Westminstenders: Stalemate

[RedToothBrush]

After May's Meaningless Vote defeat and Corbyns Pointless Vote for Your Own Party defeat we are well and truly at Stalemate.

May has invited other parties to come and talk to her to find a compromise. Except she has so many red lines all she is asking is for everyone else to compromise whilst she gets exactly what she wants.

Corbyn made a tactical error in not initially speaking to May, so now she gets to say that its Labour who are being difficult and not wanting to work together in the national interest.

Corbyn has in addition put down the red line of saying he won't talk to May until she agrees to drop no deal. Except since no deal is the default until an alternative solution is agreed! Corbyn is expecting May to say that she would revoke if there was no alternative agreed, whilst is isn't really reasonable from a compromise point of view.

They are as bad as each other. Both too stubborn for the country to move forward. Its long been said that they were alike in this respect, but having it put to the test about which is more stubborn has the potential to destory the country in the process.

In addition to this, Leadsom has removed all other Brexit related HoC business from the schedule until after the 29th January. This is a blantant attempt to try and stop backbenchers having the opportunity to table pesky amendments which the government don't like.

The 29th January is due to be the Meaningless Vote II. Given that May has made it clear that in her head 'compromise' means 'do exactly what I want and capitulate' it looks like the Withdrawal Agreement will be represented to parliament to vote on with little change. Perhaps with a few amendments there designed to attract support, though it remains to be seen where this support will come from given the spectulator level of the rejection the HoC gave it. May's Plan is literally to run the clock down and hold a gun of no deal to the head of remain leaning MPs or to scare Brexiteers by suggesting that she might revoke or there might be an extension.

Its beyond farce.

Of course the role of the Speaker becomes paramount.

Technically speaking no bill can be presented to the HoC twice in the same parliament. Its against the rules. So how is May going to get around this, and will the Speaker indeed allow it?

The Speaker may also try and help backbenchers out by allowing amendments and motions to be tabled outside the normal rules. Normally the government alone control the majority of parliamentary time, with the opposition parties being given so many debates depending on whether they are the official opposition and then according to their size. Backbenchers don't tend to get much parliamentary time. However the Speaker's actions last week showed he was willing to be creative and bend the rules to allow backbenchers more influence and power than under normal circumstances because of the way that the Executive was trying to frustrate the house. So not timetabling any further Brexit Business between now and the 29th January seems a sure fire way to have the Government straight on course for another run in with Bercow.

So what next:

Do not forget that whatever happens May has to agree to it, or we go to no deal. Whether that be a 2nd Ref, Revoking, Staying in the Customs Union, Norway + or Any Other Alternative May has to agree to it on some level.

Backbenchers can table amendments all day long to 'guide' or put pressure on May but they may not be able stop her ultimately. Boles, Grieve, Benn and Cooper seem to be the ones to watch.

So May's stubborness is the biggest barrier and issue there is to preventing No Deal.

Corbyn, whilst he might well be very right to avoid getting sucked into May's trap, isn't helping matters with his own stubborness. His priority is party politics and stopping the Labour Party from splitting. Not solving Brexit.

There is not a shread of pragmatism nor thought for the national interest between them. Party before Country.

So we are to go through all of the last week, possibly with another vote of no confidence thrown in for good measure in another 12 days.

Won't that be fun?

We have buses like that, two regular services that serve the town centre and the shopping on the edge of town, and two on-demand services that you book. They are minibuses and they are free. They've been running for a year or so now and while they were quite empty at first now they are really popular.

That story about the man walking to the job centre was horrible. Broken Britain :(

We also have shared public/school buses on some routes - they exist for school transport purposes but the public can use some of the services.

Dominic Cummings assumed that clever people would come forward to make Brexit work. But where were they?

Well, civil servants were forbidden from doing any preparatory work for the possibility of a Leave outcome ahead of the referendum, and for the last two years have been tightly managed in what they can and can't work on, lest this be interpreted as preparing to fail / giving the EU the upper hand / other spurious reason.

Obviously there are other clever people out there too! I can't think of a pro-Leave think tank that has put forward anything particularly helpful though

I once applied for a job at the policy exchange because I found Dominic Cummings a fascinating enigma.

Buses sporadic in my village. Last bus into village at 7 pm. First bus out is 7.30 am full of schoolchildren. Nearest high school 3 miles away.

ummings reminds me of me at Uni. I had a weird amount of knowledge not directly related to my BSc and kept being one of those annoying students putting my hand up to link ideas and asking loads of questions. I got a 2:1 mainly because refused to keep the questions as simple as they wanted them. I was arrogant enough to want to show something "new" all the sodding time. I was so enthusiastic and those 68s used to drive me nuts, but now and the I'd get a eureka of 84 which would fire me up again... I see similar when I read his blog. I've realised in hindsight that sometimes focusing clearly on one topic at a time is better than running off with snippets of ideas which may just have interesting links. I find him a bit of an annoying puppy desperate to show off his latest musings for some kind of acknowledgement. Having been there myself it makes me cringe.

I don't believe it was simply an absence of a plan - but an absence of people able to identify problems and come up with solutions.
Instead you just have a bunch of people bullshitting from all sides to out witt each other whilst completely ignoring the real problems.

On the night of the WA vote Danny Baker yes, not your necessarily oft go to person for political analysis tweeted this:
We have a generation of politicians long advised by fixers & wonks that a glib soundbite can solve any situation. Action seen as laughably old-school by this legion of glib invisible fixers. Now action is demanded. And they are exposed, helpless, paralysed. Useless.

I can't say I disagree.

imo, some warnings of "violence" if Revoke happens are actually veiled threats,^
or people unwittingly repeating what were veiled threats^

Repeated warnings, even if from respectable sources, can increase the likelihood

Sam Coates Times Retweeted Ben Monro-Davies@benm_d
@adamboultonSKY made v good point other day - by warning of such outcomes - are politicians "encouraging" it to happen.
Are they creating a "betrayal" narrative - rather than responding to one? also a different type of project fear?
....--
Christopher Hope**@christopherhope

NEW Chopper's Brexit Podcast today:
Remaining in the EU 'could spark a new extremist movement' says former Tory deputy chairman

Lonely - I know just the sort of person you mean (DS is exactly the same...). And having met Cummings, I agree with your summary

Can't bloody sleep for all this shit. It's given me low-medium constant anxiety. It's the uncertainty. I'm good in a crisis when I know what's what but this uncertainty is interfering with my sleep.

I'm angry that people like my mum were taken in by the lies of the leave campaign and voted for brexit. She deeply regrets it and is really worried. She's approaching 80, widowed, state pension, interest only mortgage that payments keeps increasing (has doubled in the last 6 months), the DWP no longer help as much with all the austerity cut backs and people like her are going to be affected badly by food prices increasing and medicine shortages. I'm a single SAHM of 3 who needs to go back to uni to do a short course to get back into my area of work as I've been out too longer to just waltz back in. I rent my house and worried that my landlord might sell. So many things rattling round in my head tonight. I've been so tired all day and irritable with bad period pain (endometriosis) and now I can't sleep.
I'm one of the luckier ones that doesn't know how they'll be affected but for others who are already affected or know they will be affected then I feel such anger towards the government for the situation they have caused.
Sending strength and hope and solidarity to all those worrying tonight. I hope we all manage to sleep and have brexit-free dreams

A Luxembourg political analyst summed up the bafflement of EU leaders:

“The UK basically jumped into the ocean blindfold, and started paddling round in circles.

It was almost like it expected the EU not just to say what Brexit should look like,
but to devise a version of it that would suit Britain.”

Tick tock

Tomorrow:
there will be 68 days until Brexit
and the HoC has only 35 normal working days left - maybe only 10 if there is a GE !
(A GE could dissolve parliament for 25 working days)

Pleeeeease. Let them all get D&V to last for the next few weeks, to give the few adults a chance to sort things out.

Steven Swinford@Steven_Swinford

Exclusive

I'm told that Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds are dining with Theresa May at Chequers TONIGHT.

DUP says it is a 'long-standing' social function, but it will be seen as an attempt by the PM to build bridges after disastrous Brexit vote

converse hope you get some sleep

, some warnings of "violence" if Revoke happens are actually veiled threats, or people unwittingly repeating what were veiled threats

I suspect many people issuing them are people hoping to stir up trouble/ scare remainers rather than people actually planning to cause trouble themselves. They simply want to prod other people into action - hence why I always ask anyone spouting it is that is a personal promise of action from themselves? ... it never is. They are just trying to stir up unsavoury types and frighten everyone else into giving them what they want. It needs to be called out - every time someone even dares so much as suggest it.

So like this:

Remaining in the EU 'could spark a new extremist movement' says former Tory deputy chairman

Does the former Tory deputy chairman mean that he is personally going to start up a new extremist movement? No? Then he needs to shut up then. His pontificating about what OTHER people MIGHT do is utterly worthless.

Fintan O'Toole nails it yet again:

"It may seem strange to call this slow collapse invisible since so much of it is obvious: the deep uncertainties about the union after the Good Friday agreement of 1998 and the establishment of the Scottish parliament the following year; the consequent rise of English nationalism; the profound regional inequalities within England itself; the generational divergence of values and aspirations; the undermining of the welfare state and its promise of shared citizenship; the contempt for the poor and vulnerable expressed through austerity; the rise of a sensationally self-indulgent and clownish ruling class. But the collective effects of these interrelated developments do seem to have been barely visible within the political mainstream until David Cameron accidentally took the lid off by calling a referendum and asking people to endorse the status quo.
What we see with the lid off and the fog of fantasies at last beginning to dissipate is the truth that Brexit is much less about Britain’s relationship with the EU than it is about Britain’s relationship with itself. It is the projection outwards of an inner turmoil. An archaic political system had carried on even while its foundations in a collective sense of belonging were crumbling. Brexit in one way alone has done a real service: it has forced the old system to play out its death throes in public. The spectacle is ugly, but at least it shows that a fissiparous four-nation state cannot be governed without radical social and constitutional change."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/18/europe-brexit-britain-state-politics-fit-for-purpose?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

From another thread on this board, it seems Reminers ore the ones with the "I'm alright jack" attitude ?

So as far as I am concerned fuck the eu,fuck freedom of movement and fuck all the remainders with their “I’m alright Jack attitude “

Anyone reading this thread might recall one poster telling us that car insurance won't be affected (they rather disappeared or namechanged when facts were introduced).

Is the BBC trolling them ?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46922989

Car insurance costs are climbing for the first time since 2017, partly because of Brexit uncertainty, according to the AA.

Over the last three months, the cost of a fully comprehensive policy climbed 2.7% to £609.93 on average.

Premiums have also climbed because an expected cut in claims costs won't now take effect until April 2020.

"But underlying all of this are concerns surrounding Brexit," said AA's director of insurance Janet Connor.

She said: "Regardless of what the final deal looks like, the market has continued to battle with the value of sterling.

(contd)

Ultimately, insurers invest the premiums they receive and then use the profits to honour claims. That means they are intimately tied into the forex market - usually over years (not like the fly by night merchants). Long periods of low or stagnant growth will lead to increased premiums everywhere.

Just listening to the Today programme - they were interviewing people in Milton Keynes (I think).

Apparently the NHS, supermarkets, Jaguar Land Rover etc have 'just been told' - by 'spin doctors' - that things will be bad in the event of No Deal, they don't really know that they will.

They don't understand their own supply chains as well as Dave from Milton Keynes does. If only they'd just listen to Dave, all this worry could be avoided, eh?

they don't really know that they will.

The rejection of informed predictions is one of the things about this that I find really worrying.

That is exactly my DB's attitude - doesn't feel it's even watching the news because it's all lies anyway. Says he won't believe anything until he sees it with his own eyes. Is therefore not listening when I tell him it would be sensible to have some stocks in.

He voted remain and is intelligent, just apparently deeply, deeply cynical about all sources of news information.

I don't know for sure if I jump off a cliff that I will die. I might have serious life changing injuries but I might nevertheless survive. So why do it in the first place?

I don’t do Facebook, Twitter or most mainstream media TBH. The BBC is a go to (with my sceptical hat on) as are online versions of broadsheets, US and EU print news.

Where is all this no deal stuff is OK coming from (apart from Question Time)?