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?

I am all for maintaining a healthy degree of cynicism about lots of news sources.

I am deeply, deeply worried by the trend towards automatically decrying the analysis of experts as Fake News.

I know we've talked about this endlessly on these threads - it's just that it never ceases to amaze me when I hear 'the man in the street' genuinely attempting to imply that they understand complex concepts better than those whose job it is to understand those concepts.

The UK has always had a strong thread of anti-intellectualism running through its culture. Only in the UK could a phrase like 'too clever by half' exist. It is a decades-long failure of education (not educators) that has brought us to this.

I’m also sceptical of news sources so I read a wide variety and also try and find non-news sources. I’ve been less and less impressed with the BBC.

“Until I’ve seen it with my own eyes” is an interesting strategy. I prefer “to fail to prepare is to prepare to fail”

Yes, even my educated leavers friend (sadly the only one I know who has a degree) refused to look into what WTO rules are. She's just extended her house by remortgaging and is in debt so they've blocked her credit cards too. She's financially shafted already and refuses to even look at anything that tells her she will be even worse in a few months. I worry for her families but at the same time...I've not told her I'm stockpiling. She is exactly the kind to, after a week of being "were fine surviving on porridge oats!" suddenly appear on my doorstep with her 3 kids suggesting I share my loot. She's said Corbyn would be the death of brexit (not that he would stop it but if would fail under him), and certainly didn't understand when I laughed and said that wouldn't be the reason Brexit would fail. The thing is if even educated people refuse to listen to other points of view, remainers are all high on anxiety and stress and wanting to leave - there is an on going vacuum which is just ever increasing emotional instability. I do wonder how this will all be written in the history books. Bet that red bus will be the main picture for the chapter. I worry it will be clear how little the educated and level headed remainers did/could do, which in itself is dangerous for future events like this.

FWIW educated leaver friend also thinks were are being held to ransom by religious zealots in Ireland who are threatening violence if we have a hard boarder, strongly believed Europe is developing an army, that we are better without the European court of justice (that's real sovereignty, not having people who different values changing your laws!) , believes Cameron did all he could with EU before we started this and honestly believes Germany is about to go into recession. We also had talks about the youth unemployment in France and Germany. I've highlighted their strong employment laws and lack of gig economy which is to protect mental health and the worker. She just sees it as a failing part of their economy in comparison to ours. It's so hard trying to explain things to these people as they will fully refuse to look at the whole picture.

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).

Odd cherrypicking and misrepresentation of facts there; you've obviously been influenced by listening to all these politicians.

The discussion was whether being covered through the Green Card scheme instead of through the Directive scheme was likely to cause significant extra expense.

I don't see the connection between that and the article you linked to, which was about currency movements increasing the cost of claims.

Fishes- I don't work in insurance but DH does. Ultimately insurers are like gamblers who take educated risks. Factored into their gamble is the forex markets. If the costs of paying out on claims go up. The the cost of premiums go up. Hence the knock on effect on insurance under the Green card scheme surely?

Re all this business of stirring up extremism, when I started to sketch out any scenario in my head, the extremism increasing thing was a feature. The idea there won't be unrest in no deal but there will be for revoking is nonsense. The government are contingency planning for it!!!

The problem lies with running a campaign which deliberately encouraged people to form their own idea about what Brexit should be. There were 17 million versions of Brexit which were all different. Some of them wildly. Some people were always going to be disappointed because they were promised what was unachievable.

All that is happening now is manoeuvring by politicians to try and blame others for the failure of that delivery whilst claiming that they achieved the goal as promised.

That's not my Brexit. My Brexit was shiny and unicorn like.

It's the level of toddlers.

Yes the shift to no deal Brexit as “what we voted for” is interesting. That isn’t what the Leave campaign sold us.

Also on QT a man said “we voted to leave the EU on 29th March 2019” - well, no you didn’t, that date only came about when A50 was triggered.

The FT are running a story on basic geography, logistics and Chris Grayling this morning.

The jist is Grayling wants to stick 6000 lorries waiting to go to Europe via Dover at Manston Airport meaning the area will be gridlocked with traffic.

He also wants to open a new route at Ramsgate to Europe and have lots of lorries coming and going along a different route too and from Ramsgate passing right by Manston Airport.

Can anyone spot a problem?

Chris Grayling cant.

I wonder if he's even looked at a map.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/58fed4fc-1b67-11e9-944c-54b267eb465b
Delaying Brexit is better than a no-deal, Tobias Ellwood tells Theresa May

A defence minister has become the first member of Theresa May’s government to break ranks and publicly urge her to delay Brexit if no deal can be reached.

As Whitehall stepped up preparations for a possible snap election, Tobias Ellwood argued that extending Article 50 would be preferable to Britain leaving the European Union on March 29 without a deal.

Leaving with no agreement would “be an act of self harm with profound economic, security and reputational, consequences for the UK at the very time threats are increasing and diversifying,” he told The Times.

That's not my Brexit. My Brexit was shiny and unicorn like.

“My Brexit allows me to invest at a discount, just like in the 90’s and in 2008, while somebody else sorts it all out because they always do, except for the poor people who will again get stuffed. Never mind. Their frustration and despair will be useful again in about 2030”

{The jist is Grayling wants to stick 6000 lorries waiting to go to Europe via Dover at Manston Airport meaning the area will be gridlocked with traffic.}
I wonder where the 'marshaling yards' are gong to be where the semi random arrival of trucks is segregated into those that have JiT needs (medicines and foods and maybe manufacturing in that order) and those that are not as time sensitive. The old railway marshaling yards were huge with far less diverse traffic.

Something stuck me about Born and Fennel's posts:

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

The UK has always had a strong thread of anti-intellectualism running through its culture. Only in the UK could a phrase like 'too clever by half' exist. Also phrases like the University of Life etc.

I actually think this attitude which explains the Leave shift from 'Norway to Nothing' ( despite all evidence to the contrary) is born of an obstinacy enforced and influenced in part by the relics of the class system. Bear with me.

Earlier in the thread some- one pointed out about how our society rewards group membership above competence, and self-confidence above expertise.

I think that percolates down so the true 'success' and 'superiority' comes from birth , sometimes from money but disproportionately from birth and land ownership.

Intellectual endeavour and academics are seen as a bit non- U. This enables Gove do diss trade industry specialists whose academic ability and experience has enabled them to reach the top of their industry or specialism.

Some of the failed aspirational working classes respect the Gove attitude and ape the historical land owning disdain for intellectualism. It's like a resentment of feeling that door is closed and bitterly accepting 'your place' . It's like in the two Ronnie sketch on class " I know my place". It applies especially in the elderly who can no longer be aspirational for their life path.

That's a bit garbled but I think the relics of the class system helped make the unlikely bed fellows so that the victims of austerity voted with people like JRM. They both have disdain for facts produced by intellectuals, but for different reasons.

I don't quite get why the disdain here? Germany and Italy had a sort of ruling class with counts and countesses and " Von" titles but some how intellectualism gained more respect there.Perhaps its to do with the Royal family here? They're theoretically the top of the tree in terms of fairy tale success but they're not known for producing great intellect (with a few exceptions).

The UK has always had a strong thread of anti-intellectualism running through its culture.

It's more than that. It's also about a political and corporate culture that is the opposite of technocratic and that rewards people with good presentation and communication skills and who look the part ahead of more boring people who "know stuff".

There's an aspirational element to the leavers who were tories to start - lower MC let's say for argument. These are different leavers to labour/UKIP voters, WC let's say for argument. They do converge over soverignty but the MC will argue in favour of tougher rules - they don't want WC getting places at Uni, don't want people to travel as freely as them, don't want upwards mobility because it threatens them. They have a delusional view that they are similar to Rees-Mogg in some way - sycophantic almost. WC leavers will just want us to leave because they don't like politics, don't trust it - similar to experts. Probably turns off the news when Brexit comes on and reads headline grabbers from extremist papers to garner catchphrases. In the WC leaver mind all politicians and experts want to do to the WC leaver is make them feel small by telling them how to live, become vegan and shut down industry. I think it's that in a bit of a rambling nutshell. The telling them how to live feeds into the anti-control from abroad but jars horribly with the authoritarian view of the tories - but as long as it is their OWN country using it to fight they can't see it will be used against them. Both groups are the type to bay for blood rather than rehabilitation. Emotional responses over thoughtful processing.

Yes, I think that's right, lonelyplanetmum, and chimes with conversations I've had with a leaver colleague from a white working class background. (Though I don't see much respect for intellectuals in Italy these days either...)

To be fair to my colleague, politicians do talk a lot of nonsense, and if you're not educated and get all your news from the tabloids then it is really hard to work out what you should probably believe and what you shouldn't.

@lonelyplanetmum The the cost of premiums go up. Hence the knock on effect on insurance under the Green card scheme surely?

If the cost of repairing/replacing damaged cars goes up then all motor insurance costs eventually go up to compensate. That's common sense.

It's not going to go up significantly for us all because of the Green Card scheme (or because of losing our EU-wide insurance) though.

People actually driving their UK-based car in the EU might have to pay a bit more (and often they'll be happily paying extra to extend their full UK cover to the EU anyway) but people who never take their cars outside the UK anyway should (theoretically) see a reduction due to them now being a lower risk.

The 'control' themes also lead into the 'change' themes. My MC leaver friend has said a few times in last few weeks that change is a good thing. Before Brexit began she hated change in all forms - new food, types of bedding, moving, changing supermarkets etc. That is their next psychological manoeuvring room if you ask me - tell them a little hardship is a good thing to reach their unicorn land and make them feel they are being somehow exotic.

@umpteennamechanges Significant time and expense writing requirements, would amount to weeks if not months of effort across the people who would input, write and review. Particularly as most people who would have known anything about he GC system may not be working any more

Umm. As an 'insurance professional' you presumably realise that the Green Card scheme is actually something that already/still exists? It operates today. It's only 16 years since we've officially not needed a GC for the EU and it can't be more than 6 years since Spanish police were still routinely demanding them from UK motorists.

I've organised a Green Card just this week actually; I doubt the insurer had to rewrite their systems or pull anyone out of retirement to ask them what to do.

Conservatively the insurance industry will have had to bring in £160M of income from consumers to create the ability for Green Cards when we don't even know if it's needed yet.

As above; the industry clearly already has the 'the ability for Green Cards' or they wouldn't still be available.

As for costs, under current rules the UK insurance industry is responsible for paying out for any accidents caused by a UK-based vehicle in the EU, whether the driver is insured or not. All UK policy-holders have legal minimum cover to drive throughout the EU, without their insurer charging them for the extra risk (or even needing to be informed that the vehicle may be taken abroad). This adds costs to everyone's policies, whether they're ever likely to drive outside the UK or not.

If we're in the EU then the idea of insurance cover throughout the EU makes great sense. If we're not in the EU then I can't really see any justification for a driver who never drives outside the UK paying extra (as they currently are) to subsidise the European driving adventures of people who pop over to France every other weekend.

Hopefully the current pantomime will reach it's planned conclusion sometime before 11pm on March 29th and none of this is going to matter anyway.

I don't think you can categorise "Leave " voters as a single group. Those I know (mainly from another forum) are mainly middle-class, middle aged, white. A couple have degrees, several voted "Leave" in the full knowledge that their own children were voting "Remain". Most were heavily influenced by the newspapers they read - the Mail and the Telegraph. One who lives in N. Ireland votes as her husband tells her. They have convinced themselves that the N. Ireland issue is "trumped up" to prevent us leaving the EU and that the WA is unfavourable because "the Remain campaign have been in collusion with them all along." I don't know how you get past that kind of self-delusion. I've stopped trying.

Green cards: I phones our insurers yesterday.
One was on the ball, system coming back online, but not ready yet, they will email me one free soon.
The other : nothing, the girl said I should talk to the immigration office. Eventually I spoke to a manager who had heard of them, and thought I should phone back in March as nothing was in place.

So yes, insurance companies are having to spend on training and new systems.

One of the sticking points that most worries me about a hard Brexit/no deal is the myth of the blitz spirit coupled with the reality of our highly individualist society.

I can't help but feel that the halcyon days of everyone banding together for a common cause were never actually true. PPs have mentioned this stuff as a reason why Call the Midwife is so popular. That despite grinding poverty and squalor, people looked out for each other and made sure everyone was fed etc. Except that's patently not what our history is. Our history is one of workhouses, poorhouses and poverty=shame. As a child who was born during the Thatcher years the only kind of society I know is "I'm alright Jack".

There are those who seek to upturn this, people like Jack Monroe and our own Mrs, but they are rare. After Brexit when some have a stockpile and others have whatever they can get hold of, when the lies of the leave campaign come crashing down around us, are we going to break bread with our neighbours? Or are we going to add an extra lock to the door and close the curtains?

The chat about our culture of shaming cleverness got me thinking about all of this. Critical thinking has gone out of the window, and I worry that life after Brexit will entrench this view. People don't/can't admit their own faults (see again: current politics) and they will never admit to being led down the garden path (see: we knew what we were voting for). So after a hard Brexit it'll be more of the same - it'll be "well if you're so clever, why didn't you do more to stop this happening?"

We could've done. We could band together. But people are so fucking obstinate, and we have this culture of "me and my feelings", where people don't care about the problems on their doorstep so long as they are ok. And the whole while those of us who realise this issue are pressured not to talk about it, so nothing ever gets done.

Ugh. I'm done. Sorry for the rant. It probably makes no sense at all.

The adoption of 'No Deal' is fascinating, isn't it?

At base, I think it's protection of self-esteem - at an extraordinarily fundamental level, where it is deeply bound to sense of self and how sense of self is constructed through perception and knowing.

It's so deep that it is repressed into the subconscious. Trying to reach it, engage with it, risks the unravelling of self - and can be perceived as threatening attack. It really is quite resistant to rational engagement.

Otto English has a fantastic Twitter thread where he asked people to contribute idea from psychology, sociology, neuroscience and philosophy to explain it. It's on his timeline.

For myself, I think about what I know from education, and my experience in education.

Educating children is not straightforward. It's about the transfer of information: most of it new and some of it complex . And that has to be done in a 'mass' situation (1:30 in state schools),

You are asking children to abandon what they 'know' for what they don't know (yet). This requires reorganisation of the knowledge that forms their basis of self.

Some of that information is new - and complex. Some of it is counter-intuitive: it goes against their 'daily experience'; the quotidian knowledge which serves them well for the functioning of everyday life.

Learning new things is uncomfortable: it requires effort, it takes up energy and processing time, it needs repetition and practice to embed - practice that needs to be artificially orchestrated.

Complex information needs to be broken down in order to be delivered - in manageable chunks, going from the known to the increasingly abstruse.

There needs to be a trust relationship to impart it. They need to believe the source of the teaching.

And there is a wide disparity in children in terms of how easily they learn. In a given class, about 5 will learn new and complex material quickly. The rest will require differing degrees of reinforcement, scaffolding, small-group repetiyiin: various strategies to enable learning are employed.

So , all very well in school - but what of when you leave school?

I suspect there are s lot of people who go through life feeling that much knowledge and information is 'elite': a conspiracy from which they are excluded (and why they might be excluded will be a reason they will fill in for themselves, based on whatever grounds their self-esteem can come up with - society favours women, people of colour, gay people ...).

I think they end up telling themselves that 'elite' knowledge is nothing more than an exclusionary game. It's a conspiracy.

I think they are uniquely predisposed to attraction to conspiracy theory knowledges. And information that is spread through non-mainstream channels. That reaches them through alternative networks, rather than 'elite' (mainstream) ones.

It reinforces their sense that mainstream knowledge is an elite network/conspiracy that they are excluded from. Here is knowledge that is similarly excluded! It is their knowledge.

It builds self-esteem. Finally, a knowledge tailored to their experience, a knowledge the elites can't see because their privilege excluded them from seeing it grow amongst the dispossessed!

Their relationship to knowledge is fragile - really - it's built on a very fragile relationship between self-esteem, self-identity and ways of knowing/things known.

If your sense of self is bound up with the idea that you have - uniquely - been initiated into s secret knowledge, that elevated you above those possessing elite knowledge - that, in fact, permitted you to see that elite knowledge was, in fact, just a lie, a ridiculous conspiracy, what do you do when that knowledge is a lie?

When 'Brexit means we will negotiate our position before leaving' turns into 'no Deal'?

I think what you do is you say: ' oh yes. I am super-clever. I saw that all along. I am not just one of the initiates into this Uber-elite cult, I am one of the inner sanctum. I saw the secret truth right from the start. I am, actually, one of the priests of this cult.'

Because the opposite - admitting you were wrong, even gulled - risks a catastrophe in the self-make-up that pulled you into the knowledge cult in the first place.

Applause japancat