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?

Tom peck @tompeck
Quiz question: who is the only member of the cabinet to share a platform with Nigel Farage, while still a member of the cabinet?

It was, of course, Chris Grayling. Stood on a stage in Stoke and, whilst an actual member of the cabinet, chanted "we want our country back."

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tom-pecks-sketch-a6990416.html?amp&__twitter_impression=true
From April 2016

Interesting

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6604933/amp/Whitehall-alert-General-Election-civil-servants-draw-contingency-snap-poll.html?__twitter_impression=true
Oh no, not again! Whitehall bosses are put on alert for ANOTHER General Election as they order civil servants to draw up contingency plans for Brexit deadlock snap poll

Tim Shipman @shippersunbound
I can’t remember who said it but the pithiest thing I’ve heard about Brexit this week is this: “You can’t take no deal off the table. No deal IS THE TABLE”

Why not replace No Deal by saying that the HoC should agree the WA, including the backstop,
but with the PD replaced by a line stating " to be agreed in A50 extension"

I'm pretty sure the EU would agree in advance to an extension in exchange for ruling out No Deal
AND provided that the extension is immediately cancelled if the UK reneges on the WA.

Of course, that WA risks the DUP pulling out and a GE,
but once the WA is approved, would a new govt be rash enough to renege on a signed treaty in full view of the world - and be expelled from the extension and the transition period too ?

More on the Bercow peerage story:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46913477

Ministers are furious at what they see as John Bercow's "bias" during Commons debates on Brexit.
The move would break a tradition dating back 230 years, that former Commons speakers are automatically offered a seat in the House of Lords.

A Cabinet source said: < sinisterly >

"It's a good job peerage nominations are in our gift.

"I'm sure we'll be thinking carefully about which individuals we would choose to elevate to the House of Lords."
"I can't imagine we would look favourably on those who've cheated centuries of procedure."

< blimey, they'll be talking next about how a Speaker can fall down the stairs and break a few bonea ! 🤔 >

I don't think I want a PV anymore, I'm becoming steadily convinced that it wouldn't go the way I want it to.

That is always the risk. People assume remain would win. I seriously don't think it would tbh.

As the polls swing further towards Remain, so the activity of Brexiteers and in particular no dealers will increase all over the place, including on these threads.
Re toxic masculinity, delusions and politics - what a recent visitor (I think) termed IDPOL is extraordinarily widespread across the whole spectrum from left to right and includes gender politics. Either it’s a spontaneous political/psychological reaction to certain aspects of current society or (possibly and) it’s a deliberately orchestrated attempt to undermine rational thinking and whatever (flawed) version of democracy is practised in various Western countries. The US and UK are the most vulnerable due to their particular electoral systems, plus their language is English whose flexibility and nuance is both a wonder and a weakness because it enables people to produce elaborate arguments that are essentially meaningless. See recent examples of deliberate nonsense that managed to be peer reviewed and published in reputable journals.

www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/sunday/brexit-ireland-empire.html?fbclid=IwAR06I6ht7RhdsL4F4UAPJf1X3H3l7JTCyOIqje_peC66qY6P6HywMsHAIg8

A scathing NY Times opinion piece on the British Imperial Adventure.

Forster blamed Britain’s political fiascos on its privately educated men, callow beneficiaries of the country’s elitist public school system. These eternal schoolboys whose “weight is out of all proportion” to their numbers are certainly overrepresented among Tories. They have today plunged Britain into its worst crisis, exposing its incestuous and self-serving ruling class like never before.

From David Cameron, who recklessly gambled his country’s future on a referendum in order to isolate some whingers in his Conservative party, to the opportunistic Boris Johnson, who jumped on the Brexit bandwagon to secure the prime ministerial chair once warmed by his role model Winston Churchill, and the top-hatted, theatrically retro Jacob Rees-Mogg, whose fund management company has set up an office within the European Union even as he vehemently scorns it, the British political class has offered to the world an astounding spectacle of mendacious, intellectually limited hustlers.

Even a columnist for The Economist, an organ of the British elite, now professes dismay over “Oxford chums” who coast through life on “bluff rather than expertise.” “Britain,” the magazine belatedly lamented last month, “is governed by a self-involved clique that rewards group membership above competence and self-confidence above expertise.” In Brexit, the British “chumocracy,” the column declared, “has finally met its Waterloo.”

Wrt women/ men/ misogyny/ toxic masculinity and Brexit - when Theresa May proclaimed herself a 'bloody difficult woman' she was using language normally used against women to establish a favourable position for herself among her mainly male colleagues. She could have used a term like 'excellent negotiator' but all it would have had going for it would be comedy value; it wouldn't have worked as a characterisation of herself because there is no female equivalent of machismo attached to that. A Bloody Difficult Woman otoh is someone who shoots from the lip, confronts, contradicts, and gets what she wants even if the man or men don't want that. Obviously the Tory men believed it would be the wimpy EU men who would get the drubbing.

I think this was a tacit acknowledgement of the mindset among Brexiteers.

Farming Today on Vegan Wars. More division...
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00021s8

Medicine shortages due to Brexit stockpiling second news headline 6 am after Kim Jong-un.

PMK

I'm losing hope now. Another best part if a fortnight assigned to time wasting.

Of*

Thanks red
quickly double checks she's not thanking the wrong person again, phew

Farming today has quite often bucked the BBC trend with some honest insights. I do think compared to a year ago the BBC generally has shifted a bit (not enough). It would now for example actually cover a pro EU protest march which it didn't at the outset.

On the Toxic masculinity thing interestingly it is at both ends, the workmen I saw the other day and my FiL cheers leading for no deal. Then the JRM, BoJo aspects of their attitude seeing women as baby machines or playthings.But there is an arrogant legacy born of the class system in there too that has enabled those groups to be unexpected bed fellows. Its all tied in with this..

Rewarding group membership above competence and self-confidence above expertise

This is so true. I’ve done some lecturing in the past and noticed a pattern. There was in many classes a particular type of young man, (and it was the males) with a certain educational background who scored poorly in the substance and detail of their written work but dominated class discussions with an arrogance and confidence. By contrast in most years there would be some very able self doubting anxious women.Their work was excellent but they showed too much humility.

It led me to ponder who will go further in their careers and life. The arrogance and self confident young men with a certain background would definitely have an edge with contacts and when interviewing for a job despite being less able. Yes they may be found out by an employer, but actually in many cases the bluster would work with colleagues, customers or clients too.
It led me to believe that actually misplaced self confidence is often worth more than competence and expertise, because its unassailable. Even if the underlying lack of substance leads to the individual being sacked or say imprisoned for fraud or something, the individual will then be able to project that it was the company or system that was wrong.
Perhaps is for this reason Bo Jo can rise again after his complicity in plotting GBH on a journalist and survive exposure of his personal and professional immorality.

This attitude plus 40 character soundbites has helped breed a climate where we actually rate bluster ( eg Farage) over facts and experts. In other European countries I do think intellectual capability, great scientific minds etc are held in greater esteem.

Sick of hearing about the Duke of Edinburgh! He pulled out of a side turning in front of an oncoming car whose occupants were extremely lucky not to have been seriously injured or killed! Take his driving license away before he actually kills someone!

Place mat king

Agree sostenuto. More concern about him than the two women who actually needed taking to hospital after the silly old fool caused them to crash. More bloody forelock tugging.

“Repeat after me”. A familiar refrain, and not a welcomed one.

SpaceAngel #StopBrexit #FAB & #GTTO
This is circulating in Labour groups on Facebook. It shows just how hard it will be to get, let alone win, a public vote on the deal. The factions now in force make any vote more complex, at least in 2016 it was a binary choice.
#StopBrexit

the damage caused by Brexit is futurology

This is the very definition of political shortsightedness.

I meant oakeshott's "hope is not a strategy" was pretty ironic from a leaver. Only recently we were looking for remain straplines - that is a pretty good contender.

The number 8 on that list is hilarious. He list tge vote of no confidence. So he wasn't right about the timing either.

It is tribal politics at it's worse.

*he lost the

My guess is Momentum, @PainInTheEar.

Even if I didn't recognise the arguments (and I do, I hear the a lot from Momentumites), 'Facebook group' would have been a big clue.

Obviously, not all Momentum members are like this but ...

There's a real overlap, in my opinion, between a certain section of one run and the type of people Leave radicalised: social media; inflammatory discourse; strong group identification (with self-esteem bound strongly in that); conspiracy theories ...

I wonder if the common denominators aren't actually stronger than old-school political allegiances.

I have been developing a theory about it - but it's still in development.

Again - not all Momentum members are like this!!! It needs stating and restating. Momentum members were fantastic at organising the demand for a People's Vote, and getting that taken to Conference, and agreed as a pledge.

I would personally be very proud to pin a medal on Berkow for services to the common people and democracy for what he tried to do.