Westminstenders: Red Squirrels are British. Groundhogs are not.

[RedToothBrush]

Well the good news is we haven't got a GE yet, and it looks unlike one will be called this week. Purely because we haven't got a crisis point looming this week.

May has officially confirmed plan A is plan B. But says she will try and get more on the backstop whilst working with the DUP. Barnier and Ireland have said 'no'

We now prepare for the Meaningful Vote II.

And a week of speculation about amendments.

Here's a quick summary of likely ones:
Guardian Article on possible amendments

I think the Labour one will struggle to gain Tory support. The big thing about it is leans the party line firmly towards a customs union.

The Grieve one is handicapped by talk of a minority of 300 taking control of Parliament. Otherwise it might have support.

The two most interesting are:

The Benn 'Indicative Vote' as its reflective of the Brexit Select Committee recommendations.

The Cooper-Boles Block No Deal amendment which is cross party and seeks to place a final date on May passing her deal by 26th Feb, after which Parliament will take control. This I believe is being supported by Labour as a whole.

Bercow of course gets to say which amendments are debated and voted on but Benn and Cooper-Boles have broad support so are unlikely to be ignored by him. The two together seem to compliment each other.

The rest of this week is likely to be lobbying on this but otherwise fairly calm. Though someone is bound to throw a few curveball in there with leaks.

The only other thing to watch out for is talk of up to 40 ministers quitting if they are not allowed a free vote on some sort of indicative vote motion. This seems to be being lead by Amber Rudd. But I don't expect this to come to a head until the weekend at the earliest.

In other words, we have a couple of days of calm before the storm. Expect it to ramp up again at the weekend in craziness.

@Mistigri that link makes for good reading - thank you for sharing.

Isobel Revoke is without question better than any WA or Brexit.

It's just that currently almost no MP supports Revoke publicly
and the WA is the only option actually on the table that would prevent No Deal

If there seems no reasonable chance of Revoke within the next few weeks and no chance of defining a PD with an SM+ aim,
then I'll switch to advocating the WA,
purely to avoid the national disaster of No Deal

Alex Wickham is not my fav journo, but he is very good at his job and he's interesting to read despite his very obvious bias.

I find it curious to see who has refuted the story (when it's been blindly obvious that these were problems for some time to anyone paying attention)

There were several 2nd ref groups as it was. There were numerous groups all trying to do the same thing. I had a friend who has been trying to run things locally complaining about it and how there was no cohesive plan.

Whilst I supported campaigning for reopening public debate and saw the PV ref as a good way to create political pressure to do that. As we're the marches, I've always been slightly dubious about organisition and the lack of goals.

Whilst you mind not like his agenda or tone Alex Wickham does have his finger on the pulse of what's going on. He might happen to pick more on things you don't necessarily want to hear, but it doesn't make him a bad journalist.

During the WA transition period, as the EU have continually said they would prefer the UK not to leave I have fair confidence that after say 6 months or a year if the UK had a real change of heart that readmission could happen. It does however need a period of icy cold wind blowing through Westminster to make the MPs realise that a real plan for the destination of the UK needs formulating. The UK can never be a 'superpower' in it's own right, the world has turned to often.

BCF I've seen a tweet about Murrison II getting nowhere fast this evening. I'll see if I can find. Might have been Sam Coates.

Allie Rennison @ allierennison
I dont understand why even a limited technical extension to Article 50 to allow enough time for an orderly negotiated exit is so horribly diff from Leavers talking about "managed" no deal w/a supposed status quo transition period. Cd someone please explain? I want to understand

I think this is a fair argument to throw at Leavers...

It's a matter of supporting the best option that's actually feasible, not the option of our dreams

Tick tock
Only 65 days until Brexit
That's just 34 days of normal Parliamentary time left

29 January is the next important date for this debate and the votes on the various amendments

The HoC needs to make decisions then, or very soon after
No Deal is still the automatic default until they do.

Sorry my misreading of a tweet

Tom Newton Dunn @tnewtondunn
Murrison Mk II is out. Is this the Government's opening bid to the ERG/DUP?

I thought he meant ruled out, rather than out.

Wishful thinking

From Guardian, not sure if it is new.
{No-deal Brexit would mean hard Irish border, EU confirms}

Dyson isn't in anyone's good books tonight!

Andrew Neil @ afneil
With friends like Dyson, Brexiteers don’t really need enemies.

Neil is clearly resisting the urge to shout 'traitor!!'

Which I find perversely amusing.

Questions are:

1. Would Murrison II amendment pass ?
   Depends on how Labour vote
   Also, several Tories have also expressed additional objections - e.g. want to make the 39bn contingent on a trade deal.

2. If it passes, would the EU accept it ? No

3. Danger ? High if it passes

• this could be the new game of chicken and the UK would be run over by the No Deal train

Dyson is clearly the model for UK business after Brexit:

Shout rah, rah for British enterprise - virtue signalling the Brexiter way - and bugger off to be enterprising abroad

Shows his confidence in Brexit Britain !

No-deal Brexit would mean hard Irish border, EU confirms

Translation: The EU state the bleeding obvious because the UK keep ignoring that bloody great elephant trampling over everything and using euphemisms for breaking the GFA like 'limiting the backstop'

A FAQ Brexit acronyms and quick explanation of terms seems a good idea. If I get some time tomorrow I'll work on something.

I’ve always felt uneasy about PV, and I think maybe now we have passed peak PV. I don’t know the way forward but it has to be cleaner, more direct and simple than a PV would be.
I like Revoke (obvs) but also Parliament getting much more proactive and assertive could ultimately be a very good thing.

www.thenational.scot/news/17377057.scottish-twitter-reacts-with-fury-after-tories-call-off-brexit-talks/
Scottish Twitter reacts with fury after Tories call off Brexit talks

THERESA May is facing an angry online backlash after her government cancelled Brexit discussions with senior politicians from Scotland and Wales despite promises of a more “flexible, open and inclusive" approach.

The UK Government has announced that a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee, which was scheduled for Thursday, would not go ahead due to “diary pressures”.

The Scottish Government's External Affairs Secretary, Fiona Hyslop, said the subsequent cancellation "flies in the face of the Prime Minister's rhetoric" after Theresa May had promised an "enhanced role" for the devolved governments in the Commons on Monday.

{A FAQ Brexit acronyms and quick explanation of terms seems a good idea. If I get some time tomorrow I'll work on something.}
It would be really good if MNHQ could get it to appear on a sidebar whenever the Brexit topic area is opened. There are 3 'ads' under Mumsnet insight on my screen (I use adblocker so there may be other stuff normally) but that would be a good place to put a link to such a FAQ.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/22/brexit-theresa-may-jeremy-corbyn?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet
Opinion piece by Rafael Behr
We’ll never see a cross-party deal on Brexit: tribalism runs too deep
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are too set in their ways to put country before party

May and Corbyn are set in their ways and alike in craving approval from their party’s least flexible supporters. Their interests are also perversely aligned on Brexit. When May’s deal was rejected, she offered cross-party talks knowing there was no prospect of agreement with the Labour leader. It suited her that he refused the invitation. She likes to have Corbyn lurking on the sidelines, spooking Conservatives with the thought of radical socialist government. It suits Corbyn for May to carry on grinding away as she has always done, painting Tory colours on the Brexit mess from top to bottom. And the deeper we go into this crisis, the louder each side will accuse the other of putting party before country. Both will be right

Sigh. Same observation I made, more or less. Depressing.

her government cancelled Brexit discussions with senior politicians from Scotland and Wales despite promises of a more “flexible, open and inclusive" approach.

Oh, how shocked I am....look at my shocked face... May says she will work with others and then doesn't, this is such a surprise...Nothing like this has ever happened before.

Was I convincing?

More firms leaving-

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-21/brexit-forces-equity-foreign-exchange-markets-to-leave-London

Perhaps a very big firm like Airbus needs to leave in order to focus the minds. I don't think that the general public realises the gravity of it all. Media does not help ! For many people, it is all about Project Fear.

It would be really good if MNHQ could get it to appear on a sidebar whenever the Brexit topic area is opened. There are 3 'ads' under Mumsnet insight on my screen (I use adblocker so there may be other stuff normally) but that would be a good place to put a link to such a FAQ.

I would put it at the top of each thread in that bit where on some boards it says stuff about contributors not having qualifications and whatnot. Nobody looks at right-hand columns. This is a true fact (really, it is true I have both read and carried out studies into this).

And more

Airline caterers stockpiling

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-21/now-airline-meals-are-stockpiled-as-brexit-border-fears-grow?srnd=premium-europe

Call me naive but how could anyone involved in the PV campaign have thought it would be a good idea to run the Remain campaign? The only way for a PV to be taken seriously was for it to be seen as a genuine expression of democratic decision making when those who should have made the decisions - Parliament - couldn’t. Even though I didn’t take it wholly seriously, more an expression of disapproval and a way to put pressure on Govt, I feel mildly betrayed (again).
The solution will have to come through the HOC, and individual MPs taking action irrespective of party lines.

BiglyBadgers
I'm just chucking ideas out there, something might stick.
I have not looked at the sitestuff messages mentioned earlier but there are a number of conflicts of interest going on in that Brexit topics want to be noticed but invisible as it primarily a women's childcare/family/??? site being run for profit. Too much prominence and all and sundry will troll it.It seems to me that gradually more, principally women are getting increasingly concerned with the progress and implications of Brexit so in a way threads that help to calm, perhaps with the Prepping threads should be slightly separated from the political discussion aspects such as this thread.
I love your username by the way.

Faisal Islam@faisalislam

Full leaked Border Force document obtained by Sky News has series of extraordinary detailed insights into assumptions about the operation of the Border for freight, passengers, businesses and security on #D1ND - Day 1 No Deal... /1

Slide “LENS and People Contingency Assumptions”:

“Loss of data and access to key systems” - ref to No Deal loss of access to EU’s SIS2 - database that’s checked when they swipe your passport and cross reffed against EU wide criminal databases.

Replaced by much inferior system /2

Border Force assumption is that “EU will impose full Schengen border controls” which could mean “UK passengers can no longer use e-gates” and “intentions checking” on way into EU. Which leads to ... /3

.. would lead to “disruption to commercial flight schedules” and “flights arriving out of sequence”... similarly “significant outbound queues at St Pancras” at Eurostar terminal. /4

New slide...“The reduction in the value of the pound may contribute to a surge in non-EU passenger traffic [incl before Day 1]”^

- thought pretty extraordinary to anticipate this as an impact of No deal, taking for granted a sterling slide, and also impact on migration... /5

New No Deal border requirements at border “may lead to introduced flow and increased confusion amongst travelers”. Both may lead to an increase in OCG [organised crime groups] activity... “additional clandestine threat” /6

....... “risk of reduced operational cooperation from EU partners... may include reduction in French law enforcement, with significant negative impact on our ability to manage threat from GM [general maritime]”

Interesting given context of what happened subsequently in Channel /7

^“Readiness taskforce” of 284 deployed to deal with “degradation of border security” in No Deal Brexit
/8^

Joy drug dealing and people smuggling #BrexitOpportunities

Another 'leaked' (purposely) document. My my this government resorts to anything to get WA through.

Ivan Rogers: Where did Brexit come from and where is it going to take the UK?

The text hasn't been published yet, but this is his speech at UCL today.
(he isn't actually introduced untill 11 minutes in, so skip to then)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-PxpHNXIKnY