Westminstenders: Waiting for a Valentines Miracle

[RedToothBrush]

Guess what folks, we get to do it all over again for Valentine's Day!

Bet you are all looking forward to that.

May has already been told by the EU its a non-starter, and with there being a vote scheduled again in a fortnight, there is little incentive for the EU to shift. And every incentive to just let us stew and think things over.

We are trying to renege on what we signed up to with the Withdrawal Agreement. Which only proves the EU needs the Backstop. Our credibility as a nation to do deals with is shot through the floor. With everyone but those who think they can stitch us up at least.

There is one key development with the latest vote:

The emergence of a new Brexit voting block within Labour, I believe led by Carole Flint. They are supporting Brexit and are prepared to vote with the government and against the Labour Whip.

This negates the Tory Rebel block, meaning May has a majority if she has the ERG on board - this being a big if, of course.

Many other potential rebels who threatened to quit from government, were detered from doing so by a promise from May and the promise that they had another show down on the 14th they could use to block No Deal.

In not quiting they are showing they are committed to some deal brokered by May and not an alternative by Parliament. This is important. There may be no realistic opportunity for anything else to be realistically be tabled by anyone else now.

I don't think they will quit now, if they can see a potential deal present itself.

The way forward now looks to be the Withdrawal Agreement or No Deal only. Keep this in mind and in focus. This will become an increasing pressure and increasingly definitive. Revoke is still on the table, but I just can't see May doing it. Ever.

Whether May can get the EU to back down on the backstop seems unlikely. Its going to be more backwards and forwards on it. Before it becomes obvious its going nowhere. Its just theatre.

What the ERG do next is important. My best guess is they will split into No Deal Hardliners and last minute WA Compromisers. This will leave May short of a majority, but not as far as she has been especially with Labour resolve weakening. I think she may yet get her deal over the line with Labour support of some sort. Probably unofficial rather than direct from public instruction the front bench.

Here's the logic: Corbyn has said he will now discuss matter with her. He still wants to pin Brexit on her and destroy her, but he still wants Brexit and he still wants to keep the Labour Party together despite its differences over Brexit. All without making a clear Labour policy. How does he do this?

The same way he handled the Immigration Bill is possibly the best guess. Plus how can he stop his rebels...? {innocent face emojy} He gets to look tough against May outwardly and make lots of Remainy noises without more outward support for a particular policy. Those awful stupid Northerner MP (or MPs from backward towns if you live in the Metropolian North) who know nothing and screwed Remainia. It plays people off along splits in society, in the hope they don't notice Corbyn really orchestrated it. His MPs in leave areas get to look Leave without consequence, and if it all goes wrong he still get to pin it on May. Thus saving his marginals in both the North and the South 'cos those evil Tories'. And he does stop No Deal in the process. Yes, call me cynical, but thats how he could try and game it. Ultimately Corbyn and May do have certain aligned mutual interests, afterall.

And given there are few alternatives now there apart from Revoke or No Deal, once you think it through doesn't seem as far fetched as it initally sounds. Corbyn certainly seems to have form for it. His priorities are his Party, managing his north / south cultural divide and being seen to kick the Tories.

It'll go to the wire whatever happens, and its hard to see many ways out of this now. We are running out of time, opportunities and options. Of course, this works for May and has been her plan for some time. The question is merely, if she is serious about preventing no deal (and I believe she is) how she persuades either the ERG or Labour to back her.

Afterall, after the WA is done and dusted there is still everything to play for.

What I expect too:

George Parker@GeorgeWParker
The view from Brussels via @alexebarker

From an EU perspective, wouldn't you sit on your hands for two weeks,
force May back to the HoC in mid-Feb to explain no progress,
wait for pro-Europeans to block no deal,
then see if the ERG will back down?

Guess who on QT tonight?
What did I say it's either Isabelle Oakshott, Julia Hartley-Brewer or Camilla Tominey..
Can't think who's the nastiest piece of work out of the three

Don't know if this has already been posted, but the Institute for Government has produced (for the BBC) an overview of the current legislative position in the event of No Deal:

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/brexit-two-months-to-go-final-web.pdf

TL;DR: It doesn't look as though 2 months will be enough to get most (all?) of the legislation in place.

Edit.

For "It doesn't look as though...", read "There's no bloody chance..."

Following on from the El Reg article upthread, Here's one comment which highlights a microcosm of what we will all wake up to come no-deal 30th March ...

Notice the distinction between goods and services and how repairing a good under warranty is a service ...

Also notice the problems of chasing payment in a no-deal situation.

I bet this doesn't get covered on QT.

I am currently dealing with the headache of intra EU contracts.

What happens if you sell a good tomorrow to a customer in Sweden and it comes with a two year warranty? The good can be shipped this week without any issue. What if that customer wants to make a warranty claim six months after a No Deal? It's not a Good any more, it's a Service. Even the hardest fall back option of WTO trading doesn't deal with services at all.

What happens if a customer in Austria decides to stop paying their instalments after a No Deal? Just finding out which court would be appropriate is something nobody has had to think about until now.

Currently a B2B business doesn't have to charge VAT on intra EU invoices. That will probably change in case of No Deal, I have not found a definitive answer to that yet. Will I need to reopen all contracts to change pricing?

I have found a needle in a haystack the other day, someone who is dual qualified as a lawyer for English law and Dutch law. He is raking it in at the moment. Now on to find someone dual qualified in English and Portuguese law...

I spoke with an advisor at the Job Centre on Monday and asked if brexit would affect benefits at all. She said there had been nothing at all spoken about. No rumours, no whispers, nothing. Her opinion was that brexit would come in as a mouse rather than a lion Good luck with that one lady!

When brexiteer Esther McVey was dwp minister I emailed her to ask her to guarantee that benefits of every kind would be increased with the rate of inflation after brexit given that a hike in prices were likely. I didn't get a reply.

My only hope is that they are so busy dealing with brexit that UC stops being rolled out and I can stay on legacy benefits.

Some good/bad news today. DS has been declared medically unfit for school. So he will now be getting home tutoring. Which is good because he's not managing anything at the moment. But bad because he will only get three lessons a week, one each of English, maths and science. So will only do five GCSEs. He won't be attending school again now, ever. Until we hopefully get him into college post 16. Wonder how much extra help will be available for him a year and a half after brexit.

DGRosseti I'm a bit worried about No Deal and goods vs services as I'm a British translator working in Spain and I don't understand the ramifications for me as a service provider. Most of my clients are in Spain, and I'm also an irish citizen but that's not detailed on my residence card as I got it based on my UK passport many years ago.

@golondrina , if I were you I would look to changing my Spanish papers to reflect my Irish citizenship.
I'd say that you aren't so much a British translator as a Spanish- English-Spanish translator. Unless you rely on Britishness to sell your services, you are an English speaker. Or am I overlooking something?

golondrina

... is highlighting how underthought this "Brexit" business is, and why no amount of prep and a couple of days extra A50 will solve anything.

You really need professional help, but since we still don't know what is happening. any advice can only be generic and therefore of limited use.

If you are working in Spain, and are an EU citizen, then it's hard to see how Brexit would affect you ? The only wrinkle might be if the Spanish authorities aren't aware that you are an Irish as well as British citizen, and proceed on that basis - I'm assuming you also have an Irish passport ? If not, I'd suggest the #1 priority would be to get that sorted.

I'm an IT bod, and my area of interest is the gigabytes of data flying around the EU every hour. Come a no deal, and anything originating in the EU could very well be turned off which will trigger a cascade failure of systems in the UK. It's not a failure that can be predicted or mitigated because when the systems were specced, tendered and built, no one was stupid enough to add 20% to the cost as a "what if we leave the EU" mechanism.

The real fun will start when banks companies switch to their "alternative" provider, only to discover that the alternative supplier (unbeknown to them) also had dependencies on EU-side data feeds.

There's a reason Barclays fucked off to Ireland yesterday (and others will follow) and data jurisdictions is one of them.

Nothing I have read or seen from the government leads me to believe they yet truly grasp what the status of the UK will be on the 30th March 2019. Because regardless of a deal or no-deal, the UK will become a 3rd country - that is outside all the framework that the EU has built up over the years to protect it's citizens.

I'd say that you aren't so much a British translator as a Spanish- English-Spanish translator.

Yeah, I'd be keeping my Britishness under a hat in Europe after Brexit for a while too

I'm British (and Irish since 2017) and translate Spanish to English. I have an appointment with the residency card people on 26 feb to ask, but I've also applied for Spanish citizenship (applied Jan 2017 and still not even got a reference number yet) and I can't afford to do anything that would mean I'm considered resident from now only as I don't want to mess up my Spanish application. I'll see what they say but if they saw I need a new residency card based on Irish details I'd be too worried to do that in case they put on it resident since 2019, iyswim. I wouldn't trust them not to.

And I'm one of the "lucky" ones that I have been here long enough to apply for Spanish citizenship and also have an Irish passport. So many British people I know here are really fucked.

'Trauma packs' being stockpiled in UK over fears of no-deal Brexit

Exclusive: pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson fears border delays could disrupt flow of vital medical supplies

www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/31/trauma-packs-being-stockpiled-in-uk-over-fears-of-no-deal-brexit

"under a hat" ?

under my hat - ffs !

The real fun will start when banks companies switch to their "alternative" provider, only to discover that the alternative supplier (unbeknown to them) also had dependencies on EU-side data feeds.

A bonus is that it might shut up the "It's like the Millenium bug, nothing happened" Leavers. We tell them until we are blue in the face that it didn't happen because of the work and money we put in, but they have none of it.

golondrina
In general the EU have said that even in a 'no deal' situation Brits have about a year to get residency sorted and in theory will be 'fast tracked'.
How this translates to the person you see when you try it may be a different experience but probably as their systems are in a state of flux too rather than being awkward.

Can someone link to the Guardian title about school meals/packed lunches? Neither of my devices is letting me click on it to read

Got it!
"Schools may need to be flexible about what's in lunches for pupils in no-deal Brexit, DfE says
Richard Adams Richard Adams
Schools may need to be “flexible” to provide school lunches in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the Department for Education has told schools and colleges in England in its EU exit advice note out today. It says:

The government, including the Department for Education, will continue to work with food suppliers to prepare for a no deal departure from the EU. Schools have significant flexibilities within the school food standards. Local authorities and schools must exercise their power to provide meals to all registered pupils who request one.

The DfE’s advice means schools could ignore guidelines on nutrition and content if there are shortages, rewinding Jamie Oliver’s good work and suggesting it could be back to processed potato waffles and chicken nuggets for British school children.

Schools are also told that hiring teachers from abroad will get more difficult because their qualifications may not be automatically recognised."

A bonus is that it might shut up the "It's like the Millenium bug, nothing happened" Leavers. We tell them until we are blue in the face that it didn't happen because of the work and money we put in, but they have none of it.

It's worth noting that the second the data stops flowing, so does creditworthiness. If systems drop into ultra-conservative mode, then no credit will be approved. Assuming that won't be allowed to happen. then the fallback will be to offer credit at increased risk (guess who pays ?). There's other wrinkles too, but data for credit ratings would be top of my list.

Thanks 1tis, I'll see what they say, I might get Spanish citizenship within a year as they are trying to clear the backlog. I think the person I see probably won't really know either. I was hoping I could just get some kind of official letter rather than messing with my NIE (residency card), which is after all only a bit of paper anyway, it's not even a card these days.

Can I ask how long you have been in Spain golondrina? My DS has lived there for 25 years, but says he will have to give up his British passport if he takes Spanish citizenship. (My DiL and grandchildren are Spanish).

I will not be renewing my British passport when it runs out.
Nor the kids.

golondrina
You should be OK with a residency card anyway, you don't need citizenship I don't think.
Having a pile of paperwork available to show you have lived there for a while and paid tax and whatever should all help. The EU aren't planning on chucking UK citizens out although some rights may end up being curtailed compared to those with full citizenship. Joining a relevant trade body might be good too, or as an 'entrepreneur'.

I hope invoicing systems have been suitably upgraded/modified/configured (and tested, of course) for the change in VAT on the 30th ? As a 3rd Country UK suppliers will need to start charging VAT to EU customers (obviously making their goods/services 20% more expensive).

I have no idea how VAT spread over a contract with monthly payments (for example) would be dealt with.

Again, maybe something for QT tonight ?