Westministenders: A Special Place in Hell

[RedToothBrush]

A quick start to a new thread (as I've not been paying attention this evening!).

May is looking to ditch the Malthouse Compromise. Cos its so rubbish.

The ERG look like they are splitting over it anyway.

Up to sixty Labour MPs could back the WA.

Half the ERG plus Labour Leave Rebels could be enough to get the WA over the line.

Donald Tusk, makes controversial comment by more or less stating the obvious.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/3492426-Westministenders-Abbreviation
Guide to Brexit Abbreviations and Terms

Faisal Islam@faisalislam

Turning up in Brussels to try to save a deal with no specific plan, and then being told to look at the “promising” plan of the Leader of the Opposition, the main feature of which you’re on record as calling a “betrayal”.

That probably is a special form of political purgatory.
😂😂

Monibot's latest on why disaster capitalists want a No Deal Brexit

Inadvertently typed what my ex used to call him there, (Moanybot) - I actually agree with this article.

I'm somewhere in the middle of you all.

www.gov.uk/government/news/operation-brock-overnight-work-to-start-on-the-m20-in-kent

This has just come up in my news feed. The "temporary" barrier on the M20 is starting to be installed this weekend.

Thought this was good - it makes it hard to identify if there any any differences between what we are facing and Trump? Part 1

"Like identical twins raised in different homes, the Trump and Brexit projects have ended up remarkably similar. They were similar in their advertising in 2016 and are now similar in the way they actually work — even if the advertising isn’t similar to the way they work.

Both have broken down over the issue of a hard border with a neighbouring country. Both are flirting with a trade war. Neither looks able to pass any more legislation.

It’s common to lump all contemporary populisms together. But Anglo-American populism is a unique variant: a mixture of wronged superpower vengeance plus buccaneering capitalism. Here is the Trump-Brexit governing philosophy, as revealed in power:

• Destroying the status quo might be better than the status quo. You never know until you try.
• The revolution will recreate the glorious past. So there’s no need to waste time planning for coming developments, such as climate change or artificial intelligence. The future of our countries is the older people who backed the revolution.
• People who opposed the revolution, as well as disloyal parts of the country (London, Scotland, Puerto Rico, California, sanctuary cities) should be ignored or punished.
• Ignore all critics, except fellow revolutionaries who accuse you of betraying the revolution, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg or Ann Coulter.
• Cabinet ministers do not need experience or expertise. So it’s fine if you’re on your third Brexit secretary in seven months, or if you have caretakers running the US’s defence, justice and interior departments, plus the Environmental Protection Agency. Don’t let anyone kid you that making a revolution is complicated.
• Don’t worry if government departments aren’t doing their everyday work. It probably wasn’t important anyway.
• There’s no need for friends abroad. (Trump and Brexit haven’t even made friends with each other.) Military alliances will only weaken you.
• Weakling neighbours that we bullied in the glorious past — Mexico and Ireland — will bow down again if shouted at hard enough.

Sorry about the strike through fail- here's part 2.

The great revolutionary project is renegotiating trade deals, even though these typically do little for services, which make up about 80 per cent of the US and British economies. You don’t need to have ever negotiated a trade deal to know exactly how to do it. An inspired dealmaker can overcome any inconvenient facts on the ground.
• Even while undoing existing business arrangements, the revolution’s leaders must always look after their own pocketbooks and profit from those arrangements where necessary. Hence Trump’s use of undocumented immigrant workers, his daughter Ivanka’s Chinese trademarks, the Ireland-based investment funds of Rees-Mogg’s SCM and John Redwood’s advice to investors to shun Britain.
• No matter how long the leaders of the revolution run the country, how much money they have or how expensive their schooling was, they can never become the elite. Journalists, academics and opposition politicians are the elite.
• The people are simple and should be addressed accordingly. Always repeat the same three-word slogans — “Brexit means Brexit”, “Build the wall”, “Take back control” — or people may get confused.
• The short-term health of the people is worth sacrificing in pursuit of the revolution. Left-behind Americans do not need health insurance or action on opioids. The benefits of a no-deal Brexit will outweigh any tiresome medical shortages.
• If some people don’t have food — after a no-deal, or because they haven’t been paid during a government shutdown — they can always get some if they just put their minds to it. After all, the leaders of the revolution manage. Grocery stores will “work along” with penniless Americans, says Trump; Sammy Wilson of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party advises anyone hit by Brexit-induced food shortages to “go to the chippy”.
• The revolution knows better than business people what’s best for business, even if the revolutionaries never worked in business or went bankrupt six times when they did. If the head of Airbus says that no-deal will hurt his company, he obviously doesn’t understand the aerospace industry. Similarly, Japanese carmakers seem strangely blind to the opportunities that Brexit is opening up. And American business will eventually realise that what it really needed was a trade war with China.
• Proof of the revolution’s rightness is that the economic growth that continued all through the pre-revolutionary government is continuing, so far (even if it has slowed a bit in the UK, but what are you — some kind of accountant?).
• There was nothing dubious about the votes that brought the revolution to power and, anyway, it all happened long ago, so anyone who bores on about it is just trying to subvert the will of the people.
• Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and all those faceless people in Brussels who work for Germany are ungrateful whiners who owe us a favour. They are about to go pop and disappear.
• If you ever have to choose between changing the world or changing your world view, always change the world. The revolution never compromises, not even with reality."

www.ft.com/content/a58b4414-299e-11e9-a5ab-ff8ef2b976c7

That's about the size of it @lonelyplanetmum .

AutumnCrow Portsmouth lost the Geest bananas contract - they come into Dover now?

Morning all. What fresh hell awaits today I wonder with May visiting Dublin?

Well, that's me as another member of the Brexit insomniacs club. It's becoming a bit of a routine now, wake up in the dark, body in neutral, mind in top. Lie there for a while, trying to persuade myself that I'll drop off again soon. Start worrying about what damage is being done to the country and how little I can do about it. Finally, think fuck it and get up. Log onto MN.

And I used to sleep so well

That's absolutely disgusting re Luciana Berger.

I now need to go and do some calming breathing. Again.

It all feels so powerless and hopeless at the moment. I keep coming back to what can I actually DO
Especially given my ERG MP just ignores me totally now. I've considered things like organising local protests outside our Wetherspoons (as a convenient focal point and for all it stands for)

It's obvious from those motions of no confidence that for certain people in the labour party it will never be Jezzas fault if he doesn't win an election. It will be all on the moaners who didn't get behind him.

Now why does that remind me of something?

Kent Resilience Forum: Go in Stay in Tune in
Civil Emergency Plans in Kent village posted on its FB page.
twitter.com/MelisssfMelissa/status/1093606508263288833

That's absolutely disgusting re Luciana Berger

Aren't there also moves to deselect Jess Philips, Stella Creasy and others? The Labour party seems to be eating itself, while its poll ratings sink ever lower. How can they be so far behind in a 2-horse race with this bunch of quite blatant shysters in the Tory party? I have never felt so disenfranchised.

The Labour Party is at risk of becoming a party for inadequate white men. It is horrifying to see competent female MPs at risk of deselection and an especially bad look that the first woman to be targeted is also Jewish.

I'm going to do some yoga, rat something full of sugar and rock back and forth slightly.

Jesus.

I'd vote lib Dems in England because they are the biggest remain party (I'd vote SNP in Scotland, I'm afraid I'm not knowledgeable enough about Welsh and NI politics to say if I lived in either) because Brexit is the most important issue. Whatever you think of GRA or anything else the Lib Dems are the best option on the table for remainers in England right now unless you live in Brighton and it makes sense to vote green.

I'm with you @Motheroffourdragons on this. Who the hell would l vote for. Tory? Never. Labour under Corbyn? Never. Running out of ideas.

MPs are ultimately there to represent their constituency viewpoints though, not just to be career MPs or mouthpieces of the Party. Of course the latter complicates things even more as it is the CLP that has brought this VONC against Berger, not the whole constituency. Can she appeal to the wider constituency? It would mean leaving the Labour Party.

I am sick of the massive influence party politics have on politics in Britain. Why all this angst over splitting? We need them to split: there are far too many viewpoints in Britain for the old 2-party confrontational system to work. We need more parties, more fluidity, more flexibility, to accommodate nuance, with a habit of building compromises and negotiations - for Parliament to be a place for Parley once again. Perhaps we wouldn't be in this bloody mess at all then.

Different MP's cases are not all the same. I've never had much time for Stella Creasy tbh, she always struck me as having lived in a middle class bubble all her life.

Tory - nope
Labour - dear Jesus no. It’s be going from Scylla to Charybdis.
Lib Dem - useless/woke/Challenor
Greens - see Lib Dem entry now Lucas is going/gone...

And once again, there is not bloody way I am voting for Lib Dems while they keep up with their anti-women ideologies.

Those who've said we should all 'hold our noses' and vote for them now, then hope women don't find themselves being forced into prostitution or face benefit sanctions, they could just as easily 'hold their noses' and stop supporting known rapists and paedophiles for the duration couldn't they. That I'm having to suggest they should a) hold their noses to stop attacking women, and b) should only need to do so for a short duration, shows the real position of women in the Lib Dems, one of whose reps Annie Featherstone has told women that unless they support TRA rape apologists they are not welcome.

Berger's having to put up with all this Corbynite anti semitism and misogyny and she's pregnant too. Absolutely awful treatment from the 'party'. Bullying during pregnancy seems to be quite common British work places atm, as we have lost so many of our workplace and civil rights. Not surprising to see the Corbynites joining in.

It would be interesting to find out how much of the plummeting Labour membership is due to its sexism and anti semitism, as well as messing up over Brexit.

When the poll tax was being foisted on us, I remember talking to some right wing Americans who were appalled at its human rights breaches.
Somehow I am hoping that the same reaction might be useful to help with the threats to the GFA, although so far it seems to be just Democrats speaking out.

US Good Friday Agreement committee warns of hard border dangers
www.irishnews.com/news/brexit/2019/02/08/news/us-good-friday-agreement-committee-warns-of-hard-border-dangers-1546884