Westminstenders: Stuck in the Middle With TIGGERS

[RedToothBrush]

Well I don't know how we got here tonight.
We've got the feeling that something ain't right.
We're so scared as we leave the EU
And we're wondering how we'll get out of this stew

Antisemites to the left of me!
Dog Whistles to the right!
Here I am stuck in the middle whilst we leave the EU.

'Cause I'm stuck in the middle whilst we leave the EU.
And I'm wondering what it is we should do.
It's so hard to keep this smile from my face.
Losing control and running all over the place.

Clowns to the left of me!
Jokers to the right!
Here I am stuck in the middle whilst we leave the EU.

When you started off with rights
And you're starting to wonder if thats for life.
And all the politicians come crawling
Slap you on the back and say
Please . . .
Please . . .
Vote Leave and back EU Withdrawal

But we see it makes no sense at all.

Best to keep your money offshore
Than to visit the bookstore

Deniers to the left of me!
Islamaphobes to the right!
Here I am stuck in the middle with you.

Its finally happened. FINALLY.

MPs have seen that their leaders have lost the plot and are hell bent on destruction and politicial ideology ahead of practicality and will justify the unjustifable in the face of democracy and they have jumped ship.

Enter stage left and stage right: The TIGGERS - members of The Independent Group.

Will there be more. Hard to say no. It seems almost certain there will be more.

Will it make a difference? Difficult to call, but these MPs would be driven out sooner or later. Such is our accelerating politicial polarisation and narrowing of views. This is their last stand. They have nothing left to lose on a personal level.

Whether you agree with the TIGGERS or still look to the other parties for policy, I do think that the emergence of the TIGGERS marks a feeling of optimism and much needed hope for many many Remainers / Moderates, even if it ultimately does fizzle out.

A reflection from 2017: People voted for Corbyn because they were looking for Hope. When he's failed to deliver that, its led to disillusionment and he can not pull the same trick again at a future GE. This makes that doubly so. People are STILL very much looking for that hope. If Brexit does go tits up in a big fashion, then what happens? To what direction do people look? I'm sure there will be the bitterest of recriminations, but... hope is a big deal. We need something...

Tick tick tick. 37 days til Brexit.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/3492426-Westministenders-Abbreviation

Meant to add - she's also just using foreign interference as a convenient excuse for the fact that her cake ism Brexit vision cannot be achieved

Louise Mensch, yes, who is so committed to the country that she now lives in the USA. OK she has an American husband but why, if she thinks Brexit is so wonderful, isn't she persuading him of the opportunities here/

Louise Mensch is frustrated that "her" vision of Brexit is not going to be achieved

Arguably there are 17 million versions of Brexit that are not going ot be achieved ....

Louise Mensch who said that Steve Bannon was going to get the death penalty. She comes out with some crackers.

{ I don't know why but the more leavers "suddenly" realise their idiotic ideology is going to have consequences I increasingly don't feel like giving them more time. If they can explain what they intend to do with the time, that would be slightly more interesting, but these people never do. It will be left again for someone else to sort it out.}

Exactly. The UK needs to get it into it's collective head that MASSIVE changes are on the way with it's ability to 'create' wealth (or not) and so far no one has suggested how they are going to do this in a globalised world market. Some, arguably a majority, voted to leave and are now so spineless and disorganised that they can't carry it through, and despite almost 3 years of bollocks, haven't even fully defined what and how much the UK is going to leave.
Arguing that you don't like the globalised market won't make it go away so you have to join in.
Suggesting that the UK has a 'pause' to sort itself out, which would take a good year or more is so totally ridiculous, unless you want all wealth creating industry to leave as it can't afford to hang around.

Louise Mensch, yes, who is so committed to the country that she now lives in the USA. OK she has an American husband but why, if she thinks Brexit is so wonderful, isn't she persuading him of the opportunities here

Surely, if the tide were to turn, it would start with the more pragmatic Leavers ? That way they can appear to be leading the way, rather than just hanging on ?

By the way, don't mention Menshn - it makes her look not a little bit dim and less worth listening too ....

Did Churchill really delay the evacuation of Dunkirk waiting for the weather to be favourable? I think she's mixing it up with D-Day.

I get tired of pseudo patriots (who in her case don't live in the UK) going on about Dunkirk. Yes, it was a miracle to get the personnel of the army back, but otherwise it was a rout, where we lost all our equipment, and weren't able to mound an invasion for 4 years. But details like that don't seem to bother the average Leaver.

The UK needs to get it into it's collective head that MASSIVE changes are on the way

The Now Show summarised it wonderfully as Britain - a country that famously dislikes change; voted for change because it was told that it meant nothing would change, and now it's changing, wants it to change back. Or similar ...

Did Churchill really delay the evacuation of Dunkirk waiting for the weather to be favourable? I think she's mixing it up with D-Day.

Eisenhower delayed D-Day because he was Supreme Allied Commander.

As usual Brexiteers parade their ignorance like a badge.

But the actual D-Day invasion was reliant on the weather being favourable: the Met Office in their old foyer in Bracknell used to have the charts on the wall.

Dunkirk it was all hands to the pump to get as many men back as possible.

{Dunkirk it was all hands to the pump to get as many men back as possible.}
In many ways it was a remarkable achievement. Churchill hoped to be able to repatriate around 20,000 but around 340,000? actually made it.

There's a chance we'll take part in the EU elections, although of course UK MEPs may not be long in office. But it'd be gratifying if elected MEPs have noble reasons; not the aim to destroy the EU and our relationship with it, as in the past.
UKIP gained 24 seats in the EU Parliament in 2014 (more than Labour or Cons!) but that's now dwindled to 7 after multiple defections. (With better representation in the EU over the years, just think how we could have benefited...)

So the 'UKIP' vote might be split with the Brexit Party, although with PR they'd probably both still get some representatives. I'd like to see them trounced, though. This might show a sea change in public opinion. I wonder if the first-time voters from 2016 would turn out for EU elections?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party_representation_and_election_results

The EU elections are potentially under threat from cyber-interference.
Microsoft warns EU on election hack threat

euobserver.com/justice/144234

If the UK Revoked - and then invoked again within the next 10 years ot so,
then the EU would promptly present them with this same WA

so same backstop, expats rights, paying whatever is due then for the exit bill

The EU invested all this time and all these resources once -
they are not going through this negotiating rigmarole again, while the UK negotiates with itself for another couple of years, then reneging again

The "framework" for the future relationship can be changed in the accompanying PD,
but NOT the WA itself
in particular not the backstop, which seems to be causing so much sound & fury

So we'd just be back in the same situation,
but with everyone els knowing from the start that the UK govt are incompetent idiots, instead of it slowly dawning on them

But the actual D-Day invasion was reliant on the weather being favourable: the Met Office in their old foyer in Bracknell used to have the charts on the wall.

There was a BBC documentary about the history of weather forecasting that went into the effect it had on D-Day. My point was it was up to Eisenhower, who was in charge. Churchill's job at that stage was pretty much to say "how high" - worth pointing out to our history-shy Brexiteer chums ... and while we're at it, we could also remind them that the price of US support in the war in part was the dismantling of the British Empire in the Pacific. Which the US ensured by force when it liberated the islands the British couldn't reach in time.

No-deal Brexit “like jumping off cliff without parachute” says former WTO leader

https://www.euronews.com/2019/02/22/no-deal-brexit-like-jumping-off-cliff-without-parachute-says-former-wto-leader

Britain would go to the bottom of the international pecking order in the case of a no-deal Brexit,
a former Director General of the World Trade Organisation has said.
< Obama's "back of the queue", but worldwide ? >

“What happens in the next days is you move down from first league to fourth league,
and you have to apply tariffs, borders, controls
and I’m not talking about specific arrangements of airlines, capital markets, nuclear safety.

It’s not ready, nobody is ready, for a no deal, which is by the way the reason I think it will not happen. People are wise enough not to jump off the cliff without a parachute,” Lamy said.

And he told Good Morning Europe that the idea the United Kingdom would be able to negotiate improved terms in bilateral trade deals “made no sense”.

“I know that’s a view from the Brexit side that they become independent, they regain control, in a world which is globalising, integrating,

I think it makes absolutely no sense.
What would be the sense, I mean the real sense of having a regulation for 60 million people, when the world is moving to zones that have regulations for 500 million people or 600 million people.
It makes no sense.
It has a name in economics it’s called economies of scale.”

the price of US support in the war in part was the dismantling of the British Empire in the Pacific. Which the US ensured by force when it liberated the islands the British couldn't reach in time. I wonder if anyone has told Gavin Williamson about that....

Matthew Parris in today's Times comes up with some choice descriptions of the two party leaders: Corbyn is "a leader of low intellectual calibre which, alloyed with rigid and obstinately held beliefs, renders him stupefied, or stupid, or both" . May "Is the death star of British politics...the theory of anti-matter made flesh...a political black hole because nothing, not even light can escape. Ideas beliefs, suggestions, objections inquiries, proposals, projects, loyalties, affection, trust, whole careers, real mean and women, are sucked into the awful void that is Downing Street - and nothing ever comes out: no answers, only a blank so blank that it screams."

I wish I could write like that!

It is excellent.
He was a decent politician, but is a very talented writer

Alberto Nardelli@AlbertoNardelli

EU27 ambassadors met this afternoon < Friday > to get a debrief on Juncker-May meeting,
as well as meetings with Barclay/Cox, and Corbyn

• EU position is unchanged.

Withdrawal agreement cannot be reopened. EU can only reexplain the backstop, and work further on the political declaration

< EU27 ambassadors met this afternoon and groan "ffs, won't they ever Leave ? " >

The UK, the only place that can make doing nothing difficult.

Britain in the Crazed Brexit Vortex

www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/opinion/brexit-negotiations-england-eu-deadline.html

So much for the panacea offered in 2016 by leaders of the Vote Leave campaign — a land of milk and honey in which an island liberated from European shackles would become “Global Britain,” money would flow, impetigo would be cured, children would become more beautiful, the soil more bountiful, and the world Britain’s oyster. These days, the fantasy has sagged into a mumbled, “Well, Brexit is not the end of the world.”

“Some aren't bothered about follower numbers as they're not trying to be 'someone' on there.“

Some of us think that Twitter ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ are devalued and pointless, given that you can buy both to make yourself look more popular.

Oh dear, Hunt's making foreign visits to insult people again, this time in Europe

He may have misunderstood the role of foreign sec
Probably trying to ape Boris

How does May choose her Foreign Secs ?

Dr. Jennifer Cassidy@OxfordDiplomat

Jeremy Hunt casually saying that Slovenia was a “Soviet vassal state”.

Former president of Slovenia saying,

“he comes to Slovenia asking us for a favour [to discuss how to avoid a no-deal] while arrogantly insulting us.

We were never a vassal state”
< They were part of Yugoslavia, which was officially neutral and refused to join the Warsaw Pact >
....
Also the awkward moment when he opens his speech with: “this is my first professional visit to Slovenia.”
And definitely your last Jeremy. Definitely your last.


I suspect that Hunt mixed it up with Slovakia - which was once part of a faraway country which we knew little about. No change there then.

BCF You can't help wondering where she finds them! Between Hunt and Williamson, they seem to have a cunning plan to scupper any chance of building good diplomatic relations with the countries that we'd like to trade with.

@Tanith I am naive - I didn't realise that! My Twitter correspondent justified himself by saying he thought I was a bot - but if he'd bothered to look at my profile he'd have seen I was a pretty unlikely looking bot. Thought I suppose they might have photos of themselves looking fat, grey haired and dressed for rain (no I'm not Vera!)