Westminstenders: For Whom the Bell Tolls

[RedToothBrush]

Although another round of Indicative Votes is scheduled, arguably the chance for a soft Brexit has gone for two reasons.

Parliament was unable to show a majority because those on the opposition benches were too busy saying 'I want this but only on these terms' or still being too unwilling to compromise. Thus the opportunity and point for a third round starts to look weak.

The second is that Tory MPs were resolute in an opposition to a soft Brexit.

Unless May decides to be the next Robert Peel and go for a soft Brexit on the back of opposition vote its not going to happen.

This leaves May's deal as it stands or no deal.

May seems to have actually lost a few supporters of her deal since Friday, and given the performance of the opposition tonight and the prospect of round 3 of indicative votes they will still be unwilling to go for May's deal.

Which leaves no deal.

There is talk of a managed no deal. There is no such thing. The EU plan for that is essentially to push us into the deal in order to get a trading relationship.

And that will push us closer to the us. Which is what many torys want. And what polling seems to suggest they will have surprising support for.

Sorry folks but it don't look great tonight.

The opposition benches may look back on tonight and think they screwed it. I hope I'm wrong. But I fear tonight might have sealed our fate.

Tomorrow may has a 5hr cabinet. And a secret document dmfor the cabinet to study first.

It's going to get bumpy from here on in...

Morning anybody else noticed that the constant emails from GOV.UK regarding Brexit have stopped ? I’ve normally had at least 20 by now !

Or has even my inbox had enough now?

Last one I received was from Duchy of Lancaster regarding European Elections?

The WA might theoretically have included a commitment that the Uk would remain in the SM,
but it would be fairly meaningless without all the additional treaties that would be needed
Hence difficult to enforce

e.g. Norway, about 1/10 of our economy, in addition to EFTA membership has 50 bilateral trade deals with the EU to actually make it work - and still has 2 hr goods queues at its EU border

Treaties require specifics for things that are to be binding

Anway, the UK govt wouldn't accept any commitment to SM - and neither would the current Labour Opposition, because of FOM

Arghhh they must have heard me they’ve started again!

I think this is too optimistic - how can they actually stop this from happening?

Kevin Maguire
‏*@Kevin*_Maguire
No deal catastrophe warnings from Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill are why May and responsible Cabinet Ministers-MPs would stop the UK jumping off a cliff. Even the Daily Mail's dropped its Project Fear nonsense

peregrina The WA would be very difficult to alter wrt the future relationship.

It could theoretically have things added like membership of EURATOM, EU Meds agency, Erasmus etc

• but the EU would presumably require these benefits to be contingent to be contingent on a satisfactory future deal.

Most benefits & goodies we want are not free - they are perks of EU or EEA membership

The EU has to be induced to let us have them - and probably won't unless it is an SM+CA type deal

I'm wondering ... if in a no deal scenario, the UK will be slowly nibbled back into the EU much faster than if it exited via the WA ?

As was pointed out yesterday, if the UK crashes out with no-deal, the EU has already drawn up their "cake and eat it" list . A set of very specific arrangements that allow them to carry on as close to normal as possible, while the UK won't have the option to say no. (Probably aviation and key industrial areas ?).

All the while, no full negotiation will happen until the UK agrees to the WA to start with.

The longer the UK takes, the more - completely unavoidable - little snippets it will have to give up.

Just hypothesising.

Ewe I agree.
How can the Cabinet (and just part of it) stop No Deal ?

The only ways to do so are passing the WA or Revoking - and only Revoke doesn't need the HoC to approve

I'd be delighted if some of the Cabinet are demanding that May Revoke, but sadly I see little chance of that, or of her doing so

DG I used to think that a crash out would bring a request to Rejoin within the year.

However, Leave attitides - and Remain - have polarised the country so much since,
that I expect the hard right would double down on No Deal and sell us off to their US friends (and with an NI-only backstop)

Once we have been flooded with crap US food, regulations abolished and the NHS sold off, I doubt the EU would want us.

They, like the US and every other country, would join in picking at the corpse

It's take it or Leave it, mother
and leaving it means being gobbld up by the US on far worse terms

What precise terms do you want removed / added to the WA to make it acceptable ?

You can't say it must be changed without saying that

Those changes would have to be things that could be defined sufficiently precisely for binding legal text.

mother The EU won't let us have the benefits of SM+CU until we actually sign the SM+CU deal, several years from now,
because they know any PM can renege

That's why all the goodies would be in that later deal, not the WA

We can't be held at gunpoint to accept it.

We negotiated it! The EU has spent an absolute fortune on various negotiations with the UK government to come up with an agreed way forward. It isn't something the EU is forcing on us, it is TM's approach which has got us in this mess.

I don't blame the EU one jot for refusing to spend yet more time and money on brexit. They have their own shit to deal with.

No one IRL is as worried about brexit as I am. No one is stockpiling, no one really thinks anything particularly bad is going to happen. Even DH who works in finance (IN finance btw, he's not an investment banker or anything like that) thinks I am massively overreacting.

I don't know if this is worrying or reassuring.

The options as offered by the EU:

• No Deal
• WA
• Long extension

The bottom lines are:

• No renegotation of the WA now.
• Long extension only for good reason - eg GE, PV
• Soft Brexit off the shelf has been offered in the past, but no time right now to negotiate.

The very obvious option open to the U.K. was and is a long extension for either a PV or GE or both. It’s the fuckwittage of Parliament that is blocking that.

Not only is the WA a terrible deal, it is, in the words of Yanis Varoufakis, a deal a country would only accept if it had ‘lost a war.’

In addition, it is simply No Deal deferred. Passing the WA will be the start of a 5-10 year Brexit nightmare. Analysts think the UK-EU trade negotiations will be far worse and more bad tempered than the exit talks and could easily break down completely at any point. I do not personally believe that the WA will ever lead to a signed trade deal.

I don’t think the EU do either, and they have clearly decided they’d rather face No Deal now than have the threat of it hanging over us.

It’s time to accept the fact that the WA is not likely to pass, ever. There’s only an outside chance it will scrape in faute de mieux.

If we end up with No Deal - it will be entirely on the heads of our Parliament, there were alternatives available they just blocked them all.

{We can't be held at gunpoint to accept it.}
The UK government (Cameron + May +HoC), have collectively picked up the gun, loaded it and pointed it at the UK and the trigger is half pressed.

{Once we have been flooded with crap US food, regulations abolished and the NHS sold off, I doubt the EU would want us.}
Once the shit has started to arrive from the USA or elsewhere the EU will not want to 'deal' as controls will have been dropped and they would probably force the UK to renounce the deals accepting 'alternative' sources unless it was independently checked by EU certified bodies.

{They have their own shit to deal with.}

Of course as members of the EU the UK should be in there helping them deal with it until the UK leaves.

He doesn't have any certainty about what will happen. What would Brexiters say to him?
It is the will of the people. This is their mantra. and

The WA is what is, is more because of UK demands than EU being 'mean'.

During the course of negotiations we have merely shown how we can't be trusted unless we are legally bound and that's primarily May's fault.

A different approach was possible.

May blew it.

{In addition, it is simply No Deal deferred}
Yes, I see it that it is a 'no deal but minimising accidental deaths through incompetence' as much as anything else.

Imdon't blame the EU one jot for refusing to spend yet more time and money on brexit. They have their own shit to deal with.

Me neither. And I entirely agree with them. The EU + Remainers are utterly fed up to the back teeth with the whole debacle. The waste of time and money is criminal.

Unfortunately the U.K. has bogged the EU into a marsh from there is no easy exit for anyone. The WA = 10 years of quagmire. No Deal = economic suicide, pandemonium and chaos followed by 10 years of quagmire. Even Remain has substantial problems, and no possibilty of that without a PV which Parl won’t pass.

Well its no deal next week.

Unless;
There is a GE
There is a PV
TM revoked

I don't think any of the above likely tbh so....

Morning. Not yet caught up as have been out all morning. Pretzels and Hazard. Decided my MP probably wouldn’t get the sarcasm so took most of it out before going to bed. Just showed DH my revised, non sarcastic and very much less angry than it had been last night email and his verdict was the MP would delete it without reading beyond the second lines!

Have just toned it down again (I really didn’t want to) and have sent it.

I wait...