Civil Servants told to stand down on No Deal planning

[HPFA]

According to Sky News:

twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1116391388638318597

Good job government and businesses haven't wasted huge amounts of money on this.

Fantastic news that No Deal is off the menu for now.

What else could £4.2b have been spent on?

I hope there's a public enquiry and trials.

Many conflict of interest issues to be looked into.

The level of distress, particularly over access to medicine, this has created is criminal.

‏theconversation.com/what-else-could-the-uk-government-spend-its-4-2-billion-brexit-contingency-fund-on-109110

I hope there's a public enquiry

The petition for that is growing...
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241848

I wonder who'd chose the enquiry- a daunting task.

'Chair' not 'chose'. Typo!

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry has been pushing for an inquiry into Brexit.

Shouldn't they be using the next six months to prepare for no deal in October?

The cliff hasn't disappeared it's just got further away.

Oh they can go back to the DfE, I know a lot came from there.

So we might now see some work being done on education policy. Actually not sure if that’s a good thing.

There are whispers that HS2 will be cancelled to make up the deficit. This after they spent £230 million on management consultancy advise on how to cut costs.

Shouldn't they be using the next six months to prepare for no deal in October?

Obviously no one can predict the future but imho (has brought me into v slight argument with BCF) i have never thought no-deal was a serious option, it was just a huge and extremely wasteful part of Mays bullying tactics to get her WA through the HoC.

No-deal would have destroyed the economy and the tory party, both in splitting apart and electorally.

Roll on an inquiry with teeth to refer to the CPS.

i have never thought no-deal was a serious option

I didn't either, I didn't think politicians could really choose it. But I kept being told on here and elsewhere that I was sticking my head in the sand.

The waste of money is criminal. And of course other countries have wasted millions if not billions as well due to our government's folly.

I heard something the other day about how prominent Eurosceptics in the 90s or 00s had an exercise in debating what form of relationship they'd call for with the EU if we ever left. I think it was on the Remaniacs podcast.

Guess what? They couldn't agree and all fell out a bit. They should 100% have known that they'd need a firmer plan if a referendum ever happened. It was all foreseeable.

Why on earth didn't they do the planning before the referendum? Scope out plans, work out which would have the most support and get behind that? The current situation is like we've voted for cosmetic surgery but no-one knows if it's a boob job or a nose job or mole removal. Such a colossal waste of money when people are going hungry.

I hope the Tories never recover from this.

Vote Leave deliberately didn’t come up with any plan for leaving - it was Dominic Cummings strategy. He knew that if they pinned down ‘leave’ to mean something, they’d lose the vote. As it was so nebulous, everyone could project their own fantasy on it.

They got around this by claiming it wasn’t their job, but the job of the government to do the planning, even though Gove and Johnson were in government.

Thanks for linking to the Public Enquiry petition, lonelyplanetmum. Now at 83K+, growing fast. Heads should roll.
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241848

I would LOVE someone to explain why they bothered with No Deal planning when patently the MPs were NEVER going to let the UK leave without a deal! else we would be out already!!

To those saying no deal isn't am ootio, what happens if they procrastinate between now and 31/10? Another extension?

I don’t know if the Cooper bill still applies and she has to ask for another extension?

They’ve been watching and learning for a long time.
The Countryside Alliance did the same nebulous definition tactic and hooked in a lot of people who were actually opposed to some of their ideals.
Raise emotions and a lot of people stop thinking.

And if they say no? We have no deal and no extension. Surely that leads to leave without a deal?

I think the only possible answer to that question at this point in time is ‘don’t know’.

The Tories could have a leadership contest and elect Mark Francois in the meantime.

No deal is and has not been a realistic option for weeks.

If may can't agree a position with Corbyn, then she will move to indicative votes in thr commons which are binding, so whatever gets the most will be how we move forward, it's likely to be a customs union, as she whipped against that, and it still only lost by three votes. Second place would likely be a second referendum.

I would LOVE someone to explain why they bothered with No Deal planning when patently the MPs were NEVER going to let the UK leave without a deal! else we would be out already

It was a cynical attempt to bully MPs into accepting a very flawed WA by T.May, the Govt was never going for no-deal whatever MPs said, just like the referendum, we've all been had.
She could hardly threaten NoDeal if her Govt wasn't seen to be planning for it!!!

Of course, where possible, the money was spent on stuff that needed to be done, such as the m26 upgrades.. Dover is often blocked & lorries stacked up.

Perhaps a heck of a lot of creative accounting was used to make it look like the govt was spending a fortune when it wasn't? Hancocks 1/2 hour on 5000 fridges! how many fridges does the Govt buy each year in anycase?
Obv money was completely wasted such as the ferries fiasco but was it in the billions? unlikely.

Of course, where possible, the money was spent on stuff that needed to be done

It bloody needed to be spent on education. Instead no deal stole the DfE’s civil servants, Damian Hinds has spent the vast majority of his time on TV saying Theresa May is amazing instead of talking about his actual brief and so much time has been fucking lost, never mind the money, that we’ll never get back.

The Tories could have a leadership contest

She won't resign till she gets this agreed, and they can't oust her. Also remember just because some MPs are shouting, she'd still likely win a leadership contest as she remains the candidate with the most support.v anyone else.

Perhaps a heck of a lot of creative accounting was used to make it look like the govt was spending a fortune when it wasn't

A lot of money was spent, we are one of the six thousand companies asked to prepare, and had to complete a number of government white papers on readiness due to impact if we had not. It takes a shit load of civil servants to collate and understand the feedback.

I can see how it ran into billions, from medicine stock builds, civil servants, thousands of pieces of new legislation need to be created,warehousing space, processes for things like visas and transportation, importation of goods, even things like new invoicing and vat processes on imported products, how to pay the customs duties that never existed before, staff to manage it, armed forces preparations, new security processes, the list is endless. Even websites with an eu domain owned by companies in the U.K. would have went down at the point of departure.

Much of it is unseen by the british public but I can see how it easily reached this sort of level of spend. And then some.

She said she wouldn’t campaign going into the next General Election. So vote for no confidence in the government is potentially one way of changing the leader?

Although that would rely on Theresa May sticking to her word which she is hardly famous for.

Bercow is stepping down too, so a new Speaker is a new variable.

The Cooper Act was a one-off, but could of course be replicated in the future if necessary. I think the crunch point as far as no deal is concerned will be June, when the parliamentary session is due to end. May will have difficulty extending this as the DUP - among others - are totally against it, but equally the government will have difficulty getting a new Queen's speech through if parliament is prorogued. May's position becomes untenable at this point and if she's replaced by a hard brexitoid, anything could happen imo, especially given that our 'sincere cooperation' will be reviewed around about the same time. Tusk and Juncker were keen to play down the significance of that, but there's no point in the EU having a break clause unless they're open to the possibility of using it. In short, there's no more certainty about deal-or-no-deal than there was before this extension, in fact rather less in some respects. And yes, Bercow, as noblegiraffe says. Hold on to your hats.