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Brexit

Westminstenders: On An Election Footing

966 replies

RedToothBrush · 25/07/2019 16:22

Boris Johnson has set out his strategy.

He is challenging remain Tories to put their money where their mouth is, or to shut up.

His majority, soon to be just 1, is fragile but he intends to tough it out.

His Cabinet, is to all intents and purposes an ERG take over of the Tory Party, not unlike the Momentum take over of the Labour Party. And Johnson is looking to purge the party of its liberal wing, whilst pretending that he is liberal to make it acceptable to long term loyal Tories who might still waiver and merely vote for the rosette or like the veneer of respectability.

It has been made clear to Tory MPs that they will have to sign up to a No Deal Strategy should a snap election be called - or face the prospect of deselection. Disloyality will not be tolerated as Hunt's Cabinet backers all found out when they were sacked rather than be allowed to resign as Grayling was.

Instead Johnson reaped his revenge bringing back quitters and disgraced MPs as a deliberate 'fuck you' to moderates and remainers.

His message is clear and made all the clearer by the appointment of Dominic Cummings.

Today the Treasurery opened the piggie bank and told all departments to prepare for no deal. That is what is going to happen.

Parliament can not stop no deal. Johnson will drive it through regardless, even if its technically illegal. The default of no deal makes it an impossible juggernaught to stop without triggering a GE before the 31st October.

Technically speaking there are just 3 parliamentary days left this can be done.

And a GE is no guarentee of stopping no deal anyway. Cummings coming on board spells it out. Its a campaign strategy to reinvigourate the Leave Campaign and make all the promises that were made before. Of course there is no way of implimenting any of these before 31st October, so they just sound nice and people will believe them because they want to believe them. They want to trust and have hope for the future.

Yet with no trade deals and third party status, and crippling gridlock at ports and extra red tape for exporters and importers to deal with, it is inevitable that the economy will take a big hit. And Johnson's promises are expensive. His £39 billion he wants to withhold, is peanuts in the scheme of things and given what he is proposing.

The plan might sound nice, but it doesn't actually add up.

If we want a deal we will STILL have to sign up to conditions that Brussels sets out EVEN IF we no deal.

Meanwhile the US is ready and waiting to fleece us, because we aren't prepared to admit this and are too proud to see that this is a better option than have corporate American feast on the bones of the British economy.

Human Rights and Workers Rights are very much in the cross hairs with this. Health and Safety standards that have been set by London and then imposed on the EU will be burnt.

All the while the EU will be blamed for our own folly.

The worst thing is, people will actually buy it too.

Things are going to get a hell of a lot worse in this country, not because we lack optimism and hope, but because our egos are too big and we have been too idealist rather than recognising very real obstacles and finding ways to overcome than rather than just trying to ignore them. We will find out all those Paragraph Cs in good time the hard way because of the lack of attention to detail.

PFI and outsourcing will look like minor hiccups when the shit hits the fan.

I do hope that the puritians of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats and the Remain Referendum Campaign are happy. This is also their mess. They have spent 3 years naval gazing and still don't understand nor know how to respond. This is where a General Election becomes a very real danger because they are clueless as to how to combat a reunited Leave campaign.

Be careful what you wish for going forward.

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Songsofexperience · 27/07/2019 10:36

Yes Peregrina... usually when nativists use the "people" they also kill the nation-state, which is defined by its values and institutions. "Peoples" are defined by blood and it usually ends in blood (there's a terrible logic from nativism to genocide). My German friends agree.

prettybird · 27/07/2019 10:40

I think Dominic Cummings is an anarchist - albeit a sophisticated one. He gets off on chaos and bringing down structures that he personally has decided have wronged him are not worthwhile, without any thought of what to replace them with Angry

I don't think he has any Emotional Intelligence Confused I think he has a knowledge of EI in others and exploits it but has none himself and certainly no empathy Sad If I knew him better (as opposed to the Cumberbatch interpretation but also having seen his extreme disdain for accountability to the Select Committee), I'd go as far as saying he was a sociopath or a psychopath Shock

probstimeforanewname · 27/07/2019 10:47

Personally I do think you know at 14 whether you have a science "bent" or not and I don't think there's any need to take up a minimum of two GCSE options with sciences. I knew well enough I was rubbish at science and fortunately only had to do one, so did Chemistry and got a B (first year of GCSE after O levels and CSEs were abolished). I would have failed physics, might have scraped a C for biology I guess but what would the point be, I couldn't do A level with B/C.

It's not really an argument for the Brexit pages, but I think a MFL should be compulsory, as should a humanity, but put English lit in the humanity box so it becomes an option so the compulsories would be English, Maths, MFL, a science and a humanity (plus Welsh in Wales). I am not sure how it works in Scotland, and whether there is so much emphasis on English, Maths and science so there's no room on the timetable for much else.

I appreciate we need STEM skills but you have to have a talent/interest in it. And we still need teacher, linguists, lawyers, etc.

LonelyTiredandLow · 27/07/2019 10:57

I went to boarding school at 6 and have to say I think the combination of having to learn new routines, not having support and meeting new friends as well as different ways of learning threw me for quite a few years. I passed the test for the senior school but knew I was terrible at maths (teachers ripping up books and my complete inability to learn tables by rote - other than 2/5/9/10 and half of some others) so was always in the very bottom set. Everything else I got top marks/sets for but was never called clever once in school. The only top set I didn't get into was for biology and that was because I 'couldn't do maths' - which was also why I was not allowed to take chemistry or physics. I ended up getting the highest score for biology GCSE and the teacher admitted at the awards ceremony that perhaps I should have been 'allowed' to take the higher paper as I would have got an A.

I've just got a BSc (v. late 30's) which my school would never have encouraged me to do. In fact even my Grandpa said that there was a heirarchy of degrees and if it was a BA it wasn't worth the same as BSc - he was a physics whizz Grin. I got better marks for the epidemiology papers than an actual epidemiologist in our peer group. Statistics makes sense of maths for me and I really think this should be taught in primary.

Strangely when I was 2 weeks from handing in my dissertation my supervisor suggested I might be dyslexic. A lot of things made sense when she said that, but as pp have said I have coping mechanisms and it goes under the radar. I got A and A* for Eng GCSE and took A'level Eng lit (B). I often wonder if I had been diagnosed at school which subjects they would have blocked me from - usually sports, geography and textiles/CDT and drama were foisted on dyslexics. I find it fascinating how different lives would be if we could stop being so rigid about subjects.

howabout · 27/07/2019 10:58

Queen that is my main beef with the English 3 A level system over Scottish Highers. Not much point doing triple science at GCSE because you can't go on to do all 3 plus Maths and Further Maths at A level. The consequence appears to be be that hardly any doctors in England have Physics and a minority have Maths at A level. In Scotland the majority have both at higher in addition to English, Chemistry and Biology.

The corollary is that it is rare for English engineers to have A level English or Biology but again the majority of Scottish students would have one or both at Higher in addition to Maths, Physics and Chemistry.

Fun fact about Paisley I discovered yesterday. Liz Truss went to primary school there. Add her to Andrew Neil, Fred the Shred, Dr Who, Paolo Nutini and Richard Madden....

Much to DH's chagrin I am teaching my DC to be weights and measures bi-lingual. My view is that, in the same way learning a new language enhances understanding of your own, with numeric systems the more the merrier. Marcus Du Sautoy, whose name I cannot spell, has done some interesting programmes on the subject.

Justaboutdone · 27/07/2019 11:11

@How and Tom Conti, Gerry rafferty.

Many more i am sure

Justaboutdone · 27/07/2019 11:13

Although Richard Madden did go to a very tough comprehensive in his words - and it happened to be Castlehead High School 😂😂😂

LouiseCollins28 · 27/07/2019 11:25

Boris Johnson speaking now as I think the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester. Got the feel of a major set piece speech this.

prettybird · 27/07/2019 11:42

I'm a real advocate for the broader Scottish system. I deliberately did half Sciences and half Arts ( relatively unusually I did 6 rather than the more common 5): Maths, Physics, Chemistry, English, French, Latin. I went to Uni from 5th year, so didn't do CSYS (as it was back then: now they're Advanced Highers) or A Levels. Although I went to Uni to do languages, I very nearly changed early on to do Sciences (I'd got 6 As Grin, so I could do pretty much what I wanted Wink).

Even though the norm is to do 5 Highers, it is possible to "crash" extra ones (even if you didn't do the subject for Nat 5) in S6, alongside or instead of Advanced Highers (for example, ds did Advanced Highers in Maths and Physics and did a crash Higher in Modern Studies, having dropped it in S2)

RedToothBrush · 27/07/2019 11:46

Bumped into Boris Johnson's convoy going into Manchester earlier.

We were going to the tip.

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RedToothBrush · 27/07/2019 11:48

I saw Prince Charles convoy a few months back.

He had a bigger one.

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LonelyTiredandLow · 27/07/2019 11:50

From around 12 onwards in UK (late 90's at least) it felt as if my path was chosen, but it was a confused path and I didn't know which vocations matched it. I think Highers or Bac. work far better at keeping options open for the future as well as advancing the over-all knowledge. Linking subjects makes so much sense but not in the traditional way if we want progression. My Italian friend cannot understand how so many people don't know basic physics or another language. I think if we want to fix productivity we need to explore new ways of teaching and combining subjects; which I suspect will in turn help mental health.

RedToothBrush · 27/07/2019 11:57

Paul Brand @paulbranditv
Boris Johnson’s four point plan for the north:

1. Liveability - keep streets safe, create jobs
2. Connections - broadband, transport
3. Culture - bring out creativity
4. Power - devolve it

Boris Johnson says he wants to do for north what Crossrail did for London and build proper Manchester-Leeds line.

Johnson also promises a proper network of buses for Manchester, as London has. More people travel by buses than by any other mode of public transport - yet they receive virtually no media or political coverage.

NEW: PM promises for post-industrial towns “their best days lie ahead of them” as he pledges £3.6bn towns fund for an initial 100 towns so they get the improved broadband, connectivity and other infrastructure.

Johnson also promises to “level up” the powers offered to regional mayors, so they have similar powers to London. Major devolution pledge.

First mention of Brexit comes 10 minutes into speech. This is a fairly substantive domestic policy platform from the new PM - though of course many will continue to wonder what it all suggests about likelihood of an election 🧐

Jennifer Williams @jenwilliamsMEN
At Boris Johnson’s speech in Manchester and so far it could probably have been delivered by pretty much any Labour leader 🙃

I mean he’s talking about BUSES

He also says he’s going to fund 100 towns initially with a £3.6bn towns fund but I think we should just spend it all on one really mad new town

Sorry but im tired

You know when Jim Hacker lapses into his Churchill impression, sometimes Boris Johnson makes me think of that. Aaaaanyway. ‘I don’t blame the doubters and the sceptics... but time and again they’ve been proved wrong,’ he says. ‘This really can be a new golden age for the UK.’

Well....

Andy Burham might be happy but also extremely pissed off at the same time.

If you had a list of things that would please a lot of people in Manchester and the NW, then this isn't far off it.

I am expecting HS2 to be for the chop at soon too (although the Manchester and Liverpool mayors support it).

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LonelyTiredandLow · 27/07/2019 11:57

I always suspected that men who court power have small convoys...

Mistigri · 27/07/2019 12:01

Personally I do think you know at 14 whether you have a science "bent" or not

You might know whether or not you are likely to have the aptitude for A-level maths but many 14 year olds have no idea what they want to do.

My DD is very artistic (plays and composes music, writes, loves art history) but she is also very good at maths and science (averaged 95% in her bac for science subjects and got 90% in her maths for economics module last year). She has only now, age 18, realised that she really doesn't really want to do a maths-oriented degree and that she wants to study history and literature.

My DS age 16 OTOH has obviously been destined for science since he was very young. Showed no aptitude for or interest in the arts as a child, although curiously in the last two years he has developed a big interest in (classical and jazz) music and he has also started painting very recently. He will take the music option for his bac.

This is why I think keeping options open is a good thing, although not to the point of giving kids false hopes.

PigeonofDoom · 27/07/2019 12:04

He could maybe start with giving councils proper funding again Hmm
As much as I would personally like a high speed Leeds/Manchester line, I’d much rather have our libraries, useable roads, and decent social care back! It’s terrible where I live, there’s been a very striking drop in the standard of local services since 2015.

prettybird · 27/07/2019 12:06

Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence (the foundation for 3-18 education) emphasises cross-subject learning (essentially good practice in primary schools Wink). At secondary school, this means learning how to apply your knowledge, so it means that you will get, for example, complicated questions in Maths exams that mean you have to work out what Maths' principles to use (eg along the lines of crocodile crossing a river with a current at x speed, so where do the zebras need to stand to be safe; there was another controversial one which essentially was a probability calculation). It would've stuffed me as my difficulty with Physics, I realised later (but had been lucky with the questions in my Higher exam) was with Applied Maths. So I'd have struggled with both Physics and Maths (I was good at calculus Wink). But there again, if I'd been taught CfE principles from the start, maybe I'd have been more comfortable with Applied Maths Confused

There are some who hate CfE (because it doesn't rely on rote learning so more difficult to "hot house" Hmm) and it does have its flaws (like any education system) but overall, I'm a fan Smile

howabout · 27/07/2019 12:14

Red Boris speech sounds pretty much like he lifted it from what Andy B said last time he was on Marr.

I don't agree HS2 will be for the chop though. I think rather fast tracking start of HS3 will make over runs for HS2 more palatable. My understanding per Andy B is that HS2 frees up local track but also ensures economic impact of HS3.

Waiting with baited breath for SNP to get on with reintegrating the Glasgow bus / tube / low level train network. Hopeful this will give them a much needed kick. Already under pressure in The Press to spend the policing / education Barnett consequentials effectively.

RedToothBrush · 27/07/2019 12:23

You might know whether or not you are likely to have the aptitude for A-level maths but many 14 year olds have no idea what they want to do.

I had no idea what I wanted to do at 14 nor 16.

Realistically maths, science, humanities and art were all still options for me.

This didn't help a lot.

For me, I'd have like to have down a wider range of subjects later. In the end I've effected ended up going back to things I'd had to give up, later down the road anyway.

I've always been and continue to be a jack of all trades master of none.

In many respects I probably am well skilled to set up my own business now. It's just working out what I want to do, considering whether it's viable and finding investment from somewhere to do.

But I'm not sure this is well supported as an idea at school in terms of career opportunities.

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RedToothBrush · 27/07/2019 12:25

Red Boris speech sounds pretty much like he lifted it from what Andy B said last time he was on Marr.

Isn't it just?!

Where do the Labour Party go in Manchester if he's nicked all their ideas?

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RedToothBrush · 27/07/2019 12:27

Sky news @skynews
When asked by @SamCoatesSky how he will deliver on his spending promises, Boris Johnson says his plans are "pretty reasonable" and make "sound economic sense".

Mr Johnson has outlined key policy commitments in his first speech outside Westminster as PM

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woodpigeons · 27/07/2019 12:33

Je parle Francais come un africain

lonelyplanetmum · 27/07/2019 12:41

I'm still camping and mostly off grid so I can pretend this is happening for a few days.

Why the prompt northern focus..still party first and securing votes up there because post Halloween they'll be hardest hit?

It can't be an acknowledgement that austerity etc was wrong and hit certain parts of the country disproportionately?

JustAnotherPoster00 · 27/07/2019 12:49

I desperately hope Remain Tory MPs are making this clear to Labour.

Not a lot the PLP can do tbh, getting rid of Corbyn would be up to the membership unless he resigns but I dont see that happening anytime soon.

Im worried that even if the LD's do well we'll still get BJ because Swinson seemed happy enough to vote for the causes of Brexit and she wont work with Corbyn even though Labour are going to campaign on a remain and reform ticket so that means going into government with the currently hard right Tory party

Peregrina · 27/07/2019 12:49

Where do the Labour Party go in Manchester if he's nicked all their ideas?

Tell him to sod off with his attempt to buy votes. I have two cousins there - I can't see them being impressed with him. Even if he cancelled Brexit, they still wouldn't vote for him.