Westministenders: Brexit Preppers Are Traitors Who Don't Believe Enough

[RedToothBrush]

Believe in Brexit. Brexit will be great. If only you believe.

So this is why the pound has tanked.
This is why the Treasury has opened the piggie bank for prep. This has sparked something of a backlash amongst moderates and remain MPs.
This will go towards managing that Channel Tunnel Congestion in Kent we weren't going to have.
And to stockpiling drugs which again was just hysteria.
This is why Gove, an MP who actually does have an eye for detail, has been drafted into the Cabinet Office.
This is why after his stint at DEFRA he is planning to buy tonnes of meat at a fixed price to keep farms in business.

Johnson has been to NI. But it wasn't a publicity stunt apparently. This is a man who posed for a photo when he resigned from the Foreign Office.

He was met with protests.

He also has a phonecall with the Leo Varadkar which was 'warm', before its been said by the DUP that Dublin must be a willing partner in a Brexit Deal.

Johnson is also still sticking to the line that technology can solve the border issue. Technology which will not be available until 2030 at the earliest by the government's own admission.

Johnson has refused to meet any European leaders until they drop the backstop (I note there are no EU meetings planned until mid October just a couple of weeks before the 31st anyway, so this kind of suits him and makes him look tough when really its been timetabled that way for a while. The EU themselves say that the 'next possible contact' with Johnson isn't until the G7 at the end of August anyway too).

However his 'Brexit Sherpa' David Frost - Olly Robbins successor HAS been meeting with EU officials still...

Dr Phillip Lee has confirmed today that he is actively considering his future as a Tory and defecting to the LDs. The rumour has been going for a while, and he is in the process of being deselected by his local party. To openly say it, is quite something though.

We also have the Brecon By Election today, which if the LD win as expected, would reduce the government's majority to just 1.

It is possible that Johnson will be leading a minority government very soon, if the cards fall the right way.

The speculation is rife that Johnson actively wants to force a GE. This hasn't been helped by Dominic Cummings has ordered the preparation of a Budget in the week starting Oct 7. Which would need to be voted for through parliament.

Votes on budget and other important issues are where not having a majority become crucial.

If a budget vote got stuck and provoked a GE it would perhaps land whilst Brexit Party Supporters had returned to the Tory party but perhaps before all the shit has start to hit the fan and people get really fed up.

And even if we do have no deal, when we DO have a deal, we will have to put a bill through parliament to implement it. Whilst everyone has focused on the backstop, no one has thought about this... which is pretty important.

It is remarkable that a No Deal Supporting Government are now seemingly planning for Project Fear.

And we were the crazy ones?

Roger Awan-Scully: the byelection

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/the-liberal-democrats-win-the-brecon-and-radnorshire-by-election/

The seat was actually held – albeit on slightly more favourable boundaries – by the Labour party between a 1939 by-election and 1979.

It was then captured by the SDP-Liberal Alliance in a famous 1985 by-election, lost in 1992,
but then re-taken by the Lib-Dems in 1997 and held until the Clegg-catastrophe of 2015.

The Conservatives have only held the parliamentary seat there for fifteen of the last eighty years.
....
For Labour, this was a truly dreadful result – and one which can hardly be blamed on their unfortunate candidate.

While they were never likely to win here, barely saving their deposit was a humiliating outcome.

Coming in the wake of Monday’s poll,
which showed
Labour support for both Westminster and the National Assembly at its lowest-ever recorded level in Wales,

Brecon and Radnor will heighten concerns within the party that its current UK and Welsh leadership are leading Labour towards potential electoral disaster.

The other key part of Keynesian Economics was that it's not just about redistribution but about also using public funds to "balance" boom and bust by investing in infrastructure. Thereby mitigating some of the potential inflationary impact of increased public spending (/borrowing - but ideally a fund should've been built up during the Boom years like Norway has done with its Sovereign Wealth Fund from the oil for just this sort of eventuality, as the improved infrastructure should be a vehicle for growth.

While the UK is fiddling with its navel, the clock is ticking:

Now 90 days until No Deal Brexit
(unless stopped / extended somehow)

You might like to look at the times in which different economic theories held court to look at the social results empirically. A very brief and simplistic summary would be as follows! Free market economics dominated absolutely in the Industrial Revolution, apart from - or including if you like: many people, including the Tories do - the occasional, unpredictable charitable impulse from factory owners. That thinking held over the Victorian period, but gradually the plight of the poor moved people into thinking that the state needed to intervene and slowly the worst of Old Corruption was pushed back, and then a bit more, and then a bit more. It was Lloyd George who really set the fullest application of Keynesian economics rolling as he built the welfare state. We then had some extremely stable times and the extremities of poverty and wealth both caused by the Industrial Revolution were rolled back. As free market economics has come back into dominance from the 70s onwards (as DGR says, the system was being pushed to its limits), inequality has grown again. Then we get New Labour's weird fudges and compromises.

Meanwhile, Russia gets it too ....

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49210340

US President Donald Trump has imposed new sanctions against Russia over the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in the UK in March 2018.
...

It does rather beg the question WTF is the point of Congress ? If Trump can rule single handed, why spend so much money on the Capitol ?

Heidi Allen prepared to sacrifice her seat in the Unite to Remain initiative:

'Prepared to lose my seat'
Allen, who launched the "Unite to Remain" group to coordinate a wider tie-up, said the Brecon model should be used “in as many seats as we can” at the next general election. The specter of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage forming a Brexit alliance, or of a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn, is “really focusing minds” among Remain supporters, she said.
“Those threats, and what it means about the kind of country we may become and the path we would set ourselves on, are so terrifying that it is making some of us prepared to behave in ways that we never would have considered before,” said Allen, who is writing to the smaller parties to drive discussion of a national strategy. She has also commissioned an analysis of seats to consider who should be stepping down where.
“It won’t be every seat,” she told POLITICO, “it will be somewhere between 100 and 200 seats where we can really make a difference and return more Remain, progressive, moderate MPs if we stand down and there is just one candidate.”

There are over 100 seats that could be aimed for:

Analysis by political strategist James Kanagasooriam for Sky News show “Sophy Ridge on Sunday” found a "Remain Alliance" has the potential to win between 66 and 154 seats at a general election. Kanagasooriam told the show two-thirds of the 66-seat estimate is Conservative-held, but that much of the vote share would come from Labour voters in middle England.
There is a financial incentive, too: Small parties could save money, or spend it more effectively, by focusing on seats where they have a fighting chance, rather than fielding candidates across the country.

www.politico.eu/article/anti-brexit-parties-alliance-welsh-by-election/

Even Anna Soubry seems to be getting behind the idea.

twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1156967736020484097

Sorry not caught up on this thread but just read this and thought it was a very interesting proposition

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-ireland-can-stop-a-no-deal-brexit-here-s-how-1.3972121?mode=amp

I wondered about whether Sinn Fein's votes could be used against the Tory government and this article seems to give a possible way to do it that doesn't involve SF taking their seats.

In fact it wouldn't even need all 7 MPs to quit given the majority is only 1 now.

has the potential to win between 66 and 154 seats at a general election.

There's a whopping "if" left out of that story ...

I too like Fintan O'Toole's suggestion. Would Sinn Fein not be amenable - it would be a good way of sticking it to Westminster and Boris Johnson in particular.

John Maynard Keynes lived through the Great Depression and was interested in this boom-bust cycle. Essentially he was in favour of state intervention in the economy to stimulate it, by such measures as redistribution, regulation of markets, as well as more direct fiscal "stuff" that I don't get - import tariffs and so on. Is that a start? The aim is to create demand within the economy. In austerity thinking, wages are cut, jobs slashed, public spending stops, no one has any spare money and so we just descend into a spiralling recession.

I remember having Keynesian economic policy explained to me during my GCSE history lessons - with regard to the wall street crash and the great depression. I remember thinking 'what a good job we know all this now - so we don't ever have to go through any of this ever again.'

what a sweet summer child I was.

@HesterThrale I have just been listening to Heidi Allen talking about Unite to Remain on the Remainiacs podcast. I thought it was very interesting. I like her. She's a breath of fresh air.

I remember having Keynesian economic policy explained to me during my GCSE history lessons - with regard to the wall street crash and the great depression. I remember thinking 'what a good job we know all this now - so we don't ever have to go through any of this ever again.'

The "problem" with Keynes is that it lacks the moral dimension the ruling classes like to keep the proles in place with. I have just listened to a fascination history podcast www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002gqz that explains early Victorians had a horror of charity, as they imagined it would weaken the moral fibre of the lower orders and prevent them from working hard. "Working hard" being a euphemism (not that they realised it) for "so busy they haven't time to rise up".

I give you 2019. Where many families are unable to live properly with both adults working. Food banks are an accepted part of society.

Just read an interesting article in the Irish Times
Fintan O’Toole: Ireland can stop a no-deal Brexit. Here’s how
via The Irish Times
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-ireland-can-stop-a-no-deal-brexit-here-s-how-1.3972121

Suggesting that Sinn Fein MPs resign their seats and let SDLP win the resulting by-elections. SDLP will take their seats in Westminster and fuck Johnson's slim majority. They would be 7.

Remind ourselves of the leak - what the govt / civil service expect at various timepoints after No Deal:

https://news.sky.com/story/uk-faces-potential-consumer-panic-and-security-gaps-under-no-deal-brexit-says-government-document-11775217

Britain faces potential "consumer panic" and gaps in security within weeks of leaving the EU without a deal,
according to an official government document obtained by Sky News.

My Grannie reckoned State spending encouraged backhanders DGR.

I wouldn't say either Nationalisation or Redistribution were necessary for Keynesianism. They are more about Socialism which aims to make better use of resources by redistribution of the means and fruits of production.

@bellinisurge
He is not suggesting that Sinn Fein let the SDLP win the by elections but high profile neutral people who would resign immediately after Brexit or the end of the current crisis.

A party which has lasted a millennia will suddenly crumble when a man like a frog says "boo" ?

It's not just frog man now though. He and Arron Banks have been doing some serious tie ups with the global alt-right behind the scenes. Frog man is just the little froggy face of it all 🐸

...and on the Conservative UK forums there are plenty of people agitating for similar who would jump ship. For now they are happy as they feel they've moved the Tories further right away from the 'wets' who they say 'took over' the party under David Cameron's modernisation strategy

Although the reasons for the Marshall Plan weren't specifically Keynesian Economics, compare and contrast how France and Germany used the (smaller) amount of Marshall Plan money to rebuild infrastructure and invest in industry and how the Labour Party used it to unsuccessfully shore up the Empire and sterling, with some of it going on housebuilding, but none on infrastructure. (For the record, I don't think the Conservatives would have been any better, indeed probably worse ).

As the article finishes: what a waste of a great and unrepeatable opportunity . And we're still reaping the consequences of that lack of investment 70+ years later

www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/marshall_01.shtml

@Socksontheradiator I agree, Heidi Allen seems sincere. Last year, she did a TV programme with Frank Field visiting food banks and talking to the users, and she was visibly emotional and compassionate.

I thought she came across really well in Remainiacs. If only evidence based policy was more common as an approach.

blowjob has just arrived in whaley bridge
Unfortunately I suspect people in that part of Derbyshire as being rather nice and polite people who won't tell Johnson to his face where he should stick it. Perhaps he'll stop in the cities on his way back.

One thing that bothers me about this great Remain alliance is that it can look a bit like an anti-democratic stitch-up. It adds on to my doubts about the Lib Dems already and doesn't do them many favours. If Labour get involved with it closely as well it really will remove options from voters. I doubt that I'm the only person to respond like that.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/02/boris-johnson-warned-he-could-lose-control-of-parliament?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1564767998

Fairly cheering article.

Christ, no wonder my stomach is off if he's so close by. I wonder what gems he'll come out with about the situation.

Heidi Allen is great. I wish she could keep her seat somehow.