Westministenders: Slow News Fake News

[RedToothBrush]

Things have been slow whilst we are in proroguation, ahead of next weeks Queen's Speech and the EU summit.

We've been in full spin mode, from the likes of the far right and an unnamed source at No.10.

People seem to be waking up to the reality that its highly unlikely we will get a deal now, unless something significant. And No.10 has worked out the NI problem. FINALLY.

Anyway, if you have a little time this week and you are interested in the history of where technology change and fake news meet and how where we are now is merely things repeating themselves, Ian Hislop's Fake News: A True History, is essential viewing.
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00095hv/ian-hislops-fake-news-a-true-history

I really feel strongly this is stuff that should be being taught in schools somehow as its what protects us from extremism.

Absolute unknown whether he would resign the office he has wanted all his life

To avoid the humiliation of requesting an extension or risking jail ?

If he thought it would get him a GE and a 5-year term with a majority ?
Depends maybe on what private Tory polls are saying.

He wouldn't go straight to jail, I don't think. He'd be referred for criminal investigation. At some point I'd imagine they'd HAVE to deal with him in accordance with the law. If you break the law then you should be punished accordingly.

I don't do criminal law though, so I don't know the practicalities and (thank fuck) I've never had a client referred for contempt!

But, that's all separate to whether we no deal by default. We're fucked then, whatever happens in relation to criminal proceedings.

But...I don't believe BoZo actually wants to go to prison for this cause. I don't think it's worth THAT to him.

Listening If he resigns along with all the govt - and all Tories are instructed not to step up, then there would be no caretaker govt

(Does anyone have a reference ?) I suspect that once a govt has resigned, during the 14-day period there cannot be any bills for MPs to vote on
other than a Confidence bill for a prospective PM

Even if votes are allowed, any WA still has to get more Ayes than Nos

The Week in Westminster, BBC Radio 4

(is this a minority view, or are some top legal bods getting nervous about the future ?)

Sir Stephen Laws, former First Parliamentary Counsel:

“The courts have involved themselves in an unfortunate way in politics

I think to some extent they have taken over the role of the Monarch as the as the ultimate umpire.

And I think it’s inevitable that when that starts to happen, politicians will start to say well then we ought to have some influence,
‘we should have more influence over who judges are and who is appointed to be a judge’.

“I think it’d be a very bad thing because they would in some ways, vindicate or ratify the idea that judges should get involved in politics.

I think political decisions, and political problems should have political solutions.

I think the law is useful for deciding legal questions but it is probably unhelpful and divisive when it’s used to resolve political questions.

And if we had politicians involving themselves in politics in judicial appointments
that would have the consequence that judges would think, having been politically approved they are entitled to venture further into the political field.”

“There are ways back.

I think they probably involve a reassertion by the world of politics in the form of an Act of Parliament,
that reclaim some of the territory that the judges have trespassed into.

I don’t think things will stay at the extreme end of judicial intervention, but it’s been a growing trend for judges to involve themselves in political questions.

And in some ways this may be a good thing because it may be the trigger for the move back in the opposite direction.

When constitutional actors overreached themselves, as for example the House of Lords did at the beginning of the 20th century in relation to budgetary matters,
the result was legislation to curb the powers of the House of Lords.

I think it’s likely that there will be some readjustment following recent events.”

Sunday papers

I know it's not surprising but that Express front page is hilarious.

Also, who thinks that if the vote had been remain 52% and leave 48% leavers would have stfu by this number of days post referendum? Or wouldn't have been daily calling for another vote?

Which might be exactly what happens after another referendum if the result is flipped, which polls suggest it might be.

I repeat: purgatory!

afaik, to get a PV requires

either
the Tories to officially agree, because it requires spending millions of public money

• which only a govt can agree, not an Opposition.

OR
replacing the PM

Getting a PV bill passed would also need Tory agreement, or enough additional Tory defectors to balance out the Labour Leavers

A fast track 6-weeks PV would at least cut down on the time Leave would have to pump in dirty money and use psyops.
However, they'd still have all their voter data from 2016

Purgatory indeed

Farage said before the 2016 vote that Remain winning 52:48 would be "unfinished business"

Farage said before the 2016 vote that Remain winning 52:48 would be "unfinished business"

I still wonder if it was coincidence that he used these exact numbers.

I don't think he's Mystic Meg!

I assume we have posted about the £86.6m spent on ferry contracts to try and keep most medicines coming in from Cherbourg, Caen, Le Havre, Zeebrugge, Hook of Holland, Rotterdam, Europort, and Vlaardingen following no-deal?

(This is in addition to the £ 51 million cancellations fee on the no-deal ferry contracts with no ferries in March.)

Why aren't the Brexit crew up in arms about these planned imports? It's after the intended no deal on 31 October and demonstrates we are still going to be dealing with the EU. As far as I am aware there are no plans to increase our own production? I thought the Brexit lot voted to make our own and grow our own everything -supplemented only by goods from the US?

Also I don't know if this is a reliable source but the list seems accurate. Why don't the Tories care about other financial services apart from those shorting the pound - it's weird.

I know I'm copying and pasting but just want to share my disbelief. I guess losing all of that revenue actually doesn't matter if you plan slash public service expenditure too?

" Financial services industry slowly abandons Britain ahead of Brexit

The EU is London’s biggest customer when it comes to financial services with exports worth £26 billion in profits. As the EU and Britain failed to agree a deal, the banks began moving around a trillion pounds of assets from London to new EU hubs...

The result...three UK-based pan-European platforms in London, Aquis, Turquoise and Cboe have already opened hubs in Amsterdam and Paris for EU customers to trade shares listed on other exchanges.

A report by a London based think tank that focuses on capital markets has published the most comprehensive analysis yet of the impact of Brexit on the banking and finance industry in London. It has determined that more than 250 firms in banking and finance have moved or are moving business, staff, assets or legal entities away from the UK to the EU – and these numbers are likely to increase significantly in the near future. In total, it also agrees that approximately £1 trillion of assets have already been relocated – with more expected.
The list below is not exhaustive by any means and probably only represents about a quarter of 2018 and early 2019 reports of financial services businesses moving their operations out of the UK ahead of Brexit. Banks, insurers, brokers, gold traders, investors, advisors and asset managers have lost faith and made their move as a no-deal Brexit could cause chaos for trading conditions or clients...
• London Stock Exchange is moving its European government bond trading platform (MTS Cash) from London to Italy, effective 1 March 2019. 20% of its 13.4 billion euros worth of daily trade will shift to Milan. (source – Reuters)
• Aviva, the huge insurance company, is moving £9 billion in client assets from the UK to Ireland. It gained legal approval for the transfer on 19 February and expects it to be effective on 29 March 2019 (source)
• M&G Investments is transferring a number of its investment funds totalling over £30 billion in assets from the UK to Luxembourg, including its £19.4 billion M&G Optimal Income fund (formerly the largest fund in the UK) (source)
• Marshall Wace, one of the biggest hedge funds in the UK, has obtained a license to run management companies in Ireland & plans to grow its Dublin presence as a protective measure against Brexit. (source – CityAM)
• Legal and General Investment Management has received regulatory approval for a new Dublin-based business unit in readiness for Brexit to manage euro-clients (source)
• XL Insurance Company SE (a company writing over £2 billion/year in insurance premiums) is moved from the UK to Ireland in January 2019 due to Brexit (source – companies house)
• A major financial firm, CME Group’s BrokerTec, is leaving London for Amsterdam because of Brexit, taking its $240 billion/day repo market with it. (source – Bloomberg)
• Nomura is moving about 100 staff to a new Frankfurt office to use as a new trading hub servicing EU clients post-Brexit. They expect the move to be completed in early 2019 (source)
• GoldCore opened Ireland’s first institutional-grade gold storage vault in October 2018, anticipating investors will want to move gold bars from London to Dublin. $300 billion of gold bars held in London (source – IrishTimes)
• Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group has obtained approval from the ECB to establish a banking subsidiary in Frankfurt as part of its preparations for a no-deal Brexit. It intends the subsidiary to commence operations in 2019 (source)
• Prior to 2016, fewer than 50 solicitors from England and Wales were also registered in the Republic of Ireland. Since the Brexit referendum, the number registered in Ireland has risen to over 2,000 (11% of named solicitors) (source)
• Independent insurance firm Robus Group opened a new office in San Gwann in Malta to be able to offer British clients access to the EU27 after Brexit (source)
• A.M. Best, the specialist insurance sector rating agency, established a new office in Amsterdam to be able to continue to provide ratings to be used for regulatory purposes post-Brexit (source)
• TP ICAP, the world’s biggest interdealer broker, said its full-year earnings would be hurt by additional costs of about £10 million related to Brexit. It has chosen Paris as its EU headquarters post-Brexit (source)
• Ferrovial (largest shareholder in Heathrow, owns Aberdeen, Glasgow & Southampton airports) is moving HQ from Oxford to Amsterdam due to Brexit (source – BBC)
• Steris PLC, a company with $2.6 billion in annual revenue, has redomiciled its HQ from the UK to Ireland due to Brexit (source)
• France’s top banks move 500 jobs out of London due to Brexit. (source – financemagnates)
• Liberty Specialty Markets is moves its insurance company from the UK to Luxembourg (source – libertymarkets)
• STM Life moves part of its business from Gibraltar to Malta to guard against the effects of Brexit (source – international investment)
• AIG operates in Europe through a single legal entity established in the UK (with branches across Europe). They are restructuring their business because of Brexit, and moving all non-UK business to a Luxembourg entity (source)
• Credit Suisse is moving 250 jobs to Germany, Madrid and elsewhere in the EU27, including Luxembourg (source)
• JPMorgan has secured additional office space in Paris to accommodate up to 200 staff from London due to no-deal Brexit (source – Reuters)
• Barclays has moved €190bn (£166bn) of assets to Dublin because it “cannot wait any longer” to implement its Brexit contingency plan (source BBC)
• Columbia Threadneedle has transferred the assets of European clients currently in its range of UK domiciled funds into the equivalent Sicav products domiciled in Luxembourg (source –FT)
• Lloyd’s, the insurance and reinsurance market, officially opened Lloyd’s Brussels, its post-Brexit headquarters in the European Union (source – Insurancejournal)
• Swissquote abandons plans to buy a bank in London and moves to Luxembourg due to Brexit (Source – Reuters)
• Bank of America spends £400 million setting up Paris and Dublin units ahead of Brexit (source – RTE -Ireland)
• HSBC has – has shifted ownership of its Polish and Irish subsidiaries from its London-based entity to its French unit, and will do so for seven more European branches (source – Reuters)
• Deutsche Bank moved about half its new euro swaps business away from LCH (UK-based clearing house) and onto Eurex (based in Germany) (source – risk.net)
• Daiwa Capital Markets established a new subsidiary in Frankfurt on 3rd September 2018 “so that Daiwa can continue to provide a full service to its EU-based clients post-Brexit. (source – UKDaiwa)
• Tokio Marine Group is using a “Part VII transfer” to redomicile business from two UK-based subsidiaries (Tokio Marine Kiln Insurance Limited, and HCC International Insurance Company Plc) to a Luxembourg entity "

Source..

Spurce

Sorry I think the insanity of it all is affecting my sanity as well.

Both George Peretz and Jo Maugham pointing out on Twitter this morning that if Johnson does present a WA for approval on 19/10 there is no time before 31/10 to scrutinise it, debate it and pass it in line with UK (and EU) legal requirements.

Plus the WA (and accompanying draft bill to enact it) would be a lengthy and complicated legal document that would have been hastily put together - devil is in the detail.

So basically anyone voting for a WA on 19/10 would in effect be letting Johnson off the hook wrt to the Benn Act and if he didn’t ask for an extension to enable the legal requirements to be concluded then the UK would fall out on 31/10.

Both Peretz and Maugham saying that agreeing a WA on 19/10 would be extremely foolhardy.

The ONLY WA that will be acceptable to the EU will look VERY similar to the existing WA that Theresa signed up to in November lst year. So it takes a year and a half to read 'just' 585 pages.
The HoC couldn't be arsed or were not intelligent enough toread and understand it, by March this year ot whenever they rejected it last.
Maybe the HoC should just do some work

Maybe the HoC should just do some work

How can you scrutinise what is likely to be 500 or so pages that haven’t been agreed yet let alone written to be able to come to a conclusion next Saturday?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/3712877-Peoples-Vote-March-Oct-19th March next Saturday :)

Jacob Rees-Mogg: "If we can deal with the abdication of a King Emperor in 24 hours, we can deal with leaving the European empire within 12 days"

The first Emperor had a know successor. JRM's Emperor has no clothes.

Is JRM keeping one eye on the Fifth Money Laundering Directive January 2020 date by any chance?

Pray tell me, what laws had to be written/changed/repealed/implemented when a King Emperor abdicated?

It is illustrative of the latest era (and long gone world status) that he still is thinks we are living in though

Pray tell me, what laws had to be written/changed/repealed/implemented when a King Emperor abdicated?

I believe the succession had to be changed by law to eliminate any of Edwards successors as having any claim to the throne. You don't just do that by wishing in front of a mirror.

(presumably there was a instrument of abdication that had to be signed somewhere as law ?)

It's also worth remembering why it was an abdication crisis. Many people felt the King was the King and could/should not be affected by public - or indeed political - pressure on the grounds that the Monarch is appointed by God. There was probably a 52/48 split as to whether he should abdicate or not.

Most of the pressure for him to abdicate came from people who hated the idea of an American divorcee anywhere near the throne. It was a different age then. Hard to imagine now.

The point I was making was that any law that required to be changed was narrow in scope - and not integrated into the entire functioning law book of the UK and its constituent countries.

and JRM knows this full well

If MPs genuinely want a PV, they have to stop dithering and replace BJ as PM

If he's PM, he retains a lot of powers and one of those may bite everyone else in the arse