Westminstenders: Just another DEADline

[RedToothBrush]

Today is the last scheduled day for talks with the EU.

We have til 30th June to ask for a transition extension. We won't.

That leaves us starring down the barrel of a no deal exit, when we still could be in a covid-19 crisis and the US may be in turmoil given recent events and the coming election...

It's not a pretty picture.

From the USA Trade Dept: United States-United Kingdom Negotiations
Summary of Specific Negotiating Objectives

You can find a lot here, but the language sometimes obfuscates the real aim

https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/Summary-of-U.S.-UK-Negotiating-Objectives.pdf

On investment, the US objective in negotiation of the UK-US trade deal is to:
‘reduce or eliminate barriers to U.S. investment in all sectors in the UK’’

Similarly, on government procurement, the US wishes to:

‘increase opportunities for U.S. firms to sell U.S. products and services to the UK’,
while simultaneously restricting access for the UK
(for example, through keeping domestic preferential purchasing programs at state and local government levels).

The US document also attempts to regulate the UK’s relationship with third countries!

For example, it would constrain the UK’s ability to sign a trade deal with China by creating a mechanism to:

‘take appropriate action if the UK negotiates a free trade agreement with a non-market country’.

To preserve its commercial partnerships with Israel, the US states that one of its objectives is to:

‘discourage actions that directly or indirectly prejudice or otherwise discourage commercial activity solely between the United States and Israel’.

< code for making it illegal for UK firms to follow the anti-Israel boycott >

< As of 2015, USTR [United States Trade Representatives] are bound by Congress not to include mention of greenhouse gas emission reductions in trade agreements.

The US side has stated this ban would not be lifted anytime soon>

This extract from the Guardian article jumped out at me:

Meanwhile, it demands that “ministers receive regular progress reports of concurrent EU and US negotiations to help maximise leverage and allow policy tensions to be resolved as they emerge”.

How is going to the EU and telling them that we want to lower our food standards and that they must give us access, going to be helped by us saying that if they don't we will do a deal with the US for lower standards? I could see the EU saying, 'go on then'.

Remember Johnson’s fantastic oven ready deal to Get Brexit Done?

Apileofballyhoo I was told, by a member of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, that the church taught that the mark of Cain was to be black.
‘The Dutch Reformed Church (Reformed Church in America) is one of the oldest Christian denominations in the world. According to Britannica and the denomination, it was formed in North America, specifically from Dutch settlements in now modern day New York, out of the Dutch Reformed Church in Europe in the 17th century and slowly grew from there.’
www.newsmax.com/FastFeatures/dutch-reformed-church-christians-beliefs/2015/04/02/id/636090/

@RedToothBrush
Its the ultimate warning of what is to come and what America must now prepare for. And its not to Democratics. Its to Republicans and to the military and security forces.

I think the warning is to Trump not to try any funny business in November, that the armed forces are loyal first and always to the Constitution, not to him personally.

They are warning Trump not to mobilise armed-to-the-teeth, shaven-headed, tattooed, fascist goons (as seen in Lansing, Michigan, and other state capitols protesting lockdown measures) to 'dominate' public places at election time, during the count or afterwards. They are warning against incitement to civil unrest and against hints that there has been voter fraud if he doesn't seem to be winning. They are warning against seeking to fatally divide the United States.

Those who have spoken out are not standing alone. They would not have done this without support in the Senate and the House and very possibly from the judiciary. The individuals who have spoken out are trying to hint to Trump that 'tribalism' must be reined in because it is reckless and dangerous and risks tearing the country apart. They do not want citizens out on the street fighting each other or the National Guard or members of the armed forces.

They are hinting very strongly that the President is bound by the Constitution. Repetition of references to the Constitution is a hint that the Constitution controls what the various institutions of state can and can't do, including the armed forces and the executive branch.

Will someone from a military background risk taking on Trump from within the Republican party for the election? If Trump carries on, I suspect that is the real risk Trump runs. I very much agree with your analysis math. It's hugely important.

And the question still remains about how you remove Trump from the Whitehouse without him trying to set the country on fire in the process. It might not be November. But this is a question that remains and isn't going away.

YY to your comments on Murkowski, RTB. It will be interesting to see who else fires a volley across Trump's bows (Romney has concurred with Murkowski, but that is to be expected). Lindsey Graham is of course cozying up to lick Trump's arse..

The GOP is now very clearly a party of at least two wings. Supporting the man who accused the president of abusing executive authority is something you don't back down from no matter what the president says or threatens as a result, though Murkowski has ended up dutifully toeing the GOP line every time push has come to shove so far in her career.

Trump's nomination as candidate for President isn't necessarily a given, though it would be most unusual to see a presumed second term candidate upscuttled at the Convention.

Stream of consciousness/ wishful thinking alert*...
A third party candidate might draw votes from Trump in a brave act of political suicide. Mitt Romney has nothing to lose, but he might also draw soft GOP votes from Biden, and the reason Biden was anointed by the Democrats was to draw soft GOP votes, reckoning that Democratic voters would vote for him anyway. The danger of a third party candidate would be to divide the Biden vote and let Trump in. There is the same danger with someone ex military running.

It may be that Biden will be able to use Trump's flagrant contempt for the Constitution against him as a means of securing election, with votes coming from moderate Republicans, and moderate leaders sitting on their hands instead of putting their state GOP apparatus at the disposal of Trump. Trump has threatened he will support any Republican with a pulse running against Murkowski when she is up for re-election - she could withhold Alaska GOP machine support; two can play at that game. Likewise Mike DeWine, governor of Ohio, and the governor of Kentucky. Neither of them owe Trump anything but cold revenge.

If Trump wins in November it will be hard to see a way forward for the country. If he loses, many in the GOP will come forward to condemn him, blame him for the loss, and attempt to consign him to the land of wind and ghosts, but he and his wild-eyed supporters will remain a presence. The likes of Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah who put him in office will remain a force to be reckoned with in the background.

You would think the GOP might have learned a lesson from its flirtation with Joe McCarthy that hitching your wagon to someone who has no regard for the Constitution and massive personal demons is something to avoid.

@thecatfromjapan, I wonder too if it's too much to hope that tens of millions will come to their senses and that enough of them will make the effort to cast a vote for Biden. The theory of drawing moderate votes away from the GOP rests on the assumption that you will fire up enough of your own base to make that a meaningful gain.

@colouringindoors
do you think if Trump refused to leave the White House in Nov following unsuccessful election campaign, that he wouldn't be able to rely on the support of the US Army?

I don't think he would refuse.
That would invite actual arrest. He may well be that stupid though.

He absolutely cannot call on the intervention of any other institution of state for support. There is no way the armed forces will intervene on his behalf, and the statements this week are a reminder to him to wind his neck in on that front.

He can wield much more power by going quietly but continuing to chip away at the body politic from the sidelines, making accusations of vote rigging, fraud, betrayal by the GOP, betrayal of the country by the Democrats, managing his rabid followers to maximise his nuisance value and disrupt the political discourse.

Any standoff between Trump and an elected Biden would result in civil strife, with armed forces intervention occurring with stated limited goals of securing the District of Columbia. In individual states facing insurrection, governors could call in the army. There is no fixed definition of insurrection afaik. So hordes of white supremacists waving swastikas and gathering near state capitols might be enough. Certainly each state's national Guard can be called up.

@Mistigri
The author Lawrence Douglas in the 'Vox' article suggests that only the GOP itself can control the contents of the Pandora's Box they opened. I suspect he is right. He does not think the GOP is willing to do that, but since he wrote, some cracks have appeared in the GOP facade (in the shape of Murkowski and of course Romney so far) and the concerns of ex military and former Cabinet personnel - Mattis, Kelly, Esper (who is ex West Point) - will provide food for thought for whatever thoughtful GOP representatives and voters remain. The military have highlighted the Constitution and their loyalty to it for a reason. They are hoping that responsible Americans will focus on the fact that it is the Constitution that guarantees the rights and liberty of the citizens, and do the responsible thing instead of trampling it in the mire or cheering on someone else trampling it.

The Moggster told us we shall benefit from 'cheaper clothing and footwear,' which given that the T-shirts in Primark are already £2, it looks like we won't even need to bother washing them anymore, just buy a new one and never mind how come it's so cheap.

Onwards and upwards to the perfect circular food production system: Pigs eat the chicken shit, chickens eat the pig shit...

I didn't think anyone could control the contents of Pandora's box once opened. I looked the reference up, and on Wikipedia the definition is:

"In modern times an idiom has grown from it meaning "Any source of great and unexpected troubles", or alternatively "A present which seems valuable but which in reality is a curse""

The second definition made me think of Johnson and his election victory.

It seems that in the original, instead of a named female opening the box, a 'foolish man' opened the box, and the blessings escaped, with only 'hope' left when the lid was put on.

Sadly, this seems the only thing we have left at present. We can't rely on those in power for integrity or decency.

The Moggster told us we shall benefit from 'cheaper clothing and footwear,' which given that the T-shirts in Primark are already £2,

The Moggster won't know this - he will think that every man buys bespoke Saville Row suits. He won't know what women wear, but I imagine he thinks they will be little designer numbers that cost a packet.

BCF thanks for that. I feel the legalease might be too much to filter through for most. I felt sure there was an expose of some deal a few months before Fox was canned. The Atlantic Bridge stuff is key to tying them all to the ideology (Gove etc) but it feels a little like obvious speculation.

Anyone else remember that Bozo's deal was meant to be 'Oven Ready'?

From the photos it looks like there were more marching yesterday than there were for a certain inauguration?

Wrt the composition of Trump support, and in particular the blanket phrase 'religious' - he has now lost left-leaning religious support, which is a huge swathe of votes. Not all voters who identify as members of a religious group are solely motivated by the abortion question. Many have strong historical links to Civil Rights and current links to the Peace and Justice Movement. In particular, the mainstream churches whether RC or protestant are likely to hear the strong hint about the Constitution in the words of those who have spoken out so far, to take note of the current state of race relations, and to reject anyone associating with white supremacy.

I agree with every word of Jared Yates Sexton, @Apileofballyhoo. He has hit the nail on the head. I was right to think I had stumbled into a massive cult compound when I first arrived in the US three decades ago.
threader.app/thread/1241725545341235202

The problem faced by the Democratic Party is only partly the result of how MN understands the term 'identity politics'. It is mainly to do with all that Jared Sexton says about the belief system of the New Confederacy (same as the old Confederacy) which has informed American culture since the founding of the United States, and which gained a firm grip on the American imagination since Nixon and his 'silent majority' speech encouraged it to believe that racism was both normal and patriotic, and people complaining about poverty and oppression were unpatriotic. Hence Reagan, Reaganomics, 'welfare queens'...

In the face of all that the Jared Sexton threadreader link contains, Bernie Sanders stood up and declared himself a socialist, and millions turned out to campaign and vote for him. But the rest of the Democrats can't shake themselves free of the surrounding political quicksand because they can't challenge the accepted Confederate narrative to the extent it needs to be challenged. They do not trust that the new zeitgeist isn't a dead end for the Democratic party. The old Confederate ideology is too deeply woven into American identity to be rooted out and replaced - to this extent a peculiarly American form of identity politics has ensnared the Democrats. They fear the consequences of making the break with the old and developing the new path forward that Sanders (and Warren) have identified.

So where's Boris.......
Unsurprisingly not doing any work....

I found this last night, from 2011, and it is spookily prophetic:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b011pldm

From 30 mins is the scary bit:

"People think that modern medicine will protect us into the future, but ...our genetic change is orders of magnitude slower than the pathogens, that have changed trillions of times in our history. Pathogens will always out-run us. .... The coming century will see more novel pandemics than we have ever seen in our history. "

The scientists, they were telling you for the past decade:

Yes Mockers, we learned that a pandemic was inevitable in the next decade in Public Health, we looked at proceedures to mitigate for it and in epidemiology we learned how test, trace and isolate a disease. This was a known fact and we do indeed know how to "control" it as much as possible.

My ONS post from yesterday; I was saying to my friend that in my opinion doing randomised controlled testing on the public after months of lockdown is pointless and they should be testing ALL keyworkers instead and isolating. Randomised testing works at the start of an outbreak, not when people haven't left their house in over 12 weeks.

We have known about quarantining people with disease for Centuries -that's what's so annoying.

Gus O'Donnell confirms that in the annual civil contingencies excerises in the noughties and beyond, Pandemic was always top of the list and was always passed over in short order because politicians wanted to talk about riots and terrorism.

Pandemic predicted 10- years ago. Well they were late to the party weren't they.

The very real likelihood of a viral pandemic was discussed certainly back to the 80s. Which is 2 generations before now.

To be fair the PPE used for COVID that we had stockpiled was left over from Labour govt, so it is fairly easy to see where the complacency set in.

But the stockpiles dating back to 09 that were due for distribution so they could be progressively replaced were run down to suit Osborne's austerity narrative about there being no money.

Anyway, I digress, all over the carpet as usual. Wanted to say how much I'm liking Black Lives Matter Plaza, and hoping the DC Mayor can rename some more streets around the full-of-shite House, such as Covefe Avenue and Stormy's Passage, to name just two.

Interesting story, interesting timing ... given that it's no secret the US:NRA (because there is a UK:NRA) has been pushing for the US to push for worldwide gun exports.

I'd love to see the Home Office report into proposed changes and how they would ensure only the "right" people get to own arms ?

Of course, if the UK were to become a US state one day (territory first, don't forget) they we'd need our laws to be Constitutionally valid. (Obviously the Monarch has to go as well, but that's not great loss anymore. We could make a fortune flogging their bling, unless a future POTUS gets them as a gift.)

www.thenational.scot/news/18492920.tory-ministers-tried-obstruct-firearm-ban-day-dunblane-massacre/

AN attempt by UK Government ministers to obstruct a firearms ban a day after the Dunblane massacre has been condemned as "appalling" by the father of one of the victims.

Thomas Hamilton shot and killed 16 pupils and their teacher in the gym hall of Dunblane Primary School on March 13 1996 before shooting himself.

Newly declassified Cabinet minutes from the following day, as reported in The Times Scotland, show Tory ministers expected to come under pressure for a public inquiry into gun control.

They were concerned it would produce "unwelcome" results and agreed to choose the judge leading the inquiry "carefully".

(contd)

It's a shame Nye Bevan was so mealy mouthed about the Tories - he clearly had their measure nearly a century ago.

Article in an Italian paper citing Brexit as a blessing

www.repubblica.it/economia/rubriche/eurobarometro/2020/06/06/news/benedetta_brexit_senza_l_argine_di_londra_piu_facile_la_svolta_europea_del_recovery_fund-258563320/

As if the U.K. was still at the table it would have voted against the EU Recovery Fund and bolstered the vote of the handful of nations who were not keen.

It goes on to list a few examples of how the U.K. shaped policy over the years towards a more neoliberal agenda, and pushed for the single market and the rapid accession of new counties, which would eventually lead to the populism that brought about Brexit, pushed for a lowering of trade barriers (such as allowing GM food) or voted against any sort of Europe wide fiscal alignment and scrutiny.

Now that the U.K. has fucked off the EU can get on with recovery funding unimpeded, taxing multinationals and all the other measures that were blocked by the Tories’ neoliberal agenda (and their US friends).

Looks like the Covid emergency has brought home what a pain the whiny Brits were and they won’t be missed. On that basis I don’t think it likely there will be many any concessions on the part of the EU

YouGov
Uk and other countries rate UK govt handling of COVID poorly

• except of course wrt Trump's USA, which is the benchmark for dystopia