Westminstenders: Operation Shock and Awe

[RedToothBrush]

The government is launching its get ready for the end of transition campaign which has been dubbed a 'shock and awe' campaign.

In this campaign we will learn all about what Brexit means and what amazing opportunities lie for having increased customs and borders, beaucracy and increased costs. Bet you are all really excited and looking forward to this.

We will also get a 'Farage Garage' in Kent to cope with these wonderful opportunities in traffic jams. This will be something that businesses throughout the country will be super excited to plan for in their socially distanced Zoom meetings or across warehouses with their face masks on. And banks will be delighted to see an uptick in applications in CCJs and debt reconstruction plans.

It will be a super fun time for the under 30s who have zero hours contracts, worked in retail or hospitality. Or should I say 'worked'.

Meanwhile the right to a jury trial has been binned due to 'long covid delays' which are shorter than they were several years ago. The NHS isn't getting the funding it expected, and waiting lists are longer than ever with no way to clear them. The plan to build more hospitals seems to have disappeared with the Nightingales. Many councils are about to go into insolvency and be taken over by accountancy firms. The civil service is being dismantled and conservative loyalists with no experience being put in charge of important functions of state. Communications with the press are being 'streamlined' to make them incredible of holding power to account and only able to repeat government public announcements.

Anyone looking forward to Christmas? When you write a letter to Santa remember to add 'visa application form', 'a sleeping bag for use at Dover', 'tinned tomatoes' and 'packets of seeds to grow your own' to the list.

And the wash of Russian money into the Conservative Party doesn't even need to be mentioned.

I used to be active in a local Peace group. The charge was always that we were a bunch of lefties, financed by the Kremlin. So why are the Tories immune from the criticism of being financed by Russia? Is it OK now because Communism has collapsed and Putin's regime is right wing?

The Treasurer always used to report that he'd looked hard but couldn't find any trace of Russian money. Nor were we all lefties - many of the activists were Quakers, and their commitment to peace motivated them and gave them a social conscience. It's a sad reflection on today's Tories that for so many a social conscience seems to be lacking.

I keep coming back to a remark my 80 year old DF made earlier this year. He said 'These people can't be shamed'.

Sadly it applies again and again and again with this government.

Prettybird
Yup the public sector pay rises
once you add on ERS NI and pension contributions
will cut the budget for everything else by 3%

What I can't understand is why perfectly moderate Tories are prepared to go along with Johnson and Co's totally shameless behaviour. They would be horrified to associate with someone so brazen in their own lives - lying, serial adultery. Just imagine what any other Party would have to put up with one of their number was like that. The Mail and Torygraph would be screaming their heads off.

Peregrina, one thing is what choice do such people have? Choosing the leader of the Conservative party isn’t in their gift. Once he was chosen, the choice is between Johnson and Corbyn, next time the choice is between Johnson and Starmer.

Another thing, outcomes matter. If the whole of Parliament and every opposition party with HoC representation is working against the outcome of 23/06/16 and Boris is working for it, what do you expect people supportive of that outcome to do? They are going to back him, aren’t they.

Louisecollins It depends how much incompetence, corruption and harm people will tolerate before deciding this over-rides the importance of Brexit

..... which has actually been achieved anyway;
even if the UK applied to rejoin tomorrow, most EU nations would veto and it only takes one veto

We can see in the USA the damage that has been done to the country because a significant chunk of voters fixated on 1-2 "cultural" issues
Many there remain in complete denial of the downright criminality of Trump & his gang, to say nothing of his obvious mental deterioration.

Do you have any limits at all to what you would tolerate until you decide that your particular version of post-Brexit has been achieved ?

or that the other policies and actions of the government become more important ?

Will it be after we crash out of transition with No Deal, or a figleaf bare bones tariffs & quotas deal ?
So until 1 January

Or will you always vote Tory unless Labour, Ldems or whoever stae in their manifesto that they will always keep the UK on WTO terms rather than make concessions ?

Peregrina, one thing is what choice do such people have? Choosing the leader of the Conservative party isn’t in their gift.

Sorry, paid up Tories had the choice of either Hunt or Johnson. Although Hunt made a mess of Health, I think he still has much more integrity than Johnson.

As for the outcome of the Referendum, that was ill defined. No one's talking about leaving the single market, remember?
Taking Johnson's election win as his mandate, thin on detail though getting Brexit done was, it was supposedly going to get us a great deal - no sign yet, which is fine by him because he doesn't want one, but it's another lie. He certainly doesn't seem to be working towards anything. What we do see is yet another bung going towards Cumming's friends.

Trade standards with the US are another matter - I distinctly recall that the NHS and our food standards were going to be off the table in talks. Those pledges have bitten the dust too.

I imagine that some Tories are ruing the day the voted for him as Leader of the party, and then gave him their vote last December, not realising just how bad he could be. Well tough, they have dragged us all in the shit, so there won't be much sympathy going round.

As for the outcome of the Referendum, that was ill defined.

In all other areas of life, a 52/48 result would never have been called a majority.

In fact it still isn't.

I've pointed out a few times that there are more women than men in the UK - 51/49. So by Brexit logic, we don't need mens toilets.

BigChoc that’s a really great pair of questions

Do you have any limits at all to what you would tolerate until you decide that your particular version of post-Brexit has been achieved?

My particular version of post Brexit, is of course, not on offer. I care about people doing what they say they are going to. The Johnson Govt has sometimes been spectacularly bad at this, so has every other government in my living memory. The Cummings/lockdown situation was pretty terrible on the face of it, as was the prorogation of Parliament. Keeping Cummings in place is not a decision I would have made, but it isn’t my call.

or that the other policies and actions of the government become more important ?

Clearly the Government’s overriding priority since early in the year has been dealing with Covid. As that situation begins to ease, at least temporarily, they can renew focus on other thing, principally end of transition.

Other policy areas and actions more important? Until the end of December, basically no.

Or you could imagine if a Scottish Independence referendum had gone 52:48 in favour. It would have been much too close to make a decision on, (which I would happen to agree with). It would most certainly not have been cast as an overwhelming victory which had to be implemented at all costs - with the terms of the implementation undefined.

Just for info BigChoc not sure if they “always vote Tory” question was for me? but I don’t, I have voted for all of Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives more than once in an election. Most recently voting for someone other than the Conservatives in 2017.

Lewis Goodall@lewisgoodall (BBC Newsnight)

The summary of the #RussiaReport (sent to the press) alone is both disturbing and mildly damning of politicians and officials.
Suggests government may have “taken its eye off the ball on Russia” and are “still playing catch up”

Need to look through the report in more detail but
seems the government with most questions to answer here is the Cameron government

Report identifies prioritisation of commercial links with Russia/Russian citizens over security concerns.
Similar themes with China story.

Report says Cameron government was slow to recognise the potential threat of Russian interference in the EU referendum.
Says subsequent governments haven’t really looked into what impact it might have had
(or if they have haven’t shared results with the committee).

Report says responsibility for defending our democracy is too fragmented across different parts of govt.
criticises May govt waiting until Feb 2019 to create and sign off the Defending Democracy programme.

The theme of the #russiareport is indifference.

That governments knew Russia had tried to interfere with our democratic processes

but seemed unwilling to ask too many questions about whether it was happening still and apparently less interested to do much about it.

< would louisecollins be indifferent if înstead of Brexit, Russia had interfered in another massive - and longterm - decision, but about defence,
e.g. giving up nukes, or certain types of bombers or ships, or abolishing MI5 ? >

It suits Russia for the UK to spunk as much money as possible on fripperies like Trident that will never be used (that's (a) if they work and (b) the US lets us). The more there, the less we can spend on defence that would actually be effective.

Luckily, in a country run by men, that's an easy sell. Especially given the cigar like nature of atomic rockets.

fwiw, if the 1975 referendum on the Common Market had been only 52:48, instead of 67:33
and had been on joining not leaving something we'd already signed up to a few years ago,

then despite having vigorously campaigned back then, I would definitely have said
52:48 was much too small a margin for such a major change
and that we should NOT join

In fact, I remember some Common Market figures (outside the UK) expressed disquiet for the future,
that the 67:33 margin was not much bigger
which made me concerned then, too

Although we vote in governments on theoretically 1 vote,
that assumes the principal that no government can bind its successors, so implicitly that it can be changed at latest after the next GE

Some decisions, especially as a medium sized power, are in practice permanent, or at least would take 20+ years to reverse
So - like most other developed countries - imo the UK should update its constitution to require a large majority for this

(Yes, that applies to Scottish independence too, which may infuriate some in Scotland)

But when it comes to independence of the other 3 Uk nations, only they should vote on it,
so only they need that super-majority of say 60:40

@DGRossetti

It suits Russia for the UK to spunk as much money as possible on fripperies like Trident that will never be used (that's (a) if they work and (b) the US lets us). The more there, the less we can spend on defence that would actually be effective.

Luckily, in a country run by men, that's an easy sell. Especially given the cigar like nature of atomic rockets.

Yes, but they should be our own stupid decisions, not carrying out decisions made by Putin, according to his opinion on what benefits Russia

Yes, but they should be our own stupid decisions, not carrying out decisions made by Putin, according to his opinion on what benefits Russia

There is a school of thought that what benefits Russia benefits the world. Many highly intelligent (and admittedly pretty dim) people have fallen for this over time. To the extent we have enough in the UK and US to start to do some damage.

Personally, although I found Cummingsgate infuriating, it's quite usual in govt by any party to have
"do as I say, not as I do"

So that kind of personal arrogance wouldn't - on its own - change my vote

What would change my vote would be things like:

• decisions based on ideology that cause serious economic damage
• gross incompetence, leading to large numbers of additional deaths
• large-scale cronyism / corruptionon giving fast-tracked contracts to other incompetents
• cleansing the civil service of those that speak truth to power
• Replacing top civil servants / negotiators by those who share the party's ideology
• Giving too much power over appointments & contracts to SPADs, since they are unelected and answerable only to their minister / PM

Russia report is here:

isc.independent.gov.uk/

Of particular interest is the section "What does Russia want"

which fits well into the nihilistic zero-sum attitudes of the more ideological - and stupid - rightwing Brexiters
(NAB - Not All Brexiters etc)

Government press statement:

Government swiftly rejects Intelligence and Security Committee's call for an independent inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Government response says: "A retrospective assessment of the EU referendum is not necessary".

Nothing to see here ... move along now ...

@lewis_goodall

Lots of talk around about there being “no smoking gun”. That misses the point and the main theme of this report: indifference. Ie we can’t know if there is a smoking gun or not because according to the committee, government doesn’t appear interested in looking for one.

@CarolineLucas

Governments have for too long turned a blind eye to Russian money flowing into UK, regardless of where it came from or influence it bought

That blindness particularly evident when the money went straight to Tory party coffers

#RussiaReport