Westminstenders: Prepare for what we said would never happen

[RedToothBrush]

I think that there may be a run on tinned tomatoes and pasta coming. Pizza will no longer have mozzarella in 2021.

On the plus side turnips are in season.

Have you seen Johnson’s latest the-dog-ate-my-homework?

BBC!!!!!

Poor grammar from an Oxford classics graduate as well.

Apparently there will be a meeting with Barnier during the week afterall! Just announced on Radio4. What a farce.

Despairing PMK to watch the endgame of those fantasists.

I am beyond depressed. Entering total body numbness as the only coping mechanism left at the venal, corrupt, shysters pretending to be government. And at the apologists applauding these Etonian faux spoilt boy tantrums and willingly swallowing their lies. It's like living through 2016 all over again what with Trump's possible likely reelection. Skyrocketing inequality, social unrest, nepotism, destruction of public services along with the civil service. And so much plain stupidity.

Is anyone watching Bridgen on Newsnight?

Christ, how the fuck do these people become MPs?

Credit ratings agency Moody’s has downgraded Britain’s credit status, citing a decline in economic strength in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and continued Brexit uncertainty

Well that's just sent the cost of borrowing up.

Fucking MN - it just swallowed a rant about this paragraph

From the outset we were totally clear that we wanted a Canada-style agreement, based on friendship and free trade.

It pretended to post it but instead disappeared into the ether

I'll just say it finished with "Etonian/Empire hubris"

And winner of the 'bleeding obvious' category goes to...

Arcuri admitted to having an affair with Johnson while he was with his then wife Marina Wheeler... “I think that goes without saying,” she reportedly said when asked if they had an affair. “It’s pretty much out there … But I’m not going to talk about it.” In the interview, she also discussed being bombarded by his “avalanches of passion”

Taking myself off to sleep now.

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Following with very grateful interest! Thanks as ever to all the Westminstenders contributors, particularly RTB and the regulars. The company is also the most vital element of being on a sinking ship 🛳 🗯

Catching up on the thread during a bout of insomnia.

Thanks to Sabrina for posting that letter. When everyone wakes up please can they tell me the intended audience and the purpose of writing that letter?

It's so low level with its references to Canada and Australia 'style' rather than the complexities of CETA or explanations of the insuperable hurdles in the negotiation. The letter can't be directed at MPs as then there'd be more complex acknowledgements. It's not posturing to the EU as it's too childlike for that.

So it must be intended for the electorate- as a kind of warning - even though with no deal in place there won't even be access to the limited agreements concluded with Australia

Looking at the language used:

"Now is the time for business to get ready.."
"We are willing to discuss practicalities with our friends"

I'd say it's another attempt by number 10 at laying the ground work for blaming everybody else when it all goes wrong.

@notimagain

Looking at the language used:

"Now is the time for business to get ready.."
"We are willing to discuss practicalities with our friends"

I'd say it's another attempt by number 10 at laying the ground work for blaming everybody else when it all goes wrong.

And with the UK, media captive to them, they will get away with it.

"now is the time for business to get ready" how on earth can they? Get ready for what? They don't know what they are facing. If it's no deal, how can they be ready in 10 weeks. They can't obviously.

It’s addressed to MPs I guess (“dear colleagues”), but it’s definitely intended to prep the British public to blame the EU when 1st January comes around.

David Henig Twitter thread from last night:

A letter from the PM on the EU talks which is confused, exaggerated, and internally contradictory. There could be no possible basis for a trade deal if the letter was to be taken seriously.

The EU-Canada agreement is not based on "friendship and free-trade" but is absolutely full of conditionality. I've clipped a random bit of text, but frankly there are dozens of similar examples.

"They want the continued ability to control our legislative freedom".

Distortion / exaggeration. All trade treaties involve a restriction of legislative freedom. You might as well say the same about other members of the WTO.

"Given the EU have refused to negotiate seriously for much of the last few months"

David Frost - October 2 - "constructive discussions conducted in a good spirit"

"Arrangements that are more like Australia's" - Australia has multiple agreements with the EU and is negotiating an FTA.

"simple principles of global free trade" - what are those precisely?

"not willing to offer this country the same terms as Canada". You don't just negotiate a trade agreement by crossing out one country and writing in another.

"An independent, free trading nation" - but one putting up barriers to EU trade. Remind me of that free trade definition again?

A "Canada-style agreement" would "control our legislative freedom". As does any Free Trade Agreement.

The letter is an embarrassment of ignorance about trade deals.

Preferential trade agreements come with conditions.

I think we better stop focusing on the specific areas of disagreement between the UK and EU, which in truth are pretty minor, and focus on a UK lack of understanding of what any trade agreement with the EU entails. I wrote this 16 months ago. It still holds. More tomorrow. end/

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/16/scientists-call-to-arms-went-unheeded-how-the-relationship-with-no-10-broke-down

From the outset we were totally clear that we wanted a Canada-style agreement, based on friendship and free trade.

BJ's school essay full of vague nonspecifics "letter to colleagues" is actually very precisely calibrated to appeal to the same demographic who knew exactly what they were voting for conned into voting for Brexit and for the Tories in 2019. All empty platitudes, hollow slogans, and slyly-worded untruths.

See that Steve Baker is distancing himself from Johnson’s Brexit too:

Then comes Brexit of course, which Baker has supported for many years, also as ERG chairman. First, he clarifies: “I want to make the point very firmly that Brexit is all on Boris now. Now, some of us worked extremely hard to help him get an 80 seat majority. But the Brexit we’ll have will be Boris' Brexit, won't be my Brexit from the backbenches. I would prefer a deep and broad deal along the lines that we all agreed that's fit for a civilized pair of friends and neighbours. I would like a broad and deep relationship of friendship and free trade, security cooperation. I don't want a problem with Ireland or for Ireland”.

guerrera.blogautore.repubblica.it/2020/10/16/steve-baker-at-least-350-tory-mps-are-opposed-to-the-government-strategy-on-coronavirus-and-ministers-are-egging-on-the-rebels/

Let me repeat what others have said.

We can't have a canada style deal by dec 31st.

To achieve even that we need to extend because its so complex. Which if we were serious from the outset, about having a Canada deal we would know.

But Johnson has ruled that out.

As for Australia deal. Australia has no single deal. It has multiple deals. So i guess hes talking about lots of mini deals cherry picking sectors.

But that is also complex. And can not be completed by 31st December. Which if thats what we were wanting all along we should have known.

Plus the EU have said non, nein multiple times for the last 4 years.

Its bullshit. All of it.

The UK economy is very different to Canada, which is why the deal would have needed to be that Canada +++
with adds-ons for e.g. the City

Also, Canada is thousands of miles away from the EU, so has a 6-week sea journey to allow checks and sort out documentation,
instead of a 25-mile trip across the Channel where everything has to be correct before boarding

A straight copy of the Canada deal, just swapping out names, which is what some ignorant Brexiters, like possibly our PM seem to want 🤦🏻‍♀️ ...

would need to tow the UK a few thousand miles out to sea
and shrink UK-EU trade an order of magnitude lower,
change the UK more from a service economy to a resources one
change government strategy and attitudes too,
so the UK is not a potentially dangerous trade rival sitting offshore with politicians who want to destroy the EU

I'll have another try at trying to recreate my rant from last night the one that Mumsnet ate

From the outset we were totally clear that we wanted nothing more complicated than a Canada-style agreement, based on friendship and free trade.

This just illustrates how ignorant and lazy BJ is. CETA is a detailed, line by line agreement that took years to negotiate - because it is complicated.

And it doesn't even include financial services

Plus there is a small thing call the Atlantic (you know, bigger than "the Short Straits" that a numpty of a Brexit Secretary didn't realise were so important to UK-EU trade ) between Canada and the EU, during which paperwork can be finalised. Although the Government seems to think that Farage's Garage in Kent will be an adequate substitute

Quite apart from the fact that Free Trade Agreements aren't based on "friendship" and "free trade"

They're based on hard work something BJ knows nothing about , pragmatism ditto and ceding a degree of the "sovereignty" that BJ and his cronies seem to be so keen to hold onto (the rest of us would call it "acceptable oversight for mutual benefit").

And anyway, BJ killed off any trust (the basis for any "friendship") with his IMB, when he essentially said that whatever was agreed wasn't anything that the UK had to abide by

It's just yet another example of his Etonian hubris. Not putting in the hard work but thinking that people should give him what he wants just because of who he is. Similar to the Empire attitude: "Don't they know who we are?"

And breeeeeaaaathe

(that wasn't all of the rant but it gives a sense )