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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » A handbag is needed to break Brexit’s dialogue of the deaf
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » A handbag is needed to break Brexit’s dialogue of the deaf
“Brexit means Brexit”, Theresa May once said – and if only it did. Leaving the European Union was never meant to be an easy thing and Britain is making a fine show of just how difficult it can be. The structural and procedural problems are, however, not even half the problem; the greater part of it is an inability of the government to meaningfully talk to the EU, to parliament or even to itself. So many people and institutions are thinking in ways that lie outside the parameters that the people they’re talking to are used to thinking within that Brexit has become a fog of mutual incomprehension as people simply talk past each other.
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So: announce plans to hire 10,000 new customs staff, compulsory purchase some land at Dover and along key roads in Northern Ireland, separate Customs & Excise from HMRC and give it a heavyweight head, and announce plans to - as much as possible - replicate the system used on the Swiss or Norwegian border.
Flouncing without looking like you are actually ready for a No Deal Brexit doesn't buy you leverage.
Oh, and the people of Europe will rise up, grasp the nettle by the horns, and the entire EU will crumble into dust so that the other 27 countries can be liberated as well.
As for untruthful statements, what about the Treasury report?
https://twitter.com/SiobhanFenton/status/1004998281842298880
Cameron's great failure in negotiating with the EU was that they never for a moment believed he would do anything to support Leave. And so he got a shit "renegotiation" that he could not sell to the people. And as a result, he delivered us Brexit.
May's great failure in negotiating with the EU is that they never for a moment believe she will do anything to leave on WTO terms. And so she will get a shit "Brexit" that she will not sell as Brexit to the voters. And as a result, she will not deliver closure on Brexit, but rather a running sore that risks ripping up the current political party system and creating an Anti-establishment Party committed to doing the job properly, with a level of support that UKIP could only dream about.
The EU would at least have believed that Boris would have gone full WTO. He is our Trump to their North Korea. And as a result, the likelihood of that WTO exit actually happening would have been less than now. We can argue later about whether Gove's decision to knife Boris's candidature is the reason our negotiation stance has been so poor, but that doesn't help the current process of getting a decent Brexit. As David says, May needs to get a grip, before her premiership ends in ignomy and the future for her party - and to be fair, that of Corbyn's - start to look very grim indeed. The voters have told our politicians to do one thing. Just one thing. Ignoring that instruction will have profound consequences. Don't make the voters angry. You won't like them when they get angry.
Time for a big gesture. Go along to the next meeting with the EU. Have Boris produce a six foot by three foot comedy cheque for forty billion. Have him rip it up in front of them. Stand up, tell the EU they have to get more creative, or that is the last they see of their (already spent) forty billion. And go home.
Oh, and we will be using some of that forty billion to fund anti-EU parties in upcoming elections....
Unfortunately, fudge is not what Brexiteers want. The Fudge Culture is exactly what they object to: of the diplomatic-ministerial class making agreements far above the people, whose votes mean little; the Project rolls on. Brexit was an explicit rejection of not just the Project but its methods. As such, a failure to disengage from either the methods or the EU itself will go down very badly. Indeed, such a deal will surely be unsaleable to those who believe in Brexit, or even many of those who believe in honouring the referendum result.
I also agree with the conclusion.
There is no need to go all handbags though. WTO Brexit is the default, and all that is needed toget there is to do nothing and let the clock run down. If there is one thing that May is capable of, it is masterly inactivity, so WTO Brexit looks increasingly likely.
It probably would be wise to make some belated plans for that event though.
Your idea would help reset expectations, and that is the only way a deal can develop. Also, makes no sense to be prepared. Frankly, it is a no brainer, but the 'theatrics' you propose are as important as the substance.
But until and unless there is a clear, SUSTAINABLE majority for a change, NI is part of the UK and we will go to the wall to defend them and their interests, and if that leads to no deal so be it.
But the British are unique. No wonder the EU can't understand it.
It doesn't help to try to bludgeon the other side into submission with your handbag if when they say, "Please, no more, I'll give you whatever you want, just stop hitting me with that handbag," you don't actually know what you want.
https://twitter.com/gullyburrows/status/1005187613270167552?s=19
The Leave campaign was fought and won on opposition to immigration. That victory needs to be honoured. The rest is up for grabs.
If the Brexit extremists were more bothered about trade, they should have fought the referendum on it. As things stand, they should reflect on the implications of fighting a campaign based on xenophobic lies. Looking as if they will lose on this point is one of them.
As you suggest if Northern Ireland left the UK or Ireland joined it the UK would no longer want the open border part, and it would be a conventional negotiation where the UK wanted something coherent, and the EU wanted some other coherent thing, but they had to trade things off to get something coherent that they both wanted.
Why weren't we told this before!
What genuinely shocked me how none of the contestants appeared to have read even the Lisbon Treaty.
Concreting over Kent is not going to win the hearts and minds of the voting public.
To be fair, they might have simply been voting to leave Kent.
Nice idea, Mr. Herdson, but I think May's likelier to capitulate to her adversaries and concentrate on trying to outwit her own side.
It is. It may prove the last, best moment. In a series of votes next week the knife must be wielded.
Be in no doubt: the crocs are floundering. For the foreign secretary not only to believe that his government’s Brexit preparations are approaching (his word) “meltdown”, but to broadcast that opinion, suggests only one thing to those who know Boris Johnson. He’s heading noisily for the lifeboats.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/remainers-need-courage-to-go-for-the-kill-l3nw2rqxk
And we were told Brexit would actually *save* us money.
The way Brexit was sold, made it impossible to deliver.
https://twitter.com/dianecoyle1859/status/1005147405203968000?s=21
The EU has access to the internet and can read. It knows it's negotiating with a deeply divided country, parliament and government led by a weak PM. There's still a notional majority for abstract change but there is also a majority against any actual change. And the Status Quo isn't a default option because A50 makes No Deal the default option.
But No Deal isn't credible because their is no majority in the country, parliament or cabinet for No Deal, we've made absolutely no preparations for No Dea, we've said we want a deal and the markets and business have priced in a deal.
The EU are taking us to the cleaners because this is possibly the worst handled set of negotiations in recent history. The UK doesn't know what it wants, has set in process getting something it doesn't want by default in 10 months time, is acting on the bass of a marginal 3.8% majority based on folk who want radically dffetent things and who superceeded the referendum result with a Hung Parliament where theres no majority for anything and which enboldens the Lords.
It's a global scale clusterf**k they'll be writing books about for a century as an example of how not to take complex decisions and impliment them.
The idea 'swinging the handbag ' would some how transmute the situation is ludicrous. You can't turn lead into Gold let alone a Crock of ****.
Even as a cultural reference it fails. Thatcher swung her Handbag at EU summits by ( a ) Knowing what she wanted ( b ) by being at the table to swing it with others at the table knowing she'd remain at the table so theu'd have to deal with her.
We've announced we're leaving the table and can't agree on what we want to replace the table. The Handbag is no use in these circumstances. You might as well substitute Magic Wand for Handbag. It would be more honest.
Not a reason not to do as you suggest of course (can’t have the baddies dictate policy) but necessary nevertheless.
Ah the good old days.
The ONLY away we could have got in a position where a WTO Brexit would have looked like a serious option would have been to announce that we would wait 3-5 years before triggering A50 to get everything ready. Good luck getting the ERG MPs happy with that...
She has no majority for a no deal Brexit based on the unacceptability of the EU’s response to Britain’s customs union position: that much is obvious from the public statements of MPs of all stripes. There is no time to prepare meaningfully for no deal Brexit anyway.
Despite the lateness of the hour, it is still not too late for her to do what she should have done at the outset, which is to get the EU to focus on the long term relationship it wants with Britain by setting out a clear vision of what Britain wants its relationship in 2030 to look like. This is her biggest failure and the EU negotiators reasonably have expressed their bafflement on this.
The time is right to go over the heads of the Commission and speak clearly, directly and publicly to other leaders and the citizens of other countries on this subject. Theresa May’s weakness actually assists here because the threat is not what will she do next but what her successor would do next.
This isn’t the Donald Trump strategy but the gorilla in a cage strategy: if the gorilla goes out of control there’s no telling what it might do. Given how nuts many Europhobes are (see numerous posts on pb for examples), this is a credible threat.
She might well fail. The EU’s leaders have shown no long term vision. If she does, the twin disasters are complete capitulation and awful isolation. But it’s worth a try and it stands a better chance of succeeding (ie more than zero) than the course David Herdson outlines.
But also, there was a very strong feeling (and this was clear on this forum last year) that we had to not do anything to upset the EU in negotiations, and planning for no deal was one of these things. Think of all the things we stopped talking about - we dropped our right to negotiate trade deals before Brexit, we stopped linking security to a deal, we stopped talking about rejecting a bad deal, we stopped talking about major regulatory divergence, we stopped saying the Brexit bill had to be linked to the trade deal. The wisdom, from the remain side mostly, was don't upset the EU because we have no power and we have to do what they tell us, but if we are nice and stop upsetting them it will all be OK. That didn't work either.
You are right, we could have prepared and not rubbed it in their faces. But ultimately the civil service and Hammond never wanted to have to take the chance that the public would reject their BRINO deal. Problem is, there may very well not be a deal that any UK PM could agree to. So we are screwed.
I published my video on the oil price yesterday morning (LA time), mentioned it on here, and posted a tweet.
Said tweet has now got 180 odd likes, and a large number of retweets. My piece on trade deficits also saw its views shoot up, as people who saw my oil piece watched the trade deficit piece too.
If there's anyone on here who hasn't seen either of my last two pieces, they're here:
https://youtu.be/xHo82501394
https://youtu.be/2pKS2TCd_3c
And now, to bed.
The only moment it looked doubtful was when that drug addled Fascist Juncker was demanding they continue under the jurisdiction of the CJEU which is (a) toothless (b) infamous for its inability to read simple texts and (c) more bent than a wire coat hanger with an elephant dangling off it, rather than the British judicial system. But fortunately that moment seems to have passed without too much damage.
Congrats, Mr. 1000. Always nice when things take off.
https://twitter.com/gullyburrows/status/1005187613270167552?s=19
Their conversation is within the bounds of most people’s understanding and response to the current situation.
It grieves me so to see you in such pain,
There must be something I can do to make you smile again
...
There must be fifty ways to leave the Euro your lover
Now I think it's wise to take referendum polling with buckets of salt before we know the referendum question, the exact deal on offer and this one uses loaded terms like Leave and Remain. You'd also expect the older demographic whch is much more pro Union to turnout more heavily.
But the trend is your friend and even if this one poll is a signifigant outlier the polling evidence that Brexit is energising Unification advocates mounts. It's another rejoinder to the No Deal/WTO nutters. We we're told the integrity of the UK wasn't at stake and it was all Project Fear. No wonder the Northrrn Irish border is proving such a problem with Brexit. It's not about workable solutions. It's about emotion and identity. And now avoiding a Border Poll which while I still think would see the Union win would be an historic event and a Scot like result woukd set up a Neverendum. Unlike Scotland Border Poll frequency is legislated for. A maximum of once every 7 years. With Sinn Fein now calling for one " within 5 years " giving them wiggle room a badly botched Brexit coukd now realistically trigger a Border Poll. No wonder May is being so cautious. Hard Brexit requires Hard Unionism.
The Boer Wars around the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th and the Iraq War in this are exceptions, of course, but neither turned out well.
https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/sheffield-council-officer-asked-about-tree-felling-targets-under-oath-1-9195687
It’s already begun.
Now if that was on the bloody bus!!
While it's fair to say Sturgeon has overplayed her initial hand and Brexit hasn't impacted Independence support in the way many predicted yesterdays figures don't suggest a Union that can withstand too rigourous a stress test. Scotland isn't a vindication of Project Fear yet but it's far from a rebutal of it.
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2018/06/canada-pre-qualifying-2018.html
No tip, but there's been a fair amount of news recently, so worth reading for that.
No deal is the absence of a deal. It might happen but it's unsustainable. The EU would just say, let us know when you are ready to talk.
Isolation and capitulation are the measures Brexit deals in. Moderate isolation combined with a lot of capitulation is probably the best compromise we can get out of Brexit. The situation we are in is due to the contradictions of Brexit, not because leaders have been particularly incompetent.
Actually that’s probably what Green *does* mean.
There are myrriad known unknowns let alone unknown unknowns that could interfere. And of course others who see this trajectory will try and stop it. It's an observation of where we are not a prediction of where we will go. Brexit is like a Rocket which hasn't achieved escape velocity. It still has fuel in it's tank and will hit a target somewhere. But the physics say it doesn't have the energy to reach it's intended orbit. I fear we're headed for an outcome with which very few people of any persuation will be happy.
This might by a slightly niche concern, but I've got a shotgun cartridge that was converted into a pound coin holder. Perfect size. Worked for threepenny bits, too. But the new pound coin is a tiny bit wider in diameter so it doesn't fit.
#MorrisDancerProblems
It’s just that they chose too few hypersofts for this weekend, a few months back, so they can’t run them in practice.
(And it’s pretty certain they’ll be able to get through Q2 on the ultras, which will,set them up well for the race.)
As an aside, I was amused to hear Hamilton and Alonso bitching. It turns out a tedious procession is bad for the sport when the drivers don't enjoy it. Yet there was endless defending of such in the past when they were driving more quickly (though it was just as boring for spectators).
Carne's time at Network Rail has not been a happy one.
https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/28-may-3-june-2018/designing-northern-irelands-new-vertical-bank-notes/
What's wrong with these people? I don't mind variety. Square Indian coins, perforated Chinese ones, or fantastically squiggly Hong Kong dollars are fine. But that doesn't mean every change is good.
Humbug!
As for your second point, I remember Mansell/Senna having been quite entertaining albeit ultimately frustrating... and when they are racing at speed there is at least the chance of a meeting with the barriers.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/08/trumps-g7-tariffs-trade-611888
Without a mandate the competing options within the Conservative party make it impossible, you can get votes through the house on the much softer options but the Conservative party won't accept them and on the harder options the house won't accept them. Conservative voters mostly expect hard brexit but a small but vital to winning power number won't accept harsh short term (and maybe longer) consequences to achieve this.
Not that she hasn't been terrible in plenty of ways.
Also on the Trump running Brexit thing, I don't think the comparison works.
I don't want to underestimate Trump, he is clever in some ways, the way he achieved the presidency by playing to the crowd and knowing what they wanted is a skill. However when it comes to international diplomacy Trump enters the room full of unarmed people as a raging 500 pound gorilla beating his chest. That commands some respect.
We are not America, we go in to negotiate with 27 (ish?) nations most of which were are bigger than but one or two we aren't but collectively we are much smaller than. No longer is Trump the 500 pound gorilla beating his chest commanding respect but a single guy going into bar and picking a fight with a group. This will not achieve results, the USA can bully N. Korea, it can even pick a fight with China, it may work in the short term (I do wonder how well bullying works in the longer run) we aren't bully size, I think the biggest threats we can offer are to the EU are MAD.
This is Carcassonne, in the south of France: https://twitter.com/FranceMbd/status/1005358839938539525
And this is what some damned fool modern artist did to it:
https://twitter.com/Arch_Revival_/status/993921773086310403