This is what May should do. Expel the ERG members. Labour did that with Militant. Then call a snap election with candidates approved by central office. Once the fruit cakes are out of the Commons and back in saloon bars the problem is solved.
..fears of a no deal are hugely exaggerated. Yes, the first few years would be painful .
Are you for real?
Are you ? Being scared by Treasury forecasts when you have not seen and don’t undstand the underlying assumptions and when they have no credible track record of forecasting success is obviously more your line than mine.
Go have a read of this, which is an informed, detailed and reasonably neutral summary of the situation:
To be so blasé about a few years of economic pain, based on so little information, is remarkable. Usually such opinions arrive from the wealthy, the retired, or expats, for all of whom it is other people's pain that they have in mind.
It is also coming to a head in the Labour Party. A motion is being circulated for CLPs to pass urgently demanding that the NEC calls an emergency special party conference in early January to confirm party policy to support a new referendum with remain on the ballot if no General Election is forthcoming. As Jezbollah refuses to call a VONC there is of course no prospect of a GE.
Entertainingly this motion is effectively a wedge between Jez and the headbangers. They endlessly bleat on about the rights of members who elected him. Yet here is a clear and specific example of the members backing a policy which Jeremy refuses to follow. I like so many members want the Leader of the Labour Party to represent the policies of the Labour Party as voted for by the members of the Labour Party at conference. Brexit policy is up to us. Not him.
Such a course of action would require the NEC to accept the petition, which I would've thought was far from a given.
If it got as far as a conference being called and a motion being passed, what's to stop the leadership from continuing to demand a General Election whilst the clock runs down? Yes, I know you get past a certain point and it becomes impossible for the election to be held before March 29th, but Corbyn only has to shift his position to demanding an extension to A50 so that the election can still take place before Brexit.
Even if Labour pivots to a second referendum, the idea still won't work unless the Conservative vote can be split. And there's no certainty that an extension will be granted. And there's no consensus to be found on the question, the possible choices or the voting system for the referendum. Anything without a No Deal option will make the process anathema and doubly illegitimate to Leavers. Anything with a No Deal option won't be accepted by the EU. Anything with May's Deal in it will cause the DUP to revolt, and then the rest of the Opposition either has to bring down the Government in a VoNC or look utterly ridiculous. Ultimately, a second referendum will leave the country even more split than before, with the near-certainty that the General Election which would be held immediately thereafter would turn into little more than a third referendum by proxy.
Throwing this decision back at the people will do more harm than good, create more bad blood, and resolve nothing. MPs are paid to make decisions, so they should make one. Pass the deal, leave without a deal, or revoke. Manage the process, let the dust settle, and then have an election - where, hopefully, some time can finally be devoted to subjects other than Europe.
So we have used about 90% of the time available from the 2016 Referendum to March 29, 2019 - and frankly, I still have no clue what the world will look like next March 30th. More to the point, nor does anyone else. Options from Remain -> second vote -> new deal with the EU -> pull Article 50 -> organised No Deal -> disorganised No Deal all seem to still have their vocal supporters.
Which points to one big issue: government by Cabinet is broken. It has descended into little cliques and power-struggles for the succession that mirror the number of options available. Sat above them, a bloody-minded, bloody difficult woman who has only one answer- a deal which has the unique distinction of unifying everyone but the PM in condemning its awfulness. There is no power to direct. Frankly, the Cabinet is just a rabble.
It's worth pointing out that the gravitational pull of Boris Johnson is still affecting events at the heart of our political solar system. May remains in place only because a sizeable number of Tory MPs hate Boris so much, they would rather vote to keep May as the Ringmaster of Chaos than allow him to be appointed her successor by the membership. Any sensible group of MPs would have known that keeping May gave the EU evey incentive to keep to their deal with her. The meaningful change to the deal she promised them in order to keep her job was ALWAYS impossible for her to deliver. But hey, it kept Boris from having a try....even as it makes his wish to see the PMs deal die edge ever closer. In that at least, it seems Boris will get his wish without needing to be PM.
The one thing we can all agree on is that we would be better off without Boris around.
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
The argument is that Brunel worked very closely on shipbuilding with others, such as Russell, who actually founded the Institution of Naval Architects and knew what he was doing. The double-hulled structure was advanced, but was also massively expensive (*), which was why it did not become common. AIUI the GE's hull form, machinery and structure were all Russell's design, not Brunel's.
When something was a success, Brunel's supporters gave him much of the credit; when they failed, his supporters threw much of the blame onto others. Brunel's family allegedly hated Russell.
When I was growing up, Russell was a bogeyman and Brunel a hero: Russell was the reason why the Great Eastern failed, and that led to Brunel's death. As I've read up on this over the years, I've modified that view: both men were deeply flawed geniuses in different ways. It is just that a Brunel industry promotes their man incessantly, and Russell suffers for it.
It is very interesting to read the Engineer's obituary of Russell, which is rather more positive than their one of Brunel a few years earlier!
Then again, I got married on HMS Warrior, which was a ship built by Russell in 1860, so I'm bound to be a bit biased.
(*) There's a legend that when the great ship was broken up off Liverpool, they found the bodies of a man and boy, both riveters, who had been sealed up in a section of the double hull during construction. Almost certainly untrue, but a grizzly story that 'explains' the ships curse.
Again, I'm not convinced by the Brunel 'industry' argument - indeed, spearheaded by Vaughan the emphasis seems all the other way at the moment. I would have said, for example, the most interesting work on the Great Eastern is not by Emmerson or Rolt but by Angus Buchanan, who came to the conclusion the real problem was that the Board was too weak to exercise effective oversight of the two engineers in charge leading to a runaway in costs. Yet Buchanan was the Rolt Professor of Industrial History at Bath and might reasonably have been expected to be a Brunelite (and indeed did describe Brunel as 'arguably the greatest engineer of all time').
And again, even Rolt doesn't dispute Russell was a brilliant engineer. The problem (and here Rolt got it totally wrong, incidentally) was that he was also a crook. And that is why his reputation wa trashed. Ultimately, everything to do with Scott Russell comes back to the unfortunately now unanswerable question - where did the money vanish to?
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
This is what May should do. Expel the ERG members. Labour did that with Militant. Then call a snap election with candidates approved by central office. Once the fruit cakes are out of the Commons and back in saloon bars the problem is solved.
The only MPs who would vote for an early election where the 640 or so official Conservative candidates were each facing an ERG candidate would be on the opposition benches. But then, you knew that.....
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
the whole world is on slowdown and nobody is that well prepared for it.
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
This is what May should do. Expel the ERG members. Labour did that with Militant. Then call a snap election with candidates approved by central office. Once the fruit cakes are out of the Commons and back in saloon bars the problem is solved.
The Militant tendency had strength in local Government but very little in Parliament, IIRC. The ERG-wing consists of dozens of MPs, and would have nothing left to lose by establishing a rival party if so treated.
Theresa May is the leader of the Conservative Party, and has been a member for her entire adult life. The idea that she would countenance, as her great historic legacy, breaking it in two (with the broken parts to be routed, and by a socialist to boot, at a subsequent election) is for the birds.
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
the whole world is on slowdown and nobody is that well prepared for it.
I can’t help feeling that such growth as we are achieving is almost entirely in London and the reality is that the rest of the country is losing better paid jobs for less secure badly paid service jobs. That is certainly my impression in Dundee and this is worse.
..fears of a no deal are hugely exaggerated. Yes, the first few years would be painful .
Are you for real?
Are you ? Being scared by Treasury forecasts when you have not seen and don’t undstand the underlying assumptions and when they have no credible track record of forecasting success is obviously more your line than mine.
Go have a read of this, which is an informed, detailed and reasonably neutral summary of the situation:
To be so blasé about a few years of economic pain, based on so little information, is remarkable. Usually such opinions arrive from the wealthy, the retired, or expats, for all of whom it is other people's pain that they have in mind.
I did. Perhaps you could point out to me where in that piece, the doomsday predictions of the end of the world as we know it under a no deal Brexit are located. I missed them. 80% of our economy, mostly in services and WTO seems to work OK with major trading partners like the US.
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
Let's make this simple.
If we REVOKE, as in, cancel, A50, the EU will not then allow us to turn up a year later with another plan and invoking A50 again. They will thrash the same deal on the table and say, take it, or leave it, make up your stupid minds. And do you know what? They would be right. Quite apart from the farcical nature of the events, what would happen if say Italy or Hungary decided to invoke and revoke every couple of years? It would be chaos and very damaging to everyone.
We could ask to extend. That is different. The EU might however refuse. What's in it for them? There's no sign of any fundamental change that might lead to a breakthrough. An election wouldn't cut it. Best case scenario is May wins a small overall majority. Worst case scenario is a rainbow coalition of various nationalists, populists and unicorn hunters led by a man who isn't going senile, he's always been this thick. Another referendum can't happen because we cannot agree on a question.
It is this deal, or it is no deal. At the moment, unless Labour or the ERG have a lucid moment, it looks like no deal, and has done bluntly since Chequers.
..fears of a no deal are hugely exaggerated. Yes, the first few years would be painful .
Are you for real?
I can never shake the suspicion that those who have a cavalier approach to the consequences of an unplanned no deal Brexit don't expect to be personally inconvenienced by it. When I listen to Mogg and Johnson I am always thinking that they won't be the ones to suffer if they are wrong.
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
the whole world is on slowdown and nobody is that well prepared for it.
I don't know if this interview has already been linked to, but this is about the best exchange on Brexit that I have ever heard. If Theresa May had been capable of thinking and acting along the lines Rory Stewart sets out - and if she had had it in her to frame the issues in the way he does - we would not be in this mess now. https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1073849674879111168
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
Jeremy Corbyn?
Labour MPs are not going to vote for a no deal Brexit out of loyalty to Jeremy Corbyn. And of course Jezza isn't going to vote for a Brexit which fails his tests
Mr. rkrkrk, that requires a suspension, not a revocation, which requires EU agreement.
Also, it would seem to have to come from May, who does have a record of u-turning on promises but who is also, as we saw at the start of this very week, capable of stubbornness of an intensity that may not necessarily be in accordance with the dictates of reason.
..fears of a no deal are hugely exaggerated. Yes, the first few years would be painful .
Are you for real?
I can never shake the suspicion that those who have a cavalier approach to the consequences of an unplanned no deal Brexit don't expect to be personally inconvenienced by it. When I listen to Mogg and Johnson I am always thinking that they won't be the ones to suffer if they are wrong.
They might lose their jobs and junkets.
The way things are going, so will every other MP, however. And they would deserve it. It would be Scotland 2015 on speed.
This is what May should do. Expel the ERG members. Labour did that with Militant. Then call a snap election with candidates approved by central office. Once the fruit cakes are out of the Commons and back in saloon bars the problem is solved.
May spent so long in the last election ensuring candidates were the “right sort” that it cost her seats as local associations wouldn’t support the chosen candidates and lost campaigning time allowing Corbyn a free run to build up momentum. Have you learnt nothing from the debacle of the last election.
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
the whole world is on slowdown and nobody is that well prepared for it.
I can’t help feeling that such growth as we are achieving is almost entirely in London and the reality is that the rest of the country is losing better paid jobs for less secure badly paid service jobs. That is certainly my impression in Dundee and this is worse.
Im afraid thats very much the case. The areas outside the SE have had something of a tough decade and may have another one coming.
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
If they were true to their word of honouring the referendum then those same MPs would agree to back May's deal.
The "it will all be fine" line is very similar to what we heard about the prospects of getting an advantageous deal with the EU immediately pre and post the referendum, or the "easiest deal in history" - hope is, again, overcoming logic and experience.
Those of us who didn’t panic when Osborne publishes his Treasury forecast and then his punishment budget have been pretty much vindictaed I think.
There is a significant difference between economic forecasts of doom given for political reasons by a politician and the specific descriptions of logistical hell given by the ports, HMRC, hauliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers etc etc.
What crash out Brexit does to trade the second we leave is the problem. Forget the politicians and ask industry how their industries work. There are reams of evidence about how catastrophic this will be. And unfortunately it comes down to who you trust to best understand the physical logistics of something like trade - the people doing it or armchair commentators who are not.
This is what May should do. Expel the ERG members. Labour did that with Militant. Then call a snap election with candidates approved by central office. Once the fruit cakes are out of the Commons and back in saloon bars the problem is solved.
The only MPs who would vote for an early election where the 640 or so official Conservative candidates were each facing an ERG candidate would be on the opposition benches. But then, you knew that.....
It would only be 70 or 80 MPS, and they would not have time to get organised to fight a snap election.
..fears of a no deal are hugely exaggerated. Yes, the first few years would be painful .
Are you for real?
Are you ? Being scared by Treasury forecasts when you have not seen and don’t undstand the underlying assumptions and when they have no credible track record of forecasting success is obviously more your line than mine.
This is, of course, the huge drawback with the continuity Remain approach to this issue, and why appeals to the public to back staying in (or, for that matter, the Plank's deal) based on their dire warnings continue to fall on deaf ears.
The 2016 iteration of Project Fear made wild claims about what would happen in the event of a vote to Leave. They did not, we must always remember, say that the massive job losses and a housing price crash would only occur on Brexit Day+1. They said it would happen immediately after the Leave vote.
The reality we find ourselves in is one of low but steady growth, low inflation, and unemployment at or near the lowest level seen since modern records began. The only thing they got right was the correction to the value of the pound, and even in that case the IMF had suggested prior to the referendum that sterling was over-valued. The correction could just as easily be seen as being something based on economic fundamentals for which the Brexit vote merely acted as a trigger, than as anything to do directly with the decision itself.
We must also remember at this juncture that the economic modellers at the Treasury and the Bank of England who made such a complete hash of forecasting the Leave vote aftermath are mostly the same lot of people who failed to see the Great Recession coming. Many voters will not have forgotten this. Is it any wonder that their forecasts are endowed with all the credibility of a tabloid newspaper astrology column? I don't subscribe to Michael Gove's blanket rubbishing of experts, but in the case of economic forecasters he probably had a point.
Most of the people who will listen to Messrs Carney and Hammond's stories are the already convinced: very risk averse voters who are pre-disposed to worry at the first sign of any potential problem looming over the horizon, and those who are already strongly pro-EU and looking for further confirmation of their preferences. Why would anybody else bother?
Mr. Tweed, the leaders weigh heavily, too. May's stubborn and Corbyn's a far left imbecile. When was the last time both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition had been subject to votes of no confidence by their own MPs?
I think the situation I, and I guess IanB2, are positing, is that the backbenchers on both sides have done with the party leaders in parliament, elected someone on a mandate of delivering Policy X, and then I imagine calling a GE - fought by who knows what factions. It’s the only way that ‘parliament can take back control’ and ‘block’ No Deal, because of the oft-posted reasoning on here of the executive holding the whip hand.
But as I said at the start, that’s still fantasy. It would require cast-iron and unanimous discipline in a Labour VONC, then the backbench mutineers unveiling their leader and policy and being endorsed by a HoC majority in a fortnight.
If nothing else, it illustrates the practical difficulties of “parliament will make sure/not allow X”
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
If they were true to their word of honouring the referendum then those same MPs would agree to back May's deal.
Remain MPs have been given licence to oppose the deal because of the overwhelmingly negative reaction Leavers have given it. Leavers can’t complain that Remain MPs aren’t backing the deal when something like 70% of MPs who supported Leave in the referendum are planning to vote against the deal too.
I don't know if this interview has already been linked to, but this is about the best exchange on Brexit that I have ever heard. If Theresa May had been capable of thinking and acting along the lines Rory Stewart sets out - and if she had had it in her to frame the issues in the way he does - we would not be in this mess now. RoryStewartUK/status/1073849674879111168
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
the whole world is on slowdown and nobody is that well prepared for it.
I can’t help feeling that such growth as we are achieving is almost entirely in London and the reality is that the rest of the country is losing better paid jobs for less secure badly paid service jobs. That is certainly my impression in Dundee and this is worse.
Im afraid thats very much the case. The areas outside the SE have had something of a tough decade and may have another one coming.
It’s on topic to a degree because it explains how what are superficially good economic figures are not really helping the government too much. Those ungrateful bastards in London are much too self obsessed to give the government any credit
It really is time that the side issue that is Brexit which one way or another will have so little effect on our economy was put to bed and we focused on more significant things.
The "it will all be fine" line is very similar to what we heard about the prospects of getting an advantageous deal with the EU immediately pre and post the referendum, or the "easiest deal in history" - hope is, again, overcoming logic and experience.
Those of us who didn’t panic when Osborne publishes his Treasury forecast and then his punishment budget have been pretty much vindictaed I think.
There is a significant difference between economic forecasts of doom given for political reasons by a politician and the specific descriptions of logistical hell given by the ports, HMRC, hauliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers etc etc.
What crash out Brexit does to trade the second we leave is the problem. Forget the politicians and ask industry how their industries work. There are reams of evidence about how catastrophic this will be. And unfortunately it comes down to who you trust to best understand the physical logistics of something like trade - the people doing it or armchair commentators who are not.
If IDS and John Redwood tell us that there will be absolutely no problems in crashing out of the EU, then I am certainly inclined to believe them over know-nothings in the logistics, haulage, agricultural and manufacturing sectors who have nothing like the experience and knowledge that IDS and Redwood do.
The "it will all be fine" line is very similar to what we heard about the prospects of getting an advantageous deal with the EU immediately pre and post the referendum, or the "easiest deal in history" - hope is, again, overcoming logic and experience.
Those of us who didn’t panic when Osborne publishes his Treasury forecast and then his punishment budget have been pretty much vindictaed I think.
There is a significant difference between economic forecasts of doom given for political reasons by a politician and the specific descriptions of logistical hell given by the ports, HMRC, hauliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers etc etc.
What crash out Brexit does to trade the second we leave is the problem. Forget the politicians and ask industry how their industries work. There are reams of evidence about how catastrophic this will be. And unfortunately it comes down to who you trust to best understand the physical logistics of something like trade - the people doing it or armchair commentators who are not.
I am not doubting trade will be disrupted nor am I saying this will be a good thing. Whether trade will be disrupted beyond the ability of companies contingency planning for it and if so by how much is in doubt. Trading on WTO terms and without frictionless trade works fine for countries we trade with like the US and major ports like Felixstowe and Southampton are well prepared for it. There are just too many ridiculous scare stories flying around - planes not flying, hospitals running out of medicine etc.
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
If they were true to their word of honouring the referendum then those same MPs would agree to back May's deal.
Remain MPs have been given licence to oppose the deal because of the overwhelmingly negative reaction Leavers have given it. Leavers can’t complain that Remain MPs aren’t backing the deal when something like 70% of MPs who supported Leave in the referendum are planning to vote against the deal too.
Some Leavers have every right to complain. The bottom line is no one has the right to say the choice is between Remain or No Deal when there is a perfectly viable Deal on the table. 50 or so ERG supporters cannot block the Deal if all the other MPs who voted to trigger A50 honour their word. The reason they do not is because they wish to stop Brexit entirely.
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
If they were true to their word of honouring the referendum then those same MPs would agree to back May's deal.
Remain MPs have been given licence to oppose the deal because of the overwhelmingly negative reaction Leavers have given it. Leavers can’t complain that Remain MPs aren’t backing the deal when something like 70% of MPs who supported Leave in the referendum are planning to vote against the deal too.
Some Leavers have every right to complain. The bottom line is no one has the right to say the choice is between Remain or No Deal when there is a perfectly viable Deal on the table. 50 or so ERG supporters cannot block the Deal if all the other MPs who voted to trigger A50 honour their word. The reason they do not is because they wish to stop Brexit entirely.
Sort your own side out first. If you can’t convince fellow Leavers don’t expect Remainers to ride to your rescue.
The "it will all be fine" line is very similar to what we heard about the prospects of getting an advantageous deal with the EU immediately pre and post the referendum, or the "easiest deal in history" - hope is, again, overcoming logic and experience.
Those of us who didn’t panic when Osborne publishes his Treasury forecast and then his punishment budget have been pretty much vindictaed I think.
There is a significant difference between economic forecasts of doom given for political reasons by a politician and the specific descriptions of logistical hell given by the ports, HMRC, hauliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers etc etc.
What crash out Brexit does to trade the second we leave is the problem. Forget the politicians and ask industry how their industries work. There are reams of evidence about how catastrophic this will be. And unfortunately it comes down to who you trust to best understand the physical logistics of something like trade - the people doing it or armchair commentators who are not.
If IDS and John Redwood tell us that there will be absolutely no problems in crashing out of the EU, then I am certainly inclined to believe them over know-nothings in the logistics, haulage, agricultural and manufacturing sectors who have nothing like the experience and knowledge that IDS and Redwood do.
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
Hard to know for sure, though I think it may very well be internet shopping continuing to turn the screw. The continuing increase in the numbers of parcel couriers driving round our way is unmistakable, and that Amazon Christmas ad has been all over telly like a rash.
Mr. rkrkrk, that requires a suspension, not a revocation, which requires EU agreement.
Also, it would seem to have to come from May, who does have a record of u-turning on promises but who is also, as we saw at the start of this very week, capable of stubbornness of an intensity that may not necessarily be in accordance with the dictates of reason.
If we revoke, we can always re-invoke later. I agree May seems unlikely to sign up to such a plan. But I think there are enough Tories scared of no deal to force her hand, or replace her as PM with someone else.
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
the whole world is on slowdown and nobody is that well prepared for it.
I can’t help feeling that such growth as we are achieving is almost entirely in London and the reality is that the rest of the country is losing better paid jobs for less secure badly paid service jobs. That is certainly my impression in Dundee and this is worse.
Im afraid thats very much the case. The areas outside the SE have had something of a tough decade and may have another one coming.
It’s on topic to a degree because it explains how what are superficially good economic figures are not really helping the government too much. Those ungrateful bastards in London are much too self obsessed to give the government any credit
It really is time that the side issue that is Brexit which one way or another will have so little effect on our economy was put to bed and we focused on more significant things.
It goes to the crux of the Brexit vote. London and SE didnt want to change the policies which made them well off. i can understand that. But likewise peop0le in the provinces are getting the downside of these policies and can see no chance of it changing. From their perpective a change at least gives the hope of things getting better rather than the guarantee of steady decline.
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
If they were true to their word of honouring the referendum then those same MPs would agree to back May's deal.
Remain MPs have been given licence to oppose the deal because of the overwhelmingly negative reaction Leavers have given it. Leavers can’t complain that Remain MPs aren’t backing the deal when something like 70% of MPs who supported Leave in the referendum are planning to vote against the deal too.
Some Leavers have every right to complain. The bottom line is no one has the right to say the choice is between Remain or No Deal when there is a perfectly viable Deal on the table. 50 or so ERG supporters cannot block the Deal if all the other MPs who voted to trigger A50 honour their word. The reason they do not is because they wish to stop Brexit entirely.
The bottom line is if there is a choice of three options no one has the right to say that it is really a choice between two options.
I sometimes wonder if your skill with words is such that you are able to mislead yourself with them.
This is what May should do. Expel the ERG members. Labour did that with Militant. Then call a snap election with candidates approved by central office. Once the fruit cakes are out of the Commons and back in saloon bars the problem is solved.
The only MPs who would vote for an early election where the 640 or so official Conservative candidates were each facing an ERG candidate would be on the opposition benches. But then, you knew that.....
It would only be 70 or 80 MPS, and they would not have time to get organised to fight a snap election.
No, if the ERG gets thrown out, then EVERY official candidate would be facing an ERG opponent. There would be no lack of ERG candidates from amongst current Conservative Party activists.
Mr. Tweed, the leaders weigh heavily, too. May's stubborn and Corbyn's a far left imbecile. When was the last time both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition had been subject to votes of no confidence by their own MPs?
I think the situation I, and I guess IanB2, are positing, is that the backbenchers on both sides have done with the party leaders in parliament, elected someone on a mandate of delivering Policy X, and then I imagine calling a GE - fought by who knows what factions. It’s the only way that ‘parliament can take back control’ and ‘block’ No Deal, because of the oft-posted reasoning on here of the executive holding the whip hand.
But as I said at the start, that’s still fantasy. It would require cast-iron and unanimous discipline in a Labour VONC, then the backbench mutineers unveiling their leader and policy and being endorsed by a HoC majority in a fortnight.
If nothing else, it illustrates the practical difficulties of “parliament will make sure/not allow X”
I think that's right; it certainly won't be easy. The problem is that the politicians' personal and party interest are so misaligned with the national interest.
In a way it should be easier for the Tories since, although they have the biggest potential price to pay, for them the likely economic impact of no deal is seriously bad news for the governing party, and therefore they might well be stuffed either way. Paradoxically it would be good news if Tory poll ratings took a big hit from the last week's goings on, but so far I haven't seen any sign of it.
Labour's leader knows enough about revolutions (and his election would be a peaceful example of such) to understand that things need to descend quite some way toward chaos before they happen, hence his masterful inactivity. There are many behind him however with a different view.
Mr. rkrkrk, that requires a suspension, not a revocation, which requires EU agreement.
Also, it would seem to have to come from May, who does have a record of u-turning on promises but who is also, as we saw at the start of this very week, capable of stubbornness of an intensity that may not necessarily be in accordance with the dictates of reason.
If we revoke, we can always re-invoke later. I agree May seems unlikely to sign up to such a plan. But I think there are enough Tories scared of no deal to force her hand, or replace her as PM with someone else.
*puts head in hands*
@TSE, I think somebody has just extended your meal and blowjob metaphor past reason. Now we're saying it's like somebody who cheats on wife, demands divorce on those terms, and then when a threesome is refused withdraws the divorce application threatening to invoke it again later.
We, as a nation, are the ones that are fucked here.
So we have used about 90% of the time available from the 2016 Referendum to March 29, 2019 - and frankly, I still have no clue what the world will look like next March 30th. More to the point, nor does anyone else. Options from Remain -> second vote -> new deal with the EU -> pull Article 50 -> organised No Deal -> disorganised No Deal all seem to still have their vocal supporters.
Which points to one big issue: government by Cabinet is broken. It has descended into little cliques and power-struggles for the succession that mirror the number of options available. Sat above them, a bloody-minded, bloody difficult woman who has only one answer- a deal which has the unique distinction of unifying everyone but the PM in condemning its awfulness. There is no power to direct. Frankly, the Cabinet is just a rabble.
It's worth pointing out that the gravitational pull of Boris Johnson is still affecting events at the heart of our political solar system. May remains in place only because a sizeable number of Tory MPs hate Boris so much, they would rather vote to keep May as the Ringmaster of Chaos than allow him to be appointed her successor by the membership. Any sensible group of MPs would have known that keeping May gave the EU evey incentive to keep to their deal with her. The meaningful change to the deal she promised them in order to keep her job was ALWAYS impossible for her to deliver. But hey, it kept Boris from having a try....even as it makes his wish to see the PMs deal die edge ever closer. In that at least, it seems Boris will get his wish without needing to be PM.
The one thing we can all agree on is that we would be better off without Boris around.
When we do crash out on a No Deal - and that looks the likely outcome from here - that is not the end of the process. Until our relationship with the EU is sorted out we will be stuck in limbo. And the worse the consequences of No Deal are the stronger the EU's position becomes when we do eventually get round the table again.
Again, I'm not convinced by the Brunel 'industry' argument - indeed, spearheaded by Vaughan the emphasis seems all the other way at the moment. I would have said, for example, the most interesting work on the Great Eastern is not by Emmerson or Rolt but by Angus Buchanan, who came to the conclusion the real problem was that the Board was too weak to exercise effective oversight of the two engineers in charge leading to a runaway in costs. Yet Buchanan was the Rolt Professor of Industrial History at Bath and might reasonably have been expected to be a Brunelite (and indeed did describe Brunel as 'arguably the greatest engineer of all time').
And again, even Rolt doesn't dispute Russell was a brilliant engineer. The problem (and here Rolt got it totally wrong, incidentally) was that he was also a crook. And that is why his reputation wa trashed. Ultimately, everything to do with Scott Russell comes back to the unfortunately now unanswerable question - where did the money vanish to?
I think 'crook' is over-egging the pudding more than a little. And i turn back to the rotunda: if his reputation at the time was so thoroughly trashed, why did he continue to get contracts, including one as massive and publicly visible as the Vienna rotunda? Why was his obituary so positive? Why does the ICE's own obituary talk of him in such glowing terms, whilst not mentioning the expulsion? https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/John_Scott_Russell:_Obituaries
For the question of the 'Brunel industry', just look at how Brunel's reputation has changed over the years since his death, as shown by the obituaries at the time. Lots of people lost their shirts on Brunel's back, from the time of the Thames Tunnel, through the (uncompleted during his lifetime) Clifton suspension bridge, and the ship companies that invariably went bust. There are also claims that he did not compartmentalise the money quite as well as he should have - which was hardly uncommon at the time.
I'm not saying Brunel was not a great man, and you can certainly argue he was the greatest engineer, especially in terms of breadth of achievement. But like Telford before him, his reputation was sometimes built at the cost of others - as my moniker's father can attest.
..fears of a no deal are hugely exaggerated. Yes, the first few years would be painful .
Are you for real?
.
The 2016 iteration of Project Fear made wild claims about what would happen in the event of a vote to Leave. They did not, we must always remember, say that the massive job losses and a housing price crash would only occur on Brexit Day+1. They said it would happen immediately after the Leave vote.
The reality we find ourselves in is one of low but steady growth, low inflation, and unemployment at or near the lowest level seen since modern records began. The only thing they got right was the correction to the value of the pound, and even in that case the IMF had suggested prior to the referendum that sterling was over-valued. The correction could just as easily be seen as being something based on economic fundamentals for which the Brexit vote merely acted as a trigger, than as anything to do directly with the decision itself.
We must also remember at this juncture that the economic modellers at the Treasury and the Bank of England who made such a complete hash of forecasting the Leave vote aftermath are mostly the same lot of people who failed to see the Great Recession coming. Many voters will not have forgotten this. Is it any wonder that their forecasts are endowed with all the credibility of a tabloid newspaper astrology column? I don't subscribe to Michael Gove's blanket rubbishing of experts, but in the case of economic forecasters he probably had a point.
Most of the people who will listen to Messrs Carney and Hammond's stories are the already convinced: very risk averse voters who are pre-disposed to worry at the first sign of any potential problem looming over the horizon, and those who are already strongly pro-EU and looking for further confirmation of their preferences. Why would anybody else bother?
This is essentially the crying wolf argument, overlooking the minor detail that in the story the wolf does turn up in the closing pages.
There isn't of course any logic in concluding that just because political warnings about the impact of a vote turned out to be wrong, so we can tear up all our existing trading arrangements and nothing will go wrong.
The problem is that the warnings are coming from politicians and economists and not from real world businesspeople. Partly because many of the latter have been promised by the PM that there will be a deal, and she is clearly doing her best to keep that promise. When the papers start filling with stories about businesses big and small moving away or not being able to take or place orders without knowing post-April regulations is when things might start to change?
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
Let's make this simple.
If we REVOKE, as in, cancel, A50, the EU will not then allow us to turn up a year later with another plan and invoking A50 again. They will thrash the same deal on the table and say, take it, or leave it, make up your stupid minds. And do you know what? They would be right. Quite apart from the farcical nature of the events, what would happen if say Italy or Hungary decided to invoke and revoke every couple of years? It would be chaos and very damaging to everyone.
We could ask to extend. That is different. The EU might however refuse. What's in it for them? There's no sign of any fundamental change that might lead to a breakthrough. An election wouldn't cut it. Best case scenario is May wins a small overall majority. Worst case scenario is a rainbow coalition of various nationalists, populists and unicorn hunters led by a man who isn't going senile, he's always been this thick. Another referendum can't happen because we cannot agree on a question.
It is this deal, or it is no deal. At the moment, unless Labour or the ERG have a lucid moment, it looks like no deal, and has done bluntly since Chequers.
It is this deal or no deal given the starting point of May’s red lines. That’s what Barnier’s famous “steps” diagram has made clear since day one.
If May goes and her ridiculous Nick Timothy-imposed red lines with her, a whole bunch of other deals are possible.
I am not doubting trade will be disrupted nor am I saying this will be a good thing. Whether trade will be disrupted beyond the ability of companies contingency planning for it and if so by how much is in doubt. Trading on WTO terms and without frictionless trade works fine for countries we trade with like the US and major ports like Felixstowe and Southampton are well prepared for it. There are just too many ridiculous scare stories flying around - planes not flying, hospitals running out of medicine etc.
Sadly these aren't ridiculous- no deal at all means our airlines would no longer have a licence to fly nor insurance as we would have left the certifying authority and not replaced it with a new one. That's what no deal means - no agreements of any description. Similar with other regulated items such as drugs - who certifies them for import into the UK if we have rejected the current agreement and not created a new one? Again that is what the industries involved say - why do you claim to know more than they do about their industry?
Same with General logistics. Neither side of the border have space or resources to customs and compliance check the volume of goods that come in. According to the Port of Dover - who know something about the operation of ports - trucka take an average of 2 minutes to croaa the bordwr. If that doubled the queue would be 17 miles. But it wont be 4 minutes, the average transit time in and out of the EU is 45 minutes. There isnt anywhere to park those vehicles hence converting the motorways. And As they sit in vast queues they are not making deliveries which is how the logistics manufacturing wholesaling and retailing parts of the food industry - backed by government assessment - say that we go short of significant foodstuffs in days of crash Brexit.
Perhaps you know more about running that industry than they do? They don't give a toss politically about Brexit- they just want to stay in business. We could plan for no deal in 5 years time and it would work. But crash out in 3 months and we go short of things we need. It's a fact. You may not chose to believe it but it remains a fact regardless.
I don't know if this interview has already been linked to, but this is about the best exchange on Brexit that I have ever heard. If Theresa May had been capable of thinking and acting along the lines Rory Stewart sets out - and if she had had it in her to frame the issues in the way he does - we would not be in this mess now. https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1073849674879111168
No wonder Rory Stewart has never made the Cabinet, he is far too thoughtful and rational.
This is what May should do. Expel the ERG members. Labour did that with Militant. Then call a snap election with candidates approved by central office. Once the fruit cakes are out of the Commons and back in saloon bars the problem is solved.
The only MPs who would vote for an early election where the 640 or so official Conservative candidates were each facing an ERG candidate would be on the opposition benches. But then, you knew that.....
It would only be 70 or 80 MPS, and they would not have time to get organised to fight a snap election.
No, if the ERG gets thrown out, then EVERY official candidate would be facing an ERG opponent. There would be no lack of ERG candidates from amongst current Conservative Party activists.
Then suddenly Conservatives might appreciate the argument for a fair and representative voting system?
Then we have the panacea of the WTO where apparently we don't have to follow rules and will get our own way. Have the people spouti g this nonsense spoken to our people at the WTO? They calmly and factually point out that this is utter nonsense.
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
Hard to know for sure, though I think it may very well be internet shopping continuing to turn the screw. The continuing increase in the numbers of parcel couriers driving round our way is unmistakable, and that Amazon Christmas ad has been all over telly like a rash.
Also this American Black Friday stuff gets bigger every year and pulls shopping forward into late November.
..fears of a no deal are hugely exaggerated. Yes, the first few years would be painful .
Are you for real?
.
The 2016 iteration of Project Fear made wild claims about what would happen in the event of a vote to Leave. They did not, we must always remember, say that the massive job losses and a housing price crash would only occur on Brexit Day+1. They said it would happen immediately after the Leave vote.
The reality we find ourselves in is one of low but steady growth, low inflation, and unemployment at or near the lowest level seen since modern records began. The only thing they got right was the correction to the value of the pound, and even in that case the IMF had suggested prior to the referendum that sterling was . Why would anybody else bother?
This is essentially the crying wolf argument, overlooking the minor detail that in the story the wolf does turn up in the closing pages.
There isn't of course any logic in concluding that just because political warnings about the impact of a vote turned out to be wrong, so we can tear up all our existing trading arrangements and nothing will go wrong.
The problem is that the warnings are coming from politicians and economists and not from real world businesspeople. Partly because many of the latter have been promised by the PM that there will be a deal, and she is clearly doing her best to keep that promise. When the papers start filling with stories about businesses big and small moving away or not being able to take or place orders without knowing post-April regulations is when things might start to change?
In the fable the boy is killed by the wolf
better to state a positive case than scare the voters
This is, of course, the huge drawback with the continuity Remain approach to this issue, and why appeals to the public to back staying in (or, for that matter, the Plank's deal) based on their dire warnings continue to fall on deaf ears.
The 2016 iteration of Project Fear made wild claims about what would happen in the event of a vote to Leave. They did not, we must always remember, say that the massive job losses and a housing price crash would only occur on Brexit Day+1. They said it would happen immediately after the Leave vote.
The reality we find ourselves in is one of low but steady growth, low inflation, and unemployment at or near the lowest level seen since modern records began. The only thing they got right was the correction to the value of the pound, and even in that case the IMF had suggested prior to the referendum that sterling was over-valued. The correction could just as easily be seen as being something based on economic fundamentals for which the Brexit vote merely acted as a trigger, than as anything to do directly with the decision itself.
We must also remember at this juncture that the economic modellers at the Treasury and the Bank of England who made such a complete hash of forecasting the Leave vote aftermath are mostly the same lot of people who failed to see the Great Recession coming. Many voters will not have forgotten this. Is it any wonder that their forecasts are endowed with all the credibility of a tabloid newspaper astrology column? I don't subscribe to Michael Gove's blanket rubbishing of experts, but in the case of economic forecasters he probably had a point.
Most of the people who will listen to Messrs Carney and Hammond's stories are the already convinced: very risk averse voters who are pre-disposed to worry at the first sign of any potential problem looming over the horizon, and those who are already strongly pro-EU and looking for further confirmation of their preferences. Why would anybody else bother?
In addition, on the other side of the coin, you also need to question the bright sunlit uplands those forecasters foresee if only the UK were to seek to continue aligning itself with stagnating EU economies or even belatedly join the Euro, as opposed to strengthening trading links with faster growing parts of the world. The EU has lagged behind other regions of the world in recovering from the great recession, and on given yesterday's dire economic news from the Eurozone it still has a long way to go. Do those forecasters price in the effect on growth of a continuance of permanent and constitutionally required EU austerity? Do they price in the potential for economic turmoil on the southern fringe as it becomes harder to paper over the consequences of the single currency?
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
the whole world is on slowdown and nobody is that well prepared for it.
I can’t help feeling that such growth as we are achieving is almost entirely in London and the reality is that the rest of the country is losing better paid jobs for less secure badly paid service jobs. That is certainly my impression in Dundee and this is worse.
Im afraid thats very much the case. The areas outside the SE have had something of a tough decade and may have another one coming.
It’s on topic to a degree because it explains how what are superficially good economic figures are not really helping the government too much. Those ungrateful bastards in London are much too self obsessed to give the government any credit
It really is time that the side issue that is Brexit which one way or another will have so little effect on our economy was put to bed and we focused on more significant things.
It goes to the crux of the Brexit vote. London and SE didnt want to change the policies which made them well off. i can understand that. But likewise peop0le in the provinces are getting the downside of these policies and can see no chance of it changing. From their perpective a change at least gives the hope of things getting better rather than the guarantee of steady decline.
The SE outside London voted for Brexit, didn't it?
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
If they were true to their word of honouring the referendum then those same MPs would agree to back May's deal.
Remain MPs have been given licence to oppose the deal because of the overwhelmingly negative reaction Leavers have given it. Leavers can’t complain that Remain MPs aren’t backing the deal when something like 70% of MPs who supported Leave in the referendum are planning to vote against the deal too.
Some Leavers have every right to complain. The bottom line is no one has the right to say the choice is between Remain or No Deal when there is a perfectly viable Deal on the table. 50 or so ERG supporters cannot block the Deal if all the other MPs who voted to trigger A50 honour their word. The reason they do not is because they wish to stop Brexit entirely.
The bottom line is if there is a choice of three options no one has the right to say that it is really a choice between two options.
I sometimes wonder if your skill with words is such that you are able to mislead yourself with them.
No I don't disagree with you per se. And I agree that those who voted against triggering article 50 should not be criticised for consistency. But there are far too many MPs (and posters on here) who voted to invoke and now want to cancel the whole thing using the excuse that the only alternative is No Deal. It is not. The main alternative is the soft Brexit deal that May negotiated and the only thing stopping that are those very same MPs refusing to vote for it.
It is like saying you have to starve to death because you don't really like the huge plate of beef stew that is on the table in front of you and would rather eat steak.
I don't know if this interview has already been linked to, but this is about the best exchange on Brexit that I have ever heard. If Theresa May had been capable of thinking and acting along the lines Rory Stewart sets out - and if she had had it in her to frame the issues in the way he does - we would not be in this mess now. https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1073849674879111168
No wonder Rory Stewart has never made the Cabinet, he is far too thoughtful and rational.
That the top table of British politics does not have a space for someone like him, but does reward cretins such as Fox, Grayling, Johnson, Corbyn, Burgon and the like, tells you everything you need to know about British politics.
..fears of a no deal are hugely exaggerated. Yes, the first few years would be painful .
Are you for real?
.
The 2016 iteration of Project Fear made wild claims about what would happen in the event of a vote to Leave. They did not, we must always remember, say that the massive job losses and a housing price crash would only occur on Brexit Day+1. They said it would happen immediately after the Leave vote.
We must also remember at this juncture that the economic modellers at the Treasury and the Bank of England who made such a complete hash of forecasting the Leave vote aftermath are mostly the same lot of people who failed to see the Great Recession coming. Many voters will not have forgotten this. Is it any wonder that their forecasts are endowed with all the credibility of a tabloid newspaper astrology column? I don't subscribe to Michael Gove's blanket rubbishing of experts, but in the case of economic forecasters he probably had a point.
Most of the people who will listen to Messrs Carney and Hammond's stories are the already convinced: very risk averse voters who are pre-disposed to worry at the first sign of any potential problem looming over the horizon, and those who are already strongly pro-EU and looking for further confirmation of their preferences. Why would anybody else bother?
This is essentially the crying wolf argument, overlooking the minor detail that in the story the wolf does turn up in the closing pages.
There isn't of course any logic in concluding that just because political warnings about the impact of a vote turned out to be wrong, so we can tear up all our existing trading arrangements and nothing will go wrong.
The problem is that the warnings are coming from politicians and economists and not from real world businesspeople. Partly because many of the latter have been promised by the PM that there will be a deal, and she is clearly doing her best to keep that promise. When the papers start filling with stories about businesses big and small moving away or not being able to take or place orders without knowing post-April regulations is when things might start to change?
No CEO worth his job will have put any trust in May’s promise that there will be a deal of some sort particularly when the type of deal is so obscure and unlikely. They have all made contingency plans - whether higher inventory, setting up admin offices in Europe, second sourcing from U.K. or non EU sources. The automotive industry would be worst affected because of relative lack of parts businesses in the U.K. but fixed costs are so high they are unlikely to make any move until models are up for renewal.
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
Let's make this simple.
If we REVOKE, as in, cancel, A50, the EU will not then allow us to turn up a year later with another plan and invoking A50 again. They will thrash the same deal on the table and say, take it, or leave it, make up your stupid minds. And do you know what? They would be right. Quite apart from the farcical nature of the events, what would happen if say Italy or Hungary decided to invoke and revoke every couple of years? It would be chaos and very damaging to everyone.
We could ask to extend. That is different. The EU might however refuse. What's in it for them? There's no sign of any fundamental change that might lead to a breakthrough. An election wouldn't cut it. Best case scenario is May wins a small overall majority. Worst case scenario is a rainbow coalition of various nationalists, populists and unicorn hunters led by a man who isn't going senile, he's always been this thick. Another referendum can't happen because we cannot agree on a question.
It is this deal, or it is no deal. At the moment, unless Labour or the ERG have a lucid moment, it looks like no deal, and has done bluntly since Chequers.
It is this deal or no deal given the starting point of May’s red lines. That’s what Barnier’s famous “steps” diagram has made clear since day one.
If May goes and her ridiculous Nick Timothy-imposed red lines with her, a whole bunch of other deals are possible.
I agree. If for instance a future PM said we can live with FOM, then we would have a very different set of possible deals.
I am not doubting trade will be disrupted nor am I saying this will be a good thing. Whether trade will be disrupted beyond the ability of companies contingency planning for it and if so by how much is in doubt. Trading on WTO terms and without frictionless trade works fine for countries we trade with like the US and major ports like Felixstowe and Southampton are well prepared for it. There are just too many ridiculous scare stories flying around - planes not flying, hospitals running out of medicine etc.
Sadly these aren't ridiculous- no deal at all means our airlines would no longer have a licence to fly nor insurance as we would have left the certifying authority and not replaced it with a new one. That's what no deal means - no agreements of any description. Similar with other regulated items such as drugs - who certifies them for import into the UK if we have rejected the current agreement and not created a new one? Again that is what the industries involved say - why do you claim to know more than they do about their industry?
Same with General logistics. Neither side of the border have space or resources to customs and compliance check the volume of goods that come in. According to the Port of Dover - who know something about the operation of ports - trucka take an average of 2 minutes to croaa the bordwr. If that doubled the queue would be 17 miles. But it wont be 4 minutes, the average transit time in and out of the EU is 45 minutes. There isnt anywhere to park those vehicles hence converting the motorways. And As they sit in vast queues they are not making deliveries which is how the logistics manufacturing wholesaling and retailing parts of the food industry - backed by government assessment - say that we go short of significant foodstuffs in days of crash Brexit.
Perhaps you know more about running that industry than they do? They don't give a toss politically about Brexit- they just want to stay in business. We could plan for no deal in 5 years time and it would work. But crash out in 3 months and we go short of things we need. It's a fact. You may not chose to believe it but it remains a fact regardless.
There is truth on both sides. In reality, the very worst aspects (such as non flying planes) will probably be resolved by last minute agreements, since it is clearly in both sides' interests to maintain transport links. But the points are that there will only be time to sort out a few of the most drastic implications AND in these discussions the EU will hold all the cards. The likelihood that there wont be serious adverse consequences for the UK over the subsequent months is very small, and despite Andy's complacency his "several years of economic pain" means bankruptcies and redundancies and a whole string of economic bad news amidst an atmosphere of political panic.
This is what May should do. Expel the ERG members. Labour did that with Militant. Then call a snap election with candidates approved by central office. Once the fruit cakes are out of the Commons and back in saloon bars the problem is solved.
The only MPs who would vote for an early election where the 640 or so official Conservative candidates were each facing an ERG candidate would be on the opposition benches. But then, you knew that.....
It would only be 70 or 80 MPS, and they would not have time to get organised to fight a snap election.
No, if the ERG gets thrown out, then EVERY official candidate would be facing an ERG opponent. There would be no lack of ERG candidates from amongst current Conservative Party activists.
Then suddenly Conservatives might appreciate the argument for a fair and representative voting system?
Undoubtedly.
Another reason they won't vote for an early "punishment" election though.
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
Let's make this simple.
If we REVOKE, as in, cancel, A50, the EU will not then allow us to turn up a year later with another plan and invoking A50 again. They will thrash the same deal on the table and say, take it, or leave it, make up your stupid minds. And do you know what? They would be right. Quite apart from the farcical nature of the events, what would happen if say Italy or Hungary decided to invoke and revoke every couple of years? It would be chaos and very damaging to everyone.
We could ask to extend. That is different. The EU might however refuse. What's in it for them? There's no sign of any fundamental change that might lead to a breakthrough. An election wouldn't cut it. Best case scenario is May wins a small overall majority. Worst case scenario is a rainbow coalition of various nationalists, populists and unicorn hunters led by a man who isn't going senile, he's always been this thick. Another referendum can't happen because we cannot agree on a question.
It is this deal, or it is no deal. At the moment, unless Labour or the ERG have a lucid moment, it looks like no deal, and has done bluntly since Chequers.
It is this deal or no deal given the starting point of May’s red lines. That’s what Barnier’s famous “steps” diagram has made clear since day one.
If May goes and her ridiculous Nick Timothy-imposed red lines with her, a whole bunch of other deals are possible.
I agree. If for instance a future PM said we can live with FOM, then we would have a very different set of possible deals.
There is zero chance of anyone dismissing FOM as unimportant becoming PM
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
If they were true to their word of honouring the referendum then those same MPs would agree to back May's deal.
Remain MPs have been given licence to oppose the deal because of the overwhelmingly negative reaction Leavers have given it. Leavers can’t complain that Remain MPs aren’t backing the deal when something like 70% of MPs who supported Leave in the referendum are planning to vote against the deal too.
Some Leavers have every right to complain. The bottom line is no one has the right to say the choice is between Remain or No Deal when there is a perfectly viable Deal on the table. 50 or so ERG supporters cannot block the Deal if all the other MPs who voted to trigger A50 honour their word. The reason they do not is because they wish to stop Brexit entirely.
Sort your own side out first. If you can’t convince fellow Leavers don’t expect Remainers to ride to your rescue.
Well I'm that case don't expect to escape the blame afterwards.
There are maybe 100 or so hardline Brexiteers including the DUP. There are another 100 or so who refused to back A50.
If the remaining 450 MPs choose not to back the deal when they had the numbers to do so then they get no right at all to moan If we do end up with a No Deal. They had it in their power to avoid it and chose not to.
I am not doubting trade will be disrupted nor am I saying this will be a good thing. Whether trade will be disrupted beyond the ability of companies contingency planning for it and if so by how much is in doubt. Trading on WTO terms and without frictionless trade works fine for countries we trade with like the US and major ports like Felixstowe and Southampton are well prepared for it. There are just too many ridiculous scare stories flying around - planes not flying, hospitals running out of medicine etc.
Sadly these aren't ridiculous- no deal at all means our airlines would no longer have a licence to fly nor insurance as we would have left the certifying authority and not replaced it with a new one. That's what no deal means - no agreements of any description. Similar with other regulated items such as drugs - who certifies them for import into the UK if we have rejected the current agreement and not created a new one? Again that is what the industries involved say - why do you claim to know more than they do about their industry?
Same with General logistics. Neither side of the border have space or resources to customs and compliance check the volume of goods that come in. According to the Port of Dover - who know something about the operation of ports - trucka take an average of 2 minutes to croaa the bordwr. If that doubled the queue would be 17 miles. But it wont be 4 minutes, the average transit time in and out of the EU is 45 minutes. There isnt anywhere to park those vehicles hence converting the motorways. And As they sit in vast queues they are not making deliveries which is how the logistics manufacturing wholesaling and retailing parts of the food industry - backed by government assessment - say that we go short of significant foodstuffs in days of crash Brexit.
Perhaps you know more about running that industry than they do? They don't give a toss politically about Brexit- they just want to stay in business. We could plan for no deal in 5 years time and it would work. But crash out in 3 months and we go short of things we need. It's a fact. You may not chose to believe it but it remains a fact regardless.
I'd add that Dover is where the lorries go because it is the quickest point from which to get to and from the European mainland. It takes 90 minutes to do the crossing. From Felixstowe to the Hook of Holland it takes at least four times as long.
I don't know if this interview has already been linked to, but this is about the best exchange on Brexit that I have ever heard. If Theresa May had been capable of thinking and acting along the lines Rory Stewart sets out - and if she had had it in her to frame the issues in the way he does - we would not be in this mess now. https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1073849674879111168
No wonder Rory Stewart has never made the Cabinet, he is far too thoughtful and rational.
That the top table of British politics does not have a space for someone like him, but does reward cretins such as Fox, Grayling, Johnson, Corbyn, Burgon and the like, tells you everything you need to know about British politics.
Which is partly voters' fault also, of course. We are suckers for idiots spinning us easy solutions and promises of great outcomes, and attention spans nowadays are such that few people want to work through an intelligent argument.
I don't know if this interview has already been linked to, but this is about the best exchange on Brexit that I have ever heard. If Theresa May had been capable of thinking and acting along the lines Rory Stewart sets out - and if she had had it in her to frame the issues in the way he does - we would not be in this mess now. https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1073849674879111168
No wonder Rory Stewart has never made the Cabinet, he is far too thoughtful and rational.
That the top table of British politics does not have a space for someone like him, but does reward cretins such as Fox, Grayling, Johnson, Corbyn, Burgon and the like, tells you everything you need to know about British politics.
He'll be resigning honourably next August in all likelihood too.
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
the whole world is on slowdown and nobody is that well prepared for it.
I can’t help feeling that such growth as we are achieving is almost entirely in London and the reality is that the rest of the country is losing better paid jobs for less secure badly paid service jobs. That is certainly my impression in Dundee and this is worse.
Im afraid thats very much the case. The areas outside the SE have had something of a tough decade and may have another one coming.
It’s on topic to a degree because it explains how what are superficially good economic figures are not really helping the government too much. Those ungrateful bastards in London are much too self obsessed to give the government any credit
It really is time that the side issue that is Brexit which one way or another will have so little effect on our economy was put to bed and we focused on more significant things.
It goes to the crux of the Brexit vote. London and SE didnt want to change the policies which made them well off. i can understand that. But likewise peop0le in the provinces are getting the downside of these policies and can see no chance of it changing. From their perpective a change at least gives the hope of things getting better rather than the guarantee of steady decline.
The SE outside London voted for Brexit, didn't it?
mostly
but if you look at election maps there were a lot more remain consituencies than elsewhere
Then we have the panacea of the WTO where apparently we don't have to follow rules and will get our own way. Have the people spouti g this nonsense spoken to our people at the WTO? They calmly and factually point out that this is utter nonsense.
According to Andy all British businesses are fully prepared with warehouses full of parts and worked up plans to be able to keep trading despite all the new regulatory obstacles.
It is good that at least one PB'er has his finger on the pulse and can keep us up to the minute with the latest preparations.
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
the whole world is on slowdown and nobody is that well prepared for it.
I can’t help feeling that such growth as we are achieving is almost entirely in London and the reality is that the rest of the country is losing better paid jobs for less secure badly paid service jobs. That is certainly my impression in Dundee and this is worse.
Im afraid thats very much the case. The areas outside the SE have had something of a tough decade and may have another one coming.
It’s on topic to a degree because it explains how what are superficially good economic figures are not really helping the government too much. Those ungrateful bastards in London are much too self obsessed to give the government any credit
It really is time that the side issue that is Brexit which one way or another will have so little effect on our economy was put to bed and we focused on more significant things.
Except Brexit isn't a side issue. It has suppressed economic growth by about two percentage points in the two years since the referendum. That's a big deal given that our growth rates are typically 1% or 2% per annum, we haven't left yet and potentially the growth depeciator will be bigger and last longer going forward.
Put it another way, I don't believe you think Brexit is such a side issue that you would countenance cancelling it, which is what we would do if we were concerned about the state of the economy.
Then we have the panacea of the WTO where apparently we don't have to follow rules and will get our own way. Have the people spouti g this nonsense spoken to our people at the WTO? They calmly and factually point out that this is utter nonsense.
According to Andy all British businesses are fully prepared with warehouses full of parts and worked up plans to be able to keep trading despite all the new regulatory obstacles.
It is good that at least one PB'er has his finger on the pulse and can keep us up to the minute with the latest preparations.
what evidence do you have to the contrary ? Do you think businesses have made no contingency plans ?
Thanks David - cogent and well-reasoned as usual, however for once I disagree.
May will not take us into No Deal. It would be disastrous for the Party as well as the Country. She can only carry brinkmanship to a certain point. As we get closer to Brexit-Day the markets will worsen and she will come under colossal pressure to do something. There will be two options open to her - revoke or referendum. The EU has indicated that it would allow further time for either if necessary. This makes sense because it doesn't want No Deal either.
My own assessment is that a referendum would be the less painful route for her and the Government. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is nailed on, but 2.2 (6/5) on Betfair looks value to me. I'd make it odds on - about 1.75 (4/5) .
At the end of the day, May is Prime Minister and the Conservative Party is in power.
If we come to late March, with no Deal signed, she has the choice. If she takes us out with No Deal, then she has judged that to be the better choice, and she (and the Conservatives) will take the consequences of that decision.
The other decisions may be unpalatable - revoke A50, call a Deal-vs-Revoke referendum - but they exist. And, after 31 March 2019, they will have existed in hindsight as well, and she and the Conservatives will bear the responsibility for the decision made.
It will only happen if she judges the outcomes of the other two choices to be worse. And we know that her judgement will bear in mind the effects on her Party and maybe, arguably, more so than the effects on the country.
She's not helpless, she does have choices, and she isn't forced to choose No Deal if her Deal is lost. If we go out with No Deal, she'll be saying "Look at what you made me do," yes, but she would only have been "made" to do it due to unwillingness to choose one of the alternatives. Again, they may have been worse, but it does look to an outsider to the Conservatives that they are more "worse for her Party" than "worse for her country" and that she'll have chosen Party over country.
I don't know if this interview has already been linked to, but this is about the best exchange on Brexit that I have ever heard. If Theresa May had been capable of thinking and acting along the lines Rory Stewart sets out - and if she had had it in her to frame the issues in the way he does - we would not be in this mess now. https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1073849674879111168
No wonder Rory Stewart has never made the Cabinet, he is far too thoughtful and rational.
That the top table of British politics does not have a space for someone like him, but does reward cretins such as Fox, Grayling, Johnson, Corbyn, Burgon and the like, tells you everything you need to know about British politics.
Which is partly voters' fault also, of course. We are suckers for idiots spinning us easy solutions and promises of great outcomes, and attention spans nowadays are such that few people want to work through an intelligent argument.
This is what May should do. Expel the ERG members. Labour did that with Militant. Then call a snap election with candidates approved by central office. Once the fruit cakes are out of the Commons and back in saloon bars the problem is solved.
The only MPs who would vote for an early election where the 640 or so official Conservative candidates were each facing an ERG candidate would be on the opposition benches. But then, you knew that.....
It would only be 70 or 80 MPS, and they would not have time to get organised to fight a snap election.
No, if the ERG gets thrown out, then EVERY official candidate would be facing an ERG opponent. There would be no lack of ERG candidates from amongst current Conservative Party activists.
And how well did the expelled Militants get on against the official Labour candidates?
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
If they were true to their word of honouring the referendum then those same MPs would agree to back May's deal.
Remain MPs have been given licence to oppose the deal because of the overwhelmingly negative reaction Leavers have given it. Leavers can’t complain that Remain MPs aren’t backing the deal when something like 70% of MPs who supported Leave in the referendum are planning to vote against the deal too.
Some Leavers have every right to complain. The bottom line is no one has the right to say the choice is between Remain or No Deal when there is a perfectly viable Deal on the table. 50 or so ERG supporters cannot block the Deal if all the other MPs who voted to trigger A50 honour their word. The reason they do not is because they wish to stop Brexit entirely.
The bottom line is if there is a choice of three options no one has the right to say that it is really a choice between two options.
I sometimes wonder if your skill with words is such that you are able to mislead yourself with them.
No I don't disagree with you per se. And I agree that those who voted against triggering article 50 should not be criticised for consistency. But there are far too many MPs (and posters on here) who voted to invoke and now want to cancel the whole thing using the excuse that the only alternative is No Deal. It is not. The main alternative is the soft Brexit deal that May negotiated and the only thing stopping that are those very same MPs refusing to vote for it.
It is like saying you have to starve to death because you don't really like the huge plate of beef stew that is on the table in front of you and would rather eat steak.
Absolutely. If I were an MP and it came to it, I'd vote for the deal, but only if all ways to escape from this crazy ride had been closed off. For the deal really resolves nothing and we will resume facing all of the same problems and difficulties in April.
It is however a fact that the extreme wing of the Tory party is so off-the-scale that they cannot accept that some sort of Brexit is better for them than none. We have a government and it is the government's responsibility to get its proposals supported by its MPs.
There are maybe 100 or so hardline Brexiteers including the DUP. There are another 100 or so who refused to back A50.
If the remaining 450 MPs choose not to back the deal when they had the numbers to do so then they get no right at all to moan If we do end up with a No Deal. They had it in their power to avoid it and chose not to.
Voters could be forgiven for thinking "No Deal can't be quite the End of Times that Remainers would have us believe if they aren't prepared to vote for May's Deal that stops that fear dead in its tracks...."
No Deal is a risk they are quite willing to take to hang on to their intention to frustrate Brexit of any shade - even one as Brexit In Name Only as May's Plan.
In a strongly Remain-supporting House, the maths and remaining time-line are such that, quite simply, No Deal can only be stopped by Remainers agreeing to a very soft Brexit.
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
If they were true to their word of honouring the referendum then those same MPs would agree to back May's deal.
Remain MPs have been given licence to oppose the deal because of the overwhelmingly negative reaction Leavers have given it. Leavers can’t complain that Remain MPs aren’t backing the deal when something like 70% of MPs who supported Leave in the referendum are planning to vote against the deal too.
Some Leavers have every right to complain. The bottom line is no one has the right to say the choice is between Remain or No Deal when there is a perfectly viable Deal on the table. 50 or so ERG supporters cannot block the Deal if all the other MPs who voted to trigger A50 honour their word. The reason they do not is because they wish to stop Brexit entirely.
Sort your own side out first. If you can’t convince fellow Leavers don’t expect Remainers to ride to your rescue.
Well I'm that case don't expect to escape the blame afterwards.
There are maybe 100 or so hardline Brexiteers including the DUP. There are another 100 or so who refused to back A50.
If the remaining 450 MPs choose not to back the deal when they had the numbers to do so then they get no right at all to moan If we do end up with a No Deal. They had it in their power to avoid it and chose not to.
There is a deal to be done. It is not May's deal, but it could be another one that resembles it. The problem here is May and her obsession with ending freedom of movement for British and EU citizens. If she could get passed that then we would get to a point of resolution pretty quickly. But she can't. Therefore, the 200 you talk about have all the control.
In Newcastle for our annual Christmas shopping trip. My word I have never seen the Metro Centre like this, not even in the period after the GFC. The footfall is derisory, the champagne bar is gone, last night we had our choice of tables in various restaurants, closing down sale in HoF of course, 50% discounts commonplace, it’s a bit depressing. I am not sure if this is a centre that is getting run down, the Internet or the Great British shopper finally having a break but this feels like a recession to me, and quite a bad one at that.
the whole world is on slowdown and nobody is that well prepared for it.
I can’t help feeling that such growth as we are achieving is almost entirely in London and the reality is that the rest of the country is losing better paid jobs for less secure badly paid service jobs. That is certainly my impression in Dundee and this is worse.
Im afraid thats very much the case. The areas outside the SE have had something of a tough decade and may have another one coming.
It’s on topic to a degree because it explains how what are superficially good economic figures are not really helping the government too much. Those ungrateful bastards in London are much too self obsessed to give the government any credit
It really is time that the side issue that is Brexit which one way or another will have so little effect on our economy was put to bed and we focused on more significant things.
Except Brexit isn't a side issue. It has suppressed economic growth by about two percentage points in the two years since the referendum. That's a big deal given that our growth rates are typically 1% or 2% per annum, we haven't left yet and potentially the growth depeciator will be bigger and last longer going forward.
Put it another way, I don't believe you think Brexit is such a side issue that you would countenance cancelling it, which is what we would do if we were concerned about the state of the economy.
theres simply no way of knowing that. You are merely comparing results to a forecast.
It could have killed growth by 4% or if I take Osbornes armageddon forecast we have done better by 8%
I don't know if this interview has already been linked to, but this is about the best exchange on Brexit that I have ever heard. If Theresa May had been capable of thinking and acting along the lines Rory Stewart sets out - and if she had had it in her to frame the issues in the way he does - we would not be in this mess now. https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1073849674879111168
No wonder Rory Stewart has never made the Cabinet, he is far too thoughtful and rational.
That the top table of British politics does not have a space for someone like him, but does reward cretins such as Fox, Grayling, Johnson, Corbyn, Burgon and the like, tells you everything you need to know about British politics.
He'll be resigning honourably next August in all likelihood too.
Also interesting how thoughtful James O’Brien can be when faced by the same on the other side of the desk. Most of the stuff of his that gets tweeted is him treading someone into the ground like a fag butt.
Incidentally, @JosiasJessop , can I ask why you chose your name? As coincidence would have it I’m writing an article on the Wey & Arun Canal at the moment.
When I first joined PB many moons back, I was rereading Hadfield's biography of William Jessop, one of my heroes. I didn't want to use my real name, and William Jessop sounded a little ordinary, so I chose that of his son instead. Josias is also much of interest for his work (as you say) on canals, and especially on the Cromford and High Peak railway.
They are intensely fascinating characters, working as great engineers at the critical junction between canals and the first railways (or tramways). Indeed, the C&HPR is essentially a tramway built on canal principles to link two canals.
If possible, I'd love to read your article on the Wey and Arun - I don't know that much about it, never having walked it.
This is what May should do. Expel the ERG members. Labour did that with Militant. Then call a snap election with candidates approved by central office. Once the fruit cakes are out of the Commons and back in saloon bars the problem is solved.
The only MPs who would vote for an early election where the 640 or so official Conservative candidates were each facing an ERG candidate would be on the opposition benches. But then, you knew that.....
It would only be 70 or 80 MPS, and they would not have time to get organised to fight a snap election.
No, if the ERG gets thrown out, then EVERY official candidate would be facing an ERG opponent. There would be no lack of ERG candidates from amongst current Conservative Party activists.
And how well did the expelled Militants get on against the official Labour candidates?
There weren't 17.4m aggrieved Militants to draw support from though.
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
Let's make this simple.
If we REVOKE, as in, cancel, A50, the EU will not then allow us to turn up a year later with another plan and invoking A50 again. They will thrash the same deal on the table and say, take it, or leave it, make up your stupid minds. And do you know what? They would be right. Quite apart from the farcical nature of the events, what would happen if say Italy or Hungary decided to invoke and revoke every couple of years? It would be chaos and very damaging to everyone.
We could ask to extend. That is different. The EU might however refuse. What's in it for them? There's no sign of any fundamental change that might lead to a breakthrough. An election wouldn't cut it. Best case scenario is May wins a small overall majority. Worst case scenario is a rainbow coalition of various nationalists, populists and unicorn hunters led by a man who isn't going senile, he's always been this thick. Another referendum can't happen because we cannot agree on a question.
It is this deal, or it is no deal. At the moment, unless Labour or the ERG have a lucid moment, it looks like no deal, and has done bluntly since Chequers.
It is this deal or no deal given the starting point of May’s red lines. That’s what Barnier’s famous “steps” diagram has made clear since day one.
If May goes and her ridiculous Nick Timothy-imposed red lines with her, a whole bunch of other deals are possible.
I agree. If for instance a future PM said we can live with FOM, then we would have a very different set of possible deals.
There is zero chance of anyone dismissing FOM as unimportant becoming PM
My impression is that the EU may itself be having a bit of a rethink on FOM. The UK isn't the only member to have a problem with it.
At the end of the day, May is Prime Minister and the Conservative Party is in power.
If we come to late March, with no Deal signed, she has the choice. If she takes us out with No Deal, then she has judged that to be the better choice, and she (and the Conservatives) will take the consequences of that decision.
The other decisions may be unpalatable - revoke A50, call a Deal-vs-Revoke referendum - but they exist. And, after 31 March 2019, they will have existed in hindsight as well, and she and the Conservatives will bear the responsibility for the decision made.
It will only happen if she judges the outcomes of the other two choices to be worse. And we know that her judgement will bear in mind the effects on her Party and maybe, arguably, more so than the effects on the country.
She's not helpless, she does have choices, and she isn't forced to choose No Deal if her Deal is lost. If we go out with No Deal, she'll be saying "Look at what you made me do," yes, but she would only have been "made" to do it due to unwillingness to choose one of the alternatives. Again, they may have been worse, but it does look to an outsider to the Conservatives that they are more "worse for her Party" than "worse for her country" and that she'll have chosen Party over country.
The finger pointing and blame by the government at others would fall on deaf ears among those not already convinced. If we go to no deal it will be the government that has chosen to do so and the government that takes responsibility for the consequences.
This is what May should do. Expel the ERG members. Labour did that with Militant. Then call a snap election with candidates approved by central office. Once the fruit cakes are out of the Commons and back in saloon bars the problem is solved.
The only MPs who would vote for an early election where the 640 or so official Conservative candidates were each facing an ERG candidate would be on the opposition benches. But then, you knew that.....
It would only be 70 or 80 MPS, and they would not have time to get organised to fight a snap election.
No, if the ERG gets thrown out, then EVERY official candidate would be facing an ERG opponent. There would be no lack of ERG candidates from amongst current Conservative Party activists.
And how well did the expelled Militants get on against the official Labour candidates?
There weren't 17.4m aggrieved Militants to draw support from though.
There aren't 17.4 million supporters of leaving without a deal either.
At the end of the day, May is Prime Minister and the Conservative Party is in power.
If we come to late March, with no Deal signed, she has the choice. If she takes us out with No Deal, then she has judged that to be the better choice, and she (and the Conservatives) will take the consequences of that decision.
The other decisions may be unpalatable - revoke A50, call a Deal-vs-Revoke referendum - but they exist. And, after 31 March 2019, they will have existed in hindsight as well, and she and the Conservatives will bear the responsibility for the decision made.
It will only happen if she judges the outcomes of the other two choices to be worse. And we know that her judgement will bear in mind the effects on her Party and maybe, arguably, more so than the effects on the country.
She's not helpless, she does have choices, and she isn't forced to choose No Deal if her Deal is lost. If we go out with No Deal, she'll be saying "Look at what you made me do," yes, but she would only have been "made" to do it due to unwillingness to choose one of the alternatives. Again, they may have been worse, but it does look to an outsider to the Conservatives that they are more "worse for her Party" than "worse for her country" and that she'll have chosen Party over country.
The finger pointing and blame by the government at others would fall on deaf ears among those not already convinced. If we go to no deal it will be the government that has chosen to do so and the government that takes responsibility for the consequences.
That assumes Labour will do all in its power to prevent a No Deal from happening - including backing a referendum. So far it hasn't.
No deal has maybe 50-100 MPs in favour. I don't see what is so difficult about Labour and Tory MPs agreeing to revoke a50 to give time for another general election or referendum of some other plan. If May won't do it then her own remainer MPs will turn on her.
Let's make this simple.
If we REVOKE, as in, cancel, A50, the EU will not then allow us to turn up a year later with another plan and invoking A50 again. They will thrash the same deal on the table and say, take it, or leave it, make up your stupid minds. And do you know what? They would be right. Quite apart from the farcical nature of the events, what would happen if say Italy or Hungary decided to invoke and revoke every couple of years? It would be chaos and very damaging to everyone.
We could ask to extend. That is different. The EU might however refuse. What's in it for them? There's no sign of any fundamental change that might lead to a breakthrough. An election wouldn't cut it. Best case scenario is May wins a small overall majority. Worst case scenario is a rainbow coalition of various nationalists, populists and unicorn hunters led by a man who isn't going senile, he's always been this thick. Another referendum can't happen because we cannot agree on a question.
It is this deal, or it is no deal. At the moment, unless Labour or the ERG have a lucid moment, it looks like no deal, and has done bluntly since Chequers.
It is this deal or no deal given the starting point of May’s red lines. That’s what Barnier’s famous “steps” diagram has made clear since day one.
If May goes and her ridiculous Nick Timothy-imposed red lines with her, a whole bunch of other deals are possible.
I agree. If for instance a future PM said we can live with FOM, then we would have a very different set of possible deals.
There is zero chance of anyone dismissing FOM as unimportant becoming PM
My impression is that the EU may itself be having a bit of a rethink on FOM. The UK isn't the only member to have a problem with it.
precisely so
the UK problem has been timing. A lot of what Cameron wanted would now be listened to since half of Europe is demanding the same. He called the EUref about 12 months too early.
There are maybe 100 or so hardline Brexiteers including the DUP. There are another 100 or so who refused to back A50.
If the remaining 450 MPs choose not to back the deal when they had the numbers to do so then they get no right at all to moan If we do end up with a No Deal. They had it in their power to avoid it and chose not to.
Voters could be forgiven for thinking "No Deal can't be quite the End of Times that Remainers would have us believe if they aren't prepared to vote for May's Deal that stops that fear dead in its tracks...."
No Deal is a risk they are quite willing to take to hang on to their intention to frustrate Brexit of any shade - even one as Brexit In Name Only as May's Plan.
In a strongly Remain-supporting House, the maths and remaining time-line are such that, quite simply, No Deal can only be stopped by Remainers agreeing to a very soft Brexit.
Yes, I am sure you are right Mark. However few supporters of No Deal have a proper conception of what it would entail, and of course once it has been triggered, there is no way back.
Comments
"All ze shops, zey are shut! Merde....."
https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2018/12/13/full-speech-sir-ivan-rogers-on-brexit/
To be so blasé about a few years of economic pain, based on so little information, is remarkable. Usually such opinions arrive from the wealthy, the retired, or expats, for all of whom it is other people's pain that they have in mind.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/opinion-there-should-be-no-exit-from-brexit-a-1243405.html
If it got as far as a conference being called and a motion being passed, what's to stop the leadership from continuing to demand a General Election whilst the clock runs down? Yes, I know you get past a certain point and it becomes impossible for the election to be held before March 29th, but Corbyn only has to shift his position to demanding an extension to A50 so that the election can still take place before Brexit.
Even if Labour pivots to a second referendum, the idea still won't work unless the Conservative vote can be split. And there's no certainty that an extension will be granted. And there's no consensus to be found on the question, the possible choices or the voting system for the referendum. Anything without a No Deal option will make the process anathema and doubly illegitimate to Leavers. Anything with a No Deal option won't be accepted by the EU. Anything with May's Deal in it will cause the DUP to revolt, and then the rest of the Opposition either has to bring down the Government in a VoNC or look utterly ridiculous. Ultimately, a second referendum will leave the country even more split than before, with the near-certainty that the General Election which would be held immediately thereafter would turn into little more than a third referendum by proxy.
Throwing this decision back at the people will do more harm than good, create more bad blood, and resolve nothing. MPs are paid to make decisions, so they should make one. Pass the deal, leave without a deal, or revoke. Manage the process, let the dust settle, and then have an election - where, hopefully, some time can finally be devoted to subjects other than Europe.
And again, even Rolt doesn't dispute Russell was a brilliant engineer. The problem (and here Rolt got it totally wrong, incidentally) was that he was also a crook. And that is why his reputation wa trashed. Ultimately, everything to do with Scott Russell comes back to the unfortunately now unanswerable question - where did the money vanish to?
Theresa May is the leader of the Conservative Party, and has been a member for her entire adult life. The idea that she would countenance, as her great historic legacy, breaking it in two (with the broken parts to be routed, and by a socialist to boot, at a subsequent election) is for the birds.
If we REVOKE, as in, cancel, A50, the EU will not then allow us to turn up a year later with another plan and invoking A50 again. They will thrash the same deal on the table and say, take it, or leave it, make up your stupid minds. And do you know what? They would be right. Quite apart from the farcical nature of the events, what would happen if say Italy or Hungary decided to invoke and revoke every couple of years? It would be chaos and very damaging to everyone.
We could ask to extend. That is different. The EU might however refuse. What's in it for them? There's no sign of any fundamental change that might lead to a breakthrough. An election wouldn't cut it. Best case scenario is May wins a small overall majority. Worst case scenario is a rainbow coalition of various nationalists, populists and unicorn hunters led by a man who isn't going senile, he's always been this thick. Another referendum can't happen because we cannot agree on a question.
It is this deal, or it is no deal. At the moment, unless Labour or the ERG have a lucid moment, it looks like no deal, and has done bluntly since Chequers.
https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1073849674879111168
And of course Jezza isn't going to vote for a Brexit which fails his tests
Also, it would seem to have to come from May, who does have a record of u-turning on promises but who is also, as we saw at the start of this very week, capable of stubbornness of an intensity that may not necessarily be in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Just to be sure can we demand Hanover return to its Rightful Monarch?
The way things are going, so will every other MP, however. And they would deserve it. It would be Scotland 2015 on speed.
May spent so long in the last election ensuring candidates were the “right sort” that it cost her seats as local associations wouldn’t support the chosen candidates and lost campaigning time allowing Corbyn a free run to build up momentum. Have you learnt nothing from the debacle of the last election.
What crash out Brexit does to trade the second we leave is the problem. Forget the politicians and ask industry how their industries work. There are reams of evidence about how catastrophic this will be. And unfortunately it comes down to who you trust to best understand the physical logistics of something like trade - the people doing it or armchair commentators who are not.
The 2016 iteration of Project Fear made wild claims about what would happen in the event of a vote to Leave. They did not, we must always remember, say that the massive job losses and a housing price crash would only occur on Brexit Day+1. They said it would happen immediately after the Leave vote.
The reality we find ourselves in is one of low but steady growth, low inflation, and unemployment at or near the lowest level seen since modern records began. The only thing they got right was the correction to the value of the pound, and even in that case the IMF had suggested prior to the referendum that sterling was over-valued. The correction could just as easily be seen as being something based on economic fundamentals for which the Brexit vote merely acted as a trigger, than as anything to do directly with the decision itself.
We must also remember at this juncture that the economic modellers at the Treasury and the Bank of England who made such a complete hash of forecasting the Leave vote aftermath are mostly the same lot of people who failed to see the Great Recession coming. Many voters will not have forgotten this. Is it any wonder that their forecasts are endowed with all the credibility of a tabloid newspaper astrology column? I don't subscribe to Michael Gove's blanket rubbishing of experts, but in the case of economic forecasters he probably had a point.
Most of the people who will listen to Messrs Carney and Hammond's stories are the already convinced: very risk averse voters who are pre-disposed to worry at the first sign of any potential problem looming over the horizon, and those who are already strongly pro-EU and looking for further confirmation of their preferences. Why would anybody else bother?
But as I said at the start, that’s still fantasy. It would require cast-iron and unanimous discipline in a Labour VONC, then the backbench mutineers unveiling their leader and policy and being endorsed by a HoC majority in a fortnight.
If nothing else, it illustrates the practical difficulties of “parliament will make sure/not allow X”
https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/foreign-affairs/brexit/news/95175/fresh-fines-remain-campaigners-after-referendum-expenses
But it's very potent, and clearly facts are taking a holiday here among the fanatics on both sides.
It really is time that the side issue that is Brexit which one way or another will have so little effect on our economy was put to bed and we focused on more significant things.
I sometimes wonder if your skill with words is such that you are able to mislead yourself with them.
In a way it should be easier for the Tories since, although they have the biggest potential price to pay, for them the likely economic impact of no deal is seriously bad news for the governing party, and therefore they might well be stuffed either way. Paradoxically it would be good news if Tory poll ratings took a big hit from the last week's goings on, but so far I haven't seen any sign of it.
Labour's leader knows enough about revolutions (and his election would be a peaceful example of such) to understand that things need to descend quite some way toward chaos before they happen, hence his masterful inactivity. There are many behind him however with a different view.
@TSE, I think somebody has just extended your meal and blowjob metaphor past reason. Now we're saying it's like somebody who cheats on wife, demands divorce on those terms, and then when a threesome is refused withdraws the divorce application threatening to invoke it again later.
We, as a nation, are the ones that are fucked here.
There isn't of course any logic in concluding that just because political warnings about the impact of a vote turned out to be wrong, so we can tear up all our existing trading arrangements and nothing will go wrong.
The problem is that the warnings are coming from politicians and economists and not from real world businesspeople. Partly because many of the latter have been promised by the PM that there will be a deal, and she is clearly doing her best to keep that promise. When the papers start filling with stories about businesses big and small moving away or not being able to take or place orders without knowing post-April regulations is when things might start to change?
If May goes and her ridiculous Nick Timothy-imposed red lines with her, a whole bunch of other deals are possible.
Same with General logistics. Neither side of the border have space or resources to customs and compliance check the volume of goods that come in. According to the Port of Dover - who know something about the operation of ports - trucka take an average of 2 minutes to croaa the bordwr. If that doubled the queue would be 17 miles. But it wont be 4 minutes, the average transit time in and out of the EU is 45 minutes. There isnt anywhere to park those vehicles hence converting the motorways. And As they sit in vast queues they are not making deliveries which is how the logistics manufacturing wholesaling and retailing parts of the food industry - backed by government assessment - say that we go short of significant foodstuffs in days of crash Brexit.
Perhaps you know more about running that industry than they do? They don't give a toss politically about Brexit- they just want to stay in business. We could plan for no deal in 5 years time and it would work. But crash out in 3 months and we go short of things we need. It's a fact. You may not chose to believe it but it remains a fact regardless.
better to state a positive case than scare the voters
It is like saying you have to starve to death because you don't really like the huge plate of beef stew that is on the table in front of you and would rather eat steak.
Another reason they won't vote for an early "punishment" election though.
There are maybe 100 or so hardline Brexiteers including the DUP. There are another 100 or so who refused to back A50.
If the remaining 450 MPs choose not to back the deal when they had the numbers to do so then they get no right at all to moan If we do end up with a No Deal. They had it in their power to avoid it and chose not to.
but if you look at election maps there were a lot more remain consituencies than elsewhere
It is good that at least one PB'er has his finger on the pulse and can keep us up to the minute with the latest preparations.
Put it another way, I don't believe you think Brexit is such a side issue that you would countenance cancelling it, which is what we would do if we were concerned about the state of the economy.
May will not take us into No Deal. It would be disastrous for the Party as well as the Country. She can only carry brinkmanship to a certain point. As we get closer to Brexit-Day the markets will worsen and she will come under colossal pressure to do something. There will be two options open to her - revoke or referendum. The EU has indicated that it would allow further time for either if necessary. This makes sense because it doesn't want No Deal either.
My own assessment is that a referendum would be the less painful route for her and the Government. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is nailed on, but 2.2 (6/5) on Betfair looks value to me. I'd make it odds on - about 1.75 (4/5) .
If we come to late March, with no Deal signed, she has the choice. If she takes us out with No Deal, then she has judged that to be the better choice, and she (and the Conservatives) will take the consequences of that decision.
The other decisions may be unpalatable - revoke A50, call a Deal-vs-Revoke referendum - but they exist. And, after 31 March 2019, they will have existed in hindsight as well, and she and the Conservatives will bear the responsibility for the decision made.
It will only happen if she judges the outcomes of the other two choices to be worse. And we know that her judgement will bear in mind the effects on her Party and maybe, arguably, more so than the effects on the country.
She's not helpless, she does have choices, and she isn't forced to choose No Deal if her Deal is lost. If we go out with No Deal, she'll be saying "Look at what you made me do," yes, but she would only have been "made" to do it due to unwillingness to choose one of the alternatives. Again, they may have been worse, but it does look to an outsider to the Conservatives that they are more "worse for her Party" than "worse for her country" and that she'll have chosen Party over country.
It is however a fact that the extreme wing of the Tory party is so off-the-scale that they cannot accept that some sort of Brexit is better for them than none. We have a government and it is the government's responsibility to get its proposals supported by its MPs.
No Deal is a risk they are quite willing to take to hang on to their intention to frustrate Brexit of any shade - even one as Brexit In Name Only as May's Plan.
In a strongly Remain-supporting House, the maths and remaining time-line are such that, quite simply, No Deal can only be stopped by Remainers agreeing to a very soft Brexit.
It could have killed growth by 4% or if I take Osbornes armageddon forecast we have done better by 8%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josias_Jessop
They are intensely fascinating characters, working as great engineers at the critical junction between canals and the first railways (or tramways). Indeed, the C&HPR is essentially a tramway built on canal principles to link two canals.
If possible, I'd love to read your article on the Wey and Arun - I don't know that much about it, never having walked it.
https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1073495272771252224
the UK problem has been timing. A lot of what Cameron wanted would now be listened to since half of Europe is demanding the same. He called the EUref about 12 months too early.