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*grudging standing ovation for @PrivateEyeNews* pic.twitter.com/5fGCLStlGf
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https://twitter.com/Nick_Pettigrew/status/910120997826781186
Is 2.5 still value, d'you think?
Edited extra bit: Ladbrokes also has 3.75 for him to not be FS on 25 September.
The accursed power which stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and Champagne, and Bridge)
Broke - and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).
He's still waiting...
My suggestion would be that, in the unlikely event of us not having a short more of the same transition deal, we'd go zero tariffs/importer certification on all foods. Food riots are not going to happen.
"This Hall has hosted many events over the past 900 years. In recent times only a few international figures - Charles de Gaulle, Nelson Mandela, Pope Benedict XVI and Barack Obama - have spoken here. Today Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will become the first figure other than a Head of State, the first woman from abroad and the first citizen of Asia to do so.
This is not a break from precedent without a purpose. The courage of our guest is legendary. She has withstood the unimaginable suffering of separation from her family and her people with a dignity, fortitude and resolve which most of us can barely conceive. Her connections with the United Kingdom, reinforced in Oxford yesterday, are intimate. She has been the symbol of resistance to a regime which even in an imperfect world has been exceptional in its barbarity. As the UN has documented, and from three trips to Burma's borders I can myself attest, this is a cabal guilty of rape as a weapon of war, extra-judicial killings, compulsory relocation, forced labour, deployment of child soldiers, use of human minesweepers, incarceration of opponents in unspeakable conditions, destruction of villages, obstruction of aid and excruciating torture. Burma has become a beautiful but benighted land where fear runs through society like blood flowing through veins. One woman has now defied a dictatorship of such depravity for two decades. That is why Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a leader and a stateswoman, is here with us this afternoon.
However, there is room for cautious optimism. The recent election to Parliament of our guest, accompanied by 42 of her colleagues, and the release of many political prisoners are welcome signs of reform. We earnestly hope that further, and fundamental, reform will ultimately lead to the freedom, democracy and rule of law which we have so long enjoyed and the people of Burma have too long been denied. There is an Asian saying that a journey of a thousand miles must start with a single step. We are proud that one such step will be taken in this Parliament today.
Parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege to welcome the conscience of a country and a heroine for humanity, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi."
http://www.johnbercow.co.uk/content/speakers-address-daw-aung-san-suu-kyi
Things might get a tad "embarrassing" if she doesn't start towing the line soon...
Mmmm - he didn't plan his post-Brexit ascension so well.
Boris as leader after Cameron, fighting a post-Remain GE in 2020: Tory Maj nailed on.
Boris as leader after Cameron, fighting a post-Leave GE in 2017: Tory Maj probable.
Boris as leader after May, fighting a peri-Brexit GE in 2018/19/20: PM Corbyn probable.
We're well into the point of diminishing returns... but who can do better?
It would set him up for Tory conference, or make him a pariah, and it's difficult to know what the reaction would be. Would he really want to do it before, or actually during (for even more drama) or just after?
That said, I can also believe the rumours that it's his enemies putting it about that he's going to resign by the end of the week, forcing him to put up or shut up.
In which case, he will do neither.
I quite like Boris as a person. He provides some much-needed light relief in politics. But I'm far from sure that someone who wants the job quite as much as he does, that has shown so little competence in the roles he has had, and who was so spectacularly shafted the previous time he went for the top job, should be allowed another chance.
I'm also far from sure he's up to it. Then again, there are not too many potential candidates on the Conservative benches who are ...
Personally, I think he can't resist playing politics (with a small "p") and that will prevent him ever getting to the top.
How do we know the military aren't pulling the strings and trying to soil her name?
Gove might be the same. I'm unsure he really wants the top job, but the talk of the potential gives him a certain amount of power and influence within and outwith the party.
On the other hand, I get the impression that BoJo really wants the top job.
#boris4PM
Despite the twisting of the historical facts yesterday, Remainers doom mongering about Brexit forget that we don't tend to surrender to bullying by third parties...
For the military, she's acting as a lightning rod for international condemnation.
But at the end of the day, if you are the leader then you are responsible. It is happening in her name. If she cannot control what her own military is doing, she should just resign and make it clear that she has no control.
It's perfectly possible that she becomes the first recipient of the peace prize to appear at the Hague.
As Syria/Iraq/Libya has taught us, even very bad situations can become much worse.
May is not going for a Swiss style Brexit, but a Canada Plus one. I.e. Exactly as elucidated in Lancaster House speech.
Boris is putting down his red lines to demonstrate a) he is influential and b) Hammond (surely his main rival for the leadership, now) is less so
He is good at the communications, the vision the big picture, not so keen on the detail.
If he is good or bad would be decided by the people he places in important positions who will implement policy, and how they are allowed to do so.
If he is going to be hands on, micromanage and detail obsessed, then forget it, that isn't him.
In other words, kicking the can down the road and saving the real negotiations on the deal to take effect post GE2022 for later.
This seems to me a very good deal from the EU's point of view. What incentive will they have to agree a final settlement with the UK - better just to let the "transitional arrangement" continue as long as possible. And the UK will still face an economic cliff edge if it wants out.
Agreed. As Samual Pepys once said, 'A man does well when he rids himself of a turd'
She is morally complicit, even if she isn't there with a machete
We're not going there. It would be a reversal of everything done so far.
Best not to be involved any further with the current mess, even though you were pivotal in creating it.
There are only two options regarding what May was or is going to say in her speech. If she was going to say everything that Boris wanted to hear then right now she will need to be frantically rewriting her speech or it will seem like she has surrendered to him. If she was not going to say what he wanted to hear then she is Dan sure not going to change it now or again she will appear (rightly) to be surrendering to him.
This is surely a no-win situation for Boris.
Gove said before the referendum that it would spark "the democratic liberation of a whole continent" and Boris said that we would speak for "hundreds of millions of people around Europe who agree with us but who currently have no voice".
We picked a fight that we are inevitably going to lose.
But he flounced off to the Standard and went insane.
Instead, he tried to bribe and threaten his own colleagues, whilst using his position to beat his own voters, activists, members with a stick in an attempt to show other non-Tory voters he was secretly on their side.
Yet they made such a mess of the election that George would probably be PM by now if he had just waited..
If an EU member state whose people shared a national identity strongly wished to secede from the EU in future, the fact that it might be legally, constitutionally,or economically, extremely difficult to do so would not stop them from doing so, if they wished to do so.
The only option would be for the EU to resist it by force (something williamglenn would no doubt strongly approve of) or, the other softer approach, is to stop it happening in the first place by gradually breaking down national identities by promoting regional and European ones at their expense.
Something the EU has been pursuing as subsidiary policy for years, despite Europhiles insisting that's wrong and claiming anyone who thinks otherwise is barking.
I think half of his bitterness comes from the fact that he knows he screwed up leaving parliament.
But, that's not a huge demographic.
https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/910161767233458176
The EFTA states aren't in the EU, and not subject to the supposedly egregious whims of the ECJ. I mean ask Richard Tyndall for heaven's sake. He would be happy for us to go EEA/EFTA (which I appreciate logistically might not be possible) and if there's anyone there who sees sovereignty-eating monsters behind the sofa, it's him.
We could leave the EU and be EFTA/EEA and we would not be in the EU. To say it is a "betrayal of the referendum result" is, I'm afraid, wishful thinking/fantasy on your part (unless you have asked all 34-odd million voters about it).
That said I agree with the rest of your posting.
Are we losing it?
Would you execute everyone, or only the ringleaders?
It moves them to member states, much more akin to (you guessed it) US States, but with less power.