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http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2016/02/19/damian-mcbride-to-return-_n_9274824.html?1455904155&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067
THURSDAY
4.10pm The Prime Minister, fresh from seeing his son Elwen starring as a mouse in his school’s nativity play, departs from RAF Northolt in a small aircraft with his closest aides. The party experiences a bumpy landing in Brussels owing to turbulence – a foreshadowing of torrid talks to come.
6.40pm Cameron arrives at the EU Council’s Justus Lipsius building, where the summit is to be held.
7.25pm The PM meets France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel for 45 minutes of pre-summit talks. He is joined by William Hague, key European adviser Jon Cunliffe and chief of staff Ed Llewellyn. Aides emerge with faces like thunder, saying Sarkozy is refusing to acknowledge that Britain has any right to ask for concessions in a new fiscal union treaty.
8.10pm EU leaders sit down for a dinner of soup, cod, chocolate cake and ice cream. Each of the 27 speaks in turn. According to some sources, Sarkozy becomes so animated that at one point he has to be physically restrained. After dinner, the summit resumes.
FRIDAY
2.30am Cameron makes his main contribution to the discussion, insisting the protections Britain has requested for the City of London and the single market are ‘perfectly reasonable’. The PM later says ‘everyone else in the room’ was telling him ‘give up your national interests, and go along with what everyone wants’. At this point Cameron, reportedly banging the table, formally declares he cannot support the new EU-wide treaty.
3.30am Summit breaks as EU leaders consider what to do next.
4.48am Talks end with British veto of fiscal union plan.
5.08am Sarkozy gives press conference to announce regret at ‘unacceptable demands’ from Cameron.
6.19am Cameron tells press conference what was on offer from other EU leaders ‘was not in Britain’s interests, so I didn’t agree to it’.
6.50am Cameron finally goes to bed at British Embassy.
8.15am He orders a full English breakfast.
I have liked him on most of his policy briefs but he enemyises people quickly
He won't use it to try and topple Dave or undo the Cameroon project.
"Pro-EU Tory activists hail Cameron's deal... before it's done
The letter says "we fully support the deal the PM has negotiated which helps the UK secure a unique status in a reformed Europe" and suggests that the group has made its decision to back him already before the deal is done."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35615548
Parents think he is great.
There are more parents than teachers.
Gove is just about the worst person who could become Con leader if Con want to win the next GE - only Fox would be even worse.
Boris is the only person who could swing substantial votes behind Leave - and he would be an absolutely massive game-changer.
Noel Edmonds. So, Dave, £30m of benefits against £11bn in membership.
Deal, or no deal?
He does a very low-profile role in the campaign (virtually nothing) and then endorses Osborne after to "heal the party". And help Osborne sew it up, natch.
Or.. is that just what he's told Osborne and, loyalty notwithstanding, he seriously will campaign for Leave as the Right Thing To Do, with Boris or anyone else if necessary.
Don't know.
I love Gove but I realise he isn't an election winner.
Amongst the actual public, especially the Tory voting public, he is popular.
He has also been a fantastic Justice secretary.
That tells me that regardless of his two brains, he is too quick to make enemies to be a good PM or PM-candidate
But I have to confess I've never heard of most of the other authors people have mentioned and have never read Pratchett.
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving is also good.
The 3 novels by JG Farrell: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Hill Station are worth seeking out.
Perhaps we should now list those writers we think are overrated.
- Martin Amis
- Salman Rushdie
- Howard Jacobson - other than his first novel "Coming from Behind"(which made me laugh out loud on the tube) and his essays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnXoQeGnT4Q
Trump 28
Cruz 19
Rubio 15
Bush 10
Kasich 9
Carson 6
http://newsstand.clemson.edu/mediarelations/palmetto-poll-frequent-voters-in-south-carolina-favor-trump/
Assuming most new voters will vote just for Trump, it seems an easy victory for him, just like what all the other polls say.
We can make an estimation of his margin of victory based on turnout, low turnout means Trump wins by around 10, very high turnout and he might win by 20.
I'm not worried about whether particular political parties can heal post referendum though. I'm more concerned as to whether the country as a whole can heal post referendum (whichever way it goes). Gove will probably have that in mind too.
21 from the last two overs.
That'll teach them.
Two other things:
(1) He is a radical game-changing reformer - whether it's education or justice, he makes waves and changes, and for the best of motives
(2) There's something about his back story, journey and vision that I think could potentially be unleashed
If (and it's a big if) he could find a way to connect, he could be an inspiring leader. And Thatcher came back from an awful time as Education Secretary.
So I don't rule him out yet.
I liked Graham Greene when younger but haven't read him in years. I wonder what I'd make of him now.
https://twitter.com/Grassroots_Out/status/700589002894671873
Some of those people will try and use the referendum to try and undo that, Gove isn't in that number.
Love this map of city populations over their equivalent London population https://t.co/F2wg6u7Vb6
At Grassroots Out rally at QE2 rally. Packed. Who is the special guest? https://t.co/QyvQGj2T3M
1500
That's a small minority.
It's not what I think, or Marquee Mark or countless others.
Your dislike of that cohort is influencing you, I think.
What he would give Leave is some real intellectual heft.
Some leavers (not you) come accross as a bunch of angry white men obsessed about immigration and Muslims that puts off a lot of voters.
He will make the elegant and intellectual case on the grounds of sovereignty etc that will appeal to the voters needed to win it for Leave.
15 from the last over.
I doubt it will do him any good and as has been much rehearsed, he ain't going to be PM any time soon but dear god we need politicians like him.
Perhaps the PM, through gritted teeth, or perhaps HMQ herself could reach into the tightly locked box of hereditary peerages and make him a viscount or something. Just to go to the Lords as a life peer Lord Gove of Integrity would seem woefully inadequate.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/6942957/This-man-just-made-a-Cadburys-Creme-Scotch-Egg-and-its-blowing-peoples-minds.html
Well that match was way more interesting than three hours of EU debate.
There is no route to victory for leave that doesn't involve winning > 50% of the labour vote.
He's rushing for no good reason. This isn't about him. It's about the country. And he needs to do this properly.
A bit like the Test in Abu Dhabi when I left the ground at lunch and there were eight wickets in the afternoon session to set up an England chase. But it was still a draw!
The reality is Cameron can't get anything significant now, nor in 18 months.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/02/is-michael-gove-about-to-back-out/
And that's assuming equal turnout. In reality, each parties' vote will split three ways: Leave, Remain and abstain.
It seems his memory of Chancellors only extends back as far as Gordon Brown.
" Osborne has been a victim of his own success in this. I remember when a Chancellor who got within £5bn of his forecast would be seriously chuffed with himself. Osborne, in contrast, has got absurdly close. He clearly fiddles it and will no doubt do so again. "
Can anyone hand on heart say that this Tory government isn't a massive fu*king embarrassment?
That is the challenge, as every politician knows. For the good of the UK is nothing you can drop on your foot. Winning a negotiation, even if it is to get the 27 to half-promise they won't disallow 3 o'clock Premier League kick-offs for three years, is a victory and will be spun to the public as such.
Rude - he said that all teachers were opposed to the good teaching of children.
Arrogant - he believed he knew more about education than teachers because he had read some reports on the subjects from other people, most of whom were not teachers.
Dishonest - he said that we were opposed to him because we are naturally stubborn and lazy, when in reality we were opposed to the rushed nature of his changes and the lackadaisical way he was implementing them (see Academy chains collapsing, no Maths GCSE spec six months before lessons start, record attrition rates among NQTs...)
He began with a huge groundswell of optimism and support among teachers.* Have you forgotten that a majority of my profession voted for him in 2010? And that a much larger majority voted Labour in 2015? Gove's personality was the key driver of that change. Had he worked with teachers, to modify his ideas to reflect this funny thing called reality, the fact that he is intelligent and genuinely does want to give children a great education would have given him a chance to be a truly great Education secretary - perhaps the only truly great one. He threw it away out of a personal need to insult and belittle. What an idiot.
It is disturbing to note that some people are not paying careful attention to his record as Lord Chancellor either - legal aid fiascoes, anyone? Managing to alienate all solicitors and judges by pettiness and name calling? He does not change, no matter what his job.
A Conservative party led by Gove would make the current disaster under Jihadi Jez look like a teddy bears' picnic. And it could well deliver the Bearded Wonder into government.
*It should be noted, one of his first actions, in getting Wilshaw to head OFSTED, was also hugely popular with teachers and seen as a first step into turning the hydra that is OFSTED into something vaguely useful. Wilshaw has however turned out to be an even bigger disaster than Gove, and OFSTED ratings now bear very little resemblance to the actual performance of a school.
If GoveLeave is true, then I am saddened. He is a rational creature and I assume he has arrived at his decision after deliberation and for what he considers to be the right reasons. I understand he is unpopular but that should have no bearing on the question of whether LEAVE or REMAIN is the right choice. BorisLeave would come with a nasty aftertaste of pandering and dissembling, but GoveLeave does not: intellectually, I prefer the latter to the former. If true, a sad day for REMAIN.