Brexit process

[fuzzy]

Vote Brexit party then.

Or modern SDP

[Lord Beria3]

Moving on from UK politics, the is an interesting article...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... al-brexit/

Three senior EU sources confirmed that Ireland was being forced to work with the European Commission’s Task Force 50 to lay out detailed plans on customs controls, tariff collections and checks on plant and animal products.

The European Commission has made clear that it will require Ireland to defend the integrity of the EU single market and will not provide legal exemptions on required checks.

Although customs checks and paperwork can be filled in away from the immediate border, phytosanitary checks on animal and plant products must be done close to the border at registered Border Inspection Posts (BIPs).

Officials on both sides are clear that even a “light touch� and electronic schemes will require policing and inspections that will be politically sensitive in border areas. Customs checks still require infrastructure.

The European Commission has backed Dublin, promising in its recent no-deal planning notices that it will make UK cooperation on the Irish border a “precondition� for agreeing to any discussion on the future relationship in the event of a no deal.

A report by Northern Ireland’s Department for the Economy released last week warned that, given the positions of both sides “Ireland will have to establish BIPs which are closer to the border� in the event of a no deal.

It's is unlikely but not impossible that given the spectre of no-deal the Irish will agree to a time limited 5/7 year backstop.

That might be enough to get a revamped deal across Parliament given that a group of pro-Brexit Labour MP's are now talking about backing a Brexit deal.

A bloc of 26 Labour MPs in Brexit-supporting areas could vote for a withdrawal deal brought forward by the next Tory prime minister, one of the group has said.

Caroline Flint urged the next Tory prime minister, whether it is Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt, to reach out to Labour MPs as they will have to rally parliamentary support around an exit deal to make Brexit happen.

There is a narrow path towards an orderly Brexit outcome but I stress that it is not the most likely outcome in my opinion.

Regarding Boris recent travails, Eurointelligence have a good take on it...

This morning we can continue playing our favourite news headline game of last week, and boldly state: something that was never going to bring down Boris Johnson is now not bringing down Boris Johnson. The apartment row affair is not the intruding event.

The Tory party members have not changed their views on the two candidates. If you oppose Johnson, you oppose him more. But we have yet to hear someone say that they had supported Johnson, and now support Jeremy Hunt. Brexit is the bigger issue. Hunt voted Remain. Johnson voted Leave. People got that. It isn't as though the idea of a Remainer trying to deliver Brexit hasn’t been tried.

We are very much reminded of the "grab-them-by-the-pussy" tape during the 2016 US presidential election campaign. That was exactly one month before the elections. Donald Trump ended up winning a majority among white women. Much of journalism on both sides of the Atlantic has not quite come to terms with the fast-moving 21st century. They are still trapped in the 1980s and 1990s, when incidents such as these would have finished off the respective candidates.

In the UK, Brexit has been such a dominant issue that Conservative voters would probably forgive their favourite candidate a lot more. Johnson needs to stay out of jail. Other than that, the weekend's intruding scandal is not such a big deal.

Edited - KN to put URL in function box

[Lord Beria3]

Eurointeligence latest...

Why the parliamentary timetable will play into the hands of Johnson

The girlfriend affair has predictably blown over, and we are mercifully back to the real issues. The BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuensberg, elicited two interesting statements from her interview last night with Boris Johnson, both implausible at first sight: that once he becomes prime minister, he believes the EU would be ready to re-negotiate. And if not, the UK parliament would support a no-deal Brexit.

It is easy to dismiss such bold claims out of hand, just as easy as it is for him to make them. The EU has tied itself to a refusal to re-negotiate. We don’t think this is a bluff. And parliamentary majorities are what they are.

But beware of political dynamics - and of political timetables.

One thing we simply do not know is what the EU will do when confronted with the real possibility of a no-deal. That hasn’t happened yet. It is one thing to say that you don’t renegotiate under a hypothetical scenario, another thing is to stick it out and actually let it happen. EU leaders might want to consider what could happen if no-deal isn’t the disaster everybody has been predicting. Could that not encourage eurosceptics elsewhere? For the EU, no-deal Brexit has worked extremely well as a scare story. But do we really want to find out and create facts? 

Also consider the timing. It is quite possible that the EU top jobs debate may not have been resolved by early October. An outgoing European Commission and an otherwise preoccupied European Council would have to deal with a no-deal Brexit.

And now consider the UK political timetable: the results of the Tory leadership elections are due on July 22. We assume the new prime minister will take office on July 23 or 24. The UK government yesterday set July 25 as the official start of the parliamentary holidays. The Labour Party still wants to squeeze in a vote of no-confidence before. We think this is unlikely to happen, and if it is, it is unlikely to succeed. Tory MPs will want to give Johnson an opportunity to renegotiate. 

So the new prime minister will enjoy six parliament-free weeks before having to make a positive decision on Brexit. Can he entice the EU to renegotiate on the substance of the treaty? Or will he be content with a cosmetic change? Will he really endorse a no-deal Brexit when he realises that none of the above are feasible? 

We would urge readers to accept that the answers to some of these questions are more open than they appear. Six weeks can be a long time in politics, especially under a new leader.

What is not going to change, of course, are the parliamentary majorities. The Tories and the DUP have a majority of three, soon possibly down two, after a by-election in Wales. 

Framing the question as deal vs no deal will only work if he gets his entire party to support the deal - and he will need to resort to extreme pressure to do so. If the Tories unite, and the choice is put as deal-vs-no-deal we would assume that there are enough Labour rebels to support it. 

What about no-deal? We believe that Kenneth Clarke and Dominic Grieve are ready to sacrifice their political careers on a matter of principle. The House of Commons could vote to revoke Brexit or initiate legislation for a second referendum. But in doing so it would probably trigger an election, in which MPs would have to justify their position before their voters immediately afterwards.

[Little John]

He won't need to get the entire Tory party to unite. There are now at least 25 Labour MPs who, I think, it is increasingly likely will vote to get a form of Brexit over the line that their own heartland constituents will not boot them out of office for.

As timescales are narrowing, push is coming to shove and MP's minds are being focused on their own personal political mortality.

[Lord Beria3]

The WSWS take on this...

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/0 ... n-j25.html

The Guardian’s release of recordings exposing a row by Boris Johnson with his partner Carrie Symonds has spearheaded a massive effort in recent days to prevent him succeeding Theresa May as UK prime minister. The political firestorm has united pro-Remain and soft-Brexit factions of the ruling class who oppose Johnson’s threat to leave the European Union (EU) on October 31 without a deal if necessary.

Johnson was runaway favourite to replace May in a contest against his “soft-Brexit� rival, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. But his domestic dispute early Friday morning with Symonds, a former Conservative Party communications chief, was taped by a pro-Remain neighbour, Tom Penn.

Despite the fulminations of the right-wing media about a “lefty� plot, the goal of the Remainers is to maintain vital access to the Single European Market and Custom’s Union. They fear that Johnson will tie the UK too closely to the US, at a time when Trump and Bannon’s “America First� agenda seeks the break-up of the EU—and have neither the intention nor the possibility of compensating the UK for such a massive loss of trade.

Interesting analysis as always.

[kenneal - lagger]

Or a load of left wing anti Brexit rubbish?

[Lord Beria3]

They are neither pro or anti Brexit.

The wsws want a global marxist world government.

[Little John]

They are neither pro or anti Brexit.

The wsws want a global marxist world government.

That sounds like they are Trotskyists.

Trots want a borderless world in order to implement their dream of a unified global socialism. Consequently, a number of them see transnational organizations like the EU as (ultimately dispensable) stepping stones along the way to such a socialist world government.

Trotskyists are ideologically possessed lunatics

[UndercoverElephant]

The truly bizarre thing about this situation is that we are no closer to knowing, in a collective sense, how this is going to end. Some people are very confident of what won't happen, but there's no consensus (here, or at any level, in media or government). There are leave voters who think brexit is very unlikely to happen, and remain voters who think it is almost certain. At some point we are surely going to reach some sort of pivotal moment, when various actors are forced to play their best or last-ditch cards, and we will find out how the deadlock will be broken.

To me, it still looks like the key question is whether the tory anti-no-dealers are willing to bring down their own government to stop no deal, and I remain convinced that they are, which would seem to guarantee a general election, which I believe that the tories/BXP will lose. But I also have a gut feeling that there are going to be some major unexpected twists, and have not ruled out Hunt becoming PM. And I am not at all sure what he will do if that happens.

[Little John]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... ublic.html

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: The treatment of Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds, coupled with the behaviour of their neighbours, shows we are becoming a banana republic

By Richard Littlejohn for the Daily Mail

Just when you think the squalid Stop Brexit circus can’t sink any lower, a young woman is driven from her home for the crime of living with Boris Johnson.

Step back from the feeding frenzy and consider the kind of country we now live in.

Three years after the British people took part in the greatest democratic exercise in our history, the man who led the Leave campaign, the front-runner to become our next Prime Minister, a former Foreign Secretary and two-term Mayor of London, is forced into hiding.

Demonstrators picket the flat he has been sharing with Carrie Symonds. The street is plastered with anti-Boris, anti-Brexit posters. Johnson is abused in the street and reported to the police by agitprop neighbours who record a domestic spat through the walls and leak it to an extreme Left-wing newspaper.

You might expect the Establishment to rally round their beleaguered parliamentary colleague — at the very least demanding that Scotland Yard provides round-the-clock protection for the couple.

Far from it. Their silence is deafening. Most of them are revelling in Johnson’s discomfort and subjecting him to synchronised character assassination.

Having failed, thus far, to destroy Brexit and overturn the democratically expressed wishes of the British people, they are now determined to destroy the People’s Choice to become PM.

If this was happening in a third-world banana republic, the bien pensant political class would be outraged. There would be calls for UN action, everything from sanctions to military intervention.

But in Britain 2019, this is just business as usual. Ever since the failure of Project Fear to prevent us voting to leave the EU, the Establishment have moved heaven and earth to stop it happening.

Time and again, they have demonstrated that they don’t believe in democracy, when it doesn’t deliver the right result.

First we were told they would respect the result of the referendum. Then both main parties stood in a General Election on a promise to implement Brexit, garnering 80 per cent of the vote.

Neither the Tories nor Labour had any intention of keeping their promise. With the connivance of the courts and the despicable pipsqueak Speaker Jean-Claude Bercow, the vast majority of MPs have contrived to delay and derail Brexit indefinitely.

As I have written before, there may not be tanks on the streets but be in no doubt: what we have been witnessing over the past three years is a concerted coup against the British people. We were initially told we were too stupid to know what we were voting for.

Then we were bombarded with sophistry about ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Brexit, ‘crashing out without a deal’, the Northern Ireland ‘backstop’, blah, blah, blah.

When Theresa May failed multiple times even to get hardline Remainers to back her dismal, defeatist ‘Withdrawal Agreement’, the guaranteed departure date of March 31 was arbitrarily torn up.

Having failed to prevent Boris Johnson becoming one of the final two names put to the Tory membership as May’s successor, the opponents of Brexit are straining every sinew to stop him winning.

They’re now throwing their weight behind bland Jeremy Hunt, the Manchurian Candidate, a brainwashed Remainer currently posing as a born-again Brexiteer.

With Boris at bay, Hunt turned up in Aberdeen, on the bridge of a fishing boat, clutching a can of Irn-Bru and a packet of fish and chips. Presumably, this stunt had been set up for Aberdeen boy Michael Gove. But when former Brexiteer Gove failed to make the cut, rather than waste a photo-op they gave it to Hunt instead.

Later, he joined in the character assassination, accusing Boris of cowardice. It’s a charge repeated everywhere in a plethora of ‘The Boris Who Knows Me’ pieces in all newspapers. The accusation is only because Boris refuses to play the game by the Remainers’ rules and won’t answer questions about his private life.

Why should he? Would smug Hunt like every cross word between him and Mrs Hunt smeared all over the front pages?

Would the hypocritical, holier-than-thou Guardian have published a transcript of an alleged shouting match between Jeremy Corbyn and his missus? And would the BBC have amplified it all weekend? What do you think?

This is the same Guardian which condemned tabloid reporters for listening in on celebrities’ voicemails and delighted when some were prosecuted. What’s the difference between bugging a phone and bugging a home?

We know Boris can be his own worst enemy. His shambolic private life is pretty much an open book, but still it hasn’t stopped people from voting for him.

As for accusations of cowardice, he has to suffer more abuse than any politician bar Nigel Farage. Yet until now he has insisted on cycling and walking in London without a bodyguard.

No, Boris is in the crosshairs because he is the last best hope of Brexit ever happening. If they can’t prevent him winning, they are even prepared to collapse Parliament the day he moves into No 10.

Politics is a bloodsport, but this is one step beyond.

Remoaners such as Bercow, Grieve, Soubry, Rudd and most of the British Establishment might just as well be standing on Carrie Symonds’s doorstep alongside the Class War rabble.

They have created the poisonous climate in which such intimidation is now commonplace. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Project Fear is one thing. Forcing a blameless young woman to live in genuine fear is quite another.

[UndercoverElephant]

Are you serious, Little John? This is the same paper that will print any crap it can think of about Jeremy Corbyn. Or do you now condone that double standard?

[fuzzy]

Yes I winced when I saw the choice

As the old lush JW points out, the design of the tory dog and pony show is to announce a 'leader' 3 days before the MP summer holidays lasting until 3rd september - nice work etc..

https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2019/06/22 ... he-agenda/

https://off-guardian.org/2019/06/24/bor ... eneath-us/

[adam2]

Please remain on topic and at least somewhat polite.
Personal insults and quotes thereof and replies thereto will be deleted without notice or consultation.
If you consider that a post contains a personal insult to yourself, please report this and I will consider deleting it.

I can not of course promise to delete every post that upsets someone.

Also when replying POLITLY to a post please give the USER NAME of the member to whom you are replying.
Please do not give the persons real name, this is for two reasons.
Firstly not everyone knows the real name of the member concerned and confusion can be spread if some replies use the user name and others use the actual name.
Secondly many members choose not to use their real name and this should be respected.

[Little John]

UE has posted his first name on here several times in connection with his trade as a forager and as a writer.

So, I will have to write it again.

UE, the truth is I like you based upon all of our interactions both here and elsewhere. However, my problem is, notwithstanding the admittedly regrettably belligerent tone I may have employed of late, I do actually mean every thing I have written.

So far as I am concerned, you have indeed, adopted and accommodated one of the bourgeois anti-Brexit narratives. Which is to say, anti-democratic narratives. Namely, "...Brexit is just so hard... the powers that be are going to do whatever is necessary to stop it... therefore, we should just accept its not going to happen..." etc etc etc.

There are, of course, more overtly anti-Brexit narratives. But, they are all antidemocratic narratives.

This really is an existential moment. It's time to pick a side. I mean properly pick a side. It is no longer morally or politically tenable to merely "observe". That, in itself, is a political position. This is about more than the EU and it certainly is about more than economics. It is even about more than party politics. It is about who rules us and by what authority. It is about fighting to hold onto the single most revolutionary tool that millions of no-marks like me have to hold the bastards to account, however imperfect that tool may be in practice.

On the basis of all of the above and given I am not going to change my mind and the fact I do not want to fall out with you anymore than has already occurred UE, I am going to give this place a break for a bit. Probably up till October or thereabouts.

My taking a break has not been instigated by you.

It has been instigated by me.

[UndercoverElephant]

UE has posted his first name on here several times in connection with his trade as a forager and as a writer.

So, I will have to write it again.

UE, the truth is I like you based upon all of our interactions both here and elsewhere. However, my problem is, notwithstanding the admittedly regrettably belligerent tone I may have employed of late, I do actually mean every thing I have written.

So far as I am concerned, you have indeed, adopted and accommodated one of the bourgeois anti-Brexit narratives. Which is to say, anti-democratic narratives. Namely, "...Brexit is just so hard... the powers that be are going to do whatever is necessary to stop it... therefore, we should just accept its not going to happen..." etc etc etc.

Except this is total bollocks, I have never, not once, said or implied "we should just accept it's not going to happen". Not once.

This really is an existential moment. It's time to pick a side. I mean properly pick a side. It is no longer morally or politically tenable to merely "observe".

I have picked a side. I am anti-tory, and I have every right to pick that side rather than prioritising brexit.