UK Politics: Winter of Discontent

[Slick Mongoose]

Anyone with half a brain cell knew that already.

[lacuna]

On 1/19/2018 at 9:52 PM, Slick Mongoose said:

Anyone with half a brain cell knew that already.

"Hey, I'm trying real hard, ok?"

Boris' half a brain cell, probably.

[Which Tyler]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42829555

Trump is prepared to apologise for retweeting those racist Britain First stuff a few weeks ago.
He hasn't, but he is prepared to... If Piers Morgan tells him that Britain First are bad people... which he already has, along with just about everyone else in Britain

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42829555

Trump is prepared to apologise for retweeting those racist Britain First stuff a few weeks ago.
He hasn't, but he is prepared to... If Piers Morgan tells him that Britain First are bad people... which he already has, along with just about everyone else in Britain

I doubt he does it. 

On the downside in today's news, you won't be able to throw rotting fruit at him if he comes by to say hello.

[Which Tyler]

Wanna bet?

[Werthead]

Sounds like Labour are having a crash summit to work out a more cohesive Brexit policy that opens some air between them and the Tories.

However, it doesn't sound too different so far. The Tories are talking about staying in/setting up a customers union with the EU (not necessarily the formal EU Customs Union itself) and Labour sound like they are saying the same thing. The breakthrough will be if they can get Corbyn to commit to either saying 100% that Britain should stay part of the customs union and single market or back out and negotiate a new approach.

[Which Tyler]

Why would he commit to anything now? Labour aren't in power, they don't have to have well defined policies ready to put into practice straight away. We're supposedly 4 years from the next time that's necessary, and a lot can change in that.

Currently, they need some basic ideas, some principals and some sketches for viability.

They can have more worked out in the background, but they're not in power, they don't get to propose stuff or conduct negotiations; they get to keep their powder dry.

[mormont]

I would suggest that if Corbyn's plan is to reveal his Brexit policy in four years' time, he may find its reception a touch disappointing.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

3 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

Why would he commit to anything now? Labour aren't in power, they don't have to have well defined policies ready to put into practice straight away. We're supposedly 4 years from the next time that's necessary, and a lot can change in that.

Well, a majority of Labour voters is pro remain (and from what I can tell, that's particularly true for the younger voters). And they caught on to Corbyn's Captain Soundbite routine. So they would like to hear some reassuring words, that Corbyn will do his best to mitigate the(perceived)  damage for them. So Labour is kinda forced to clarify its position, before they turn to the real Remain parties. The SNP is (at least imo) doing a pretty good job of beating Labour with that stick.

3 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

They can have more worked out in the background, but they're not in power, they don't get to propose stuff or conduct negotiations; they get to keep their powder dry.

Possible, but not probable. Labour have been all over the place with their position, depending on who you ask. Starmer vs. Corbyn vs. Ummuna. And that's not really backbenchers squabbling.

[Which Tyler]

But by the time Labour get to enact any policy, Brexit will be finished.

They're under no obligation to have a strategy for negotiation, and even less to tell everyone what it would be.

[Denvek]

But they are supposed to be the Official Opposition, and part of that includes having a clear position on important policies. It's not always enough to say the government are doing it wrong - sometimes you need to be able to say what you would do instead.

[mormont]

4 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

But by the time Labour get to enact any policy, Brexit will be finished.

So it's fine for them to simply duck the biggest political question of the last forty years?

[Werthead]

Quote

 

But by the time Labour get to enact any policy, Brexit will be finished.

They're under no obligation to have a strategy for negotiation, and even less to tell everyone what it would be.

 

The risk of a governmental collapse and a snap election remains real (although not inevitable), so Labour really need to have a clear position if that takes place. Being caught floundering and spending several weeks of an election campaign working out what their Brexit position actually is, is no help to anyone, least of all Labour themselves.

[polishgenius]

Not to mention, quite simply, Corbyn became popular in large part because people felt he's listening to them. On many issues he still does, but on Brexit, he's insistently sticking his fingers in his ears and going LALALALALALA and the longer he does it the longer he erodes trust, and the perception of trust is more important to him than to the average politician.
I'm not saying he needs to turn around and install a platform of being pro-remain, even though I'd quite like it if he did, but he and Labour must clearly and decisively set out what their position is and how it's better than what the Tories would offer, if only to actually put pressure on them.

[Werthead]

Bit of an odd week. The Tories won't quite pull the trigger on imploding altogether, but that means we're just getting tons of news stories every single week about the Tories not quite pulling the trigger on imploding altogether. It's mind-numbingly tedious. Meanwhile, May goes to China to prostrate herself and beg for scraps from Beijing's table, the Brexit ministers are screeching about how mean the EU are (which on past form they'll do for another few weeks and then fully capitulate to the EU's position and afterwards say it was a fair deal) and Jacob Rees-Mogg keeps going on television and having his opinion sought as if it is in anyway interesting or relevant (which is at least preferable to Farage).

I will say that JR-M is at least consistent in stepping up to people (even much bigger and shouty ones) and being willing to engage in them with a debate rather than running off. 

[williamjm]

On 03/02/2018 at 0:30 PM, Werthead said:

Bit of an odd week. The Tories won't quite pull the trigger on imploding altogether, but that means we're just getting tons of news stories every single week about the Tories not quite pulling the trigger on imploding altogether. It's mind-numbingly tedious.

The latest story suggests a plot to install a so-called 'dream team' of Boris as PM, Gove as Deputy PM and Rees-Mogg as Chancellor, which is a horrible prospect. How the Brexiteers think handing all the key positions to people on one wing of the party is going to help solve the deep divisions in the Tory party wasn't explained.

[Werthead]

Matthew Parris on good form: 

Quote

 

Sometimes, the mask slips. In the Commons this week, Jacob Rees-Mogg, famously the gentleman, slandered a studious and respected think-tanker and some identifiable Treasury officials. He did this by repeating a piece of hearsay, echoing it back to the colleague he’d heard it from, so that parliament and the public could hear it too. Mr Rees-Mogg’s question showed signs of careful preparation and there will be speculation that the pair (the colleague was a minister) had colluded in this exchange. Perhaps. The involuntary wince on the face of the Brexit secretary David Davis spoke volumes.

The story was entirely false. The House has now heard an apology from Rees-Mogg’s ministerial colleague. But from Gentleman Jake? From the man who published the story? Only slippery evasion.

In parliament on Thursday Rees-Mogg asked Steve Baker, a junior Brexit minister, a question. Would Baker confirm that Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, had told Baker over lunch that Treasury officials “had deliberately developed an impact assessment model to show that all options other than staying in the customs union were bad, and that officials intended to use this to influence policy”.

From the dispatch box Baker replied. This was “essentially correct”. He fumbled as Labour opponents challenged him, and said he was only confirming that he had heard the allegation. He added that it would be “extraordinary” if true.

Hours later, Prospect magazine, which had hosted the lunch, posted the audio recording. Mr Grant had said no such thing. Yesterday morning Baker apologised. Rees-Mogg has not.

He should. Instead he issued a volley of irritable tweets last night suggesting (incorrectly) that Treasury officials would have been breaking the rules if they talked to research institutes, unless bidden by ministers. Senior civil servants talk routinely to research institutes; it’s their job. He then suggested the chancellor may have been freelancing. One more person to whom he now owes an apology.

And the incident is revealing. Wrong-footed, his good manners depart and snarls break through the politesse. His cloak of courtesy slipping so easily on and off his shoulders, Rees-Mogg deserves the writer Robert Harris’s appraisal, “a barmaid’s idea of a gentleman”. Barmaids deserve better, though. They see through men more easily than the eager young Tory boys of the ConservativeHome website.

It’s revealing, too, about the Brexit ultras: so blinded by zealotry as to think it even remotely likely that senior civil servants would cook the figures; so blinded by zealotry as not even to check with the alleged source of the story — but instead to take a flyer with the facts and the proprieties in the cause of some supposed greater good: Brexit.

With a complicit prime minister and a supine cabinet trailing in its wake, Europhobia — this mutant gene in the Conservative body politic now spreading its cancer through the whole government — is moving from idiocy to dishonesty.

There were scrupulous assessments, said ministers, of the impact of Brexit on the British economy. Then they didn’t exist. Then they did, and would be published. This proved a bag of wind, scrabbled together, vacuous. Then it emerged via the Buzzfeed website that the Treasury had indeed done some careful work; and some was leaked. Then ministers said the work was incomplete and hadn’t been signed off by ministers and didn’t represent government thinking and wouldn’t be given to MPs — and anyway they could see it once negotiations were complete (bejesus). Then MPs insisted on seeing it, so ministers said it would be handed over — but only to Hilary Benn, Labour chairman of the Brexit committee.

Oh for pity’s sake. If you’re going to set a nation on a daring but risky course, you examine the options — of course you do. You do the cost-benefit analyses — that’s what civil servants are for. Some of the reports will describe costs. How could it be otherwise? There is every reason why ministers should have wanted these studies, no reason to be ashamed they exist, and every reason to be open about both the process and the results. If you believe in Brexit, where’s the shame in acknowledging that there are costs and uncertainties and you wanted to know and face up to them? You then add that civil servants are naturally precise about costs but cautious about benefits, but that you can see the bigger, brighter picture.

So why all the furtiveness? “Disingenuous” doesn’t do it justice. This is fraud.

Isn’t it now clear that the government doesn’t believe in what it’s doing, can’t even decide how to do it, hasn’t the guts to say so, and is trying to creep forward under cover of fog, wretchedly hoping something will turn up? If Theresa May and her cabinet were a prisoner in the dock, mumbling and stumbling, avoiding our eyes, and under pressure dribbling out banalities, repetitions and evasions, the jury would need about thirty seconds to decide. Guilt is all over the pages of this contemptible Tory story. They know (most of them) that the referendum placed voters in an impossible position. They know that, narrowly, the voters made a mistake. They can see this is becoming plain. They know — the majority that are not zealots — that our party is now acting against the interests of our country. And nobody has the spine to say so. They speak to us, this sane majority of Tory backbenchers and ministers, like hostages with a gun to their head telling the world that everything’s OK. And the gun is being held by perhaps fewer than fifty zealots: about a sixth of them.

Eden lied about Suez and his government concealed its purpose; but he believed in that purpose and believed it to be in the national interest. Blair dissimulated about Iraq and his government used dark arts to clear its path. But he believed in the adventure and believed it to be in the national interest.

Brexit is worse. The means are the same as with Suez and Iraq but half the cabinet and most of the parliamentary party don’t even believe in the ends. I seriously doubt whether Boris Johnson does. A terrified, paralysed prime minister leads a seasick party and doubting government towards she knows not what.

Wickedness may not always lie in the carrying forward of bad projects. It may also lie in allowing oneself to be carried forward by them, knowing their wrongfulness. Perhaps that is the more culpable, for zealots at least believe their madness. A special kind of guilt attaches to the sane majority of the Conservative Party today. It is written across their faces.

 

 

2 hours ago, williamjm said:

The latest story suggests a plot to install a so-called 'dream team' of Boris as PM, Gove as Deputy PM and Rees-Mogg as Chancellor, which is a horrible prospect. How the Brexiteers think handing all the key positions to people on one wing of the party is going to help solve the deep divisions in the Tory party wasn't explained.

Yeah, that's a good idea. That shower of shit would lose a general election in five seconds flat, and I think most Conservatives know that.

[Spockydog]

5 hours ago, williamjm said:

The latest story suggests a plot to install a so-called 'dream team' of Boris as PM, Gove as Deputy PM and Rees-Mogg as Chancellor, which is a horrible prospect. How the Brexiteers think handing all the key positions to people on one wing of the party is going to help solve the deep divisions in the Tory party wasn't explained.

Rubbing my hands with glee at the prospect of these three twats leading the Tories.

[williamjm]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, that's a good idea. That shower of shit would lose a general election in five seconds flat, and I think most Conservatives know that.

It does seem like it could be Jeremy Corbyn's dream team in terms of who he might have to face in an election - although Rees-Mogg rather than Boris as PM might work even better. I'd also be doubtful about the Tories hanging on to their recent Scottish gains from the SNP with that trio in charge.

[mormont]

Apparently the Brexiteer insistence that we're not hitting ourselves in the face with the hammer hard enough is bearing fruit. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42938672

It's a weird sort of position. Brexit is about doing trade deals, but we're ruling out being in the customs union, or any form of customs union, with our major trade partner. We want to make trade easier, except with Europe where we want to deliberately make it harder. We want frictionless trade outside the EU and to increase friction on trade with the EU. We want to ship goods to the US and China and Indonesia but not across the Channel. Of course, we do want to ship stuff over the Irish border, or so we claim. And some magic solution will make this possible while restricting trade from the rest of the EU. Nobody will tell us what this is, only that it definitely exists and it's unpatriotic to even ask what the fuck it might be. 

None of this makes any sense, conceptually, practically, or politically. If it wasn't going to make us all poorer and wreck the lives of innocent people it might even be funny.