UK Politics - Not a Special Relationship

[Myshkin]

11 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

 

Praeclarissime timidi redduntur infinita mentitum esse promiserat irritum horas domino nulli bona.    

 

might be more apt.

 

 

 

Or there is always the clasic

 

Tua criceta fuit, et pater tuo redoluit bacarum sambucus.

Done and done

[Pebble thats Stubby]

11 minutes ago, Myshkin said:

Done and done

 I just hope google translate did those phrases the justice they deserve. 

 

[SeanF]

4 hours ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

For Boris,  I think Quoting a few Shakespearian insults would work.  extra marks if you first translate them into Latin.

 

 

or throw a milkshake at him.

Boris would favour “Ego pedicabo vos et irrumabo.”

[SeanF]

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think it's abundantly clear that Johnson was prepared to sell that down the river to get a deal with the US. The Americans under Trump made it very clear that those things would have to be accepted as part of any deal and the UK government was prepared to discuss those things (maybe thinking they could water them down, but that would have been a forlorn hope).

More interesting is that most of the UK's supermarket chains (barring Tesco and pre-Walmart-selloff Asda though) had already agreed to voluntarily not stock any American chicken and other imports, but I suspect that would have been legally challenged.

Now it's - very likely - a moot issue.

I don’t think there’s a trade deal that could satisfy both Parliament and Congress.

[The Anti-Targ]

My guess is that the USA would have mostly exported manufacturing chicken to be made into McNuggets and such at a cheaper price than the cost of locally sourced manufacturing chicken. I have my doubts the US would have seriously tried to compete in the fresh retail chicken market.

[Werthead]

Farage is not having a good week. He does seem to have awoken to some spontaneous realisation most people had in 2016 though:

Quote

After years of failure, Britain is now caught in a trap between Brussels and Washington. Stranded in the mid-Atlantic, we have played ourselves into a form of checkmate. Brexit talks have stalled and this time the clock is genuinely running down. Johnson now faces a simple choice. He can either strike a deal with which both Washington and Brussels are happy, or he can go it alone and be criticised for looking friendless in the world.

This was always the case, and has been since 2016. Trump was going to milk this country dry in whatever deal he could get.

Farage does make one good point: Biden should never have allowed himself to be photographed with a wanted IRA terrorist and attempted murderer for whom there is still an outstanding warrant. That's just stupid.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

On 11/10/2020 at 2:23 PM, Werthead said:

This article is best read with a laughter track. It's hilarious, and the tinge of panic in the writer's voice as he realises that the US election means his dreams of the hardest of hard Brexits have gone down the toilet and no, Britain does have to listen to what Ireland wants because they now have the upper hand in the relationship, is most entertaining.

Does this mean, reality has finally caught up with the dimmest of the dim? I mean nothing he writes there is new was unpredictable. A Trade deal was gonna get shot down in US congress, if it threatened Irish peace. Biden's election just made that a fair bit more obvious.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

Yes, if a successful Brexit depended on the White House being occupied by Trump or someone just as, uh, unusual, it probably wasn’t a very sound idea. It’s depressing that it’s taken this long for them to realise.

 

ETA: At the time of the referendum campaign, it seemed most likely that Hillary Clinton was going to be in the White House. Let’s be under no illusion that Trump’s presidency was something that was counted on back in 2016, and his defeat has pulled the rug from under us.

[Derfel Cadarn]

36 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Does this mean, reality has finally caught up with the dimmest of the dim? I mean nothing he writes there is new was unpredictable. A Trade deal was gonna get shot down in US congress, if it threatened Irish peace. Biden's election just made that a fair bit more obvious.

Of course not. Just looking to shunt the blame onto America when Brexit implodes.

Even though we ‘took back control’

[Myshkin]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Farage is not having a good week. He does seem to have awoken to some spontaneous realisation most people had in 2016 though:

Though those that are betray'd do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

ETA: At the time of the referendum campaign, it seemed most likely that Hillary Clinton was going to be in the White House. Let’s be under no illusion that Trump’s presidency was something that was counted on back in 2016, and his defeat has pulled the rug from under us.

At the time of the Brexit campaign, it was assumed that a "yes" vote would still mean a close trade deal with the EU, and many Brexit campaigners voted on that basis. Remember that the "yes" campaign never expected to win, so that calculus never really entered their thinking. They had no plan for winning and have had to play it by ear ever since. In that sense Trump threw them a lifeline (even if ultimately it was covered in shit).

[Maltaran]

I assume you mean the No campaign...

 

Edit: just remembered it was Remain and Leave, not Yes and No

[Chaircat Meow]

3 hours ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

Yes, if a successful Brexit depended on the White House being occupied by Trump or someone just as, uh, unusual, it probably wasn’t a very sound idea. It’s depressing that it’s taken this long for them to realise.

 

ETA: At the time of the referendum campaign, it seemed most likely that Hillary Clinton was going to be in the White House. Let’s be under no illusion that Trump’s presidency was something that was counted on back in 2016, and his defeat has pulled the rug from under us.

The ETA does not make much sense. If it seemed most likely Clinton would win in November 2016 how could Trump's victory be counted on by the Brexiteers in June 2016. 

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

1 hour ago, Chaircat Meow said:

The ETA does not make much sense. If it seemed most likely Clinton would win in November 2016 how could Trump's victory be counted on by the Brexiteers in June 2016. 

It couldn’t, that’s my point. No one was expecting Trump to win, and so a Trump presidency was never factored into any pro-Brexit arguments before his election. Now you have Farage and the like complaining that Trump’s defeat makes a mess of The Brexit That Was Always Meant To Be. I’m just saying that’s a load of bollocks. Brexit was conceived without Trump, so if it now seems like a shit idea without him, that’s just because it was always a shit idea. As Werthead said above, he was just a temporary lifeline.

[Zorral]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

Farage is not having a good week. He does seem to have awoken to some spontaneous realisation most people had in 2016 though:

This was always the case, and has been since 2016. Trump was going to milk this country dry in whatever deal he could get.

You can just see this guy taking a successful running sugar plantation in the West Indie 200 years ago and running it right the frack into complete bankruptcy.

 

[mormont]

So if I'm understanding this right, Dominic Cummings is leaking to the press that he may resign, because he really is that bigheaded, and because he's annoyed that another unelected official resigned because a third unelected official was appointed over their heads. Also, I guess Johnson's partner and the mother of one of his (legally speaking, innumerable) children was involved.

Good governance.

[The Anti-Targ]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

 

Farage does make one good point: Biden should never have allowed himself to be photographed with a wanted IRA terrorist and attempted murderer for whom there is still an outstanding warrant. That's just stupid.

Is it though? We are talking about the president elect of the USA, now. The USA has always felt, and known, that it can do whatever the hell it wants on the international stage. I would say Biden and by extension the USA loses nothing with that photo. It pisses off the UK, but whaddya gonna do about it?

Republicans want the Irish American vote, the white vote is the only thing that gets them any political power so they aren't going to say much about it. This wanted terrorist was essentially a fugitive from UK justice living freely in the USA as an official representative of Sinn Fein. That pretty much tells you all you need to know about whether or not it was politic for Biden to be pictured with her. I see Obama was photographed with her and Jerry Adams too. Seems to me that the USA and the UK are always going to be on opposite sides of the Northern Ireland question until Irish reunification, and those photo ops are deliberate messages to HMG to not piss around with Northern Ireland. Seems more like a mis-read of the way the wind blows on the part of Farage to even mention it as being a negative for Biden.

[Maltaran]

I was just reading about that on Twitter. Although, to be fair to Carrie Symonds, she does have actual experience working in the Tory press office so Johnson listening to her advice is not automatically a bad thing.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Republicans want the Irish American vote, the white vote is the only thing that gets them any political power so they aren't going to say much about it. This wanted terrorist was essentially a fugitive from UK justice living freely in the USA as an official representative of Sinn Fein. That pretty much tells you all you need to know about whether or not it was politic for Biden to be pictured with her. I see Obama was photographed with her and Jerry Adams too. Seems to me that the USA and the UK are always going to be on opposite sides of the Northern Ireland question until Irish reunification, and those photo ops are deliberate messages to HMG to not piss around with Northern Ireland. Seems more like a mis-read of the way the wind blows on the part of Farage to even mention it as being a negative for Biden.

You mean Democrats? Republicans have been somewhat more consistent in distancing themselves from Sinn Fein and the Republican cause (the Bush Jnr. administration revoked her travel licence in 2004) and leaving the issue as a UK-Irish one which the GFA has essentially resolved (at least in the short term).

[Chaircat Meow]

1 hour ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

It couldn’t, that’s my point. No one was expecting Trump to win, and so a Trump presidency was never factored into any pro-Brexit arguments before his election. Now you have Farage and the like complaining that Trump’s defeat makes a mess of The Brexit That Was Always Meant To Be. I’m just saying that’s a load of bollocks. Brexit was conceived without Trump, so if it now seems like a shit idea without him, that’s just because it was always a shit idea. As Werthead said above, he was just a temporary lifeline.

Ah, yes, I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

I would add though that it was primarily just Farage and some of his friends in the commentariat who made a big thing out of Trump and largely because he liked him. May's government were not very keen on him. I am not sure how much Boris and Cummings really put any hopes in Trump either.