Equalising constituencies should reduce the number of inner city seats and provide a small net benefit to the Tories which would reduce their reliance on the DUP if the 2017 result was repeated
This was really Cameron/Osborne adopting GOP-style tactics from America, whose only merit was that they would disadvantage Labour. Predictably it provoked a registration drive, and it turns out that newly-registered voters tend to come from pro-Labour demographies. Net advantage: minimal if any.
Still would likely be a small net advantage to the Tories especially the loss of 25% of Welsh seats given Labour did particularly well in Wales in June
In 2015, there were eleven Conservative MPs returned by Welsh constituencies. You can't always be fighting the last war. Scotland was anti-Tory but suddenly under Ruth Davidson there is a SCon revival.
If we had a small recession after Brexit before bouncing back quickly to growth and surpassing the pre-recession peak, would PB's Remainers still class that as trashing the economy?
Well the Leavers have gone from pre-referendum that there’d be no economic hit to know it would be worth it. Like the badgers that plagued Owen Paterson, you keep on shifting the goalposts.
Nope. The idea that there would be a small hit but it would be worth it was very commonly expressed by leavers before the vote. You have selective memory yet again.
It is only Scotland, England and Wales whose revised proposals are being published on October 17th, the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland told me via Twitter this week that they will not be publishing until at least January
Aren't we always being told on other legal issues, such as uncertainty over legality of A50 being revoked, that political solutions will always be found?
Yep. When it is anything that would help Brexit it is always impossible but when it is anything that might hinder it of course a political solution will be found. Typical mendacious Remainiacs.
I had the impression that the amount of wishful thinking on either side is pretty similar.
One may well be more so than the other, but it isn't all on one side. Paricularly when contradictory arguments are old friends to us all.
Given that this was an inevitable consequence of voting Leave in the circumstances that existed last June, this is a distinction without a difference.
Why was it inevitable ?
We were told Cameron wouldn't resign if the vote was lost - he said so himself publicly and even on the night of the result a letter from the prominent LEAVE supporting MPs such as Gove and Johnson asked him to stay on.
He chose not to.
The Conservatives then anointed as their successor the former Home Secretary who had publicly backed REMAIN as their leader. She pledged to unite the country and party and started sounding like Ed Miliband which people started to like for no obvious reason.
What she then failed to do was have the wider discussion about what we actually wanted - the line was "you voted LEAVE. You don't need to worry about it. Trust me. I'll sort it out" or "Brexit means Brexit". We could get away to our summer holidays, football, Love Island, Strictly or whatever and not care about the future of our country because Theresa will sort it out and we could imagine she would dish up the deal each of us wanted (albeit millions of different deals ranging from BINO to bricking up the Channel Tunnel).
That illusion got us nine months with a further seven months of the Davis-Barnier show which isn't quite the Two Ronnies but is getting there.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has only today been accused of treachery and sabotage for expressing a cautious view that is not to the liking of Leavers. Did you really believe that David Cameron would ever have the authority to negotiate a settlement with the EU, bearing in mind some of the loonies on the Brexit bus?
You only had to look at the Leave advocates to realise that the Government was going to be hugely weakened and stuffed with crazed ideologues if Leave won. And so it proved.
(a) Leavers who were foaming at the bit a year ago for Article 50 to be triggered immediately and conducting Two Minutes Hates of judges who were holding up the process of rule by Government fiat; and
(b) Leavers who are now furious with the Government for having triggered Article 50 too soon?
You could but it would probably look like a pair of eyeballs staring at you. Another Meeks fail.
You seem to be contradicting yourself in saying no but agreeing that is what should have happened. I completely agree every effort should have been made to make this a national effort. I have repeatedly said that the Government was wrong not to invite Mandelson to take part and Starmer if he was willing. We also should have had at least 1 prominent remainer in the negotiations. Just imagine where we might be if, instead of having a catastrophic election, May had been big enough to give Osborne that role.
Instead we had the 3 Brexiteers. A plan to further disunite the country is hard to conceive of.
I like agreeing with you but not telling you I agree with you. It means you read the whole contribution.
Brexit has to be a success or at least tolerable or you cancel it and move on. No deal is not success. Any arrangement with the EU will necessarily be inferior to what we had before, so necessarily the negotiation is about damage limitation. But if Leavers want to see the union flag disappear at Berlaymont, they have to roll with it.
The question is how we get a good deal with the EU. We do that by having an alternative. If we do not have an alternative we will have to choose between a bad deal and staying in (although god knows why the EU27 would want a member who would be bloody furious and not minded to agree to anything else, ever).
Step by step. The current step is to get through withdrawal while keeping things as close as possible to what we already have for a limited period. It's citizens rights, Irish border fudge and a chunk of money in exchange for a time limited "transition" - actually a partial extension. It's not difficult because it basically comes down to money. Longer term discussions come later. Talk of walking away wastes time and increases the probability of Brexit failure, which surely isn't in the Leaver interest and shouldn't be in the Remainer one either. We don't always do the rational thing but I think we will probably agree to release the money.
I completely agree with the first part. That is exactly what we should be aiming for. But I disagree with the second part. My experience is that negotiations only succeed when both parties realise that the other side has a choice, no matter how unpalatable, and something to trade.
The problem with that analysis, which I accept as theory, is that we don't have a no deal alternative that is better than anything the EU is likely to offer. Which puts us in a very weak negotiating position. Our better strategy is to understand what the EU wants and maximise our value around that. Maybe we shouldn't have got ourselves into this situation in the first place, but that's another discussion about a situation that I don't feel I contributed to.
Our basic problem is that we do not revert to the status quo if there is no deal. Both sides take a hit and ours is far, far worse. As the government has never tried to positively influence public opinion in the EU27, preferring instead to pander to the anti-European English press, the EU negotiators are under no real domestic pressure to get anything done. We've dug ourselves a deep hole and it is looking increasingly unlikely that German car manufacturers and Italian prosecco makers are going to pull us out of it.
Given that this was an inevitable consequence of voting Leave in the circumstances that existed last June, this is a distinction without a difference.
Why was it inevitable ?
We were told Cameron wouldn't resign if the vote was lost - he said so himself publicly and even on the night of the result a letter from the prominent LEAVE supporting MPs such as Gove and Johnson asked him to stay on.
He chose not to.
The Conservatives then anointed as their successor the former Home Secretary who had publicly backed REMAIN as their leader. She pledged to unite the country and party and started sounding like Ed Miliband which people started to like for no obvious reason.
What she then failed to do was have the wider discussion about what we actually wanted - the line was "you voted LEAVE. You don't need to worry about it. Trust me. I'll sort it out" or "Brexit means Brexit". We could get away to our summer holidays, football, Love Island, Strictly or whatever and not care about the future of our country because Theresa will sort it out and we could imagine she would dish up the deal each of us wanted (albeit millions of different deals ranging from BINO to bricking up the Channel Tunnel).
That illusion got us nine months with a further seven months of the Davis-Barnier show which isn't quite the Two Ronnies but is getting there.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has only today been accused of treachery and sabotage for expressing a cautious view that is not to the liking of Leavers. Did you really believe that David Cameron would ever have the authority to negotiate a settlement with the EU, bearing in mind some of the loonies on the Brexit bus?
You only had to look at the Leave advocates to realise that the Government was going to be hugely weakened and stuffed with crazed ideologues if Leave won. And so it proved.
Even if May and Hammond and Davis stay on until Brexit talks are completed and a deal, if any, is concluded I am now of the view that it will be PM Boris and Chancellor Gove leading post Brexit Britain and the Tories into the next general election
We don't need experts remember. They all have a vested interest in their area of expertise - would be so much better to just shout platitudes about the glory of Britannia, complain about the hun then blame the frogs when it turns out these biased experts were right.
To be fair your source is now rather out of date. In the modern climate of the last few years extremist has been used more and more as a synonym for potential terrorist. Wrongly perhaps but I can see why the correction was felt necessary.
Given that this was an inevitable consequence of voting Leave in the circumstances that existed last June, this is a distinction without a difference.
Why was it inevitable ?
We were told Cameron wouldn't resign if the vote was lost - he said so himself publicly and even on the night of the result a letter from the prominent LEAVE supporting MPs such as Gove and Johnson asked him to stay on.
He chose not to.
The Conservatives then anointed as their successor the former Home Secretary who had publicly backed REMAIN as their leader. She pledged to unite the country and party and started sounding like Ed Miliband which people started to like for no obvious reason.
What she then failed to do was have the wider discussion about what we actually wanted - the line was "you voted LEAVE. You don't need to worry about it. Trust me. I'll sort it out" or "Brexit means Brexit". We could get away to our summer holidays, football, Love Island, Strictly or whatever and not care about the future of our country because Theresa will sort it out and we could imagine she would dish up the deal each of us wanted (albeit millions of different deals ranging from BINO to bricking up the Channel Tunnel).
That illusion got us nine months with a further seven months of the Davis-Barnier show which isn't quite the Two Ronnies but is getting there.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has only today been accused of treachery and sabotage for expressing a cautious view that is not to the liking of Leavers. Did you really believe that David Cameron would ever have the authority to negotiate a settlement with the EU, bearing in mind some of the loonies on the Brexit bus?
You only had to look at the Leave advocates to realise that the Government was going to be hugely weakened and stuffed with crazed ideologues if Leave won. And so it proved.
Even if May and Davis stay on until Brexit talks are completed and a deal, if any, is concluded I am now of the view that it will be PM Boris and Chancellor Gove leading post Brexit Britain and the Tories into the next general election
If they do, I wonder if Priti Patel with hold on to Witham!
Equalising constituencies should reduce the number of inner city seats and provide a small net benefit to the Tories which would reduce their reliance on the DUP if the 2017 result was repeated
This was really Cameron/Osborne adopting GOP-style tactics from America, whose only merit was that they would disadvantage Labour. Predictably it provoked a registration drive, and it turns out that newly-registered voters tend to come from pro-Labour demographies. Net advantage: minimal if any.
Still would likely be a small net advantage to the Tories especially the loss of 25% of Welsh seats given Labour did particularly well in Wales in June
In 2015, there were eleven Conservative MPs returned by Welsh constituencies. You can't always be fighting the last war. Scotland was anti-Tory but suddenly under Ruth Davidson there is a SCon revival.
True but in both 2015 and 2017 the Tories did worse in Scotland and Wales than they did UK wide, as was also the case in London
If we had a small recession after Brexit before bouncing back quickly to growth and surpassing the pre-recession peak, would PB's Remainers still class that as trashing the economy?
Well the Leavers have gone from pre-referendum that there’d be no economic hit to know it would be worth it. Like the badgers that plagued Owen Paterson, you keep on shifting the goalposts.
Nope. The idea that there would be a small hit but it would be worth it was very commonly expressed by leavers before the vote. You have selective memory yet again.
Sure, when the ex-Chancellor released the Treasury's short term forecasts of Brexit, they were universally acclaimed and labelled Project Reality by all Leavers.
Given that this was an inevitable consequence of voting Leave in the circumstances that existed last June, this is a distinction without a difference.
Why was it inevitable ?
We were told Cameron wouldn't resign if the vote was lost - he said so himself publicly and even on the night of the result a letter from the prominent LEAVE supporting MPs such as Gove and Johnson asked him to stay on.
He chose not to.
The Conservatives then anointed as their successor the former Home Secretary who had publicly backed REMAIN as their leader. She pledged to unite the country and party and started sounding like Ed Miliband which people started to like for no obvious reason.
What she then failed to do was have the wider discussion about what we actually wanted - the line was "you voted LEAVE. You don't need to worry about it. Trust me. I'll sort it out" or "Brexit means Brexit". We could get away to our summer holidays, football, Love Island, Strictly or whatever and not care about the future of our country because Theresa will sort it out and we could imagine she would dish up the deal each of us wanted (albeit millions of different deals ranging from BINO to bricking up the Channel Tunnel).
That illusion got us nine months with a further seven months of the Davis-Barnier show which isn't quite the Two Ronnies but is getting there.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has only today been accused of treachery and sabotage for expressing a cautious view that is not to the liking of Leavers. Did you really believe that David Cameron would ever have the authority to negotiate a settlement with the EU, bearing in mind some of the loonies on the Brexit bus?
You only had to look at the Leave advocates to realise that the Government was going to be hugely weakened and stuffed with crazed ideologues if Leave won. And so it proved.
Even if May and Davis stay on until Brexit talks are completed and a deal, if any, is concluded I am now of the view that it will be PM Boris and Chancellor Gove leading post Brexit Britain and the Tories into the next general election
There’s no way Boris will make Gove Chancellor, Northern Ireland Secretary maybe.
Given that this was an inevitable consequence of voting Leave in the circumstances that existed last June, this is a distinction without a difference.
Why was it inevitable ?
We were told Cameron wouldn't resign if the vote was lost - he said so himself publicly and even on the night of the result a letter from the prominent LEAVE supporting MPs such as Gove and Johnson asked him to stay on.
He chose not to.
The Conservatives then anointed as their successor the former Home Secretary who had publicly backed REMAIN as their leader. She pledged to unite the country and party and started sounding like Ed Miliband which people started to like for no obvious reason.
What she then failed to do was have the wider discussion about what we actually wanted - the line was "you voted LEAVE. You don't need to worry about it. Trust me. I'll sort it out" or "Brexit means Brexit". We could get away to our summer holidays, football, Love Island, Strictly or whatever and not care about the future of our country because Theresa will sort it out and we could imagine she would dish up the deal each of us wanted (albeit millions of different deals ranging from BINO to bricking up the Channel Tunnel).
That illusion got us nine months with a further seven months of the Davis-Barnier show which isn't quite the Two Ronnies but is getting there.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has only today been accused of treachery and sabotage for expressing a cautious view that is not to the liking of Leavers. Did you really believe that David Cameron would ever have the authority to negotiate a settlement with the EU, bearing in mind some of the loonies on the Brexit bus?
You only had to look at the Leave advocates to realise that the Government was going to be hugely weakened and stuffed with crazed ideologues if Leave won. And so it proved.
Even if May and Davis stay on until Brexit talks are completed and a deal, if any, is concluded I am now of the view that it will be PM Boris and Chancellor Gove leading post Brexit Britain and the Tories into the next general election
There’s no way Boris will make Gove Chancellor, Northern Ireland Secretary maybe.
There has been a reconciliation between the two it seems, we will see
To be fair your source is now rather out of date. In the modern climate of the last few years extremist has been used more and more as a synonym for potential terrorist. Wrongly perhaps but I can see why the correction was felt necessary.
'Fanatic' has held more or less the same connotation at least since Pepys' time - though back then often rendered Phanatique.
Given that this was an inevitable consequence of voting Leave in the circumstances that existed last June, this is a distinction without a difference.
Why was it inevitable ?
We were told Cameron wouldn't resign if the vote was lost - he said so himself publicly and even on the night of the result a letter from the prominent LEAVE supporting MPs such as Gove and Johnson asked him to stay on.
He chose not to.
The Conservatives then anointed as their successor the former Home Secretary who had publicly backed REMAIN as their leader. She pledged to unite the country and party and started sounding like Ed Miliband which people started to like for no obvious reason.
What she then failed to do was have the wider discussion about what we actually wanted - the line was "you voted LEAVE. You don't need to worry about it. Trust me. I'll sort it out" or "Brexit means Brexit". We could get away to our summer holidays, football, Love Island, Strictly or whatever and not care about the future of our country because Theresa will sort it out and we could imagine she would dish up the deal each of us wanted (albeit millions of different deals ranging from BINO to bricking up the Channel Tunnel).
That illusion got us nine months with a further seven months of the Davis-Barnier show which isn't quite the Two Ronnies but is getting there.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has only today been accused of treachery and sabotage for expressing a cautious view that is not to the liking of Leavers. Did you really believe that David Cameron would ever have the authority to negotiate a settlement with the EU, bearing in mind some of the loonies on the Brexit bus?
You only had to look at the Leave advocates to realise that the Government was going to be hugely weakened and stuffed with crazed ideologues if Leave won. And so it proved.
Even if May and Davis stay on until Brexit talks are completed and a deal, if any, is concluded I am now of the view that it will be PM Boris and Chancellor Gove leading post Brexit Britain and the Tories into the next general election
There’s no way Boris will make Gove Chancellor, Northern Ireland Secretary maybe.
There has been a reconciliation between the two it seems, we will see
Which was denied. Gove is spending a lot of time with George Osborne.
If we had a small recession after Brexit before bouncing back quickly to growth and surpassing the pre-recession peak, would PB's Remainers still class that as trashing the economy?
Well the Leavers have gone from pre-referendum that there’d be no economic hit to know it would be worth it. Like the badgers that plagued Owen Paterson, you keep on shifting the goalposts.
Nope. The idea that there would be a small hit but it would be worth it was very commonly expressed by leavers before the vote. You have selective memory yet again.
Sure, when the ex-Chancellor released the Treasury's short term forecasts of Brexit, they were universally acclaimed and labelled Project Reality by all Leavers.
Except he was not predicting a small hit - which was the question asked. He was predicting an immediate recession with an emergency budget necessary long before we got anywhere near actually leaving. Rather different from TSE's comment.
To be fair your source is now rather out of date. In the modern climate of the last few years extremist has been used more and more as a synonym for potential terrorist. Wrongly perhaps but I can see why the correction was felt necessary.
If we had a small recession after Brexit before bouncing back quickly to growth and surpassing the pre-recession peak, would PB's Remainers still class that as trashing the economy?
Well the Leavers have gone from pre-referendum that there’d be no economic hit to know it would be worth it. Like the badgers that plagued Owen Paterson, you keep on shifting the goalposts.
I never said there would be no economic hit. I reluctantly voted for Leave as the lesser of two bad outcomes. I find this tribal mentality of all Remainers/Leavers being official spokesmen for all of them a bit silly.
I would be interested in hearing your view on my question, however.
Given that this was an inevitable consequence of voting Leave in the circumstances that existed last June, this is a distinction without a difference.
Why was it inevitable ?
We were told Cameron wouldn't resign if the vote was lost - he said so himself publicly and even on the night of the result a letter from the prominent LEAVE supporting MPs such as Gove and Johnson asked him to stay on.
He chose not to.
The Conservatives then anointed as their successor the former Home Secretary who had publicly backed REMAIN as their leader. She pledged to unite the country and party and started sounding like Ed Miliband which people started to like for no obvious reason.
What she then failed to do was have the wider discussion about what we actually wanted - the line was "you voted LEAVE. You don't need to worry about it. Trust me. I'll sort it out" or "Brexit means Brexit". We could get away to our summer holidays, football, Love Island, Strictly or whatever and not care about the future of our country because Theresa will sort it out and we could imagine she would dish up the deal each of us wanted (albeit millions of different deals ranging from BINO to bricking up the Channel Tunnel).
That illusion got us nine months with a further seven months of the Davis-Barnier show which isn't quite the Two Ronnies but is getting there.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has only today been accused of treachery and sabotage for expressing a cautious view that is not to the liking of Leavers. Did you really believe that David Cameron would ever have the authority to negotiate a settlement with the EU, bearing in mind some of the loonies on the Brexit bus?
You only had to look at the Leave advocates to realise that the Government was going to be hugely weakened and stuffed with crazed ideologues if Leave won. And so it proved.
Even if May and Davis stay on until Brexit talks are completed and a deal, if any, is concluded I am now of the view that it will be PM Boris and Chancellor Gove leading post Brexit Britain and the Tories into the next general election
If they do, I wonder if Priti Patel with hold on to Witham!
The question is how we get a good deal with the EU. We do that by having an alternative. If we do not have an alternative we will have to choose between a bad deal and staying in (although god knows why the EU27 would want a member who would be bloody furious and not minded to agree to anything else, ever).
Step by step. The current step is to get through withdrawal while keeping things as close as possible to what we already have for a limited period. It's citizens rights, Irish border fudge and a chunk of money in exchange for a time limited "transition" - actually a partial extension. It's not difficult because it basically comes down to money. Longer term discussions come later. Talk of walking away wastes time and increases the probability of Brexit failure, which surely isn't in the Leaver interest and shouldn't be in the Remainer one either. We don't always do the rational thing but I think we will probably agree to release the money.
I completely agree with the first part. That is exactly what we should be aiming for. But I disagree with the second part. My experience is that negotiations only succeed when both parties realise that the other side has a choice, no matter how unpalatable, and something to trade.
The problem with that analysis, which I accept as theory, is that we don't have a no deal alternative that is better than anything the EU is likely to offer. Which puts us in a very weak negotiating position. Our better strategy is to understand what the EU wants and maximise our value around that. Maybe we shouldn't have got ourselves into this situation in the first place, but that's another discussion about a situation that I don't feel I contributed to.
Our basic problem is that we do not revert to the status quo if there is no deal. Both sides take a hit and ours is far, far worse. As the government has never tried to positively influence public opinion in the EU27, preferring instead to pander to the anti-European English press, the EU negotiators are under no real domestic pressure to get anything done. We've dug ourselves a deep hole and it is looking increasingly unlikely that German car manufacturers and Italian prosecco makers are going to pull us out of it.
The Germans sell a lot of cars in Italy and the Italians a lot of prosecco in Germany. A propos of nothing at all ...
To be fair your source is now rather out of date. In the modern climate of the last few years extremist has been used more and more as a synonym for potential terrorist. Wrongly perhaps but I can see why the correction was felt necessary.
OK - what about "Zealot"?
I think that is a term that could be applied to plenty of us on both sides.
Equalising constituencies should reduce the number of inner city seats and provide a small net benefit to the Tories which would reduce their reliance on the DUP if the 2017 result was repeated
This was really Cameron/Osborne adopting GOP-style tactics from America, whose only merit was that they would disadvantage Labour. Predictably it provoked a registration drive, and it turns out that newly-registered voters tend to come from pro-Labour demographies. Net advantage: minimal if any.
Still would likely be a small net advantage to the Tories especially the loss of 25% of Welsh seats given Labour did particularly well in Wales in June
In 2015, there were eleven Conservative MPs returned by Welsh constituencies. You can't always be fighting the last war. Scotland was anti-Tory but suddenly under Ruth Davidson there is a SCon revival.
Please get your terminology right, it isn’t a revival, it is a surge.
To be fair your source is now rather out of date. In the modern climate of the last few years extremist has been used more and more as a synonym for potential terrorist. Wrongly perhaps but I can see why the correction was felt necessary.
I agree there are some fairly loose synonyms there (nut, fiend, visionary); I'm sure we can all choose the definitions we'd prefer to be applied to ourselves and to our opponents!
How do Leave voters here feel about Nigel Farage these days? I can't believe his chutzpah, after campaigning for so long for Brexit, to go off on an American jolly at a critical moment and contributing nothing to the substantial issue of making Brexit work. It's as if Lenin had pissed off immediately after proclaiming Soviet power.
And how's that fantastic moustache of his doing?
I have long been vocal as an opponent of Farage within UKIP and in the wider debate. He served a very useful role early on in the campaign to leave the EU and deserves our thanks for that. But once the decision had been made for a referendum he became a liability. I am actually glad he is now no longer appearing all over our screens as part of this debate as I don't think he would add anything of substance.
Once Brexit has been completed I also see no further point to UKIP.
If he had been campaigning for Remain, and won, in the same circumstances, and with the same historical context, he would have had at least a knighthood by now.
If we had a small recession after Brexit before bouncing back quickly to growth and surpassing the pre-recession peak, would PB's Remainers still class that as trashing the economy?
Well the Leavers have gone from pre-referendum that there’d be no economic hit to know it would be worth it. Like the badgers that plagued Owen Paterson, you keep on shifting the goalposts.
I never said there would be no economic hit. I reluctantly voted for Leave as the lesser of two bad outcomes. I find this tribal mentality of all Remainers/Leavers being official spokesmen for all of them a bit silly.
I would be interested in hearing your view on my question, however.
Yours is a Corbynite view, trash the economy to make it better long term.
Both strategies are bollocks and are economic arsonism.
Given that this was an inevitable consequence of voting Leave in the circumstances that existed last June, this is a distinction without a difference.
Why was it inevitable ?
We were told Cameron wouldn't resign if the vote was lost - he said so himself publicly and even on the night of the result a letter from the prominent LEAVE supporting MPs such as Gove and Johnson asked him to stay on.
He chose not to.
The Conservatives then anointed as their successor the former Home Secretary who had publicly backed REMAIN as their leader. She pledged to unite the country and party and started sounding like Ed Miliband which people started to like for no obvious reason.
What she then failed to do was have the wider discussion about what we actually wanted - the line was "you voted LEAVE. You don't need to worry about it. Trust me. I'll sort it out" or "Brexit means Brexit". We could get away to our summer holidays, football, Love Island, Strictly or whatever and not care about the future of our country because Theresa will sort it out and we could imagine she would dish up the deal each of us wanted (albeit millions of different deals ranging from BINO to bricking up the Channel Tunnel).
That illusion got us nine months with a further seven months of the Davis-Barnier show which isn't quite the Two Ronnies but is getting there.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has only today been accused of treachery and sabotage for expressing a cautious view that is not to the liking of Leavers. Did you really believe that David Cameron would ever have the authority to negotiate a settlement with the EU, bearing in mind some of the loonies on the Brexit bus?
You only had to look at the Leave advocates to realise that the Government was going to be hugely weakened and stuffed with crazed ideologues if Leave won. And so it proved.
Even if May and Davis stay on until Brexit talks are completed and a deal, if any, is concluded I am now of the view that it will be PM Boris and Chancellor Gove leading post Brexit Britain and the Tories into the next general election
There’s no way Boris will make Gove Chancellor, Northern Ireland Secretary maybe.
There has been a reconciliation between the two it seems, we will see
Which was denied. Gove is spending a lot of time with George Osborne.
Gove remains an arch Leaver and Osborne an arch Remainer, ideologically on Brexit Gove is closer to Boris, Hammond to Osborne
Except he was not predicting a small hit - which was the question asked. He was predicting an immediate recession with an emergency budget necessary long before we got anywhere near actually leaving. Rather different from TSE's comment.
If they were forecasting on the assumption that the implications of the decision would be quickly understood, it's easy to explain why they proved overly pessimistic.
If we had a small recession after Brexit before bouncing back quickly to growth and surpassing the pre-recession peak, would PB's Remainers still class that as trashing the economy?
Elliot. Its what happens next that's the concern. We have to be able to trade on day 1 after we leave, yet when real and practical issues are raised its always thrown back as "we're Britain" or "in 5 years...". Forget 5 years down the line and look 5 days down the line.
Without being a member of the EEA the EU will impose a hard border. What we do on our side is irrelevant - they will stop and check all trucks crossing their border. The delay not only adds massive cost it physically stops trade. Our trucks can't cross the channel to then recross loaded with car parts or food or that fitness tracker I've ordered from Amazon that they're sending me (with free shipping!) from Italy.
What are the realities here? Our port operators say it will take years to install the infrastructure needed for full customs checks. HMRC say it needs 5 years for a computer system to handle "no deal" customs checks. Our big logistics operators are increasingly concerned. I work in the food industry which is now trying to work out what the hell to do with the worst case scenario we're now facing. And thats just one industry - most others are built on easy free unimpeded access to and from European suppliers and factories. The EU will impose a hard border if we leave the single market on day 1.
So in an economy with inflation once again outstripping wages, with 1/3 of households having £0 in the bank, with personal debt north of £200bn and an immediate sharp economic shock brewing with no deal brexit, you will have to excuse me if I - a leave voter BTW - take your dismissive comments about the economy under advisement.
The Tories are setting themselves up for a 1997 scale defeat if they don't get a grip on this kind of thing.
More UK voters voted Leave than voted for Blair in 1997
Total bollocks. the referendum was a binary choice. General elections have score of option.s.
The referendum outcome was superseded by the GER2017 when TMay failed to get a mandate for her Brexit plans.
And in which 80%+ of the electorate voted for parties that claimed they wanted a hard Brexit. And moreover TMay still got more votes than Blair did in 1997.
Give it up Mike. You keep trying to twist this every way you can but in the end the numbers speak for themselves. There are no results out there that show the majority of the electorate do not want Brexit.
The closest analogy I can come up with is the American war of Independence. How did the world's most powerful empire get beaten by a bunch of back woodsmen with hunting rifles? Well, mainly because there was a very significant minority in this country who did not think we should be fighting at all and that the Americans were in the right. So our efforts were undermined and ultimately failed. Until Donald Trump was given the nuclear codes this was not obviously a disaster.
In this country we had 48% of the vote in favour of remaining. We are hopelessly split as a country about what to do here and it is again undermining our position threatening the worst of all worlds. Alastair Meeks has pointed out that no effort has been made to appease or win over the remain faction. This is undoubtedly true although I suspect in many cases nothing was going to convince them to move on. But putting the negotiations in the hands of prominent Brexiteers was a serious mistake. Getting rid of Hammond would be another. We need to come together as a country to sort this out, not bicker amongst ourselves.
"Come together as a country to sort it out" - no.
The problem is and always been the Conservative Party. The referendum itself was cooked up by Cameron as a way of shoring up the Conservative vote from UKIP and it succeeded.
Cameron may not have expected to win his majority - perhaps he hoped for Coalition 2.0 - but the LDs were crushed and he had to implement the Referendum he had promised. Perhaps he thought he could win that by the strength of his charisma, personality and popular appeal but he crashed and burned just as Nick Clegg did with AV.
With his departure, a sensible leader would have made this a cross-party non-partisan exercise inviting the best from all sides (including REMAIN) to come together to craft the best deal for our country.
That didn't happen - instead, part of the Conservative Party decided they would own and control the process completely and spent months telling us not to worry our little heads about it but "trust Theresa". When it turned out we didn't and time and money was wasted on a futile GE we've found ourselves seven months down a twenty-four month road and, platitudes aside, we have the sum total of bugger all.
My error was not to vote LEAVE but to assume those who would find themselves in power would have the interests of the nation at heart rather than their own squalid party political machinations.
My error was not to give that nice Nigerian man all my money but to assume that he would behave with honour and integrity and actually hand over the £25m he promised me.
The Tories are setting themselves up for a 1997 scale defeat if they don't get a grip on this kind of thing.
More UK voters voted Leave than voted for Blair in 1997
Total bollocks. the referendum was a binary choice. General elections have score of option.s.
The referendum outcome was superseded by the GER2017 when TMay failed to get a mandate for her Brexit plans.
And in which 80%+ of the electorate voted for parties that claimed they wanted a hard Brexit. And moreover TMay still got more votes than Blair did in 1997.
Give it up Mike. You keep trying to twist this every way you can but in the end the numbers speak for themselves. There are no results out there that show the majority of the electorate do not want Brexit.
There is a very important, indeed crucial, confusion about what 'no deal' means. I touched on this on the last thread, but it is so important that please forgive me for repeating the point:
- One meaning in which people use the phrase is 'no trade deal', i.e. going to WTO terms. But that is not the same as:
- No deal at all, i.e. no agreement on payment, no agreement on citizens rights, no agreement on airline slots, no agreement on medical regulations, etc etc.
The first would be an amicable agreement to move to WTO terms and agree on whatever needs to be done to get there with minimal disruption, no doubt including a transition period. The second would be utter chaos.
The two are very different, and we should always be clear which we mean.
You seem to be contradicting yourself in saying no but agreeing that is what should have happened. I completely agree every effort should have been made to make this a national effort. I have repeatedly said that the Government was wrong not to invite Mandelson to take part and Starmer if he was willing. We also should have had at least 1 prominent remainer in the negotiations. Just imagine where we might be if, instead of having a catastrophic election, May had been big enough to give Osborne that role.
Instead we had the 3 Brexiteers. A plan to further disunite the country is hard to conceive of.
I like agreeing with you but not telling you I agree with you. It means you read the whole contribution.
That's remarkably cunning. How are you placed over the next few months? We have a couple of problems to sort out.
To be fair your source is now rather out of date. In the modern climate of the last few years extremist has been used more and more as a synonym for potential terrorist. Wrongly perhaps but I can see why the correction was felt necessary.
I agree there are some fairly loose synonyms there (nut, fiend, visionary); I'm sure we can all choose the definitions we'd prefer to be applied to ourselves and to our opponents!
So would you rather be called a fanatic or an extremist? There are very different meanings and implications for the two words.
A film fanatic or a film extremist? A football fanatic or a football extremist?
More apposite perhaps:
A political fanatic (which I would suggest includes quite a few of us here) or a political extremist?
One can be a fanatic and still be part of the mainstream. By the very nature of the word in its basic meaning the same does not apply to an extremist.
Equalising constituencies should reduce the number of inner city seats and provide a small net benefit to the Tories which would reduce their reliance on the DUP if the 2017 result was repeated
This was really Cameron/Osborne adopting GOP-style tactics from America, whose only merit was that they would disadvantage Labour. Predictably it provoked a registration drive, and it turns out that newly-registered voters tend to come from pro-Labour demographies. Net advantage: minimal if any.
Still would likely be a small net advantage to the Tories especially the loss of 25% of Welsh seats given Labour did particularly well in Wales in June
In 2015, there were eleven Conservative MPs returned by Welsh constituencies. You can't always be fighting the last war. Scotland was anti-Tory but suddenly under Ruth Davidson there is a SCon revival.
True but in both 2015 and 2017 the Tories did worse in Scotland and Wales than they did UK wide, as was also the case in London
With a higher swing to Conservatives in both Wales and Scotland than England. Though even if you are right, it may be hard for the other parties to see any merit in supporting a change that is designed to favour their opponents.
Except he was not predicting a small hit - which was the question asked. He was predicting an immediate recession with an emergency budget necessary long before we got anywhere near actually leaving. Rather different from TSE's comment.
If they were forecasting on the assumption that the implications of the decision would be quickly understood, it's easy to explain why they proved overly pessimistic.
So what you are saying is that in fact they were wrong then. They predicted the markets and business would act in one way and they didn't.
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
In fairness that wasn't a surprise. Its why we left. Which makes moaning about it now seem a tad childish.
Actually, it does seem to have come as a surprise to most Leavers that the EU won't immediately smilingly agree to all of Britain's wishlist. The idea that they had their own priorities seems to have been a sensational revelation to nearly all of them, up to and including those now responsible for negotiating Britain's exit.
Equalising constituencies should reduce the number of inner city seats and provide a small net benefit to the Tories which would reduce their reliance on the DUP if the 2017 result was repeated
This was really Cameron/Osborne adopting GOP-style tactics from America, whose only merit was that they would disadvantage Labour. Predictably it provoked a registration drive, and it turns out that newly-registered voters tend to come from pro-Labour demographies. Net advantage: minimal if any.
Still would likely be a small net advantage to the Tories especially the loss of 25% of Welsh seats given Labour did particularly well in Wales in June
In 2015, there were eleven Conservative MPs returned by Welsh constituencies. You can't always be fighting the last war. Scotland was anti-Tory but suddenly under Ruth Davidson there is a SCon revival.
True but in both 2015 and 2017 the Tories did worse in Scotland and Wales than they did UK wide, as was also the case in London
With a higher swing to Conservatives in both Wales and Scotland than England. Though even if you are right, it may be hard for the other parties to see any merit in supporting a change that is designed to favour their opponents.
The Tories still won a significantly higher percentage of MPs in provincial England than in Scotland and Wales though I agree there is no guarantee the plans will get through
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
Leavers said getting out of the EU would be quick and easy, as the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation
There was and still is a much easier option that many of us have long advocated. The trouble is that the Remainer sat in Number 10 has decided it is not an option to be contemplated.
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
In fairness that wasn't a surprise. Its why we left. Which makes moaning about it now seem a tad childish.
Actually, it does seem to have come as a surprise to most Leavers that the EU won't immediately smilingly agree to all of Britain's wishlist. The idea that they had their own priorities seems to have been a sensational revelation to nearly all of them, up to and including those now responsible for negotiating Britain's exit.
No one who has ever had to take on the SNP is going to be surprised by that kind of blindness. See the conversation on this thread about fanatics.
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
Leavers said getting out of the EU would be quick and easy, as the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation
There was and still is a much easier option that many of us have long advocated. The trouble is that the Remainer sat in Number 10 has decided it is not an option to be contemplated.
Because her Leavers would string her up if she tried.
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
Leavers said getting out of the EU would be quick and easy, as the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation
There was and still is a much easier option that many of us have long advocated. The trouble is that the Remainer sat in Number 10 has decided it is not an option to be contemplated.
Many of us pointed out that wasn’t an option given what Vote Leave focussed their campaign on.
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
In fairness that wasn't a surprise. Its why we left. Which makes moaning about it now seem a tad childish.
Actually, it does seem to have come as a surprise to most Leavers that the EU won't immediately smilingly agree to all of Britain's wishlist. The idea that they had their own priorities seems to have been a sensational revelation to nearly all of them, up to and including those now responsible for negotiating Britain's exit.
No one who has ever had to take on the SNP is going to be surprised by that kind of blindness. See the conversation on this thread about fanatics.
18 months ago I was given both barrels by Leavers on here incandescent when I pointed out how protracted negotiations might be. Use of the blessed sponge of Lethe is not confined to Cabinet ranks.
Delighted to see that 74% of people understand that it’s preferable to go into negotiations with their cards close to their chest, rather than face up on the table in front of them.
There is of course no such thing as no deal. No deal is a bad deal, a very very bad deal but I don't suppose that clarification appeared on the questionnaire.
Leaving with no deal is of course a bad deal, but if those on the other side of the table don’t seriously think we’ll walk, then we are always going to get a bad deal. That means they need to see us seriously planning for the eventuality of no deal.
This is what’s annoying me so much about some of the media coverage, they don’t appear to understand the first chapter of the 101 textbook on negotiation.
That falls down because we are hamstrung by the default "no action" option being hugely deleterious for us. It doesn't matter what it means for them (BMWs, etc), a do nothing option means we suffer more than almost any other scenario.
I think it was @FF43 who mentioned BATNA yesterday; this is something the British side needs to investigate as a matter of urgency.
Indeed we need to look very carefully at BATNA and no-deal options.
At a base level it means that we need to start with things like replication of regulatory structures - as an example our Civil Aviation Authority needs to apply for membership to ICAO who are the global aviation regulator and part of the UN. Not talk about it, but actually get the application in. Things that would mitigate what no-deal looks like. The EU will probably object to our application until the day we actually leave, but we can and should appeal to global authorities over the heads of the EU for such petty brinkmanship as suggesting our planes will be grounded if there’s no deal.
There will be several other industries where similar action could be taken, most of which have a higher authority such as UN or WTO body.
States are members of the ICAO, not their aviation authorities. The UK is already a member of the ICAO in its own right and is a member of the ICAO council. The EU has a Representative at the ICAO but is not a member. So it doesn't look to me like there is anything to be done on that front. The issue with keeping planes in the air is the open skies agreements, not the ICAO.
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
Leavers said getting out of the EU would be quick and easy, as the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation
There was and still is a much easier option that many of us have long advocated. The trouble is that the Remainer sat in Number 10 has decided it is not an option to be contemplated.
Many of us pointed out that wasn’t an option given what Vote Leave focussed their campaign on.
And you were wrong then and are wrong now.
Edit: you might remember you were kind enough to actually publish a thread of mine on this very subject.
Quoting Nick Clegg on the subject of broken promises seems a tad... ironic?
If you read his article that's exactly the point he makes. He knows the price of breaking a promise only too well, and the Brexiteers have the anger of 17 million people to look forward to.
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
Leavers said getting out of the EU would be quick and easy, as the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation
There was and still is a much easier option that many of us have long advocated. The trouble is that the Remainer sat in Number 10 has decided it is not an option to be contemplated.
Many of us pointed out that wasn’t an option given what Vote Leave focussed their campaign on.
There is a very important, indeed crucial, confusion about what 'no deal' means. I touched on this on the last thread, but it is so important that please forgive me for repeating the point:
- One meaning in which people use the phrase is 'no trade deal', i.e. going to WTO terms. But that is not the same as:
- No deal at all, i.e. no agreement on payment, no agreement on citizens rights, no agreement on airline slots, no agreement on medical regulations, etc etc.
The first would be an amicable agreement to move to WTO terms and agree on whatever needs to be done to get there with minimal disruption, no doubt including a transition period. The second would be utter chaos.
The two are very different, and we should always be clear which we mean.
Very good point, but I'm not sure DD is capable of delivering either good or bad WTO. I wonder if Theresa could appoint Nigel Farage to the role. He knows the EU and its personnel well, and would be trusted by the most ardent Leavers. Surely he'd want a good WTO as you describe it. Even Nigel wouldn't want to see our airliners grounded and our medical structures wrecked. (I'm thinking outside the box here because I'm desperate.)
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
Leavers said getting out of the EU would be quick and easy, as the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation
There was and still is a much easier option that many of us have long advocated. The trouble is that the Remainer sat in Number 10 has decided it is not an option to be contemplated.
Many of us pointed out that wasn’t an option given what Vote Leave focussed their campaign on.
And you were wrong then and are wrong now.
Boris and Gove rejected the EEA, they knew.
Given it is the only sensible choice and always has been I would think you would be hoping they were wrong as well.
Quoting Nick Clegg on the subject of broken promises seems a tad... ironic?
If you read his article that's exactly the point he makes. He knows the price of breaking a promise only too well, and the Brexiteers have the anger of 17 million people to look forward to.
If the British state breaks a constitutional promise there would be far higher ramifications. Remember that publically funded leaflet?
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
Leavers said getting out of the EU would be quick and easy, as the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation
There was and still is a much easier option that many of us have long advocated. The trouble is that the Remainer sat in Number 10 has decided it is not an option to be contemplated.
Many of us pointed out that wasn’t an option given what Vote Leave focussed their campaign on.
And you were wrong then and are wrong now.
Boris and Gove rejected the EEA, they knew.
Given it is the only sensible choice and always has been I would think you would be hoping they were wrong as well.
I would have been happy with it but when the campaign was fought on stop free movement, going to the EEA would have been an affront to democracy.
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
In fairness that wasn't a surprise. Its why we left. Which makes moaning about it now seem a tad childish.
Actually, it does seem to have come as a surprise to most Leavers that the EU won't immediately smilingly agree to all of Britain's wishlist. The idea that they had their own priorities seems to have been a sensational revelation to nearly all of them, up to and including those now responsible for negotiating Britain's exit.
No one who has ever had to take on the SNP is going to be surprised by that kind of blindness. See the conversation on this thread about fanatics.
18 months ago I was given both barrels by Leavers on here incandescent when I pointed out how protracted negotiations might be. Use of the blessed sponge of Lethe is not confined to Cabinet ranks.
I agreed with you then. In particular the great Repeal Bill (as it was then called) always seemed to me to be a gargantuan undertaking. The links, overlaps and interweaving of our law and EU law are almost unending after 40 odd years. No wonder Baroness Hale is looking for some clear instructions!
To be fair your source is now rather out of date. In the modern climate of the last few years extremist has been used more and more as a synonym for potential terrorist. Wrongly perhaps but I can see why the correction was felt necessary.
I agree there are some fairly loose synonyms there (nut, fiend, visionary); I'm sure we can all choose the definitions we'd prefer to be applied to ourselves and to our opponents!
So would you rather be called a fanatic or an extremist? There are very different meanings and implications for the two words.
A film fanatic or a film extremist? A football fanatic or a football extremist?
More apposite perhaps:
A political fanatic (which I would suggest includes quite a few of us here) or a political extremist?
One can be a fanatic and still be part of the mainstream. By the very nature of the word in its basic meaning the same does not apply to an extremist.
It's all about context; I don't think most people would see much difference between an ISIS fanatic and an ISIS extremist & would consider both not part of the mainstream. I would differentiate between a political fanatic and someone fanatical about politics (I don't think I'm either but others may disagree).
To be fair your source is now rather out of date. In the modern climate of the last few years extremist has been used more and more as a synonym for potential terrorist. Wrongly perhaps but I can see why the correction was felt necessary.
I agree there are some fairly loose synonyms there (nut, fiend, visionary); I'm sure we can all choose the definitions we'd prefer to be applied to ourselves and to our opponents!
So would you rather be called a fanatic or an extremist? There are very different meanings and implications for the two words.
A film fanatic or a film extremist? A football fanatic or a football extremist?
More apposite perhaps:
A political fanatic (which I would suggest includes quite a few of us here) or a political extremist?
One can be a fanatic and still be part of the mainstream. By the very nature of the word in its basic meaning the same does not apply to an extremist.
It's all about context; I don't think most people would see much difference between an ISIS fanatic and an ISIS extremist & would consider both not part of the mainstream. I would differentiate between a political fanatic and someone fanatical about politics (I don't think I'm either but others may disagree).
9,938 = fanatical
The first step is to acknowledge that you have a problem...
That falls down because we are hamstrung by the default "no action" option being hugely deleterious for us. It doesn't matter what it means for them (BMWs, etc), a do nothing option means we suffer more than almost any other scenario.
I think it was @FF43 who mentioned BATNA yesterday; this is something the British side needs to investigate as a matter of urgency.
Indeed we need to look very carefully at BATNA and no-deal options.
At a base level it means that we need to start with things like replication of regulatory structures - as an example our Civil Aviation Authority needs to apply for membership to ICAO who are the global aviation regulator and part of the UN. Not talk about it, but actually get the application in. Things that would mitigate what no-deal looks like. The EU will probably object to our application until the day we actually leave, but we can and should appeal to global authorities over the heads of the EU for such petty brinkmanship as suggesting our planes will be grounded if there’s no deal.
There will be several other industries where similar action could be taken, most of which have a higher authority such as UN or WTO body.
States are members of the ICAO, not their aviation authorities. The UK is already a member of the ICAO in its own right and is a member of the ICAO council. The EU has a Representative at the ICAO but is not a member. So it doesn't look to me like there is anything to be done on that front. The issue with keeping planes in the air is the open skies agreements, not the ICAO.
Yes, the UK is a member of ICAO. The issue that the EU is threatening to “ground planes” over, is that the UK CAA’s licensing responsibilities for planes and licensed personnel are now delegated through EASA - so they say that on the day we leave the EU no British registered planes will have a Certificate of Airworthiness and no British airlines, pilots, engineers or dispatchers will be licensed as we have to be EU members to be licensed under EASA.
This is the sort of thing we need to take up with international authorities as quickly as possible, in order to transfer the current EASA powers to the UK CAA and have international agreement on their validity IN ADVANCE of the conclusion of the Brexit talks, if we wish to avoid being told to bend over by the EU.
Why are there any negotiations if the EU is not going to make any concessions, nor is it expecting the UK to make any concessions.
I agree. Whatever is going on it is not negotiating. One side is saying "tell me what you're going to give me and then I'll tell you what you'll get for it". The other side is saying "let's talk about both sides of that deal" when it should be saying "fuck off".
Well the trump / macron love in didn't last long...
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made the decision several weeks ago, and told French President Emmanuel Macron Washington was considering leaving during a meeting with President Donald Trump in late September on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. Macron was seeking Trump’s support for a French candidate seeking the top job at UNESCO.
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
In fairness that wasn't a surprise. Its why we left. Which makes moaning about it now seem a tad childish.
Absolutely. Davis has not exactly been highly rated on PB boards. His Cameron era sulk was ridiculous.
The man's an over promoted idiot. It's....suboptimal.
David Davis is the only prominent Leave campaigner who has "owned" Brexit and tried to make a success of it. Not one other of them has stepped up to the plate. I respect him for that, even if I suspect his willingness to take it on was due to an unwarranted belief in his powers of negotiation. He seems pretty disillusioned however.
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
In fairness that wasn't a surprise. Its why we left. Which makes moaning about it now seem a tad childish.
Actually, it does seem to have come as a surprise to most Leavers that the EU won't immediately smilingly agree to all of Britain's wishlist. The idea that they had their own priorities seems to have been a sensational revelation to nearly all of them, up to and including those now responsible for negotiating Britain's exit.
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
In fairness that wasn't a surprise. Its why we left. Which makes moaning about it now seem a tad childish.
Absolutely. Davis has not exactly been highly rated on PB boards. His Cameron era sulk was ridiculous.
The man's an over promoted idiot. It's....suboptimal.
David Davis is the only prominent Leave campaigner who has "owned" Brexit and tried to make a success of it. Not one other of them has stepped up to the plate. I respect him for that, even if I suspect his willingness to take it on was due to an unwarranted belief in his powers of negotiation. He seems pretty disillusioned however.
Michael Gove stepped up to the plate and ran for the leadership to be PM. Andrea Leadsome stepped up to the plate and ran for the leadership to be PM. Boris Johnson stepped up to the plate and became Foreign Secretary. Liam Fox stepped up to the plate and became International Trade Secretary. What he's done since I'm not so sure about.
Who precisely was a prominent Leave campaigner who didn't step up to the plate?
Turns out David Davis is not the consummate deal-maker he thought he was. What a surprise!
Turns out that Eurocrats care more for their pet undemocratic project than the people of Europe. What a surprise!
In fairness that wasn't a surprise. Its why we left. Which makes moaning about it now seem a tad childish.
Actually, it does seem to have come as a surprise to most Leavers that the EU won't immediately smilingly agree to all of Britain's wishlist. The idea that they had their own priorities seems to have been a sensational revelation to nearly all of them, up to and including those now responsible for negotiating Britain's exit.
Only a surprise to gullible idiot Leavers.
As I said, nearly all of them.
Nicely priggish, but with a touch of self doubt peeking through? Nah, you must be needing your gripe water.
He's consistent on that policy at least, but given politicians love to hypothesise about what their opponents plan, or the impact of policies, why not clarify what to do if getting people to stand trial is not a realistic option. I want world peace, but it doesn't betray that to consider a potential action in the event I cannot achieve that.
OK, but clarify the opposite side of the coin as well - i.e. if your intel is good enough to track a terrorist's movements down to a single house or locality it should also be good enough to assess when collateral damage would be unacceptably high.
Comments
fanatic
Synonyms for fanatic
noun person overenthusiastic about an interest
activist
addict
bigot
devotee
enthusiast
extremist
You only had to look at the Leave advocates to realise that the Government was going to be hugely weakened and stuffed with crazed ideologues if Leave won. And so it proved.
The referendum outcome was superseded by the GER2017 when TMay failed to get a mandate for her Brexit plans.
I would be interested in hearing your view on my question, however.
I agree there are some fairly loose synonyms there (nut, fiend, visionary); I'm sure we can all choose the definitions we'd prefer to be applied to ourselves and to our opponents!
Both strategies are bollocks and are economic arsonism.
https://twitter.com/IanDunt/status/918388447068545024
Give it up Mike. You keep trying to twist this every way you can but in the end the numbers speak for themselves. There are no results out there that show the majority of the electorate do not want Brexit.
Leave 2016 17.4 million
So not total bollocks.
Both May and Corbyn backed hard Brexit at GE2017
Theresa May should have the President on Catalonia over for a cozy chat soon!
*titters*
- One meaning in which people use the phrase is 'no trade deal', i.e. going to WTO terms. But that is not the same as:
- No deal at all, i.e. no agreement on payment, no agreement on citizens rights, no agreement on airline slots, no agreement on medical regulations, etc etc.
The first would be an amicable agreement to move to WTO terms and agree on whatever needs to be done to get there with minimal disruption, no doubt including a transition period. The second would be utter chaos.
The two are very different, and we should always be clear which we mean.
A film fanatic or a film extremist?
A football fanatic or a football extremist?
More apposite perhaps:
A political fanatic (which I would suggest includes quite a few of us here) or a political extremist?
One can be a fanatic and still be part of the mainstream. By the very nature of the word in its basic meaning the same does not apply to an extremist.
Glad we cleared that up.
https://twitter.com/nick_clegg/status/918459801222418433
As someone once said of him ‘He’s the only man who can strut sitting down’
Edit: you might remember you were kind enough to actually publish a thread of mine on this very subject.
It was very good politicking on his part. Is he up to it? Would anyone be?
Who could have predicted that the UK didn't hold all the cards in negotiating with the EU?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/19/the-eu-will-play-hardball-with-post-brexit-britain/
https://twitter.com/georgeeaton/status/722385618857304065?ref_src=twsrc^tfw&ref_url=http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2016/04/19/vote-leave-sets-out-its-objective-tse-gives-his-robust-interpretation/
The first step is to acknowledge that you have a problem...
If corbyn ever gets in the SAS might as well go on vacation for the next few years as they are never going to be called into action.
This is the sort of thing we need to take up with international authorities as quickly as possible, in order to transfer the current EASA powers to the UK CAA and have international agreement on their validity IN ADVANCE of the conclusion of the Brexit talks, if we wish to avoid being told to bend over by the EU.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made the decision several weeks ago, and told French President Emmanuel Macron Washington was considering leaving during a meeting with President Donald Trump in late September on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. Macron was seeking Trump’s support for a French candidate seeking the top job at UNESCO.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/11/u-s-to-pull-out-of-unesco-again/amp/
Andrea Leadsome stepped up to the plate and ran for the leadership to be PM.
Boris Johnson stepped up to the plate and became Foreign Secretary.
Liam Fox stepped up to the plate and became International Trade Secretary. What he's done since I'm not so sure about.
Who precisely was a prominent Leave campaigner who didn't step up to the plate?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41598991