the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

Also my da has a mate from his old canoe club who's a dead ringer for IDS lol

I used to think that all the moralistic Christian stuff he came out with was just a smokescreen for the brutality of his welfare policies but now I'm pretty sure he was genuinely stupid enough to believe both things at once without ever noticing the contradiction.

It just goes to show that the absolute dearth of talent in the Conservative party has been a very long term problem. Nothing about IDS stands up to much scrutiny, including his fabricated CV. Or the pretense that he quit Cameron's cabinet over cuts to disability benefits.

Now enjoying the idea that reality has shifted, Man in the High Castle style, and IDS is the only person who remembers that he was leader of the Conservative Party.

meanwhile, David Davis is doing the whole "a dog ate my homework" routine in front of the Brexit Select Committee.

in fact, not so much "dog ate my homework" as "I do not recall the existence of any homework in the first place" JFC

it is fairly perturbing that a senior british politician has literally no idea how the democratic system of one of the country's closest neighbours works.

Come on, you don't actually think Tories believe the Republic of Ireland is a proper country?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQUYSWeX4AAoXRf.jpg

Williamson vs Hammond fite is an amusing little sideshow.

choppy morning for david davis

trying to get out of it with "I'm running late" particularly impressive

I'M RUNNING 17 MONTHS LATE

here is footage of Davis' response to the committee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDUIGvpDolw

it's his SAS training kicking in - 'improvise, adapt and overcome'.

Q: Did the government undertake an assessment of leaving the customs union before the cabinet took that decision?

Not a quantitative one, no, says Davis.

Q: Isn’t that extraordinary?

No, says Davis. He says the range of different outcomes is too wide. Some free trade agreements have been very effective, and others haven’t. Ministers had to take a judgment. That is what they did, he says.

Davis says cabinet took decision to leave the customs union without an analysis of the economic impact.

There was a piece in the Standard about pro-Corbyn City boys (and more generally City types who voted Labour last time). It illuminated precisely nothing about Labour policy but really did show quite how catastrophically the Tories are trashing their own brand, apparently without realising it. That Davis answer is their whole problem in a nutshell.

fuck it we'll give it a go. over the top lads.

xpost

"Lets just do it and be legends"

Committee chairman Hilary Benn asked whether impact assessments had been carried into various parts of the economy, listing the automotive, aerospace and financial sectors.

"I think the answer's going to be no to all of them," Mr Davis responded.

When Mr Benn suggested this was "strange", the minister said formal assessments were not needed to know that "regulatory hurdles" would have an impact.

"I am not a fan of economic models because they have all proven wrong," he added.

oh so that's okay then

In retrospect it was probably a mistake to let them watch The Hatton Garden Job the night before.

Jim Allister, a former DUP MEP and now leader of the hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice, said today that any moves aimed at keeping Northern Ireland inside the European Customs Union would have moved the border to the Irish Sea.

it's cool they set up a party for that weird way they all speak

they should have called it the Hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice

good alex harrowell piece from a month ago on the causes of these pervasive and seemingly baffling fyre-festival levels of useless incompetent mendacity

tl;dr: most billionaires are deeply stupid but they now basically drive politics and policy

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxpYW_w5pgo

Davis says cabinet took decision to leave the customs union without an analysis of the economic impact.

and there it is.
no doubt this will get buried in the deluge of crap thats flying around at the moment ...

Wera Hobhouse, a Lib Dem, asks where the misunderstanding that there were impact assessments came from.

Davis says she will have to ask other people. He says he always used the phrase sectoral analysis. He accepts that, at an earlier hearing, when Seema Malhotra asked him about impact assessments, he might not have corrected her.

haha that is great - never saw it before, xpost.

surely this idea they don't have impact assessments is outrageous bullshit right? "our dog ate them" sounds like a classic case of covering up the truth expertly by admitting to something absurd and embarrassing.

lobster magazine -- never exactly unguilty of conspiracy-type thinking (since C-TT is literally its raison d'etre) -- is tweeting its theory that this blur of nomenclature is a ruse to avoid releasing actually existing impact reports (now callled something else) as demanded by FOI requests

We're a Hobhouse

^ basically just ridiculing a foreign name, good job bananaman

that sounds plausible enough, @mark

DD is also doing a lot of "I can't hear the question" at that select committee. Is he actually hard of hearing or pretending to be so to buy time because he does it at almost every question or interjection - at one point he upbraids Seema Malhotra for not giving him the exact date she is trying to tie down when she has already given it to him twice.

Davis won't resign or get the sack, and we'll have to suck it up.

Isn't this wonderful?

This interview will colour everything that happens from now on. A town loses its car factory and biggest employer? They chose to leave the customs union without an analysis of the economic impact. Food prices start spiralling and people slip further into poverty? They chose to leave the customs union without an analysis of the economic impact. Several British airlines find their European flights effectively grounded? They chose to leave the customs union without an analysis of the economic impact.

If nothing else he should be fired for being stupid enough to have admitted it.

the transcript as reported by the Guardian:

Benn: So, just to be clear, has the government undertaken any impact assessments on the implications of leaving the EU for different sectors [of the economy]

Davis: Not in sectors. The Treasury, of course, has got an OBR forecast which has an implication, although even that is pretty crude ... There is no systematic impact assessment.

Benn: So the answer to the question is no. So the government hasn’t undertaken any impact assessments of implications of leaving the EU for different sectors of the British economy.

Davis: No.

Benn: So there isn’t one, for example, on the automatic sector?

Davis: Not that I’m aware of, no.

Benn: Is there one on aerospace?

Davis: Not that I’m aware of.

Benn: One on financial services?

Davis: I think the answer is going to be no to all of them.

Davis won't resign or get the sack, and we'll have to suck it up.

Isn't this wonderful?

i'd say there's a p big chance he's toast now. someone must be sacrificed and theresa may is already dead.

plus everybody obv hates him and he's not a key figure in negotiations.

If Davis had just said there are no impact assessments, it's the will of the people and we are here to carry it out so what's the point of doing one it would have saved him the time and the technocrats wouldn't be boring on my twitter rn.

Yeah, they've got a pile of embarrassing reports somewhere - the FOI requests make it clear that something exists. I'm just not sure whether they're embarrassing because they say Brexit will be a disaster, or because they're terrible, just the shoddiest desperately rushed guesswork padded with c&p filler with no co-ordination or consistency across departments. Probably both tbh.

that's p much what he did say.

xpost

It's actually impressive what a massive fuck-up this week has been, considering it's only Wednesday.

Corbyn says in July Liam Fox said the Brexit talks would be “the easiest in human history”. Does she still agree?

the lady is for turning?

They won't sack anyone, that's just implying that they agree there's something wrong.

May says nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. The only hard border is down the middle of the Labour party.

the fucking nerve of these people

the way he's so insouciant at the committee - hand waving and eating sweets (!) during it - well, it's almost as if he doesn't care about the UK leaving the EU and never has....

I mean he should've said it at the start, not pretended that impact assessments existed xps

full asymptotic allegory convergence: SINKHOLE BRITAIN vs the MIDSOMER MURDERS METAPHORBOT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvUkDFtKsrM

An embattled councillor is found crushed under a fallen piece of stage equipment on the opening night of Macbeth. Suspicion falls on the village madrigal enthusiasts, angry that redevelopment on the land of a down-on-his-luck aristocrat might threaten to make the village do... pic.twitter.com/6x00hxbTOm

— Midsomer Murders Bot (@midsomerplots) December 5, 2017

I'm not sure if I'm stepping on your joke mark, but that conspiracy theory seems at least quite plausibly what's happened? Possibly the "Impact: dinosaur meteor level" has been filed off.

DD & Boris and Liam Fox are there effectively as part of a coalition government, there'd be trouble if they went and weren't replaced by others of the same stripe - unfortunately they may be the most competent of that lot.

it wasn't really a joke, more a caveat attached to the cited source for the reading (lobster is a good magazine! but it does reach for conspiracy by natural inclination)

if that is what happened surely the implications are pretty huge. like he is misleading parliament.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan, a Conservative, asks about new figures showing literacy improving.

May pays particular tribute to Nick Gibb, the minister for school standards, and to teachers around the country.

improving in some sectors