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

who is the bolshy footman mentioned a few posts upthread? i didn't know Wilson got on so well with the Queen but it doesn't surprise me.

yeah Jeanette Charles was/is uncanny.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/05/24/article-0-1DCF73FA00000578-543_638x564.jpg

David Davis is not facing contempt proceedings, so he should survive this.

who is the bolshy footman mentioned a few posts upthread?

he is entirely figurative: charles I was haughty with everyone who wasn't also a monarch and considered parliament his servants -- as everyone knows this ended badly. my sketch was an attempt to convey how this tale reads from the inside (where charles is a not-that-distant ancestral relative who might as well be an uncle of some sort)

Guess who's to blame for the UK economy's long-term problem with low productivity? Yes, it's the disabled of course!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42265268

They constantly get away with this sort of shit though.

Was just laughing at the bit in Betting The House where Hammond was asking if the rumour he had heard that a lot of his colleagues casually refer to him as a "cunt" behind his back was true!

maybe inappropriate to ask the Queen that

Have read an account of this before, but it still makes me (☝ ՞ਊ ՞)☝

... members of staff at headquarters had already signed up to work on post-election leadership campaigns for the so-called moderate Labour MPs Chuka Umunna and Yvette Cooper. The suspicion ran so deeply that Corbyn's core team were amused to discover that their passes to Southside were deactivated on 9 June - the day after the election. 'They thought the nightmare would end, didn't they?' says one key Corbyn lieutenant.

despite the sufficient progress announcement it’s hard to see how the DUP’s stated desires square with no hard border without some sort of single market membership.

ah i think i see - they’ve effectively kicked the can down the road again

Joint report - key line on "full alignment" in absence of agreed solutions with internal market and customs union rules that protect Good Friday agreement pic.twitter.com/wf7jSpg49v

— Ross Hawkins (@rosschawkins) December 8, 2017

sorry “DUP are surely betting *against* there being agreed solutions”

remind me again what Brexit means?

It means Brexit, Jasper

it reminds me of the definition of “deems” lol in Jowett’s Dictionary of English Law cited by Geoffrey Hill in one of his lectures:

“Generally speaking, when you talk of a thing being “deemed” to be something, you do no mean to say that it is that which it is deemed to be, it is rather an admission that it is *not* what it is deemed to be, and that, notwithstanding it is not that particular thing, nevertheless it is to be “deemed” that thing.”

There's some other handy brexit stuff in there actually, this quoted from Edmund Campion:

"Equity is gracious and calls for gracefulness to invoke it, whereas the voices of the persecuting authority are noisy and ugly with falsehoods, naked and unproved words, bruited about"

naked and unproved words, very handy.

perhaps appropriately enough he compares the cadences and logic of that definition with Alice in Wonderland. I'd quite like to see a Theresa in Brexitland, with Alice's graceful, incisive innocence replaced with Theresa's awkward backing into things, creating further problems and difficulties, and with her just forcing the ball over the line through sheer stubbornness and indefatigability. Mangling language and thought and sense as she goes. Creating a sort of wreckage-strewn, scorched version of Wonderland as she goes.

A deal in Brussels is good news for Mrs May as we can now move on to the next stage of humiliation.

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) December 8, 2017

What's even his position, if one at all, now? He wanted this humiliation iirc.

I think he wanted hard national self-immolation asap.

he wants the earth scorched, all negotiation is an affront to English sovereignty, and anything that commits us to being more than a libertarian tax haven is a humiliation

looking again at that para, it’s prob a decent enough achievement of May in a sense. aiui one of the main criticisms of the EU from DExEU was that talks about how trade would be carried out (which will now take place) were inseparable from an agreement on the Irish border, which had been made a precondition of moving to phase two.

given that some sort of “legal fiction” or fudging or whatever you want to call it was always going to be required.

It's just an agreement not to change things

I mean

Clap that if you want but

A full brexit text that boils down to "we'll say we did obv but can we not pls"

It's just an agreement not to change things

I mean

Clap that if you want but

yeah the sheer unlikelihood of them reaching any kind of way forward right up until yesterday makes this seem unusually competent from May et al

otoh the hardcore Brexiteers are gonna be going full mental by, say, next Tuesday, let's see how that works out for the gov

especially when it dawns on them that the DUP are now the unlikely defenders of the single market

think i said upthread that may's throughline is playing the DUP off against the brexit ultras, a fact that possibly only dawned in no.10 in the cold light of tue morn

she is only a tiny way further through imo, with much dawning to endure

It makes clear the whole of the UK, including Northern Ireland, will be leaving the customs union.

It leaves unclear how an open border will be achieved but says in the absence of a later agreement, the UK will ensure “full alignment” with the rules of the customs union and single market that uphold the Good Friday agreement.

i... huh

it is right out in plain public sight bcz this is the age of the internet but tbf a lot of historical agreements have hinged on similarly baffling ambiguities and contradictory can-kicking

think i said upthread that may's throughline is playing the DUP off against the brexit ultras, a fact that possibly only dawned in no.10 in the cold light of tue morn

she is only a tiny way further through imo, with much dawning to endure

reading myles this morning is helping (when doesn’t it)

“At present it is impossible to say more but an official spokesman stated that it is ‘not unlikely’ that the ESB and the sugar-beer people will be approached not to secure their co-operation but with a view to securing their co-operation in this vital industry”

do you mean playing them off because of their fear of PENNYCORBS, mark?

Ah the esb and the sugar beets

That came out sharp upthread fizzles sozzles

i think PENNYCORBS IS BAD NOT GOOD is a point of agreement so that's probably a bad lever to tug on

the good lever is WHO IS THE MOST STUBBORN IN THE LAND

good from this very particular POV i mean, in every other context it's probably as terrible as ever

.....which land

i guess fear of pennycorbs from both dup and hardcore brexit shitlads strengthens her hand tho?

Likes: unionism in its many forms.
Dislikes: being reminded that we're all in it together with them (for a wide variety of thems).

"the land" usefully unclear in this instance, further precision wrecks all

i've sat here for thinking abt an answer to LG's q and this best i can come up with is, fear of PC is what's keeping her in office, so yes in that narrow sense

i don't think there's any sense it which it makes her hand easier to play: she is going to end up giving away at least one of several farms, possibly more

minutes that could have been spent writing sentences in english, yes

.....which land

DUP most stubborn in the universe so question is redundant.

"this is the kingdom of not, which while it is not, yet is"

as sun ra teaches us

Sun Ra couldn't teach anything to these tin-eared infidels, only the gulags will teach them *something*.

brexit is finally getting good

Sun Ra couldn't teach anything to these tin-eared infidels, only the gulags will teach them *something*.

Couple of Sun Ra titles did pop into my head, "We'll Wait For You" and "They'll Come Back".

The Nu Plebians of Brexitia

The Eurosceptic Worlds of Sun Ra

I don't really understand what the detail of this agreement actually means and but it feels like a fudge to me. The general aim seems to be to cleave as closely to the existing situation as possible while pretending the exact opposite? In which case the howls of betrayal from Tory Brexit ultras should be due any minute now.

It's an Irish solution to a British problem

I can see it suiting everyone tbh

Just accidentally clicked on Torygraph piece with Farage going ham on May. The fading pay-walled tedious and angry words reminded me of that amusing comment that it creates the visual effect of walking away from the pub bore.

"Nope, its the monarch that is supreme." <- a line I've just read