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

Probably not, but it would be amusing to see Farage on a platform with Dave M and Chuka. Lol, there is a Centrist Party called Platform as well btw.

flatporm

I thought flatprom but in essence yes

lol a centrist party literally named for a Houellebecq novel is tres jolie

"Against the World, Against Life" would be a pretty good slogan for our new centrist party overlords

@bbclaura
Laura Kuenssberg Retweeted Sebastian Payne
EU says all EU Law will apply until end of transition, assumed to be 2021, and we have to stick with all four freedoms, which means EU immigration carries on as is for five years after the referendum

Have to? LOVE TOO stick...

Same thing happened when we voted against the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

We chose not to use the tape. It was poisonous stuff. But it was one voice; a few sentences; totally unrepresentative of most Tories and their leadership. Most of all we worried about its impact on the public debate. We never released it. (And it will certainly be gone now).

— Theo Bertram (@theobertram) December 15, 2017

^^ twitter thread from a former Blair/Brown advisor Theo Bertram (tldr, during the 2005 election campaign Labour's research team had a tape of someone from the Conservative party making racist remarks, Bertram says that if the tape had been made public it would have completely discredited the idea that the tory focus on immigration "are you thinking what we're thinking" etc was anything other than racist dog-whistling, however the research team chose not to release the tape)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/stopping-brexit-labour-tony-blair-jeremy-corbyn-eu-referendum-general-election-a8114531.html

well i've gotta say i'm shocked

the left don't care about winning

What is it with Blair trying to be 'statesman like' well past his date? Why is he in the news at all? Does he have any leverage or influence at all? (being in the media is not the same)

i wonder if there's some conspiratorial sense in which his thinktank influence is greater than we can realise from our vantage points. In the media he is a pretty pathetic figure, issuing pearls of wisdom to the eyerolls of all

but there is a whole generation of new-labour ppl in quango/tertiary positions or idk university vice chancellorships that are still intent of steamrolling through kinds of NL/Coalition consensus reforms to "energise" their agencies. There is a very real sense in which the alveoli of the state are all being poisoned by these ppl. These are Blair's people who I think he is really speaking directly to(?) I doubt he has any interest in "common people", Blairism, as such, has always had a strong seam of technocratic rationality (and the post-Trump conflation of democratic process with populism and weirdly by extension fascism, largely plays into this) and the administrators of these kinds of "expertise" still are very powerful at more local levels. This is less easily addressed than the horrors of zombie new labour councillors turning every council estate into an investment opportunity and the link between the third sector and government was badly severed by Cameron's big society bollocks.

sorry, gibberish

ctrl-f 'iraq' one result found

welp guess i'm not gonna be reading that then

can we stop giving press coverage to war criminals without hounding them relentlessly about their horrific decisions pls

not gibberish plax, booming posts imo

This is literally exactly what Corbyn did during the referendum campaign and got him accused of being a lazy, useless tosser who was secretly in love with Brexit pic.twitter.com/WMRmK6pF6I

— Dan Howdon (@danielhowdon) December 16, 2017

i’d add to plax’s post that people like Blair and Mandelson are at the centre of international agencies where they are basically prostituted around on the basis of their name and their address books, to offer “analysis” and “consultancy”. they exist (always existed?) in a grey space between the political and the corporate.

in some ways it’s the apex of the technocratic, neoliberal, third way approach - the corporatisation of politics, the notion of managerial politics.

appearing in the paper every other weekend as if they matter is partly free promotional consultancy (advertising in other words), partly because they need to appear still relevant in order to have currency, partly because they are perpetually surrounded by people who tell them and pay them on the basis that they are relevant, and so believe it themselves, partly because they believe they operate at stratospheric levels of international power - an ultra version of the adults in the room, secular power gods in the world, which means they believe that they have value and other people just. don’t. understand. everything in their world points to their centrality. it is profoundly undemocratic and kinda absurd and embarrassing. they are also deeply vain.

Blair's right about the importance of staying in the EU or at least campaigning against withdrawal, but otherwise his argument doesn't really stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. There is no way of stopping Brexit if the Tories are still in still power, certainly not given the make-up of the party right now.

It's just another example of Blair's astonishing naivety around people who are more right wing than he is. The article is entirely right to point out the contradiction between his stance on Brexit and his weird Trump blind spot.

Booming posts all

Give Blair to the provos imo

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/darts-diane-abbott-tweet-blackface-alexandra-palace-pdc-world-championship-labour-a8114276.html

Where to begin.

You said it.

“We tweeted it and it has had an unprecedented response in terms of retweets and likes.

“Ultimately you’re not going to please everybody all the time. We have never had anything on our social media that has had such a positive response.”

The bookmakers then courted further controversy when they replied to Ms Creasy: “This wasn’t some guerrilla marketing stunt Stella; one of our team attended on a social night out. We thought it was a very impressive attempt at fancy dress and merely shared it with our followers.

“Please stop taking things so seriously.”

I've got a couple of other ideas for them to tweet to get unprecedented response.. jfc.

Michel Barnier said it was unavoidable that British banks and financial firms would lose the passports that allow them to trade freely in the EU, as a result of any decision to quit the single market.

“There is no place [for financial services]. There is not a single trade agreement that is open to financial services. It doesn’t exist.” He said the outcome was a consequence of “the red lines that the British have chosen themselves. In leaving the single market, they lose the financial services passport.”

This is so self-evident and has been from the very beginning that you wonder how the govt. have the brass neck, frankly. it's truly embarrassing.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/18/uk-cannot-have-a-special-deal-for-the-city-says-eu-brexit-negotiator-barnier

Nonsense! It's simply a matter of being stronger and stabler than those stuffy bureaucrats

i don't get how the discourse has gone from the vote aftermath last week which was "uk will never really leave the eu/brexit in name only" back to "uk will leave the eu and the single market"

I *think* the latter statement is Brexit ultra face-saving by Davis and co but who even knows any more.

if they keep saying different things to every constituency then every constituency might think they're only lying to the others. genius.

not sure which side's indignation when they realise they've been played will be most delicious

I think the fuss about the first stage was the right massively overreacting to the transition rules but the final destination has always been as Barnier sets out.

The government must know by now that they have no real power in this negotiation and they will have to swallow whatever concessions they are made to. Their entire continued political existences, both individually and as a government, are based on pretending otherwise.

The EU must also be calculating that, as infuriating and incompetent as May and Davis are, they are at least known quantities and preferable to sitting around the table with Boris Johnson and/or whichever headbanger they come up with next. So they have a vested interest in allowing them to continue playing to the gallery as long as they don't overreach themselves.

OTM. These negotiations have been totally one-sided, everything the EU have asked for they've got.

The most disappointing thing for me is the way May's extremophile government are managing to survive all these fucking disgraceful daily levels of incompetence and humiliation without dying. To misquote Richard Pryor - they have survived the ultimate test, and the ultimate test is can you survive death. They look increasingly like surviving death for another few years yet.

The most disappointing thing for me is the way May's extremophile government are managing to survive all these fucking disgraceful daily levels of incompetence and humiliation without dying

you can't shame a cockroach iirc

If these fuckers are still here in 2022 then we are all doomed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42420829

Thoughts on this in a bit - I don’t think Barnier’s “fuck off with your passporting” had been mentioned here yet?

was amazed by this line:

"Which begs the question - if they are playing hard ball - why are we being so nice in rolling out the red carpet?"

the BBC

http://drinkinggamezone.com/img/games/movie/blazing-saddles.jpg

L-R: EU negotiators, UK government

But cmere it has to pass commons again once finalised and it won't so all of this is just curious surely

I assume the negotiations are following the same pattern behind closed doors as those for cameron’s emergency brake where he implored them for something he could sell at home but basically got very little from the EU. he thought it was enough that he could trumpet it in the papers at home as having ‘stood up to europe’. the difficulty is that, as cameron quickly found out,, the more eurosceptic press will never be placated come what may so the tories are on a hiding to nothing with this hardmanning

was the mail’s headline not something basically like IS THAT IT? for dave’s big renegotiation

May's extremophile government

a+ for this btw

xpost

More or less, 'Call That a Deal, Dave?'

https://www.thepaperboy.com/uk/2016/02/20/front-pages-archive.cfm

FWIW the most dangerous thing now is probably the emergence of a narrative of national humiliation and Farage is already starting to stoke that up. Best case scenario is that he gets the blame from people who would not normally be inclined to do so but I think that's unlikely.

esp not with the BBC being so awful now. if you haven't seen last week's question time then consider yourself lucky.

The right wing love a good "stabbed in the back" narrative. But hopefully that nonsense won't cut it with most people, and they will be more concerned with the increasingly real threat to living standards.

luckily there's no precedent for people swallowing a stabbed in the back narrative en masse

good thread of additional observations from the barnier interview here:

The EU will be uncompromising on transition: UK must accept EU acquis lock, stock and barrel, including any new laws passed when British ministers and MEPs no longer at the table.

— Jennifer Rankin (@JenniferMerode) December 19, 2017

To be doubly sure, checked: this means EU’s four freedoms, including people, and sensitive areas, such as fisheries. MB said transition shd be “short” without extensions.

— Jennifer Rankin (@JenniferMerode) December 19, 2017

goes back to LG's point, what on earth is all this talk about having cake again about? i can't work out whether it's something they genuinely believe, or it's just for the right-wing press and hard brexit faction, and there'll be another six months of posturing before doing what the EU wants. Think I said unthread that I had a conversation with a friend who had spoken to dexeu civil servants earlier in the year and they said they were seriously hampered by the fact that DD and others *believed* this posturing nonsense, but surely that can't have survived phase 1? seriously, these fucking clowns.

MB said during transition the UK will be allowed to re-negotiate the 750 international agreements that fall when UK leaves EU.

Subtext: good luck with that.

— Jennifer Rankin (@JenniferMerode) December 19, 2017

xp
aye, thank god that never happened!

The outcome of the snap election guaranteed this would happen. A lot of press at the time pointed out that an increase in the Tory majority would mean that the influence of the hard Brexiteers would be drowned out and there would be no need to rely on them for tight votes. This was apparent to the EU too, see this Deutsche Bank analysis for example: http://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-sterling-election-idUSKBN17K1KS

Obviously, what happened happened. The Remain faction in the party is bigger but also clearly more biddable as they vote along with the government on every occasion for the most part.

If you go on conservativehome the comment talk is increasingly of “never voting for the Tories again if they don’t deliver” and the mood is increasingly ugly. Nicky Morgan wrote a piece about receiving death threats and the comments were all along the lines of “yeah but you are actually a traitor so”

This isn’t me slagging off the Remain faction either - getting death threats and constant abuse, especially given what happened to Jo Cox, must be horrific. The government won’t even come out and condemn the Telegraph or the Mail for their rhetoric, so they know they’ve got no support from the party.

Agree with the comments about the emerging and dangerous narrative, but at a loss to see what would change it.