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

Twitter appears to be blocked where I am but I am sure someone has pointed out Sasha Talavera - the Swansea academic who came up with the data for that study - is a professor of Finance and happens to be one of the founders of Vox Ukraine, a free-market lobbying / analytics group with a pretty clear agenda when it comes to Russia.

If only Putin knew some of us would become FSB moles if he just put a couple of grand in our accounts. I had a dream last night that I was on an impossibly huge yacht and someone (possibly a Putin employee) was offering me a house with an indoor swimming pool if I worked for them, but then I was going in circles forever and couldn't get to some room where I had to go to accept the job!

Dreams now! Is there anything those Russians haven't infiltrated

Well at least the latest weather front from Russia is apparently going to be a heatwave, rather than the invading "Beast" that was completely to blame for Windrush, UK GDP flatlining etc.... Anyway, Corbyn can get some pro-tips from that other 80's Soviet mole outed by the Sunday Times, Neil Kinnock.

Jo Johnson being asked about Amber Rudd on Peston now - he supports her remaining in post. Iiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnteresting dinner table for him tonight.

Amelie's husband is no gentleman, for sure.

start reading some Western European history, dawg. Instead of that Marvel shite (not meant as a serious swipe and in jest!)

No, that is a fair point, my knowledge can be a little patchy for biographical reasons. Is there anything in particular you’d recommend, I’ve been meaning to make my way through the Hobsbawms at some point?

Obviously something that would be handy for a 60:40 split at another referendum would be some sort of massive gammon apoplexy.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-deal-talks-latest-eu-immigration-free-movement-offer-a8326101.html

I honestly don’t get second referendum people. The first one was massively toxic and horrific; even if Remain had won I don’t get how people expected the country to just carry on as before? We’d probably be seeing UKIP polling high again if that had happened.

There’s also no public support for a Remain vote even after almost two years of continuous bad news, higher prices in the shops, and even the the threat to the union.

It’s not that people can’t change their minds; it’s that the evidence so far is that they aren’t doing so.

xp
I'm not much of a reccommender AF tbh, but will go with what I'm currently on, currently am on Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, which is a lot of fun tbh. Last night I learned that Lloyd George's geographical knowledge was barely infant school level!

The Welsh Wizard didn't even know where Slovakia was.

reasonable, since Slovakia only came into existence in 1993

#GeographyPedant

well why were they discussing it at the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty? And also he wan't sure about New Zealand and huge swathes of North Africa that lines were being drawn on.

I suppose they were discussing it in the context of the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the constitution of Czechoslovakia, that part of the world was known as the "Czech Lands" (or alternatively Bohemia and Moravia) and the "Slovak Lands" and both were parts of the Austrian part of the dual monarchy IIRC

lots of "new countries" petitioning for independence at this juncture, so maybe a pass. But for someone leading the BE his geography was still erm.. rocky to say the least.

yeah fair enough, as I say I'm just being a pedant really!

Not picking on you gyac, you’re just the third one to say it - but that’s a bullshit strawman. There is no-one in this country* that now thinks that we’d carry on as before in the case of a remain vote either at the first referendum or some putative second one. But things are toxic and horrific now, in concrete ways - I’d take UKIP in the polls again vs their most crippling desires being played out, damaging people and families and institutions.

I’m not unbiased of course - I’m a European in the U.K., specifically an Irishman, so I’m bound to the two countries that will be (are being) most fucked by this.

*statement void if Tony Blair is in the country, but how likely is that?

xp

No worries Neil, I'll kill you last :p

Well neither am I, for exactly the same reasons. I have never felt more foreign or unwanted in this country than I have in the last two years. I am not saying all that out of some desire for things to continue as they have!

that part of the world was known as the "Czech Lands" (or alternatively Bohemia and Moravia) and the "Slovak Lands" and both were parts of the Austrian part of the dual monarchy IIRC

*Actually* Slovakia was part of the Hungarian empire*

*looked it up on Wikipedia

dangerous game is pedantry!

Seeing as May has a 2:1 degree in geography, perhaps I shouldn't ride Lloyd George too hard.

hah hoisted by my own petard!

^^^ it’s ‘hoist’

*ducks*

it's 'with your own'

*also ducking*

Board Announcement:

Neil's pedantry card has been revoked indefinitely, his statutory right to appeal has also been revoked until he can sort out his gramma ffs!:)

Someone has leaked a letter from Rudd to May talking about “ambitious but achievable” deportation targets. Will be interesting to see how she explains not seeing that one.

"I'm quite the touch typist"

The former immigration minister Brandon Lewis suggested on Sunday this proposed increase was an ambition rather than a target.

Seems legit.

fuck me, Plausible deniability card revoked!

can you have SMART ambitions?

Show Me A Racist Tory?

Shoot May, Amber Rudd & TobyYoung?

Worst iteration of fuck, marry, kill.

xposts I knew the geography of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would end up being my downfall :-(

Amber Rudd resigns!

gtf out!

*choke*

Yup. Watching itv news, it's already out of date.

I wonder if it’s too late to make tomorrow’s front pages?

God I thought I had a boring sunday

🎉

after that Javid Torygraph cover today, perhaps he's the next home sec or is he playing for the top job?

Appointing a POC to the role after all this bullshit is the kind of on-the-nose thing May would do, but it can’t be Kwasi Kwarteng because his partner is... Amber Rudd.

i feel like the logical follow up to this would be for May to go next, but logic doesn't seem to apply to this lot.

It might have been better for the Home Secretary to lose her seat in a GE, which seemd likely, but there's lots of harm she could do before then.

June 2017:
Amber Rudd stands in for Theresa May by taking part in the leaders debate instead of her.

April 2018:
Amber Rudd stands in for Theresa May by resigning over the hostile environment fiasco instead of her.

— David Schneider (@davidschneider) April 29, 2018

The way May treats her proteges tells me she might have trampled on more than just some wheat when she was a kid.

Key difference between Rudd and other Tory rebels Soubry, Grieve and co: she has been in Brexit war-Cabinet meetings and knows exactly where the government stands on big issues — e.g customs union. Could be very handy intelligence for the backbenchers and very dangerous for May.

— Adam Payne (@adampayne26) April 29, 2018

this seems to make sense.