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

wait i have a concerning understanding of the verb "to slot"

arrgh! such troubling images (apart from the ones where he punches the 5ft diabetic woman!-oh shit I'll get 51-ed here!)

either 'slotting' is sas slang for killing someone or bravo two zero was much more of an erotic story than i realised at the time

speaking of erotic stories

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfFCyTBXUAAiE_a.jpg:large

strong confessions of a (terrible) brexit negotiator vibes.

People seem to be taking that Nadine tweet as evidence that the Brexiters are shook and panicking when in fact it's exactly the same sort of deranged nonsense that Dorries comes out with all the time.

DD such a flouncer. Stephen Bush this morning: On the one hand, this isn't the first time that friends of Davis (or Davis himself) have hinted he might quit as Brexit Secretary - in fact, this is the fifth one.

On the other, it's the looming 10-year-anniversary of the most pointless by-election in history, when Davis quit his job as shadow home secretary in protest over 42 days detention (a policy his party opposed) and triggered a by-election in his ultra-safe seat as a referendum on the issue. (The other parties sensibly denied him the spotlight by not fielding candidates.) The Brexit Secretary has form on pointless resignations.

And have no doubt, this would be a pointless resignation. For the fallback arrangement to be meaningful, it can't be time limited.

I wonder if he has a couple of scotches and decides to *make a stand*. Don’t quite see it. Strikes me as essentially a frivolous man, so maybe he periodically feels the need to aim for seriousness and misses the mark.

He's shitting himself because he knows he's not up to the job and also must know by now that it's all a terrible idea anyway. It's nothing to do with the backstop.

otm

Catchy

Government proposes creating a new customs territory after the UK leaves the EU customs territory called “the customs territory comprising the customs territories of the UK and the EU” pic.twitter.com/sTUuJpI7WX

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) June 7, 2018

the customs territory of all customs territories that are not members of themselves

the ol' tctctctotukateu, trips right off the tongue

or ctcctukeu if you take out all the thes, ofs and ands

feels Lovecraftian.

appropriately

we're leaving the eu in favour of being subsumed into r'lyeh

the infernal, mind-destroying clutches of Cthulhu preferable to the current Cabinet IMO
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/look-all-im-saying-is-lets-at-least-give-nyarlathotep-a-chance

total centrist dad position

i've long said that no rational person would choose michael gove over any given shoggoth to carry out virtually any task

shoggoth is less freaky lookin tbf

itt: goveshaming

which i'm all for, to be clear

lol davis rescinds his “threat”. no eyeroll big enough.

and our prime minister remains safely unslotted :(

lol, this arsehole

This Brexiteer became so angry during a rant about Remainers, he had to cut short the call and put the phone down https://t.co/6If6bRCZ43

— LBC (@LBC) June 7, 2018

Called into Lush shop to buy present and express my solidarity. Along with many of the victims of #spycops I am grateful to Lush for supporting the campaign for truth and justice. It’s appalling its staff have been intimidated because Lush stood up for us. Let’s stand up for them pic.twitter.com/Hwhxfq8ade

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) June 7, 2018

A reminder that David Davis is threatening to resign over something the EU has already rejected

— Adam Payne (@adampayne26) June 7, 2018

(view not as far as I can tell modified by the eventual half-arsed compromise)

it does sound increasingly like it will be the everybody-gets-a-special-hat version of brexit rather than the, you know, actually leaving the EU one. Which I'm fine with.

I assume Labour would attempt to rejoin the ECJ

I hope

realise i'm being v 'stephen bush says stephen bush says' but i thought this seemed absurd and plausible:

it may be that there is no relationship with the EU - not Brexit, not Remain - that can command a majority of votes in Parliament.

our new relationship with brussels will be a quantum superposition where we are simultaneously both in and out of the european union at the same time

Schrodinger's prevaricating and full of shit cat!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/daily-mail-paul-dacre-resign-new-editor-geordie-greig-a8388316.html

I don't really know what the editorial difference between the Mail and MOS is beyond the Remain/Brexit positions, but this Grieg guy looks like a complete twat as well.

I'm working on the assumption that when it comes down to the choice between 'shatter this fragile government' vs 'decide precisely which flavour of Brexit you want', most if not all Labour MPs will plump for the former. Including Corbyn (and if he doesn't...)

I'm also working on the assumption that all Tory MPs know this full well, including Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve and whoever, and May will therefore be able to command enough votes to squeak through.

So therefore all this Tory dickwaving is pretty much that, it's entirely about jockeying for position to be the next leader/PM and nothing to do with the EU at all, except for the fact that literally everyone else on the hook while said dickwaving goes on.

dacre and greig fucking hate each other iirc, so i’m okay with this purely on the grounds it’ll eat at him until the day he finally dies

Dacre = immigrants/poor people/Muslims/people selling alcopops all threatening Britain
Greig = I like going to parties with Kate Moss and Samantha Cameron, oh look there's some poor people voting Labour, why must they insist on spoiling all this fun?

Given the choice I'd go for the latter every time.

alcopops are rank tho

Considering the alternative to Greig was apparently the absolute unit of goblin dung that is Tony Gallagher this is a relative relief.

this kind of bad relativism makes me think of how Chukka + Yvette would be considered hard left socialists in the US!

boris Johnson speculating on how Trump would handle Brexit, were he in charge of delivering it:

“He’d go in bloody hard … There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But actually you might get somewhere. It’s a very, very good thought.”

^ some language-as-a-virus right at the end there

I think I've heard quite a few BBC correspondents on R4/WS/R5 recently that would probably agree with him by the type of comments they make about Trump. No Boris, it's not even a very good fart. His hamfisted trade-warring with the EU will already cost the US economy dearly in the future, that's the "somewhere" he has got them to!

An extremely good rule of thumb is that anyone who thinks the Millennium Bug was an overhyped squib, rather than a tremendously severe risk that was solved through years of hard work and planning, is a dangerous fucking idiot. Guess what Boris Johnson thinks? pic.twitter.com/kZJn2xo4HH

— John B (@johnb78) June 8, 2018

So basically its looking like soft Brexit - not least because voting for no option (because MPs can't decide what they want in enough numbers) probably means WTO - and I don't think we have an army of trade negotiators.

And then its going to be about how betrayed that section of the public which voted for Brexit and really wanted out of the institution feel about it and what they would do in the next general election. Do they sit it out, or what? (Do many of them vote anyway, given there were many who voted to shake things up)

Bumping Dacre for Remainer Geordie Greig will probably help jumpy Tory MPs sleep slightly sounder in their beds at night - wherever that may be.

And then its going to be about how betrayed that section of the public which voted for Brexit and really wanted out of the institution feel about it and what they would do in the next general election. Do they sit it out, or what? (Do many of them vote anyway, given there were many who voted to shake things up)

prior to the referendum nobody gave enough of a shit either way to make UKIP a genuine political force. god knows i enjoy a bit of centrist Remoaner baiting and anybody who genuinely thinks the EU is a force for good is probably deluded af but to be fair the reason that Brexit doesn't, can't, mean Brexit is become the terms where never defined more clearly than "do you hate foreigns y/n?"

The section of the population we're talking about here is considerably less than the 52% of voters Tory MPs would like to pretend it represents. Most Leave voters would have been happy enough with soft Brexit from the start and the people who just want to end immigration now are never going to be satisfied whatever happens.

Some attention is finally being paid to the blocking potential of Labour MPs in leave-voting constituencies, both of the legitimate concerns and the 'I voted Remain but WTF can I do?' category. The latter one seems to throw up some knotty questions about what 'representation' actually means, if you genuinely believe (with some justification) that a hard Brexit would decimate employment in your area then surely you have a duty to vote against it even if your constituency voted Leave? Like, they're not going to thank you when it all goes tits-up in two years time.

What Boris Johnson thinks of Northern Ireland pic.twitter.com/QAf20P2YLI

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) June 7, 2018

I agree with him that the entity called Northern Ireland is a folly.

Good news though:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-united-ireland-referendum-northern-border-uk-yougov-poll-a8389086.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-44398502

Well the ppl I talk about are considerably less than 52%, agreed. It's more to do w/the spread across the country. If they were confined to Tory land it wouldn't be much of a deal.

Ultimately its seeing the impact of a soft Brexit on the economy, or even the (longer-term) impact of what is happening in Italy and Spain on the EU (and its lack of flexibility on the technocrats to make the necessary adjustments) and us over here. You could say (as per that poll) a united Ireland is on the cards - but if the EU were to collapse in the next few years (not beyond the realms of possibility)..