sufi

lala
peston on fb:
Hello from Brussels and the EU Council that promised a Brexit breakthrough and delivered nothing.
So on the basis of conversations with well placed sources, this is how I think the Brexit talks are placed (WARNING: if you are fearful of a no-deal Brexit, or are of a nervous disposition, stop reading now).
1) Forget about having any clue when we leave about the nature and structure of the UK’s future trading relationship with the EU. The government heads of the EU27 have rejected Chequers. Wholesale. And they regard it as far too late to put in place the building blocks of that future relationship before we leave on 29 March 2019. So any Political Declaration on the future relationship will be waffly, vague and general. It will be what so many MPs detest: a blind Brexit. The PM may say that won’t happen. No one here (except perhaps her own Downing St team) believes her.
2) The earliest date for a deal on Brexit terms - that vacuous Political Declaration and the Withdrawal Agreement - is now the Council in mid December. But even that date may prove too challenging.
3) The gulf between the EU27 and May, as you know, is over how to keep open the Northern Ireland border. There is no chance of the EU abandoning its insistence that there should be a backstop - with no expiry date - of Northern Ireland, but not Great Britain, remaining in the Customs Union and the single market. That would involve the introduction of the commercial border in the Irish Sea that May says must never be drawn.
4) All efforts therefore from the UK are aimed at putting in place other arrangements to make it impossible for that backstop to be introduced.
5) Her ruse for doing this is the creation of another backstop that would involve the whole of the UK staying in something that looks like the customs union.
6) But she feels cannot commit to keeping the UK in the customs union forever, because her Brexiter MPs won’t let her. So it does not work as a backstop. And anyway the Article 50 rules say that the Withdrawal Agreement must not contain provisions for a permanent trading relationship between the whole of the UK and the EU. Which is a hideous Catch 22.
7) There is a solution. She could ignore her Brexiter critics and announce the UK wanted written into the Political Declaration - as opposed to the Withdrawal Agreement - that we would be staying permanently in the customs union. This is one bit of specificity the rest of the EU would allow into the Political Declaration. And it could be nodded at in the Withdrawal Agreement.
8) But if she announces we are staying in the Customs Union she would be crossing her reddest of red lines because she would have to abandon her ambition of negotiating free trade deals with non-EU countries. Liam Fox would be made redundant.
9) She knows, because her Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins has told her, that her best chance - probably her only chance of securing a Brexit deal - is to sign up for the customs union.
10) In its absence, no-deal Brexit is massively in play.
11) But a customs-union Brexit deal would see her Brexiter MPs become incandescent with fury.
12)Labour of course would be on the spot, since its one practical Brexit policy is to stay in the Customs Union.
13) This therefore is May’s Robert Peel moment. She could agree a Customs Union Brexit and get it through Parliament with Labour support - while simultaneously cleaving her own party in two.
14) It is a Customs Union Brexit, or leave the EU without a deal.
15) Which will May choose? Ultimately this is her choice, and hers alone. It is her moment in history.
drama much?
the Peel allusion is good, i wonder would the brexiteer irregulars assassinate her?
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Droid's shit-stirring glee during our Brexit agony has been one of the few enjoyable things about it.
 

droid

Well-known member
It certainly is. Ive gone from glee to disgusted pity. Like seeing the old teacher who used to humiliate you at school stumbling down the street with a can of lager and shit dribbling down his stained trouser leg.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
this was all a smokescreen politics for the capitalist class to continue its austerity. I said this in 2015-16.

There will be no no deal. we are staying in the EU. both the middle class leftists and opportunist Class War muppets fell for this shit and diverted crucial organising energy. All who have won are the left wing jingoists (red brown more like!) and the fringe nutters on the tory party. Otherwise, it's business as usual as the country shifts ever more rightward.
 

Leo

Well-known member
looking in from afar. admittedly with a scintilla of the understanding you all have, it looks as if Theresa May is basically being shit on. comes off as if a bunch of powerful men got the country into a supremely fucked up situation and then didn't want to take responsibility, so they got a woman in to try and clean up their mess and ultimately take the fall for the inevitable failure, allowing them to walk away and point the finger elsewhere (but not before openly laughing at her).

surely this isn't the actual case, certainly may could have handled things differently. but that's the optics from outside, kind of make you feel sorry for her.
 

droid

Well-known member
She was a willing foil. She fought for the leadership.

Also, she is a despicable sack of shit.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Yep. Obvs not the first time I've heard expressions of sympathy for May from sane people, in the UK as well as from elsewhere, but I think it's the same dynamic as a toxic codependent parent relationship - both sides are getting something out of this, or at least were (hard to see anything but horror for May at this precise moment tho). Don't blame the father and let the mother get off scot-free (and vice versa, needless to say, depending upon the constellation), unless there are direct life-threatening issues to be considered.

There's so much evocation of the sick parental nuclear family structure recently in UK politics. But it's hardly surprising. And the US has been Daddied by a Bob-like monster, so maybe it's universal.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I think also from an external perspective, it's harder to remember (and also not as well known?) the very different affect Theresa May gave off prior to being ground down as PM, like someone who had walked out of a particularly chilling fairy tale.

It's been grimly fascinating seeing the dramatic arc of her personality gradually being ground into the dust by a, as you say, misogynist power structure; because it really didn't seem like that was necessarily going to be the case. Like watching Series 1-5 of a pretty convincing psychological thriller.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
That arc has seen an almost physical transformation, too. Very similar to what happened to Gordon Brown.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Totally, it acts through the body's decay - fallen evil crumbles and wilts, but properly upkept evil lives forever. Some people used to think Theresa exuded a certain kind of sick glamour back in the day. And Gordon looked youthful in 1983.
 

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
DsY-kkmX4AIUMt5.jpg
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I don't get this at all, why pick another fight when they are already losing so many? They are gonna publish the summary so what is to be gained from digging in over how it was arrived at?
But the bigger point; what was the point of the vote if the government can just ignore it? Can parliament hold government to account or not? It seems that as in the US it turns out that the checks and balances on power only work if power lets them. In each case it's taken a crisis of sorts (when these things are actually needed) to reveal this.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
But the bigger point; what was the point of the vote if the government can just ignore it?

For a bleary-eyed second there, before reading the context -or the tense - properly, I thought you were talking about the vote on the deal on December 11. Because literally nothing would surprise me at this stage.
 

Leo

Well-known member
It seems that as in the US it turns out that the checks and balances on power only work if power lets them.

RE: the US, I guess it depends on how you define that "power". the reason checks and balances have not functioned as intended here is because the republicans have held all three branches of government and have essentially been in agreement with and supportive of trump. it's not that they've been prevented from providing checks, it's that the GOP have chosen to look the other way and do what's in the best interest of their party instead of the best interest of the country.

maybe the entire Republican Party itself could be viewed as the oppressive "power", but it's by choice as opposed to not being allowed to do otherwise.

Also, I supposed a form of "power" could also be the pressure that congresspeople feel from the trump base to either walk in lockstep or potentially get voted out.
 
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