The battle of Brexit!

[Toby]

From todays Times
——————————————
Sometimes the price of political failure has a human face and right now Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is that emblematic figure. The British mother, jailed in Iran, has become a symbol of the foreign secretary’s incompetence, the Brexiteers’ myopia and the prime minister’s weakness. The government should be doing everything in its power to bring this innocent woman home, but instead — for reasons of internal Tory party politics — ministers seem to be conspiring to make her situation worse.

It is shocking that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe is facing an extra five years in prison as a result of Boris Johnson’s suggestion that she had been training journalists in Iran, rather than on holiday as her family has always said. This is not a “gaffe” that can be laughed off like all the others but a catastrophic error of judgment by the man whose job is to protect British citizens abroad. Already Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe is close to a nervous breakdown, after 19 months in an Iranian jail, with medical problems including lumps in her breasts.

Her stress can only have been compounded when Michael Gove declared over the weekend that he did not know why she was in Iran, a bizarre brain freeze by one of the cleverest members of the cabinet. She is right to denounce the government’s handling of her incarceration abroad as a “shambles”. In a heartbreaking interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Richard Ratcliffe, who has been a brave and eloquent campaigner for his wife’s release, said he believed she was the victim of the “wider politics” now playing out in the government.

He is right that an awful case has got muddled up with the ideological manoeuvrings, leadership failings and vain ambitions of Brexit-obsessed Westminster. One minister describes Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe as “collateral damage” of the cabinet’s Europe wars. “Boris’s whole reckless, slapdash, unserious approach to diplomacy has put her in a worse position,” he says. “The government is paralysed by Brexit which means our entire foreign policy position is in a mess. Because of the weak prime minister and the personality of the foreign secretary, other countries feel they can push us around.”

Another senior MP claims the situation is yet more evidence of Mr Johnson’s unsuitability for the role of foreign secretary. “At best he hasn’t read the brief, at worst he is somehow complicit with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. It points to a man who is so callous and egotistical that he simply doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions. It’s narcissism to the point of absurdity.”

There is, of course, usually a “cock-up” rather than a “conspiracy” explanation for political disasters. I am willing to believe that the foreign secretary made a simple mistake in his comments about Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, as he has now admitted, but the point is that for the man who is responsible for protecting British citizens abroad to mis-speak about such an important matter is unforgivable.

What makes the situation worse is that, even if this were purely a diplomatic cock-up, there is still a political conspiracy underlying it. Mr Johnson is not the foreign secretary because he is the best man for the job but because he is the most politically expedient holder of that great office of state. Appointed by a Remain-supporting prime minister to tie the leading Brexiteer into her government, he keeps the job — despite being hopelessly ill-suited to a role that requires a grasp of detail as well as diplomatic skill — only because she feels too weak to sack him. This is nothing to do with what is right for the country or British citizens abroad and everything to do with a prime minister trying to survive in No 10 and hold her party together. The fact that the Brexiteers, who see everything through the prism of their paranoia, blame a Remainer plot for the whispers against Mr Johnson is itself revealing: the issue is his competence not his Euroscepticism.

The foreign secretary displays ‘narcissism to the point of absurdity’
Meanwhile, Mr Gove’s allies insist that he did not understand the significance of the question when he was asked what Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing in Iran and had absolutely no intention of further undermining her position. I am sure this is true, but again the problem is that even if the environment secretary’s comments were an innocent cock-up he is also involved in a wider conspiracy with the foreign secretary.

As part of their Brexit bromance, the two men recently sent an extraordinary memo to the prime minister stressing that they were “profoundly worried” at the “insufficient energy” being shown by some parts of government about the UK’s departure from the EU. They urged Theresa May to ensure her senior team fell behind their Brexit plans by “clarifying their minds”, a phrase described as “Orwellian” by some of their colleagues. Having fallen out over the Tory leadership contest last year they are now such close allies that Nicky Morgan, the Tory chairwoman of the Treasury select committee, accused them of acting like a “government within a government”. If this is how their own Conservative colleagues see things, it is not entirely surprising that Mr Ratcliffe is left wondering where their loyalties lie.

Other ministers are convinced that they are more committed to each other than to a British citizen unfairly locked up in a foreign prison. “They’ve just been busy conspiring for their own advancement on the back of Theresa May’s weakness,” one says. “They’re destroying the country trying to promote their own careers. Now Nazanin has become the victim of their ambition.”

Of course, the real villains of this story are the Iranians, who have thrown Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe into jail for no reason, but there is a vacuum in No 10 that has allowed ambiguity to thrive both in this country and abroad.

Every appointment is made on the basis of balance, not of talent
As one Conservative MP puts it: “The reason the Iranians can get away with it is because they perceive us as weak, and we are. Apart from anything else we are distracted. Theresa May is just incapable of leading anything any more.”

With every ministerial appointment made on the basis of Brexit balance rather than talent, the cabinet is frozen in its indecision and there is a human cost to that.

Yesterday Mr Ratcliffe told the foreign secretary: “I want you to solve this mess created in your name.” He and his family deserve nothing less. It is appalling that a woman’s life hangs in the balance because of the failings of this distracted and divided government.

I find the emphasis being proportioned to Boris's so called gaff quite telling..The media should be focusing on her imprisonment but instead have gone on another head hunt in order to destabilise the the British Gov.


The exact reason for her arrest was initially unclear, though according to Amnesty International it is believed related to the 2014 imprisonment of several Iranian technology news website employees. Zaghari-Ratcliffe used to work for the BBC Media Action international charitable project, (which sits in the BBC World Service Group) which is linked to a BBC training course offered to Iranian journalists, some of who were convicted for participating in the foreign training course in 2014. Nazanin worked for BBC Media Action between February 2009 and October 2010, "in a junior capacity as a Training Assistant" according the CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, before moving to Thomson Reuters Foundation.(Facts that Boris was clearly aware of and now is being hounded for repeating.)

According to Yadollah Movahed, the head of the Justice Department in the Iranian city of Kerman, and as reported by the Iranian news network Press TV, Nazanin was arrested "over her involvement in post-election riots that engulfed Tehran and some other cities in 2009". Movahed said Zaghari was among the suspects who "conducted activities against the security of the country by designing websites and carrying out campaigns in the media” during 2009. According to Movahed, Nazanin was not arrested for activity inside Iran or for activity during her 2017 holiday to Iran: “Some members of the group were outside Iran, including the suspect Nazanin Zaghari”

[zara]

I find the emphasis being proportioned to Boris's so called gaff quite telling..The media should be focusing on her imprisonment but instead have gone on another head hunt in order to destabilise the the British Gov.


The exact reason for her arrest was initially unclear, though according to Amnesty International it is believed related to the 2014 imprisonment of several Iranian technology news website employees. Zaghari-Ratcliffe used to work for the BBC Media Action international charitable project, (which sits in the BBC World Service Group) which is linked to a BBC training course offered to Iranian journalists, some of who were convicted for participating in the foreign training course in 2014. Nazanin worked for BBC Media Action between February 2009 and October 2010, "in a junior capacity as a Training Assistant" according the CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, before moving to Thomson Reuters Foundation.(Facts that Boris was clearly aware of and now is being hounded for repeating.)

According to Yadollah Movahed, the head of the Justice Department in the Iranian city of Kerman, and as reported by the Iranian news network Press TV, Nazanin was arrested "over her involvement in post-election riots that engulfed Tehran and some other cities in 2009". Movahed said Zaghari was among the suspects who "conducted activities against the security of the country by designing websites and carrying out campaigns in the media” during 2009. According to Movahed, Nazanin was not arrested for activity inside Iran or for activity during her 2017 holiday to Iran: “Some members of the group were outside Iran, including the suspect Nazanin Zaghari”

That's the standard rebuttal. Don't blame Boris, blame the Iranians.
He is an incompetent foreign secretary and an embarrassment to the country. The foreign office don't trust him. Foreign ministers wont meet with him as they are afraid that he will just leak info to the press.
Replace him with a brexiteer if you must, even Gove.. but he has to go.

In any other circumstances the foreign secretary should lose their job over this, he is not fit for office.

[snapper]

Says more about the PM's weakness that Boris has not been fired. I gave up making excuses for him in Kyiv after his visit here when he got drunk.

[zara]

Says more about the PM's weakness that Boris has not been fired. I gave up making excuses for him in Kyiv after his visit here when he got drunk.

Never heard that story.. what happened?

[Toby]

That's the standard rebuttal. Don't blame Boris, blame the Iranians.

Its actually what I think. Without any help from anybody....I have one of those minds that can work on its own, independent of others. Try it some time!

He is an incompetent foreign secretary and an embarrassment to the country. The foreign office don't trust him. Foreign ministers wont meet with him as they are afraid that he will just leak info to the press.
Replace him with a brexiteer if you must, even Gove.. but he has to go.

In any other circumstances the foreign secretary should lose their job over this, he is not fit for office.

Standard left of centre herd mentality, hell bent on Gov destabilisation.

[Toby]

Says more about the PM's weakness that Boris has not been fired. I gave up making excuses for him in Kyiv after his visit here when he got drunk.

God you mean he actually gets drunk ...how naughty!..From my experience of socialising with numerous Ukrainians I'm surprised anybody noticed.... In fact they probably think better of him.

[zara]

Its actually what I think. Without any help from anybody....I have one of those minds that can work on its own, independent of others. Try it some time!

Um you needed putin to help you vote...

[zara]

View of Boris from the Republic (irish times)

ent Boland
Wed, Nov 15, 2017, 01:15

The UK’s flailing effort to leave the EU can be measured not in policy gains or political successes, but in soundbites. It is best captured in the one beloved of Boris Johnson, Britain’s foreign secretary, that, when it comes to Brexit, “we can have our cake and eat it”.

Johnson, who is due to visit Dublin on Friday, will no doubt be offered tea and – who knows? – cake when he meets Simon Coveney, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, at Iveagh House. As even the British foreign secretary must know by now, though, having your cake and eating it is not a sustainable foreign policy.

It has taken a while, but that reality is beginning to sink in among Britain’s arch-Brexiteers, of whom Mr Johnson is the blustering archetype. To take one example that concerns us mightily in Ireland, consider the breezy response of British advocates of leaving the EU to Irish concerns about the impact of Brexit on the Border. What we were told repeatedly was, in effect, “Don’t worry, nothing will change”.

There was no better illustration of the Brexiteers’ cluelessness about Ireland than that obvious falsehood. The ignorance was instructive, nonetheless. Dominic Hannigan, who was the chairman of the Oireachtas EU affairs committee before the UK referendum, told me, after an appearance by – I think – Bill Cash, another arch-Brexiteer Conservative MP: “The trouble with the British is that they think we are still part of the family.”

Knowing nothing about Ireland is hardly new among British political leaders. That may have something to do with the poor state of history-teaching in English schools. Johnson and other arch-Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has emerged as the darling of the Tory right wing, went to Eton and the University of Oxford. They received the best education money can buy. Yet they seem to have learned nothing.


That is one reason why the dangers of Brexit for the island of Ireland – for not just economic ties but social, historical and political affiliations, in some cases dating back centuries – were so casually brushed aside before the referendum. A campaign based on “taking back control of our borders” had nothing to say on the post-Brexit fate of the UK’s most important external border – the one that separates this Republic from Northern Ireland.

Clean break

There is more to the Brexiteers’ attitude to Ireland than mere cluelessness, however. There is the awful prospect that they simply do not give a damn. Their desire for a clean break with the EU, their readiness to reverse nearly half a century of assimilation in European networks of trade, diplomacy and security, and their willingness to turn their backs on the world’s largest and richest free trade zone in the stated pursuit of free trade, are evidence that they don’t really care about Britain or Europe. Why, in the circumstances, should they give a fig about us?

Yet, as was evident after last week’s round of negotiations between the UK and the EU, nowhere is the wishful thinking at the heart of Brexit being exposed more pitilessly than on the question of the Border in Ireland.

The Brexiteers tell us at every opportunity that there must be “no hard border” in Ireland after Brexit. Yet the strategy they are maniacally pursuing, of a “cliff-edge”, or “hard”, or “no deal” Brexit, will create that very thing, with all the administrative, physical and political infrastructure that will be required to make it work. That is the political and legal reality of the UK’s decision to leave the EU single market and customs union, and not a plot by eurocrats to punish Britain. The argument by pro-Brexit advocates that if there is a hard border in Ireland after the UK leaves the EU, it will be the fault of Europe and not the UK, is dishonest.


Human tragedy

Why do Brexiteers hold such a contradictory stance on the Irish Border? One answer is that they do not understand the nature of borders – and in particular the nature of the Irish one. They seem to regard the Border as simply a commercial barrier that can be overcome with the use of (yet to be invented) technological wizardry; as a 500km-long traffic-calming speed-bump that you can negotiate just by slowing down for a minute.

Of course, the Irish Border is a commercial barrier. It divides two economies that use different currencies, for starters. Uniquely in the EU, however, it does not divide two peoples made distinct by language, religion or history. It is happily disappearing for practical purposes, but it remains a political, symbolic, historical, psychic and contested space. As I discovered last spring, when I spent a few days in Fermanagh talking to people whose lives were changed forever by their proximity to the Border, it is a place of human tragedy and ethnic cleansing.

The Brexiteers are ignorant of the Border – not just of its symbolism but of the reality of life along its winding course through communities, fields, and farmyards. That is why they appear ready to sacrifice the spirit, if not the letter, of the Belfast Agreement, with all its imperfections, its cumulative small victories, and its one great achievement, in their pursuit of a fantasy that does not include us.

Yet their ignorance has set a trap for them. Our Brexiteer friends are starting to discover that it is not in Brussels or Berlin that they cannot have their cake and eat it, but in Ireland.

[Toby]

Um you needed putin to help you vote...

The roof blew off my shed the other week....could this have been the work of the high winds....of course not it was the Russians!!

Case solved...Not!

[Toby]

View of Boris from the Republic (irish times)

ent Boland
Wed, Nov 15, 2017, 01:15

The UK’s flailing effort to leave the EU can be measured not in policy gains or political successes, but in soundbites. It is best captured in the one beloved of Boris Johnson, Britain’s foreign secretary, that, when it comes to Brexit, “we can have our cake and eat it”.

Johnson, who is due to visit Dublin on Friday, will no doubt be offered tea and – who knows? – cake when he meets Simon Coveney, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, at Iveagh House. As even the British foreign secretary must know by now, though, having your cake and eating it is not a sustainable foreign policy.

It has taken a while, but that reality is beginning to sink in among Britain’s arch-Brexiteers, of whom Mr Johnson is the blustering archetype. To take one example that concerns us mightily in Ireland, consider the breezy response of British advocates of leaving the EU to Irish concerns about the impact of Brexit on the Border. What we were told repeatedly was, in effect, “Don’t worry, nothing will change”.

There was no better illustration of the Brexiteers’ cluelessness about Ireland than that obvious falsehood. The ignorance was instructive, nonetheless. Dominic Hannigan, who was the chairman of the Oireachtas EU affairs committee before the UK referendum, told me, after an appearance by – I think – Bill Cash, another arch-Brexiteer Conservative MP: “The trouble with the British is that they think we are still part of the family.”

Knowing nothing about Ireland is hardly new among British political leaders. That may have something to do with the poor state of history-teaching in English schools. Johnson and other arch-Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has emerged as the darling of the Tory right wing, went to Eton and the University of Oxford. They received the best education money can buy. Yet they seem to have learned nothing.


That is one reason why the dangers of Brexit for the island of Ireland – for not just economic ties but social, historical and political affiliations, in some cases dating back centuries – were so casually brushed aside before the referendum. A campaign based on “taking back control of our borders” had nothing to say on the post-Brexit fate of the UK’s most important external border – the one that separates this Republic from Northern Ireland.

Clean break

There is more to the Brexiteers’ attitude to Ireland than mere cluelessness, however. There is the awful prospect that they simply do not give a damn. Their desire for a clean break with the EU, their readiness to reverse nearly half a century of assimilation in European networks of trade, diplomacy and security, and their willingness to turn their backs on the world’s largest and richest free trade zone in the stated pursuit of free trade, are evidence that they don’t really care about Britain or Europe. Why, in the circumstances, should they give a fig about us?

Yet, as was evident after last week’s round of negotiations between the UK and the EU, nowhere is the wishful thinking at the heart of Brexit being exposed more pitilessly than on the question of the Border in Ireland.

The Brexiteers tell us at every opportunity that there must be “no hard border” in Ireland after Brexit. Yet the strategy they are maniacally pursuing, of a “cliff-edge”, or “hard”, or “no deal” Brexit, will create that very thing, with all the administrative, physical and political infrastructure that will be required to make it work. That is the political and legal reality of the UK’s decision to leave the EU single market and customs union, and not a plot by eurocrats to punish Britain. The argument by pro-Brexit advocates that if there is a hard border in Ireland after the UK leaves the EU, it will be the fault of Europe and not the UK, is dishonest.


Human tragedy

Why do Brexiteers hold such a contradictory stance on the Irish Border? One answer is that they do not understand the nature of borders – and in particular the nature of the Irish one. They seem to regard the Border as simply a commercial barrier that can be overcome with the use of (yet to be invented) technological wizardry; as a 500km-long traffic-calming speed-bump that you can negotiate just by slowing down for a minute.

Of course, the Irish Border is a commercial barrier. It divides two economies that use different currencies, for starters. Uniquely in the EU, however, it does not divide two peoples made distinct by language, religion or history. It is happily disappearing for practical purposes, but it remains a political, symbolic, historical, psychic and contested space. As I discovered last spring, when I spent a few days in Fermanagh talking to people whose lives were changed forever by their proximity to the Border, it is a place of human tragedy and ethnic cleansing.

The Brexiteers are ignorant of the Border – not just of its symbolism but of the reality of life along its winding course through communities, fields, and farmyards. That is why they appear ready to sacrifice the spirit, if not the letter, of the Belfast Agreement, with all its imperfections, its cumulative small victories, and its one great achievement, in their pursuit of a fantasy that does not include us.

Yet their ignorance has set a trap for them. Our Brexiteer friends are starting to discover that it is not in Brussels or Berlin that they cannot have their cake and eat it, but in Ireland.

I was vaguely aware of Johnson and Gove during the referendum.....Didn't think alot of their efforts...it all looked quite silly really...travelling around in that big red coach with a imbecilic quote on the side....If they'd done nothing, I reckon more people would have voted leave. it was that bad...

[snapper]

Never heard that story.. what happened?

There was supposed to a supper for him. The Embassy didn't let him go. The then Ambassador gave his excuses... "not feeling well", "ate something" etc... "Tired and emotional" was what the Secretary told me which is a HoC euphemism for drunk. He'd apparently hit the spirits as soon as he got off the plane and continued over lunch and all afternoon. 'Bullie Bullie Bullie' and all that.

God you mean he actually gets drunk ...how naughty!..From my experience of socialising with numerous Ukrainians I'm surprised anybody noticed.... In fact they probably think better of him.

He can get drunk with his Bullingdon Club pals on his own time, not when he is being payed and entrusted to represent his country abroad. Suppose someone working in a shop doesn't turn up for work because they are drunk; if you own the shop is that ok? You want to get drunk? Fine but when it interferes with your work your employer - and in Boris' case that is you - has a right and would be wise to fire him. Any other diplomat would be recalled pdq for such behaviour.

[snapper]

Seems Victor Pinchuk owns 1-3 Strand Street on Trafalgar Square. https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/the-co...ace-off-abroad HMRC might be interested but I doubt it.

[zara]

There was supposed to a supper for him. The Embassy didn't let him go. The then Ambassador gave his excuses... "not feeling well", "ate something" etc... "Tired and emotional" was what the Secretary told me which is a HoC euphemism for drunk. He'd apparently hit the spirits as soon as he got off the plane and continued over lunch and all afternoon. 'Bullie Bullie Bullie' and all that.



He can get drunk with his Bullingdon Club pals on his own time, not when he is being payed and entrusted to represent his country abroad. Suppose someone working in a shop doesn't turn up for work because they are drunk; if you own the shop is that ok? You want to get drunk? Fine but when it interferes with your work your employer - and in Boris' case that is you - has a right and would be wise to fire him. Any other diplomat would be recalled pdq for such behaviour.

Exactly. Reminds me of Boris Yeltsin visiting Ireland, getting so drunk on the plane and falling down the red carpet steps at the feet our Taesoich. Complete joke and embarrasment to the country. But in leavers eyes he can do no wrong as hes the high preist of the Brexit cult.

[snapper]

Yeltsin had many faults but he was a far braver man than Boris J will ever be.

[Toby]

Yeltsin had many faults but he was a far braver man than Boris J will ever be.

and if he was sober when he climbed onto that tank when the shit hit the fan , then I'm Batman!