The battle of Brexit!

[snapper]

I am pretty sure that the DUP is not in the Government; this is not a coalition where they get cabinet Ministers but an agreement.

[kato]

They still hold power over the government as in any coalition.

[Bigfella]

Looks like the hardline Brexiteers are admitting defeat & jumping ship. Normally I'd suggest they are counting numbers, but I suspect they know the numbers do not favour them. Boris had his chance & blew it.

So, May is weakened, but will probably get a 'soft' Brexit. The euroskeptics have lost influence but maintained their purity. The government & the Tory party look even more a shambles than before (imagine!). Omni shambles.

Meanwhile a Labour party that should be tearing itself apart is keeping its shit together because it might actually have a chance of taking power. St Jeremy of the beard must be the luckiest pollie in Britain since Tony Blair.

[snapper]

The British press seem to think she is safe for now as any new leader could not realistically do any better. Thank God Boris is out of the FCO... a signal disaster that he is unlikely to recover from. Jeremy Hunt (the new Foreign Secretary) now looks to be a good potential future leader.

[Albany Rifles]

Looks like the hardline Brexiteers are admitting defeat & jumping ship. Normally I'd suggest they are counting numbers, but I suspect they know the numbers do not favour them. Boris had his chance & blew it.

So, May is weakened, but will probably get a 'soft' Brexit. The euroskeptics have lost influence but maintained their purity. The government & the Tory party look even more a shambles than before (imagine!). Omni shambles.

Meanwhile a Labour party that should be tearing itself apart is keeping its shit together because it might actually have a chance of taking power. St Jeremy of the beard must be the luckiest pollie in Britain since Tony Blair.

The schadenfreude just oozes out of that post, Peter!!!

[snapper]

Just a small example of how self centered Boris Johnson was considered at the FCO that I got in an email today from a former colleague. The FCO has been primarily (and understandably) interested in showing that while the UK might be leaving the EU it will be NOT be leaving the international community. One of the ways of doing this is organising Conferences in London such as the Western Balkan Conference (https://www.gov.uk/government/topica...it-london-2018).

Thing is this Conference - which I am told took lots of time (and money) to get arranged and staged actually started yesterday - or was supposed to - with a "meeting of the principles" (Foreign Ministers). Of course Boris, who on Friday had apparently toasted Theresa May at Chequers (the PM's Official Country House) resigned after David Davis had given the lead. Davis' second in command Steve Baker also resigned so Boris probably thought his time had come. He just did not turn up for work on Monday morning. Nor of course the Conference which had time and money to arrange and put on. In fact he did not leave Carlton Gardens (the residence) until nearly 9pm by which time it was clear that the votes were not there to beat Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt was waiting to moving in. Not one minute of his day yesterday was spent on the Conference which his FCO had arranged. Sir Simon McDonald (the current Permanent Secretary) must be delighted.

[kato]

Prepare for no-deal Brexit, German business groups tell members

BERLIN (Reuters) - German business groups have urged their members to step up preparations for a hard Brexit that would see Britain crash out of the European Union next year without negotiating a deal.

British Prime Minister Theresa May secured a cabinet agreement last week for “a business-friendly” proposal to leave the EU, aimed at spurring stalled Brexit talks. But the hard-won compromise has come under fire from within her governing Conservative Party and may yet fall flat with EU negotiators.

“Even if the British government is moving now, companies must plan for the scenario in which there is no agreement,” Joachim Lang, managing director of the BDI, Germany’s biggest industry lobby, told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

Thilo Brodtmann, managing director of the VDMA engineering association, told the same paper: “It is urgent to prepare for Brexit and to expect the worst case scenario.”

German industry is concerned about increased friction in trade with Britain after Brexit. Britain is the second-biggest export market for German car manufacturers.

But Lang said some German businesses were only just starting to analyze what Brexit would mean for them, adding: “At least that has moved us forward from a few months ago.”

Brodtmann warned engineering firms against being lured into a sense of complacency by stable business in Britain now.

“Brexit is such a big nonsense that many companies still hope it will not be that bad because the EU will not allow a hard landing for the economy. But I can only warn against that,” he said.

Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Gareth Jones

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-b...-idUSKBN1K40P7

also:

Ireland to move oil reserves from UK over Brexit: Sunday Independent

DUBLIN (Reuters) - The Irish government is planning to move 200,000 tonnes of its oil reserves from Britain as part of its Brexit preparations and will sign off on the move this week, Ireland’s Sunday Independent newspaper reported.

Ministers will sign off on the decision to move the oil, which includes refined products, at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the newspaper quoted an unnamed senior government source as saying.

Around 500,000 tonnes of Ireland’s 1.5 million tonnes of oil reserves are currently held overseas, the report said.

A government spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Toby Chopra

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-b...-idUSKBN1K50HF

[snapper]

So to pick up on this story 'Vote Leave' are now found guilty of breaking electoral law; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44704561

Should there be another vote? No says Theresa May largely due to her non majority and Tory infighting.

Also Aron Banks, who is said to be the single largest donator in English political history and by far the largest contributor to Vote Leave met 16 times with the Muscovite Ambassador and was offered shares in some Muscovite mine - which his co conspirator took up.

The person getting most of these goodies into the public space is a journo called Carole Cadwalladr an example of which you can see here; https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...sia-connection

The similarities with the Trumpkin campaign are all too clear.

I was never an EU fan - far from it! I briefly was a UKIP member back in the UK but I asked once if they were getting money from Muscovy - who are the Party donors? That apparently was "confidential" for the sake of the donors. Well BS - you have to pay membership fees so I am a donor. They wouldn't answer the simple question "Is the Party taking money from Moscow?" so I understood the refusal to be a confirmation and left. It is surprising how little MI5 have done about this - or not been allowed to say. And how little the current British Government continues to support the verdict of a flawed election influenced by Moscow.

[antimony]

Looks like the hardline Brexiteers are admitting defeat & jumping ship. Normally I'd suggest they are counting numbers, but I suspect they know the numbers do not favour them. Boris had his chance & blew it.

So, May is weakened, but will probably get a 'soft' Brexit. The euroskeptics have lost influence but maintained their purity. The government & the Tory party look even more a shambles than before (imagine!). Omni shambles.

Meanwhile a Labour party that should be tearing itself apart is keeping its shit together because it might actually have a chance of taking power. St Jeremy of the beard must be the luckiest pollie in Britain since Tony Blair.

This is exactly the scenario we need in the US. A GOP in complete shambles and the Democratic Party in recovery. For that we need Trump's policies to go through

[tankie]

The EU has just signed an FTA with Japan.

Japan did not have to pay £39 billion. Japan did not have to sign up to a customs union. Japan did not have to sign up to the single market.

Japan did NOT have to agree to free movement of people.

Ironically Brexit has expedited this treaty.

[kato]

https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info...eparedness.pdf

Mostly just a recap of what will happen on March 30th.

[Monash]

The EU has just signed an FTA with Japan.

Japan did not have to pay £39 billion. Japan did not have to sign up to a customs union. Japan did not have to sign up to the single market.

Japan did NOT have to agree to free movement of people.

Ironically Brexit has expedited this treaty.

Tankie, as I am sure you realize a free trade agreement between two countries is just that, a trade agreement. As such it applies only to the goods and services listed in the body of the text or relevant annexures. The accords signed by GB when it joined the EU contain a whole range of binding commitments covering everything from immigration, civil and criminal law to public administration. As such joining the EU is a whole order of magnitude more complex than negotiating a free trade deal.

By default leaving the EU is therefore much harder than terminating a single FT deal with a trade partner. So I don't think your analogy. stands.

BTW long time no hear, nice to see you back.

[Bigfella]

The schadenfreude just oozes out of that post, Peter!!!

English politics is a joke at the moment. People blame the 'political class', but they are just an expression of the electorate. The vote for Brexit was ill considered and the current chaos is the result. You would like to think all this would teach people a lesson about electoral tantrums, but people have a near infinite capacity for shifting the responsibility for the results of their stupidity to others.

[Bigfella]

This is exactly the scenario we need in the US. A GOP in complete shambles and the Democratic Party in recovery. For that we need Trump's policies to go through

The British Labour party isn't in 'recovery', it is eating itself. The only reason it hasn't descended into civil war is because the Tories are in such a godawful mess that Labour is competitive in the polls. I say competitive because despite the Tories spending a year doing their impression of a rotting corpse Labour is still only level. If, as expected. may gets knifed after the Brexit negotiations & replaced with someone more competent then the 'recovery' may come to a grinding halt.

[snapper]

From what I have read they are the British Labour Party is fighting itself about antisemitism. Comrade Corbyn, being the last 'red' of the old style has a base antisemitic impulse which most of the new generation (post USSR) recognise as base racialism so they are arguing about that instead of stopping this suicidal economic Brexit.

I rather think - looking from afar but with a little understanding of British politics - that we end with a "no deal Brexit" or a "no Brexit" reversal of course barring a new election. The reason is simple; whatever proposal the current Government comes up with for a trade deal with the EU it cannot get a majority in the House of Commons to support it. The only reason Theresa May is still in No 10 is because the Brexiteers do not want to take responsibility for the disasters to the British economy that follow Brexit; they have no answers either although backed by Muscovite money they said it would be easy. The whole Brexit fiasco was a rehearsal for the US election that resulted in a compromised imbecile in the White House.