POLITICS CORNER

[Stanley]

P is quite right in my opinion China. Since 2010 and the advent of the dead hand of Tory DNA dragging us away from Europe and back towards the 19th century look at the results. Historically, the 2008 crisis was the natural result of thirty years of right wing monetarist economical thinking based of Friedman and the Chicago School. P has recognised this and is drawing the only natural conclusion.
I wasn't aware of the appeal to the court, interesting.
Even though it looks as though the ERG initiative to oust Nay is failing, it could still happen if Parliament is as divided as is suspected. As usual in this chaos, we are uncertain of what is happening, what the consequences will be and where we will end up. The only certainty we have at the moment is that May is going to hang on to her Plan, no matter how flawed. Brilliant management!

[Bruff]

Correlation does not imply causation. That joining the then EEC correlates with the resultant 3-day week does not imply it caused it. There was quite a lot of strife in the 70s, post our joining the EEC. The sharp-eyed will note that saying this means ergo, our joining is not necessarily the cause of our generally good economic performance since then. Thankfully, we have clever people who work hard on robust studies that look beyond simple correlations to cause so that we don’t have to bother. All we have to ensure is we understand correlation does not imply or prove cause, so folk can’t pull the wool over our eyes. There is a view that membership was generally good as it forced the UK economy to face stiff competition – so poor firms went bust, management improved and industrial relations improved. But it’s complex. This link is as good as any as a primer

https://www.ft.com/content/202a60c0-cfd ... f7778e7377

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Thanks for the voice of sanity Richard. You made me feel better. Again!

[Tizer]

I've just been chatting to a neighbour. She said "If only someone could wave a magic wand and turn things back to how they were". Her family have bought a house in south-west Ireland and they are aiming to all get Irish passports eventually.

[plaques]

Correlation does not imply causation

I like the old analogy. More people drown when ice cream sales increase?
One of the main problems with austerity is that it encourages firms to carry on with cheap labour rather than invest in new technology. Some of the arguments for entering the Common Market was that we would enjoy the benefit of cheap imported vegetables while we would sell high value products. Then we then found that some of these 'backward' countries had far more advanced manufacturing techniques than we had. We were then left playing catch up. Today its recognised that to keep up in technology you need educated people. This is especially true when the pool you are selecting from is relatively small. So what do we do? We make higher education more expensive making the pool even smaller. When are we going to wake up to the fact that cheap labour is the road to ruin. No easy solution I'm afraid but that's up to the professional politicians.

[chinatyke]

Correlation does not imply causation

We wouldn't want any inconvenient truths to get in the way of a good story, would we?

[Stanley]

Yes we would!
There used to be a neat correlation in Ireland between the number of barrels of Guinness brewed and RC priests ordained.
Quite right P about education, particularly investment in early years and primary, the current obsession with higher education doesn't worry me too much. I also think your analysis of industry and low pay is correct. Add in the overall neglect of good apprenticeship schemes to catch the young who fell though the education net early on.

[plaques]

Mrs May's toing and froing to Brussels is reminiscent of David Cameron's negotiations about free movement. Always on the cusp of a breakthrough but always a little more work to do with one or two things to iron out. You can get a good idea about who is the real boss by who is doing the travelling. Our propaganda machine (Goebbels mark 2) will never admit defeat the nearest you will get is "there is no alternative"! Where have I heard that one before? Meanwhile, the secret discussions will continue along with the secret advice not to mention the secret agreements we have already reached. With all that behind us we can continue with confidence, in secret of course.

[Stanley]

Weird P how you put your finger on the matters that bother me. (I like Goebbels Mark II)
I suspect that Jeremy Corbyn voiced what many people think in PMQs yesterday when he said the draft political agreement was waffle, full of pious hopes and aspirations but no substance. From what I have seen of it it is riddled with loopholes and any refinement of it over the years as it develops could result in some nasty surprises.
My suspicion is that it is only meant to disarm criticism by lulling casual observers into a sense of false security and facilitating a positive vote in the House. It remains to be seen whether it will succeed. It wouldn't surprise me at all if she succeeds and gets a majority simply because so much confusion exists.
The defence should be debate focusing strictly on facts but I see little evidence that this is a remote possibility. The blind are leading the blind.....
I have only one certainty, our position was much more secure before the Article 150 letter was fired off.

[Tizer]

A point by point breakdown of the draft political declaration on the future relationship between the EU and the UK, after Brexit:
`Brexit: What's in the political declaration?' LINK

[Stanley]

That's a very good summary Tiz. I wonder whether in most MP's minds 'regaining sovereignty' means 'getting our own way'?
I see T May is off to Brussels again tomorrow. If she gets a sign-off from the EU it will be trumpeted as a big deal when actually it is only the precursor to years of argument (sorry, 'negotiation'.)
Then there is the vote in Parliament.....

[PanBiker]

Seems crazy that they get the deal signed off by the EU before it goes through our Parliament and why no one has questioned this. They could have saved a lot of time for re-negotiation, but of course May insists that is is not possible, probably not at this eleventh hour. Why have we not had successive deals put before Parliament over the last two and a half years? We should have thrashed out the deal there before presenting it to the EU. Should have dissolved Parliament anyway after the result of the referendum and formed a coalition government as if on a war footing. , might have got some consensus then.

Oh, I am aware of why the EU are keen to sign it off, they wrote most of it over two years ago did they not?

[Tizer]

The `other side' consists of 27 countries, each of which has to approve the deal, so it's a lot more complicated from their end. Any one of them can scupper the deal. We're still part of the EU and still subject to its rules.

[PanBiker]

I'm aware of that Tiz but it still seems stupid to try to broker a deal that has not been through Parliament. If we are leaving we should be presenting a deal that all our lot agree on. What the other side does is up to them. Personally I'm not in favour of it I voted to stay but the method has been bungled from day one. My statement above stands, once we decided to leave we should have had a coalition government and agreement for a general election after the split. Nothing democratic about any of the procedure since the vote.

[plaques]

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has said that nobody negotiates with the EU. “Once the European Union presents a deal on the table, it is take it or leave it. There is no way it can be unpicked or that it will be somehow substantially changed either by Theresa May or by any other government.” It would appear that Mrs May's visit to the headmaster's study will be "Yes we, the EU, has set out everything you are going to get. Take it or leave it." On return Mrs May will say "good progress has been made where the door is still open for further negotiation". We will clap and cheer, sing Rule Britannia and gird our loins for more austerity.

[Tripps]

The `other side' consists of 27 countries, each of which has to approve the deal, so it's a lot more complicated from their end. Any one of them can scupper the deal. We're still part of the EU and still subject to its rules.

I'm way off the pace here, and hesitate to get involved - and noting that we are just about to enter the pantomime season -

I'm confused. This weekend there are two documents - one is just a political way forward which has expanded from 7 pages to 20 pages, but is not legally binding at all, just a vague statement of intention, and the other which is 'the agreement' but it has no validity until Parliament has approved it, which is said to be extremely unlikely. I read also that it will be approved or not by the 27 EU countries by 'qualified majority voting' which means that only 20 of the 27 need approve it. So what Spain thinks about Gibraltar doesn't really matter.

Separately - Don't I recall an Act of Parliament passed early in this process whereby on the day after leaving the EU, 30 march 2019, all EU regulations would become identical British regulations - under British control, and hence amendable. I recall quite a fuss at the time, but have heard nothing of it in the current chaos.

I still maintain Mrs May is mentally ill, and thinks that by continually robotically repeating a false statement - it will eventually become a true statement.

PS just found this from Martin Howe QC.
The following quote highlights the sheer stupidity of Theresa May’s charade of appearing to ‘negotiate’ the best agreement on trade for Britain. She is actually surrendering all power – now and at any time in the future – to EU bureaucrats. Her draft (‘daft’ would be more appropriate!) agreement will keep us under the EU’s thumb and subject to their rules for as long as the EU bureaucratic empire exists. Worse, we won’t have any say in how their rules are made and implemented and, crucially, it entails ditching Northern Ireland as an integral part of the UK:

‘I think that the incredulity in some quarters about it being possible for a treaty like this to bind a country indefinitely is because trade treaties never do bind their participants indefinitely. In practice they all routinely contain termination clauses giving each party the right to withdraw on notice – commonly one year. This is only common sense. All sorts of conditions may change over time and countries do not want to be bound without their consent into trade relationships which become inappropriate or burdensome over time.

‘Therefore this Protocol in locking in the UK without a right to leave is quite unique and unprecedented. I am not aware of any trade agreement between the EU and a non-Member state which does not contain a right for that state to withdraw from the agreement. Even the humiliating and degrading Association Agreement between the EU and Moldova which I discuss in my note on ECJ jurisdiction (shortly to be published) contains in Art.460 a normal each-party termination clause on 6 months notice.’

[Tizer]

Theresa May voted to stay in the EU. She knows it would be wrong to leave. She's probably deliberately created a situation where we'll end up staying because there's no other sensible choice. She knows she's going to get kicked out of the PM role anyway so she might as well sink the Brexiteers at the same time and save the country from a bad decision.

This is a logical explanation of the current situation: LINK
`Brexit: What will happen if MPs reject Theresa May's deal?'

[PanBiker]

Are you suggesting that the last two and a half years are a calculated cunning plan by Theresa May to save us all from Cameron's Catastrophe? High risk way of going about it, just about on a par with one of Baldricks!

[Tizer]

Not for the whole two and a half years but it probably crystallised out in her mind as time went by!

[plaques]

crystallised out in her mind

I would have thought 'atrophied' was a better word.

[Stanley]

Splendid posts which show a better appreciation of what is going on than much of the 'public debate'. Like Ian I advocated a National Government as soon as Cameron set this process in train. I said at the time that in its own way this was a war situation and should be treated as such. At its root, this is economic warfare, the attraction to the Brexiteers is that they can deploy their wealth freely to ensure that the present trend of capital being sucked into the higher echelons from the lower majority can continue and expand. Look at the way we allow the UK to be a home for dodgy shell companies and money laundering already, May even pointed this out to the EU in the heady days when she thought we could dictate terms to the EU. This ploy was soon abandoned when it was realised that this was preaching to the converted and the campaigning switched to fear of Johnny Foreigner taking all the jobs and depressing wages and bribes of millions of pounds a day for the NHS etc. This tapped directly into the bigoted, ignorant, xenophobic seam that lurks beneath the surface of our fair land and got them a slim majority. At no time was principle or the moral value of international cooperation mentioned. Instead they banged on about tradition and a mythical National Sovereignty, the same basis that ensures the survival of our Monarchical system.
The irony is that it is the economics of the matter that has brought them to the present situation. The EU was pissed off because one of their biggest net contributors was bailing out and openly saying that they intended to set up as trading competitors with the Union at a time when they are under huge financial pressure to hold together a Union flawed by the fact that a common currency had been brought in before the political (Federal) framework was in place. They knew from the beginning that as soon as Article 150 was invoked the UK became a supplicant with no leverage, that's how the treaties were written. All they had to do was write their own version of Brexit and watch the UK flounder towards a situation where time has run out. In political terms they have played a blinder!
In another irony, the Tories will have succeeded in their Cunning Plan to get back to 19th century laissez faire because no matter what the outcome, they have made sure that for the majority of the UK austerity continues for the foreseeable future. Nothing beats poverty in bringing the lower classes to heel. The Rees Moggs of the world will shift the corporate HQs of their hedge funds to EU territory and carry on as before.
There is only one way I can see to partially retrieve the situation. Have a General Election quickly, chuck the Tories out and before March 29th, cancel the Article 150 application. The man who wrote the regulation says this is always possible. We will then go back to where we were before but without the loopholes we had created over the years and start the long painful climb back to become a meaningful part of what is still a grand plan, a United Europe which can stand up to the major global forces ranging against us. Look abroad, power is shifting from the West and nobody seems to have recognised this yet.
The world faces many problems and economic warfare is one of them. As a lone nation state on the fringes of the EU we will try to 'punch above our weight' and fail miserably. Read honest economists like Piketty and Stiglitz and make up your own minds.....

[plaques]

From Mrs May's 'My Letter to the Nation'. Letter.
Some excerpts
...We will take back control of our boarders.putting an end to free movement.
We will take back the control of our money by putting an end to the vast annual payments we make to the EU.
.. Like on our own priorities like the extra £340M per week that we are planning on the NHS.
..Our laws will be made interpreted and enforced by our own courts and legislature
That there will be no hard boarder between Northern Ireland and Ireland.

All jam tomorrow but meanwhile 'back on your heads'

[chinatyke]

From Mrs May's 'My Letter to the Nation'. Letter.
Some excerpts
...We will take back control of our boarders.putting an end to free movement.

Ah, the boarders, the Albanians in the spare bedroom, I'd forgotten about them.

[Tizer]

You an always lodge a complaint, China!

[plaques]

Actually I'd forgotten about the albinos in the Arctic. You would make a good spoofreader China. A bit peedantic though.