POLITICS CORNER

[plaques]

I think it was in her book 'This Changes Everything' Naomi Klein said that this type of oil was extremely corrosive and that the current pipelines were constantly leaking contaminating waterways and aquifers. There is already quite a backlog of litigation claims from towns and landowners trying to unravel who owns what.

[Tripps]

From the Daily Mail online.

"He's tried governing the same way. His actions are a blitz. He rarely consults old Washington hands. He hangs the threat of retribution over anyone who challenges him. and now he and his party have been dealt a stinging defeat."


Someone has given this bully what is probably his first experience of a 'punch on the nose'. Hooray.

[Stanley]

I forecast that this would happen. He will have to learn that the President is not omnipotent, he leads by cooperating with the people and the Hill. Bull in a china shop is not productive. Question is how long before the people who fell for his rhetoric realise that they have elected a bum steer? Does he learn or implode?
There was a good piece on R4 from an American Republican journalist who was sacked for saying Obamacare would never be repealed because to do so would deprive millions of people of health care. He still has the same opinion. Looks as though he might be right.....
May has not gone to the EU anniversary celebrations. Big mistake. She should have put in an appearance and wished the Project well even though we are resigning. It would have been appreciated and we can only get the best from negotiations by being cooperative and reasonable. By staying away she has signalled clearly that we are already outsiders and are antagonists.

[Tizer]

Yes, antagonism seems to be the order of the day for May and the Brexiteers. No diplomacy or subtlety whatsoever, just like Trump really!

I think that American Republican journalist also said that blocking Trump's attempt to kill off Obamacare has been a benefit for him - if it had gone through he would have faced a revolt from all those people who lost health care. Did you notice that Trump immediately started telling the press "I didn't really want to do it anyway" - just like a child!

[plaques]

Hear we go again. Mrs May hoping to take charge and alter laws without the need to consult Parliament. Link. Quote 'The government will then publish its Great Repeal Bill on Thursday.
It will propose giving ministers the powers to change some aspects of European laws when they have been incorporated into UK legislation, without needing the approval of Parliament. and carries on to say..'It includes proposals for the government to be given a "new time-limited correcting power" which would allow changes to be made through so-called Henry VIII clauses - without needing the approval of Parliament.' It was not all that long ago that of all the legislation passed by the EU there were only seven laws which we really objected to. The obvious fear is that hidden in the small print there will be a lot of intended consequences that will favour the rich and disadvantage the poor. I can foresee that the ordinary worker will have to be more flexible an euphemism for working for less money with no job security.

[Stanley]

Tiz. Yes you're right he did say that. So Trump moves on to another of his promises, lowering taxes.... For whom?
P, yes a chill ran through me when I heard that. In effect she is proposing Emergency Powers in anything but name. You're dead right, the poor face at least ten more years of increasing pressure.

[Tizer]

The FT this morning says that Britain will still be subject to EU laws even after Brexit because it doesn't have the time or expertise to replace European bodies with a new British regulatory regime within two years. I think Bruff might have already warned us of this situation.

[Stanley]

He did Tiz and we can see now how prescient he was.
There is a pattern emerging and again it's something that Richard has been flagging up for a while. It's the shallow attitude of the majority towards the real issues behind Brexit. I call it the LCD argument, the Lowest Common Denominator. Basically it's over simplifying the problem to purely one of economics. We saw the power of this argument in the notorious £350million a week canard during the referendum campaign. It exists now by concentration on trade and migration in public converse and it seems to be the obsession of the negotiators.
I watched the first half hour of the debate on BBC1 last night and what struck me was that Davies was being patronising and evasive, Starmer, Salmond and Clegg seemed to me to be the most persuasive and the UKIP woman was puerile. Salmond in particular was spot on when he compared the possible £50billion penalty of exit with the estimated £50billion per annum of loss to the Tax Take if we are forced into WTO rules.
Beyond this my beef is that nobody is talking about the wider international implications of withdrawing from the EU Project. Post 1945 we saw the beginnings of a general global interconnectivity as nations were forced by the experience of World War to recognise the value of wider cooperation, if you like, the Star Trek Federation model. I experienced WW2 and I find this a very attractive goal and am all in favour of pursuing it. The model adopted by Mrs May and the Tories is the direct opposite of this, dominated as it is by the most selfish elements of the LCD arguments and based in otherness and antagonism. I may be an old romantic but this to me is the biggest possible mistake and the tone of the BBC programme last night demonstrated this.
So I am with Richard who said a while ago that Brexit was a calamity..... Even worse, it is a catastrophe triggered by Cameron's weakness and the dinosaur DNA in the Tory Party amongst those who still hanker for the days of empire and 19th century laisser faire. There is something wrong with a political system that allows such puerile and obviously mistaken influences to have permanent effects on a nation. (I say nation but one of the consequences is that the UK as we know it could perish in the process)

[Tizer]

Post 1945 we saw the beginnings of a general global interconnectivity as nations were forced by the experience of World War to recognise the value of wider cooperation, if you like, the Star Trek Federation model. I experienced WW2 and I find this a very attractive goal and am all in favour of pursuing it.

Somewhere recently I saw a response by David Davies to a similar comment. He twisted it and claimed that such people are living in the past, thinking wrongly that European nations would ever again go to war with one another. That's his Cunning Wheeze, deflect the argument away from our concerns about protecting Europe and towards the idea of internal warfare.

[Stanley]

If the Luftwaffe had been after him he might have a different opinion. That's why we need historians. Read 'God's Playground' the story of Poland and reflect... Remember Bosnia.

[Tizer]

Talking of historians...David Starkey was on the Today programme this morning, wanting Nick Clegg drawn and quartered for being a Remainer. I think he was joking. Starkey was likening present Brexit events to Henry VIII breaking with the Catholic church in Rome and putting it over as the great event that led to Empire, freedom for the English and all that. He forgot to mention some other aspects that were raised on the Long View programme the other day when they looked at the same comparison. When Henry split from Rome England did indeed find itself separated from European trade and rushed out to begin to trading more widely across the world, and saw organisations such as the Levant Company set up. Elizabeth set up deals with the Ottoman Empire (she sent a Lancashire man with his clockwork organ to impress the Ottoman Emperor who offered him a permanent place in court with a choice of concubines, but he refused and said he preferred Lancashire!). All this looked good but eventually they found that trading at such long distances and with emerging nations was very difficult and they had to come back to Europe, cap in hand, and look for trade deals again. No wonder one of the commonest questions at the moment is this: `Is Article 50 reversible?'

[Bruff]

Compliance with a lot of EU requirements will be necessary for on-going relationships, and certainly a trade deal. If you want to sell your widgets to Europe then you’ll have to comply with the product standards for widgets. If you want to sell your cauliflowers then you’ll have to comply with the requisite number of florets if they are to be Class 1. Memo to passing Brexiters: there are no requirements for the number of florets on Class 1 cauliflowers in EU law. I made that up. But you believed me for a moment there didn’t you? Oh dear….

In addition, social dumping will not be allowed in any future trade deal, as the EU chief negotiator M Barnier has made clear. This ‘social dumping’ is the undercutting of minimum standards on such things as workplace safety, hours of work, entitlement to leave and so on. So one assumes that, if we seek a trade deal with the EU, then the minimum social requirements will apply.

So it’s fair to assume that if we wish for continued trade with the EU through some formalised trade deal, a lot of what we are encouraged to see as ‘red tape’ will remain. Properly, within the context of trade, we should refer to this red tape as ‘non-tariff barriers’ – mutual recognition of standards and so on, in contrast to the ‘easy’ bit of trade that are the tariff barriers (though these are anything but easy).

As a general point, getting rid of regulations – deregulation - is very difficult. Simplifying them, consolidating them, repealing redundant regulations (because the industry has vanished) is relatively straightforward. Actually removing a requirement or a protection is hard. This is because huge amounts of regulation actually helps business and consumers and citizens and workers in providing the said protections and creating a level, fair, operating environment. And when one begins the process of removing these, it becomes very clear to people that this help and this protection is being removed. And they react accordingly. There aren’t many examples of pure deregulation, the removing of a protection.

So a lot of red tape will remain. Sorry about that.

So the letter’s delivered and the EU will discuss at a formal meeting in a month’s time 29 April. Prediction: the EU will be politely reminded by the Mail and the Express and the like to ‘pull their finger out’ and get a move on now we’ve triggered Art50 after 9 months…….. ‘Tis the British way

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

I watched Donald Tusk making his announcement in Brussels and was struck by his air of resigned resignation. I hadn't realised he was Polish and no doubt he is well aware of his country's history, a powerful incentive to make a cooperative Europe work. He gave a glimpse of the fears of the smaller members as the Project loses 10% of its funding, that's their most immediate problem and will colour the initial direction of the 'negotiation'.
The thing that struck me was the lousy signature on the letter, it looks as though May's pen was running out of ink......
Was it really necessary to include the implied threat of lessened cooperation on intelligence in the letter. This betrays something about general attitudes despite a general softened tone.
The Hawaiian judge has extended the ban on Trumps travel ban indefinitely. This will not please him......

[Tizer]

I listened to John Humphrys tackling David Davies this morning about that implied threat on intelligence cooperation. Davies just kept laughing during the interview as if he didn't take it all seriously. But it was a somewhat manic laugh...it reminded me of monsters in Dr Who laughing as they press the button to destroy Earth. Humphrys, perhaps not surprisingly, seemed to be getting to the end of his tether and you could hear the tension in his voice. I wondered if he was going to give Davies a slap across the face to bring him to his senses.

There was also an interview with German MEP Manfred Weber and he wasn't laughing. He cut straight through to the core of the problem - "You can't have all these deals with the EU - you've chosen to leave the EU. If you want the deals you should have stayed a member". The interview is reported here: LINK

[Bruff]

What you have to remember about David Davis is this. He was a former FCO Minister. He is also a, quote: ‘committed eurosceptic’, being a Maastricht rebel. Despite this, he didn’t know that the EU negotiated as one on trade and EU members could not negotiate alone one of the most basic facts out there. He is therefore either stupid or simply unenquiring. As he’s a Tory, I’ll pop for the former.

Herr Weber was to the point (he always provides good value in interviews). Perhaps the harder end of the spectrum regarding likely EU approaches, but he spoke self-evident truths. On leaving, the UK will be a third-country so far as the EU is concerned. We will be no different to Senegal. Weber simply noted this in his roundabout way: ‘I do not think about Russian and American citizens in my role as an MEP, I think about EU citizens’. Quite right – he should have no concern at all about the UK once it leaves. And that’s what he said. Mr Tusk noted the same – the EU will prioritise the EU and its citizens. How and why should it be otherwise? Personally I’m with Weber. We should get the hardest of hard Brexits and speaking to others in Europe, that’s what a lot of the electorate there seem to want. They are frankly sick to the back teeth of us. I sensed that in Mr Tusk with his: ‘here it is, the letter. Six pages’, followed by a tweet noting ‘after 9 months the UK delivers the letter’. Ouch!

Repeal Bill today. Except as noted below it’ll likely ‘repeal’ not much. Stuff on protecting newts I think. Seems a quaint notion among Davis and his ilk that this means trade deals will be quick to set up. Really? The Repeal Bill kicks in the day we leave. Our legislation then immediately diverges. Why? Because EU law, like ours, is not fixed and immutable. It changes constantly as technologies develop, evidence emerges, holes are found and so on and so forth. Repeal brings what we have, in; trade talks will be about how what we’ve brought in, reacts to this divergence. Oh well.

Richard Broughton

[plaques]

He is therefore either stupid or simply unenquiring.

When Michael Howard stood down as leader of the Conservative Party the replacement front runners were David Cameron and David Davis. Davis was rejected because he was seen to be dull, backward looking with nothing to offer to make the party move forward. Cameron on the other hand was more upbeat and energetic. We now know that Cameron's efforts to appease the Eurosceptics have got us in the mess we are now in. Its of no comfort to know that the man the majority of the Conservatives rejected is now in charge of negotiating our futures. Probably worse still is the thought that it was a stroke of genius on Mrs May's behalf to put Davis, Gove and Johnson as the 'A' team for Brexit. This is the funny farm gone mad.

[Bruff]

It’s genius from May I guess if she thought the Brexiters now own the process and so if it goes to hell in a hand cart the Brexiters own the failure and the way is prepared for a massive U-turn. That’s the conspiracy theory. The alternative is it’s a cock-up – as M Heseltine said yesterday, they are in place as being Brexiters May presumably thought they know what they’re doing, but the evidence so far is they don’t. So conspiracy or cock-up? Come on, it’s the Tories! Cock up.

I’ve been listening to Davis in the Commons on the Repeal Bill. He made a startling statement in response to a Q from Labour’s Kevin Barron who asked if there would be a vote on leaving the EEA? Davis said there very well may be. This is significant. The EEA = EFTA + EU. But we are leaving the EU and are not members of EFTA. So is he saying there will be a vote on leaving the EU (and so EEA)? That’s not in our gift now Art50 has been triggered as the EU will decide whether we’ll simply forget it ever happened. Or that there is a plan to try for a third-party arrangement that preserves a lot of the EEA benefits? That is EU-minus or EFTA or EFTA2 or whatever? Either way, EEA membership requires payment and free movement and much else. Errrr…….?

Of course, flogging a dead horse, Davis might not have a clue what he’s talking about.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

As far as I can see the office of Foreign Secretary is a sinecure now. Bojo is keeping remarkably quiet. It's all quite depressing and like Richard I will always veer towards cock-up when it comes to Tory machinations.
For once, I think that Labour (and of course the SNP and Liberals) are taking the right line. Recognising the reality but striving to hold the Tories to account. As realisation grows of the enormity of the mistake being made they will gain strength.
Is any other area of governance receiving attention?

[Stanley]

Sorry, but I told you so..... Mrs May yesterday got the first indication of what I have always said was going to be her biggest problem. For months now she has been waffling on about keeping her cards close to her chest and boasting about the number of instances where we had an arm lock on the EU because they needed our trade. I have always said that this betrayed her wilful ignorance of the basic fact that as soon as the Letter was sent, the EU had complete control of the course of the divorce proceedings. Mr Tusk made that perfectly clear yesterday as he blew many of Mrs May's preferences out of the water by stipulating that there will be no slicing and dicing of the privileges of membership and that there will be no discussion of those topics until the basic financial settlement has been laid out.
Remember what Richard said when he predicted the howls of outrage against the EU's intransigence? He was dead right, watch this space.
All this was entirely predictable and one wonders why this has not been admitted by our leaders. Could it be that they have been trying to maintain the credibility of Brexit by suggesting that it could lead to immediate beneficial results? In fact, far from a gain of £350million a week we will have an immediate bill of perhaps £50billion, disadvantages on trade and tax take of perhaps £50billion annually and annual payments to the EU for other benefits such as collaboration in science in the future. What is the reaction of the country going to be when this realisation strikes? What will the consequences be for Austerity? These matters do not indicate an immediate transition to the broad sunlit uplands that was predicted by the more optimistic Brexiteers.
Tin hats on Lads!

[Tizer]

Now the Brexiteers are complaining because the EU will allow Spain to be party to discussions on Gibraltar's future after Brexit. Spain has a land border with Gibraltar - how can you plan Brexit without discussing it with Spain? I suppose if he doesn't like any of it IDS will send a gunboat to sort out Johnny Foreigner!

[PanBiker]

How could anyone ever think that we tighten control on immigration after we exit the EU. For the first time ever we will have a direct land border with Europe in the shape of the present soft border in Ireland, I believe there are around 270 crossing points all with free travel. There is no will on the island to harden it either, and rightly so, thousands of workers traverse it both ways each day to earn their daily bread.
So, after Brexit we raise the shutters on the mainland ports of entry on our little island to keep all the migrants out, right! Now if I was a Johnny Foreigner looking for passage I would simply take a holiday to Dublin then get the bus up into the UK, (if it still exists).

[Stanley]

We're beginning to get evidence of the incompetence I forecast and the lack of preparation Richard mentioned. Be prepared for even more....

[Stanley]

It's started already, the attempt by Spain to use the Brexit negotiations to renew their claim on Gibraltar. It looks as though Mrs May and her experts didn't see this one coming. Michael Howard spouts nonsense comparing The Rock to The Falklands and May to Thatcher. He'll have a job sending the gunboats in let alone a carrier. The last news I had all the Type 45s and attack submarines are tied up for maintenance.
Meanwhile Trump pokes another hornet's nest saying that the US can deal with North Korea alone and doesn't need any help from China. This man is a dangerous joke.

[Tizer]

I suppose if he doesn't like any of it IDS will send a gunboat to sort out Johnny Foreigner!

I should have kept quiet - it looks like Michael Howard was listening. If we haven't got any suitable warships we can always threaten them with Boaty MacBoatface!

[Stanley]

I've forgotten who said it but an MP remarked yesterday that Spain now held all the cards after Article 50. Dead right! At least one of our leaders has recognised the reality of the situation. This will not be the last Unintended Consequence. We are passengers on the train heading for a wreck, not in the cab of the engine!