Well, thanks to May's acceptance of Jacob Rees-Mogg's four wrecking amendments to her customs plan, she has - at least at first glance - made her own negotiating position even more uncertain and tied herself in knots by accepting the Brexiteers' views into law. It's madness. Madness. What on earth was she thinking?
There are two points that can help explain the seemingly inexplicable. What we are seeing is short-term Tory party management in extremis. Plenty of people have commented about how the Prime Minister is living from day-to-day, and here we are. By accepting the Mogglodytes' amendments she was able to get the 60-or so votes they hold behind the government's position. As we have seen, Tory remainers could only muster 11 votes in opposition so from that point of view, the government's overall position lived to fight another day. Had Mogg and co. set their face against the remainers would not have been enough and it might have proved curtains for May.
The second point is that voting the Brexiteers' amendments into law doesn't actually matter. Nothing has changed, to coin a phrase. When Dominic Raab is packed off to negotiations with Brussels and May's plans dissolve in first contact with the European Union's position, whatever is eventually arrived at - and it's looking like Britain is heading more to a Norway-style destination - this will mean more government legislation, and therefore anything put down to placate the Brexiteers now will necessarily get repealed later. One assumes the European Research Group have the wit to realise this too, and so their mobilisations are all about showing May what headaches they can cause her down the line.
And here we are. A Brexit position evolving not from speaking to the EU but from arguments amongst the Tory party, and a set of incompatible and contradictory negotiating lines that will be rejected out-of-hand. Unfortunately, the longer this shilly-shallying goes on the more likely the UK will crash out of the EU, a crash that will hit our people the hardest.
11 comments:
What they haven't yet done is end the backstop agreement. Remember we stay in the Customs Union until there is something suitable in place for Northern Ireland. The Brexiters are attacking this but it is an existing agreement and provided they're thwarted on the subject we can't yet crash out. In principle, anyway...
The Tories are controlled by the Brextremists. Don't be fooled by their internal divisions and how they vote. Their only goal is to get Britain officially out of the EU, as of March 29th, next year. With Summer recess, then the Xmas break, there is only about 4 months of parliamentary time to stop Brexit.
Come March, once Britain is officially out, all of the promises and agreements (including the backstop) will be scrapped, and May will be out. The new PM will push through a blowing up of any agreement, if any has been reached, by pushing through a divergence from the common rule book.
The Brextremists hope of course that the EU will reject May's proposal before that, so that they can just go straight to a no deal Brexit. Either way, a no deal Brexit is coming within about a year, unless Brexit itself is stopped.
The Brextremists believe that faced with the chaos of a no deal Brexit, before or after March 29th. the EU will be forced to make concessions to Britain. If you remember that was Bojo's negotiating stance before the referendum. They think that because they have that old Tory colonial mindset, which many of those old folks who voted for Brexit are still in thrall to.
They think this is still the world and Britain of Churchill and his predecessors where British gun boat diplomacy could bend the will of others to its needs. They think the world owes Britain a living, and that whatever demands they put forward are the ones the world will have to concede to it.
Sheer delusion. Instead it will play out like this. A no deal Brexit jumping off the cliff followed by chaos, which Soubry showed the Brextremists actually know will happen, but are prepared to accept. The chaos will affect the EU as Britain effectively gets cut off, but its response will be to offer to help Britain get out of the chaos it has imposed on itself. It will offer rapid Bre-entry, provided Britain scraps all its existing opt-outs, rebate and so on, and also agrees to join the Euro and Schengen.
Britain thereby avoids vassal state status, but rightly ends up with a much reduced status within the EU, and the world.
talking of sheer delusion....
I would have thought the current insanity gripping liberals of most stripes (including the Yvette Cooper loving left), namely that Putin put Trump in the White House and controls his every move, would be a good area of research for any genuine objective sociologists.
The original Brexiteers, such as the late blonde bombshell Theresa Gorman, were clear in expressing the belief that the UK should align itself with the US version of capitalism (red in tooth and claw and light in red tape) and break with the social democratic pinko European version (too much of the old let the lazy live while punishing the wealth creators about them). Gorman would regale us back in the day with her frequent trips to the US and how wonderful life and culture was over there. The important point to note is that the current Brexiteers are no different to Gorman other than reducing the argument to an even greater level of imbecility.
I think the pro war Left/Liberal, who have not only kept quiet about anti Muslim racism but have more often than not endorsed it, bear some responsibility for the vote to leave the EU, given their craven obedience to US imperialism, their craven obedience to a rotten and degrading US culture their support for imperialist wars of supremacy, not matter how many times those wars result in something far worse than was there before.
If we were to create a pie chart showing the factors that influenced Brexit and the election of Trump Russia would literally not appear on the pie chart, so small and insignificant is their influence. Even if we magnified the chart a million percent we would still not see the segment for Russia, yet all the insane liberals, republican neo cons and rogue Marxists can talk about is Russia.
Isn't it an indictment of democracy rather than Putin that these liberals and neo cons believe a few facebook posts can mean the difference between who gets elected? If democracy is that superficial maybe its about time we posited a new definition of democracy, one that challenges the bourgeois definition. After all our job is not to bring about the full expression of bourgeois democracy but to eradicate it from the face of the Earth. never has that historic task been of a more pressing concern
signed by:
The Committee for the Campaign Against American Culture
Not necessarily off piste!
We were discussing the lack of political education in the LP last night. As far as we know there are no topics, materials, speakers provided by the Party centrally.
I recall that you were the Education officer in your constituency. Any ideas for topics/resources%?
Off the top of my head I thought
Social Democracy / Socialism : What is the LP?
Social mobillity or Equality. What do we want?
What do women want?
The economy: Well, that’s a big one.
I haven’t run this past anyone yet so I’d be interested in any balance sheet of your experiences.
The Committee for the Campaign Against American Culture previously known as BCFG, DFTM, Chris, Dave, The Sentinel amongst others.
I am aware of the others but who is the Sentinel you buffoon?
I think Boffy is projecting his own guilt here.
Like the Committee he views Brexit negatively, but while the members of the Committee have done all they can to fight the actual material conditions that have led to Brexit (of which Russia is not one incidentally) Boffy has actually assisted the Brexit campaign with his imperialist chauvinistic drivel. He has been warned before that the chauvinistic imperialist attitude he displays contributes to the backward mindset of the masses. He was warned when he trotted out his pathetic Proletarian military policy that he was ignoring the grave warnings of Marx who recognised what the chauvinistic response to the Irish struggle for freedom was having on the state of mind of the working class yet he ignored the comradely warnings. Hence the sub conscious guilt.
The Committee fights all those reactionary forces, be they liberals, republican neo cons or rogue Marxists who would poison the consciousness of the working classes through chauvinistic imperialism and progressivist stupidity (again something Marx warned us about).
Incidentally here are just a few of our positions:
Ban the use of cheerleaders at all public events
Ban Prom nights in all schools
Children caught trick or treating force fed cabbage for a month
Parents dressing their children up for Halloween to be sterilised, put on a register and closely monitored
Ban of puppets in all adverts except adverts solely selling puppets
Illegal to call a game primarily played with the foot soccer, US football to be more properly called hold ball
Fast food restaurants to be called fast death parlours (even the non american ones)
Leaders debates to be banned
All elected mayoral and police positions to be scrapped, one individual cannot be given such levels of power and responsibility and no one should be led to believe that democracy amounts to such nonsense.
I rest my case. Exposed and condemned from his own keyboard.
Your legal standards are straight from Guantanamo bay (an imperialist concentration camp).
Being aware is different from being - Hegel (phenomenology of spirit)
The committee have noted how Boffy abuses Marx to push his chauvinistic and imperialistic outlook.
An example, one of many, that was brought to the committee’s attention was the use by Boffy of Marx and Engels unhistorical peoples to basically dismiss the rights of Palestinians as somehow going against the natural order of things.
Now this alone would be an abuse but if we look closer at what Marx and Engels said they defined these unhistorical peoples as those people relying on a bigger power than themselves for their survival. Now anyone looking at the Israeli- Palestinian situation could only conclude that it is the Israelis who are relying on a bigger power for survival and if those bigger powers were removed from the equation we would quickly see who the unhistorical peoples are.
The committee agreed that Boffy deliberately abused the definition to push the imperialistic world view and the committee have concluded that Boffy is effectively an agent of imperialism even if he isn’t on the payroll.
The committee have determined that any individual in the service of imperialism is a class enemy (based on Marxist principles).
Therefore criticisms by Boffy of the Committees policies are irrelevant.
The committee will listen to views from within the movement and note that the proposal to ban supermarkets was scrapped after concern was raised by numerous comrades.
The committee have noted that if Corbyn ever comes to power the Putin-Russia_Corbyn link will be ramped up to 11.
Dear Committee, your personal attacks are very unwelcome and completely out of character with the frank but comradely debate that usually follows Phil's thoughtful pieces. I ask you to reconsider your debating tone. Thanks.
@Richard,
The committee is just a troll, so any hope that he might do as you request is in vain. Committee is an appropriate name for him to use here given the large number of sock puppets he uses, including those he uses to put up straw men to knock down in one of his other persona.
One day he assumes the persona of a BNP ex soldier, IT businessman, another as an SWP type idiot anti-imperialist, another as a right-wing libertarian/Austrian School fanatic and so on. The best thing to do once you recognise the underlying troll is to simply ignore him. He just makes ridiculous comments to incite a response in the hope it will escalate into a flame war.
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