#DUP will hold May to promise of Brexit deal changes

[mariacallous]

Summertime is marching season in Northern Ireland. Throughout July and August, flute bands will parade across the country, celebrating British Protestant history before boisterous crowds numbering in the thousands.

Every year, unionists—those who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom—take to the streets to commemorate several key events leading up to the 1690 victory of Protestant King William III over his chief rival, James II, in a festive show of music and singing.

By the 1690s, Ireland had been under English rule for several decades. James, the deposed Catholic king of the British Isles, was determined to restore his authority. He mustered an army consisting primarily of Catholic recruits and clashed with William’s advancing forces on the banks of the River Boyne.

His eventual defeat all but secured the crown for William, and more importantly, reinforced Protestant control of Ireland for the next several centuries.

Although a relatively minor event in the long march of history, the Williamite War has had significant reverberations in the modern day. For many unionists, the fight to protect British Protestant identity is ongoing. But instead of seizing territory with muskets and cavalry, they’re fighting a rearguard action on the election trail, the steps of city hall, and inside stuffy courtrooms.

Unionists were dealt a humiliating blow in Northern Ireland’s local elections earlier this year. Sinn Fein, the country’s largest pro-Irish nationalist party, continued its relentless climb to the top, securing outright control of four local councils and winning more first preference votes than any other party.

Although unionist politicians didn’t lose seats, their overall performance paled in comparison to Sinn Fein’s romp, and that was enough to sound the alarm bells.

“For unionism, it’s perhaps a ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ moment,” former Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Edwin Poots said to reporters at the BBC.

The recent elections are part of a long, steady decline of political unionism. After more than half a century in which unionists held an unshakeable grip on power, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement—the peace accord that ended the 30-year conflict known as the Troubles—required unionists to give their opponents in the leading nationalist parties an equal hand in the administration of the country.

Since then, nationalists have made steady electoral gains across the country. They took control of Belfast City Council in 2011, a major propaganda coup with serious political and symbolic ramifications. Six years later, unionists lost their century-old majority in the region’s legislative assembly, before completely relinquishing control to Sinn Fein at last year’s assembly election. They also lost the role of kingmaker in Westminster when former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a commanding majority in the 2019 U.K. general election; no longer could the small but thran DUP hold former Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal hostage. The recent local elections are the latest such defeat for unionism.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Advocates for the Good Friday Agreement argued that the peace document was a victory for unionism; the Irish government had renounced its territorial claim to the country, and the British government promised that its constitutional status wouldn’t change without the consent of the majority.

Given the demographic composition of Northern Ireland at the time, the consent principle effectively meant unionists would have final say. Reflecting the optimism of the time, Gary McMichael, a unionist representative with ties to paramilitary groups, told reporters after signing the agreement in 1998 that “the union is not only safe, but has, in fact, been strengthened.”

There were, of course, detractors. Unionist dissidents recoiled at being asked to negotiate with former members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a nationalist paramilitary group responsible for roughly 1,500 deaths during the conflict.

There were political concerns, too. As soon as IRA gunmen were given seats at the table, unionists argued, a long process would begin that would inevitably end with those same IRA gunmen holding the keys to the kingdom.

Those dissenters look prescient now. Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the IRA, is poised to lead the governments of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the south, an unimaginable prospect even 10 years ago.

In the most recent Irish general election in 2020, Sinn Fein fell just two seats short of becoming the largest party in the Irish parliament. That might still have been good enough to put it in government, but an eleventh-hour deal led by rivals Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, the country’s historically dominant parties, kept it from power. Recent polling data suggests that the establishment parties might not have enough to overcome another big Sinn Fein performance.

The aftermath of a Sinn Fein takeover could be seismic. The party’s leadership continues to make holding a referendum on Irish unity a core part of its political program.

For many unionists, it’s hard to ignore what looks obvious.

“The fundamental premise of the peace process,” said Jamie Bryson, a prominent loyalist activist, “was that IRA acts of violence and terrorism were rewarded with political concessions.”

Justice and equality were two of the guiding principles during the Good Friday negotiations, but when a formerly privileged group loses status, it’s sometimes perceived as injustice and inequality. This can lead to reactionary politics and violence, a course of events that has played out in many other parts of the world—from the United States to the former Yugoslavia.

Nowhere has this been on greater display than policing, one of the most controversial issues in Northern Ireland today, just as it was in the 1990s. Among other changes, peace negotiators in 1998 agreed to replace the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Northern Ireland’s police force, with a new body. Prior to the outbreak of the conflict in the late 1960s, many in the region’s Catholic population saw the RUC as an armed agent of state repression with little interest in defending their communities.

This was highly offensive to many unionists, who believed the RUC had served honorably in a brutal conflict, upholding law and order in the face of constant death threats and intimidation.

It didn’t end there. Perhaps the most controversial provision of the Good Friday Agreement was the conditional release of convicted militants. By the middle of 2000, more than 400 prisoners had been freed, forcing many victims and victims’ families to live alongside their brutalizers.

While the recidivism rate for conflict-related criminals has been remarkably low, unionists couldn’t shake the horrifying reality that the victims of republican terrorism weren’t going to get justice. When it emerged in 2014 that the British government had secretly granted IRA fugitives immunity from prosecution, it was clear that the violence committed against unionist communities would go unpunished.

That sense of double-dealing came to a head in 2021, when the government chose not to prosecute Sinn Fein officials for ignoring COVID-19 restrictions to attend the funeral of former IRA strategist Bobby Storey.

As far as unionists were concerned, they were subject to one law, nationalists another.

But the reality is more complicated.

Dating back to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the peace accord allowed for the release of both republican and loyalist prisoners, meaning that loyalists who committed violence against Irish nationalist communities would also escape justice.

Indeed, the structure of the Good Friday negotiations themselves was manipulated so representatives of loyalist paramilitary groups were guaranteed seats at the table, despite having negligible support at the polls. In more recent times, former First Minister and DUP leader Arlene Foster came under heavy criticism after she met with a representative of loyalist paramilitaries in 2021 at the height of the Northern Ireland Protocol crisis, suggesting that violent groups still held sway.

Still, the notion that unionists are losing status is difficult to shake, and recent international disputes such as Brexit have only served to further entrench those beliefs.

When the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, observers across Europe feared that the sudden change could upset a still-fragile situation in Northern Ireland. The Irish border was made invisible by the Good Friday Agreement, an arrangement considered vital to the success of the peace process.

Those opposed to Brexit warned that placing customs infrastructure along the contentious Irish border could antagonize nationalist paramilitaries and send the country spiraling back to war. However, any practical Brexit required a customs border somewhere between Britain and the European Union. The Irish Sea was chosen as a compromise.

Much of the wrangling and negotiating that followed—including the much-publicized disputes over the so-called backstop and the Northern Ireland Protocol, both of which established trade barriers in the Irish Sea—were aimed at mollifying nationalist concerns.

Observers were right about Brexit destabilizing Northern Ireland, but wrong about who would be most upset. At an EU summit in 2018, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, echoed the prevailing notion that erecting new customs posts within Ireland could inspire republican paramilitary groups to remobilize. While organizations such as the New IRA have certainly made headlines, loyalists were the ones taking matters into their hands.

The protocol was designed to stabilize Northern Ireland and ferry the Good Friday Agreement through its most turbulent period since the late 1990s. It’s done the opposite.

When Johnson and the EU agreed to the protocol in October 2020, unionists were outraged. After all, they were told in 1998 that the country’s constitutional status wouldn’t be changed without their consent. The economic relationship with Britain, they argued, was a fundamental part of the constitutional framework.

Johnson and his Conservative Party allies mostly ignored them, and by April the following year, parts of Northern Ireland were in flames.

“The protocol is leading to sustained societal difficulties, which are not only liable to persist, but will probably get incrementally worse,” Bryson told me at the time.

British officials had to act, but when they did, it only seemed to confirm unionists’ worst suspicions. The U.K. Supreme Court ruled that not only did the protocol override parts of the Acts of Union, but also that Parliament had the explicit authority to do so. It looked as if Westminster was selling out, and there was nothing unionists could do about it.

In a last-ditch effort to reform the protocol and secure Northern Ireland’s place inside the United Kingdom, the DUP—Northern Ireland’s largest pro-Union political grouping—withdrew from the region’s governing bodies, refusing to reengage until substantive changes were made to the Protocol.

Although the DUP’s boycott has come under intense criticism from nationalist politicians, it’s extremely popular among unionists. According to one poll from LucidTalk, nearly two-thirds of unionists believe their politicians should refuse to reenter the regional executive until the protocol is either changed or scrapped entirely.

This is despite the emergence of some data that suggests that Northern Ireland’s economy is actually better off under the current arrangement. But economics are secondary to the true north star in Northern Ireland politics: identity issues.

Fair or not, the perception among many of Northern Ireland’s unionists that they are losing ground in their own country has undermined the peace process.

Shortly before the April 2021 riots, the Loyalist Communities Council, the body that coordinates Northern Ireland’s remaining loyalist paramilitary groups, temporarily rescinded its support of the Good Friday Agreement, citing grave concerns over the protocol.

“Please do not under-estimate the strength of feeling on this issue right across the unionist family,” it said in a statement.

Several months later, the same LucidTalk poll mentioned above showed that a majority of unionists would oppose the Good Friday Agreement if they voted today. One should not forget that unionist support was considered not only necessary, but absolutely vital to the viability of the peace process in the 1990s.

The summer marches have long been one of the most controversial events in Northern Ireland. Nationalists call them triumphalist displays of ethnic supremacy, while unionists say they’re merely celebrations of culture and heritage. No one agrees what their true purpose is anymore (and it might be all the above), but we may have to add another designation to that list: a lamentation of lost status.

[chrissterry]

Northern Ireland's DUP will hold May to promise of Brexit deal changes : Reuters

Northern Ireland’s DUP will hold May to promise of Brexit deal changes : Reuters

BELFAST (Reuters) – The Northern Irish party that props up Britain’s minority government will hold Prime Minister Theresa May to her commitment to secure changes to the divorce deal struck with the European Union, its leader said on Monday.

With less than three months to go until the UK is due to leave the EU on March 29, May plans to hold a vote on her deal in mid-January, after pulling it from…

[bugganeofsttrinians]

On the Split

7 Labour MPs are to split from the Party.

One of the big reasons for the Split as to do with the Labour Party’s positioning on the UK’s withdrawal from the EU or, as we all somehow ended up jargonising it as, Brexit.

Now there have been for months talks of a ‘new centralist party’ emerging, with a particular effort in countering Brexit.

I will make it clear: I campaigned in the 2016 EU referendum for keeping in. I still believe that leaving the EU is, to put mildly, not the most wisest of policies. The second best outcome would be the Norway to keep a more... softer exit but the governing party, the Conservative and Unionist Party, have with the hard-right DUP appear to be considering no deal as a serious option and... y'all have heard the news of potential for food shortages and martial law, yes?

Labour has been in a tricky situation: on the one hand the electoral gains in the 2017 General Election came with a promise to full fill the results of the 2016 EU referendum, while the party’s membership base include a significant of those who oppose Brexit.

There are a number of issues, issues reflective on the historical split in the 1980s that formed the SDP and resulted in only aiding the Tories.

In FPtP *First-Past-the-Post) news parties tend to... split the votes of the parties they claim from, in this scenario Labour, and strengthen the position of their prime opponent, in case the Conservatives. Our voting system is ill suited for new parties and the sad result is spoiled votes; wasted votes.

Another concern however are the interests of what is centralism in the UK.

The split includes Angela Smith, a advocate for the privatisation of water. It is unlikely that any centralist party will hence prove opposition to the years of privatisation under both the Conservative and the Blairite administrations since the 1980s. This would be a issue, along with potentials that the new party may not be anti-austerity. For a anti-Brexit party a anti-austerity would be necessary if they are to be serious. Even before Brexit our economy has been harmed by austerity. Yet a pro-privatisation and cuts approach would ignore this.

There is of course another matter: Gavin Shuker, one of the purposed figures to lead the split, was one of the members of Ed Milliband’s Shadow Cabinet that opposed same-sex marriage. This history would generate a scepticism towards whether this new centralist party would honour LGBT rights.

The party is further undermining by the factor of its strategy in the electoral sense: there is considerations the splitting MPs may leave their constitutionies and seek to hold their campaigns for election in contest Labour-Tory seats. This would risk splitting the anti-Tory vote allowing those marginal seats to be Conservative blue on the electoral results map.

If the Tories continue to govern after the next general election the Brexit will be potential be the hardest while austerity measures continue to hinder our society. It need be reminded that austerity measures have been linked to deaths. It is imperative on this and other matters that the Tories be opposed.

It would be a understatement to state the impact Brexit is going to bring but just as no one issue can be the by all end all so true must it be realised on how Brexit was shaped by austerity (though it should be the highlighted that a signfiicant portion of the Leave vote was from the more wealthier elements of our society) and that if we fail to counter the causes of Brexit (including the xenophobia and the Tory austerity measures) then any attempt to oppose it would end up mute.

In the end though what should be conducted?

If there be honour any who do leave need to consider a by-election in their seats. It is imperative electoral democracy is conducted on this end.

It is also imperative Labour prepares its strategies in line with the risk of splits but at the same time there are steps to highlight why such splits would damage the UK in the long run; we cannot oppose the Tories if their best opposition is weakened by splits.

Of course this also highlights the damage that FPtP has bought to British politics and the need for electoral reforms. Labour should serious consider changing their stance on FPtP and support a move towards a more proportional electoral system, which would help in ensuring that the votes of all matter and that new parties do not end up in a vote splitter game.

As for those striving to oppose Brexit: I would suggest you align with Another Europe is Possible, for we cannot oppose Brexit by standing with those who caused it like those from the Tories and Lib Dems. Another Europe is Possible opposes the withdrawal of the UK from the EU while also seeking to oppose austerity and to help challenge (like their Europe wide partners DiEM25) the shortcomings in the EU, including challenging Fortress Europe.

In the end though: the main two forces in the next general election (unless there is some short of cosmic interruption) would be the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, with the third largest being the SNP in Scotland, with the former third largest party the Lib Dems having 11 seats in fourth place with only 1 seat advantage over the Northern Ireland based DUP. UK wide the question of who will be in government of Britain will be either the Tories or Labour, for as long as we have FPtP we are bind to such.

The question is whether is whether we see the split of votes in action or the Tory administration ends in result of the next general election.

I just hope the damage can be repaired before it aids the Tories in the next general election.

@wetpinkorthodoxy @evilelitest2 @bed-of-cunts

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Brexit vote: May faces her day of judgement

By Ian Dunt

It was crushing. Never in our lifetime has a prime minister been humiliated like this. After the vote was over, the parliamentary nerds started trying to find another moment in British political history when the government had been defeated so comprehensively. It's possible they haven't been.

The MPs were crowded in the No lobby like sardines. Usual political enemies like Tim Farron and Iain Duncan Smith joked away, their animosity temporarily put to one side as they united to kill Theresa May's deal. More cautious commentators had been hedging their bets, suggesting many would abstain, but it wasn't to be. They delivered a body blow. The final result was 202 votes for and 432 against. A majority of 230. A biblical level of defeat. The kind of dafeat that puts you in the history books.

By any rights, that should have been it. No British prime minister before her would have stayed in place after that. But instead of resigning, May quickly darted for her sole remaining advantage: the DUP's continued loyalty to the concept that Jeremy Corbyn must be kept out of power at all costs. She encouraged the leader of the opposition to table a vote of no-confidence in the government. This would allow her to take the challenge to her position in a way where it was very likely she'd survive.

Corbyn took the bait. He had to. Anything else would have looked like rank cowardice. The vote takes place tomorrow. Probably, Corbyn will fail. And then, technically, he is in the next stage of the sequence he'd been forced to accept by members at the Labour conference. Renegotiations won't happen. A general election won't happen if he loses that vote. And then there's the 'all other options' stage.

Each step drives him remorselessly towards having to support a People's Vote. But he is going to fight it every step of the way. He is going to do everything in his power to prevent it. He will table confidence motion after confidence motion if he has to. Corbyn is desperate not to be the person to call that vote.

Then May, with the closest approximation of a humble tone she could muster, tried to present herself once again as a reasonable centrist. She was better at it this time. She insisted that she would not try to work down the clock. She sounded very much like she would never tolerate no-deal. On the other hand, Brexit had to go ahead. She would also continue to oppose a second referendum.

It's a wierd state of affairs. No-deal and People's Vote are the two obvious options which hang over everything, but neither the prime minister nor the leader of the opposition are prepared to countenance either of them.

Instead, May said she wanted to see if there was any view which could win a majority in the Commons. She was giving herself over to parliament. There'd be a statement on Monday - if indeed the government still existed on Monday - along with an amendable motion. But outside of no-deal and People's Vote, what options are there really available to her?

There are only two things that can be changed in order to get a deal: the withdrawal agreement and the future relationship document.

The only thing you can do to the former is to remove the backstop. This, and only this, would placate the hardcore Brexiters. But it would not bring Labour on board and more than enough Remain Tories would vote with the opposition to defeat it. It doesn't matter though. It's irrelevant. The EU will never take the backstop out.

Changing the future relationship document is much more tempting. It can be done easily on the EU side. And technically it could bring Labour on board. If she was to amend the wording so that it promised a permanent customs union and strong promises on workers and environmental rights it would almost directly replicate Labour's position. Could this bring the opposition on board?

On a moral and logical level the answer is surely yes. But on a political level, the answer is absolutely not. Labour does not want to touch Brexit. It wants the process to take place in such a way that it can blame everything on the government and keep its fragile coalition of mostly Remain voters and some Leave voters onside. Helping May pass a deal is suicide.

This means that no specific deal, no matter the content, is possible. So we come back to the same problem. The two options she and Corbyn have rejected are the only ones which are possible: no-deal and a People's Vote.

That brings parliament into play. If the leaders won't pick one of the two possible options, then MPs will have to mass behind one and force their hand. At the moment there is no majority for no-deal or a People's Vote. Many MPs have ruled out both. But soon they are going to have to decide which of the two they find most objectionable.

No-deal comes closer and closer. In the time remaining, May has promised amendable votes, MPs have shown every willingness to force her to hold them, and Bercow today reiterated that MPs will be able to debate and vote on whatever they want. So as the weeks pass, these options will be thrown forward as alternatives, as brake pads to prevent calamity. And eventually those options are likely to whittle down until only a People's Vote is left.

The question is whether enough MPs have the bravery and responsibility to prevent no-deal. We're about to find out.

[lhs3020b]

It’s been a long couple of weeks in British politics.

The current situation reminds me a lot of a quote from Ken Macleod - as I recall it was from The Sky Road and it was something to the effect of “It’s like entropy - nothing’s changed, but everything’s gone up a few levels, so the coming crash will be even worse.” (Don’t quote me on the exact phrasing there, but it was words to that effect.)

So, the House has hung. They’re still 8 votes short and everyone still hates them.

But, Mrs May still has the slenderest of toe-holds on power. The DUP apparently loathe Mr Corbyn even more than the Daily Mail does - apparently it’s the Northern Irish sectarian thing, or something. (Please don’t ask me to try to explain this stuff, because like most mainlanders, I find it utterly baffling. NI stuff really does feel like the politics of another planet.) As such it seems the DUP will do anything to prop the Tories up - plus, also, they managed to screw an extra billion pounds in taxpayers’ money out of Mrs May. Mrs May, incidentally, told a nurse during the campaign that there were “no magic money trees” from which public sector payrises could come. Apparently she thinks £100 million per DUP MP is more of a mundane sappling, then?

Parliament has hung, but as usual, the supposed ~180 “moderate” Tories are nowhere to be seen. These people could reign in the fanatics in the Europe Research Group, but they never actually show up to any fights, so the ERG lot always win by default. So as a result Mrs May lurches on in her role as the human-shaped glove-puppet of the ERG.

However, while the Tories have survived for now, they’re back into David Cameron mode. What I mean by that is, they manage to win individual battles, but they have no strategy to go with it, so each narrow victory leaves them in a more vulnerable position. Cameron was like this every day from 2010 to 2016, and of course it finally caught up with him on the morning of June the 23rd. (It’s just a real pity that his final disastrous bit of self-out-manouevring also took the entire country down as collateral damage.)

Basically, the country hates DUP-Deal. It has some of the worst polling figures I’ve ever seen associated with the Tory Party. Mrs May’s leader ratings are so far underwater that they’re on the seabed, leaking forlorn bubbles. And the opinion polls are now showing consistent Labour leads. (A case in point: YouGov’s panel is now retruning the highest Labour score since the panel’s creation: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9927 This is also notable as YouGov’s turnout model was one of the sole few that spotted the imminent hanging parliament prior to polling day.)

Also there’s public sector pay cap. Despite DUP-Deal, it’s still in effect. It hasn’t even been relaxed a little. There’s always money to prop up Tory careers, of course, but not a penny to help real people in the real world.

Oh yes and, rhetoric aside, austerity is still Very Much A Thing.

In addition, well, Grenfell Tower. The Government’s handling of the disaster was lazy, callous and useless. It’s re-inforced a (justified) perception of a toxic and aimless administration whose only interest is in self-promotion and which cares nothing for the public good of the country.

(Relatedly, I’ve found my own feelings have moved on. At first I had some sympathy for Mrs May as a human being - I got the sense that she was basically an introvert who was in over her head. I had no sympathy for her policies or the government she was leading, but there was a sense that perhaps the specific human being was caught in a tight spot. Now, however? Her behaviour has outed her as a truly-foul person, not just a bad leader. She’s arrogant, short-sighted, greedy and spiteful. When her fall arrives, I will enjoy it without qualms.)

While the opinion polls can be justifiably treated with some scepticism given past records, there are also indicators like this: the A Very Public Sociologist blog periodically tracks local by-election results - actual elections where actual voters cast real votes for actual candidates, not voodoo polling - and something grim seems to have happened to the Tory vote since June, namely a 20pt drop. If replicated at a general election - if! - not only do they lose power, then the Tories become the new Lib Dems. (Under our electoral system, ~22% of the vote might net you barely a couple of dozen seats, if even that many.)

Aaaah yes, and now we move onto the Lib Dems, whom I’m getting a little worried about.

It’s not attracting much press attention, but they appear to be about to crown Vince Cable as party leader - without an actual ballot. (So much for the “democrats” bit in the name, then.) During the Coalition years, Cable was a somewhat more sympathetic figure than Nick Clegg, and sometimes Cable did seem to have a bit of discomfort with some of the things the Coalition was doing. (Clegg never showed any hint of remorse - if you read the fine print, his apology was literally “Oh I’m sorry you thought I’d made a promise”, not “I’m sorry, I fucked up”.) But, throughout all of the work capability assessments, the grinding austerity, the push for random foreign wars, the bedroom tax, the tuition fees, apparently none of it was ever quite bad enough for Mr Cable to put supposed principle ahead of salary. So, I don’t trust him.

And now, from what I’m seeing in the LD blog-o-sphere, it appears that Mr Cable wants to put opposition to Brexit under the bus. (The new weasel words are apparently “extreme Brexit”, which is presumably somehow distinct from hard Brexit? Don’t ask me, I only live here.)

Apparently getting 7% of the vote in June was too popular, and the LDs would like to try for 0%.

If they do what they look like they’re about to, then they fully deserve what will happen. (Full disclosure: I voted LD in June, solely on the basis of opposition to Brexit. If they do what they’re threatening, then they’ve certainly lost my vote.)

Also, one has to wonder - have the LDs been looking at DUP-deal and thinking “Oooh, we missed out on a coalition there?” I mean, they have 12 MPs, so the maths works. The country would hate them, but it would land them five years of some ministerial salaries - Deputy Junior Undersecretary for Nothing Whatsoever in the Department of Aimless Nothing-burger-ness, or whatever. I’d genuinely thought they’d learned their lesson after 2015 and had changed for the better, but it appears the critics were right on the LDs.

But there’s a further worry. The LDs have 12 seats. If they implode, will they open the door to 12 new Tories? (That’s what their well-deserved implosion in 2015 did, after all.) If they blow themselves up on Brexit, will they hand Mrs May another barebones majority, say in a putative December election? Now there’s a nightmare scenario for you!

Oh yes, and then there’s the Labour Party. There are signs that they’re reverting to the pre-election factional infighting between Progress, Momentum and the various other hangers-on. I could write about this at length, but I’m just too fucking depressed by it :(

Let’s just say that this is the most vulnerable condition that the Tories have ever been in - one good push and this government could fall. And the best Labour can do? Squabble over factional ideologies that no-one outside the party cares about.

Meanwhile, there’s Brexit itself. The iceberg on the horizon, toward which the ship is sailing at ever-increasing speed.

Bizarrely, Leave!Twitter seems to be in a state of complete despair at the moment. Frankly this is baffling - they’re getting everything they want and nothing is stopping them, so why all the whining? But then, the Leave campaign and reality do have a bit of a strained relationship - £350 million for the NHS, anyone? - so maybe their state of persistent delusion is no real surprise.

Some Leavers have actually convinced themselves now that Brexit isn’t actually going to happen at all. For once, I’d be delighted if they were right, but I really can’t see how. I mean, the two main parties are Brexiteers, and it seems the LDs are trying to sneak into the Brexit Social Do via the back window, so who exactly is left to oppose it? The SNP and the Greens only have 36 MPs between them, after all, out of 650. They can’t stop anything the others all want.

In fairness, Labour’s position could still evolve on Brexit, I think. While their current position is rather incoherent, they have marketed themselves as more moderate than the Tories. And if the LDs implode, as they might, then that opens up some fresh space on the Left. If the Tories carry on getting worse - which they probably will - then paradoxically that makes it easier to move leftwards. Plus we now know from the election that an actual socialist platform isn’t any kind of electoral poison - in fact one took 40% of the vote, produced a net gain of dozens of seats and chased the Tories into minority - so that anti-left argument is null-and-void now.

But, the question is, will Labour’s position evolve? And how? Also, if they do go anti-Brexit, how do we actually stop it? What do we do, who do we talk to, what do we organise? These are all questions that need answering.

I’m not entirely convinced there’s much merit in a second referendum. It might just give BoJo another opportunity to preen in front of the cameras, and end up generating the same result. A better strategy would be to take it to the country in a general election, on an explicitly anti-Article 50 platform.

Cancelling Article 50 would (in my opinion) would require direct democratic intervention of some sort. Just doing it by political fiat would cause the mother of all storms - frankly, Leavers would have a legitimate complaint there, and whatever the actual merits, it would look like the paragon of all corrupt backroom fix-ups. I mean yes, constitutionally, no parliament can bind the hands of its successor and no act of parliament is so magically-special that they can’t be repealed and in theory referendums are only advisory - but legal niceties don’t mean that it’s practically-possible to just waive inconvenient realities away.

Plus just randomly-cancelling A50 would have one very obvious side-effect: it would bring UKIP back from its deathbed. And the last thing anyone in their right mind wants is to have to go through all this nightmare again, in 5-10 years’ time!

It was a lack of effective democracy that got us into this mess, in my view - that’s why “Take Back Control” had so much emotional resonance! It also means that any solution to this disaster has to be democratic in character.

[ebenpink]

World News Briefs -- March 27, 2019 (Evening Edition) https://ift.tt/2UhIOu0

Mrs May made her final gamble to try and get the Brexit deal across the line by promising to leave No 10 if Tory Brexiteer rebels finally back down

Daily Mail: The DUP crushes May's hopes hours after her leadership sacrifice for Brexit: Allies won't back PM's deal despite offer to stand down by May 22nd IF Tories support her. . . and Boris couldn't wait to take her up on it! * Theresa May addressed her MPs tonight and said she would resign as PM if they back her deal later this week * Amid mounting pressure from Brexiteers and frustrated ministers she admitted to a need for 'new leadership' * The PM set no date for her departure but promised she would be gone before EU trade negotiations begin * Speaker John Bercow says the government must change May's deal to bring a third vote this week * Jacob Rees-Mogg says Remainers will thwart referendum if deal doesn't pass by the end of this week * He said that 'all other potential outcomes' set to be voted on in Parliament tonight are worse than this deal * Despite May's promise to go ERG sources told MailOnline tonight the deal was still '100 per cent' set to fail The DUP crushed Theresa May's hopes of saving her Brexit deal tonight as they rejected her offer to resign in return for rebel votes. DUP leader Arlene Foster said her party still could not support the deal because it 'poses a threat to the integrity of the UK'. A party statement said 'we will not be supporting the Government if they table a fresh meaningful vote' - with Westminster leader Nigel Dodds vowing to vote No. The hammer blow came hours after Mrs May sensationally promised to quit Downing Street in return for Tory Brexiteer rebels passing her deal as she admitted her time as Prime Minister was almost over. Read more ....

MIDDLE EAST

U.S. recognition of Golan Heights as Israeli will help peace process: Pompeo. Israel airstrikes, Gaza rockets follow day of calm. Syria requests urgent UN Security Council meeting on Golan. Hezbollah chief urges 'resistance' over US Golan move. NGO: Airstrike on Yemen hospital kills 7. Yemen's healthcare system among war's wreckage. Mosul ferry sinking: Iraq orders arrest of ex-governor. Turkey elections: Thousands of observers to oversee local vote.

ASIA

Brunei Shariah law applies death sentence for homosexuality. Joint US-Afghan operation leaves Taliban fighters, civilians dead. US efforts to rebuild Afghanistan beset by 'theft and abuse from security forces'. N. Korea activity incompatible with denuclearization: US. Kim Jong Un attends 'historic' military meeting, state media says. North Korean state TV gets another makeover. China and Russia claim thousands of North Korean workers sent home. China defends Tibet policy ahead of Dalai Lama exile anniversary. China expels ex-Interpol chief from Communist Party.

AFRICA

Bouteflika's key allies back army plan to oust him. Saudi King Salman meets Libya's General Haftar. 10 civilians killed in suspected Boko Haram attack in Niger town. Comoros' president wins 'sham' election. UN appeals for $184 million for Cameroon displaced. Mali 'spiral of violence must stop immediately'. Cholera outbreaks reported in Mozambique. Mozambique: One million people without aid after cyclone. Refugees 'dying in camp in Libya'.

EUROPE

MPs reject EVERY Brexit alternative: Commons turns down eight different plans as plan to leave the EU descends to a new level of chaos. May offer to quit fails to sway key opponents of her Brexit deal. Spanish judge issues warrant for alleged North Korea embassy intruders: source. Pompeo: sees joint action with NATO allies next week on Ukraine. Unrest in Ukraine as nation prepares to elect new leader. UK parliament holds 'indicative votes' on Brexit. Cyprus Backstop? Ireland is not the only island with Brexit muddle. Luxembourg court delivers setback to 9/11 families' Iran claims. EU 'to suspend ship patrols' on Mediterranean migrant mission. Switzerland indicts Liberian over war crimes. Spanish prosecutor to investigate Catalan leader for disobedience.

AMERICAS

Trump signs executive order on protecting US from potential EMP attacks. Number of migrants trying to cross US-Mexico border could hit 1M in 2019: report. Guaido calls for protest as Venezuela blackout drags into third day. Trump: 'Russia has to get out' of Venezuela. Russia defends troops in Venezuela. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accuses US of financing mercenary ‘plot’ to assassinate him. Venezuela hit by fourth massive blackout in less than three weeks. Camps open in Colombia for Venezuelans fleeing crisis. Anger after Bolsonaro calls for Brazil army to mark 1964 coup. Canadian police find kidnapped Chinese student Wanzhen Lu after three-day search.

TERRORISM/THE LONG WAR

U.S. steps up push for U.N. to blacklist Kashmir attack leader. Pentagon sustains budget for arming local anti-IS forces amid US pullout. Terror suspect arrested in Austria for damaging German trains. 'Dirty secrets' of prison torture hinders trial of accused Bali-bombing chief Hambali, says US lawyer.

ECONOMY/FINANCE/BUSINESS

Wall Street ends down as Treasury yields fall on slowdown worries Trump discusses China, 'political fairness' with Google CEO. Boeing holds test flights for 737 MAX fix: sources. Energy demand grew in 2018 at fastest pace in decade. China, France sign US$45 billion of deals including Airbus order. from War News Updates https://ift.tt/2UeAvit via IFTTT

[opedguy]

May Faces Brexit Showdown

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), March 11, 2019.--No longer worried about her own survival, 62-year-old British Prime Minister Theresa May faces another Parliament vote March 12 on whether to approve her best Brexit deal with the European Union.  May has won precious little from Brussels trying but failing to win concessions of the Northern Ireland border with the EU’s Irish Republic.  May wanted a backstop or insurance policy that the border would remain a passport free zone allowing the same commerce that existed before British subjects voted June 23, 2016 to end its membership in the EU. With Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] terror attacks sweeping Europe, British citizens had had enough of the EU’s pro-immigration policies.  Voting to end membership in the EU, British voters told the EU that it had enough of the EU’s refugee mandates, leaving voters no choice but to end ties with the EU.

            Spearheading the Brexit vote, former leader of U.K.’s Independence Party Gerard Batten lobbied the public hard about the dangers of letting the EU dictate immigration quotas in the U.K.  While euroseptic opposition was strong in 2016 leading to a 52% to 48% final tally on leaving the EU, the public has reversed itself, now showing an equal percentage now favors staying in the EU.  Whether staying or leaving the EU comes with a big price tag, the British parliament must decide to accept May’s Brexit deal tomorrow or ask for a month-long delay to decide leave the world’s second largest trading bloc with a signed deal or not.  No-deal Brexiteers believe no deal is preferable over a bad deal, something that would tie up British politics for years.  No deal backers want May to negotiate an independent trade deal with EU at a time-and-place that suits both parties in the future.

            British parliament has been reluctant to accept a deal that doesn’t guarantee London as the EU’s banking capital, fearing, without a deal, more financial institutions would move to Frankfurt.  Eighteen days away from the Brexit deadline, it looks more likely that May will ask for an extension of Article 50, allowing Downing Street to find a better way forward.  Without a deal, Members of Parliament fear economic chaos, potentially sending world markets into a major sell-off.  “We have an opportunity now to leave on March 29 or shortly thereafter and it’s important we grasp that opportunity because there is wind in the sales of people trying to stop Brexit,” said British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.  May and Hunt want the Brexit deal because they fear another defeat in Parliament could reverse the outcome.  May and Hunt haven’t accepted that British voters have changed their minds.

            May has refused so far to hold a second referendum to give voters another voice in the outcome of the vote.  If the first referendum June 23, 2016 decided to leave the EU, a second vote could very well decide to stay in.  May’s allies Nigel Dodds in North Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party and Steve Baker of the Parliament’s euroseptic faction said “the political situation is grim,” meaning May stands to lose tomorrow’s vote in Parliament.  “An unchanged withdrawal agreement will be defeated firmly by a sizable proportion of Conservative and the DUP if it is again presented to the Commons,” Dodds and Baker wrote the Sunday Telegraph.  Labour Pary spokesman Kier Starmer said his party firmly supports staying in the EU, seeking a second referendum.  With the vote scheduled tomorrow, May hasn’t got a firm commitment of the “backstop,” preventing the return to the hard border in Northern Ireland.

            If the vote fails in Parliament tomorrow, May promises to let the Commons vote on whether to leave the EU without an exit deal. MPs fear that a no deal Brexit would lead to economic chaos, potentially driving the global banking community out of London to Frankfurt.  With so much at stake, you’d think May would have her ducks in order before she schedules a vote.  Looking more like May will ask for a delay under Article 50 to leave the EU, it still doesn’t satisfy Parliament’s demands that the EU provide a backstop on the Northern Ireland border. France’s EU affairs minister Nathalie Loiseau told French Inter Radio that she saw no value in extending the Article 50 deadline, because European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Donald Tusk told May that Brexit negotiations with the EU were over, giving little chance of a different deal.

            May surely knows that all her failed negotiations with the EU have damaged the U.K.’s reputation with the international banking community.  Instead of recognizing the mistake of leaving the EU, May’s Tory Party has dug in, stubbornly trying to push her Brexit deal through the House of Commons.  Tomorrow’s vote looks to repeat the Jan. 15 vote that May lost by 230 votes.  Unless May pulls a rabbit out of her hat, tomorrow’s vote should mirror Jan. 15, wreaking more havoc on British politics.  “Business is holding its breath ahead of the vote in parliament this week, knowing that if Brexit has taught us anything, it is to expect the unexpected,” said James Stewart, head of Brexit at U.K’s London office of accounting firm KPMG.  Steward worries that financial firms will look to get out of London, looking to move headquarters to Frankfurt without Brexit deal.

About the Author    

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Question of trust: Brexit amendments must force Johnson back to the table

By Ian Dunt

Three major battles are coming up.

The first is this afternoon, when John Bercow rules on whether the government can try for another meaningful vote on its deal. It wants to try to get support in general before publishing the detail of the legislation. The Speaker will likely stop it from doing so.

The second comes tomorrow, when the government seeks support for a programme motion for the withdrawal bill, which will define how long MPs can debate it. If MPs rebel here, they could secure more time to scrutinise it and the October 31st deadline would become increasingly untenable.

And then, finally, the main course: amendments. Countless amendments will be thrown on the bill, some of them super-sexy like a People's Vote. But the one which has most chance of success and could pose the greatest risk to the government is on keeping the whole of the UK in the customs union.

It could get DUP support, as it keeps the UK together. It could get Labour pro-dealer support, as it protects manufacturing. Most other opposition parties - hopefully all of them - could support it. This could be the decisive vote of the entire Brexit saga. If it went through, the government would be in serious trouble.

So they're likely to try and find a compromise. They'll do this the same way they always do: turning legal guarantees into political promises.

This is what happened with the level-playing-field provisions on workers rights and the environment. They went out of the legal withdrawal agreement and into the non-legal political declaration.

The government repeatedly promised that it would maintain all the best standards during the debate on Saturday, while simultaneously making sure it had no legal obligation to do so. This is what is allowing it to succeed: operating on a level of promise rather than fact, so that both ERG hardliners and Labour pro-dealers can believe they'll get their way.

Any compromise this week will likely take the same form. If a customs union amendment looks likely to succeed, Boris Johnson could offer a promise to negotiate a customs union during transition and enshrine that in UK law. He'll very likely do the same thing with workers rights, in a bid to get Labour MPs on board.

But as the legal expert George Peretz pointed out yesterday, this is not a real guarantee. It would only be written into domestic law and domestic law can be easily repealed.

If the deal was passed, Johnson would immediately seek a general election, as he tried to capitalise on the short intermediary period after people saw he'd got a deal and before they realised we'd still be debating Brexit forever.

And how will he campaign in that election? On the basis of undoing the promises he has made.

The key Brexiter mission is to deregulate. It has been throughout eurosceptic history, with all the oceans of ink dedicated to talk of Brussels bureaucracy. Much of that came from Johnson himself when he was the Telegraph's Europe correspondent.

What bureaucracy are they talking about? Certainly not on trade, given that they've just signed up to an indescribably complex dual customs system in Northern Ireland. It is on standards: for workers, for the environment, for consumers.

What Johnson says now does not matter. The trustworthiness of the prime minister should be beyond question. He quite simply not trustworthy and cannot reasonably be considered so.

On September 2nd, he said: "There are no circumstances in which I will ask Brussels to delay." On September 6th, when asked if he would comply with parliament's instruction to send the extension request, Johnson said: "I will not." Later that day he said: "[MPs] just passed a law that would force me to beg Brussels for an extension to the  Brexit deadline. This is something I will never do." On September 9th he said: "I will not ask for another delay."

On Saturday night, he asked for a delay.

This is a prime minister who lies as easily as he breathes. That is not hyperbole. It is a simple statement of fact. It is black and white.

The only way the customs union amendment works is if it is written into the deal with the EU itself. It needs to be in treaty law, not just British law.

Writing this into the political declaration would be an improvement. It would make it a clear negotiating aim to secure customs union membership. It might be enough to trigger an ERG revolt. But even this is not enough, because it is not legally binding. Johnson could campaign at the election to change tack on the future relationship.

It needs to be in the withdrawal agreement. It must prevent the government ratifying the withdrawal agreement until it is amended with a customs union backstop that covers the whole of the UK.

That is the guarantee the DUP need and which Labour MPs worried about their constituents should be seeking. It prevents a cliff-edge in 2020, because it replaces it with customs union. It therefore stops the ERG from securing a diluted form of no-deal in future.

Essentially, you're Theresa-May-ifying the deal. But it should then go further and put a clear commitment in the future relationship document to secure permanent customs union membership.

This is the only thing which holds Johnson's feet to the fire. Anything else just trusts him to keep his word, which is a frankly laughable proposition.

In reality, the prime minister would almost certainly not accept this. He'd demand, once again, that we have an election. That is his prerogative. But it is not what parliament should worry about. It should worry about instructing the government to secure negotiating aims keeping the UK together and protecting workers.

That's the test. Anything below this level cannot be trusted, any more than we could trust Johnson's insistence that he would not send that letter.

[wionews]

Revolution of the young: The 2017 Election in the UK

On the Andrew Marr show on 11 June, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne described the Prime Minister, Theresa May as a ‘dead woman walking’. Osborne had his own reasons for glee at May’s terrible miscalculation in calling a snap election on 8 June, having been previously sacked from the Cabinet, as May cosied up to the party’s Eurosceptics for a ‘hard Brexit’. The latter would mean a departure from both the Single Market and the Customs Union – a move that, May sensed, required a greater parliamentary majority and legitimacy for herself and her party. It was the logical outcome of the Conservative Party’s shift to the right, the supposedly acceptable response to the resurgence of xenophobic populism in the UK.

  But Osborne’s necrotic comments were not hyperbole. Predictions at the start of the election campaign were that May might increase her majority in Parliament from 17 to upwards of 100. On Friday 9 June morning, against all expectations and most pollsters, Jeremy Corbyn, the allegedly ‘unelectable’ leftist, had added 30 new seats for Labour. Better than any leader since Clement Atlee, he had increased the party’s share of the popular vote to over 40 per cent. The Conservatives lost a total of 13 seats, missing an overall majority in the House of Commons by 8 seats. Far from achieving a ‘strong and stable’ basis for Brexit, May had unwittingly set up one of the most spectacular and important electoral upsets in modern British history.

  Theresa May’s robotic mantra of the need for ‘strong and stable’ government summarises, in almost comic fashion, the many ways in which this election turned the UK on its head. Because if there is one expression you could never use for a ‘hung parliament’ where no party holds a majority, it is ‘stability’. But there were other ironies which showed how the results had global implications. Throughout the election campaign which was accompanied by two serious terrorist attacks in Manchester and London, the parties of the right made a play of Corbyn’s historical conversations with members of the IRA. Yet two days after the election, May was building an alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland, whose 10 seats would allow her to govern. The DUP had strong links to Protestant paramilitary forces, principally the Ulster Volunteer Force, from the mid-1980s. And in forging a relationship with the DUP, May threatened to undo British government neutrality in Northern Ireland, which was key to peace via the Good Friday agreement. Overnight, Corbyn’s insistence that radical extremism needed to be tackled not with the suppression of rights, but by understanding its root international causes in UK colonial/postcolonial intervention, seemed to make perfect sense. And his logic was supported further by the publicised connections between MI6 and the Libyan bomber in Manchester, and by the UK’s continued arms deals with Saudi Arabia.

  At least the DUP, reflecting Northern Ireland’s overwhelming support in the EU referendum for Remain, was likely to argue May should follow a softer Brexit line. In other ways then, and against all claims of ‘stability’, the government’s Brexit negotiations are thrown into disarray and further uncertainty. It is clear that the majority in the House of Commons would no longer back the ‘hard’ Brexit that May had nurtured on the back of post-imperial sentiments and a nod to popular xenophobia. The entire Brexit strategy has been premised so far on her penchant for being a ‘difficult woman’ in Brussels negotiations. But the only element of the election that allows May to hang on to power at all, are the newly won Conservative seats in Scotland. Furthermore, Ruth Davidson, the Conservative leader in Scotland, is strongly in favour of a ‘soft’ Brexit, remaining if possible in the Single Market.

  Negotiators on the EU side will now look at the UK with uncertainty. May seems illegitimate both in the UK, and in the context of changing international relations. There are suggestions that not only could the negotiations themselves be delayed, but that the 27 EU states might even entertain a total reconsideration of Brexit itself, should the UK government choose to revoke the signing of article 50 and stay in the Union. The 2016 referendum, after all, was legally only ‘advisory’. And there is no doubt that the surge of dissatisfaction with Theresa May’s Conservatives on 8 June was driven, in part, by the ‘48%’ – the relatively well educated, demographically younger, and more left-wing supporters of Remain.

  The constituency that feels most cheated are the 18 to 25-years-olds – the population of the UK that is perhaps most clearly connected to promises of overseas work, whose horizons are increasingly global, being connected to the like-minded like never before via social media and travel. Although denigrated by the right-wing tabloids as a man who would take Britain ‘back to the 1970s’ via old-fashioned socialism, Jeremy Corbyn managed to harness this constituency in a way that made a remarkable difference to the outcome of the election. It has also had a knock-on effect elsewhere in the world. Donald Trump, whose diminutive hand held that of Theresa May's, has now postponed his planned visit to the UK for fear of protests led by the very same constituencies that came out to vote for Corbyn. The ‘special relationship’ too then, between the USA and UK, like Anglophone influence in the EU, has never seemed more uncertain.

  Perhaps the 2017 General Election in the UK shows something broader. Political scientists and commentators have looked at the rise of authoritarian populism in the USA, UK, India, Russia and Turkey as part of a possible global shift towards anti-cosmopolitanism, in the face of global economic crisis. The UK election of June 2017, alongside the Presidential elections in France of this year, suggest that important parts of Europe, at least, are bucking this trend. Most importantly, they show that a younger generation of voters and leaders are emerging to contest this global shift to the right, and to lay the possible foundations for a new kind of politics.

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[ericfruits]

Britain’s government slides into chaos

NOBODY CAN accuse Theresa May of an unwillingness to repeat herself. The woman who said, again and again, that “Brexit means Brexit” is now telling Britain that her version of Brexit is the only version worth having. This morning the prime minister spent three hours extolling her deal to the House of Commons. This evening she spent a mercifully shorter period addressing the country via a press conference. Mrs May claims that her version of Brexit does two hard-to-deliver things. It respects the result of the 2016 referendum by taking back control of the Britain’s borders, ending the free movement of people. But it does so in a responsible way by ensuring frictionless trade with the EU. 

Mrs May is determined to talk to as many audiences as possible rather than just, as has often been her wont in the past, playing to Conservative MPs. Her speech in Parliament was addressed as much to Labour MPs as to Tories. Her press conference was intended to take the message to the country: her calculation is that the best way to bring wavering MPs onside is to address their constituents who are worried about their jobs and who, more than anything else, want the government to get Brexit over and done with. Mrs May took every opportunity to present herself as the grown-up in the room. Rather than crackpot policies such as leaving without a deal or having a second referendum, Mrs May claims to offer a realistic solution to a difficult problem.

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Her press conference came after one of the most dramatic days in British politics in decades. At 9am Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, resigned on the grounds that he couldn’t bring himself to sell an agreement with “fatal flaws”. He is the second person in five months to resign from that job. A little later Esther McVey, the work and pensions secretary, quit. She is the eighth cabinet secretary to resign in the past year. During the morning two junior ministers and two parliamentary private secretaries resigned—and most Westminster-watchers expect more to go in the next few days. 

During her three-hour ordeal before the House Mrs May was confronted with opposition to her deal from every shade of opinion. Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, denounced her deal as a “huge and damaging failure” and an “indefinite half-way house”. Nigel Dodds, the leader in Westminster of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), accused her of betraying Northern Ireland and “choosing subjection”. Conservative Leavers were incandescent. Sir Bill Cash accused her of “broken promises”, “failed negotiations” and “abject capitulation to the EU”. But Tory Remainers were equally unreconciled to the deal. Anna Soubry and Justine Greening pooh-poohed it and made the case for a second referendum. At 11.30am Chris Leslie, a Labour MP, noted that “we’ve talked for an hour and no one has offered their support to the prime minister.”

With the Labour Party, the DUP, the Scottish Nationalists, the Lib Dems and a phalanx of Tory MPs ranged against her (84 of them, according to Mark Francois, a Conservative), it is hard to see how she can get her Brexit deal through the Commons. Mrs May can talk over Parliament to the nation as much as she likes. She can raise the spectre of a catastrophic no-deal Brexit or a betrayal of the referendum. She can bribe and bully members of her party. But the parliamentary arithmetic looks impossible. 

At the same time Mrs May faces a growing rebellion within her own party. Shortly after lunch Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the pro-Brexit European Research Group and a man who, hitherto, has always proclaimed that he wants to change the leader’s policy not the leader, said that he was sending in a letter calling for a confidence vote on Mrs May. The Conservative Party’s rules dictate that it must hold a leadership election if Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, receives letters demanding a leadership election from 15% of the party’s MPs (which currently means 48 of them). Mr Rees-Mogg’s intervention makes it more likely that more Brexiteers will send in letters. And today’s general chaos also makes it more likely that middle-of-the-road MPs might have had enough of Mrs May’s leadership. Everybody agrees that she is a dutiful politician. But she is also an incompetent one who has brought much of this misery upon herself. She triggered the Article 50 exit process before Britain was ready, laid down red lines that turned pink and spent months negotiating a deal that fell apart on its first contact with political reality. 

Mrs May could therefore soon find herself confronted with a leadership challenge. The most likely challengers to are two Leave-voters, Mr Raab and Michael Gove, and two Remain-voters, Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt. Messrs Raab and Gove might be able to say that as long-time Leavers they are best positioned to deliver a real Brexit. Mr Raab is probably in the stronger position: he can claim that he resigned on principle as soon as he saw that Mrs May’s Brexit didn’t really mean Brexit, whereas Mr Gove has remained close to the prime minister. Messrs Javid and Hunt can claim that they are hard-headed realists who can bring the two sides of the party together behind Brexit. 

A leadership election would be embarrassing as well as bloody. The party would spend weeks tearing itself apart when it ought to be grappling with the most complicated bit of statecraft in a generation. It would destroy what little credibility it still has with voters. Young people in particular are already furious with the Tory party for dividing the country over Brexit. They will be more furious still if the party abandons itself entirely to civil war. 

It is hard not to despair about the state of British politics. Mrs May’s Brexit deal clearly offers a worse outcome than the status quo, including an obligation to obey the EU’s rules for the foreseeable future without any say over what those rules should be. Yet for all this awfulness, today’s debate in Parliament was surprising. Mrs May gave one of the best parliamentary performances of her career. She laid out the case for her Brexit deal with admirable vigour (indeed, remarkable vigour, given that she spent most of yesterday trying to sell it to a reluctant cabinet). Jeremy Corbyn also gave an impressive speech which combined rare passion with forensic analysis of Mrs May’s proposals (Labour MPs suspect that his speech was written by Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, rather than Seumas Milne, his usual wordsmith.) Many other MPs were on impressive form. There was plenty of parliamentary rhetoric of a high order. The pity was that it was all devoted to appraising a deal that has little chance of making Britain a better place. 

[feamproffitt]

Concrete Investments for Unstable Times? When Political Instability Meets Property Investment

The snap general election left the UK with a hung parliament on the 8th of June. Despite being the largest party, the Conservatives failed to secure the 356 seats required to hold a majority. Theresa May has been in talks with the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) to negotiate the terms of a potential coalition. However, at the time of writing (15th June 2017), the deal’s announcement has been put on hold due to the tragedy at Grenfell Tower.

Gavin Barwell, former Housing Minister, lost his seat in the general election to Labour. He has, however, since been appointed as May’s chief-of-staff. Arguably, May’s decision here could suggest a readjustment in her politics, considering Barwell is “on the moderate wing of the party, pro-immigration, and campaigned for Remain.”

Some critics are hoping that his priorities will remain with the UK housing market, though others believe his commitment will be Brexit and May’s “political survival.”

However, it is likely that the reshuffled government will commit to the ambitions outlined in the 2017 Housing White Paper, which confessed that the housing market was broken. Amongst other intentions, the White Paper promised to encourage family-friendly tenancies, provide small builders with a £3bn fund and support older people who wish to downsize to smaller properties.

On the 15th of June, Andrea Leadsom announced that the Queen’s speech and state opening was to take place on Wednesday the 21st of June, two days later than expected.

What does this mean for the property market?

A reminder of the shockwaves in 2016

Not only does uncertainty surround current circumstances, but the longevity of current solutions, too. It is hard to tell how long such a coalition would last.

We believe the news parallels the shockwaves caused by Britain’s vote to leave the EU, which pulled the Pound down to a €1.1472 on the 26th of September. Patrick Graham, from Reuters, noted that Brexit had “been a rollercoaster ride for investors.” Indeed, the “FTSE 100 ended down 91.39 points, or 1.32%, with only a few stocks rising” on the 26th of September.

However, as the stock market suffered, the property market boomed. The pound’s plummet attracted a surge of foreign investment, which accounted for 78% of all commercial property purchased between July and September in central London. In addition to this, according to Nationwide’s UK Monthly Indices, July, August and September saw average house prices increase by 0.4%, 0.6% and 0.3% respectively.  Indeed, fear within the market existed, though was seemingly too weak to actualise many knee-jerk reactions.

Admittedly, these changes were in speculation of a future reality, and the full effects of leaving the EU are yet to be revealed.

On results day, the pound dropped by 2.34%, marking an eight-week low. However, the same afternoon that May announced a potential coalition with the DUP, the pound recovered some of its losses.

The Conservative manifesto

In the absence of any deal, it is impossible to know. In analysis of these negotiations, an article in the The Times noted,

“Theresa May’s hopes of securing the support of the Democratic Unionist Party for her minority government were faltering last night as the Treasury dug in against the costs of a deal.”

As mentioned, it is unlikely that May will detour away from existing ambitions outlined earlier this year.

In their 2017 manifesto, May announced that the Conservative party will “meet [their] 2015 commitment to deliver a million homes by the end of 2020” and “deliver half a million more by the end of 2022.” In an echo of the party’s Housing White Paper, she also wrote, “We have not built enough homes in this country for generations, and buying renting a home has become increasingly unaffordable.”

Other ambitions include building better homes which match the quality of older stock by supporting “high-quality, high-density housing like mansion blocks, mews houses and terraced streets.” May also called for the active contribution of social and municipal housing providers, which, if we fail to receive, will never achieve the required number of new homes.

The DUP manifesto

Whilst the DUP manifesto makes little mention of housing, their track record includes attempting to negate the bedroom tax and arguing against the government’s cuts to supported housing. According to Steve Hildtich, “The party’s policy document says the case for investment in social housing is “unarguable” and the DUP is committed to building 8,000 social and affordable homes by 2020.” As a result, (though contrary to popular belief) the party’s influence on housing could be positive.

What does this mean for property investors?

Some experts have argued that the pound’s drop will attract yet another surge of foreign investment into UK property. From this, we can understand that the UK still appears to be a haven for international property investors, maintaining its global appeal. The pound’s value provides an entry point which foreign buyers are racing to gain from – similar to the market behaviour which followed the EU referendum.

In light of these events, we struggle to believe that this short-term noise will have any dramatic implications on the long-term property investment in the UK. House prices fluctuate, even in the absence of political change. For investors, focusing on the larger picture may prove to be more useful.

In supporting the resilience of the housing market, sales director at Seven Capital, Andy Foote, argued that “While the London market may be more sensitive to a change in central government, for the short term, growth markets will remain robust and resilient, delivering capital growth for investors…Despite the change in government, the imbalance of supply and demand in the UK property market still persists.”

With a lower level of risk and volatility than the stock market, we believe that property, as an asset class, has the bricks-and-mortar strength needed to withstand such periods of instability.

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The post Concrete Investments for Unstable Times? When Political Instability Meets Property Investment appeared first on Economoose.

[nathanmoravec99-blog]

Check out the trending Irish news from this past week

NOVEMBER 13, 2019

Recently on November 13th, news broke out about the concerns of the British Conservative Party promising court protection for British military veterans who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. For those who are unaware, the Troubles was a lengthy period of violence between the British military and Irish nationalists disputing over territorial claims in Northern Ireland (1968-1998). After the treaty was signed in 1998, both Britain and Ireland took up the responsibility of holding those who are responsible for acts of violence including British soldiers and Irish nationalists. The trials have been continuing to this day as six former soldiers face prosecution for their involvement in Bloody Sunday in January 1972. Well known Irish politician Leo Varadkar who is part of the Dail (Irish Parliament) spoke against the idea of amnesty for those facing prosecution regardless if they are pro-British or pro-Irish. Mr. Varadkar has stated that he will be discussing with the Conservative Party to remind them all who are guilty must be held in court. Since 2011, 26 cases relating to the Troubles have appeared involving 13 Irish Republicans, 8 British Loyalists, and the 6 British Army members. Hopefully both Ireland and the British government follows through their commitments and punish those who committed acts of crime accordingly. 

NOVEMBER 14, 2019

On November 14, 2019, the idea of bedroom tax was offered to the Irish Parliament and it was quickly shot down. The proposal included imposing a fee on those who have empty bedrooms in households. The purpose was to free up family homes and encourage older Irish to downsize. The Irish housing market is very competitive with the increase of families looking to move out of apartments. The construction of new housing units is lagging behind Ireland’s rapid population growth. This also relates to the recent Irish birth rate in the last decade. Oddly in 2008-2009, the Irish birth rate hits record highs for the first time since 1988 right after the 2008 Market Crash which wiped out Ireland’s economy. The idea was shot down by most of the Parliamentary members based on several reasons. This idea was actually implemented in the UK and it failed miserably. It did not influence older individuals to move out and it created a much higher cost of living. The Irish government goes back to the drawing board as they decide how to fix the limited housing market with a massive family-based population. 

NOVEMBER 15, 2019

As the Brexit negotiations continue with a new deadline of January 31st, Ireland continues to strive for their goal of tariff-free trade. It appears that Ireland’s desire of free trade seems simple enough however it appears the political mishaps in Britain is causing this to be difficult. The DUP (Democratic Union Party), Labor Party, the Conservative Party, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson are in a Parliamentary deadlock. The Conservative Party is pushing for Brexit with deal including free trade with members of the EU, United States, and Ireland. The DUP and Labor Party’s objectives are polar opposite as they are striving to remain in the Union. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is also striving for Brexit however he claimed that there would be a Brexit, deal or no deal has created future uncertainties. Recently, Mr. Johnson has regressed on his statement but he has a strained relationship with the Parliament especially after he suspended the Parliament in September 2019. Mr. Johnson is not the only controversial topic as the DUP ruffled some feathers in Ireland after rejecting a Brexit proposal that included free trade with Ireland in October 2019. This caused a lot of resentment in Ireland towards the DUP and now Ireland shifted their support towards the Conservative Party. The DUP’s rejection caused the whole Brexit deal to collapsed resulting another deadline extension and another months of exhausting political rifts.  

NOVEMBER 16, 2019

Enough about politics, let's get into sports. The Euro 2020 Cup is fast approaching for next summer so that means qualifying for Euros is in full swing for Ireland and Northern Ireland. Both Ireland and Northern Ireland are searching for a bid to qualify for the Euros and both are surprisingly close. Northern Ireland and Ireland are not exactly well known soccer countries however they have raised some attention in the 2016 Euro Cup. Both countries stunned European soccer with Ireland’s defeat over Italy 1-0 in group stage and Northern Ireland’s 2-0 defeat over Ukraine. Both countries qualified for the next round but both lost close matches in the first round. Ireland and Northern Ireland both fell very short in the World Cup qualifying when both countries lost competing in the playoffs for the finals spots. Ireland is looking for redemption as they face Denmark who knocked them out of the 2018 World Cup qualifiers on Monday. If Ireland wins, they automatically qualify for the Euro Cup. If Ireland should lose or tie, they will be put in the playoffs for the final Euro 2020 spots. Today, Northern Ireland faced Netherlands and resulted in a 0-0 draw. That means Northern Ireland will play in the playoffs for the remaining Euro 2020 spots with the team they are facing will be announced later on.  

NOVEMBER 17, 2019

Recently the leader of the Sinn Fein Party proposed the New Deal for Ireland which included a potential vote on the Irish Unity within the next five years. For background purposes, Sinn Fein is a Irish Nationalists Party that have seats in both Ireland and Northern Ireland Parliament. They were also leading the vote to remain in the EU back in 2016. The vote would also have to take place in both Ireland, and Northern Ireland determined by a referendum among citizens. According to the 1998 Anglo-Ireland Good Friday Treaty, either Ireland or Northern Ireland are allowed to call for a unification vote. If the vote is yes, then the United Kingdom must cease and decease their control in Northern Ireland. This proposal may have been a response to the Brexit vote in 2016 when 55% of the voters in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU. Also this is a response to the DUP leading the Unionist vote to reject the Brexit deal in October. For background purposes, DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) voted to leave the EU in 2016 which conflicts with their Irish Nationalists peers who voted to remain. Also the DUP originally was Unionist Party which supported the British Occupation of Ireland, opposed the Good Friday Treaty, and the Irish Independence. Political division continues in the Northern Ireland Assembly with the Unionist still controlling the Parliament despite Northern Ireland being a Catholic Irish majority country. The British government also called for an election on December 12 to break the political deadlock in the British Parliament which will include re-election of Northern Irish MPs. This vote is very likely to give the Sinn Fein the majority power in the Assembly for the first time based on the current trend of general disapproval to the DUP from the voters. 

NOVEMBER 18, 2019

Ireland falls short in their Euro qualifier match against Denmark as they finish with a 1-1 draw. This means the Irish side will be sent to the playoffs for a second chance to qualify for the Euro Cup 2020. In the Euro Cup playoffs, there are 4 groups of 4 teams and each winner of that group will go to the Euro Cup. Ireland now faces a daunting task with Wales, Slovakia, and Bosnia. All three teams contain talented stars and great defense so it will be interesting to see how this goes. Northern Ireland’s opponents are not yet official however they will likely have Bulgaria, Romania, and Israel in their group providing them an easy path to the Euros. Hopefully both or one of the other will make the appearance for next year’s highly anticipated Euro Cup. 

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

Today was a slow news day for Ireland so let's get into their local news. Today, a Dublin man was handed a 3-year probation sentence for threatening to cut off a priest’s fingers. This odd case made national news for the day as he was charged with a lenient sentence based on his mental history. According to the court documents, the man was diagnosed with Religious Persecution Disorder which is a strain of Schizophrenia. The individual also had 17 previous convictions of theft, drug offenses, criminal damage, public order offenses, and road traffic offenses. This story was also interesting because it reflects on the difference between the American criminal justice system and the European system. Here in America, we have harsher punishments for the same crime compared to our European cousins based on cultural differences. Here in the United States, we have sort of an “eye for an eye” mentality which is why we tend to hand out longer prison sentences. In Europe, their perspective of the justice system is based on reform. The European courts believe in changing criminal behavior and reforming prisoners. If that individual was here in the United States, he would've received a much harsher punishment based on his record and his crime.

[insurancepolicypro]

Johnson softens his Brexit stance on Irish border

Boris Johnson on Monday signalled a retreat from his hardline Brexit place on the Irish border, as he admitted no-deal departure by Britain from the EU could be a “failure of statecraft” that might harm each the UK and Eire.

The British prime minister confirmed he could be keen to see agriculture and meals handled as a part of an “all-Eire financial system” primarily based on EU guidelines after Brexit, in a transfer aimed toward guaranteeing no well being checks on produce passing over the border between Northern Eire and the Irish Republic.

Mr Johnson additionally hinted at a partial climbdown on the Irish backstop, the contentious provision in his predecessor Theresa Might’s withdrawal settlement with the EU that’s meant to stop the return to a tough Irish border by retaining the UK in a customs union with the bloc.

After insisting for weeks that the backstop should be scrapped as a part of his efforts to forge a revised Brexit deal, Mr Johnson steered earlier than talks in Dublin with the Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar that he was searching for assurances that Britain wouldn’t be trapped within the association.

“The touchdown zone is obvious to everybody,” mentioned Mr Johnson. “We have to discover a approach to make sure the UK will not be stored locked within the backstop association and there’s a approach out for the UK whereas giving Eire the assurances it wants.”

I’ve one message that I wish to land with you in the present day, Leo, that’s I wish to discover a deal, I wish to get a deal

Downing Road insisted that Mr Johnson didn’t imply what he seemed to be saying. “He’s not searching for a time restrict [to the backstop] and the backstop must be abolished,” mentioned the prime minister’s spokesman.

Mr Johnson has made eradicating the backstop the centrepiece of his push to forge a revised withdrawal settlement with the EU, and beforehand mentioned some form “escape mechanism” will not be adequate.

“A time restrict will not be sufficient,” he mentioned in July. “If an settlement is to be reached it should be clearly understood that the way in which to the deal goes by means of the abolition of the backstop.”

Mr Johnson was holding his first face-to-face talks with Mr Varadkar since he grew to become UK prime minister in July, and the 2 leaders mentioned in an announcement afterwards that that they had a “constructive assembly” on Brexit.

“Whereas they agreed that the discussions are at an early stage, widespread floor was established in some areas though vital gaps stay,” they added.

Mr Johnson has mentioned repeatedly that the UK should depart the EU on October 31, with or and not using a deal.

Though London and Dublin have harassed the necessity to retain an open Irish border, a no-deal Brexit may power the return of checks to guard the EU customs union and single market, in a improvement that might in flip harm the peace course of.

One in every of Mr Johnson’s allies mentioned it was “vital” that he had conceded the case for treating “agrifoods” as an all-Eire difficulty throughout the EU single market, supplied the Stormont meeting is revived to provide its democratic consent to the association.

However Downing Road mentioned Mr Johnson doesn’t intend to increase the precept to different sectors, reminiscent of manufactured items.

The EU and Dublin have made it clear that retaining animals, vegetation and meals throughout the bloc’s single market guidelines throughout the island of Eire doesn’t come near resolving the border difficulty.

British officers conceded that an association on agrifoods would relate to “at finest one-third” of the industrial visitors throughout the border.

Mr Johnson has insisted that different measures reminiscent of trusted dealer schemes and expertise may assist an open Irish border by masking different sectors.

Beneficial

Monday, 9 September, 2019

Standing alongside Mr Varadkar, Mr Johnson mentioned a no-deal Brexit could be a “failure of statecraft, including: “I’ve one message that I wish to land with you in the present day, Leo, that���s I wish to discover a deal, I wish to get a deal.”

Mr Varadkar replied he was able to hearken to “constructive methods” to settle the Irish border difficulty, however added Dublin wanted legally binding and workable proposals, which his authorities had not but acquired.

“What we can’t do, and won’t do, is change a authorized assure [about the backstop in the proposed withdrawal treaty] with a promise,” he mentioned. “Within the absence of agreed different preparations, no backstop is no-deal for us.”

The backstop is opposed by Northern Eire’s Democratic Unionist social gathering, which props up Mr Johnson’s minority Conservative authorities in Westminster.

The DUP objects to how the backstop, by retaining Northern Eire throughout the EU’s single market guidelines in addition to a customs union, treats the area otherwise from mainland Britain.

Eurosceptic Conservatives oppose the backstop due to issues that it may lock the UK in a customs union with the EU in perpetuity.

Dublin is open to the concept of changing the all-UK backstop rejected by Mr Johnson with one masking solely Northern Eire.

However this feature is far wider than Mr Johnson’s agrifood proposal, and has been repeatedly rejected by the DUP.

Downing Road mentioned Mr Johnson doesn’t intend to to return to the EU’s previous proposal for a Northern Eire-only backstop.

Arlene Foster, chief of the DUP, mentioned she couldn’t assist such an thought. “The prime minister has already dominated out a Northern Eire-only backstop as a result of it could be anti-democratic, unconstitutional and would imply our core industries could be topic to EU guidelines with none means of fixing them,” she added.

from insurancepolicypro http://insurancepolicypro.com/?p=995

[gyrlversion]

This is what is likely to happen as Brexit was put off AGAIN tonight

Britain has been pushed into a six-month delay to Brexit tonight after Theresa May was humiliated again in Brussels.

EU leaders are offering the UK a delay of Brexit until October 31 with a ‘review’ in June.

The extension, agreed by the heads of state of the other 27 countries in the bloc, doomed the Prime Minister’s hopes of winning a short delay until June 30 in which to pass a Brexit deal. 

But European Council president Donald Tuck said it was a ‘flexible extension’ suggesting we could leave before Halloween if a Brexit deal can find a majority in Parliament. 

Whatever happens, the PM must return to the Commons tomorrow to explain to MPs when and if Brexit will ever take place. 

It opens up a raft of possibilities, ranging from a short-term delay to not leaving at all.  

The big question is whether Theresa May will stay on, to make sure she at least is remembered as the leader who delivered Brexit.

She has already agreed to step down once a deal is approved and senior Tories are jostling to replace her. And she has indicated that she would not countenance a delay to Brexit past June 30. 

However, she has clung stubbornly to 10 Downing Street thus far and despite much talk there is no clear way for the Conservatives to get rid of her. 

Tonight it appears she has suggested to EU leaders that she would stay on until a deal was indeed completed.

Talks with Labour over a cross-party Brexit deal will continue on Thursday, and Mrs May has committed to allowing MPs a series of ‘indicative votes’ that would allow them to shape the type of Brexit they want.

Previous indicative votes were inconclusive but a soft Brexit including a customs union could triumph this time round, having been close to victory before.

The Prime Minister could also try to ram her Brexit deal through Parliament for a fourth time, but that seems almost certain to fail without some serious changes.

Some Brexiteers, including the DUP, still want her to demand the EU reopen the Withdrawal Agreement, whose Irish Border backstop provision is the major stumbling block to it passing. But the EU has refused to do so and the Government accepts this is a non-starter.

A delay to the end of October means that it could be a new Tory – or Labour – leader who sees us out of the EU. 

If a way can be found to convince Theresa May to resign the summer is likely to be spend in a Tory leadership campaign. 

But that could lead to a general election, which is a high risk for the Tories. 

What seems less likely at the moment is that there will be a second referendum. Theresa May is against one and Jeremy Corbyn looks happy to block one – to the fury of a large section of his MPs – if he can get an acceptable Brexit deal.

What did Mrs May ask for? 

In a letter to Donald Tusk she formally requested an extension to Article 50 that will delay the UK’s departure beyond April 12 to June 30 – but she also wanted a ‘termination clause’.

This would allow the UK to leave on May 22 – the day before European elections – if a deal can be pushed through the UK Parliament.

However, this delay was a carbon copy of that sought by Mrs May before the last emergency summit in March – which was rejected.

What did the EU say?

Non, nein, nee and nem – that’s no in a variety of EU languages. Despite French president Emmanuel Macron threatening to veto a delay and demanding if there was one it be short, the EU27 agreed to push Brexit to to the end of October. 

But importantly they did include the termination clause, meaning we can still leave earlier if the Government – or MPs – can cobble together a deal that can win a majority of the Commons.    

Donald Tusk had said before the meeting that a 12-month ‘flextension’ to March 29 2020 is ‘the only reasonable way out’ of the crisis and has urged leaders of the EU’s 27 member states to back him at Wednesday’s summit. 

Ahead of the summit today, Mr Tusk urged the 27 leaders to consider a long delay because there was ‘little reason’ to believe the deal would be passed by MPs before the end of June. 

How did the EU make its decision? 

When the summit started at around 5pm this evening, Mrs May first answered questions from EU leaders – building on a diplomatic blitz that included trips to Paris and Berlin yesterday.

After a session lasting little over an hour she was kicked out of the summit so the other 27 EU leaders can decide what to do over dinner. Once they had a unanimous agreement on a delay Mrs May was asked to say Yes or No.

At the last summit three weeks ago the EU leaders debated in private for almost six hours. 

When will Brexit be? 

It is hard to say – but it is almost certain not to be on Friday, when we had been due to leave without a deal.  

The PM clearly still wants to get out of the EU before European Parliament elections have to be held on May 22 but this is ultimately up to Brussels. 

Were she to pass the deal in the next couple of weeks, it is probably possible to conclude exit by around late May. 

What is happening in the cross party talks? 

The Prime Minister has said the divorce deal could not be changed but announced last week she would seek a new consensus with Jeremy Corbyn on the political declaration about the final UK-EU agreement. It is her final roll of the dice to save the deal.

Talks broke down on Friday between ministers and officials from both parties, despite previous efforts being hailed as ‘constructive’. After technical discussions on Monday, they finally resumed yesterday – but have now been adjourned again until Thursday.

If the talks fail, Mrs May has promised to put options to Parliament and agreed to be bound by the result. She now has more time to call this vote.

In a second round of indicative votes last week a customs union, Norway-style soft Brexit and second referendum were the leading options – but none got a majority of MPs.  

Why is she talking to Labour?   

Mrs May has abandoned all hope of winning over remaining Tory Brexiteers and the DUP on the terms of her current deal.

Striking a cross-party deal with Labour on the future relationship will require Mrs May to abandon many of her red lines – including potentially on free movement and striking trade deals.

To get an agreement with Labour, Mrs May will need to agree the political declaration should spell out a much softer Brexit than her current plans do.

This might mean a permanent UK-EU customs union or even staying in the EU Single Market.

What if Mr Corbyn says No? 

Mrs May said if she cannot cut a deal with Corbyn, she would ask Parliament to come up with options – and promised to follow orders from MPs.

In a second round of indicative votes last week a customs union, Norway-style soft Brexit and second referendum were the leading options – but none got a majority of MPs.

They would probably pass if the Tories whipped for them – but it would almost certainly mean ministers quitting the Government.   

The Institute for Government has mapped out how a crucial week in the Brexit endgame might unfold ahead of a possible No Deal Brexit on Friday 

Will May resign? 

Nodbody knows for sure. Mrs May has announced she would go if and when her divorce deal passed so a new Tory leader could take charge of the trade talks phase.

In practice, it drained Mrs May of all remaining political capital. Most in Westminster think her Premiership is over within weeks at the latest. 

As her deal folded for a third time a fortnight ago, she faced immediate calls from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn so stand down with instant effect. 

What is clear is there is already a fight underway for the Tory leadership.  

Does is all mean there will be an election?

Probably, at some point though the immediate chances have fallen because of the latest events. The Commons is deadlocked and the Government has no functional majority. While the Fixed Term Parliaments Act means the Government can stumble on, it will become increasingly powerless.

Mrs May could try to call one herself or, assuming she stands down, her successor could do so.  

Would May lead the Tories into an early election? 

Unlikely. She said last December she would not lead them into a new election and having admitted to her party she would go if the deal passes, Mrs May’s political career is doomed.

While there is no procedural way to remove her, a withdrawal of political support from the Cabinet or Tory HQ would probably finish her even if she wanted to stay.    

How is an election called? When would it be? 

Because of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act passed by the coalition, the Prime Minister can no longer simply ask the Queen to dissolve the Commons and call an election. There are two procedures instead.

First – and this is what happened in 2017 – the Government can table a motion in the Commons calling for an early election. Crucially, this can only pass with a two-thirds majority of MPs – meaning either of the main parties can block it.

Second an election is called if the Government loses a vote of no confidence and no new administration can be built within 14 days.

In practice, this is can only happen if Tory rebels vote with Mr Corbyn – a move that would end the career of any Conservative MP who took the step. 

An election takes a bare minimum of five weeks from start to finish and it would take a week or two to get to the shut down of Parliament, known as dissolution – putting the earliest possible polling day around mid to late May. 

If the Tories hold a leadership election first it probably pushes any election out to late June at the earliest.  

Why do people say there has to be an election? 

The question of whether to call an election finally reached the Cabinet last week.

Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay warned the rejection of Mrs May’s deal would set in train a series of events that will lead to a softer Brexit – meaning an election because so many MPs will have to break manifesto promises. 

MPs voting to seize control of Brexit from ministers has only fuelled the demands.   

Labour has been calling for a new vote for months, insisting the Government has failed to deliver Brexit.

Mr Corbyn called a vote of no confidence in the Government in January insisting the failure of the first meaningful vote showed Mrs May’s administration was doomed. He lost but the calls did not go away. 

Brexiteers have joined the demands in recent days as Parliament wrestles with Brexit and amid fears among hardliners promises made by both main parties at the last election will be broken – specifically on leaving the Customs Union and Single Market. 

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen wants Mrs May replaced with a Brexiteer. He believes it would push Remain Tories out of the party and then allow a snap election with more Eurosceptic candidates wearing blue rosettes.

What might happen? 

Both main parties will have to write a manifesto – including a position on Brexit. Both parties are deeply split – in many cases between individual MPs and their local activists.

Under Mrs May, the Tories presumably try to start with the deal. But it is loathed by dozens of current Tory MPs who want a harder Brexit and hated even more by grassroots Tory members. 

Shifting Tory policy on Brexit to the right would alienate the majority of current MPs who voted to Remain.

Labour has similar splits. Many of Labour’s MPs and activists want Mr Corbyn to commit to putting Brexit to a second referendum – most with a view to cancelling it. 

Mr Corbyn is a veteran Eurosceptic and millions of people who voted Leave in 2016 backed Labour in 2017. 

The splits set the stage for a bitter and chaotic election. The outcome is highly unpredictable – the Tories start in front but are probably more divided on the main question facing the country.

Labour is behind but knows it made dramatic gains in the polls in the last election with its promises of vastly higher public spending. 

Neither side can forecast what impact new political forces might wield over the election or how any public anger over the Brexit stalemate could play out.

It could swing the result in favour of one of the main parties or a new force. 

Or an election campaign that takes months, costs millions of pounds could still end up in a hung Parliament and continued stalemate. This is the current forecast by polling expert Sir John Curtice. 

The post This is what is likely to happen as Brexit was put off AGAIN tonight appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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[uk-news-talking-politics]

Remain should push for an election

By Ian Dunt

No-one likes opinions with a 'probably' in them. People want certainty. But there's no way for anyone, on any side of this thing, to be certain about anything anymore. The variables are too severe. So there's a big fat 'probably' caveating all of this. Absolutely everything you are about to read could be wrong. Anyone who claims otherwise right now is a fraud.

But here's the thing. It's probably time for Remain to push for an election.

That wasn't the case a month ago. Back then, things were different. Boris Johnson had no deal, so there wasn't a risk of something getting through parliament. He was pushing for no-deal, the risk of which had to be eliminated with the majority opposed to it in the Commons. It made sense to resist an election in those circumstances.

They have now changed. There are now two paths open to us: Johnson's deal and an election.

There is no Commons majority for a confirmatory vote on the deal. There should be. It makes more sense to hold a referendum on the contents of an agreed deal than an imaginary future one. But that's not where MPs are and there's no point pretending otherwise. We have to deal with reality.

There are basically two stages of the legislative Brexit fight: The activation vote and the damage-limitation campaign.

The first comes if this bill passes third reading. If it does, Brexit is happening. The second comes after that and will last until the end of the transition in December 2020, or, if it is extended, December 2021 or 2022.

The damage limitation fight will be on things like membership of the customs union, abiding by European regulations on worker's rights and whether to extend that transition at all. It's about softening Brexit and not letting the hardliners in the Tory party wrench Britain out on a new form of no-deal later on.

The battles over amendments that MPs will have if the government pursues the bill all relate to that secondary damage-limitation fight. They'll try to get firmer guarantees for workers' rights, customs union membership in the future relationship document and some sort of parliamentary lock on the 2020 extension.

This is where the government is weak. Each concession it makes to that softer Brexit side makes it harder to keep the hardliners in the ERG on board. It could fall apart at this stage.

But even if it does, where does that get us? Basically where we are right now: needing an election to change what's happening. It's possible that at this point MPs could back a second referendum, but even here we have no guarantees. It seems a very distant and unlikely point to aim for, with lots of very high risk moments on the way.

And the bill might not fall apart. At the moment it's more likely it would pass. Johnson can accept the concessions, get Labour pro-dealers and independent Tories on board, then betray them afterwards.

The ERG hardliners have shown they are willing to throw principle overboard if they think the prime minister is ultimately acting in their interest. They have just done it to their brothers-in-arms, the DUP. There is a chance they will stay on board no matter what the government agrees, because behind closed doors Johnson will be assuring them that once we're out, he will drive forward the real agenda.

And that is perfectly likely, because avoiding an election now does not avoid one in future. If Johnson secured a deal, he would be desperate for an election. He'd have secured Brexit. There would be a brief flicker of time between him doing so and people realising they'd still have to talk about it forever. And in that scenario he could get a bigger majority than he could now. He would then have the votes to win all those battles he lost during the passing of the deal. The customs union, workers rights, extension provisions: These can all be repealed.

So betting all your chips on the bill getting caught up in amendments presents two risks. The first is whether you can win that fight in the first place. The second is whether it creates ideal electoral circumstances for the Conservatives to win a larger majority and then win the damage-limitation fight.

What risks does an immediate election have? The obvious one is that the Tories can win both those stages in one go. With a majority, they'd be able to pass the deal and then win the battles which follow it in 2020.

Will they get that majority? At the moment it seems they would. Johnson enjoys decent polling.

But put that in perspective. Even with polls as they are, John Curtis, one of Britain's leading pollsters, would expect the Tories to only win a majority of around 20 seats. When she called her snap election in 2017, Theresa May had a much bigger 21-point lead, which was chiseled away over the course of the campaign. There's no reason the same can't happen here. And if it does, Johnson can't rely on DUP support to help him.

People think Johnson is a better campaigner than May. It would admittedly be hard to be worse. But he's not all he's made out to be. His speeches since he became prime minister have been lacklustre and odd. The gravitas of the job doesn't suit him.

Where is the Tory majority expected to come from? They will lose seats to the Lib Dems and they will lose them to the SNP. It is not remotely clear that they can pick them up from Labour in the north on a Brexit ticket. May tried exactly that and failed and she was overall probably a better candidate to do so than the former Etonian.

He would be campaigning before Brexit has happened, on the back of a deal which involves painful compromises, having broken his central promise to deliver by October 31st. He will be fighting against Nigel Farage's Brexit party, which will chisel away at his vote. No matter how confident the Tories try to sound, these are not optimal conditions.

Jeremy Corbyn has been an atrocious opposition leader. If the last three years had involved a Labour leader who was on top of the detail, we'd be in a better place. And if they involved someone who looked like a real threat, the Tories wouldn't have had the room to radicalise quite so disastrously.

But for all that, he is a decent campaigner. He comes alive on these occasions. The party is likely to improve its performance in the polls during the election.

If Labour becomes the largest party, ideally governing with the support, in one form or another, of the Lib Dems and the SNP, there is a clear route map to Remain. They will negotiate a soft Brexit, in the customs union and some kind of single market relationship, and then they'll hold a referendum.

That negotiation serves two functions. First, it creates a safer worst-case scenario - far better than anything we'll get through amendments to Johnson's bill. Second, it will be so unappetising to many Brexiters that it is hard to imagine them turning out for the referendum which follows it.

So those are the risk assessments. No-one knows the right answer on this. There are too many variables. Maybe the bill dies in the Commons. Maybe Johnson performs particularly strongly in an election. We just don't know.

But the last few days have seen two knife-edge votes in the Commons. If either had gone for the government, Brexit would be about to happen. It would be game over. We came seriously close. We can't keep on surviving like this.

We are completely powerless in these events. We have to watch as MPs behave in ways that don't always make sense. The whole issue is being decided on the tightest of margins, by politicians who are exhausted and under enormous emotional pressure.

An election is not an ideal way to sort this. A referendum is. But we have to work with what we've got. And at least an election allows people a chance to get involved, to do something, to work on a campaign of securing Remain seats where they can be won - to have agency. It's better than simply having to sit here and watch BBC Parliament night after night in a state of high anxiety.

That has a democratic dimension too. If this thing is happening, at least let the public get involved in it. At least lets have them give some form of input, no matter how imperfect, to validate what is happening.

So, in summary: God knows. What a mess. But probably, overall, an election is the right way to go.