As May's carnival of catastrophe rumbles on into Jeremy Corbyn's allotment, there's one tiny crumb of pleasure to be had in the gathering gloom.
Yes folks: Polly Toynbee will be bricking herself. The two major party 'leaders', both personally committed to leaving the EU, in the same room, hoping to hatch a workable exit plan. It might happen!
Polly, of course, was hoping Labour would stay aloof and grab an opportunity in all the carnage to see A50 revoked. Period. "Any Brexit is a bad Brexit ... no time for compromise!" Home and dry. Nightmare over. And you sort-of feel Starmer is hoping the same.
So: will Corbyn and May find unexpected love among the tomato plants? Will Jeremy ultimately be as stroppily pro Brexit as Polly fears? A bit of a cliff-hanger for her at the end of this particular episode.
ND
UPDATE: Polly is indeed distressed, and emoted all over Newsnight last night. Thin comfort: but a pleasure to behold.
12 comments:
Not that it's likely to happen, but wouldn't it be quite something if it was Corbyn that finally gave Brexiteer's the Brexit they wanted.
If there is a government of National Unity it will be fun to see who Mrs May throws to the wolves to make place for team Jezza, amusing if people who swallowed what passes for their principles were thrown out. I bet failing Grayling is still in the cabinet when the dust settles.
As I understand it, the softer Brexit is after the Withdrawal Agreement is passed and needs to be in place by end 2020.
There'll be a general election before then, and who know will be in charge of negotiating the future relationship?
The key thing is to get the Withdrawal Agreement passed (and if the ERG had signed up for it they wouldn't be in this terrible position), then sort out the future relationship. And a 21 month implementation period to get everything sorted without a panic seems fine to me and the City, as far as I can tell.
Please, please can the EU (Macron) put an end to the misery and tell her/us to leave on 12th April..........(no deal obviously)
My guess is that Jezza hangs Tezza out to dry. He's quite aware that this is the Tory's bag of sh*t and I'm sure he's intending to make sure they and they alone own it. Yes his own party are as split as the Tories, but they aren't the party of government, so shoulder less of any blame or media attention. So he's going to do everything possible to keep Labour fingerprints off the dagger in Brexit's back, and hope that when the next election comes he can get some of the 'I'm never voting for those Tory @rseholes again' votes that will be looking for a new home, by the million. Getting into bed with the Tories on some sort of BRINO stitch up that will infuriate his own northern Labour heartlands is not going to increase his chances of winning the next election. So like Anon above, I think there is a significant chance that JC will be the one who tips us into a No Deal Brexit, and Lord love him, if he does I might even vote for him.
Tolkein, the Withdrawal Agreement is not Brexit in any shape or form. It is in fact worse than either Hard Brexit or not leaving at all. This is of course its point, which is why the Maybot and the Civil Serpents are moving heaven and earth in order to get it passed.
The trick is for them both to come up with something that sounds credible on the news but is just unacceptable enough for the EC to deny an extension. That way when we leave on the 12th we can establish the narrative that it's the EU's fault ...
I have maintained that the WA will get through. That's Remain without a say and loss of recourse to Art 50.
Deep State is at work here - May has been their puppet all along.
Polly Toynbee ? The Tories have defaulted on their promise to take us out of the EU and are dead now. Polly has nothing to fear, she'll get her way.
I still say WA and then a second vote to record that it was the people's idea to Remain.
The Good Hitchens in Feb 2016
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/02/the-eu-is-our-own-hotel-california-we-can-check-out-but-well-never-leave.html?p=2
"Be assured. If there is a majority to leave there will be a second poll and a search for a new deal."
I tend to agree with Sobers.
There is a recent parallel.
Lib Dem MPs
Year No. Seats
2001 52
2005 62
2010 57
(clegg does things that upset libdem voters ...)
2015 8
No matter what May does a good fraction of the tories will not vote tory for a few years.
All JC has to do is say nothing and do nothing.
Off to betfair to "vote lab" for the first time since 97.
Bloke in Brum
In what way does the Withdrawal Agreement not mean the UK not leaving the EU?
The transition period is fine to help everybody negotiate the new future arrangements.
I think the backstop, which I don't like, will be dealt with by technological advances - the DLT/Blockchain/digital projects I'm involved with and the chatter in the City around FinTech leaves me pretty optimistic about this.
We'll eventually exit transition end 2020 and make our own way in the world. And I think we'll do just fine
Tolkein
Thanks for responding. There are several aspects to the whole WA and surrounding fiasco which ring some very loud alarm bells.
First is a meta one. The way in which the WA came about and the circumstances in which it has been foisted upon the cabinet and Parliament.
I don't want to write a novel, but a quick précis:
David Davis, then Brexit Secretary and Chief negotiator resigns after the Checkers meeting after he discovers that everything he was doing was a front whilst Teresa May and Olly Robbins were doing all the real negotiating in secret without any input from him or the cabinet. Cabinet browbeat into supporting the deal and told they'd be stripped of official vehicles and be forced to take taxis home if they resign in protest. Rumours abound that Teresa had met with Angela Merkel before the Chequers meeting and discussed with her the Agreement even before telling her cabinet about its contents.
The draft Withdrawal Agreement itself was finalised and published 13/11/2018.
This was immediately followed by the resignation of Dominic Raab who was Brexit Secretary then and who had major concerns over the content of the Agreement. He said he had heard the EUs Secretary General(Martin Selmayr)say that losing Northern Ireland was the price the UK would pay for Brexit.
We've now just lost yet another Brexit Secretary ( Chris Heaton-Harris ) who resigned yesterday.
Just before the Withdrawal Agreement was published, in a report in The Times, it was said that Sabine Weyand(EU deputy chief negotiator) briefed EU ambassadors on Friday 9th November, “We should be in the best negotiation position for the future relationship. This requires the customs union as the basis of the future relationship… They must align their rules but the EU will retain all the controls. They apply the same rules. UK wants a lot more from future relationship, so EU retains its leverage.” And also that Britain “would have to swallow a link between access to products and fisheries in future agreements.”
Olly Robbins was caught out in February by ITV’s Angus Walker in Brussels, who overheard Theresa May’s chief negotiator talking loudly to two colleagues in a Brussels hotel bar on Monday night.
Robbins’ revealed his plan to force the deal through by letting it go down to the wire and using the threat of a “long” extension to bully MPs into voting for the deal, saying “… Got to make them believe that the week beginning end of March… Extension is possible but if they don’t vote for the deal then the extension is a long one…”
Robbins also boasted about the true nature of the backstop, revealing that it was not intended to be a “safety net” as it has been sold publicly but actually a “bridge” to the future relationship.
The agreement itself seems to have come from the pens of EU bureaucrats without any input from Britain. All the legally binding terms are favourable to the EU whilst all the verbiage which seems in the Uk interest is all non legally binding waffle.
I once went through the hard sell of a timeshare tout. I resisted the temptation and psychological bullying. I knew that a good product sells itself, and only a poor deal needs to be pushed that isitently. The Withdrawal Agreement process is a mirror image of that process..
Next, I'll get to the content of the Agreement itself, which is actually comprised of The Agreement itself, the Political Declaration, three Protocols concerning Ireland, NI, Gibraltar and Cypress and nine annexes.
It will have to wait until tomorrow night though, and Part II!
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