Tuesday 8 October 2019

Dominic Cummings speaks

So, Dominic Cummings has decided to try and game the coming General Election by releasing a statement to The Spectator. it is very rare I would post like thism but given the state the Government has found itself in, this is quite some statement. Read it for yourselves:

‘The negotiations will probably end this week. Varadkar doesn’t want to negotiate. Varadkar was keen on talking before the Benn Act when he thought that the choice would be ‘new deal or no deal’. Since the Benn Act passed he has gone very cold and in the last week the official channels and the backchannels have also gone cold. Varadkar has also gone back on his commitments — he said if we moved on manufactured goods then he would also move but instead he just attacked us publicly. It’s clear he wants to gamble on a second referendum and that he’s encouraging Barnier to stick to the line that the UK cannot leave the EU without leaving Northern Ireland behind.
There are quite a few people in Paris and Berlin who would like to discuss our offer but Merkel and Macron won’t push Barnier unless Ireland says it wants to negotiate. Those who think Merkel will help us are deluded. As things stand, Dublin will do nothing, hoping we offer more, then at the end of this week they may say ‘OK, let’s do a Northern Ireland only backstop with a time limit’, which is what various players have been hinting at, then we’ll say No, and that will probably be the end.
Varadkar thinks that either there will be a referendum or we win a majority but we will just put this offer back on the table so he thinks he can’t lose by refusing to compromise now. Given his assumptions, Varadkar’s behaviour is arguably rational but his assumptions are, I think, false. Ireland and Brussels listen to all the people who lost the referendum, they don’t listen to those who won the referendum and they don’t understand the electoral dynamics here.
If this deal dies in the next few days, then it won’t be revived. To marginalise the Brexit Party, we will have to fight the election on the basis of ‘no more delays, get Brexit done immediately’. They thought that if May went then Brexit would get softer. It seems few have learned from this mistake. They think we’re bluffing and there’s nothing we can do about that, not least given the way May and Hammond constantly talked tough then folded.
So, if talks go nowhere this week, the next phase will require us to set out our view on the Surrender Act. The Act imposes narrow duties. Our legal advice is clear that we can do all sorts of things to scupper delay which for obvious reasons we aren’t going into details about. Different lawyers see the “frustration principle” very differently especially on a case like this where there is no precedent for primary legislation directing how the PM conducts international discussions.
We will make clear privately and publicly that countries which oppose delay will go the front of the queue for future cooperation — cooperation on things both within and outside EU competences. Those who support  delay will go to the bottom of the queue. [This source also made clear that defence and security cooperation will inevitably be affected if the EU tries to keep Britain in against the will of its government] Supporting delay will be seen by this government as hostile interference in domestic politics, and over half of the public will agree with us.
We will also make clear that this government will not negotiate further so any delay would be totally pointless.  They think now that if there is another delay we will keep coming back with new proposals. This won’t happen. We’ll either leave with no deal on 31 October or there will be an election and then we will leave with no deal.
‘When they say ‘so what is the point of delay?’, we will say “This is not our delay, the government is not asking for a delay — Parliament is sending you a letter and Parliament is asking for a delay but official government policy remains that delay is an atrocious idea that everyone should dismiss. Any delay will in effect be negotiated between you, Parliament, and the courts — we will wash our hands of it, we won’t engage in further talks, we obviously won’t given any undertakings about cooperative behaviour, everything to do with ‘duty of sincere cooperation’ will be in the toilet, we will focus on winning the election on a manifesto of immediately revoking the entire EU legal order without further talks, and then we will leave. Those who supported delay will face the inevitable consequences of being seen to interfere in domestic politics in a deeply unpopular way by colluding with a Parliament that is as popular as the clap.
Those who pushed the Benn Act intended to sabotage a deal and they’ve probably succeeded. So the main effect of it will probably be to help us win an election by uniting the leave vote and then a no deal Brexit. History is full of such ironies and tragedies.’

So basically, Cummings has gone BDS to denying the EU want a deal which they really do and instead now moving to blame everyone else for No Deal. Whilst there are elements of truth to this position re Varadkar, the threatening of EU members who will or won't entreat with us is just mad. After a No Deal Brexit the only thing on the Government's agenda will be seeking a deal to mitigate the downsides - blasting your future negotiating partner like this is very poor strategy. Yes we all know the Mad Parliament has created this situation unnessecarily but this is still not the only way out of the situation. 

19 comments:

E-K said...

Yes. It is mad. The EU project has driven us all stark staring mad.

Maastricht and mass immigration were designed to destroy our nation.

Well this is what destruction looks like. There is no such thing as the controlled destruction of a nation - it was very silly of Blair/Major to think there could be.

Unknown said...

Yeah, but it is the way to win an election - maybe.

Anonymous said...

talking of which E-K, who'd of thought this might be the case?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335924797_Ethnic_Diversity_and_Social_Trust_A_Narrative_and_Meta-Analytical_Review

But of course EU Globalists tell us something is good, it must be, or we are simply being atavistic antedilluvian populists.

Frank said...

"...blasting your future negotiating partner like this is very poor strategy."

Oh dear, he's insulted the EU. Maybe he'll get one of Donald Tusk's special places in Hell.

Bill Quango MP said...

It’s simply a reverse project fear.
Deal with us, or deal with it!

Cummings wants the Eu to understand that no deal is real. That the Benn act won’t change the government’s mind. And that an election will give a leave supporting parliament the right to walk away and to hell with you.

The EU, evidently, believe there will be an extension. And an election. And they hope remain supporting parliament wins.
If it doesn’t, they just agree the Boris proposals. The EU, thanks to the surrender act, has no need to negotiate on anything. So they won’t. Until forced to do so.

Cummings is trying to force them to see believe that after he wins the next election for Boris, there will be no deal. Just out.

Not sure the EU will believe that. Not even sure that i do. But that is the game being played.

Anonymous said...

I was in Ireland holidaying when the Surrender Act was passed, and the media temperature (on morning RTE radio and in the papers) changed overnight - back from "come on, Varadkar, get talking, we need a deal" to the earlier attitude of "those poor Brits, whu can't they be enlightened like us?". The Surrender Act removed all the undoubted pressure and worry the Irish were feeling.

On Dominic Cummings, I think it's generally unwise to reveal your plans to the enemy, including the enemy within. But he has good form on the election-winning front, although I think our elites never thought they could lose, whereas now they will fight dirty.

CityUnslicker said...

Well this has been overtaken by events. Merkel has given Boris the heave-ho.

overly stimulating times ahead for us all now. Will Boris hold against Parliament? Am not sure now they have nearly 3 weeks to get their act together to stop no deal.

I still hate no deal, the EU are being shitty but i expect that of a shitty organisation. But there is a path to leaving available and it is a tragedy to me that this is just ignored.

No deal will be crap, not as awful as the remainers say, but still crap. And then we will have to negotiate anyway, so pointless too!

DJK said...

Agree that the current situation is pretty crap. But there isn't a path available to leaving.

The EU *is* the customs union, so for the UK to leave in any meaningful sense, it has to leave the CU. But the EU offer is only for three of the four UK constituents to leave, so Boris is quite right to reject it.

Sebastian Weetabix said...

“But there isn’t a path available”
Absolute bollocks. We can just leave. And we should. They have not acted in good faith. Remember what Selmayr said? “The price of leaving will be Northern Ireland”. In less “enlightened” times this attempt at annexation would have been a casual belli.

DJK said...

I should clarify: there isn't a path available to leave with a deal. My preference is just to leave anyway, without a deal.

andrew said...

Having outsourced our international trade negotiations to the eu for the last 40 odd years, it should be no surprise we are not as good as them at negotation; and as such we will probably leave on a no deal basis as any deal will be too far away from what we can live with.

(Think i said this before)

What surprises me is that the eu did not game this and so not push so hard.

Or maybe it is not.

The eu is nothing outside its rules which include the customs union.

The uk is seriously undermined if part of its territory is outside its control

The good friday agreement is based on free movement across the border.

Pick any 2.

DJK said...

andrew: The courts in Belfast have already ruled that a no-deal exit does not breach the Good Friday agreement. So pick 2/2.

Elby the Beserk said...

@Anon 11:29

Robert Putnam - American Liberal - wrote a book some years back now called "Bowling Alone", about the decline of civil society in the USA.

To his dismay, he found that the more diversity in a community, the less trust. Not really surprising, there's a reason for all the old sayings, and birds of a feather do stick together.



E-K said...

Anon at 11.29.

What we're getting is not diversity, many areas looking depressingly similar now. The electorate believe in changing the Parliament, Parliament believes in changing the electorate, it would seem.

andrew said...

Djk

No one cares about the small print.

Suff said...

Sorry for the rant but I feel better now
Andrew you seem to be be under the misapprehension that a negotiation took place. May did exactly what she was instructed to do and a whole lot more. But like all the shower of Sh1t in Westminster they have no comprehension of the British people. It was her intention to make the whole deal so unpalatable that the people would demand that the government revoke. Not only was there no negotiation, her and the team of traitors around her intentionally set about destroying our negotiation position, while giving the pretence that they were upholding the result of the referendum. First announcement Britain will pay 39 billion for no reason( populace screw that get us out) second we will pay more for our nuclear reactors then requested, third of course HS2 will go ahead. Every sensible solution suggested by the Eu rejected end replaced with a solution more detrimental to the British public. Each and every step of betrayal only increased our resolve to leave so the plan backfired. So she sat on her tattered document of abject surrender and only presented it when it was too late for her or anybody else to change it. The EU couldn’t believe their luck when it was almost passed through Parliament. The EU have had no negotiation to do and the worlds media laugh at us. Boris’s proposal is one of theirs but they can now reject with absolute confidence.
CU Cummings is absolutely correct but this should have been done day one. As I said from the start, there can not be a successful Uk and an EU. They are not our friends but our competitors.The country should have been on a war footing-from day one. We should have taken the innovative and driven the media from the start. Get the other 27 nations questioning what the benefits of boing in the uk are. The first thing we should have announced on day one was that Britain was no longer responsible for the protection of Europe and the second day, set up trade discussions with Putin. That would have broken the myth about the EU being responsible for peace in Europe and set the tone for the negotiation. Cummings’s biggest problem is Boris because Boris can’t say the things that need to be said without pointing out the absolute betrayal of the country by May and therefore his own party. Which is why Cummings is commenting in the Spectator where he can say what needs to be said.

Suff said...

Sorry anybody know how to remove a misspelt rant

Anonymous said...

Leave it misspelled.
It’s passionate.

andrew said...

If you got rid of the putin bit and replaced conspiracy with incompetance i would be with you.

Looking at the last 40 odd years of govt i see no evidence of planning or cunning post the thatcher privatisations
(You could add blairs min wage)

On hols in greece. Currently in the prehistoric museum. They had sewage and running water and "wallpaper" 4000 years ago. This was lost until the 1950s. Not everything improves.

Talking to a nz pensioner (he was a farmer). He asked me if we still think sidelining the commonwealth was a good plan. I poured him a drink.