TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
Usually when pulled up, we get a 48 hour break during which time someone in there, the lodger/ phone a friend perhaps? writes some normal style posts (relatively speaking).You noticed?
Brexit: give me a positive effect... XV
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ks.234
Half way to Infinity
You presume that Liz Truss has some sense of loyalty to her past principles. Truss is a Conservative so principles there are none. And as an ex Lib Dem she is merely following the traditional LD strategy of leaving principle at the door when walking into Tory offices of State!
PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
It is puzzling, but it does suggest that Truss is probably not the sharpest knife in the box. Make that "confirm".
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
Like Claire Fox turning from Revolutionary Communist Party to right wing ethnic nationalist, taking a seat in the Lords handed to her by a Bullingdon Club wastrel. Brexit makes strange bedfellows.
Tony L
Administrator
I’m not trying to analyse this from her perspective. Without wanting to be cruel or offensive she does not seem even remotely bright or articulate and has been clearly out of her depth in every government role she has occupied to date. What I am trying to figure out here is the underlying game plan of those who own the Conservative Party? This move is not happening by chance, there will be a strategy in play, but at present I can’t see it. Infighting and back-stabbing are obviously core Tory traits so there will unquestionably be some elbowing to future troughs in play, but also some strategy from the oligarch wealth that owns the party. They can’t afford to upset their £billionaire donors, so what exactly are they getting from this?
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
It could just be that the penny has finally dropped that the Frost/Davis approach isn't working, so send someone in who isn't entirely bonkers who can a) get some sort of agreement with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol and b) be the blame-magnet for the angry Prods. As a bonus, b) would also effectively scupper Truss's leadership hopes, so a win-win situation for Johnson.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
The interesting or rather entertaining question is who will fall when Johnson falls? If Sunak takes over who among that shower of Johnson awardees will be kept on? It becomes more interesting if the new saviour is from a different wing of the party- Jeremy Hunt for example.
Most of them are known incompetents promoted beyond their ability to brush their own teeth properly. Easy ones are Dorries, Patel, Shapps and Coffey. Then there’s the Britannia Unchained and other fruitcakes who would be bringing on the Ides of March if left in place- Gove, Truss, Raaab, Kwarteng.
The entire cage will need cleaned out if they are to limp to the next election resembling one party with all those conned red wall voters waiting to wreak revenge. I suppose a couple of them might stay on as useful idiots because no one knows who they are or what they actually do- Alistair ‘Union’ Jack, Oliver Dowden, George Eustace and Anne Marie Ruggles.
Most of them are known incompetents promoted beyond their ability to brush their own teeth properly. Easy ones are Dorries, Patel, Shapps and Coffey. Then there’s the Britannia Unchained and other fruitcakes who would be bringing on the Ides of March if left in place- Gove, Truss, Raaab, Kwarteng.
The entire cage will need cleaned out if they are to limp to the next election resembling one party with all those conned red wall voters waiting to wreak revenge. I suppose a couple of them might stay on as useful idiots because no one knows who they are or what they actually do- Alistair ‘Union’ Jack, Oliver Dowden, George Eustace and Anne Marie Ruggles.
Tony L
Administrator
That was my original thinking, though the Tories so obviously compromising on their hard-right ‘Get Brexit Done’ policy has to cost them dear in the nationalist/xenophobic voter base that won them the ‘red wall’, plus will send the ERG nutters in the party into total meltdown. As a long term move enables Farage/Banks and other far-right/fascist candidates standing and splitting the vote as they will not be happy with anything less than a full Daily Express/Telegraph/Eturnumviti-grade self-immolation Brexit.
Maybe they have hard polling data that Brexit is now an electoral liability and just want to brush it under the carpet and forget about it despite the fact this is impossible given the damage it is causing to every aspect of UK life? Is this step one of an erasure strategy? The ERG won’t be happy!
PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
I really, really hope the slimy Hunt doesn't slide in again. He has tried to reinvent himself as the voice of Tory reason recently, but he did more to weaken the NHS while in office than almost anyone else in memory. Repulsive individual.
Barrymagrec
pfm Member
Then said By-ends, I shall never desert my old principles, since they are harmless and profitable.
John Bunyan must have known Tories.
eternumviti
Insufficient privileges to reply.
Ok, so you've done it again, that thing you do, that patronising misrepresentation of what I've said. I was explicit in my point - the 'advantages' of freedom of movement of goods, and of the availability of cheap labour are entirely dependant upon compulsory adherence to an ideological political/imperial project that is entirely extreaneous to the ability to freely move goods and people about.
I'm sure that you think I'm akin to the village idiot - so much is apparent from your tone when you reply to me in this way. You'll have to try to find a way of accepting that someone who doesn't necessarily agree with you is not by definition a half-wit.
During the course of the EEC's transition from a trading partnership to a superstate, a process that has involved very substantial transfers of constitutional powers from Parliament (and thus the people) to the institutions of the EU (and thus a bunch of unelected technocrats), none of the major political parties have placed either a halt to the advance of the EU, or a reversal of the process of integration, on their manifestos. This has left a substantial proportion of the electorate without a voice on the matter, a deep well of longstanding frustration that boiled over in the result of the 2016 referendum.
Any question that involves constitutional change and a dilution of the supremacy of Parliament on the level of the joint Maastricht/Lisbon advances into the sovereign states of the EU should absolutely be incumbent on the direct consent of the people, a precedent set when the UK voted by popular referendum to remain in the EEC in 1975, and one present in the constitutional arrangements of several other European countries, including Ireland, France and Denmark. This consent was not given by the UK electorate upon the foundation of the the EU at Maastricht, and its consolidation at Lisbon. This was a grave and lasting wrong, the direct consequences of which we are now having to deal.
No more so than one person's compromise and 'enlightened tradeoff' is another person's blackmail. The blackmail is built into the system, as there is a clear distinction between trade and imperium, but the former is made dependant upon the latter.
Indeed.
I refer the honourable gentleman to my earlier reply. You might not want to (the EU certainly doesn't, and complexity and the consequent opportunity for obfuscation are amongst the most powerful weapons in the EU's integrationist arsenal), but there are times when you certainly should.
Barrymagrec
pfm Member
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
As minutes pass I think she is there to get an agreement, as I said in#1278. Don’t be surprised to see it. Negotiation had become impossible with Frosty the Lard-Arse no-man.
tonerei
pfm Member
Didn't even get 48hrs this time out.
PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
And you pull the same fake injury stunt any time I post anything of substance that disagrees with your view of the EU as the evil empire: pretend I am willfully misinterpreting your position rather than disagreeing with your point. It's just your way of shutting down debate and wriggling out. In this case, I objected to the "compulsory" bit. Remove that word from your sentence and it reads much better (making allowances for all the rhetoric about empire etc.) There is nothing compulsory about membership, and half-way houses (EEA/EFTA) are available for states that don't want to subscribe to the full program while still enjoying many of the benefits.
I really don't. Based on what you post here, you appear to be an intelligent, sensitive and well-educated person with a varied set of interests, and probably a bit of a romantic (for the avoidance of doubt, none of this is criticism, OK?). You just have a serious bee in your bonnet about the EU, which clouds your normally sound judgement. I would love to understand why, but I don't. I used to think there was something in the CAP or something that your family had suffered from, but it seems that some of them are benefiting from it, so I don't get it.
The EU is not a superstate, however much you want to portray it that way. If it was, there would be a large army, a President, common taxation and social security, transfer mechanisms from North to South, etc. (If I explain this again here, is that being patronizing? I'm not, just disagreeing with what seems a misrepresentation of reality.)
The elected members of the British people have approved treaties, according to the UK's accepted constitutional principles, and you want the whole thing tossed out because you happen to disagree? That's not very democratic, is it?
I realize this is your position, but it is a marginal one and entirely at odds with the traditions of British parliamentary democracy. The fact that other countries with different political traditions have different ways of doing things is neither here nor there. I seem more attached to the British form of parliamentary democracy than you are.
Not really, see above. And at the risk of appearing patronizing again, please consider that Maastricht came about because of the Single Market, a cause heavily championed by the UK and Mrs Thatcher and her acolytes in Brussels. See also the numerous opt outs secured by the UK over the years in areas it felt uncomfortable with.
And the result of this preference of yours is that the UK's elected representatives, unable to come to any sensible agreement among themselves, abdicated their explicit responsibilities and tossed the whole matter over to the hapless electorate, asking them to adjudicate on the very matters of constitutional law, international trade law, security arrangements, standards harmonization etc. on which they had failed to reach consensus. A cop out, but one that kept them in power and happens to agree with your personal preferences. Enjoy your victory.
Synchronisation issues... The left-hand side is the new EU energy label, the right is the old EU energy label in a John Bull costume. Unsurprisingly, the UK has now also adopted the exact same label type and energy scale as on the left (albeit with a Union Flag replacing the European Union one), but while the EU version came into effect in 2019, the UK one didn’t until 2020.Interesting...
The one on the right strikes me as especially wasteful, given that the UK had already committed to their new labelling following the same standard as the EU. In that light, there was no reason to foist a six-month change onto businesses when the government could have just said something like: “Until the UK introduces its new energy labelling in 2020, existing EU labels will be valid for use on UK-market products”.
(The reason for the change is that with some product types, especially lighting and refrigeration, almost all products are now comfortably above the original A-rating, leading to an ever-greater number of A++ type steps above. So, the decision was made to re-scale the grades to better reflect modern technologies, and make an A-rating something that’s hard to achieve again)
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
We’ve had a particularly humiliating run of Foreign Secretaries from Johnson to Hunt, Raaab to Held in Truss. Johnson was notorious among both the civil service and our allies. We had Patel at one point running her own foreign policy behind the back of the FCO which she was rightly sacked for. They’ve collectively been instrumental in lowering Britain’s global standing.
Remember Hunt’s bell end incident:
zarniwoop
hoopy frood
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
Truss, same old same old: trigger finger for Article 16 and the inevitable consequences for trade and the peace in Northern Ireland.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...new-chapter-same-story?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Please the ERG and minority DUP clowns and alienate the democratic majority in Northern Ireland, and the administrations in Washington and Brussels with a toxic lack of diplomacy.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...new-chapter-same-story?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Please the ERG and minority DUP clowns and alienate the democratic majority in Northern Ireland, and the administrations in Washington and Brussels with a toxic lack of diplomacy.
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