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Oh Britain, what have you done (part ∞+4)?

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Anyway, here's Peston's other comment:
Theresa May is arguably the most cautious and methodical politician of this generation or perhaps any generation.

So it more than beggars belief that today she announced she would be rolling the dice in the biggest parliamentary gamble I can recall being taken by any PM of modern times, by announcing that next Tuesday she will ask MPs to vote a staggering 15 times, on amendments to that important EU Withdrawal Bill which is so central to the UK’s future outside the European Union.

At stake is whether she and her ministers are in charge of Brexit, or whether MPs and Lords will determine our Brexit future.

And tonight the odds of her winning look slim – because rebel Tory MPs, led by Anna Soubry, Nicky Morgan, Dominic Grieve, Antoinette Sandbach and the rest, met and think they have the votes to defeat her.

The point is that they, and Labour, and the Scottish National Party all want the UK to stay in a customs union. And they want a parliamentary vote on whatever Brexit deal she ultimately negotiates with the EU to be “meaningful” in the sense that MPs should be able to instruct her to return to the Brussels negotiating table.

She does not want her hands tied in either respect. But even if a few Labour eurosceptics were to rebel against Corbyn, May will struggle to win.

So on arguably the biggest issue facing the country now or at any recent time, she would become the pawn of parliament, not its leader. To describe her in those circumstances as a lame duck would probably be an insult to the limping quackers.

What’s more, in the event that Labour were to overcome its reluctance to sign up for full single-market membership via joining the EEA club, she would probably lose on that too.

If the Cabinet had already agreed on a customs negotiating position that was unambiguous and clearly practical, she might stand a chance of picking off some of the rebels.

But as she made clear when she met business leaders tonight, ministers are still some distance from proving to themselves that either a reworked New Customs Partnership (NCP) or a reinvented Max Fac would facilitate the kind of frictionless trade that would deliver growing commerce with the EU and an open border in Ireland – and if they cannot prove it to themselves, there is no chance they will be able to bring round parliament.

And when the whips try to strong arm the Tory rebels into abandoning their principles for the sake of the party, they will legitimately query why the foreign secretary looks set to be allowed to vote against the most important infrastructure project this government will push through – the construction of a third Heathrow runway. Why should they be loyal if his disloyalty will be licensed?

One MP said to me that there is a growing view in the Tory Party that the government is “almost resigned to losing the customs union vote”. I got some sense of that when one of May’s most important ministerial allies made only the feeblest of attempts to persuade me that the government “has the numbers” to enforce its Brexit will.

In a way, that might be rational – since the PM heard (again) tonight from the heads of those big international companies that they would rather have customs union membership than any version of Max Fac or NCP.

But if parliament were to boss her in this way, she would – to use that resonant phrase – be in office but conspicuously not in charge. And with her authority so shattered, with her Brexit red lines scrubbed, could she really survive?

As I said, as a politician this is bet bigger than she’s ever made.
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It looks like next Tuesday might be a crunch day.
 
droodzilla said:
It looks like next Tuesday might be a crunch day.
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Can you imagine the DM front page next Tuesday? Dacre, Murdoch and the Barclays will be completely unbuttoned. They’ve their dirty tide mark of Enemies of The People and TRAITORS to surpass. Expect more death and rape threats from Ukip supporters-

http://www.itv.com/news/2018-06-04/...ce-over-racist-and-threatening-emails-to-mps/

David Hall admitted sending six grossly offensive messages, including one warning Labour’s David Lammy to “remember what happened to Jo Cox” and others saying four Tory MPs deserved to hang for “treachery” over Brexit legislation.
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Finally some opposition from Labour. Next tuesday could be interesting indeed.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-44377072

'The amendments would force the government to negotiate "full access to the internal market of the European Union" with no new barriers to trade.'
The only way this is possible is to vote to stay in the Single Market.
 
Tony L said:
... a Tory poster boy!
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Just what they need right now.

He's unique IME in that he can talk normally whilst seemingly sneering down his nose at voters. The last time I saw that was in black and white Monty Python episodes.
 
Good job I got my £100 at 5/2 on an election this year. Odds might fall. If not I may pile in with more dosh.
 
HarryB said:
Not really. The current Conservative Party is populated by dysfunctional oddballs and complete and utter cnuts. Gove is the perfect hybrid.
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https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/05/...n=20180605+blog&utm_content=ukrw_nonsubs_blog

'On Monday, 21 May, Michael Gove and Ruth Davidson launched a new Conservative think-tank, Onward. Its aim, in the words of its director, Will Tanner, a former aide to Theresa May, is to ‘reach out to millennials in their twenties and early thirties – my generation – who overwhelmingly voted Labour in 2017’. The inspiration behind the name is Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign, En Marche! The irony of invoking Macron to boost popular support – for all the media buzz, he won on the lowest election turnout in the history of the French republic – seems to have been lost on its organisers. With Onward, Nick Timothy writes, ‘the future of the Conservative Party is about to be revealed.’

Onward follows a number of other Tory efforts to court the young: Activate, Freer, New Generation, Refresh, Young Conservatives, and a new ‘vice chair for youth’. These have been accompanied by such youth-pleasing policy proposals as freezing tuition fees at £9250, and an Instagram push to make Conservative MPs look like ‘real people’. Last week the Times revealed that the party was looking to offer members discount cards for restaurants ‘like Nando’s’ to incentivise young people to join. Nando’s swiftly distanced itself from the idea.
The generational divide in voting has never been so stark. According to the latest YouGov poll, almost half of people under fifty say they would never vote Conservative, and only 16 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds say they would never vote Labour. The trend is reversed in over-65s. ‘It’s harder to come out as being a Conservative than being gay,’ a Tory student said on Radio 4 in December – a conceit that, you sense, is a key part of the problem.

[...]

Beneath an array of new logos, in other words, the Conservatives are trying to argue that the economic consensus is a budding counter-movement, and hoping to boulster their case with some of the very things that make them unpopular among young people: en marche, indeed. ‘This generation are #Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters,’ Liz Truss wrote on Twitter, to widespread derision. Conservatives desperately want this message to be true. Truss first made her rallying cry at the launch of Freer; the speech then became an article for Refresh; Colvile later turned it into a T-shirt. While Corbyn announces plans to ban zero-hour contracts, the Conservatives resolve to persuade young people that they love them really.

Truss is 42. The young seem to be getting older. May suggested as much when she announced she would raise the upper threshold for a young person’s railcard from 25 to 30, a plan that has since disappeared because no one in the party wants to pay for it. Tanner goes further: ‘The young,’ he says, really ‘means the under-45s, not just the under-25s.’ Graham and Rowley go further still: young people means anyone ‘born after 1970’. It’s as if any Labour-voting demographic is by definition young – even when their fiftieth birthday is only two years away. Better to extend the meaning of youth, it seems, than pursue an economic policy that will actually enable people to become independent adults.'
 
Hmm!

The youth of today have NO idea they were the middle aged of yesterday. Huff!
 
Thanks Joe. I particularly love this.

"The generational divide in voting has never been so stark. According to the latest YouGov poll, almost half of people under fifty say they would never vote Conservative, and only 16 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds say they would never vote Labour. The trend is reversed in over-65s. ‘It’s harder to come out as being a Conservative than being gay,’ a Tory student said on Radio 4 in December – a conceit that, you sense, is a key part of the problem."

It is of course pretty much what I've been saying since before the last GE.

The thought of Liz Truss being down with the kids is absolutely laughable. What's that clip they play on HIGNFY all the time?

Tories dying in huge numbers, membership of the Conservative Party declining by epic proportions and young people knocking on doors to campaign for Jezza. For the first time in my life I'm genuinely optimistic for our political future.
 
Will Prime Minister Gove be able to solve the food, petrol & medicine crisis and prevent the 2019 economic collapse of the UK? Unfortunately not. He won't.

"European governments are advising businesses not to use British parts in goods for export ahead of Brexit, Sky News has established.
In its advice rolled out to all Dutch businesses, the Dutch government has told its exporters that "if a large part of your product consists of parts from the UK" domestic exporters may lose free trade access under existing deals.
The advice says: "Brexit will have consequences for exports outside the EU.
"After Brexit, parts made in the UK no longer count towards this minimum production in the European Union.
…
A leading car industry executive told Sky News that not using UK parts for EU exports would be a "catastrophe" for the British industry.
"The hard Brexiteers have built a bomb under the UK automotive industry and the EU have lit it," said one chief executive.
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/euro...-of-brexit-11395908?__twitter_impression=true

Stephen-Collins-17-March--001.jpg
 
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