FlyTheNest

Morning all.

Surprised cod skirmisher is appointed Minister of State for Universities (5,8).

This is quite interesting if correct

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ ... 4cda4f9b33

Assuming Hilary Benn's amendment is voted on (probable) and that it passes (probable) that's it according to this piece. May's deal will automatically fall.

Corbyn was completely correct and being responsible on his questions outwith Brexit IMHO.

PfY

Your next task is make them fit into a crossword grid.

Maybe for Christmas?

Good idea.Have you started trying to work out the answers to signposts yet?Part of the reason of my barely decipherable posts is that what remains of my Brian(intended)has been mangled by "over crypticification"

I heard that PF :"it was pretty mangled to start with"

Constance claiming finishing the Times crossword in ninety seconds.Wel it is in complete with the letter "z" at every entry,but for a cat can't be bad.

Welsh Labour leader announced later.


https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.wale ... 513430.amp

Local council funding settlement announcement delayed due to Brexshit.

It was a lot milder night,hard forr to gauge temperature considering I avoid work in fridge,freezer and a microwave room,the latter being the biggest facility in Europe,half a million each,I get inside sometimes.

Multi-tasking isn't one of their talents, is it?

If I go missing I have probably been up tempoed and in my way to China or something.

Managed to coordinate foodbank attendance delight.

Always taught that of you do a good deed to tell people negates it,before you get to the sickening hypocrisy of creating their usage and making people struggle as deliberate policy.

Of course I never do a good deed,but beside the point

https://twitter.com/rafaelbehr/status/1 ... 3437456385



Useful thread giving a sense of what's going on within Parliament at the moment and it's very worrying:


"But no-one seems to know what the exact balance is between PV and super-soft Brexit camps..."
.....or the precise dynamics operating below the waterline in each others parties. Leading me to feel Behr is unfortunately correct with this conclusion:
"So while there is a self-identifying "sane majority" there isn't a distinct coalition for a sane outcome, so sanity could still fall through the gaps"

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

Putting together a few Twitter "reports" I think some of the Cabinet may have been to see May to suggest delaying the Meaningful Vote.

She isn't going to as far as I can see.

Going back to my earlier point, we may need to look at the Benn amendment.

Here it is

This rejects both May's "deal" and "no deal" doesn't it?

What the Huff Post piece (Paul Waugh?) says is that the Benn amendment will probably pass with all the opposition parties (DUP incl.) voting for it and a few Soubry types making up for the Labour "rebels".

This should stop Hard Brexit but avoid May being destroyed in Parliament, so she may be quite sanguine about it.

Of course he was, even some who originally objected are now admitting as much.

I assume that the people who got awfully excited about Corbyn failing to disclose a trip to a meeting at the UN a few years back will be equally vociferous about this?

https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/ ... 1411958784



They will won't they?

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

Given the vote won't be binding, it's pretty important that May is both happy to go along with it and also isn't vulnerable to being ousted. The difficulty for Parliament is that they gave permission to trigger article 50, which means the decision to leave the EU has already been taken and they have also passed the Withdrawal Bill which means the framework for our leaving is already in place. At this point, Parliament is only expressing an opinion, it has already provided the government with all the legislation it needs to leave, either with this deal or with no deal, with no further involvement from Parliament necessary. The only thing holding the government back is its lack of a majority and the possibility the government may fall if Parliament isn't heeded.

So, the Benn amendment could stop both no deal Brexit and May's deal, but it is not guaranteed, plus the problem of what happens instead still remains - soft Brexit or further referendum?

From the start the government has gone about this whole process the wrong way. A detailed white paper on what kind of future relationship we are trying to achieve should have been debated and approved by Parliament before article 50 was triggered.

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

She's getting more and more "inadvertent" as time rolls by, it seems.

Thanks - very insightful.

I'm sure you'd agree though that indecision between Peoples Vote and Soft Brexit is a rather more comfortable place to be!

But the point is, this sort of obfuscation won't work as well with as MPs as it might with (inevitably, mostly lower information) voters. Indeed it will annoy some of them all the more......

I forgot to say -

Cod skirmisher! Wonderful - and very apt, under the circumstances.

FIFY

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... and if I die clutching your photograph / don't call me boring, it's just 'cause I like you...

I was just about to say that!

Thinking of the Daily Borisograph in particular, which has covered the Corbyn (non?) story almost obsessively.

Absolutely.

I'm just a bit worried that, although hugely significant and hard to ignore, such a vote wouldn't actually bind the government. And there are reasons why the government is desperate to avoid either of those options. Note what Philip Hammond says here:



If Brexit is about protecting the spivs at the heart of the City of London from EU scrutiny, then leaving the single market is a red line for more than just the ERG crowd, it's a red line for May's government too. And if May's deal is rejected, a no deal Brexit may be the only way to preserve that red line. She might not actively choose no deal, but what if it were forced upon her by a Brexit blocking opposition?

Don't get me wrong, I remain hopeful, but until another option has actually happened no deal Brexit remains a slim, but worrying possibility.

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

LibDem MP for Eastbourne, Stephen Lloyd, has resigned the party whip. He has previously said he will vote for May's Brexit deal.

@Willow

Many good points well made. Thanks.

This is absolutely true and why Labour's Brexit policy is more credible than May's. It does reveal, however, that Labour's objection to the backstop is basically hollow and that May is right in so far that a backstop would always be necessary due to the nature of the article 50 process. Labour need to be clearer about the gaping hole in May's deal - it's not the backstop, it's the lack of anything yet proposed that can credibly supersede the backstop.

Even so, this is quite awkward for Labour as May's deal, imperfect as it is, does roughly coincide with Labour's official stated Brexit policy of a customs union but outside the single market (if the backstop kicks in). Unless Labour change their stance to customs union plus single market, they will be essentially rejecting May's deal in order to attempt to instigate virtually the same deal themselves which doesn't make a lot of sense. Rejecting May's deal makes much more sense if your eventual aim is to remain in either the EU or single market, yet these aren't official Labour positions.

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

Smaller phone box required.

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... and if I die clutching your photograph / don't call me boring, it's just 'cause I like you...

I think Behr's analysis above is very astute. Parliament is in complete flux. There are a few sane ways to navigate Brexit, but no way to tell which has the best chance of success. This leaves MPs in a horrible position, frankly, and I don't envy them one jot!

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

And in further defection news yet another UKIP MEP - Nathan Gill - has left their group (and the party) That's exactly half their 2014 contingent gone now.

This comes back to the nature of the GFA and the December 2017 Agreement, which says

Internal Market and Customs Union. The issue isn't that we can avoid the backstop with a comprehensive customs deal, it's that any deal has to meet the function of the single market. I haven't read about any ideas for this other than the made up technological/magical ones proposed by the government/leave campaign. I haven't seen and I don't claim any expertise here but I can't imagine what could meet the functions of the custom's union and single market other than continued membership, functional or full, of the custom's union and single market (or an FTA coupled to the single market).

The backstop issue isn't about tariffs, it's about something somewhere between regulatory harmonisation and regulatory alignment and about confidence in this being sufficient to abandon phytosanitary checks and product safety tests, and about ECJ oversight to iron out any differences of opinions.

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... and if I die clutching your photograph / don't call me boring, it's just 'cause I like you...

Another busy day, it seems - Mark Drakeford AM has just been elected the new leader of Welsh Labour.

By roughly 57-43 over Vaughan Gething after Eluned Morgan - a bit over 20% in the first round - was eliminated.

(a shame IMO, she would have been my first choice)

The Christmas Fairy still hasn't appeared outside 10 Downing Street.

Good-evening, everyone

That's a polite way of describing their talent deficit

Marley refused the gig
so it's Thatcher's

How minor can an amendment to a motion be to qualify as an amendment?