Weird Granny Slater- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 2,844
To hell with Osborne, but this has to be one of the Standard's best front-page photos in years:
Brian Dixon likes this
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,657
I wonder if this would have all been sorted by now if the MPs had not been more or less instructed how to vote by their party leaders or whips.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
With many Tories coming across to the deal albeit reluctantly the talk was of a 10 - 12 vote defeat followed by bringing it back again on Monday. 58 seems rather a lot to warrant yet another debate and vote on the same wording.
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
fog in town this morning dover's cut off from the rest of the world.
so much about Brexit. has it happened yet there seems to a news blackout.
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,657
Seems the voice of the people is being completely ignored by nearly all the Remain voting MPs who really want to scupper the whole Brexit thing and it seems they are gradually succeeding.
This will end up costing us as a nation another wasted fortune to the EU.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Keith Sansum1- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,572
ref post 3,856
How is john W ray?
ray hutstone likes this
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
Pablo- Registered: 21 Mar 2018
- Posts: 614
#3869, Jan I’ve been saying for months now that I believe Theresa’s real desire has been to stay in the EU all along. She’s now within touching distance of her aim. But all we need is one stroppy EU country to veto a further extension and we shall be out on Apr 12. However, if that does happen I fear she might put the no-deal exit to Parliament one more time and when it’s defeated, say: You’ve binned my deal, you’ve binned no-deal, the only alternative is no Brexit, so I’m using the Royal Prerogative to reverse my action of March 29 2017 and cancel A50.
This is a bit like watching a high level game of chess where the participants are looking 4 or 5 moves ahead.
Jan Higgins likes this
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
I was rather hoping my investments would be worth a few bob in 4 hours time, not to be though.
Gary39 likes this
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
doomed no , buggerd yes
Gary39- Registered: 7 Jul 2017
- Posts: 421
And where is Gina Miller...
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
in the high court or there abouts.
Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 2,900
Jan Higgins likes this
(Not my real name.)
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
So many permutations now with a lengthy extension of Article 50 being the favourite meaning us holding elections to the European Parliament and all the chaos that goes with it. The PM has put her party on General Election alert in the event of a 4th failure to get her deal through, put all that together with the local elections and our political parties would be heading to bankruptcy.
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,657
This idea of a General Election as an answer to Brexit is in my opinion daft.
A narrow Labour win would mean the Conservatives behaving as Labour are now so any proposal will be blocked. A narrow Conservative win would see MPs just as bad as now. Can you imagine the chaos from a Coalition result as I doubt there will be a substantial majority for any party.
Plus an election now would be all about Brexit not any future day to day issues that are just if not more important to the majority of voters.
Brian Dixon, howard mcsweeney1 and ray hutstone like this
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
A few MPs have said that about day to day issues but the majority live in the Westminster bubble and don't really understand problems facing many people. Having said that there are large swathes of people who are happy to dress up and protest for or against Brexit as if that is all that matters.
This week it was announced that 3. 7 million of our children live in poverty.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Matthew Parris in the Times.
In an attempt to distance myself from our Brexit insanities I am deep in Africa. My hope was to stand a little back, take a calmer and less partisan view. Some hope. With distance, anger only grows. The further you travel the stupider this Brexit thing looks. People here, whose world of cyclones and cassava-harvests barely touches ours, have heard there’s a bad business going on in Britain. In any satellite’s heat-map of hotspots of human lunacy, the United Kingdom blushes crimson from outer space.
Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, shorn of even a hint of what might come after, failed to clear the Commons yesterday. Thank God. On a cusp between tragedy and pantomime, preposterous figures like Boris Johnson and desiccated zealots like Jacob Rees-Mogg would have strutted the national stage as business leaders wept and what is left of my dear old Conservative Party fell apart.
So where now? Suppose that Mrs May stays in Downing Street. It would be tempting at this point to have another kick at her. But Remainers should take care. Even now, parliamentary Brexiteers among whom I predict a civil war, are confecting their in-house history of the Brexit That Never Was.
Paradise Postponed, by B Johnson and friends, is a story of betrayal: a history of the glorious Brexit that was so nearly within our reach, before a dreadful prime minister became a stooge for dastardly Remainer renegades and their Brussels-fawning running dogs.
Reader, don’t feed that narrative of betrayal by blaming the prime minister, useless as she is. The Archangel Gabriel could not have clawed from the European Union a better withdrawal agreement than May’s civil servants negotiated for her, though the Archangel Gabriel (or the unfeathered Michael Gove) might have been able to sell us that pup. Be thankful that Mrs May’s failure of salesmanship has saved Britain from a bad deal. And now the real battle begins. It’s a battle Remainers can win, and these next few days may be critical. I see the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, has been calling for the spirit of compromise. Compromise? Compromise with these tinpot Brexiteers who would destroy Britain’s links with our biggest trading partner? Compromise with the gang who cheated voters with the lie of a Brexit that would offer all the benefits and none of the obligations of EU membership?
Compromise with the bullies who called judges “enemies of the people” and accused Remainers of (in Mrs May’s words) “subverting democracy”? Compromise with the skulduggery of politicians who, offered the half-loaf of relinquishing our seat at the EU’s top table while remaining subject to its rules, would take the half-loaf, and within days — days — start whipping up public anger at the arrangement?
Compromise be damned. We’re looking at an assemblage of ninnies and rascals here, and they’re well on their way to being rumbled. Yet again I remind you of the words (to me) of Margaret Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary, the late Ian Gow. “In the Lady’s view, once you’ve got the crocodile on to the sandbank you don’t help it back into the deep. You stick the knife in.” In the “indicative” votes cast by MPs in their debate this week, the numbers speak volumes. RIP Norway-plus. This was never going to survive the kiss of daylight. RIP no-deal too — except by accident.
Through to the second round goes the suggestion we stay inside the customs union after Brexit, which found unexpected favour. Remainers should resist this. It helps the crocodile back into the deep: uber-Brexit lives to fight another day, its likely slogan being “one last heave”.
Referendum-ites did rather well, and it’s likely that lots of Tory MPs in favour of putting any deal to a confirmatory referendum are still hiding in the closet. David Cameron remarked this week that for a Commons majority to be found for any way forward, it must win support from more than one gang. Mrs May’s deal plus a referendum might just do that; more likely, customs union plus a referendum should be able to gather a Commons majority. If Remainers believe in democracy, they should be content with anything plus a referendum, and keep their powder dry for the new referendum itself. Leaving the EU but staying in a customs union would mean our once-proud empire follows the Ottomans and ends up in the same basket as modern Turkey. It beats me why Britain should forswear the only new freedom that Brexit promised: the freedom to make our own trade deals. So far, we are winning. And if Lord Williams and the Queen will forgive me, this is no time for splitting the difference. Instead, the day of reckoning is coming: time to make lists. Who were the Brexiteers? Names, please. Names and deeds.
Should we who they have accused of treachery, having had our patriotism impugned and been charged by them with contempt for the people MPs serve, now turn the other cheek, murmur that “the Conservative Party is a broad church” and welcome these wreckers back? I’m not of that persuasion. If the Conservative Party is to survive (and I’m beginning to wonder how likely that is) it has to turn its face away from the gang who, by the end of this year, will be seen to have brought our country close to ruin. My best guess, however, is that there may not be time to cut them off; that all the arbitrary dates in April, May or June by which the EU will require this, that or the other, all the amendments in the name of “Cooper-Letwin”, “Kyle-Wilson”, etc, will be swept away in a general election that could destroy the Conservative Party, even as Labour lurches reluctantly into a manifesto promise to put a soft Brexit deal to the people.
Ross Miller likes this
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
dam shafted as well. we allways can a referendum as well as an election to give the in coming incumbents something to chew on.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
The bookies now have it odds on for a General Election this year with the Tories slight favourites to win the most seats but with the likelihood of a hung parliament so no surprise there.
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
oh dear what a mess,. one thought about this mess.
1/look in the mirror and say to your self ,, if I knew then what I know now, would I have put my mark in the leave box.
2/ if your answer is yes, no, not sure. write to your MP and tell them what a ducktard they are.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Courtesy of the Sunday Times.
Theresa May will be warned today that her government faces total collapse unless she passes her Brexit deal — as the prime minister’s aides were at loggerheads over whether to accept a soft Brexit or call a general election this week. In an emergency conference call last night Brexiteer cabinet ministers agreed they would resign if May accepted a customs union or got Tory MPs to vote for the UK to take part in European elections in May. They will deliver their threat when the prime minister consults her cabinet today. More than half her Commons party, 170 MPs and ministers, have signed a letter telling May to pursue a no-deal departure from the EU rather than accept a soft Brexit. It also demands that the UK leave the EU by May 22.
But May will face resignations from at least six cabinet ministers on the party’s remain wing if she backs no-deal. In a leaked email, the immigration minister Caroline Nokes, who attends cabinet, told a constituent May’s “deal is dead” and said she would prefer “no Brexit rather than crashing out”.
Last night an opinion poll put Labour on 41%, up 5 points, with the Conservatives down 7 points at 36%, which would translate into Jeremy Corbyn being 19 seats short of a majority. MPs will seek to hijack the Commons agenda tomorrow to try to agree on permanent membership of the customs union, a Norway-style deal inside the single market, or a second EU referendum. If May does not accept the outcome, they have threatened to pass legislation to force her to do so. But two leading constitutional experts have warned that the government has the right to ask the Queen to refuse to give royal assent to any bill forced on the government by backbenchers.
A paper passed to No 10 yesterday warns that attempts by backbenchers to seize power from the government will “provoke damaging institutional conflict” and “may prompt the government to respond with countermeasures”. The document, written by Sir Stephen Laws QC, a former first parliamentary counsel — the government’s most senior lawyer on constitutional matters — and Professor Richard Ekins, head of the think tank Policy Exchange’s judicial power project, reads: “The process of royal assent has become a formality, but if legislation would otherwise be passed by an abuse of constitutional process . . . the government might plausibly decide to advise Her Majesty not to assent to the bill” — though it would be preferable for MPs not to force the matter. Senior government sources said such a nuclear option would be difficult since the Queen is supposed to be above politics. But May’s advisers acknowledged that she is facing an almost impossible situation this week.
The prime minister’s team want to put her Brexit deal before MPs for a fourth time on Tuesday. If it fails again, her spin doctor, Robbie Gibb, and political aide Stephen Parkinson are pushing for a general election — a stance that has provoked heated exchanges with the chief whip, Julian Smith.
One Brexiteer cabinet minister described a general election as “an act of ultimate self-harm” and said a customs union was “not Brexit” and would lead to Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister.
The minister accused remainers of “the ultimate act of betrayal” for seeking to push the country towards a customs union. “What they are doing is an absolute betrayal of the referendum result and of this country. I cannot understand how any of them can describe a customs union as any kind of Brexit. You may as well revoke article 50.”
Another cabinet minister said: “We have got to stick by our manifesto commitment not to join a customs union. It would be deeply damaging to hold EU elections. If they are going to happen, Labour MPs will have to vote for them.” However, May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, and deputy, David Lidington, are pressing for a soft Brexit deal and a growing number of Conservative MPs are set to back a new referendum.
At least six have indicated they are prepared to back the so-called Kyle-Wilson amendment by which any final Brexit deal approved by MPs should be approved by voters too. They include Richard Harrington and Steve Brine, who resigned as ministers earlier this month, as well backbenchers Mark Garnier and Ed Vaizey. Bim Afolami, the MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, said: “We now need to come up with a stable alternative to the prime minister’s deal and I think a confirmatory referendum has to be considered.”
Labour MPs backing a soft Brexit compromise are expected to travel to Brussels soon to thrash out the details with European Commission officials, negotiating behind the back of ministers. MPs reacted with fury to the prospect of an election, saying they would vote for one only if the prime minister stood aside and let someone else lead the party into the campaign. Two-thirds of the Commons would have to back the plan to trigger an election. They said dozens of Tory association chairmen are writing to Conservative campaign headquarters warning that there cannot be an election because the Tories would face a “wipeout”. Tory whips have also told MPs to expect parliament to sit through the planned Easter recess, a move that has angered MPs. One former minister said: “It is becoming increasingly clear that those who run parliament either have grown-up children, no children or hate their family. Not all of us are rich and can afford to cancel plans at the last minute.”