Kettle off the boil

Further signs of depression and dis-May in the Guadrina today. M Kettle now has a rather thin prospect of hope,now that the Tories seem to have voted both for a deal and for re-negotiation of a bit of it ( which will be the most important of the two remains[sic] to be seen).

Kettle now seems to be relying on Labour, but only after it organises a coup of its own:

In spite of the upbeat signals that came from Jeremy Corbyn’s meeting with Theresa May on Wednesday, experience suggests that it will not prove a turning point on Brexit....The only thing that would seem to unite them is that both want Brexit to happen, preferably under a Conservative government....Having claimed hers was the only possible deal, May has now pledged to try to change the Northern Ireland backstop arrangement in order to keep her right wing on board. Corbyn, meanwhile, wants her to adopt a soft Brexit approach that would, if she embraced it, trigger a full-scale revolt from her own side and from the Democratic Unionists.... May has less need of [cross-party support]  now. She has regained a bit of control. Her hardliners kept their swords sheathed. The chief whip and the chairman of the Tory backbenchers both played skilful hands, while pro-remain MPs overplayed theirs this time. A second referendum now looks a more distant prospect

On the PV, the Times is reporting splits in the movement between those who want to keep it as a single issue lobby and those who want to use it as the basis for a new political party

Kettle hasn't lost all hope though. There is the strange liberal prayer for further turmoil and indecision:

the vote for the Brady amendment was a vote for something that is both vague and unlikely to happen. The European Union has little incentive to agree to it. And, assuming that it will not happen, certainly not in the small window of time now available, it seems odds-on that May will soon be struggling to find a majority once more....This brings us back to the role that Corbyn may yet play. For most of the parliamentary Brexit process, Corbyn has been a large but inert presence. Brexit politics has happened around him, not with or through him. He remains content, it seems, to go through the motions but not to get his hands dirty. Up to a point, it has been a coherent strategy if your three priorities, like Corbyn’s, are for Brexit to happen, for the Tories to own it, and for your own pristine politics to remain unsullied by the most important argument facing the country...

Then for some new Labour [sic] people to emerge to replace Corbyn:

One pressure is that backbenchers in his party – such as Yvette Cooper and Hilary Benn – have emerged as de facto Labour figureheads [really?]. Another is that May has begun to engage with workplace and environmental regulatory issues that Labour cares about.

And some fantasy politics where all right-thinking nice people rally round:

A more adept Labour leader would have been reaching out relentlessly to Tory moderates over recent months on the customs elements of the eventual UK-EU trade deal, searching for common ground and looking for ways to ensnare them in a shared commitment to the open borders and regulatory alignment that the hard Brexiters so loathe....Such a thing may yet happen anyway. If May fails to get the changes from the EU that she seeks, and if this week’s Tory party unity comes under strain, as it may, then a space could open up for a softer Brexit deal...

And of course, the unproblematic 'national interest':

Even Corbyn must see what is now at stake, and why engaging seriously with May is overwhelmingly in the country’s interest.

On the latter, a GNU was spotted again last night on C4 News

Partisan journalism -- let's trust (some) politicians*

The Guardina's R Behr is on good form today after the disappointments.He demonstrates the utter irrationality of the supporters:

Inside the addict’s head the most important thing is getting to the next Brexit fix, scoring the best deal. But from the outside, to our European friends and family [lovely image] , it is obvious that the problem is the compulsive pursuit of a product that does us only harm...

After all their hopes, the wrecking/leaving amendments failed, and Behr has to rationalize that too:

Some MPs can see the situation spiralling out of control. Today 298 lined up to demand an intervention. They backed a cross-party bid to seize control of the Brexit agenda from the government and delay the day of departure if necessary. But the move failed [so is a majority important or not?] . There is ample horror of the no-deal scenario across the Commons (a vaguer condemnation of that option won a narrow majority), but clearly the greater fear is association with anything that looks like an active plot to thwart Brexit [cowardice rather than representing their constituents] . Yvette Cooper and Nick Boles, sponsors of the more controversial amendment, insisted their aim was only to guarantee an orderly departure, and there is no reason to doubt them [Jesus!]

Behr is eager to trot out the line we heard endlessly on TV last night --that the only purpose of the Irish backstop provision is to prevent a hard border which will threaten peace:  'The backstop only exists because May’s Brexit red lines could not be bent around the Good Friday agreement any other way.' Nothing to do with trade terms or punishing Britain! Nothing has been said to remove the threat of a hard border once the EC realized they would have to be the ones to install it.

What Remainers and the EU do is high-minded and civilized  politics aimed at world peace. For others, however:

It is the bluff that Britain holds all the cards, and that if we show enough contempt for treaties and economic logic, Brussels will be intimidated into granting favours that could not be won by conventional diplomacy. There are two possible reasons for pursuing that strategy. One is stupidity: failure to grasp what the negotiations so far have actually been about and how May’s deal was their logical outcome. The second is cynical vandalism: knowing that the plan will fail and hoping, when it does, to pin blame for a chaotic no-deal Brexit on Brussels intransigence.

And/or it is all cynical party politics, but only on one side, of course:

May still acts as if Brexit is something that must be settled to the satisfaction of the Conservative party first, and only then shared with the rest of Europe. The British public is at the very back of the queue [how a Remainer can write that last sentence is beyond belief]

Only the EU ever had a realistic view:

They expected May to start building bridges from the leavers’ fantasy island to the reality of what was available in negotiations with a bloc of 27 countries – the imbalance of power and the calculus of damage limitation....But May never confronted that logic. When she took the referendum result as her personal mission she also anointed herself with sacred oils of Brexiteer mythology. Her inscrutable demeanour and robotic speeches conceal a fervour that would be instantly identifiable as demagogy in a more expressive politician. At first, the prime minister’s rigid mask tricked Europeans into thinking she was a reasonable and capable person. It had a similar effect on the domestic audience...Her parochial mediocrity has nurtured the complacent assumption that the worst cannot happen here, that we are, at heart, a pragmatic nation not given to fanatical lurches.

The contempt and desperate management of any possible objection to Remaining is concluded thus:

It is obvious that Brexit is a disaster [except to half the country and a lot of MPs but we've devalued or ignored them], yet still so many MPs observe a taboo against saying that it should be stopped [perhaps because they don't think it should be -- and stopped how? By coup?]. To our continental friends and neighbours it is scarcely comprehensible. It looks like British social awkwardness [cultural cringe now?] elevated to the scale of a constitutional meltdown

May goes back to Brussels...

After a busy night in Parliament, some public despair for Remainers (for now),after a couple of delaying or wrecking amendments were defeated. One amendment urging the Government to reject no deal was passed. So was a Government-sponsored one urging the PM to return to Brussels to renegotiate the backstop. Curiously, as a number of commentators pointed out, this contradicted the PM's earlier claim that no further dealing was possible. The mugs don't really understand pragmatic politics or negotiation and were also bleating (C4 and Newsnight), that the EU had rejected any chance to renegotiate, so it was all pointless, ignoring the recent wobbling over them having to install a hard border if no deal. EU speaks as last word/revealed truth/only sensible option etc.So:

MPs have voted for a fantasy. It’s an indictment of our entire political class

J. Freedland is left with a consoling fantasy of his own, that one day the truth will come out at a Chilcott -style public enquiry. It will uncover the serial lies told during the campaign (the bus is the main one, of course):

Almost everyone involved, from both main parties, showed themselves to be immersed in delusion, trading fantasies and absurdities, each one refusing to meet reality’s eye, let alone tackle it head on...Theresa May had repeated endlessly, and for weeks, that her deal was the only deal on offer. Yet there she was, standing at the despatch box urging MPs to vote for an amendment that trashes that very same deal...First, it’s really no great achievement to get MPs to agree that they’d like the good bits of a deal but don’t want to swallow the bad bits [notquite trashing the whole deal then]: yes to the sugar, no to the pill. The Tories have united around a position that says they’d like the benefits of the withdrawal agreement, without paying all the costs [sounds perfectly sensible tome]...It’s the familiar Brexit delusion, which Brussels took all of six minutes to crush, by declaring – for the millionth time – that “the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.” 

Freedland does have some good points to make:

it was that same logic that saw them [Leavers]  win the referendum itself. Their message back then boiled down to: do you want to stay in the European Union, with all its concrete, visible flaws, or would you like “alternative arrangements”? What we’ve all learned since is that the moment an “alternative” becomes real, it loses its all-things-to-all-people appeal.

Quite right -- but applicable to all political policies,a fortiori to the Remainers, who cannot even develop any 'real' intentions because they are entirely negative and conservative. Freedland thinks history will absolve him -- and the delayers:

[any future enquiry will surely forgive]  the handful of MPs who are using every parliamentary wile they can to stop the country from slamming into the iceberg. The names Grieve, Cooper, Boles and others may earn themselves an admiring footnote in the report that will eventually come.

Freedland is especially venomous to the 14 Labour MPs who voted for the amendments,despite a 3-line whip:

14 Labour rebels ... concluded that even a slight delay to Brexit [who is he kidding]  – just a few months – poses more of a threat to their constituents than a crash-out that could see shortages of food and medicine, with more warnings along those lines coming this morning from the leader of a major hospitals group. The future public inquiry into this horror show will damn those 14 especially.

Interestingly, there is a report in the Times that Boles is coming under fire from his constituency and risks deselectio.

Meanwhile, el Grunida carries extracts from reports of the vote in European newspapers. They seem to grasp the politics a bit more accurately, but also look a bit panicky:

Theresa May is now risking a major showdown with the EU and increasing the danger of a damaging no-deal departure,” writes Le Monde’s London correspondent, Philippe Bernard....“As risky as it is, she intends to run down the clock so as to force the EU27 into making concessions before 29 March. And then, if necessary, blame the EU – an easy scapegoat – for eventual failure.”... Björn Finke in the Süddeutsche Zeitung says...May’s weakness is dangerous, for Britain and for the rest of the EU.”...It is true that this “worries the Europeans”, Vidal-Folch [of El Pais] says. “That’s why they’re drawing up contingency plans, which only remind them of the losses ahead. But those who’ll suffer the most damage are the British themselves....NRC Handelsblad in the Netherlands is equally brutal. “To save her Brexit deal, avoid a split in her party and retain the minimum of control a prime minister needs, May aims to provoke a conflict with the EU,”...Libération, France’s leftwing daily, detects a familiar British strategy behind Tuesday evening’s “utterly absurd” scenes in the Commons. “From now till mid-February, aided by the Eurosceptic press, she can deploy the classic British rhetoric: those intransigent, arrogant Europeans are refusing to give us what we want...“Then she can say, ‘I tried, but this is the only deal on the table.’ She is counting on fear of a no deal to win MPs round. It’s a very big gamble, and it could backfire, lamentably.”

Guardian anomalies

Interesting insights today in the Gurdian story: 

Peers and MPs receiving millions in EU farm subsidies

Analysis by Guardian and Friends of the Earth raises questions about impartiality in post-Brexit reform

All the politicians concerned declared their receipt of money, apparently. There are clearly risks of stoking hostility to an already unpopular EU policy , but there are other interesting features of the story. The GUrdnia clearly has allies among Friends of the Earth as well as Remainers. There must be some split loyalites, as there are in all single-issue alliances. 

Secondly, the sting of this story might be that it stokes hostility to one of the targets of the new petit-bourgeoisie -- the aristocracy, despised almost as much as the proletariat. 

The largest single payment – £473,000 – was paid to a Sussex farming firm run by the 18th Duke of Norfolk, a large landowner whose estate dates from the middle ages...Conservative MP Richard Drax, descendant of a 19th-century slave-owner and current resident of the family ancestral seat of Charborough House in Dorset, owns a farm that received £411,000.

 
Thirdly, there is a surprising note of resignation -- this article discusses what happens when the UK leaves the EU, not if. If the Remain cause is lost, maybe the old ones need reviving in the interests of future distanciation?

Elsewhere,it is Graun business as usual. J Harris denounces the racism and intolerance of the English ( mostly the working class English). It all sounds so reasonable at first:

It’s time we started building a new England – one that is modern, diverse and open...To use a phrase habitually deployed by the prime minister herself, what kind of country do we want to be? Put another way, who are we?

But before long it is the same old same old:

England [Celts are forgiven as usual --see below] has come to be understood as a country awash with furies and resentments. Politicians have seen that a significant part of its population apparently thinks that immigration is inherently problematic and ought to be the focus of endless crackdowns, and that supposed benefit “cheats” deserve the same treatment.

There is the usual sort of 'evidence':

When I am out reporting, it usually seems that most of us remain essentially mild, moderate people, seemingly open to compromise. But everyday examples of the worst of the Brexit spirit are easy to find...[as when you talk to staff in a language-learning company, rather than English proles themselves]...staff who had moved to the UK from across Europe, and who had recently started to experience a mixture of discomfort and estrangement. 

There might be something in economic determinism, Harris thinks, but then: 

why do much the same Brexit-ish instincts and opinions run so deep among affluent people with no obvious axe to grind? What students of Marxism would call economic determinism has its place, but it risks constant denial of the fact that politics has long since slipped free of the old simplicities of class and economic complaint. Culture matters. The political right understood this a long time ago, selling a brand of Englishness replete with the reactionary instincts that exploded in June 2016. In his brilliant Brexit book The Lure of Greatness, the writer and activist Anthony Barnett  [of course -- a writer].

Back to an earlier Graun enthusiasm for Scots Nattery, at least at the petit-bourgeois cultural level:

Five years ago I watched a grassroots movement in Scotland lead a conversation about leaving the UK behind, and moving on from an old, patriarchal, hidebound view of their own country....after long years of groundwork, the conversation about a new Scotland had been updated by a coalition of organisations that stood well apart from party politics, known at the time as “the third Scotland”, because of its distance from both the SNP and the Labour party.

If only the nice people of England would rise up:

As against imperial delusions and English exceptionalism, it is time we talked about the realities of our past and a future that necessarily involves being part of Europe – and the fact that in the 21st century, the movement of people is a basic fact of life. I know what a modern, open, accepting, diverse vision of my country looks like: I see it not just in Bristol, Manchester, Leicester, Leeds, and Birmingham [on Remainer demos? Writing workshops?] , but in endless small kindnesses in places that are too often either ignored or reduced to a Brexit-supporting caricature [by him among others] . We need to seize on such examples and make the case for a new England. 

EU conservatism matches Remainer conservatism?*

Another piece in the Observer today, from J Cliffe,  'the Charlemagne columnist and Brussels bureau chief at the Economist', about the underlying appeal of the EU --its cultural conservatism:

The motivations and instincts of our continental partners sometimes baffle us Brits. To un-baffle ourselves, a useful principle is that most of what the EU and its leading members say or do can be traced back to the quest for the quiet life....the European project knows no higher ideal than calm good living...Europe’s quest for the quiet life goes much further. The EU and most of its states were born or reborn from the rubble of war and the traumas of totalitarianism...The opposite of horror and cataclysm is the quiet life... the European lifestyle such as long holidays and universal healthcare...[the EU] ...generally values the stability of uniformity above the bracing fizz of difference. It is unremittingly defensive.

Cliffe argues that the Brits do not understand this (literally reactionary) quest for a quiet life, but in my view, Remainers share it. Their quiet life especially means unemployment and poverty are safely confined to areas where they do not live , where there are no quiet gardens, no long holidays and highly restricted healthcare, where there is street violence and drugs and authoritarian officials operating Universal Credit. The 'European' lifestyle has done very well for them and they want to keep it.

Of course, there is absolutely no guarantee that Brexit will deliver any alternative -- that would require a socialist government (probably not one of the Corbyn gestural tendency). If we ever get one and we are still in the EU, we will see a rather nastier side of EU conservatism, I suspect.

More fake news --from the Observer!

Similar techniques in today's Obsever to those used in its stablemate el Guradino. Eg headline:

UK firms plan mass exodus if May allows no-deal Brexit 

Copy:

Thousands of British companies have already triggered emergency plans to cope with a no-deal Brexit, with many gearing up to move operations abroad if the UK crashes out of the EU, according to the British Chambers of Commerce....the BCC said it believed companies that had already gone ahead with their plans represented the “tip of the iceberg” and that many of its 75,000 members were already spending vital funds to prepare for a disorderly exit

But then:

in recent days alone, it had been told that 35 firms had activated plans to move operations out of the UK, or were stockpiling goods to combat the worst effects of Brexit.[my emphases]

Then a mention for the latest no Brexit heroine, further puffed, together with support for the other amendments coming up -- interestingly, that piece starts with reminding us that:

The local MP, Labour’s Yvette Cooper, led lengthy campaigns to save both [below] . She sought investors and EU state aid [and did she get any?] , met ministers and executives and fought for fair redundancy packages and skills training for those affected. But the campaigns to keep the power station and pit going were ultimately doomed.

Back to the first piece, we are told that now:

Labour MP Yvette Cooper has revealed to the Observer that two major employers in her West Yorkshire constituency – luxury goods manufacturer Burberry and confectioner Haribo – had both written to her, warning of the damaging effects of no deal on their UK operations.

Meanwhile: 

European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has warned Theresa May in a private phone call that shifting her position in favour of a permanent customs union is the price she will need to pay for the EU revising the Irish backstop.

Juncker supports Labour!

Project Fear -- Best Yet!

The Graun tries to pull out all the stops on the hell ('chaos' or 'catastrophe' are the terms among the chattering classes) that will be hard Brexit, especially since it thinks elsewhere that the Cooper amendment to 'delay' Brexit might be in trouble: 'A backbench plan to ward off a no-deal Brexit by extending article 50 is in the balance amid concerns from Labour MPs in leave-voting seats, who fear it could be seen as an attempt to frustrate Britain’s departure from the EU'.How could they think such a terrible thing!

The Graun structures its Project Fear piece rather oddly. It begins with:

Cabinet Office compares no-deal Brexit to Iceland ash cloud chaos

I am not at all sure that too many of us remember the Iceland ash cloud chaos, apart from the Flying Classes. I certainly do not recall queues for toilet paper or dying diabetics.  However, the Graun clarifies:

The repercussions for the UK of a no-deal Brexit could be similar to the national emergency faced by Iceland [my emphasis]

Still not very scary I suspect. As if in recognition of this, the Graun ups the stakes:

The Cabinet Office believes this represents the “nearest recent example” of what government departments could have to cope with. But the potential disruption to the UK from Brexit is likely to be much broader, according to the government’s private planning assumptions [leaked]...The contingency planning for no-deal – codenamed Operation Yellowhammer – has so far involved hundreds of civil servants being given a three-hour introductory briefing on the potential impact on communities, trade, border crossings and regulations...The government has a running list of “reasonable worst-case scenarios”, which is constantly being amended and updated. Earlier this month it included a gamut of serious concerns.
According to an internal document seen by the Guardian, these included:

• A reduction in certain fresh foods and increases in prices, with people on low incomes disproportionately affected.[No strawberries! Price rises unlike with any other!]
• Price rises across utilities and services including fuel.[ as bad as the steady increase over the last 5 years?]
• Private companies “cashing in” because they will put commercial considerations first.[a terrible slur]
• Police forces being stretched by the likelihood of protests and counter-protests, along with an increase in public disorder [maybe the Guardina should stop encouraging PV demos?] .
• Restocking of medicines becoming problematic after the first six weeks.[more dying diabetics]
• Disruption of supplies to vets, which could “impact the UK’s ability to prevent and control disease outbreaks” among animals [should have mentioned pets as well].
• A significant reduction in the flow of goods through Dover and Eurotunnel to as low as 13% of current capacity on the day [my emphasis] of Brexit.[should reduce the 27km queues anyway?]

Even COBRA might be unable to cope:

“Cobra can only take decisions if it knows what is going on at the local level,” said one. “It needs information that has been properly collected and collated. At the moment we don’t have that system in place.”

The Graun  ends with its trump card:

On Friday the chancellor, Philip Hammond, said there would be significant disruption to the UK economy if Britain left the EU without a deal.

And then, in a climax designed to really terrify us all into marching to demand no deal is 'taken off the table', they cite Hammond again:

“We will find ways of managing things like the additional time it takes for trucks to get through the border,” he told the BBC’s Today programme. “But it might take us quite a while to sort that out. So there will be a short-term impact through disruption. There will be a long-term impact through a reduction in the size of our economy.”

The Queen, God Bless Her!

Grauniad ( and the Times) led early editions with the news that the Queen gave a speech to the Women's Insittute. Naturally, it had to relate to Brexit somehow:

Queen's speech calling for 'common ground' seen as Brexit allusion 

Eslsewhere, there is another example of 'balanced' reporting:

No-deal Brexit will disrupt UK economy, says Philip Hammond

Chancellor says disruption of leaving EU with no deal would ‘settle down’

While he was there ( at Davos): 'Hammond said companies had to accept that changes were coming – such as an end to the free movement of people and business models built on a supply of cheap labour.'

In another version  of the story, Hammond seems more steely:

Philip Hammond urges business leaders to accept Brexit result

“We need to get the politics right,” Hammond said at a Confederation of British Industry (CBI) lunch in Davos. “Even from the narrowest interpretation of business interests, it would be a pyrrhic victory to meet the needs of the economy, but by shattering the broad economic consensus behind our country’s political and economic system.”

 

Elsewhere,it is Graun business as usual:

The pound soared after Theresa May suffered the biggest parliamentary defeat ever over her Brexit plan, as currency traders in the City bet that the chances of a hard Brext in less than 70 days’ time had significantly diminished....Stock markets around the world have rallied over the past month after the worst December for Wall Street since 1931. The FTSE 100 has staged a strong recovery along with other major global indices as hopes grow for a resolution in the US-China dispute over trade, which has been acting as a handbrake on the global economy. The UK’s major listed companies have gained by more than 6% in a month, despite lingering concerns over Brexit....UK inflation declined to the lowest level in almost two years in December after a drop in petrol prices....An increase in firms stockpiling before a potential no-deal Brexit helped UK factory output grow at the fastest pace in six months during December, amid growing fears of border delays...The average wages of British workers rose at the fastest annual rate since the financial crisis in the three months to November as unemployment fell to the lowest rate since the mid-1970s...The Office for National Statistics said the UK’s contribution to the EU budget was £1.5bn higher than in December 2017; transfers to Brussels can fluctuate at the end of each year.

Must be galling for them.Luckily:

Britain’s trade in goods deficit – the gap between imports and exports – unexpectedly widened in November to £12bn from £11.9bn in October, as the weak pound failed to lift export volumes abroad...UK consumers reined in their spending in December over the key Christmas shopping period after splashing out in November on Black Friday promotions...UK house prices fell at the fastest rate in six years in December, while the outlook for sales was the weakest in two decades, according to the latest snapshot from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors [a plus for me]...UK car sales fell at the fastest rate since the world plunged into recession a decade ago, according to data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. While consumer demand has waned as the Brexit vote dents households’ finances and knocks confidence in making big purchases, several other problems have plagued the car industry.

Note all the other problems mentioned as well as Brexit.

Kettle gets close

Nearly adequate complexity is demonstrated by M (banging on and on) Kettle in el gurdino today. The situation is more difficult than was the Good Friday agreement, he says, and in a typical liberal Grauniad way bemoans the absence of leaders as good as Paisley and McGuinness: 'Unlike in Northern Ireland’s, ours is a conflict which no leader has won the authority to try to resolve by consensus.'

More generally, he summarises some results of recent polling, which, anong other things, nmust  offer bad news for PV supporters:

There is almost no consensus among voters about what should happen now....n his keynote address, the political scientist John Curtice argued that the practical problem with Brexit is that there is very little middle ground on which the two sides can make trades...it is not just the Commons that dislikes her [May's] deal. Twice as many voters oppose it as support it, though often for wildly different reasons...However, none of the other alternatives is popular either. Most remainers continue to support remaining, hence their backing for a second referendum. Most leavers, though, still want to leave, with the largest group of them wanting to leave even without a deal.... For a proportion of leavers, a renegotiation is seen as the second-best option – but remainers are suspicious of that; they see going back to Brussels as a hard-Brexit ploy. The much-touted second referendum option falls into the same divide. With opinion among Tory voters now so emphatically in the leave camp, there is little incentive for May to move in the direction of a softer Brexit, let alone a second vote.

However:

Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Politics argues, on the basis of NCP’s own polling, that May’s deal is in fact the closest thing to a consensus among public opinion. At first sight, this is a weird claim, since May’s deal is far less popular in Singh’s poll than either remaining in the EU or leaving with no deal. However, when people are asked if these other outcomes might be personally acceptable to them, May’s deal vaults into a narrow lead.

Kettle thinks Brexiteers might flake -- but there is a quiet yearning in his own writing:

The determination of MPs like Yvette Cooper and Nick Boles to prevent no deal may now be alarming hard-Brexit Tories who fear the process will be delayed and softened. Some of them may decide they could live with a form of May’s deal after all. If she is able to cobble together a majority, it is possible that public opinion, exhausted by Brexit, might also fall into line...The most obvious accommodation on Brexit – a soft exit along Norway lines – might have succeeded if David Cameron had decided to stay, if May had embraced it early on, or if Jeremy Corbyn had been a different kind of Labour leader. But those chances have come and gone. One of the striking aspects of the Brexit standoff since 2016 is not just the absence of a middle ground, but the absence of political leaders who speak for it.

I don't think they will be able to stand theheat much longer

Extending Article 50?

Lots of support for this among Remainers,with an amendment scheduled for debate next week arguing for an extension of 3, 6, 9 or 12 months.: 'To pass, the amendment must first be selected by the Speaker, John Bercow, and then receive majority support in the House of Commons and House of Lords.' says the Guran


One problem though is that the EC has to agree. Why wouldn't they? A Barnier interview today in the Graun

If Britain asks for an extension, it has to be approved by EU leaders. They will only agree if three questions are answered: first and second, why and how long? And third, will not that be a problem for holding the EU elections in May? I have no clear legal answer to the third question yet. It is important that the EU’s democratic processes are not disturbed by this, however.

The May elections are for MEPs and the EC is already worried about 'populist' MEPs dominating their Parliament. They don't want any more British Brexiteer MEPs to join them.

Barnier also addressed the Irish border issue:

There will be checks in case of a no-deal-Brexit. We will do everything possible to enforce them unobtrusively. However, that will not be possible with everything. How should we control animals crossing the border? There will have to be checks. Again, the problem arose from Brexit and we expect the UK to take responsibility [some chance,pal -- we will, as the EC reminds us 'a third country' by then]

Meanwhile, Project Fear/ Rallying for Remainers dribbles on in hte Guranida as ever:

A no-deal Brexit would be “incredibly damaging” for our security, the head of UK counter-terrorism policing has warned....Basu, an assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan police, said: “This isn’t a political point, this is a factual requirement [well go on then Guardian reporters -- challenge] between security services and policing and my counterparts in Europe and our need to share information.

The trouble is that since Project Fear(s) and the obviously partisan if not hectoring statements by a number of public bodies to scare us or solidify them, no-one knows if this is a real issue or not. Now, all information looks strategic.

There are some mostly unattributed and unchallenged 'facts', which only adds to the suspicion:

Under current measures, it takes six days to check if a foreign national has criminal convictions elsewhere. Under any replacement system in the event of a no-deal Brexit, that could take 66 days....For every suspect held under the European arrest warrant who is wanted by British police, officers in the UK arrest eight on behalf of their European colleagues....Richard Martin, the police chief lead on international policing, has said a no-deal Brexit would make it harder to arrest the two Russian novichok suspects if [!] the two men left Russia and entered an EU country.

Irish border --latest

In the Guarnida:

No-deal Brexit would mean hard Irish border, EU confirms

Spokesman says it is ‘pretty obvious’ border controls would be needed under no deal

So the priorities are now clear.After all the pious bleating about the Good Friday Agreement, the EU will impose a border in the name of trade regulation:

The EU has confirmed it will enforce a hard border on the island of Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit, despite the risk it would pose to peace....In comments that will be highly uncomfortable for Dublin, Jean-Claude Juncker’s chief spokesman told reporters it was “pretty obvious” that border infrastructure would be necessary if the UK were to leave without deal.... So of course we are for peace. Of course we stand behind the Good Friday agreement but that is what a no-deal scenario would entail.”

Meanwhile, on the Parliamentary coup front:

Two Labour MPs [Lammy and Phillipson] campaigning for a second EU referendum have said they have no choice but to work with the Liberal Democrats and other politicians openly critical of Jeremy Corbyn’s policy on Brexit in the hope of eventually securing a vote. (Guardina) . [And] Phillipson said she wanted the Commons to vote on a second referendum only when it had a chance of succeeding. “I want to make sure when we get to the point when we want to secure a referendum, it is a time when we have the greatest prospects of success.”

Surely a case to withdraw the Labour whip?

Frictionless trade*

Another version of the lorries circumnavigating the world in 2.5 days ( below)

In the event of a no-deal Brexit, French authorities have warned a two-minute delay at the border could lead to 27,000 vehicles queuing on both sides of the Channel.

That story follows a lorry driver through Calais at the moment: 

“I wanted to make it common knowledge how congested Calais already is. It runs smoothly, but sometimes you can wait up to nine hours,” said Wilkinson...“This is pure luck it only took an hour-and-a-half. A few hours later and it would be gridlock,” added Wilkinson, who runs a fleet of refrigerated lorries from Kent across the Channel every day, then brings food back.

So if I have the maths right, the nine hour delay experienced by this driver, with queues of 27k vehicles (if it is every) 2 minutes predicted by French authorities, means a queue of 7,290 km outside both Calais and Dover?  At ,say, 50 vehicles per km, that will be queues of 3,545,000 vehicles.

Interestingly, we learn that:

Between 6,000 and 10,000 trucks cross the Channel every day, and all checks – bar those of passports and for fraud and smuggling – are carried out on the French side because of limited space at the cliff-edged port of Dover.

And that:

But the best-laid plans could be undone by language issues, with knock-on delays as haulage is now dominated by Polish and Romanian-licensed lorries, with many drivers unable to speak French or English

 It all sounds pretty dysfunctional already,and in need of reform.

The first link points to another story from the Road Haulage Association:

Government plans for customs checks at Dover in a no-deal scenario are so impractical it would take eight hours to clear an average lorry carrying food and goods from Calais, the Road Haulage Association has warned...As it stands, each haulier entering Britain will be required to submit a 40-field declaration form per consignment before travel...“The form takes 10 minutes to fill out. If you take a large retailer who has 8,000 consignments [in one lorry], that would take 170 people eight hours to process one trailer,” said Richard Burnett, RHA chief executive...“That is the worst-case scenario. But even if you took the average trailer which has 400 consignments per delivery, that would take nine people eight hours to process.”

However, a local French politician is reported:

Bertrand said the French are so concerned about no-deal, they are going ahead with arrangements to keep traffic flowing in Calais...“It is very important to accelerate preparations at a national level. The lorries that will be stopped at the Franco-British border in Calais and elsewhere are not those just for the region but for the whole of Europe and companies that will be blocked from trading will be from the whole of Europe, so delays will affect all countries,” he said...Bertrand said there would be temporary border inspection posts for food controls in place for April and that recruitment had begun for the first batch of 250 customs officials...The region was also working on a “fastpass” virtual queuing system to counter stop-start congestion...“We need to tell companies locally in France and across Europe about changes that will take place at the border on customs and encourage companies to register the goods that they are trading as early as possible in the process rather than doing everything at the border ... We need to mobilise everybody to avoid that catastrophe,” he said.
A spokesman for HMRC said traders would submit customs declarations before transit to avoid delays...He said while no-deal would be a challenge, HMRC had “well developed plans” to ensure “functioning customs, VAT and excise system” in such a scenario.

Headlines versus copy*

Nice simple example today in the Graun. 

Headline:

Brexit bites: more than 200 products subject to shrinkflation, says ONS 

Copy: 

Shrinkflation was an established trend in Britain well before the Brexit vote, as firms used stealth tactics to eke out greater profits at the expense of consumers. 

Observer uncovers racism

The Absurder today has a Belgian scientist accuse Brexiteers of racism. With deepening paranoia, and a strange disregard for worrying about anything like the dangers of generalization or needing to define his terms he says:

Brexit has blighted the nation and distorted its attitude to international science, said De Strooper. As a result, his UK Dementia Research Institute, set up in 2016 at a cost of £250m with the aim of turning the UK into a world leader in dementia research, now faces serious funding and recruitment problems....De Strooper insisted he would continue leading the project and help its scientists achieve their goals. Brexit just makes that aim much more difficult. “There used to be an open mentality in this country, but over the past two years that has changed to something that is close to racism,” said the scientist. “I always felt at home in Britain so, when I took up the job, I thought I would be coming to family....“But the country has become anti-European, anti-international. Many Brexiters [sic] say Anna Soubry is a fascist. It is just the reverse, of course, and as a foreigner I ask, ‘When will it be my turn?’ When are they going to gather outside my institute, demanding why I am recruiting all these foreigners. ‘Belgian, go home’, they’ll shout.” [Burn Agatha Christie novels featuring Hercule Poirot!]

Evidence for racism against foreign scientists is rather odd:

“I am not going to be able to convince bright young scientists to come over, along with their families, so that they can work with me and help beat the scourge of dementia. They will know they will not be made welcome. Some are already being turned back, in fact.”...Last year, De Strooper said, he tried to get a temporary visa for a young Indian scientist, who was then working in Belgium, to speak at a UK seminar. “He was highly educated, an expert in his field, and had a good salary, but the UK authorities would not let him attend a two-day meeting. Nor would they explain the grounds for that refusal. So we are already treating foreign scientists badly.”...De Strooper contrasted Britain’s attitude to scientists with its luring of top foreign footballers to ensure the English Premier League is the best in the world. “It sees nothing wrong with that, but it does not want to do the same for scientists who would make sure our science maintains its top-flight status in the UK.”

There might (or might not) be something more substantial in this:

in the period 2007-13 Britain paid a total of €5.4bn towards research, development and innovation activities in the EU. In return, it received €8.8bn in EU grants for research projects carried out at universities and other scientific centres in the UK. “We would no longer be eligible for these grants after a hard Brexit [depends on what you mean there, of course] and so British scientists would lose a great deal of money,” said De Strooper.

Then there is more paranoid stuff:

After a hard Brexit, most financial experts believe the UK economy would take a hit and government coffers would have much [ an additional qualifier] less in them than at present. “That means that when I go for the next set of UK grants to maintain our work, there will be little chance of them being maintained at current level – never mind making up for all that EU money we will also have lost,” said De Strooper.

Coup -- who'd have thought it

An extraordinary story in the Sunday Times today:

how a senior House of Commons official helped rebel MPs who are plotting to derail Brexit...Dominic Grieve, the former attorney-general, has been in secret communications with Colin Lee, the clerk of bills, with the explicit intention of suspending Britain’s departure from the European Union...Lee drew up three versions of the plan for Grieve — each of which would overturn centuries of parliamentary precedent — and then swore him to secrecy....Two different groups of rebels will then table amendments, to be debated on January 29, that will seek to allow back-bench MPs to seize control of Commons business and force through their own legislation — a device seen by May’s team as a constitutional “coup”...One group, led by Nick Boles and Yvette Cooper, will attempt to outlaw a no-deal Brexit. But a group of more than 20 plotters led by Grieve want to go further by suspending article 50.

Most extraordinary of all, it seems there is an odd procedure to let a minority of backbenchers dominate legislation in our 'constitution'

Their plan would need the support of 300 MPs — not even a majority — as long as they came from five different parties. Only 10 Tories would have to approve, making it all but impossible for May’s team to thwart the plot.

What on earth could prompt the rebels to take such an unprecedented move?

Richard Harrington, a business minister, broke cover last night to say: “We will do anything we can to stop this nonsense of a hard Brexit. We don’t want to be put in a position where we have to resign from the government for that to be the case. That might mean supporting the Nick Boles plan. I’m not prepared to have it on my conscience to sell business down the river.”

May seems to have done some work of her own:

the prime minister’s plan B to salvage her Brexit deal can be disclosed. She wants to offer a bilateral treaty to Ireland that would remove the hated “backstop” from the EU withdrawal treaty and prevent a hard border by other means....However, last night a senior Irish source said the plan was “not a runner”.

Polly pecks at old people

P Toynbee seems to have finally succumbed to intolerance and despair in the Guarnida yesterday. She says that tomorrow will see the day when more young people join the electoral register than old people leave it (by dying), hence 'This is the day, in theory, when the country turns remain'. As a result:

The true “will of the people” looks considerably more questionable if it turns out to be the will of dead people – not the will of those who have the most life ahead of them to face the consequences'. 

All her past campaigning seems to have been replaced by just the one policy -- wait for the oldd to die and then they can be ignored. The current batch of MPs will have been elected by some of those now-dead people too, of course -- so shall we recall them?

She thinks there is a swing to Remain (confirmed by today's YouGov polling), but  is still worried, as are they all, that Leave might win again after another successful campaign:

It’s right to fear how much further they might go in the case of a second referendum, always wrong-footing a painfully fact-based gentler remain campaign. I like the remain campaigners’ self-mocking and unshrill homemade placards on their upbeat Ode to Joy demonstrations: “Brexit – is it worth it?”, “This doesn’t seem very well thought through”, “Let’s call the whole thing off”, “CakeNotHate”,”I want to have my gateau and share it”, “I want my continent back”. Will the remainers be up to the bare-knuckle bloody fistfight of a bitter second round? Factual rebuttals are so much harder to explain than crude bare-faced lies.

I don't remember that 'gentler fact-based' description, I must say. She points to the llie about the bus as ever, but that was preceeedd by a lie about the EU paying for loads of facilities. Implict racism about Turkey was an excuse to label all Leavrers racist, stupid, ignorant,narrow etc. Leave politicians wer personally abused -- by P Toynbee as well.  Typically for metropolitan luvvies, she likes the posters!