More flaking*

The Guardian today speaks for all the worried petit bourgeoisie, I am sure.

Uncertainty over Brexit is ruining our personal lives 

Z Williams says:

I’ve never felt the public realm bleed so relentlessly into my personal life that I’m drenched in unknowables and can’t make any decisions at all...All questions end: “Wait and see what happens in March, I guess.” “Do we move house?” is merely the headline uncertainty that probably only affects a few. Where do you go on holiday when you don’t know what’s going to happen to the pound? This stuff matters. I have a friend who went to France last year and spent £25 on a chicken in a market. She said: “You know if you got mugged by your own parent? That’s what it tasted like.”... Is that supposed to be something only a spoilt person would object to? Is it tempting fate to renew a pet passport? Should your kid learn Spanish, or would he be better off with karate? Should you leave your diary blank from here on, block out some time for your own civil disobedience?

A marvellous illustration of flake in the face of risk -- risk about experiencing any changes to their congenial metropolitan lives.

Remain's first martyr?

The Grudnia today has this:

‘Beyond insane’: why one woman fears no-deal Brexit could kill her 

Madeleine Warren’s life depends on imported supplies for her daily kidney dialysis

“If I can’t get my dialysis supplies, it would kill me,” said Warren, a former executive at Goldman Sachs [so maybe indirectly responsible for a few deaths herself?] . “If there was serious disruption to certain supplies and you couldn’t do dialysis, then within a week you could die.”...She spoke out as the government moved to try to reassure the public that medical supplies were secure in the event of crashing out of the EU. The government revealed it has created a logistics hub in Belgium where vital medical supplies will be stockpiled to stop the NHS running out....Warren says she does not feel reassured by the government statements...Warren adds that she has had no reassurance that supplies will be secure either from the renal unit at the hospital or the government.

She says she is so concerned that she is prepared to go on dialysis strike [so sometimes strikes are acceptable, even to a former banker?] outside Downing Street to drive home the dangers facing her and other home dialysis patients.

A marvellous example of how new experiences of risk are leaving the middle classes unable to cope. They are not even reassured by this (appearing right at the end of the article):

“While we never give guarantees, we are confident that, if everyone – including suppliers, freight companies, international partners and the health and care system – does what they need to do, the supply of medicines and medical products should be uninterrupted in the event of exiting the EU without a deal,” said the health minister, Stephen Hammond.

JC and the EC

The Observer carries an important message for us all:

The Church of England is to urge congregations to take part in five days of prayer as Britain approaches the deadline for leaving the EU....Justin Welby told the Church of England’s General Synod: “We cannot ignore the warnings that have been proffered about the possible profound impact that the next months may possibly have on the poorest of our society....[but/and] ...If attention was not paid to the “pain and exclusion” of some parts of society revealed by Brexit, greater division and strife would result...Welby said last month that a no-deal Brexit would be “not only a political and practical failure, but a moral one”...Welby voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, but has since stressed the need for reconciliation and restraint.

Meanwhile:

John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, led the synod in a prayer asking God to “save our parliamentary democracy” and “protect the high court of parliament and all its members from partiality and prejudice”.

On other pages, an ingenious argument that the defecting MPs, of whom the Observer is quite supportive, should not do anything silly like trigger byelections:

The 12 MPs are facing calls to trigger immediate byelections. The argument is that their constituents should be given the chance to endorse or reject their new status. But the arguments against weigh stronger still. The principle of representative democracy is that voters elect MPs to represent them in the best way they see fit until the next general election. There has never been a convention that defecting MPs should trigger a byelection – indeed, the vast majority historically have not – and nor should there be [so much for mould-breaking].. Our two-party, majoritarian system is no longer representative of a fragmented electorate divided along more than one axis. Our first-past-the-post electoral system makes party realignment almost impossible even if there are significant shifts in the electorate. To set a precedent that all defecting MPs must trigger a byelection quashes any realignment before it has even begun, risking even greater public disaffection with politics.

And, in the wider scheme of thing, there is probably some deeper, truer sense of democracy that only liberals can detect:

It is not inconceivable that this small group could help alter the course of Brexit history [i.e. stop Brexit]. In which case, job done.

Big boys' Brexit

An interesting piece in the Guradian today(!) from S Jenkins, noting that whatever the deal for other sectors, big finance has already cracked it:

An iron law of modern British government says that whatever London wants, London gets. On Monday, with no fuss or publicity, the Bank of England and a group of City interests reached an apparently boring deal in Paris with the European Security and Markets Authority. It follows a similar deal with the European commission last December. Both state, in effect, that, as far as the City is concerned, if there is a no-deal Brexit, Brexit did not happen. It was just play-acting by idiots down the road in Westminster....The regulators have duly issued licences to the clearing houses, allowing Europe’s banks to disregard EU rules and continue trading on London’s derivatives platforms. Financially speaking, London is to become a “free port”...a light lunch in Brussels, a pat on the back in Paris, a quiet handshake and let’s call it a bad dream.

The best bit was setting the motto of  a big company called ION Markets -- 'We need to disrupt the status quo' -- against the Bank of England's spokesperson: “The important thing is we have certainty,”

For every other business  there is no such certainty, of course.Predicting the need for State subsidy to protect those industries, Jenkins declares:

Brexit will mean a Tory party taking Britain back to state intervention by the back door..

Not necessarily a bad thing, we might think, allowing for the contradictions at the heart of moderncapitalism that would result, but Jenkins concludes with what every left Brexit opponent of Mrs May's deal knew:

The real gap that Brexit will widen yet further is not just between financial services and trade in food and manufactures. It is between London and the rest of the country. Already the Treasury’s staggering £4.2bn “for Brexit preparations” is tipping jobs into the capital. The greatest irony is that London and the south-east of England, which voted overwhelmingly for remain, will emerge from a hard Brexit richer than ever. It is the provinces that voted leave that will suffer.

Guardian readers explain their views

No doubt in one of those 'we'd like to hear your views' appeals, the Graun has brief extracts from people who have changed their minds over Brexit -- both ways.

Leavers who now would remain say things like:

I voted to leave the EU purely as an emotionally driven response, to rid ourselves of David Cameron and George Osborne. Now, I think, with our country dangerously divided and politicians of all parties discredited, we should listen to British businesses and preserve jobs by voting to remain. The EU is by no means an ideal partner, but better the devil you know. Why take a step into the unknown?... I am also beginning to agree with members of the younger generation who feel betrayed that the small majority in the referendum was largely down to votes by senior citizens...If we leave, there will be huge uncertainty and a protracted period of readjustment during which many thousands of jobs will be lost.

I felt, and still feel, the EU is an unnecessary organisation that allows richer countries to leech workers from its poorer members. There’s too much reliance on other nations, and I’d like to see us invest in proper training,..Changing my mind has been gradual; the effect it will have on my family has finally dawned on me. My parents have lived in Bulgaria for more than 10 years, and I worry about how they may be treated....

I believed the bus advert that said the NHS would get £350m if we left the EU. The NHS has been going down the pan, and, instead of sending that money to Brussels, I thought it would be wicked if we could get better funding. Soon after, it became clear we weren’t going to get that money. I felt betrayed and disappointed that people in power had been lying...Even the government’s own forecast states that it will harm our economy.

While those remainers now supporting Leave say:

I disagreed with vote leave because I felt it was supported by the Russians and Americans, who were trying to destabilise Europe. The EU has also made progress in bringing about regulatory change of social media companies, which I think do present a pernicious problem for children in our country. I am a fervent SNP supporter...but I think it is essential for the UK to honour the result and to meet its financial and legal obligations upon dissolving its treaty with the EU

We have done really well out of being part of the EU, and at the time I felt it was best for our company and staff to remain. It took me about 12 months to change my mind. When the backlash started against those who voted to leave, I wanted to understand why they voted that way. I’ve always been pro-European, but, since the referendum, have become anti-EU...As I now see it, the EU operates to benefit itself, not its citizens, and is no longer responding to the needs of our country. Hopefully, a reduction in economic migration will help slow down the rate of change in communities, allowing people to build ties within them. I no longer feel our business will be adversely affected. In the end, companies will create systems that will smooth any obstacles the EU puts up.

I’ve always considered myself to be European because my dad has lived in France since I was 11. I voted to remain, as I really wanted to keep my rights to live and work abroad, and to visit my family. From what I could see, there are just so many reasons to stay in. I know the EU is not perfect, and some parts of it can be quite cumbersome, but I am convinced that leaving the customs union will make us poorer... However, I live in an area where a lot of people voted to leave, and if there were another referendum I think it could really disenfranchise them enough to never vote again...In my opinion, it is too late to stop Brexit... If we leave with no deal, in 12 months’ time, we may be begging the EU to take us back

Meanwhile, a more typical Guardian appeal in this:

My grandfather was a Nazi. I’ve seen why we need the EU

Labour split helps Brexit?

The long -awaited split in Labour was launched yesterday. Someone has already noticed the negative-facing nature of their reasons for the split -- they don't like anti-semitism, they don't like Corbyn, they don't like Brexit, they are centrists because they don't like left or right. We have had a re-run stuff about breaking the mould of politics from he-who-would-be-king, C Umunna, but even that seems borrowed from old SDP/Lib arguments spiced with some recent Guardianista stuff about the new generational politics replacing social class -- so presumably they will dissolve themselves when they reach 45, or whatever P Toynbee thinks is too old?

P Toynbee herself is not too keen though:

These seven lack anyone of the stature, public recognition or intellectual heft of the SDP leaders. The Gang of Four [SDP founders] between them had all held serious government office – between them they had occupied the roles of chancellor, home secretary, foreign secretary, education and transport secretary. This grouplet does not have that kind of weight and it lacks ideological substance and ideas.

 The timing is monstrously badly judged [we'll see why in a minute] and the reasons the MPs give are oddly scattergun, lacking political punch and focus... this walkout is a damaging distraction, because right here, right now, there is only one cause that matters – Brexit......These seven defectors were vague on reasons for jumping ship, beyond wishing for a better leader....Labour MPs walking away at this point only give succour to those Labour pro-Brexiters,such as Caroline Flint, who caricature those in favour of reversing Brexit as members of “metropolitan elites”.

Of those that have not split: 

The best of them, such as Peter Kyle and Yvette Cooper, are stuck deep into battle to rescue us from calamity: Labour will again back Cooper’s amendment next week to prevent a no-deal crash-out and delay withdrawal. Some of those 35 Labour MPs who failed to back it last time are being brought round, giving it a good chance of success.

Toynbee reawakens the old stuff about Labour being dominated by the Unions (an SDP and general nice persons' theme)

you only had to listen to the Unite leader’s infuriating [they are still SO angry] pro-Brexit views on the Peston show last week to suspect he spoke the Labour leader’s mind too. 

She also reminds us that it can get personal, even for nice people, whpo would otherwise condemn those pickets shouting at 'scabs' or 'blacklegs' :

So deep was the SDP/Labour split that sitting in the Guardian canteen, Labourites picked up their plates and walked away from us SDP-ites. Schism is bitter and personal. And in this particular case, needless.

Poor Toynbee has had a hard time, what with that and people not being much nicer to her mother on the switchboard during wartime

There are already counter-accusations that this will only keep Tories in power just as did the SDP. On that, J Hunt has already cited the Labour split to advantage:

Jeremy Hunt has seized on Labour’s split, claiming to European foreign ministers it proved that only concessions to win round Conservative rightwingers will get the Brexit deal through the Commons...During a frenetic day of lobbying in Brussels, the foreign secretary privately counselled his EU counterparts that the opposition could not be relied upon, even if the government pivoted to backing a customs union.

News values and accurate reporting*

A small insightful piece in the Guradian today by A Chiles:

There are plenty of thoughtful, pragmatic remainers and leavers. They’re just not getting any airtime

Just after the referendum I made a Panorama documentary in the West Midlands asking people why they had voted the way they had. The leavers, the majority, thumped their tubs in triumph. The remainers hung their heads in despair at the simple-mindedness of the leavers. Standard stuff....Two and a half years later, for Radio 4, I went back to speak to some of the same people. Having been told – and even blithely said myself – that we were all at war with ourselves, I prepared for the worst. My interviewees’ positions would surely have hardened...But I didn’t need my political flak jacket at all. All but one of the leavers were studies in pragmatic moderation...The remainers – even more encouragingly, to my mind – weren’t giving it the old I-told-you-so.

The sobering thing for me was the realisation that I only heard these moderate voices because I was stuck with them – this being the whole point of the programme, to go back to those I had heard from before. In the normal run of things they wouldn’t have made the cut and they would never have got on air. What good is a moderate, considered voice in a news vox pop?

The dark arts vol 94

It seems that the egregious O Robbins, main civil servant Brexit negotiator and major actor in the Kit-Kat plot ( see below), was overheard in a bar predicting an extension to the Article 50 deadline.The Grudnia has:

Olly Robbins, was overheard in a Brussels bar saying MPs would be given a last-minute choice between her deal and a lengthy delay to Britain’s departure from the EU...

The link leads to earlier coverage:

Robbins said the government had “got to make them believe that the week beginning end of March ... extension is possible, but if they don’t vote for the deal then the extension is a long one.”..“The issue is whether Brussels is clear on the terms of extension,” Robbins was overheard saying. “In the end they will probably just give us an extension.”..On the backstop, Robbins appeared to confirm that the government’s initial plan was for the backstop, which effectively keeps the UK in a customs union, to form a temporary “bridge” to the long-term trading relationship...“The big clash all along is the ‘safety net’,” Robbins said. “We agreed a bridge but it came out as a ‘safety net’.” [Quite revealing. How duplicitous! ]

The Government denies all:

"Mr Robbins is likely to be appalled by this story [of the leak not the substance?] Officials advise. Ministers decide. What matters ultimately is the policy of the prime minister and the cabinet.”...But another senior Brexiter said “the trouble with Mr Robbins is that he is a draughts player in a chess world”...Robbins’ revealing remarks are likely to embolden those ministers who are increasingly anxious about the threat of a no-deal Brexit....

Back to more conventional fears of dark artery on Facebook with this by G Monbiot:

Dark money is pushing for a no-deal Brexit. Who is behind it? 

Almost everywhere trust in governments, parliaments and elections is collapsing. Shared civic life is replaced by closed social circles that receive entirely different, often false, information. The widespread sense that politics has become so corrupted that it can no longer respond to ordinary people’s needs has provoked a demagogic backlash that in some countries begins to slide into fascism..In Britain, for example, we now know that the EU referendum was won with the help of widespread cheating. We still don’t know the origins of much of the money spent by the leave campaigns. For example, we have no idea who provided the £435,000 channelled through Scotland, into Northern Ireland, through the coffers of the Democratic Unionist party and back into Scotland and England, to pay for pro-Brexit ads. Nor do we know the original source of the £8m that Arron Banks delivered to the Leave.EU campaign. We do know that both of the main leave campaigns have been fined for illegal activities, and that the conduct of the referendum has damaged many people’s faith in the political system...Since mid-January an organisation called Britain’s Future has spent £125,000 on Facebook ads demanding a hard or no-deal Brexit. ...So who or what is Britain’s Future? Sorry, I have no idea. As openDemocracy points out, it has no published address and releases no information about who founded it, who controls it and who has been paying for these advertisements. The only person publicly associated with it is a journalist called Tim Dawson, who edits its website. Dawson has not yet replied to the questions I have sent him. It is, in other words, highly opaque

 It's not just the Brexiteers though,although the headline would never let you guess:

The anti-Brexit campaigns are not much better. People’s Vote and Best for Britain have also been spending heavily on Facebook ads, though not as much in recent weeks as Britain’s Future....At least we know who is involved in these remain campaigns and where they are based, but both refuse to reveal their full sources of funding. People’s Vote says “the majority of our funding comes from small donors”. It also receives larger donations but says “it’s a matter for the donors if they want to go public”. Best for Britain says that some of its funders want to remain anonymous, and “we understand that”. 

Something Must Be Done. Monbiot comes to radical conclusions, not signalled at all in the headline (luckily, they are fantasy in the current circumstances so we can all nod wisely and move on):

Our politicians have instead left it to Facebook to do the right thing.... mostly, I think, it’s because, like other governments, it has become institutionally incapable of responding to our emergencies. It won’t rescue democracy because it can’t. The system in which it is embedded seems destined to escalate rather than dampen disasters. Ecologically, economically and politically, capitalism is failing as catastrophically as communism failed....As the famous saying goes: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Our urgent task is to turn this the other way round.

 And we do this by staying in the EU?

End global neo-liberalism -- by staying in the EU?!

Longish feature in el Riguanado today by a writer ( who else) and Guardian journalist, one M. Carter, plugging his book (too cynical?) on what he found when he walked through England in 2016 'in the footsteps of a 1981 march against unemployment that my late father had helped to organise.' So a bit of Oedipus too, fairly common in these pieces?

on my walk I was shocked by the level of poverty, by the sheer number of homeless people in doorways and parks, and by the high streets of boarded-up shops and pubs, full of payday loan outlets and bookies. People in those former industrial towns spoke of their anger and betrayal, of having being forgotten by Westminster politicians, of their communities having been destroyed as the manufacturing that had sustained them either folded or moved to low-wage economies.Nearly everyone I spoke to in those towns said they were going to vote for Brexit. There was a lot of talk of “taking back control”, and in the context of the industrial wastelands, that sentiment made a lot of sense. 

However, this could not be rational politics: 'But the EU issue was, for a majority, a proxy for their pain'. What sort of 'majority' and how he was able to psychoanalyse so many people is a mystery.

He is right to say that: 

since then we have had a government paralysed by Brexit, effectively not governing at all.. At a time when politicians should be reaching out to leave voters with concrete proposals for rebalancing our economy, heavily based as it is on services and centred in the south-east, we get a continuation of turbo-charged austerity. In their call for a second referendum, remainers should ask themselves whether the anger that drove the result in June 2016 has been even remotely addressed.

Harrowing details ensue of the results of austerity in Walsall or Stoke:

“The establishment of a neoliberal consensus in Britain has been … an anti-municipal project,” wrote Tom Crewe in a 2016 essay for the London Review of Books. “Austerity is Thatcherism’s logical end-point. People can no longer expect the services they pay for to be run in their interest, rather than the interest of shareholders.”

One person he spoke to:  

railed against the amount of money spent on infrastructure projects in the south-east compared with the rest of the country (figures from the IPPR in 2014 showed that every Londoner had £5,426 spent on them annually, compared with £223 in the north-east) and told me he would be voting out in the EU referendum. But that might make the economy even more precarious, I said. He paused for a moment, narrowed his eyes. “If the economy goes down the toilet,” he said, “at least those bastards [in London] will finally know what it feels like to be us.”...

In 1976, three decades of the postwar settlement had seen the UK reach “peak equality”, according to a 2013 economic study, when the country was better off than it had ever been before or since. Forty years of neoliberalism has destroyed that for ordinary people...If you asked the vast majority of people what they want, they would say that essential services should be renationalised (a 2017 YouGov survey found only 25% and 31% of people respectively thought our trains and energy companies should be privately run). They want properly funded health and education services, and to live in a country where they are not afraid to grow old or sick. They want jobs with meaning and value and security. They want to feel that politicians are in charge, not their corporate paymasters. And many, whether progressives like it or not, want a conversation about immigration.

The piece concludes:

until our politicians begin to acknowledge that the globalised neoliberal economic model is a disaster for human beings and the planet we inhabit, we will remain angry and scared and vulnerable to dog whistles.

But then. Then! After all that!:

Brexit will deliver none of this. As driven by the right, it is the final part of the race to the bottom that started 40 years ago. 

And Remain -- more global neoliberalism?

 

Then they came for the kitchen sink

Well -- nice German bathrooms anyway, the latest commodity threatened by Brexit, says the Gudrian, along with cheap strawberries, fresh tomatoes, and prompt Amazon deliveries. Soon the working classes will not be the only unwashed -- the rich might get a bit squiffy too. In a German factory:

Two workers are painstakingly arranging a mosaic of hundreds of tiny Versace-designed grey and white patterned tiles. A welder stands by ready to seal it into the wall of one of hundreds of units the company is constructing for the Dubai-owned Damac tower block in Nine Elms, south-west London. Deba is also proud of having completed no fewer than 1,242 bathrooms for the Battersea power station conversion – “one of our biggest showpieces so far”, Von Gruben says....Elsewhere a shower wall cut out of Thessaloniki Grigio marble is destined for a luxury development next to the Shard, for now the EU’s tallest building, which Deba is kitting out with 290 bathrooms.

There's a rallying cry for any new emotional and patriotic case for Remain -- vote for luxury German bathrooms in posh buildings! The piece ends with a recognition, at last, of the potential damage to the German economy should it all go 'crashing' next month:

€85bn Value of German exports to the UK in 2017
7% Proportion of all German exports that go to the UK
50% Estimate by German Economic Institute of potential fall in UK-German trade after a no-deal Brexit

I hope that concentrates their minds a bit and stops all the arrogant swaggering and hypocritical bleating about the 4 sacred freedoms (which we don't seem to hear much about these days, come to think of it).

As an example of what brinkmanship might achieve, another story reviews the Irish border issue:

An August 2017 paper from the UK pushed the case for keeping Northern Ireland in the single electricity market for starters – “to keep the lights on” – and nodded at the need for regulatory equivalence for agri-food measures to avoid checks on animals and plants. The basis of the single market aspect of the Irish backstop was already there. A political fix, not a technical one...There was also the first concerted stab in a second paper at proposing a technological arrangement for customs. One option was a “highly streamlined customs arrangement” comprising trusted trader schemes with licence plate technology and exemptions for small businesses conducting 80% of cross-border trade in Northern Ireland. A second was a “customs partnership” in which the UK would collect duties on the EU’s behalf for goods destined for the bloc...Alarms bells rang in Dublin. Before they were even presented in the negotiations after the summer break, the ideas were trashed to reporters by EU officials as “magical thinking”. “We hadn’t even had a meeting by then,” a source admitted.

As the deadline approaches, things might be changing:

Today neither EU nor UK officials rule out a technological solution for the border at some point. In order to entice MPs to vote for the withdrawal agreement, it is understood the EU is looking at spelling out how just such a solution might work in the future, and its determination to work on the current problems

However: 

Asked how the UK’s fresh groping for technological fixes is being viewed in Brussels, sources point to Weyand’s recent comments. “The [British] negotiators have not been able to explain them to us and that’s not their fault,” she said. “It’s because they don’t exist.”

And never will? Europe --   land of the old technology.

Freedland and the land of the free*

There have been some silly arguments in the Guardian displaying thinly disguised hatred and spleen at the Brexiteers, getting more hysterical as the clock ticks, but this one is egregious.

J Freedland starts off with an imaginary cosmopolitan cultural history, evidently confirmed after visiting a display at the British Library he assumes we will know about,  that is used to berate an equally imaginary racist depiction of Little England: 

what will befall these islands in less than 50 days is of epic significance, breaking a thread that has run through our long history. Even in the age of Mercia, the kingdom strained hard to connect with its neighbours in “Francia”, Rome and Ireland [but not to join them in an economic union] The 10th-century court of Æthelstan was a cosmopolitan magnet to scholars from all over the continent [who all wrote in Latin of course and all shared the same religious beliefs -- all members of a dominant feudal elite in other words] . And need we mention that the Anglo-Saxons were themselves migrants [rather a polite term] from northern Europe? The Faragiste tendency, [unlocated as ever] which imagines a British past pure and unsullied by the taint of Europe, imagines a past that did not exist.... Even the softest, mildest Brexit-with-a-deal represents an act of national folly that would have had Cnut [that well-known English patriot] shaking his head in disbelief. 

No one can make a positive case for [Brexit] , [no-one has made one for Remain except via imaginary reforms] listing the concrete benefits [that sets the agenda of course] it will bring...The government’s own figures show that Brexit in whatever form will make us [I love that 'us'] poorer.

Waiting for a referendum is too risky so:

I think pro-Europeans now have to make a different move. They can’t wait for the starting gun of a referendum that may or may not ever sound. Nor is it good enough to devote their energies simply to campaigning for such a vote, or to Commons manoeuvres to get one. They need instead to make the anti-Brexit case to the public right now, as if the referendum campaign had already begun. Don’t wait. Put up the posters, book the halls, spend the money right away. Do it now....The first task is to persuade the public that Brexit has to be stopped: that leaving the EU will bring ruin, while staying in and making it better [the old vague promise] is the confident, open, patriotic choice.

Why might it work?

The polling sage John Curtice reported today that his poll of polls now has remain leading leave by 54% to 46%, with pro-Europeans way out in front among those who did not vote in 2016 (often because they were too young to do so). More striking is the small but distinct erosion of support for Brexit among those who voted leave last time.

In a petit-bourgeois Trotskyite turn to deploy rank and file to seize the streets:

“We’ve been far too up our parliamentary arses,” admits one people’s vote strategist, promising that the battle will now move to street level, with another mass demonstration on the way. He admits that they’ve paid too much attention to Westminster, which is the weather, rather than building public opposition to Brexit, which is the climate.... [But] as pro-Europeans make their case, they need to be mindful that economic catastrophism – even the sincere warnings of medicine shortages and actual corporate decisions to relocate jobs – is not cutting through. As Gary Younge wrote on these pages last week, remain needs to tell a story that goes beyond economics and speaks to national pride.

So back to an imagined history to appeal to our patriotic pride, the sort of thing cosmo journalists think might appeal to the unemployed in the North-East:

such a narrative is there, ready to be told. It is the story of a nation that has always been plural, hybrid, forged of many tribes; of a confident people who have reached across the seas to touch their closest neighbours [and often kill or rob them, and vice versa] , and who have never feared any kind of international club or alliance, because they had the confidence, even the swagger, to know they did not just belong in such a grouping, they could help shape it....The nation whose earliest works are now on display at the British Library would see the European Union and know in an instant that its place was at the heart of it.

Guardian finds a good aspect of Brexit!

The Guardian ignores the faux outrage sparked by D Tusk's remarks that he thinks there is a special place in hell for Brexiteers. More offensive for me was the sentimental stuff about unity with Ireland. It is left to G Miller (below) to reproduce the quote:

As Mr Tusk himself said today: “I’ve been wondering what a special place in hell looks like for people who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely.”

The environment correspondent of the Grduina reports that leaving the EU's Common Agricultural Policy might better protect the environment, according to a UK Government adviser, 'Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University'. Apparently, the CAP rewards those who grow most but the proposed UK replacement offers payment to those who protect the environment.

Naturally, this story cannot go unchallenged, at least at the cultural or morale level, and two side panels carry much more encouraging reports:

Peers and MPs receiving millions in EU farm subsidies 

No-deal Brexit would be catastrophic for food supply, say UK farmers

UK could use Brexit to avoid EU ban on antibiotics overuse in farming

 

 

Meanwhile, the Gurdina predicts house prices falls, sounding more like the Daily Mail. The headline says:
 

UK house prices fall in January as Brexit puts off buyers 

The copy is rather more modulated, as ever.:

House prices in the UK fell 2.9% in January from December and the annual growth rate slowed sharply as Brexit fears put off buyers, according to Halifax, one of Britain’s biggest mortgage lenders.[However] the monthly drop took the average house price down to £223,691 and came after a 2.5% rise in December. [And the MD of Halifax actually said]:“There’s no doubt that the next year will be important for the housing market, with much of the immediate focus on what impact Brexit may have. However, more fundamentally it is key underlying factors of supply and demand that will ultimately shape the market.”

And we finally learn what it is that G Miller, egregious Remain campaigner, actually wants -- a revival of the deal offered by the EC during negotiations with Cameron all those years (4) ago. (Tusk said the EC would allow us to operate for now in a kind of second-tier fringe.) May needs to accept she will never be able to get the cooperation of 'a mixture of fantasists, egotists and rightwing ideologues', says Miller. 

The Tusk deal led to the 2016 referendum in the first place, and was comprehensively rejected, or, as Miller puts it 'showed real promise in terms of addressing the issues that were, just a few months later, to dominate the referendum debate.'

 

 

Toynbee fears war, dead sheep, rationing,and people being no nicer*

Hysteria mixed with resentment at the prospect of Brexit in P Toynbee's column: 

No-deal Brexit will feel about as “in control” as a blindfold skiing novice pushed off-piste from a black run...Just to reprise the government’s own warnings: putrid rubbish will fester in the streets, and slurry will stink out the countryside, [lovely Guardian story] risking a plague of rats. Sheep will be slaughtered [no!], unexportable with a 60% tariff. Supermarket shelves will empty – it only takes a rumour to set off panic-buying [among the chattering classes especially?]. The NHS may [gosh] lack medicines [not like before Brexit]. The army and police stand ready for riots, [the Mirror story says 'Members of the military will help to keep order and bring medical supplies to hospitals, and also assist with traffic problems close to ports such as Dover.'] all this costing £4.2bn. You may shrug off Project Fear forecasts – but the pound has already fallen 15%, carmaking has lost 50% investment in a year [diesel crisis probably] , and finance is in flight with 2% less growth [not 2% less! Catastrophe!]. The business minister warns that Brexit is a crisis but no deal “will be a catastrophe”. Good grief, even the Queen may flee for fear of us storming her palace [that link leads to a piece in the Irish Examiner, but even that did not predict any palace-storming.Nor is it clear who would be doing the rioting] .

The Brexiteers remain [sic] unpanicked so far:

Their romantics, such as Charles Moore, flippantly yearn for hardship....In phone-ins, older Brexiters say, “People these days have more than enough. It’d do them good.” [an actual quote?] [Extending the war analogy herself, butnbot fliup[pantly ] Imagine digging for Brexit – how many potatoes, cabbages and tomato grow-bags might your garden fit? [especially if you live in Islington] Look in the wardrobe and think make-do-and-mend, no need for new stuff [that will clinch it -- Remainer riots will surely follow] . It will be good for the planet, good for national moral fibre if shortages bring communities together.

For Toynbee:

What tolerance does this brave island race have for privation? There’s no evidence we are stoical or rational [no WW1 or 2?, no foodbanks?] when petrol queues brought Tony Blair’s government to its knees in days [well -- the Iraq War couldn't have helped], when leaves on the line and a hint of snow paralyse  transport. [A historian says] ... Nor will leave voters tolerate what they voted for, he predicts. Even in wartime, crime soared with a thriving antisocial black market – though, in postwar austerity, spivs defying rationing seemed glamorous not villainous....“Even in a supposedly collectivist decade, people were strongly individualist,” Kynaston says [so why would such rugged individualists support the EU?]. They welcomed the NHS as “good for me”, but reading mass observation archives, he detected no widespread New Jerusalem sentiment [what on earth would that look like?]. Ahead, he fears the nationalism that brought us Brexit.

[And finally, the real evidence] my mother worked on a fire service switchboard, but she said that in wartime people were no nicer.

Above all, she can't bear the impeding triumphalism :

That’s why I remain convinced that May will swerve away from a no-deal kamikaze. ...No doubt we shall still strut like turkey cocks. No doubt our best export will be nostalgic movies about the war. But the best Brexit is no Brexit.

EU as an imagined community

Rather quiet in the Graudian today, as the EU appears to have offered some compromise on the Irish backstop, but the Brexiteers are still playing tough. A bit of ideological background to fill in while we wait:

'The UK no longer feels like home’: the British Europhiles racing for EU passports 

A long piece with individual stories of people wanting to apply for various other nationalities after Brexit. No attempt to do any more than tell their stories, of course -- no assessment of their typicalilty, no critical analysis of motives etc. The responses come from 'more than 1,100 people [who] replied' [to the Guardian's request for stories]. Backup facts include:

200,000 Britons applied in 2018 [for irish citizenship]  About half of these were from Northern Ireland – anyone born on the island of Ireland before 2005 and anyone born there since with a parent who is Irish, British or “entitled to live in Northern Ireland or the Irish state without restriction on their residency” is entitled to Irish citizenship. The other half are Britons living outside Ireland who have suddenly discovered an affinity with the birthplace of a parent or a grandparent. The number of applications has doubled since the referendum,... 200,000 Britons applied in 2018. About half of these were from Northern Ireland t. The number of applications has doubled since the referendum

Examples of reasons include:

[The writer's own family want to] retain a foothold in the EU and a place in the postwar vision of a unified Europe... “I wanted the opportunity to work wherever I chose in Europe and did not welcome the fact that the opportunity had been removed by the Brexiteers"... England...it’s who I am, but Ireland will give me the freedom to be who I want to be.”...“Britain no longer feels like home, as it has rejected Europe and I have not.”...“Getting an Irish passport has enabled me to live abroad without the worry of my tuition fees being increased to the same level as non-EU students or having to apply for some kind of student visa.”...[from a family originally fleeing from Germany before the War} “I was brought up only speaking English because my parents wanted us to feel as though we belonged to the UK. I am now applying for German citizenship alongside my British citizenship. The spur was Brexit. German citizenship will allow me, my daughter and grandchildren to remain European, which gives us more options if things get very difficult in this country. Underlying that, though, is a sense of righting a wrong, returning to the roots – at least mentally – that belonged to my parents and of which they were unjustly deprived. If the German government now wants to make amends, I welcome that.”..Brexit is offering blue passports. That doesn’t disguise the fact the passport is being devalued.”..That makes a new passport essential, in case I want to work in Switzerland or elsewhere in the EU.”..“I had always thought we would return to the UK; I no longer know if that will be possible, but at least I know that my family will be able to stay together in France. I will be able to live and work in France indefinitely and this is a great relief for me. My national identity used to be hugely important to me. Now I am embarrassed to be British and feel quite lost.”...For us, freedom of movement is a joy and a privilege. Our region is completely dependent on the border being open and invisible and we can’t imagine anyone wanting to reintroduce checks that have been removed. For my kids, Brexit is incomprehensible.”..“I have decided most probably never to return to the UK, as my family doesn’t feel welcome,” he says. “This is a shame, as I’m a UK-qualified teacher with 15 years’ experience, although it has to be said that teaching in Sweden is far less stressful than in the UK.”...But after the referendum I realised that it is about identity as well. I feel Swedish and British, European and Indian. I don’t see that as contradictory, although England versus Sweden in the World Cup was tricky.”...[a pilot! said]...“It’s partly about career security,” he says. “But for me it’s mainly about how I feel about my identity. When you go to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand – crossing the border, you’re made to feel like an outsider because you don’t have the right to be there. I don’t want to feel like that going to Europe.”

Some European countries do not seem quite as welcoming as the Irish. The UK seems fairly straightforward and cheap. In Germany, by contrast:

“It took a year, huge amounts of paperwork, an exam to prove that I was fluent in German and another on the German law and constitution,” she says. “The whole thing cost around €1,200, but now I finally have the guarantee of the same freedom of movement and security that I had for the previous 40 years.”..

The writer sums up:

I believe Gompertz’s [the pilot] more emotive argument resonates. For almost 50 years, despite the half-heartedness of the British political class, we have been citizens of Europe, with unfettered access to that beautiful, varied, culturally rich continent. Some part of us could claim to be French or Spanish, Italian or German. We had fought many wars with our neighbours; now we could enjoy a long peace and claim a stake in their wonderful countries.

Brexit may change this for ever. While my wife and son are safe in their new nationalities, the angry Welshman in our family – me – is about to lose his EU passport and the fantasy that he is Spanish. Is this really the end of the dream? If I set up a small business in Plovdiv, how long will it be before I qualify for Bulgarian citizenship?

Vote Remain because people retain a fantasy about freedom in the EU, feel unwelcome when they travel,  or because there are practical advantages (Much more understandable -- I'd apply to Ireland myself if I could). The clincher is that a Welsh Guardian correspondent is worried about the problems of setting up a hypothetical small business in Bulgaria!

Dreams of a People's Vote (still)*

W Hutton in the Observer today outlines his case:

I marched for a “people’s vote”. I co-wrote a book making the case for one, a case that included a massive programme of reform [oh that minor detail] . I have argued for it in many public meetings [strange why no-one has voted for it then] . Britain can and must be a member of this club of like-minded European states at the global standard-setting centre [that is all global capitalism does -- set common standards] of the world’s largest free-trading network [for members only]. It transcends the World Trade Organization in importance and reach, confirmed on Friday by the Japan-EU trade deal...For the EU is the enabler of prosperity and guarantor of peace in [northern] Europe. It is the friend of every principal economic interest group [every principal one? where is global finance?] – from farmers to magic circle law firms, from university lecturers to trade unionists. The British are culturally and philosophically Europeans [so why would that change?], even though too many still believe in the myth of our Dunkirk spirit exceptionalism [as ever, no rational case for Brexit]

 Hutton had a dream...

One day, I have no doubt, a second public vote will reverse Brexit. Minds will be changed by the lived experience of the economic stagnation ahead – already darkening as investment in the car industry has plunged 80% over the past three years, with turmoil in aerospace and aviation – and by growing awareness that the country was sold a lie by a bunch of vainglorious, ex-public-school boys.[This was the hope of Project Fear all along, of course -- and the contempt for classes above and below remains strong]...The prospect that this second vote might be this year, as seemed a likely possibility only weeks ago, still exists, but it is receding.

Remainers will bang on and on:

The deal will be a suppurating sore at the heart of British politics for years. Remainers will morph into Returners (I will be one), insistent that Leave sold the country a lie and that committing to Europe while reforming at home is the precondition to break out of the low growth, high inequality, low trade economy and noxiously riven society the Brexit Tory party will deliver. Leavers, backed by their hysterical, obsessive media, will insist that only the cleanest of breaks will deliver the impossible sunlit uplands of the hyper-Thatcherite world they want to construct, while blaming every reverse on pernicious Europeans.

We can rely on demographics as well as working-class experience and contempt for nobs:

Eventually, a government of the centre and left will emerge that will settle the issue and we will rejoin the EU, validated by a second public vote. Today’s young [ah yes] , a working class that has learned through experience what works [ and what puts you out of work]  and millions of naturalised EU citizens [a kind of Remainer fifth column?] will build on the existing Remain vote to create an overwhelming majority – with imperial, Thatcherite fantasies left as the preserve only of the Spectator-reading classes. The only question is whether it will take two or 10 years....The cultural, economic and popular base for Brexit does not exist [compared to the young, working class reformers and naturalised EU citizens?]  Populism, as Donald Trump is discovering, does not survive long when extravagant promises turn into real hardship. It was only callow, second-rate political leadership, along with the malevolent genius of Nigel Farage [don't forget the dark arts of Vote Leave] exploiting fears of immigration, which delivered the transient Brexit majority. The reality will out.

The EU, by contrast, is nothing but helpful:

MPs and trade union leaders involved in this betrayal should reflect on the recent proposals of the German coal exit commission. To compensate regions and towns facing the loss of mining in 2038 as the country moves to meet its climate change goals, Germany is to launch a €40bn 20-year programme of economic regeneration, a Marshall plan for its old industrial regions.[And Greece?]

Then there is the march of progress to wash away old ideas -- and help a new centre party (purely by chance):

 Will the Corbyn faction now controlling the Labour party, so endemically hostile to Europe as part of its 19th-century socialist worldview, ever rise to this challenge? We now know it can’t. The mission is to persuade a majority of the British that their best interests lie in Europe and for that either the Labour party has to be reclaimed – or a new party born.

Feb 14th seems to be the birthday, all Remainers agree, assuming May wins the vote

Plots thicken

Same stories in the Times and the Absurder about a new centre-ground party (hardly news), featuring C Umuna and A Soubry. The main rallying cry seems to be Brexit, clearly the most important issue, despite the Tory manifesto -- that and a bit of opportunism, of course. Maybe some background panic too, of the kind made famous by Beck's study of risk, and how, for the first time, the middle classes are feeling at risk of something dreadful (in Marx's day it was Malthus who voiced those risks): it must all roll into one -- climate change, air pollution, the use of fur in the fashion industry, gender anxiety, Trump, Brexit.

The Observer has been told by multiple sources that at least six MPs have been drawing up plans to resign the whip and leave the [Labour]  party soon. There have also been discussions involving senior figures about a potentially far larger group splitting off at some point after Brexit, if Corbyn fails to do everything possible to oppose Theresa May’s plans for taking the UK out of the EU.

The Absruder thinks that the split will be advanced by news of a poll saying that:

Labour is now seven points behind the Conservatives, with approval ratings for Corbyn over his handling of Brexit at an all-time low and worse than those for May...The survey suggests Labour is losing its Leave supporters to the Tories and Remain backers to the Liberal Democrats, who are up one point on 8% earthquake!], as the Brexit crisis deepens.

I know which group I would sacrifice, but Labour will lose both if it isn't careful.

Unrest inside Labour and frustration at its failure to mount stronger opposition to Brexit – and back a second referendum – has grown after a week in which nine shadow ministers were among 25 Labour MPs who escaped any punishment by the leadership after they defied a three-line whip and refused to back an amendment aimed to delay Brexit by up to nine months. The amendment tabled by Labour’s Yvette Cooper was defeated by 321 votes to 298 with the help of the Labour rebels...The Observer has also learned of mounting anger on the former solidly pro-Corbyn left of Labour. Ana Oppenheim, an organiser for the leftwing anti-Brexit movement Another Europe is Possible, who is also active inside the pro-Corbyn grassroots movement Momentum, suggested any Labour MPs who refused to do all in their power to block May’s Brexit should be deselected.

 

Leftwing? Meanwhile the Sunday Times,after an hilarious headline story about plans for the Queen to be evacuated if there are riots after Brexit, adds another dimension to the Cooper amendment saga:

Last Monday MPs were poised to vote for a cross-party plan concocted by Sir Oliver Letwin, Nick Boles and Yvette Cooper to let MPs seize control of the Commons agenda to press for a softer Brexit. Letwin reported to members of the cabinet that the motion, in Cooper’s name, would “win by three votes” [impressively precise] . The ministers Richard Harrington, Tobias Ellwood and Sarah Newton were all prepared to resign to help it triumph...A secret deal struck between Brexiteers Kit Malthouse, Steve Baker and Jacob Rees-Mogg and remainers Nicky Morgan, Robert Buckland and Stephen Hammond torpedoed that plan

No doubt all the Remain media were tipped off beforehand, hence all the discussion that assumed the Cooper amendment was a done deal and confidence that Parliament was 'taking back control'