Tactical voting

The Observer leads with a story about MPs resisting May's threat of a general election. Well might they! Many will be deselected or wiped out by a pissed off electorate. There are the usual paradoxes and self-interest disguised as principled thinking:

Antoinette Sandbach, a Tory MP who backs another referendum being held on any deal agreed by parliament, said she would vote against calling an election....many Tories would vote down an election, adding that other parties such as the newly-formed Change UK group would also oppose it.

“It is not a great look for an MP to avoid their electorate,” said one former cabinet minister. Another MP against an election said: “We would be honour-bound to vote for it.”

Commentators are up for reform.No surprises really,--so desperate are some Remainers that they have already advocated, Parliamentary coup,  GNU or revocation. N Acherson starts with a little preliminary virtue-signalling:

most MPs are well-meaning men and – especially – women. Yvette Cooper, wise Joanna Cherry, Anna Soubry the maenad with blazing eyes [blimey-- he's in love]: they and their sisters have been the stars of these awful weeks. Best of all, none of them did that “womanly” number of trying to mediate between gnashing, stomping males. They gnashed too, and with a furious clarity.

the machine has broken down. This is because it wasn’t built to take the strain of minority governments...the Anglo-British non-constitution is archaic. Incredibly, nobody knows what the law of state is. [now he notices!]...the Westminster power machine is still heavily authoritarian. In parliament, it has operated through the massive majorities created by “first past the post” voting. This conceals the fact that “parliamentary sovereignty”, in the narrow local sense that the Commons could order a government about, has mostly dwindled to myth.... the union is genuinely in trouble. It’s not only that Brexit is wrenching Scotland out of Europe against its will (62% Remain)....the 1998 devolution settlement only remained stable – only made sense – in the context of British and Scottish EU membership....British governance is becoming more authoritarian, less spontaneous, more blindly provincial in its indifference to the real world outside. In the darkness under the Palace of Westminster, there lies a gigantic, swelling fatberg of undemocracy.

Young people's views and grassroots revolt

Forced myself to watch rather wincingly 'diverse' Graun video on the views of some teens on Brexit. Didn't learn much. Remainers stressed their own diversity against the monotony of MP backgrounds (private education,childish behaviour in Parliament) . They saw themselves as interested in change, and having more empathy. One said she would feel more limited in what she could or where she could go. One just wanted to stay in the EU. Nearly all of them said they didn't really understand some of the terms and/or others did not understand them (so common it must have been a Guardian prompt?). One or two (!) Leavers saw the opportunities for Britain, one farmer mentioned a better market for British food. One student, who claimed to be from a mixed European background himself,  said he felt under a lot of pressure from his mostly Remainer colleagues and fellow Hall residents.

Elsewhere, more grassroots revolts seem imminent. D Grieve has just lost a confidence vote in his constituency to the Graun's chagrin. He must be about the fifth or sixth. It leaves them very open to the Great Toynbee Argument. Why should they think they have any right to determine the national interest, especially in revoking Article 50, when they are not going to be MPs much longer?

On TV , the BBC covered the pro-Brexit marches outside Parliament and estimated the size of the crowd as 'many thousands'. C4 decided to expose a Leave contributor and marcher for having links to a right wing outfit on one of his FB pages. Both reported the presence of T Robinson ( 'real name StevenYaxley-Lennon'). The Graun claimed that 'Those attending [the Farage march] ranged from far-right activists through to Trump-voting Americans and French supporters of “Frexit”.'

Votes just in

El Guradino has the results of the 'indicative votes' gathered last night after 'Parliament seized control' for the day under Prime Minister (temporary, self-appointed) Sir O Letwin. It was multiple choice. There might be another move on Monday to offer the most popular options, maybe with a transferable vote, of all ironies. Letwin apparently thinks MPs will finally compromise and choose the least worst one. He then intends to pass legislation requiring the Government to implement it!

As expected, no single alternative emerged with a majority although soggy stuff came closest: 'customs union' -- Commitment to negotiate a “permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union with the EU” in any Brexit deal came within 9 votes; the strangely vague and ill-disguised PV mk x, 'confirmatory public votes' -- "Require a public vote to confirm any Brexit deal passed by parliament before its ratification" -- came up 28 votes short of majority. The least popular two were:

'Calls for the government to seek to agree preferential trade arrangements with the EU' (139/422) and 'Remain within the EEA and rejoin Efta but outside a customs union with the EU' (65/377). Remainer press has been supporting both of those 'Norway options'.

The proposals advocated constantly by C4 and the Grunida -- PV, GNU, lengthy extension-- were not selected for voting.

Other features of note: no deal was third from bottom ( 60/400), although a Brexiter said this does not mean it is dead because MPs know it is still the default position. Most alarmingly, though, 184 MPs voted to revoke Article 50 (184/293). Who the fark do these people think they are? Apart from anything else, they are particualrly vulnerable to the Toynbee Argument -- as most of them won't be MPs for much longer, why should their decisions now bind future generations?

Manwhile, the Graun offers an 'agony aunt' service to its readership ( and hopes to get some free copy):

The Brexit process is frankly exhausting in its uncertainty...What’s more the stress of it all is raising daily personal dilemmas. Is it OK to book a holiday? What do I do with all my newly acquired knowledge about arcane parliamentary procedure? Is there any way to get through a family gathering without screaming at the cousin who thinks Jacob Rees-Mogg is a “legend”?..If you have a Brexit-related dilemma you would like our Brexit agony aunt to help with send us your problems for consideration.

Economic news -- damn, it's quite good

The Gruniad has a monthly report on the economy, trying desperately to justify Project Fear but never quite able to marshall the stats:

• Economy defies Brexit gloom even as crisis deepens
• UK remains afloat despite Brexit shenanigans

The prospect of no-deal Brexit repeatedly sank sterling, only for speculation over a deal to trigger a rally hours later. The pound has fallen close to $1.30 against the dollar, while hitting a high of almost $1.34....Over the month, the FTSE 100 has risen by about 100 points and currently stands at about 7,200....Economists said food prices were likely to rise further over the coming months as a result of higher import prices, which rose by 5.5% in January. The energy regulator, Ofgem, will also lift its energy price cap by 10% in April, boosting the headline rate of inflation further. However, the inflation rate remains below the 2% target set for the Bank of England by the government...Britain’s trade deficit widened in January by more than expected as imports grew faster than exports – a possible sign of a slowdown in the global economy, which could be sapping demand for goods and services abroad. Economists also said Britain raised its imports, possibly reflecting greater levels of stockpiling...Unemployment unexpectedly dropped to the lowest level in 44 years as employers ramped up hiring ahead of Brexit despite mounting fears over a no-deal withdrawal.... Annual growth in average pay remained at 3.4%, the fastest rate in a decade. Despite the apparent good news, economists said the jump in employment probably came as Brexit uncertainty encouraged firms to hire workers to meet demand rather than invest in equipment as it would be easier and cheaper to fire staff in a downturn....Consumers appear to have shrugged off mounting fears over Brexit...Some analysts said that shoppers may have been stockpiling goods ahead of Brexit, though the figures showed that supermarket sales fell, which would appear to contradict this.... The chancellor had used the spring statement to say the recent stronger performance of the public finances would give him as much as £26.6bn to either spend on ending austerity or to fight an economic downturn in the event of no-deal Brexit....House price growth across the country slowed over the past month to the lowest rate in almost eight years, amid fears that no-deal Brexit would cause a crash in property values...

And finally

Economic growth in the eurozone appears to have remained weak in the first quarter of 2019 after a disappointing conclusion to last year. The latest snapshot showed that manufacturing output contracted the most since December 2012 – a period when the eurozone was gripped by the sovereign debt crisis...Brexiters might argue the bad news from the European economy is reason enough for Britain to distance itself from the EU as much as possible. Eurozone GDP is on course to expand by just 0.2% for the first quarter, marginally weaker than the UK....However, the EU accounts for almost half of UK exports, while there has been little adjustment to non-EU trade since the Brexit vote. Bad news for the EU is still bad news for Britain.

EC supports democracy

Says the Guranida today:

EU cannot betray 'increasing majority' who want UK to remain, says Tusk 

EC president hails those who marched against Brexit and millions who petitioned to revoke article 50

The actual context referred to Tusk saying that  if the UK had to take part in European elections after a loing delay to Brexit, that would be inconvenient but necessary because of this 'increasing majority'. 

On the democratic option of just revoking Article 50, it is interesting to see the SNP in full support, while at the same time lobbying for another binding referendum on Scottish independence. The Government has apparently emailed all those who signed the petition (including the underage, the disqualified and the fake?) that:

“Revoking article 50 would break the promises made by government to the British people, disrespect the clear instruction from a democratic vote, and in turn, reduce confidence in our democracy.”

Meanwhile, A Chakrabortty is pushed up to attack one of the enemies of the petit-bourgeoisie, this time the upper classes:

the UK stands on the verge of a calamity as great as any since the war....And where are our political classes?...Sunday afternoon was Theresa May’s crisis summit at Chequers, to which Iain Duncan Smith came as Toad of Toad Hall, complete with open-top vintage sports car and cloth cap. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s chosen passenger was his 12-year-old son, Peter, because a national crisis evidently created the perfect occasion for bring-your-child-to-work day. Boris Johnson rocked up in his Spaffmobile before chuntering back to London to publish a column dumping all over the woman with whom he’d just been talking, dubbing her “chicken” and saying she had “bottled it”. (One of the columns, if it’s not too unseemly to mention, for which the Telegraph pays him £275,000 a year.) The BBC reports that these men refer to themselves as the Grand Wizards. Since that is an honorific used by the Ku Klux Klan, the best can be said is they have put as much thought into their nicknames as they ever did into the Irish backstop.

This is how today’s governing classes comport themselves, while the country teeters on the edge of a cliff...a fundamental trend in public life that is utterly corrosive....today’s political elite are strangers to collective interest or public responsibility...myopic cynicism...profound unseriousness...In his essential recent book Reckless Opportunists, [there is, naturally, a book to plug] Aeron Davis charts the breadth and the depth of this betrayal.[ He writes of]  a generation of leaders who are “precarious, rootless and increasingly self-serving”. They grab whatever they can – be that cheap headlines or fast money – and then crash out, even while loosening the very foundations of the institutions entrusted to them. Crucially, this is a genre of politics that relies on a strong state even as it bilks it of the necessary tax revenue...moneyed nihilism.

we need a wholesale reimagining of our institutions so that they better serve the rest of us, rather than just those who run them. This was one of the promises of the leave campaign, of course [so there is some leftwing case for Brexit?] , but it was always destined to be folded and put away inside the pocket of one of Rees-Mogg’s double-breasted jackets...Chaos and authoritarianism are fine, it appears, as long as they prove good for asset prices. In that elision between morality and financial returns is much that’s gone wrong with the governing classes

Strong analysis of the ruling class, even if a bit moralistic -- but what on earth is the connection to weak petty Remainering and identity politics?

Fuck a vote -- let's revoke

Revoking Article 50 is the latest Remainer enthusiasm. Reports the Observer:

an online petition to cancel Brexit became the most popular ever...By Saturday night more than 4.6 million people had signed the petition on the parliament website, which states: “A People’s Vote may not happen – so vote now”.[ only 'vote' if you agree, of course]...Public discussion about halting Brexit was considered politically toxic until just days ago. But that shifted last week as the prospect of crashing out drew closer and the number of petition signatures rose dramatically.

A cross-party group of parliamentarians is now examining the possibility of cancelling the Brexit process, following concerns that Theresa May could end up backing Tory MPs who favour a no-deal departure if her own withdrawal agreement is rejected again. They are planning to table an amendment to Brexit legislation closer to the day of Britain’s scheduled departure from the EU....The European court of justice ruled late last year that Britain could unilaterally revoke article 50, although not just to buy time. Writing on theguardian.com, the Tory MP Phillip Lee said that the people had to be given an opportunity to reconsider Brexit [until they get it right] and that one way of allowing this to happen would be to revoke article 50. “Mrs May should ensure that the UK has the time and the space to do this in a properly considered way – either by seeking a long extension of article 50, or by taking back control [nice jibe] and revoking it altogether.”

Is there a contradiction between the million-strong march for a PV and this plot to launch a Parliamentary coup? Any attempt to weigh 4.6 million petitioners against 17.4 m who voted in the Referendum? Not for the Observer, with its conveniently instrumental view of voting and democracy -- any route to Remain will do, whether obtained by mass protest or elitist plot. 

Such is the conviction that no deal would be 'a disater' or 'catastrophe', that the Tory party are plotting to remove May (difficult -- she has survived a leadership election and a no-confidence vote). The Observer,linked this with a second 'report' on the March:

One million join march against Brexit as Tories plan to oust May 

Conservative MPs and ministers from both sides of the Brexit argument said May could not last in office for many more days – and Downing Street appeared to threaten them with a general election if her deal does not pass ... “No-deal is not going to happen. Parliament will not allow it,” said a senior No 10 source. “There are so many people opposed to this in parliament that there would be a confidence motion in the government before no-deal. That could mean a general election.”...On Monday a powerful group of backbench MPs will attempt to hand control of the Brexit process to parliament by securing indicative votes on alternative options for Brexit, including a soft, Norway-style option.
Downing Street had been expected to try for a third time to force May’s deal through parliament on Tuesday. However, with Tory support for her disappearing, her team will delay the vote if they conclude that she will be defeated again – an outcome that could see her forced to quit

A further piece elaborates:

Members of Theresa May’s cabinet believe she will have to resign this week should she allow a shift towards a soft Brexit, with angry Tory MPs examining ways to end her premiership. [but] ...Downing Street is also warning hardline Tories that parliament is so against a no-deal Brexit the government would be brought down before it could implement such an outcome...cabinet ministers on both sides of the Brexit debate made clear they were ready to quit if necessary....Pro-Remain ministers will not tolerate any endorsement of a no-deal Brexit. But some pro-Brexit ministers have said that May could not carry on in No 10 unless she backed a no-deal Brexit. 

 ...some senior ministers are also warning that toppling her now would unleash a general election and a leadership fight that would be “toxic” for the Tories....Some assume that her de facto deputy, David Lidington, would take over. However, seen as a pro-Remain minister, he would also face serious challenges from Tory MPs if he attempted to engineer a soft Brexit. One minister said: “The idea that everyone would step back and allow David Lidington to deliver a soft Brexit is absurd.”...Tory MPs say some of the prime minister’s closest aides in Downing Street have been hinting that May could try to call a snap general election if her deal does not get through the Commons for the third time, as she believes support for it is stronger in the country than in parliament.

But Conservative MPs have made clear to Brady that they would work together to block an early election. Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, two-thirds of the Commons would need to agree an early election.

One plan would see the meaningful vote held at the end of this week, should those [planned]  indicative votes show that no other option could command a Commons majority. At the moment, several Tories are saying they believe May’s deal would be defeated by more than the 149-vote margin recorded at the second attempt. One government insider said: “There is a concern that we will go backwards.”

Requests for Theresa May to quit have been relayed to the prime minister and her team by both Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, and the chief whip....Some Tory MPs are so exasperated with May’s leadership that they want to change party rules, enabling another vote to have her removed. Under current rules, a failed attempt to oust her last year means another vote cannot be held until December....James Duddridge tweeted: “Conservative MPs could have an indicative vote of no confidence in the PM. It would be a secret vote and we would get over 2/3 of MPs wanting her to go at least, likely lots more. If indicative votes are good for the Commons they are good for the Conservative Party. #Resign.”

Marchers for ...?

Big march yesterday, ostensibly for a PV [and other things as we shall see]. Some reasons given to or deduced by the Observer:

let no one tell you that this was just a London crowd...“If I didn’t do something I felt I would regret it for the rest of my life,” [a marcher] said, voicing the sentiment of many....“When you talk to ardent Leavers and you meet them on the street, or by a riverbank where they are fishing or whatever, you find you can have a proper conversation,” he said. “And that’s something we all need to do in the coming days.”...Like many of the marchers, he felt that if nothing else walking had been a good way of avoiding the stress and frustrations of watching the news. “I thought, if I am sitting at home on Twitter for the next three weeks I am going to go insane.”...

That feeling was shared by those expats who had flown in from the continent  ...“If no-deal happens then the next morning we will become what the Italian government now calls an ‘illegal resident’,” she said, a status that will affect everything about her life from driving a car to continuing to run her training business....I never thought I would become addicted to Parliament TV, but I have.”

Harris, a landscape designer who works on both sides of the [Irish] border every week, also felt he had to be here rather than shouting at the television. “It is clear that either no deal or her deal will leave things in Northern Ireland up in the air for years,” he said. “I fear we will spend the next decades just trying to get back the freedoms we have given away.”...Like many on the march his priority had changed in the past week or so, with the options narrowing and the cliff-edge looming, and the online petition to revoke article 50 climbing towards 5 million signatures. “Revoke would now be number one, number two people’s vote,” he said. That idea had travelled in this crowd. Variations of the three Rs populated signs and banners: revoke, remain and reform....

There have been many attempts to divide the respective Leave and Remain tribes since the referendum  ...One of the simplest distinctions, however, has always seemed to come down to that division between those who relish the idea of being cheek-by-jowl with people unlike themselves, and those who feel threatened by that idea.... The people who had come to demonstrate voiced, above all, a conviction, to borrow that telling phrase from Jo Cox, “that we have more in common than that which divides us”. (Cox, it goes without saying, would have loved this event. Her killer would have loathed it.)

I had spoken to [a WW2 veteran] brigadier the day before the march about his reasons for coming. “It was an easy decision,” he said. “There is not much time left for me to do anything and I just feel if we can even at this late stage get people thinking sensibly, then it will be worthwhile.” His great anxiety, as a former controller of the Slimbridge Wildlife Trust, was that our fractured politics would deflect us from the co-operative spirit required to combat climate change.

It was impossible watching that sight not to make some comparisons with those few stubborn souls on the ill-fated “March to Leave”, moved to trudge along lonely hard-shoulders by Nigel Farage, only to find that he had turned up for the photo opportunity and left them to fend for themselves. Farage, alive to BBC requirements for “balance”, had returned to preach on Saturday to his handful of leaderless footsoldiers at a pub car park in Linby, Nottinghamshire: “You are the 17.4 million,” he told a crowd of 150...there was, contrarily, a spirit that the Brexiters have failed over the past three years ever to begin to convey: that of creative optimism. You saw it in the 100 and more tango dancers led by Matthew Cooper, who had met in growing numbers on each of the past three protest marches, aged between 20 and 80. And in the improvised speeches on freedom given by an Emmeline Pankhurst lookalike under the statue of the suffragette. And even in the bloke flogging Donald Trump toilet rolls from a shopping trolley to stockpile should the rationing begin...There was a very droll Britishness in the spirit that tempered any edges of anger from the many younger voices on the march.

Watching the crowd I was reminded of a book I reviewed for this paper not long after those electoral convulsions of 2016 here and across the Atlantic. The book, On Tyranny, by the Yale historian Timothy Snyder, was a little survival guide against the digital forces of populism and the brutalist politics they promoted. Snyder called above all for a “corporeal politics” in response, for voting with paper ballots that can be counted and recounted; for face-to-face conversation, and for marching rather than online petitioning: “Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on a screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people.”

Overall:

you cannot fake an almighty crowd...the Put it to the People march represented a formidable sea of humanity, and a powerful strength of feeling....Their collective message served as a reminder that when the prime minister stands up again this week and claims to speak for “the people” with her unloved deal and her fingernails-down-the-blackboard phrases about delivering Brexit, she will not speak for the million individuals who filled the wide streets and squares of the capital yesterday, or for the millions more across the country who were with them in spirit.

I was as much interested by the apparent inlfuence of social media or TV in kindling these genuine emotions and panics;  the recognition of the symbolic and therapeutic dimensions (they had to do something to feel better); the slip in the mask that this is about a PV but more about 'the three Rs'; the opportunistic commercial aspects; the propagandist link with J Cox; the phatic elements ( young, wildlife; the contrasts with Leavers (uncomfortable with foreigners, pathetic Faragists); the literary reference in contrast to the stupidly selective 'sample' (including two with special interests, an expats and an Irish borderer); fantasy politics (end Brexit to stop climate change).

More on reasons for marching in yet another article:  

the world is in a very dangerous situation and leaving Europe just fragments it further – that leads to disastrous politics. So I hope – though I doubt – that Theresa May will listen to this huge objection to her strategy. So many more people now are aware of what the issues are – the collapse of our car manufacturing industry, banks going everywhere and anyone with any money is getting it out of the UK. We have to stop this or it will be disastrous for our country, our children and our future.[Blimey -- I can see the sense in this case -- it's from an Army vet aged 80]

As a person who will still be in the EU even after Britain leaves [she's an Irish student at Glasgow Uni] , I think it’s important to have connections with the country I live in [what sort of connections?]. I’m lucky that because of the Good Friday agreement I won’t have to apply for settled status after Brexit but I have friends from other European countries who don’t know what’s happening. For me, the EU means the freedom to move around [Iron curtains after Brexit?]. 

[A psychotherapist] This country is in crisis and what happens when people are in crisis? They come out to support each other, even if they’re stressed, even if they’re struggling. We’re not an army but we can get up on our feet like an army to let the politicians know. This march is a way of saying we care about the wellbeing of the whole country, because Brexit is going to affect everybody. [We care, oh how we care! Nasty old stressful politics!]

I’m fed up with hearing Theresa May talk about the numbers who voted to leave, when it was such a small majority [!]. The “will of the people” is not all one way. For me, the EU means being part of something bigger, not fighting each other.[ Make do with some other imagined community the? NATO? Eurovision Song Contest?]

In 2016 I campaigned to remain. Unfortunately, we lost so now I’m doing all I can to get us the best deal possible on leaving – or, if possible, have a second referendum. I think today will definitely be a success in terms of alerting the government to how many people care about this issue. So many people have been disenfranchised in this process and we want our voices to be heard...I am angry about what’s happened and I’m angry that the parties can’t put aside their politics and listen to what people have to say. This is the true voice of the people.

Brexodus by Brexiles

A Graiunida story about people who have emigrated because of something to do with Brexit. First in this classic selection of Graun readers is a person moving to France

What sold us on France? The healthier work-life balance and excellent education system, plus the fact that we’re lucky enough to have jobs that allow us to work remotely. Ultimately, though, there was one factor that cemented our decision to emigrate: Brexit...it’s not just that EU nationals are turning their backs on the UK – in the year after the referendum, 17,000 Brits sought citizenship of another EU country, according to figures collated from embassies. The Brexodus is fully under way....A common refrain among the Brexiles I speak to is that they no longer recognise the country they grew up in. Raised in Northern Ireland, I’ve always grappled with my national identity. I was born in west Belfast and have an Irish passport – yet until I moved across the UK border in Ireland to study at university, my cultural references were, by and large, British. I watched Gladiators on television and read The Famous Five [Jesus!]  I bought pic’n’mix from Woolworths and wanted to be Anneka Rice...In the 2012 Olympics, I felt a surge of pride for my adopted homeland....A French friend, whose children were born in London, moved her family to Dublin last summer. She felt increasingly uncomfortable about the rise in xenophobia (Home Office figures showed that hate crimes rose by a third from 2016-2017) and wanted her daughters to be “raised European”. Many Irish friends have returned home, too, uneasy with “jokes” made by colleagues and acquaintances about the Irish famine, shocked by the ignorance of many of their English peers...Nationalism isn’t confined to the UK. Nearly half of young French voters backed the Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, in the country’s 2017 general election. But aren’t we better off wading through this mess together? ....When my husband and I lived in London, we became good friends with a neighbour, a retired diplomat in his 80s. He had loved serving his country, including a stint in the USSR during the cold war. These days, he no longer identifies as British, but as a citizen of the world....In a world of increasing uncertainty, I’ll take a bunch of bureaucrats over going it alone any day – even if that means uprooting. I spoke to four others who feel the same way.

Second up is 'Pip Batty, 40, a communications consultant, originally from Leicester, moved to Georgia [well-known for tolerance] in November. She now works in Tbilisi as an English language teacher'. 

It’s a beautiful country and the people are so welcoming. I’m half Greek, and had been learning Greek for five years with the intention of emigrating there someday. Then Brexit happened. Suddenly, it started to become more challenging: a potential employer in Greece, who had been happy to offer me work, asked, “You have a Greek passport, right?” When I told him I was born in England, he just said, “Oh.”... There are people I don’t speak to any more because I know how they voted and I’m furious with them. People who were aware of my plan to move to Greece, people whose children are dating foreign nationals, how could they vote for Brexit? They weren’t thinking about any generation apart from their own...Two years after the referendum, we’re an international laughing stock. It’s humiliating to be British.... I don’t want to say I’ll never come back to the UK because I will always be British. I’ve been told I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face, but I feel very strongly about this and will do for years to come. We’ve been wronged.

Journalist Alex Rawlings, 27, moved to Barcelona last November. He speaks 15 languages and holds Greek and British passports:

I was really excited about being in cosmopolitan, international London. This was the UK I had grown up in, a country that had been proud of its multiculturalism, its ability to welcome people from different backgrounds. A few weeks later, it voted to leave and that all evaporated...The fact that the Brexit debate centred so much on immigration made me uncomfortable....I wanted to move to a place where people go out on the streets and protest in their thousands, asking for more refugees.[Germany then? Has he asked the Greeks?]...The reason more people don’t move from the UK is because they don’t speak languages.

A cancer researcher chose Toronto (not Europe?) 

The main things I worried about were access to funding, being able to ship chemical samples to mainland Europe and what would happen to my colleagues. Roughly a third are EU citizens...Mum is Sri Lankan and Dad’s a Geordie. I grew up in Hertfordshire and was usually the only non-white person in the room. You get used to it, but I definitely felt “other”. Moving to London for university was a revelation.

An 'Irish-British software developer' moved with his husband to Berlin

Josh and I were heavily involved in the remain campaign, turning our tiny flat into a hub on the day of the vote. At the time, I likened Brexit to the Scottish referendum, where everyone was panicking a few weeks beforehand but, when it came to it, voted for the safe option, the status quo.[Surely the safe option and status quo was Remain?]...Afterwards, I went through a very unhealthy, spiteful stage that I’m not quite out of yet. I stopped speaking to people who voted leave. One was a close friend, and I regret that now, but I’m not sure how to get back in touch...the main issue was immigration. I was born in Germany on a British army base and moved to the UK when I was seven. On my first day at school, the teacher mentioned my background and immediately there was this wave of xenophobia [he diagnosed this accurately -- at age 7]...I’ve got Irish citizenship, as my grandparents were Irish, and my goal in the next few years is to become German....Brexit is the failure of the progressives, rather than the work of the hard right, and that’s what makes me sad. The left failed to challenge it and as a result, we’re leaving the world’s largest trading bloc. If Brexit has been good for anything, it has made people on the left realise how important it is to stand up for globalisation and cohesion.

Remainer vox populi

In the Guardian today, reporting-while-celebrating the imminent march for a PV:

The timing feels right to march now: we could make a real difference because things have come to a head after rumbling on for so many months. It’s gotten [sic -- by a man from Dorset] to a point where we really could be influential. 

Initially, I wasn’t going to go on the march because I have PTSD and anxiety which makes it very difficult to be in crowds...It’s been unreal [not the frequent 'surreal'] 

I’m marching because young people want to live in a country bigger than our back yard. We want to live, work and travel across Europe. We appreciate our teachers and doctors who come to work in Britain and make it a vibrant place, a better place.watching our politicians’ incompetence, ignorance and their arrogance. I just hope they won’t ignore us now when we come to London – so many people are making a long trip and we need our voices to be heard..I think young people will be angry at the march but not in a violent way – we will be saying: why are you are taking away our future? The Brexit elite, like the Jacob Rees-Moggs of the world, will be OK if we leave the EU, but we won’t. We have to have our say on that.

[From D Smith, celebrity cook] I’m marching because I am a passionate remainer and I will feel physically hurt if we leave the EU...There were promises over the NHS [still hurts then]. Now we have had time to think it through and it’s so clear that leaving will be awful....The leadership on this has been a total disaster on both sides. We wanted clarity and instead we have the two main parties squabbling while the people are left behind.

We’ll be travelling overnight, so there might be sing-songs and there is a DVD player on the coach, but I hope that nobody brings their bagpipes...I feel optimistic about revocation. The number of signatures on the petition shows that people have had enough, even people who voted to leave.

I’m a single mum with two small children and I’m autistic. I will be marching with around eight other women. We’re part of an online group for autistic mothers. More than 100 members of the group have asked us to march for them, so we’re representing our community as well...we will be angrier and more determined...I’m marching because when this is all over, I want a clean conscience, to know I have done everything I could to stop Brexit. Oh, and I want good stories to tell my grandchildren. Assuming we all survive.

[Well-known democrat A Campbell]: What the past two years has shown is that the Brexit that was promised is undeliverable – there is no Brexit that can be done without damaging the country...All along, the marches have played a really important role [except the one opposing intervention in Iraq, of course] . If you look back at when we started, we were the minority, seen as the people who wouldn’t accept that the war was over, but we’re now polling as the most popular outcome of the various options that are being put forward...We also have people coming from all over the country and Europe to show their support – that shows you how much desire there is for the march and for the cause behind it

So -- 2 celebs, one younger man, one black woman, two older people (with specific needs), and a Scot who wants a sing-song.

Latest GNUs

J Snow on C4 News has again begun interrogating his interviewees on where they stand on GNUs. With PVs and 'extensions' proving less likely, GNUs have been spotted amassing on the horizon:

The GUardian has

Top Tory donor: form unity government to solve Brexit crisis 

John Griffin, the taxi tycoon who has given £4m to the Tories over the last six years, said the party should reach out to MPs from Labour, the Lib Dems and the Scottish National Party if it is to emerge from EU negotiations with a successful deal.
It follows similar demands from fellow Tories including Nicky Morgan and Sir Nicholas Soames....“It is like the last world war. We have to get together, agree that we are in the middle of a crisis, and show that we are unified. This is not going to be fixed unless we all get together as a government – and I am talking about all parties. We need to get together as soon as possible. Tomorrow would be good.” [said Griffin]...Soames has previously mooted the idea of a national unity government, telling Channel 4 News: “I must say, if I had my way, we would have a national government to deal with this. It is the most serious problem this country has faced since the war.”

There is also the upcoming march (Gurdinas here) :

Brexit is a disaster, but it’s not yet a done deal. The Put it to the People March is our chance to demand a say  

Saturday’s march will once again allow new and marginalised voices to be heard. And when the dust settles, it’ll be the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets to fight for change who will be remembered.... Today’s politicians ignore us at their peril....We know any Brexit will damage our futures and leave us poorer. We know that allowing May’s deal over the line will only lead to more years of painful negotiations and bitter arguments. All the while, the chance to tackle issues of climate change and cybersecurity – which my generation are determined to do – will fall by the wayside as our country obsesses further over a disastrous project.

Personal spite is all that is left?

May appeared on TV last night (transcript here)  to try to explain that she had done her best but that Parliament had blocked her.The piece included offering a weak form of phatic communication as she sympathised with voters who must have found Parliamentary procedure tedious and petty.

On Peston an hour or two afterwards, Labour's L. Nandy was incandescent, claiming May had attacked MPs and Parliament itself. The Tory P Lee agreed.Peston raised the stakes still further saying that May was urging constituents to pressure their MPs, which became bullying their MPs (I recall). Nandy remained furious and vulnerable at the same time, as is fashionable.

My own viewing of the speech is different. May was pleading for her deal and suggested the options included no deal, long extension (involving European elections), and abandoning Brexit. She was especially critical of the last two saying they would be even more divisive and piss off the people who voted Leave. That is what upset the Remainers. But it was all dressed up as personal, as is usual.

Today P Toynbee maintains the fury and makes it even more personal.

May’s attack on MPs is the dangerous act of a desperate politician 

Attempting to turn voters’ anger against parliament is the dangerous and despicable act of a prime minister thrashing around in her terminal desperation. Tantamount to calling for insurrection against democracy, ...another ill-judged diatribe against parliament, achingly lacking in remorse or self-awareness....an angry farewell, a croaky swan song. As she nails her dead parrot of a plan to the perch again next week... kamikaze mission, with we the people strapped on board...caving in to the unsavoury likes of Andrea Leadsom, Liam Fox and Chris Grayling, she handed power to the deranged no-dealers. Nightly on TV the thuggish Mark Francois struts the ERG’s bully-power, holding her to ransom... the bone-head Owen Paterson...extremist infiltrators...

Dear me! The answer:

All other options are better. Call a general election to end this paralysed parliament. Better still, seize the face-saving Kyle-Wilson amendment whereby the House would nod through [she is sure of this?] her plan on condition it’s put to the public vote for confirmation. Odd how those who call “the will of the people” sacred dare not ask the people if this is what they voted for. On Saturday, expect a gigantic march to demand the voters get a hearing.

So people will be asked to confirm a deal that is unalterable anyway? Bog-standard plebiscitary democracy with no alternatives but accept or reject. This would still never be seen as a vote to leave on WTO terms, of course, even if rejected, but would have to be spun as no Brexit again.  Toynbee also reluctantly offers a rebuke to the EC:

Donald Tusk helped propel her on her way: if parliament refuses to vote for her deal next week, that’s it, curtains, the end. Was it orchestrated? He offers a short extension but only if the Commons submits. Later, between the lines, some suggested that just possibly, if the Commons balks at this bullying [sic!], Tusk was not ruling out a long extension.

However, this bullying is at least well-mannered, thank goodness:

With “patience and goodwill”, as ever the Europeans are embarrassingly courteous in the face of boorish British insults [examples? It is an insult to want to leave?]: they have more urgent anxieties at gathering clouds of populism threatening upcoming elections. [Populists should not be demanding a vote then?]

Border chaos blamed on Brexit

Chickens have come home to roost with the hoo-hah about the Irish border which has been so important an issue -- because no-one want a return to the Troubles, of course, nothing to do with trouble-making or punishing theUK.

The UK Government has announced that there will simply be no tariffs on goods coming from the Republic into Norther Ireland. This had an interesting reaction when it was announced with the Republic's spokesperson saying this would require all parties to discuss what to do about the border. Now they can discuss it. Before it was inviolate, of course.

More today in teh Grauniad, slanted in the usual way:

Post-Brexit tariffs will ‘wipe out businesses’ near Irish border 

But who will be imposing these tariffs? 

The UK government’s decision not to apply tariffs on imports from the republic in the event of no deal is an existential threat, they fear, since Ireland, as an EU member, will be obliged to impose steep duties on goods from outside the single market. That differential could wipe out farms and manufacturers facing tariffs when they export to Ireland and unable to compete with tariff-free goods entering from Ireland...“It’s been an awful shock to businesses to comprehend what the policy will do to us,” said Declan Billington, the head of the Northern Ireland Food and Drink Association. “We’ll be facing tariffs exporting to Ireland which could well be 30% to 40% on beef, but beef from the south will come in with zero tariffs... “It will be a disaster if they bring in tariffs one way but not the other,” the 56-year-old farmer said. “The whole country will be at a standstill. There should be free trade. People don’t understand the border.”

There is also a fear of 'industrial-scale smuggling worse than the illegal, paramilitary-backed cross-border trade at the height of the Troubles'

So -- principled opposition to a hard border will be replaced by standard EU tariffs after all. This might well hurt Irish producers. We are not to blame the gung-ho arrogance of the Irish and their EU allies that kept holding up the border as an insoluble issue, however, but the UK Government who has done the obvious thing.

Will any of this lead to what the UK has been asking for -- a custom post-free electronic border and thus no need for a backstop? Do the Irish and the EU want to discuss this now or after Brexit?

The whole Guardian issue is positively awash with scare stories and fears:

'It could be terrible for us': how one British high street is preparing for Brexit 

(This is a story  about a specialist high street in York. There are the usual elements -- fears for the supply of charcoal, just-in-time flower stockists who can't work a day in advance, fears for medicines. The closing of shops is noted, as if that were not happening everywhere, thanks to Amazon. There is only one reservation, tucked well down amidst the list of fears: 'Whether this is because of Brexit is impossible to know'.

Of course, we must not ignore other victims:

Exit Brussels? The UK civil servants under a fog of uncertainty

and this

‘A riskier place to go’: academics avoid conferences in Brexit Britain

Not just plebs -- toffs are also to blame

The Graun renews its attack on those above as well as those below in its classic petit-bourgeois class politics with this:

Britain’s Brexit crisis is rooted in the power of our public schools

[the ERG is a] 90-strong band of ideologues...Jacob Rees-Mogg. This one-man embodiment of the mess into which we have all been dragged...Where did he come from, this human museum piece?...[His dad William was an Editor of the Times but] the roots of the Rees-Mogg family wealth [are]  in the ownership of coalmines in Somerset....places replete with the ghosts of a lost industrial past and the consequences of the austerity that he has enthusiastically endorsed....His apparent skill in matters of high finance – which, according to a recent edition of Channel 4’s Dispatches, has earned him an estimated £7m since the referendum, assisted by the fall in the value of the pound – goes back to childhood dealing of stocks and shares, and time spent in Hong Kong and the City....

But above all, Rees-Mogg is an old Etonian. Let's discuss the role of this school calmly and rationally:

Eton College. This institution sits at the heart of the Brexit mess and the dismal political failings that led to it. What comes to mind at the mention of Eton? Tailcoats? The eternally mysterious wall game? Or the angry lament contained in the Jam’s Eton Rifles, with its Larkin-esque opening line: “Sup up your beer, and collect your fags / There’s a row going on, down near Slough”, that lyrical portrait of a working class serially defeated by privilege...Eton chiefly symbolises the unbroken English link between private education and power. [For evidence? ] To quote one old boy, who did his time in the 1980s: “Kids arrived there with this extraordinary sense that they knew they were going to run the country.”

Etonians and the alumni of other “top” private schools are still at the core of British rightwing politics. Their fingerprints are all over Brexit. David Cameron was deluded enough to call the referendum in the first place, blithely ignoring the possibility that the cruelties of his austerity programme would inform the public’s response....Thanks to his brazen embrace of a cause he thought would smooth his passage to the Tory leadership, Cameron’s Eton contemporary Boris Johnson led the push to exit the EU

There are books to push as well though:

It is no accident [!!] that, as the scale of the Brexit disaster has grown, two high-profile books – David Kynaston and Francis Green’s Engines of Privilege, and Robert Verkaik’s Posh Boys – have been published tracing the history of so-called public schools and their domination of our power structures.

Generalising a bit, perhaps for 'balance' and perhaps because the upper class enemy is everywhere:

The past three years of British history have proved that privilege often breeds a dangerous mixture of ineptitude and arrogance, as well as incubating the kind of unhinged ideas that could appeal only to people removed from ordinary life, who tend to see the world in terms of crass abstractions. This, incidentally, is something proved by any number of posh revolutionaries, and is evident on the modern political left as well as the right....Brexit should focus minds on how we begin to cut the ties that bind the state, politics and key professions – including journalism – to a tiny number of schools.

However, as we might expect from liberals and their petit-bourgeois clientele:

There is no need to abolish private education. [Heaven forbid! That would make the housing market even more important in picking 'good' state schools]  The simplest solution might prompt outrage, but would be no more drastic than Brexit itself. As well as an end to private schools’ charitable status, it should be demanded, via legislation, that over the next 10 years or so Russell Group universities [so that is the beef?] allocate their places in line with the balance between private and state schools in the population at large, so that 93% of their students are eventually state-educated.

Anticipating some mild protest from his pubic school colleagues as well as from Graun readers?

obviously, it is more than possible to go to Eton, or Harrow, or any number of other fee-paying schools, and emerge as humble, sensitive and self-aware as anyone else. I have also met people profoundly damaged by the experience of private school, even when everything has gone to plan.

Finally, according to Google, J. Harris (the author) was educated at Loreto College and  The Queen's College, Oxford

Now it's house asking prices -- Britain unravels

Shock news from the Guardian today,leading with the stuff that will really unsettle its readers. Say what you like about the price of strawberries, the soggy tomatoes in BLTs or the late delivery of Amazon items --this is the killer

Brexit fears dampen spring property revival as asking prices fall 

In a story that will cause consternation, the Guardnida tells us:

Brexit anxiety has all but killed the traditional spring property revival, pushing down asking prices across the UK by 0.8% in the year to March, according to property website Rightmove...Inner London saw the sharpest falls, followed by boroughs across the rest of the capital and surrounding counties...In the last year London prices have fallen 3.8%. Across the south-east prices are 1.5% down on this time last year.

It really is a worry. That huge fall in asking prices (my emphasis).  All down to Brexit of course. Said a Rightmove spokesperson:

"As the clock ticks down towards the Brexit deadline it is natural human behaviour for more buyers to hesitate."

We are on to buyer hesitation now,not asking prices. 

Strangely, though:

Outside the south-east, the only region to record a monthly fall during February was the north-east, where asking prices fell 1.3%....In the north-west, prices rose 2.5% last month and were 3.4% higher than a year ago, Shipside said.

Luckily, the Graun has some supplementary textual shifters to put things back on track: 

The British Chambers of Commerce said Brexit uncertainty was continuing to dampen economic activity as it downgraded GDP growth to 1.2% in 2019, matching the Bank of England and the Treasury’s independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility. If realised, this would be the weakest growth since the financial crisis a decade ago... a separate report by accountants and business advisors BDO concluded that UK export growth fell “perilously close” to the point of contraction in the first quarter of 2019.