The mayor and the pole-dancer: latest*

Some early campaigning as the Graun still sees mileage in the story of the Mayor of London and the pole-dancing  former model American entrepreneur. There is some classic textual shifting. Shouty headline first

Johnson knew of potential conflict of interest, says Arcuri

US businesswoman says Boris Johnson was also aware of her links to Libor-rigger Tom Hayes

No need to read on, surely? Got the bastard! Just a small problem a few paragraphs down:

But Arcuri again denied she was given any favouritism by Johnson or his agency and even claimed that at times she felt shut out because of her friendship with the mayor. She said: “He knew there was a potential for conflict, and this is why he never did anything.”

Further down still:

Arcuri told Bloomberg that she had told Johnson how upset she was at Hayes being prosecuted after his arrest in 2012. She recalls the then mayor saying: “Look Jennifer, the world is full of bad men, be careful.”

The favouritism allegations over Arcuri's inclusion in a Mayor-promoting organisations' trade trip is also a bit of a damp squib:

[She] expressed frustration that Johnson would not help her. “I was going insane with Boris. I was like, ‘Dude, what is your deal?’ … The mayor’s team made things very difficult. But I was just not going to take no for an answer. Why should I not get to go to Singapore because I was friends with Boris?”

What exactly is the beef then? He knew there was a potential conflict of interests -- and did not help her, the cad! He also knew she had links to a dodgy banker -- and warned her off 'bad men' . The headline could equally have read:

Johnson refused me assistance because of potential conflict of interest, says Arcuri

US businesswoman says Boris Johnson warned her about associating with Tom Hayes, who later rigged Libor

Graun policy emerging: compromise, revenge or blander cooking contests?

After events have turned out badly, the press can often be caught searching round for a 'line' to reassure themselves while carrying on with business as usual. The Graun may be at that stage today

M Kettle may be in the forefront of trying to disavow Graun partisanship now it looks likely to have failed to deliver Remain, Revoke, PV, CV, GNU or anything else it has been demanding. Predicting (hoping for) another hung Parliament, Kettle sees a chance for much nicer politics after all. The sound of hooves from a herd of GNU might just be detectable in the background:

Like it or not, a readiness to compromise remains the greatest skill in modern politics. The next generation of politicians – and of media – need to get used to that, whatever happens on 12 December.

E Broakes doesn't want to be nice just yet though, and revives the device of equating Johnson and Trump (there may be a third term in the analogy -- Satan?):

Both men are so desperate to be liked that a chorus of disapproval is sometimes the most appropriate response 

The strength of his [Johnson's] need, combined with the jokey tone he deploys to service it, sets up his critics – however reasonable and fair-minded – to long for the kind of closure that only public humiliation can fulfil.

The way he has gone for cheap gags his entire career – Muslim women as “letter boxes”, which for scorn is on a par with Trump’s mockery of a disabled reporter [only to a Grduanista, surely?] – is indecent in a way that calls for indecency in response.

watching Trump forced to confront his own unpopularity [after being booed at a baseball match] and absorb some of the ugliness he himself has created was, for a brief moment, like a revenge fantasy made real, one in which – Johnson, take note – making someone feel bad was the ultimate political gesture.

Not very Guadrian I'd have thought. Close to advocating abuse, bullying, trolling and shaming, surely? Broakes should read the item warning of the damaging effects of intrusive nastiness in Bake-Off (allegedly -- never watch it myself). Reporting Bake Off.. as the prominent story in the Culture Section is another example of world-class reporting in the Graun these days as they struggle to preserve their own very high standards:

The allure of Bake Off has always been the illusion that it is a quaint little show, when actually it is an anxiety-driven thrill ride watching people lose it while trying to add a marzipan layer to their Battenburg. This series, however, bakers have been reduced to tears four times during a technical, including in the final, where Steph and Alice both buckled under the pressure. 

Gurdina celebrates -- years of misery to come

The GRu is having some worrying thoughts about the forthcoming election (agreed at last). S Jenkins:

A win for Boris Johnson would lead to a ruinous hard Brexit. How are opposition parties acting in the country’s interest?

The polls may be unreliable but, with a divided, demoralised opposition, the odds must be on Johnson winning [could be because enough voters will agree with his deal, of course, or, like me, hold their noses and vote against Remainers and revokers]

There is only the consolation of moral victory and a few years muttering I told you so to the cows in the field, passing traffic, or anyone who will listen:

That is not the end. Next year comes the real moment of truth: proper negotiations on a long-term trade deal with Brussels. Remember, Britain will still be in a transitional customs union, and it will start to be hit by a tornado of economic bad news.

This line seems to be echoed by the egregious M Barnier:

British companies risk trade barriers to the European Union if a future government seeks to abandon EU standards on workers’ rights and environmental protection, Michel Barnier has signalled.

I don't think I'd have much of a problem with that, though, unless it became a game of restrictive practices, and it would ease Labour's worries, surely?

Luckily, there is more punishment promised as well:

[Barnier] warned that the EU-UK free-trade deal could be blocked by any one of three dozen national or regional parliaments. “Don’t underestimate the difficulties of the process of ratification,” he said...[and]... the UK would have to pay a “proportional” contribution to the EU budget to remain in the single market beyond 2020.

Meanwhile, Graun commentators might be quite disappointed with a comment on the England Rugby Team's stance while the All Blacks performed the haka. The team stood in a V formation. They were fined, no doubt for the usual sort of thought crimes involving colonialism and disrespect for indigenous peoples.The Gra is normally hot on those. How disappointing to read this:

Tapeta Wehi, a haka expert from Rotorua in the North Island, praised the English side’s bold move and said he wished more teams would respond to the haka with such panache....Wehi said the haka was widely misunderstood and was intended as a challenge to the opponents – and any side that met the challenge deserved respect – not a fine...“Most Māori love it when the challenge is met – I love it,” said Wehi.

Oh dear -- some sort of support for confrontations, albeit ritualised ones. Tapet Wehi looks like they are male,and, unfortunately, hegemonic phallogocentrism has outweighed the pull of the spiritual and peace-loving traditional wisdom of the Maori (assuming Tapet Wehi is one) in this case. More regulation of team body language is clearly required.

PV split -- City PR guru takes on Lord of Darkness

A newsy bloggy thing on the Graun website has this:

1h ago 10:16

Around 40 members of staff at the People’s Vote campaign have written to Roland Rudd, who effectively runs it, complaining about his decision to dismiss two of its most senior executives, James McGrory and Tom Baldwin. In the letter, which was sent last night, they said:

It is utterly absurd that at this critical time for our country, you have started an argument about how our campaign is run.
We do not want a public argument [sic], we simply want to get back to work, delivering the people’s vote that our country so desperately needs.
Your actions have meant that we have been unable to do that, at this critical juncture for the campaign and the country.
As the staff of the People’s Vote campaign, we demand you allow us to continue with our work, under the leadership of James and Tom. 

I missed the main Gru coverage yesterday. It was a cracker:

McGrory and Baldwin, the campaigns and communications director respectively, are not going away without a battle, and staff are pushing for them to be reinstated.... McGrory, [is] a former spinner for Nick Clegg and the remain campaign, and Baldwin, a former director of media for Ed Miliband [there's some talent there!] .. But to get their positions back they have to go head-to-head with Roland Rudd, the powerful City PR guru who effectively controls the campaign through the Open Britain organisation...Rudd, a multimillionaire businessman and the brother of the Conservative former cabinet minister Amber Rudd [fancy!], is one of the godfathers of the 2016 remain campaign [I never knew they had any wealthy backers], having co-founded the Britain Stronger in Europe group that turned into the official coordinating body... Rudd, its chairman, also says he is chair of People’s Vote, although that is disputed by his opponents[!].

One person familiar with all the parties said the fallout began when Rudd began to install his allies on the board, with Peter Mandelson and others trying to stop him taking control. In his next step in the battle, Rudd is expected to make moves to remove Lord Mandelson and his allies – two former remain campaign executives, Will Straw and Joe Carberry – from the board of Open Britain.
Anger among senior staff also boiled over when another friend of Rudd, Hugo Dixon, was made deputy chair of the People’s Vote campaign, and began organising a semi-rival March for Change that they felt cut across some of the organisation’s aims.

Said a colleague:

“Roland is a frustrated politician”. “He’s very pleased with his success in business. But it’s never been enough. He’s desperate to be acknowledged publicly. It’s a combination of pique, amour propre and a desperation for publicity,” he said.

[Critics] place Rudd on the side of “starry-eyed remainiacs”, saying he wants to form an alliance with other pro-EU groups and potentially even help bring about a realignment of centrist politics around the Lib Dems...On the other side, the current executive team have been focused on winning the practical arguments for a second referendum in the country and trying to get more soft Tories and Labour figures on board in parliament...But allies of Rudd say this characterisation is rubbish and a “smokescreen” for explaining away problems with the current structure. They also point to previous efforts by Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, the former communications director to Tony Blair, to get rid of Rudd, saying that had pushed him into this course of action. A rival plan pushed by the Mandelson group would have put Michael Heseltine, Dominic Grieve and Margaret Beckett in senior roles [what a winning team that would have been].

PV splits with CV, while Elliott holds the fort

People's Vote has split, says the Graun today, between those who want to campaign for a second vote and those who want to remain.It all sounds a bit undemocratic.

The power struggle within the People’s Vote campaign for a second EU referendum has intensified with two of the group’s most senior figures forced out.,,,It follows reports of a power struggle within the campaign for a second referendum, with PR executive Rudd forming a new company to oversee a remain campaign in the case of a second referendum....Tension has stemmed from Rudd’s desire to move the campaign towards a more pro-remain position, with the campaign directors focusing on winning over soft leave voters and undecided Labour and Conservative members of parliament

I am not sure anyone is left who thought that two issues were separate 

Meanwhile, the heroic L Elliott stands alone at the ramparts as Graunies cook leaves in  patchouli oil in sustainable yurts all round him:

Don’t be fooled – the EU is no defender of workers’ rights

[In 1988, at a TUC Conference] Delors said. The domestic political outlook may be bleak but Thatcherism can be circumvented by action at a European level. Brussels has a plan for a social Europe that will protect workers, tame capitalism and prevent a race to the bottom.

it is complete nonsense. Britain’s labour market has been reshaped over the past 40 years by deregulation, privatisation and anti-trade union laws, not by the limited protections delivered by the EU, which are weaker in practice than they sound in principle.There was, for example, nothing in the draconian Trade Union Act 2016 that would have run counter to EU law, not even the clause – eventually dropped as the legislation passed through parliament – that picket supervisors would have to give their name to the police....the overriding principle behind the European project has been to make life easier for capital, which is why multinational corporations like it so much [As in the recent] calls for European labour markets to become more “flexible”....a succession of EU treaties has enshrined in law four basic freedoms for business: the right to provide services; the right to establish an enterprise; the right to move capital; and the right to move labour. These freedoms trump all other considerations, including the right of workers to withdraw their labour.

Anybody who suggested to Greek workers that they should look to Brussels to protect their rights would be given short shrift.. when a structural adjustment programme was imposed on Athens as the price of financial support in 2015, it was the International Monetary Fund that sought to tone down the hardline demands of the Commission and the European Central Bank, for whom the imperative was to safeguard the profits of European banks rather than to protect Greek workers.

[Or try]  the Viking case in 2007. At issue was the concept of “posted workers”, employees hired in one country but employed in another. Viking, a Finnish ferry company, posted workers from Estonia as a way of getting round collective bargaining agreements made in Finland. The action by the company – a classic example of a race to the bottom – was challenged by the International Transport Workers Federation and ended up in the ECJ. The judges sided with the company, with the ECJ advocate general Poiares Maduro saying “the possibility for a company to relocate to a member state where its operating costs will be lower is pivotal to the pursuit of effective intra-Community trade”.

[And] all the progress made thus far to reduce the gender pay gap to about 10% has been the result of domestic pressure and industrial action stretching back to the 1968 strike by women machinists at Ford’s Dagenham plant. The EU was not responsible for the Equal Pay Act or the Sex Discrimination Act. Nor was it Brussels that led to the passing of the Health and Safety at Work Act or the Employment Protection Act.

The notion that only Brussels stands in the way of a barrage of deregulation betrays not just a misunderstanding of the way the EU operates but also a deep and irrational pessimism on the left, a belief that the Conservatives will be in power for ever no matter what they do. The left doesn’t need the EU to fight its battles. What it needs is to make the case for better working conditions and win over a public sick of a labour market loaded in favour of employers. 

Toynbee wants a purge before an election?

I missed the first item by P Toynbee until I read about it in the Times, where it was condemned for its superior tone and its inability to understand dissent:

Labour MPs who help Boris Johnson to victory will not be forgiven

Things are already shaping up for a revenge campaign then:

Any Labour MPs or Tory remainer/soft Brexiteers who rejected May’s deal need to say which of these magic new ingredients could possibly sway them now....[Corbyn] would be right not to expel them. (And in that spirit, he should suspend destructive trigger ballots currently wasting the energies of Labour MPs who should be out canvassing, not wooing their own members.) [the latter because K Starmer is fighting reselection?]

Labour MPs who help Johnson to victory, by backing his Brexit to satisfy their constituents, will find themselves unforgiven even if not expelled. Each Johnson act that passes, each budget turn of the screw, will belong to them in perpetuity, no way back...[sosheis assuming an elcltionvictory ifhe gets Brexit done?] ...Flint rightly says Labour MPs who take that course will be “brave”. If they were, like Hoey, actual Brexit believers, that might be so. But those such as Flint, who think democracy commands that they must obey their leave constituents’ wishes, look a bit less brave than other leave-constituency MPs such as Sunderland South’s Bridget Phillipson, Redcar’s Anna Turley or Wakefield’s Mary Creagh, who vote against leaving the EU while warning their leave voters of Brexit harm.

The suspicion that Johnson might indeed pull it off and get rewarded with a majority is what has pushed her into full campaigning mode today?

when the searchlight eventually does fall again on public services, as it likely will in a general election, that may do Johnson and his party no favours. Take Brexit out of the immediate battleground and what’s left? Only the true state of the country and its services after nine long years of funding starvation perpetrated by Conservative governments.

Toynbee goes on to make some excellent points, especially about the damage done to the NHS by Tory austerity. But her conclusion is typically baffling:

Are these tales of privatisation, neglect and cost-cutting the kind of thing Johnson wishes we would all focus on intently once Brexit is “done”? (Not that it ever will be.) If he thinks close coverage of the state of public services is his winning ticket in an imminent election, he may be in for a shock.

Despite her own obvious commitments she is still putting Brexit above all else -- I continue to ask why it means so much to her. She wants it taken out of the battleground but promises it will never be done. She is sure Labour will recover from its dreadful vagueness and dithering Remainerism and look credible again, and be able to force the agenda on to social issues -- but she can't do this herself! She wants a purge.

Remainers Assemble!

Two options for the (potentially) defeated and embittered in the Graun today. First Monbiot, who has come quite a long way considering:

British people are fundamentally disempowered by our political system. Other countries show that there’s another way 

 [We currently have] a 19th-century model of democracy that permits no popular engagement other than an election every few years, and a referendum every few decades?...Representative democracy is a remarkably blunt instrument. Hundreds of issues are bundled together at every election, yet the vote tends to swing on just one or two of them. The government then presumes consent for its entire programme 

Then it gets a bit soggy:

I want to see it balanced by popular sovereignty, especially the variety known as deliberative democracy....drawing citizens together to solve problems. It means creating forums in which we listen respectfully to each other, seek to understand each other’s views, change our minds when necessary, and create the rich, informed democratic culture currently missing from national life.

Some of this looks a little bit like Autonomism,especially in the Brazilian example he cites:

citizens were able to decide how the city’s entire investment budget should be spent. The process was... allowed to evolve as citizens suggested improvements. Some 50,000 people a year participated.

Others look like a talkshop begging to be colonised by the financially secure chattering classes:

In Ireland, a citizens’ assembly on abortion law turned an angry debate into a considered one. It tested competing claims and ideas, and led eventually to a referendum. The Better Reykjavík programme allows the citizens of Iceland’s capital to put forward ideas for the city’s improvement, which other people vote on.  The 15 most popular ideas every month are passed to the city council to consider.[a bit lame] 

Then the expected focus:

The European referendum, that apparently represents the people’s will, was reduced to such a crude choice that no one knows exactly what the majority voted for. Rather than encouraging an informed, nuanced politics, it has made our system even more adversarial, binary and reductive....I could see the point of Brexit if it meant returning power to the people. But Johnson is as contemptuous of popular sovereignty as he is of parliamentary sovereignty.

Elsewhere, R Behr develops more common Graun perspectives:

Among the ‘smashed avocado metro-elite’ is a generation of young people radicalised by Brexit

An opening weird comment:

[Johnson's] deal horrifies anyone with even a trace of attachment to European institutions. It explicitly prohibits negotiation of intimate trade [tariffs on ladies' underwear?] If a more distant relationship isn’t agreed quickly, a nasty, familiar cliff-edge comes back into view.  

The Brexiteers in the Tory Party are increasingly sectarian and he fears their wrath:

[They] will pursue the defeated side until the very memory of a pro-European Toryism is extinguished....Europhobic fanaticism has broken the will of some remainers but radicalised the rest. 

This seems a suitably empty radicalism for Gardianistas, because there are still problems in agreeing a concrete alternative:

the People’s Vote campaign has whipped up demand for a referendum, but that is an expedient to avert Brexit [surely not?] not an argument why EU membership is worth saving. Many Europhiles find the thought of another bitterly fought plebiscite dispiriting, so they shrink from the policy printed on the banner under which they rally. Charismatic leadership celebrating the pro-European cause on its own terms is no more available now than it was in 2016. [well,how about Corbyn? Swinson? Grieve? Starmer? Various SNP folk?]

Leavers are haunted by a spectral return, of the temporarily humiliated if not exactly the repressed:

Their fear is that Labour’s pro-Europeans will escape the debilitation of Corbyn’s leadership and that a refreshed, united opposition will turn remain into rejoin. [It will energise the purely] cultural dynamics sustaining the anti-Brexit movement. The pro-EU electorate has been poorly served by the main English parties but, paradoxically, that has nurtured attachment to remain as an identity. In the absence of capable political representation, the cause has become a grievance – a lingering burn in the hearts of people who didn’t think about their status as citizens of Europe before 2016, but now resent having that citizenship, and all it represents, withdrawn.

Let us not despair:

Remainers come in all ages, but their numbers swell in younger cohorts. They are more likely to live in cities, but they are spread all over the country. There are millions of them and they vote...[Brexiteers might have their moments of triumph but]   But those feelings will, I suspect, be weak and transient compared with the anguish and loss felt on the other side. Leavers will not thank politicians for Brexit, not with the passion and persistence of the remainers who will punish them for it.[What sort of punishment does Behr want, I wonder?]

Revenge and punishment fantasies -- what a Guardina vision!

SNAFU as Remainers threaten to bore on

J Freedland in teh Graun still isn't ready to go quietly:

MPs have voted for the bill to go forward, but that doesn’t mean they all back it – or that the saga is ending any time soon

He might be right. The timetable to get the Bill through by October 31st was defeated, so now the EC decides whether to extend and if so for how long, no doubt motivated entirely by what is best. Recovering from a brief shock, seen best in bleak faces on C4 News when the first vote came through, the Remainers still see a chance for mischief via amendments as the Bill proceeds.

Johnson won his meaningful vote by 329 to 299 votes, a majority of 30. Put another way, and as if to reflect this divided nation through what have become the defining numbers of the Brexit era, he won by 52% to 48%.[ but before we sneer, the timetable]... was defeat[ed] by 322 to 308 – all but 52-to-48 in reverse.

E Maitlis, who doesn't seem very good at sums, crowed at the second majority but not the first [maybe -- I find it hard to concentrate during her scolding tirades and point-scoring]

Fear not ye who Remain, says Freedland:

First, don’t fall for the hype that says that parliament approved Johnson’s deal. It did not. MPs simply voted for it to receive a second reading, some of them motivated by the desire not to endorse it but to amend it. As Labour’s Gloria De Piero confessed, she voted yes, “not because I support the deal but because I don’t”. That 30-vote majority will include MPs who wanted to propose UK membership of a customs union, others keen on conditioning the deal on public support in a confirmatory referendum. Screen out the Tory spin: those MPs should not be counted as backers of the deal.

However, nagging doubts resurface:

Johnson felt compelled to call the whole thing to a halt...Why? The obvious explanation is that this gives the PM a pretext to grab what he really wants: an early election framed as a battle to get Brexit done, with him as the people’s tribune pitted against those wicked remainer saboteurs.

But rejoice! There might be more fuck-ups to come as remainers search desperately for a last square metre to pitch their tent on (as Q Letts put it). Freedland finds hope:

Any period of scrutiny is unpalatable to Johnson, because he fears that the threadbare coalition that might exist to back his deal will unravel once it engages in closer examination of the withdrawal agreement. Its erosion of workers’ rights; its creation of a new no-deal cliff edge in 2020; its entrenchment of a hard Brexit in law – all those dangers would only become more visible under the spotlight of protracted (or even normal) Commons scrutiny. Bits of his coalition – especially among those Labour MPs who backed him on Tuesday – would begin to flake off.

And finally, we must all breathe a sigh of relief:

we are not free of the Brexit saga yet, not by a long way.

Oh good.

Faith versus passionate reason as the Northern Irish just get on with their lives

W Hutton again in the Observer reports from the People's Vote march, and sums up the classic Remainer view. Brexiteers just have unreasoning faith in their opinions

For them, Brexit is a religion, a reason for being, a lifestyle. Brexit is not a policy or a feasible strategic direction for the country, as we have learned. You can’t reason with them, when they argue, for example, about the number of independent trade deals that they imagine can be done to substitute for what we will lose. These deals just don’t exist. 

Then the usual apparent mea culpa,rapidly reversed by blaming other Fleet Street dogs:

it’s clear that the greatest weakness of the pro-EU cause has been an inability to find ways of fighting Europhobic faith with passionately argued reason. The capacity to compensate with vivid argument, speaking from the heart, has been absent: why, despite everything, Remain commands only a small majority in the country even now.

Well, they've done their best, surely, over the last 3 years? All that crisis stuff ranging from the threat to cheap British strawberries, through soggy tomatoes in JiT BLTs, diabetics not getting insulin, house prices crashing, criminals roaming the streets unmolested (implying European ones but pass on),the solemn reassurances that economists can make accurate predictions 10 years in advance.

Pathos to end:

But for all that, Saturday’s march left me hopeful.. Britain will one day again make common cause with friends and allies in Europe – we millions who marched are not going away.

 Ah yes -- the march. The usual stuff:

hundreds of thousands of very real people determined to march once more in London told a very different, more inclusive, island story. One that cuts across borders of politics and circumstance and region...good-natured and well-mannered...

Brexit has become an assault on the salt of the earth....Dave Blackburn, 62, a support worker for autistic adults...Sheila Connolly, who works with young homeless people...Emmanuelle Brook, a teaching assistant in her 40s with two children [who was] born in France, has lived in the UK for 24 years....Judith Spencer, who spent her career as a psychologist on the civil servants’ appointment board[who was] "born here half-Japanese in 1940,” ...Martyn Cattermole, a retired management consultant [Oh and one] warehouse worker from Warwick

They might [be a bit petty bourgeois but]...reflect on the fact that, in three-and-a-half years, the most notable collective showings of Brexit voters has been the 29 March “Brexit Day” gathering, dominated by the intelligentsia of the Football Lads’ Alliance and their arthritic desire for a ruck in the name of Engerlund.

 
Hutton and all the others will soon be onto some other crusade, marches for Climate Change or whatever, of course and it will be social distancing and moral hectoring as usual.

W Keegan continues to develop Project Fear:

the independent National Institute of Economic and Social Research is to be congratulated for its imminent publication of Beyond Brexit: A Programme for UK Reform, a product of the newly formed Policy Reform Group....[there will be] challenges facing the country regardless of what particular form of exit from the EU will ultimately be chosen”.

Keegan's take on this remarkably uncontroversial statement is 

There is now abundant evidence that no form of Brexit would be chosen by any sane administration, and many of us – as is clear from public demonstrations – have not yet given up hope that in the end the best Brexit is indeed no Brexit.

There is an interesting quote from an unknown source, although D Gauke is implicated:

all reputable studies point to a severe knock to the economy’s tax base from any form of Brexit. The dissident former cabinet minister David Gauke, having had access to all internal studies, points out the damage that would result from abandoning more than 70 trade agreements we already have via our membership of the EU. With regard to any new FTA (free trade agreement) we might negotiate with a non-EU third country, “for every pound gained to the UK economy by being able to enter FTAs with third countries we will see a loss of up to £33”.

I love economists' forecasts, and insist we take them entirely literally -- so if we get lots of FTAs we will soon see the economy wiped out by all those lost £32s until there is nothing left? 

Even if some of the argument is suspect, we can trust Keegan's political insight -- he knows it is all a plot by Tory deregulators:

superficially the present government recognises the need for a huge repair job on the British economy, with lots of regional and infrastructure spending. But much of this is pie in the sky and incompatible with the not-so-hidden agenda of the Brexit paymasters, which is for a deregulated, low-tax, “offshore” island.

We can always vote out such a Government of course, at least in principle. Who could vote out the EC, not even in principle?

Meanwhile, a curious piece for the Observer  on the reaction to the Johnson deal in NI itself. You would expect predictions of renewals of armed conflict and all that, but their reporters have actually interviewed some people

Peter Shirlow, a director at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies and an authority on unionism, said there was little appetite for disruption. “A lorry sitting in Larne having its contents checked won’t drive them back to violence. The narrative is changing. Northern Ireland is not as dysfunctional as you think.”...there seems little appetite for mass unruly protest....Few thought the union with the UK was imperilled.... "Betrayal? It’s ridiculous, inflammatory language. Let’s just get on with life.”...It was a common sentiment: customs or no customs, do a deal and move on.

A terrible day indeed, when you can't trust the Irish to do armed rebellion on behalf of the chattering classes. They probably need vivid argument, speaking from the heart.

Freedland laments the end of civilisation

J Freedland is in mourning in la Gruna. First a bit of ground clearing and updating on the latest wheeze:

Almost everything about this moment deserves either regret or condemnation. Forty months have passed since the referendum, but MPs will have little more than four hours to assess the new withdrawal agreement governing Britain’s departure from the EU. That’s barely time to read it, let alone debate and scrutinise it. To rush through a decision of such gravity is not the action of a country that is serious about its own future....That in itself is a good reason to support Oliver Letwin’s amendment, which would force the government to seek another EU extension and give everyone more time. (Letwin’s prime purpose is to head off a bit of Spartan chicanery, making it impossible for the hardcore Brexiters to get round the Benn Act by voting yes on Saturday, only to vote down the withdrawal agreement later, thereby triggering a no-deal exit on 31 October.)

Is there still the concept of vexatious litigation for Maughan or vexatious legislation for Letwin?

What debate there is will be blind to the most crucial facts [sic -- see below] . The chancellor, Sajid Javid, has refused to provide an economic impact assessment of the deal, breezily insisting that any cost will be worth it because getting Brexit agreed will be “good for the fabric of our democracy”. The closest guide we have is an independent study, warning that the latest arrangements could reduce Britain’s per capita GDP by up to 7% over 10 years [my emphasis] (compared with remaining) [so is that a real reduction or an accountant's one?] , making this deal even more economically damaging than Theresa May’s.

Johnson must never be credited with anything:

[He] was ready to – what’s the word? – surrender a principle that for the leader of the Conservative and Unionist party should have been sacrosanct [the Union with NI. The result is good though, surely, for Freedland?] Northern Ireland will be, in effect, in the EU customs union from day one, even if it officially remains part of the UK customs area.

Despite the Gurdina's best efforts,though:

Johnson may just scrape home. If that happens, there will be many millions in this country who will feel nothing less than bereft....For three and a half years, they have put off that moment of pain, hoping that somehow, Brexit might be averted, that their fellow Britons would change their minds and change course. Sometime on Saturday that dream could be over....they have come to value it very dearly. It is an ideal of cooperation across borders; of their country combining with its neighbours, rather than fighting against them, to face down shared threats, whether they be the climate crisis or the lethal recklessness of Donald Trump. In 2019, that idea seems more necessary than ever. Yet tomorrow it could all vanish....They – we – fear we are about to lose something very precious.

It's still all about imagined communities and paranoid fantasies then. Brexit will mean World War 3 with Germany or keep Trump in power permanently.The climate will now worsen and we shall all be drowned in our agreeable inner urban suburbs.

We were too nice, too honest...

I couldn't find the latest Great White Hope story of J Maughan's court case reported anywhere else and there is no sign of it today. Instead, we have a Graun 'why ohwhy/mea culpa/moral victory' story. A Beckett writes:

Remainers had the better arguments, but they have failed to shift public opinion

For a lot of Britons, Brexit is still mostly just words. Jargon, vague promises, dire warnings, contradictory predictions, a few catchphrases [silly vulgar Leavers mostly]...It’s a conversation that remainers have rarely controlled, let alone dominated. If they are, finally, about to lose the Brexit battle, this may be why....remainers [have not] produced equally effective propaganda of their own.

Here's an example of the sort of thing Graun journalists might have done:

After the referendum result was announced, leave figures quickly began talking about “the biggest democratic exercise” and “largest mandate” in British history. The first claim was incorrect: more people voted in the 1992 general election, when the UK population was more than a 10th smaller. And the second claim was at least debatable: the leavers’ victory margin was much narrower than those in the UK’s two previous national referendums.  

That would have clinched it. All it takes is a bit of simple checking and the whole thing would have evaporated:

The same has happened with who voted for Brexit. Again and again, they have been characterised as “the left behind”: poor, neglected, Labour-inclined voters from the north of England. The reality that Brexit is essentially a rightwing project – to deregulate the British economy for the benefit of more hard-nosed, non-EU capitalism – has been largely obscured...Remainers have been unable to identify and promote a similarly marketable political cohort of their own.

Well, they think the petty bourgeoisie just is 'the people' They couldn't admit to being a mere cohort could they? And would it be a popular cohort with lots of support?

The (other) meeja are to blame (astonishingly):

The formation of the prevailing common sense on political questions is rarely driven by which side has the better ideas. The leavers have had most of the press on their side, implacably anti-European for decades. And the BBC has been strikingly reluctant to pick apart dubious pro-Brexit claims, for example about the supposedly overwhelming leave mandate – for fear, it seems, of being accused of remainer bias.[So I imagined all those hysterical denunciations of Leavers on Newsnight?]

Graun journalists have been wonderful of course, but dogs can always turn on other dogs:

journalists outside the Tory press would always act as remain’s allies – as fact-checkers against the leavers’ half-truths and lies – [but] remainers should have realised that a Brexit deal, and whatever uncharted world comes after, is simply a better story for the media than Britain staying in the EU.

Here's another fact for you: 'Leavers have had much of Whitehall on their side, too.  '

The problem is that Remainers are too idealistic and nice:

A wide but unwieldy coalition of liberal celebrities, lawyers, usually apolitical citizens, leftwing and centrist activists, and usually warring political parties, it has advanced – further than most people ever expected – on multiple fronts: on the streets, in the courts, in the Commons. But the movement has been so busy with all this, and with managing itself – the 48% getting to know each other – that it has not noticed how the underlying political narrative has still been moving in Brexit’s favour, and has not done enough to reverse that. 

However, they anticipate more delicious possibilities even if they have lost:

the Brexit crisis will still be there – but as a more concrete matter, less about rhetoric and more about economic and diplomatic realities. Remainers may finally be able to say the words that some of them have been itching to use for years: “We told you so.”

Remainers try the courts again, Toynbee still hopes for a CV

You have to take your hat off to J Maugham QC and his legal campaigns. This latest is a beauty.  Maugham is applying to a Scottish court for review, which means delay which means Benn Act extension. As usual I want to ask -- what drives this man?

Lawyers for Maugham will tell the court on Friday morning the deal contravenes section 55 of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, which states that it is “unlawful for Her Majesty’s government to enter into arrangements under which Northern Ireland forms part of a separate customs territory to Great Britain”....On Twitter, Maugham confirmed that he would ask the inner house of the court on Monday to order the prime minister to apply for an extension to article 50 until 31 January under the Benn Act, or send the letter itself.

Meanwhile P Toynbee, sounding a bit weary and sour I thought, bangs on rather desperately. The DUP won't support the deal (so they are now magically restored to her good books?), nor will the 19 Labour MPs who want a deal if it continues alignment with EU regulations. Farage is still against. Happily, she thinks:

This deal unites Labour, and even fires up Jeremy Corbyn to cast aside his ancient scepticism and at last put his shoulder to the cause of killing it off. Today [and for some time] Labour was calling for a confirmatory referendum: ask the voters if this is really what they want?

What about Brexit weariness?

Is the Get It Done sentiment so strong at Westminster that it will sweep aside doubters on all sides? MPs know that nothing is “done” if they sign up to Johnson’s deal: it’s only the beginning of unending torment over the economy-defining negotiations on customs, tariffs and regulations, where as an outsider the UK will have the weakest hand.

Toynbee has been arguing all along that the UK has the weaker hand in any EU negotiations, of course, and so should abandon the whole idea..

The last chance to get his deal agreed would be to accept the Kyle-Wilson amendment for a confirmatory referendum ballot, which would see the Commons overwhelmingly pass it.  

Many shudder at the prospect of five long months of a referendum campaign that would be more bitter, more mendacious and savage than the last. But as hundreds of thousands of People’s Vote marchers file past parliament as it sits on Saturday, the worthwhile prize is a vote to stop Brexit dead:...A packed Labour for a Public Vote meeting in the Commons last night discussed ways to run a grassroots campaign, making the remain side a fiery insurgency, with greater input from young people and women [That will go down well, the day after pissed-off commuters pulled down an XR protester from the roof of a Tube]

In the least convincing of all her points:

But if leave were to win, that too would be a necessary catharsis. Remainers would just have to live with it, in the hope of drawing gradually closer to Europe again over the years.

Kettle drums beat for last stand

That nice open-minded journalist M Kettle sums up his overall experience at this difficult time, with a mixture of resignation and defiant insistence he was right all along:

At first, I accepted Brexit [!] . Now it’s become clear that we must not leave the EU

Back in 2016 my response to the leave victory was to lament it bitterly but to say that Britain should continue to hug Europe as close as possible, even while leaving.This would help to protect jobs, secure the Irish peace process, and allow Scotland’s remain vote to be treated with enough respect to avoid Brexit becoming a threat to the union...it might then be possible to reopen the question of EU membership [very far-sighted these Remainers] 

Kettle now thinks the position is even more polarised and since Leavers have not flaked, that strategy is no longer sellable.

There is no perfect choice to be made on Brexit. The fault with that lies in the way the referendum process was devised – verdict first, terms later. All the options come with risks, often very big ones. But we don’t solve anything by wishing we could have made better choices at previous turnings along the way. The here and now choice takes two forms. The first is between Johnson’s deal, no deal and remaining in the EU. The other, which applies as much to hardline leavers as it does to remainers, is between folding and fighting on.

He tries for Guardiain-style independence and balance:

A deal could draw some of the worst poison from public attitudes to politics. It would satisfy the many (more than some of us want to think) who just want the whole thing over

But then the usual list of reasons to remain, with the usual implicit ifs and buts:

But it would still be a terrible deal and that can’t be ignored, however weary we are. It would mean buying a pig in a poke and hoping that what’s inside entails a good future for the British people. It would defer rather than solve the Irish border crisis. It would risk breaking up the union. It would instantly worsen the UK’s trading position, with severe short- and long-term impacts on the economy and jobs. It would weaken the UK in the negotiations during the transition period. And it would set Britain at odds with its only true geographic and regional allies.

Then it's a turn to good old common-sense, pragmatism, a rejection of anything as European as a political ideology, and more than a bit of self-justification and belief he was right all along, mixed with a demand to keep the old elite and select a new people:

The lesson is that Brexit won’t work.[You silly people have had your fun,now pack up your toys] ...Brexit won the vote. But it’s an ideology not a policy. When its supporters tried to turn it into policies, as they are still trying to do, it fell apart. It made things worse. These three years have been the leavers’ fault and no one else’s [they just won't listen to reason] That’s why obstructing no deal has been so important.

History will absolve him!

Communities selectively imagined

A Chakrabortty can write good stuff, even for the Grudiqan. This column begins very well, citing B Anderson's Imagined Communities

Benedict Anderson analyses how a national identity is manufactured,...a collective waking dream fed by comparatively recent technology, such as books in the vernacular language and common consumption of the same media. ...Great Britain [is] “an invented nation superimposed, if only for a while, on to much older alignments and loyalties”.

That's good though isn't it -- it denies any romantic, racist or ethnic basis for nationhood and generally reinforces the importance of flexible cultural identity politics? However, we soon warm to the main theme:

The same bunch of spivs, blimps and yahoos chuntering on this week about making Britain great again are more likely to shrink it, making the country smaller than at any time since the Stuart dynasty....the proximate cause of the UK’s demise will be easily ascribed: it will be death by hard Brexit...if remain-voting Scotland goes its own way, it will make the Brexit maelstrom look like a passing shower. 

And then, some typical Grudian independence and balance:

While it would be easy to argue that this national instability is the fault solely of Johnson and his red-faced, jabby-fingered Brexiters, it would also be wrong....As described by Anderson and others, nation-building is a long journey of establishing common interests and promulgating them through an engineered common culture. The UK’s store of both is dwindling. As recently as Margaret Thatcher, the country had only four TV channels; today you need never watch the same thing as either your spouse or your offspring. 

the idea of a national economy becomes ever more laughable....What’s left is the idea of a territory sullenly governed and subsidised by central London, which is itself a global entity – a host to multinational businesses, an international tax haven, a laundromat for the world’s hot and dirty money.

What happened to the idea of Britain? It lost the interest of elites who spotted easier, quicker ways to cash in. Perhaps all that’s left now is the most negative way to hold together a nation: an imagined enemy. It used to be the Frogs and the Krauts and all those other ugly words. Now? It’s the SNP, who used to have Ed Miliband in their pocket, the saboteurs in the judiciary and in parliament, the remoaner establishment.

What a curious mixture! Marxism plus sentimentality about the Union. Critiques of stamocap and strong petty bourgeois values over the horrors of cable TV threatening the family. Above all, using this stuff to rebuke Leavers, and ignoring the fatuous imagined community that is 'Europe' for the sentimental Remainers.