Strengthening democracy? Who is going to vote for that?
Speak for yourself. This side of the pond the next two years are looking pretty terrifying.
I don't think I agree. It looks to me like the ongoing struggle, Trump v Democracy and the Rule of Law, is likely to come to a head.
Yeah, I could be totally full of shit. It has been known to happen.
re: 2
I genuinely am not sure how much to panic and start making plans.
i) my wife isn't British, so we need to start paperwork for settled status. (No matter that the official recommendation is to wait)*
ii) how likely is the pound to tank, and my meagre (but important) savings with it?
iii) should I be stockpiling a longer supply of essential medicines, food, whatever.
* I'm also expecting at some point that the government will renege on their promises to the EU citizens in the UK, and start using them as a bargaining chip.
4: That was the worst thing about the 2016 election. I had to face the fact that heebie could be wrong.
But why did I have to pick that to prove my point with? Couldn't I have been wrong on the diet wars or cry-it-out sleep methods?
5: Have you done the full two-column pros/cons decision analysis with this stuff? I also wonder if I should be more systematic about planning for catastrophe... There should be a way to determine whether it's literally possible to plan rationally or not, right?
2/5: That all does sound terrifying for sure.
5.i. It's never too soon. Parents of a friend of ours were on Windrush, and his dad, being a suspicious bastard, got all his paperwork sorted pretty much as soon as they landed. Now they're in complex negotiations with various government bodies about care for his mum and they can produce anything they're asked for. Huge weight off their minds.
5.iii. Which reminds me, I need to ask advice about this re. drugs. Do you think I should ask a doctor or a pharmacist?
I'm also expecting at some point that the government will renege on their promises to the EU citizens in the UK, and start using them as a bargaining chip.
Second week in April would be my guess.
re: 10.1
We, luckily, made the decision to put some of the utility bills in my wife's name, and she has always been on the lease, so we at least have years of bills, etc. Although we don't have them going back to 2002, when we got married, as who keeps paper copies of bills for 16 or 17 years?
She did have permanent residency -- we had to go through a load of paperwork in 2002, including flights out to the Czech Republic for me, etc. to attend an interview at the British Embassy. We only discovered, post the Brexit vote, that ... that's not permanent. If you get your passport renewed, you have to go through it all again. So, it's pretty fucking temporary.
11. last: whaaaaaaat? Is there no way of transferring the stamp to her new passport?
5.ii: I've always kept significant savings in whichever of my countries of residence I wasn't living in at the time. I now have about a third of my money in yen, and am thinking about sending more over as I'm assuming the pound is likely to drop as the negotiations go down to the wire, even if it does rebound in violent relief if May does get a deal through the Commons.
5.iii: There's a spanking new set of shelves in my dining room, which I'm gradually stocking up with a few more staples each time I go to the supermarket. There's no harm in having a full larder, whatever happens.
who keeps paper copies of bills for 16 or 17 years?
Civil servants at the Home Office, apparently. I did know a guy who had every pay slip he'd ever been given in his life when he was in his late 40s.
On the plus side, I didn't get eaten by a bear.
Right-wing militias are definitely not heading to the border.
I don't know about Brexit, or how the EU or UK regulate prescription drugs, but you should always have an extra 30 days or so of any critical prescriptions. So many things can go wrong with modern supply chains, e.g. the hurricane in Puerto Rico disrupted the entire U.S. supply of some specialty drugs for a few weeks because they were manufactured in a hard-hit area.
15: There have been several recent bear sightings here in residential neighborhoods, including at my in-laws', where the bear clawed up the wood on their front-porch posts. But I don't think the bear's very bright—he was like ten feet from some beehives that are currently brimming with nectar and he totally missed it. Stupid bear.
18: I admit I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, but that is just rude.
IF WE WANTED NECTAR WE WOULD EAT FLOWERS. STUPID HUMAN.
I read a fair amount about Brexit, and the phenomenon is still completely opaque to me. I mean, is it really possible that May won't make a deal at all?
I think the focus of the Trumpian emergency* now shifts almost completely to the DOJ. Destroying it is his biggest hope and he is a fair way down that road. D House can help that a bit, but only on the margins.
re: 12.1
You'd think, but:
"You can apply for a new residence card or permanent residence card if the passport containing your old residence card has expired - you cannot transfer it to a new passport."
https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-a-uk-residence-card/replace
So, no.
In theory, you can carry the old passport, but the Czechs didn't return it at renewal. And a 10 year old expired passport isn't exactly cast iron, when it comes to proving residency for the purposes of Brexit, even if we did have it.
re: 22
Current informed opinion is leaning towards that option being the more likely outcome at the moment. Which will be catastrophic.
Tim has a green card that he got through work. Ordinarily, he would have to wait 5 years to apply for citizenship, but since he's married to me, he's eligible now after 3 years.
He doesn't trust Trump to respect green cards.
Problem is a lot fo other people feel that way too. In the past, they routinely waived interviews for employment-based green cards, but now they're doing them. This along with the increase in the number of applications for naturalization has created a huge backlog. More work, but no more staff. It used to take a few months. Now it can be 18 months to 2 years. Sigh.
Pertinent to 27, I applied for citizenship (also based on marriage) about 13 months ago, which was my 3-year mark. Not a peep yet from the bureaucrats.
I looked at appointments to get my German permanent residence permit inscribed in my new passport, but that was within a year of the big influx, and Berlin's main office of foreigners' affairs had other things to do. As a result, wait times for an appointment were 10-12 months. So I have let it slide. Fortunately, I got my old passport back after renewal. (I knew I would from previous renewals.) I do have to show both at any non-Schengen border crossing.
"You can apply for a new residence card or permanent residence card if the passport containing your old residence card has expired - you cannot transfer it to a new passport."
Does that really mean going through the entire application process again, or can you apply for a new card to be reissued with the new passport number, in the same way as replacing a lost card? I'm under no illusions as the the bureaucratic malignity of the Home Office, but it seems worth asking.
As the saying goes, malignity begins at home.
re: 30
Again. There's no transfer route.You'd think there would be, since, you know, as the spouse of a British citizen who was officially granted indefinite right to remain over 15 years ago, you'd think that'd be permanent or indefinite, but it's not. You really do need to go through the entire process again.
Every page for all classes of residency reiterate that, again and again. So, every 5 - 10 years, you need to repeat the entire process, again.
e.g.
https://www.gov.uk/right-of-abode/apply-for-a-certificate-of-entitlement
"You need to apply for a new certificate when your passport expires."
In our case, the re-application is probably much less onerous than the original one, since J' is an EU citizen and wasn't in 2002.
Bloody hell. That is truly malign.
I still have Japanese permanent residence, but updating that to a new passport only involves an hour or two in immigration getting a note made on the back of my residence card.
I'm pretty sure mine did transfer over last time, but a) I'm a UK citizen, and b) I had my old US passport with the stamp in it. It was also a long time ago, pre-hostile environment etc.
Would it be easier to apply for a biometric residence permit? (Again, asking from ignorance, so apologies if you've already explored this route.)
Replace your visa with a BRPYou can apply for a biometric residence permit (BRP) to replace the visa (or wet ink stamp) in your passport or travel document, for example if:
your passport or travel document has expired or it's been lost or stolen
25: to be clear, the current drama is whether they will make one *by the end of the month* so the text can be presented at the December 13th/14th European Council. According to Michel Barnier, the other side of the table, the text is 95% done, and the status of citizens chapter has been closed for months. The bear-side theory is no longer that they won't agree, it's that they don't hit "Accept all changes and stop tracking" in time to hold the necessary votes, signing ceremony, etc.
But this text still has to pass the Commons?
Yes, and the parliamentary arithmetic is very uncertain. I wouldn't bet against May getting it to pass, though. The closer we get to March 29, the less time there is in which to propose an alternative deal acceptable to the EU (good luck with that one!), or hold another referendum. It will take a lot of courage to vote No Deal in the Commons under those circumstances, and if I were May I'd be doing everything I could to postpone finalizing the agreement until the last moment.
FWIW I have the increasing impression that the Tory eurosceptics are ready to cave - they keep stacking up dramatic showdown meetings that end with nobody walking out, no veto wielded, no leadership challenge happening - but the Jo Johnson thing has injected quite a bit of extra uncertainty. If you could take it at face value it would be great but it's the fucking Johnsons so you have to assume maximum cynicism and also love of drama for its own sake.
This comes a week after Johnson-B admitted that he didn't want to run for the leadership because he thinks he might place fourth or fifth. So score one for "ERG cracks under the pressure" but also one for "second referendum thing is some kind of weird plot"
If Jo Johnson votes against the deal, then presumably his brother will also feel he has to (purely to avoid being trumped), and then the same dynamic applies to the other Tory eurosceptics.
At which point presumably there's cover for any Labour eurosceptics who are wavering, to vote in a similar way.
Wait? There's two of them. I thought Jo was just a weird nickname for Boris.
Sure, you can construct theories like this but there is no evidence that obligations to anyone constrain his behaviour in any way. I can see him supporting a deal, supporting no deal, supporting remain in a second referendum scenario, or pussying out completely and missing the vote (he did this while he was foreign secretary). It's also a mistake to assume he's a leader of anything. He is not in fact the leader of their caucus or especially influential among Tory MPs (this is why he's given up on running for leader).
I would actually go as far as to say that him flipping or running away is, in general, more likely than not, because flipping on an important issue (or running away) is dramatic and being a massive drama queen, he always chooses more drama over less drama. He was, after all, a turncoat in the referendum campaign.
Even more shocking, "Jo Johnson" is a man. Yep, it's short for Joseph. What an affectation!
46: Jo as the short form of Joseph is common in Britain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Grimond
I thought the Johnsons were posh.
What do they use for shortening Josephine?
Going private at 420, funding secured. https://mobile.twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1062373395445231616
Cabinet ministers being called in for briefing/waterboarding/Khashoggi-style axe murder one by one. Survivors meet tomorrow afternoon for signoff, digging of big hole in No.10 Rose Garden. Then EU General Affairs Council later in the week, parliamentary vote, off to whatever chateau they've booked for December 13th masque of the red death.
@44
That's not based on constructing a chain of obligations, that's purely on people acting out of a fear of being left behind and/or (in the case of the some of the waverers) giving them sufficient cover so they can avoid having to stick out.
Is Boris Johnson one of those people the media quotes only because he reliably says things that rile people up, rather than because he has political influence?
The really startling thing about Jo Johnson is that he's married to A/melia G/entleman, the Guardian reporter who pretty much singlehandedly exposed the Windrush scandal. Their dinner conversations must be interesting.
56. Odd couples like that sometimes work. I used to know a paid up Trot who was married to a Tory. Their favourite game was teasing Labour Party canvassers.
55 - no: he has political influence within the Tory party, which is one of the most terrifying things about our situation.
@58
For whatever reason, the Telegraph operates as a personal outlet for Boris Johnson a lot of the time. To the extent it influences the news agenda of other papers, that has an effect - even if purely negatively.
Secondly, by becoming the canonical un-serious politician that the party MPs hate, he unintentionally acts as a check on their impulses.
Hence 42; events have proven that Boris Johnson can be panicked into action - and that there's a fair amount of family rivalry. Once he votes no, I assume that the ERG may also vote no to prove that they are at least as serious as Johnson Sr. and so on.
Secondly, by becoming the canonical un-serious politician that the party MPs hate, he unintentionally acts as a check on their impulses.
He's the most extreme un-serious politician? What about Rees-Mogg? At least Boris Johnson seems like he could conceivably be a human being existing in the year 2018.
@60
That a not insignificant number of each group think that Rees-Mogg is a viable politician is indicative of the state of Tory MPs collectively, the Tory Party and the Country.
It doesn't seem to me that the next two years will be better, in any way. We're looking at two years of intra-governmental finger-pointing and reckless and morally despicable policymaking, punctuated by increasingly frequent mass shootings and climate change-related natural disasters, while we ramp up for Trump's reelection in 2020. I'm pretty tired of the 21st century.
Jo Johnson is really not directly comparable to Boris Johnson - he was the head of the No.10 Downing Street policy unit (not sure what the US equivalent is, but a thinktank of top officials embedded in the prime minister's staff) and did a couple of serious ministerial jobs without screwing up, as well as working for the Financial Times and....Deutsche Bank. Oh.
That said, MEP-dad, MP-son, MP-son, media darling editor-sister are all repulsively close for pure career advancement.
Johnson B has influence with the party membership, less so with the MPs, for the good reason that the MPs have met him and the membership have only consumed his celebrity. The distinction is important as you need to win the MPs to get to the vote of the party members.
Also on the not actually a breather at all front, next year is the first election where the ANC may lose its majority. Interesting times.
I'm just happy that democracy is not yet as dead as I'd thought.
64: share sources please? The more the merrier...
Alex makes an important point about Boris Johnson's popularity: it is a phenomenon only found among people who have not tried to work with him. I can't think of anyone in public life except possibly the president of the United States, who has been more comprehensively vilified by former employers and colleagues.
63.last: So a little like Corbyn, then?
66: The most recent (local) elections; all that really matters is the graph in this piece. I haven't read the book reviewed here but it sounds a lot more sanguine than I feel.
That looks like they will maybe lose the majority of the vote but still be by far the largest party.
64. Why exactly would it be bad for the ANC to lose its majority? As a general proposition, most parties that have been in power for a long time should be kicked out. Are the alternative parties or a coalition government ridiculous options?
71: it might still lead to some tense times for South Africa.
71: Because they are not likely simply to concede the election. The ANC is essentially a Leninist party, its office holders kleptocrats. The alternative is intrinsically unstable coalitions, necessarily involving the number three party, which is these people.
(The bad guys from Lethal Weapon 2 joined the ANC.)
That makes sense, given that half of the good guys became anti-Semitic.
I've drank as much as him and never had that happen.
Are you sure? Apparently he really packs them away.
You mean you never drank so much you started calling the cops 'sugartits'?
It's depressing that the question in 71 didn't even cross my mind. There are so many ways it can go badly! (Mexico is the case I am most familiar with.) Thanks MC, I will read the links this morning...
Why is there no post yet about the giant article in The Atlantic about youngish people not having sex? What else is even the purpose of this forum? Is it because it's not by Caitlin Flanagan?
82: Because we are old and are having so much sex we can barely find a moment to post on Unfogged.
82: I literally just finished reading that article. Everything about it was incredibly traumatic and I hope that I will soon learn it's a tissue of lies.
No one sent it in! What, you guys think I am minimally competent on my own?
74. Ah! Thanks. I guess I had forgotten that the ANC would likely try to hang onto power one bad way or another, as one does. I blame not enough coffee before I posted.
85: I am avoiding this article completely, because I am 54 and have not had sex* since just before Obama's inauguration. However, I managed to extract mopey, passive ex-in-place right before the 2016 debacle, and now the blue wave is making me think, maybe it's NOT comprehensively too late. Flipping, hooray!
*except in my mind. Lots and lots of that.
You probably haven't been trying to sleep with 18 year olds and that's your problem.
89: She has been trying, but the 18 year olds are too busy with hentai porn and video games.
Do you ever read the article, Moby?
Or maybe, reading between the lines, she holds elections for bedfellows and can't get enough 18-year-olds to vote?
I don't really want to read the article. I already got my culture shock this morning from this article about period-tracking apps. Also potentially worth a FPP. (My take: gehwaiopfndajk;uioewpwrjghjda9jiea)
Every morning my phone says if it's still the Quaternary.
The bloatware is really insane nowadays.
92: Au contraire, there's got to be at least some silver highlights before a candidate even registers in my field of vision. Unfortunately the online frontrunner turned out to be a Jordan-Peterson-quoting "Hard Conservative", which I just managed to find out before a proposed meetup in Chicago. I sent a selfie of my hand flipping off the Trump building and haven't heard a word since. No regrets.
Maybe ruling out the bald so quickly isn't helping.
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that the candidates were 18. Just a silly joke about millennials not voting. (And perhaps an oblique point about the absurdity of caring enough about the sex lives of strangers to report on them.) Apropos of 56/57, I have read about how cross-party relationships have tanked in the age of polarization here, and it really is striking how small the possible intersection of values and beliefs has gotten, and interesting to think of a time when it would have been different. It's pretty much religion at this point.
84. Actually a pretty fascinating article of the "we are SO doomed" variety (highlight, or more accurately lowlight: "kids men today" think the gymnastics and positions and activities they see in porn are totally mainstream and appropriate during a first sexual encounter.* Result: ouch.)
They also have one on how the Republicans screwed over their chances over the last two years (spoiler: they did what Trump asked them to do) and what they have to do to reverse it (spoiler: be more populist and try to screw the HENRYs, aka getting-wealthy younger people, and give the proceeds to the lower classes: they won't, of course).
There's also an article proposing that Congress make the sort of Fortnite battle among the states that Amazon pulled off over their "HQ2" scam illegal. Somehow. Maybe the Interstate Commerce Clause? Good luck on that!
* Don't tell me I'm wrong if they are. Thanks.
Moby has never read an article in his life. It's his naive simplicity that makes his contribution so valuable. He's a holy fool. Here's an article about it.
All right you ingrates, all the sex articles are up.
The "less sex" comes out every few years. One version was on the cover of Time in 1985, literally the same week that my future wife and I moved in together. We were very happy to be missing out on the latest trend.
From the late 1990s to 2014, Twenge found, drawing on data from the General Social Survey, the average adult went from having sex 62 times a year to 54 times.
Probably because in 2014, he or she was 15 years older.
In 2005, a third of Japanese single people ages 18 to 34 were virgins; by 2015, 43 percent of people in this age group were.
That's just statistical cherry-picking.
.
"kids men today" think the gymnastics and positions and activities they see in porn are totally mainstream and appropriate during a first sexual encounter.
I have read literally dozens of articles and seen literally dozens of talking head interviews saying this is why they're all having too much sex in rainbow parties and morals are collapsing and they're not going to make the Success Sequence and end up being Zero Marginal Product Workers and whatnot. Now it's that they're not having enough sex. Can we just turn moralizing opinion editorial off?
105: No, but we can instead moralize about the horrible threat to our society posed by commenters who post in the wrong thread.
The wheels seem to be coming off Brexit a bit; I woke up this morning and some nonentity from the Northern Ireland Office resigned. By the time I've had coffee the Brexit Secretary has resigned as well.
107. The "agreement" locks us into the customs union forever, in the interests of an open border on the island of Ireland. That is, the UK can't leave it without the agreement of the EU, which Ireland will presumably resist. If NI decide to fuck off and join the Republic, obviously this won't apply any longer, but although that appears less impossible than two years ago, I'm still not holding my breath.
Therefore the Tory right, which was motivated to leave entirely by the prospect of leaving the Common Market sensu lato, are not going to wear this. I don't see how it can pass the Commons.
Indeed. And 60 million British citizens and their children, cats and dogs chorus "Who?"
Penny Mordaunt rumoured to be writing her resignation letter. Once more with feeling, "Who?"
And a junior Brexit minister about whom even I say "who"?
re: 108
I'm vehemently pro-Remain, obviously. But the deal is bloody stupid.
It's like some sort of shit "Norway" option, and obviously worse than staying in, and has none of the advantages* of being fully out that the Tory right want.
* illusory, bullshit, not really advantages, sold to gullible idiots by cads and bounders, obviously ...
Everyone resigning today, not have the bottle to resign in Cabinet yesterday?
Raab is apparently resigning in protest at himself, which is special but I think quite justifiable when you only realized the UK was an island a week before signing.
Someone on the twitter just said it was like robbing a bank and then putting yourself under citizen's arrest as you run out through the doors.
Much as I despise JRM, I did chuckle at his Mark Antony routine just now.
Upside: separating McVey from the DWP is incidentally very good news for anybody who's poor and/or disabled.
Going back to the permanent residence card issue: this came up this morning in a translators' group. A Japanese woman who was given permanent leave to remain in the UK 20 years ago recently got a new in-house job, but was fired after three weeks because her residence card was in her expired passport, and the company's HR wouldn't accept it as proof of her right to work. She contacted the Home Office, who said that she does indeed still have the right to live and work here, but that to prove it to her employer she has to apply for a Biometric Residence Permit (costs 229 pounds for non-EU nationals, takes 3-6 months to be issued, and is valid for only five years). I somehow doubt they'll keep her job open for her while she goes through the process.
UK immigration is such a horrible money-making racket these days.
She can't just show the letter from the Home Office to her HR people and say "look, obviously I still have PR status!"?
It was verbal advice over the telephone. Apparently they said ""Your working in the UK - as you have for the last 20 years - is not illegal. We can't comment on why they dismissed you (maybe just down to internal systems). We would recommend you get a BRP though."
It seems to be a specific part of the hostile environment, introduced in 2014.
1. Right-to-work checks
As part of the recruitment process, right-to-work checks must be carried out to ensure that only those who are legally entitled to work in the UK are employed. The checks will also give employers statutory protection against the payment of a civil penalty if they are found to be employing an illegal worker. The Bill will make it simpler to complete these checks by making older documentation that is vulnerable to forgery ineligible, thus reducing the number of acceptable documents. Straightforward guidance will be available to confirm which documents are needed to confirm a person's right to work in the UK.
Or, as I said, a money-grubbing exercise to force people who are fully entitled to work to shell out for new documentation to prove it.
This looks entirely like no deal to me. There isn't at the moment a commons majority for any of the alternatives: this deal, no deal, or a second referendum (which last would require the co-operation of the EU). Given that the conservatives are led by evil fantasists and Labour by incompetent fantasists, I can't see anyone sorting out the mess in the three and a half months remaining. If nothing happens, we have a no deal exit. Perhaps, when that's six weeks or even six days away, the prime minister of the day will blink and the commons will follow them. But I don't know how lucky I feel ...
May cannot deliver what the leavers promised because it does not exist. She can't stop Brexit. She can't offer anything but this deal which everyone loathes because it is so clearly worse than what we have now.
and add mine to the votes for "gah".
Not nearly as serious a problem, but I would like to open a new bank account for my mother. She is so old that both her driving licence and her passport long ago expired. She has no proof of residence (utility bill or whatever) in her present care home, since no bills go to her there. She does not exist, apparently.
re: 121
Yes, it's deliberately and explicitly a hostile extortion racket.
So, we at least have this possible route: apply for permanent residence as an EU citizen, then apply for British citizenship.
Where I'm less clear is if the existing permanent residence (which we have no proof of, but presumably the Home Office does) lets us go straight to step 2.
Perhaps, when that's six weeks or even six days away, the prime minister of the day will blink and the commons will follow them
It's not clear what blinking can entail though. We still don't know if Article 50 can be revoked. So it could well be that the only viable "blink" is to pass the crappy deal.
131 - yes. passing the crappy deal was what I had in mind as a blink
Sounds like the shit has hit an entirely new fan. The scenario in 128.first seems like your best shot.
I believe that our British commenters are completely inured to how good a villain's name Penny Mordaunt is. Almost Dickensian.
JRM has now called for a no confidence vote against May. If it wasn't terrifying it would be hilarious.
I don't understand the Brexit situation very well, but I keep coming back to the fact that there doesn't seem to be any plausible outcome at all. Surely "no deal" can't happen. A second referendum is all but impossible. The May deal can't pass. The May deal can't be meaningfully modified to gain passage. What can happen?
Reading here, am I right in supposing that the May deal, maybe with some face-saving modification, is the educated guess for the likeliest outcome? Anything else is so awful that even Europe has a strong interest in keeping it from happening.
I suppose in a few months, with the gallows in view, minds will be concentrated. But to what end?
And now this. I'm still inclined to think that pf is right (above), but nobody is driving this trolley any more.
I agree with pf - but all the other outcomes are also plausible. Accident, miscalculation or madness.
Reading here, am I right in supposing that the May deal, maybe with some face-saving modification, is the educated guess for the likeliest outcome?
Yes. I don't see room for a materially different deal unless the UK entirely capitulates on FoM and other red lines and goes for EEA membership, which nobody in sniffing distance of power is proposing. But no deal* is perfectly plausible. It's the default. There are more ways to get to no deal than any other outcome. And it's been exacerbated by Labour's (and most of the remainer Tories', to be fair) willful blindness over the "meaningful vote" nonsense. It was always going to be a this deal or no deal vote once Article 50 was triggered.
*It most likely wouldn't be absolutely no deal, just no overarching framework and no formal transition. The EU put out some contingency notices just before the draft agreement that address in the near term the very worst of the cliff edge effects (at least as far as the EU 27 is concerned), like overflight rights, some financial services issues, and visas and such.
Isn't it basically time to blink now? Is there really a parliamentary majority for No Deal, which seems to be the only real alternative to the May Deal?
Or do they first have to remove the traitor May before ultimately blinking, and accepting the deal she negotiated as the best available outcome, given her abominable performance?
There's a parliamentary majority for Remain, as in most MPs support it, but they are too afraid of the consequences (losing their seats, being murdered) to vote on that basis.
140: Half the UK is still living in a delusional fantasy world.
Is there really a parliamentary majority for No Deal
Ostensibly no, but no grouping with the ability to command a majority has outlined a viable route to a deal if this is voted down.
Or do they first have to remove the traitor May before ultimately blinking,
Most of the ERG types who think she's a traitor would be happy to go out in a no deal blaze of, um, glory. It's the remainers and soft-Brexiteers who are likely to blink, because they're not insane and monomaniacal. But if the opposition think they can get a general election or even a referendum out of no-confidencing May, then they could be willing to risk it.
Well if remainers and soft-Brexiteers blinking consists of accepting the May deal, doesn't it win, now, in Parliament? And isn't derailing a vote on the May deal the real reason for the ERGs to be pressing for a no confidence vote first? Ie a recognition that her deal will pass.
Because if they had the votes to beat the deal, wouldn't they beat it first and then go for the no confidence vote? It's surely easier to support a no confidence vote if the PM fails to secure the government's principal objective.
Gove is apparently saying he will only take the job of Brexit secretary if he's allowed to renegotiate the deal.
Gove is apparently saying he will only take the job of Brexit secretary if he's allowed to renegotiate the deal.
On the one hand, makes sense. What's the point of a Brexit secretary at this point if you're not going to renegotiate it? On the other hand, what exactly does he think can be renegotiated that will get past the Commons, let alone the EU27?
Isn't he effectively making a leadership bid? May can't appoint him on those terms, but if he doesn't take the job she's even more badly wounded?
I honestly can't see how any government could be better off with Michael Gove in it (nor any other of the resigners). Apparently there is a rumour that the DEXEU will be shut down and rolled back into the Foreign Office, which would be one of the first sane things to happen in ages.
144: This is the arithmetic:
Conservative 315 - the anti-dealers have claimed that they will have 84 votes against. This may be true or they may be lying like rugs.
Labour 257 - their chief Brexit spokesperson, Keir Starmer, has said, "NYET!" Corbyn hasn't broken cover yet.
Scottish National Party 35 - all reliable No votes.
Liberal Democrat 12 - One, Stephen Lloyd (who?), has said he will vote for the deal; the party has been trying to make itself the party of remain since 2016.
Democratic Unionist Party 10 - Almost certainly 10 Noes; might be bought off to abstain as they have no principles.
Independent 8 - Odds and sods, mostly kicked out of major parties, so who knows. One reliable remainer from NI who might jump either way.
Sinn Féin 7 - Do not vote.
Plaid Cymru 4 - Almost certainly No.
Green Party 1 - No.
Speaker 1 - Does not vote.
Total number of seats 650
Your task, should you wish to accept it, is to find a reliable majority for the deal in that lot.
Re: US Election aftermath, the Maine instant runoff is being live-streamed here. Kind of interesting.
150: This is neat, but it's a lot less instant than I was expecting.
..and Golden wins in the second round, with about three thousand more votes. Huzzah, Americans can rank choices.
The guy who won. Poliquin is the Republican shitbag who tried to get the election ruled unconstitutional.
Earlier they went through the boring, tedious data "cleansing" needed to make things work (exact name matches, for instance). Done in Excel.
I honestly can't see how any government could be better off with Michael Gove in it
Well that's a given.
154: I had a brief power outage, so missed a bit before that; did they explicitly run Rounds 1 and then 2, or did the software automatically move to Round 2?
Re: blinking, it seems pretty telling to me that pretty much every lobbying group whose statement I've looked at is saying "Take the deal".
157: I think the software just automatically did it--after they cleansed the data, they put it in their utility, ran it, and the bald dude announced Golden had run with 50.5ish% of the vote.
It will be very interesting to see if this leads to more independent runs, or actual third parties, in Maine.
May is giving a weirdly unconcerned press conference, emotionally blank even for her, repeating the Article 50 date and basically making like nothing happened.
Is there a brief explanation of "backstop"? If I understand correctly, Northern Ireland's DUP wants simultaneously to be part of the UK and to have open commercial traffic (in just goods or also services?) with Ireland, so with the EU.
161. Try this.
The May agreement keeps the whole of the UK in the Customs Union until the EU (read: Ireland) agrees to it leaving.
149 Ok, I get that various opposition parties don't want to help May out of this mess. But if you run through the same list, and instead of counting votes for the May deal, you count votes for no deal, it looks pretty different, doesn't it?
I understand that the whole Brexit idea is a ridiculous fantasy. But isn't going back for another vote fantasy as well, and winning this time, just with a different set of self-deluding folks?
re: 160
I sometimes really wonder about her. She gives almost robotically empty answers to almost everything, and has for the past 2 years. I mean, it's worryingly empty/blank much of time.
Question: "Prime Minister, foo foo blah blah blah?"
May: "I have said vacuous slogan and continue to be confident we can achieve vacuous slogan."
For literally everything. Even by the debased standards of post Blair politics in the UK, she's like some kind of idiot savant.
re: 163
Remain would definitely win the plurality of the vote. But, there's almost no chance, as far as I can tell, that that would be provided as an option in a second referendum, since both the Tories and the Corbynites seem to be keen not to offer it.
Ok, I get that various opposition parties don't want to help May out of this mess. But if you run through the same list, and instead of counting votes for the May deal, you count votes for no deal, it looks pretty different, doesn't it?
The issue is that large parts of the opposition (and some remain Tories, though I think they mostly just prioritise a Tory government over Remain) have deluded themselves into thinking that a vote against the deal isn't a vote for no deal, without articulating any vision for no deal not to happen. The very closest you get is Labour saying that if they were in power, they'd try to negotiate a better deal, but a) there's no obvious mechanism for that to happen in time, and b) there isn't really meaningful daylight between them and the Tories on the red lines, so it's hard to see how a better deal happens unless they're being completely disingenuous about said red lines. Which seems unlikely given how halfhearted Corbyn's campaigning during the referendum was. There's also the issue that the thing Corbyn and McDonnell seem most worked up about, state aid rules, is precisely the thing the EU is going to want to protect the most in any deal.
The opposition parties that are just straightforwardly remain do have a clear alternative vision.
re: 166
I assume that Labour think that if they can vote down the government and get a general election, they can persuade the EU to postpone the A50 exit while a new negotiation happens. I think your last point is definitely right.
re: 167
Those are nowhere near a majority, though.
she's like some kind of idiot savant.
I get the idiot part, but I'm not seeing the savant.
FWIW, the Labour party just sent this to members:
"The government is falling apart before our eyes. Their half-baked deal has unravelled, the Prime Minister has lost all authority and is clearly incapable of delivering a Brexit deal that commands even the support of her Cabinet - let alone Parliament and the people of our country.
Our Party Conference agreed that this deal would be judged against our six tests, and if it failed to meet them we would vote against it.
After two years of bungled negotiations, the government has produced a botched deal that breaches the Prime Minister's own red lines, does not meet our six tests and will leave the country in an indefinite halfway house without a real say.
As I said in Parliament earlier today, people around the country will be feeling anxious about the industries they work in, the jobs they hold and the stability of this country.
We do not accept that the choice is between the government's deal and 'no deal'. We will work across Parliament to stop a 'no deal' outcome. Labour has set out our alternative plan for a sensible Brexit that would work for all of our nations and regions, bring Parliament and the country together, support jobs and our economy and guarantee rights, standards and protections.
If Parliament votes down this shambolic Tory deal -- as seems likely -- this will represent a loss of confidence in the government. In those circumstances the best outcome for the country is an immediate General Election that can sweep the Tories from power and deliver the Labour government this country desperately needs.
If we cannot get a General Election, in line with our conference policy, we will support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote.
We are ready to lead, ready to deliver a sensible deal that works for all our regions and nations and ready to build a Britain that works for the many, not the few.
Jeremy Corbyn
Leader of the Labour Party"
I assume that Labour think that if they can vote down the government and get a general election, they can persuade the EU to postpone the A50 exit while a new negotiation happens.
Sure, and it may be true. It's about the only way out of this mess I can see. But it's so easily capsized, even assuming they manage to get (and win!) a general election. It only takes one out of 27 countries to veto, and if it's clear that the new government isn't going to accept FoM or a level playing field on competition, what would be the point in extending? They've got to be thinking the next Tory government would just invoke Article 50 again anyway.
Would the EU agree to Labour's deal?
Labour have yet to articulate anything like a coherent deal, but from what they've been saying, no.
re: 173
Well, I think Labour have been somewhat vague about what they actually want. Something that's closer aligned with the EU, and maintaining something like full EEA membership, but ... with the kind of freedom to subsidise industry, and make certain kinds of investment, that the EU are not likely to allow.
And the EU aren't going to go for that. But, I think a lot of the Labour party -- and I may be wrong on this -- if they don't actively hope for a second referendum and full Remain -- would prefer something like the Norway option, over a harder Brexit.
Is it out of the realm of possibility that the main (and truly only) point of all this "May's deal won't pass" is to get rid of May, after which there is a Tory leadership election and (probably) a general election, and then whoever wins that passes May's deal with the serial numbers filed off? (I'm not sure this is too optimistic or too pessimistic, but: whatevah.)
Unlikely. The opposition isn't because it's May's deal, it's because it really is a bad deal. I don't think any other leader would have better luck with it. This isn't like Obamacare where you could get people to like it once you de-blackified it.
A journalist at the Telegraph claims that the DUP just threatened to withdraw confidence and supply unless May is out.
In the history books, are they going to say the supreme irony was that the Tory majority depended on the Ulster Unionists because if it had just been a regular Tory majority they could have squared the circle by screwing Ulster Unionists for the benefit of everyone else?
I dunno, this seems like the supreme irony to me.
What does "remain" even mean at this point? Wikipedia makes it look like no one has any idea how it would work, legally. Politically, the EU probably wishes none of this had ever happened, but wouldn't want to let the UK remain without some kind of assurance that it won't happen again in 5 years. Assuming somehow that between now and next month there's a second referendum on withdrawal and the country votes No, and also that there's a new government with a comfortable majority, what are the chances of Brexit proceeding regardless?
I tried to put exact numbers on the referendum vote or the hypothetical new government's majority and gave up. It's a weird situation and I know very little about UK politics. Let's just say they should be stronger than the 2016 votes were but not implausibly overwhelming.
Politically, the EU probably wishes none of this had ever happened, but wouldn't want to let the UK remain without some kind of assurance that it won't happen again in 5 years.
No, the EU's been quite clear that they are prepared for a "no-Brexit" outcome at any point and would regard it as the best result.
What does "remain" even mean at this point? Wikipedia makes it look like no one has any idea how it would work, legally.
We'll have a better idea come 27 November, unless the government gets its way.