Britain and Brexit business

[laPapessaGiovanna]

Lol lol lol

We'll block trade deal if Brexit imperils open Irish border, say US politicians

Well it's pretty clear at this point that without the possibility of a backdoor to the EU market the US finds little value in a trade deal with the UK. Who would have thought it!

[unsafetydancer]

51 minutes ago, Glasgowghirl said:

He came to Scotland and ended up leaving the First Minister’s house out the back door to get away from the booing that he encountered entering

Yup, he talks tough, until he comes up here and people boo at him. 

[Ozlsn]

14 hours ago, Glasgowghirl said:

she said that in the event of a no deal Brexit if we threaten the Irish with starvation they will back down over the Irish Border,

Dear Lord, really?! There's tone deaf and then there's that which I really do not know how to begin to describe.  Disgusting is a pretty good start.

[Ozlsn]

13 hours ago, unsafetydancer said:

Yup, he talks tough, until he comes up here and people boo at him. 

Look it's all fun and games until people expect you to do something and don't like you.

[fraurosena]

Oh joy! Boris had a win in yesterday's by-election!

Just kidding... he actually lost a seat and only has a narrow one-seat majority in the Commons now. Oops.

Boris Johnson suffers major setback

Quote

Britain's pro-EU Liberal Democrats won a parliamentary by-election in Brecon and Radnorshire on Thursday, dealing a blow to Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Jane Dodds, the Welsh Liberal Democrats leader, won by 1,425 votes over Conservative incumbent Chris Davies. 

The loss in rural South Wales means Johnson's Conservative party now holds a narrow one-seat majority in the House of Commons, with just 320 out of 639 lawmakers in Parliament.

The result will make it more difficult for the government to pass legislation and leaves it vulnerable to a vote of no-confidence that might trigger a general election.

It also puts Johnson's plan to leave the European Union on October 31 with or without a deal under strain.

After the results were announced, Dodds said: "My very first act as your new MP when I get to Westminster will be to find Mr. Boris Johnson, wherever he's hiding, and tell him to stop playing with the future of our community and rule out a no-deal Brexit." 

Why did the election happen?

Officials called the by-election after it was revealed that Davies had claimed false expenses. The Conservative said it was an honest mistake.

In June, around 19% of local voters asked him to give up his seat in a "recall petition," which is issued if a member of Parliament is convicted of a crime. If over 10% of voters sign, a by-election is called.

 

[fraurosena]

Interesting take on the by-election result and what it means.

The 'Lib Dem fightback' is real - and it's changing everything

Quote

Since their nadir, their lowest ebb of 2015, there has been a lot of talk over the years of a "Lib Dem fightback". Mostly, it has been utter nonsense. For years they have rested in the doldrums.

No longer. It's real. It's happening; it's changing everything.

This was a seat the Lib Dems should have won. They've held it for most of the last three decades. They hold the equivalent Welsh Assembly seat. They have a strong local presence. The circumstances of the by-election could not have been more propitious - the Tory MP had been found guilty of expenses fraud.

Nonetheless, the Tory majority was a substantial one, over 8,000. It required a 10% swing to win - it was no small feat. As a result, the Lib Dems have a Welsh seat for the first time since 2017- for their new leader in Wales, no less. The party will hope it is a foundation for a revival in their old Welsh heartlands.

The "remain alliance" obviously helped matters. Plaid Cymru and the Greens didn't run in the seat to give the Lib Dems a clear path. Without it the majority would have been tighter, or potentially non-existent.

The Lib Dems will say this is a big victory for remain. Indeed overturning a big Tory majority, as the unalloyed, anointed remain party, in the fortnight the Tories appointed a new prime minister, effectively committed to no deal, is a huge psychological (and parliamentary) boost to the pro-remain forces of the country.

If it were the other way around and a Lib Dem had been displaced by a Brexit Party or Tory candidate, then we surely know how the narrative would have been spun. That the country wants to leave, at any cost - and soon. The reverse was true in mid-Wales.

But, before remainers crack open the Veuve Clicquot, they ought to bear this in mind: if you take the Lib Dem vote (the only party expressly pledged to remain or hold a new referendum) their share of the vote was 43.5%. Even if you add Labour's (a party with a, let's say, nebulous position) the sum is 48.7%.

By contrast, if you combine the parties pledged to leave without a deal if necessary (the Tories, the Brexit Party and UKIP) the total is 50.3%. 48.7% vs 50.3%. In other words, not a million miles away from how Brecon and Radnorshire voted in the original 2016 referendum. Not much has changed and the mandate is muddied.

All in all, the Tories won't despair, too deeply. Their vote held up alright, in the circumstances. Nonetheless, the Brexit Party (which did badly and lost votes back to the Tories) still cost them the seat. It will give succour to hard Brexiter Tories who say they have to press on with no deal and nullify their more extreme cousins.

But there's another lesson for the Tories to learn too. For there are scores of seats which the Tories hold narrowly against the Lib Dems. Renewed Lib Dem success for the latter will cost the former dearly. Never forget, the only majority the Conservatives have formed for thirty years came at the cannibalism of Lib Dem seats. Any Lib Dem rebirth will cost the Conservatives dearly.

In the meantime Boris Johnson's government hangs by a thread, though a thicker thread than the headlines might suppose given there are a few independents who might vote with the government when it comes to the crunch. Still, plenty of crucial Brexit divisions have come down to a single vote. There are more to come. It could well be that this election is of true historic importance.

But in sum, Brecon confirms one of the big political themes of 2019: a true Lib Dem renaissance which significantly changes the calculus of the electoral battle, for both the Tories and Labour.

Few, would have thought it, even a few months ago.

Ain't that the beauty of politics.

 

[unsafetydancer]

The issue I have with this is that I just do not trust the Lib Dems. Granted, they are the only large party in England that seems to be taking Brexit seriously but I very much doubt their credibility.

I was one of the young voters in 2010 who voted for them on the basis that they had promised to block tuition fee increases for students in England and fight for a fairer electoral system here in the UK. Instead, they joined a coalition with the Tories, enabling them to triple tuition fees, many of their members voted in favour of blatantly unfair measures like the hated bedroom tax and they allowed the Tories to water down their proposal for full PR in this country to the disastrous AV vote which gave no one what they asked for and so failed. 

They continue to allow arsehats like Jo Swinson to dominate their party. I certainly can't see them winning seats in Scotland because of this, she is very unpopular here and was parachuted into her East Dunbartonshire constituency, knows nothing about the area and ignores the people who live there in favour of trying to win brownie points down south.

It's still nice to see the Tories take a well-deserved kicking but I am sceptical of how the Lib Dems will behave if they gain more seats. 

 

We also have this leaked piece of information today:

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/food-shortages-public-disorder-ex-pats-endangered-by-no-deal-brexit-government-leak-reveals/01/08/?fbclid=IwAR3vVe4xJNqKuUNPDO-MxRkEObPwPPO0-mjfQLty5wwEb-3TeVMngxa-aJM#.XUNkz51ZXo0.twitter

 

Yet again Jeremy Corbyn has condemned the Tories while completely failing to do anything about Brexit because he knows that half of his party are in favour of it. It's the pipe dream of the old school Labour party that somehow if we leave the EU then the UK will turn into some magical utopia. Of course, this is bloody nonsense but that doesn't stop the sort of idiot that buys into it from believing in it.

The one certain thing is that this document shows that a lot of people will be seriously harmed. The decrepit fools who bang on about a blitz spirit have never actually lived through real food shortages. I wonder how they will feel when they have to choose which member of their family will eat today. 

If you look at the security parts then it's even more worrying. Basically, there is a high chance that without access to the EU crime-fighting data and resources then things like child trafficking will be allowed to go unchecked as police will have no way of stopping it. The police will probably even lose their capacity to deal with lower-level crime. I don't like the idea of looting going on in towns but who will stop it?

This doesn't even cover any of the every day things that the EU provides. Internet in public libraries is funded at least partly by the EU. Now that everything from pensions to benefits has been made digital, how will people cope when they lose the guaranteed access to the internet that is currently in their local library. (I used to volunteer on a program for senior citizens in a library. A lot of them don't have broadband at home and rely on the library internet to do things like claim reductions on their council tax due to living alone.)

The idea of UK citizens abroad, many of whom are older people, suddenly losing access to healthcare and the right to live in their own damn house should worry everyone. 

People need to stop being so fucking stupid! (still raging)

On a lighter note, the magnificent Janey Godley! 

 

 

[Glasgowghirl]

On 8/1/2019 at 5:33 PM, unsafetydancer said:

Yup, he talks tough, until he comes up here and people boo at him. 

Scotland voted remain and if he keeps alienating the Scottish people there will be another vote for Independance. While Ruth Davidson has managed to get the Scottish Conservatives ahead of Labour in Scotland, he is not popular here. Both Ruth and Nicola are not shy to call him out over his stance on a No deal Brexit and both did when they met him. 

20 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

Dear Lord, really?! There's tone deaf and then there's that which I really do not know how to begin to describe.  Disgusting is a pretty good start.

She has Indian heretage you'd think the fact the British Empire done the same thing to India would make her think twice before saying that. 

[fraurosena]

WOT??

England would be better off without Scotland, says Tory candidate

Quote

The Tory candidate for one of the party’s target parliamentary seats has sought to distance himself from a column he wrote accusing Scotland of “fleecing” English taxpayers and claiming that Scotland remaining in the UK would be a “catastrophe” for England.

Ryan Henson was selected last year as the Conservative candidate for Bedford and Kempston, which Labour won from the previous Tory MP, Richard Fuller, in 2017 with a wafer-thin majority of 789 votes.

In a 2014 article for Conservative Home, Henson wrote that, except for its contribution to Britain’s armed forces, “Scotland’s single biggest offering to the union over the past 50 years has been to provide the Labour party with parliamentary lobby fodder.

“In exchange, the people of England have seen their prescriptions and their university fees go up, while in Scotland both have been abolished – using English taxes to pay for it.”

A year before the SNP’s huge gains in the 2015 general election, he wrote: “Like a marauding tribe from the Dark Ages, Scottish Labour MPs have travelled south every four years to pillage their hard-working, wealthier and more politically sound neighbours. Enough is enough.”

“Scotland faces economic ruin,” he added, “should it continue with its socialist policies after losing the power to fleece the Conservative-voting English taxpayers. It is we English who bankroll her free health prescriptions; fund the entirety of her children’s four-year-long university courses; and subsidise her bloated, private-enterprise-killing, left-leaning public sector.”

He also said that, after Scottish independence, the English economy would thrive and that the English should say “what everyone’s really thinking: Scotland, it’s time for you to go”.

Last night Henson said the article had been intended as satire. “This was intended as a light hearted take on the Scottish Referendum campaign, and was taken as such at the time. It does not reflect my views – I passionately believe in the importance of the Union especially at this time.”

The revelations about Henson come at a difficult time for the Conservatives in Scotland. Boris Johnson was jeered loudly when meeting Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, in Edinburgh last week; while the Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, voiced her opposition to a no-deal Brexit after her ally David Mundell was sacked by Johnson from the cabinet.

The SNP’s constitution spokesperson, Pete Wishart, said in a statement: “These comments are typical of the contempt for Scotland that is increasingly in the mainstream of the Tory party – right up to, and including, the prime minister, who himself has spread the subsidy myth.

“Indeed, a recent poll found that – far from being the party of the union – most Tory members would now be happy for Scotland to become independent if that meant delivering Brexit.

“The Tories under Boris Johnson are completely out of touch with Scotland. No wonder more and more people are concluding that independence is the only way forward.”

Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary, Lesley Laird, said: “This is just yet another example of the dangerous nationalism taking hold within the Tory party under Boris Johnson.

“Labour’s message is clear, the real division in society is not the division between Scotland and England. The real division is between those who own the wealth and those who, through their hard work and endeavour, create the wealth.”

The Conservative party did not respond to requests for comment.

Satire my arse.

Edited August 4, 2019 by fraurosena
removing superfluous spacing

[Smash!]

I think one of the main problems in the UK as in the US is that bad news is flowing so constantly that people get tired of it and feel helpless and out of options. Why vote and engage in politics if it doesn't change anything? Of course this is intended and probably planned by the political leaders.

[Glasgowghirl]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

WOT??

England would be better off without Scotland, says Tory candidate

Satire my arse.

I have seen many comments on social media saying the same. Many people in England hate the fact in the 20 years of the Scottish Parliament both the current SNP administration and the previous Labour and  Liberal Democrat one has voted to scrap things that still exist in England and instead of using that to vote in better government's they blame Scotland and have voted in the very party that are responsible for austerity measures. 

[unsafetydancer]

On 8/4/2019 at 1:27 PM, Smash! said:

I think one of the main problems in the UK as in the US is that bad news is flowing so constantly that people get tired of it and feel helpless and out of options. Why vote and engage in politics if it doesn't change anything? Of course this is intended and probably planned by the political leaders.

Yes, this is a real struggle. The good news is that people roughly my age seem to have realised that if they truly want anything to change then they have to get stuck in. It's not universal but it's a trend I have noticed. A large number of my friends who used to be the "I never vote because it never changes anything" crowd have started posting online about joining political movements and encouraging each other to vote. Hopefully, it will continue, at the moment the only group who can be counted on to vote are extremists which is not helpful.

[fraurosena]

Well, that's comforting to know, isn't it?

 /s

 

[Ozlsn]

On 8/8/2019 at 2:33 AM, fraurosena said:

Well, that's comforting to know, isn't it?

 /s

 

I kind of have some sympathy.. hard to plan when your leaders can't come up with a coherent exit strategy and set of guidelines.

Also... she'll be right.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Ozlsn

[fraurosena]

I don't think it will make a lick of difference to Boris and the Brexiteers.

UK Economy Shrinks for First Time Since 2012 as Brexit Bites

Quote

The British economy shrank in the second quarter for the first time since 2012 as Brexit uncertainties weighed on business investment and firms reduced their stockpiling after Britain was granted an extension to its departure from the European Union, official figures showed Friday.

The decline is sure to raise alarm that Brexit uncertainty is increasingly weighing on the economy. Most economists expected the economy to flat-line. The quarterly drop lowered the annual rate of growth to 1.2% from 1.8% in the first quarter.

The Office for National Statistics said there was “increased volatility around the U.K.’s original planned exit date from the European Union in late March.”

Brexit was meant to happen on March 29, but was delayed to the end of October after Parliament rejected the withdrawal agreement that the previous prime minister, Theresa May, had negotiated with the EU.

Before the extension request, many firms ratcheted up their inventories to help cushion the likely disruption from Britain crashing out of the EU on March 29 without a deal. That business activity helped the economy grow by 0.5% in the first quarter.

Since then, companies have stopped stockpiling as much. Many car companies also moved up their annual maintenance shutdowns to April from later in the year to cushion the potential blow from Britain leaving the EU without a deal on March 29.

It was largely the combination of these Brexit-related developments that contributed to a sharp 1.4% quarterly decline in the output of production industries.

The fact that the overall economy performed worse than anticipated is likely to increase concern about Brexit’s corrosive effect on the economy. Business investment, which has been weak since the country voted in June 2016 to leave the EU, weakened further in the second quarter, contracting by 0.5%.

“Brexit uncertainty, and to a lesser extent, weaker global demand, has reduced firms’ appetites to expand,” said James Smith, an economist at ING bank. “Meanwhile, contingency planning activities for a no-deal Brexit are costly and often resource-intensive, reducing scope to lift capital spending. We expect this trend to continue for the rest of the year.”

May’s replacement as prime minister, Boris Johnson, has insisted there will be no further delay to the Brexit date and that Britain will leave the EU on Halloween come what may. That’s stoked fears that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, a development that would see tariffs and other restrictions imposed on traded goods. Most economists think that would lead to a recession; even Brexit’s most passionate supporters say it would be disruptive at least in the short-term. The pound has fallen to 2½-year lows against the dollar and was down by 0.2% on Friday, at $1.2104.

Sajid Javid, Britain’s new Treasury chief, conceded that this is a “challenging” period for the British economy but insisted that the fundamentals remain strong.

“The government is determined to provide certainty to people and businesses on Brexit — that’s why we are clear that the U.K. is leaving the EU on 31 October,” he said.

The British economy is not expected to fall into recession — commonly identified as two successive quarters of economic contraction — in the third quarter partly because the car manufacturers will be operating in August, having moved up their maintenance period earlier in the year. Also Friday’s figures showed that British consumers remain upbeat as unemployment is at 44-year lows and wages are rising solidly and outpacing inflation.

However, Brexit uncertainty looks like it will get more acute in September, when Parliament returns from its summer recess and the political debate and maneuvering around a no-deal Brexit intensifies.

Add in worries over the global economy as a result of the trade conflict between the United States and China, and the economic headwinds are mounting. The Bank of England warned last week that there’s a one-in-three chance that Britain will slip into recession in the early part of 2020 even if a no-deal Brexit ends up being smooth.

 

[unsafetydancer]

5 hours ago, fraurosena said:

don't think it will make a lick of difference to Boris and the Brexiteers

I was just coming here to post about this. The worry I have about terms like "Brexit uncertainty" is that they WILL be used by brexiters to say that we should just leave with no deal because it's waiting that is causing all this uncertainty. As usual, there is a total lack of real criticism of these idiots in our media.

[Ozlsn]

7 hours ago, unsafetydancer said:

I was just coming here to post about this. The worry I have about terms like "Brexit uncertainty" is that they WILL be used by brexiters to say that we should just leave with no deal because it's waiting that is causing all this uncertainty. As usual, there is a total lack of real criticism of these idiots in our media.

I heard two British (English actually) interviewees in a row say that it should just happen because there were no other good options and it would end the uncertainty. And I thought "good for who exactly?" And throwing yourself off a cliff will end the uncertainty too but it doesn't make it a good idea.

[unsafetydancer]

6 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

And I thought "good for who exactly?"

For the wealthy tax exiles who own the news channel they appeared on. Recently the BBC, Channel 5 and Sky News have shown huge bias when selecting their interviewees. There was a whole scandal where BBCQT kept selecting audience members who were obvious plants. Some of them even turned out to be politically affiliated with the guests. There's also the absolute shitshow that is the Jeremy Vine show, a morning talk show on Channel 5. Several times they have allowed Brexit supporters to rant on unchallenged. 

5 is owned by Rupert Murdoch, so is Sky. The BBC has a large number of wealthy Eton graduates in its top jobs and has shown unforgivable bias against Scottish and Welsh politics. You could argue that the BBC gave Boris his start in politics too, by inviting him on to panel comedy shows like Have I Got News For You and making him into a loveable buffoon character that was easier for people to accept than a fascist numpty. 

The thing all of the people who own these channels, and also a lot of the newspapers, have in common is that they have huge amounts of wealth stored in offshore tax havens. The EU tax directives now make it much harder for people to hide obscene amounts of wealth from the taxman. There's an argument that Brexit is really about tax laws; these people want to turn the UK into a tax haven with few financial regulations. It's disaster capitalism at its finest. If they cause a recession here again then they can convince people to just accept awful things like no employment rights and tax cuts for the wealthy. 

[FloraKitty35]

On 8/2/2019 at 1:47 AM, Ozlsn said:

threaten the Irish with starvation they will back down over the Irish Border,

The English threatening the Irish with starvation. How arrogant.  

[unsafetydancer]

@FloraKitty35 this is not even the first time they have done it! 

[Glasgowghirl]

UKIP have elected as their leader a man called Dick Braine, what an appropriate name for a UKIP leader. 

9 hours ago, FloraKitty35 said:

The English threatening the Irish with starvation. How arrogant.  

What next are they going to go to Scotland threaten more Highland clearances if they dare keep up the talk of Independence. 

While the UK government was not solely to blame for both the famine and the clearances, Rich Irish landlords used the famine to their advantage and took land from the poor in exchange of giving them a little food to survive or they had to give it up to get help in the poor house. The British government were still exporting other crops from Ireland and didn't intervene until the famine had killed close to a million had died around an other million left Ireland and it was another dark period in the UK and Ireland's relationship. Priti Patel bringing that up shows how horrible a woman she is. 

I do love the Irish PM Leo Vandakar he doesn't pull any punches dealing with Boris Johnson and I wish he was our leader. 

[Ozlsn]

Ah Murdoch.  I was reading a review of the series "The Loudest Voice" which puts Roger Ailes in that role among those cheerleading for the Iraq war. The reviewer somewhat cynically suggested that Murdoch should feel slighted.

11 hours ago, unsafetydancer said:

There's an argument that Brexit is really about tax laws; these people want to turn the UK into a tax haven with few financial regulations. It's disaster capitalism at its finest.

I would believe that. Of course the mythical 1950s Britain that half the idiots are hearkening back to had tax rates that were so high the wealthy were exiles for tax purposes... I could live with that again.

[Glasgowghirl]

21 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

I would believe that. Of course the mythical 1950s Britain that half the idiots are hearkening back to had tax rates that were so high the wealthy were exiles for tax purposes... I could live with that again.

Britain had barely recovered from the war for most of the 50s, people did benefit from newer homes and the NHS but in reality most people's lives were only marginally better than what it was before the war.

When they say 1950s they mean when it was still more acceptable to be racist, women were still mostly at home doing the cooking and cleaning and homosexuality was still illegal in Britain. They also like to say I like my own people, as a subtle racist term.

[samurai_sarah]

2 hours ago, Glasgowghirl said:

Britain had barely recovered from the war for most of the 50s, people did benefit from newer homes and the NHS but in reality most people's lives were only marginally better than what it was before the war.

When they say 1950s they mean when it was still more acceptable to be racist, women were still mostly at home doing the cooking and cleaning and homosexuality was still illegal in Britain. They also like to say I like my own people, as a subtle racist term.

ZOMG! We weren't living in that magical "Call the Midwife" fantasy documentary???

Edited August 11, 2019 by samurai_sarah

[fraurosena]

And now we wait for Boris and the Brexiteers to make Varadkar out to be the villain.

Ireland tells Boris Johnson there will be no backstop renegotiation

Quote

The Brexit stalemate looks set to continue after the Irish government said the backstop would not be up for renegotiation at a planned meeting between Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar.

The two prime ministers will meet early next month but a spokesman for Varadkar said there was no prospect of a rethink on the most contentious part of the withdrawal agreement.

Johnson has been invited by the taoiseach to Dublin with “no preconditions” but the Irish government is keen to avoid any ambiguity.

The meeting will come at a crucial time with MPs who want to avoid a no deal seeking to build a coalition in parliament to block the government from that path.

An Irish government spokesman said: “[The talks] would give both sides an opportunity to gain a better understanding of their respective positions. As has repeatedly been made clear, the withdrawal agreement and the backstop are not up for negotiation.”

The EU has said it will not countenance the ditching of the Irish backstop, an insurance policy that would keep Northern Ireland in the single market and the whole of the UK in a customs union with the bloc to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

Whitehall sources insist that Downing Street wants to strike a deal with Brussels before 31 October despite recent accusations from the EU that Johnson is offering no grounds for fresh talks.

Johnson’s chief EU adviser, David Frost, is expected to visit Brussels again in the coming days. His first visit two weeks ago led EU officials to conclude that the a no-deal Brexit was the new British government’s “central scenario”, a claim denied by Downing Street.

UK sources insist that it is EU intransigence that is heightening the risk of a no-deal Brexit. But the concern at the British government’s position was reflected in a flurry of social media activity by key EU officials in recent days.

The former deputy chief negotiator for the bloc, Sabine Weyand, “liked” a tweet which claimed that “a good faith negotiator, seeking to replace a previously agreed legal text, would at this stage produce a further text setting out with precision the amendments they want”.

Stefaan De Rynck, a lieutenant to the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, retweeted claims that British farmers would need to engage in mass culling of livestock in the event of a no-deal Brexit. He wrote: “You may believe this story or not. But clearly, Brexit means an adaptation for UK economy. Brexit disrupts. EU agreed to UK ask for a transition period in withdrawal agreement that eases adaptation. In other words, “inflexible” EU agreed in withdrawal agreement to help mitigate negative impact of Brexit on UK.”

Johnson will meet the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, for the first time at a G7 meeting in Biarritz at the end of this month. In an interview with an Austrian newspaper over the weekend, Juncker said “the British would be the big losers” in a no deal Brexit. “They pretend it’s not like that, but it will be”.