Awol

DS giving Hogan enough rope.

On tonight? Hause.

Our squad is thinner than numbers suggest, but the 1st choice back four looks promising.

Hogan. Lol.

Blatant penalty

Steer, Bree, Hause, Konsa, Targett, Hourihane, Grealish (C), O'Hare, Jota, El Ghazi, Wesley. Different team 2nd half.

Bournemouth also want Butland (according to Sky report), so we might not want to fill their pockets with cash for Mings before that deal is done - assuming we are actually in for Butland.

Very good.

I’m saying it wouldn’t be off the table in those circumstances, all would hinge on the approach taken by Dublin - in the hypothetical and hopefully unlikely scenario that Republicans choose violence over democratic means.

Agreed, threatening violence isn’t okay. Civil disobedience & peaceful protest are in any case far more effective ways to pressure a government. Violence is the reason why, 20 weeks into the protests, Macron can’t compromise with the yellow vests.

I was thinking more the Republic than Belfast. Safe haven in a neighbouring state is a key requirement for the survival of terrorist groups (that one is from Afghan, not Somalia). Nodding sympathetically when people threaten the return of the IRA to get their own way politically, is a rather wonderful encapsulation of the Remainer mindset.

I expect you’ll have no problem when the Tories topple May, install a new PM and just crack on - because you know, they can.

But you did say poo in a foreign language, so I kinda got your point anyway. This gaff is a coven of Remainer harlots and always has been. That’s why it’s occasionally fun to check back in.

Soubry’s just a drunk James O’Brien.

Yeah, Chukka for President - Anna for weights and measures.

If the cabinet, or a substantial minority (say 10+ ministers) say ‘you go or we do’ she’d be forced to resign. There’s already 18 gapped junior ministerial posts she can’t fill. Add 10 cabinet ministers and there’s no government. If, for example, Macron said no to a long extension but that he’d sign off on 4 weeks for both sides to do final no-deal prep’ then she's out the next day. Her Parliamentary and wider party now hate her after the Corbyn stunt. Tbh it’s all so fluid who can really say how various scenarios play out? It’s seems likely to me that nothing at all is set in stone.

Honestly? I’d rather stay in than sign that god-awful treaty, & I’m pretty firmly for Leave... It’s the roadmap for an absolute national disaster, and as you say we’d still have the right to leave the EU. By any objective measure the Conservative party deserves to dissolve over this farce, probably spawning two new parties. I’d say the same about Labour, too. The misalignment of public opinion and party structure is greater than I’ve ever known it. BIAD and start again.

@snowychap thanks for posting that. My point was in a no-deal scenario May and Hammond would be gone really, really fast. What happens then is anyone’s guess, but in those circumstances I wouldn’t take anything with the Treasury’s fingerprints on it as likely future policy.

I reckon that’s broadly correct. It’s difficult to know what the UK would do about applying tariffs to imports from the Irish Republic because in a no-deal May & Hammond would be out. If we assume reciprocal rates, then large parts of Irish agriculture is on the fast track to insolvency. Dublin can’t make unilateral deals with the UK and so huge pressure is then exerted on Brussels to move into a mindset of resolve the issue with the UK, rather than winning a battle. Obviously I’m not trying to convince you, only to highlight that with an executive in London that is actually committed to getting this done, things would start to look different. We’re not in that place & are very unlikely to be, so this is pretty academic anyway. FWIW I reckon we’re on a track to revoke, with the silver lining of exploding the Conservative party.

@peterms I’m not saying May is being manipulated, I’m saying she is the manipulator, ably assisted by the civil service.

I totally get that you haven’t followed the actual detail of counter insurgency operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia etc.why would you? AQ in Iraq for example we’re systematically demolished by UK and US special forces. That’s not an isolated case. If the IRA fancied a comeback it would be horrific for them. Not what some people may want to hear, but still a realistic assessment of the current operating environment.

I didn’t say they wouldn’t do any damage, I said it would end very, very badly for them, because it would. As for being deluded you may well be right, be you haven’t actually responded to my arguments, which is interesting. So embarrassment aside: No-deal day +1, what does Dublin do on the border with Northern Ireland?

I guess we’ll be waiting 30 years for the papers (or two years if someone cashed in for their memoirs) to find out definitively, but I think what I said is correct.

Post 9/11 we’ve spent nearly 20 years smashing terrorist networks on an industrial scale and doing things very differently to the 80’s & 90’s. If Republicans go back to that kind of violence it’s going to end really, really badly for them. I sincerely hope they don’t.

She promised to leave the customs union, then insisted via Ollie Robbins that the backstop (a customs union with the EU) was extended to cover the whole of the UK. That would apply unless or until the EU chose to release the UK from it. It’s been engineered this way by London to avoid actually leaving the economic and legal order. I’m not going to argue the toss with you but having followed this process obsessively it’s been well explained by the professional commentariat.