The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

IDS was on the Today show earlier. He was asked what the governments objective was in the Brexit negotiations. His answer? To leave. The other guest nearly wet himself.

Edit - worth also saying he went on a very longwinded rant about Rogers going, which can basically be summed up by the sound of toys being thrown out of a pram and insults.

 

 

[StefanAVFC]

Quote

Leadsom suggests farmers will still be able to hire EU seasonal workers after Brexit

Andrea Leadsom, the environment secertary and one of the leading Conservative Vote Leave campaigners, has been speaking at the Oxford farming conference today. Inevitably much of her speech focused on Brexit. Here are the key points.

Leadsom hinted that the government would ensure that British farmers could still hire seasonal workers from the EU after Brexit.

"I also know how important seasonal labour from the EU is, to the everyday running of your businesses. I’ve heard this loud and clear around the country, whether in Herefordshire, Sussex, or Northamptonshire, and I want to pay tribute to the many workers from Europe who contribute so much to our farming industry and rural communities.Access to labour is very much an important part of our current discussions – and we’re committed to working with you to make sure you have the right people with the right skills."

(This may confuse anyone who thought that one of the main goals of the leave campaign was to cut unskilled immigration from the EU.)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2017/jan/04/ivan-rogers-brexit-eu-ambassador-ids-couldnt-be-trusted-by-ministers-claims-duncan-smith-politics-live?page=with:block-586cdb3de4b081b2b4ed9e91#block-586cdb3de4b081b2b4ed9e91

She doesn't come across as the brightest.

Edited January 4, 2017 by StefanAVFC

[snowychap]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

IDS was on the Today show earlier. He was asked what the governments objective was in the Brexit negotiations. His answer? To leave. The other guest nearly wet himself.

Edit - worth also saying he went on a very longwinded rant about Rogers going, which can basically be summed up by the sound of toys being thrown out of a pram and insults.

According to The Grauniad, he said this (I think later on Sky News) about Rogers:

Quote

He may have his own opinions and advice. But he’s not God Almighty. He can’t confuse that with the idea that when he opens his mouth, he is speaking truth...Sounds a touch, if you don’t mind me saying so, a little bit like a man who’s got a little bit too close to his own self and thinks that he’s more important than perhaps he really is.

That's priceless.

[Chindie]

As a mother Leadsom is more qualified to talk about Brexit

[Awol]

Holding the view that we shouldn't be leaving the EU at all is fair enough, but Brexit can't 'continue to be a mess' when it hasn't even begun. That's ridiculous. 

Over on Guido Fawkes there's an article about Ivan Rogers and the role he played in Cameron's renegotiation effort before the referendum. Supposedly he persuaded CMD not to go for genuine immigration reform and reform of the ECJ, i.e. the type of thing that would likely have seen Remain win. 

Guido alleges he had carried this obstructionist attitude forward after the vote... and as he was due to finish in October this year anyway it makes sense for him to make way for someone else, who will then be in place before A50 to see the whole thing through. 

[blandy]

1 minute ago, Awol said:

Holding the view that we shouldn't be leaving the EU at all is fair enough, but Brexit can't 'continue to be a mess' when it hasn't even begun. That's ridiculous. 

Over on Guido Fawkes there's an article about Ivan Rogers and the role he played in Cameron's renegotiation effort before the referendum. Supposedly he persuaded CMD not to go for genuine immigration reform and reform of the ECJ, i.e. the type of thing that would likely have seen Remain win. 

Guido alleges he had carried this obstructionist attitude forward after the vote... and as he was due to finish in October this year anyway it makes sense for him to make way for someone else, who will then be in place before A50 to see the whole thing through. 

You're right Brexit can't continue to be anything when it hasn't even started yet.

I'm not sure the Gov'ts eforts are anything but a mess to date, but we'll find out in due course, I guess.

Re the Civil servant man and blogs "supposed, alleged" assertions about what he did or didn't get Cameron to do....It just seems somewhat odd that the (then) PM was kind of forced or cajoled to do anything he didn't want to do by a neutral advisor. It's all a bit "play the man" not the ball because he resigned and exposed more flaws in the Gov't's "preparations".

Changing the subject to that twitter Stefan posted from Leadsom, about exporting cheese etc (make Britain grate again? :)) it's more inane drive lfrom an idiot (no not Stefan, the tory, I mean). At the end of the linked Heil article it says "Ministers are aiming to boost British exports by £2.9billion across these markets over the next five years". which is nice, but trivia compared to the 513billion goods and services export figure for 2015. It's hiding panic behind daily mail propoganda articles.

[snowychap]

9 minutes ago, Awol said:

Over on Guido Fawkes there's an article about Ivan Rogers and the role he played in Cameron's renegotiation effort before the referendum. Supposedly he persuaded CMD not to go for genuine immigration reform and reform of the ECJ, i.e. the type of thing that would likely have seen Remain win. 

Guido alleges he had carried this obstructionist attitude forward after the vote... and as he was due to finish in October this year anyway it makes sense for him to make way for someone else, who will then be in place before A50 to see the whole thing through. 

I'm really not sure quite how much credence we should give to one side over and above the other. The aides of Cameron (who ultimately failed and had to resign over the outcome of the referendum) blame someone else for the failure: Oh, what a surprise.

You say 'the type of thing that would have likely see remain win' but that presupposes one thing, i.e. that Rogers's advice was incorrect and that such a thing was possible in the renegotiations.

That Rogers was due to go in November means that it does make sense that someone else should be in post to go through the whole process rather than go after six months but is/was it news to the government and PM that he was due to retire/leave in November? I can't imagine that no one checked. Whether or not he was being 'obstructive' (I fear that him giving his honest advice that was contrary to the desired positivity is what is being described as obstructive), this resignation seems to have come as a bit of a shock and further suggests (to me) that the government isn't in control of what is happening even over its own personnel.

[chrisp65]

When all we've been told is that we'll be having a red white and blue brexit, it's difficult to form an opinion on it all being sound and well thought out.

There's a desire to give out a message that says 'we have listened, we are negotiating a very good pro UK patriotic deal', unfortunately, the track record of many involved such as Johnson, Fox and May suggests they are keeping it secret and vague because they don't know what to do, other than hope that some months down the line, we'll all be 'out' but with promises to agriculture, and manufacturing, and banking, and airlines, and american tax dodgers that they will be either exempt or compensated.

If our chief negotiator was so poor, why on earth, with weeks to go, hadn't the government replaced him anyway?

We've left a control freak, a disgraced former defence secretary and Boris Johnson in charge of this. They are running scared of heavy weight thinkers such as Farage, Mrs Gove, The Mail,  Murdoch and Rees Mogg. I'm sure it'll turn out just **** fine.

[blandy]

5 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

When all we've been told is that we'll be having a red white and blue brexit, it's difficult to form an opinion on it all being sound and well thought out.

There's a desire to give out a message that says 'we have listened, we are negotiating a very good pro UK patriotic deal', unfortunately, the track record of many involved such as Johnson, Fox and May suggests they are keeping it secret and vague because they don't know what to do,

There's not a single thing that's leaked out, been formally announced, been inferred or otherwise communicated via any medium that says anything other than "they've not an effing scooby". Whereas there are numerous examples confirming the utterly shambolic nature of what's (not been) going on.

Tories, they mess everything up.

[StefanAVFC]

41 minutes ago, Awol said:

Holding the view that we shouldn't be leaving the EU at all is fair enough, but Brexit can't 'continue to be a mess' when it hasn't even begun. That's ridiculous. 

Really though, your issue is with semantics.

I'll correct myself. The process of Brexit since the Leave vote in June is continuing to be a mess.

[Awol]

@Blandy Re: the civil servant, who knows. It's not very important in the grand scheme of things, but for the sake of continuity it makes sense for him to move on now - whether he actually went native or not.

In terms of everything being a mess I don't know how that call can be made unless you've got some really good sources. The detailed negotiating position is rightly being kept very close hold until A50 is declared. 

I think what events since June 23rd do show is the weakness of the charge that the Leave side 'should have had a plan/had no plan' etc. 

Cameron explicitly forbade Whitehall to do any contingency planning before the vote, an act of hubris that marks him (and will mark him historically imo) as probably our worst post-war PM. 

Since June it has taken a whole of Government effort coordinated by a dedicated Brexit team of 400 civil servants to draw up the negotiating position, and they're still not ready yet. 

Without access to and control of all the levers of state power it is simply impossible to do the necessary research and planning to come up with anything more detailed than a direction of travel and a wish list of objectives. Leave did that, i.e. control of our laws, borders/immigration and money.

If you recall the Ministers who backed Brexit were denied briefings on the EU and not allowed to task the resources of their own departments, even as the Whitehall machine was used to campaign for Remain. Despite stacking the deck in his favour Cameron still lost - interesting to note the Treasury's dire predictions of immediate economic collapse are now described by them as "scenarios"! Without project fear I suspect the margin for Leave might have been even bigger. 

Leave was not the government, indeed many of people pushing for it were not even in the governing party. It seems unrealistic to me that they could have done significantly more other than make the arguments  that they did, minus the squalid 350M to the NHS lie - I wouldn't be surprised if Gove was behind that. 

 

[ml1dch]

2 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

 

 

Deflection  ..my that takes me back to a long lost poster  , thanks for the nostalgia trip 

Can I suggest that "sense of humour" and "ability to stick a yellow emoticon at the end of every post" aren't exactly the same thing.

[Awol]

17 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Really though, your issue is with semantics.

I'll correct myself. The process of Brexit since the Leave vote in June is continuing to be a mess.

It's not semantics, unless you know our negotiating position then on what do you base the claim? The process doesn't start until A50 is triggered, at the moment the Government is clearly still assessing what the priorities are and formulating the plan.

Im not saying they won't f' it all up completely, they may well do, but until then all this guff about it being shambolic, disasterous etc is just that, guff, with no actual fact behind it at all. 

Edited January 4, 2017 by Awol

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, StefanAVFC said:

She doesn't come across as the brightest.

Spoiler alert: she isn't.

[Awol]

38 minutes ago, snowychap said:

I'm really not sure quite how much credence we should give to one side over and above the other. The aides of Cameron (who ultimately failed and had to resign over the outcome of the referendum) blame someone else for the failure: Oh, what a surprise.

You say 'the type of thing that would have likely see remain win' but that presupposes one thing, i.e. that Rogers's advice was incorrect and that such a thing was possible in the renegotiations.

That Rogers was due to go in November means that it does make sense that someone else should be in post to go through the whole process rather than go after six months but is/was it news to the government and PM that he was due to retire/leave in November? I can't imagine that no one checked. Whether or not he was being 'obstructive' (I fear that him giving his honest advice that was contrary to the desired positivity is what is being described as obstructive), this resignation seems to have come as a bit of a shock and further suggests (to me) that the government isn't in control of what is happening even over its own personnel.

Para 1: fair one, agreed.

Para 2: Yes, that would have also required Cameron stating clearly that he was prepared to back Leave if they didn't give him what he wanted. IF he'd done that then Merkel may well have taken it more seriously - and he'd still be PM.

Para 3: some fair points, although I think the institutional resistance to the referendum result, particularly in the FCO, is significant. 

The country voted by a majority to bin the foreign policy that even our most senior diplomats have spent their entire careers shaping and pursuing. It's not very surprising if some of them aren't pleased that the electorate have taken a flamethrower to their lifes work.

[snowychap]

26 minutes ago, Awol said:

interesting to note the Treasury's dire predictions of immediate economic collapse are now described by them as "scenarios"!

To be fair, both of the forecasts for the short term impact of a vote to leave by the Treasury were called scenarios in their pamphlet, one was the shock scenario and one was the severe shock scenario.

One thing we ought to take from the Treasury forecasts (other than the standard thing of not to put much faith in detailed economic forecasts) is that it's very dangerous to have independent civil servants' output so controlled by the political will of the executive.

Edited January 4, 2017 by snowychap
spelling: severe

[StefanAVFC]

25 minutes ago, Awol said:

Without project fear I suspect the margin for Leave might have been even bigger. 

 

 

If both major Leave groups hadn't lied through their teeth and certain quarters of the media hadn't stirred the pot up so much with their agenda, then Remain might have won. It goes both ways.

Edited January 4, 2017 by StefanAVFC

[ml1dch]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

Im not saying they won't f' it all up completely, they may well do, but until then all this guff about it being shambolic, disasterous etc is just that, guff, with no actual fact behind it at all. 

It'll probably be fine.

All we need is to find a skilled, knowledgeable, competent negotiator who really believes in Brexit.

Oh.

Edited January 4, 2017 by ml1dch

[OutByEaster?]

I think its a bit harsh to call Cameron our worst post war prime Minister when we've a war criminal and a woman who sold the country's assets to banks for a pittance in the running. 

[TrentVilla]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

There's not a single thing that's leaked out, been formally announced, been inferred or otherwise communicated via any medium that says anything other than "they've not an effing scooby". Whereas there are numerous examples confirming the utterly shambolic nature of what's (not been) going on.

Tories, they mess everything up.

It's okay they are going to privatise Brexit, therefore reduce the public sector. Triffic