Having your cake and eating it

The real big news on Brexit at the moment is that Germany is blocking discussion of the status of EU citizens living in UK and soon to be former EU citizens living in the EU outside the UK. They are sticking to the line that nothing will be discussed until Article 50 is invoked and the leaving process starts officially. But although this iilustrates just how weak the UK's barganing position, this was something that was completely predictable.   More fun is the revelation of an official's notes from a secret UK government meeting about Brexit.

Paul Nuttall New Leader of UKIP

Paul Nuttall looks like a right wing reactionary, and may well be one

Another month, another UKIP leader.  We are all used to Nigel Farage resigning and coming back, so there is a sort of feeling that this isn't much of a story.  The BBC however are taking it very seriously giving it top of the bill on the news broadcast I am listening to.  The pitch he is taking is to take up the role of the patriotic working classes who have abandoned Labour and are now looking for a party that truly represents their views.

Five Tangible Benefits of the EU

Rhetorical tricks don't always work the way you want them to.  Early on in the referendum campaign, before I had started thinking about it much, Nigel Farage was on the television. At this point I still found him refreshingly different from other politicians so I listened to what he was saying.  He said to imagine we were outside the EU.  Would we want to join?  It was a clever way of putting it because it implied that we obviously wouldn't.  It was very effective because it meant you had to either accept his  assertion or come up with a positive reason to join the EU.  So it was harder work to disagree with him than to accept his premise.

What if we Brexit and nobody turns up?

Pro-Brexit Campaigners Failed to Fill Parliament Square

As I write there may still be some pro-Brexit supporters in London but it is already clear that a protest that I have seen promoted on leaver blogs and groups online for several weeks now has been a complete flop.  The Sun and the Express are talking it up but the more reliable media are suggesting that attendees only just got into three figures.  This is pretty pathetic.  I have always felt that the whole anti-EU thing was pretty shallow and was only kept going by increasing hysterical coverage in the media.  But even I thought they could muster more than a church hall's worth of activists.

The True Farage Revealed - A Quisling.

Quisling collaborating with Nazis

I suppose if you aren't very old and don't read WW2 history books you might not have come across the term quisling.  It comes from the major who fronted the puppet government of Norway during the German occupation.  His name for some reason became the generic term for anyone who collaborates with the enemy in this way, with the extra implication that the motivation is to exert some power over their fellow countrymen on the back of occupying forces.

Labour's 170 Questions

The Labour Party has quite enough problems of its own without Brexit to add to them.  But as it happens Brexit is a major challenge to the party.  Although it is exaggerated, there is no doubt that a lot of the working class people who Labour is supposed to represent voted for Brexit.  But the majority of Labour voters, and a large majority of Labour members voted against it.  It is a tricky situation.  Even though the popularity of Brexit is beginning to decline, it might still be an issue that could alienate people that Labour needs.  But it isn't going to be easy to come up with a message that might be acceptable to this group of people without offending the many people who are very strong supporters of continued membership.

Fatties Voted Brexit

Is Voting Brexit Like Eating Cake?

I have wondered from time to time what it is that makes some people left wing and some right wing.  I have a pretty well developed radar and can usually guess someone I met's politics before the subject comes up.  But I have taken a long time to put my finger on what it is that gives the game away.  I have never thought of being pro or anti the EU as being something that was particularly left wing or right wing, and there are plenty of very left wing leavers and and very right wing remainers.  But nonetheless there does seem to be some kind of affinity between leavers and a particular kind of conservatism.  And I think that Brexiters in general have the same general qualities that a lot of right wingers have.

Never Mind Leaked Memos - Keep An Eye On The Job Adverts

Leaked memo reveals the bleedin' obvious

Today's Brexit story is that a leaked document reveals that there is as yet no coherent plan for Brexit.  This is not too much of a revelation.  This far in, had a plan been in operation it would be obvious.  Even it were to be kept secret or partially secret it would be possible to get some idea of what was going on from what the government were actually doing.  As it is, it is clear from their actions that there is as yet no plan and no strategy.

Could Blair Block Brexit?

Love him or hate, nowadays you probably can't afford him

I don't think that Tony Blair has any plans to do anything remotely like this, but I did wonder if he might be able to use his rather unique position in British politics to do the apparently impossible and actually stop Brexit.  This is how I think it could be done.

I Hate The Americanisation Of Politics That UKIP Is Spearheading

American politics no doubt suits Americans but it is a pretty bad fit for the UK.  There are no end of things that simply can't be translated from one system to the other.  Take for example the way judges work.  In the UK the judges are independent.  There is a long history behind this, but the upshot is that the role of the courts is to interpret the will of parliament as expressed by votes and debates in the House of Commons.  Top judges are appointed by the government of the day but can't be influenced once they are appointed.  On the whole the system works well.

Price Rises On The Way - Surely This Will Affect Opinion?

I have included a link below to avoid to a price rise story, but it is my own prices that I am currently grappling with.  I have to quote for some business in a non-EU country and even though it is Sunday I need to get on with it.   Costing special jobs is always a problem but now I have to bear in mind that prices I have given for similar jobs in the past now look 15% or so cheaper to my customer than they did before the vote.  I also need to bear in mind that my direct costs will be going up, and that they profit I need to make on something I will probably not get paid for until 3 or 4 months now will need to be higher if I am to generate the cash I need to stay in business.

Some Details Of Brexit's Adverse Effect On Trade

Should you blog when you are angry?  There are lots of things you shouldn't do when you are angry.  Maybe blogging is one of them. Anyway I am angry.  I have just got paid.  That doesn't usually make me angry and I sent of my customary 'received with thanks' e-mail to confirm that the international bank transfer had gone through okay.   But I had priced the job in Australian dollars.  It had made sense to do do so at the time - this was all a long time before Brexit.   As a result now I am getting the money I have rather less than I was anticipating.  The fall in the value of the pound has given my customer a bonus and me a penalty.  I hope it makes him more likely to place business with me in the future, but who knows.

Remain Back In The Lead In The Polls

Not much of a story but as I am hoping this blog will be a record of the process, the first poll to show majority support for remaining in the EU popped up this morning.

http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/tories-best-party-handle-brexit/

That has been the direction of travel since the referendum - in fact if my reading of the numbers is correct since about a week before the referendum - so not much of a shock.  The difference is still too small to undermine the democratic mandate of the actual referendum. But modest as this news is, it is more significant than the story generating the lurid headlines this morning.  The probability of Brexit simply fizzling out from lack of interest is still not great, but it is a possibility nonetheless.

Enemies of the People Are Becoming Rather Numerous

My opinion that yesterday's court judgement requiring the government to debate Brexit negotiations in parliament was a bit of a non-event wasn't shared by this morning's tabloids.  Both the Mail and the Express were completely over the top, with the Sun not far behind.  Out of touch judges now join the Mail's rather long list of undesirables along with migrants, Scotland, leave voters, metropolitan elites, the Labour Party and life saving vaccines.  The big surprise is the 'enemies of the people' phrase.  It sounds a bit like Mao's cultural revolution.  I'd always assumed that the Mail's totalitarian government of choice would be a fascist one rather than a communist one.  Well, whatever.

High Court Non Event

The news today is that the High Court has ruled that the legislation enabling Brexit needs to be passed by the House of Commons.  The pound has recovered on the news but it doesn't seem to me that anything has really changed here.  The Conservatives won an election on a manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on EU membership.  They cannot now choose to ignore the result of that referendum and they are obliged to support its conclusion.  The only way they can get out of this is to dissolve parliament and fight the election again on an anti-Brexit programme.  Unfortunately for the country they show no sign of doing this and so Brexit it must be.

Bad News Is Bad News For Remainers

Since the Brexit vote relatively little has happened economically.  The tills have continued ringing and people have continued to draw their incomes and pay their bills.  If anything, it has been a few months that have been pretty good for most people's personal prosperity and there haven't been too many obvious Brexit losers yet.  The pro-Brexit press, which is most of the press, haven't failed to point these things out and gleefully portray remainers as not only wrong in general but wrong in particular.