"oh you don't get me I'm the end of the union": lol brexit is how we're all gonna die

xp more so than the UK? I’m not sure it’s relevant to this at all esp as you say they’ve basically all held the line.

in this case the UK is kicking the can, that's what makes the contrast interesting IMO- the lesson for the UK has been that the EU is able to act with unanimity and force when presented with an issue on which it can take a common position, despite British efforts to undermine that solidarity.

Anyway yes this is a tangent, sorry!

God, just fuck off already Tony!

Politicians should be ready to “stand up” to members of the public who brand them elitist because they argue for a second Brexit referendum, Tony Blair has said. Speaking at the launch of the annual Edelman Trust Barometer in London, he said people should listen to what MPs say about Brexit because MPs were likely to be better informed.

As the Press Association reports, Blair recalled an encounter with a member of the public in which he tried to explain details of the working of the EU’s single market and customs union which made him oppose Brexit, only to receive the reply: “You’re just trying to say to me that you know far more about this than I do.” Blair went on:

I was prime minister for 10 years.

I want to say to people, I follow Newcastle United, if a game is on the TV I will watch it, but I know that Rafa Benitez has forgotten more about football in one day than I will ever know.

It’s not because he is smarter than me - though he probably is smarter than me - it’s because that’s what he spends his life doing.

You send people to parliament and that’s their day job. It’s not your day job. So if they study the detail and say this is a bad idea, they are not squabbling children, they are doing what you sent them to parliament to do.

If you explain that to people they regard this as the elite fighting back. It’s absurd. We have got to have politicians who stand up and say ‘No, that is not a sensible way of looking at this’.

This is an argument contains an obvious truth, but it is not something MPs say in public these days - and even Blair would have thought twice about putting it in these terms when he was in the Commons himself. In the 19030s the Labour politician Douglas Jay famously wrote: “The gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves.” But this quote became a byword for establishment hubris and ever since MPs have been extremely nervous about ever saying they are better informed than their voters.

love it when war criminals break out the patronising football metaphors

I want to say to people, I follow Newcastle United, if a game is on the TV I will watch it,

... otherwise I don't give a flying fuck.

Blair always wants to say, wants to say to people.

But how does he feel about Genesis?

look, he is passionate about cadcading

yknow, mb its the winter vibe but I think I'll just leave that touchscreen-aborted post to fester in this thread without explanation

hes not wrong in this particular instance but

like

as a board we do lets not forgot also rightly despise the man on the street too so let's leave some wriggle room

Edelman Trust Barometer

nicely drawn cartoon of old fashioned dial except instead of stormy variable etc every option is demon eyes

yes im banky

Getting one of the least trusted men in the UK to launch your big consumer trust research survey is a baller move on Edelman's part.

Labour's confirmed it will support the Cooper amendment. Sensible move, anything else would have made them look like they just weren't serious about trying to prevent No Deal.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/29/british-pensioners-in-eu-will-lose-nhs-covered-health-care-under-no-deal-brexit

This seems bad.

lot of talk among tories this morning makes it seem like they have it figured out - going to be v funny when it unravels

after bending over a few times to accommodate cameron, temptation among EU27 must be pretty strong to lean into entrenched position and try drive split in conservative party

As far as I can make out, the thing that has them all so pleased with themselves is that they have finally reached a position which the entire Tory party (more or less) can get behind.

The fact that it’s two years late and looks incredibly and alarmingly unlikely to be acceptable to the EU is basically irrelevant afaict. It will at least let them now unite in painting the EU as intransigent buggers. Exactly how that will save them in the no-Deal winter they will cast us into is not for polite conversation.

“They tell me,” May said, “that you really care about Europe. Well, that’s all right, as long as you remember that I really care about the Conservative Party.”

It’s more bullshit and yet again you have people reporting on this as though it’s not yet another bit of codology.

lol @ Kit Malthouse tho! Even though his "compromise" won't get past the EU and seems to be effectively No Deal.

Cheeky Brexiteer MP: “Backing Brady buys us another few weeks, she won’t get enough on backstop and then we can just vote the deal down again in Feb.” Oh

— Ross Kempsell (@rosskempsell) January 29, 2019

yup would trust those guys as far as I can throw them - if I was JRM I’d counsel them to seem reasonable and look as if we’re moving towards a compromise and leave it as long as possible before withdrawing support and enforcing no deal by default

election or no deal still feel most likely outcomes to me, though sentiment seems to be that the may deal might pass

Asked about @MatthewdAncona’s article turning on Tories as repellent, Blair says, “I thought he was Labour?”

— John Rentoul (@JohnRentoul) January 29, 2019

*chef’s kiss*

That’s perfect.

Lol!

You send people to parliament and that’s their day job. It’s not your day job. So if they study the detail and say this is a bad idea, they are not squabbling children, they are doing what you sent them to parliament to do.

Backing Brady buys us another few weeks, she won’t get enough on backstop and then we can just vote the deal down again in Feb.

Lots of MPs seem to have rather more than just the one day job.

kind of glad i turned up too late to bother taking apart the ways that Blair was as stupid and mendacious as ever in that little speech

Study the detail? Fuck that. I'm starting to think this is getting too complicated for Parliament to operate with. I'm not saying they're all idiots (though, y'know, some absolutely are) but to get any 600+ group of people to co-ordinate effectively around a problem you do generally need some clear narratives and shorthands, even among detail-studying domain experts.

And this mess is becoming some 4d chess now, and the shorthands are multiplying in less-than-helpful ways so it's hard to grasp the big picture, and at the detail level I'm pretty confident that there isn't enough collective understanding of the WTO/EU27 position, and enough bad-faith ERG confident-sounding reassurances, that the expertise on which to judge the positions is pretty lacking.

Brady over Malthouse? Cooper? Who knows or cares, they're either effectively academic or will just buy time, but it's (deliberately?) confusing enough that they'll burn large amounts of time just wading through them. And the whips are no help, because the party leaderships are in just as much of a state - both sides U-turning based on tides among MPs.

I mean most of these bent fuckers didn't even know what a customs union was till last year. Shittest experts ever.

You have to admire the neck of people still convinced German car manufacturers will force Merkel to see sense, when May has turned a deaf ear to every single business leader here.

Literally just talking about German car manufacturers in Commons now

I wish May's batteries would finally run out so she can't repeat that bloody 'Corbyn talks to Hamas, RAF, IRA, Hezbollah, Taliban, Al Qaeda and West Ham United but not to me' line over and over and over again

so what happens tonight ?

just votes on the amendments ? or that plus vote on the deal (as amended) ?

fair play to corbyn tbh, there's pretty much no-one i'd want to speak to less than theresa may

xp amendments plus the deal and then another vote in the middle of next month on the concessions that May will have definitely have gotten out of the EU by then.

May has just reassured Peter Bone that if the deal she brings back from the EU (see above) isn't agreeable to Parliament, then he'd be able to switch to 'No' on the vote next month - which means that the EU can't (as well as won't) negotiate for any concessions she claims to have backing for.

https://i.imgur.com/NmQYLEu.png

I can't see the Graun having this nugget still on top as anything other than straight up trolling tbf

My partner just had a call from NHS Blood Donation, cancelling her April appointment, because they're shutting down in Kent port towns between mid-March and May, anticipating that Operation Stack on the M20 will prevent them from moving staff in or blood out.

— Marc Morris (@Longshanks1307) January 29, 2019

lol we're all gonna die

wikipedia says "operation stack" will be superseded by "operation brock" in the event of no deal

Ken Clarke and Oliver Letwin have come out for the Cooper amendment so it looks like May's assurances have left at least some Tory MPs unconvinced. Presumably there'll be 15 or so others at least.

The ERG (well, Steve Baker) being unable to keep discipline and letting it be known that they're waiting for the next vote to say No and kill any deal can't be helping matters either

EU rules out reneg (for the umpteenth time). I think May will still take it. United against the EU.

Anyone watching this muck? PM was whispering to the chief whip urgently just now.

Sort of half watching, aye, but wondering more and more why I am. It's a spectacle that will result in nothing more than the aforementioned 'kicking the can down the road'. Possibly also a good day for May (under false pretenses), which is also ruining my day.

Apparently Brady's & Cooper's may go down to the wire, but the Spelman one is reasonably likely (no-deal, but only advisory)

Cooper amendment defeated.

is that some imago band?

no deal it is then lads