Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

Basically unamended Cooper Letwin Bill has passed its committee stage 4 hours after its second reading....

MPs now voting on its third reading - ie the big final vote.

Peter Bone furious asking Speaker to “make this farce stop” and order “There can be no third reading”. pic.twitter.com/728OX8WN0B

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) April 3, 2019

the "farce" presumably being the idea that the sovereign legislative body from whence executive authority supposedly emanates might set its agenda?

its not designed to *work*

"Forgive them Father, they know not what they do," Mark Francois says of the Commons after it passes the Cooper Bill.

— Robert Hutton (@RobDotHutton) April 3, 2019

Caption this. We’ll share the best #Peston pic.twitter.com/BHkr5V4CBe

— Peston (@itvpeston) April 3, 2019

Normally I don't dignify them but hmm best Telegraph front page ever

The crowd going wild for Bercow's Boiler Room debut

LOL!

thanks, willl

vg

*shocked face*

A series of hugely influential Facebook advertising campaigns that appear to be separate grassroots movements for a no-deal Brexit are secretly overseen by employees of Sir Lynton Crosby’s lobbying company and a former adviser to Boris Johnson, documents seen by the Guardian reveal.

The mysterious groups, which have names such as Mainstream Network and Britain’s Future, appear to be run independently by members of the public and give no hint that they are connected. But in reality they share an administrator who works for Crosby’s CTF Partners and have spent as much as £1m promoting sophisticated targeted adverts aimed at heaping pressure on individual MPs to vote for a hard Brexit.

Repeated questions have been raised about who is backing at least a dozen high-spending groups that have flooded MPs’ inboxes with calls to reject Theresa May’s deal. Until now they were thought to be independent entities.

But according to the documents, almost all the major pro-Brexit Facebook “grassroots” advertising campaigns in the UK share the same page admins or advertisers. These individuals include employees of CTF Partners and the political director of Boris Johnson’s campaigns to be mayor of London, who has worked closely with Crosby in the past.

Their collective Facebook expenditure swamps the amount spent in the last six months by all the UK’s major political parties and the UK government combined. They have paid for thousands of different targeted Facebook ads encouraging members of the public to write to their local MPs and call for the toughest possible exit from the EU, creating the impression of organic public opposition to Theresa May’s deal.

The will of the bots

*checks yesterday's posts* brb going to get odds on a coup d'etat by end of year

Re: Corbyn helping May get a deal through Parliament, Tom Kilbasi on Twitter made the point yesterday that at the next election, May and Cable will both be gone. Sturgeon definitely won't support any kind of Brexit deal. Which leaves Corbyn as the only party leader who will be required to defend the deal/new status quo at the next election. That's a disastrous position for a Leader of the Opposition to be in and a massive disincentive for him to offer May any kind of support.

Crosby's cunts have been doing the same shit in Australia to strangle any govt action on climate change.

Yep, easily one of the most evil men in politics. The Tories won a majority in 2015 with dogwhistling, and then the London mayoral campaign a year later was absolutely one of the most disgusting campaigns.

xp I think there are a lot of assumptions about this - that Corbyn has any real intention of making this work. We saw already how infuriated this made the Tory party - think it’s much more likely to drive a wedge between various factions than produce anything usable.

Which leaves Corbyn as the only party leader who will be required to defend the deal/new status quo at the next election.

So, the next Conservative leader will be slagging off his immediate predecessor (as well as Corbz) in a bid to gain popular votes?

I don't think he has any intention of making it work (I don't think May has either) but both need to be seen to be trying. There's a big chance that any deal would lose the support of a huge slice of the Labour benches and an even bigger chunk of the Tories. Just because Labour MPs voted for a Customs Union in the abstract doesn't mean they want to be seen by their constituents and CLP to be propping up the Tories - and that goes for nearly all Labour MPs.

(xpost to Mark - very probably given the likely contenders)

So Matt do you think Corbyn will make it to the next election now? ;-)

watching gammon twitter erupt over fiona onasanya breaking the tie is quite something

If the next election is in 2022 then I still don't think Corbyn will make it that far, but the idea of this lot serving the full five years is looking increasingly remote.

xeno's zugzwang

After hearing the reports of No Deal being decided against in cabinet on Tuesday evening, I was a little more hopeful - but Hammond on the Peston show last night, talking about the idea that the UK can get an extension but drop out as soon as a deal is agreed, has me back on No Deal watch.

The Jolyon M. article (I know how much everyone here loves Jolyon M) about how the amendment is so badly worded as to be pointless has put me back there too, along with Matt's observation that neither Corbyn nor May want to find a compromise, just be able to claim that they gave it a go. And talking of Matt's posts and No Deal...

In any case if we get No Deal then everybody dies for a few weeks and then the UK government goes right back to the negotiating table with zero leverage and we end up with basically the same thing anyway.

I regretfully assume that if they get their No Deal there's no way the Atlantic Bridge/MAGA-hat Brexiteers plan to let anyone talk to the EU until they've signed a deal with the US that sells the NHS off (oh dear, what a shame, forced by circumstances) - but can they hold out for long enough to rush a trade deal through when people are dying and/or rioting? How much would the regulatory alignment clauses etc in it hinder a worthwhile deal with the EU?

PS I know I'm out of my depth here, so I welcome any attempts to talk me out of my paranoid follies, as the good folks of the "lol we're all gonna die" thread are more levelheaded than I

(sorry to dig up posts from a dayA Long Time In Politics ago)

to be clear, May is not to be trusted and doesn't seem interested in budging an inch, so I absolutely don't blame Corbyn for the near-impossibility of a deal resulting from their talks, but it's still depressing to think through the game theory of the options available in such stark terms

Why would a trade deal with the US involve selling the NHS?

wasn't the TTIP thing about this? they'd insist on the right to bid for nhs contracts (and would sue if they lost).

https://fullfact.org/europe/does-ttip-mean-privatisation-nhs/

where "they" = american companies

just goggled 'ttip dead' and apparently no-one has written about that for over two years so will try 'ttip alive' next

trump cancelled it, i think. there's a comment i've just read about it being reinstated in 2018.

wikipedia:
Negotiations were halted by President Donald Trump, who then initiated a trade conflict with the EU. Trump and the EU declared a truce of sorts in July 2018, resuming talks that appeared similar to TTIP

and this being an eu-us treaty that would apply to the uk whilst it was part of the eu, was actually something that was mentioned as a left wing reason for supporting leave.

meanwhile a burst pipe in the commons means the sitting is suspended, the press gallery is abandoned, and the light fittings are filling up with water

Sabotage

the drowned god wants his isles back

I want to see them having snowball fights with deadly clumps of asbestos (which there is plenty of in that old building).

xps I was thinking of the TTIP worries (thanks koogs) and this paper from a thinktank affiliated with a few Brexity big names, from last year:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/18/rightwing-thinktanks-unveil-radical-plan-for-us-uk-brexit-trade-deal-nhs

and just in general of the crossover between prominent Leavers and wanting to privatise the NHS, which the public wouldn't accept without a good excuse, which perhaps really needing a trade deal counts as

I've read a few other articles on this theme but tbh most of the ones I can find are from the Independent and a bit shrieky so probably not very good exhibits

Sitting suspended until Tuesday so we’re getting bloody close to the wire now.

(Maybe they really should have tried to fix the literal roof while the sun was shining instead of using the phrase as a pretext to ruin the lives of disabled people.)

this job is even too big for pimlico plumbing, does that grayling lad know any half decent construction firms?

More from the nation that gave you Norman Wisdom and Mr. Bean.

globally self-clowning britain.

xxxp they weren’t debating Brexit so imagine they will have to amend the business of the house for next week to prioritise it

Leak!

Business in the House of Commons has been suspended after water started pouring from the chamber's roof (turn on your sound)https://t.co/BKgYHPJ9eU pic.twitter.com/LYRBqG4kIt

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) April 4, 2019

Actually looking at the parliamentary calendar I see the house has been deprived of an adjournment debate on “travellers in Mole Valley”.

Great fantasy trilogy mm

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-XgB3Xykb1M/maxresdefault.jpg

https://dygtyjqp7pi0m.cloudfront.net/i/21252/20807780_3.jpg

Also this is a few days late but I didn’t see this clip of “Brexit hardman Steve Baker”

“How are you feeling tonight?”

Steve Baker MP: “Well everyone knows i’m BREXIT HARDMAN STEVE BAKER as far as i’m aware..” pic.twitter.com/Mf4tI3nkmF

— James Davies (@jamesorharry) April 1, 2019

he definitely "irons out" his very smart shirts.

dire warnings of cheesebergs atop irish milk lakes:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/04/northern-ireland-faces-prospect-of-no-deal-brexit-milk-lake

yeah id say stuff will pile up unsold along the border alright def yeah

*winkkkkkk*

border molemen confiscating my cheddar suitcase, drowned god on the phone to satan

http://media.filmz.ru/players/img_4851.jpg