brexit negging when yr mandate is is trash: or further chronicles of a garbage-fire

One of the things that people who know him have always criticised is his lack of attention to detail and then sort of laughed it off, presumably in the belief that no one would give him a job that actually mattered, and even then there'd probably be someone around to do all the heavy lifting. That quote is an obvious example of why that matters, he didn't even bother to understand the basics of what he was talking about and thought he could wing it in what is clearly a highly perilous and delicate situation.

Priti Patel having to eat humble pie, will no doubt survive, but the knives seem to be out for her.

she had 12 meetings under the radar of the foreign office with her lobbyist pal during the trip, including with Netanyahu. Even Hilary Clinton is wondering why she isn't toast already!

had been blithely assuming that the gov surely cannot blunder itself into a (catastrophically bad) no deal situation.... however have been reading “the blunders of our governments” and it is doing nothing for my confidence on this

the poll tax, the CSA, the ERM, pensions misselling.... these were all eminently avoidable foot shootings

Back from meetings in Brussels. There's good news and bad news. First, the bad news. Because it's... extremely bad. 1/

— Jonathan Lis (@jonlis1) November 6, 2017

This thread will cheer you up then.

Patel has to resign over this.

As for Johnson:

Boris Johnson's statement on his comments about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. No retraction. No apology. pic.twitter.com/wF2GSSv5WU

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) November 6, 2017

“I haven’t had to have a wank for 20 years,” Johnson is quoted as saying in Gimson’s biography.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/11/joke-s-over-how-boris-johnson-damaging-britain-s-global-stature

This is absolutely extraordinary: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-from-international-development-secretary-priti-patel

If both this pair stay we are hurtling towards the Trump situation. Except with a craven and cringing figurehead.

an activity-packed holiday. the fam must have been delighted.

two naive questions:

while I'm, obviously, embarrassed by how the govt. has gone about backing away from anything approaching a solid statement on the EU divorce bill, I'm not entirely sure why it isn't the EU's hand to play first? i.e. why don't they just tell us what the bill is since they obviously know what they think it should be.

another point I'm not entirely clear about it the UK opposition's hand-wringing about whether there should be a second referendum on the deal when it is finalised. Do they seriously expect the EU to arrive at a deal after two or more years of negotiation costing hundreds of millions, if not billions of euros, having wasted many thousands of hours of EU time and manpower and thrown the EU into disarray for two+ years for them to then had it either to the UK people or the UK parliament for a vote in order for us to reject it? and then what? they go, okay let's just forget about it and pretend the last two years didn't happen? / or they say well you voted against the deal so there's no deal, goodbye (the UK collapses) / or they spend hundreds of millions more and valuable time renegotiating because we declined to accept it?

I honestly don't have a clue.

because or they say well you voted against the deal so there's no deal, goodbye (the UK collapses) seems the most likely and the most pointless route for those opposing brexit to pursue.

calzino - the tweet you posted last. the guy forgot to detail the good news....

the good news was hidden, my mistake.

Patel circa 2015: - we should pretty much kill off the entire international aid budget

Patel circa 2017:

The BBC understands Ms Patel suggested some of Britain's aid budget go to the Israeli army, after the visit.

Malcolm Rifkind on Today just said it was no big deal cos at least she wasn't talking to the Russian government

also Boris is fine, he just might need to concentrate a bit harder

and then what? they go, okay let's just forget about it and pretend the last two years didn't happen?

Schauble said the UK would be welcomed back in if it changed its mind as recently as September; Macron said the same around June.

I'm guessing there would be costs attached for wasting everyone's time but ultimately the EU's not keen on losing the UK.

If you ever needed a clearer signal that the government is no longer functioning, this morning's Cabinet meeting was cancelled. No official reason given but probably something to do with the fact that two ministers are facing calls to resign and a third is under investigation for sexual harrassment.

Are there any constitutional precedents for governments being put out of their misery? Short of the backbench MPs (no) or the Remainers (also no) supporting a no-confidence, this shambles can roll for as long as they can swallow their embarrassment and shame, afaict.

The core Tory dynamics (Leavers desperate for Brexit to happen ~somehow~, righties terrified of Corbz, May terrified) rn suggest they'll stick together for as long as those three factors hold.

There must be something in Erskine May about humane killing of governments too sick for the country to endure much longer, surely.

Cromwell non?

votes of confidence tend to be the mechanism by which lame duck governments get put out of their misery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motions_of_no_confidence_in_the_United_Kingdom though as the Major years attest, governments can limp along for a very long time while surviving such votes

Yeah, but post-FTPA the bar for pulling that off is quite high -- you'll need a chunk of Tories onside, and I don't see the dynamics working out. If Major could survive it I think May certainly can.

It's been said before, but May's style has long been to just hide until trouble blows over. Cancelling cabinet is an amazing attempt to try that trick while actually leading a government.

you'd have thought more MPs would be angrily calling the government out on their shit and trying to provoke some sort of rebellion. atm it seems anna soubry is leading the charge, and she's not exactly ideal as a voice of reason

Apparently even The Spectator is referring to Johnson's fuck up as "one of the worst messes created by a Cabinet Minister" - maybe they just want him back.

Even the Soubry's of the "moderate" wing (not worth 198 Bevan Attlees btw) are too scared of the idea of commissar Corbyn as pm to make up enough dissenters for a vote of no confidence, probably.

I imagine some Tories, old and new, are enjoying all this.

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/cameron-osborne.jpg

Jail them.

So Priti Patel. Shall we talk about her? (1)

— Cab Davidson (@gnomeicide) November 6, 2017

i swear if we vote this lot back in

Are they going to bother with another election? They cancelled Queen's speech, cancelled Cabinet. Time for a government of national stability through the transition I suspect

p disturbing stuff all around.

They're also filibustering and no-showing on Commons votes that call for them to actually do anything. Total abdication of responsibility.

Well catching up with y’all has certainly cheered me up this morning.

i thought i had trouble getting my wife to stop working on vacation but at least she wasn't meeting with benjamin netanyahu

woke soubz won’t even defy the whip on govt business (despite her protestations) so looking to her to support a no confidence is probably for the fairies atm

Patel recommending aid money for Israel directly after these secret meetings is pretty much the smoking gun right?

I can’t think of a previous administration where something like Patel would have been let slide, but seems like anything goes with this weak-as-fuck government. Fallon going means nobody else can; they’re all like flashing invulnerable Pacmen rn.

Johnson's fuck-up is worse than Patel's. Hers is deceitful and mendacious, his is both of those with added incompetence, and has the potential to (even further) fuck up the life of a blameless individual, while also generating far worse headlines later down the line. I think he'll be the one to keep his job.

BREAKING: Ex-Communities Secretary Carl Sargeant has been found dead. He was suspended following allegations of incidents with women pic.twitter.com/zTAYtcP0XW

— BBC Wales News (@BBCWalesNews) November 7, 2017

and heeeeeere cooooooooomes the MRAs

Not sure about that Matt

As someone who used to work for FCO a thread on why ppl need to understand that Priti Patels "mistake" far far worse than Boris' "gaffe" /1

— Nick🇬🇧🇪🇺🇩🇪 (@nicktolhurst) November 7, 2017

12 meetings though. While on "holiday". Sack her for being the most boring person in Britain alone.

Speaking of mistakes being far worse: good lord that dude has THREE flags in his twitter name. You can get executed for that in my filter bubble iirc.

What a dumb thread anyway, to rank two gruesome mistakes.

i: i suspect may very much wishes she could just resign and vanish from public life forever
ii: except she is these days trapped in a catastrophic sunk-costs fugue of "my duty to party and country"
iii: (she's a tory so she entirely confuses these two)
iv: her judgment was extremely bad from the get-go but she now more than half-knows that she doesn't have instincts she can trust, quite the opposite
v: understandably, she trusts everyone round her even less (in terms of judgment AND motive)
vi: at every turn every salving action taken -- obviously sacking johnson, but there are now daily troubles to manage on all sides -- merely presents an even more terrible vista
vii: so she's retreated even further into the land of terrified zugwang

Does she trust in the small still voice of OUR LORD? Not that he has much good form in this.

if by that you mean Arlene Foster, then I'm not sure she has a choice TBH

looking fwd to five more years of this. increasing child poverty, increasing homelessness, nosediving productivity, lacklustre economic growth, etc etc

There's an extent to which any claim to accountability and seriousness in this cabinet is immediately undercut by the presence of Liam Fox in it. I know, I know, he went down, until the bloating in his corpse caused him to rise again.

you know, I had thought that after the election, May remaining as PM was a torturous spectacle, but I increasingly get the sense that she is tenaciously clinging to power with as firm a bite as she can manage and quite possibly close to deranged. I don't think anybody is forcing her into this position, I think that the desire to be PM for whatever that means to her will trump any personal sense of embarrassment or shame of what and absolute disgrace she is. I think she is desperate that *something* will happen that means she can claim to have had some sort of success. Really resigning before the election is the only way she could have claimed this, when she was the most popular PM of all time or w/e.