Friday 21 October 2016

Article 50

At what point is the tipping point reached and the UK government has to admit the referendum was just the silliest thing ever and that no-one will sign article 50 on the back of it? I say that having listened to a spread of news this morning. Matters did not go well for May at the Eu summit. They simply did not go, she got 5 minutes at 1am and not a leader responded. Sky News says 49% of Brits think May does not know how to leave the EU, 34% think she does have a plan. The Poles our usual allies are essentially warning us not to make fools of ourselves. French leaders like Juppe are warning us we can have all the migrants who wish to cross the Channel. It is our treasury saying as starkly as they have said all along, leave the EU and our ports and economy will be chaos. I just heard Anna Soubry Tory saying sausages to the immigration issue, we just have to stay in the single market. What happened this summer will not go away, it was a dreadful Tory created farce and I remain so glad I refused to dignify it. And I am getting more bullish that so far from having to accept the day when we leave the EU (about which bits of me will rejoice), I am more likely to see the day that Britain has to totally back off the whole withdrawal business. You may detect in me a contradiction, at heart I am a leaver but the pragmatist in me which realises prosperity is key has consistently said the process was a farce. Here we are four months from the vote and can you tell me there is a sensible route to leaving the EU, remaining in the market, controlling immigration and saving LOTS of money to spend in the UK? That is what Leave promised, tell me now how it is going to happen? And if you really don't have a clue, be man enough to tell your MP like Guy Opperman, we've made a big mistake.

Sunday 9 October 2016

Max Adams

A speedy U turn http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37600566 . I think what party conference season has revealed is that NONE of the UKIP, Labour or Tory conferences know what to do with the situation Brexit has caused. Cameron claimed it would solve the matter once and for all. At every level he has been proved so wrong. #HIGNFY chair on Friday Nick Clegg was the one man who could have saved his bacon and the electorate utterly humiilated him in 2015. He seemed in good form though. Yesterday Max Adams in Carlisle set the context as being a perpetual yin/yang relationship brought about by our rocky marginal status. He did contend that within our islands, regional identity is more meaningful than national. Being Welsh, British, Irish, English or Scottish means less than being Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, a Norfolkman, a Gallowvidian, an Ulsterman. I get that and I can claim at least the last three. But how do we go forward? It is not "all our fault". Europe has not helped itself or us. In the context Adams spoke off, the loss of control over borders has been a perpectual theme. The Anglo Saxons were appalled at how their relatively civilised order could be snuffed out by the Normans. I do warn against the spoken violence now widespread in British politics and hope it will not turn into physical violence. In a different age the murderer of Jo Cox would have received far swifter and decisive justice to have warned all that violence is abhorrent. But each of these points, Romans, Vikings, Normans, the Reformation, Napoleon, Nazis, the EU has had a different shading. Our moment comes when the power of social media, a new type of mob, is in the ascendent and whose effect we are experimenting with.