EU referendum are you in or out

[KlaxonCow]

So, to recap, the unelected leader of a government that lacks a majority is trying to work out how to impose leaving the single market and customs union on a country that actually voted Remain and doesn't want to leave at all, to please Unionists like the DUP - whose votes, that were secured via a billion quid bribe, no longer matter, as the government can't reach a majority even with their assistance anyway - and tempt the rest of Parliament, who sensibly, in majority, never wanted to Brexit in the first place (besides the leader of the Opposition, who in contradiction to the rest of his party, is tap dancing around providing any opposition to a Brexit that he'd actually quite like, as it would remove the "state aid" rules that would block him from re-nationalising everything) to secure a Withdrawal Agreement - as we've not even got to the trade agreements yet! - to avoid the UK losing its trade deals with every single nation on the planet (rather than every single nation on the planet minus 27, as somehow 27 > 165 in importance, in this broken political arithmetic) by Halloween, so that Jacob Rees Mogg can continue to avoid paying his taxes.

[Absolute_Zero]

One possible way for the prime minister to square the circle – to write the letter yet avoid a delay in the event of no deal – would be to persuade one or more EU leaders to veto an extension, once a letter had been sent. The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, a rightwing eurosceptic, is the name most often mentioned. But few in the EU think even Orbán would risk helping out Johnson in this way. A senior Tory minister remarked: “There are EU budget negotiations coming up and Hungary needs funding. Orbán would be putting all that at risk.”

I don't necessarily think it will transpire --the Quids Pro Quo would have to be mighty-- but what else does the Hungarian Foreign Minister discuss with Gove, Raab & Barclay, within the normal span of intergovernmental contact? Allegedly, the fate of Hungarian migrants within the UK... that feels like excus-a-tory cover.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Everyone should form a mob and burn estates to ground like in the good old days. Trick or treat!

[Absolute_Zero]

BloJo seems very keen for a Queen's speech in October... but no later. I wonder.

Baldrick: I have a cunning plan
Queenie: My government will seek an extension to article 50...

What do the opposition do [given that the ERG etc can vote Noes with semi-plausible deniability], vote for it? Through the looking glass.

If the speech is voted down, the Government falls. Parliament is dissolved and per the caretaker convention, the government in purdah executes the will of parliament as expressed in that final vote.

[tufty]

For that to work, if that's possible, he'd need to have a queen's speech that the majority of parliament would be against. The majority are for an extension, so he'd probably need to go balls-out ERG.

"My government will, regardless of the Benn act, withdraw the UK from the EU with no deal", perhaps.

But even then, he'd need some way for the outcome to be leaving with no deal. Perhaps the excuse that, as the government is no longer in place, they can no longer negotiate, or even send a letter requesting an extension, so the "default" happens by default.

[Rubisco]

Or he could just break the law and get himself jailed. It worked for Hitler.

[Cloudane]

Hopefully he finds that ditch he was after.

[tufty]

Thought I'd share this one further

[Ollie]

Absolutely shameless; with a General Election so imminently in the offing, there is absolutely no need for a Queen's speech at this time. Blob-a-Job has essentially already started campaigning and he is clearly aiming to manoeuvre Her Maj into reading out a party political election brochure camouflaged as a Queen's speech.

[tufty]

There is at least one need, beyond the possible option thrown up by A_Z

If he wants to keep the gammons on board, he has to make it sound like he's done something, he's got a deal. His minor rehash of May's deal simply can't be brought before parliament again, the speaker won't allow it. So he has to have a new session in order to have "a deal" of any kind.

Obviously, having "a new deal" is contingent on the EU throwing Ireland under the bus, but it still allows him to put May's deal in front of the house again in a "this or no deal" situation/

[PFVA]

A little intermission just to say that here in this country people decided it was the time to follow the trend in the rest of Europe and elected the first nacionalist rep to the Assembly. The speech is the usual against refugees, migrants, and raising the national flag seems important.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Perhaps out of place, perhaps not:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/a ... d=12274032

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
Rogers says we shouldn't let the drama now being played out in Washington distract us from the bigger picture: the state of America's institutions.

The key to their success, he says, is trust.

"It's the capacity for people to trust one another, and to trust the conventions that govern them and that the people use to interact with one another," Dr Rogers says.

That's the underlying institution of the "social contract". And it has been fundamentally eroded.

"The Trump phenomenon is a symptom of those erosions. We're talking about 30 years of neoliberal market fundamentalism," Dr Rogers says. "For the average person who might have once thought of themselves as aspiration middle class, that hope has fundamentally fallen away."

The raw numbers are sobering.

Since the 1980s, the top 10 per cent of wage earners in the United States doubled their earnings. The peak 1 per cent tripled it. The elite .001 per cent multiplied their wealth as much as seven times over.

In contrast, the bottom 50 per cent of the population has seen incomes stagnate, even falling.

"This extraordinary asymmetry in wealth has only accelerated further since 2008. This is the fabric of society we're talking about. Those conventions of trust between citizens and the government — the very fabric of the social contract — have been pulled apart."

It's a rift that has been overseen, and actively promoted, by the very government institutions founded to protect the masses.

So Mr Trump's supporters see him as a wrecking ball. A way to disrupt the entrenched interests in Washington. As revenge.

ET TU, BRUTE?
The heart of this Shakespearean drama, Rogers says, is Trump's role. The story isn't about him, though he is the lead actor.

"Is he a reformer as some people think he is? Some people certainly think he is not. Is he genuinely motivated to penetrate and overthrow the class of 'permanent winners' who have entrenched themselves in the seats of power?"

It doesn't matter.

What matters is what his supporters believe him to be.

Trump, the ultimate expression of self-interest, is being promoted as a threat to a self-interested establishment.

"A class of 'permanent winners' has emerged in the United States over the past 30 years," Rogers says. "Their power over agendas, their power to direct investment and the flow of capital has created a sort of private governance."

That is what broader US society finds itself up against.

"It's that disconnect of the Senate and Congress from the lives of everyday people, from the lives of individuals and families and communities around America, that disconnect is the essence of what the American Republic has suffered."

And that discontent, Rogers notes, is crystallising around Trump's banner of nationalism — the promise that the future does not belong to the globalists, it belongs to patriots.

"This is as much I think, a broadside aimed at places like Silicon Valley," Dr Rogers says.

The movement of money. Immigration. The scheming of lobbyists. The power of corporate giants.

Some of Trump's backers, Rogers says, believe nationalism is the most effective tool available. "Nationalism, for all dangers and all the incredible destructiveness that comes with it, is the big blunt tool against this entrenched globalist class."

And Shakespeare's fates have given Mr Trump that tool, he suggests.

"I can agree with all the criticisms of Trump — he has a million and one flaws. But if you look at the need to reform a system that's broken, then there is scope to suggest that a Trump-like figure was inevitable. Perhaps necessary," Rogers says.

[KlaxonCow]

It seems my earlier point above about how Westminster is arguing over how to extract Northern Ireland from the EU, single market and customs union - when the country did not vote for Brexit at all and doesn't want any of these things to happen - is a bit more significant than I first realised.

As here's the Belfast Telegraph reporting on how an ex-loyalist prisoner has declared that he's not going to vote DUP and will go with the Greens instead:

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news ... 67878.html

The real headline, though, is that a recent survey, posing the question of a United Ireland, came out with 51% support for it.

A majority.

Granted, it's just one poll. But with loyalists questioning their loyalty, unionists wondering which union is best, a continuation of this nonsense at Westminster (who are arguing over how to force Leave on a country that voted Remain, remember) and, if we leave, the economic damage of Brexit (and Northern Ireland will have the best view of it all, as they only have to look over the border to make the comparisons) then that glancing majority for a United Ireland in one poll could well turn into a consistent, convincing majority and an irresistible call over time.

[KlaxonCow]

Perhaps out of place, perhaps not:

"Is he a reformer as some people think he is? Some people certainly think he is not. Is he genuinely motivated to penetrate and overthrow the class of 'permanent winners' who have entrenched themselves in the seats of power?"

The fundamental problem here is that the answer must be "of course not".

Because Trump is one of those "permanent winners". Indeed, he's the living embodiment of the concept. Its ultimate incarnation.

Inherited wealth. A narcissistic idiot, who regularly fails miserably in his business ventures. But it doesn't matter - he remains a "permanent winner" - as everything he tries regularly fails, but he's still got stupid amounts of money in the bank. He remain completely untouchable - no matter what he does - because his wealth has excused him ever facing any consequences or hardship over anything for his entire life.

Trump is the dictionary definition of "permanent winner" and a demonstration of all that's unfair and broken about it. As he floats around getting pretty much everything wrong, constantly, but has never once had to face any consequences that might have corrected his insane levels of narcissism - his ego is out of control, but of course it is. If you'd spent a lifetime where no matter how much you fuck up, nothing ever goes wrong, and no matter what you do wrong, there are no actual consequences, and no matter how badly you treat folks, you still have legions fawning over you regardless ("teflon Trump"), then at no point was your ego ever corrected and limited by any reality you experienced.

So if the question is, is the ultimate "permanent winner" Trump going to be the wrecking ball for this whole unfair system of "permanent winners"?

Of course not. He's not going to swing a wrecking ball directly into his own face, is he?

It's been a rather ridiculous con. Yeah, during the election campaign, he trumpeted that he was going to "drain the swamp" - but then he immediately appointed bankers and oil barons and all the usual establishment characters into key positions. He's been undoing environmental protections - removing all regulations on business interests - at a rapid pace. He's boldly tried to remove California's ability to set its own environmental policy, in a blatant bit of corruption to aid his friends in the fossil fuel industry.

He's quite literally nothing but nepotism. Doing his establishment friends corrupt favours. Systematically undoing any good that Obama or states like California were doing to level and balance things out, ripping it all up with glee.

If anyone voted Trump, thinking that he'd somehow "fix" this broken system, then those turkeys really did vote for Christmas.

All he's been doing - at rapid blinding pace - is systematically reinforcing the "permanent winner" system so that it goes from strength to strength, and remains ever more untouchably entrenched. He's been digging it all in, to make it as impossible as possible to ever dig it back out ever again.

[Dio]

The real headline, though, is that a recent survey, posing the question of a United Ireland, came out with 51% support for it.

A majority.

Granted, it's just one poll. But with loyalists questioning their loyalty, unionists wondering which union is best, a continuation of this nonsense at Westminster (who are arguing over how to force Leave on a country that voted Remain, remember) and, if we leave, the economic damage of Brexit (and Northern Ireland will have the best view of it all, as they only have to look over the border to make the comparisons) then that glancing majority for a United Ireland in one poll could well turn into a consistent, convincing majority and an irresistible call over time.

I've said before here that I don't even slightly understand the DUP's position on Brexit. It seems to me that a fairly inevitable endgame of anything but a Norway-style Brexit is a united Ireland by the end of the century, probably within my lifetime. (And that the Tories would quite cheerfully agree to it, if it was what was required to secure Brexit).