Re: UK newspaper urges readers to buy BDX before Brexit
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2019 7:59 pm
Very good
Here is Thomas Friedman’s take:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/opin ... -news.html
And mine:
Brexit update: Tories in meltdown as May calls the ERG’s bluff
Part one: Background – how we got here (optional but recommended)
The UK is in the midst of its gravest ever peace time political crisis. To understand why this is, and how this might play out, it is useful to revisit the background as to how we arrived here.
Brexit was based on a fantasy, which nobody really expected to happen…
Three years ago, according to the Leave campaign, by exiting the EU the UK could ‘take back control’, notably of immigration, whilst maintaining full access to the single market, without having to pay into the EU budget, and whilst being able to negotiate its own trade deals.
Only a small minority of ‘experts’, with knowledge of EU institutions and how the EU actually works, knew this was a nonsensical fantasy, but the complacent Remain campaign didn’t even bother to point this out because everyone knew they were going to win anyway.
And the electorate, used to being spoon fed news and views, was not really interested in understanding the arcane workings of the EU and its institutions. Therefore, resorting to slogans like ‘let’s take back control’, which were as meaningless as they were effective, the Leave campaign, backed by savvy backers, exploiting big data and social media to the maximum, engaged in their bold gambit. But they realistically saw little chance of winning.
…The outcome turned on one man’s ambition…
However, their fortunes took a turn for the better when, four months before the referendum, Boris Johnson, a politician with even higher viewer recognition than David Cameron, opportunistically threw in his lot behind Leave. In hindsight, this was probably the most decisive moment in the referendum campaign.
Brexit arguably happened because of one man’s over-arching ambition to become prime minister. Even though Johnson himself did not expect Leave to win. In fact, while he enthusiastically embraced and embellished the Leave campaign’s false narratives, he was actually gambling on a narrow victory for Remain, which would put Cameron in an untenable position, thus paving his path to 10 Downing Street.
…and nobody planned for it…
In the event of Leave winning, he was shell-shocked. And so was everyone else. Because nobody had a plan, which helps to explain why we are in this mess nearly three years later. Vote Leave knew they had presented an undeliverable unicorn embellished by false promises on the NHS, baseless scare stories of the UK being overrun by Middle Eastern immigrants, and the ease of delivery of new trade deals.
That the government itself did not have a plan was nothing short of extraordinary. And breathtakingly irresponsible. In the 2000s, Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown commissioned 23 sperate studies into joining the euro before concluding it was not in the UK national interest.
That not one Brexit impact assessment was commissioned will surely be the subject of a public enquiry in the future. Cameron promptly exited left stage, opening up the opportunity for Theresa May to realise her long her long held ambition to lead the Conservative Party and the country.
…leaving the ERG to grab the initiative, fill the vacuum and control the narrative…
May, an agnostic default Remainer, had little understanding of the EU, and the only things she really cared about were uniting the Conservative Party and controlling immigration, where she had so conspicuously failed as Home Secretary. It probably never occurred to her to reach out to other parties, in Parliament, and the country to discuss the best way forward.
The ‘people’ having voted for a unicorn, now expected it to be delivered. As cold reality set in, and the painful trade-offs became apparent, the unicorn turned out to be a zombie. May tacked hard to the right, dancing to the tune of the ERG, the small minority of hard core Brexiters in the Conservative Party, who have dominated the agenda and the narrative ever since.
By October 2016 Conservative Party conference May had embraced the hardest of hard Brexits, which meant exiting the customs union and the single market, arguably the most important determinants of the prosperity of the British economy in recent years. Consequently, this position coincided with a second big leg down in the pound to the post-GFC lows.
May’s gambit to reinforce her authority and Hard Brexit policy by calling a general election in April 2017 backfired spectacularly when, rather than beat Corbyn’s Labour in a landslide, she lost her majority and had to turn for support to the notoriously awkward-to-deal-with DUP.
May pretended that nothing had changed, noting that 85% of the electorate had voted for Brexit supporting parties, when the reality was that swathes of ‘homeless’ moderate Remainers had voted Labour tactically, with the express aim of denying May a majority, which they effectively succeeded in doing.
It was from this extreme position that a weakened May gradually rowed back to her softer and much derided ‘Chequers’ proposal over the next year and a half and the final deal, reached last November, which represented a compromise on so many levels, notably having to accept a backstop for the Irish border, which was never going to be acceptable to the DUP.
May’s deal - a legally binding withdrawal agreement and non-legally binding political declaration - were doomed from the start because it was seen as the worst of all worlds – losing access, whilst not really taking back control – ironically uniting the ERG and Remainers in opposing it.
…leading the accusations of betrayal and surrender, which seeped into the mainstream
The ERG adopted ever more emotive, war-like metaphors, bemoaning ‘surrender’ (to the EU) and ‘betrayal’ (of democracy and ‘the people’, all 17.4m of them who voted to leave), even applying this to different, albeit softer versions of Brexit.
But part of the point of this introduction is to illustrate how this small group of anti-EU fanatics, aided and abetted by the Brexit-backing newspapers, has come in from the fringes and so dominated the narrative, normalising extreme populism, radicalising the Party and influencing public opinion.
The notion that anything less than a ‘clean’ Brexit isn’t really Brexit at all and is therefore a betrayal has seeped into the collective consciousness and narrative almost unchallenged. As has making it virtually taboo to discuss a second referendum or revoking Article 50. MPs doing so risked being vilified.
Brexit proponents have also claimed to have superior insights as to why exactly people voted to leave, perhaps attributing to many of them implausibly sophisticated insights. Some have even professed to know better than businesses what is good for them, especially those on the front line desperately lobbying to maintain close trading links with Europe or single market access.
The pendulum has swung a long way in the last three years, will it swing back?
However, the important point is that if you wound the clock back three years to before the referendum, and you offered the ERG May’s deal virtually all of them would have gleefully grabbed it with both hands. In part because any departure from the EU was then seen as a radical step.
Most of them would also have grabbed an exit with permanent customs union with both hands. An outcome now deemed to be a betrayal. This is a measure of how far the narrative has been shifted and distorted in the last three years. And to what extent the ERG has skilfully punched way above its weight for so long.
While some still cling on to the hope of no deal exit, this is important to remember and bear in mind in navigating the path ahead, as public opinion polls continue to shift gradually towards a larger majority in favour of remaining in the EU and holding a people’s vote.
Not just this but the massive scale of the two people’s vote marches in October and March and the record breaking six million signatures on the revoke Article 50 petition may facilitate a swinging back in the pendulum to a very soft Brexit or no Brexit at all. This seems to be the direction of travel albeit against very determined resistance.
But it is why all but the most hard-core ERG folded behind May’s deal as the hardest Brexit on offer, and is why their bluff can be called. They can see the writing on the wall. The pendulum has swung a long way to the Brexiter narrative and has the potential to swing back.
But this is also why the Conservative Party is now in meltdown.
This from Liberal commentator Jonathan Lis earlier this week: “The Tories can no longer accept compromise. They can no longer accept moderation. They can no longer accept voices who defend business over nativism. The party has been taken over by toxic nationalism. There is no going back. If this party isn’t finished, the country soon will be.
Part two: Yesterday’s Cabinet meeting and May’s pivot
May gives up on the ERG and DUP
Yesterday May admitted that she can no longer sell her Withdrawal Agreement to the ERG and DUP, and she is now reaching out to the opposition leader Corbyn to forge a cross party consensus.
This could be an elaborate bluff and a trap for Corbyn because she is planning on asking the EU for a short extension to 22 May, implicitly ruling out participation in the European Parliamentary elections. So it could be a ploy to make Corbyn partly own her deal, which Corbyn has strenuously tried to avoid, and force a choice between her deal and no deal.
While Corbyn might be tempted to try to allow a no deal Brexit and pin the blame on the Tories, he would face a vicious backlash in his own party and risk mass resignations to TIG. And although the Conservative Party is in melt-down, Labour is not that far behind.
However, while May and Corbyn are ‘tribalists’, and have a track record of being untrustworthy, they do not want to be seen acting against ‘the national interest’ in a time of grave crisis. It is an opportunity for Corbyn to look statesman-like and as a leader-in-waiting.
May has agreed to another series of indicative votes if she cannot agree a way forward with her opposite number. This should be seen as a major concession. She would probably have no choice but at least to run off the winner against her deal, or back the winner.
In the last set of indicative votes on Monday, three options came within touching distance of winning a majority – PCU, PV and CM2.0 - with plenty of scope for each of them to get over the line next time (see chart below).
The irony is that May and Corbyn are actually quite close in the sort of Brexit they would like to see, but both are at odds with their respective parties. Both would be happy with some kind of permanent customs arrangements (now an anathema for many Tories), both want to restrict free movement, and both are wary of a people’s vote.
At the same time Corbyn is under intense pressure from within his party to insist that any agreement on way forward is subject to a confirmatory public vote with Remain on the ballot paper.
May’s intention was to wrap up this process by close on Friday and communicate a way forward to Donald Tusk soon after, but this looks unrealistic now.
It is unlikely that the EU will grant May her short extension to 22 May, unless all parties can back a Permanent Customs Union, which would require only small tweaks to the Political Declaration.
If Parliament has not backed a way forward, it is much more likely that the EU will offer a choice between no extension – implying no deal exit or the UK revoking A50 - and a long extension, which will require UK participation in European Parliamentary elections, and possibly with other strings attached as well. At the time of writing Yvette Cooper’s no deal amendment was going towards a final phase.
Ireland stands to lose as much as the UK from no deal, and Leo Varadkar’s meeting with Macron yesterday and his meeting with Merkel tomorrow is notable in this respect, and suggests that the EU is unlikely, in the final analysis to allow the UK to crash out. The EU is batting for Ireland. But it will be keen to ensure that it is the UK that blinks first, so the EU will continue publicly to talk up the risk of no deal.
Any deal has to be on the basis of the current withdrawal agreement, which cannot be amended, so will involve changes to the PD. However, because the PD is not legally binding there is a risk that it is jettisoned by a May successor to achieve a harder Brexit. Therefore, Corbyn may insist that any changes to the PD are enshrined in UK law.
The base case is that we get a long extension, with a pledge for a second referendum more likely than a general election. While many Tories are incandescent over May’s overtures to Corbyn, and are threatening to back any no confidence motion, there has also been a fierce backlash against a general election among Cabinet ministers and Tory MPs. It will also risk going down very badly among the general public as an unwelcome waste of time that may not solve anything.
It is also quite possible that May’s decision to reach out to Corbyn leads to the collapse of the government, sending the Conservative Party into a death spiral, and leading to some kind of unity government.
Here is Thomas Friedman’s take:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/opin ... -news.html
And mine:
Brexit update: Tories in meltdown as May calls the ERG’s bluff
Part one: Background – how we got here (optional but recommended)
The UK is in the midst of its gravest ever peace time political crisis. To understand why this is, and how this might play out, it is useful to revisit the background as to how we arrived here.
Brexit was based on a fantasy, which nobody really expected to happen…
Three years ago, according to the Leave campaign, by exiting the EU the UK could ‘take back control’, notably of immigration, whilst maintaining full access to the single market, without having to pay into the EU budget, and whilst being able to negotiate its own trade deals.
Only a small minority of ‘experts’, with knowledge of EU institutions and how the EU actually works, knew this was a nonsensical fantasy, but the complacent Remain campaign didn’t even bother to point this out because everyone knew they were going to win anyway.
And the electorate, used to being spoon fed news and views, was not really interested in understanding the arcane workings of the EU and its institutions. Therefore, resorting to slogans like ‘let’s take back control’, which were as meaningless as they were effective, the Leave campaign, backed by savvy backers, exploiting big data and social media to the maximum, engaged in their bold gambit. But they realistically saw little chance of winning.
…The outcome turned on one man’s ambition…
However, their fortunes took a turn for the better when, four months before the referendum, Boris Johnson, a politician with even higher viewer recognition than David Cameron, opportunistically threw in his lot behind Leave. In hindsight, this was probably the most decisive moment in the referendum campaign.
Brexit arguably happened because of one man’s over-arching ambition to become prime minister. Even though Johnson himself did not expect Leave to win. In fact, while he enthusiastically embraced and embellished the Leave campaign’s false narratives, he was actually gambling on a narrow victory for Remain, which would put Cameron in an untenable position, thus paving his path to 10 Downing Street.
…and nobody planned for it…
In the event of Leave winning, he was shell-shocked. And so was everyone else. Because nobody had a plan, which helps to explain why we are in this mess nearly three years later. Vote Leave knew they had presented an undeliverable unicorn embellished by false promises on the NHS, baseless scare stories of the UK being overrun by Middle Eastern immigrants, and the ease of delivery of new trade deals.
That the government itself did not have a plan was nothing short of extraordinary. And breathtakingly irresponsible. In the 2000s, Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown commissioned 23 sperate studies into joining the euro before concluding it was not in the UK national interest.
That not one Brexit impact assessment was commissioned will surely be the subject of a public enquiry in the future. Cameron promptly exited left stage, opening up the opportunity for Theresa May to realise her long her long held ambition to lead the Conservative Party and the country.
…leaving the ERG to grab the initiative, fill the vacuum and control the narrative…
May, an agnostic default Remainer, had little understanding of the EU, and the only things she really cared about were uniting the Conservative Party and controlling immigration, where she had so conspicuously failed as Home Secretary. It probably never occurred to her to reach out to other parties, in Parliament, and the country to discuss the best way forward.
The ‘people’ having voted for a unicorn, now expected it to be delivered. As cold reality set in, and the painful trade-offs became apparent, the unicorn turned out to be a zombie. May tacked hard to the right, dancing to the tune of the ERG, the small minority of hard core Brexiters in the Conservative Party, who have dominated the agenda and the narrative ever since.
By October 2016 Conservative Party conference May had embraced the hardest of hard Brexits, which meant exiting the customs union and the single market, arguably the most important determinants of the prosperity of the British economy in recent years. Consequently, this position coincided with a second big leg down in the pound to the post-GFC lows.
May’s gambit to reinforce her authority and Hard Brexit policy by calling a general election in April 2017 backfired spectacularly when, rather than beat Corbyn’s Labour in a landslide, she lost her majority and had to turn for support to the notoriously awkward-to-deal-with DUP.
May pretended that nothing had changed, noting that 85% of the electorate had voted for Brexit supporting parties, when the reality was that swathes of ‘homeless’ moderate Remainers had voted Labour tactically, with the express aim of denying May a majority, which they effectively succeeded in doing.
It was from this extreme position that a weakened May gradually rowed back to her softer and much derided ‘Chequers’ proposal over the next year and a half and the final deal, reached last November, which represented a compromise on so many levels, notably having to accept a backstop for the Irish border, which was never going to be acceptable to the DUP.
May’s deal - a legally binding withdrawal agreement and non-legally binding political declaration - were doomed from the start because it was seen as the worst of all worlds – losing access, whilst not really taking back control – ironically uniting the ERG and Remainers in opposing it.
…leading the accusations of betrayal and surrender, which seeped into the mainstream
The ERG adopted ever more emotive, war-like metaphors, bemoaning ‘surrender’ (to the EU) and ‘betrayal’ (of democracy and ‘the people’, all 17.4m of them who voted to leave), even applying this to different, albeit softer versions of Brexit.
But part of the point of this introduction is to illustrate how this small group of anti-EU fanatics, aided and abetted by the Brexit-backing newspapers, has come in from the fringes and so dominated the narrative, normalising extreme populism, radicalising the Party and influencing public opinion.
The notion that anything less than a ‘clean’ Brexit isn’t really Brexit at all and is therefore a betrayal has seeped into the collective consciousness and narrative almost unchallenged. As has making it virtually taboo to discuss a second referendum or revoking Article 50. MPs doing so risked being vilified.
Brexit proponents have also claimed to have superior insights as to why exactly people voted to leave, perhaps attributing to many of them implausibly sophisticated insights. Some have even professed to know better than businesses what is good for them, especially those on the front line desperately lobbying to maintain close trading links with Europe or single market access.
The pendulum has swung a long way in the last three years, will it swing back?
However, the important point is that if you wound the clock back three years to before the referendum, and you offered the ERG May’s deal virtually all of them would have gleefully grabbed it with both hands. In part because any departure from the EU was then seen as a radical step.
Most of them would also have grabbed an exit with permanent customs union with both hands. An outcome now deemed to be a betrayal. This is a measure of how far the narrative has been shifted and distorted in the last three years. And to what extent the ERG has skilfully punched way above its weight for so long.
While some still cling on to the hope of no deal exit, this is important to remember and bear in mind in navigating the path ahead, as public opinion polls continue to shift gradually towards a larger majority in favour of remaining in the EU and holding a people’s vote.
Not just this but the massive scale of the two people’s vote marches in October and March and the record breaking six million signatures on the revoke Article 50 petition may facilitate a swinging back in the pendulum to a very soft Brexit or no Brexit at all. This seems to be the direction of travel albeit against very determined resistance.
But it is why all but the most hard-core ERG folded behind May’s deal as the hardest Brexit on offer, and is why their bluff can be called. They can see the writing on the wall. The pendulum has swung a long way to the Brexiter narrative and has the potential to swing back.
But this is also why the Conservative Party is now in meltdown.
This from Liberal commentator Jonathan Lis earlier this week: “The Tories can no longer accept compromise. They can no longer accept moderation. They can no longer accept voices who defend business over nativism. The party has been taken over by toxic nationalism. There is no going back. If this party isn’t finished, the country soon will be.
Part two: Yesterday’s Cabinet meeting and May’s pivot
May gives up on the ERG and DUP
Yesterday May admitted that she can no longer sell her Withdrawal Agreement to the ERG and DUP, and she is now reaching out to the opposition leader Corbyn to forge a cross party consensus.
This could be an elaborate bluff and a trap for Corbyn because she is planning on asking the EU for a short extension to 22 May, implicitly ruling out participation in the European Parliamentary elections. So it could be a ploy to make Corbyn partly own her deal, which Corbyn has strenuously tried to avoid, and force a choice between her deal and no deal.
While Corbyn might be tempted to try to allow a no deal Brexit and pin the blame on the Tories, he would face a vicious backlash in his own party and risk mass resignations to TIG. And although the Conservative Party is in melt-down, Labour is not that far behind.
However, while May and Corbyn are ‘tribalists’, and have a track record of being untrustworthy, they do not want to be seen acting against ‘the national interest’ in a time of grave crisis. It is an opportunity for Corbyn to look statesman-like and as a leader-in-waiting.
May has agreed to another series of indicative votes if she cannot agree a way forward with her opposite number. This should be seen as a major concession. She would probably have no choice but at least to run off the winner against her deal, or back the winner.
In the last set of indicative votes on Monday, three options came within touching distance of winning a majority – PCU, PV and CM2.0 - with plenty of scope for each of them to get over the line next time (see chart below).
The irony is that May and Corbyn are actually quite close in the sort of Brexit they would like to see, but both are at odds with their respective parties. Both would be happy with some kind of permanent customs arrangements (now an anathema for many Tories), both want to restrict free movement, and both are wary of a people’s vote.
At the same time Corbyn is under intense pressure from within his party to insist that any agreement on way forward is subject to a confirmatory public vote with Remain on the ballot paper.
May’s intention was to wrap up this process by close on Friday and communicate a way forward to Donald Tusk soon after, but this looks unrealistic now.
It is unlikely that the EU will grant May her short extension to 22 May, unless all parties can back a Permanent Customs Union, which would require only small tweaks to the Political Declaration.
If Parliament has not backed a way forward, it is much more likely that the EU will offer a choice between no extension – implying no deal exit or the UK revoking A50 - and a long extension, which will require UK participation in European Parliamentary elections, and possibly with other strings attached as well. At the time of writing Yvette Cooper’s no deal amendment was going towards a final phase.
Ireland stands to lose as much as the UK from no deal, and Leo Varadkar’s meeting with Macron yesterday and his meeting with Merkel tomorrow is notable in this respect, and suggests that the EU is unlikely, in the final analysis to allow the UK to crash out. The EU is batting for Ireland. But it will be keen to ensure that it is the UK that blinks first, so the EU will continue publicly to talk up the risk of no deal.
Any deal has to be on the basis of the current withdrawal agreement, which cannot be amended, so will involve changes to the PD. However, because the PD is not legally binding there is a risk that it is jettisoned by a May successor to achieve a harder Brexit. Therefore, Corbyn may insist that any changes to the PD are enshrined in UK law.
The base case is that we get a long extension, with a pledge for a second referendum more likely than a general election. While many Tories are incandescent over May’s overtures to Corbyn, and are threatening to back any no confidence motion, there has also been a fierce backlash against a general election among Cabinet ministers and Tory MPs. It will also risk going down very badly among the general public as an unwelcome waste of time that may not solve anything.
It is also quite possible that May’s decision to reach out to Corbyn leads to the collapse of the government, sending the Conservative Party into a death spiral, and leading to some kind of unity government.