Verbal

By throwing a few more millions onto the help/rent-to-buy pyre, apparently. And also by not firing Brexit Jihadist-in-chief BoJo, who's polished his street cred with Millennials by quoting a patronising colonial-infused poem by Kipling. That'll get the younger vote out for the Tories. Especially as they come to realise that the next leader of the Tory party wants a Brexit that drives the thickest wedge possible between Britain and the EU, in order to return to some kind of Kipling-esque Nirvana of Commonwealth countries lorded over by a new British Raj. It is entertaining, though, watching such a monumental (especially the last two syllables) case of someone inside the tent pi ssing in.

Is there a timetable for when the government will complete the negotiations with itself? Boris's latest intervention contradicts just about every point made in May's Florence speech.

Companies (and governments by different routes) can bring cases to international trade panels. Only governments, not companies, can make or alter trade barriers. The Bombardier case, like the Airbus saga, has not reached a legal conclusion. Yet the US government decided to throw up a tariff barrier that, with taxes, triples the cost of Bombardier's plane overnight. The decision was taken by Wilbur Ross, Trump's commerce secretary and a fully paid up member of Trump's highly protectionist America First agenda. It's as clear a warning as we're likely to get as to how the Trump administration will view an enfeebled UK outside of the EU. It can easily push Canada around even with its trade deal (NAFTA). It can't push Airbus and the EU around anywhere nearly so easily - and hasn't, even though the Airbus case has been in the works far longer. It's also also a clear warning to May - she personally pleaded with Trump not to impose a punitive tariff little more than a week ago. So much for the special relationship. As for Boeing - who last year alone spent $17 million just on lobbying Washington politicians - the case doesn't even eliminate a direct competitor because Boeing doesn't actually make a competing aircraft (a case made strongly by Bombardier's customer Delta Airlines). Boeing has a reputation as a slash-and-burn company against foreign and domestic competition - its corporate instinct is to monopolise. It would like nothing more than to wipe out Airbus, but takes out a non-competing minnow instead. Even if the tariff is eventually dropped, it will have been enough to drive away a major customer in Delta. By the way, Airbus will tell you that the net cost of the subsidies it receives is nil - because they're what are called launch subsidies which are repaid incrementally to governments as royalties on sales. Meanwhile Boris yesterday launched his think tank on FCO property, dedicated to pressing May towards a jihadist Brexit - a WTO free-for-all in which the UK unilaterally pulls down all its own tariff barriers. It even (says it) wants to abandon EU product standards, thereby cutting off the EU increasingly as a market into which UK companies would be allowed to sell. The latter is more likely yet another of Boris's jolly-jape EU wind-ups. It'll have the opposite effect, of course - as before, galvanising the EU into an unsplittable negotiating pact. Boris thinks this is the way to Nirvana. This comment in the FT yesterday sets out a more likely trajectory:

Canada has a trade deal with the US - result: 219% punitive tariff. May personally pleaded with Trump not to impose the tariff - result: 219% punitive tariff. The US and EU have gone to-to-toe on Airbus about exactly the same issue of state subsidies - result: lots of hot air for over a decade but nothing yet.

Very well argued. Whether it gets through the noise of a certain wing of Corbynism is debatable though. There's a small hard core of fanatics, largely older and drawn from the 'extra-Parliamentary' left - Trotskyists and others who've snuck back into Labour and temporarily given up wondering whether ISIS for example might be a 'progressive force' - who persist with the ignorant and utterly false criticism of the EU as a 'neo-liberal project'. Actually the EU is ordo-liberal - in favour of mixed public/private markets. Younger and more idealistic Corbynistas are strongly pro-Europe, but this older, deeply cretinous wing of Corbynism makes the most noise because, frankly, Corbyn himself is one of them, clinging to the pathetic fantasy that the EU is the brainchild of Friedrich Hayek. Bin these gimps and Labour has a chance of formulating a winning strategy for the UK's relationship with the EU - one that, paradoxically, is more pro-business and more pro-state enterprise than anything dreamed up by the vastly incompetent intellectually bankrupt May regime.

So 'we' made ISIS throw (alleged) gay men from rooftops? 'We' were responsible for the regular beheadings in Raqqa's town square of any Syrian who got in their way? 'We' are responsible for ISIS's most violent thugs being Chechens, Gulf Arabs, and South east Asians, as well as British late teens with drug and petty crime problems? And the overwhelming targets of their violence being Syrian and Iraqi civilians? In short, can you not break free of a simpleton's view of the world, in which all its problems are invariably and exclusively sourced to 'us' (i.e. the evil West)? As if Putin's regime and Assad (and Saddam) were all merely benign actors, whose gross abuses (over 90 percent of all civilian casualties in the Syrian conflict) are wholly determined by what 'we' do?

An appropriate and patriotic response. The last time citizens' rights were threatened with forcible removal was in the second world war. The one the Brexit Jihadists keep trying to re-fight, but on the wrong side.

We should call this Remoaners' Day. Watching all the Just Get On With Its go into meltdown has been a delight.

Still losing millions by the week, which of course delivers short-term popularity in undercutting local rivals. The bellicose response to the TfL decision from Uber London shows also how the abusive corporate culture hasn't really changed since Kalanick was forced out. In reality, the way forward is simple: Uber have to comply with TfL's regulations and clean up their act on safety. It's not complicated and not expensive. But Uber prefers to do this by sounding like Malcolm Tucker on speed. How to win friends....

You must be new to thinking. Welcome. Just for starters, you might consider not jumping on a random generalisation based on who knows what, and using that to draw the false conclusion that an entire religion's culture (whatever the fu ck that might mean) can be written off as racist - all couched, as a wannabe would, in scumbag's suck-a-lemon tone.

Do we not do midfields any more?

And why is that, scumbag? I answered your question ages ago, as you well know. Again: I condemn the cry of racism when used to protect Asian rape gangs. I have also, at length, supported Andrew Norfolk's work on this (you wouldn't know who he is, but never mind) and given an account, based on first-hand knowledge of the geographic area concerned, as to why these rape gangs came to have the attitudes and behaviour that they do. All this stuff is on this thread, scumbag - just go and look for it. So - I'm off next week to the country concerned. Want to tag along? You'd love it. It's just your thing.

What is an 'islamic refugee, scumbag?

Our best defence against rampaging Jihadists is that they are spectacularly, Four Lions thick.

Looking on the bright side, at least you've made an effort to string an argument together. Unfortunately, you've made a complete mess of it. Read again the last sentence of mine you quoted. Here it is: Nor is the EU in the least bit interested in agreeing a 'bespoke' transition deal, nor in any kind of trade deal at all before the end of the year. Note the highlighted bit - the bit you entirely missed. (Reading to the end of sentences is generally a good idea if you want to capture their meaning.) So you've rather hopelessly constructed an argument based entirely on failing to read to the end of a sentence. I'm not saying the EU won't agree ever - just that it won't before the end of the year. You seem particularly clueless about what's going on, so here's a helpful précis. The EU negotiating team have made it a condition of any discussion of a trade deal that 'progress' be made on three key components of an exit deal: rights of citizenship, the Ireland 'hard border' problem (and it's implications for the Good Friday agreement), and the exit bill. On the first, the only progress has to so with EHIC. There was much trumpeting by Brexiteers about this. What they failed to point out is that the agreement so far on EHIC is a severely limited version of what we have now - it only applies to the snapshot of people found either side of the border on exit day. ALL the other questions to do with citizenship - much thornier than EHIC - have yet to get to a starting point of negotiation. With regard to the Irish border, the hopeless situation is that the UK government presented a ludicrous position paper which they themselves hurriedly withdrew. So no progress there. With regard to the exit bill, there is also no progress at all, and if anything the endless nitpicking, which occupied almost all the negotiating time in the last round, indicates that there's several months' work needed just to get this to an 'agree to disagree' point. So do I KNOW there won't be progress on a trade deal before the end of the year? Of course! The EU are saying it, and the British government are saying it (notably by Davis's call for 'flexibility' - i.e. 'let's talk trade stuff instead of all this really difficult exit stuff). Beyond that, the European parliament and each of the 27 member states have ALL to agree unanimously within the next six weeks that progress has been made. That is simply not going to happen. To your bizarre conclusion that it's not worth talking to the EU if they're not prepared to negotiate, this, as you now no doubt see, is based on an entirely false premise - it is literally the opposite of true. The EU has been ready to negotiate since day one. It has also had, from day one, an agreed position between member states on all the key issues. The UK government, on the other hand, is still negotiating with itself, and has proved spectacularly inept at producing an agreed position on pretty much anything. Just on the transition deal, what do you think the UK government's position is? Is it Fox's 'no single market; no customs union'? Or is it Hammond's bits of both? Or Davis's 'single market but no customs union? Or Boris's 'cake and eat it'? All different, all contradictory. As I've said repeatedly, true Brexit Jihadists should be very worried, and demand the government get its act together. It pleases remoaners like me no end that you have this ludicrous blind faith in the May regime delivering you to your promised land of milk and honey and x virgins.

I give up. Your cogent eloquence has persuaded me. Well done! I couldn't quite detect any measurable thought from you, though, on what precisely is wrong with the case for the May regime's reckless incompetence. You got any actual, you know, arguments? Yet another example of stunning stupidity is the 'magical thinking' involved in Davis's proposal for a 'frictionless' customs border between the two Irelands. Once the obvious was pointed out - that the technology doesn't exist, and that even if it did work that would still mean a hard border - the position paper was quietly taken out and shot. Still, you're convinced, so that's good. I can see that you have exactly no problem believing that a government that will take four years to fix Big Ben can tear down and rebuild the regulatory framework of the British economy and its relationship with the EU in a whole eighteen months. I agree, 'religion' isn't quite right. It is more an economic death cult.

Only your ignorance can lead you to this conclusion. He's actually right. The May regime is saying a transition deal is necessary and yet has failed to discuss it in any detail with the EU. Nor is the EU in the least bit interested in agreeing a 'bespoke' transition deal, nor in any kind of trade deal at all before the end of the year. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/09/leaked-memo-citys-brexit-envoy-reveals-sobering-analysis-eu/ You Brexit Jihad acolytes have been warned over and over again - May and the gang aren't behaving as serious negotiators, and are acting against your cult's interests out of sheer uselessness. The more rational Brexiteers are prepared to acknowledge this. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-tories-uk-pm-leader-hopeless-attack-lord-harris-a7937381.html

The immigration policy leak seems to have cause something less than a tsunami of comment. As ugly as it is, and as much as it tells us about May's profound xenophobia, it also reveals an ugly truth for those who want their Brexit rammed up them hard. And that is that this government is not serious. If it were true that there is going to be a cut-off in March 2019, we would have to have seen before now some huge investments in infrastructure to cope with post-Brexit. Under what counts for their plan, even the transition period dumps us out of single market and customs union membership. Therefore we should have seen before now massive investment in border infrastructure - masses of extra staff being recruited and trained, thousands of acres of land being compulsorily purchased to create customs waiting areas for freight, hundred of millions invested in customs halls and technology, the construction of a new fleet of customs patrol craft, a complete overhaul and massive investment in immigration staff and technology etc., etc. And that's just customs and immigration. How much of this is happening, a mere eighteen months before we crash out? Nothing, nada. As I've said many times before to the Jihadists, if you want your Brexit hard, you're going to be betrayed by this government. And pining for the 'no deal better than a bad deal' option won't help either - because it forgets that there are two possible outcomes of 'no deal': crashing out and, much more likely, bellyflopping back in. Hard remain here we come...

But it is 'some sort of right'. It's called a woman's right to choose, and it's enshrined in the UK by the 1967 Abortion Act and in the US by the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade judgment. Perhaps in the circumstances, and given Mogg's personal mission to over-populate the world, he should be advised to go f u c k himself.

A wit, yes.

0/10.

Because the dreamers are almost all Latino, and in any case, DACA meant they weren't in the US illegally - now (potentially) they are.

Any sane person would hope that a UK government of any political colour wouldn't 'walk away' from the world's largest economic area, which just happens to be on our doorstep. This is plainly false. Can you provide a link to where any Labour politician has said "whatever deal you propose we accept." (You're the one who's put it in quotes, so you presumably have evidence to back up the voices in your head that told you the quotes are real).

...is the answer to the question: How delusionally far do Brexit Jihadists have to go to prove that no deal is better than a bad deal?

Not bigoted, but a kind of reverse, perverse Utilitarianism - the idea that the benefit of the very few should be borne by the very many. You're willing to risk throwing the British economy of 65+ million people under a bus to keep UK citizenship for 35,000 Gibraltarians. Bizarre.