Verbal

Even some of the right wingers are waking up to the lunacy and gross incompetence of the May government's approach - such as it is - to Brexit. Dominic Cummings, a true Brexit Jihadist, has described the May regime as 'morons' for wanting to pull out of Euratom because it depends on recognition of the European Court of Justice for adjudication of disputes. The fact that this crosses May's so-called 'red line' against the ECJ jurisdiction is taken by said morons to trump the fact that the British nuclear industry would quickly run out of fuel without Euratom membership. So as before - Lord Pony and other ill-informed jihadists should start applying more critical thought to their unquestioning support of May et al. Leave it to May - and associated fools like Davis, Johnson and Fox - and the turmoil will result in no Brexit at all. What we'll end up with on the current trajectory is two+ years of chaos causing huge damage to the UK economy, followed by an inevitable belly flop back into the EU.

Beat me to it. This has always been one of David Davis's aces - that German industry, and carmakers in particular, would not allow Merkel to do a bad deal on Brexit. Pure Panglossian fantasy. On the one side of this negotiation are 27 states who've rarely united on anything yet speak as one voice. On the other side, the May government has laid out long lines of typewriters, put out an emergency call for monkeys, and are still awaiting something resembling a plan. So for the umpteenth time: Brexiteers should be terrified that the present (what counts for) Tory government is negotiating all this, because it sure as hell isn't going to lead to the sunny uplands.

Je ne comprend pas. http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/business/new-lab-hopes-to-export-to-europe-and-earn-15m-1-5215035

How will you escape it exactly? Remember, my question was how you'd avoid these regulations in any bilateral trade deal with the EU. The EU will simply insist that its regulations still apply if you want to export into the EU - as it does with pretty much everything else.

What tangible regulatory burdens imposed by the EU will we escape from when - or more accurately, given events to date, if - we have Brexit with a fully agreed bilateral trade deal with the EU?

That must account for the UK prior to 1973 being labelled, for very good reason, the 'sick man of Europe'. But all of this is a dead-wood argument - there will (should) come a time when you have to stop fighting them on the beaches. Regardless of one's view, pro or anti, the UK is in an awful mess with these negotiations, and I repeat yet again - if I were a Brexiteer, I'd be scared ****less that May, Davis et al are the ones responsible for getting this done. Because whatever it is they're doing, it isn't going to result in Brexit.

Barnier has said bluntly today that the UK's position is 'impossible'. There will be no 'frictionless' borders without freedom of movement; there will be no 'sector by sector' negotiation (i.e. financial services, motor manufacturing, etc); and there will be no compromise on ECJ jurisdiction. So much for having your cake and eating it - this is not having any cake and starving. Which means the next set of EU/UK meetings are going to be interesting. I wonder when the penny will finally drop with May, Davis, et al.? Or are they playing this out like a whole season of House of Cards, and waiting for the public mood to catch up with a reality they understand all too well but dare not mention? Either way, the choice between hard, economy-trashing Brexit and the not-really-Brexit-at-all of single market and customs union membership couldn't be starker.

While the government refuses to publish its report on the funding of Islamist extremism in the UK - which reportedly says that most of those funds come from Saudi Arabia - the Henry Jackson Society has released its own analysis. This confirms not only that most of the money to fund Wahhabi-Salafist loons comes from Saudi, but that almost all of it comes from the Saudi government itself. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/05/report-calls-for-public-inquiry-into-gulf-funding-of-british-extremism May is clearly fearful that in the UK's heavily Brexit-induced weakened state, it can't afford to alienate a huge market for British goods (mostly arms). Even if that market is the financial source of murder on British streets.

Now this sounds like something, but I can't quite find the word. Begins with a T and ends with...SM. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/02/gunmen-open-fire-outside-avignon-mosque-france-eight-injured/

So you went to one of the major donors of the Leave campaign to get a balanced view as to why motor manufacturing investment in the UK has crashed since June 2016?

Everyone has access to the single market. If Kim Jong-un has access to the single market, why won't we? On the broader point, I'm not sure what's so obvious. We have a hung parliament rather than the one that was going to gallop into the EU negotiations with a thumping majority and demand the earth. We have a department, Dexeu, and its head, who are regarded within Whitehall as wildly dysfunctional (it even lost half its ministerial team in the wake of the election, one of whom resigned because of the rampant incompetence in the department). And we have continuing frustration from the EU side that the UK seems incapable of spelling out its position coherently on anything. And we have serious splits in the two main parties between soft Brexiters/remainers and Brexit Jihadists. So the only thing that's obvious right now is nothing.

When things are 'hard to reconcile' it's usually - and in this case - because someone is trying to have it both ways, appealing to leavers and remainers. Again, that's the point; I wasn't quoting the manifesto to show how clear things are, but actually how messy they are. There are contradictions in virtually every iteration of soft Brexit. It's likely in practice that the only way a soft Brexit can be done is with no Brexit at all - even the Norway version is fraught with contradictions for the UK. The Swiss model with 10,000 or more individual bilateral agreements is also troublesome, given that the Swiss have just lost a huge battle with the EU on FoM. As for the suggestion that I've said Labour is 'mimicking' anything the Tories are saying, I've no idea where you get this. What's certainly the case - and I hope this is clearer - is that there are soft-Brexit/remain factions in the Tory party who are waiting for the political tide to turn, just as there are in Labour. The tide may just keep going out, of course, and the UK might fall out of the EU in just the way the BJs hope. The fun - if that's what it is - is in watching it all unfold.

So tell me, Pony, how 'retaining the benefits' is actually incompatible with retaining membership. That's the point - it's a very deliberate fudge. You read it as hard Brexit because you've been Pavlov-conditioned by Ukippery to see everything that way. So Labour have suckered Brexit Jihadists (aka BJs) like you and they've suckered remainers into thinking they're on their side. That's politics. Most careful politicians in Westminster are watching the political tide and will be watching it closely over the next two years - two years in which the EU will repeatedly trounce the woeful Davis, but more importantly two years (or less) in which the impact on the economy and especially jobs - Labour's red line - will be laid bare. And it's not only Labour who's playing this game. Large sections of the Tories are doing the same thing. As I've said many times now, you BJs should be very worried that May, Davis et al are the ones tasked with delivering Brexit.

Utter pony, Lord Pony. You seem to be confused by politics. Here's the Labour manifesto commitment. Read carefully: We will scrap the Conservatives’ Brexit White Paper and replace it with fresh negotiating priorities that have a strong emphasis on retaining the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union – which are essential for maintaining industries, jobs and businesses in Britain. Labour will always put jobs and the economy first.

Honestly, do you think that that wage rises only occur in stagnant economies?

Dear me, Nick. Do you really think this is how economies work?

Gosh, what a surprise. The racist scumbag is a ****ing liar. http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/820888/EDL-London-London-Bridge-Police-Presence-Monument-St-Pauls-Latest-News https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/24/far-right-activists-detained-at-uk-border-before-britain-first-rally http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-protest-idUKKBN19F0IQ?il=0 http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/624845/EDL-march-Trafalgar-Square-ant-fascist-terror-London-Bridge-Westminster-attack-ISIS

You can argue about metaphors for defeat all you like, fanboy. The result still means the Tories rule the roost, even as a minority government, and that Labour, sixty seats adrift, will be able to enact precisely zero percent of its manifesto.

It wasn't quite so clear-cut as that. Yes, Corbyn attracted a huge mostly public sector middle class to his programme, but he also gained working class votes too. However, his biggest gains weren't across the class divide so much as across the age ranges. Essentially, the young voted for him (witness the crowd size at the decidedly neo-liberal capitalist free-for-all Glastonbury), where in previous elections many may not have voted at all. Amidst all the crowing from McDonnell, et al, though, it's easy to forget that the Tories actually increased their share of the vote too, and defeated Labour by 60 seats. I really don't understand the 'stand aside May' argument. Claiming the result was an affirmation of Labour's right to govern is a bit like losing a game 7-2 but boasting that you'd scored two incredibly good goals.

Is this one ours?

Aside from the fact that the size of the state in the economy has nothing to do with 'spending their way out of recession' - because it's long been that size even under the Gaullists - what does this have to do with the EU?

In April this year, David Davis said it was not inevitable, even with Brexit, that the UK would lose the European Medicines Agency and the Banking Authority. Yesterday, it took the EU all of four minutes to decide finally on the relocation of 1,000 highly skilled jobs to Europe. As more and more staff from the City and elsewhere in London are filmed - a la Lehman Brothers - leaving their UK HQs for good, I wonder whether the penny will drop with Davis, Fox, May et al.?

I can think of a few other tests he's more urgently in need of.

Maybot's annointed successor, Boris Johnson, car-crashing embarrassingly in an interview with Eddie Mair on Radio 4 today: https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/boris-johnsons-excruciating-radio-4-interview This is the same Eddie Mair who not so long ago famously called Johnson out as a 'nasty piece of work' - a reasonably objective remark considering that Boris, our future PM, engaged in a conversation with a Bullingdon mate about how seriously his mate is going to assault a journalist. (Boris seemed happy with a crashed rib). Some government, this.

The idea of "taking back control" over immigration has been one of the biggest lies of all in the whole Brexit campaign. Britain has always been able to exercise control, even under the term of the EU's freedom of movement. It - and this applies especially to Theresa May's Home Office - has just chosen not to exercise it, and the blame has fallen, wrongly, on the EU. The rules are that EU immigrants can come for three months, but after that "must have sufficient resources not to be a burden on the benefit system of the country." The UK has never enforced this rule, in part because it doesn't have the ID card system that would make tracking possible, and also in part because the benefits of EU immigration outweigh the costs of monitoring. But also partly because the Home Office is so utterly useless. When the great fudge comes, and we slide back into the not-Brexit-at-all Brexit of membership of the single market and of the customs union, something we already have will be trotted out as a major new concession from the EU to the migrant-controllers of the Tory party. All they'll need to do is to introduce ID cards and spend heavily on monitoring the three-month rule. Which they will still be too incompetent to enforce. This is all aside from the fact that non-EU immigration, which is running at around the same rate as EU immigration, is completely within the control of the Home Office. And it's certainly aside from the fact that the NHS, for one, would simply collapse - and is already in serious trouble - without both EU and non-EU migrants.