Government Watch - 2

www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/28/boris-johnson-charged-with-breaching-ministerial-code-over-thinktank-launch

Boris lost his chance of being PM?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt9VMCT9JRc&t=0s

An interesting take on economics and what we're not being told about it.

Well the panel of lawmakers seems like a very good idea Jen. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

I think Denmark has only just decided to accept dual citizenship last year, as otherwise it's population would be considerably reduced.

This is interesting. The Lords is fighting back.

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-28/may-s-brexit-bill-faces-new-obstacle-after-lords-demand-changes

I assume they are applying to Spain and Denmark Jen for, in effect, dual citizenship. I think Verhofstadt and the EU are looking at a different one entirely but I think it will be difficult to do - we may find it turns out to be more of a Visa type thing.

Both my sons are applying for EU passports, one Danish and one Spanish as they are married to women of those nationalities. Their children are going to have both passports, too.
It makes sense to me.

The EU - and Verhofstadt in particular - has been canvassing the opinions of UK citizens living in the EU to see if they would like some form of EU membership for themselves - I think he had a huge number who said they would. It is not yet clear if this is a possibility - or if it would be available to UK citizens still living in UK.

What brexiteers haven't realised is that if the EU citizens living in this country had been given the vote, the result would have been the reverse.

I am not sure that came from tonight's speech.

He also said
48% is not a minority you can ignore because doing politics, in my point of view, is trying to take all big opinions on board and to find compromises not to broker [difficult to here that word] differences. I think it was John Stuart Mill who teaches us that democracy is not the dictatorship of the majority.

The commentator then said that the dictatorship of the majority, as he calls it, is something that bothers people in Europe much more than it bothers people actually in the country where it matters here in Britain, but that's something that you hear over and over again whether you are in Brussels, Berlin or Paris. They don't think that the minority - the 48% - have been given the right voice in this whole process, let alone the 3.2 million EU citizens living in this country.

Isn't it great that the EU worries more about the large minority but our country doesn't They are storing up trouble for the future in my opinion.

Verhofstadt gave a speech at LSE this evening - he thinks he understands why TM gave the speech about Brexit in Florence.

"She chose Florence because Florentine politics in the 15th century made her feel at home I think - backstabbing, betrayal, noble families fighting for power and so on. So, I think it is an environment that she recognised very well."

People believe it Jen - you have to remember that. The same as they believe that austerity was a necessity - Tories have repeated it so often.

You can see that May is a child of the vicarage - what an over the top speech. As people say so often - put two economists in a room and you get three opinions. None of them are right or wrong as such. The choice of way forward is based on the ethos of the party in government. Austerity, of the type we have been force to undergo, was a political judgement by a Conservative party farther to the right than we have seen in decades; not an economic necessity.

"Living standards have fallen since May’s Conservatives came to power in 2010, due to years of meagre wage growth and bouts of high inflation - including a slowdown caused by last year’s vote to leave the European Union.

BoE Governor Mark Carney, speaking at the same event, told May that the central bank’s ultra-low interest rates and other stimulus programmes would be unable to offset the likely hit to the economy from Brexit.

“The biggest determinants of the UK’s medium-term prosperity will be the country’s new relationship with the EU and the reforms it catalyses,” he said, repeating comments he has made previously on Brexit.

“Most of the necessary adjustments are real in nature and therefore not in the gift of central bankers.” "

From Reuters. No joy for her there, then.

"May called capitalism the “greatest agent of collective human progress ever created” and said prosperity required a tough approach to ensure budgets are balanced.

“To abandon that balanced approach with unfunded borrowing and significantly higher levels of taxation would damage our economy, threaten jobs, and hurt working people,” she said, adding that “ultimately, that would mean less money for the public services we all rely on.” "

She's really lost the plot.
Doesn't she realise what her brand of economics has done to the public services "we" all rely on?
Love to know who she means by we.

May's speech seems to be her riposte to JC's comment that "there is a crisis of legitimacy in capitalism". I have put a bit from the DP on the Jeremy Corbyn the political equivalent of buying a Harley Davidson? thread. She seems to be having to prove that what they have been doing has been the right thing (at last).

They had a Tory MP on DP and Martyn Lewis really put him in his place - very politely - when the MP chimed out that "Austerity wasn't a choice". He pointed out that it was a choice, it might not have been the wrong choice, but it certainly was a choice. He said that only under the Tories economic belief it may not have been a choice.

It really is time that we stop believing that there is only one way of looking at economics.

What is really interesting and shows how unstable this government is, is the fact that May felt she had to give the speech she did.

Not that simple, Petra. You obviously didn't read all the article.
It requires a parliamentary vote, and the agreement of all the other 27 member states.

durhamjen
Your link @Wed 18.21.
Simple solution.
All TM has to do is open the old word file of the original letter saying we are leaving ..... change the article No, give notice ( since it's still over a year to brexit anyway) and they can coincide nicely. Job done, simples.

Maybot due to make a speech today -according to my paper, on needing a strong and regulated free market.

I don't understand. I thought that one of the reasons we were going through all this economic pain, and destruction of our national reputation, was to free ourselves from regulation.

Brexit seems to become even more pointless by the hour.

"The UK’s exit from the EU is likely to have far-reaching effects on health in the UK and the NHS, according to a Health Policy review published in The Lancet today. It cites issues such as threats to the NHS workforce and finances, the licensing of medical products, governance issues on competition and health regulation, the provision of care for UK citizens living abroad and scientific research. "

Pleased I didn't vote for this.

Vienna is the favourite to get EU banking; Copenhagen favourite to get the EU medicines agency.

I reckon it will not the ECJ, ECJ

"May set out clearly for the first time in her Florence speech that the U.K. wants to continue current trading conditions and that existing rules would apply during any transition. She also offered to keep paying into the EU budget over the same two-year period, linking the divorce settlement to the transition deal for the first time. British businesses see a transition as vital to avoid a so-called cliff-edge Brexit in March 2019.

Still, the European Parliament offered a reminder on Wednesday of just how far apart the two sides remain. The parliament, which has a veto over a final deal, will demand that the European Court of Justice has jurisdiction in the U.K. during the transition—something that U.K. Brexit Secretary David Davis rejected as recently as last weekend. The ECJ is loathed by pro-Brexit campaigners and has taken on emblematic importance in the debate. The assembly will also insist that free movement of people continues during the transition, according to a summary of a draft resolution to be voted on next week.

We'll get a better sense of how it's gone inside the negotiating rooms today when Davis and Barnier hold a press conference at the end of the talks, probably around midday. "

Bloomberg's Brexit bulletin.

Maybot due to make a speech today -according to my paper, on needing a strong and regulated free market.

We have it of course with the EU, but that seems to be overlooked at the moment.

Free trade, in order for it to work for everyone needs quite a bit of state intervention, to regulate tax, working conditions etc. Otherwise the weak go to the wall. That is what we do as part of the EU.

My worry is that the loonier part of the Tory right, want more of a model after Brexit that reflects the type of free trade so beloved by the Victorians, the ultra neo-liberal model that Thatcher flirted with but abandoned after quickly understanding its consequences in a modern world capitalist system so we know where that will take us, but the loons are so hell bent on their project that they appear to be an unstoppable force. Most Brexiters realise the dire consequences in following that model, parliament must play its role in stopping that idiocy at the very least.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/article-127-brexit-stop-what-is-it-single-market-eu-eea-theresa-may-article-50-a7955806.html

This is interesting. I wonder if May realises that we haven't got an agreement to leave the EEA yet.

Fallon seems to have managed to do a u-turn in about an hour must be a record.