33 days to go .... What’s the Brexit plan?

I think everyone with a pragmatic and sensible sensible outlook would Grandad1943

What we need now is a bit of positivity.

Me too GG13!

With a bit of luck and a good push ...
?

Urmstongran, it takes two to make a bargain right and Johnson has to get the EU commission to agree his proposals, and as they have stated they will not do that if there is any threat to the integrity of EU market standards.

Agreed Grandad1943

A deal would be best, but it might not happen. There are so many red lines on both sides. But if we have compromised maybe the EU will (where they can).

It is a very difficult conundrum but maybe something can shift the logjam so we can ALL move forward. Businesses on both sides of the Channel are crying out for clarity. Most people are sick of it. It really is time to get this (bit) done.

Or another referendum - if vote is still leave we would be no further on, but if it is remain we can revoke article 50 and continue with business as usual..

Boris Johnson's senior aides have ordered Conservative MPs to call the European Union "crazy" if it rejects the Brexit proposals tabled by the UK on Wednesday, an internal memo leaked to BuzzFeed News reveals. In a special post-conference "lines to take" email sent to Tory MPs after Johnson's Europe adviser, David Frost, delivered the government's new offer to Brussels, the prime minister's aides made clear that they would seek to blame the EU if a deal could not be reached.

www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/eu-crazy-leaked-tory-memo?utm_source=dynamic&utm_campaign=bfsharetwitter

ERG and later Boris have only ever had one plan- to leave without a Deal, and for the darkest and lest democratic reasons ever. Anything in between was just wasting time ...

Great news for the disaster capitalist billionaires.

Very bad news for the 67 million ordinary UK citizens.

From the BBC website:

“A hedge fund boss who wished to remain anonymous said the idea that a small group of financiers was pulling the strings to achieve a no deal was ridiculous. Not least, he said, because it would be "bonkers" to bet that a currency that was already at a 30-year low against the rest of the world would go that much lower.

"Most hedge funds are waiting for the moment to buy," he told me, adding that he was certain that Johnson was sincere in his wish for a deal.

They would say that wouldn't they, I hear you say. But it's also worth remembering that for every person who has bet against the pound, there is someone who has taken the other side of that bet. These are usually big international investment banks, the bosses and partners of which often make political donations of their own.

Hedge funds make money by betting the market is wrong - that the price of something is not reflecting what is really going on. It's no secret that many pollsters are hired by hedge funds to conduct political research on which they bet. Paying for better information is not the same as nobbling the result.

The general unease about speculators getting involved in politics is understandable.

As one bank chairman told me: "When hedge fund owners start backing individuals or parties we should worry. It creates at best a perception of conflict of interest. At worst a genuine conflict."

The widespread acceptance of this current conspiracy theory demonstrates that this rings true for many. But, as yet, there has not been enough evidence produced that a few shadowy financiers are pulling the strings of a no-deal Brexit puppet.

LONDON — It seems there is only one voter who matters to British politics right now: a Brexit-obsessed, 50-something white man living in rural southern England.

Why? Because a quirk of Britain’s unwritten constitution is that prime ministers are often appointed by their parties without facing general election. John Major, Gordon Brown and Theresa May all entered office as a result of their predecessor resigning, and then being selected by their party to take charge. Only Mr. Major was ever able to achieve any clear electoral success of his own.

Mrs. May’s resignation last month meant that, once again, a new prime minister will soon be appointed without a democratic mandate. The overwhelming favorite is Boris Johnson, the controversial journalist-turned-politician, with a lifelong weakness for causing offense and then laughing off the consequences. Unless there is a great upset, Mr. Johnson’s appointment will be announced on July 23, leaving this notoriously reckless figure to navigate Britain’s exit from the European Union, which he has committed to delivering by the Oct. 31 deadline.

Each political party has its own way of handling the process. Mr. Brown insisted that he be handed the job by Tony Blair uncontested, which is what happened in 2007. (This was described as a “gigantic fraud” at the time by none other than Mr. Johnson.) For the Conservatives, there is a complicated series of votes among the party’s members of Parliament to whittle things down to two candidates, who are then presented to the party’s members. The choice before the Conservative membership is between Mr. Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, a more trusted but unexciting man, with far less appeal to the Conservative base.

At a time of deep political and economic anxiety, the contest is producing the surreal experience of something that feels like democracy — an election campaign season, complete with televised debates and policy announcements — but without any public franchise. In this case, the “electorate” consists of a mere 160,000 people, just 0.3 percent of the national electorate, who are significantly older and richer than average. And while Mr. Johnson is hounded by questions surrounding his honesty and indiscretions — questions that might damage him in a nationwide contest — the Conservative Party membership seems to view his personality as an asset.

This is uncharted territory. Conservative Party rules have changed since Mr. Major entered office in 1990, to allow the members to have the final say. (Mrs. May’s rivals all withdrew in 2016, so the members weren’t consulted.) At first glance, a leader elected by 160,000 people might seem to have a greater democratic mandate than one appointed by their own colleagues. But as more becomes known about the unusual identities and priorities of the party members, the worry is that Britain is now in the grip of something combining the worst aspects of both oligarchy and representative democracy. It might best be described as unrepresentative democracy.

Mr. Johnson’s appeal to his base rests heavily on his enthusiastic comments about “no deal” Brexit, a kamikaze policy that would devastate Britain’s economy and produce a state of emergency for basic civil infrastructure, such as the supply of medicines. It would, however, signal a complete rejection of the authority of Brussels, which is why Mr. Johnson toys with it. The fact that a clear majority of the public opposes the idea is, for now, irrelevant.

More disturbingly, new polling suggests that Conservative Party members are now so fixated on Brexit that they believe it is worth doing at almost any cost — even if it leads to Northern Ireland or Scotland leaving the United Kingdom, “significant damage to the U.K. economy” or, most strikingly, the destruction of the Conservative Party. For the next few weeks, the most influential force in British politics is a fanatical sect.

How did Britain reach this extraordinary situation? A plausible part of the explanation is that the Conservative Party has been heavily infiltrated by supporters of Nigel Farage, the far-right populist who formerly led the U.K. Independence Party and who recently established the Brexit Party. His new party took more than a third of the vote in May’s European Parliament elections, energized by the fact that Britain did not leave the European Union on the scheduled date of March 29.

Last August, Arron Banks, a major U.K.I.P. funder over the years and backer of the xenophobic Leave.EU campaign, wrote an op-ed for The Times of London titled “Join Tories and unseat the traitor Theresa.” It’s hard to know for certain how many people have followed Mr. Banks’s advice, but Faragism has clearly penetrated the Conservative Party: 59 percent of Conservative members voted for the Brexit Party in the European elections. What’s more, the majority of Mr. Johnson’s supporters in the membership joined the party after the 2016 referendum. The party also appears to have experienced a surge in membership of around 30 percent since last summer, when confidence in Mrs. May’s Brexit deal started to plummet.

Pockets of deep resentment toward governing “elites” are a feature of most liberal democracies today, to which there are a range of possible responses. What’s different in Britain is the collision between its old-fashioned, unwritten constitution and the exceptional drama of Brexit, which has become a Trojan Horse through which nationalist, anti-establishment rage is being channeled directly into the corridors of power. For years, the case for reforming Britain’s constitution, to ensure that parties and parliament are more representative of the public, has been viewed as a somewhat academic topic, never urgent enough to demand much attention. Not any more.

For the time being, Mr. Johnson has said enough to reassure the Conservative members that he will govern with the same xenophobic bravado that he has always expressed in his journalism. But if Mr. Johnson’s personality offers one glimmer of hope, it’s that he’s never shown any indication of holding principles, and is entirely relaxed about letting people down.

William Davies (@davies_will) is a sociologist and political economist at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the author, most recently, of “Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason.”

Trump does not hold the majority - and he won't be able to give us any Deal that does not respect Ireland and the GFA - the Irish lobby is still very strong in USA. Anyway, his days are probably numbered.

Trump wishes America to become an inward looking self-sustaining isolationist nation. In that, he has engineered a trade war with China and is now engaged in the same with the European Union.

Very large nations such as America, China and Russia can totally support themselves and be isolationist due to their huge populations and natural resources. Therefore, it is essential that the European Union through its large population and joint resources develop the same mentality.

However, the above will almost certainly leave an isolated Britain outside the EU in a very weak position when it comes to attempting to gain trade agreements with the above nations and other large trading blocks.

In my view, Britains trade thinking is already outdated even before it becomes operative outside the European Union.

Brilliant interview on LBC (Iain Dale) last night with the vice-president of the EU parliament.

She criticised Johnson's new offer before having to admit she hadn't even read it, and then it become obvious she didn't even know that checks in ports like Rotterdam take place miles away from the border.

Embarrassing. So many clowns in Brussels yet some know-nothing gullible souls over here hang on their every word.

*

And what is Varadkar on??

Varadkha is the excellent PM of a small, thriving nation long raped and dominated by the UK. A nation long ignored and misunderstood by the majority of the British population who were once only too willing to commonly post job or rental related notices stating 'no blacks or Irish'. Little has changed.

Good post Jura.

This is a balanced and interesting piece about the likely post Brexit economic situation of the UK. Far from the simplistic notions you hear from most Leave voters (no, we can't grow avocado's in Lincolnshire), interesting times lie ahead of us.

Will London's post-Brexit future be as gloomy as predicted?

www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/04/will-londons-post-brexit-future-be-as-gloomy-as-predicted?

Urmstongran: Embarrassing. So many clowns in Brussels yet some know-nothing gullible souls over here hang on their every word.

Not good, is it? We of course have our own dunces. Not so long ago the then Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab admitted he did not realise how important the trade route is between Dover and Calais.

So many clowns in the UK yet some know-nothing gullible souls over here hang on their every word.

Who in Northern Ireland is supporting Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan?

DUP ✔️
Sinn Féin ✖️
UUP✖️
SDLP✖️
Alliance✖️
Greens✖️
TUV✖️
Manufacturing NI✖️
Chamber of Commerce✖️
Food & Drink Federation✖️
Freight NI✖️
Diageo✖️
FSB✖️
Manufacturing NI✖️
Retail NI✖️
Retail Consortium✖️
CBI ✖️

Faisal Islam
@faisalislam
Dropping legally-binding level playing field commitments from withdrawal agreement & political declaration has been noticed by businesses who relied on them as a path to maintaining frictionless tariff-free, rules of origin checks-free trade with EU.

Greta

Greta 'So many clowns in the UK yet some know-nothing gullible souls over here hang on their every word.'

did you see Liz Truss's interview the other day- did not have a single clue

The situation in the Netherlands is totally different politically to Ireland - can't you see Urmston??? And it is from EU to EU !

Remember the Liar said he’d rather be dead in a ditch than extend Brexit?

Today he has stated that he will be applying to extend Brexit on the 19th if the alternative to the Backstop that is proposed isn’t accepted.

So no Brexit on 31 st by the sound of it.

Very confusing - especially, as the QC for Joanna Cherry et al said, the submission contradicted statements by the prime minister last week in Parliament.

Oh no!! Not another extension. I can’t bear this merry go-round much longer!

Let's just revoke article 50 and get brexit gone for good.

Are the Brexit 50p coins going to be delayed too?