The Brexit Day that never was

Quote of the day from The Guardian (here):

This was the day when Big Ben was supposed to ring at 11pm to mark the UK’s departure from the EU. When the Red (white and blue) Arrows did a fly past. When new 50p coins were worth 40p. Instead, we were back in a looking-glass world where everyone knew less than they did before. It can’t be long before no one knows anything. Back to the future.

Everything was up for grabs in Schrödinger’s Brexit: when we were leaving, if we were leaving and how we were leaving; who would be the prime minister, and if there would be a general election. Anything and everything was still possible. Parliament had said something but no one could interpret the language it was speaking. A delegation of ministers was going to No 10 to speak to Lino, but there was no guarantee she would be there. She is lost even unto herself.

There was just one certainty. By voting with the government, Boris Johnson had traded his principles for his career. But then we had always known he would. Johnson’s untrustworthiness is the only solid thing the country has left to hang on to. A Newtonian rock in a Quantum Brexit. We really are that far up shit creek.

   

Shades of the Cuban Missile Crisis

The Monroe Doctrine was adopted by the US in the early 19th century to discourage European powers from interventions in Latin America.  It appears to be thriving in the 21st century.  The Times reports:

President Trump has called on Russia to “get out” of Venezuela after it deployed troops and equipment in the crisis-torn country.

American officials said the Russian team that arrived in Caracas at the weekend included cybersecurity personnel and special forces. The 100 officers, one official said, came to Venezuela to prop up President Maduro’s embattled regime and secure investments.

Several tonnes of equipment were seen being unloaded from two Russian planes, an Antonov An-124 and an Ilyushin Il-62, at Caracas airport.

Worrying.  Especially as President Trump is no JFK ...

 

Lies and consequences

This is what happens when you give credence to anti-MMR propaganda.  The Wall Street Journal reports:

A New York county has declared a state of emergency over one of the worst measles outbreaks in the state in decades, banning unvaccinated minors from public places to help curb the spread of the disease.

Rockland County Executive Ed Day said Tuesday the ban—the first of its kind in the country—will go into effect at midnight.

The extreme measure comes as the county has recorded 153 confirmed measles cases in the past six months, mostly in children under 18, according to the county’s health department. The outbreak is concentrated in the orthodox Jewish communities in Rockland County, including the towns of New Square, Spring Valley and Monsey. Some in those communities oppose vaccinations for religious reasons.

This guy has a lot to answer for.

Spot the difference

Noddy:

Iain Duncan Smith:

More here.

Futility

From The Times (here):

The Luxembourg prime minister, the deliciously named Xavier Bettel, thinks Brexit is like waiting for Godot. So here’s my quote of the week. At one point in Samuel Beckett’s play, the two key characters look at each other. “I can’t go on like this,” says one. “That’s what you think,” replies the other. Beckett is our Brexit guide. Who knew?

   

The headlines say it all

   

So much for "taking back control"

The Times reports:

Theresa May will ask the EU to delay Brexit today amid warnings from Brussels that the price of an extension could be a general election or second referendum.

Cabinet ministers are expecting the prime minister to ask for the Brexit deadline to be pushed back to June 30 with the option of requesting a longer delay left open.

Mrs May will then travel to Brussels tomorrow with little to offer the 27 other EU countries, all of which must agree to any postponement. By law Britain will leave the EU with or without a deal in nine days’ time.

She has made a horlicks of it.

   

Round and round the garden ...

Speaker Bercow's latest intervention has caused a minor kerfuffle.  The Guardian reports:

This was a whole new level of Brexit clusterfuckery. The previous week’s chaos now merely looked like one of the more unfeasible Matrix plotlines. Just with no Keanu Reeves. A room full of chimps could make a better fist of things. Some MPs talked of proroguing parliament; others of a general election – with 11 days to go till 29 March. Hey, at least it’s still double figures.

For Lino [Leader In Name Only] it was just one more humiliation. Not only would she be going back to Brussels to ask for changes to the withdrawal agreement she wasn’t going to get. She would now be asking for an extension on a deal she was now unable and too scared to put to a vote. Not even the Four Pot Plants can help her now. But on the plus side, at least we’re giving the rest of the world a good laugh. The UK: not just a reality freak show, but also a feel good movie. We fail so they don’t have to. It’s a legacy of sorts for the government.

   

Insanity?

The Times reports:

Theresa May will ask the European Union to delay Brexit until at least the end of June after narrowly seeing off an attempt by MPs to seize control of the talks.

The prime minister is set to make a third attempt to win Commons backing for her deal on Tuesday. Even if she is successful Mrs May must now ask Brussels for extra time to complete the necessary legislation.

Acording to Albert Einstein (allegedly), the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. And if the prime minister wants to keep banging her head against a brick wall, it merely confirms the diagnosis.

   

   

Of course, it may not happen like this

The Times has a rather complicated decision tree:

  

Comforting?

Everything will be all right.  Well maybe.  Bloomberg reports:

Forget about continental specialties like foie gras or Wienerschnitzel, or the Champagne toasts. Yet even if the U.K. leaves the European Union without a deal, there’ll be plenty of that British staple, fish sticks, on the menu.

Nomad Foods Ltd., which sells frozen fish and vegetables under the Bird’s Eye brand and other labels, said it’s building stocks of fish sticks -- known in Britain as fish fingers and often served for school lunch with peas and carrots -- to eight weeks from five weeks to prepare for a chaotic Brexit.

“It’s millions, millions of fish fingers, as you can imagine,” Nomad CEO Stefan Descheemaeker said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

I think I'm more concerned about the likely absence of foie gras ...


 

Like ferrets in a sack

The Times reports:

In one of the most rancorous cabinet meetings of recent times Mrs May yesterday reluctantly and in a “testy” manner presented ministers with her plans to offer MPs the chance to vote on March 14 to delay Brexit day, according to a source. She suggested “several times” that she did not see the need for a delay, as she had done the previous day in public, even as she set out her plans to allow MPs to vote for one.

“She did not seem to like her own plan and appeared sympathetic to those of us who suggested it was a bad idea,” said one cabinet member. Michael Gove, the Brexiteer environment secretary, asked whether the vote to delay Brexit day from March 29 would be a whipped vote but she did not give a conclusive answer.

Liz Truss rounded on “kamikaze” colleagues who she claimed had undermined the prime minister’s Brexit negotiations, in often heated exchanges. She and Andrea Leadsom, the Commons leader, were the two most vociferous critics of the trio.

Ms Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury, took on leading cabinet Remainers, including her boss Philip Hammond, in a two-and-a-half hour cabinet meeting which confirmed the bitter divisions at the top of government that are continuing to impede progress on Brexit. “Andrea was visibly quite upset at what happened,” said one. The Commons leader had suggested that the cabinet was losing credibility with the back benches and damaging the credibility of the party.

Once upon a time, the cabinet was expected to exhibit collective responsibility.  Like so much else, such a quaint notion seems to have evaporated in the Brexit mists.

 

60 hours on a train?

I thought this might catch your interest:



 

Headline of the day

From Le Monde (here):

Brexit : les Britanniques bientôt en manque de papier toilette ?

Yeah, it means what you think it does ...

 

Ridiculous

97 years old but still allowed to drive on public roads?  A danger to himself and others.

The Duke of Edinburgh has escaped unhurt after the car he was driving was involved in an accident close to the Sandringham estate in Norfolk.

 

Tit for tat

Like children in the school playground (here):

US President Donald Trump has postponed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's upcoming trip to Brussels and Afghanistan, asking her to stay to negotiate an end to the partial US government shutdown.

The president was able to halt the trip by denying the use of military aircraft to Mrs Pelosi and a delegation.

On Wednesday Mrs Pelosi had urged Mr Trump to postpone his State of the Union address, amid political deadlock.

 And the pettiness is not confined to the USA (here):

Such is the anger with the Speaker at senior levels of government, it has been suggested he could be blocked from getting a peerage when he retires.

Ministers are furious at what they see as John Bercow's "bias" during Commons debates on Brexit.

The move would break a tradition dating back 230 years, that former Commons speakers are automatically offered a seat in the House of Lords.

You might think that they had more important issues to address.

 

Flogging a dead horse

Kuenssberg of the BBC casts some doubt on the Prime Minister's motivations anent Brexit:

Meetings, on their own, are not a Plan B. Conversations, are not by themselves, compromises.

...

Before she decides which way to tack, or how far to budge, she may need to ask herself if the talks she wants to hold with other political parties are occasions when she is really open to ideas - or just ways of managing the political situation.

Does Mrs May have the imagination (or the inclination) to step beyond her red lines?  Or is she thirled to the deal she has reached with the EU, perhaps with a minor modification or two?  Even though that would never command the support of parliament.

Can you see a way forward from the "conversations" with senior parliamentarians? 

No, me neither.

   

Failing Grayling

Odd that the parliamentary sketch-writers focus on the Transport Secretary's physical tics (as well as his manifest incompetence):

The Times:

Mr Grayling’s left cheek started to twitch, as it did during the Northern Rail timetabling fiasco.

The Guardian:

Grayling’s only outward sign of sentience is a twitch in his left cheek, and this nervous tic was in evidence well before he was called upon to answer an urgent question about his decision to award a £13.8m contract to a ferry company with no ferries. The cheek is Grayling’s last remaining centre of intelligent life: when it wobbles, it’s a sure sign he’s in danger. Even though he isn’t aware of it himself.

The Independent:

The tell for when not just the world but Grayling himself knows Grayling has cocked up is an occasional twitch in his right eye, as if the lower eyelid is determined to scratch an itch in the upper one.

And as Labour’s Andy McDonald filleted, seasoned and served up the full horrors of the Seaborne Freight contract with a spectacular precision that can only be described as Salt Bae-esque, the transport secretary’s right eye socket danced like a dying fly on a halogen hob.

Steering inexorably towards a disastrous no-deal Brexit is not the best time, perhaps, to have an utter incompetent as transport secretary.  Nevertheless, no need to focus on the man's physical disability ...

 

    

When the cat's away, the mice will play

From The Guardian (here):

The prime minister may have been regretting her decision to give parliament two weeks off for Christmas at a time of constitutional and political crisis. If only because it’s given so many members of her cabinet the chance to prove not just how hopeless they really are but also how anxious they are to replace her.

Sajid Javid cut short his South African safari to personally deal with the “national emergency” of a few dozen refugees getting washed up on Kent beaches by talking tough on immigration to any passing TV camera. Long after his leadership bid has bitten the dust, Sajid will be getting grief from his family for ruining their holiday. Good.

Not to be outdone, Gavin Williamson, the fireplace salesman also known as the defence secretary, used the break to announce he would establish new military outposts in the far east. Because the empire worked out so well last time. He then hastily diverted some warships to the Channel to crack down on rubber dinghies and was last heard of planning a pointless raid on Dieppe.

For the pièce de résistance, we had Chris Grayling – who else? – awarding a ferry company that had no boats and seemed to specialise in pizza deliveries a £13m contract on the grounds that it was British. The stupidity bar has never been lower. 

   

So much for the Red Duster

It speaks volumes for the state of the British merchant shipping fleet that, of the three businesses contracted by the UK Government to fulfil "no-deal" ferry arrangements, the first was Danish, the second was French and the third was a UK company that has neither ships nor any trading history.

Britannia used to rule the waves ...