Zompist Bboard Again

I really only know about Watson from the policies he claims to profess
I would prefer as PM someone with Corbyn's economic policies, an opposition to selling arms to Saudi Arabia, an opposition to selling land to Qatar and the UAE, a pro-Israel policy and a cancellation Brexit possibly followed by a second referendum. Also, Wales, Scotland and North Ireland have had raw deals and should be independent (with Northern Ireland sharing the Queen and the President of Ireland as join heads of state), while Cornwall should be at the least a very autonomous part of England.

Anyone know of an ideal PM for me then?

I thought the repeated references to entryism by the members of the newly minted IG were quite interesting. It made me wonder: where else do they think the spirit of a party should come from? How do they think a political party is supposed to work, apart from as a mass movement with a large and dynamic membership?

It's not like they were complained that leftie communists were joining the Tories, or right-wing fascists were joining Labour for the purpose of disrupting the parties. The people joining had a reason to feel that the relevant party was a good home for them. It seems pretty natural for UKIPers to migrate to/from the Tories, and for various forms of socialist to join Labour. If this shifts the party in the process, then that's just the nature of the beast, and if enough unaffiliated people object then maybe they should join the party and shift it back again.

The Anna Soubrys of the world are the kind of people who can't help sneering when they use the word populist. But we've tried the alternative system of direction being set by an unaccountable leadership, usually with secretive or at least opaque links to the privately powerful. How well did Blair, Cameron, Clinton, and other third wayists work out? The consensus anti-populist platform gave us a banking crisis, a state of permanent foreign warfare and a basically broken society.

Of course, a small completely unrepresentative extreme pool of people picking the candidates for the parties most likely to win can be a problem. But the answer isn't to throw away popular involvement in choosing the candidates for the major parties or their policies.

mèþru wrote: ↑Mon Feb 25, 2019 5:03 pm Anyone know of an ideal PM for me then?

People don't normally win elections on a promise of dismembering their country, let alone splitting it into five pieces... especially not when only of those five pieces has the majority of both voters and seats. The only way you'll get what you want in one go is if England decides it wants to secede from the union.

mèþru wrote: ↑Mon Feb 25, 2019 5:03 pm I really only know about Watson from the policies he claims to profess
I would prefer as PM someone with Corbyn's economic policies, an opposition to selling arms to Saudi Arabia, an opposition to selling land to Qatar and the UAE, a pro-Israel policy and a cancellation Brexit possibly followed by a second referendum. Also, Wales, Scotland and North Ireland have had raw deals and should be independent (with Northern Ireland sharing the Queen and the President of Ireland as join heads of state), while Cornwall should be at the least a very autonomous part of England.

Anyone know of an ideal PM for me then?

I think you're describing the programme of a dictatorship, not an elected PM.

Further proof that IG is doomed. If I were them, I'd want Blair's open support like a hole in the head:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 96576.html

Tony Blair backs the Independent Group as he says ‘truly mind-boggling’ Labour has been taken by populists

It's truly mind-boggling that Blair finds it mind-boggling.

He is - no, honestly - a fairly smart man. He knows the debates that were happening in Labour in the 1980s. Yes, his side won, and yes, there were very good reasons why they won. And they did a lot of good as a result, and nobody's suggesting going back to the policies of Michael Foot, that's a non-starter. But he has to be able to understand that, even if everyone in Labour adored him and he solved all their problems (which they don't, and he didn't), Labour have been out of power for nine years and that's inevitably going to provoke questions about strategy.

I think if Labour's policies were hurting them in the polls, most of Labour would drop them in a flash. But so far it doesn't seem as though they have to choose between left-wing policies and electoral success - their policies are the only popular thing about them at the moment!

Well the Northern Ireland secretary still seems determined to make the case for no longer being the Northern Ireland secretary. Her line about the British Security forces not being criminals because they were following orders rather reminds me of this classic Spitting Image number.

To be fair, what she said is true. Where state officials are obeying legal orders in the performance of their duties, their actions are not crimes - a rule that is necessary in order to prevent every police officer, tax inspector and parking attendant being put on trial for the decisions of the government. Was a deportation unlawful? Sue the airplane pilot for damages! More generally, the State is only able to survive by NOT allowing each individual official to independently determine policy ad hoc.

Indeed, in the case of army and police personnel, it's illegal NOT to obey a lawful order. [and if an order is unlawful, it's not an order]


But to be sure, it was undiplomatic of her to recognise this fact publically. [the genuinely worrying thing is that she said that only 10% of killings were by the government, which is massively below the real numbers - either she's ignorant of her brief and making things up as she goes along, or she's putting out propaganda to whitewash the government's role in the atrocities. But nobody cares about that, they just care about the 'gaffe' in which she said 'not a crime' instead of a euphemism like 'cannot be prosecuted']

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2019 1:13 pm To be fair, what she said is true. Where state officials are obeying legal orders in the performance of their duties, their actions are not crimes - a rule that is necessary in order to prevent every police officer, tax inspector and parking attendant being put on trial for the decisions of the government. Was a deportation unlawful? Sue the airplane pilot for damages! More generally, the State is only able to survive by NOT allowing each individual official to independently determine policy ad hoc.

I assume you've temporarily forgotten international law and war crimes?

I was about to say that... that is why in western militaries today they typically say that one must obey all lawful orders, not simply all orders, and disobey all unlawful orders.

The Nuremberg principles go beyond "unlawfulness":

The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

That is, something can be a war crime though it is quite legal by the state's rules.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2019 4:52 pm I was about to say that... that is why in western militaries today they typically say that one must obey all lawful orders, not simply all orders, and disobey all unlawful orders.

In the UK, you must obey all orders, even if you may then be punished fo obeying an unlawful order (which is not an order). This was confirmed in a court case relating to the Iraq war.


zompist: the Nuremberg principles have no legal standing. By contrast, we have signed up to the Rome Statute, in which an official obeying an apparently lawful order is not committing a crime. Certain crimes are so monstrous - genocide, for instance - that an order to commit them cannot appear to be lawful. However, this does not apply to the great majority of killings in Northern Ireland.

That said, there probably were some cases that were crimes, so it was inappropriate for the minister to speak as simplistically as she did.



EDIT: but let's not relitigate the details of cases from decades ago that are highly contentious. There's plenty of modern British politics to argue about.

So, as you may have noticed, the meaningful vote at the end of February never happened.

Instead, the meaningful vote was postponed until tomorrow. Now, there are rumours it may be going to be postponed again. Downing Street denies this... but last time the vote was postponed the day it was scheduled, they denied that to the last moment too. An opposition MP has accused the PM ofr flagrantly "lying" to the House, but it may just be that she hasn't got a clue what she's doing from day to day. She claims to still be negotiating with the EU; the EU say they're not negotiating with her and that they're waiting for the decision of MPs.

The current schedule is that we'll have the vote on May's (basically unammended) deal tomorrow. When that fails in a catastrophic landslide again, we'll have a vote for No Deal on Wednesday. That will also fail. Then on Thursday we'll have a vote to postpone Brexit. This is also likely to fail.


It looked for a moment there as though the PM had won. When she announced the vote on postponing, the ERG gestured toward voting for her deal to prevent that. Instead, they've forced a concession from the PM: when the vote to postpone Brexit fails, we'll have No Deal (even though Parliament will have voted AGAINST No Deal the day before). Since they're confidant they can block the postponement, this means they win.

That said... personally, I wouldn't be surprised if we got to the postponement, at least a short one. But nothing substantial will change in the interim, and each postponement will be harder to justify politically (anyone who votes for it will get crucified by Murdoch). Also, of course, while we can apparently cancel Brexit whenever we want, we can't actually unilaterally postpone it, and the EU won't be keen on postponing past the next EU elections (which will be a colossal waste of money, holding elections to select UK MEPs who will then leave, in theory, a month later). So it may not matter what Parliament votes for.

It appears that the reason for the last minute dash to Strasbourg was that a negotiated solution to fudge the issue fell apart just before/over the weekend after TM's representatives agreed it then the cabinet rejected it. Now, she not only can't command a majority in parliament, she can't even keep her cabinet on her side over the course of a single weekend.

The other side consider it to be more evidence of negotiation in bad faith, since something was agreed then un-agreed. Apparently lying to everyone all the time isn't a good strategy.

Does anyone really think it's going to be easy to get the extension parliament will probably vote for? This could even all be part of TM's cliff-edge plan... hack the other side off enough to ensure no extension is forthcoming and then have meaningful vote 3 with a few days to go. The problem with that cunning plan is that an extension and goodwill will be needed now even to implement the existing agreement and pass associated legislation, so she could have poisoned her own deal in the course of preventing any other deal.

It does seem like the chances of an accidental or deliberate no deal must be at least 50%.

It's unlikely, to be sure, but if the Government falls apart before the 29th and we have to have a General Election, what would happen to Article 50?

We would leave with no deal during purdah.

The important thing here is that Brexit no longer requires an action - Article 50 did that. Unless the UK cancels Brexit, or the UK and the EU negotiate an extension of the A50 period, Britain will leave the EU, with or without a deal, on that day, no matter who is prime minister. Westminster could have been obliterated in a matter-antimatter blast the night before, Brexit would still happen.

On the EU's side, would a postponement of Brexit need the unanimous approval of the Council of the European Union? Because in that case, I could well imagine the current governments of Italy, Poland, and Hungary, and perhaps some others as well, vetoing it.

That's a good question. Without looking into the legal details, my impression is that it would, yes. However, until now the whole of the EU has been completely united at every stage on brexit policy, and at least the reports out of the EU indicate that they don't expect any internal rebellion on the issue.


Anyway, the PM has now won the negotiations with the EU, and they've backed down completely. She has fulfilled her promises to Parliament and secured "legally binding changes". The backstop problem has now gone away.

The EU, however, believes that this is not the case, and that the latest agreement is 'letter for letter' the same as the last one.

Critics of the PM have pointed out that Parliament demanded legally binding changes giving us the right to unilaterally leave the backstop, whereas what May's agreement does is give us legally binding changes to add on a further codicil that says 'this constitutes a legally binding change'. Actually it says "this has legal force and binding character". But all 'this' does is "recall" the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement. May says that a legally binding change is a legally binding change and that's what counts. Critics are now just staring at her skepticaly/disapprovingly in silence.


Actually, what the new agreement does is confirm the WA's intentions an legally commit the EU to "best endeavour" obligations, which can be grounds for arbitration procedures, IF the EU are obviously being sadistic and are demonstrating that their sole intention is to maintain the backstop in perpetuity. Of course, the arbitration procedures are 'ask the EU nicely to stop'. I guess that if they then were obviously corrupt in their arbitration, this document could provide the basis for a legal dispute in the World Court (or the world arbitration forum, I guess?). It also commits the EU to holding high-level meetings on the subject perpetually until it is solved.

However, leaving aside the implausibility of actually winning such a case, it only applies where the EU are demonstrably not acting in good faith. If, however, they are simply rejecting our 'solutions' because our solutions don't work, then we can indeed be held in the backstop in perpetuity. So the core issue has not been addressed.

As a result, it is considered unlikely that the government will be able to win this evening's vote.

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2019 8:00 am That's a good question. Without looking into the legal details, my impression is that it would, yes. However, until now the whole of the EU has been completely united at every stage on brexit policy, and at least the reports out of the EU indicate that they don't expect any internal rebellion on the issue.

Thank you, good to know!

May has lost again by a similar margin to last time (margin of 149). Only 3 Labour MPs voted for and the ERG voted against.

Is there any point to a third meaningful vote at this point? It feels like, having conclusively rejected the deal that's taken two years and exhausted whatever goodwill was left, the only two real options are no deal or remain. And personally, while I strongly prefer remain, I still believe that either would be preferable to May's exit deal.