On 22 September, Theresa May will make what has been flagged as a major speech – on a topic that is being withheld from the public, rather than the usual trails and leaks priming the population for what to expect and giving the the ‘commentariat’ time to tell us all what a great idea it is.
The pro-Brexit organisation The Leave Alliance (TLA) claims to have ‘intel’ on the topic of the speech – and if it is correct, it will be the equivalent of throwing a live hand-grenade into a crowded room: carnage.
TLA’s ‘intel’ suggests that May will announce the UK’s formal notice of its departure from the European Economic Area (EEA):
The EEA is an agreement among member nations allowing the free movement of goods, services, capital – and people. Most EEA members are also EU members. Some, such as Norway and Iceland, are not. All submit themselves to the ‘four freedoms’:
If this intel is correct, Theresa May is planning to unilaterally withdraw from the EEA now and attempt a ‘take it or leave it’ offer to negotiate individual deals with member states – the whole EU plus those shown in green or yellow above.
Deals that will, somehow, include only ‘trading rules’ and not the movement of people – the Holy Grail/pipe-dream of right-wing ‘hard brexiteers’: a better deal (by their standards) than the UK has now as an EU member.
If the intel is true, it appears that Theresa May and her government have lost the plot and are about to engage in a gamble as reckless and desperate as Hitler’s ‘battle of the bulge‘ near the end of World War Two that accelerated Germany’s military collapse.
David Davis and what passes for the UK’s ‘negotiators’ have, so far, appeared completely outmatched and out of their depth opposite a competent and thoroughly-prepared Michel Barnier, who looks daily more exasperated with the hapless, grinning shambles opposite him.
And if the UK can’t deal with one team of negotiators, their chances of handling negotiations with thirty or so countries make the prospects of a furnace-bound snowflake look positively rosy.
The ‘Legatum template’ mentioned in the intel introduces an additional enigma into the picture.
The Legatum Institute is, according to its website, a think-tank and charity focused on
understanding, measuring, and explaining the journey from poverty to prosperity for individuals, communities, and nations.
A search for ‘Legatum template’ reveals that there is a page on the Legatum site ‘li.com/template’ – but the page is blank:
A wider search for “Legatum template” as an exact phrase reveals only a web design company and a few quotes of TLA’s tweet shown above.
Legatum’s media office told the SKWAWKBOX that the page is ‘probably offline as part of a site rebuild’. The spokesperson said he was not sure which document was meant to populate the page and has offered to send some examples of the kind of documents they provide in due course.
Number 10’s press spokesperson told the SKWAWKBOX:
I can tell you now that we will not be commenting. But it would be appreciated if you could send us that tweet.
Whatever the details that are/were in the ‘Legatum template’, if the TLA ‘intel’ turns out to be correct May’s speech will be a give-away that the Tories have dug themselves into such a hole of incompetence and desperation that a ‘bunker meme’ could not even begin to encompass the level of desperate self-deception involved.
Eight days to go before we find out.
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Reblogged this on Sid's Blog.
If true it might well see her safely past the Tory Conference. But it will still be somebody else who has to clear up the mess. Sounds like Corbyn; he has all the flexibility and backing to speak human to the EU and save the economy.
First she throws everything into a two year ‘transition period’ ( to see her through the election before the Post Brexit Implosion), now she’s apparently trying to bring forward the implosion by a couple of years.
I sincerely hope this prediction is wrong. But she needs something ‘exciting’ before the tory conference to have any chance of survival – so this might be one more suicidal gamble.
Makes me wish I believed in god sometimes 😉
What indications does May have, that EU member states would be stupid enough to take her bait and rush to negotiate individual deals with Britain? Still delusional about Britain being able to outsmart “those continentals”.
They legally can’t. If this is true this is unbelievably stupid and will fuck the UK.
http://www.li.com/media/commentary/shanker-singham-reaction-to-the-prime-ministers-speech-on-the-uk-government's-strategy-for-brexit-negotiations
http://www.li.com/media/commentary/shanker-singham-reaction-to-the-prime-ministers-speech-on-the-uk-government's-strategy-for-brexit-negotiations
Is this ‘intel’ more or less reliable than the information about a DA notice around Grenfell Tower?
Learn to read.
Fascinating.
A few more tips for Mr david landon cole…
Firstly, just use two names. It’s so much easier.
Second, your profile photo looks like some pretend-to-be-narked-off, supercilious, child-molesting 70’s-80’s DJ type. For goodness sake, man?!
Third, give up your wet dream that someone from the right-wing media will take note of your piss-poor attempt at trolling combined with the desperate tactic of rehashing of the same tired old bollocks -Indisputable bollocks – to even consider employing you in any capacity. (See reasons 1&2) You see, for all their faults, even the s*n and fatty fawkes have standards and the the bar can only go so low…Even the ‘tory youth’ gobshites ‘activate’ would be extremely wary with you looking like that – and they’ll have anyone!
Honestly, take me up on these and you’ll thank me for it. 😉
Reblogged this on BertieS.
http://www.li.com/programmes/special-trade-commission
This is truly terrifying read the section in the EEA costing and the agricultural sub-section
Inside the EEA, the UK is bound by EEA Regulation. This means that a lot of European regulation that is distortive of competition also cannot be changed. Outside of the EEA, the UK would be able to remove the agricultural regulatory barriers that have plagued the EU’s trade relationships with other countries. Many of these are in the realm of Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures such as bans on beef treated with hormones, poultry, and Genetically Modified Organisms to name a few. If the UK adopted a science and innovation based approach to regulation in these areas, and not the precautionary principle relied on by the EU, the UK would be much more open to agricultural trade and would be able to lower its own distortions. The gains from elimination of these kinds of barriers far outweigh the tariff and border measure gains which in agriculture would themselves be signi cant.3
Terrible reasoning. When it comes to what I put in my mouth, the precautionary principle suits just fine, thanks
This is a less succinct be more long winded way of demonstrating Frankie Boyle’s truism about libertarians.
“Libertarianism seem to be the belief that you should use your freedom of speech to tell everyone else to shut up.”
Only here it is being extended to absurd ideological purity by saying corporations rights to put harmful shit in food to increase profits and the personal wealth of the few should always trump citizens rights not to have this forced upon them.
As the Injun in Josey Wales told the carpetbagger “You drink (consume) it.”
The would be OK if the science you are talking about wasn’t answering to the Money but instead to the well being of the humans at the end of the chain.
Hadn’t heard of Legatum before today – but they seem to be the ‘thinktank’ that’s proposing an Irish border overseen by airships . . .