Codeword for move to intensive diplomatic negotiations issued
Media reports including the word ‘tunnel’ today have signalled that the warm words of Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar about a UK-Ireland agreement that will satisfy the the EU have moved into the serious and negotiations about a concrete deal that will have EU approval.
Its use means that a press conference is likely next week between Johnson and Juncker, probably on the 17 October, to announce an agreement if everything proceeds as the two prime ministers envisage.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here for a monthly donation via GoCardless. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
If you wish to reblog this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Hope a deal on the border can be found,but a complicated mess all round by a criminal PM…..like Jeremy said Johnson’s got form..!
I think the only way a deal can be reached is to ditch the DUP’s red lines. The DUP are no longer of any use to the Tories/ Johnson so they will be ditched along with their red lines and they will learn the hard way what we have always known – never trust a Tory especially a blonde one.
Smartboy We don’t want to alienate the loyalist community and give the DUP a card to play.The DUP are slowly becoming redundent,but the negotiator will have to be a little bit smarter than johnsons team.Remember that if the loyalist hit the streets they will make the provos look like a Sunday school team.The DUP have strong connections to the armed militias and again the arms to back up an insurrection…..This time we must take the loyalist working class with us..no return to the Billy Carson days the UDI…and mobalization of a loyalist army.Isolate the DUP,..they wanted leave and the majority voted remain in NIreland so they have nothing to lose by having a hard border and direct rule from Westminster.In fact direct rule will be the route for survival and smashing the good Friday agreement…No way this can be sorted by the end of the month!
I agree with you that getting things sorted by the end of the month.I think the DUP’s main challenge is not alienating its core voters by agreeing to anything which would or would be perceived to weaken the union.
Johnson won’t shy away from ditching the DUP, they are slated to lose half their 10 seats at the election, about the size of the Greens. He presumably knows – and has known for ever? – that he can’t crash out without disaster. It’s just as well he ends up owning the deal.
Johnson might end up emulating his role model, Churchill closer than he planned. Churchill ‘won’ WW2 and was very popular yet there was a landslide against him just weeks later. If Johnson gets a deal will the electors say ‘Thanks Boris, now piss off”.
If only …..
This is not good news imo , we end up with a potential Tory Johnson deal , no better than Mays crap deal and should there be an election soon afterwards then there will be a positive rebound for Johnson from the Tory nutters which maybe enough to put him back into power. Conversely if Labour wins it , we will be saddled with a shit load of problems dictated by Johnson shit deal .
It would be far better for the EU to reject this liars proposals and he is then forced to go for an extension and a GE
^^^What rob said,
Johnson is obviously aiming to present some superficial modifications as a stunning ‘new deal’.
Apart from the fact that ‘deal’ is, in any case, totally the wrong vocabulary for such an agreement, it will all be window dressing.
Whether parliament will fall for it, is another matter, but my best guess is that the Tory defectors will go along with it this time.
Upside for Labour : it means the potentially situation will have clarified, with an agreement on the table, saving the effort of promising some nebulous future negotiation. Downsides : quite a few – not least of which is the current mess that the Party is in with a major fissure between the leadership and membership on the one hand, and a large section of the Blair legacy PLP and the bureaucracy on the other. Not a good time for subtle strategic maneuvering.
The best bet is for Labour to work openly and unambiguously for what has been obvious for a long time : a fresh referendum – this time done properly and convincingly, with careful guards against dodgy money and shaving the electorate – sidelining the entirely minority whinging of the fake democrat Lexitories.
I imagine that the deal will be based on reverting to the EU idea of a border in the Irish sea coupled with a more democratic alternative to the DUP veto that was proposed. I never really got May’s aversion to this idea – don’t have the expertise!
An election after an exit is very much better for Labour. Fighting a “deal now” election wouldn’t be easy! The situation changes radically once it’s done, the focus moves to life after Brexit. Goodness knows what the LibDems will be advocating!
Boris’s so called deal is nothing of the sort, it is no more than a negotiating framework. It is analogous to obtaining outline planning permission, all the detail is yet to be designed, presented and negotiated on. The devil is in the detail.
IF, and it is a massive IF, Boris manages to get this agreement (if we ever get that far) approved by parliament then the eventual outcome (deal) that the Tories negotiate will be worlds apart from what Labour would achieve within the same framework.
AGREED but how to get that over to the average punter against the howling headlines and esp the latest crap on the Graun/ Indy Corbyn will resign etc etc
I think it was a strategic mistake of McDonnell to even entertain the idea of having anything to do with that twat Campbell(end) , and so it has proved ..
He should be treat
ed in the same manner as that meted out to Chris Williamson ,, ie shunned
“if everything proceeds as the two prime ministers envisage”… but it won’t.
A 2nd Referendum………. let me see what the possibilities are @ reaching a resolution. Does everyone agree that Referenda undermines the sovereignty of parliament? What makes you believe that anybody will accept the result, especially if they had their fingers crossed? If we need a 2nd, we will also need a 3rd; 4th & 5th etc.& we will need to have another Referenda in 2 years anyway, so that today’s 16 year olds will have a chance to vote on their future & those pesky elderly will have a chance to die. I am told that the Referendum was a cause of great bitterness & divides friends, families; even the whole nation, so why would anybody recommend another…………….unless? So you don’t accept the 1st result, but you may accept the 2nd? Why should I?
Stephanie Richardson 11/10/2019 at 6:10
Oh come on Steph, you know as well as I do that this is nothing more than ERG/Brexit Party propaganda.
Any Confirmatory Vote will be voting on known outcomes so it is quite easy to make the adoption of its result mandatory and binding on parliament. Similar to the aims of the Kyle Amendment.
As for whether or not you accept the result well that is entirely up-to you. It will be your democratic right along with other like minded individuals to campaign for parliament to legislate for another referendum about whether we should leave the EU (good luck with that 😉).
Stephanie Richardson . Good argument and thats not supporting either side of the brexit debate from.me?I am an international.member of the Labour party and have an option of duel nationality that I have not taken.And I am a supporter of Bolton wanderers that I have taken litteraly so I tend to remain neutral now although I agrree with the lodgic of who’s to say what vote is legitimate if you ignore the first?.I will.be on the first available flight from Cambodia if an election is called to canvass probably in.Brighton or Crawley. Last held by my friend Laura moffett under the Labour banner in 19 97 in the Blair landslide victory!My home base is a short hop from Dieppe to Newhaven but will help as !much as I physically can for an old socialist who has a dream of a socialist Labour government
The best deal is the deal we have now. Brexit was based upon a series of myths which surely anyone who can think for themselves now realise were sold to them, if they were foolish enough to buy them, by right wing spivs.
There were at least six main myths doing the rounds:-
We’ve lost control of our borders – We never lost control. Blatant racism and anti-immigration were used to frighten the electorate.
We’ve lost control of our laws – we never lost control. Britain has helped to draft and has been on the ‘winning’ side of 92% of laws formulated and voted for by the EU.
Bring back control of our money – We never lost control. We pay a membership subscription to the EU which goes into an EU fund to bring all EU members up to the same standard. This helps to increase trade thoughout the EU – win-win. According to the CBI we gain from this far more than it costs us.
We can easily replace lost EU trade with new trade deals – We can’t. Trade deals are difficult and according to all estimates our GDP would only increase by a maximum of 0.7% whereas lost EU trade will cost us 7% of our GDP.
We have lost sovereignty – we haven’t. We have shared some of our sovereignty with others and they with us, for the benefit of all.
And Farage’s favourite: ‘They need us more than we need them’ – garbage. The EU’s economy depends upon Britain for 16% of its trade, Britain depends upon the EU for approximately 50% of its trade.
Some in the Labour Party should stop trying to kid the electorate that we can adopt a Brexit policy which is fair to all, or even a majority. We can’t, the best way to help the majority is to ditch Brexit and use our present position in the EU as a springboard for a Jeremy Corbyn Socialist government to implement those incredible policies in our last manifesto. And before the die-hard Lexiters jump in, YES WE CAN have peoples’ ownership of the utilities whilst being members of the EU.
We have the man, Jeremy Corbyn, a man of honesty and integrity but now we need the right Brexit policy, which must NOT be any form of Brexit, to win the next GE.
Only LD’s now see they way forward is to simply cancel the whole thing – but as they know they will never get a majority so don’t really have concern over any reality. Ms S will probably lose seats because she won’t address the problem that over half the nation will feel SORELY cheated. For Labour to adopt that policy is madness. Corbyn has called it well, after all what exactly are your objections if we do end up staying in the Custom’s Union, very close to a Single Market and guarantees about standards for workers and consumers? And there is a confirmatory vote . You object maybe to the Court? Or the passport colour?
Paul, sitting on the fence is NEVER ‘calling it well. Those who were cheated are those who believed the myths!
In the situation we’re in I think sitting on the fence is exactly the right place to be because there is a lot of water about to pass (maybe in tunnels?) and the situation will change enabling you to make the jump onto one side or the other rationally rather than from a previous bunkered belief. The situation on Europe and a very Right wing government are major crises and it’s important I think to keep nimble rather than dig your pit even deeper.
But I am interested as to what you feel is inadequate about the long time 6 aims of a Labour deal?
The central point is getting democratic power to citizens (democracy) back over the primacy of the market economy (Neo-Liberal capitalism).
Democratic control of labour supply and capital supply.
With a current Neo-Liberal EC to quote from Shrek “Better out than in!”
Barnier say non to being in the tunnel yet
Paul, do we want an election first or a referendum? To have either we have to have a position to offer the electorate, fence sitting wont do.
To have an election we need to have a manifesto, to have a manifesto we must state a clear position on Brexit.
The policy we adopt on Brexit must not be one which makes the country poorer – hitting the worst off. After more than three years, NO ONE has proposed ANY form of Brexit which will assist the prosperity of the country, quite the reverse. It’s all ‘if this’ and ‘if that’ etc., followed by a recital of all the above myths. Because there is no form of Brexit which will benefit Britain, our principled position should be to reject it.
The so called compromises which have been suggested are dangerous. They are those where we give ground to the right wing before they come back for more.
Clear and unobstructed vision is required. Labour’s position should not be to go chasing votes by trying to second guess the electorate over Brexit but to do the right thing and gain votes by offering a genuine Socialist manifesto which will benefit the vast majority and beat the Tories. AND THEN CAMPAIGN HARD FOR IT.
An election first, followed by negotiations to have a good Exit option in the subsequent Referendum. And your objection to Labour’s 6 points?
Paul, Labour’s 6 points? is there anyone who remembers what they are? and if you do, please tell me how they would not be met by remaining?
On a completely different note, did Jennie Formby sign off on the charges for Chris Williams’ third suspension?
Of course – that’s the whole problem with the Catch-22 of the procedures. Instead of the disinfection by daylight, we have the issue festering under a plaster of secrecy. Breaching confidentiality (often done by the accusers) becomes an offence in itself.
The whole set-up breeds distrust and cynicism – justifiably, since the high-notoriety cases where we have been able to judge on the basis of known facts are frequently (almost invariably, actually) revealed to be travesties of justice – aka ‘stitch-ups’.
So the system, blatantly breaching the norms of natural justice in the case of Chris Williamson, manages to immediately come back with further secret charges, which, on the balance of probability, will have been trumped-up (What an appropriate term!). If Williamson defends himself in the daylight – he will have transgressed!
Meanwhile, JLM/LFI transgressors get away with practically anything.
And from reading most of the above comments Squawkbox the British Labour veiw shows no interest in the lives of those across the Irish sea only in relation to brexit or anything other than Ireland,and maybe thats how it should be because neither has the British public.The republican community have long held the veiw that N.Ireland has always been a political pawn for the Establishment and the loyalist community are slowly beginning to realise that they have been used and that there future is a United Ireland inside Europe.The DUP only survive on bigotry and hatred for the island they were abandoned on by the old colonial rulers.