Thursday, 4 May 2017

The "This election is at the mercy of evil foreigners" election - day 16


Old-fashioned campaigning

Philip Hammond (Conservative, Runnymede and Weybridge, majority 22,134) and David Davis (Conservative, Haltemprice and Howden, majority 16,195) came out with a very familiar pictorial backdrop to illustrate Labour's latest "tax bombshell". You have to get these things in at the right time, before the opposition manifesto is out, to fix the idea of their irresponsibility in people's minds.

Needless to say, some of the policy items which contribute to the "£45 billion black hole" (they could do these events in their sleep) won't actually be in the manifesto when it comes, but the number will stick.  John McDonnell (Labour, Hayes and Harlington, majority 15,700) can splutter about "lies" all he wants, but he'll have to brief his fellow spokespeople better to have a chance of countering these stunts.

Hammond and Davis didn't point to their own record, and many Labourites will probably forget to mention it as well.



Meanwhile, nominations for constituencies in Northern Ireland suggest that the various Unionist parties have agreed a deal to allow a single candidate a free run in each of "their" seats.

And the BBC has been out vox popping again, finding people (8 out of 30 interviewed) who don't know there's an election in June.


The Michel Barnier Show

The EU's lead Brexit negotiator came out for a press conference in Brussels to introduce the documents released by the Commission today which define a negotiating process in two stages.  Pointedly, Barnier only has a mandate for the first stage, plus the responsibility to recommend when "sufficient progress" has been made on stage 1 to proceed to stage 2.

Stage 1 - elements necessary to ensure an orderly withdrawal
  1. Citizens' rights
  2. Financial settlement
  3. Northern Ireland
  4. Governance and dispute resolution
Stage 2 - framework for a future relationship, and transition to it

To these I'd add a Stage 0, in which the two sides will argue about whether this structure is acceptable.  May &co have maintained that the future UK-EU relationship must be negotiated in parallel with the withdrawal agreement if not actually as part of the same process.  Any change would presumably need the approval of the EU Council, so we could see weeks of negotiating time taken up by talks about talks.

Barnier said at least twice that the British referendum had led to ten months of uncertainty, which needs to be resolved as soon as possible.  He warned that leaving the EU would have consequences, in the personal, social, financial, legal etc fields, and that the British "know the complexities".


Issues to be resolved on citizens' rights in the UK and the rest of the EU include the cut-off date (EU wants rights for anybody making the move up to the date of withdrawal;  various earlier dates have been mentioned in the UK), how long the rights should be protected (for life is the EU demand) and which law should enforce them (May &co aren't going to accept the ECJ).  We could end up with some people in the UK who retain free movement rights and EU citizenship protections and some (merely British citizens) who don't.


Barnier denied that the financial settlement being requested is any kind of punishment or "exit tax".  It's just "settling of accounts" based on commitments already made.  He refused to mention any particular figure - not the "up to €60bn" hinted at by Ivan Rogers, or the "maybe €100bn" floated by the Financial Times on Wednesday morning - but insisted that a "methodology" for the calculation must be agreed as a precondition for moving on to any later discussions.


Little was said about the other main objective of stage 1 - Northern Ireland - but Barnier said he would be in Dublin next week.


Several questioners mentioned the leaks from last week's dinner but Barnier talked of that evening being the first time he had "had the honour" of meeting Theresa May and that he had attended with the attention of establishing an entente cordiale.

Sky's commentators on the session included Yanis Varoufakis, who recognised the Brussels technique - you give us everything we want, then we'll talk about what you want - and Gisela Stuart who said there is pressure from countries including Ireland and Holland which would ensure that trade is discussed earlier than the current EU timetable would allow.


The Theresa May show


#MrsME seems to have a cunning plan (thanks to @davidallengreen for the initial idea).
  1. Kick off the Article 50 process at a time of your own choosing.
  2. Call an election at a time of your own choosing.
  3. Invite Juncker and Barnier for dinner to show you're still doing the important things.
  4. Worry them with apparent unpreparedness so that they brief newspapers (this might not have been planned).
  5. Dismiss the leak as "Brussels gossip".
  6. Go to see the queen (those important things again) so the cameras are all following you.
  7. Make a speech complaining about interference in your election (no longer just "gossip" apparently) by an EU negotiator who's carrying on with the process you started at 1.
  8. Wait for the howls of outrage and endless TV repeats which that nice Mr Crosby assured you would come.
Job done!  "Standing up to Brussels" is now established in the public mind along with "Vote for ME and MY candidates".  The cult of personality must be worrying even some Tories.




Saboteurs department

Osborne's at it again.  The Standard looks likely to become required reading for a while at least.



The Economist's man in Berlin, Jeremy Cliffe, who brought us an account of the dinner leak story in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung queries the declared purpose of #MrsME's election.  Others have observed that a bigger majority would give her more chance to compromise with those evil, election-fixing foreigners, while yet others fear that all the new Tory MPs will be ardent young Brexiters.



Not everything is going #MrsME's way.  Let's see whether ITV have the guts to go through with this one.




And I'm not alone in putting #MrsME in the saboteur column.


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