Mailwatch(ed) Forum

A thread title paying homage to that long-running discussion started by @mattomac before the Great Fire and indeed, before "stupid" grew wings, fledged, and began to shit over the UK - NI partly excepted.

First up, this "once in a generational opportunity to reset relations" nonsense is just that. Nonsense, and as with as much real-world validity as the fat lad's Get Brexit Done horseshit; international relations are a process of development and evolution, (for better or for worse), rather than a singularly identifiable event, and Starmer cannot defy the laws of economics any more that he can avoid the laws of physics. That apple falls on your head as surely as leaving the Single Market and the Customs Union wreaks havoc with your economy.

You want to magic away vast black holes in your finances? I have a cunning plan.

Starmer coming to the end of our street today to shake hands on an - er - oven ready treaty after ten minutes in office, and while most of the RW press are on holiday, looks to me to be the opening initiative of the country edging towards a bespoke variant of the EEA Agreement.

Türkiye managed it, but I still believe that I will be German or dead or both before the damage has been repaired.

No mention yet of my bacon, unless it falls under "other" and "High-Level Talks".



Aside from taking a run at the defence pot before a: it gets allocated and b: Russia attacks, I would not be surprised if HMG is in no mad hurry to get the rest boxed off. There will be nothing like a few days chaos at Dover so galvanise a few minds in favour of Brexin (kinda).

kreuzberger wrote: ↑Mon May 19, 2025 5:57 pm No mention yet of my bacon

Cultural and artistic exchanges, Shirley?

Good that it seems we are rejoining Erasmus.

I wish I could copyright the word 'Betrayal', just for tomorrow.

Killer Whale wrote: ↑Mon May 19, 2025 6:15 pm

kreuzberger wrote: ↑Mon May 19, 2025 5:57 pm No mention yet of my bacon

Cultural and artistic exchanges, Shirley?

There's nothing artistic about the way I eat a bacon butty and it's definitely uncultured.

The Mail has called in the big guns. LittleJohn has phoned in his copy from Florida whilst Andrew Neil filed his copy from his home in the South of France. You really couldn't make it up.

A more balanced approach can be found here.

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europ ... n-100.html

Th

e EU and Great Britain are realigning their relations after Brexit. Closer cooperation is planned in defense, fisheries, and food controls. However, there are still points of contention.More than five years after Britain's exit from the EU, both sides have agreed to a rapprochement. At the first summit of top politicians from the EU and Great Britain since Brexit, the sides agreed to closer cooperation, the British government announced. The agreement addresses the areas of defense, security, fisheries, food controls, and youth mobility.

"Paying for the privilege" is the Defence thing, right? Standard for non-members to do that with EU programs. Of all the things worth paying to join, this is surely it.

It doesn't have to make sense. It's a religion, a cult. It doesn't have to make sense.

Adam Berman, a policy director at Energy UK, told the Guardian that the European Commission’s concession on electricity and carbon trading could hold “substantial cost savings” for the UK. He explained:

The agreement is a meaningful concession from the European Commission which will make energy trading less burdensome and save up to £370m a year in the near-term. These savings could grow by an order of magnitude by the end of the decade under the government’s plans to become a net exporter of green electricity. I would say the savings could eerily more than double from today, even using conservative assumptions.

Ban this filth, say Kemi and Farage.

Bexit Dream died.


Excellent: When do we torch its rancid corpse.

Quite the effort from Priti Patel here.

What we’re now seeing is sheer dishonesty from Keir Starmer and his appalling Labour government that have deceived the public.
What they’ve effectively done is that they’re signing up to a foreign court, the European court of justice all over again. We’ve got to pay for the privilege of the indignity of going back into a European court and being a rule taker. And they’ve sold out our fishermen with a 12 year deal.
I understand that Starmer went into the negotiations saying he wanted a four year deal, but he’s come out 100 times worse with a 12 year deal [sic], which is basically going to put British fisheries in proper jeopardy.
Now I see these guys, the Labour MPs, the Labour government, every day. You know their instincts are not the same instincts of those of the British people. They don’t care about Britain in the way in which your listeners do, or my party does, and did when we campaigned for Brexit and delivered Brexit.
And a classic example of this is look at how they’re wrecking our domestic economy. You mentioned winter fuel payments. Look at the family farm tax, look at increases on national insurance. And they’ve got the audacity to put out a press release yesterday saying this is good for Britain
I think he’s taken us all for fools, and it just shows how arrogant and out of touch, they are.

My favorite bit is where she accuses Starmer of dishonesty, while lying that the domestic economy is "wrecked" (grew by 0.7% last quarter) and that the Conservative Party "campaigned for Brexit".

My fun thing of the day is randomly replying to anyone on forums or social media saying this is ‘betrayal’ or ‘surrender’ and pointing out this is still Brexit, it’s just as valid a form of Brexit as no deal or Boris’s ‘deal’ because no one ever voted on a specific form of Brexit (and we’re still not in the EU), but now everyone is better off or unchanged and this deal could have been done by the Tories at any point. This is a free trade deal done outside the EU - it just happens to be with the EU. So what in precise factual terms has changed or what is it they have lost?

Not one has an answer. Not one. But every single one who bothered replying has eventually boiled it down to one of 2 things:
a) no immigration (code, here, for “I’m just racist”)
b) I want my country back (code, here, for “I’m racist AND I don’t like women having jobs, poofs, not being able to slap my kids etc)

All feelings, idiocy and hatred. That’s all they’ve got, and for many it’s all they ever had too.

See Littlejohn's effort today.

"We voted to leave. No ifs, no buts, out."

"I'm not going to go into the detail..."

We all know this. Leave meant 17 million different things, all equally valid.

I don't know if Patel got any follow up questions, but perhaps she could have been asked why her party are coming 4th with yougov? And that's with the Greens on 10%. It's not like the Lib Dems have got ahead of them by cannibalising the 5th party- which of course they could well do in an election in the seats where they need those votes.

Patel accusing others of dishonesty? That's quite something. Was she smirkin'?

I can't help there's something missing in all of this stuff. Patel used to be a business lobbyist, and you'd hope she was still in favour of exports in some way. Where are all the business people saying this deal is terrible? Is there anyone saying that? I can't even see one of those James Goldsmith "business but with a sense of destiny" types.

As I keep saying, this stuff isn't tenable for a party with a business base. I never much liked the party, but at least they used to have Sajid Javid and Greg Clark round there to say the Tory Party ought to be against trade friction.

Starmer's making the point that the deal with India would rather seem to suggest that the UK isn't rejoining the EU. That's rather a good point, you'd think.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Tue May 20, 2025 1:26 pm I can't help there's something missing in all of this stuff. Patel used to be a business lobbyist, and you'd hope she was still in favour of exports in some way. Where are all the business people saying this deal is terrible? Is there anyone saying that? I can't even see one of those James Goldsmith "business but with a sense of destiny" types.

As I keep saying, this stuff isn't tenable for a party with a business base. I never much liked the party, but at least they used to have Sajid Javid and Greg Clark round there to say the Tory Party ought to be against trade friction.

The working and middle class Tories have fucked off to Reform. The landed gentry who still feel that it all went wrong when we backed the wrong horse in '39 are over there as well. The rest of those along with the One Nation lot, are with the LDs. I don't really know who they've got left.