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Peers with EU pensions

Daily Mail 20th Feb 2017

The peers in the pocket of Europe: Mandy, Kinnock and Co are told to declare their lavish EU pensions before they try to derail Brexit in the Lords

• More than 20 peers who worked in Brussels built up lavish EU pensions  
• They include Labour’s Lord Mandelson who will receive almost £35,000 a year  
• Yesterday he urged fellow peers not to ‘throw in the towel’ on Brexit despite clear Commons vote in favour of Bill allowing Theresa May to trigger Article 50

Peers with generous EU retirement packages were last night urged to declare them publicly before intervening in this week’s Lords debate on the Brexit Bill. More than 20 peers who worked in Brussels built up lavish EU pensions.

They include Labour’s Lord Mandelson who will receive almost £35,000 a year thanks to his former job as trade commissioner. Yesterday he urged his fellow peers not to ‘throw in the towel’ on Brexit despite the clear Commons vote in favour of the Bill allowing Theresa May to trigger Article 50 – the formal mechanism for leaving the EU.

The former Cabinet minister suggested that he hoped the Lords would inflict a series of defeats on the Government as the Bill passes through the Upper House. But campaigners said peers with EU pensions should publicly declare an interest. They claim many in the Lords fear they could lose their entitlements if Britain goes for a ‘hard Brexit’ and fails to agree an amicable deal with the EU.

The pro-Brexit group Change Britain said the combined pension pots of former MEPs and EU commissioners in the Lords added up to £10.2million, giving payouts worth more than £500,000 a year in total.

Ex-Tory minister Dominic Raab said these peers had a vested interest in thwarting Brexit and should be honest about their intentions. Peers will debate the Bill today and tomorrow before amendments are considered next week. The Bill was passed overwhelmingly by MPs without any amendments. But the Lords, where the Government lacks a majority, are considered much more likely to pass two main amendments. One would require a ‘meaningful’ parliamentary vote on the final Brexit deal. Mrs May has said there will be a ‘take it or leave it’ vote – if Parliament votes against, the UK would leave the EU without any deal at all.

Full story here.

Brexit white paper holiday error

Fullfact.org reported a mistake in the White Paper,

MPs seem to get far more than 14 weeks off, so they would have no reason to query it.

Source.

Farage jape

Yesterday's DPols discussed Labour MEP Seb Dance's five minutes of fame when he held up a page of A4 with a very neatly printed "HE'S LYING TO YOU" behind Nigel Farage holding forth on the failings of the EU parliament. Matthew Parris, the wee scamp, guesting on the show, made his own sign for Andrew Neil, not nearly as neat, inscribed, "HE'S ALWAYS RIGHT".

Analysis of Labour A50 rebels

I have spent the day charting an analysis of the Labour MPs who voted against Article 50. The factors listed are:

• Referendum result. Note that not all the results were reported to constituency level and so in some cases (marked with an *), the area for the containing area is shown.
• The percentage vote for Leave (* ibid).
• Majority at the last election.
• Loyalty rating.

Date sources:
Wikipedia brexit results
Wikipedia list of constituences
LabourList Loyalty rankings

Comments to follow.

The Brexit White Paper

77 pages, available here.

Here's Mrs. May's foreward,

We do not approach these negotiations expecting failure, but anticipating success. Because we are a great, global nation with so much to offer Europe and so much to offer the world. One of the world’s largest and strongest economies. With the finest intelligence services, the bravest armed forces, the most effective hard and soft power, and friendships, partnerships and alliances in every continent. And another thing that’s important. The essential ingredient of our success. The strength and support of 65 million people willing us to make it happen. Because after all the division and discord, the country is coming together. The referendum was divisive at times. And those divisions have taken time to heal. But one of the reasons that Britain’s democracy has been such a success for so many years is that the strength of our identity as one nation, the respect we show to one another as fellow citizens, and the importance we attach to our institutions means that when a vote has been held we all respect the result. The victors have the responsibility to act magnanimously. The losers have the responsibility to respect the legitimacy of the outcome. And the country comes together. And that is what we are seeing today. Business isn’t calling to reverse the result, but planning to make a success of it. The House of Commons has voted overwhelmingly for us to get on with it. And the overwhelming majority of people – however they voted – want us to get on with it too. So that is what we will do. Not merely forming a new partnership with Europe, but building a stronger, fairer, more Global Britain too. And let that be the legacy of our time. The prize towards which we work. The destination at which we arrive once the negotiation is done. And let us do it not for ourselves, but for those who follow. For the country’s children and grandchildren too. So that when future generations look back at this time, they will judge us not only by the decision that we made, but by what we made of that decision. They will see that we shaped them a brighter future. They will know that we built them a better Britain.”

From the BBC.

Votes against Article 50

From Huffington Post

Jeremy Corbyn suffered a significant rebellion against his order to vote for Brexit on Wednesday evening, as a quarter of Labour MPs voted against triggering Article 50.
The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, which will allow Theresa May to start the Brexit process, cleared its first parliamentary hurdle by a vote in the Commons of 498 to 114.
The Labour leader saw 47 of his MPs (full list here) rebel against a three-line whip and vote against triggering Article 50 - while 167 backed his position.
Ahead of the vote, two more of Corbyn’s frontbench team quit in order to allow them to freely defy the leadership.
Shadow environment secretary Rachael Maskell and shadow equalities minister Dawn Butler both resigned. Shadow Welsh secretary Jo Stevens had already quit, as had shadow minister for early years Tulip Siddiq.
Several other frontbenchers chose to oppose Brexit, taking the risk they will be sacked from their jobs.
The Labour leader’s team said any decision to sack rebels will be “taken at a later stage”.
Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary and close ally of Corbyn, missed the vote due to illness, her office said.
SNP MPs and seven of the nine Lib Dem MPs also voted against triggering Article 50.


Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East)
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow)
Graham Allen (Nottingham North)
Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting)
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree)
Ben Bradshaw (Exeter)
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West)
Lyn Brown (West Ham)
Chris Bryant (Rhondda)
Karen Buck (Westminster North)
Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent Central)
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth)
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley)
Ann Coffey (Stockport)
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Mary Creagh (Wakefield)
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow)
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West)
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth)
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge)
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood)
Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside)
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford)
Mike Gapes (Ilford South)
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South)
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood)
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton)
Peter Kyle (Hove)
David Lammy (Tottenham)
Rachael Maskell (York Central)
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East)
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Madeleine Moon (Bridgend)
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South)
Stephen Pound (Ealing North)
Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall)
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn)
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith)
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington)
Owen Smith (Pontypridd)
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central)
Stephen Timms (East Ham)
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green)
Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test)
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge)

Rhodes statue

Times 24th Jan 2017

Liddle Sunday Times, 29 Jan 17

Sunday Times, 29 Jan 17 

Shapps on foreign aid

Sunday Times, 29 Jan 17

Spectator cartoon

Analysis of Labour MPs' loyalty

In March 2016 a spreadsheet analysing where MPs stood in relation to Mr. Corbyn was "discovered".

Here's a Guardian article.

Labour’s chief whip, Rosie Winterton, and its London mayoral candidate, Sadiq Khan, have been labelled as “hostile” in a leaked document that appears to rank the party’s MPs by their loyalty to the leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
Members of parliament have been separated into five different sections ranging from a “core group” of loyalists, through “neutral but not hostile”, to a final “hostile” list that includes those believed to be most negative about the current leadership.
The document underlines unrest within the shadow cabinet with a number of frontbench MPs listed in the fourth “core negative group” including Lucy Powell at education and Maria Eagle, who was moved from her role in defence to culture.
They have been placed alongside Dan Jarvis – who is seen as a potential leadership candidate if MPs try to trigger a coup against Corbyn.
A spokesman for Corbyn categorically denied a claim by the Times, which was leaked the list, that it was drawn up by Katy Clark, Corbyn’s political secretary. They also pointed out that the list included Harry Harpham, who died of cancer last month and the late veteran MP Michael Meacher who died in October. He is listed in the core group with “RIP” before his name.
Some backbenchers speculated that the hand of Damian McBride, the combative spin doctor to Gordon Brown who recently joined the team of the shadow defence secretary, Emily Thornberry, may have been behind the release of the list. The suggestion is categorically denied by McBride.
A spokesman for Corbyn said: “It doesn’t come from this office and we have no knowledge of it.” He insisted that it did not represent the leader’s views either.
David Cameron seized on the list at prime minister’s questions, joking that he would put himself in the category of “core support” for Corbyn. “I thought I had problems,” he added.

And a chart

Here's the full list from LabourList:

CORE GROUP	CORE GROUP PLUS	NEUTRAL BUT NOT HOSTILE	CORE GROUP NEGATIVE	HOSTILE GROUP
Andy McDonald	Andy Slaughter	Alan Whitehead	Alan Johnon	Alan Campbell
Catherine Smith	Angela Rayner	Adrian Bailey	Alan Meale	Alison McGovern
Dennis Skinner	Alex Cunningham	Andrew Gwynne	Angela Smith	Ann Coffey
Diane Abbott	Albert Owen	Andy Burnham	Anna Turley	Barry Sheerman
Grahame Morris	Catherine West	Andrew Smith	Ed Miliband	Caroline Flint
Ian Lavery	Margaret Greenwood	Angela Eagle	Ben Bradshaw	Chris Evans
Ian Mearns	Carolyn Harris	Ann Clwyd	Bridget Phillipson	Chris Leslie
Imran Hussain	Chinyelu Onwurah	Barbara Keeley	Diana Johnson	Chuka Umunna
Jeremy Corbyn	Christina Rees	Barry Gardiner	Daniel Zeichner	Elizabeth Kendall
John McDonnell	Dave Anderson	Bill Esterson	Dan Jarvis	Emma Reynolds
Jon Trickett	Dawn Butler	Catherin McKinnell	Derek Twigg	Fiona Mactaggart
Kate Osamor	David Winnick	Chris Bryant	Frank Field	Graham Jones
Kelvin Hopkins	Debbie Abrahams	Chris Matheson	Gareth Thomas	Harriet Harman
RIP Michael Meacher	Emily Thornberry	Clive Betts	George Howarth	Ian Austin
Rebecca Long-Bailer	Emma Lewell-Buck	Clive Efford	Geoffrey Robinson	Ivan Lewis
Ronnie Campbell	Vicky Foxcroft	Colleen Fletcher	Gloria de Piero	Jamie Reed
Richard Burgon	Harry Harpham	David Crausby	Graham Allen	John Woodcock
Clive Lewis	Helen Goodman	David Hanson	Hilary Benn	Luciana Berger
Rachael Maskell	Holly Lynch	Derek Twigg	Ian Murray	Margaret Hodge
	Ian Lucas	Gavin Shuker	Jo Cox	Mark Tami
	Jo Stevens	Geraint Davies	Jenny Chapman	Mary Creagh
	Kate Hollern	Gerald Jones	Joan Ryan	Melanie Onn
	Karen Buck	Gerald Kaufman	John Mann	Michael Dugher
	Karl Turner	Gisela Stuart	John Spellar	Pat McFadden
	Keir Starmer	Gordon Marsden	Jon Ashworth	Phil Wilson
	Kevin Brennan	Graham Stringer	Julie Elliott	Rachel Reeves
	Khalid Mahmood	Heidi Alexander	Kate Green	Simon Danczuk
	Liz McInnes	Helen Hayes	Keith Vaz	Rosie Winterton
	Lilian Greenwood	Helen Jones	Kerry McCarthy	Tom Blenkinsop
	Lindsay Hoyle	Huw Irrance-Davies	Kevan Jones	Sadiq Khan
	Louise Haigh	Iain Wright	Liam Byrne	Stephen Twigg
	Lisa Nandy	Jack Dromey	Louise Ellman	Siobhain McDonagh
	Marie Rimmer	Jeff Smith	Lucy Powell	Stella Creasy
	Mary Glindon	Jessica Morden	Lyn Brown	Toby Perkins
	Nick Thomas-Symonds	Jim Cunningham	Margaret Beckett	Tristram Hunt
	Owen Smith	Jim Dowd	Maria Eagle	Yvette Cooper
	Pat Glass	Jim Fitzpatrick	Meg Hillier
	Paula Sheriff	John Healey	Natascha Engel
	Rob Marris	David Lammy	Neil Coyle
	Rosie Cooper	Jon Cruddas	Richard Burden
	Rupa Huq	Judith Cummins	Ruth Smeeth
	Roberta Blackman-Woods	Julie Cooper	Rob Flello
	Sarah Champion	Kate Green	Shabana Mahmood
	Sharon Hodgson	Karin Smyth	Stephen Doughty
	Steve Rotheram	Kate Hoey	Stephen Kinnock
	Stephen Hepburn	Kevin Barron	Jess Phillips
	Sue Hayman	Madeleine Moon	Jonathan Reynolds
	Susan Elan Jones	Mark Hendrick	Steve Reed
	Teresa Pearce	Matthew Pennycook	Stephen Pound
	Tom Watson	Mike Gapes
	Valerie Vaz	Mike Kane
	Vernon Coaker	Naseem Shah
	Virenda Sharma	Nia Giffith
	Wayne David	Nic Dakin
	Yasmin Qureshi	Nick Brown
	John Cryer	Nick Smith
		Paul Blomfield
		Paul Farrelly
		Paul Flynn
		Peter Dowd
		Peter Kyle
		Ruth Cadbury
		Rushanara Ali
		Roger Godsiff
		Seema Malhotra
		Steve McCabe
		Stephen Timms
		Tulip Siddiq
		Thangham Debbonaire
		Wes Streeting
		Yvonne Fovargue

Wubble Wubble

I had not noticed this before, from the Daily Mail, 18th March 2016, presumably an image grabbed from the TV coverage, Odious Osborne getting an eyeful on Budget Day.

Gone with the Trump

The Sun, 29th January

V1 from the Sun's web site

V2 a screen grab from this morning's newspaper review on the Marr show that has an inset of an earlier version with Reagan and Thatcher.

Image from  Hake's Americana & Collectibles.

Conservative Home has an earlier and inferior variant.

And finally, one of the originals.

from Original Vintage Movie Posters.

May's 12-point "plan"

From the Telegraph, 17th January

1. Provide certainty about the process of leaving the EU. 
2. Control of our own laws. Leaving the European Union will mean that our laws will be made in Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. 
3. Strengthen the Union between the four nations of the United Kingdom. 
4.  Deliver a practical solution that allows the maintenance of the Common Travel Area with the Republic of Ireland. 
5. Brexit must mean control of the number of people who come to Britain from Europe. 
6. Protect rights for EU nationals in Britain and British nationals in the EU. We want to guarantee rights of EU citizens living in Britain and the rights of British nationals in other member states, as early as we can. 
7. Protect workers' rights. Not only will the government protect the rights of workers set out in European legislation, we will build on them. 
8. Free trade with European markets through a bold and ambitious free trade agreement with the European Union. 
9. New trade agreements with other countries. It is time for Britain to get out into the world and rediscover its role as a great, global, trading nation. 
10. The best place for science and innovation. We will welcome agreement to continue to collaborate with our European partners on major science, research and technology initiatives. 
11. Co-operation in the fight against crime and terrorism. We will continue to work closely with our European allies in foreign and defence policy even as we leave the EU itself. 
12. A smooth, orderly Brexit. We believe a phased process of implementation will be in the interests of Britain, the EU institutions and member states.

Article 50

Follow the progress of the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 here

snapshot 27th January

Article 50 states,

Article 50, Lisbon Treaty 

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it. A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

source: EU

Article 49 of the Lisbon Treaty states,

Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union. The European Parliament and national Parliaments shall be notified of this application. The applicant State shall address its application to the Council, which shall act unanimously after consulting the Commission and after receiving the assent of the European Parliament, which shall act by an absolute majority of its component members. The conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded, which such admission entails, shall be the subject of an agreement between the Member States and the applicant State. This agreement shall be submitted for ratification by all the contracting States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. The conditions of eligibility agreed upon by the European Council shall be taken into account.

source: EU

The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill 2016-17 looks like this,

source HofC

Miliband in Brighton

The Times, 24 Jan 17

Snowflakes I

The Times, 16th January 2017

Black students 'feel excluded by tutors'

Dominic Kennedy Investigations Editor

Black students are suffering racism because they are expected to ask their lecturers for help and use academic language, according to a students' union.

White staff and students must accept that their behaviour is racist even if that is not the intention, says a report about discrimination at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), part of the University of London.

An excess of white lecturers is creating a racist teaching and learning environment, the students' union claims. SOAS students provoked dismay among some academics last week after it was reported that they were demanding that the "majority of philosophers on our courses" should be from Asia and Africa.

Yesterday the union defended its "Degrees of Racism" report, which blamed prejudice at the school for black and ethnic minority (BME) students getting poorer examination grades than whites. The report identified "barriers to support, including having to ask proactively for help (which excluded students whose confidence had been undermined by racial exclusion and discrimination)".

It stated: "Some BME students felt silenced also by the pressure to communicate using academic language that - for reasons of structural racism - was closer to the everyday speech of middle-class, white students than to their own". When challenged over racism, white students and staff should react constructively "by listening, being non-defensive, and being committed to learning and changing". There should be "a clear message that behaviour and comments are racist because of their impact, not their intention".

The union said that ethnic minority students felt gagged because lecturers failed to challenge the opinions of whites. Tutors "passively enabled white students to dismiss others' experiences by neglecting to intervene".

It added: "Some participants attributed this to their tutors perhaps feeling obliged to maintain what might appear to be freedom of speech. Whether this was the reason or not, the consequence of not intervening was that BME students remained effectively censored."

Daniel Hannan MEP, who was born in Peru and studied at Oxford, said: "Brave anti-racists fought for generations for everyone to be treated the same. It's sad to see some people now fighting to be treated differently."

SOAS said that, while its attainment gap of 10 per cent was less than the average for the sector, it was not complacent and the report had "helped to spark productive debate".

The union said: "Speaking the truth about racial inequality, being unafraid to talk about racism and positively addressing it can only enlighten and benefit our members of every ethnicity."

dkennedy@thetimes.co.uk

Prioritising moral judgements

Rory Sutherland, Spectator, 14th Jan
"Writing recently at edge.org, one of the founding fathers of evolutionary psychology, John Tooby, answered a question which had long baffled me. Why do people on the left get more agitated about transgender bathroom access or hate speech than they do about modern slavery? Tooby explains: ‘Morally wrong-footing rivals is one point of ideology, and once everyone agrees on something (slavery is wrong) it ceases to be a significant moral issue because it no longer shows local rivals in a bad light. Many argue that there are more slaves in the world today than in the 19th century. Yet because one’s political rivals cannot be delegitimised by being on the wrong side of slavery, few care to be active abolitionists any more, compared to being, say, speech police.’ I might also add that many of the practitioners of modern slavery might be a bit foreign–looking, and so in criticising them you run the risk of violating some leftist tribal shibboleth."

Tristram to the V&A

Times 14th Jan

EU contributions

An interesting piece on Guido,

"All this talk of Brexit being a cliff edge for Britain ignores the other side of the coin, it is a funding cliff edge for the EU. Excluding Germany, Britain’s contribution is more than the total net contribution of the 26 other EU states combined. Guido will repeat this: add up the debits and credits of every member state from France to Poland bar Germany and it comes to a figure less than Britain’s EU contribution."

Labour Party Questionnaire

The labour party send me an 89-question test paper this morning. Here are some of the questions:

5. How can we harness Britain’s higher education sector to help meet our industrial goals? How can current research funding arrangements for universities be improved so that they better serve these goals? How can we strengthen the transition from research to marketability?

26. What would the best industrial balance be in respect of meeting our climate goals in the 4th and 5th Carbon budgets?

77. What is the role of macroeconomic policy in delivering an industrial strategy? What should be the balance between macroeconomic objectives such as aggregate demand, inflation, debt etc?
78. How should fiscal, monetary and regulatory tools be utilised to deliver these goals?

I did my best, but gave up after an hour at Q67.

Mensch on Trump

The x/ny period has been awful with no Daily Politics, Sunday Politics, Question Time or This Week to watch. DPols starts again next Monday and I thought there had been a QT last night, but there wasn't and I realized (but only after 20 mins) that we were watching the last of 2016 from mid Dec.

Apart from Will Self (who I usually enjoy) making an absolute arse of himself, the show was notable for a comment by Louise Mench (sp?) who quoted a comment on Trump that "the media took him literally but not seriously, whereas the voters took him seriously but not literally. A gem.

Mensch blogs at HeatSt.

Intro

For those of us who enjoy politics, 2016 was an outstanding year.
Going forward (ha!) I intend to note here any items worthy of recording.

Nick