Both May and Corbyn now pushing for a ‘deal’. Staggering response to the local elections (I still can’t find any information on the turnout on a national level - round my my it was given by ward, ranging from 30% to 45%) where two parties arguing for Remain were the big winners (though not big enough winners to be a pointer to the national picture). I still think a second referendum would be a disaster though. Although the motivations are all wrong I hope they do a deal and get it through before we have the farce of the EU elections, where the only winner will be Farage, and then we spend a few years licking our wounds, blaming someone else for our problems and observing the EU, which even Juncker said this week is in trouble.
Suggestions today that May is prepared to make concessions to Corbyn on a Customs Union, alignment to Single Market rules on goods and protection of workers rights. If this is correct, Corbyn may well agree. The problem then is can this new deal get through Parliament? Tory back-benchers would hate it, and many Labour MPs would only go for it if it was subject to a new referendum.
The “Evening Standard News Content Grid.” Journalism died as a business model. It left a suicide note. Here it is :pic.twitter.com/ifMOd6BFdl please log in to view this image
So who do we think will get the best deal We know what theresa thinks please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image
heres what you do if the people vote the wrong way Turkey to rerun vote in Istanbul following opposition win Turkish local elections 2019 please log in to view this image Image copyright EPA Image caption Supporters of Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu came out to support him after the decision to rerun the election was announced Turkey's electoral body has ordered that Istanbul's local elections be re-held after a shock opposition victory in March. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party questioned the slim win by the opposition CHP, claiming there were "irregularities and corruption". CHP deputy chair Onursal Adiguzel said the rerun showed it was "illegal to win against the AK Party". The vote in Turkey's largest city will be held on 23 June. An AKP representative on the electoral board, Recep Ozel, said the rerun was because some electoral officials were not civil servants and some result papers had not been signed. Mr Adiguzel tweeted that the decision was "plain dictatorship". "This system that overrules the will of the people and disregards the law is neither democratic, nor legitimate," he wrote. Turkey's rulers are bad losers, says vote 'winner' Erdogan: Turkey's pugnacious president CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu was officially confirmed Istanbul's mayor by the authorities in April. In a speech broadcast on social media, the mayor condemned the electoral board for ordering a rerun, saying they were influenced by the ruling party. "We will never compromise on our principles," he told the crowd. "This country is filled with 82 million patriots who will fight... until the last moment for democracy." A supporters' group for Mr Imamoglu urged restraint, saying: "Let's stand together, let's be calm... We will win, we will win again." please log in to view this image Image copyright Reuters Image caption President Erdogan was once mayor of Istanbul Municipal elections took place across Turkey on 31 March and were seen as a referendum on Mr Erdogan's leadership amid a sharp economic downturn. Although an AKP Party-led alliance won 51% of the vote nationwide, the secularist CHP claimed victory in the capital Ankara, Izmir, and in Istanbul - where Mr Erdogan had once been mayor. The ruling party has since challenged the results in Ankara and Istanbul, which has prompted opposition accusations that they are trying to steal the election. please log in to view this image Erdogan determined to retake Istanbul By Mark Lowen, BBC Turkey correspondent President Erdogan was never going to take the loss of Istanbul lying down. "Whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey", he has often said. He is determined to win back the country's economic powerhouse. But it's a strategy fraught with risk. The Turkish lira - which has lost more than 30% over the past year - has slumped again. An economy in recession can hardly cope with more uncertainty. After all, it was economic woes that lost Istanbul for Mr Erdogan in the first place. What's more, Ekrem Imamoglu, who was formally appointed mayor last month, is gaining popularity, fast. He's reached out beyond his base and has settled into the role with ease. The rerun could widen his win - barring major irregularities against him, which many of his supporters fear. And Mr Erdogan's own party is deeply split on the issue. His diehard loyalists believe victory was stolen. But other wings of the party accept they lost, and that rejecting the result is another nail in the coffin for what's left of Turkish democracy.
I've had on and off discussion with some on here about the quality of our elected representatives, the extent to which we can trust their motivation, whether they receive fair remuneration, and how much blame we can attribute to circumstance vs individuals. In that context I thought the below article in The Times yesterday was very interesting, and I broadly agree with the analysis. I've no doubt others will take a different view! -- We’re still paying the price for the expenses scandal A glittery toilet seat, a jar of Branston Pickle, 17 silk cushions, a single paper clip and, of course, that ornamental duck house; just some of the expensed items which brought the mother of all parliaments to her knees a decade ago. Remember those more carefree times, when all we had to tut about was the MP for Fiddleshire claiming £1.20 for a packet of custard creams? As David Cameron’s speechwriter at the time I saw this scandal as a gift; a crisis to be turned into rhetorical opportunity. Yes, numerous Tories were implicated (it wasn’t a Labour MP who had their moat cleaned courtesy of the taxpayer), but here was a chance for Cameron to champion a noble cause: cleaning up Westminster. The promises of reform were grand. In speech after speech we said the Conservatives would “fix our broken politics”, as though the political system were a faulty washer-dryer in need of some detailed spanner work. Ten years on, can we say politics was “fixed”? Alas, I believe a couple of serious mistakes were made in the aftermath of the scandal for which we are still paying dearly. The first was the level of self-flagellation indulged in by the political class, out of all proportion to the “offences” committed and enduringly detrimental to the reputation of politicians. Sure, there were a few who were fired or even imprisoned for genuine fiddling — rightly so. But beneath this were many who were simply acting with the herd, without thinking, within a system that never questioned them. The phrase “there but for the grace of God go I” might have been invented for the scandal. If you or I had been working in parliament we might well have fallen foul; what seemed outrageous and splashed all over the papers became scandalous only in hindsight. Yet listening to the mea culpas coming out of Westminster, you might have supposed that the House of Commons had been exposed as a den of *****philes, Ponzi salesmen and granny-muggers. “What we are seeing now is the unravelling of a system that thrived in the shadows,” thundered Nick Clegg. Wanting to paint themselves as the embodiment of the new, reforming politics, it suited Cameron and Clegg to paint the scandal as the epitome of the old, rotten politics. All this showy breast-beating was meant to draw a line under the scandal and win back public confidence — but it failed spectacularly. So pungent was the ordure heaped on parliament that the stink still hangs around its members. No matter how humble an MP, how modest their expenses, how hard they work, the in-it-for-themselves narrative endures. It was this that contributed seven years later to the Leave vote, the slap in the establishment’s face that we suffer the consequences of today. The second time-bomb laid in 2009 was the widely spouted notion that this scandal happened because parliament was stuffed with “elites” — pampered politicians whose temerity in ordering bath plugs on expenses was rooted in the fact that they lived on easy street. From this emerged the wisdom that what we needed in parliament was more “real” people with “real” experience, who had “real” jobs. Postman, nurse, charity campaigner: real jobs. Banker, lawyer, political adviser: not real jobs. Down with those who worked in thickly carpeted City offices, who had made large amounts of money. Up with the real workers! Anti-elitism was sold as the solution to the rot. Cameron promised to “transform politics . . . by taking power from the party elites and the old-boy networks and giving it to the people”. He went about this by throwing the Conservative candidates’ list wide open, to bring in “new blood”. And so, at the 2010 election, a load of experience was lost from the Commons and in came hundreds of new MPs, many swept through the selection process with little scrutiny because they were deemed real people. At the 2015 and 2017 elections the same attitudes persisted. The result? Though there are many brilliant MPs in the Commons, a significant proportion are, well, a little mediocre. Not unintelligent — just not of the calibre we might expect. Forty years ago, the corridors of Westminster were thick with heavyweights: Margaret Thatcher, Shirley Williams, Harold Wilson, Barbara Castle, Peter Shore, David Owen, Douglas Hurd, Jim Prior, Roy Jenkins, Geoffrey Howe, Denis Healey, Michael Heseltine. Today the parliamentary talent pool is far less vibrant. Sure, those MPs I describe as mediocre can parrot the party line, stand at PMQs and ask the prime minister to “join me in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Fiddleshire festival”, but they are not the authoritative, original thinkers we should expect. Do they have broader views on the scope of the state, on Britain’s place in the world, on the challenges that face us from automation to our ageing population? This should concern us all, for from 650 MPs are drawn the ministers and leaders who shape our future. Yes, parliament should be open to people from all walks of life, but it shouldn’t suck them in regardless of talent. The deciding factor for candidates must be raw ability, not “real” life experience. Alan Johnson was a good politician because of his clear thinking and easy charm — not because he was once a postman. Rory Stewart is a good politician because of his intelligence and eloquence — the fact he went to Eton should be irrelevant. The anti-elitism and politician-loathing spawned by the expenses scandal backfired badly on us all, because it has repelled exceptional people who might have been MPs. It has left us with a thin parliamentary talent pool, several ministers who would not have made it into the government just ten years ago, and not enough choice when it comes to who leads our nation next. The reputation of politics won’t be restored if we continue to put “ordinary” people into roles which should be reserved for the extraordinary. We must aim higher. When it comes to the calibre of candidates selected, the approach must be more elitist, not less. To recruit the best, things must change. Parties should end the obsession with local candidates, as though only those with decades on the district council were qualified. They must stop being so preoccupied with candidates’ gender, race and sexuality, as though any of these things made a difference to an MP’s ability. And while it might make some furious, the truth is we will only attract better candidates for parliament if the salary is more in line with other senior roles in the public sector. Ten years on from expenses, it’s clear there is no easy way to fix politics and our discontent with it, but focusing on attracting more exceptional MPs would be a good start.
Yay, another royal baby! Government has given up on the chance of getting a brexit deal through Parliament any time soon, so we are condemned to hearing Farage drone on and on about betrayal in the EU elections. Double yay.
