“I am the way into the city of woe,
I am the way into eternal pain,
I am the way to go among the lost.’
Dante’s circles of torment as he descends into everlasting hell is a touch melodramatic as an analogy for Brexit. As is Prometheus chained to his rock for eternity. But it’s much how it feels.
The Westminster vote forced on Theresa May against her wishes is now postponed indefinitely. If she leaves it long enough till the due date of March 29 2019 there’ll be no chance of any Plan-B Norway type deals. It’s my way or the highway – I’m really starting to dislike her more and more.
The chart for the maybe-exit has an Aries Sun exactly opposite her Libra Sun. with the Ascendant/Descendant and Mars in Taurus within orb of the conjunction/opposition to the destructive Fixed Star Algol.
The Sun is opposite the Fixed Star Vindemiatrix, the widow maker, associated with falsity, disgrace, stealing, wanton folly.
And Pluto and the Moon as well as the North Node are in aspect to Procyon, which can raise to great heights and then bring crashing down again. Pluto doesn’t get to the exact aspect until 2021.
Saturn will be exactly opposite the UK 10th house Moon for a sense of loss or separation.
That apart the Sun is square the Jupiter/Pluto midpoint for a surge of confidence and empowerment. And Uranus will be exactly square the UK Jupiter for a feeling relief.
Jupiter is square Neptune for ‘false happiness’ – over confidence.
But who knows? It may come and go as so much in this tediously dragged out shambles has to stretch the agony out for another aeon of time.
I must say this week didn’t have much going for it in terms of the vote – felt like an empty space and so it transpired.
Ivan Rogers baled early on when he could see it was all going to go toes up eventually and hurls blame on all political sides in the UK, which certainly fits the separating Solar Arc Moon (voters) opposition Saturn (legislature) in the UK chart in 2019. In yesterday’s Guardian.
‘Theresa May has been accused of failing to be honest with the public about Brexit by the UK’s former ambassador to the European Union, who warned that “fantasies and delusions on all sides” risk plunging the UK into a democratic crisis.
In an excoriating denunciation of the British political class that goes to the top of government, Ivan Rogers said the Brexit debate had suffered from “opacity, delusion-mongering and mendacity on all sides” and predicted the public would not forgive politicians.
“The whole conduct of the negotiation has further burned through trust in the political class”
He also criticised “a secretive opaque government” that has “repeatedly failed to explain to a wider audience what the real constraints and trade-offs are” to reach the deal the prime minister has struck with the EU.
Criticising some of Labour’s promises on Brexit as implausible, he concludes “too much of our political debate just insults people’s intelligence”.
“We face the biggest political crisis for at least a couple of generations,” he said. “The risks are now both of a democratic crisis and an economic one.
“The public will, understandably, not for a very long time forgive a political class which, on all sides of the divide, fails to level with it on the choices being made.”
Brexit, he stressed, would be a process not an event, invoking the example of Switzerland, which is “in a state of permanent negotiations with the EU about something highly intractable”.
The next stage of Brexit will be “whether Brexit proponents like it or not, a much longer process”.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/13/brexit-delusions-risk-putting-uk-into-crisis-warns-ivan-rogers
Marjorie, that’s not quite right. He didn’t ‘bale’ – he was forced out by Theresa May because she and her chief advisor at the time didn’t like what he was telling them.
Nothing quite so irksome as being proved right amidst the shambles of misjudgments.
A useful and damning precis of Theresa May’s handling of Brexit from Owen Paterson, a former Northern Ireland and Environment Secretary who backed leave in the referendum and laid out his thoughts in his no confidence letter yesterday.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/12/11/have-handed-letter-no-confidence-prime-minister/
May won the No Confidence Vote within her own party tonight. The result effectively means the hard line Tory Brexiteers have shot their bolt since they can’t mount another challenge to her for 12 months under Conservative Party rules. They would have been better advised to wait until Mays Brexit deal was voted down in the Commons before challenging her.
May could still be taken down in a Parliamentary No Confidence vote but I can’t see the DUP voting for that if it puts Corbyn in power, particularly given his stated views on a United Ireland which he reiterated publicly quite recently.
At the moment it looks like a standoff.
Tweets suggest that the ERG wanted to stage the no-confidence vote on Monday, after the PM’s Brussels visit and giving them the weekend to mobilise support. Indeed, there were also rumours that the Commons would not sit next week, to prevent MPs from being in London next week.
However, it seems that either TM or the Whips decided to hurry up the process and intentionally had supportive MPs send in no-confidence letters, to bring forward the vote. Remember, under party rules, once the leader wins a vote of no-confidence, there can be no other vote of no-confidence for one year.
TM is effectively inoculated against party votes of no-confidence for one year.
I believe from what I’ve read that conversations with the Norwegian Prime Minister and the Brexit negotiation team in the UK included his view that any rules on free movement could be “easily got around” if you knew how. (And how many other countries in the EU “get around” the rules when push comes to shove, whereas the British, God Bless ‘Em, like to play by the rules).
A lot of the arguments about how it will all pan out rely heavily on nothing changing anywhere anytime soon. For example, Dover has been heavily congested for at least 20 years and now is not the first point of entry for all goods coming into the UK, Harwich being a much more modern and highly automated port with customs systems which can switch easily from one country’s needs to another by the flip of a switch. So a good third of imports now comes through Harwich and Hull could easily follow suit with suitable investment. The border concerns could be overcome easily if the EU would accept the adoption of computerised systems already used smoothly in the UK/Ireland, and/or America/Canada, but it is not in their interest to do so. What they want is apunitive agreement, and the British, stubborn to the core, will not accept this and will go down with all guns blazing in a No Deal Brexit rather than surrender their sovereignty. Whose fault a No Deal Brexit will be will be good question, but I don’t think it will be just the UK’s.
Well for a start off, the Norwegian Prime minister is a She.
😉
2 points on Brexit: 1. Why does the Eu need a Backstop when there is a perfectly good international agreement between two sovereign states, Ireland and the UK, called the Good Friday Agreement, setting out how borders will be open?, and
2. I wonder if Gina Miller is now feeling a bit like Pandora?? Letting Parliament “have its say” has turned into a series of vetoes on anything put in front of it, which if taken to a logical conclusion will result in a No Deal Brexit.
Marjorie, the only thing I like better than your astrology is the quality of your political acumen. Your sanity is quite an achievement these days. Some days, it can be quite helpful.
Another few bon mots from Tim Stanley in the Tel.
“As my old friend keeps saying: “I think the world is being run by a skeleton staff of idiots”.
“It was Mrs May’s mistakes and bad choices that led her to standing at the Dispatch box before a House largely stacked against her, rambling on about clarity like a high-operating Scientologist. “
Yanis Varoufakis was right at the start – you can’t negotiate with the EU – either stay or leave.
Brexit seems to hinge over the Irish question….though it all might be an elaborate smoke screen…does anything turn up in the Irish Chart to predict which way the wind blows?
Marjorie thank you – is there any way that you can look at John Bercow and see how he relates to the parliamentary leaders, the U.K. and Brexit? Despite his Tory background he seems to veer towards the left more. Thank you
“If she leaves it long enough till the due date of March 29 2019 there’ll be no chance of any Plan-B Norway type deals. It’s my way or the highway – I’m really starting to dislike her more and more.”
So, now “a Norway type deal” is a good thing now in Britain? I love Norway, we have family there. But just because of that, I do not think British people fully realize how special they are. What really bugs even Norwegians is that they conform to practically all EU norms without having a say on them, only true amendment being fishing. They also pay EU for the priviledge, but have a per capita GDP almost a double of that in Britain (and any devoloped country, for that matter). Something British truly may struggle to realize is that they also have a Nordic Free Movement Treaty predating ECC by 2 years. They have extensive landboarder with Sweden and Finland, which are Schengen countries. Gothenburg is only 3 hours from Oslo, Stockholm around 6 hours on good, beautifully paved roads which never get European or British style heavy traffic. Logistics run perfectly, even if the fellow Scandinavians too think Norway is horribly expensive (and I’ve had elderly, retired relatives moving to Finland because of this, their Norwegian pension goes far everywhere).
What I’m saying here is, if a Norwegian style deal was a true option and would not literally bankrupt The UK, it would have been negociated. But, to be clear, after 27 months, the true options remaining were May Deal, No Deal or, ultimately, Remain. If you are fan of this phantomatic “Norway Deal”, you are, ultimately, for Remain, but this is obviously a big step for many people.