As a Freelance Parliamentary correspondent I hate to do this, but the Guardian, the Independent & others need to be questioned about their editing when it comes to #Brexit. They have as distinct a bias against it as the rabid Right wing press does for it. Today they jumped the shark. It’s all semantics.
As has repeatedly been stated in the Commons ‘Sectoral analyses’ (a compilation of information of what is) were not ‘impact assessments’ (a compilation of information of what might happen). for the last several weeks in the Commons and in the select committees the idea that these were ‘impact studies’ has been corrected every time the words ‘impact studies’ were used.
You’ll note that in the full viewing of David Davis’ appearance infront of the Select Committee lead by Hilary Benn he doesn’t use the words ‘impact studies’ once. He uses the words ‘sectoral analyses’, because that’s what Parliament asked for… They asked for ‘sectoral analyses’. According to the Tory defence they didn’t ask for impact studies. The reason they didn’t ask for ‘impact studies’ is because no government ever wants to publish their impact studies – as it tends to be data which is usually a threat to general government narrative at all times, ie “everything’s cool, relax, please, for the love of God, don’t panic.”
Make no mistake, everything is not cool. People should panic. The Tories are totally incompetent, but on this specific point the anti Corbyn Pro EU Blairites MPs were banking on the general ignorance of parliamentary procedures to get this narrative through. And until 35 minutes ago it worked. Now even the Guardian has to admit this was a fuss over nothing. Hilary Benn will not be writing to the speaker asking for contempt proceedings against David Davis.
In the full sitting of the edited clip this morning that was doing the #FakeNews rounds, you would see other committee members repeatedly state that assessing Brexit’s impact was ‘unquantifiable’ – because it is. Brexit is a leap in the dark. Davis hasn’t lied about not doing his homework. He handed in what he was legislated to hand in. Like a sneaky Tory he left out every single shred of possible useful information. Saying that, he handed in about as much information as Keir Starmer would have handed had Labour won the snap election.
I must say, it was strange to see Corbyn supporters like Another Angry Voice and the like supporting the Pro EU Blairite’s & Hillary Benn’s #FakeNews narrative.
Because make no mistake, with the NEC elections being hotly contended, the fight for the direction the Labour Party takes is still on. The Pro EU Blairite anti Corbyn brigade are now in reckless desperation mode – as their hysteria over Brexit shows. They don’t care if Labour get painted as the pro EU Party. They don’t care if the side effect of that is that they will easily be painted as the anti UK party. As far as the Blairites are concerned the worst that can happen is that the Labour Party crashes and burns – which was the EXACT result they were trying to get in the snap General Election.
You see the end game of this whole Brexit hysteria on the part of the Pro EU Blairites is to revisit the idea and turn it on the Tony Bennite raised John McDonnell & Jeremy Corbyn that they are not ‘Remain enough’. Corbyn & McDonnell meanwhile, being actually connected to the Working Class know being seen as too pro EU, and therefor not Pro UK, will lose them the working class vote. But the NeoLiberal Blairites have never cared about the Working Class vote, so why would they start now, when they are at their most desperate?
All the way through these debates, at select committee and in the commons, there has been a debate over semantics, with the pro EU MPs calling these documents ‘impact studies’ and the government calling them ‘sectoral analysis’, and the whole time watching it has been annoying as they have this semantic back and forth, every debate, about whether it is an ‘impact assessment’ or whether it is a ‘sectoral analysis’, the government saying the latter, the opposition saying the former.
Point being no complaint has been made by the Select Committee Chair Hillary Benn to the Speaker of the house, therefor, not even he thinks there’s anything wrong here, save he hasn’t had all the information he wanted. He’s just happy hacks are willing to edit out the actual answers to his questions.
Chris Leslie jumped the gun on this stuff last week. He basically got stuck when the government said to him that during Brexit the government can say ‘certain data will hurt our position in the Brexit negotiations: national interest’, because at least in some cases that’s obviously true, and say they’ve given a broad amount of information which is more than sufficient. IF Labour insist for more, they look like they are working for the EU, against the ‘National interest’.
It isn’t sufficient information. It’s meaningless fluff from the public record, but still. The Blairites are basically demanding from the govt:
“Tell us what is going to happen after Brexit! Tell us NOW!”
And when the Tories say
“we can’t predict the future, we’re still negotiating”
the Pro EU Blairites say
“AHA! you’re incompetent.”
Now, as it happens, the Tories are incompetent. But that doesn’t mean the Blairites are right.
David Davis knew what he was doing when he said :
“there are no impact studies, we agreed to publish sectoral analyses.”
Watch the whole thing. Davis basically mic drops and leaves. The Blairites havent suddenly become good at debates. They’re just as shit as they were during the Referendum. This whole thing is spin based on very edited clips, as the speaker said when this was brought up in points of order.
So there’s a lot of bs on both sides about this. Just remember ‘Sectoral analyses’ (a compilation of information of what is) are not ‘impact assessments’ (a compilation of information of what might happen).
The pro EU Blairite inability to win the debate & the argument was evident again today on this, as was their ability to spin a false line afterwards. They fell for the Tory linguistic cul de sac, the semantics. Corbyn, McDonnell & company can win the debates – but it won’t matter if the pro EU Blairites & NeoLiberals have convinced the Working Classes we were traitors during the #Brexit negotiations.
Mapped as a General Election leave won over 400 seats. We cannot afford for those 17.4 million voters to vote Tory for the rest of their lives. The NHS won’t survive that. The Labour Party won’t survive that.
People keep talking about the £350 million on the NHS like anyone believes a word a politician said in that Referendum campaign – on either side. Brexit voters always knew it was going to cost to do this. There’s a point where this hysterical nonsense actually works for the Tories – because the normal, non politics people just think we’re all constantly making a fuss – which means the Tory’s rank incompetence goes mostly unnoticed.
Did you know there’s a £30 billion gap in the latest Tory budget? Where’s that story?
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