I’m on by-election duty for ALDC tonight. And the first result of the night’s six by-elections was a cracker.

Great result from Durham’s Esh and Witten Gilbert ward. Bev Coult holds seat for @libdems with 62% of the vote, up 9.5%

Lib Dem Bev Coult: 1115
Lab: 366
Indi: 155
Con: 128

— ALDC (@ALDC) March 21, 2019

Nicely done, Bev. Congratulations to you and your team.

And in Southend on Sea, there was an advance of nearly 10% for Carol White:

Strong result in the Milton ward in Southend on Sea for Carol White – up nearly 10%.

LAB: 49.9% (+4.7)
CON: 31.6% (+5.3)
LDEM: 13.1% (+9.7)
FBM: 5.3% (+5.3)

— ALDC (@ALDC) March 21, 2019

And great to be standing a candidate in Thurroci:

Well done to Tomas Pilvelis our @thurrocklibdems candidate in the Aveley and Uplands by-eleciton.

This was a Conservative gain for Independents.

CON: 43.6% (+16.4)
TIND: 31.1% (-12.1)
LAB: 22.2% (-1.5)
LDEM: 3.1% (+3.1)

— ALDC (@ALDC) March 21, 2019

There were two by-elections with no Lib Dem candidate.

Here’s the first result.

Labour hold in Vange (Basildon). No @libdems candidate

LAB: 51.3% (+10.1)
CON: 48.7% (+27.2)

— ALDC (@ALDC) March 21, 2019

And the second:

Independents gain from Labour in Newcastle under Lyme.

IND: 40.3% (+23.2)
LAB: 38.3% (-13.9)
UKIP: 12.3% (+2.6)
CON: 7.0% (-8.3)
SDP: 2.0% (+2.0)

via @britainelects

— ALDC (@ALDC) March 21, 2019

One more to come – Dalgarno ward in Kensington and Chelsea where Alexandra Tatton-Brown is flying the Lib Dem flag.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings

Speaker John Bercow has thrown his biggest curve ball yet at the Brexit process, moving to block the Government bringing back another Meaningful Vote to the Commons. Bercow said the Government must now meet the test of “substantial changes” in order for a new meaningful vote motion to be tabled. His rationale for allowing MV2 was that it “could credibly be argued that it was a different proposition” from the first. Suddenly the Speaker has decided that he cares about Erskine May. Picking and choosing which parts of the constitution to respect as he pleases… 

However no-dealers’ celebrations at Bercow’s decision may be premature. May will now need to seek substantive changes from the EU to hold MV3. There is no guarantee that those changes will be in the right direction…

The post Bercow Blocks Third Meaningful Vote appeared first on Guido Fawkes.

The horrifying abuse faced by Joan Ryan has, unsurprisingly, attracted outrage. However this wasn’t the only shocking element in the Daily Mail’s latest piece on Labour and antisemitism.  An account of a meeting, held to support Marc Wadsworth, and which featured Chris Williamson as a leading speaker, contained some disturbing detail:

Dave Rich pointed out on Twitter that Chris Williamson’s own comments constituted ‘dog-whistle conspiracy talk’.

Certain dark forces are using their power, using their contacts in the media, in order to take out key allies like Marc and others from the struggle.

However most shocking was this report of a Labour councillor’s comments:

Another Labour councillor drew laughs with a series of comments in which she suggested the term ‘due process’ should be dubbed ‘Jew process’ and also swapped Labour’s ‘For the many not the few’ slogan to ‘For the many as well as bad for the Jews’.

As with parallel problems on Facebook and Twitter the problem isn’t so much that one person says something vile – but that others (assuming this is accurately reported) find such remarks not merely acceptable, but funny.

The predictable response from Remainers to Tusk’s hell comments yesterday was naturally to agree with him, while again peddling the myth that Brexit campaigners didn’t have a plan. They did…

While it is correct to say that Vote Leave made the strategic decision not to publish a full-on white paper-style plan to avoid getting it filleted Salmond-style, Vote Leave did nonetheless publish considerable detail on what Brexit should look like*, including leaving the single market, regaining an independent trade policy and immediately guaranteeing EU citizens’ rights unilaterally. Also central to their plan was a three-phase framework for how to approach the negotiations, including multiple warnings against triggering Article 50. Ivan Rogers fans eat your heart out…

One prominent former Leave campaigner has penned a pithy response to Tusk which more or less sums up the UK’s current predicament:

Dear Tusk,
Lucky for you the MPs did every single thing the opposite to what Vote Leave said.
You were celebrating when Number 10 triggered Article 50 without a plan or a clue.
If they’d followed the Vote Leave plan and started making preparations to leave without triggering Article 50, you would have been stuffed.
Negotiating with Vote Leave would have been like running into a mincing machine, they’d have kicked you down the street like they did Cameron and Blair.

Then Gove backstabbed Boris, and the rest is history…

*Not to mention the thousand-page magnum opus Change or Go published by Vote Leave’s predecessor Business for Britain…

The post Tusk vs Vote Leave’s “Mincing Machine” appeared first on Guido Fawkes.

In September Guido reported on the mysterious circumstances of the ‘Corbyn Cab’, a which had campaigned without an MOT, hurriedly passed an MOT and then one month later spectacularly failed its MOT with fourteen major defects.

Now Councillor Jayne Innes, who was pictured with the cab, has faced questions over her own personal car which has been pictured in the council car park on multiple occasions and has no MOT. Today she has resigned her post as Cabinet Member for City Services on Coventry Council. Innes, who has previously stood as a Labour Parliamentary candidate, maintains the resignation is not to do with the questions raised over the legality of her driving. Convenient, abrupt, normal resignation…

The post Guido Scalp: ‘Corbyn Cab’ Councillor Resigns appeared first on Guido Fawkes.

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The “Norway” option of staying in the EEA was one of the first to be ruled out after the referendum – among other issues it doesn’t allow the UK to end free movement and would mean the UK remaining subject to vast swathes of EU law in perpetuity. Although much the same could be said about Chequers…

However, the suggestion of using the EEA as a staging post during the transition period has regained some traction after senior Tory MP Nick Boles made a renewed call over the weekend for the UK to seek temporary membership of the EEA, to give the government time to negotiate a new relationship with the EU and avoid what he calls the “humiliation” of Chequers. Boles is very close to Michael Gove – has the Environment Secretary gone cold on Chequers after taking the heat from angry local party members over the summer break?

It won’t work for several reasons. If the UK had announced it was seeking to maintain EEA membership two years ago, it’s possible that the EU would have agreed to it. At this stage in the negotiations it’s unlikely the EU will accept any EEA-style deal unless the UK also commits to remaining in the customs union. As we’ve seen time and time again in the negotiations, the EU simply pockets any British concessions and then continues demanding more…

And while Boles’ well-intentioned plan only views the EEA as a short-term stop, many Brexiteers are understandably worried that once the UK gets in, the inertia of the EEA will prove too great to overcome and Britain will end up staying in on a permanent basis, with all the disadvantages that brings. If the Brexit negotiations are still a mess after March next year, that will at least be a strong incentive for both sides to keep negotiating until a sustainable long-term solution is found. Once Britain has been safely bound up in the trap of the EEA, the EU will have no incentive to come back to the table…

As Boris’ column this morning pointed out, there are still over two years until the end of the transition period – time which can be used to negotiate a better alternative to Chequers. With the exception of the Irish backstop, the Withdrawal Agreement itself should not lock the UK in to any particular type of future relationship. Provided the UK does not give in to the EU’s demands on the Irish backstop, there is no need to make a desperate dash for the EEA option. It’s not too late to put a comprehensive Canada-plus deal back on the table…

The post Norway Is No Way Out of Euro Limbo appeared first on Guido Fawkes.

The EU Council endorsed the new proposals for European Parliament seats after 2019. The 73 UK seats disappear, with an overall reduction of 46 seats. Germany at 96 (n/c), France at 79 (plus 5) and Italy at 76 (plus 3) will be the largest in the new Parliament out of a total of 705. It shows that some of the planning for the UK exit soon is progressing.

The 27 agreed a line on Brexit which is far from friendly to the UK. They are only holding out the hope of some “political declaration” about the future relationship, yet seem to expect the UK to sign up to the very one sided Withdrawal Agreement they have in mind nonetheless. To make that worse they are still insisting on some “back stop” for the Irish border, which is their way of trying to get the UK back into the Customs Union we voted to leave. The UK would be wise to point out we have no need to sign any Withdrawal Agreement unless there is a really good proposal for the future which would offset the penal terms of their Withdrawal document.

The Cabinet will be seeking to hammer out a more detailed proposal on the future relationship at their meeting at the end of next week at Chequers. I trust they will recognise the so called New Customs Partnership is badly holed, and was rejected by the Brexit Cabinet Committee when last examined. They should also veto any idea of ending up in a version of the customs union and or single market just for goods. The EU is the big winner from the current goods arrangements, so the UK has no need to pay to continue those arrangements, and must ensure it takes back control of its laws and trade policy when we leave.

I repeat my advice to the government. Table a comprehensive free trade agreement for goods and services. If the EU is well disposed, then negotiate over it. If the EU is not, then just leave without signing any Withdrawal Agreement The government says all is going well with plans to leave with No Deal, so lets make sure the EU know that. So far the EU has turned down every constructive UK suggestion. They have even managed to turn a very generous UK offer on defence and security into a UK demand they cannot meet!

These caveats aside, the clear conclusion is that we’re really, really, getting our GDP numbers wrong. Or to be more precise, the numbers might be accurate, but they are a horrible guide to what we’re really trying to measure. What we want to know is ‘how rich are we? How close with popping with the pleasure of it all are we, being alive in this very digital dawn?’.

In economic terms the best we can do here is to estimate the value we get to consume. As a proxy for that – and we really must note that it’s a proxy – we measure GDP, which is value created at market prices. This is a problem when there’s no direct market value for something. As Google’s chief economist Hal Varian has said, GDP has a problem with free.

Latest from @GuidoFawkes Corbyn Tonight Met Far-Left Group Who Called For Destruction of Israel and Attacked Critics as "Non-Jews" https://t.co/7JBC6uQfgS via

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) April 2, 2018

And David Herdson’s right – one of the attendees has leaked this

Corbyn meets with political extremists is hardly news. What is interesting is that someone's leaked the picture here, presumably to damage Corbyn. Question is: is it a member of Jewdas, someone on his own team, or a third party? There can't be many suspects. https://t.co/xiMHzutuEP

— David Herdson (@DavidHerdson) April 2, 2018

Mike Smithson

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In a fast-moving plot, yet another twist. The Labour front bench has used the urgent question put down to ask David Davis about yesterday’s Brussels mess-up to announce a fundamental shift in its own policy.

Sir Keir Starmer told the government that now was the time to put membership of the customs union AND the single market back on the table. It could have big significance for the future.

The possibility of staying in the Customs Union had been creeping back into Labour’s policy options (despite the best efforts of the Shadow International Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner). The Single Market had not been brought back into acceptable policy options. David Davis pointed out that John McDonnell had been among those on the Labour front bench who had ruled out continuing membership of the single market as a betrayal of referendum voters. The fact that John McDonnell was sitting on the front bench to hear the words shows this was no slip of the tongue.

The point of the UQ was to ask the government what was going on after the DUP had effectively pulled the plug on yesterday’s negotiations.

The DUP’s Nigel Dodds told MPs that the Irish government had shown an aggressive, anti-unionist face and behaved disgracefully. He said repairing relations would take a long time and the preferred approach of Dublin would be economically catastrophic. He didn’t sound like a man who was necessarily working to the same “I could be back on Wednesday” timetable that Theresa May was suggesting in Brussels yesterday.

Mr Dodds will be one of 3 DUP MPs who meet with the government later today, to talk through where things go next. Damian Green wasn’t at the last such meeting last Thursday, which appears to have been with the newly appointed Chief Whip, Julian Smith. It’s not clear who they will face across the table today but it is not expected to be the PM herself. Arlene Foster will remain in Northern Ireland for the moment.

A source said, “there’s no chance of anything before Christmas,” which would be a major blow to the PM’s ability to keep a grip on her job. Much now depends on getting the DUP down from the ceiling they hit yesterday lunchtime. “It won’t be easy,” one longstanding Northern Ireland nationalist politician said; “the government opened a veto bar up in front of a bunch of veto-holics,” he said.

Follow @GaryGibbonBlog on Twitter

Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin welcomed grateful mass torturer and killer Bashar al-Assad in Sochi.

Putin did more than anyone to keep the butcher Assad in power.

Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, the Black Sea and a balcony corner of the Bocharov Ruchey State residence in Sochi, a favorite of the Kremlin head. You can also see one of Putin’s many luxury watches peeking out from under his shirt, this one perhaps a Blancpain $10,000 piece, one that is often spotted on his wrist, according to activists.

Yet the context is as important as the timing. On Wednesday Putin is due to welcome Iran’s Hassan Rouhani and Turkey Recip Tayyip Erdogan — a noticeably small list of guests that leaves out the US and Europe — to the same Black Sea resort to discuss a political settlement in Syria.

That brave Syrians (at least those who are still alive) who took to the streets peacefully in 2011 to oppose Assad’s regime, only to be met with brutal repression, are now faced with a “settlement” imposed by these creeps makes me extremely sad.

And the failure of the US and Europeans to sufficiently support the Syrians who have opposed both Assad and the Islamic State makes me sadder still.

Richard Radcliffe is doing everything in his power to free his wife, and everyone in his position would do the same. Tulip Siddiq took a very partisan tone in the Commons when she had a go at Boris today for his sloppy language a week ago in front of a Select Committee. Be in no doubt that Siddiq has exploited voters’ natural sympathy for the Nazanin case for partisan purposes.

Above is a letter that was delivered to constituents during the recent general election. It is an official Labour Party leaflet sent in the name of Richard Radcliffe urging voters to vote for Tulip Siddiq. There’s something distasteful about Tulip Siddiq’s exploitation of voter sympathy for an innocent woman held prisoner overseas for partisan purposes.

Learn how you can support the Free Nazanin campaign

The post Siddiq Has Exploited Nazanin Case for Partisan Purposes Before appeared first on Guido Fawkes.

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