our view from the man in a shed

There's an attempt to freshen the content for Cameron's memoirs.

So much has happened since he triggered the Referendum and Tory psychodrama that crashed the UK, it is not surprising he can't sleep at nights.

At least he has a choice of venue, with his Cotswold home and the west London one. Then there's his £25,000 shepherd's hut designed for writing, yet he preferred the garden. Or, come to think of it, the second shepherd's hut on his £2 million Cornwall holiday home.

In this recent publicity interview, he has called out Gove as mendacious, Johnson as appalling and acting with 'sharp practices' and that the Referendum campaign left him caught in a quagmire. That the pair of them "left the truth at home," when campaigning for Brexit. Hardly insightful.

"I think about this every day. Every single day I think about it, the referendum and the fact that we lost and the consequences and the things that could have been done differently, and I worry desperately about what is going to happen next."

Cameron accuses Gove of creating the false narrative (like Turkey or the NHS bus) although I suspect that Gove's assistant Dominic Cummings was significantly influential. He also mentioned that he offered Boris a top-five job to support him. Would Boris have behaved differently if it had been top-three?

Cameron's already received the HarperCollins reported £800,000 for the right to publish his memoirs. No wonder he can give away the profits from the book and audio.

the littlest yellowhammers sing the prettiest song?

Tap turns on the water. See the water flow. As the old CCS song goes.

Now we've got the new CCS being authorised and budgeted. The Civil Contingencies Secretariat.

Acorn makes a forest. Watch the forest grow.



The justification and financing of the CCS is so that the short term impacts of No Deal can be handled, from ND D1 onwards. Yellowhammer says it is for short term and unusually has been granted power to suspend normal legislation in emergency situations. Maybe Boris is jumping the gun on this one somewhat? Once the peak of chaos is over, the DExEU swings into action and runs the long game.


Everything works in PowerPoint, as they say.

What I'm interested in seeing is the risk register, which should show mitigations for the main areas. Instead we have an allocation of risk assignment to other Departments sprinkled around the Civil Service.


It's clever, because it also has three cross cutting areas of responsibility covering legal, communications and data. There's plenty of lines and gaps to fall down, even before we get to the politics of who can tell what to whom.

Pass the hot potato parcel, anyone? It's not clear from the diagram how something gets placed into YellowHammer or DExEU.

There's a gap instead of overlap between the two areas on the diagrams. Maybe this will all be resolved amicably in the case of any surfacing emergencies?



Particularly noteworthy is the choice of language used to describe the CCS role. Advice, guidance and facilitation. In the type of crisis being portrayed, this doesn't seem strong enough, but I suppose the other Departments don't want to be messed with?


It appears that the decisions from the CCS can be communicated not only through the communications hub, but also through the liaison teams to the operational centres. I can see this governance model working in a steady state, but perhaps less so in a volatile one? Maybe someone should illustrate who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed as well as communicated to?


At least there are some guiding principles, to aid the decisions and direction setting. I'm not sure that it is enough though, even if Mr Gove is definitively saying that it is?


The yellowhammer is an unmistakeable yellow-headed and pretty bird, singing from the tops of trees and bushes. Sometimes the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs.

mad boris

No wonder everyone is twitchy. Comic book mad Boris has tapped authority to sanction via arbitrary decree, relying on absolute authority to enforce. It is, as Mr Bercow implied, rule by fiat. The deceptive clown is borrowing from the Presidential model, as exploited by the big twit of the United States.

He's probably got there under guidance from the shadowy one.

The Tories haven't woken up yet to the thought that shadester Cummings believes huge amounts of what the Tories did was wrong. Not least of which was the hurried invocation of Article 50. Cummings has been exploiting the dysfunctional wiring of power in Downing Street and was one of the early ones to call out that the state had made no preparations to leave and planned to make no preparations to leave even after leaving.

Some of that has been revised now, with Gove's appointment and DeExEU chugging out papers on borders, security and Ireland. We must not forget the Brexit checker tick-box system, which auto lists other useful documents.

I tried it for TheSixTwenty and look at what we've received.

Dive into it and there's soon a complexity of semiconductor topology patents and uniformity of EU geo-handling (Don't Geo-block a country). Then there's UKCA (UK Conformity Assessment) - which is a new thing. I assume that CE will still work? Ah yes..."The CE marking will only be accepted in the UK for a time limited period. The government will consult and give businesses notice before this period ends." No hint of dates?

It reminds me of the consultancy process to generate a thin book and a fat book. The fat book has alll the facts and figures in it to support the thin book. I'd hazard a guess that the fat book has to justify its production fee of around £nK per page.

Cummings has gone on to say (to the Tories): "It also increases the probability that others will conclude your party is incapable of coping with this situation and, unless it changes fast, drastic action will be needed including the creation of new forces to reflect public contempt for both the main parties and desire for a political force that reflects public priorities."

Mwah,ha,ha, as a villain might say.

So now we get Mr Speaker diving in. Blockbuster ending, anyone?

Pass the popcorn (CE approved).

strong and stable

We've had a few crazy days with the aspiring strong and stable Parliament. Buffooning Boris is being taken to court for his ducking and diving associated with closing Parliament. So much for the will of the people and democratic processes.

No wonder most of the other parties are so guarded around the lies of progress in the negotiation and the thought that Boris might simply hoodwink everyone to get Brexit passed.

But where to start? The pound? The stock market? British industry? Let's take a look.

The Pound hasn't done so well, dropping from 1.69 to around 1.22 against the dollar.

Maybe the stock market has fared better? Or maybe not. Here is the FTSE100 compared with the DAX and the S&P400.

I seem to remember I summarised British industry in January 2019. Slip slidin' away.

1. JPMorgan Chase & Co chief executive Jamie Dimon said the bank would probably use Frankfurt as the legal domicile of its European operations after Brexit, though jobs could be put elsewhere as well.
2. HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver confirmed possible plans to move 1,000 jobs from Britain to Paris in case of a so-called "hard" Brexit, and said recent reforms from the French government would be positive, if enacted.
3. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are planning to spread their operations across a number of cities including Dublin and Paris.
4. Lloyds, Standard Chartered, Credit Suisse, Citigroup and Nomura are among the banks that are planning to expand or set up new offices in Frankfurt in light of Brexit.
5. Hubertus Väth, the managing director of Frankfurt Main Finance said: “All in all, we expect a transfer of €750bn to €800bn in assets from London to Frankfurt, the majority of which will be transferred in the first quarter of 2019.”
6. Nomura Holdings has set up new offices for certain operations in Paris and Frankfurt as part of its Brexit preparations, but says it headquarters remain in London.
7. Other Japanese firms, including Daiwa Securities and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, plan to move their main EU bases out of London.
8. Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the CBI, said the failure to sort out Britain’s departure from the European Union was damaging Britain’s brand abroad and had joined a list of systemic risks to the world economy.
9. Ford has predicted that a no-deal Brexit will result in costs of $800m (£612m) during 2019 alone, in the latest in a series of stark warnings over potential disruption to British manufacturing.
10. The Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis has said it is stockpiling drugs in the UK before a possible no-deal Brexit, which it warned would be “hugely impactful” for patients.
11. Jaguar Land Rover, the UK’s largest carmaker, informed employees that it will shut down its four main factories for extra time because of “potential Brexit disruption”.
12. Airbus manufactures aircraft wings in the UK and employs 14,000 people in the country. Chief executive Enders stated: “It is a disgrace that, more than two years after the result of the 2016 referendum, businesses are still unable to plan properly for the future.”
13. The BBC is considering Brussels as the location for a new EU base after Brexit to allow it to continue to broadcast across the continent.
14. Sony will move its European headquarters from the UK to the Netherlands to avoid disruptions caused by Brexit.
15. Panasonic has already moved its headquarters to Amsterdam, mostly because of tax issues potentially created by Brexit.
16. BMW plans to shut its Mini plant for a month after the UK’s official departure from the European Union, to minimise the impact of a no-deal Brexit that it fears would cause a shortage of parts.

It's hardly stable, despite Gove's claims that everything will be fine if there's a No Deal Brexit.

Similar stories of uncertainty in the House too, with shambolic scenes intended to echo the time of King Charles I, when members held the Speaker in his chair to delay ending the session.

A glance at certain commonplace pub names would remind us that it didn't end well for the Ruler.