Current Affairs EU In or Out

[NilSatisOptimum]

Johnson ready to break the law, as Brexiteers are a bit partial to the musical theme, here is one of my favourites...

'Extraordinary the PM thinks he's above law', says Corbyn in latest Brexit twist | ITV News

The Prime Minister has written to Tory members confirming he will not ask for a Brexit extension despite a new law set to demand it of him. | ITV National News

www.itv.com

 

[Anders_Limpar]

For those who say no deal is not a problem please watch this.

For context Peter Oborne voted to leave and sits very much on the right politically.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I would imagine these stories will become increasingly common:

@Barnfred 55 you were wondering why people are so on edge? You may argue that this is an isolated anecdote, but I don't believe this is isolated at all. People are being put through this for what? So some arbitrary mandarin can decide whether you're suitable to do something you've always been doing? It's wrong. It's practically wrong, it's ethically wrong. Shame on this country for the direction it's gone in.

 

[tsubaki]

For those who say no deal is not a problem please watch this.

For context Peter Oborne voted to leave and sits very much on the right politically.

Oborne is one of the very few journalists who will emerge from these last twenty years with any credit. He predicted where British politics was likely to end up more than ten years ago, has waged a lonely struggle at the Telegraph and now the Mail against the idiocy that is destroying this country, and his cricket writing is excellent.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

For those who say no deal is not a problem please watch this.

For context Peter Oborne voted to leave and sits very much on the right politically.

Goodness, the bloke telling the story of the minibus execution. Utterly heartbreaking.

 

[ToffeeTim]

Well, exactly. That's the entire reason Leave won and we're in this mess - 'Leave' was allowed to become this vague "whatever you want" proposal that could hoover up votes from all the people that wanted a soft Brexit, a hard Brexit, a somewhere-in-the-middle Brexit, a WTO Brexit etc... all without any intention of delivering on multiple incompatible vote-winning outcomes, and at the same time without even being a party that could suffer electoral blowback for being so duplicitous.

If the deal was arranged beforehand (and I know that was impossible given the way A50 works) and put on the ballot paper directly against Remain, with no wiggle room for 'actually we could get this instead' shenanigans, then there's no way Leave would have won as the electorate wouldn't have been led to pin their own fantasy version of Brexit on the vague 'Leave' promise. I've asked on here if people would have voted Leave if May's WA specifically was on the ballot paper against Remain and I never get a straight answer.

I would probably not vote if the only options were remain or May's deal. I don't support either option.

 

[ToffeeTim]

S'pose the thing holding Labour back is a large amount of the elctorate in their seats (especially in the north) voted leave. Where do those voters go if Labour say they're remain (after three years btw of saying they would respect the result of the referendum)?

Lots of these voters have already left labour anyway.

 

[ToffeeTim]

Have you been following what the government have been doing the last few weeks Joe?

They are going well clear in the polls and the opposition are running away from an election.

 

[summerisle]

They are going well clear in the polls and the opposition are running away from an election.

Hung parliament.

 

[Barnfred 55]

@Barnfred 55 you were wondering why people are so on edge? You may argue that this is an isolated anecdote, but I don't believe this is isolated at all. People are being put through this for what? So some arbitrary mandarin can decide whether you're suitable to do something you've always been doing? It's wrong. It's practically wrong, it's ethically wrong. Shame on this country for the direction it's gone in.

Where are you coming from here Bruce? Please don't turn my post into something it isnt.

I called out a poster for being patronising a d condwscending. TTs post was just a point of view expressed in a perfectly reasonable way . It didnt deserve the response it got.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Where are you coming from here Bruce? Please don't turn my post into something it isnt.

I called out a poster for being patronising a d condwscending. TTs post was just a point of view expressed in a perfectly reasonable way . It didnt deserve the response it got.

I meant in relation to our conversations this week about my wife's anxiety around her status in Britain.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

They are going well clear in the polls and the opposition are running away from an election.

As has been shown above, the Tories aren't running away with anything, and are well below the 42% of the vote May won in 2017. The Lib Dems and Brexit Party have emerged as real flies in the ointment of the duopoly. If it shows anything, it's that cooperation and compromise are likely to be the key in the next parliament, which is sadly something the government have shown no ability at.

 

[Barnfred 55]

I would probably not vote if the only options were remain or May's deal. I don't support either option.

I would vote for Mays deal Tim. Not because I think its a good deal but because I believe compromise is the only way to try and bring the country together.

I do agree though that a referendum that ignores the wishes of millions of voters is bot democratic

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I would vote for Mays deal Tim. Not because I think its a good deal but because I believe compromise is the only way to try and bring the country together.

I do agree though that a referendum that ignores the wishes of millions of voters is bot democratic

I don't really see what's contentious about May's deal tbh. It's a withdrawal arrangement that basically says we have a transition period whereby we still contribute to the EU budget and ensure both sets of citizen's rights are protected during that period, and have a backstop insurance policy to ensure that the Good Friday Agreement is a priority during that transition period.

It doesn't touch on the future relationship whatsoever, so if that withdrawal agreement is so contentious then good luck trying to secure any kind of future relationship with the EU that meets any Brexiters approval.

 

[Xizor]

I do agree though that a referendum that ignores the wishes of millions of voters is bot democratic

The problem being that any specific Leave deal will also be ignoring the wishes of potentially millions of Leave voters, as Tim alluded to in the post you quoted. There's an excellent précis of the situation in the latest Chris Grey blog:

As ever, it is important to recall the bigger picture to avoid getting entirely lost in the swirl of events. Within that, what remains the irreducible core of the crisis is the fact that voting to leave the EU was not a vote for any particular way of doing so – a result of the deliberate strategy of the Vote Leave Campaign as devised by one Dominic Cummings.

It is this which continues to make our politics impossible because it means that the concept of ‘delivering Brexit’ is as meaningless as the accusation of ‘betraying Brexit’. All versions of Brexit – from the soft Brexit that some expected, to May’s hard Brexit deal that was rejected by MPs, to the no-deal Brexit that is now threatened - can all equally well be regarded as delivering it or as betraying it.

What has made things doubly impossible is the insistence that there is an inviolable democratic principle at stake because of the Referendum vote. This automatically sets up a failure of democracy given that any particular form of honouring the vote also betrays it. Moreover, since the form of delivery can only be decided by the democratically elected parliament, democracy has been weaponised against itself.

None of this is a function of there being a ‘remainer parliament’. Exactly the same dynamic would be present if every MP had been a lifelong Brexiter, because they would still have to decide on a form of Brexit which by definition could only be one of those that Brexit could take and therefore at odds with what at least some who voted for Brexit in the referendum had expected.