Brexit - The UK referendum on leaving the EU - Reneging, reshmeging!

[Maggie5]

The hard core Brexiteers are no different to Abbott and co here. If they don't get their own way they're prepared to tear down the whole thing. I feel for May, she's not dealing with rational people.

I feel for her too. She was in the 'remain' group if I recall correctly. Where is the plan the 'leave/exit' group had?
What a mess.

This all sounds very Trumpian with the Health plan ready to go as soon as he became President. 2 years on with both houses, still nothing.

 

[Badesumofu]

That's not an option though is it?
It's 2 years - hard or soft Brexit

There was talk of extending Article 50 in Parliament today. I'm guessing it's possible to extend the negotiations but May ruled that out along with ruling out another referendum. Her position seems to be both inflexible and likely to lead to a no-deal Brexit. I expect she'll either have to back down or she'll be pushed out.

 

[The Warlord]

Yes they did.

Shall we do this all day?

Nah, coz you're wrong.

 

[Mofra]

There was talk of extending Article 50 in Parliament today. I'm guessing it's possible to extend the negotiations but May ruled that out along with ruling out another referendum. Her position seems to be both inflexible and likely to lead to a no-deal Brexit. I expect she'll either have to back down or she'll be pushed out.

May might still get rolled and a new leader promising to extend Article 50 could sweep in, but it's unlikely.

For all the bluster of May's opponents it seems they seem to know it's a total shitshow with so many important questions still unanswered (i.e. the Irish border)

 

[Bomberboyokay]

The hard core Brexiteers are no different to Abbott and co here. If they don't get their own way they're prepared to tear down the whole thing.

That's why - putting Labour's election ambitions aside - Remainers should support the deal more than Leavers. If they stay in EU alignment something like membership could be salvaged years down the track. Far right Conservatives don't want that. It's easier for them to build a no tax, no regulation, anti-worker state from the ashes. They do not care about the human cost. And if they can force that reality, the UK will be out of EU alignment for generations.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

The Brexiteers only have themselves to blame for the UK’s disastrous fate

15 NOVEMBER 2018
BY GEORGE EATON

The problem is not that Theresa May has failed to deliver on Leave’s promises, but that they were undeliverable all along.

Every failed project needs a scapegoat. In Theresa May, the Brexiteers have found theirs. Jacob Rees-Mogg – who has previously maintained a Tony Benn-like distinction between personalities and issues – has warned that “the policy and the individual” have become “intimately connected”. Boris Johnson has denounced the Prime Minister’s “total surrender” to Brussels. Even Nick Timothy, May’s former chief of staff and fiercely loyal ally, has accused her of a “capitulation” and of never believing Brexit could “be a success”. Et tu, Brute?

All of this merely distracts from where the blame truly lies: with the Brexiteers themselves. The problem is not that May has failed to deliver on the Leave campaign’s promises – the problem is that no prime minister could have done so. In 2016, the Brexiteers vowed to end free movement, retain the economics benefits of EU membership, withdraw the UK from the customs union and avoid a hard Irish border – aims that were inherently irreconcilable.

Theresa May has played a bad hand badly – she squandered her parliamentary majority in an unnecessary election and carelessly alienated EU leaders – but a bad hand it always was. From the moment that she reaffirmed Leave’s pledge to avoid a hard Irish border, a softer Brexit became inevitable. None of the alleged “technological” solutions offered by Leavers have ever been credible. The only certain way to prevent a hard border is for the UK to indefinitely remain in a customs union.

The Brexiteers’ true quarrel is not with May but with reality. On 11 July 2016, David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, wrote that within two years the UK could “negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU”. As recently as 20 July 2017, Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, predicted that a new British trade deal with the EU would be “one of the easiest in human history”.

Such hopes were always delusional. The UK never held “the best cards” in the negotiations. The threat of “no deal” – a supposed masterstroke - was never credible. As the EU well knows, it is Britain that has the most to lose from this outcome (an estimated loss of 8 per cent of GDP compared to the EU’s 1.5 per cent). Again, the Brexiteers chide May for failing to adequately “prepare” for no deal. But the notion that the UK could ever successfully manage the upheaval that would result – punitive tariffs, medical shortages, grounded flights, chaos at ports and on roads – is fantastical.

Others pointed to Britain’s large trade deficit with the EU. But as Carlo Calenda, the former Italian minister for economic development, replied to Boris Johnson when warned “you don’t want to lose Prosecco exports”: “I’ll sell less Prosecco to one country and you’ll sell less to 27 countries.”

For this reason, among others, it is the UK that has been forced to capitulate: agreeing to pay a “divorce bill” of €40bn to €45bn before a new trade deal has been reached, and pledging to abide by all EU laws and regulations until at least December 2020 as part of a transition period.

Article 50 was triggered recklessly early in March 2017, before the cabinet had even reached agreement on the UK’s negotiating aims (nearly two years later, it still hasn’t). Ever since, the EU has been able to exploit internecine warfare on the British side as the clock runs down. But the problem has never merely been one of time but of substance. Undeliverable promises were always undeliverable.

Johnson and other Brexiteers now lament that May’s proposed deal is worse even than EU membership – but the delusion was to believe that it could ever be superior. A soft Brexit would sacrifice political sovereignty –with the UK becoming a rule-taker, rather than a rule-maker – while a hard Brexit would sacrifice economic prosperity.

Faced with this choice, the UK has been routinely accused of wishing to “have its cake and eat it”. The irony is that it was already doing so. Britain enjoyed formal opt-outs from the euro (the only member state other than Denmark to do so) and the borderless Schengen Zone, and a £4.9bn budget rebate.

Brexiteers are left to assert what my colleague Jonn Elledge has called“the Tinkerbell theory”: the insistence that only a lack of belief, a lack of faith, has held the UK back. “The moment you doubt whether you can fly,” J M Barrie wrote, “You cease for ever to be able to do it.”

In 2016, the Brexiteers had the chance to prove that they could fly. But faced with the prospect of power – and responsibility – Boris Johnson and Michael Gove self-imploded. On the morning after the EU referendum, they resembled men who – having boasted that they could fly – disastrously failed to sprout wings. Power, though, would merely have taught them the lesson paralysing the May government: that the greatest enemy of Brexit is Brexit.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politi...ly-have-themselves-blame-uk-s-disastrous-fate

 

[The Speaker]

You're spreading misinformation. The referendum does not constitutionally obligate the UK government to do anything. UK law doesn't work like that. This is why Scottish National Party and Liberal Democrats MPs are still openly opposed to Brexit but nobody's calling them anti-consitution.

No misinformation on my part. While they are not literally bound to any decision made in a referendum, constitutionally they are expected to follow the will of the people. This is why Remain supporters are so desperately pushing for a second referendum.

The truth is, the British system is ill-equipped to handle referenda, particularly for such an all-encompassing issue.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

The so-called will of the people has proven impossible to implement.

 

[The Speaker]

The so-called will of the people has proven impossible to implement.

That is a different argument to whether it is constitutional to ignore it.

 

[Crankyhawk]

What would a hard core no deal brexit look like?

My assumptions
- completely severing from EU including all trade agreements and payments to EU members (the 40 to 45b euro mentioned)
- no payments for European pensions in the UK
- prices of goods likely to go up from scarcity (until new imports could be established- not sure how long)
- hard border checks
- maybe even chuck Northern Ireland back to a Ireland as a single country then they can choose to manage their own version of GFA

Would such a scenario be better for Britain compared to what may negotiated?

 

[King Elvis]

The Brexiteers only have themselves to blame for the UK’s disastrous fate

Bingo, they want all of the good and none of the bad.

May was never going to deliver - and should’ve never tried.

Shows how ****ed the entire process was - voting on something with no actual framework, just the idea, was moronic.

 

[The Warlord]

The UK voted to leave, with its government making contradictory promises to different parties (I.e. no to a customs union and a hard border). In some regards this deal is actually quite reflective of the vote itself, there was a slim majority for Brexit, certainly no majority for a scorched earth hard Brexit. An end to free movement and getting the ECJ removed from oversight of the backstop reflects the aims of the Brexiteer lobby, continued close ties should satisfy te large majority of remainers and inhabitants of the six counties and Scotland.

As an aside, the DUP have some brass neck standing up and complaining about this deal and the minor level of regulatory divergence as threatening to the Union. The party’s founder, Ian Paisley, was more than happy to seek special opt outs for cattle from NI during a foot in mouth crisis, on the ground they were Irish cattle not British cattle. If he could accept such things, a man who set up his own arm smuggling loyalist paramilitary outfit (and ironically the only large paramilitary group not to have decommissioned its weapons), then surely Arlene and the rest should be able to. https://sluggerotoole.com/2009/04/29/our-people-may-be-british-but-our-cows-are-irish/

They also don't mind divergence on gay marriage or abortion.

 

[The Warlord]

You're spreading misinformation. The referendum does not constitutionally obligate the UK government to do anything. UK law doesn't work like that. This is why Scottish National Party and Liberal Democrats MPs are still openly opposed to Brexit but nobody's calling them anti-consitution.

Precisely, it was an advisory referendum, unlike the Scottish one which was legally binding.

 

[The Warlord]

No misinformation on my part. While they are not literally bound to any decision made in a referendum, constitutionally they are expected to follow the will of the people. This is why Remain supporters are so desperately pushing for a second referendum.

The truth is, the British system is ill-equipped to handle referenda, particularly for such an all-encompassing issue.

You keep throwing the constitution word around when the UK doesn't actually have one.

 

[The Warlord]

That is a different argument to whether it is constitutional to ignore it.

It can be ignored with no "constitutional" impact. It was not legally binding.

 

[The Speaker]

You keep throwing the constitution word around when the UK doesn't actually have one.

Wrong.

 

[its free real estate]

May's cricket hero is Boycott which explains so much, a lover of Compton or Gower wouldn't have allowed this s**t show.

There’s a lot in this. Replace bed with EU.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

There’s a lot in this. Replace bed with EU.

If you're in a shitted bed and the alternative is another shitted bed with Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnston in it, most people would agree you're better off staying in the original shatted bed.

 

[Badesumofu]

The UK does have a Constitution, wrong to say otherwise unless you want to provide some in depth discussion around why you hold that view.

In terms of this referendum - it's not quite the same as Australia where the referendum is the actual instrument by which the Constitution is changed, but I'd still say there is an obligation to implement the result. Of course, by that reasoning it's equally possible to undo the original referendum by holding a second one. Well not 'undo' it exactly, but reverse it at any rate.

I think as well, given that the deal on the table doesn't really give effect to the will of the people as expressed by the first referendum (this is really Brexit in name only and it leaves the potential for a situation where the UK is bound by laws it has no say in making, and no unilateral means to get out of that agreement) it's only reasonable to give the people another chance to express their will, knowing now what the actual options are.

 

[Seeds]

May is going to lead them into disaster.

Just stop being so stubborn and have a second referendum. One not based on fantasy but on facts.

 

[its free real estate]

If you're in a shitted bed and the alternative is another shitted bed with Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnston in it, most people would agree you're better off staying in the original shatted bed.

I will defer to you on what it is like to be in a bed full of s**t.

 

[Mofra]

Some interesting points here

https://theconversation.com/theresa...dead-in-the-water-now-what-for-britain-107029

The contrast between what she said and the way she said it was stark. In a subdued, almost reticent way, Theresa May told the nation on the steps of 10 Downing Street on November 14 that she “believed with her head and her heart” in the draft withdrawal agreement she had negotiated with the EU. The cabinet also backed it, she told us.

As subsequent cabinet resignations have proven, there was no such agreement. The whole address looks increasingly like it could be the first part of a long and drawn out resignation letter.

It was also the culmination of May’s ultimate folly: the crumbling of her absurd red lines. These red lines – leaving the customs union and the single market, ending the jurisdiction of the ECJ – were never compatible with not having a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, nor with a smooth transition in general. More painfully, these red lines were almost totally unnecessary. These issues were not on the 2016 referendum ballot. History will be a harsh judge as to why May and her team – stand up, Nick Timothy – chose to go down this path.

It has been clear for a long time that there is little appetite for these red lines especially in light of the potential impacts (a border in Ireland and disruption to trade to name two). But the root of the problem is this: from the moment she became PM, May played to a particular gallery: the Hard Brexiteers within her own party. It was to these people, first and foremost, who May spoke. Despite appeals to the hallowed “will of the people”, it was the will of the Brexiteers that May appealed to from late 2016 onwards.

But now that approach has crumbled on contact with the reality of UK and EU politics. Not only does this deal achieve the remarkable feat of being both the product of her red lines and an immediate transgression of them, May’s appearance before parliament the day after the Withdrawal Agreement was published showed one thing clearly: her deal has not only divided her cabinet but has no support in the Commons.

 

[The Warlord]

Wrong.

No, I'm right. There's a series of documents, agreements, common low, precedents etc that act as a sort of constitution, but there is not one like Australia or the US have.

 

[The Warlord]

The UK does have a Constitution, wrong to say otherwise unless you want to provide some in depth discussion around why you hold that view.

In terms of this referendum - it's not quite the same as Australia where the referendum is the actual instrument by which the Constitution is changed, but I'd still say there is an obligation to implement the result. Of course, by that reasoning it's equally possible to undo the original referendum by holding a second one. Well not 'undo' it exactly, but reverse it at any rate.

I think as well, given that the deal on the table doesn't really give effect to the will of the people as expressed by the first referendum (this is really Brexit in name only and it leaves the potential for a situation where the UK is bound by laws it has no say in making, and no unilateral means to get out of that agreement) it's only reasonable to give the people another chance to express their will, knowing now what the actual options are.

This explains exactly why Britain's lack of a constitution is proving a major problem during Brexit.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/30/why-britain-needs-written-constitution

 

[Seeds]

Seeing the born to rule mentality of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and their ilk come back to bite them on the ass is quite the piece of shadenfreude. The EU weren't quite the pushovers they thought.

It's unfortunate the ramifications could be quite brutal over here and it won't be those dish lickers who cop the brunt of it. It'll be the everyday man.

Getting paid in AUD might come in quite profitable for next UK/Euro summer.

Lol the aud is crashing. Our housing market is on the brink.