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UK Politics: Deal, or No Deal. To May and Beyond.


A Horse Named Stranger

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14 hours ago, mormont said:

Yes.  Voting certainly is an affront to democracy. It's not democratic at all.

What's entertaining about this is the implicit assumption that a second referendum is likely to challenge the result of the first. Doesn't really fit with your line above about how the outcome wasn't that marginal, but hey. If I lived in another country and the entire topic of Brexit was nothing more than an intellectual exercise to me, maybe I would also be pontificating about points of principle instead of thinking abougt dealing with actual consequences.

There was a vote. Having another vote because people don't like the outcome of the first one (which is really what this boils down to) is undemocratic - it implies that any vote that doesn't go the right way must be reversed ASAP.

(As for the living in another country thing. Yes, it's true. I do. Many non-Americans have opinions about Donald Trump too, and not just about his foreign policy. But in this case.. well, half my family is British (having a Scottish father and Welsh grandfather will do that), and my sister is married with children, in London. It is not simply an intellectual exercise for me).

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13 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I always find it confusing that anyone would suggest leavers didn't vote to leave without a deal.. thats pretty much exactly what they voted for.

Most people didn’t have a clue what a trade deal was before the referendum, such was the spectacular lack of preparation or information. All the nuts and bolts of what leaving actually looks like commenced after the vote. But surely any high profile leaver (Boris, Nigel, take your pick) if asked before, would never have volunteered that No Deal was likely or beneficial. 

13 hours ago, Heartofice said:

A Norway Deal, or Chequers deal is much closer to Remaining that leaving. 

It’s not really a grey area; there’s an official list of member states of the EU. If you’re not on it, you’re not in the EU. 

13 hours ago, Heartofice said:

If there is a second referendum and it chooses to Remain, you'd be ok with another one 2 years later to check that nobody had changed their mind? And then another 2 years later... for the rest of eternity. 

If something about our membership in the EU changed, something which affected the country to the degree which I believe a No Deal compared to even May’s deal does? I’d absolutely be in favour of a vote. I understood this argument a while back, but now that it’s looking possible, Remain vs No Deal is absolutely not what was voted on in 2016 and is definitely worth voting on now.

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9 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

There was a vote. Having another vote because people don't like the outcome of the first one (which is really what this boils down to)

It really doesn't. The first vote was irredeemably flawed: the situation has changed since the first vote: Parliament is at an impasse: opinion polls consistently suggest the public want the final say.

Claiming the above is simply taking a pro-Leave position while trying to present it as something else. There are ample reasons to justify a second vote in this case. 

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On 1/6/2019 at 7:13 AM, The Marquis de Leech said:

Having a referendum on May's Deal versus No Deal is fine. Having Remain on the ballot too is an affront to democracy (and ties in with the EU's historical fondness for having referendums until it gets the result it wants).

The mental gymnastics involved to blame the EU for this referendum is worthy of an Olympic Gold Medal if ever there was a competition in "Creative Lying and Twisting of Facts".

The Brits cooked up this whole mess all by themselves, they voted themselves in, they voted themselves out, if they want to vote themselves back in again, fine, but you cannot blame the EU for this constant voting. No one in the EU wanted the first referendum, no one asks for a second one, all the EU did was to negotiate a Brexit thats best for the EU-countries. Which is their job.

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12 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

There was a vote. Having another vote because people don't like the outcome of the first one (which is really what this boils down to) is undemocratic - it implies that any vote that doesn't go the right way must be reversed ASAP.

Which is a good argument against General Elections too. 
Do you want voting to stop and the democratic process to just become one off events? That's a bit...umm... undemocratic. 

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3 minutes ago, Nevarfeather said:

Which is a good argument against General Elections too. 
Do you want voting to stop and the democratic process to just become one off events? That's a bit...umm... undemocratic. 

A general Election is asking the populace 'Who do you want to be in charge of the country for the next 5 years?' Its clearly a time limited vote, the point being that if after 5 years they haven't done a good you can get someone else in.

A better comparison would be having a second general election before the new government have even moved their stuff onto their desks. 

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6 minutes ago, Nevarfeather said:

Which is a good argument against General Elections too. 
Do you want voting to stop and the democratic process to just become one off events? That's a bit...umm... undemocratic. 

i'm incredibly pro remain, but i can't help feeling this is nonsense.  When you vote in a general election it is for a prescribed term, the brexit vote was never sold like that. 

edit, shit, i just agreed with HoI. 

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19 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

i'm incredibly pro remain, but i can't help feeling this is nonsense.  When you vote in a general election it is for a prescribed term, the brexit vote was never sold like that. 

edit, shit, i just agreed with HoI. 

Sort of, but special circumstances can allow for another GE election before the 5 year period has expired. May called an election before the prescribed 5 year term had expired, justifying it as an attempt to get a mandate from the electorate (ie increae her majority).

So votes can be held again if the circunstances dictate. Like the Government making a fucking arse of Brexit, and economic armageddon looming ever closer.

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32 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

A general Election is asking the populace 'Who do you want to be in charge of the country for the next 5 years?' Its clearly a time limited vote, the point being that if after 5 years they haven't done a good you can get someone else in.

A better comparison would be having a second general election before the new government have even moved their stuff onto their desks. 

like a snap election before a government completes any of their manifesto promises, like last year perhaps?

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43 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Sort of, but special circumstances can allow for another GE election before the 5 year period has expired. May called an election before the prescribed 5 year term had expired, justifying it as an attempt to get a mandate from the electorate (ie increae her majority).

So votes can be held again if the circunstances dictate. Like the Government making a fucking arse of Brexit, and economic armageddon looming ever closer.

We can hardly say its a surprise that the government fucked it up, they fucked it up from well before the vote was in, and we all new they would.  Thats not a change of circumstances, thats meeting expectations.

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7 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Remain vs No Deal is absolutely not what was voted on in 2016 and is definitely worth voting on now.

Yes, and no. Or rather, no and yes.

The referendum was a mandate to leave the EU. The Leave campaigners promised a lot of contradictory things to different sets of voters. So in a way you can interpret no-deal as the most logical outcome of this mess. You can't argue people did not vote for it. But neither can you argue they really voted for it. They voted broadly to leave the EU, without really knowing the specifics. The Brexit campaign was in a way a modern art piece, you could see, what you wanted to see. Similarities to Labour's Brexit policy may or may not be coincidental.

Having that said, I think it's absolutely worth having a second vote, now that the public had a glimpse of what lies behind the Brexit curtain.

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

We can hardly say its a surprise that the government fucked it up, they fucked it up from well before the vote was in, and we all new they would.  Thats not a change of circumstances, thats meeting expectations.

But Brexit could've been so wonderful, if just a proper Brexiteer had been in charge of the negotiations, somebody like David Davis or the real Raab himself...

Anyway, my point is, what you propose would involve being clear, that the problems with May's deal are features of Brexit (and not the result of her incompetence), so in other words that those problems are intrinsic to Brexit itself. But then again, you have the Labour frontbench claiming they could renegotiate the entire thing within a forthnight after a new General Election... That's not even talking baout the ERG nutters (and our Resident leavers) who pretend no-deal is a satisfactory alternative, or that the EU would drop the backstop, if May was stomping with her foot loud enough for Brussels to take notice or something.

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7 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

The referendum was a mandate to leave the EU. The Leave campaigners promised a lot of contradictory things to different sets of voters. So in a way you can interpret no-deal as the most logical outcome of this mess. You can't argue people did not vote for it. But neither can you argue they really voted for it. They voted broadly to leave the EU, without really knowing the specifics. The Brexit campaign was in a way a modern art piece, you could see, what you wanted to see. Similarities to Labour's Brexit policy may or may not be coincidental.

Yeah I basically agree with this. Voting Leave I'd suggest however for most people was about "returning sovereignty to the UK ( especially over immigration) ". Interpret that how you will, but that was the clear motivation. A Norway or Chequers deal which keeps you in the Customs Union or Single Market doesn't really separate you from EU law and juristiction in the way that was suggested, which is why I'd say that No Deal actually the closest thing to the Brexit that was promised. What wasn't really explained was just how complex that would be, and it certainly wasn't explained what a terrible job May would do in preparing for a no deal.

11 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

But Brexit could've been so wonderful, if just a proper Brexiteer had been in charge of the negotiations, somebody like David Davis or the real Raab himself...

I don't think we will ever know, as May has clearly been top dog in all these negotiations and clearly has very different ideas to Davis and Raab. May has however made enormous cock-ups at every single stage since the referendum. 

Whether it was calling Article 50 early, before any real thinking had been done as to the the next steps or accepting the EUs sequencing of negotiations or rejecting the Canada + options early on, or losing an easy General Election, or handing over money to the EU so easily, or coming up the the Chequers plan and expecting anyone to like it....

If there is any real justification for a second referendum, it can only be that May has been so incredibly bad at her job as to have made any real chance of an orderly Brexit impossible. I would vote Remain tomorrow , because I'm just broken by how badly handled everything has been. I was a reluctant remainer in the first ref and I would be in the second one.

However, that doesn't mean that I see a second ref as democratic or a good option. We will see an enormous pushback if Brexit is cancelled. It's hard to know what would happen. 

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4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

A general Election is asking the populace 'Who do you want to be in charge of the country for the next 5 years?' Its clearly a time limited vote, the point being that if after 5 years they haven't done a good you can get someone else in.

A better comparison would be having a second general election before the new government have even moved their stuff onto their desks. 

So does that mean recall elections are "undemocratic?"  What about confidence motions - that's clearly an effort to change the public's "time limited" vote?  I'm hardly the one to be defending direct democracy (I'm kind of an elitist) - and there are certainly reasonable arguments opposing another referendum - but this "undemocratic" nonsense is absurd.  If anything, from a purely theoretical perspective opposing a referendum would be much (much) closer to the classic criticisms of unchecked democracy - that the government is increasingly unstable as it is subject to the whims of public opinion (or, if you really wanna be dramatic about it, invites the ol' "tyranny of the majority").

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9 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Whether it was calling Article 50 early, before any real thinking had been done as to the the next steps or accepting the EUs sequencing of negotiations or rejecting the Canada + options early on, or losing an easy General Election, or handing over money to the EU so easily, or coming up the the Chequers plan and expecting anyone to like it....

So much nonsense.

Article 50 was triggered early under much public pressure, but yes, that was not a particularly great idea. After the clock started ticking...

The sequencing while not favourable to the UK was also part of Article 50. It just covers the withdrawal of a member state.

Canada+, well, as Ivan Rogers put it so nicely. Beware all pluses. Why would you need a + deal? BEcause the original is not satisfactory. What the UK understands as plus and what the EU understands as plus in those arrangement may differ bigly. Whatever cherry picking Davis or Johnson try to sell as Canada+ would not fly with the EU.

The General Election was a waste of precious time. But then again, even with her majority intact it would not have changed the fundamentals that much. Well, she arguably could've discarded NI more easily, but that would've still been a tough sell.

Handing over money, drinking from the Brexiter koolaid much lately? Those are financial obligations the UK entered, while it was a member state. If the UK withholds the payment, the EU would file the paperwork at the Hague and sue the UK to honour its financial obligations. So that's not really an option, unless you want the further humilation before a court... :dunno:

Chequers was and is ludicrous. It was a compromise position trying to appease her party at home, while never been acceptable to the EU. That it took the UK that public humilation at Salzburg to get that point was somewhat disturbing.

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19 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

There was a vote. Having another vote because people don't like the outcome of the first one (which is really what this boils down to) is undemocratic - it implies that any vote that doesn't go the right way must be reversed ASAP.

Is your assertion then that it was wrong to poll Ireland twice on the Lisbon Treaty (when they changed their mind in a year)?

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Chris Grayling decided to fake a lorry traffic jam in Kent today to try to see what it would be like after a No Deal Brexit, even though I don't think that was really necessary. We can probably guess what 80 lorries driving down a motorway looks like (and not the 6,000 lorries stuck in laybys and in Manston Airport that the system is designed to deal with in an emergency). Apparently the measure cost £60K and the drivers involved described it as "pointless".

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4 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Chris Grayling decided to fake a lorry traffic jam in Kent today to try to see what it would be like after a No Deal Brexit, even though I don't think that was really necessary. We can probably guess what 80 lorries driving down a motorway looks like (and not the 6,000 lorries stuck in laybys and in Manston Airport that the system is designed to deal with in an emergency). Apparently the measure cost £60K and the drivers involved described it as "pointless". 

Say what you will, but Brexit is really life imitating art, namely Monty Python. The UK goverment and hteir hapless actions really look like a giant Monty Python sketch, about some goverment project htat has gone off the rails a long while ago, while the bureaucrats pretend  it's all going according to plan.

I mean I can literally see a younger John Cleese playing some sort of Grayling arguing how it makes perfect sense for the goverment to hire a ferry company, without ferries. Or blocking a motorway with 80 lorries.

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7 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Say what you will, but Brexit is really life imitating art, namely Monty Python. The UK goverment and hteir hapless actions really look like a giant Monty Python sketch, about some goverment project htat has gone off the rails a long while ago, while the bureaucrats pretend  it's all going according to plan.

I mean I can literally see a younger John Cleese playing some sort of Grayling arguing how it makes perfect sense for the goverment to hire a ferry company, without ferries. Or blocking a motorway with 80 lorries.

The same ferry company who copy/pasted their terms and conditions from a takeaway food firm.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46748193

 

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