[Closed] EU Referendum - are you in or out?

Th second part of that phrase does not follow the first part

....nope, you'll have to run that one by me again

....nope, you'll have to run that one by me again

Still all aboard the train, I wonder who May is going to get to sit next to at dinner or maybe they will bring her a bespoke and unique table decorated in 3 striking colours with the scraps from the main table served cold and slightly too late.

Anyone hear John Redwood doing the rounds this morning?

It absolutely terrifies me that a man so clearly unhinged as him is presently dictating government policy

What he's advocating is absolute madness! Basically, the most extreme form of brinksmanship where you hold a hand grenade and threaten to pull the pin out unless you get what you want.

Andrew Rawnsley did his usual nail-on-head assessment of the present lunacy in yesterdays Observer

[url= https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/15/this-dangerous-deadlock-is-a-delight-to-the-brextremists ]This Dangerous Deadlock is a Delight to the Brextremists[/url]

[i]Who is to blame for this stalemate? The answer you get depends on where you put the question. From EU capitals, you hear the understandable contention that it is extremely hard to negotiate with Britain when its riven government hasn’t finished negotiating with itself. It doesn’t help that Mrs May is desperately weak. Recent events have compounded the impression that she is a lame duck, one crisis away from having the last crutch kicked from under her.

Key European players ask why they should spend any of their political capital trying to progress the negotiations when they can’t be confident that Mrs May will still be sitting on the other side of the table come Christmas.[/i]

Just read it again, I'm sure you're not really simple

I'll await tmh's superior intellect to explain.

Oh, hang on, that's another sentence that makes no sense 🙄

As anyone can see, I was commenting on a choice of phrase. Nothing to do with the poster at all.

Ah yes - the phrase that was chosen by the poster. Makes perfect sense.

Who's excited for May going to meet the EU today to ask very nicely of they'll let us have transition deal talks...

As if her year hasn't been humiliating enough already !

As if her year hasn't been humiliating enough already !

She's going to be looking back fondly at this, as the good old days.....

Have we done Dominic Cummings' quotes in Prospect Magazine?

[url= https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/peering-over-the-cliff-edge-why-dominic-cummings-fears-brexit-will-fail ]Peering over the cliff-edge: why Dominic Cummings fears Brexit will fail (Prospect, 11th Oct 2017)[/url]

“Theresa May and David Davis have provided a case study of grotesque uselessness” in their approach to Brexit. This comment was not made to Prospect by one of the usual “Remainer” suspects, but by Dominic Cummings, the Vote Leave mastermind.
..
“It was crazy” of her “to trigger Article 50 without preparations first and even more crazy to sit around and still not prepare,” he said. “If there’s no deal, there will be significant problems that were completely avoidable.”
..
On May and Davis, he predicts that “schoolchildren will shake their heads in disbelief that such characters could have had leading roles in government.” In the event of a total Brexit disaster, there could even be an investigation into why it occurred—and civil servants are already scurrying to cover themselves. Officials are drafting their emails with a half an eye on “the inevitable inquiry,” Cummings said—“and the history books.”

schoolchildren will shake their heads in disbelief that such characters could have had leading roles in government

😆 🙄

[url= https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-bill-not-fit-to-be-passed-say-tory-rebels-as-theresa-may-flies-to-brussels-a3659491.html ]Well it seems like the Tory remainers have belatedly grown a pair[/url]

I'm sure the Mail will be winding up into full-on 'Enemies of the People' mode, but where does this leave Brexit if the Brexit Bill doesn't get through parliament?

but where does this leave Brexit if the Brexit Bill doesn't get through parliament?

What does happen when a government can't pass a bill?

election time...

why would backbenchers in an unpopular government push for another election?

They are politicians at the end of the day......self-interest rules, in this case self preservation

You never know THM, maybe they’ll do the job they are elected to and act in their consistents interests.

It's a party fighting like rats in a sack, odds are good still so there will be something in there. Comes a point where you can't bribe enough people without pissing off the other ones - you do remember the tory party has to pay the DUP for it's votes, be interesting to see some more about their EU positions...

You never know THM, maybe they’ll do the job they are elected to and act in their consistents interests

Maybe - these are strange times. But I'm on thm's side on this one - looking after No 1 is the first rule of politicians.

What does happen when a government can't pass a bill?

With something as seismic as Brexit I imagine a referendum on the issue to settle it for a lifetime 😉

You never know THM, maybe they’ll do the job they are elected to and act in their consistents interests

What honouring the result of their votes?

Or saying, now then little people, back in your boxes, you've had your fun. We are going to tell YOU what's in your interests not the other way round. Got in? Good....now STFU and do as you are told.

Worth remembering that there are a few ways it could split
Loose the DUP - 10 Votes
Piss off the Scottish Cons by sucking up to the DUP - 13 Votes
Rile up the back benchers who dislike May and love to leave??
Piss off the moderate ones who don't think they are going in the right direction and would consider falling on their swords.

There must be enough back benchers who are there for life but not keen on the direction, some who would probably be returned with a decent majority and see some enemies go. Some who see a tactical retreat from the whole EU shitstorm the wise move. It's naive to think the only self serving interest is to remain unpopular, some very graceful speeches start with
"It was a difficult decision but for the good of...."

Im reasonably sure most Tories don't want to force an election, (though wonder if some might be smart enough to give Corbyn the chance of owning brexshit)

They just see May for the weak & powerless puppet she is and are looking to yank her strings.

In this case trying to mitigate the damage done by the more extreme brexies

Or saying, now then little people, back in your boxes, you've had your fun. We are going to tell YOU what's in your interests not the other way round. Got in? Good....now STFU and do as you are told.

You're still struggling with this parliamentary democracy concept, aren't you.

Worth quoting the Andrew Rawnsley article in full. About as good a summing up of the whole thing as I've read and it points very clearly to who really wants a nasty Brexit. If there is one thing I've learnt in life it is this:

If you don't know where you stand on an issue, look at what the swivel-eyed loons in the Tories and UKIP want - then back the opposite.

The British are great most of all in their pragmatism – or so much of the world once thought. The European Union’s supreme talent is for compromise – or so it was widely assumed. Both sides have much to lose from a ruinous version of Brexit and for that reason it will be avoided. This logic was the basis for believing that it could be managed in a way that contained the damage to trade, jobs and investment from extracting one of its largest members from the world’s most prosperous bloc.

The EU27 will suffer from a traumatically severe Brexit. For Britain, the consequences of departing without a deal would be several times more calamitous. The chief executive of one of our biggest ports recently told a private dinner that if the government was serious about planning for a “no deal” scenario and a hard trade border it would have to invest in 20 square kilometres of lorry parking at each major port. Rational minds must thus prevail. Some sort of bargain has to be struck. It will be just about OK in the end. This is the case I have often heard from the pragmatic majority in the cabinet when they have sought to persuade me that it will be sort of all right on the night.

That hope has not evaporated, but it is becoming increasingly less comfortable to be any sort of optimist about Brexit. The outlook is darkening. The sand is running through the hourglass. I hear more and more businesses say that they are contingency planning for a bad Brexit. Those ministers who still hope for the best now sound tight in the larynx when they try to voice reasons to remain cheerful.

It is more than six months since Theresa May dispatched her divorce letter. There have been five rounds of jaw-jaw in Brussels. The bargaining has still not advanced beyond square one. Michel Barnier, the EU’s main negotiator, describes a “very disturbing” deadlock. Philip Hammond publicly expresses fears of “a bad-tempered breakdown”, an outcome the chancellor then makes more likely when he clumsily characterises the EU as “the enemy”, an insult not much softened by his subsequent retraction. Mrs May once thought she would be travelling to this week’s Brussels summit to come away with an agreement that the talks could progress from the terms of the divorce settlement to negotiations about Britain’s future relationship with the EU27. This is not going to happen. Most diplomats on both sides think that the best she might get from the EU27 is some sort of agreement that they will start talking among themselves about what kind of transition arrangement they might be prepared to accept. December has become the new target month for concluding the first phase of the negotiations. This slippage prolongs the uncertainty for companies about the prospects for doing business in a post-Brexit Britain and encourages more employers to prepare for an ugly outcome. More boards will decide to switch investment and jobs away from Britain to less risky locations.

Who is to blame for this stalemate? The answer you get depends on where you put the question. From EU capitals, you hear the understandable contention that it is extremely hard to negotiate with Britain when its riven government hasn’t finished negotiating with itself. It doesn’t help that Mrs May is desperately weak. Recent events have compounded the impression that she is a lame duck, one crisis away from having the last crutch kicked from under her. Her hapless party conference speech was almost universally reported in the continental media as a metaphor for her enfeebled premiership. The daily tests of her authority by various Tory factions add to the impression of chronic debilitation. EU capitals noticed when Boris Johnson brazenly trampled over collective responsibility by publishing his own version of a hardline Brexit that openly contradicted the prime minister’s position. They further noticed that the foreign secretary didn’t get sacked for his impudent freelancing.

EU capitals also notice when senior Tories join more junior ones in demanding the head of Philip Hammond, one of the few in Mrs May’s cabinet to talk realistically about the hard choices that have to be faced to avoid plunging the economy into chaos. To anyone looking in on Britain from outside, it is another sign of Mrs May’s fragility that the government has been forced to postpone the committee stage of the withdrawal legislation, in this case because of the threat of rebellion on multiple fronts by pro-European Tory MPs.

None of this incentivises the EU to be terribly serious about the negotiations. All of it reinforces the view, in some European capitals and some elements of the commission, that it is essentially futile to try to find a way forward because Mrs May isn’t capable of enforcing any deal on her quarrelling cabinet and splintered party. Would you buy a car from someone who can’t describe what the car looks like, nor convince you that they actually own it? Key European players ask why they should spend any of their political capital trying to progress the negotiations when they can’t be confident that Mrs May will still be sitting on the other side of the table come Christmas.

By taking that attitude, they make her weaker. They chip at her authority over her party and her credibility with her country. They compound the problem of which they complain. People around the prime minister counter that it is the EU that is behaving with unreasonable rigidity and, in some respects, they have a point. One reason the negotiations can’t move on to trade is because they haven’t reached an agreement on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. But the status of the Irish border can only be settled once the future trading relationship is established. Which the EU won’t yet discuss. Catch-22.

A similar stalemate has frozen progress about Britain’s bill for checking out. As is so often the case in divorces, even breakups conducted with more goodwill than this painful separation, money is the biggest barrier to moving forward. Mrs May thought she had offered a substantial concession when she made her recent speech in Florence. She promised that Britain would meet its financial obligations to the EU and implied that there would be further payments in return for continued access to the single market on frictionless terms. Advisers to Mrs May argue that this speech demonstrated that she was being responsive to the EU and showed that she was a “grown-up” about the compromises that will be necessary to secure a deal.

She has also recognised that Britain will have to submit to adjudications by the European court of justice during a transition period, as well as accepting the continuation of freedom of movement for at least two years after 2019. Having taken these steps, at the risk of enraging the hard Brexiters in her party, the prime minister is hugely frustrated that there has been little reciprocation from the EU.

An important reason for that is an emerging split in the EU. Very credible sources report that Mr Barnier wanted to progress the talks, but has been blocked by some member states. The most powerful naysayer is Germany, which confounds the belief of some in the British government that Angela Merkel would ride to the rescue.

People intimately familiar with the state of the negotiations say that they have become jammed in a chicken and egg situation. The Germans aren’t prepared to move on trade until the British are more specific about the money. Mrs May can’t offer anything more on the money until the EU is prepared to respond with some movement on trade. Catch-22. Again.

The Germans would be wise to take note that the people most delighted with this deadlock are the Brexit zealots in the Conservative party who have always wanted, and continue to agitate for, the severest form of rupture with the EU. The Brextremists would love to kill off any transition period. They fear that the longer that Britain sits in a departure lounge, half in and half out of the EU, the more chance there could be that the country might change its mind about leaving or end up agreeing some kind of associate membership.

The Brexit fanatics crave a bad-tempered breakdown in the negotiations in the hope that this will be the precursor to the most stark form of departure. They want a breakdown to be blamed not on their own delusions and the fantasies that they peddled during the referendum. They want the guilty men to be Remainer saboteurs at home and dastardly continentals in Brussels and Berlin. The Germans might take note of that as well.

There is no majority in Britain for an extreme Brexit that hurls this country into the vortex. Nor is there a majority for an economically disastrous Brexit in parliament. A car-crash Brexit would be massively disruptive for much of the continent. It wouldn’t be a benign outcome for the EU either.

So the logical man still says that cool heads ought to prevail and a deal should be struck in the end. The flaw in the reasoning of the logical man is to assume that the world is always sane. Were you searching for ways to describe how we got here, your word of first choice would not be rational.

That last paragraph sums up this self-destructive madness nicely.

THM - if MPs are just there to do what they’re told, get shot and pass the job to the careerists of the civil service. The bureaucrats would probably do a better job and we could sell off Westminster.

Alternatively, you and I both know the difference between doing what someone wants and acting in their best interests. Yes it can be annoying but it is actually what you need.

On a slightly separate topic, you said as a libertarian you favoured referendums and devolution - presumably moving power towards the people. A noble intention no doubt.
However as we have seen, referendums do not move power towards the people, save perhaps on the one isolated issue they address. Everything since June last year has been about trying to move power towards government away from parliament. Nothing has headed towards the people. And it has even tried to ride roughshod over the administrations created by devolution.
I like devolution, but with wider countries.
Referendums are, as they always have been, a bad idea, fundamentally at odds with UK democracy. (There’s a good Thatcher quote on that subject)

Redwood on the Today programme was outlining his hard Brexit wet dream.
Despite WTO members already poo-pooing our post Brexit WTO plans for even a soft Brexit

https://www.farminguk.com/news/Major-agricultural-exporters-disapprove-of-UK-s-proposed-post-Brexit-import-quotas_47576.html

Either way Redwoods interview timed nicely to undermine May as she sits down to what No.10 has confirmed is definitely not a crisis meeting 😆

Anyone hear John Redwood doing the rounds this morning?

It absolutely terrifies me that a man so clearly unhinged as him is presently dictating government policy

What he's advocating is absolute madness! Basically, the most extreme form of brinksmanship where you hold a hand grenade and threaten to pull the pin out unless you get what you want.

It's kind of like that, except all the other member states are standing at a reasonably safe distance, wearing safety glasses, and our attempts to bring them nearer by having a massive schizophrenic argument with ourselves aren't working all that well.

mikewsmith - Member

Piss off the Scottish Cons by sucking up to the DUP - 13 Votes

They can piss off the scottish conservatives as much as they want, they'll never break from the government line- Davidson made that pretty clear during the DUP fiasco when she was shown exactly what 10 votes was worth and decided not to bother doing anything with it.

Seems unlikely Ruth will risk the union or the Tory party in govt for the sake of well anything actually

why would backbenchers in an unpopular government push for another election?

They are politicians at the end of the day......self-interest rules, in this case self preservation

A Backbencher in a ruling party gets paid the same as a backbencher in opposition. Back benchers aren’t In power, they just get to wear the same team colours. Self preservation doesn’t necessarily extend to acting in the interests of the party. Compared to their current predicament doesn’t losing an election sound attractive?

Footage on the news just now of Junker and other EU leaders openly laughing at the idea that the Maybot popping over for a chat over dinner is going to make the slightest bit of difference.

'We' literally are an international laughing stock

I wonder which side will leak first this time.

The Russians.

I wonder which side will leak first this time.

dissonance - Member

Or who will make a speech undermining the Maybot before she gets to have a chat.

Boris

Boris... hmmm... that sounds a bit... um... Russian.

Clearly Trump is behind it all.

Juncker - he will be half cut before they start, so will pop out for a double leek

Or who will make a speech undermining the Maybot before she gets to have a chat.

Redwood already did this morning

the idea that the Maybot popping over for a chat over dinner is going to make the slightest bit of difference.

Oh dear, cue mega moaning from the undemocrats....

Sky news reporting "constructive and friendly exchange" (Juncker) and agreement that "efforts should accelerate."

So Nov, Dec or Jan before the proper talks begin? So much for the lie about the the status of the talks.

😉

Looking forward to the tag team's twist on this. But granted Juncker could just be pissed....

Alastair Campbell writes a [i]Fantasy Brexit Backout[/i] speech for May:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/16/theresa-may-brexit-cant-be-done

Never happen of course, but it's nice to dream. 😆

What does happen when a government can't pass a bill?

Now don't get all factual and serious on us Mefty!!

That would be the ultimate irony though!!!

Anyway countdown to "nonsense"

3......2........1

Just revoke A50. Legal opinion allegedly says that’s doable.

And politically would be just fine for the EU and OK in this country if you framed it right.

Blame it on the Brexies who didn’t know what they did want only what they didn’t or were lazy fantasists like BoJo and Davis.

Next.

Now any “but, but, but, we have to leave” nonsense?

The thing about not being a child anymore is you get to reflect and consider and change your mind. I trust we are a grownup country - no?

PS - Mefty, THM, you’re normally brighter than that. Come on.

constitutional crisis anyone? Both Holyrood and the welsh assembly are going to refuse consent on the great repeal bill due to the huge power grab from the devolved regions. dunno how that one will play out but its hard to see a single move May could make that would not stoke nationalist sentiment

"Constructive and friendly" is diplomatic speak for "waste of time but not overly hostile because we all knew it was a waste of time. Dinner was nice."

If it were literally constructive then they'd announce the amazing thing they'd constructed.