Isn’t there another thread running for whining about an ineffectual party that’s not actually in power? It’s all getting a bit tedious now TBH.

I think the “debate” about whether voting for Labour in the European Elections will be used as support for a “pro” or “anti” Brexit position is key to this thread. And it clearly isn’t clear cut, so disagreement and discussion is very likely, even if perhaps repetitive and boring for most people. With the party leadership currently in discussion with the government about delivering Brexit, it’s pretty relevant and topical as well. Talking about anything surrounding Brexit will become more and more “boring” over time… but that’s because it is a long slow difficult process, not something that happened one day in June 2016.

Kelvin – I fully agree. Tedious but completely relevant.

Jeremy is trying to get his version of Brexit integrated into Theresa’s WA. Whilst the majority of Labour voters don’t want any Brexit, Jeremy’s (or is it Seumas Milne’s) version of Brexit is being offered to the UK Gov. And who voted for that?

Its not really clear if for the few hundred thousand people who actually make the difference whether a brexit labour or a remain labour does better.

Certainly a lot of labour MPs are very worried that any move to remain will lose them votes

Anyway, back to the right wing….

UKIP members worried as Rape and Racism platform fails to win over Middle England voters

Jeremy is trying to get his version of Brexit integrated into Theresa’s WA. Whilst the majority of Labour voters don’t want any Brexit, Jeremy’s (or is it Seumas Milne’s) version of Brexit is being offered to the UK Gov. And who voted for that?

They’ll orchestrate a stitch up before the deadline for EU elections to get Brexit over the line. Serves both their interests best and **** the country!

Anyway, back to the right wing….

They are fools arent they? Should have realised the funny tinge party were going to triangulate them on that. How many candidates have they lost so far?

Serves both their interests best and **** the country!

Actually that is debatable but I will bow down to your great political knowledge.

They’ll orchestrate a stitch up before the deadline for EU elections to get Brexit over the line. Serves both their interests best and **** the country!

Dunno whare yo get this fantasy from. There is no chance of any deal between labour and the tories. I’ll bet my house on that. they are far too far apart

They’re not even remotely contentious. They’re self-evident.

I could contend them, therefore they are contentious 🙂

Hearing the line “80% of voters voted for parties that want to implement Brexit” trotted out endlessly by brexiteers, makes me very wary of voting for labour.

I was told 84% last time. And that I’m a danger to democracy itself, because I supported something proposed by the deputy leader of the party they were a member of, and I had voted for.

You’re just being contrary Molls! 😉

I think Labour will see how local elections play out next week before deciding how to jump (or not) for Euros. Brexit obvs not direct Local Election issue but they are a useful test of dissatisfaction with Labour and politics generally.

I see the six extra months are being put to good use (not).

Labour and the Conservatives got you into this mess. Vote for someone else if you want to get out of it and don’t want your part of the responsibilty for it all. Not that you’l have the chance to vote so I go back to my suggestion of nearly three years ago. Stop spending on anything but essentials, boycott anything or anybody connected to Brexit and get out on the streets.

I was told 84% last time. And that I’m a danger to democracy itself,

Who is telling you that?

No one you know. If you haven’t heard the “we can’t have another referendum ’till we enacted the last one… to do so would endanger our democracy” line from anyone, then you’re lucky. If you haven’t seen the attacks on Watson (and others) for calling for a referendum on any Brexit, then you’re lucky. If you haven’t had to listen to the “80%+ of voters voted for parties committed to leaving the EU, Single Market, Customs Unions and to ending FoM“, then you’re lucky.

Anyway, some loud mouths are coming around…

Leave the talks. Fight for a Second referendum. Wipe the floor with the Libdems/CUK. Forget Lexit. Sounds like a plan… https://t.co/uQA8Ab14aD

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) April 24, 2019

Serves both their interests best and **** the country!

FFS I see we’re back to remain fantasyland. Let me reiterate a point I’ve made repeatedly. Any serious political party wanting to govern the UK must respect the referendum result. Deny it all you want but the simple reality is that any party that refuses to do this will not be elected to government. By all means vote for a party other than labour, but do so in the knowledge that you’ll be helping the tories stay in power.

Let me reiterate a point I’ve made repeatedly. Any serious political party wanting to govern the UK must respect the referendum result. Deny it all you want but the simple reality is that any party that refuses to do this will not be elected to government.

You can reiterate it until you’re blue in the face, but it’s an argument that’s fundamentally flawed.

The referendum was non-binding and advisory, and whilst a small majority of those voting in the referendum voted to leave, 17m is not a majority of the British public by any metric. It happened nearly three years ago, and simply assuming nobody has changed their mind in the presence of a wealth of new information, the shifting demographic of voters (i.e. death of those >70 who voted overwhelmingly to leave vs teenagers who would have voted overwhelmingly to remain becoming eligible to vote) would mean that if it was re-run today the result would be reversed.

If you bring into consideration the fact that people have also changed their mind, the majority erring towards remain, and a re-run of the referendum would most likely see the result reversed, possibly by a large margin. Die-hard brexiteers know this, which is why they are so opposed to the idea.

So, in the absence of a second referendum, we have the imperfect metrics of the local and then European elections with which to judge brexit sentiment. Neither will provide a conclusive result, as in many cases just as with the first referendum itself, they will be treated as an opportunity to protest against the establishment.

Where to from here? **** knows. We can carry on down the route of huge political, economic and social self-harm and try to get the least-worst brexit that will be any metric see the UK seriously diminished. Or, we can head down a route that will cause significant short-term political and social harm, possibly via a second referendum, and try to explain why brexit simply is not worth it. The trouble with the latter is that even if Westminster politicians were up-front in explaining why they had lied for the past 40 years in blaming the EU for domestic problems, the people who need to listen to that information the most are those who are least likely to do so. The trouble with the former is that once we leave and the EU bogeyman can’t be blamed any more, the problems will still remain, and will be compounded by the significant self-harm that brexit will bring.

Back to your final point, which is also fundamentally flawed:
1) At the local elections, a vote for the largest party for that ward that isn’t the the Tories stands the best chance of keeping the Tories out. This probably won’t be Labour in quite a lot of cases.
2) At the Euro elections it’s proportional representation, so a vote for any party that isn’t the Tories reduces their vote.
3) Neither of those elections have any bearing on their power in Westminster

Any serious political party wanting to govern the UK must respect the referendum result.

More than half the population now disagree with you. It’s all a bit “must support the troops” in the Iraq invasion, and now Blair is now amongst the most discredited people in the UK with abut as much chance of being elected as me being made a mod on STW.

but it’s an argument that’s fundamentally flawed.

It really isn’t. I agree with all your points about how the 2016 referendum isn’t now valid. But the crux of the argument is that not enough brexit voters in marginal seats for either the tories or labour have changed their minds enough to enable either to win an election on a position of ignoring the referendum result.

Expecting labour to do otherwise is, to use a topical phrase, extreme unicorn thinking. The most we can expect is for them to support a confirmatory vote but right now even that is contentious. So more time is required to allow the sands to shift in both the public and parliament.

The referendum was non-binding and advisory, and whilst a small majority of those voting in the referendum voted to leave, 17m is not a majority of the British public by any metric.

How ‘was’ it not a majority by the definition of the vote’s outcome?

Would you have been saying that if it had been the other way around?

And irrespective, Parliament has enacted the result (badly).

More than half the population now disagree with you.

Which 5000 people have been surveyed now?

You have noticed polls do change daily and don’t ways reflect actual voting. So do us a favour and stop passing stuff like this off as fact.

But the crux of the argument is that not enough brexit voters in marginal seats for either the tories or labour have changed their minds enough to enable either to win an election on a position of ignoring the referendum result.

If you’re sure about that get down the betting shop. I’m not, like the Iraq war, the public are slowly realising they were duped and Brexit was the wrong decsion:

https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-think-britain-was-right-or-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu/

Edit: when the facts are uncomfortable ignore them eh, Rone… .

But the crux of the argument is that not enough brexit voters in marginal seats for either the tories or labour have changed their minds enough to enable either to win an election on a position of ignoring the referendum result.

I disagree. There is a hardcore on both sides, yes. But for the vast majority of people, brexit is three year old news that they’d rather just went away so the country can move on. Fundamentally, the UK will be better off on just about any metric aside from wealth generation for the top 0.1% by choosing to remain, so as a consequence, any party that campaigns a GE on a platform of a second referendum and more agreeable domestic policies will likely win over one that vows to commit to the first referendum result come what may but has less well-received domestic policies, whichever side of the left/right divide they fall. The qualifier to that argument i guess is that if Brexit is enacted, a government’s ability to do much beyond being told what to do by just about any other state we wish to trade with is probably pretty limited.

any party that campaigns a GE on a platform of a second referendum and more agreeable domestic policies will likely win over one that vows to commit to the first referendum result come what may but has less well-received domestic policies,

You are flattering the average voter. They don’t tend to look as far as the actual policies.
Go and talk to some and find out.

How ‘was’ it not a majority by the definition of the vote’s outcome?

I’m not defining it by the vote’s outcome. There are about 65m people in the UK, only 17.2m voted leave. That’s not a majority. But, if you define it by the vote’s outcome alone, as I explained above if you re-ran that vote today and nobody had changed their mind, enough brexit voting oldies will have been replaced by remain voting 18 and 19 year olds to change the outcome.

Would you have been saying that if it had been the other way around?

Farage was

And irrespective, Parliament has enacted the result (badly).

On the one hand, in agreement with you it has I guess. Which means it’s not at all undemocratic to ask the question again (the counterpoint to the “we must enact it before we can ask again” trope). On the other hand, all parliament has done is largely abdicate its responsibility to serve in the best interests of the UK’s population for the last three years.

Which 5000 people have been surveyed now?

You have noticed polls do change daily and don’t ways reflect actual voting.

Most reputable polls will give a statistical margin of error. Interpreting trends as opposed to point-in-time results leads to a pretty sound conclusion that sentiment has turned against brexit. Interpreting these data, particularly over the past 6 months since we got to the pointy end show a preference for remain.

So do us a favour and stop passing stuff like this off as fact.

#irony

You are flattering the average voter. They don’t tend to look as far as the actual policies.

So by extension, their policy on brexit should matter little

So who to vote for in the EU elections? (I’m a labour party member ffs.) Who’s the anti-Farrage?

I’m not defining it by the vote’s outcome. There are about 65m people in the UK, only 17.2m voted leave. That’s not a majority. But, if you define it by the vote’s outcome alone, as I explained above if you re-ran that vote today and nobody had changed their mind, enough brexit voting oldies will have been replaced by remain voting 18 and 19 year olds to change the outcome.

It doesn’t matter what benchmark you use, or think may happen.

Tiring. Get a time machine.

Most reputable polls will give a statistical margin of error. Interpreting trends as opposed to point-in-time results leads to a pretty sound conclusion that sentiment has turned against brexit. Interpreting these data, particularly over the past 6 months since we got to the pointy end show a preference for remain.

More than half the population now disagree with you.

I’m not debating how good a poll might be I’m debating the fact that someone specifically said something that is not true because we haven’t voted again yet.

No need for irony, as you’re buckling under logic.

john 0 IIRC its a list system where you rank in order of preference IIRC and I am sure someone will correct if I am wrong. If you don’t put a prefernce against some candidates then they all get ranked last.

So you vote first preference for your choice of party, rank the rest of the pro remain parties. Don’t rank the pro leave parties. thats the best anti brexit strategy I think

I’m debating the fact that someone specifically said something that is not true because we haven’t voted again yet.

On that basis anything I say that hasn’t been voted on would be untrue. The European elctions should give some substance to the debate shortly. If any of you remainers vote either Labour or Conserative you are fools.

I had a some refreshing conversations walking across Spain recently with people from all over the world. Brexit was an excellent source of chuckles, laughs, sarcasm… . Oh how we laughed. In the few serious passages between jokes about cake two things stood out:

1/ Non-Brits are really impressed with how Tusk in particular is dealing with the situation, keeping all 27 on board and all doors open.

2/ How ridiculous British government and opposition are. The live stuff from the houses of parliament which looks like a barmy Harry Potter spoof to people with more dignified assemblies to govern them..

If nothing else Brexit is showing up the weaknesses of democracy UK style.

Rone – do you have a point to make?

Rone:

Which 5000 people have been surveyed now?

You have noticed polls do change daily and don’t ways reflect actual voting.

Also Rone:

I’m not debating how good a poll might be I’m debating the fact that someone specifically said something that is not true because we haven’t voted again yet.

It doesn’t matter what benchmark you use, or think may happen.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Chatting to German customers last week one made the comment that prior to this debacle there was a lot of talk in the media ( there ) about Europe and whether or not it was actually that good for Germany, and maybe they should think about making some changes – consider leaving themselves.
Apparently, having looked at the knots we’re tying ourselves in, that talk has stopped.
Funny that.

So I may have joined the Jacob Ress Mogg supporters group on Facebook trolling people there is like shooting fish in a barrel – & they all live up to the Brexit voter cliches.
Wonder how long it’ll be before I’m kicked out…

Peston on twitter
So maybe now we’ll see…

many senior Labour figures tell me they worry Seumas Milne and Jeremy Corbyn will somehow find a way to prevent the party adopting an unambiguous pledge to campaign for a referendum. As one senior Labour said to me, “it is a test of whether Jeremy really believes in party democracy”.

I think we all know the answer to that one

In other news, it seems like Chris Graylings no deal, no ferries fiasco keeps on giving. I wonder how many tens of millions of taxpayers money this next episode in the long-running farce is going to cost?

P&O sues over £33m Eurotunnel payout in Brexit ferry fiasco

I think we all know the answer to that one

I think you think you know the answer to that one…