Current Politics in the United Kingdom

[jacques22]

Originally Posted by judy84

The implementation of the backstop would amount to a change in Northern Ireland’s constitutional status without it's people’s consent – a total breach of the peace settlement.

Not at all since the Irish backstop only aims to preserve the status quo set by the Good Friday Agreement.

There's definitely a contradiction between a hard Brexit and the GFA as well as between May's red lines and the GFA. (A soft Brexit would help solve the backstop issue).
But you have to remember that it's the UK which signed the GFA, and it's the UK which created that backstop problem with Brexit. So it's up to the UK to compromise, otherwise History will remember the Brexiters as some reckless gamblers who destroyed the GFA.
The EU is doing the right thing by supporting the Republic of Ireland. "All for one and one for all" as Alexandre Dumas wrote. That's how a team works.

The longer this Brexit farce drags on, and the less likely the Brexiters will get what they want:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-br...-idUKKCN1PB13O
Britain would vote to stay in the European Union by a 12 percentage point margin if it was given another vote, the highest level since the shock 2016 Brexit referendum, according to a YouGov poll taken on Jan. 16.

There's also an insightful piece in today's Guardian summing up what Brexit is all about:
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...it-for-purpose
The project was driven by decades of camped-up mendacity about the tyranny of the EU, and sold in the referendum as a fantasy of national liberation. It simply could not survive contact with reality. It died the moment it became real. You cannot free yourself from imaginary oppression. Even if May were a political genius – and let us concede that she is not – Brexit was always going to come down to a choice between two evils: the heroic but catastrophic failure of crashing out; or the unheroic but less damaging failure of swapping first-class for second-class EU membership. These are the real afterlives of a departed reverie.

[Wendigo]

We had a vote and the decision was to leave the EU

How that is done is up to HMG but all this shenanigans about another vote is plain bonkers. It will do nothing but divide the country far more than it is now and break the bond between the people who voted to leave and our leaders

The UK has had a Eurosceptic outlook from the times of wine lakes, butter mountains and Edith Cresson so the referendum result is a very fair reflection and the thought of remaining in the EU is anathema to me.

Even outside the EU we will still have many strong historic, personal and cultural ties with Europe and that will continue. I am not listening to Project Fear Redux supporters as I firmly believe we can thrive outside the EU

that's all from me, see you on the flip side

[Mal Hombre]

"We had a vote" Brexiteers cling to that like a Nun clutching Her rosary,You voted for something We can't get and We're going to get something no one wants.The WTO rules that Brexiteers speak of so blithely do not cover Services,Services constitute 80% of the UK economy,So what then ? We're not "Going Global".We're headed for the gutter.

[charliels531]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

"We had a vote" Brexiteers cling to that like a Nun clutching Her rosary,You voted for something We can't get and We're going to get something no one wants.The WTO rules that Brexiteers speak of so blithely do not cover Services,Services constitute 80% of the UK economy,So what then ? We're not "Going Global".We're headed for the gutter.

Mal, I am familiar with the breed--Often wrong, never in doubt.

[G-Type]

Originally Posted by Wendigo

We had a vote and the decision was to leave the EU
...
How that is done is up to HMG but all this shenanigans about another vote is plain bonkers. It will do nothing but divide the country far more than it is now and break the bond between the people who voted to leave and our leaders
...
...
I am not listening to Project Fear Redux supporters as I firmly believe we can thrive outside the EU

that's all from me, see you on the flip side

What strikes me here is that you only talk about "You" as the "Leaver" and the potential division or tearing the bond between the leavers and the "leaders".

Seems you don´t care whether there will be a severe division between your people who nearly reflect 50% of the opposite opinion.

Where are your "leaders" a.t.m.? They have nothing better to do than to divide themselves within their own party and play embarrassing games in order to maintain their positions. How ridiculous is it to sack down the own PM because of a unpleasant deal and to speak confidence one day after.

I am very sure that you won´t get the Brexit you are hoping for. What is on the table is of course a compromise, but a compromise that 2 negotiators have agreed upon.

The fact that your government and its MP´s reject this plan shows their egoism in plain form.

This attitude won´t bring you forward - it leads straight to a hard Brexit without a deal.

Speaking from the EU-side, I can only hope (and I am pretty sure) that the deal on the table will not be opened or re-negotiated. Too much time has been invested, but you still don´t know what you want.

The hard Brexit seems inevitable to me, and the more I read and hear at this place convinces me that you won´t be satisfied until your country has completely decoupled from the EU.

You can have it...no, you will have it!

I just feel sorry for the 48% (it will be more now, that´s for sure) who will suffer widely due to an incompetent government who has shown nothing but 100% failure throughout the last months.

We in the EU have enough of this attitude...and we are well advised to no longer wait and see what garbage comes next.
.

[vinceprince]

Originally Posted by bjcb0

This is yet another irony: a Tory government suggesting unilateral free trade, one of the key policies they opposed throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Then Dr Fox wonders why none of the 40 biggest Non-EU countries seem bothered about negotiating free trade deals. They don't need to, come the 29th they will have free access to our markets but they can impose WTO tariffs on the industries that compete with their own. The best of both worlds for them along with the EU.

The reason for this is if we selectively waive only some tariffs on certain goods and countries is that we will have to check every single lorry to see if tariffs apply. We haven't even thought about which tariffs will be waived and even if we had decided this the traffic at Dover would effectively grind to a halt. There is no infrastructure or 'new technology' in place to handle this on the 29th and no plans for it anywhere in the near future.

Unless you physically check the lorry how do you know what the goods are or exactly where they come from? If they don't they can avoid tariffs by sneaking through unchecked.

'No deal' is the very worst deal for trade.

[Wendigo]

Originally Posted by charliels531

Mal, I am familiar with the breed--Often wrong, never in doubt.

Yet again you are reduced to used stupid sweeping arguments, there is NO Brexit breed just as there is NO Remain breed, I voted leave for my own personal reasons largely involving us taking back control of our country within this country and also having lived through the whole 40 years of our membership actually within the EEC/EU, which you have not done, yet you feel happy to give your opinions on which is fair enough, just as I feel happy to ignore them.

Have I any doubts, yes of course and the current behaviour of many MP's in Parliament does not help that. I don't expect leaving will be easy and you will never find anywhere I have said that, what I have often said is yes there may be some tough times ahead but we have faced tough times before and if the country can pull together I am sure we will manage to thrive outside the EU.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by haunted

As NI voted against Brexit in the referendum you could argue that the implementation of Brexit would amount to a change in it's constitutional status without it's people's consent- in fact directly against the expressed will of the people of NI.

You could, if you didn't understand the point. The point is that Northern Ireland is part of the UK until its own people choose differently. That means it goes where the UK goes and it does what the UK does. That is the constitutional position and the point the DUP makes when it (not unreasonably) objects to the attempt being made in the Leave agreement brokered by Mrs May to treat Northern Ireland as a separate entity.

Now don't misunderstand me - I do know that Britain's four nations all have degrees of autonomy and self-government nowadays (arguably except England). However, we have an internal free trade area and a common travel area [which includes the Irish Republic]. We have remained outside the Schengen Agreement and actually the Irish Republic made that choice too. Regarding the so-called free movement of people, all that is needed is that we and the Irish government agree to implement sensible checks on who comes in from outside the Common Travel Area in order to watch each others backs, which is same as it ever was, and exactly the same as it already is now, when Britain is still a member of the EU. As regards the free movement of goods, this will presumably require some sort of free trade agreement and we know this is achievable. Other countries have free trade agreements with the EU.

For movement of goods to be frictionless will require some more intelligent thinking, pretty much what we haven't yet had, but I was mildly intrigued when I read somewhere on this thread that the EU itself had suggested that customs procedures could take place anywhere in the British Isles, not necessarily in Northern Ireland or on the border. This would have resolved the critical issue of treating Northern Ireland differently, the thing which no one should be surprised that the Unionists in Northern Ireland will not accept. If that is true, if the EU really did make such an offer, then Mrs May and her ministers are idiots not to have been open to that proposal: but, hey, we know they are idiots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i97FkO3d_lU

Frankly, if there is a genuine achievable alternative to Mrs May's utterly crap proposal, an alternative in which Britain genuinely leaves the EU but also initiates a friendly and cooperative relationship afterwards, we should not be wasting time. The only way to reach such a goal would be to request an extension of the Article 50 declaration deadline, because this is detailed stuff which would need months, not weeks, just to create a heads of agreement. All EU members would have to consent to such an extension, and the only reason why they even might agree to do that would be if they could see a real point to it, and that it might make a difference. I think the British side would need to have at least a basis for negotiations, the principle on which a realistic plan could be made.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

"We had a vote" Brexiteers cling to that like a Nun clutching Her rosary,You voted for something We can't get and We're going to get something no one wants.The WTO rules that Brexiteers speak of so blithely do not cover Services,Services constitute 80% of the UK economy,So what then ? We're not "Going Global".We're headed for the gutter.

As I remember it, the question was whether to remain in the EU or to leave the EU. Either option is perfectly achievable. The angst is all about the results of either decision - which incidentally is why I keep saying I would never, ever ever had held that referendum without a really imperative reason, such as forthcoming compulsory membership of the eurozone. Our status had not changed - all that was different was that UKIP had good poll numbers and David Cameron was shitting yellow.

[bubbs999]

The other day, I was watching the Buster Keaton silent movie "The Boat"


In one scene, water is pouring in from a hole in the side of the boat in a long stream, hitting the floor and filling the boat with water.

His 'solution' is to catch the water in a funnel, but he needs to get the water from the funel out of the boat - so he drills a hole in the bottom of the boat.
Result = now twice as much water is flooding in.


This sums up the UK government handling of 'Brexit' - a HUGE fuck up - and we're sinking fast