Brexit discussion thread VII (Please read OP before posting)

Hurrache

FrancieBrady wrote: »

Wouldn't it be great if an initially grey but ultimately safe, truly conservative (in comparison) pair of hands like John Major would emerge from the chaos.

Are there any left in the position to sweep in? I was wondering over the weekend if there was such a person when I saw the fab four listed from where the new leader is expected to come from.

Enzokk wrote: »

But how would they oust her? They would have to do it in a way that doesn't harm the party in the eyes of the voters and seeing that they cannot do it from a party perspective only as the ERG shot that load last year already, the only way is to cause even more chaos for the party.

We know well at this stage the Tories don't plan, so I think the height of it at the moment is just to ask her nicely to step down.

Hurrache

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

Looks like tomorrows vote will be pulled. Plenty of time left to play with I guess .

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/brexit-vote-must-be-put-on-hold-mps-warn-theresa-may-3jkhl37gm

Behind paywall but you'll get the gist from the first 3 paragraphs.

It's mostly based on comments from Marcus Fysh, who's been hammered all morning since he spoke on different programs. He's basically regurgitating the Malthouse amendment and saying that they should vote on that in order to show the EU that this is what the EU MUST agree to.

Rumours now are also been put out there from the UK, unsurprisingly seem to be originating from the Telegraph, that if the EU agree to an extension that they'll ask for additional payments from the UK in order to do so,.

An Claidheamh

Hurrache wrote: »

Raab on TV said yesterday that if she extends article 50 she'll find herself in an even trickier situation with regards to holding on. And according to the Sunday Times they're lining up to try oust her if she does extend it, with some senior cabinet ministers thinking about telling her to leave this week.

So the new leader is expected to be one of Johnson, Raab, Hunt and Javid, what a horrid bunch.

To be fair she did hire them

Zubeneschamali

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

Behind paywall but you'll get the gist from the first 3 paragraphs.

Ha ha!


They have advised her to halt the vote and replace it with a motion setting out the kind of Brexit deal that would be acceptable to Tory MPs to keep the party together and put pressure on Brussels.

People in Brussels can see your secret plan, dudes!

lawred2

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Ha ha!


They have advised her to halt the vote and replace it with a motion setting out the kind of Brexit deal that would be acceptable to Tory MPs to keep the party together and put pressure on Brussels.

People in Brussels can see your secret plan, dudes!

you've had near three years lads... you hardly think it's going to manifest itself now

ancapailldorcha

Mod: Stop with the insults please. Any more posts with them will be deleted.

Enzokk

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Ha ha!


They have advised her to halt the vote and replace it with a motion setting out the kind of Brexit deal that would be acceptable to Tory MPs to keep the party together and put pressure on Brussels.

People in Brussels can see your secret plan, dudes!

I will rephrase. I don't understand how they think they will get any deal through without any support from Labour. If the Brexit deal is seen as too soft then the ERG will vote against it. If it is seen as too hard then you have the Tory rebels that will vote against it. They need cross party support and yet it is the one thing they seem actively not to look for.

Snickers Man

lawred2 wrote: »

the picture with that article is mind boggling

the 'great work' of the armed forces in holding unarmed people at gunpoint against a wall

Fade it to black and white, change the shape of the helmets just a little and you might think you were looking at a scene from the Warsaw ghetto 27 years earlier. Even the fashions hadn't changed that much.

I know: Godwin, Godwin, Godwin but FFS if you want to call such behaviour "dignified and appropriate"......

Hurrache

So the vote tomorrow if it goes ahead may not be a "meaningful" vote, but a notional vote on an imaginary agreement that the UK want. Ridiculous.

Anteayer

I find that Irish Times article a bit confusing, particularly the reference to immigration from war torn areas.

The UK has an entirely independent visa and immigration regime for non-EU & non EEA nationals. Is there some war torn part of the EU we're all unaware of? I'm guessing there must be some part of emm let's say Denmark that's much rougher than anyone's ever realised...?

Outside of the EU, the UK will still have immigration from non EU countries in exactly the same way it's always had. It's an English speaking country and many of the places that people immigrate from are its own former colonies. You'll also always have refugees seeking asylum under international and basic moral obligations. It's even more hypocrisy when the UK is regularly militarily involved in many of the conflicts they cause massive displacement. You see the same hypocrisy in France and in the US btw. They're not alone in that.

They'll also be outside any EU rules like the Dublin Convention, so that's going to make things very complicated.

I'm fed up with the way journalists don't ever challenge this rhetoric. They've just allowed a completely false narrative to develop.

It's like you have a cohort who don't like immigration and are right wing on the issue but it's easier and more politically acceptable to be anti EU than to express an opinion that they actually want hard-line immigration policies. So the two issues have been rolled into one - sort of blame foreigners on there being too many foreigners.

They'll have a lot of very uncomfortable realities to deal with when they've cut off two way freedom of movement for EU and EEA nationals and still have lots of immigration from everywhere else.

Seth Brundle

Given the scale of the numbers, why isn't someone in government shouting STOP!?

Brexit fallout on UK finance intensifies - think tank

More than 275 financial firms are moving a combined $1.2 trillion (£925 billion) in assets and funds and thousands of staff from Britain to the European Union in readiness for Brexit at a cost of up to $4 billion, a report from a think tank said on Monday.

New Financial identified 5,000 expected staff moves or local hires, a figure that is expected to rise in coming years.

Ten large banks and investment banks are together moving 800 billion pounds of assets from Britain - or 10 percent of banking assets in the country. A small selection of insurers have shifted a combined 35 billion pounds in assets, and a handful of asset managers have moved a total of 65 billion pounds in funds.

“Business will continue to leak from London to the EU, with more activity being booked through local subsidiaries,” Wright said.

“This will reduce the UK’s influence in European banking and finance, reduce tax receipts from the industry, and reduce financial services exports to the EU.”

A 10 percent shift in banking and finance activity would cut UK tax receipts by about 1 percent, the report said.

Relocations have cost firms $3 billion to $4 billion, which will be passed on to customers and shareholders, the report said.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-banks/brexit-fallout-on-uk-finance-intensifies-think-tank-idUKKBN1QS00B?utm_source=applenews

Leroy42

Because the MP's have bought into the narrative that, as servants of the people and due to the will of the people, they simply must go along with anything. In effect, the sovereignty of the HoC as been cast aside at the altar of Brexit and now the Mp's must vote for something that they know is actually not only not in the best interests of the country but actively harmful to the country.

That it is all based on nothing but someone elses interpretation of the vote and what it means seems totally lost. All the Brexiteers seemingly have to do is pull out the voting card which states Leave on it and then basically anything goes.

Anteayer

Seth Brundle wrote: »

Given the scale of the numbers, why isn't someone in government shouting STOP!?

Brexit fallout on UK finance intensifies - think tank

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-banks/brexit-fallout-on-uk-finance-intensifies-think-tank-idUKKBN1QS00B?utm_source=applenews

I'd guess that this will also be a gross underestimate as you'll have all sorts of unpredicted and unpredictable knock-on impacts that will not have been modelled because this is a totally unprecedented situation.

The level of integration and complexity of supply chains and service supply chains is very poorly understood by policy makers in general and the group who are running the UK at the moment don't really understand subtle complexities. Everything's binary choice.

jochenstacker

ilovesmybrick wrote: »

Meet the Irish in Britain who voted for Brexit: ‘My views can offend dinner-party sentiment’

Now, as an immigrant to another European country I do think there is a certain truth to what the lad means when he says:



However, you'd have to be a complete tool to go back home living abroad and spout the nonsense about Ireland surrendering their independence etc. etc. I can empathize with British brexiteers to a certain extent, but the Irish and other foreign nationalities based in the UK that support it (including members of my own family) I have nothing but contempt for.

The next step, he says, is for Ireland to leave the EU. “Ireland has no choice,” Kelly says. “I don’t understand it – you spend 800 years trying to gain independence and within 60 years sign up to another imperial power.”

I have to say that ignorant statements like these make me irrationally angry.
It's like joining the local tennis club and then complain that they are evil slave drivers who force you to play tennis against you will.
But this is of course the big, central lie of the SNIP. Cut this out. pushing Brexit, it doesn't have to be true, it just has to have a ring to it.
Simply bleat "Evil Imperial Overlords" over and over and over again, and in today's fact free world you can hoik in easily impressed and mentally less gifted voters by the boat load.
Because nobody will stop for one second, look behind the hysteria and spend 5 minutes on Google checking facts.
I predict hard times for Europe if the average oik has become so lazy, so stupid and so complacent that they will simply swallow anything put before them.
Seriously, if you believe the "Evil Empire" line (especially as a Brit! Oh The Irony!), you are in the Twilight Zone.

j8wk2feszrnpao

jochenstacker wrote: »

Seriously, if you believe the "Evil Empire" line (especially as a Brit! Oh The Irony!), you are in the Twilight Zone.

The really Evil Empire, that allows you to leave by just voting for it. If only the British Empire had been so generous.

Anteayer

jochenstacker wrote: »

I have to say that ignorant statements like these make me irrationally angry.
It's like joining the local tennis club and then complain that they are evil slave drivers who force you to play tennis against you will.
But this is of course the big, central lie of the SNIP. pushing Brexit, it doesn't have to be true, it just has to have a ring to it.
Simply bleat "Evil Imperial Overlords" over and over and over again, and in today's fact free world you can hoik in easily impressed and mentally less gifted voters by the boat load.
Because nobody will stop for one second, look behind the hysteria and spend 5 minutes on Google checking facts.
I predict hard times for Europe if the average oik has become so lazy, so stupid and so complacent that they will simply swallow anything put before them.
Seriously, if you believe the "Evil Empire" line (especially as a Brit! Oh The Irony!), you are in the Twilight Zone.

They way I interpret it is that everyone sees the world through their own lens. If you're coming from the perspective of an old empire and have all the cultural baggage that goes along with that, you will probably tend to interpret the world around you as thinking how you think. Thus, the EU has to have some kind of imperial motive because that's how you understand the world.

You also see it in the way that the Tories keep trying to negotiate with Merkel. They understand the EU as if it were the UK, where the biggest member runs the place and everyone else is just subordinate. Then they're somewhat shocked when Merkel tells them she doesn't run the EU and you need to talk to the Commission.

You see a similar issue with Russia where they're basically seeing the world as if it were still in the early 20th century - wars between great powers and diplomacy and the US tends to see everything as a military threat and become locked in cold war mode.

You're also seeing an element of that in Eastern Europe - increasingly a lot of people are interpreting the EU as if it were the USSR which is completely inaccurate, but you can see where it's coming from in terms of their history.

You can only understand multilateralism if you've actually engaged in it. I think most of Europe has, and I would very much include Ireland in that, but the UK has very much sat on the outside not really fully comprehending what's been going on as everyone else chats away and it sits in the corner. I mean, when you look at the EU it's basically a club that evolved in post-war Western Europe in a very cooperative kind of way. The UK only got enthusiastic about it because its imperial days were over and its economic situation going into the 1970s wasn't great. So, I think in a lot of ways the British public tended to understand the EU as nothing but a trading bloc, which is not what the rest of the members understood it to be. It was always far more than that.

Leroy42

And they have to keep ramping up the narrative about the Evil and intransigent EU in order to avoid having to take any of the blame.

The one question that seemingly never gets asked of the likes of TM, Davis, Raab and Johnson, is how they allowed the EU to bully them (on the basis that we accept that is what happened). How did the UK go from a position of having all the cards to being forced by the EU to stay against their will.

For to answer those question needs to be either a) its all nonsense or b) that they have done a terrible job of delivering Brexit and that the reason for the current situation is entirely because they failed.

Now which one are they going to try to push as the reality? Of course blame the EU and make it out as if the likes of Barnier etc as evil geniuses that lied and threatened the UK so much that they had little choice.

Anteayer

It's incredibly irresponsible when you look at it. I mean they seem to only care about protecting their own political careers, not about the country itself. If the UK goes into an economic downward spiral because of this, blaming the EU is not going to put dinner on people's tables or pay their gas bills.

Leroy42

Anteayer wrote: »

It's incredibly irresponsible when you look at it. I mean they seem to only care about protecting their own political careers, not about the country itself. If the UK goes into an economic downward spiral because of this, blaming the EU is not going to put dinner on people's tables or pay their gas bills.

You are looking at it from the wrong perspective. They, the MP's, are looking at it from the basis that if they were to vote against Brexit they could realistically lose their seats. Either through a non selection or by the people voting them out on the basis that the other party candidate would have followed the 'will of the people'.

Due to the party system and FPTP, there is little advantage of stepping out of the crowd. For the majority of party MP's, simply following the party line will be enough to get them re-elected.

There are exceptions of course, Soubry etc, but in the main that is the process. And the ERG and others have done a remarkable job of painting leave as the Tory position, when only a few years ago they were seen very much as the troublesome, but minority, part of the party

MrMusician18

Tell me how wrote: »

How the f.u.c.k are people still talking about Europe being uneleceted?

The most prominent individuals in the EU are not elected.

Maybe the commission should be drawn from the EU parliament?

Leroy42

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The most prominent individuals in the EU are not elected.

Maybe the commission should be drawn from the EU parliament?

Like?

Anteayer

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The most prominent individuals in the EU are not elected.

Maybe the commission should be drawn from the EU parliament?

Because in its present state the EU is still a hybrid between being an intergovernmental body and a governmental body in its own right and there's no harmonised pan-European political system at this stage either. So, it would be quite difficult to conduct a pan-EU election for individual office holders.

The Commissioners are appointed by the 28 elected, sovereign governments through whatever processes they wish to use. You could argue that's basically an electoral college. The Commission then must be approved by the European Parliament.

The Council of the European Union, is just the collective group of line ministers on a particular topic or the heads of government meeting as a group.

and the European Parliament is directly elected.

It's a bit rich for the UK to go around calling the EU undemocratic when its upper house is a mixture of unaccountable appointees, hereditary peers and the bishops of the Church of England.

I also don't understand how the EU is supposedly so incomprehensibly complicated. It's like the way some people have a mental block about the metric system. They don't want to understand it.

Inquitus

Unbelievable, she's contemplating delaying the vote again, with not even 3 full weeks left until Brexit day. Given chaotic no deal should be taken off the table by Parliament tomorrow, that leaves her deal, or an extension, or a crash out if the EU rejects said extension. Unless the EU re-opens the WA, I cannot see any other compromise that will get her deal through the HoC, and I don't think the EU are for moving. So what's the plan, hope that if she delays this even more that either the EU or the ERG will move from what are clearly very well entrenched positions, that's genius that is........what a complete clusterf##k!

bobmalooka

MrMusician18 wrote: »

Tell me how wrote: »

How the f.u.c.k are people still talking about Europe being uneleceted?

The most prominent individuals in the EU are not elected.

Maybe the commission should be drawn from the EU parliament?

Jesus Christ, which prominent individuals are unelected?
Every form of governance has elected officials and unelected civil servants (pesky buerocrats) - EU being no different

Hurrache

So rumours now that May will be heading to Strazburg this evening followed by claims she has put a deadline of early evening for a breakthrough. The EU has said there's nothing to discuss based on what the UK had proposed, and at lunchtime the Irish government has said we're approaching the point of a hard brexit.

May be optics for May to say she made one last push ahead of tomorrows vote.

Theresa May has pleaded with the EU to hand her an eleventh-hour concession to break the deadlock in Brexit negotiations and allow her to put a revised deal to a vote of MPs tomorrow.

Downing Street has set a deadline of early evening to achieve a breakthrough in the talks despite insistence from the EU that it will not improve its offer on the Irish backstop.

The prime minister’s official spokesman insisted that MPs would still be given a vote tomorrow but did not rule out altering the motion to make it “conditional” on further concessions from Brussels.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brexit-vote-must-be-put-on-hold-mps-warn-theresa-may-3jkhl37gm?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1552306673

Inquitus

Hurrache wrote: »

So rumours now that May will be heading to Strazburg this evening followed by claims she has put a deadline of early evening for a breakthrough. The EU has said there's nothing to discuss based on what the UK had proposed, and at lunchtime the Irish government has said we're approaching the point of a hard brexit.

May be optics for May to say she made one last push ahead of tomorrows vote.

It's been well documented that all these trips to the continent have largely been for show, and nothing of substance has been proposed or discussed, but hey ho, why not continue this charade until erm end of day 29th March and then we'll just see what happens........I can't get my head round how this Tory Government is behaving, the mind boggles.

Anteayer

Oh no! Please don't tell me we're going to have another geographically named speech that nobody's aware of except the UK press and I'll be hearing about "The Strasbourg Speech" for the next 10 years as if it were the Treaty of Versailles.

Inquitus

Hurrache wrote: »

The prime minister’s official spokesman insisted that MPs would still be given a vote tomorrow but did not rule out altering the motion to make it “conditional” on further concessions from Brussels.

Maybe the EU should have a vote deciding that remain is the only acceptable outcome and go present that to May, hw the hell can you hold a vote on a deal that is not on offer......

54and56

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The most prominent individuals in the EU are not elected.

There is nothing particularly unusual with high office holders in mature democracies being appointed rather than elected and there is an argument that recruiting the most talented person to fill a role is a smarter way to operate, particularly in a complex association made up of of 26/27 countries each with individual nationalistic prejudices etc.

Examples include some senior office holders in the US Administration (Attorney General, Sec of State, Sec of Treasury etc), Olly Robbins negotiating Brexit on behalf of the UK etc etc.

Just because a parish pump politician wins a local popularity competition doesn't make them suitable to hold high office requiring expertise, experience and decision making skills!!

MrMusician18

bobmalooka wrote: »

Jesus Christ, which prominent individuals are unelected?
Every form of governance has elected officials and unelected civil servants (pesky buerocrats) - EU being no different

The entire commission is unelected. The commissions role is more like that of the executive branch of government rather than a civil service head of department.

There is no reason why the commission couldn't be drawn from the EU parliament, much like the way our Daily works.