"The people have voted to shoot themselves in the foot. Parliament rejects proposal to shoot themselves in the right foot, but proposal to shoot themselves in the left foot also seems destined for failure."
Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament
51–60 of 1001 posts
Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament
#52Imagine if all the great minds thinking, discussing, reporting and debating brexit spent their time on solving real problems facing the human race instead.
Because democracy, whilst not perfect, is the best system we have for civilisation to continue. As someone who voted remain, I have to say that we now have to leave the EU. If Brexit was to be stopped by Parliment, the damage to UK politics would last a generation. People would simply loose faith in the system, giving rise to more extreme political parties - and we all know where that leads to. If I was in charge, I'…
Out of interest (also a remainer here) what do you think to the argument that since every 5 years we get to change the government if we want to and if the Leave campaigners basically lied to the electorate, we should get a second vote?
Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament
#53Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament
#54Don't fully understand UK government structure but is it possible for the labor party to take over leadership and revoke article 50 before the deadline?
There's a confidence motion tomorrow evening at 7PM GMT. My understanding is, if the government loses a general election is triggered which takes a couple of months. So a new government could be in place before March 29th. However, I think if a general election was to happen then all sides would agree to ask for an extension to Article 50 and allow a few extra months for the new government to decide what to do. Anoth…
The betting odds show an 83% likelihood that the U.K. remains somehow after 3/29. There is a 40% chance of another general election this year (15% in 2020 and just 13% in 2021).
I’d say odds are the confidence vote fails tomorrow and a general election is called, with a motion to extend article 50 until the election is held giving the people a chance to speak, albeit not via a referendum.
Another referendum is not going to happen. Labour wants tories to hang themselves through the utter failure of Brexit. A referendum risks another Brexit approval or worse and gives the tories political cover for the whole mess.
Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament
#55The Brexit promise is something nobody can deliver on. It was a lie, you cannot force the EU to accept an unfavorable trade deal. If only for the reason that it would set an exceptionally bad precedent and everybody would want their own deal, to pick and choose the parts of EU membership that are favorable to them, leading the EU to implode. Somebody needs to own up to that lie and accept that a "no deal" outcome, wh…
Maybe? If you think that most of the people are actually looking at or arguing about the implementation of any specific policy (I'd suspect this is the minority).
It seems more likely people are just arguing about which tribe they're a part of. In that case nobody cares about what the best outcome is or what the truth is. If you can get a brexit deal passed that still allows the UK to 'brexit' in name only, but otherwise retains all of the actual agreements of being in the EU it could be a win-win. People get to pretend they left, but it doesn't actually change anything.
Without this there isn't a good outcome here short of just ignoring the referendum. I think owning the lie is a good idea, but not sure if it would work politically since someone like Nigel Farage can just come back and loudly call you a liar that can't deliver on a 'true brexit'.
Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament
#56Imagine if all the great minds thinking, discussing, reporting and debating brexit spent their time on solving real problems facing the human race instead.
Brexit is a real problem that the human race is faced with.
There can be no higher question than that of what rules people should be using to deal with each other. For most of human history the rules were imposed by force. You open your market because if you don't, I'll escalate from sending a strongly worded missive all the way up to sending my armies to pillage your countryside.
Recently we've moved to a more contract-based system because using force sucks and you only want to do it if you absolutely have to. But that brings with it its own set of problems. Getting everybody on the same page is hard. Politics largely deals with local perspectives, even when it has to aspire to "the will of the people" when it comes to things like entering into international treaties.
Brexit is history in the making. The EU is a phenomenally novel way of integrating sovereign nation-states into a singular political entity, that happened without war. It's aim is to make something as singularly powerful as the United States, without force. The US had to clear out the West by force in order to achieve its Manifest Destiny. Great that we have it now, but we can't just keep fighting wars to achieve political unity.
That without force part is the problem being solved. Whatever happens here will influence all future non-violent political integrations humanity has going forward.
Make no mistake, this matters. Moreso than just about anything we've done since WW2.
Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to be clear, article 50 hasn't been revoked, the UK will still leave the EU with no deal on March 30th. This vote is very damaging to the government's position, but as it stands there's been no move, assurance, or guarantees, to stop article 50. If article 50 is activated it starts a two year countdown as the UK slowly moves out of the EU. Even if the government loses the no confidence vote, there's still no imp…
What I don't understand (and I am very ignorant!) is why the initial vote can't just be looked at as a stage in the decision process. Time has gone on, and the public has become more educated as to what the true effects of Brexit will be. Even leaving aside the question of how dishonest the pro-Brexit arguments were. It just seems reasonable to have another vote.
I think the issue is that once you have had a referendum with outright dishonest arguments and likely manipulated by foreign states and one side wins by a couple of perentage points, the outcome is ironclad will of the people and even if these dishonest arguments turn out to be to many people's surprise wrong, it will not change what is the will of the people. Vice versa, any notion of asking people what they like about the actual outcome is considered pretty much hostile against democracy. Or something like that. I really can't claim to understand the argument properly.
Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament
#58Imagine if all the great minds thinking, discussing, reporting and debating brexit spent their time on solving real problems facing the human race instead.
Apparently more than 51% of the UK's voters thought that the UK belonging to the EU was a real problem worth solving. What's your legitimacy to belittle this concern?
Approximately 99% of the people voting for or against brexit didn’t know what they were voting for. I would be surprised if even 1% of the UK population could accurately describe what the EU is, it’s structure and the implications of leaving the EU.
Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament
#59The whole thing seems like a slow motion train wreck, except with the potentially and arguably happy outcome of them remaining in the EU.
The "best" solution to this problem is to cancel Brexit. Even that solution would cause a massive political blowback and only deepen the current divides that exist today.
The "fantasy" solution is that the government can somehow negotiate a better deal for Brexit. But this is pure fantasy. For starters, there is severe disagreement as to what kind of deal ought to be pursued among the people who dislike May's deal. Most of the Brexiteers want a "hard" Brexit, which means in practice that they want all the goodies of being in the EU without any pain whatsoever (this is kind of like expecting the Pope to appoint a Muslim imam to the College of Cardinals). This also runs into the problem that it is very risky to reopen strife in Northern Ireland, which was cooled in large part by the effective removal of a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
The "crazy" solution is to bail out with no deal. Very few people actually want this--taken literally, it means things like "you can't fly between UK and Europe;" the hope is that by playing brinksmanship, none of the horribles actually happen.
So yes, it is a slow motion train wreck. There's no easy way out.
Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament
#60I voted remain but I spend a lot of time with group of people who voted leave. Some of them have realised the leave campaigners basically had no evidence to back up their claims and so feel lied to but, sadly, the others are just angry - and I mean really angry. They want out at all costs because the “EU is telling us what to do”. Revoking article 50 would be a bad idea for civil stability but going through with it s…
It wasn't 52% of the country though. The voter turnout was 72% and that excludes the millions of under 18s who will be affected by this the most.