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Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

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751–760 of 1001 posts

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#751

I guess one thing that many people are missing is why the "leave" vote won in the first place. If Europe is so great why did some people had the desire to leave it? Surely they were not all brainwashed or lobotomized? The EU is now trying to make the UK pay an extraordinary price in order to warn the other countries that leaving the EU is not a choice to be taken lightly. This kind of technique is known as bullying a…

Flooded by migrants, eh? Did they come in a wave? A tsunami? Did their little beady rat-like eyes and their smell offend you?

Dress it up all you like, but you’ve just broadcast “I’m a xenophobe” loud and proud.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#752

Here's what happens next: - A motion of no confidence has been tabled and will be debated and voted on tomorrow - If the motion carries (i.e. the Government loses): 1. Theresa May must resign as Prime Minister 2. There can be a 14 day window in which a new government is formed, which must be approved by a motion of confidence. This is likely to be waived 3. There will be a general election. Theresa May will remain le…

> It's likely such a referendum will have two questions: Do you wish to leave or remain?; and, in the event of a vote towards leave, would you accept the backstop or would you prefer "No Deal"

That's interesting, as it also could have had one question, with three possible answers: What option do you prefer: Leave, No Deal Brexit, May's Deal Brexit?

I can very well imagine the presentation of these questions influencing the outcome (with Remain being more likely in my formulation), and I wonder how such things get considered when designing a referendum.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#753
post #41

The 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…

I'm not sure I agree that a no-deal Brexit is such a good idea - given the (now exposed) lies of the Leave campaign, a second referendum seeems pretty reasonable.

At any rate - the idea that there is an alternative deal that someone can deliver on persists even now, which is insane. My favorite quote on this came from Michael Gove:

> “It’s a bit like a load of people in their mid-fifties at a swingers’ party holding out for Scarlett Johansson to arrive,” Mr Gove said.

> Amber Rudd, work and pensions secretary, added: “Or Pierce Brosnan.”

> Meanwhile David Gauke, justice secretary, claimed Labour’s Brexit policy was so fanciful it was “like hoping Scarlett Johansson is going to turn up on a unicorn”.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#754
post #274
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Brexit promise is something nobody can deliver on.. I would - respectfully - point out that's not the situation. It is (was?) a promise in the sense that the government is there to enact the will of the people. The majority of people who voted, voted to leave (personally I was in the minority). So now (in engineering terms) it's pretty simple. If everyone sits on their hands, the UK will leave the UK as schedule…

Brexit itself can of course be delivered, but the larger promise sold to voters - that the country would be able to negotiate favorable trade deals, that it would directly result in increased NHS funding, that it would lead to reduced immigration without affecting free movement for workers, that customs and border control would be seamless, that European court of justice would stop having jurisdiction in UK affairs e…

I don't think that was important to Brexit voters. It's an emotional vote, a rejection of something, and they didn't care about the consequences. The favorable deals are only a way to keep the debate going.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be a lesson for all voters across the world - think for a minute before voting. At least try to understand what you're voting on. We can blame all we want on the media, politicians etc etc, but in the end, we can't deny Brexit is the result of a properly, democratically conducted election - voters need to take at least some responsibility. No amount of "voters' remorse" is going to help now.

>This should be a lesson for all voters across the world - think for a minute before voting. At least try to understand what you're voting on. We can blame all we want on the media, politicians etc etc, but in the end, we can't deny Brexit is the result of a properly, democratically conducted election It's a shitshow for sure, but at least it's a democratic shitshow. Democracy isn't always a bed of roses, sometimes i…

The UK was always a special-case member of the EU, always demanding it's own uniqueness and pushing neoliberal garbage at every corner. The EU council should never have bent over so far backwards for the UK in the first place and it would have been absurd for them to bend even further. UK exceptionalism can go enjoy it's lonely island time.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#756
post #41

The 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…

This should be a lesson for all voters across the world - think for a minute before voting. At least try to understand what you're voting on. We can blame all we want on the media, politicians etc etc, but in the end, we can't deny Brexit is the result of a properly, democratically conducted election - voters need to take at least some responsibility. No amount of "voters' remorse" is going to help now.

This is not the voter’s fault. In a functioning democracy, there is a system to approve a text by popular vote instead of the usual parlement. So the question at such a vote should always be: “do you approve the proposed text?”, then the text becomes law.

By organizing an abstract opinion poll, the government just prepared a shit show, there no way to make any significant chunk of the population happy, everybody had a different view of brexit.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's phrase it like this. There would be nobody in parliament or government talking about a second referendum if remain had won. In fact it'd have been taken as a mandate to immediately pass more powers to Brussels, see the PESCO.

Well, of course. Remain is the current, familiar situation. A Remain victory wouldn't have come with a 25% drop in the pound, rampant inflation, the worst growth rate of G8 countries, stockpiling of food and drugs, and an increasing risk to see the world order that brought about the longest period of peace (70 years) in this corner of the world, being toppled. A Remain victory would also have been obtained in spite o…

> A Remain victory wouldn't have come with a 25% drop in the pound, rampant inflation, the worst growth rate of G8 countries

Why do people spout such provable nonsense?! Inflation is around the BoE target rate of 2% having just nudged down a touch (consensus forecast for Jan 2019 is 2.1%). Rampant inflation is what you see in Venezuela and Zimbabwe. A moment's thought should disabuse you of this opinion.

Back in late 2015, the UK's growth was around 2.9% based primarily on fundamentals that are largely unrelated to Brexit (IT and software). Those fundamentals haven't changed so there's a high likelihood that growth is dragging due to overall negative sentiment as a result of Brexit uncertainty.

Clear that fog, and growth should bounce back. The fastest way to clarity that honours the referendum result, though many don't want to hear it, is a no-deal departure with appropriate WTO exceptions based on national security assertions (de-risking essential supplies) during an FTA negotiation period coupled with the (already given) assertions on the EU citizens' right-to-remain in the UK.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU's plan from the start has been to make the process so painful as to dissuade anyone else from trying. Martin Selmayr was boasting that he has managed to trap the UK.

Of course, why would the EU adopt any other strategy if their goal is to keep the EU together?

That's not the reason that the EU has made the process so difficult.

They made it so difficult and so scary to warn the other states to not even try to think about an exit.

How is that democratic?

If the EU is so convinced that the only way is the EU way they should have made it easy for the UK to leave, then watch it as it burned to the ground and groveled to try to buy its way back into the EU then maybe the other states would have thought: Gee, it did not work for the EU but at least now we know and we won't try!

Instead, the EU is trying to make an example of the Uk as a show of force to the other states. The EU is ruling with fear and acting like a bully!

And that's forgetting the fact the EU leaders could have seen Brexit as a wake-up call and maybe changed the course of action and reform the EU from within to give people what they fucking promised when this thing was made in the first place: prosperity, safety, so on and so forth.

Instead, they march forward with more integration, more federalism, more Europe, as if the nations don't count anymore. Free trade is the new God in town and it doesn't take prisoners.

Lets forget the fact the economic growth for the EU is one of the weakest in the world for the last 15 years, that the youth unemployment rate is roughly 25% and that because the wages are so low due to the enormous amount of tax being paid by the companies and citizens, they have resorted to importing people from 3rd world countries in order to fill job vacancies that only exists because nobody can actually afford to work for such a low wage.

A new age of slavery built on top of migrant workers.

Ain't the EU pretty?

God forbid you are against them! 30 years ago if you showed any sign of reservation towards unregulated capitalism you were labeled a communist and shamed by the major political parties, nowadays if you are against the EU, you are labeled as backward, illiterate and racist/fascist/populist.

The words have changed, the technics are the same.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#759
post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, they didn't really opt out of the Euro. It is completely unfeasible at the time. Originally they were going to go with the Euro and to start the transition they linked the pound to the deutsche mark. However, the German economy was crushing the British economy and this pushed interest rates in the UK to over 10% (Fun fact: I was getting 12% interest in my savings account in the UK). Mortgage rates were ab…

Part of the reason the Eurozone's in the mess it is right now is that, for the most part, the EU didn't let the fact that the Euro was completely infeasible for particular countries get in the way of converting them over to it anyway. The UK wasn't the only country with similar problems, but others like Italy didn't opt out and are in a fine state now as a result. In that sense the British opt-out worked well for us.

By that logic the US shouldn't have a single currency, either.

I get that a single currency is problematic. Arguably it is problematic even in the US, after all this time. But it doesn't necessarily follow that a single currency is fundamentally infeasible. The US isn't crippled because of it.

By contrast, the poster gave a very concrete explanation why adoption of the Euro by the UK was [then] infeasible.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#760
post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This form of condescension is a major part of why remainers have utterly failed to make their case. Remainers clearly believe they are better than brexiters, but do not address the issues which matter (lack of control on political matters which affect the lives of average people: trade, standards, communications, intellectual property, immigration) to the people they are ostensibly trying to convince. The Brexit refe…

The original intent? What original intent was that? Brexit was always light on detail, and that is coming home to roost. When pressed, most Brexit supporters I've spoken to show absolutely no interest in the dismal nitty gritty of politics, preferring to spout shallow platitudes like "why can't they just get on with it". The silence from chief Brexiteers Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson has been profoundly deafening.

I'm not at all knowledgeable about the situation in the UK so I searched for Nigel Farage and this came up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIhPlyG96zk

It felt like he was trying to avoid the consequences of the actions of "Brexiteers" like himself.

But he is definitely not silent. There's that.

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