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Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

nytimes.com

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Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#931

Post by rmc »

gonehome wrote: post #55
yholio wrote: 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…

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 other…

> 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.

I don't think that would work. All it takes is the EU to pass a law saying "all speed limits must be in kmph", or "You're not allowed sell goods in imperial units". The UK would then have to do that change, and that'd drive the Brexiters mad.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#932

Post by rmc »

makomk wrote: post #144
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #99

I'll be the first to admit: I'm an American. I fundamentally do not understand Brexit. I understand the following timeline: 1. A largely disseminated, nation-wide vote occurs, bolstered by nationalist sentiment, that the EU is bad for the UK. This vote results in a conclusion that UK should leave the EU. 2. This is controversial, due to the majority of the populace in general not desiring to leave the EU, but not vot…

May's deal permanently blocks the UK from ever fully leaving the EU without the EU's permission, meaning that anyone who wants to leave won't support it. It also removes almost all the benefits of remaining in the EU, meaning Remain supporters hate it too. Oh, and for bonus points it effectively makes Northern Ireland no longer fully part of the UK, meaning that the DUP (the Northern Ireland unionist party which the…

The Good Friday Agreement, an international treaty between the UK & Ireland makes NI a slightly special place anyway. People born there can choose Irish or British citizenship. "Treating NI special" is part of the UK's treaty obligations.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#933

Post by trampypizza »

ako wrote: post #716
smileypete wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So what could the EU have conceded that would have convinced the die-hard Brexiteers to opt for Remain? All it would have taken is to swing the referendum result by a few percentage points. Some moves towards reforming the EU to make it more democratic could have been welcome.

After reading this [1] i wonder if the level of democracy is n't the problem, but rather the general understanding of how the EU works. [1]: https://qr.ae/TUnWGJ

Thanks for sharing this.

I have just completed a European Law module for my Graduate Diploma in Law, and this answer is a really concise and organised version of what I've been trying to say to people since the first few weeks of the course.

I have studied the European Union as an undergraduate politics student and now as a postgraduate law student, and I would totally agree with you that one of the primary issues of the European Union is its perception among citizens. Another commenter here mentioned how low the European Parliament Election turnout is in Britain, I think it was about 34% last time round, and this vote is often used as a 'protest' vote.

The public are not aware of how the European Union is constructed, and they are not aware of how the balance of power is determined. Much of the dialogue before the referendum in the UK was about 'unelected' and 'undemocratic' power in the EU, and this was usually directed towards the commission - a body that has no lawmaking power, and is selected by directly elected bodies(at the EU and Member State levels).

I really think the EU needs to speak louder and more directly to European Citizens about the role it plays and how it functions. Perhaps it does already, but I have not come across much outreach.

Full disclosure: I am an ardent remainer, and believe that whilst the EU is not perfect, we are much better off inside with influence than outside without.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#934

Post by ataturk »

roywiggins wrote: post #183
qfq wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Theresa May was initially against building a submarine out of cheese, obviously. Because it’s a completely insane thing to do. Leaving the EU is not a completely insane thing to do. The UK (and many other countries) have legitimate grievances about some things the EU is foisting on them (immigration for example) and the EU is giving them the cold shoulder and fining them if they don't comply. Labelling people who ar…

If you want access to the single market, you have to sign up to freedom of movement. The UK was never going to be able to have one without the other because it's a fundamental principle of the EU as an institution. It's a package deal.

And that package deal was wrecked the instant Soros and his cronies opened the refugee/illegal migrant taps and flooded Europe with too many idiots.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#935

Post by robertony »

_lbaq wrote: post #878
robertony wrote: post #855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One would think that the EU would be in a better position to get better deals than a single country. The EU has a history of being really slow at negotiating trade deals unfortunately. Further, the EU enforces VAT fees and implements protectionism with these methods to favour EU-based businesses, even when no EU competitors exist. These fees have a trendency to reduce economic activity within the EU and prevent che…

>implements protectionism with these methods to favour EU-based businesses Had to look it up, looks like 85:ish % of the UK trade is with the EU.

Sorry, I should have phrased that better.

When I said "reduced economic activity in the EU", I mean as a whole. This is an over simplfiication, but imagine a situation where everything is 20% more expensive than the normal asking price, this leads to less purchases being made as a whole. It doesn't matter if you're purchasing from outside the EU too, because it's still 20% more expensive. The overall economic activity in such an area is simply reduced.

The trade numbers simply are the way they are because importing doesn't really reduce the costs either. It should also be noted that exporting products outside of the EU has additional fees that make us less competitive than the alternatives outside of the EU too, so our exports are impacted too.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#936

Post by rtkwe »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #647
rtkwe wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4) Hold another referendum where it's going to have to be a decision between staying in or exiting with no deal (also political suicide & creates distrust). I've never really understood this reasoning given how Leave as completely nebulous with no real details. Is it really such a betrayal to go back and say "alright here's what Leave actually means is this what you actually want vs Remain"? That's been my issue wi…

To me it seems like that a revote would have to deal with the literal fear mongering the stay side has been pushing out. My personal favorite is the food shortages, while every other country outside of the EU manages to import food, apparently if you try to leave, you wont' be able to find the food you want on the shelves any more! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/02/brexit... https://www.wired.co.u…

The issue with the food is about the regulations on their import into the UK, having been in the EU for so long most of those rules are just the EU rules or really old out of date rules that were superseded by the EU food regulations. If there's a no deal Brexit all those EU rules go away and boom suddenly there's a big question about what food is legal to import.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#937

Post by BerislavLopac »

cryptonector wrote: post #674
BerislavLopac wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now the PM (and the EU) gets to go back to the drawing board Nope. The EU has said there will be no more negotiations.

Many brexiteers would be happy with no-deal brexit. The EU will almost certainly negotiate something, if not now, then later. Of course they'll say that they won't renegotiate _now_.

There is no "later", unless Article 50 is revoked.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#938

Post by nicky0 »

pmyteh wrote: post #828
nicky0 wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so. The UK parliament is at the root of democratic authority in the UK. The European Parliament is a largely powerless rubber-stamping body.

Thirty years ago, maybe. It's now got extensive co-decision powers and is a serious body in its own right. In fact, there's an argument that the in-built government majority in the Commons makes that far more of a powerless rubber-stamping body in normal times (recent events notwithstanding!)

Except that the the UK the goverment is formed from the elected members of the house. In the EU the only body with real power, the commision, is appointed by a process in which the "elected" president of the commision is the only candidate.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#939

Post by shedside »

TheGrumpyBrit wrote: post #773
justaguyhere wrote: post #651

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.

The thing is, there was no talk of a deal before the referendum. The vote was simply Stay or Go, with the assumption being that we would simply fall back to WTO rules. All this talk of negotiating a deal came after the vote. In that sense, a No Deal Brexit is closer to what the people voted for than any deal. Contrary to "voters remorse", I know plenty of Brexit supporters who are celebrating the defeat of what they…

The official Vote Leave campaign absolutely did talk about a deal: https://imgur.com/a/YGitsR8

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#940

Post by jcranmer »

desertedisland wrote: post #798
jcranmer wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU council could have offered some reasonable concessions in order to remain, both before and after the referendum, but nada. The essential problem with the Brexit movement is that it's based not on what the EU is but on the distorted view on what the EU is. When you start tackling the specific complaints that people had, it often turns out that it was the British government who had the power to alter the polic…

Here are some specific complaints about the EU: - Nobody in the UK ever voted for an external, supra-national government to have increasing control over numerous and increasing aspects of British life: farming, fishing, immigration, subsidies, etc. etc. - The EU is openly talking about a unified army, implementation of a law requiring all members to join the Euro and 'tax harmonisation': the removal of sovereign coun…

> Nobody in the UK ever voted for an external, supra-national government to have increasing control over numerous and increasing aspects of British life: farming, fishing, immigration, subsidies, etc. etc.

Most of that stuff was in the EEC that the British did vote for. The EU did guarantee that Britain could further opt out of "ever closer union" if it wanted to.

> The EU is openly talking about a unified army, implementation of a law requiring all members to join the Euro and 'tax harmonisation': the removal of sovereign countries to set their own tax policies.

Britain also had a guaranteed opt-out of the Euro. Since Britain and France are the only EU countries with any military capabilities worth speaking out, Britain has an effective veto over any unified military policy.

> The EU is very expensive to the UK which makes a net contribution of £9 billion / year. This is money that could be spent on hospitals, teachers, police, etc.

You do know that the Leave campaign basically said the day after the referendum "oops, this part of our plank was a big, fat, steaming lie"?

> Oh I know you'll tell me elected chambers that elect councils that distribute swords allocating a table of 7 presidents who nominate a head hobbit but the EU is patently undemocratic: noone knows who's in it, what they do or how they got there. Turnout for EU elections runs around 25% in the UK: it's hardly a mandate from the people is it?

I'll grant you that the EU has a hard time trying to overcome apathy in its democratic institutions. But apathy doesn't make it less democratic.

> I know you like the EU because you see it as some hippy, huggy federation of nations

Ha ha ha. No, that's not how I see the EU at all.

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