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Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

nytimes.com

941–950 of 1001 posts

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#941

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…

> the EU is increasingly right-wing and neo-liberal

Yes, but Tory Britain is even more so.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#942

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t blame the voters for trump or for brexit. They voted their hearts as they should. It was the job of Hillary and the remain campaign to push their message and educate the people on what their choices could lead to. They failed. That’s not the fault of the voters. I doubt a single sole intentionally voted with malicious intent, and you can’t fault someone for voting what they honestly believe is best, even if…

You're giving US conservative republican voters and politicians too much credit. They didn't "vote their heart" they voted their hatred and wallet.

Conservatives didn't elect Trump. They tried to elect everybody else but Trump, he was maybe their sixth choice out of the original group.

Independents and particularly white women elected Trump. They were the most important swing vote that determined the critical states that gave Trump the electoral college edge over Hillary's massive $2 billion political campaign. Hillary's failure to resonate with independent white women and minorities, particularly black voters, sank her campaign.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#943

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're giving US conservative republican voters and politicians too much credit. They didn't "vote their heart" they voted their hatred and wallet.

Conservatives didn't elect Trump. They tried to elect everybody else but Trump, he was maybe their sixth choice out of the original group. Independents and particularly white women elected Trump. They were the most important swing vote that determined the critical states that gave Trump the electoral college edge over Hillary's massive $2 billion political campaign. Hillary's failure to resonate with independent whit…

"failure to resonate" being "Fake facebook memes knocking Hillary posted from a partisan meme factory" made her demographic stay home from the polls (they didn't vote for T either)

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#944

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't see how this could reasonably have been done in the Brexit case. You would have to spend years negotiating the terms of the withdrawal first, then ask the people for a yea or nay. That negotiation would go totally differently if the UK government couldn't credibly claim it had a mandate from the people for the withdrawal.

That’s what they did on the “European constitution”. On Maastricht, on schengen.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#945
post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not the voter’s fault. Yes it is. Asked "do you want to fundamentally change status quo in some random yet to be decided way that most experts warn you will result in chaos" population should have voted "no". Population would have voted "no" if just a few more young people cared enough to get their asses to the voting booths. The lessons from Brexit are the same as the lessons from Trump in USA, Kaczyński i…

I think the problem is that consensus (51.9%) was made at the 30k ft. / 9km view (leave the EU). The details were left to be sorted out later and that's where all the trouble is. If the details of Brexit were included in the referendum, there wouldn't be any trouble in implementing it. But, you can bet that the ~half of voters that wanted Brexit aren't even in agreement on how to implement it, let alone trying to gai…

It was a strategy of the tory government to be as ambiguous as possible about what brexit would actually mean, how it would be implemented, what the details are. Their aim was to cause uncertainty and dissuade people from voting leave.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what Switzerland does. Just today I voted about an energy act, a police act and a residence planning act. I admit that I didn't study the law texts carefully. Instead I read the neutral explanation of the government and both explanations of the pro and contra committees and decided whether the reasonings convinced me or not. So even in Switzerland you could get the proverbial shit show if someone managed to co…

But precisely, you are voting on laws, not on an abstract "would you rather leave or remain" question. The referendum should have been held now: "We have this deal prepared, would you leave with this deal, leave with no deal, or remain?"

Meanwhile there have been several conservative speeches in Parliament about the direction they want:

They want May to come up with a better plan for a "No deal" Brexit. To take a much harder stance against the EU in negotiations. THAT's why they voted against her.

I feel like this is going in a VERY different direction than is being implied in the comments here.

And let's be honest here: it might work. In the EU, in all countries where I can understand the language: France, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands there are artikels on the front page of the main newspaper about companies lobbying to force their governments to simply break ranks with the EU in case of "No deal": to have a trade pact with the UK ready to go March 29. In theory, that's not legal, but there is precedent. If the UK can get trade deals with the US (which is not going to be a problem), Ireland, Belgium, France and the Netherlands, the damage of a no deal Brexit will be limited quite a bit. A "fuck the lot of you. No deal !" approach ... it's not out of the question that they actually make it work.

Plus, you know, it's clearly what the majority of the voters want and in theory both the UK and these European countries are democracies. On would think that would make it simple.

And then there's the question of what happens if Juncker gets called on his bluff. AFD, 5*, Lega Nord and FN will certainly see their hand strengthened quite a bit if the UK blows up their EU membership and actually gets away with it. Talk about worst possible outcome for everyone.

The EU should say "ok ... voters decided, sucks, but let's make this work. Let's give the UK a fair exit and a fair trade deal". That is in the interest of everyone in the EU AND everyone in the UK ... with the notable exception of the EU politicians themselves.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#947
post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What lies did the remain side give? We know exactly what we were getting there, the same as what we have.

We knew what we were getting, but that is not what the campaign sold. Both sides ran overwhelmingly negative campaigns. Ironic that remain was labelled Project Fear as the most direct lies were on the leave side - the £350m that is nowhere near and never has been, and the claims of mass Turkish immigration when Turkey isn't even in the EU stand out as easily memorable. Remain were less blatant, but gave numerous pred…

We haven't left yet so the results are still to be seen.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#948

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s nebulous because “leave the EU,” means everything from remaining in the SM and CU, to having no formal relationship with the EU, and a number of positions in between. People voted for the leave option without well defined idea of what that choice entailed. Remain, by contrast, was basically about keeping things as-is.

"no formal relationship with the EU" - anything else wouldn't really be leaving, would it? It would be partial leaving. The vote wasn't for partial leaving.

So Japan is "in" the EU, because of the recent trade treaty?

This is a formal relationship, after all.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#949
post #610
post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a "no deal" outcome, which is clearly bad, is still the best thing brexiters can actually deliver I don't see the logic here. The deal (let's call it D), is clearly worse than staying in the EU (let's call that option E). From that relation D < E it does not follow that no-deal (N) is better than a deal, i.e. D < N. It may well be that N < D < E. So I don't see how no-deal is the "best the brexiteers can delliver."

They said "can actually deliver", not "could technically possibly deliver".

They could have actually delivered the deal had they voted in favour -- and it would have been better than no-deal -- but many leavers voted against.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#950

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…

Change comes from within, not from arrogant temper tantrums. EU is not going to be able to convince a country that leaves on a whim. For God's sake what is EU is the second most Google thing in the UK right now behind what's Brexit. It wasn't a very informed deliberate decision.
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