Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 1001 posts

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#611

Post by dumael »

jimnotgym wrote: post #489
twoslide wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's preventing the referendum from being declared stupid and that the UK gov't is not going to do it? Nothing except politics. The referendum is advisory and not legally binding. The Leave campaign has been found guilty of criminal offences. But actually, the referendum result is the closest thing May has to a mandate, her party won a minority in the parliamentary elections.

Correct, in fact the only force that the referendum has at all is that David Cameron promised to enact the result. But even this is old news, a past Prime Minister can hardly bind the hands of a future one! In fact the idea that a government can't bind a future government is an important part of Britain's ("unwritten") constitution.

Nit: It's Parliament cannot bind a future Parliament rather than UK governments cannot bind future UK governments.

https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/role/sovereignty

The subtly here is that usually a government commands an overall majority of Parliament, but weak/minority governments have to worry about government rebels.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#612

Post by osrec »

arethuza wrote: post #287
roland35 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of the Despair demotivational poster "Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."

"We all live in a yellow lump of Brie, yellow lump of Brie... " Edit: Clearly one glass of wine too many...

Are you referring to this: https://www.indy100.com/article/brexit-explain-cheese-submar... ?

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#613

Post by RugnirViking »

ttul wrote: post #54
humps wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 go…

We could almost see the incredible position of an election neither party particularly wants to win.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#614

Post by cryptonector »

mstade wrote: post #541

I’ve heard a lot of people make the point that it’d be political suicide if the government declares brexit a bad idea and then backtracks, ignoring the referendum and thus remain in the EU after all, that it’d feed into the hand of the nationalists – but I’ve got hard time understanding why? Doesn’t this assume that people are just dumb? That hey believe the government has been sitting on their hands in trying to get…

The electoral map of the UK is more hard-brexit than the popular vote. There are many seats where brexit won 60+% or even 70+%. That means that there are a lot of MPs who, though they may wish to Remain, also wish to remain as _MPs_, and that means they cannot be overtly Remain.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#615

Post by RugnirViking »

cryptonector wrote: post #369
pkaye wrote: post #5

Don'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?

Problem is: many labour MPs are from hard-brexit districts. Same thing for conservative MPs. In fact, the problem is that the electoral map of the UK is more hard-brexit than the popular vote, while the MPs from hard-brexit districts are mostly remainers. Remainer MPs from hard-brexit districts have contradictory and irreconcilable motivations: they want the UK to remain in the EU, but they want to remain MPs. If at…

note that you say a potential election might not yield a remain result - in fact I would suggest that it will certainly not. Even if every remain voting constituency somehow formed a government (impossible with even just SNP and Labour tensions), it would not be close to enough seats to form a government.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#616

Post by RugnirViking »

Someone1234 wrote: post #3
tunesmith wrote: post #2

The whole thing seems like a slow motion train wreck, except with the potentially and arguably happy outcome of them remaining in the EU.

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…

bookies odds are at 83% for the uk to remain in the EU past march, and the pound is up following the annoucement. Add to this the fact that the SNP and most remain voting MPs voted against this deal, and I reckon theres a significant likelihood of at least something happening

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#617

Post by RugnirViking »

scarmig wrote: post #9
Someone1234 wrote: post #3

Earlier 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…

Yes, but there was no chance of article 50 being revoked while May's deal was still on the table. Now it's a choice between revoking it and a hard Brexit. Which is the only way we'd ever get to a state where it might be revoked. EU courts have, IIRC, ruled that Britain can unilaterally revoke article 50, so now it's all up to elected MPs to figure out a way forward. So the fate of the UK rests on the good judgment an…

I'm just hoping Jeremy Corbyn is playing the long game of claiming to be one way but then acting another to fake out the prime minister. Same as he did with stating that he was not going to be appearing on the televised debates like may, until changing his mind at the last second, showing up anyway and showing her up.

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#618

Post by Udik »

joshuahughes wrote: post #606
Udik wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be so hard to argue that steps of this magnitude should not be taken based on a single poll won with a 2% margin (which means that if only 1/100 of the voters had changed sides the result would have been opposite). It might take a bit of courage to declare it but it's a travesty that politicians are so afraid of their electorate as not daring to utter such an obvious truth.

'Leave' actually received 1,269,501 more votes than 'Remain', which is quite a huge number out of a UK population of about 66m. Pretty sure that means FOUR out of every hundred votes would've needed to swap sides to just get us to a 50/50 split. That's really not the close contest it's made out to be.

Sorry. I think we're both wrong. The referendum was won by leave with 51.9% of the votes. That means that if 2/100 had switched sides to remain (not 1/100 as I said before, but not 4/100 either) the result would have been in favour of remain (0.1% in favour). Agree?

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#619

Post by mstade »

cryptonector wrote: post #614
mstade wrote: post #541

I’ve heard a lot of people make the point that it’d be political suicide if the government declares brexit a bad idea and then backtracks, ignoring the referendum and thus remain in the EU after all, that it’d feed into the hand of the nationalists – but I’ve got hard time understanding why? Doesn’t this assume that people are just dumb? That hey believe the government has been sitting on their hands in trying to get…

The electoral map of the UK is more hard-brexit than the popular vote. There are many seats where brexit won 60+% or even 70+%. That means that there are a lot of MPs who, though they may wish to Remain, also wish to remain as _MPs_, and that means they cannot be overtly Remain.

Is more or was more? The referendum was two and a half years ago and people now have more information at hand, which is my point – why is reneging on brexit automatically political suicide? Because it's not what the people want? Maybe it is today, given what we now know? Would love to see some data sources, if you have any links?

Re: Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

#620

Post by RugnirViking »

laurentoget wrote: post #327
fixermark wrote: post #296

So what is the worst-case scenario if the UK comes up with no clear legal plan for Brexit on their end before the EU deadline?

Major recession, food and medicine shortage, 1 million british citizen deported back to the UK, 3 million EU citizen leaving the UK and civil war in Northern Ireland is what the most alarmist have predicted.

A more realistic but important to note still on the worse end of outcomes for a no deal would be something like: Major recession, large queues on motorways for a while, slighty rising unemployment in the longer term.

The bank of england would probably manage to smooth over the worst of the effects, messing with the pound to insulate buisnesses trading internationally (note that right now their main problem is the pound being too high, so it might sort itself out naturally)

Post reply on HN