81–90 of 108 posts
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If this hyper politics game is real, what was the exit plan? There was simply no way it would pass? Or Cameron wants to stay in power so bad that he'd do the dirty work that the people willed and taje the fall for whatever fallout comes?
Cameron doesn't want to stay in power, he announced he would stand down before the next election at the end of the last parliament.
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If there is still a trade agreement between the UK and the EU, then lots of things in the UK will still be controlled by the EU, as the EU is larger and will make the trade rules. (Also, the EU is quite bureaucratic and thus not so flexible, so it will not be very willing to make a special agreement with the UK. It's EEA, Canada-style, WTO-style, or nothing.) If you don't want the EU controlling any aspect of the UK,…
Right now small businesses in the UK that don't export at all have to comply with all EU rules. If the UK leaves then they won't. So the effective influence will be greatly reduced.
Or maybe Boris looked subdued because he just had the flu. All those plausible theories are just that: plausible and theories. Who knows what's going through Johnson's head right now? Who knows what will happen in the future? What good is this sort of analysis, that's based on some vague attempt to form a theory of mind of a particular person (rather than a class of person, say) by people who have never even met the…
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And, right now, he has 52% of voters behind him. But, that is somehow making him do a sad face?
52% of voters from all parties were behind his side. 52% of people voting for a brexit doesn't translate into 52% of the seats in the House of Commons going to a Johnson-led Conservative party. Edit: And it certainly doesn't translate into 52% of people wanting him to win in 2020. If he negotiates a poor deal with the EU and/or 'forgets' about a few central 'Leave' arguments, he'll be in all sorts of trouble.
You have to understand how those people operate. They don't give two bits about reason and making sense. All they care about is to stay in power. They optimise for that and that alone. And 52% is power, beyond BoJo's (or Gove's or Farage's) wildest dreams.
If Brexit was a big mistake, thinking that Boris will get cold feet now that he has a clear line of sight to his goal (to be PM, duh) is an even bigger one.
There's a much better and simpler explanation to the 4-months delay. As shown in Cameron's [white paper on Brexit from last February]( https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm... ), the critical part of the exit process is to buy more than 2 years to define the new relationship (article 50 has basically only this period as a hard fact). The paper does bold that a realistic timeline would be ~10 ye…
There is no way this situation can extend for 10 years. The EU will not allow it, especially if recession hits. If really UK elites get cold feet, we'll have a general election with an europhile party winning and abandoning the whole thing, with a second referendum forced.
I wonder if a snap election could be called before article 50 is invoked? One of the major parties could campaign on "Remain" and if they won, they'd have a democratic mandate to ignore the referendum.
Look, forget about any of the major parties (like, the following two, Tories and Labour). They are responsible for this mess, either because they wanted to cause it (that's half of the Tories and a quarter ish of Labour) or because they failed to stop it (three quarters of Labour). The best chance the UK has to reverse the result of the referendum is Nicola Sturgeon being able to do what she suggested today, blocking…
Tbh I feel awful for Lizzie and Charles, who might end up being constitutional arbiters in the process of disgregation of a kingdom their family kept together for hundreds of years. They probably didn't expect to have to deal with this shit at their age.
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Arg.. I just spent a half hour writing a long comment on this article, but then Chrome crashed when I hit "submit". I'll try to briefly retype my thoughts here since you've covered some of them. It's quite clear that Boris did not want the referendum to win. While (like all tories) he would occasionally grumble about Brussels nobody considered him anti-EU during his time as mayor. He was, however, obviously after the…
> It's quite clear that Boris did not want the referendum to win. It's not clear to me. I think you are taking it as self-evident that Leave is a bad idea. In the mainstream narrative, the EU is associated with everything nice and international and the only reason to be against it is if you're a crazy old-fashioned nationalist. There's a classical liberal case for Brexit, though, which Gove articulated reasonably wel…
I have no idea why you claim that I have a "conspiracy theory" when I am commenting on the motivations of one man (which, by definition, isn't a conspiracy)... yet you yourself call his motivations into question by calling him an "opportunist". As far as I can tell your argument boils down to: 1. Boris is an opportunist 2. Anyone who claims that Boris acts opportunistically is a conspiracy-spouting nutter.
> Nor is it clear that a Remain vote would have helped Johnson's career, given that almost the entire establishment backed Remain.
His next career advancement isn't under the control of some vague "establishment" (mind your own conspiracy language there!) but the party membership at large. (He would have to finish in the top-two selected by the parliamentary party, but that probably wouldn't be hard) The membership is more Euroskeptic than the "establishment" as you put it. He would run as the candidate that would bridge the euroskeptic-grassroots with those more "establishment" types (old Etonian, former mayor of London, knows all the right people...) He'd certainly be the hero of the right-wing press as well.
Again, I think the only reason that Cameron brought him close was that he never thought Boris would make such a brazen move... a disastrous misestimation.
> There is now more money in the UK budget, where it gets spent is up to the next PM.
Part of the economic logic of the EU is that instead of every member employing their own bureaucrats producing basically-similar regulations, they would all just pool resources and do it once. It's more complicated and messy, but still cheaper than doing something 28 times. Plus then there's no complicated trade questions.
The brexit campaign of course ignore this all: they made the brazen claim that the UK sends all this money and gets nothing in return.... not even the money that's directly returned. (Hell, not even the "rebate" which literally never leaves the exchequer) That's not reality at all though.
So no, there is not more money.
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The Uk has a constitution, it is just unwritten.
I get the feeling the Brits like to not have too many written rules. Including s constitution. Personally I think it is detrimental to them.
There could be a life ring thrown in this situation after all - Scotland is thinking of vetoing Brexit - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-3663...
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Arg.. I just spent a half hour writing a long comment on this article, but then Chrome crashed when I hit "submit". I'll try to briefly retype my thoughts here since you've covered some of them. It's quite clear that Boris did not want the referendum to win. While (like all tories) he would occasionally grumble about Brussels nobody considered him anti-EU during his time as mayor. He was, however, obviously after the…
> It's quite clear that Boris did not want the referendum to win. It's not clear to me. I think you are taking it as self-evident that Leave is a bad idea. In the mainstream narrative, the EU is associated with everything nice and international and the only reason to be against it is if you're a crazy old-fashioned nationalist. There's a classical liberal case for Brexit, though, which Gove articulated reasonably wel…
Yes, but is it false?