** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

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meic
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by meic »

If they come to a judgement that the promises he stood on cannot be enacted, what are they to do? This is the reality of the situation we are in; no attempt to simplify it to labelling people as "liars" will resolve that.

The policies like allowing a referendum and offering to implement Brexit were both something which Conservative and Labour have maintained were a bad thing. However when UKIP came knocking on the electoral door, they both ended up offering these things.
This wasnt due to a sudden belief that a referendum or Brexit were in the interests of the people it was just to get re-elected. The evidence is that the politicians who are refusing to implement Brexit believed it was going to do harm before they stood for election.
It is not something that they realised after the votes were cast.
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mr bajokoses
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by mr bajokoses »

roubaixtuesday wrote:All of which comes down to the fundamental problem with Brexit. As described in the Brexit campaign *and* the subsequent General Election, it cannot be enacted. It's just not possible, regardless of the effort and goodwill expended on it, and there has been plenty of both. The fantasy is colliding with reality now, as it always was bound to eventually.


Here lies a great danger with campaigning for a second referendum aka People's Vote. 'No deal' is pretty much impossible because any enactment of it is illegal under international law. As we found previously it is seriously bad if the public is given an option to vote for something which is impossible to implement.
roubaixtuesday
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by roubaixtuesday »

meic wrote:
If they come to a judgement that the promises he stood on cannot be enacted, what are they to do? This is the reality of the situation we are in; no attempt to simplify it to labelling people as "liars" will resolve that.

The policies like allowing a referendum and offering to implement Brexit were both something which Conservative and Labour have maintained were a bad thing. However when UKIP came knocking on the electoral door, they both ended up offering these things.
This wasnt due to a sudden belief that a referendum or Brexit were in the interests of the people it was just to get re-elected. The evidence is that the politicians who are refusing to implement Brexit believed it was going to do harm before they stood for election.
It is not something that they realised after the votes were cast.


Yes, I agree, politicians did bad things regarding Brexit.

What should they do now is what is at issue. There is no unambiguously principled policy, because of the inherent contradictions in Brexit.

So, what do you believe they should do now:

(1) Betray their duty to their constituents by implementing a Brexit deal they know to be harmful and which directly contradicts the promises they made or
(2) Betray their duty to their constituents by not implementing a Brexit deal when they directly promised to do so.

Which is it?
roubaixtuesday
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by roubaixtuesday »

mr bajokoses wrote:
roubaixtuesday wrote:All of which comes down to the fundamental problem with Brexit. As described in the Brexit campaign *and* the subsequent General Election, it cannot be enacted. It's just not possible, regardless of the effort and goodwill expended on it, and there has been plenty of both. The fantasy is colliding with reality now, as it always was bound to eventually.


Here lies a great danger with campaigning for a second referendum aka People's Vote. 'No deal' is pretty much impossible because any enactment of it is illegal under international law. As we found previously it is seriously bad if the public is given an option to vote for something which is impossible to implement.


Yup. Anyone who believes a "People's Vote" is a panacea is every bit as deluded as someone who maintains that Brexit is simple.
Psamathe
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by Psamathe »

mr bajokoses wrote:
roubaixtuesday wrote:All of which comes down to the fundamental problem with Brexit. As described in the Brexit campaign *and* the subsequent General Election, it cannot be enacted. It's just not possible, regardless of the effort and goodwill expended on it, and there has been plenty of both. The fantasy is colliding with reality now, as it always was bound to eventually.


Here lies a great danger with campaigning for a second referendum aka People's Vote. 'No deal' is pretty much impossible because any enactment of it is illegal under international law. As we found previously it is seriously bad if the public is given an option to vote for something which is impossible to implement.

"No deal" does not have to be something the People's Vote referendum offers. It can ask if the negotiated deal is acceptable or not. If the answer is that it is not then our politicians have to go back and negotiate something else. Parliament was promised a "meaningful vote" and "take it or leave it (disaster)" is not a meaningful vote.

But there are many options to re-negotiate. Everybody talks about how we leave 29 March 2019 but that date was set by Parliament who can change that date. They set it, they can change it. I suspect they'd need a good reason but "the electorate has rejected the negotiated deal and we need time to negotiate another" would be seen as a good reason. We'd need the EU to extend the time but if we don't ask we don't know.

That the UK has dithered about for so long without even knowing what it was asking for shows what a complete bunch on incapable idiots our politicians are. I suspect that if a "People's Vote" rejected the negotiated deal then it would see the end of quite a few of these incapable politicians (or a loss of their power) and maybe we'd get some new faces in and maybe they'd be able to negotiate more sensibly.

Ian
Psamathe
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by Psamathe »

roubaixtuesday wrote:
mr bajokoses wrote:
roubaixtuesday wrote:All of which comes down to the fundamental problem with Brexit. As described in the Brexit campaign *and* the subsequent General Election, it cannot be enacted. It's just not possible, regardless of the effort and goodwill expended on it, and there has been plenty of both. The fantasy is colliding with reality now, as it always was bound to eventually.


Here lies a great danger with campaigning for a second referendum aka People's Vote. 'No deal' is pretty much impossible because any enactment of it is illegal under international law. As we found previously it is seriously bad if the public is given an option to vote for something which is impossible to implement.


Yup. Anyone who believes a "People's Vote" is a panacea is every bit as deluded as someone who maintains that Brexit is simple.

I don't think it is a panacea but I do think it is necessary given what looks like a massive gulf between what Leave promised and what we will probably get.

Ian
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meic
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by meic »

roubaixtuesday wrote:
meic wrote:
If they come to a judgement that the promises he stood on cannot be enacted, what are they to do? This is the reality of the situation we are in; no attempt to simplify it to labelling people as "liars" will resolve that.

The policies like allowing a referendum and offering to implement Brexit were both something which Conservative and Labour have maintained were a bad thing. However when UKIP came knocking on the electoral door, they both ended up offering these things.
This wasnt due to a sudden belief that a referendum or Brexit were in the interests of the people it was just to get re-elected. The evidence is that the politicians who are refusing to implement Brexit believed it was going to do harm before they stood for election.
It is not something that they realised after the votes were cast.


Yes, I agree, politicians did bad things regarding Brexit.

What should they do now is what is at issue. There is no unambiguously principled policy, because of the inherent contradictions in Brexit.

So, what do you believe they should do now:

(1) Betray their duty to their constituents by implementing a Brexit deal they know to be harmful and which directly contradicts the promises they made or
(2) Betray their duty to their constituents by not implementing a Brexit deal when they directly promised to do so.

Which is it?

If they are having a sudden outbreak of morality, then the ones in this predicament should resign on mass and stand again on an honest platform.
Yma o Hyd
Psamathe
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by Psamathe »

Where is Corbyn in all this? The Labour Party Conference decided to keep the option of the People's Vote "on the table" yet Corbyn is now unilaterally going in a different direction. Reports are he does not like the EU because of its state aid rules but that he can't see the bigger issue, that it looks like he is going to allow a disaster to happen despite the Labour Party established policy speaks very poorly of him.

I suspect he's just playing politics, putting his possibility to get/win a General election above the good of the country/damage Brexit will cause. He gives me the impression is that he regards the Brexit damage and cost as incidental to his personal ambitions.

Ian
roubaixtuesday
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by roubaixtuesday »

If they are having a sudden outbreak of morality, then the ones in this predicament should resign on mass and stand again on an honest platform.


General election then. It's possible.

But please answer the question. What do *you* think MPs should do now?
roubaixtuesday
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by roubaixtuesday »

I don't think it is a panacea but I do think it is necessary given what looks like a massive gulf between what Leave promised and what we will probably get.


Well, I think it's possible you're right.

But go into it with your eyes open. It would be much more divisive than last time and there is no guarantee, perhaps even no likelihood of it changing the result. It will make things worse, whatever, and potentially a *lot* worse.

The only question is if other alternatives are even worse yet.
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meic
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by meic »

roubaixtuesday wrote:
If they are having a sudden outbreak of morality, then the ones in this predicament should resign on mass and stand again on an honest platform.


General election then. It's possible.

But please answer the question. What do *you* think MPs should do now?

As I said there.
If they feel that they can no longer implement what they promised and that to attempt to do so would be harmful they should stand down and seek re-election to get democratic support for the new direction.

Which may be the least bad way to cope with the whole sorry affair. If support has dwindled for Brexit, they then can proceed with their policies with a democratic mandate. It does have one unsurmountable hurdle, it would require politicians to risk losing their seats!

Not necessarily a general election, just a series of by-elections. As MPs will "realise" their predicament at different times.
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mr bajokoses
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by mr bajokoses »

roubaixtuesday wrote:It would be much more divisive than last time and there is no guarantee, perhaps even no likelihood of it changing the result. It will make things worse, whatever, and potentially a *lot* worse.

The only question is if other alternatives are even worse yet.


Agreed, the question (whatever it turns out to be) will be divisive enough, let alone the answer.
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by slowster »

Winston Churchill is supposedly Boris Johnson's hero and role model. Ironically, at the one time when copying Churchill might have worked, he did the opposite.

Churchill's biggest achievement was in galvanising the nation and stiffening its morale in the early years of WW2 when Britain was suffering one defeat after another. Instead of making false promises he made it clear that he could only offer 'blood, sweat and tears', and the British people understood and accepted that and rose to meet his challenge.

If Boris Johnson (and other senior Leave campaigners) had similarly said during the referendum campaign that Brexit would not be easy, that it would be hard in the beginning and there would be a price to pay, but that in the long run it would be worth it and Britain would eventually be better off out of the EU, then he and the rest of the Leavers would have had the political mandate and capital to undertake the negotiations and to insist on a 'no deal' Brexit if necessary, and Parliament would have felt compelled to vote it through, even if a majority of MPs believed it was bad for the country.

Instead Boris Johnson and the rest of the Leave campaign took the easy, lazy approach of saying and doing whatever it thought was necessary to win the vote (cf Dominic Cummings etc.). And now the chickens are all coming home to roost.

The argument that those politicians who supported Remain and are now objecting to what they see as a bad deal, are undemocratic in not being prepared to simply rubber stamp whatever deal is presented to them (or equally agree to a 'no deal' Brexit), is absurd. As far as I can see those politicians are not claiming that they can simply ignore the result of the referendum; they are saying that the only/best way to proceed is another referendum on the actual deal (or 'no deal') being offered.

Those for whom Brexit is a matter of ideology and gut conviction don't want another referendum because they are afraid of losing, not least because they know that in a second referendum they will not get the votes of those who were swayed by promises of £350M for the NHS etc. and who now believe that a) they were lied to, and b) Brexit will make them worse off.
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meic
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by meic »

The argument that those politicians who supported Remain and are now objecting to what they see as a bad deal, are undemocratic in not being prepared to simply rubber stamp whatever deal is presented to them (or equally agree to a 'no deal' Brexit), is absurd.

That isnt the argument which is being made (by me, at least).
They stood for election to implement Brexit but there is NO version of Brexit which they will support.
Because they inherently believe that ALL possible options are harmful. Excepting a version of Brexit which is little more than a name change.
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Psamathe
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Re: ** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

Post by Psamathe »

meic wrote:
The argument that those politicians who supported Remain and are now objecting to what they see as a bad deal, are undemocratic in not being prepared to simply rubber stamp whatever deal is presented to them (or equally agree to a 'no deal' Brexit), is absurd.

That isnt the argument which is being made (by me, at least).
They stood for election to implement Brexit but there is NO version of Brexit which they will support.
Because they inherently believe that ALL possible options are harmful. Excepting a version of Brexit which is little more than a name change.

Do they not also have an obligation to act in the best intrests of their electorate.

The referendum asked only"Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?". What is happening is that the ideologists are adding a host of their personal wet dreams to the answer. There are many ways to implement the referendum decision that are not as damaging as the path our politicians are pursuing - but they would not meet the dreams of Mogg, Blobby, IDS, Hoeeey, Farage, etc.

Politicians have an obligation to implement the referendum decision in a manner that does at little damage to the UK as possible. A "least damage" route is quite compatible with the various manifesto promises made. That is not what is happening and hence the increased division.

But, I am regularly told that manifesto promises are meaningless and in reality politicians never seem to feel bound by them. So why suddenly is this particular manifesto pledge being held as mandatory where all others seem to be optional?

Ian
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