[Discussion] Brexit means Brexit

Discuss the political fallout and other issues around Britain's exit, Brexit for short, from the EU.

For the sake of clarity, I'm including the full text of Article 50.

Article 50 wrote:

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.

4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

Which doesn't make sense for the Tories, Shadout. The whole point of this was to prevent the growth of UKIP. It's just complete and utter ignorance and indifference on the issue that has led them to this. I genuinely believe they intended to just muddle through.

Anyway, May's speech today should at least be something tangible. At last. Not holding out much hope but something has to shift eventually.

Prederick wrote:

the fevered sex dreams of Farage/Johnson.

*throws up a little bit in mouth* D:

Axon wrote:

Which doesn't make sense for the Tories, Shadout. The whole point of this was to prevent the growth of UKIP. It's just complete and utter ignorance and indifference on the issue that has led them to this. I genuinely believe they intended to just muddle through.

Anyway, May's speech today should at least be something tangible. At last. Not holding out much hope but something has to shift eventually.

But Tories as a group didn't really support it? Only some opportunists who thought they could gain power in the party through the chaos (not caring about the consequences).
Only UKIP truly wanted this, and for them the bad consequences is likely not detrimental, but pretty much the point.

I know Cameron did it to appease internal criticism, and get back UKIP voters, but he was apparently convinced there was no way the vote would ever result in brexit. So he did not need any plans for how it was supposed to work either.

Shadout wrote:

I know Cameron did it to appease internal criticism, and get back UKIP voters, but he was apparently convinced there was no way the vote would ever result in brexit. So he did not need any plans for how it was supposed to work either.

He profoundly underestimated the extent to which the leave side were funded (among other things).

WRT to the border I guess what will happen is what has happened throughout these negotiations. May/Davis make a lot of noise about their red lines and ultimately have to capitulate to the EU because they don't actually have a better suggestion nor any leverage.

So I guess that means a sea border with Ireland.

But that surely means May loses DUP support and triggers an election?

And if that really happens and Ireland is de facto united then surely that will embolden the SNP to either leave or demand they remain in the CU/EEA. If there can be and England-Ireland hard border why not a Scotland-England one?

Shadout wrote:

But Tories as a group didn't really support it? Only some opportunists who thought they could gain power in the party through the chaos (not caring about the consequences).
Only UKIP truly wanted this, and for them the bad consequences is likely not detrimental, but pretty much the point.

I know Cameron did it to appease internal criticism, and get back UKIP voters, but he was apparently convinced there was no way the vote would ever result in brexit. So he did not need any plans for how it was supposed to work either.

Which now leaves us with the Tories pursuing a policy they know to be damaging if not impossible in order to protect their electoral base. Madness.

May's speech, while vague, was at least shifting away from the "cake and eat it" strategy that was being pursued up to now.

May's Five Tests for a good EU-UK Brexit deal.
1) The agreement respects the referendum result.
2) The agreement must endure.
3) It must protect people's jobs and security.
4) It must be consistent with a "modern, open, outward-looking, tolerant, European democracy"
5) It must strengthen our union of nations and our union of peoples. (I assume she means the United Kingdom here).

Full text here:For some reason only the Spectator seems to have it.

It's the same sh*te she's always been peddling. It's still "cake and eat it" as far as I can tell but with a tiny bit of more detail about what she kind of cake she'd like. Just like the Florence speech, it reads like someone who wants to join the EU not leave it.

Did she specify what the goal is for those tests? I'm thinking a "pick 2" situation would be doable.

Weird that the best option for those criteria would be to "Remain", that only fails test 1!

Yeah 1 and 4 seem to be the same "we're leaving but we expect the EU to be nice to us" stuff.

To be fair, she used a good portion of the speech to inform the listener that you can't have everything which is yet to dawn on many in the UK. Agreed that outside of that, it was much of the same but I suppose she can only do so much in her mind.

In the absence of anything of substance from May and Davis I see the EU Parliment guidelines for a future relationship with the UK are now out.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...

And it is pretty much as any sober analysis would have predicted about 12 months ago.

So I guess we're next going to here a lot of sabre rattling from Davis, May and the Brexiteers followed by a capitulation on all points (as they don't actually have any better suggestions).

I assume with more these extra bits of detail here economic forecasts can be updated to take the various options in to account.

Soft border with North is not possible, UK report finds

There is “no evidence to suggest that, right now, an invisible border is possible” between the North and the Republic after Brexit, a House of Commons committee has found.

In a report to be published on Friday, the Westminster Northern Ireland Affairs Committee calls on the British government to show how a “hard” border can be avoided should the UK leave the EU customs union and single market.

Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the Irish border would have known this. Either way this has lead to the EU basically informing the UK that Northern Ireland needs to remain in the Single Market.

Ahead of three days of talks on the issue this weekend, EU officials said the British government would have to reconsider the possibility of Northern Ireland effectively staying in the customs union and single market, a position it has previously rejected.

We are in a geo-political version of the game chicken. I'm not 100% sure who is going to blink first but we are certainly headed for a historical moment.

*I couldn't stomach a link to the Sun. So here's a Guardian alternative*

Still an actual LOL though

New Blue "Patriotic British" Passports... to be manufactured in France.

Sacre bleu!

Vote Leave illegally overspent in their campaign.

Fairly sure that's been claimed multiple times, but now there's someone from their side who is saying this. Of course, to be taken with a pinch of salt, as this is just one person so far.

I've also been seeing a LOT of anti-Corbyn sentiment lately (I know there always has been, but more so!), particularly due to people unhappy he won't back a second referendum (I personally think he'd be stupid to as I don't think it's a promise anyone can keep to). Fires have been fuelled even more by habitual party trouble maker Owen Smith being sacked.

Clusks wrote:

Vote Leave illegally overspent in their campaign.

Fairly sure that's been claimed multiple times, but now there's someone from their side who is saying this. Of course, to be taken with a pinch of salt, as this is just one person so far.

I've also been seeing a LOT of anti-Corbyn sentiment lately (I know there always has been, but more so!), particularly due to people unhappy he won't back a second referendum (I personally think he'd be stupid to as I don't think it's a promise anyone can keep to). Fires have been fuelled even more by habitual party trouble maker Owen Smith being sacked.

Corbyn has made it pretty clear that he's pro-Brexit in a big way, even though a great deal of his party isn't - and the party's stated position is one that broadly supports a very soft Brexit model. He's very intolerant of people who dissent from his point of view, which considering Corbyn's entire political career has been one of dissent against his leadership is more that a little ironic.

With Momentum manourvering themselves to return the Labour Party to an even more leftwing version of Neil Kinnock's party in the 1980s (And look how successful that was with the British Public) Labour are in a really odd place at the moment. Corbyn's problems with Anti-sematism don't help. He clearly has a big problem with how the state of Israel behaves, but he has a very unfortunate way of expressing those opinions.

What it leaves is anyone who didn't vote for Brexit (and no matter how much Brexit try to hide from it it was A LOT of people) is a total lack of alternative. It does look like the Lib Dems are seeing a lot of returning votes in the last couple of local elections, but that's probably because they are the only major political party apart from the Greens who are readily campaigning to reverse Brexit. Owen Smith clearly sees a mass of support there going to waste because they aren't being given a creditable alternative to the utter mess the Tories are currently making of the situation if they vote Labour.

The vote leave campaign was clearly more than a little shady at times, but then I suspect both campaigns bent the rules to breaking point on more than one occasion. The problem is it doen't matter now and to some extent is providing a smoke screen for the Tories to their utter capitulation to every demand the EU makes of them in these "negotiations". Which more and more appear to the terms of surrender to an utterly defeated foe.

It's f**king dreadful, and it still can only get worse.

Sorbicol wrote:

Corbyn's entire political career has been one of dissent against his leadership is more that a little ironic.

This really isn't the gotcha people think it is. What is really going on is that he has a stated political position and he has (more or less) never deviated from it. As party leader it is entirely his prerogative to remove dissenting opinions from the front bench. Had he previously been a front bench MP and dissented from the PLP's stated position I'm sure he'd have taken a demotion on the chin.

Sorbicol wrote:

With Momentum manourvering themselves to return the Labour Party to an even more leftwing version of Neil Kinnock's party in the 1980s (And look how successful that was with the British Public) Labour are in a really odd place at the moment.

Kinnock had a much harder job to win votes back then, the obvious failures of Thatcher/Regan's neo-liberalism were nowhere near as manifest as they are today.

DanB wrote:

Kinnock had a much harder job to win votes back then, the obvious failures of Thatcher/Regan's neo-liberalism were nowhere near as manifest as they are today.

Oh reckon there are still enough people around to remember the 3 day working week in the 1970s, and the regular black outs (although I was admittedly very young at the time - yes, I'm middle aged) I suspect if Corbyn/Momentum really do start to make progress, there'll be plenty in the news to remind people that sometimes different isn't necessarily better.

The 3 day working week was an commercial and industrial electricity supply limitation, domestic supply was not limited so it is very unlikely you would remember 'regular black outs'.

That being said, the 3 day week was a conservative government policy and a direct consequence of that government's cavalier attempts to fix worker wages, so pretty hard to pin on Labour really. Yes, miners wanted more money in the face of the sharp inflation of the early 70s but the stag-flation of that period had its roots in Nixon reneging on Bretton-woods and the subsequent oil crisis. Again, neither of which you can really pin on Labour. We're sold a tale that it was about union power but it was really a consequence of larger exogenous economic forces.

Over in the European thread I mentioned that Ireland setup referendum commission in order to regulate the campaigns and ensure they are fairly run. As evidence comes out today how the Brexit campaign was illegally run it interesting to note that the Irish government was consulted on how to run referendums due to our greater experience. All that advice was ignored. This mess couldn’t get worse and I see no good way of this ending.

Which I’m sure one individual is delighted about.

EU Rejects UK's Irish Border proposal. Again.

“It was a detailed and forensic rebuttal. It was made clear that none of the UK’s customs options will work,” a source told the paper.

The Telegraph (very euroskeptic and pro-Brexit) are reporting this and are suggesting there are now doubts that the UK can leave the customs union.

You'll excuse this Irishman's schadenfreude at the notion that our partitioned country is at the root of scuppering Rees Moog's nationalist dreams.

Ok, update the depressing Brexit thread time. Local elections today in the UK but take nothing from them. Expect a Labour and the Lib Dems to make gains. The real election is in the cabinet were they cannot agree on how to resolve the Irish border issue.

Fisal Islam offers a good summary of the situation here. To add to it, the Irish governments stance is they want to see "words on paper" in the form of a draft agreement or they'll veto the talks in June.

I have a feeling we are looking at a Tory party split and a general election this Summer. Can't see it going any other way at this stage. The only question is what do the pro-EU Labour party members do? Join the remaining pro-EU Tories in another party or just vote with them.

Mind you, I suspect the next general election in the UK (and Ireland) will focus on housing and not the EU or Brexit.

The obvious outcome is going to be "brexit in name only". The Tory party can't establish a negotiating position and even if they could the only acceptable position for Ireland would be to remain in the CU.

So probably they will come up with something mealy mouthed that no one wants. Both the EU and Ireland will reject it and the gov't will have to take whatever the EU is offering, which will be 'remain in the CU'

At the next election we’ll get to see rigid Theresa in debates in an attempt to try claw back public opinion, which could end up as car crash TV. And I, for one, am bloody excited about that.

I'm so very depressed about it all. I do recommend you all listen to the Capital podcast. Soundcloud link

It's an alternative universe where to appeal to UKIP voters the Conservatives offered a referendum on capital punishment. Harry Enfield plays the Minister, but most of the time is spent with the civil servants who have to implement it. It's good stuff.

DanB wrote:

The obvious outcome is going to be "brexit in name only". The Tory party can't establish a negotiating position and even if they could the only acceptable position for Ireland would be to remain in the CU.

So probably they will come up with something mealy mouthed that no one wants. Both the EU and Ireland will reject it and the gov't will have to take whatever the EU is offering, which will be 'remain in the CU'

Unless the hard brexiters take control of the Tories, declare ‘we’re leaving the EU today with no deal - and we’re not paying them any money either’ and then watch this Country descend into a Mad Max style dystopia - only wetter.

It’ll be fun. Honest.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DcNJ0jQX0AA0yEU.jpg)

Theresa May forced to give MPs single market vote after shock defeat

MPs will have a vote on remaining in the European Economic Area – effectively a vote on the single market – after a shock defeat for the government in the Lords.

It means the Brexit strategy of both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn has been blown apart in the last 24 hours.

The rebel Labour amendment in the Lords opened the prospect of a Commons vote on the EEA – a less stringent version of the single market – after 83 Labour peers voted against the party whip.

Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP who co-chairs a pro-European Commons committee with Conservative Anna Soubry, said the leadership would now have to come off the fence and make it clear where it stood.

“The time for constructive ambiguity is over: our members and our voters will be delighted with this clear signal that we will not go along with this Tory Brexit,” he said.

The vote came hours after Boris Johnson called the prime minister’s proposal for a customs partnership “crazy” in an interview with the Daily Mail that dealt a major blow to the government’s strategy of a cautious balance between leave and remain.

Johnson was the subject of fierce criticism from within Tory ranks all day. In the Lords debate the former Tory MP Patrick Cormack asked: “What sort of example are we being given by a cabinet that is rent asunder by the foreign secretary, the second most important cabinet minister, rubbishing the prime minister in the columns of the Daily Mail?”

Few hours late on that one.

I'm not sure wtf is going on in the UK at this point, but I can't say much considering I live in America.