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 If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

Shadout wrote:

I’ll believe it when I see it honestly.

I know the last two years have undermined everyone’s confidence in the UK but there does seem to be something to it.

I’ll get my sources that corroberate DoveBrown’s post. On phone now.

Axon wrote:
Shadout wrote:

I’ll believe it when I see it honestly.

I know the last two years have undermined everyone’s confidence in the UK but there does seem to be something to it.

I’ll get my sources that corroberate DoveBrown’s post. On phone now.

Hammond as been consistently ‘softest brexit’ through the whole process, I don’t see why this should be a surprise, not that he’s briefing business leaders on this considering May is pretty much at the mercy of everyone now - anything she says or does is just going to be ignored.

If she wants cross party support it pretty clear she’s going to have categorically rule out a no deal Brexit. That’ll have to involve extending article 50 so that the withdrawal agreement can be re-written. At the moment leaving on the 29th March is actually legally binding, because the Withdrawal Act is legislation.

Gotta love politics.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/e5SWpOd.jpg)

Corbyn explaining what they want out of brexit (customs union, market access, protection of worker's rights), and explaining why Labour won't enter into negotiations solely on May's terms. And pointing out how she previously lied to Labour in their last discussion/negotiation.

https://twitter.com/D_Raval/status/1...

The funniest possible outcome of Brexit (to me, at least) is everyone getting frustrated, throwing up their hands and deciding to return to an absolute monarchy.

Prederick wrote:

The funniest possible outcome of Brexit (to me, at least) is everyone getting frustrated, throwing up their hands and deciding to return to an absolute monarchy.

You suspect that no matter what the outcome her Maj will get someone going to see her (or at least threatening to) to dissolve Parliament so that the outcome can't take place.

Talk about pulling no punches.

Even a columnist for The Economist, an organ of the British elite, now professes dismay over “Oxford chums” who coast through life on “bluff rather than expertise.” “Britain,” the magazine belatedly lamented last month, “is governed by a self-involved clique that rewards group membership above competence and self-confidence above expertise.” In Brexit, the British “chumocracy,” the column declared, “has finally met its Waterloo.”

I won't lie, the Irish republican in me did enjoy it.

Could I get a plain English explanation of why the May deal was voted down? I don't follow it mostly because not my country, can't change anything, and it does my head in, but I'd like to understand that part.

I'm guessing it was either not right wing enough, or the people rejecting it just want to topple May for their own gain. Happy to be corrected.

My current understanding of Brexit is that it's like when a toddler has a tantrum and it gets so bad that even if you offered them the thing they wanted it'd just make the tantrum worse.

I might be overlooking some of the more nuanced aspects of the process though.

It seems like it was an unofficial EU membership deal. Where brexiters merely want to not be in EU but get all benefits from being in EU. Which is of course perfectly reasonable.

Mermaidpirate wrote:

Could I get a plain English explanation of why the May deal was voted down? I don't follow it mostly because not my country, can't change anything, and it does my head in, but I'd like to understand that part.

I'm guessing it was either not right wing enough, or the people rejecting it just want to topple May for their own gain. Happy to be corrected.

There are a couple of reasons:

For Labour they want a General Election, and their ‘6 tests’. They voted against the deal (and probably would have done regardless) as those 6 tests were not met, they voted against.

The Lib Dem’s, Greens and SNP want the softest of brexits, remaining in the Customs Union and Single Market being fundamental to their positions. They voted against.

For hard brexiters, the backstop. Under Mays deal the backstop cannot be ended until both the UK and EU agree to do so. Hard Brexiteers believe the EU will use that to keep the UK in the single market/customs union indefinitely. They want any backstop to be temporary and for the UK to be able to cancel it unilaterally.

Oddly enough May is/was trying to keep everyone happy. She can’t.

As someone outside of this whole mess, I had the hardest time understanding what the "backstop" is and why it has proved so intractable. This is what I've gathered from reading, but I'm happy to be corrected on any and all points.

The backstop revolves around the border between Ireland (which is an independent nation) and Northern Ireland (which is part of the UK), the only land border between the UK and the EU, and the locus of decades of violence. With both Ireland and the UK being part of the EU, the border between them was open and frictionless, but there are a lot of practical reasons that can't continue if one half of the border is in the EU and the other half isn't.

Much of what EU membership provides is a unified market where goods and people can move across borders without checkpoints and hard borders and all that. That openness depends on both sides of the border following the same rules and regulations, but those rules and regulations (especially with regard to the free movement of people) are what Brexiters want out from under.

So if the UK leaves the EU, one would assume that would lead to a hard border with customs and checkpoints and inspections along the Irish border, because now both sides of the border have different regulations for trade and immigration. But there's a very real chance that a hard Irish border could reignite violence between people who want Ireland unified and those who want to see North Ireland remain part of the UK. Right now, open borders put a lid on a lot of that violence.

To prevent that, there's the so-called backstop. This would leave North Ireland subject to EU regulations to avoid a hard border there until a deal around that border could be negotiated between the UK and EU. For North Ireland, this isn't a great solution because they worry that it sets them aside from the rest of the UK and makes them unequal to other regions. For Brexiters, this isn't a good solution because part of the country doesn't really leave the EU at all. For Remainers, they think that the easiest solution to the Irish border is to just stay in the EU, or at least to keep the rest of the country in the trade union, as well, which is kind of Brexit in name only.

May's deal is a kind of worst of all worlds solution. It segregates North Ireland from the rest of the UK by leaving it in the EU trade union, but the deal pulls the rest of the UK out. However, it leaves the question of what to do with the Irish border in the long run to be determined by both the UK and the EU instead of the UK alone. It sticks everyone with the part of a deal they didn't like without giving anyone the part of a deal they might have been attracted to. No one's happy.

Trouble is, I'm not sure there even is some kind of hypothetical deal that could make all sides at least somewhat happy. And even if there were, there's certainly not enough time to negotiate it before the UK's self-imposed, legally binding deadline to leave the EU in March. May presented everyone with a sh*tty deal and was counting on people voting for it because they were just out of time to get anything else.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

and why it has proved so intractable.

Well... lets us all go back 300 years...

Long story short England ended up in charge of northern Ireland (by force) and southern Ireland (now Eire) became a separate nation state. And the historic religious division is that Ireland (and later Eire) was always a Catholic nation and England was protestant so in order to keep control of northern Ireland the English moved a huge number of protestants in to Northern Ireland in order to be in charge and make it their's. You may recognise this same tactic being used in Israel/Palestine today.

Fast forward to the C20th and the catholics of Northern Ireland would really, really, really like northern Ireland to be part of Eire and not part of the UK and for assorted reasons this desire sparks a steadily increasing series of insurgent actions, campaigns and attacks throughout the twentieth century. And from the late 60's onwards the UK enters a period of civil war with a cadre of Northern Irish Nationalists (The IRA) who want to unite Northern Ireland with Eire. Problem being the long settled protestants of N.Ireland don't want to leave the UK and the UK doesn't want to lose N.Ireland. This results in something of a terrible stalemate. The UK media euphemistically refers to this civil war as "The Troubles" and the IRA are always branded as "terrorists" rather than insurgents.

So for the best part of 40 years there is no real progress in resolving this conflict until.... the 1992 Maastricht treaty. This treaty gives birth to the modern conception of the EU and both Eire and the UK are signatories. As we know now the EU guarantees the borderless free movement of people and goods among signatory nations. And eventually diplomats put 2 and 2 together and realise that is you squint a bit this resolves most of what the Irish nationalists wanted. Which leads to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Which, to summarise terribly, basically says "hey, the UK and Eire are both in the EU, so there no longer needs to be a hard border between the two so lets just pretend N.Ireland and Eire are in effect united and in exchange you guys put down your weapons and in exchange the UK promises not to leave the EU".

So the intractable bit is if the UK leave the EU it is specifically reneging on it's portion of the GFA which in turn would require a hard border goes up between Eire and Northern Ireland, this completely voids the agreement (which the UK specifically said they wouldn't do) to the point that it will effectively reignite the Irish nationalists and the armed civil insurgence that may follow.

I didn't realize that the GFA specifically forbids the UK leaving the EU. Commentary in the US has largely glossed over that, but the US is very much sympathetic to the narrative of The Troubles and the IRA as terrorists, so I'm not surprised. Thanks for the added info.

Why the hell wasn't this one of the topics of conversation leading up to the Brexit referendum? Why does it seem to have caught the government by surprise?

Oh. Right.

DanB wrote:

a cadre of Northern Irish Unionists (The IRA) who want to unite Northern Ireland with Eire.

quick point: pretty sure "Unionists" are the Protestants, and Unionism is union with the UK, not the Republic.

also, 'union' is a really weird word if you type it and say it a bunch in a row.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I didn't realize that the GFA specifically forbids the UK leaving the EU.

I think it is more that the GFA specifically prohibits the UK erecting a hard border between N.Ireland and Eire. Which as long as both Eire and the UK were in the EU was a very easy requirement to fulfil. But if the UK leaves the EU then there has to be a border somewhere as the EU is actually pretty frickin' strict about its external borders (contrary to what the press might tell you). So the options are:

Re-establish the Land border between N.Ireland and Eire : The northern Irish nationalists are strongly against this as it separates Ireland once again, it is prohibited by the GFA and so erecting it risks restarting "the troubles". See above.

OR

Establish new sea border between Ireland and the rest of the UK: Gives N.Ireland special status as a part of the UK that remains "in the EU", Irish unionists such as the DUP want to remain part of the UK and not be part of a Irish state and Theresa May is only in government because of her continued appeasement of the DUP so she can't take this option without losing a commons house majority. Additionally risks inflaming separatists in Scotland, Gibralta etc... who would also like an equivalent "in-the-EU special status"

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Why the hell wasn't this one of the topics of conversation leading up to the Brexit referendum? Why does it seem to have caught the government by surprise?

This has been covered at length further up the thread but the long and short of it is that the English Establishment couldn't give two sh*ts about the Scotland, Wales and Ireland (or even the North of England for that matter). But it is a prime example of why the entire Leave camp and their voters don't have a single clue about what treaties the UK is signed up to and what they actually say and mean. Just about everyone who voted or campaigned for leave was literally blindsided when negotiations with the EU got to "and what about the Good Friday Agreement?"

cheeze_pavilion wrote:
DanB wrote:

a cadre of Northern Irish Unionists (The IRA) who want to unite Northern Ireland with Eire.

quick point: pretty sure "Unionists" are the Protestants, and Unionism is union with the UK, not the Republic.

also, 'union' is a really weird word if you type it and say it a bunch in a row.

Yeah Nationalist/Unionist confusion. Doh.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

also, 'union' is a really weird word if you type it and say it a bunch in a row.

What’s the difference between a chemist and an autoworker?

Spoiler:

How they pronounce “unionized”.

Ok thanks for that. Understand now.

If you want to know more, I'd recommend you just cross reference your query with either James O'Brien or Fintan O'Toole on Google and YouTube. You'll find several clips of the former explaining it to some Leave voter and the latter is building a long list of lectures and interviews that are for the "beginner".

On the GFA, I've linked the below clip to Fintan's explanation in the interview I posted earlier (It starts on 17:00 if it doesn't work). I fully recommend the whole interview if you want to understand more on Brexit. Fintan is an entertaining speaker so it's fairly easily ingested.

One minor correction for above, the backstop is now the whole of the UK and not just NI. The UK government requested this and the EU made the concession. Why, I haven't a clue. May must have known it was never to going to fly. But we shall wait and see. Perhaps it's a position to bargain from.

Axon wrote:

One minor correction for above, the backstop is now the whole of the UK and not just NI. The UK government requested this and the EU made the concession. Why, I haven't a clue. May must have known it was never to going to fly. But we shall wait and see. Perhaps it's a position to bargain from.

It’s because the DUP are adamant any backstop has to apply to the whole of the UK and NI cannot be treated any differently. As May cannot command a majority without them, she’s conceded.

Fintan O'Toole has been on point about all of this for ages now. Always worth reading/hearing what he has to say.

Sorbicol wrote:
Axon wrote:

One minor correction for above, the backstop is now the whole of the UK and not just NI. The UK government requested this and the EU made the concession. Why, I haven't a clue. May must have known it was never to going to fly. But we shall wait and see. Perhaps it's a position to bargain from.

It’s because the DUP are adamant any backstop has to apply to the whole of the UK and NI cannot be treated any differently. As May cannot command a majority without them, she’s conceded.

Of course but that was never going to be accepted. Or at the very least she failed miserably to sell it. In real terms, she placated 10 MPs but alienated over 400. And at that the 10 voted against the deal anyway. On top of that the EU made a concession and it was viewed as a hostile act.

My larger point was that May is either brilliant and is about to reveal some master plan at the last minute or she will out do Cameron as the worst PM in history. And at this point I cannot say which certainty which is more likely. I just can't accept that people are this incompetent. I'd actually prefer they turned out be disaster capitalists at this point.

Oh hey so Dyson (aka. the business face of brexit who is/was pushing for the hardest of hard brexits) is COINCIDENTALLY and for entirely unrelated reasons moving his entire business overseas! What are the odds!

pyxistyx wrote:

Oh hey so Dyson (aka. the business face of brexit who is/was pushing for the hardest of hard brexits) is COINCIDENTALLY and for entirely unrelated reasons moving his entire business overseas! What are the odds!

No, no, no, you see Singapore is on the equator, so it's much easier to build vacuums there as there is more angular momentum due to the Earth's rotation. This makes it much easier to...ummm....trap the vacuum goblins... inside the...ummm....sucky-whoosh-cavern? Efficiency!

Also, it's "closer to growing markets", and if there's one thing we know about the modern world, it's that it's definitely not a good idea to build things literally half a world away, then ship them to the other side of the world where they're needed. I mean, look at China - complete mess of a manufacturing sector. Who'd want that?

Jonman wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

Oh hey so Dyson (aka. the business face of brexit who is/was pushing for the hardest of hard brexits) is COINCIDENTALLY and for entirely unrelated reasons moving his entire business overseas! What are the odds!

No, no, no, you see Singapore is on the equator, so it's much easier to build vacuums there as there is more angular momentum due to the Earth's rotation. This makes it much easier to...ummm....trap the vacuum goblins... inside the...ummm....sucky-whoosh-cavern? Efficiency!

Also, it's "closer to growing markets", and if there's one thing we know about the modern world, it's that it's definitely not a good idea to build things literally half a world away, then ship them to the other side of the world where they're needed. I mean, look at China - complete mess of a manufacturing sector. Who'd want that?

Going to areas with less competition because a post-Brexit UK already sucks well enough.

Dulce et decorum est pro Brexita mori.

(Stolen from https://www.theguardian.com/politics...)

Well, it’s a combination of May trying to keep the Tory party from tearing itself apart, the DUP living in a mythical fairyland where the UK completely exits the EU but remains in the single market and customs union, and May having to go a long with it as without them she cannot command a majority, and Jeremy Corbyn probably being the most ineffectual opposition leader there has ever been.

None of it has anything to do with what might be best for the UK. Mind you, that went out of the window the second Cameron called the referendum in the first place.

It looks stupid because it is stupid:
May runs a minority government that can't face the fact that it is. She's made her red lines and won't budge on them. I read something this morning that talked about because she is so bland with such robotic delievery people just assume that she must be rational, rather than the fanatic her actions show her to be.

Corbyn and the Labour leadership are 100% focused on the post-Brexit world. They don't believe that Brexit can be halted (and there are good reasons why that might be). Their entire focus is making sure that everyone knows they didn't partake in the Tory running of Brexit, but they also aren't the reasons the Tories screwed it up.

The EEA/People's vote people can't get it together because neither has a majority on their own and neither will get that support as long as those two options exist. Lots of people in parliment aren't sure that a second Referendum won't produce a "Just Get On With It" result, the British public didn't think the first time, no evidence they will thing the second time.

The ERG people don't want a withdraw deal anyway. They don't care. They don't think any of this will effect them and they are mostly right. They don't care if Northern Ireland explodes into violence. Their goal mostly seems to be on producing the Libertarian/Neo-Feudal landscape where everyone but them is in a race to the bottom on living standards.

I can not for the life of me see what the Lexit people are getting out of this. Mostly I think they think if things get bad enough, the Revolution will finally kick off as the middle class disintergrates.