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 If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

Axon wrote:
Prederick wrote:

UKIP's "court the YouTube edgelord demographic" campaign strategy does seem to be cratering, however. They've literally managed to make Farage and Co. seem like the reasonable ones.

It's actually comical. Loving it. Car crash stuff. The exodus of all their MEPs after Carl Benjamin's past came to light was brilliant. Didn't see it coming and I'm delighted I was wrong about their election chances. I sincerely hope he fails to get the seat now after UKIP topping the polls in the last election.

DanB wrote:
Axon wrote:

Farage was painstakingly clever to always give himself enough "plausible" deniability over the years.

This is true of Farage's public presentation once he went in to politics. Less so of reports of his behaviour before then

The absolute surreal nature of watching Nigel Farage and Piers Morgan lay into Carl Benjamin and UKIP on TV.

In Farage's case, I think this is obvious opportunism, and a little bit that the Brexit Party and UKIP are a bit Judean People's Front/People's Front of Judea.

BBC and VTM (Flemish commercial channel) worked together on a Brexit documentary.

Negotiating Brexit

The gripping untold story of the Brexit negotiations... from the inside. For two years, Belgian film maker, Lode Desmet, has had exclusive access to the Brexit coordinator of the European parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, and his close knit team. This revelatory fly on the wall film captures the off the record conversations and arguments of the European negotiators as they devise their strategy for dealing with the British.

A short version airs on VTM tonight, the full version will appear on the VTM website tomorrow. It's on BBC Four tonight.

Link to a short clip.

Screw Game of Thrones, I'm watching the real thing as soon as I possibly can.

I am surprised they are showing that / allowing that to be released when the situation has not been closed yet.

The maker, Lode Desmet, did mention that Verhofstadt and the others put a lot of pressure on them to remove certain parts. I guess they, despite everything, never expected the negotiations to take this long.

In the end, Desmet only removed one bit. They had filmed a British negotiator and could not be 100% certain he was aware of that fact. To every other complaint VTM & BBC replied with a shrug and a "what the f did you expect?"

LeapingGnome wrote:

I am surprised they are showing that / allowing that to be released when the situation has not been closed yet.

I mean, if they follow that guideline, it won't be released for decades!

Brexit party may get more EU election votes than Tories and Labour combined – poll

Nigel Farage’s Brexit party is on course to secure more support at the European elections than the Tories and Labour combined, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

In the most striking sign to date of surging support for Farage, the poll suggests more than a third of voters will back him on 23 May. It puts his party on 34% of the vote, with less than a fortnight before the election takes place.

The poll suggests support for the Conservatives has collapsed amid the Brexit uncertainty, with Theresa May’s party on just 11%. Labour is a distant second, on 21%. The Lib Dems perform the best of any of the openly anti-Brexit parties, one point ahead of the Tories on 12% of the vote.

Ouch.

I guess UK really does want to commit economic suicide. Oh well.

BadKen wrote:

I guess UK really does want to commit economic suicide. Oh well.

Not exactly. It’s just there are a lot of people who think committing economic suicide is a price worth paying to get out of the EU.

There's also a lot of people that can't handle the cognitive dissonance of accepting they made a really bad decision so are just doubling down.

Just to point this out the the non-European folk, there isn't really a lot of influence the Brexit Party will have. Even if they won all seats available to them it wouldn't effect much. They are a protest party at the end of the day. The European Parliament will still be controlled by the centre-left/centre-right (European centre, it bares pointing out, which would be radical left in the US).

What is never really explained to the British populace is what grouping the parties are aligned to and why that matters. So they just assume the Parliament doesn't matter and vote to give the main parties a kick.

Come General Elections they go right back to the two main parties.

BadKen wrote:

I guess UK really does want to commit economic suicide. Oh well.

I might be misreading it, but it looks more like the no-Brexit or soft-Brexit support is stronger than the Brexit Party but hasn't coalesced around an particular opposing party, probably because there's so much disagreement about what they want. A majority doesn't seem to want a hard Brexit, but there's not a strong, single answer to what they want instead, so that support gets split across the other parties.

Deck chairs, Titanic, etc.

Is nothing happening regarding actual Brexit? It is very quiet with news.
Are they just waiting until a few days before the next deadline for maximal drama effect.

Nothing will happen until one of Labour or the Tories leaders change. Corbyn wants Brexit but doesn't want to own it. May wants her deal but nobody else wants to own that either. Something quite serious is going to have to happen to break the stalemate. The UK is now a zombie state.

Shadout wrote:

Is nothing happening regarding actual Brexit? It is very quiet with news.
Are they just waiting until a few days before the next deadline for maximal drama effect.

The short answer is no. It will eventually probably boil down to another general election. As Axon says above, Jeremy Corbyn wants Brexit, as does his power base (the militant parts and leadership Momentum) as do the majority of labour voters. The parliamentary Labour Party don’t.

May doesn’t want ‘her deal’ as such, she just sees it as the only way to deliver the referendum result as she sees it, which is fundamentally a hard Brexit because the EU will not give the UK preferential access to the single market.

The ‘negotiations’ with Labour will probably only get resolved if it comes with a confirmatory vote. That’s not what May or Corbyn want for sure, but it’s probably the only way the majority of Labour MPs (and all the pro-remain parties) will vote for it. Otherwise we are back to square one.

Sorbicol wrote:

The short answer is no. It will eventually probably boil down to another general election. As Axon says above, Jeremy Corbyn wants Brexit, as does his power base (the militant parts and leadership Momentum) as do the majority of labour voters. The parliamentary Labour Party don’t.

Where are you getting that the majority of Labour voters want Brexit? And that Momentum which trends younger also want Brexit? I got the impression that in leave voting constituancies which have a Labour MP, there wasn't much corelation between voting Labour and voting Brexit (i.e. a majority want Brexit and a majority want a Labour MP, but through the fun of FPTP those aren't the same people).

Well, his power base does. I can find videos of those individuals on national television calling for Brexit. The wider Momentum movement doesn't, that's true.

As for the majority of voters, no they didn't. However, the majority of seats did. Corbyn's not commital stance is in way entirely rational. Of course, I'm with Watson where you have to set out an actual policy or it will split the party. But, again, part of me thinks Corbyn wants to do that as well.

DoveBrown wrote:

Where are you getting that the majority of Labour voters want Brexit? And that Momentum which trends younger also want Brexit? I got the impression that in leave voting constituencies which have a Labour MP, there wasn't much correlation between voting Labour and voting Brexit (i.e. a majority want Brexit and a majority want a Labour MP, but through the fun of FPTP those aren't the same people).

I checked and you are correct - I take that back. It does look like the majority of labour voters did actually vote remain. Probably goes to show the level of reporting in this country, you have to double and triple check everything you read or see about Brexit - from all sides!

The internal Party Politics of the Labour Party are probably even more complex and vicious than what's going on in the Tory party. Momentum is clearly in the throws of trying to "take over" the Labour Party and remove any vestiges left of Blarism (with some success I think) while also completely ignoring the utter lack of success that bought them when Kinnock was in charge. They come across as more Pro-Brexit than perhaps the majority of it's members are because they support Corbyn, and so look Pro-Brexit by extension. I do think the Momentum leadership are more in favour of Brexit than most of the their members, as is Len McClusky who runs the Unite Union, who is very pro brexit and anti second referendum and a staunch Corbyn supporter.

While Corbyn's non-committal stance makes some sense in terms of the labour party's internal politics, for the wider electorate it makes him look extremely indecisive and not much better than May. That will damage him a great deal more than I think either he or Momentum realise. I think the rest of the parliamentary Labour Party are quite happy to give him enough rope to hang himself with as things currently stand.

Brexit: Bill implementing deal to be introduced in early June

A bill implementing the Brexit deal will be introduced in the first week of June, the government has confirmed.

Downing Street said this was "imperative" if the UK was to leave the EU before MPs' summer recess.

The government also said talks with Labour would continue on Wednesday in an attempt to agree a way through the Brexit impasse.

Attempts to find a cross-party compromise began after the PM's Brexit deal was rejected three times by MPs.

A Labour spokesman said Jeremy Corbyn had raised concerns "about the prime minister's ability to deliver on any compromise agreement".

BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said bringing the legislation forward would allow the prime minister to push ahead with her ambition of delivering Brexit before the summer, despite the lack of agreement so far in the cross-party talks.

He said the vote on the law was separate to a so-called meaningful vote on the prime minister's Brexit deal - which has been defeated by MPs three times.

He added that the proposed timetable nevertheless would allow "more space and more time" for the talks to continue.

Sorbicol wrote:

While Corbyn's non-committal stance makes some sense in terms of the labour party's internal politics, for the wider electorate it makes him look extremely indecisive and not much better than May. That will damage him a great deal more than I think either he or Momentum realise. I think the rest of the parliamentary Labour Party are quite happy to give him enough rope to hang himself with as things currently stand.

Is any of this true? Labour have a pretty comfortable 'GE voting intention' lead in the polls right now

DanB wrote:

Is any of this true? Labour have a pretty comfortable 'GE voting intention' lead in the polls right now

This Article says it here rather more eloquently than I have managed! As the last election made clear, I wouldn’t read too much into the polls at the moment. They are - mostly - wrong.

May agrees to set her exit date after Brexit bill vote

Theresa May has agreed to set a timetable for her departure as prime minister in the first week of June, leading MPs to believe she will trigger a leadership contest before the summer.

Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers, said she would agree a timetable for the election of a new leader after her Brexit legislation returned to parliament for a final attempt in the week of 3 June.

Another member of the 1922 Committee told the Guardian that May understood she would have to name a quick date for her departure if the withdrawal bill is voted down, with a leadership contest before the summer.

The MP said some Brexit supporters on the committee were disappointed that the prime minister was not forced to announce her departure immediately but this represented a “fair compromise”.

Mexit?

Texit?

Tex-Mexit?

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Tex-Mexit?

If the ultimate outcome of Brexit was fajitas, I'd move and change citizenship tomorrow.

Prederick wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Tex-Mexit?

If the ultimate outcome of Brexit was fajitas, I'd move and change citizenship tomorrow.

Alas, we had the opportunity to have a taco truck on every corner in the US and voted it down...

Prederick wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Tex-Mexit?

If the ultimate outcome of Brexit was fajitas, I'd move and change citizenship tomorrow.

Taco Tuesday?

Surprising absolutely no-one, Boris Johnson has confirmed that he will make a bid in any forthcoming leadership contest for the Conservative party. In a way I wish him success so that he can actually take responsibility for this total sh*tshow that he was heavily involved in the making of rather than just whinging from the sidelines. And also to prove that he can't get any deal through parliament either so he's not the master statesman he's convinced he is.

Brexit negotiations between the Tories and Labour have failed rather predictably, so next step is probably indicative votes again because that worked so well last time. Once that hasn't worked again it's either going to be:

General Election
Second Ref
No deal or rescind Article 50.

I think on balance of it being the least worst option for the political parties involved, it'll go to a second ref. Assuming they can get the legislation in place in time. Other wise someone is going to have to make a very hard choice.

That's exactly why I think "No Deal" is still the most likely. Every other scenario requires someone (actually several someones) making a "very hard choice". "No Deal" doesn't require any hard choices, it is the result of everyone involved avoiding making a hard choice until they run out of time. Considering that's literally all that has happened so far it seems relatively likely to continue.