According to newspaper reports, Gove was offered a top job, but wanted another plum post for a henchman. Boris declined and Gove set his double-cross in motion.
Gove’s statements / interviews also showed remarkably bad judgment for someone who has been in politics as long as he has.
Essentially a smug “I thought Boris was not what this country needs, but I am what this country needs”. Simultaneously looking not just arrogant, but also as though he’s entitled to the position now he’s managed to take out his main rival.
Anyone on the fence previously would take an instant dislike to him.
There’s an interesting article here which points out that Teresa May could delay invoking Article 50 until early next year when it could be rejected:
That’s quite an interesting blog, Quartz. The writer certainly has views doesn’t he? Got anything better?
I like reading all sorts of views; I try to keep myself out of an echo chamber. Are you saying that he is factually incorrect about the bit I quoted?
I think he’s wrong about Article 50 and QMV being linked in any way. But it’s you who posted the assertion, so you can post the relevant bits of the Lisbon Treaty to support the argument, surely?
There’s a link in the article. Did you miss it? Did you miss that the author of the linked article was a MEP? Did you miss the fact that said MEP gave his own sources?
Here’s a link to Article 16, BTW which contains the bit about 31st March 2017:
This is Article 50. It is the only article of the Lisbon Treaty which mentions withdrawal of a member state.
Any state can decide, all by itself, to leave. The EU cannot countermand that decision.
The EU will negotiate with the departing state to agree a deal on how the departure will be managed, and what the post-withdrawal relationship between the state and the EU will be. That deal will be ratified on behalf of the EU by QMV. (It will, presumably, be ratified by the departing stage according to its own constitution).
Obviously, the departing state won’t have a say in whether the EU ratifies the agreement, because that would be insane.
So can the EU, through QMV, prevent a state from leaving?
No.
- It’s a deal on how they leave, not whether they leave.
- Article 50 is explicit. If there’s no ratified deal after 2 years, the departing state is out in any case. There is no taking back an Article 50 notification.
So the claim that somehow a) the EU could vote down any state planning to leave, b) that this power only exists due to new QMV rules and c) that the UK would somehow have a say in the ** EU’s side of negotiations over how it left** but for this scurrilous QMV change is total, total, nonsense.
Hmm… you’re saying it works one way and a MEP says it works a different way. Who should we believe? Do you have any special standing of which we should be aware?
Maybe read the first clause of Article 50? It is only 17 words long, but it is very much the operative clause. Your cite seeks to conflate the act of invocation with the minutiae of the post-invocation agreements.
I think you should believe the plain language of Article 50.
Could this “man” (robot boy) be a Prime Minister?
The answer is no.
Strange But True (aka WTF??!): Michael Gove co-starred in a 1995 slapstick comedy with Christopher Lee.
I’m not sure that those of us who have spent the last week becoming far more familiar with the Lisbon Treaty than we previously were 
have all understood the role of Article 50 correctly. According to this article, it does not confer the right to leave on EU member states. They already have that right as sovereign states, under Article 62 of the Vienna Convention on the law of treaties (which covers “Fundamental change of circumstance” – the “circumstance” in this case, I presume, being the express desire of a state to be in the EU, or not). Instead, Article 50 merely sets out the process that the leaving state and the remaining EU states agree to follow.
In short, as others have said, Article 50 is not in any way about giving “permission” for member states to leave the EU. This is not Hotel California. In fact, part of an EU (well EEC) member state has left the community before – Greenland, a Danish territory, left in 1985, long before Article 50 was even a twinkle in José Manuel Barroso’s eye.
Furthermore, Article 50 has never been invoked before, so who’s to say how things would proceed? I note that there is provision in it for the EU states to agree to an extension of the 2-year deadline (it says “unanimously”, but let’s face it, that means “if Germany and France so desire”.) Given the EU’s proclivity for dealing with knotty problems by “kicking the can down the road”, I wouldn’t be surprised to see any Article 50 process drag on for longer that two years, and, who knows, some classic EU fudged compromise to emerge.
No, the MEP doesn’t say anything of the sort. What he says is that the definition/construction of the “qualified majority” required for decisions under Article 50 will have changed; since Article 50 provides for QMV only in respect of the final agreement between the departing member state and those remaining, there is no difference between what the MEP says and what Stanislaus and Baron Greenback say. The error is in the blog that misinterprets the MEP’s analysis.
Are his hands even smaller than Donald Trumps’s? :eek:
It may be academic in the present context but, no, I don’t think the “express desire of a state to be in the EU, or not” is a “fundamental change in circumstances” of the kind contemplated by the Vienna Convention Art 62. If we see the EU in terms of a set of entitlements and obligations arising under treaties, a desire no longer to be in the EU is nothing more than a desire no longer to be bound by the obligations, or to benefit from the entitlements, of the treaties. In other words, the “fundamental change of circumstances” that a state would be relying on to withdraw from the treaty is simply that it has decided that it wishes to withdraw from the treaty. So, no.
But, as I say, it’s academic. It does not matter whether Art 50 both confers a right and establishes a process for exercising that right, or simply establishes a process for exercising a right that already exists or arises elsewhere. The point is that it establishes the process for leaving, and it’s a process to which the UK has agreed, and to which it is bound by treaty. They have to go through the process.
The UK could simply denounce the EU treaties and walk away. What would stop it? It’s not as though there are massed European armies waiting to pour across the borders and overthrow the Queen’s government. But it’s very much not in the UK’s interest to to that. It would be a breach of treaty obligations, it would devalue the diplomatic standing of the UK with respect to all its treaties, and it would make it very much more difficult for the UK to negotiate a satisfactory post-exit relationship with the EU or, indeed, to negotiate free trade agreements with third countries. For who will bother to negotiate a detailed treaty with the UK if the UK is simply going to walk away from it whenever it changes its mind? So, basically, no-one, on any side, is proposing this.
Well, I’m not so sure that France and Germany are as able to procure unanimous agreement on every point they please. If they couldn’t get the UK to agree to remain in the EU, what makes you think each of the other 27 member states will be quite so slavish? But this may be beside the point. Both France and Germany have indicated that they want Brexit to be concluded more quickly, rather than more slowly, and from their point of view this seems to make sense. Plus, in the UK Brexiters will presumably also want to see the process concluded quickly. Until the UK exists, its still bound by all its EU obligations, it’s still sending the mythical 350 million to Brussels ever week (or at least Brexiters believe it is), but it has less and less practical influence in EU decision making.
So an extension of the two-year requires the UK to want it, it requires France to want it, it requires Germany to want it, and it requires no other EU member state to be willing to stand in the way. And at the moment none of those factors are in place, or seem particularly likely.
Today’s definition of chutzpah: Boris Johnson says Cameron’s government should have had a post-Brexit plan:
In his first intervention since withdrawing from the Tory leadership race, Mr Johnson criticises the government for offering the public a “binary choice on the EU” without explaining how the country would move forward in the event of a Leave vote.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/03/boris-johnson-project-fear-hysteria-is-gripping-britain/
So what was the Mop-Headed Poltroon doing before he decided to jump on the Brexit bandwagon and before you were about to launch his leadership bid?
PS: Someone’s quip today “Don’t put all your asks in one Brexit”
Johnson was in no position to have a plan post-Brexit. He was only a vocal backbench Mp. He had no control over the civil service or government bureaucracy. The best you could have expected from Brexiteers were vague outlines of negotiating principles. It’s the government that is required to have plans in place for a variety of scenarios.
I think for Germany, at least, the preferred option would be for the UK to not leave at all. If the UK is really to leave, then sure, the EU will want it done quickly. But if there is a way for it to be prevented, I think they will pursue that as far as they can.
I don’t put too much weight on what they say publicly. A lot of it is posturing and bluff-calling. I wonder what the UK and the EU are saying among themselves behind the scenes.
As for the Brexiteers, sure they will press for exit but they’ll be up against much of the establishment, who don’t want to leave and will be buoyed by the knowledge that public opinion is only narrowly in favour of it. I think they too will look hard for some kind of sellable compromise, which may not entail the UK actually leaving.