Prompted by this article: Brexit headlines predict catastrophe | CNN Business
There were some earlier threads, but they seem a bit stale now.
Should there be another referendum? Will Theresa May be able to stay at 10 Downing Street? Should she?
A no-deal Brexit looks more and more likely.
Another referendum doesn’t matter at this point if I understand correctly, as the UK invoked Article 50.
They still want all of the advantages of being in the EU without the costs, which was unrealistic in the first place and now they will pay the price. IIRC as they have invoked Article 50 they would have to ask to rejoin and the request may be subject to the procedure in Article 49 as the the question if Article 50 is revocable is untested and may happen but I doubt it will with the political realities inside the UK.
There is a prohibition against using Article 50 to better ones position which would be a hard sell to the pro-Brexit crowd.
And there’s the problem with governing by referendum. Suppose May reaches a deal with the EU; it’s softer than the leavers want, and harder than the remainers want, so there’s a large vote against it, maybe even larger than the original vote, because no-one likes it.
So you end up with a hard-break, which increasingly looks likely anyway.
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I think recent history has shown that referendums are no longer meaningful if enough attention is paid to the matter. There’s too much polling and too much attention to allow the thing to not turn into a 50/50 Hotelling’s Law scenario. Fundamentally, you need intellect, introspection, and factual underpinnings to enter the matter in order for a real outcome to result. Once you get the full attention of the general masses - who lack the intellect and introspection - and then also get the financial backers for each side - who will destroy all chance for factual underpinnings to rise to the fore - you’re left with a clusterfuck. You just get a 50/50 result that could go either way and certainly won’t demonstrate a “clear” message and political mandate to get things done. And nor is it based on any reality. It’s just a poll of whether anyone actually knows anything. And since no one does, the result is 50/50. Half go for and half go against, because they don’t actually understand what the vote means in any real way.
I mean, Brexit should be stopped. And if a second referendum would stop it - of which there’s a 50/50 chance - then by all means it should take place. But it’s really not the answer.
We all need to accept that there’s a reason for us to elect representatives. They represent what we would choose if we were given the ability to investigate and deliberate properly. You have to let them do that. There never should have been a first referendum. And after the results of the first referendum, after Cameron left, everyone else should have simply issued a statement to the effect of, “Cameron was a moron and he took a lazy way out of doing his job. The rest of us intend to actually do our jobs, as your elected representatives, and govern based on the facts of the matter and what we can determine based on economic models, foreseeable legal changes in Brussels, etc. and we will decide how to interact with the EU on the basis of what makes sense. If you genuinely think that you know something on the topic and have a strong opinion, then by all means vote for the representatives who you trust to advance your positions. That’s the only vote that matters. We’re going to do what makes sense not let the country slip into shambles because of populist idiocy and political laziness.”
And, simply, there’s no reason to not issue that proclamation today either. The UK government should do its job and if Brexit is stupid and bad for the nation, then they should not proceed with it.
But as I understand it, it’s not clear under Article 50 if the UK can just say “oops, our bad, never mind!”
Once Britain gave notice, they’re on the train to Exitville.
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I’m sure I’ve read a statement from Tusk saying that they can always back out. I’m not sure what that’s based on. I’ll try to confirm, one way or another, as that seems pretty relevant to the discussion.
This is saying that it can be reversed, according to the guy who wrote the article of the EU constitution that outlines the steps for leaving the EU.
Absolutely. This was a terrible decision and I think it would never pass if voted on again. Forget all the need for face saving or any special rules in the EU-- write new ones, if needed.
The strength of the Union is Britain,
And the strength of Britain is the Union.
To paraphrase from The Jungle Book.
Either May is playing a blinder or she’s making an almighty cock-up and just praying that something comes along to rescue her. Personally I tend to the latter. She took a year to invoke Article 50, for example, which gave Remainers enough time to mount a legal challenge and cause serious damage to the process.
May is trying the buy time until some kind of solution emerges for the Irish Border problem. Between the UK, the EU, Ireland and parties in Northern Ireland, there is no consensus on how to draw a border. Her strategy is to try to negotiate a delay in leaving the EU during which the UK will be in some kind of limbo unable to leave and negotiate other trade treaties, yet the UK would still have to pay its membership. This position is unacceptable to the Brexiteers.
The opposite: crashing out of the EU with no agreement is even more unacceptable to just about everyone because of the economic disruption it will cause. We have had warnings from former prime ministers and major industries dependent on Europe wide supply chains and many other businesses. The status of he 4million EU nationals working in the UK and 1 million UK nationals who live and work or are living out their retirement in sunny Spain is another concern. It is a nightmare scenario and an answer is needed before the deadline that is looming in March next year.
If May does not get support for her delay and is her position becomes untenable she may resign. Then there would have to be another leader who would face the same stark choice.
I suspect fudging and delaying the issue is probably the only way forward until public opinion begins to turn and people begin demanding a vote on what sort of constitutional and economic car crash they prefer.
Staying in the EU is clearly the most sensible thing to do. But sadly we don’t have any senior politicians with the courage tell the British people that Brexit is a stupid idea and it is not going to work without a great deal of unnecessary pain to the economy. The Referendum was supposed to be advisory anyway. It was never intended to be an instrument for a Constitutional change or they might have put a bit more thought into it. It has been promoted as the ‘democratic will of the people’ by the Brexit campaigners. .
Allowing the vote to go 49/51 is a very small margin which has split to country. A second vote could be justified on the basis that a significant number of the people who voted last time are not dead and a lot more have come of age.
In any case, why did we agree that the Scottish Referendum should allow voting at 16 yet the EU vote should be 18? It was ill conceived. The UK does not do Referendums well, this is not Switzerland where they have them all the time and they know what they are doing. This was Cameron taking a gamble to get UKIP and the Anti-EU Conservative Party off his back when he had a small majority of seats. He gambled on winning the Referendum and lost. He has jeopardised the prosperity of the country for internal party political intrigues. The fellow is scoundrel and responsible for getting us into this mess. Sad to say, I cannot see that there is any politician who has any credible answers from either the Conservatives or Labour. Labour is just as divided, not wanting to alienate their working class voter base.
Just as May gambled on calling snap elections to strengthen her hand in Brexit talks. That… didn’t work out too well, either.
Yeah. I gotta say that, once legislation has been enacted, the opinion of the technicians who drafted the legislation as to what it means counts for very little.
There’s a case currently on its way to the European Count of Justice on the question of whether the UK can validly unilaterally withdraw the Article 50 notification that it has already given. The opinion of the ECJ on this is very signficant; Lord Kerr’s, not so much.
Another bit of unintended consequences is the amount of reorganization lots of companies are doing to prepare for Brexit. In the consulting sector, mid and long-term positions in the UK are being increasingly difficult to fill based on the amount of times I get hooks for the same one and on what my British agents tell me; firms which used to be exclusively UK-based are scrambling to get a subsidiary in Ireland or the Continent. Firms which used to be UK-based with a Continental subsidiary have reversed the setup. In some cases the Continental branch is Swiss and this may still be more convenient than being British, going forward (Switzerland is not EU but that’s more and more a distinction without a difference).
In the air, the company which owns Iberia and British Airways is Spain-based but mainly UK-moneyed, and they’re scrambling to ensure that this allows them to continue counting as “EU”. I’m not sure why does the nationality of the money matter, since IANAFinance Person at all, but if it didn’t there wouldn’t be a lot of lawyers getting paid to solve this. They’re not the only ones in this situation, just the one best known in Spain: one of my former clients is a Spanish company whose main stockholder is Rolls Royce, and they’re a huge player in the airplane-maintenance sector. That includes maintenance for NATO planes in Spain.
I agree with Sage Rat overall, but …
“Hotelling’s law is an observation in economics that in many markets it is rational for producers to make their products as similar as possible.”
While there may be something to Sage Rat’s observation, surely it’s not as simple as Hotelling’s Law. Leave and Remain were hardly “as similar as possible.” :smack:
I know nothing about European politics and perhaps shouldn’t offer an opinion, but if the British P.M. went to Berlin, stood barefoot in the snow, and kissed the feet of the German Chancellor, couldn’t the matter of Article 50 be set aside? They all want what’s best for Europe.
“Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence!”
The Leave campaign worked hard to market a Leave vote on the basis that it was, in many respects, similar to Remain, telling people that the UK would keep all the advantages of EU membership even if they left; that the EU would rush to enter into a new treaty with the UK conferring all the goodies that the UK already has, but without any of the tiresome budgetary contributions or all those foreigners coming in. After the referendum they spent some time framing the EU position (that if the UK leaves it will be a non-member) as “punishment” by the EU, and now they’ve moved on to gaslighting the electorate by assuring them that they voted for Leave, including all the negative consequences of leaving, and they knew this at the time.
The immediate obstacle to the UK revoking its Article 50 notice is domestic; it would be unacceptable to too many people in the UK.
If they could get past that and they sought to revoke their Art 50 notice, the EU would have a dilemma. On the one hand, it would be gratifying and a salutary example to others to have the UK realise that leaving has really, really bad consequences. On the other hand Brexit has consumed a great deal of time, effort, energy and goodwill; do we really want to subject ourselves to more of the carping and the whingeing and the throwing of toys out of the pram, perhaps indefinitely? So I think much would depend on the political context; is the UK seeking to revoke A50 notice simply because it can’t arrive at a decision on how to leave? Or has it actually developed a positive national consensus for a commitment to the European project?
To be fair to the Leavers, no one anticipated that Brexit would revive the Irish question.
The only practical solution to it short of canceling Brexit or the United Kingdom might well be a reconquest.
Does anyone else get the feeling the whole thing i.e the referendum, was not thought through?
It was obvious that it risked doing so, and the fact was much discussed in Ireland.
If this escaped attention in the debate that went on in Britain this is because it was not in the interests of the Leave campaign to point to this problem, and the Remain campaign was led by people who had a policy of not considering or planning for the consequences of a vote to Leave, since this implied that Leave might win, and that was considered defeatist.
A reconquest? 
The Good Friday Agreement created a settlement between the UK and Ireland that brought peace to a long running conflict that caused the deaths of three thousand victims. Years of terrorist attacks with Northern Ireland beset by sectarian paramilitaries persecuting each others communities and requiring a heavy, militarised security presence. The regular terrorist bombings are not forgotten. The IRA nearly assassinated Thatcher and Major. It was the UKs major terrorist threat from 1968. It was settled by agreeing to change the constitution of both the UK and Ireland and agree institutions that applied across the whole of island of Ireland. The amount of political capital spent on this was very high by Major and later Blair.
The Irish Question has been a major constitutional concern for the UK from the beginning. It is a very big deal and every UK politician (and every politician in Ireland and the Northern Ireland) does not want to open that can of worms.
Ireland is a dedicated member of the EU and, like many smaller economies, has benefited greatly from its membership. There will be a border between the EU and UK and the land border runs across Northern Ireland. It requires some way of checking goods and people crossing the border. The borders between EU member states are pretty very open. Whereas the borders between the EU and non-EU states required customs and police checks. Put that in place between Ireland and Northern Ireland and the worry is that they will become the target for terrorist attack from Irish Republican groups. Very easy for that to escalate the Troubles in Northern Ireland to return. The EU says Northern Ireland can stay in the EU customs union and there can be border with the rest of the UK along the Irish Sea. That is unacceptable to the Unionist parties in Northern Ireland and May is dependent on their votes in Parliament.
Even if all the other issues relating to Brexit can be solved (and there are lot of them), this one is sticking point with no clear solution. May suggests that some remarkable computer system can be contrived to make the border ‘frictionless’ and she is trying to buy time by postponing the exit for an undetermined length of time. Her support within her party for this proposal is looking very shaky.
Without that compromise agreed and accepted such that she can win a vote, the only alternative is a Hard Exit with no agreement. Or, of course. going back to the country and saying. Hey we can’t do this. It was too hard and the consequences were very bad.
I don’t think anyone would vote for a No Deal, Hard Exit from the EU and the economic crisis that would surely result. But it is surely democratic to offer the public a vote now that the consequences are becoming clear because it certainly was not two years ago.
Most of the issues regarding Brexit explored so far have been internal wrangles taking place between factions within the Conservative Party about what the UK wants. The EU has said no negotiation on a future trading relationship until the UK leaves. Only then the UK be able to negotiate with the EU and start developing all the trade deals with other nations and trade blocs around the world.
That limbo is where the default position is the WTO trading rules, which deals with tariffs and has little regard for the legal regulations regarding standards. Some in the Conservative Party think that this is a perfectly acceptable position to be in and the economy will surely thrive and take advantage of all kinds of novel trading opportunities. The business community can see only problems that will upset finely balanced trading arrangements that have been put in place over the past 40 years and are essential for smooth international trade.
The UK is highly dependent on international trade, the basis of the economy is that of a major trading nation. If that is disrupted the consequences will be serious.
We should find out quite soon whether May has developed an agreement that is acceptable to the various factions on which she depends on for votes. She really has the worst job in politics.