Of course, Mrs May’s proposed withdrawal agreement just covers withdrawal. There is a short, vague, aspirational paper on the future relationship, but that isn’t what people are arguing about now. If they mention it at all it is just to criticise it for being so short, vague and aspirational.
So the withdrawal deal which Parliament will shortly vote on does not preclude (or commit) the UK in the main negotiations, next year, to seek to rejoin the EU, or adopt the Norway model, or for Great Britain to adopt the Canada model, or indeed for Great Britain to leave the transitional period with WTO terms only.
Really, all this deal achieves is to confirm that we won’t shaft each other’s resident citizens (duh!), that the UK will pay off its bar tab, and that Northern Ireland will remain in the EU on broadly the Norway model, even if Great Britain does not. The last point is contentious, and for some reason is often described as a capitulation to EU bullying. This is perplexing since honouring the letter and spirit of the Good Friday Agreement is one of the UK Government’s own red lines.
Remember, this isn’t the end, the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning. It is just the preparatory work for us to get to the start line! We’ve got years more fun to enjoy yet before Brexit is settled. Fortunately, the UK has excellent negotiators, a clear vision of common purpose, and we hold all the cards and will be able to drive hugely profitable trade deals with the EU and the rest of the world, to make all this worthwhile.
Between those two, certainly. But his or her oath is to the Sovereign, and thus to the nation. The MP’s ultimate responsibility is to the United Kingdom, not to his or her constituents.
No it isn’t. It’s what the majority of the country now want, and the practicality of it consists in simply withdrawing the article 50 notification. The only practical thing standing against it is the hard left wing of the Labour party being pro-leave, if Corbyn and his cronies would stand with the majority of the party and the country, they could force an election, win, and remain in the EU, and it would all be sorted by the middle of January.
Say what you like about Tony Blair (and believe me, I have) we wouldn’t be in this level of shit if he was still in charge.
phssssshhhyeah. Like TPTB in the powerful US Tabloid-Industrial Complex are EVER going to consent to the elimination of their Royal Family as their bread-and-butter. :dubious:
Normally, yes, what you describe would work. But we are not in normal times.
Normally MPs adhere to a party platform that they either wholly or broadly agree with, and get elected on the party platform. It’s easy in that regard for them to sustain the party because they already agree with the platform already. There may be some issues on which they disagree, but they’re going to be minor, or they’ll hold their noses and support it anyway in exchange for support from the party for other issues.
With Brexit, many MPs are trapped between what they think is in the natural interest, what the party leaders think is in the national interest, and what their party members in their constituents think is in the national interest. Brexit has completely torn up the rule book, and we’re facing an enormous upheaval of party divisions - from a sorta consensus on market liberalism and civil rights to a stark divide between nationalist fantasism and pan-nationalist liberalism. (yeah, I’m impartial, haha)
Eventually, hopefully, things will settle into a new normal. Here’s hoping we can stop the country disintegrating in the meantime.
Looks like the day of reckoning in the UK Parliament for the Withdrawal Agreement is 11th December.
If it is rejected by the MPs, it will be time for Plan B.
Will May resign?
Will she take out a prepared plan for a Hard Exit from the EU? With no transition deal and instead some pre-arranged deals with countries like the US to boost trade and thereby offset the crisis that will result from having the legal basis for trade with EU suddenly being pulled like rug from beneath the feet of the economy?
Will she surprise us all by calling going over the heads of the MPs and calling a Peoples Vote on her plan?
Will she simply ask to extend the terms of Article 50 to buy more time so the UK can decide what to do next?
I would suggest she might try to get approval for a Hard Exit from Parliament. If that was also rejected. What could she or any other leader do?
Flash forward to 2069, when nobody can remember how it became a tradition for the British PM to visit Brussels every year to ask for a renewal of Britain’s EU membership, with murmuring about how it must just be a weird quirk of the unwritten constitution.
The former. While the voters approved a deliberately vaguely-articulated concept of Brexit in 2016, the Withdrawal Agreement just negotiated is the result of the “red lines” that May choose to adopt about seven months after the referendum, which determine the kind of Brexit that the UK can and cannot secure.
May could have targetted, and likely achieved, an entirely different form of Brexit, consistently with the referendum result.
I don’t think no deal will happen, at minimum. Not only is it unacceptable to most MPs, much of the Cabinet would walk out, too, and I can’t see May withstanding another Cabinet walk-out.
Something’s going to give, and I think either MPs will cave on May’s deal the second time it’s offered, or a second referendum will happen with an extension to Article 50. With the latter, I think the Tories will splinter into two parties - ERG/UKIP, and the rest.
The one thing the Tories historically shy away from is a formal split, unlike the Liberals and Labour; that’s what comes of considering yourselves as the natural party of those entitled to govern. The Brexitmaniacs would simply lick their wounds and bide their time once again, as they did in 1992. Past battles over Tariff Reform/Imperial Preference didn’t lead to a significant organisational split (but were punished by the voters, who tend to be turned off by disunity within parties).
I get the feeling that Labour’s (or at least, the Leader’s Office’s) biggest interest in Brexit now is precisely this question of how much it will destabilise the Tories. It is pretty clear - and to a large extent it is fair enough - that Corbyn et al would rather have a bad/no deal Brexit and a Labour government than no/a good* Brexit and a Tory government.
To this end, they are unlikely to vote for the deal, because it’s failure will destabilise May. Their ideal scenario is for May and the Tories to be seen to have failed to deliver Brexit because of their own in-fighting/incompetence, and for Labour to fight an election based on delivering a better Brexit without ever doing anything that would make them responsible for what has happened to that point, or discussing what they might have done differently.
So the question is, what is their strategy for the day after the vote on the deal? They can’t force an election, and while the Tory party is split it will unite around the idea that none of them want to lose their jobs right now. They can argue for a second referendum. They’ve been shy of this so far, but in the circumstances of a lost WA vote, there is a strong case for saying that Parliament/the Government has failed to reach consensus and so the question should go back to the people. (I don’t like this case personally, but it’s there.). What kind of referendum they would ask for (Deal or No Deal; Deal or No Deal or No Brexit; Deal or Extend A50; ???) I wouldn’t like to guess. Whatever has the best chance of splitting the Tories/boosting Labour’s election chances, I suppose.)
I think it’s more a matter of “we’re going to be dealing with each other for yoinks, we’re going to have a bunch of them living here and a bunch of us living there, and we can afford to play nice, so we will. But playing nice doesn’t equal dropping your pants and bending down.”
Well, I think Parliament’s response should have been “thank you for voting in this non-binding referendum, but the margin is too close for us to contemplate any drastic course of action,” followed by something of an education campaign about how the EU works and what the UK’s MEPs do.
But yes, as UDS said, it’s the decisions made since the vote that have been either farcical, disastrous, or both.
40-odd years too late for that, given the general obfuscatory inability/unwillingness of the political and media classes to do it effectively when it should have been done.
I’m not sure it has anything to do with that—the Tories’ counterparts in other Commonwealth realms (such as the Canadian Tories) are notorious for splitting, reforming, and splitting again ad nauseam.
I don’t think there is a Plan B, and I could see May deciding to Hell with this crap and resigning (possibly without even sticking around as a caretaker while the Tories pick a successor) if she can’t get Parliament to approve the agreement. I’ve said it before, but I’d kill to be able to listen in May’s weekly audiences with the Queen.
