Extension needs unanimous EU27 agreement, and it’s only extendable for a couple of months eg to accommodate a general election/second referendum level event. I think.
It’s the transition arrangement that can be extended for up to two years.
But now that it’s confirmed that revocation of Article 50 can be done unilaterally, it could just be revoked in the morning and resubmitted in the afternoon, starting the clock over again.
Isn’t there “good faith” wording in today’s judgment*? There was in the AG memorandum.
*Haven’t had time to read it. Bloody work keeps getting in the way :mad:
The full judgment can be found here.
Another withdrawal immediately following the cancellation is mentioned as a concern submitted to the court:
I’m not a lawyer, but as far as I see from a quick read through, the court did not address this concern. They say the revocation must be “in an unequivocal and unconditional manner.” And that “revocation brings the withdrawal procedure to an end.”
However, I don’t see that it prevents another withdrawal. Maybe someone else can shed more light on this.
Well this has changed now. The ECJ has given the British a clear out. A painless no negotiation needed method to end this madness. Politically speaking, its a lot easier.
Anyway, if the vote is to be pulled, it’s not the PM that decides, but Parliament. The Commons would have to vote to amend the programme motion (essentially the timetable of business). I reckon there’s a decent chance the Commons will vote to allow the vote go ahead. 
This Referendum concept seems to be interesting technique to create a powerful political mandate out of an issue that was way down the list of political concerns of an electorate. Dealing with the EU have always been a marginal issue for the British voters, so too was immigration. Important within the Conservative Party, but the public were much more interested in the NHS, Education, Housing, Taxes, Transport, the Economy. The usual stuff.
For the past couple of years the government seems to have talked about nothing but Brexit as it tries to decide what it means and how to implement it. The amount of legislative time and political capital expended on it means that less attention is paid to all the other issues that the political class should be attending to.
I am wondering if Corbyn led Labour party gets into government, he might use Referendums to force through a radical programme. The British public would certainly vote for nationalising various industries, doubling the funding of the NHS, abolishing university tuition fees. Loads of stuff that would cost a huge amount to finance.
A non-legally binding Referendum to generate a political mandate celebrated by the incantation that this is ‘the democratic will of people’. The Brexit experiment has shown it is effective in promoting a nationalist anti-immigration agenda that was once the preserve of at fringe of the Conservative party. The Labour party has a fringe as well and I am sure if they get into power they will try to implement a radical socialist programme in the UK with little regard for the economic consequences. It allows a government, even with a small working majority, to relentlessly drive a political programme. It used to be the case that political parties referred to the manifesto they espoused when seeking election. Now they just have to add a commitment to holding a manifesto on an issue in order to divert the whole political machinery of state to an all or nothing objective. It enables radical solutions.
I fear that this awful Brexit mess is just a foretaste of what may come in the future in British politics.
The general public are very accustomed to voting on very simple concepts that have few practical consequences. Thumbs up or thumbs down reality TV show popularity contests are all very entertaining, but that approach does not work when deciding which direction a government should take on an important and very complicated trade issue that only experts really understand.
However, maybe it is for the best. If the result of Brexit becomes the equivalent of driving the UK economy off a cliff face at Dover, it will be a salutary lesson in how a modern state should NOT make important strategic decisions.
It is interesting that the US and UK are both going through a difficult educational process in the consequences of putting faith in the headline grabbing simplifications by populist politicians. Europe was once destroyed by that and most of the countries have constitutions that hold the extecutive of governments in check.
Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK are tests of how well each countries political systems can cope with an executive that goes off the rails on some mad project. The cracks are really beginning to show.
Interesting times.
That depends on how you estimate the reaction amongst Leave partisans and voters. The extreme right (and I mean extreme) is lining itself up as a campaign about “betrayal by the elite” on this as on non-EU immigration and Islamophobia. It could get very nasty.
This referendum wasn’t intended to create a powerful mandate, rather, to shut up the minority in the governing party, as indeed was the case in the 1975 referendum. However, since our accession was then so recent, demonstrating support for it was rather more important, whereas Cameron took it for granted that cosmetic “negotiations” would suffice to demonstrate acquiescence for the status quo - and found he’d trod on a rake.
Which makes it unlikely that we’ll turn to referenda more generally - and certainly not to reinforce a demonstration of support for policies already in the manifesto on which a government has won a majority in the House of Commons. Why would they need a referendum?
Any UK post-secondary or private school that takes a significant number of students from outside the UK will take a big hit - indeed, many are already taking the hit, much in the same way that any institution that hires a lot of non-UK EU citizens is already likely getting borked (most notably the NHS).
But, you know…sovereignty, blue passports, yadda yadda yadda…
Depends in whether they have a working majority. The past few governments have been characterised by slim majorities and that require alliances to pass legislation comfortably and deal with the threat of internal rebellion.
The lesson that a powerful political mandate can arise from a Referendum will not be lost on future politicians who might be tempted to use this device.
That worries me.
A law that deals with the terms on which any Referendum should be called seems wise. At the moment it is a political device at the discretion of the government and the consequence of this has led to divided country. There should at least be a requirement for super majority.
By the time Brexit is concluded a significant percentage of the voters will be push up daisies, leaving youngsters who were too young to vote at the time to pay for the mess that has been left. This hardly seems fair and it is in contrast to the terms of the Scottish Independence Referendum that allowed voting at 16. This also differed from the terms of that other Referendum we had on PR. These inconsistencies should be dealt with before another government decides to go down the Referendum path and decides that political expediency can be best served by throwing the dice of woefully uniformed public opinion.
We are in an awful mess because of this Referendum. The major political parties are both split and so is the country. It has solved nothing and heaped a whole host of troubles upon ourselves that is going to perplex the country for many years to come.
:smack:
Fucking hell, though, what a total shitshow. This is shaming.
I’ve got to the stage where I honestly don’t care about Brexit qua Brexit any more. I mean, I’d prefer to remain in the EU, sure, but I would absolutely be OK with an orderly, well-managed Brexit under pretty much any terms. What I struggle with with is the bottomless idiocy, mendacity, cowardice, indecision and general fuckwit-level incompetence being exhibited by the people who have fought to put themselves in charge of the process.
Today’s latest comedy of fuckups is emblematic. We’ve known for weeks that May wasn’t going to get this vote passed. Nevertheless she has been adamant that the vote would be held, because this deal was the best deal on offer and there was no renegotiation to be had. That’s fine, if that’s your strategy. But what happens? We get to the day before and while her spokesman is in front of the press telling them the vote is definitely going ahead and we won’t renegotiate, she is in Cabinet informing her colleagues/rivals/blood enemies that she is about to postpone the vote so she can fly to Brussels and renegotiate.
And what is it she’s renegotiating? Not much, she just wants a time limit on the backstop. The if all else fails, come what may, written in stone guarantee that there will **never **be a hard ROI/NI border. It’s not a fucking phone warranty. If it’s time-limited, it’s not a backstop, it’s a just a transition period. The point is not to ever transition to a hard border. There is simply no way the EU will agree to a time limit, because that would mean ROI agreeing to a time limit, and they won’t.
Either May is so ill-informed she doesn’t know this, or she’s so desperate she’s ignoring it. But it’s utterly fucking shambolic. It’s a national disgrace that we’re in this position, it’s genuinely just embarrassing. And this is just today. There is no prospect of British politics becoming any less a festival of fuckwittery next week, next month, next year. When does it end? Seriously, when will the incompetence ever end?
May buys herself a little time… but to any good end? At least now she can actually read the EU court’s decision, I guess: Brexit vote delayed as Theresa May pulls the plug | CNN
The events of today have been very interesting. Arriving in London on the train from the terrible Continent, we are here for the week now, and one of the colleagues when we hear of the decision on delaying the vote, he joked to the British counter-party that by the time we pay for our hotel, it may be obtaining a 20% discount (relative to our euros)… the poor British, he just put his face in his hands.
May is now going back to Brussels to renegotiate the backstop. What are her chances of succeeding?
Statements today:
Donald Tusk, the president of the European council: “We will not renegotiate the deal, including the backstop.”
Spokesman for Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission: “Our position remains: we will not renegotiate the deal that is on the table right now and that was endorsed by the EU council on 25 November.”
Michel Barnier, EU chief negotiator: “The backstop has to remain in place as an insurance.”
Guy Verhofstadt, European parliament’s Brexit coordinator: “I can’t follow anymore. After two years of negotiations, the Tory government wants to delay the vote. Just keep in mind that we will never let the Irish down.”
Leo Varadkar, Irish Taoiseach: “We ended up with the backstop with this withdrawal agreement because of all the red lines the UK laid down along the way. This is a withdrawal agreement which has the support of 28 member states. It’s not possible to open up any one aspect of this without opening up all aspects of the agreement."
The only possible outcome will be more delay with no meaningful changes, and May will be in an even worse position than before. I don’t know what she’s thinking. How much longer can parliament put up with this?
It was obvious for a while now that May wasn’t going to get the 330+ votes she needed. It almost makes you wonder if a hard exit is the best they think they can do but want to shift the blame to the process.
The delay in even getting this far made another referendum impossible, but it is hard to tell it was due to intent or incompetence. I suppose assuming incompetence is the proper thing to do.
What a glorious, glorious mess.
Rule Britannia! Rule the waves!
I haven’t been following Brexit all that closely, but I see it’s in the news again. Anyone have a place to find a good summary of what happened and what it means?
I’m unconvinced by these warnings about betrayal if Brexit doesn’t get through. There’s betrayal whatever happens. Hard Brexiters will want a no deal but won’t get it, soft Brexiters will want unicorns and won’t get it, and Remainers will just observe that the rest of the country now feels like they’ve felt for the past 2.5 years.
It’s gonna be controversial come what may, but we can at least avoid economic chaos by just stopping the whole thing. I’m pretty sure most of the country will breathe a huge sigh of relief, even Brexiters.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
The best overview summery explanations I have found would be these videos for someone who doesn’t know the various acronyms.
P.S. I had a typo above, 320 votes are needed.