Not solving anything doesn’t make it worse; nothing is currently solved. Wasting time only makes it worse if that time could better be spent doing something else. And I see no other thing that could be done that would plausibly make the situation better.
Now, I have this whistle…
What would be the process to cancel Brexit? Can May do it unilaterally? With her Cabinet? Or would it require approval by Parliament.
What do the polls say about a repeat referendum? Is the split still about 50/50, or would Remain win this time?
It would require approval by Parliament. If May continues wasting time ineffectually, it may come down to a choice between no-deal and no-brexit. In which case, perhaps there will be enough sanity left to choose no-brexit.
Were May able to hone down the choices on the table to be no-deal and no-Brexit, I’d argue that she actually hasn’t wasted time ineffectually.
The soft option was what poisoned the water.
Just do a hard Brexit. I predict that the second it’s a done deal, the EU will immediately shft in tone and start working constructively on trade and immigration agreements with Britain. All the scare stories, threats, and predictions of disaster are hardball politics.
One reason why the EU might not soften on Britain after: if they think that a consequence-free Brexit will embolden other countries to leave the EU as well. But if that’s the case, it just illustrates how weak and damaged the EU really is, and therefore even a fair bit of short-term pain is worth getting clear of that impending train wreck.
The EU was always a bad idea. Free trade and economic cooperation: yes. A single currency? No. Heavy regulation powers located in Brussels and unnacountable to voters in individual states? A recipe for disaster. Completely open borders between all states? Madness. The rise of a new nationalism in EU countries is a reflection of the problems inherent in trying to govern people of widely varying cultures and economies from a central government.
That wouldn’t be a shift in tone, that would be continuing what they’ve been doing since the withdrawal under Article 50 was submitted.
As for the rest of your post, I share some of your misgivings about the EU, but I also think this country will be far better off inside it than out, and have far more say about the direction of the union from within.
A consequence-free Brexit? That exists? If it does, so do unicorns.
The idea that a hard Brexit is in any way desirable is so ludicrous it doesn’t deserve more than a cursory glance.
No, they’re evidence-based reality. The EU doesn’t want hard Brexit, but it -rightly - doesn’t feel terrible inclined to indulge Britain’s self-entitled special snowflakeness.
A consequence-free Brexit? That exists? If it does, so do unicorns.
The idea that a hard Brexit is in any way desirable is so ludicrous it doesn’t deserve more than a cursory glance.
The EU is deeply flawed but it’s one of the best ideas to come out of the Twentieth Century.
The fact you call it heavy regulation, unaccountable, and with uncontrolled borders indicates you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
Even if this prediction comes true, hard Brexit will still be disastrous. Leaving the customs union and single market without any kind of negotiated transition period or compromises would bring up major barriers to trade instantly. The sudden imposition of customs checks, tariffs, regulatory compliance etc. etc. would be poison to businesses. The UK government is making plans to both ration medicine and airlift it in if hard Brexit comes to pass, because that’s the scale of disruption to trade.
This would of course only be temporary - until such time as the new trade and immigration agreements you predict come into play. Based on past performance, that means something like the best part of a decade. It’s cavalier in the extreme to call for hard Brexit in the expectation that major, comprehensive trade and immigration and customs deals will be summoned into being.
As to your other points about the madness of the EU, you will find it difficult to construct a union that has free trade and economic co-operation but doesn’t have some degree of centralised regulation, or that can open borders to the provision of services but not to labour.
As from the rest of the comment, says the person coming to this assertion by the hard ideological political position, it is the a priori conclusion from the political ideology.
This was the claim of the very hard core Brexiters since the day one. Except there is this detail of the supply chains of the goods in particular. And the capital flows. And that no, in fact despite the two years of these predictions, in fact there is no political magic wand except the membership that makes the goods controles get hand waived away and outside of hte world of the ideoligcal political, the real world logistics make this not
the continental EU supply chains for the industry, they will be hurt. The UK will be gutted. this is the logistics physical reality, and why my colleagues who have the focus on the investment capital are so very busy moving it to other destinations.
but maybe we are like in the years of predictions about the great success in the Iraq, it was entertaining to read in a way.
so the American civil war (yes I remember you are a canadian) was the illustration of how weak and damaged the USA was? that is a silly assertion without logic.
No confederation union body can be set in a fashion where jumping in and out and forcing the ad hoc arrangements for one member over the others can work - even the Swiss in their arrangement found this after some conflict.
If it is the sign of “weak and damaged” - it is then all things human organization.
it was always an idea that a certain kind of hard right fringe in the anglo-saxon world has detested. And has always said is a bad idea.
and has been predicting to fail and collapse now, I think it is the 50 years. Well eventually the ever returning prediction will come true, nothing lasts forever.
It would seem by the following comments this is merely an easy slogan without the regard to or maybe the understanding of the actual structures and the actual economic requirements of the successful large free trade areas for the optimal return.
Are you going to go back to your 2009-2010 predications of our imminent failure and collapse? It is part of your Big Government Failing prediction cycle I believe, no?
(the Euro expansion is a problematic and a difficult subject, the ideal currency zone is not there but there are the economic exchange advantages… defending the euro conception is not something I like, but the single currency is not also some complot and not without economic value.)
It is a pity Soviet Europe run by Commissar Bruxelles, she is costantly failing… I think there is a kind of a BD series about this. Maybe it can be made into a movie, like that strange american one I saw (until changed) on a plane about the north koreans invading the americans?
my god… the slogans crash into the free trade economics… It is economics and Free Trade - the effeciency of the free trade area among the members states, as the very example of the United States demonstrates, is very much dependent on the adjustment mechanisms which allow the labor mobility for allowing some degree of the rebalancing in the demand and also the efficiency in the exchanges.
This is the real free market economics and Free trade policy (without the hard right fringe nationalism infecting it in strange ways to pick and choose).
A customs free goods market without the free labor exchange is almost never sustainable in an integrated fashion and has enormous efficiency losses.
this is fringe (north) American right wing ideology speaking, not informed well by an operational understanding of the EU - it is more of the nature of the people who write about no go zones in the european cities.
the standards harmonizations and the standards and rules setting for the economic and shared systems values is an efficiency gaining - the United States is here the example. Widely varying cultures - it is Europe. …
Of course expansion, it was done too far and too fast for the East in the post-Communist enthusiasm, but the populist reactions, it is silly and simplistic attribution.
unloved Bruxelles, it is not attractive to defend the Bruxelles fonctionnaires who are very tedious and boring, but it is also a stupid thing to buy into the easy and silly stereotypes which politicians use for bouc emmissaires to distract from the fact of their own decisions in the local government.
indeed in fact it is impossible. And in fact the idea runs against the very free markets concepts supposedly he is for with Free Trade. but it is from the north american Libertarian perspective so… not really the economics as the actual trade economists will look at it
May is still clinging to the idea that she can get a Brexit-with-deal through Parliament, if necessary by forcing it down to the wire. She postponed the vote on the deal precisely so that she could keep it in play. IF she can do this, she will have delivered Brexit (in some form) just as the referendum demanded. Perversely, this would probably be seen by the majority of people as some kind of triumph -she had a damn hard job to do, she didn’t give up, and she managed to scrape over the line in the end. We can only presume that she views this outcome as worth holding out for, and better than turning to a referendum to break the deadlock in Parliament.
A referendum, in truth, isn’t a great option. The practicalities of organising it are immense (look what happened when we half-arsed the last one) and we would almost certainly have to ask the EU for an extension to the March 29th deadline which would generate yet another mini-crisis for everyone to get excited about. Even then, there is no guarantee that people would return a clear answer. Some polls now suggest that Remain would win, others that May’s deal would edge it. If you made it a three-way question (remain, deal, hard Brexit) it would be possible for Remain to win a plurality but for the majority to go to the combined Leave options. While that would actually make sense (the two leave options being very different) it would look awful and lead to a stab-in-the-back narrative.
But there is a personality aspect to this as well. May has, for better or worse, a very strong sense of public duty. She was a Remainer, after all, but she now sees it as her responsibility to deliver Brexit - a moral duty that she owes it to the people to fulfill. Compared to Cameron, who fucked off rather than deal with the shitheap he’d created, this is in some ways an admirable attitude. In other ways, it leads to a terrible inflexibility which, in a crisis like this, does not help.
The triumph of ideology over facts!
Just as democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others, so the EU is the worst system for Europe except for all the others. Certainly the EU needs some serious reforms and improvements, but on the whole it’s been beneficial.
In any system, ask who benefits most from it. In the USA presently, it’s the large corporations and the wealthy who benefit at the expense of everyone else. In Europe, it’s the ordinary people who have benefited most from the EU.
What do you think this will look like? Remember, that trade deal needs to be there fast to avoid drastic economic consequences for Britain. Do you think it will happen quickly somehow? As I pointed out previously to Novelty Bobble, this just ain’t the way things work. Even bilateral free trade agreements between partners with little bad blood and very similar interests are phenomenally time-consuming ordeals.
Why would the EU’s position “immediately shift” after a hard Brexit actually happens? The EU’s position is driven by the EU’s interests and the EU’s strategic position, and the actual occurrence of a hard Brexit doesn’t change either of these things. Immediately after a hard Brexit, the EU’s concerns will be what they are now - getting the UK to settle its financial obligations, getting the UK to enter into arrnagements which will keep the Irish border open, protecting the rights of EU citizens in the UK.
As the EU sees it, immediately after Brexit actually happens the UK will no longer be seeking a withdrawal agreement - it will be too late for that - but it will still be seeking an agreement. Not that much will have changed. In particular, the EU’s priorities and interests won’t have changed, and the strategic positions and relative barganing power of the EU and the UK won’t have changed (or, at any rate, not to the UK’s advantage).
To paraphrase that great European, Winston Churchilll, Brexit is not the end, not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. The only thing that will change after Brexit is that “Remain” will no longer be on the table, but the other aspects of the Tory party’s European problem will not be greatly affected.
There are finally enough Tory MPs seeking a vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s leadership of the party, which will occur this evening.
I assume she’ll win, if only because there’s no reason to think anyone else would do better, but it will be interesting to see how slim the margin is and what the ramifications are if her victory is narrow.
Apparently even many Remainer Tories are sick of her now. Who the fuck knows.
If more than one challenger appears, it goes to the wider party membership, right? If so, I expect an ERG-type to become leader. And then I expect the sane wing of the party to jump ship or at least back a confidence vote.
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I think we have some small evidence from last century that it is, in fact, the very opposite of the bad idea that was European DisUnion. Only 2 world wars and that spot of bother in Yugoslavia…
Query - did you travel or live in non-UK Europe before AND after the Schengen Agreement and the intro of the Euro?
Because IME, having the Euro and the Schengen Zone is vastly better than what existed before. There’s just no comparison.