The bankers are not welcome in Dublin. Rents now are already comparable to London or NYC. Homelessness is sky high. I don’t think this city can absorb 1,000s or 10,000s additional well paid workers in the short to medium term without there being serious ructions.
Maybe. The other possibility is that some Cabinet members will resign and several more Tory MPs will send letters to the 1922 committee so May will be subject to a confidence vote. There is a growing feeling that May has totally mishandled the Brexit process. On the other hand there is no obvious alternative Tory MP to become Prime Minister.
Just speaking as an American but…
How many PMs is this thing going to claim, anyway? It appears, from here, to be a truly insoluble problem.
Oh, sure. But it all comes to the same in the end. If the draft Withdrawal Agreement is rejected by the Westminster Parliament before the EP considers it, the EP will never consider it. If the May govt. falls apart rather than accept the draft Withdrawal Agreement so that it never even gets to the Westminster Parliament, same outcome; the EP will never consider it.
The Conservatives have painted themselves into a corner from which escape is impossible. The only way forward for the Conservatives is to lose office, spend a period in opposition, purge themselves, try to reinvent themselves as a movement at least arguably sane and potentially competent, and hope to God the electorate will buy this in a few years time.
Of course, in the meantime enormous damage is done to the country; it faces a choice between Brexiting on awful terms, or Brexitting on terms that are much, much worse that that. No good Brexit is possible. There’s a slim chance that the country might still avoid Brexitting at all, but (a) this seems very difficult to pull off, starting from where things are now, and (b) even this would leave a lasting legacy of bitterness, anger, sense of betrayal, waste, humiliation.
But the country is basically just collateral damage in the Conservatives’ civil war.
So…is this kind of like the Abilene Paradox by now? The main majority of Brits don’t want Brexit any longer, would heave a big sigh of relief if it were not to happen after all, and the PMs don’t want to leave, and there isn’t any legal reason it HAS to leave, but…it must make itself do something it doesn’t want to do?
Velocity, the majority of electoral-college voters voted for Trump in 2016: would he stop being president if a poll taken of those same people now said a chunk of them have changed their mind? In the UK, the majority of people who voted did vote for Brexit. “I changed my mind” doesn’t work for this kind of situation.
Never heard of that before: Abilene paradox - Wikipedia
Well, it can. The referendum of 2016 was, formally speaking, consultative. Legally, Parliament doesn’t have to give effect to it. Politically, though, both the major parties committed themselves to give effect to the outcome of the referendum, so it’s very difficult not to.
But not impossible. You could take the view that circumstances have changes so much since 2016 that the political mandate conferred by the referendum is no longer adequate. Or that Brexit, as she is shaping up, is so very different from the Brexit offered in the referendum campaign, that the mandate is no longer adequate. And, if you take that view, then you can argue either that Parliament as the sovereign power can now decide not to implement the referendum (which, legally, is undeniable but, politically, would be highly controversial) or that Parliement can, and perhaps should, seek a fresh mandate in a second referendum for Brexit on the terms that are available. Now that they know more about what Brexit actually looks like and what it actually entails, people may change their mind about whether they want it, and if there’s reason to think that that is so that’s a perfectly good reason for another referendum.
(Which is not to say that a decision to hold a further referendum wouldn’t be hugely controversial and divisive.)
Not to mention defining the question, and how the answers would be interpreted. This deal or no deal? This deal, or no deal, or call the whole thing off and hope everyone forgets it ever happened?
Yes, all this.
Plus also the question of timing. As of right now, the UK is on an inexorable course to quit the EU on 29 March 2019. That is almost certainly not enough time for the UK to take the legislative, administrative and practical steps and processes that a referendum would require, so they’d need to agree an extension of time with the EU, and this would require the unamimous consent of the 27 other member states of the EU. This consent is unlikely to be forthcoming unless allowing time for another referendum afforded a good prospect of a materially better outcome (from the EU’s point of view) than not allowing time would.
Tl;dr: At this point a second referendum is only feasible if the EU-27 all agree that it would be a good idea.
There is plenty of time to do a referendum. If there are particular time constraints in existing legislation they can be changed. Remember:
If you can do a general election in two months, you can do a referendum in two months.
I just wish I’d bookmarked all the times the Leavers and Remainers-turned-Leavers on this board had said everything would turn out fine…
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I agree. Dust off the 2016 referendum legislation, changes the dates and the questions. Perhaps make it two-stage, the second stage coming two weeks later.
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Only with signficant legal changes. UK legislation on referendums, for instance, prescribes a process for settling the question to be put, including fixed periods for public consultation. There’s also a process to identify and designate official campaigns for each side of the question; that takes time. None of that arises in relation to a general election.
Of course, parliament can do anything, so parliament can sweep aside all these tiresome processes and just cut to the chase, if so minded. But the processes are there for a reason. And, since one of the major concerns about the 2016 referendum is the extent to which the process was corrupted or abused through illegal foreign donations, illegal concerted practices, abuse of data, etc, etc, the notion that a second referendum would be more satisfactory with processes intended to protect the integrity of the system being weakened or removed altogether is not an appealing one.
It’s very hard to say what the results would actually be like for another referendum; I’ve met a lot of people who initially weren’t bothered either way who now think Brexit is heading for disaster, but there also seem to be a lot of people who are swallowing the concept that the failure to get an amazing deal is due wholly to ‘bullying by Brussels’ rather than unrealistic claims by Leave.
People buying that Brussels are somehow bullies for refusing allow the UK access to everything they want without paying (plus a pony that craps glitter) are loudly claiming that a no-deal Brexit would be ‘telling Brussels where to go’, and is therefore the preferred plan of action. I suspect some people with this attitude are just the same people who phone their utilities companies and threaten to get them arrested if their services are cut off for non-payment, but those campaigning are saying they’re meeting a lot of them, and they’d be furious and out in force if another referendum was called; which way it would go, I don’t know.
I suspect a 3-option referendum of ‘This deal (whatever that is), no deal, or try and cancel the whole thing’ would maybe produce a cancel result, but there’s a genuine risk that ‘No deal’ would beat it out, because a lot of people aren’t thinking further than ‘Well, that’d show them that they can’t boss us around!’
Maybe we should try the Marshmallow test before allowing someone to vote?
Just read someone on Twitter describe the whole Brexit deal as divorcing your husband to become his concubine.
Very crude (and sexist), but somehow, apt.
The mega document produced by May and all those hard working civil servants cover the terms of the Withdrawal from the EU which will involve a transition period during which the UK will be neither in nor out.
What it does not cover is a trade deal to replace EU membershiip. Trade deals are long drawn out negotiations that take a few years to agree and every one of those 27 countries in the EU could raise issues that slow down and process. This happened with the EU-Canada deal which took 7 years. An EU-UK deal will be a lot bigger and more complicated.
We haven’t really heard much from the EU about this, but their deliberations could prove very drawn out and there very little any UK politician could do about it. I am sure they remember Farage and his triumphant Brexit speech to the EU. The EU does not owe the UK any favours.
It makes me wonder how long this transition process is going to take and when the UK will be free to negotiate deals outside of the EU. How long in Limbo?
I think Brexit will be a 10 year project that will keep the next few UK governments very busy indeed. If the UK crashes out, the problems of building an new agreement afterwards are still there.
The British public still have no idea what the problem is. They do not see any crisis ahead, just a lot of politicians squabbling about obscure issues to do with trade. It is a ‘phoney war’ and they should just ‘get on with it’.
That has to change.
I’m trying to work out the path and potential sticking points for the WA:
- Cabinet today. Plan is for cabinet to approve; potential for resignations which could trigger leadership challenge.
- Tory MPs read it tomorrow. They should wait for the vote; potentially could trigger leadership challenge.
- “Meaningful” vote in Parliament. Lots of things could happen here which boil down to: WA passes as is, WA passes amended by Parliament, WA voted down. The vote will be mildly chaotic as MPs from both the Remain/Soft Brexit and Hard Brexit divides (none of whom will be any too happy with the agreement) try to decide what will happen to a) Brexit, b) their party and c) them personally if the WA is voted down. Would it mean a general election? Renegotiation with Brussells? No Deal? A second referendum? All of the above? People with very different attitudes to Brexit could plausibly end up voting against the WA motion because they also have very different expectations of what that No vote would lead to.*
- Approval by the EU. Should be straightforward if Parliament hasn’t thrown in any significant and/or wrecking amendments, but we’ll cross that bridge when we’ve negotiated the preceding tightrope.
*It’s pretty clear that the Labour leadership hope and expect a No vote to lead to a general election, which they’d likely win. So any Labour MPs who vote for the WA because they think that’s best for the country are going to be mighty unpopular with the leadership, colleagues and some proportion of grassroots members. “You voted to keep the Tories in power, you centrist melt” isn’t an accusation many will want to face.
Bolding mine. Not sure I’d agree with this at all. As disastrous as the Tories have been, Labour have done nothing to capitalise on it. And I speak as a Labour voter.