Oh, and just to add- the party currently in power, the Conservatives, don’t actually have a majority of seats. They’re come to an agreement with one of the little parties to get supply votes to get them over the 50% mark, that party being the Democratic Unionist Party- the largest NI unionist party, basically the least likely group imaginable to vote for any border between NI and the rest of the UK.
The difficulty of the backstop situation is over the domestic UK politics and the Irish politics, and the risk of the reopening of the civil war.
The greater difficulty is about the political incoherences in the british islands, it is not a technical matter of the EU treaties itself.
The hard brexiters fear that no coherent resolution can ever be achieved (and this is probably true) and so they are trapped- by their own magical thinking.
Or there is a result that creates the situation for reigniting violence in the northern Ireland and breaking up the United kingdom…
The agreement made in the 1950s for the UK and Ireland to form a common travel area has no such clause, and leaving the backstop would mean breaking that agreement, completely against the wishes of the Republic.
Because leaving the backstop without replacing it with some other agreed arrangement that will keep the border open results in a hard border, which is something the British government has guaranteed not to do. And because keeping the border open is border is an existential issue for Ireland, so they’re no about to let the UK off the hook for the guarantee it has given. And Ireland is a member state of the EU, so the EU has its back here.
Another perspective to add to the previous explanations. The UK could walk away from any backstop commitments if it really wanted to. However, reneging on a formal permanent black stop could not be hand waved away with Trumpian rhetoric. Any other agreements with the EU would also obviously be void.
The point is, you can’t have all four of an open border in Ireland, an open border between Ireland and Great Britain, the integrity of the EU single market and an independent British trade policy. The backstop therefore prevents the UK’s preferred outcome: the UK makes fine promises about policy in Ireland, a comprehensive free trade agreement is made between the EU and UK, the practicalities prevent the UK’s commitments in Ireland being fulfilled (so sorry) but the UK keeping its trade deal with the EU.
Every time Brexiters moan about the backstop not being temporary, they basically admit their feckless insistence that technology can fix the border issue is hollow nonsense, and they know it.
Basically, if they think there’s a solution, why are they scared of the backstop?
Their solution is to declare the problem doesn’t exist. Ostriches.
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And the EU applies a principle which doesn’t exist in the US:
while there can be regulations affecting the same concept at different levels of government (and in fact, generally must), the lower one must always include the higher one. In general, EU regulations become country-level laws; depending on the structure of each country, there may also be state/regional level laws. But you always know that, if you are in compliance with the law which covers your location at the smallest size, you’re also in compliance at higher levels: there can be no such thing as “marihuana is legal in two neighboring states, but moving a bag of maria from one to the other is illegal at the federal level”.
They want to be able to vacation in Tenerife or crack their heads open in Dubrovnik as easily as today, but don’t want to have any Spanish-speaking dishwashers in their chippie nor hear the plumber cursing in Croathian.
What exactly did the Speaker of the House of Commons do yesterday that has some MPs up in arms. From the best I can tell, he allowed a motion to be voted upon that the government did not agree should be voted upon? Does the Speaker have such a power? Who was in the right on this?
I watched the parliamentary procedure online and got a rather rudimentary understanding of it.
BTW, I love the British politeness. You see the same thing, but in a different way in the American South. Politeness is very disarming to one’s enemies.
Bear with me. I think it’s like this:
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A considerable while ago, the government committed to allowing Parliament a “meaningful vote” on the Withdrawal Agreement they were to negotiate with the EU.
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The negotiations concluded in November, so it became appropriate to allow Parliament to debate, and then vote on, the Agreement resulting from them.
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That debate and vote was to be held in early December. Parliament passed a procedural motion, providing for the debate to carry on for five days, and conclude with a vote. If the vote did not approve the agreement, the government was then to have 21 days to bring its alternative proposals before Parliament.
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On Day 4 (I think - or it might even have been Day 5) of the debate, the government used a procedural device to defer the debate, and the vote, for a month (until this week, in fact). There was general outrage at this, the point being that to defer Parliament’s vote for as much as a month, so close to Brexit, necessarily limited the options realistically available, should the agreement be rejected, and so made Parliament’s vote less “meaningful” than it would otherwise have been. There was also a strong view (articulated, signficantly, by the Speaker) that for the government to do this by a procedural device, rather than to allow Parliament to vote on whether the debate and the vote should be deferred) was improper and offensive.
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Right. When the debate was resumed, this week, a cross-party group of MPs put down a motion to amend the procedural motion mentioned in para 2 above, to provide that if the Agreement was not approved the government had three days, not 21 days, to come back to Parliament with its Plan B. The rationale for this, obviously, was that since a month had been lost by the government delaying the vote, it was no longer desirable to wait as long as 21 days for Plan B.
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The government objected, citing precedent to the effect (I think) that procedural motions about the handling of government business, once passed by the House, should not be revisited, unless the government proposed it. But the speaker ruled that, in the circumstances, he would allow the motion to amend, and it was voted on, and it was carried (against the government).
Ostensibly the outrage relates to the fact that the Speaker departed from precedent to allow this, that it sets a bad precedent for the future, that it betrays bias, yadda, yadda, yadda. In fact there have been many and varied departures from precedent in the handling of Brexit, and those who are outraged at this one seem to have accepted others with equanimity The real fault line is not between the upholders of precedent and tradition, on the one hand, and the dangerous radical innovators on the other. It’s between those who, tactically, feel that bringing forward the government’s obligation to announce their Plan B reduces the likelihood that the Brexit process will end up where they would like, and those who feel that it increases the likelihood that it will end up where they would like.
The short version of this is that there’s a power struggle over who controls the conduct of the Brexit process - the executive or the legislature? Back in 2017 the executive went to the Supreme Court to resist having to seek parliamentary approval for what they were doing (and lost) but since then Parliament has been very slow to exercise the degree of control that, constitutionally, it could exercise. Episodes like this suggest that the dragon is finally waking, and scare the living sh1t out of the government.
Because walking away from the backstop without an agreement, like walking out of the EU without an agreement, directly breaches a legally binding international treaty with an EU member state (i.e., the Good Friday Agreement) and even if there were no long-term risk of a revival of the more extreme and violent politics of the border issue, it would damage the economic interests of an EU member state (the Irish Republic) by necessarily creating an economic hard border around them.
Thank you for the helpful reply. I quoted this part because I was unaware that the Speaker of the Commons had this much power. I thought his only function was to yell out “The Prime Minister!” and “Order! Order!”
I didn’t think he controlled the calendar of the House or that his opinion on public policy mattered at all. In fact, I thought he was not to have (or pronounce) an opinion on anything.
It might have seemed polite to an untrained eye, but that was the parliamentary equivalent of a hair-pulling, eye-gouging mass brawl. Very little actual politeness going on.
It’s fair to say that Brexit is testing a few boundaries. Bercow has a bit of a thing about ensuring that the sovereignty of Parliament isn’t restricted too much by the Executive, and yesterday was the most stark expression of that yet. Effectively, by selecting the Grieve amendment, he was telling the Government to stop taking the piss, and it was a bit of a kick up the arse to Parliament too. The Commons has power, and with the clock ticking, maybe use it, eh?
Anyway, the Grieve amendment passed, so a majority of MPs agree. The longer term implications of the Speakers actions can probably wait until after this mess is sorted out.
Eh, a little Trouble never hurt nobody.
Well, as an American I could see the seething anger beneath the surface of all of it, but everyone addressed each other with respect and courtesy
But, see, I thought that one of the main benefits and features of your system was that when a government failed in its basic duty, that the no confidence motion could be invoked to get a good government in there that would do it properly, “properly” meaning how the voters wanted it done, whether that is an increased Conservative majority or a new Labour government.
The Speaker’s (unspoken) contention and some of the backbenchers seem to believe that not only has May and her government have made an absolute disaster of the Brexit process, negotiating an exit agreement that does not have the support of the Commons and will lead to a no-deal Brexit, but that she and her government have effectively denied the Commons any chance to avert this trainwreck.
Again, as an American, I do not know enough to have a solid opinion on whether the above is true or not, but I was under the impression that in a scenario like that, it was time for new elections, not to have the Speaker simply start changing rules so that the present government does what he, in his own non-reviewable opinion, thinks is right. If the government is incapable of enacting a Brexit deal that can get a majority, it seems like a band aid solution, even if the Speaker is within his power.
ETA: My wife has barred me from watching Commons proceedings until I agree to stop barking “Order! Order!” in my best John Bercow impression at every interruption. So I will count on your for updates. 
“No confidence” is a pretty drastic measure, only to be resorted to when the political parties in opposition think they have a chance to bring down the government.
It’s not the function of the Speaker to try to trigger a non-confidence motion; that’s the exact opposite of the Speaker’s role.
The Speaker’s role is to ensure that the House can debate an issue within fair procedural rules. The job is to keep the debate going, not to hinder it. Just like in my first day in CivPro, our prof said, “Procedure is the handmaiden of justice.”
In Parliament, the equivalent is that procedure is the handmaiden of debate: ultimately, the purpose of procedure is to allow the Members to debate an issue within fair rules, and with the fundamental constitutional principle that the executive branch is accountable to the House.
In this case, the situation is one where there are very tight timelines, beyond the control of the Government or the House. March 29 is inexorably moving towards us.
Back in December, the House agreed to the Government motion that if the vote on the Withdrawal Agreement was lost, the Government could have 21 days to bring in Plan B for the House to consider.
The PM delayed that vote for a month, because it looked certain she would lose. Having changed the schedule of the vote, the Government wanted to keep to the 21 day timetable.
But the circumstances have changed. The Commons agreed to the Government’s motion for 21 days, on the assumption that the vote would be in early December. Given that the Government unilaterally changed the timing of the vote, it seems reasonable to me, as an outsider, that it’s only fair that the House be given the opportunity to consider whether it still agreed to the 21 day timetable for Plan B.
The Speaker didn’t overrule the Government on this issue. The Speaker agreed to allow an amendment to allow the House to express its views on whether it still agreed with the 21 day delay, or wanted it shortened, since an entire month has gone by.
The House then voted to change the timetable, not the Speaker. That likely causes trouble for the Government, but it’s not the Speaker overruling the Government. It’s the House, to which the Government is accountable. In these unusual circumstances, with an inexorable deadline and a timeline changed unilaterally by the Government, it seems appropriate for the Speaker to ensure the House can express itself on the issue.
The Parliamentary arithmetic doesn’t work quite yet for a vote of no-confidence (VONC) to get anywhere. Basically the current government is a minority government - the Conservatives don’t have enough MPs to pass legislation on their own, but they have an agreement with the largest party in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), on matters of confidence and supply. So the government can just about function.
A successful VONC would need either some Conservative MPs to vote against their own party, and/or the DUP to break their confidence agreement.
So how does a VONC work? In theory one can be called for by any MP, but the only person in Parliament who can do so and have the vote happen straight away is the Leader of the Opposition, currently Jeremy Corbyn - the leader of the Labour Party.
Oh, Jeremy Corbyn. There’s no way on God’s green earth that the DUP would vote with him on a VONC, for many, many reasons, and things haven’t yet got so bad that any Tory would (maybe one or two, maybe).
If you want me to expand on any of this - it’s hard being so close to it the past few years to know what’s obvious and what isn’t - just ask.
Suffice to say this is a perfect storm for UK politics, almost everything is unusual right now.
Here’s a sneaky wee video you can watch whenever you are alone with your laptop 
Sidebar if I may: Speaker Barcow doesn’t wear the traditional full rig for a Speaker, similar to lawyer’s gown, waistcoat and bands; just a black robe over a business suit.
Is that his own innovation, or have the Speakers been moving away from the full rig except on formal occasions?