It is very strange to watch this process, it is like watching someone sawing through their own wrist, and at the same time they continue to be loudly declaring they refuse to stop unless they get a deal for having another hand…
And the strange comments that show some kind of the magical thinking like the ex minister for the Brexit ""hadn’t quite understood” the importance of cross-Channel trade to the UK economy (also the BBC for more of the context) is just strange. It all seems to be like the very comments by Quartz here in this thread and even over the years, going back to some vague resentments that are not very well supported by any analysis of the economic logic or the economic data and facts. Nostalgie for the Glorious years as imagined in memory?
Well, the first appointee to the role was David Davies - a leading Brexiteer. He didn’t exactly do a good job so the Cabinet Office took over in all but name.
He was the minister just said in the public only a few weeks ago that he was surprised to learn how important the channel transit and the frictionless trade is to the British economy, so it is maybe too much to expect the mastery of the boring details.
The Conservative Party has their own internal rules regarding the confidence votes in the Prime Minister.
That process has just been triggered by Rees-Mogg writing a letter to the Conservative Party 1922 Committee.
If enough Conservative MPs join him in asking for a no confidence motion in the leadership of the party, that could mark the end of Theresa May as a Conservative Prime Minister.
The party would remain in power and then to quickly elect a new leader to take the poisoned chalice that is Brexit. Whether they would want a General Election, they would have to agree that with Labour, I guess.
Apparently 48 Conservative MPs are required to trigger a Conservative Party no confidence motion in Theresa May as leader.
Will she be able to muster enough support to see off this challenge?
If May goes, so does the Withdrawal Agreement. A new incumbent would have to come up with something pretty darned quick that could be sold to the party and was acceptable to the EU.
That’s the thing; is there any other MP who thinks they can do a better job of negotiating this? Does this Rees-Mogg guy have any better idea how it should go down?
Purely as a hypothetical: IF the House of Commons were allowed to vote by secret ballot, how would they split today on the Remain-Leave question? (For the purpose of this hypothetical, let’s assume that Merkel et al have agreed to “go easy” and forget about Article 50 if “Remain” wins.)
There’s a majority of Remain MPs in the Commons, many represent what were Leave-majority constituencies in the referendum. Many have changed since then, I’d wager.
I would suggest that it would be an overwhelming vote to Remain. Brexit was never a popular issue with MPs except for those on the Atlanticist fringe of the Conservative Party. It was never really an issue that Labour was bothered about.
No politician in their right mind wants to spend the next years dealing with this problem and disruption that Brexit will cause. Tearing up agreements is easy. Building them takes a long time. They know that the public are mainly interested in their politicians dealing with ‘home and hearth’ issues - Health, Education, Jobs, etc. Not complicated international trade negotiations that they do not understand. There are no votes in this.
I am sure most MPs wish the whole issue would just go away so they can get back to normal politics.
So the people elected to represent the People want to Remain, but are afraid of the foolish People that elected them. Perhaps Churchill was right after all when he called “democracy the worst form of government.”
How about that woman whose face appears on all your money? I assume she wants to Remain also. I’ll repeat the same suggestion that has been made before in SDMB threads on this topic, but is always booed down. But remember: Difficult times may require extreme measures.
Elizabeth Dei Gratia performs a once-in-a-lifetime duty, demonstrating why Britain has retained its “obsolete” Monarchy. She dissolves Parliament, takes charge personally, and announces that the U.K. will Remain in the European Community. Members of Parliament pretend to be outraged, but smile inside, shrug their shoulders, and say “What can we do? The Constitutional Authority has ruled.”
In the aftermath of this, Britain might throw off the royal yoke and become a Republic … but nevertheless obey the pre-Revolution Command and Remain.
Far-fetched? Probably. But an “insoluble” crisis of such extreme peril may require an extreme solution.
An interesting point to bear in mind throughout all of this:
The Withdrawal Agreement is 585 pages of dense legal text. It’s been available for less than 24 hours. Pretty much anyone who has a strong opinion about it can safely be said not to have read it in full, still less to have thoroughly digested it. It’s just not possible in the time.
You can give May and her Cabinet Ministers a bit of a pass - they’ve had it explained to them at some sort of length by people who do understand it (one hopes). But the ERG lot, Corbyn and his six tests, “commentators” and anyone else who’s telling you exactly what the deal means are working off summaries and skim-reading at best.
The territorial waters of the UK are well-defined and we have the fisheries protection vessels and the navy to protect and enforce them. It’s not a difficult problem or one that requires a lot of detail.
Did she (May) seriously name drop Geoff Boycott? AKA the most selfish batsman to every play the game. Guy who once helped lose a World Cup final by being so ridiculously slow?
Who was once dropped for being too slow while batting? Who was sacked as captain after a revolt?
Now if she had said Peter May, she would have had a point.
So it’s by no means certain that the EU will accept this deal without modifications. Those modifications will make it even less acceptable to the UK Parliament than it already is.
