What’s important here is that we blame everyone else for what Johnson’s doing.
No, I’m blaming Johnson for what he’s doing. I’m blaming everyone else for they’re doing, or more importantly not doing, which allows Johnson to get away with doing what he’s doing.
My suggestion is the Queen fire UKTrump and appoint someone that can bring an end to the Brexit debacle - even if that means appointing a PM willing to have anothr referandum.
So, you are suggesting that she ignore Parliament. That couldn’t possibly backfire…
What exactly is Johnson ‘doing’?
So far he’s lost his majority in Parliament (by sacking his own MPs and having members of his own party walk out), lost a string of votes in Parliament and had his only actual ‘action’ stated as illegal and reversed by the courts.
He has made no progress in negotiations with the EU and been exposed yet again as a liar.
This is not an action that the Queen would ever consider, let alone actually do.
The debacle will eventually be resolved by one or more of these:
- an EU deal being passed by Parliament
- a general election
- a second referendum (with better options :smack:)
- a vote to rescind Article 50
The latest speculation is that Boris will try to suspend the Act that was recently passed that would prevent a No-Deal Brexit, and therefore the UK would exit the EU in October without a deal.
The opposition may therefore try to topple Boris before the 31 October date to prevent this from happening, but they can’t agree on who should be the interim Prime Minister before a new general election is held.
A general election is not a resolution to the debacle.
At most, it might open the way to the UK making a clear choice for one of the options which are resolutions. But there’s a sporting chance that it might not even do that.
Similarly, a second referendum isn’t a resolution. It’s just a mechanism for choosing a resolution.
There are only three possible resolutions:
- Revoke the UK’s notice to leave the EU, and remain a member.
- Leave the EU on the terms of a withdrawal agreement (which, realistically, is going to be the withdrawal agreement the UK has already negotiated, or something very, very similar to it).
- Leave the EU without a withdrawal agreement.
A general election or a second referendum represents progress only if it’s a mechanism by which the UK chooses one of these three options.
Actually there are two fundamental alternatives regarding the withdrawal agreement–backstop covering the whole UK or backstop limited to Northern Ireland.
Yeah. Both of those have been negotiated with the EU - first the NI-only backstop and then, at the UK’s request, the UK-wide one, which is the version the UK government signed off on. Either version would probably still be available. I consider both of them to be embraced in the concept of “the withdrawal agreement the UK has already negotiated, or something very, very similar to it”.
I’m not sure that I’d regard the differnce between them as representing “two fundamental alternatives”. The backstop is, after all, just one aspect of the agreement, and it’s a transitional aspect; whichever version of the backstop is included will operate only until a long-term treaty is put in place, governing the relationship between the UK and the EU, whose terms are effecive to avoid a hard border.
Fair point.
I should have said that the options I gave were to make progress towards a resolution.
Or in other words, the issues will be fundamentally the same then: even if a transitional withdrawal deal gets through parliament, we shall still have to face the border problem, the standards/checks problem and the legal venue problem.
The public had a chance to vote for a remain party in 2017 if that was what they wanted, and parliament themselves have had numerous chances and two years since then to either agree to a deal or to say exactly what they do want. All that has come to light in that time is what they *don’t *want, not a single coherent idea that the whole of parliament can get behind. Seeing as what they don’t want is the default position and has been since the triggering of article 50, that is not in their hands to rule-out and I don’t agree that this is all Boris’s fault, we are certainly not in this position in the first place because of him. He is playing games amongst the confusion and trying to pull a fast one but the confusion is not of his creation.
The whole of parliament is responsible for the current situation and Corbyn only cares about getting his hands on power. If a no deal Brexit is the price for that he’ll be happy to pay it. Had he called for a NCV a few weeks ago a pledged to put a more neutral and less incompetent and more trusted figure into the temporary PM position then we would not be here. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He is weak and self-serving and it shows. Had he taken that course of action he’d have shot-up in the estimation of many people. What a grown-up and statesman-like thing to do, sacrificing ambition for the good of the country, imagine if he’d approached Ken Clarke? a Tory for crying out loud. But he did none of that and I think the only reason for doing so is that he did not want that to work. Draw your own conclusions why.
Personally I wouldn’t be surprised to see May’s deal, or a close version thereof, reintroduced at the 11th hour.
Incipient tyranny must be confronted and opposed whenever and wherever it arises.
The plan is to do nothing and leave without a deal. Anything else said is a lie.
Great article by Marina Hyde about
That’s one good example. London doesn’t need more bridges in that area, and a “garden bridge” is impossible at that elevation over a river (they kept comparing it to the Highline in NYC, as if the local environment is irrelevant), and it was intended to be closed to the public and chargeable for large periods of time, hired out to private companies. It was a terrible idea.
And that was just one terrible idea. His main successes were the Barclays Bikes, started by his predecessor, and the Olympics, started by his predecessor. I do give him credit for expanding cycle lane provision. I’d ask Steophan (who does n’t live in London) what he thinks Boris actually did well, but going on his responses to how well Boris is doing right now he’s probably claim even the garden bridge as a success.
The public were told by Boris Johnson that unless we voted Leave 70 million Turks would be able to come over here (swamping a country of 60 million) and that the Leave campaign would put £350,000,000 per week into the (massively popular) National Health Service.
Despite these incredible lies, 48% voted to Remain.
It was down to the Leave campaign to explain what was on offer, not for Remain to work out what the Leavers intended. (Of course the only thing the Leavers wanted was a no-deal Brexit.)
It certainly is Boris’ fault (you could argue that Dominic Cummings shares the blame.)
Boris has no clue what to do about the Irish backstop - even after 3 years.
Of course you mean Boris, not Corbyn!
Boris wanted power at any cost. He’s prepared to have a ruinous ‘no deal’ Brexit, sack over 20 members of his own party, break the law and lie - just to become Prime Minister.
He has no idea how to negotiate, how to organise, how to delegate and how to be truthful.
I wonder what he really means?
A pretty good trick considering the entire population of Turkey in 2017 was less than 80 million. Hell, even Iraq has lost less than one-sixth of its population to refugee and diaspora status due to catastrophic invasion and civil war, nowhere near seven-eighths.