I read your post and I’m unable to find the part where Boris Johnson would be physically prevented from doing as I outlined. Perhaps you think that laws prevent things from happening? They don’t.
He doesn’t say that Johnson can’t do it (though, in fact, if given advance notice of Johnson’s intention, a court might restrain him from doing it, or invalidate it, if done). What he says is that, if done, it won’t work.
If, as the law requires, Johnson sends the first letter, seeking an extension to 31 January, the EU can offer the extension sought and, if it does, the law requires Johnson to accept it. Bang, done, dusted. If the EU offers an extension of a different length to that sought, the law requires Johnson to accept that too, unless he can get parliament to vote to reject it. Sending the second letter will do precisely zero to change Johnson’s legal obligations in either of these scenarios.
Johnson might hope that by sending the second letter he can dissuade the EU from offering any extension at all in response to the first letter, but it seems a fairly desperate hope.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s attempt to win over the voters continue to work their magic:
https://metro.co.uk/video/angry-voter-pms-constituency-calls-boris-johnson-filthy-toerag-2020638/
And as someone mentioned earlier,Parliament will be prorogued tomorrow.
That’s an awfully trusting judge.
It’s all grandstanding at this point. I don’t think Johnson really wants to leave without a deal, or at least without a deal and without an obvious mandate for leaving without a deal, because he would get the blame for the following shitstorm.
The Johnson plan now is to put up a good show of fighting an extension that is now almost inevitable so that he can go into an election as the champion of the ‘the people’ and win a majority, since what he mostly cares about is his own political fortunes. To this end I expect they will come up with some ruse that’s likely to fail, but makes him look like the champion of the Brexiteers because otherwise the Tories are going to be eaten alive by the Brexit party.
And I do think the EU will grant an extension. It’s one last roll of the dice for them and with the Tories imploding and the opposition now solidifying as remainers/very soft leavers its worth a punt.
The consensus from the guys in the pub is that they wish it would all just go away. They assume that the ‘deadline’ has finally forced “That Lot in Brussels” to finally realise that the UK is off, whether they like it or not and they are scrabbling around to find some compromise that will satisfy nobody, but save their collective a̶r̶s̶e̶s̶ faces.
The tragedy being that Brexit will never go away.
Even if we get a deal and exit in the next 30 days, we still be mired in Brexit for the foreseeable.
First, the actual real-world consequences will become clear. This will not be a Day One event. Various industries will, at various speeds, be affected one way or the other and this will shake out over time. Then industries will respond to these effects, and those responses will have their consequences. It will be a while before these ripple effects drop below background noise. Whatever euphoria is felt at a deal finally being reached will not last.
Secondly, this is only the Withdrawal Agreement. There remains a long period of negotiation to develop the agreement covering our future relationship. This may not go on forever, but it will take years and feel like longer. Every argument we’ve had over the WA will be repeated for each industry sector’s trade agreement. FTAs take up 100s even 1000s of pages, each of which is the product of tediously hammered out negotiations. And that doesn’t count non-trade agreements over minor things like migration, travel, EURATOM material, security, reciprocal agreements on e.g. healthcare, pensions… The guys in the pub will be chewing over the ramifications of each of these decisions for at least the next decade.
Brexit will never stop.
I understand that the Queen’s Speech didn’t have the full effect that was hoped for (and promised).
How was it ever going to? It’s farcical. The Queen’s speech is supposed to set out the goverment’s legislative agenda for the next session of parliament, expected to last a year or more. But this government is 43 votes shy of a majority. Since Johnson became PM they haven’t got a single thing through Parliament - not just no legislation, but no substantive votes on any matter at all; they have lost ever single vote. Even if they had a legislative agenda nobody would care about it, since it would be irrelevant; they can’t get their legislation enacted.
But they have no legislative agenda. Johnson doesn’t want a new session of Parliament lasting a year or more; he wants an immediate dissolution and an election, and is whingeing bitterly about the fact that Parliament won’t give him one. So he has organised a Queen’s speech to lay out a legislative agenda that he cannot get enacted in a session of Parliament that, given his druthers, he would not convene.
This is not a Queen’s speech that anybody was ever going to take seriously. In time Johnson will get his election, following which there will be another queen’s speech setting out the agenda of whatever government is in office after the election. That’s the only queen’s speech that anyone of any sense will pay any attention to.
How on earth does would they expect to get that through parliament? Most of the hard-brexiteers might go for it but any separation of NE from the UK is fundamentally opposed by the DUP. And while there are a number of opposition MPs who would consider voting for a reasonable deal I’m not sure this would qualify.
Cynical as I am I see this as Boris desperate to get any deal even if it gets voted down. It’ll be another plank of his ‘I did my best and was thwarted by remainers’ strategy.
Most of the elctorate won’t even know the details of the deal, let alone understand why it’s unacceptable to so many people.
Scottish Nationals say they’ll never accept Johnson’s (or anyone’s, maybe) Brexit plan:
How much does this matter? I don’t know how many MPs are from the SN party.
Remember this is just the withdrawal deal about the financial obligations, rights of citizens and Irish backstop. The future deal is going to be negotiated during the transition period. Anything the withdrawal deal says about the future relationship is purely advisory. So if Labour wins the election they could negotiate a quite different future relationship than the Conservatives would–and nothing in this withdrawal deal would prevent this from happening.
- They’re the third largest party in the Commons. They also control the devolved Scottish Parliament. They’re a left wing party that wants Scottish independence, so are entirely opposed to the Conservative And Unionist party (to give it its full name).
They are also strongly in favour of remaining in the EU, more so than any other party apart from maybe the Lib Dems. As to how much this matters, this deal will likely be opposed by MPs from every side, they’re not going to hold the balance or be able to make a deal with the Government about this. But should Brexit actually happen, they will push very strongly for another Scottish independence referendum, and likely win it.
I doubt he does, this - like the Queens Speech - is election campaigning not governance. It’s becoming very clear that there is no possible deal acceptable to the EU, the UK Government, and Parliament.
If/when there’s a general election in the next few months they’ll be back around 50 seats, I expect. With Ruth Davidson gone from the Scottish Tories, and yer actual Boris Johnson as PM the soft Tory vote in Scotland is gone. Johnson is loathed up here, even by the kinda-sorta probably-a-bit-Conservative folk I know. And that vote will largely go to the SNP, who aren’t really all that much of a left-wing party as such.
There is the question of lesser evils. To lots of MPs this is a lesser evil that No Deal. To lots of MPs it is a lesser evil than Soft Brexit. To lots of MPs it is a lesser evil than Remain. The problem is that if this deal is rejected it could easily happen that a worse option will be the result.