I think a motion to submit May’s deal to a referendum could be held without an intervening prorogation. A motion calling for a referndum is substantially different from a motion to ratify the deal.
Depends. At the very least, a general election is highly likely to take the DUP out of the frame, which would simplify matters. And if May can impose a manifesto on the party which includes “Brexit on the terms of May’s deal”, and get a majority in the election, there’d be a fair following wind for the ratification of the deal by Parliament.
That’s the thing. So many MPs have put their colours to the mast and so firmly rubbished the deal for various reasons I don’t think she’ll be able to without mass resignations.
And if she were to resign as some way of resolving things, then whoever takes over would offend the other wing of the party so much.
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I wouldn’t bank on another general election producing any clearer an outcome, as between the two major parties, or as regards the possibility of a minority government deal with one of the minority parties. As for your second conditional, that would more likely split the Tories rather than give her or any new leader a stronger footing than the one she threw away last time.
It seems like May’s government is having a major meltdown.
There was a cabinet meeting this morning. Cabinet sources have leaked that May ‘read the riot act to to the cabinet about leaking’. However, the cabinet still continues to leak like a sieve. She has no authority, even among the people she personally appointed.
Leaked from various sources, posted on the Guardian:
Is this the most utterly useless government in UK history? How much longer can May hang on?
It seems likely the EU will grant an extension, and there will either be a referendum or a general election or both.
I’m surprised May is even bothering asking for a 30 day extension, if that bit is true. There are 10 days left before the scheduled deadline. Her latest strategy was to try and convince the hard-line Brexiters that her Withdrawal Act was the hardest Brexit they could get. And while that may have been starting to work for two or three dozen MP’s, it wasn’t going to get 75 no-voters to switch to yes. Now Bercow’s made it even harder to get a yes vote on the current Withdrawal Act. She might as well just cut her losses and just ask for a long-term extension. Then she can decide if she wants to lead a compromise effort, or if she’d rather just stand aside and let someone else have a go.
In case you were wondering what Jeremy Corbyn was doing last night, on one of the most dramatic days of the Brexit fiasco… he was giving a speech at the British Kebab Awards… even though he doesn’t eat kebabs, as he is a vegetarian.
Nothing like having a sense of urgency as the clock runs down.
As always, the main reason Theresa May remains in power is the lack of a remotely palatable alternative from any party. Corbyn is less “Leader of the Opposition” and more “object lesson on why you should never say ‘it can’t get any worse’”.
And, just so I am clear, the party leaders are elected by the MPs of that party, not by the voting public, correct? So, if you dislike a particular party leader, your only recourse is, if your own MP voted for them, voting out the MP?
and for those who think it couldn’t get any worse for the Tories, remember that it could have been Leadsom.
Someone put her name in the nomination box without her knowledge? She was wrong to run and the Tories were idiots for electing a Remainer to implement Leave. As someone said earlier, she took the job because it was her chance to be Prime Minister. She thought she could reach the pinnacle of self-aggrandizement in History but it was actually gonna go like this: https://youtu.be/A0TalLrtZ24?t=134
I’ve seen people try to come up with convoluted reasons for why the people involved act as they do. Sometimes, when we have difficulty figuring out why people act as they do, our first intuition can be to think they must be pulling some complicated 3D chess moves. More often then not, they’re playing checkers.
Why this constant refrain that May is a Remainer? Yes, yes, she proffered a (muted) effort on the Remain side in the referendum, and we are told she voted Remain; but everything she has done since the referendum has been the instincts of a Brexiter - the red lines, the citizens of nowhere speech, the attacking of Remainers as opponents of the people’s will, and the loyal support she had for two years by the pro-Brexit press calling on her to ‘crush the saboteurs’.
If we had a ‘true blue’ Brexiter like Leadsom in charge, I tell you now, we’d likely be in a very similar position. The failure of Brexit is nothing to do with Remainers sabotaging it. Brexiters have done plenty of work sabotaging it themselves.
I didn’t mean to imply the problems of Brexit were caused by Remainers. I’m sure that’s how Brexiters will spin it. You can expect plenty of “We were stabbed in the back”. I mean, what are they gonna do, engage in introspection, admit they made a mistake and make a deliberate effort to improve?
Each party has its own rules. In the Labour party, the leaders is elected by a vote of the party members. In the Tory party, the candidates for the leadership are whittled down to just two by a succession of votes by Tory MPs, after which the party membership gets to vote between the two remaning candidates.
In both cases the rules are relatively recent and they could be changed if the judgement is that they tend not to produce good outcomes. Just sayin’.
If you don’t like the leader of the X party, and this sentiment is what is going to determine your vote in the general election, then you don’t vote for the candidate from X party. Whether he or she likes the leader of the party, or voted for them, or supported them in their leadership campaign, or whatever, is completely irrelevant. A vote for the X party is a vote for the X party as currently led by its current leadership.
Current polls suggest that a general election would deliver a Tory majority. Of course, polls suggested that just before the last election, and look what happened, so nothing is certain. But the UK electoral system is pretty good at delivering a majority for some party, even when their vote share doesn’t justify it, so it would be extrordinary bad luck to find the DUP holidng the balance of power again.
You could of course find another party holding the balance of power - e.g. the SNP. But that would still be a much better outcome than the current situation.
The main thing that I want to come out of this is that in every GD thread, once a couple of people chime in on each side of the debate, a mod comes in and shouts:
I’m not being pedantic, I’m pointing out that the correct place to look for increases on “EU customs officials” is many places. If someone wanted to know how many ships does the US have guarding their borders, would the Navy be the correct place to look? In the case of Spain, you need to look at “reassignments within the Guardia Civil” first, but oh wait, those are currently in the “prepared, not executed” phase so civilians don’t have access: you can’t know what the plans are. You can know how many people is the Guardia Civil looking to recruit, but hey look, we already have some of the longest borders in the EU and no border land with the UK, so on one hand we already have a lot of Civiles at the border and on the other what needs to be reinforced is sea and air ports of entry (hopefully those Brits doing business legally won’t suddenly decide that it’s a good idea to smuggle oranges by sea from Costa da Morte). Other countries will have their own bodies, which may be civilian, police or military and may or may not be already partially or completely public. And unlike for trade costs, this isn’t something for which statistics are frequently collated: you need to look at each of them.
Comment of the day from France’s EU Minister Nathalie Loiseau:
“I call my cat Brexit. He wakes me up every day meowing like mad because he wants to be let out, then when I open the door he just stands there, indecisive, then gives me a dirty look when I put him outside.”