<requisite pedantic nitpick>No et. “The voice of the people [is] the voice of God”, not “The voice of the people and the voice of God”. As far as I’m aware God hasn’t voted in the referendum - nor could he have, being a foreign national - and so far couldn’t be reached for comments.</rpn>
So, “yea” and “nay” cannot be substituted for “Option A” and “Option B”?
The only possible way I can see out of this is to get new cards with a general election; It might not solve the problem but you can’t solve it with the current set of circumstances. The DUP and the ERG can effectively veto any proposal that has a chance with both the EU and the rest of Parliament. The problem can only be solved if the lose that veto. It might also make it worse although I’m not imaginative enough to see how the Brexit trainwreck could get worse.
Now you’ve gone and confused me!
There are only two main parties in Parliament. One of them has to win, right?
Even if they both are “shattered”, one of them will have more seats than the other…
(yes,I’m just an ignorant American who doesn’t follow British politics.)
When brexit fails and leaves a terrible mess, the public will probably vote out the the party who caused all the problems, hoping that a new leader will magically fix everything. And the only leader in Labour is Corbyn, right? Surely Corbyn wants a new general election. It seems to me that it’s in his benefit to let May ruin the economy, and then Labour should have no difficulty winning a solid victory. What does Corbyn have to be afraid of? Once he’s elected, he may not be able to live up to the public’s hope of a saviour from chaos. But at least he’ll have several years in power.
What am I not understanding?
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Square One
Corbyn is pretty toxic to the wider electorate. It’s not entirely clear Labour would gain a majority, even after all this.
Not the only one, but a minority nonetheless.
I wouldn’t count on that. People wrote him off before in 2017, but if it wasn’t for him, we’d be leaving the EU tonight in a few hours.
There isn’t currently a single party with a majority, just as there wasn’t between 2010 and 2015, so it’s not guaranteed that one of them will win. Also, Corbyn is pretty deeply unpopular among some people (such as myself) who would vote for anyone else if it’s an option. Really, the only way I’d vote for a party with someone like him in charge is if it were the only way to stop Brexit, and under normal circumstances I never would.
The largest party apart from the Conservatives and Labour at the moment is the Scottish National Party. Had the Conservatives won slightly fewer seats last time they would probably have been the kingmakers rather than the Democratic Unionist Party, a Northern Irish party that have traditionally been allied with the Tories.
There are also two vaguely centrist parties, the Liberal Democrats and the Independent Group, I’ve no idea how they will do at a potential election in the near future. The Lib Dems were the ones who supported the Conservatives from 2010-2015, but lost a lot of support afterwards for doing so. The Independent Group are MPs who have quit the larger parties in protest at their handling of Brexit.
There’s also Plaid Cymru, the Welsh national party, and the Green party, as well as a handful of other independents, and although they have no MPs at the moment the UK Independence Party might make a comeback if enough people see them as the only way to achieve Brexit.
So, it’s a shambles at the moment, and it’s entirely possible that a general election would make it more shambolic. Plus, both main leaders are unpopular with some parts of their parties, so might not get as much support as you might think. It’s a mess.
I’ve no idea if this actually answers your questions, or just makes things worse…
Unlikely, if Labour had had a leader that actually campaigned for Remain instead of the 70s throwback they have now we wouldn’t have voted to leave. Corbyn is a Leaver, don’t forget.
And I’m going to share this page I looked at, just because thinking about what the correct reply to “Current State of the Parties” should be gave me a slight chuckle.
Nigel Dodds has been ruminating in the past hour or so that maybe the best hope of preserving the Union - by miles his party’s most pressing concern - is to actually remain in the EU. It would truly be peak Brexit banter if it was the DUP that kept the UK in…
Apparently, they want to be called Change UK.
Yep, they’ve started the process of registering as an actual political party. I think that was always the intention anyway, but they’ve hurried the process up in anticipation of EU Parliament elections. Heidi Allen has been appointed interim leader.
It’s proving a little controversial, not least because my own dear leader Ms Soubry can’t actually remember the name…
ETA that website has nothing to do with The Independent Change UK.org Group, just to avoid any further confusion
It took him until now to realize this? :smack:
Corbyn has to balance his constituencies who have heavily voted leave (Which I personally believe have swtiched alot) with the ones which have voted remain, so is forced into a politically ambigious position regarding Brexit.
Perhaps if he’d campaigned for Remain, and countered some of the lies that were being told, they wouldn’t have voted so heavily for leave in the first place.
From last August:
More than 100 Westminster constituencies switch Brexit allegiance from Leave to Remain - study
It must be far more by now.
Yes I agree, but alot of leave voters are in Labour heartlands, especially mine.
Thanks for the answers guys and gals - as an American plenty of this is stupifying (perhaps it is to you as well).
From what I heard all of the main opposition party leaders are calling for a general election, but is there any chance that the EU would use an election as a reason to extend the Art 50 deadline? Wouldn’t UK have to hold EU elections as well?
It just seems to obvious to me that the situation is: two groups of people who want largely/entirely incompatible things (hard v. soft Brexit, NI union vs hard border with RoI, customs union v. no customs union) have voted to head down a path, and since they hold nearly all of the levers of power and don’t want to give up said levers they are both going to get something that none of them want (crash-out Brexit).
One quick follow-up to a note above - if the Labour and Conservative parties were to agree to a framework they could both support (some softer Brexit than what is in May’s deal) does that mean it would pass with the Irish backstop still in place? Who exactly is hung up on the backstop - DUP or hard-Brexit Tories?
Wrong. You seriously misplace the situation in 2016, alot of the places where he could of campaigned would of just ignored him anyway, it has taken a situation like where we are now for people to see what Brexit really is, hell, even Nigel Dodds has allegedly said he would rather remain in the EU, and he’s a DUP politician.