But they used to under Theresa May, I know there was no formal coalition like 2010-2015 between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats
The point of the Letwin amendment was to delay approving until the substantive legislation to implement the agreement has passed: what the government wanted was a simple declaratory vote in favour of the agreement in time for the European Council meeting next week. But with the amendment passed, they decided it would be pointless. Monday is the first day the government can actually start to put the legislation through parliament.
Whether Johnson thinks this is a way of getting everything done by 31 October, or whether he’s going to obey the law and ask for an extension, or whether he really is prepared to crash out without a deal, or whether he’s calculating that the prospect will bring enough MPs to heel, or whether the opposition parties will move to a vote of no confidence to get Johnson out to give someone else a chance, or even get a second referendum… Who knows?
Here’s a good summary from BBC News and shouldn’t be paywalled.
Brexit delay voted through by MPs: What just happened? Brexit delay voted through by MPs: What has just happened? - BBC News
And another good article in the NYT : may be paywalls, although I was able to read it.
I might be misunderstanding Letwin, but it basically says if there’s no deal in place, the govt. has to seek an extension. BoJo is trying to get a deal before the existing deadline, and if he gets the EU and UK parliament to pass a deal before then, the amendment won’t matter. This basically protects UK parliament from him just going “whoops I had a deal but it looks like I didn’t get it in before the deadline - guess we have to crash out”.
I think the other thing is that while BoJo was saying to most of parliament that his proposals ensured that a deal would be made, he told the ERG that they would allow the UK to crash out.
That was me I think, and I apologise. It’s been a long old slog, and some of us were just coming off the back of the Scottish indyref too. Sorry for not being helpful on that occasion. :o
This actually kinda reminds me of Boris Johnson’s strategy on Twitter and interviews. ‘Let’s just get Brexit done and move on’ I see this as his way of trying to take advantage of the average person who has Brexit fatigue and will agree to anything just to not hear the word again. Johnson may look like a buffoon, but he isn’t.
No indeed. BecauseI don’t think the point has entirely sunk in, among the people who might be responsive to that line, that this agreement isn’t “getting it done”, it’s “getting it started”, in terms of negotiating the future permanent relationship, which is so far covered only in outline in the “political declaration” accompanying the withdrawal agreement.
Though I see references to the idea that if those negotiations fail, then a no-deal exit could be entirely possible at the end of the transitional period. Because the Northern Ireland issue will still be there.
Not a problem. ‘Brexit’ is a terribly complex issue made that much more dizzying by its importance and by the pace of its (potential) implementation. So, it’s easy for people like me to have all sorts of ‘academic’ questions while sometimes forgetting that the crisis is real for those in the UK.
I’ve tried to answer questions in that thread, and will try to here as well. I’ve also tried to keep factual answers as politically neutral as possible, although that’s not easy.
The role of Northern Ireland, and of the DUP in particular, has been a major force in Brexit politics. Maybe the major force.
Why did the DUP support leaving the EU in the first place? What was its fundamental concern with the EU? I suspect immigration, religion and ‘colour’ may play a role but from the little I’ve read, support for Brexit and the DUP comes from large segments of both its major religions.
Thanks.
The DUPs main - overwhelming actually - focus is on maintaining the Union with the rest of the UK. I don’t think they are all that fussed about the EU as such, it’s just that if the rest of the UK goes they want to go to, so as to prevent any possibility of becoming closer to the Republic.
The DUP is extremely strongly Protestant in nature and support. Like, some of their representatives are actual, literal young-earth creationists.
So why are the DUP the dominant NI voice in Westminster? NI as a whole voted Remain, the Protestant population on the whole is much less militant than the DUP etc
Partly it’s that Sinn Fein MPs don’t take their seats, partly it’s because of the collapse of the Ulster Unionist party, but it would need an actual NI resident to explain all that in detail, I think.
The only reason the DUP has had such a big role to play is that the previous Government relied on them to have a majority, so they could make a lot of demands. As the current deal shows, that is no longer the case - it ignores the DUP’s demands that there be no different treatment of Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, and they are opposed to it.
Apart from that I’m not an expert on Northern Irish politics by any means, but as far as I’m aware support for the DUP is mostly Protestant, and are a strongly Unionist party (as the name implies), they are a right wing party that are natural allies of the Tories, and they presumably strongly prefer to keep ties with the UK rather than have even closer ties with the Republic Of Ireland.
If you’re not aware, politics in Northern Ireland is very distinct from the rest of the UK. None of the main parties are present there, either in Parliament or in the (currently suspended) Stormont Assembly. It’s also worth noting that the DUP also has a disproportionately large say in Parliament as the 7 MPs from Sinn Féin (the largest Republican party) do not take their seats in the commons.
I hope this answers your question a little bit, although I rather suspect it will just lead to many more. The whole issue of Northern Ireland, its politics, its relationships with the rest of the UK and with the Republic of Ireland, the legal complexities of the border and the Good Friday Agreement, and many other things would probably take a University course to fully grasp, and as I say I don’t know all of it by any means.
ETA Or what the Baron said, basically.
Extremely informative, both. Thank you.
So people in Northern Ireland who vote for Sinn Fein are really just casting protest votes? Sounds like a recipe for a perpetual sense of aggrievement. But that’s just another cog in all this, I suppose.
Trump et al have caused me for the first time in my life to reflect on societies, government, and international relations. As someone who values the inherently stabilizing effect of things continuous and predictable, but is aware of people’s folly, I see only instability on the horizon. There is a growing balkanization of the globe now in precarious balance with the EU and what it stands for. Brexit threatens everything.
That’s part of it, but MPs do a great deal of stuff outside of Parliament. I don’t know exactly how much Sinn Féin MPs actually do, but it would surprise me if they’re not representing their constituents in local issues.
They do everything other than swear the oath to the Queen which would allow them to sit in the Commons. They have offices in Westminster, constituency offices etc.
It’s also worth noting how we got here: parliament voted to hold a referendum offering a massive constitutional change it didn’t want and didn’t know how to implement.
This was an act of madness for which only the Scottish National Party can be absolved of blame.
The idea that a British government could take the country out of the EU in a fairly organised and relatively painless fashion is by no means a crazy one. But for that we would have needed a government with a clear notion of how it intended to do so, and a clear majority in parliament behind that notion. Absent that, no referendum on the matter should ever have been called.
For example, had our electoral system not made it impossible for anyone to break the Tory-Labour duopoly, we can imagine a situation in which pressure for the UK to leave caused coalitions to form between parties on either side of the Brexit-Remain divide. If the pro-Brexit coalition had gone on to acquire a parliamentary majority, the government thus formed could then have set about planning our departure strategy, calling a confirmatory referendum once the approach was agreed upon by coalition MPs. If the public chose not to veto, then the government would have been able to approach negotiations with the EU - and with non-EU trading partners - from a position of considerable strength, and easily move through whatever legislation was necessary to get the deal done.
What actually happened is that parliament called a referendum on a change it didn’t want or know how to make, and thus set popular sovereignty - as expressed in a single yes/no vote - over and above its own, undermining the very foundations of democracy in our country.
Had our government been able to negotiate with the EU from a position of solid parliamentary backing, the Irish border question could surely have been resolved long ago.
The biggest difference between the May and Johnson deals is that the former fucked off the Tory hard right to appease the Ulster Unionist hard right, while the latter did the opposite.
Both were shit and deserved to fail.
The future looks pretty bleak.
Our Prime Minister is trying to sell parliament a terrible brexit deal that nobody believes in. He backed himself into a corner to achieve leadership of the Tory party, denying himself the flex he’d need to square this circle.
Apparently, he has now sent the letter asking for an extension, as required by Parliament.
But he hasn’t signed it, instead he signed an accompanying letter saying he doesn’t agree with it.
So there, yahboo sucks and no returns.
But this moves on to even trickier ground. The EU have said that previous extensions depended on some sign of something changing; but if the government won’t change its stance, what would be the point of another one, and how could the EU in effect say they’ll listen to parliament rather than the government that is still in office? But suppose, as the only alternative I can see, a vote of no confidence, aimed at trying to get another government in office, is tried and fails?