Why the hell are you posting on this thread then?
Brexit Thread V - The Final Countdown?!?
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In other words, UKs negotiation tactics are those of a suicide bomber.
Latest news is that May is now trying to renegotiate the backstop again, because the only thing she knows how to do is to grovel to her backbenchers. What a stupid, stupid woman.
yeah
What an appetite for gambling this PM has. Though not the only one.
That cross-party initiative of last week is apparently already discarded by her. Let's see what she has to say on it today with her plan B.
Though the genius is now out of the bottle and at cross-party level under the formal radar of Corbyn and May, talkings continue.
Word is that May secretly hopes that this cross-party will result in excluding no-deal. But IDK if that is technical legal possible at all. Perhaps at the brink of no-deal extending-revoking Art 50 ?
When May does stubbornly refuses to go cross-party, the only way out stays the showdown to her no-deal faction and the EU (on the backstop).
Word is also that May has offered that no-deal faction that she would resign when that no-deal faction accepts her (modified) EU-deal.
Giving free room for Tory Brexiteers to sail to Singapore horizons (when they are not shipwrecked during that 2 year transition time).
In that case it will be interesting to see whether a new PM will replace Hammond (or whether Hammond will quit himself).
The hardcore no-deal people faction in the UK, 30%, are hardening, and just want the whole mess to stop and have "their" clean Brexit NOW... **** you all !
EDIT
Here below a graph that shows how differently Remain and Leave voters see how PM's should be acting towards Brexit in Westminster:
How differently they see the role and responsibility of PM's in their favored kind of democracy.
How much room in the mandate for representatives and room for unpolarised national and broader interests.
How much micromanagement effects from the people (from polls and media amplifiers)
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politic...d-mps-vote-nation-or-constituents-meaningful-
So, assuming it would either be no deal or may deal, which of the two is more likely?
I am not seeing May asking for an extension. Actually, for a tory, she is pretty stuborn and if it wasnt known she is tory scum i would tend to compliment her on persisting, like inno noted.
I am not seeing May asking for an extension. Actually, for a tory, she is pretty stuborn and if it wasnt known she is tory scum i would tend to compliment her on persisting, like inno noted.
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Some of the hardline Brexiteers seem to be coming round to the idea that May's deal may not be so bad now the anti-No Dealers seem to be getting support from both Remainers and soft Brexiteers in all parties. She may well still win out.
I'd admire May more for her consistency and stubborness if she showed the same determination across a wider range of policies than just Brexit and immigration. Everything else she just drops or kicks down the road at the least sign of resistance.
innonimatu
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Remain voters are sore losers who can come up with no better that a reheated project fear and allegations of "national interest". Guess what: the national interest in a democracy is by definition whatever the majority chose it to be.
Leave voters merely noticed the tactics of the remainers and are countering them.
No deal. For all the reasons, both practical and political, that I have been posting here for months. And remainers keep not wanting to believe.
In fact no deal is a misnomer, because the withdrawal agreement is not the deal. It was only supposed to be a bridging treaty, to be renegotiated. It begs the question: why not just leave, put in place temporary agreements sector-by-sector (which the EU is scrambling to get now that the prospect of not having their "agreement" has hit them), and then move on to negotiate the real deal?
The Agreement grants the UK no advantage over a no deal exit. The opposite is true: it would bind the UP permanently to EU regulations through the "backstop". The terms that the EU is demanding for what was supposed to be a bridging agreement are absolutely disadvantageous to the UK.
Only the remainers whose true purpose is to keep the UK in the EU will in the end be hysterically defending the need for an "Agreement". I thing that when the history of these days is finally truthfully told we'll discover that a lot has yet to be told on how those people involved (I'm thinking May and Corbyn, but others also) were playing this. The UK's biggest handicap in this process the EU's fifth column inside Parliament...
edit: to be clear, I wonder if May's tactic of not saying no clearly to the EU on its unacceptable terms was a strategy to produce this "no deal" exit all along. It is something I've wondered before.
A government that has not been clear about what it wants, that has not prepared adequately, it should be punished by its voters. But the performance all around on this as been so abysmally low, the duplicity so great, that May may very well come out looking good by comparison.
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That's one of the most stupid things you've said on this forum. The majority of the UK cannot claim that sending an atomic bomb on London is in the UK's national interest. They may vote for that if they wish, but it's not the same thing.
In the original democracy at Athens, the majority frequently recognized that it made poor decisions and was willing to reverse them upon further discussion or argumentation. After the rebellion of Mytilene, the Athenian assembly voted to have all the male citizens of the city executed, not just the original leaders of the rebellion, and a ship was duly sent to Lesbos with the orders. The next morning, the assembly realized that such a massacre would've been over the moral event horizon even for the notoriously vicious world of fifth-century Greek politics, reversed its decision, and sent another ship across the Aegean at top speed to try to catch the previous vessel. In Thoukydides' account, the Athenians succeeded in stopping the original orders in the nick of time - although the leaders of the rebellion were still put to death. But even allowing for the historian's drama, he clearly shared the assumption that the Athenians believed that the democracy's decisions were reversible, so long as the opportunity to reverse course remained.
Why should that be any different for the modern British democracy?
I still would love to know if lysander waited for the athenian navarch captured at aigos potamoi to reply before executing him. Seems we will never know, but i like that ambiguity and may peripherally include it in a story
Sometimes time reveals what really happened
Sometimes it takes 30 years and sometimes faster.
Here a recent inside on what Cameron seemed to have in mind when he made that referendum part of his election manifesto:
I [Donald Tusk] asked David Cameron, ‘Why did you decide on this referendum, this – it’s so dangerous, so even stupid, you know,’ and, he told me - and I was really amazed and even shocked - that the only reason was his own party, [He told me] he felt really safe, because he thought at the same time that there’s no risk of a referendum, because, his coalition partner, the Liberals, would block this idea of a referendum. But then, surprisingly, he won and there was no coalition partner. So paradoxically David Cameron became the real victim of his own victory.
Spoiler screenshot article :
innonimatu
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So you don't believe in democracy. You believe that people must be managed by their betters because they cannot be trusted to decide on what is better for themselves or their community. Managed by some smaller groups who know what the "national interest" is. Doesn't surprise me, I knew you were a fan of the EU.
@Dachs: yes, I know about that,the story on the genera's execution, etc. But we're not talking about a direct democracy. We're talking about an elected assembly that voter to hold a referendum on an issue it knew to be divisive, that was supposed to sort it out once and for all. Or a least for a couple of decades, in politics nothing is immutable. Now two years late they're conspiring to sabotage the implementation of the decision reached in that referendum.
They cannot allege that the decision was a spur of the moment thing, it had been argued over in the UK interminably before the referendum, that was the whole reason for holding one to decide. They cannot argue that the UK is unprepared to leave, they had two years to pass legislation to prepare the country. If the country is not prepared, if there are things to fear, Parliament and government are the only ones to blame. Their failure cannot excuse them now trampling over the democratic decision they are supposed to implement, else they could deny any democratic decision just by refusing to act. That is a subversion of democratic representation, and those representatives must not be allowed to get away with it.
Representative democracy does allow for some wishes of the voters to be ignored. But there are limits, big issues cannot just be ignored, especially when they are not going to disappear. People get angry, justifiably so.
One-time big events or emergencies sometimes do now allow the time for wide discussions to be held. But in this case there has been plenty of time. Brexit has probably been the most discussed issue in the UK since the Corn Laws! Far more discussed that participation in WW1, or in WW2, or the end of the Empire, which kind of just happened even though the situations leading up to it were clear to those who wanted to see. Brexit has been discussed to death. And still those who are unsatisfied with the decision reached want to postpone and have more discussion. This is terribly stupid, the UK needs to move on, to sort out its many other problems. And can only do so once this is closed.
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The whole point of a representative democracy is that you elect people to make decisions for you and that these people are ostensibly better briefed and more able to make said decisions than you. There's no way you don't realise this.
innonimatu
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@Hrothbern The Independent seems to be in schizophrenic mode, but what else is new in the UK nowadays? It was campaigning for a new referendum, now it's lamenting that there was a referendum...
Not at all. I've never said that the popular vote shouldn't be followed, just that it wasn't in the UK's best interest. You're really confusing popular will with national interest here. The people can be wrong (which absolutely doesn't mean that you shouldn't listen to the people, just that the debate between vote for the national interest vs vote for the popular will exists)
innonimatu
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Those representatives explicitly sent to the people in general this specific decision: stay or leave, back to the general public. They chose to hold a referendum, and they stated their will to act on it.
I believe that the idea of such a "debate" being necessary is the last excuse of tyrants in the modern world.
The people can be persuaded, they can never be wrong if you believe in democracy. If you fail to persuade them to back what is your idea of "national interest" the failure is yours, not theirs. It is your idea of "national interest" that is the narrow one, not the majority's idea.
And as I was saying before, representative democracy already allows for plenty of time for debates, on all issues but real emergencies. Politicians, those representatives, have privileged access to the mass media, can publicize their own opinions and seek to bring people around to what the prefer.
If even even so they fail to push their own preferences on their voters, they should be removed and replaced with people who actually do what the people want. That is the whole idea of representative democracy: that a representative who refuses to do as people wish is wrong and will get replaced.
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Have you noted that the MPs who are not doing their job the way you'd want them to do it were elected more recently than the referendum ? So which mandate is better ? The people could have chosen known brexiters to represent them in parliament. By giving the power to vote to remainers they gave them a sort of mandate too
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