British Politics Guide

[alice]

For fun:

https://jonworth.eu/brexit-where-now-the-flow-diagrams/

[Richard W]

So as I see it, if the 226 Labour MPs who voted on Wednesday 27 for a customs union voted for May's deal, Parliament could ensure that a customs union came into effect at the end by voting down any trade deal negotiated during the transition period.

Presumably their defence for not so voting is that they want to hang on to the UK's EU concessions when, as they hope, we remain in the single market, e.g. bargaining chips such as us keeping our negotiated benefits in the single market or else us keeping on sending Nick Farage to the EU Parliament. He's already been proposing not extending Article 50 as a way of keeping him out.

[Richard W]

For fun:

https://jonworth.eu/brexit-where-now-the-flow-diagrams/

If way forward selected is customs union only, we could proceed straight to passing MV4 as I note above. That path is missing from the flow diagram. We then proceed to trade deal negotiations; on failure or rejection by Parliament, we then proceed to customs union only, the already agreed fallback.

Mischievous thought: What if the ERG strategically, at the last minute if there is a division, votes for customs union only and then keeps their consciences clear by not voting for, or voting against, the formal MV4 which nevertheless passes with Labour votes?

[Raphael]

Meanwhile, Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeted approvingly about a youtube video of a speech by one of the leaders of Germany's AfD. So, after decades of claiming that the EU is bad because it is run by Germans and all Germans are nazis, British right-wingers have now taken the positions that some Germans are ok, as long as they're politically close enough to actual nazis.

(Fittingly, JRM was also recently photographed from an angle and with a lighting arrangement that made his face look rather ... unfortunate.)

[Raphael]

Oh, and the local party organization of Dominic Grieve, a Tory MP who had opposed Brexit, has passed a motion of no confidence in him. The Times reports that Theresa May has said that he won't be deselected anyway. Err, does she get to decide that?

[Salmoneus]

And Nick Boles has resigned the whip.


And the government's dodged a bullet. All four indicative votes lost, though by smaller margins than last time - customs union lost by only 3 votes. Referendum lost by 12 votes.

[Raphael]

So May had announced that she's seeking another Brexit extension.


Babe. I got you babe. I got you Babe.

[zompist]

I'm offering to sit down with the Leader of the Opposition to try to agree a plan that we would both stick to, to ensure that we leave the European Union and that we do so with a deal.

Any plan would have to agree the current withdrawal agreement.

Does she not realize that these two adjoining statements conflict?

In a sense, she has a point: she's actually done the negotiations with the EU, so she knows that simply cobbling together a different deal in the next couple weeks is impossible. So in her brain "everyone should simply agree to the WA" makes sense. But it seems a bit insane that she just refuses to recognize that people don't like her WA. The only idea in her head is to keep presenting it over and over.

Sitting down with Labour might have been a good idea two years ago. If she were serious about it, she'd ask for a two-year extension to do it.

[dhok]

I'm offering to sit down with the Leader of the Opposition to try to agree a plan that we would both stick to, to ensure that we leave the European Union and that we do so with a deal.

Any plan would have to agree the current withdrawal agreement.

Does she not realize that these two adjoining statements conflict?

In a sense, she has a point: she's actually done the negotiations with the EU, so she knows that simply cobbling together a different deal in the next couple weeks is impossible. So in her brain "everyone should simply agree to the WA" makes sense. But it seems a bit insane that she just refuses to recognize that people don't like her WA. The only idea in her head is to keep presenting it over and over.

Sitting down with Labour might have been a good idea two years ago. If she were serious about it, she'd ask for a two-year extension to do it.

If she's asking for another extension as Raphael noted, then that would help. But she's not going to get one long enough to triage another deal between her backbenchers, Labour and Brussels, get it passed through all 27 EU member states, and passed by Parliament; she only got the extension she got with Macron saying in no uncertain terms that the extension had to have a clear purpose and a limited duration.

The customs union vote almost passed, and it's conceivable, maybe even probable, that it could squeak through in the next ten days. But it's also conceivable that May will snatch defeat from the jaws of barely-acceptable mediocrity and fuck everything up again.

It's really tempting to want to revoke Article 50 and forget the whole mess ever happened, but that would poison politics on both sides of the Channel for years (No-Deal would probably only poison them on the British side).

[Salmoneus]

Babe. I got you babe. I got you Babe.

So, so much this.

Sometimes, it honestly feels like being in... well, not even a quirky romantic comedy, but an outright horror film. She's like the fucking Terminator of negotiation. It feels like the entire nation is being gaslighted, or trapped in, as you say, a time loop where nobody believes us and everything just goes round and round again.

As Zompist says, it's not unfair of her to want to stick to her plan, given that there don't seem to be any good alternatives. But there's no argument, no debate, discussion, negotiation, even explanation. Just these constant paradoxes. "We will now seek a different way forward. Parliament will vote on my deal for a fourth time." "It's time to arrive at a consensus with other parties. Everyone must put aside their differences and vote for my deal." "We will listen to the country. Then we will decide that the country has said it wants my deal." All of it without the glimmer of self-awareness or recognition of reality.

[dhok]

Babe. I got you babe. I got you Babe.

So, so much this.

Sometimes, it honestly feels like being in... well, not even a quirky romantic comedy, but an outright horror film. She's like the fucking Terminator of negotiation. It feels like the entire nation is being gaslighted, or trapped in, as you say, a time loop where nobody believes us and everything just goes round and round again.

As Zompist says, it's not unfair of her to want to stick to her plan, given that there don't seem to be any good alternatives. But there's no argument, no debate, discussion, negotiation, even explanation. Just these constant paradoxes. "We will now seek a different way forward. Parliament will vote on my deal for a fourth time." "It's time to arrive at a consensus with other parties. Everyone must put aside their differences and vote for my deal." "We will listen to the country. Then we will decide that the country has said it wants my deal." All of it without the glimmer of self-awareness or recognition of reality.

Suppose Parliament finally decides to put her out of her misery and call a vote of no-confidence.

Then what? You get a general election, but the resulting Parliament might be even more useless than the current one.

[Raphael]

Not to mention that the election campaign would take six weeks, and there would probably be a no-deal Brexit at some time during these six weeks.

[Salmoneus]

Babe. I got you babe. I got you Babe.

So, so much this.

Sometimes, it honestly feels like being in... well, not even a quirky romantic comedy, but an outright horror film. She's like the fucking Terminator of negotiation. It feels like the entire nation is being gaslighted, or trapped in, as you say, a time loop where nobody believes us and everything just goes round and round again.

As Zompist says, it's not unfair of her to want to stick to her plan, given that there don't seem to be any good alternatives. But there's no argument, no debate, discussion, negotiation, even explanation. Just these constant paradoxes. "We will now seek a different way forward. Parliament will vote on my deal for a fourth time." "It's time to arrive at a consensus with other parties. Everyone must put aside their differences and vote for my deal." "We will listen to the country. Then we will decide that the country has said it wants my deal." All of it without the glimmer of self-awareness or recognition of reality.

Suppose Parliament finally decides to put her out of her misery and call a vote of no-confidence.

Then what? You get a general election, but the resulting Parliament might be even more useless than the current one.

Well, if the Tories got another forty votes, maybe even if they just got thirty more votes, and assuming those new MPs weren't all ERGers themselves, May could get her deal through. Or reform it to screw over the DUP. Alternatively, if Labour won a majority, or, more likely, a minority government or coalition supported by the SNP and/or Lib Dems, they could pursue a customs union solution, and since the EU would like that they might give us time. Or someone could just call a damn referendum and riots in the streets be damned.

Or we could just be left with an even weaker Tory minority government. Or a Labour government so dependent on the SNP that they can't agree to have any sort of brexit at all, until we crash out. Or just a Labour government that, under the pressure of leadership, falls apart under its own papered-over cracks. Or maybe the Lib Dems and UKIP will do really well as people find the main parties failing them on brexit, and we'll be given an even more fractured parliament. It's rolling the dice, really.

[Richard W]

The customs union vote almost passed, and it's conceivable, maybe even probable, that it could squeak through in the next ten days. But it's also conceivable that May will snatch defeat from the jaws of barely-acceptable mediocrity and fuck everything up again.

And Ken Clarke made it clear that the customs union minimum requirement accepts the withdrawal agreement. It just tears up the political statement.

A sane strategy for passing the withdrawal agreement is now available. Step one is to make revocation the default outcome. Then those who prefer Brexit to rejecting the withdrawal agreement can vote for the agreement in MV4.

Meanwhile, sustainable Brexit terrorism appears to have begun - 'Pro-Brexit' sabotage devices left on tracks.

[Raphael]

First Cabinet member has resigned over May's offer to talk things through with Corbyn.

In other news, British soldiers in Kabul have been caught on camera using pictures of Corbyn as targets for shooting practise. By now, pretty much everyone here should have noticed that I'm no fan of Corbyn, but that's still extremely horrifying.

[dhok]

Aaaand Brussels has said no to May's request for an extension. Nine days to go.

[KathTheDragon]

Rest in peace United Kingdom, 1707-2019?

[chris_notts]

First Cabinet member has resigned over May's offer to talk things through with Corbyn.

In other news, British soldiers in Kabul have been caught on camera using pictures of Corbyn as targets for shooting practise. By now, pretty much everyone here should have noticed that I'm no fan of Corbyn, but that's still extremely horrifying.

There has been an argument since Corbyn was elected leader that the establishment would react very badly to his premiership. The civil service has been trained since the 80s to regard neoliberal sell-offs, outsourcing, PFI, low regulation, etc as a good thing, and while not overtly political they are a strong inertial force resisting any change in direction. Then there's the police, army, security services... which tend to lean towards right-wing might makes right, blow up Johnny foreigner type thinking.

I doubt that Corbyn will be deposed in a military coup, or at least I hope that democracy is more deeply embedded in our society than that, but we could well see a massive upswell in obstructionism, attempts at damaging leaks, active resistance to instructions by certain parts of the public sector and so on like no government has seen in recent history. And then the right will try to blame the resulting mess on the left-wing government rather than the illegal resistance of the government apparatus to a democratically elected leadership.

[Travis B.]

Somehow I knew it was going to be a bad idea from the moment they said they'd hold a vote on whether to leave the EU. It is generally a bad idea to hold a plebiscite on something that might just end up having the wrong outcome.

[Linguoboy]

Somehow I knew it was going to be a bad idea from the moment they said they'd hold a vote on whether to leave the EU. It is generally a bad idea to hold a plebiscite on something that might just end up having the wrong outcome.

Sort of begging the question there, aren't you?

Plebiscites aren't necessarily bad ideas, but deciding matters of tremendous consequence by simple majority generally is.