E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

There are smarter ways than uniformed blokes in a little hut with a red and white barrier.

 

But leaving all the above aside, we have the how do we go forward from here question.

Parliament is against a new referendum, May's deal, and leaving with no deal.

If we have a general election you can vote for a Conservative party with some new leader that will propose to leave the EU but will demand a better deal that May's or a Labour party that wants to leave the EU but will first go to the EU and demand a better deal. Or that other party that we never hear of anymore that used to be run by that guy that works for Facebook. Or the non-quite-a-party-without-a-name, that wants to stay in the EU, and will probably propose a referendum (question tbd) to do that.

Chances are we get a hung parliament and either the Conservative paying off the DUP or Labour paying off the SNP (and bear in mind they'd want a lot more) but quite possibly there wouldn't be any viable government to be formed.

The referendum is to form in a way that isn't seen as rigged to one side or the other. A three way, of Remain, Bad Deal or No Deal, would be intended to split the leave vote and be seen as unfair by those outside the hard core "this is too important for the little people to have a say" remainers. A Leave/Remain vote could well produce the same result and I still can't see how a "so what sort of leave do you want?" question can work.



Then the EU federalist headbangers can announce that the UK has lost all it's previous exemptions and rebates, has to pay an extra 6bn pa into the budget and join the Euro and a bunch of other stuff. which would do a nice job of getting a new leave campaign going. Oh and dooms the Euro in the next crisis, fwiw.

Meantime the European Parliament will be full of wingnuts of all colours many of whom make Farage seem almost normal.


Can anyone suggest a plausibly non-unicorn, politically viable way out of this that doesn't kick the can down the road or piss off half the electorate?

 

There isn't one.

There is no solution that will please everyone.

I'm up for brexit going ahead and a concentrated campaign of naming and shaming the UK politicians that lied as a counter to the inevitable "the EU is punishing us" ******** they'll spout.

I want May to be forced out in shame and ******* .. BoJo to take over leadership so we can all crack jokes that may was so **** as pm and party leader that a child abuse defender replaced her. And incidentally, watching the Tories be torn apart by his particular brand of idiocy would be just too funny.

At the next GE vote labour in and watch Corbyn buckle under the strain of making a decision every day, have multiple stress related health issues and retire to potter about his allotment and starve to death when he decides to plant potatoes but then decides he wants pears for dinner.

Ireland gets a shot at reunification and Scotland gets another leave referendum. Sod it, why not Wales too. The concept of every other part of the UK leaving and rejoining the EU tickles me greatly.

I'm also a fan of covering Nigel in honey, and tying him into a boat full ants in the Mediterranean during summer. Anchor it just far enough that his die hard supporters drown trying to swim out to rescue him. When he's done, put Cameron in there.

JRM will likely disappear to haunt old people when the Tories are torn to shreds by their own infighting, which is fine. I'm not sure you can really punish deaths ghost brother.

 

Just seen the headlines. Has April 1st been brought forward?

 

You have to feel sorry for them.

Led down the garden path (and then down a dual carriageway) by Farage et al who supports them by buggering off.

 

I imagine the only way forward is that Parliament's current session will be closed and a new one reopened immediately.

Thet can then ask the same question. It may get through, it may not.

A long extension for a GE or another referendum? Possible. A GE would annoy me, Labour have been just as useless.

I think A50 should be struck off. It was advisory and it's turned it a clusterfook, will they do that? Very much doubt that.

 

Oh FFS, this issue is way more complicated than that. It is not just about the movement of goods and people across the border. It is also about cows grazing in fields that have the border running through them --what if there are different agricultural standards on grazing land, pesticides used? What about shepherd dogs crossing the border in that field hundreds of times? What about different phytosanitary standards? Every time a cow crosses a field, it "exports" itself across the border. Which part of the field did those crops grow on again that you're trying to sell on the local market?

What with the border crossing a village? Different standards on infrastructure? Drinking water? Electricity supply? On which side of the border is the supplier again? What rules do they need to comply with?

How about health care? Which side of the border is your GP? And your nearest hospital? Your nearest pharmacy? What if there are different rules on exchange of patient medical data? Different health care governance? Different medication licences? Different regulatory bodies and standards for medical staff?

I could go on for hours about this. I think that you simply don't understand the complexity of the situation here. The politicians certainly don't.

 

Cancel Brexit. Simple. It is unrealistic, undeliverable and frankly unconstitutional. Yeah, people will complain that it will destroy people's faith in democracy. But such as that faith was in the first place, that is already destroyed. There is no solution and no good outcome for that. But we're in damage limitation territory now --just trying to stop real-life, concrete stuff from breaking. Just trying to save the country from quite substantial, material damage. Just pull the plug, take the punches and chalk it up to experience.

Or: keep stumbling on right up to the inevitable Brexit day, with no vision, no plan, no preparations, in thrall to a minority of right-wing Bible-bashing and deregulated free market nutters, and spend the next decade or two in diplomatic purgatory and economic stagnation while frighteningly incompetent and frankly quite unhinged politicians in keep throwing blame and punches back and forth rather than actually trying to manage the situation, let alone ameliorate it, as the country passively drifts into further confusion, political extremism, "managed decline" and geopolitical irrelevance during a period of world recession, global warming and a whole set of revolutionary changes coming right up that will require the Western world to adjust rapidly, flexibly and thoughtfully just to survive. Because "people had their say" on something that they understood even less than the inner workings of their mobile phones.

 

That really does minimise the complexities of borders and the smarter ways that would deal with all the complexities just don't exist.

 

I don't think there was ever going to be a non-unicorn, politically viable way out of Brexit that wouldn't piss off half the electorate, that was fairly clear before we even had the vote.

I say that because IMO the referendum was intended to be a solution to an entirely different problem, yes being a member of the EU isn't perfect and involves compromise, give and take, and the ceding of some control over your own affairs in return for *reasons*, however it was hubris to assume that life would be better if we split off from the group.

Control over your own affairs is great and all but put simply there's some things i just don't want to be responsible for, I'd be useless at, or it would be impossible for me to achieve on my own. Sure being a part of something bigger than ourselves comes with disadvantages but generally speaking the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, that's why in my eyes the referendum was never really about if we should or shouldn't be a member of the EU, it was a proxy for other things.

 

Well that was the objective for some.

 

Those 'some' should seek therapy for what must be a multitude of problems related to self-destructive tendencies.

Although it probably also has something to do with not having learned how to do research.

I feel like anyone who thinks Brexit is a good idea just hasn't read enough.

 

Nah, just the media siding with the official line from no10.
Personally I just don't see the value of complaining about what Bercow did, because MPs had two chances to vote for / against the May WA and sent it down the river twice, so acting like they need unlimited attempts until the "right" result returns just strikes me as wrong.

 

I'd have rather we were staying in the EU but trying to drive it in the right direction rather than just complaining about what it gets wrong. But I've been saying that for nearly 30 years and we've had conservative and labour governments that have fiddled around without getting stuck in.

Now the funny thing is that if we were to actually remain, it would cause a huge shock for some who had been planning to accelerate the EU towards becoming more like a state (Army, finance minister, foreign minister, all proposed ) with the UK out of the way and assuming that the smaller countries that might have also objected can now be ignored.

 

I meant those on the EU side that had designed article 50* and used the process to make the UK an example "pour encourager les autres....."

(*afaik this was actually a UK civil servant working on that project!)

 

So are you suggesting we stop people less well educated that you for voting, or have the government control the press? Might have stopped this problem, I'd say it would cause a few more.

 

Here's how it went: the EU drafted the Lisbon Treaty. "But hang on", the UK says, "what if someone wants to leave? There is no exit clause in the Treaty that allows someone to leave". To which the EU says: "OK, you write one and we'll put it in". And so the UK became the author of Article 50.

Now you'd think that a government demanding an exit clause in the anticipation that it might one day want to use it, would pay particular attention to how it is drafted, but it didn't. Lord Kerr assumed that no country would want to be batshit insane enough to want to leave. So Article 50 was written more with getting rid of dissenting countries in mind: a mutually expedient and orderly separation with a deadline so neither side could keep the other hostage.

Nobody foresaw that the leaving country might flounce out without plan or preparations, and then need to stop halfway out the door to argue with itself what it actually wants. But that is what you get when you try and effect major constitutional change without a supermajority. So it's time to stop blaming the EU for everything and take some ****ing ownership.