E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

It's all a bit academic because not even the ERG will countenance a no-deal Brexit. They are advocating a "managed no-deal Brexit", which essentially means triggering GATT article XXIV on Brexit day... to maintain current trading arrangements for up to a decade while negotiations for a Canada+ style FTA are ongoing.

Of course this requires the agreement of the EU, and an agreement of what those interim transitional arrangements are going to look like --which, I suspect, would be pretty much the same as those of the 20 month transitional period in the current deal. Except they would last for up to a decade. Talk about "taking back control"...

Nobody seems to have cottoned on to this little detail yet, but it doesn't sound to me like an ERG that is confident to go for broke and crash out of the EU into the WTO.

 

I found that soundbite by JRM interesting particularly as it's supposed to be a secret ballot.

Mind you some were tweeting their cards from the voting booth so there must be different rules.

 

Yea the 140 votes in the bag thing is just a guess based on it being pretty dumb to vote in favor of loosing your job and taking a pay cut of anything from £15-70k.

Apparently not as JRM said Mrs May should step down even with something like 60% of MPs supporting her.

I suspect that's just posturing as they've been asked so many times what their plan is they had to come up with something that sounded credible, their probably depending on it being rejected by the EU so they can tell everyone how everything only turned to poop because of the big nasty EU punishing you all.

 

Ha I wouldn't like to bet on anybody not voting in a self-harmful manner, I mean look at the current mess we're in

 

A 52-48% advisory referendum is a democratic mandate, a 63-33% vote of confidence means Mrs May must resign.

Asking the people to judge what they were promised two years ago against what they've ended up is an affront to democracy, asking Conservative MPs to judge what they were promised two years ago against what they ended up is fine and dandy.

I know logic doesn't matter when it comes to belief systems but surely even they can spot the flaws here.

 

I hope the MPs can enjoy their Christmas...

Meanwhile countless other issues in the UK go by the wayside.

We're just dropping off some kids toys and chocolates at local charites christmas collections, then there'll be another contribution to the Foodbank which we've done several times this year.

Yeah hope the MPs like tucking in on their holidays.

 

I'm not sure that'll work after over 2 years' of telling everybody that just walking away into the WTO is nothing to be afraid of and it will all just be fine...

 

It's not the economics of WTO that scare them, people generally don't notice the increased costs as prices are always going up and a 5-10% lower GDP means very little to the man or woman in the street.

What worries them are lorry parks, people dying from lack of medicines, going hungry because of the lack of food on shelves, it's the noticeable effects of an extreme Brexit that they want to blame on the EU, the unnoticeable effects like if someone will only be earning £500 instead of £1k in ten years time or paying 10 or 20% more for things doesn't really matter.

You can see it already with the way they tried to spin government forecasts on how the economy would fair under May's failed Chequers deal, apparently we're going to be better off, something that takes too much mental gymnastics for me to get my head around this early in the morning.

 

https://news.sky.com/story/revealed-how-much-it-will-cost-to-travel-to-the-eu-after-brexit-11580454

The EU has decided to have a EUR7 fee for a visa waver if you wish to travel to europe without a full visa after Brexit (That's under May's "cunning" plan, not a no-deal provision). Afaik, the UK has yet to announce costs.

 

Fee isn't much, though I do think i'd rather pay more and have an all you can eat deal (aka remain). I can imagine people will be caught out with the need to pre-register

 

So basically half of what it costs for the USA, not too bad... except for the annoyance of having to fill in stupid forms.

 

It's a times like these the advantage of Proportional Representation seem clear to me.

Firstly, people know their vote actually counts, I mean really counts. Who knows how that would have affected feeling during the referendum.
Secondly, when it comes to something like Brexit the parties would have to talk to each other.

 

Beware what you wish for. In 2015 UKIP had 13% of the vote, could have been 83 seats.

 

Wouldn't it be 84 and a half, I'm all for splitting a UKIP MP in half.

Seriously though I'd actually prefer there to be 83 odd UKIP MPs sitting in parliament, isn't there a saying about shinning light into dark places or something like that, it's not like they'd be able to have much effect on legislation without working with others.

They'd probably do the same as they've been doing in the European parliament for years, they'd be all obstructionist and ride the gravy train at every opportunity.

 

As apposed to now, with... how many member does the ERG have again?

 

A similar thing happened in Finland according to my friend (always head bleeding conversations with her, in a good way, International Politics PhD).

The thing is the party/parties (i forget the specofics) got a little bit of support, everybody heard them speak more often, everybody then saw them for what they were and they lost support.

Whether that's still the case i don't know.

Tories just appropriated UKIP views though so they are there in a way. Why an MEP who has never been in the UK Parliament still gets airtime is beyond me though.

 

https://twitter.com/LiamFox/status/1073298501746991104

Stolen from the OCUK brexit thread.

 

You'd have most of them too.

 

After the 2015 election the Nationalists ("Finns Party") are the 2nd largest group in the parliament) and are in the governing coalition.

 

I wonder if they know that they don't know, by the looks of that it seems not.