Brexit

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Re: Brexit

Postby Askias » Fri May 31, 2019 3:24 pm

EU elections have come and gone indeed. While there's a lot of effect on the European level, with the EPP and S&D have lost their majority which means Parlement will have to enter new coalition talks, and after 5 months the Commission will change with Manfred Weber (head of the EPP in Parlement) being heir apparent to succeed Juncker, and the other changing of the guard that happens after elections, I don't see that affecting the brexit process much. The deal drafted with May's government would still pass if it had to be re-done, which to my knowledge it doesn't, there's no view on a different deal within any reasonable timeframe but Barnier's team is currently unaffected so negotiations can continue, and any large changes at this stage, as well as any changes to the annoyingly alive and flexible deadline, hinge on the European leaders in the Council, not Parlement or the Commission or even Barnier.

And on that topic:
blehblah wrote:At this point, it doesn't matter. The EU is tired of dealing with uncertainty. It's better to rip the band-aid off than suffer the non-exit exit that Britain is slow-walking around. The irony is in leaving, the EU gets to dictate terms in ways which they could not if Britain had stayed within the EU. Their only concern, so far as I understand it, is that you guys don't become a (yet another) tax haven for the ultra-rich and global corporations.


I'm 50/50 on the point of the EU's likely course of action, mostly because I think the ''ripping off the bandaid'' analogy is wrong. Brexit isn't a one-time setback they can just get over with and they'll be back to normal in a year. It's more analogous to opening a wound, one that will continue to bleed, or even chopping off a digit. Stalemate hurts, sure, but in practise it means delaying the ongoing damage brexit will inflict. Nobody is in a hurry to be jumping off a rooftop, since it wasn't their voters that told them to do it.

There's a few countries in Europe who stand to lose very little, but nobody gains, so none of them are likely to cross the rest. ''Getting it over with'' involves Ireland having to instate a hard border. Half of western Europe has to dial up customs checks, which they're preparing to do but there's no gain in pushing that date up. Questions of nationality and residency will haunt national governments down the line once the goodwill-leave-it-for-later agreements run out. And while big international firms have made their preparations, a lot of smaller firms on the mainland that trade with the UK will need to see a few more guys in blue suits to get a move on.

Spoiler: show


I may be mistaken, but the UK still has the card that they started with, the only real card in their deck, which is that Brexit without a deal will suck for everyone. If the EU countries need to make no concessions for delaying, and they don't seem to have to, the cost/benefit for pushing for a quick exit isn't there. Remember, May asked for a delay until 30 June. The EU stuck four more months on, until the end of October.

I can't look in the heads of the heads of state. Maybe it was legitimately the compromise between Macron wanting to keep the UK out of the future commission so he can make more work of his European reform agenda (if so, him losing to Le Pen's party probably motivates him to get on with that and he may actually threaten a veto on further extensions) and most other nations just wanting to throw a year at them (my own country also pushed for the year) to get it off their backs for a while. Maybe that line isn't so hard and they'll just add more time because delaying the not-entirely-inevidable is still better than the UK crashing out. Maybe Malta suddenly decides 'brexit means brexit' and vetos. That's kinda the issue with so many players who may not hold equal sway, but everyone of which has an end-all vote.

As for the UK... Honestly I give the 'Malta goes insane' scenario more chance than the UK ever agreeing with itself. It's been their move for most of a year.
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Re: Brexit

Postby Marcuse » Fri May 31, 2019 7:44 pm

I may be mistaken, but the UK still has the card that they started with, the only real card in their deck, which is that Brexit without a deal will suck for everyone.


On this point, we sort of do and we don't. It's definitely the default situation if the 31st October passes without a transitional arrangement in place, and a Prime Minister might be able to manipulate their way into blaming Remainers for that default occurring. However, in indicative votes (votes which have no real legal force, but indicate the lie of the land within parliament) the result has been specifically against any "No Deal Brexit" whatsoever, and I don't think with the current parliamentary arithmetic there's any scope for parliament to back it.

That said, several Conservative leadership candidates (Boris, Dominic Raab etc) have expressed a desire for a No Deal Brexit. Unless they're prepared to take that decision on the chin and own it as their idea alone, I don't see it happening. How likely do I think it is that a politician will take a position and honestly accept that the consequences of their decision are entirely as a result of their choice?

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Re: Brexit

Postby Pedgerow » Fri May 31, 2019 9:00 pm

An impressive thing about these European election results is that while 32% doesn't sound like much of a winning majority, UKIP only got 26.6% last time, and the Conservatives, the government, the people who are actually in power, only got 23%. Also, come on, 9% this time round? 91% of the electorate voted against the government. I don't think any government has ever done that badly in history.

In more frivolous Brexit news, Boris Johnson is facing a private prosecution for the crime of misconduct in public office over that damn bus and its debatable slogan. I've never really thought about the actual sum of money before, because I'm usually disapproving of people who say, "They promised £350m a week for the NHS!" when they did nothing of the sort. "Let's do X" isn't a promise; it's just the usual meaningless campaign guff that I would expect anyone to see right through. That money was promised to the NHS in the same way that Donald Trump "promised" to make America great again. You can't sue him for not doing it. But anyway, this private prosecution (which needs to pass certain tests of plausibility to be accepted, but really isn't a proper arrest or anything) says that because Boris Johnson couldn't not have known that most of that money comes straight back via rebates and things, which then go into the NHS a lot of the time anyway, the slogan was still criminally disingenuous. If found guilty, Boris Johnson faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. I really hope he both becomes Prime Minister and is also sentenced to life in prison. I'd love that more than anything.
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Re: Brexit

Postby Marcuse » Fri May 31, 2019 9:09 pm

The stupid thing about the Boris prosecution is that it relies on the 13th century offense of "misconduct in public office", the definition of which is nebulous as all hell. It's staggeringly unlikely he'd be convicted in the first place as (I think) it would have to be proven not only that the claim was false but that he knew the claim was false and did so with the intent to mislead.

The guy bringing it was apparently living with his parents following the referendum and the prior winding up of his business. He says he had a lot of time on his hands to get angry about the vote, and that's where the prosecution comes from. That and a shitload of crowdfunding, because we won't spend money on healthcare but we'll spend several hundred thousand donating to prosecute a single politician for being misleading. He's since pivoted to say he'll target remain figures if a clear enough case can be made against one, but this hasn't played well since a lot of his donations came from angry remainers who wanted to see someone they disagree with punished by the law.

Edit: On top of that; prosecuting politicians for lying is a Pandora's box. Not one with pretty bracelets either. The bad one, where everyone and their mum in politics could be subject to such a prosecution. I'm loathe to see people in public office being subject to proceedings because another group disagree with them. It won't end well.
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Re: Brexit

Postby cmsellers » Sat Jun 01, 2019 5:05 am

I think that rather than prosecute politicians for lying, we should use the system from Robert Sheckley's science fiction story "Ticket to Tranai." Anyone is allowed to kill any politician who displeases them. That'll put an end to lying politicians in no time.
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Re: Brexit

Postby Marcuse » Sun Jun 09, 2019 3:14 pm

Day 999: the Conservative leadership candidates are threatening to eat each other unless Brexit is delivered.

On a more serious note, the race has narrowed a little, from 13 to 11 candidates as the rules on who can run have been changed. Apparently all someone needed to run for Conservative leader was 2 nominations from fellow MPs. The 1922 committee has revised this to eight, leading Kit Malthouse and James Cleverly to pull out of the race. Additionally, it's worth noting that right now only six of the announced candidates have that many backers (Boris, Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt, Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid and Matt Hancock). If that stays the same, I assume the field will be cut in half before any voting even occurs.

Little niblets of actual policy have started to trickle down to the media now Teresa has officially resigned (she remains as caretaker until the new leader is decided). Michael Gove has been high profile for the wrong reasons, having admitted that several times while working as a journalist he took cocaine. This has prompted other leadership candidates to make the kind of vague admissions one expects of politicians; I took it but only once and didn't like it, or I was given it at a party but didn't know what it was. It has harmed Gove's stock though, given the final leadership vote is taken from among the party membership, which is generally on the old and (unsurprisingly) conservative side.

Esther McVey has made waves by claiming she would use a little known parliamentary technique known as prorogation to force parliament to suspend prior to the Brexit date in order to prevent it from voting in a legally binding way to prevent a no deal Brexit. Other people have called this undemocratic. McVey is making her move down the "Brexit at any costs" mentality, so it makes sense for her to think like this but I don't know if it could help, nor if the Speaker would allow it. He's already said he wouldn't so I'm unsure how viable a plan that would be.

Boris has, characteristically, referred to the leaders of the Labour and Brexit parties as Scylla and Charybdis, claiming he's the only one who can guide the UK away from both of them. The membership seem to agree, Boris has a way higher proportion of support compared to others in a recent poll by ConservativeHome.

Sajid Javid has gained the support of Ruth Davidson, the influential leader of the Scottish Conservatives. I'm surprised by this given he's a pretty staunch Brexiteer. But whatever the reasoning, he's gotten a pretty substantial boost due to this.

The first vote is on the 13th June, with subsequent stages on the 18th, 19th and 20th. From there it's whittled down to two candidates for the general membership to vote on.
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Re: Brexit

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Wed Jun 12, 2019 12:19 pm

The real question here is which one of these people will look best not passing a bill, begging the EU for more time, and ultimately stepping down?

I felt really bad for May this whole time, to become pm just to be forced to do this thing you know is going to screw over your country, and being eaten alive on all sides. I don't think anyone would've gotten results in that environment, but I sure hope one of those people pissed and moaned about her get to see what it's like.
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Re: Brexit

Postby Windy » Wed Jun 12, 2019 6:05 pm

Has the British government actually done anything that justifies their own existence in the past 50 years?
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Re: Brexit

Postby gisambards » Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:52 pm

Windy wrote:Has the British government actually done anything that justifies their own existence in the past 50 years?


To be fair, I feel like most countries' governments spend more time being useless than not.

To answer the question, there have been a few times where our government has done stuff:
Under Edward Heath, we got a decimal system for our currency (we were using shillings, etc. until 1971, which was a ridiculous system), and he also got us into the EU in the first place, which regardless of one's opinion of the EU was no mean feat because there was a lot of anti-British sentiment in France at that time.
Margaret Thatcher's government did a fair amount in the first half of her time in office, getting the unions back under control after James Callaghan let them get out of control, negotiated a solid financial rebate from the EU (that Tony Blair stupidly took away, which we might not be in today's mess if he hadn't done) and actually contributed a fair amount to cooling Cold War tensions. She did go mad in office, though, and her government didn't manage much after that.
Pre-Iraq, people felt very positive about having Tony Blair as prime minister, so I think that counts as a government justifying itself.
Also, at the moment, amid all this chaos, our economy is actually doing a lot better than it probably should be, which I think might be in part due to Philip Hammond in the Chancellor's office. Things have not yet gotten as bad as they did here in the '70s, with the Winter of Discontent and three-day weeks.
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Re: Brexit

Postby cmsellers » Wed Jun 12, 2019 11:56 pm

gisambards wrote:we were using shillings, etc. until 1971, which was a ridiculous system

That's a strange way to spell "awesome."
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Re: Brexit

Postby Marcuse » Thu Jun 13, 2019 2:31 pm

The real question here is which one of these people will look best not passing a bill, begging the EU for more time, and ultimately stepping down?


The current front-runner is saying that if the deadline is reached with no deal, there'll be a no deal Brexit. I strongly doubt any new leader would simply spend their time doing what Teresa did, because honestly it was kind of weird trying to bring the same bill before parliament multiple times in the first place and at least some of the pushback was due to it being an affront to take the same deal asking for a different answer.

I felt really bad for May this whole time, to become pm just to be forced to do this thing you know is going to screw over your country, and being eaten alive on all sides. I don't think anyone would've gotten results in that environment, but I sure hope one of those people pissed and moaned about her get to see what it's like.


While I don't disagree that May got shat on from a great height, at least some of it was her own doing due to how she chose to proceed with negotiations, ministerial placements and in parliament. She also knew exactly what she was getting herself in for, the Brexit referendum was run before she became leader. She wasn't forced to do anything really.
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Re: Brexit

Postby Pedgerow » Thu Jun 13, 2019 8:52 pm

The UK government also introduced minimum wage in the past 50 years (in 1999), and that has unequivocally kicked ass.

cmsellers wrote:
gisambards wrote:we were using shillings, etc. until 1971, which was a ridiculous system

That's a strange way to spell "awesome."


Fun fact: it was also known as "LSD", because the £ sign represents the letter L (for whatever the Latin is for pound; libri or something like that) and old pence were abbreviated to "d" (again, Latin; I assume it was short for denarii) so if something cost an old sixpence to buy, it was advertised as costing 6d. So it was called LSD, and just a few years after the invention of the other LSD, we decided to make our money all metric and nerdy, and stop calling it that. Bankers are such squares.

In the latest Brexit news, the first round of leadership votes have taken place, and the bottom three candidates have now been dropped. So it's goodbye to Esther "the will of the people is so important I will literally end democracy to force it through" McVey, Andrea "it's my fault we had Theresa May" Leadsom, and Mark "apparently quite sound actually" Harper. Seven candidates remain, and Boris currently has a lead that you'd need to add the next four people's votes together to match. Christ. I thought his fellow MPs all hated him?
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Re: Brexit

Postby Krashlia » Sat Jun 15, 2019 7:06 am

Has the UK considered the benefits of Cleromancy?

EDIT:

You know, with a side of animal sacrifice?
Maybe giving it that ritual and Baptist-Pentecostal church-y flavor by having the Members of Parliament intone "God save the Queen", while the Ministers gather-round and solemnly lay hands on the Sacrificial Bull, and the Queen herself lets out its blood?
Then casting the dice.
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Re: Brexit

Postby Marcuse » Sat Jun 15, 2019 12:46 pm

Boris currently has a lead that you'd need to add the next four people's votes together to match. Christ. I thought his fellow MPs all hated him?


My understanding is that the Tories recognise they're basically up shit creek right now. Coming fifth in the EU elections, losing heavily in the local elections and failing to deliver Brexit as they envisioned has convinced many in the party that they are looking down the barrel of electoral annihilation. In the words of one Michael Caine "in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't understand".

Now I'm sure Boris won't be as interesting or cool as the Joker, but he has a lot of hallmarks. He's physically very similar to Trump, and is trying to play the IDGAF say whatever and run onward attitude. The Conservative party itself seems to be working along the same lines as the US Republican party did, in that the expectation is he can be a figurehead, lightning rod for criticism, and a fall guy if things go wrong, while the "grown ups" do the real business of government in the background. I'm not sure this worked in the US, and I'm not sure it would here, but it seems to be the only way the Conservatives can dig themselves out of this hole.

There might also be a movement inside the party to more or less thrust Boris into the PM job to do probably the hardest job a prime minister has had to achieve in the last 40 years because he's been such a dickhead about it it's become a case of "if you think you can do a better job by all means" and almost hoping he crashes and burns. In that sense for a lot of the Conservatives it's win/win: he either succeeds and they claim victory or he fails and the threat of a normal service Boris premiership is thwarted.
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Re: Brexit

Postby Pedgerow » Tue Jun 18, 2019 10:38 pm

Dominic Raab is now also out of the race, and we're down to five. Also, Dominic Raab is another candidate who said he would prorogue parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit, so it's nice he's gone. I think he was the last one who supported that, so I won't be pouring out any 40s for my defeated homie here. Good riddance, you madman.

In other news, the TV debates have now taken place for the next Prime Minister. The Channel 4 one didn't have Boris Johnson on it, but tonight's BBC debate did, along with the other four (Michael "the blue Ed Miliband" Gove, Rory "the blue Corbyn" Stewart, Jeremy "the blue Harold Shipman" Hunt, and Sajid Javid, the blue marble with a face). Unfortunately, the debate itself was pretty terrible. The candidates kept talking over each other, but none of them made any valid points. In a nice touch, the questions were asked by members of the public via videolink, and after several of the questions, moderator Emily Maitlis asked the people if they were happy with the answers they had received. On each occasion, the answer was a resounding No.

In my own personal opinion, Michael Gove impressed me the most, and Rory Stewart had the most catastrophic moment. They were all discussing Donald Trump's wacky tweets, and their willingness to denounce them. Rory Stewart, ever the tactful diplomat and clearly eager for a US trade deal, was visibly unwilling to say that Islamophobia and fake news were bad things. What a dumbass. Just lie, dude. I know that a lot of Rory Stewart's fans are not members of the Conservative Party and so won't have a vote, but I really feel like he screwed that up, especially given his fanbase.

There also appears to be a firm consensus not to call another general election any time soon, so I guess our ludicrous parliamentary arithmetic where absolutely nothing can gain the support of parliament won't be ending any time soon. Jeremy Hunt says there can't be another general election until Brexit has been completed, and he also says he's willing to keep Brexit going past its current deadline of the 31st of October. So I guess he can be Prime Minister indefinitely if he wins.
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