Brexit

What's happening in your world? Discuss it here.
Forum rules
Play nice. We will be watching

Re: Brexit

Postby cmsellers » Mon Feb 25, 2019 1:46 am

I haven't seen Theresa May back down on anything she's said she'll do so far, which means from a game theory perspective, I find her a much more credible in her threats than, say Donald Trump. Saying she might stay on after Brexit weakens this credibility. She could be signaling she'll back down, or she could be preparing for a Brexit on the deal she negotiated and thinking to herself "I made these whiny crybabies take their medicine, I'm the only adult in the room, I'm the only one capable of getting Britain through the post-Brexit fallout."

However, she doesn't need to blink for Article 50 to get extended. The alternative way for it to happen is she loses the PM-ship. Since she's already won an internal vote of no confidence, we need either nine defections to The Independent Group, or for the DUP to abandon her government.

Now, if the assclowns in Sinn Fein were to abandon over a century of useless abstentionism and take their seats, that would reduce the number of defections needed to topple her government to two. But I don't see that happening, Sinn Fein is very clearly hoping that a botched Brexit and hard border across Ireland will lead to a referendum in which Ireland is reunited.
  • 3

User avatar
cmsellers
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9316
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:20 pm
Location: Not *that* Bay Area
Show rep
Title: Broken Record Player

Re: Brexit

Postby Absentia » Tue Feb 26, 2019 8:23 pm

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47373996

Theresa May announces that if her deal fails to pass again next month (wasn't the first time embarrassing enough?), MPs will be given the opportunity to vote on whether they support a no-deal Brexit. If (read "when") that also fails, she will propose an extension to the Article 50 proceedings until June.

It's not exactly a breakthrough development, but at least there will be more time to prepare for the worst.
  • 5

User avatar
Absentia
TCS Moderator
TCS Moderator
 
Posts: 1786
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:46 am
Location: Earth
Show rep

Re: Brexit

Postby Askias » Tue Feb 26, 2019 10:40 pm

Absentia wrote:Theresa May announces that if her deal fails to pass again next month (wasn't the first time embarrassing enough?), MPs will be given the opportunity to vote on whether they support a no-deal Brexit. If (read "when") that also fails, she will propose an extension to the Article 50 proceedings until June.

Now they're voting to keep everyone in this groundhog day loop. I highly doubt the EU will block it (besides just being straight up self-harmful, it would be 'uncooperative'), so round and round we go.

All political calculations (and by this point, it is only political) are based on that clock, and specifically running it out, so it'll solve nothing, but maybe the no-deal laws making the rounds across the mainland will have some time to get into effect. I still predict a no-deal, but we now have the worse option of 'putting it off forever and ever' on the table and immediately looking annoyingly likely.

That's not too bad for the UK. The internal blockade in the UK won't resolve anytime soon, but there are EU elections in may. The last elections were in 2014, so the nationalist wings across the board will probably see a big rise in EU Parlement. They're not outspoken allies of the UK in this matter - the UK's gain on many points is the EU's loss - but they are not concerned with maintaining the EU so they'll be more receptive at the very least. There might be more than one clock ticking, and the extension is agreed by the UK and the European Council (national leaders), not any other EU body, so that won't get in the way.
  • 3

If there be here lesson or moral, it lies beyond the competence of him who wrote this post.
(Jack Vance, Emphyrio)
User avatar
Askias
TCS Camper
TCS Camper
 
Posts: 759
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2015 2:40 pm
Location: Under the Sea
Show rep
Title: Night Owl

Re: Brexit

Postby cmsellers » Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:58 pm

Theresa May is claiming that this is a one-off extension that will not be repeated. I don't believe her, since she blinked before she absolutely needed to this time around, and I imagine a lot of Parliament will see it the same way. So if she really, truly means it this time around, we could still have a crash.

I would have thought that the only benefit of delaying is if you want to reverse Brexit either de facto by infinite delays, or with a second referendum. However Askias raised another point: the EU elections could undermine the EU's position a bit, and she could get some further concessions. However, given that the biggest sticking point seems to be the backstop, I don't see any way around that short of reversing Brexit. The least-bad solution, assuming Brexit, is probably to have Ulster in the EU customs territory and customs posts on Irish Sea ports, but the DUP is firmly opposed to this solution.
  • 2

User avatar
cmsellers
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9316
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:20 pm
Location: Not *that* Bay Area
Show rep
Title: Broken Record Player

Re: Brexit

Postby Pedgerow » Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:28 am

This is a big week for Brexit news, with three humongously crucial votes to determine how it's going to happen, spread across three days. Right now, I am 0-2 in predicting how the votes will go.

The first was yesterday, Tuesday 12/3/19, when MPs voted on Theresa May's deal again. The night before, there had been big announcements that the problems with the unpopular backstop had all been fixed, and I started to worry because I still want to Thwart the Will of the British People™ and undo all of this. I really thought the deal was going to pass this time, but then the UK Attorney General said that actually, these changes meant nothing and the backstop would still be in place. Theresa May's deal had already been defeated by 230 votes (a record, remember!), and this time, it was defeated by 149 votes. So that's better, but still catastrophically hopeless.

Today was the next vote, on whether or not to push on with No Deal. Everyone has been saying that No Deal would be the end of the world, apart from a couple of untrustworthy folks who coincidentally stand to make vast sums of money profiting from the collapse of the UK economy, so I wondered how badly No Deal would be defeated by. My guess was 250-300 votes out of the total 650, so like 410-160ish; in actuality, it lost by four. Four votes. 312-308. I am clearly an imbecile. They tried a couple of amendments, but the will of parliament is clear: No Deal cannot be countenanced, not even as the negotiating tactic supported by those who voted in favour.

(Coincidentally, I agree that we should keep No Deal on the table to strengthen our negotiating position. Imagine if you go into a bank with a gun, and all the employees are behind bulletproof glass, and you point the gun at your own head and say, "Hand over all your money or I'll blow my own brains out!" That's basically where we are now. It's a terrible idea, but you might get some money from people who don't want to clean up blood splatters. Removing No Deal as an option is like handing over the gun, letting the police take it away, and then demanding the bank's money anyway with nothing more than a frowny face. You ain't getting shit. They'll laugh you all the way to the prison).

Tomorrow's vote is the last of the big three, a vote on extending Article 50. This is seen by pretty much everyone as completely inevitable at this stage. But I'm still a touch worried: if the vote doesn't pass, then that basically means No Deal, because we're not getting another deal and there was actually a question in parliament about whether the government was allowed to just keep asking MPs to vote on the same thing over and over again until they vote the right way (hey, that sounds familiar...), and the answer was very noncommittal. And the opposition to extending Article 50, which requires the agreement of the other 27 EU countries (unlike revoking it, which we can do whenever we want) and will probably require us to take part in the upcoming European elections, seems like it has far fewer supporters than No Deal does, and No Deal was only defeated by four votes. We could wind up with the exact "disorderly No-Deal Brexit" that was predicted to obliterate our economy in the Bank of England's absolute worst-case scenario. We could wind up watching MPs vote for a third time on the exact same deal (or even a fourth time), or we could even ask for an extension and get it refused because we have no plan whatsoever for what to do with the extra time, so why would the EU grant us that extra time? So that's why I'm worried. Honestly, me being 0-2 on predictions this week might actually be a good thing.
  • 4

User avatar
Pedgerow
TCS Regular
TCS Regular
 
Posts: 346
Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2018 2:09 am
Show rep
Title: PWOT refugee

Re: Brexit

Postby CarrieVS » Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:44 am

This feels a bit like eliminating all options for actually leaving. The deal is out, we don't seem to be able to get any other deal, and no deal is out. If extension is also ruled out, then what option have we got left? Can't go and leave the EU against the will of Parliament, they went to the Supreme Court over that!

But maybe I'm being cynical here.
  • 3

A Combustible Lemon wrote:Death is an archaic concept for simpleminded commonfolk, not Victorian scientist whales.
User avatar
CarrieVS
TCS Redshirt
TCS Redshirt
 
Posts: 7103
Joined: Sat Apr 20, 2013 7:43 pm
Location: By my wild self in the wet wild woods waving my wild tail
Show rep
Title: Drama Llama

Re: Brexit

Postby cmsellers » Thu Mar 14, 2019 1:11 am

Parliament only had to vote to invoke Article 50. A hard Brexit happens automatically if Parliament does nothing by the end of the two-year negotiating period. I fully expect the deadline will be extended, but a hard Brexit is looking more likely, especially given how close the vote on it was, at least as long as Theresa May remains PM and terrified of the Euroskeptics in her own party.
  • 0

User avatar
cmsellers
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9316
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:20 pm
Location: Not *that* Bay Area
Show rep
Title: Broken Record Player

Re: Brexit

Postby CarrieVS » Thu Mar 14, 2019 1:14 am

cmsellers wrote:Parliament only had to vote to invoke Article 50. A hard Brexit happens automatically if Parliament does nothing by the end of the two-year negotiating period.


I'm aware of that thank you. That was not what I said or meant.
  • 1

A Combustible Lemon wrote:Death is an archaic concept for simpleminded commonfolk, not Victorian scientist whales.
User avatar
CarrieVS
TCS Redshirt
TCS Redshirt
 
Posts: 7103
Joined: Sat Apr 20, 2013 7:43 pm
Location: By my wild self in the wet wild woods waving my wild tail
Show rep
Title: Drama Llama

Re: Brexit

Postby Marcuse » Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:48 am

I find it ironic that a win by four votes (which in a parliament of 650 mps is 0.6%) is considered sufficient to "definitively take no deal off the table" when as has been said it really doesn't. These motions in parliament have no legal force either way. A vote in favour of extending the article 50 process wouldn't do more than express that parliament wanted it. The EU seems rightly wary of the idea in any case and have said Britain should be resolving this situation.

As it is, this is rightly being described as a crisis. We have lots of expressions of what they don't want but no positive statements about what is wanted. As such none of these votes do anything to progress leaving and just waste time. We will still leave without a deal on 29th March unless some alternative is agreed and I have no confidence in parliament to actually do something constructive when bitching from the sidelines is so much fun.

I'm actually at the point where I feel as though we need to remove them all en masse.
  • 7

User avatar
Marcuse
TCS Sithlord
TCS Sithlord
 
Posts: 6592
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 8:00 pm
Show rep

Re: Brexit

Postby Crimson847 » Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:08 pm

Marcuse wrote:I'm actually at the point where I feel as though we need to remove them all en masse.


Welcome, brother. We've been expecting you.
  • 8

"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
User avatar
Crimson847
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3195
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2015 5:18 am
Show rep

Re: Brexit

Postby gisambards » Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:03 pm

Marcuse wrote:I'm actually at the point where I feel as though we need to remove them all en masse.


Very much this. Obviously it's nothing new for politicians to recklessly pursue their own agendas, but I honestly don't think we've seen it happen this recklessly across the entire political spectrum at once. Whilst I've never been in favour of Brexit myself, if it does lead to trouble that will be entirely the fault of this generation of politicians, not an inherent fault of the process itself.
  • 2

User avatar
gisambards
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 2088
Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2015 11:45 pm
Show rep

Re: Brexit

Postby gisambards » Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:00 am

Update:

Parliament has voted to seek a delay. I can't help but feel there's something a little cruel about giving Theresa May more time to find a better deal, when it's already obvious that she can't. Further, the EU do actually have to grant the delay. Something that is important to remember is that the EU actually will also be hurt (potentially pretty badly) by a no-deal Brexit, so they should be doing what they can to avoid that scenario, but then that's forgetting that the EU do seem to have committed themselves to the usual EU position of making this all much harder than it needs to be, and it is entirely possible that they'll refuse for the short-term thrill of being rude to the Brits.
In conclusion, as with everything Brexit-related, this is good and/or bad for the government and means that a second referendum and/or no-deal Brexit is inevitable, and everyone is angry.

In lighter news, it turns out that not only is the late Sir Vince Cable not dead, he's been leader of the Liberal Democrats for a year and a half now, but he's now stepping down. The current political moment, with so many people in the country currently finding themselves caught between the extremes of the two main parties, could really have been the Lib Dems' finest hour, and under their last few leaders they have squandered that on a scale that truly boggles the mind. There have been points where I have genuinely forgotten they're there, and I'm probably their key demographic. I'm sure whoever replaces Sir Vince will do nothing to break that proud tradition.

(edit: the Lib Dems are such non-entities that, in the original version of the second paragraph, which is entirely about Vince Cable's resignation, I forgot to actually mention that Vince Cable is resigning)
  • 5

Last edited by gisambards on Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
gisambards
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 2088
Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2015 11:45 pm
Show rep

Re: Brexit

Postby Marcuse » Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:11 am

Now we enter a new stage of Brexit, which I will refer to as "kicking the can down the road". We're going to delay Brexit because parliament can't agree anything positive, and have voted down everything except continuing the status quo for a currently indefinite period.

I predict that by the end of any extended period no deal that parliament will pass will have been found, and they'll use that as an excuse to push through the revocation of article 50.
  • 1

User avatar
Marcuse
TCS Sithlord
TCS Sithlord
 
Posts: 6592
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 8:00 pm
Show rep

Re: Brexit

Postby CarrieVS » Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:39 am

Marcuse wrote:I predict that by the end of any extended period no deal that parliament will pass will have been found, and they'll use that as an excuse to push through the revocation of article 50.


I too think that is likely, but ... I can't say I'm hoping for it: I feel like if it happens I won't be happy about the manner in which it'll come about, but I was and am a Remainer (although I try not to be a Remoaner and I don't think Brexit'll be the end of the world if it does happen: it'll royally suck for a while until everything gets straightened out, but things'll be ok eventually.) But I think if it doesn't happen I'll see that news with relief. At least until the fallout kicks in, because fallout there will be.
  • 3

A Combustible Lemon wrote:Death is an archaic concept for simpleminded commonfolk, not Victorian scientist whales.
User avatar
CarrieVS
TCS Redshirt
TCS Redshirt
 
Posts: 7103
Joined: Sat Apr 20, 2013 7:43 pm
Location: By my wild self in the wet wild woods waving my wild tail
Show rep
Title: Drama Llama

Re: Brexit

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:50 am

It's funny that I kept looking at Brexit for a while and being like: "Man, it's ridiculous you guys couldn't figure something out", but now I get it.

We also have a closely divided nation in which a 50.5% majority of votes (or less, #ElectoralCollege) seems to give the green light for extreme fundamental changes to the country and in which politicians will happily send the nation into a dumpster fire if it means they don't have to do the correct (and unpopular) thing.

I feel for ya, England. Not just because I have shares of Lloyd's Group and now have to keep a closer eye on Brexit, but because that shit sucks.
  • 4

Doodle Dee. Snickers
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 2730
Joined: Mon May 06, 2013 8:15 pm
Show rep

PreviousNext

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 26 guests