Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
The idea that it was the ERG who kept us in Europe is possibly the stupidest take remainers come up with.

The EU have explicitly and gleefully said - on camera, mind - that this deal was designed to and did make us a colony of the EU. It was not leaving in any meaningful sense and kept us in the mechanisms of the EU. It was specifically designed by remainers to effectively keep us under the heel of the EU.
The bottom line is that had the ERG voted with the whip, we'd be out of the EU now.

During the 2016 vote, none of the leave campaigns advocated no deal. Farrage openly discussed being in the SM (Norway) and the CU (Switz), both of which would have made us rule takers, and as such, just as much a "colony."

So 52% voted for a from of Brexit which would have involved some form of vassalage. May's govt put this to Parl 3 times. The only reason it didn't pass was because the ERG voted against said Govt.

There is no way that a no deal Brexit could be described as evolutionary change by historical British standards. It would be completely revolutionary. You'd have to go back to 1649 to find such a break with the existing order.

So please explain simply what deal you'd have tried to get 2016-19 with the EU that would be both "evolutionary" and avoid making us, to some extent, "a colony of the EU", to the extent that as opposed to pooling sovereignty, we would take rules over which we had no say.

And that's before we mention the Irish border.

There's no such thing as an "evolutionary" no deal Brexit. And that, coupled with the Irish border, has been the crux of the problem.