So that means Chequers is in effect a dead duck. The EU will reject it, May has no mandate for it and even the Remainers are now tactically rejecting it.
So that means Chequers is in effect a dead duck. The EU will reject it, May has no mandate for it and even the Remainers are now tactically rejecting it.
And even that a hugely tenuous one. The argument that 17 million people understood what they were voting for has been largely undermined by the rather obvious fact that nobody really has a clue how to do any of this or what it will look like.
But as discussed, the legitimacy of a democratic process is irrelevant as long as it is a British one.
Are you sure a soft Brexit is out of the question?
No Deal would be voted down by Parliament and the government would almost certainly be forced to ask for more time to negotiate, which the EU is likely to accept. This would force May out and would probably prompt a GE. Labour would campaign on the promise that they'll honour the referendum result by negotiating a soft Brexit.
Had Cameron been a little less thick, he would have structured the referendum such that there was no lack of clarity as to what was being voted for. Which basically means it would have had to have been a Remain or Hard Brexit choice only.
I suspect he didn't do that because he would have been accused of setting it up in a way that didn't give the public enough flexibility in their vote but the reality is that, especially with hindsight, that was the only sensible thing to do.
I'm up for a hard Brexit now, should be great fun either way.
I'm sorry, but that is a canard. One could question the legitimacy of any vote on the basis that people didn't know what they were voting for. When people voted for Tony Blair, were they voting for invading Iraq? When they voted for David Cameron were they voting for gay marriage? Of course not. No vote is specific or comprehensive in its meaning, but - whether you like them or not - votes are the only legitimate means of democratic expression we have.
All that was on the ballot was to remain in or leave the EU. The vote was to leave. Everything else is detail.
That is nonsense and you know it. You cant compare this with a single, reactive foreign policy issue or a minor civil rights issue within an election manifesto. IF for no other reason than that those decisions were not justified solely by the fact that people voted for them.
This was a single issue vote on one question. Possibly the most incomprehensible and complex question in our constitutional history.
Yes, people voted leave. They didnt vote for specific versions of it and we have no idea what they wanted from it (although we can make a guess in certain areas).
The process since has shown just how complicated it is. Each side is quick to point to a betrayal of the voters on various fairly minor detailed points but its all *******s.
If it was clear that voting Leave meant a hard Brexit what are we having these negotiations for?
I expect that a large number of Leave voters never believed that a hard Brexit would happen, mostly because so many people kept telling the public that a hard Brexit wasn't in either sides interests.
I'm really struggling to see a way out of this that doesn't at some point involve asking the people if they want a hard Brexit.
The point is that all votes have obscure and unpredictable consequences that not every voter can be expected to understand. That is not a reason not to have the vote, however.
The logical conclusion of your position would be that, because the matter is simply too complex and obscure for voters to understand, they ought never to have been allowed to make a democratic decision on it.
I said before the referendum that they should not have been given the opportunity to vote for the leap in the dark. We negotiated the terms of staying, we should have set out the issues and requirements of leaving.
The interesting point is where does the legitimacy of parliament sit if it fails to ever agree a brexit deal? What is the shelf life of that referendum? Can it be surpassed by an election where a clear mandate to drop all this nonsense is given?
After all, the sovereignty of parliament is what this is all about isnt it.....
We're having these negotiations because our leaders are too weak and remain-focused to have negotiated properly. Hard Brexit (ie walking away) should always have been our basic negotiating position, allowing for concessions to be made where both sides could agree. Instead, our government has gone into negotiations trying essentially to remain in the EU in all but name - something for which they had no mandate and which they could never deliver.
You could make that argument about literally any conceivable vote ever, even something as seemingly binary as for or against the death pelanty.
After all it’s highly unlikely “ordinary people” would truly understand the moral and ethical complexities behind the issue.
It goes a bit deeper than that. Essentially, you're saying is that EU membership has eaten so deeply into the bones of this country's democracy that it is simply too complicated and damaging to separate the two without killing the patient. This rather confirms what every Eurosceptic has been saying for the last 40 years.
If we cannot democratically unhitch ourselves from this monster, we are admitting that our democracy is not just undermined, but actually dead. The inescapable conclusion would be that the people may not govern themselves because the politicians and bureaucrats have sold their democratic birthright for a mess of pottage. The notion of national self-determination would be dead and we would effectively be told we must accept vassalage.
The consequences of such an admission are potentially disastrous - far more so, I would argue, than any negative short-term economic consequences.
Hard and soft Brexit are terms that have only come to exist after the vote, though, as remainers have tried to water down the initial vote into something they prefer. I would argue that there was a vote for a hard Brexit - it's only remainers who pretend there wasn't.
Who's going to force a general election? The Tory remainers don't have the numbers and the ERG is currently in control of the party and has no interest in pushing for one.
I'm not ruling it out, but it's far from the most likely scenario. May would literally have to decide to take the entire party down in flames for it to happen - and she doesn't strike me as being that bold.
No, I am not saying that. I am asking whether a parliament that continues to frustrate and betray the will of the people was worth fighting for in the first place.
If we want to leave to protect the sovereignty of parliament, where does it leave us if it becomes clear that we cant trust our own parliament to represent us? You talk frequently of the politicians and bureaucrats as though it is some Brexit conspiracy. THat is just how parliament works. It is what 'the likes of me' having been saying for years. You are fighting for the primacy of a backward, insular, self-preserving political elite that kept your biggest issue off the ballot for 40 years.
Oh, if you're arguing that Brexit has revealed our parliamentary system, party structures and civil service to be wholly unfit for democratic purpose, you have my full agreement. Large-scale restructuring seems inevitable over the coming years, starting (I'm guessing) with the dismantling of the House of Lords and major changes to our parties.
They wanted the country to be able to spend its own money, manage its own borders and pass its own laws. You can't do that in the EU and you can't do that with a 'soft' (fake) Brexit.
To suggest that they must understand the mechanics and minutiae of trading protocol and arrangements before they can ask for that is bit orf, tbf. We have a large political class and civil service who are paid to grapple with the details, and the fact that this class is claiming that independence is a technical impossibility shows the true technocratic, democracy-phobic soul at the heart of the EU.
Because the ruling class was physically sick when the proles refused to obey their orders, and is doing everything it can to overturn the result of the referendum.
They had no plans for implementing a leave vote before the referendum, and they have had no plans for a no-deal scenario even up this point, over two years after the vote. When you have no plans for something, you have no serious intention of doing it.
"Better a bad Parliament, than a good King". - Tony Benn
Brexit should be just the first step in re-energising democracy and building a new political landscape, with new political parties and everything up for grabs in terms of ideas. And people like you, my friend, should be on the side of this peaceful, democratic revolution. :thumbup:
My sis-in-law, with whom we're staying atm, is the only Leave voter I know.
She voted out to "fück 'em all" and to send some more cash to the NHS where her other sister works.
I'm fairly sure she couldn't define sovereignty and it's not about immigration. She's Cornish so:
1. There are no immigrants here so they don't feel swamped in the slightest.
2. Don't matter if they're from Devon, Romania or Timbuk-fücking-tu, they're from the wrong side of the Temar and should all fück back off up country.
All these articles and letters and posts from Leave voters saying "All 17.4m voted for the exact same reasons I did" are getting on my tits.
There were myriad reasons which is why, given the closeness of the vote, there is no national majority for any outcome.
Which, as we all know, is why this country's political establishment is in the clusterfück it currently is.
This is why JRM feels he can push the govt into a hard Brexit. And why Sourbury, Ken Clarke and the Remainers think this then allows them to overturn the vote.
I reckon I've studied pretty much every govt since Walpole and can't think of it every being this fücked.
When Lord North lost the Septics, we had CJ Fox waiting in the wings which then led within a year to Pitt the Younger.
Suez led to Supermac.
Asquith had DLG, Chamberlain had WC, and the Tories twice had the bøllocks to actually split on the principle of free trade.
Today? Fücked.
No.
The logic of that position is that we had vote for full time representatives to make these complex decisions for us.
As you know full well. And which you'd fully support were Jezza's MPs to rebel on a manifesto commitment to steal all your money and send you to a gulag. Were that to happen, you'd be praising our representative democracy as you have on here many times in the past.