They should withdraw the offer to Corbyn and ask Farage instead...
To be fair Jezza has agreed to the ITV format which is a simple head to head with just a moderator.
The BBC format is a total pigs ear including opening statements, closing statements and a panel of experts for some reason, they'll probably chuck in the mad Newsnight vicar aswell!
I can't say I am enthusiastic about seeing the two of them debate regardless, but if they're going to do it they should go with the straightforward ITV format. Corbyn should stick to his guns on this.
He is frightened of examination by a panel.!!!! And he wants to be PM
This is not a protest march
Oh come on don't be daft. They're both pants when it comes to debating but the original BBC proposal had a 20 strong panel, including members of the public?! Have you not seen BBC Question Time recently??!
Put leavers in charge and even see if they don't know what they are talking about.
Johnson was ForSec for two years, and Davis ditto BrexSec.
Both were hopeless beyond belief.
They were ignored throughout the whole process.
If so, they ought to have resigned in October 2017 (when the transition period was proposed) or December 2017 when the backstop was agreed in principle. If those are unacceptable to them now, then they were unacceptable then.
While it's plain that plenty of Remainers in the Commons have never had any intention of honouring the result of the Referendum, despite voting to trigger A50, Brexit-supporting MPs have been utterly stupid in assisting them, by denouncing May's deal.
Perhaps they should have done, but that does not change the fact that she ignored them.
And Brexit supporting MPs aren't being stupid in rejecting the deal if they find it unacceptable. It's exactly what they should be doing.
So we can remain, because that is what is likely to happen now
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
Mr. Herdson, I have a lot of sympathy with that view. Sturgeon's criticism that there's no real Remainer (or, indeed, real Leaver, though she didn't say that) is valid.
It reminds me a bit of the Syrian intervention debate. Both sides essentially agreed on the proposed action but disagreed as to whether the plan should have a blue or red letterhead.
Scott thinks that HGVs travelling the length of Europe and onward into Britain, thundering accross our countryside to collect Irish goods is a good thing.
You don't think free trade is a good thing?
Wow
I don't think Southern England being used as a virtually free road bridge for trade between Ireland and the EU is much of a benefit.
Should tax each HGV £1000 a trip.
Irish hauliers pay 4.5 million euro per year to use UK roads
each? - peanuts otherwise
Not really. They pay a levy of £10 a day for every day or part of day they drive in the UK. It applies to all foreign vehicles over a weight limit and is a similar rate for UK drivers in other EU countries. It seems both a reasonable system and a reasonable rate.
still peanuts for all goods on our (and Europe's) roads when much of it can go by rail (?)
So you are advocating building a goods railway from the Welsh ports to the channel Tunnel? Not sure that is going to get much support.
Anyway the question of rail vs road is a separate issue.
I'd be in favour of that - paid for by the Irish government (or the EU whichever they prefer).
They should withdraw the offer to Corbyn and ask Farage instead...
To be fair Jezza has agreed to the ITV format which is a simple head to head with just a moderator.
The BBC format is a total pigs ear including opening statements, closing statements and a panel of experts for some reason, they'll probably chuck in the mad Newsnight vicar aswell!
I can't say I am enthusiastic about seeing the two of them debate regardless, but if they're going to do it they should go with the straightforward ITV format. Corbyn should stick to his guns on this.
Except that the problem is that the brexit debate isn't a general election, where the PM and the LotO could fairly stand as representative of the main choice.
May and Corbyn hold very similar views on Brexit and a debate between them would be arguing about angels on pinheads, while voices representative of Remain or a harder Brexit (who between them probably represent about 70-80% of opinion) would not get a look in.
Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of this debate is completely daft, especially given it's MP's not the general public she needs to convince. I'm just saying one format is slightly less of sh*t sandwich than the other.
Good - if significantly less polluting HGVs serving Ireland's interests on our roads is the "damage" from Brexit - then sign me up.
TBH I am, for once in my life, largely with TGOHF on this one. It's the same lunacy as the third runway at Heathrow, where we are determined to turn ourselves into a hub of congestion and pollution largely for the benefit of kiss-and-go travellers.
If we charged the full environmental cost of cross-Britain transport to Irish hauliers, those hauliers would largely (perishables aside) find it more economical to go by sea. We don't. We have chosen to subsidise jobs in the port industry instead. So we continue to concrete over our countryside - such as the M11 extension replacing the A14 from Cambridge to Huntingdon to provide a faster route to Felixstowe - and increase our already illegal air pollution levels.
At least the other European hub airport, Schiphol, is in a country with a sane local transport policy focused on bikes, pedestrians and local trains. We have a hub airport, Irish HGV traffic, car-centric cities and ever-rising train fares. It's pretty much a quadruple pollution whammy.
^^^ this
Meanwhile the Green MPs in parliment will fight tooth and nail for remain...
Mr. Jonathan, point of order: there isn't clarity yet. An opinion has been given, the formal, legally binding judgement has not.
So far as I have been able to decipher it, the backstory is interesting tho'. ECJ gives opinion which Commission believes will open the door to members renegotiating the terms of their membership?
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
David Davis had ample opportunity to do something. He chose to do nothing when Brexit Secretary.
Put leavers in charge and even see if they don't know what they are talking about.
Johnson was ForSec for two years, and Davis ditto BrexSec.
Both were hopeless beyond belief.
They were ignored throughout the whole process.
If so, they ought to have resigned in October 2017 (when the transition period was proposed) or December 2017 when the backstop was agreed in principle. If those are unacceptable to them now, then they were unacceptable then.
While it's plain that plenty of Remainers in the Commons have never had any intention of honouring the result of the Referendum, despite voting to trigger A50, Brexit-supporting MPs have been utterly stupid in assisting them, by denouncing May's deal.
Perhaps they should have done, but that does not change the fact that she ignored them.
And Brexit supporting MPs aren't being stupid in rejecting the deal if they find it unacceptable. It's exactly what they should be doing.
It's stupid to make the best the enemy of the good. If the ECJ concurs with the Advocate General's opinion, then we won't be getting No Deal, if the WA gets voted down, but Remain.
They don't see the deal as good, but even worse than remaining. Saying that someone is stupid for rejecting something worse doesn't make sense.
Scott thinks that HGVs travelling the length of Europe and onward into Britain, thundering accross our countryside to collect Irish goods is a good thing.
You don't think free trade is a good thing?
Wow
I don't think Southern England being used as a virtually free road bridge for trade between Ireland and the EU is much of a benefit.
Should tax each HGV £1000 a trip.
Irish hauliers pay 4.5 million euro per year to use UK roads
each? - peanuts otherwise
Not really. They pay a levy of £10 a day for every day or part of day they drive in the UK. It applies to all foreign vehicles over a weight limit and is a similar rate for UK drivers in other EU countries. It seems both a reasonable system and a reasonable rate.
still peanuts for all goods on our (and Europe's) roads when much of it can go by rail (?)
So you are advocating building a goods railway from the Welsh ports to the channel Tunnel? Not sure that is going to get much support.
Anyway the question of rail vs road is a separate issue.
Ships to European mainland? We have railway link but still use ferries
Scott thinks that HGVs travelling the length of Europe and onward into Britain, thundering accross our countryside to collect Irish goods is a good thing.
You don't think free trade is a good thing?
Wow
Free trade is a good thing.
Having our motorways clogged up by hauliers for a hostile third party nation that aren't trading with us isn't.
"hostile"
"Freeloading" would also work.
Perhaps a class action by the Uk public against the ROI for the pollution and poor health caused by their gas guzzling HGV's would be welcome ?
And Leavers wonder why non-cultists think they're completely unhinged.
You are in favour of HGV's ploughing through the nation, giving children asthma just for the benefit of fatcat Irish producers ?
Extraordinary how you, an unthinking, diamond-hard rightwing, let the market rip, dry-as-sand orangeman has suddenly embraced the concept of environmental externalities and ecological husbandry.
Put leavers in charge and even see if they don't know what they are talking about.
Johnson was ForSec for two years, and Davis ditto BrexSec.
Both were hopeless beyond belief.
They were ignored throughout the whole process.
If so, they ought to have resigned in October 2017 (when the transition period was proposed) or December 2017 when the backstop was agreed in principle. If those are unacceptable to them now, then they were unacceptable then.
While it's plain that plenty of Remainers in the Commons have never had any intention of honouring the result of the Referendum, despite voting to trigger A50, Brexit-supporting MPs have been utterly stupid in assisting them, by denouncing May's deal.
Perhaps they should have done, but that does not change the fact that she ignored them.
And Brexit supporting MPs aren't being stupid in rejecting the deal if they find it unacceptable. It's exactly what they should be doing.
It's stupid to make the best the enemy of the good. If the ECJ concurs with the Advocate General's opinion, then we won't be getting No Deal, if the WA gets voted down, but Remain.
They don't see the deal as good, but even worse than remaining. Saying that someone is stupid for rejecting something worse doesn't make sense.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
I think you're being charitable. They aren't taken in, many in fact they know it's complete rubbish. They are doing and saying anything they can to remain in the EU.
Oh dear we sort of tried but it was impossible, what a shame.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
I utterly disagree with you. You have spent decades of your life honourably working towards Brexit, and now it's happening, and is looking fairly chaotic, if not disastrous, you're looking for someone to blame.
And it can't be Brexiteers, as Brexit is pure and good.
It must be someone else's fault.
I also love your belief that it would all have been better if (say) Boris, Davis or fox had been in charge. A belief based, as far as I can tell, on nothing but the strength of their Brexit fervour. To make it clear to you: they're clueless and ineffective. And I could put it stronger than that ...
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
Mr. Herdson, I have a lot of sympathy with that view. Sturgeon's criticism that there's no real Remainer (or, indeed, real Leaver, though she didn't say that) is valid.
It reminds me a bit of the Syrian intervention debate. Both sides essentially agreed on the proposed action but disagreed as to whether the plan should have a blue or red letterhead.
They were having trouble deciding whether the RAF should act as the air force of the Assad regime or ISIS. They settled on Assad in the end.
I utterly disagree with you. You have spent decades of your life honourably working towards Brexit, and now it's happening, and is looking fairly chaotic, if not disastrous, you're looking for someone to blame.
And it can't be Brexiteers, as Brexit is pure and good.
It must be someone else's fault.
I also love your belief that it would all have been better if (say) Boris, Davis or fox had been in charge. A belief based, as far as I can tell, on nothing but the strength of their Brexit fervour. To make it clear to you: they're clueless and ineffective. And I could put it stronger than that ...
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
You can't help yourself can you Tyndall - insulting people when you have said you will try not to. Typical Leaver promising the impossible.
As to the substance, blaming Remainers for the Leavers' failure (and there were a lot of leavers and there was a lot of failure) for failing to achieve a sensible Brexit is absurd. Because here we are with as good a deal as it was possible to achieve.
Not that you have the wit or intelligence to understand that, mind.
Scott thinks that HGVs travelling the length of Europe and onward into Britain, thundering accross our countryside to collect Irish goods is a good thing.
You don't think free trade is a good thing?
Wow
Free trade is a good thing.
Having our motorways clogged up by hauliers for a hostile third party nation that aren't trading with us isn't.
"hostile"
"Freeloading" would also work.
Perhaps a class action by the Uk public against the ROI for the pollution and poor health caused by their gas guzzling HGV's would be welcome ?
And Leavers wonder why non-cultists think they're completely unhinged.
You are in favour of HGV's ploughing through the nation, giving children asthma just for the benefit of fatcat Irish producers ?
You do realise that Irish hauliers are the lifeblood of the North Wales economy and specifically the port of Holyhead. Try selling that to the voters on Anglesey
A few Welsh jobs serving cups of tea to drivers doesn't compensate for the costs of the diesel fumes and road damage caused, nevermind the losses due to a congested Uk motorway network.
Divert them all via Roscoff ...
Perhaps you think the French should do the same for all the UK lorries heading for the rest of Europe?
They do with the Peage...
That wasn't what you said. You said "Divert them all via Roscoff" implying we should not allow them on our roads.
Presumably the EU will seek to amend A50 PDQ in light of this?
The opinion relies on article 68 of the Vienna Convention on Treaties, which makes specific reference to treaties which have a notice of revocation clause in them. Changing it would need a (unanimously agreed?) EU treaty amendment.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
You can't help yourself can you Tyndall - insulting people when you have said you will try not to. Typical Leaver promising the impossible.
As to the substance, blaming Remainers for the Leavers' failure (and there were a lot of leavers and there was a lot of failure) for failing to achieve a sensible Brexit is absurd. Because here we are with as good a deal as it was possible to achieve.
Not that you have the wit or intelligence to understand that, mind.
I make an exception for truly stupid comments. Yours do seem to qualify for that a lot.
You'd have a better point if leavers have been in charge. Instead control has been taken by Remainers May and Robbins who have frustrated and stymied any Leavers.
Put leavers in charge and even see if they don't know what they are talking about.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
She appointed three leavers then gave them so little room to act and so undermined them that 2 of them resigned then so did one of their successors. Davis and others said that May was negotiating badly, that has turned out to be spot on not wrong, flawed or incoherent.
Yes and no. Committees start in the morning, but generally the main chamber only revs up at lunchtime (and then goes on till 7 or 10, depending on the day). The idea is to allow MPs with other interests to pursue them - e.g. Letwin used to spend a few hours at his bank many mornings. In practice the workload is so overwhelming that you just crack on from the early hours through till 10ish.
As a matter of interest, are you aware of any MPs in safe seats who restrict their Parliamentary activites to what was pretty much the norm back in the 1950s or the interwar period?
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It's a remarkable achievement to block something so effectively while not having the first idea about it. I'd say nobody in parliament understands Brexit as well as Theresa May at this point.
I completely agree. This has been a remainers Brexit by people who never believed it was a good idea or they could make it work. It was all about damage limitation to them and nothing else. Hence the terrible negotiation and deal that can't get through parliament.
Now the remainers who consistently failed in their approach are calling for us to remain instead and sadly will probably get their wish.
If only there'd been a party of Leavers that had stood hundreds of candidates in every General Election since 1997, giving people the opportunity to vote for True Brexit As Implemented By Leavers. You could maybe call it the "UK Independence Party" or something like that.
Today we have seen the ultra brexiteers say we can walk out of the EU without paying a penny, we can revoke A50 and then invoke it, Ireland is a hostile nation, and Holyhead is unimportant for the Welsh economy
And they think they will achieve a hard brexit. Fortunately today ended all that and they have TM brexit or we remain. Their choice
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
I utterly disagree with you. You have spent decades of your life honourably working towards Brexit, and now it's happening, and is looking fairly chaotic, if not disastrous, you're looking for someone to blame.
And it can't be Brexiteers, as Brexit is pure and good.
It must be someone else's fault.
I also love your belief that it would all have been better if (say) Boris, Davis or fox had been in charge. A belief based, as far as I can tell, on nothing but the strength of their Brexit fervour. To make it clear to you: they're clueless and ineffective. And I could put it stronger than that ...
Given I am not interested in a hard or pure Brexit your comments are at best ill informed and at worst utter garbage. I blame the person in charge. That is May. An authoritarian Remainer unfit for any public office above cleaning the municipal loos.
Which is of course a view I have held about her since long before she got anywhere near derailing Brexit.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
David Davis had ample opportunity to do something. He chose to do nothing when Brexit Secretary.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
I utterly disagree with you. You have spent decades of your life honourably working towards Brexit, and now it's happening, and is looking fairly chaotic, if not disastrous, you're looking for someone to blame.
And it can't be Brexiteers, as Brexit is pure and good.
It must be someone else's fault.
I also love your belief that it would all have been better if (say) Boris, Davis or fox had been in charge. A belief based, as far as I can tell, on nothing but the strength of their Brexit fervour. To make it clear to you: they're clueless and ineffective. And I could put it stronger than that ...
Given I am not interested in a hard or pure Brexit your comments are at best ill informed and at worst utter garbage. I blame the person in charge. That is May. An authoritarian Remainer unfit for any public office above cleaning the municipal loos.
Which is of course a view I have held about her since long before she got anywhere near derailing Brexit.
Make your mind up. Has she negotiated an acceptable deal given the necessary compromises that you didn't anticipate, or has she totally derailed Brexit through her incompetence?
Scott thinks that HGVs travelling the length of Europe and onward into Britain, thundering accross our countryside to collect Irish goods is a good thing.
You don't think free trade is a good thing?
Wow
Free trade is a good thing.
Having our motorways clogged up by hauliers for a hostile third party nation that aren't trading with us isn't.
"hostile"
My head has just disappeared in my hands again.
Suggesting Ireland is a hostile nation is very sad
Nearly as sad as them turning into a hostile nation I agree.
To think when this process started the then Taoiseach started work on how to keep the border open only to see it cancelled by this hostile successor. Varadkar is the Putin of Ireland and should be treated like it.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
You appear to be grubbing around in the realm of bizarre conspiracies. Where's the evidence that Theresa is a devout europhile determined to make Brexit fail? If she had one political mission throughout her career it's curtailing immigration - hardly compatible with EU membership. She barely spoke out for Remain during the referendum, her long-time guru Nick Timothy is clearly a eurosceptic, and she leapt upon the sceptic bandwagon the moment the vote was in. You're picking on her because the macho men of Brexit were found wanting in every department.
Presumably a "big, open and comprehensive offer" from the EU cannot be far away? Something stronger than Cameron's "emergency brake" on FoM?
Which is what Boris Johnson wanted.
He wanted to vote Leave so the EU would offer us a really good deal so we'd stay.
In my opinion the only way Remain can win a second referendum is if what is now on offer is significantly better than Cameron's renegotiation. Never mind the economics or politics of it, it's basic psychology. It looks like the EU are moving towards that today, with the AG's ruling and now this suggestion on the rebate - but those concessions only restore the status quo ante.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
David Davis had ample opportunity to do something. He chose to do nothing when Brexit Secretary.
He was allowed to do nothing.
Do you honestly believe DD would have demonstrated unbridled energy and steely competence if given sufficient latitude?
Nigel Dodds on R5L says "unlikely" DUP will support VONC in govt if MV fails.
Why should they?
Besides if May's government falls it gives Tories 14 days to scramble together a successor they can have confidence in. They should have pulled the plug and gotten Corbyn to lay the confidence motion when this deal was announced.
Make your mind up. Has she negotiated an acceptable deal given the necessary compromises that you didn't anticipate, or has she totally derailed Brexit through her incompetence?
The deal is rubbish but is better than staying. That is why I very reluctantly support it and why I think those hoping to derail it and get No Deal are making a mistake. The question is whether she will even get that through. I have huge doubts about that and if we do not leave then that failure will indeed be down in large part to her.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
David Davis had ample opportunity to do something. He chose to do nothing when Brexit Secretary.
He was allowed to do nothing.
Do you honestly believe DD would have demonstrated unbridled energy and steely competence if given sufficient latitude?
No he's useless and he'd have probably screwed it up almost as badly as May which is saying something.
But still he was ignored so he can't be blamed for any of this. And he was chosen by May anyway rather than someone on the leave side who understood the basic principles.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It's a remarkable achievement to block something so effectively while not having the first idea about it. I'd say nobody in parliament understands Brexit as well as Theresa May at this point.
I will clarify my comment. She never had the first idea about what drove Brexit.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
David Davis had ample opportunity to do something. He chose to do nothing when Brexit Secretary.
He was allowed to do nothing.
He just thought it would be so easy, so he chose to do nothing. When did he ever go to Brussels?
Saying to the people “ we and you now know the reality of what leave might mean, which we did not know at the time of the referendum” and so we are revisiting the decision is, IMO, living up to our responsibilities not shirking them.
I agree with a lot of your post but not the above. We do NOT now know the reality of what leave means. The future relationship between us and the EU is still to be negotiated. It can only happen after Brexit, therefore the only way to discover what leaving means is to do it.
The one thing we truly know now that perhaps many people didn't back in 2016 is that leaving the EU is in practice a messy and politically controversial business. Does that justify another referendum? Hardly. It would essentially be the politicians telling the public "we can't do what you want so vote again and get it right this time please". Terribly terribly damaging for our democracy.
If the collective view of parliament is that Brexit is such a ghastly mistake that it must be reversed it follows that holding the 2016 referendum was a ghastly mistake that must be reversed. The honourable (or at least less dishonourable than a 2nd ref) thing to do in that case is to say so, apologize on behalf of David Cameron, promise never to hold a referendum on this matter again, or any matter preferably. and then revoke article 50 and remain.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It's a remarkable achievement to block something so effectively while not having the first idea about it. I'd say nobody in parliament understands Brexit as well as Theresa May at this point.
I will clarify my comment. She never had the first idea about what drove Brexit.
She fell for the Remainers straw man that it was about immigration and not control.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
David Davis had ample opportunity to do something. He chose to do nothing when Brexit Secretary.
He was allowed to do nothing.
Do you honestly believe DD would have demonstrated unbridled energy and steely competence if given sufficient latitude?
No he's useless and he'd have probably screwed it up almost as badly as May which is saying something.
But still he was ignored so he can't be blamed for any of this. And he was chosen by May anyway rather than someone on the leave side who understood the basic principles.
Your final sentence does limit the field a bit. Which leavers would you have liked to have seen in the cabinet ahead of Fox, Davis, Johnson, Leadsom, Raab.... etc?
The ECJ advocate's opinion is pretty startling in many ways.
It says that since A50 is part of an international treaty, that means the UK may derogate from it the same way it may derogate from any international treaty obligation, as is its right as a sovereign state. That's a pretty serious opinion: one that greatly undermines and weakens the EU, since it now has no mechanism to prevent any sovereign state from derogating from anything, since its entire existence is based on international treaties.
To put it another way, the EU is a rules-based organization, and amazingly the ECJ's attorney is arguing that the rules don't matter.
The rebate is an anachronism and long-term would be salami sliced away to nothing - our net contributions are now too low relative to other rich nations.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It's a remarkable achievement to block something so effectively while not having the first idea about it. I'd say nobody in parliament understands Brexit as well as Theresa May at this point.
I will clarify my comment. She never had the first idea about what drove Brexit.
She fell for the Remainers straw man that it was about immigration and not control.
That was an easy sell, because it's all May cares about. In most ways that matter, Brexit is to May simply the biggest of her botched immigration crackdowns.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
I utterly disagree with you. You have spent decades of your life honourably working towards Brexit, and now it's happening, and is looking fairly chaotic, if not disastrous, you're looking for someone to blame.
And it can't be Brexiteers, as Brexit is pure and good.
It must be someone else's fault.
I also love your belief that it would all have been better if (say) Boris, Davis or fox had been in charge. A belief based, as far as I can tell, on nothing but the strength of their Brexit fervour. To make it clear to you: they're clueless and ineffective. And I could put it stronger than that ...
Given I am not interested in a hard or pure Brexit your comments are at best ill informed and at worst utter garbage. I blame the person in charge. That is May. An authoritarian Remainer unfit for any public office above cleaning the municipal loos.
Which is of course a view I have held about her since long before she got anywhere near derailing Brexit.
It doesn't matter if it's hard, soft, pure or I-can't-believe-it's-not-Brexit, it's a blooming mess.
You keep on making a big deal about the fact May is a 'remainer', as if it's some virulent form of 21st century leprosy. Again I ask why you think that any of the likely leavers could have done any better, given their rather poor histories? What's your thinking?
The ECJ advocate's opinion is pretty startling in many ways.
It says that since A50 is part of an international treaty, that means the UK may derogate from it the same way it may derogate from any international treaty obligation, as is its right as a sovereign state. That's a pretty serious opinion: one that greatly undermines and weakens the EU, since it now has no mechanism to prevent any sovereign state from derogating from anything, since its entire existence is based on international treaties.
To put it another way, the EU is a rules-based organization, and amazingly the ECJ's attorney is arguing that the rules don't matter.
If followed by the ECJ, in the short term, it makes it easier for the UK to decide to Remain. Long term, it opens up cans of worms for the EU.
The ECJ advocate's opinion is pretty startling in many ways.
It says that since A50 is part of an international treaty, that means the UK may derogate from it the same way it may derogate from any international treaty obligation, as is its right as a sovereign state. That's a pretty serious opinion: one that greatly undermines and weakens the EU, since it now has no mechanism to prevent any sovereign state from derogating from anything, since its entire existence is based on international treaties.
To put it another way, the EU is a rules-based organization, and amazingly the ECJ's attorney is arguing that the rules don't matter.
Genuine question - would the withdrawal agrrement be a Treaty? If so....
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It's a remarkable achievement to block something so effectively while not having the first idea about it. I'd say nobody in parliament understands Brexit as well as Theresa May at this point.
I will clarify my comment. She never had the first idea about what drove Brexit.
She fell for the Remainers straw man that it was about immigration and not control.
That was an easy sell, because it's all May cares about. In most ways that matter, Brexit is to May simply the biggest of her botched immigration crackdowns.
For all May's rhetoric the rate of immigration has barely changed. It was all just talk anyway.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
You appear to be grubbing around in the realm of bizarre conspiracies. Where's the evidence that Theresa is a devout europhile determined to make Brexit fail? If she had one political mission throughout her career it's curtailing immigration - hardly compatible with EU membership. She barely spoke out for Remain during the referendum, her long-time guru Nick Timothy is clearly a eurosceptic, and she leapt upon the sceptic bandwagon the moment the vote was in. You're picking on her because the macho men of Brexit were found wanting in every department.
She leapt upon immigration absolutely!
She absolutely ignored everything else. Like Hunter S. Thompson's famous book title, May has been driven by 2 emotions: fear and loathing.
She has such a loathing of migration that it is unpleasant. Yet her fear of what Brexit entails was so great that she backed remain despite her loathing of free migration.
That has underpinned her entire approach to Brexit. Seeking to end free movement which she loathes but from an afraid approach looking for damage limitation.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own fa It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
I utterly disagree with you. You have spent decades of your life honourably working towards Brexit, and now it's happening, and is looking fairly chaotic, if not disastrous, you're looking for someone to blame.
And it can't be Brexiteers, as Brexit is pure and good.
It must be someone else's fault.
I also love your belief that it would all have been better if (say) Boris, Davis or fox had been in charge. A belief based, as far as I can tell, on nothing but the strength of their Brexit fervour. To make it clear to you: they're clueless and ineffective. And I could put it stronger than that ...
Given I am not interested in a hard or pure Brexit your comments are at best ill informed and at worst utter garbage. I blame the person in charge. That is May. An authoritarian Remainer unfit for any public office above cleaning the municipal loos.
Which is of course a view I have held about her since long before she got anywhere near derailing Brexit.
It doesn't matter if it's hard, soft, pure or I-can't-believe-it's-not-Brexit, it's a blooming mess.
You keep on making a big deal about the fact May is a 'remainer', as if it's some virulent form of 21st century leprosy. Again I ask why you think that any of the likely leavers could have done any better, given their rather poor histories? What's your thinking?
He's just trying to make it personal as displacement for having to think about the flaws in the whole enterprise. Which Mrs M has done her best to try and work through.
The ability to revoke A50 has not been agreed. There has been no ruling.
The Advocate General has indicated his *opinion*. The ECJ will then rule, taking into consideration all information and views, including their own.
True, they tends to agree with the AG more often than not (~80% of the time), but this is not, and never has been, a normal case.
The assumption that everyone made is that the ECJ will rule as it always does in a way which increases the power of the EU.
That's not the case here. This opinion, if affirmed by the ECJ, will greatly, potentially catastrophically, undermine the EU's power to stop governments playing silly buggers.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
You can't help yourself can you Tyndall - insulting people when you have said you will try not to. Typical Leaver promising the impossible.
As to the substance, blaming Remainers for the Leavers' failure (and there were a lot of leavers and there was a lot of failure) for failing to achieve a sensible Brexit is absurd. Because here we are with as good a deal as it was possible to achieve.
Not that you have the wit or intelligence to understand that, mind.
I make an exception for truly stupid comments. Yours do seem to qualify for that a lot.
I can certainly see why you so admire the useless Brexit idiots such as Davis, Raab et al.
That is, if I may say so politely, rubbish. May embraced Brexit and defined it in the way best calculated to get Tory leavers supporting her. She appointed Leavers to the main three departments and they failed. Blaming one civil servant for the mess the government and leavers have made of this project is unjustifiable and, frankly, distasteful. Politicians need to take responsibility not blame others. Pretty much everything Davis, Johnson, Fox and others have said has turned out to be wrong, flawed or incoherent. That is their fault not that of Mr Robbins.
Sorry but I won't be so polite. That is complete and utter bollocks. May put Leavers in key positions whilst at the same time making sure they had no power to actually take any decisions and vesting all that power in her own office and a few select Europhile civil servants. The Leaver ministers were never anything more than smoke screen and a disposal asset for when she needed to deflect attention from her own failings. She did exactly the same thing with Amber Rudd who carried the can for May's own failings at the Home Office.
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
David Davis had ample opportunity to do something. He chose to do nothing when Brexit Secretary.
He was allowed to do nothing.
Do you honestly believe DD would have demonstrated unbridled energy and steely competence if given sufficient latitude?
No he's useless and he'd have probably screwed it up almost as badly as May which is saying something.
But still he was ignored so he can't be blamed for any of this. And he was chosen by May anyway rather than someone on the leave side who understood the basic principles.
Your final sentence does limit the field a bit. Which leavers would you have liked to have seen in the cabinet ahead of Fox, Davis, Johnson, Leadsom, Raab.... etc?
Yes it does. There's a lot of idiots on both sides of the argument in parliament unfortunately.
The rebate is an anachronism and long-term would be salami sliced away to nothing - our net contributions are now too low relative to other rich nations.
By the time we rejoin they may well be back in balance.
"Informed Consent" doesn't come close to "Take Back Control" as a slogan IMO.
And its probably not as good as "Better In" or "Better Together" from the first go round.
"Make Britain Sane Again"
"Stop The Chaos" would be a good one for Remain.
Leave takes a little more thinking but it has to emphasize the way the establishment are trying to subvert democracy maybe something like: "Vote Leave In The Loser's Vote!
The ability to revoke A50 has not been agreed. There has been no ruling.
The Advocate General has indicated his *opinion*. The ECJ will then rule, taking into consideration all information and views, including their own.
True, they tends to agree with the AG more often than not (~80% of the time), but this is not, and never has been, a normal case.
The assumption that everyone made is that the ECJ will rule as it always does in a way which increases the power of the EU.
That's not the case here. This opinion, if affirmed by the ECJ, will greatly, potentially catastrophically, undermine the EU's power to stop governments playing silly buggers.
To my mind, that makes the probability of the ruling going against the AG much more than the 20% talked about. People will be being leant on *hard*.
But I suspect that a large proportion of the grudgingly-accepting will switch to full-on Revoke if this deal fails - "you had your chance, you had a deal and you blew it".
Yes, that is spot-on. The ERG have blown it in my opinion. If like Michael Gove they'd backed the deal as a reasonable implementation of Brexit (which it is), then I think it would have passed, and we'd be leaving on time next March. By trashing it, they've encouraged Remainers to trash it as well, and if the deal fails there is only one other option, which is to revoke Article 50 either unilaterally (if the Advocate General's opinion is confirmed), or by agreement with the EU.
The ECJ advocate's opinion is pretty startling in many ways.
It says that since A50 is part of an international treaty, that means the UK may derogate from it the same way it may derogate from any international treaty obligation, as is its right as a sovereign state. That's a pretty serious opinion: one that greatly undermines and weakens the EU, since it now has no mechanism to prevent any sovereign state from derogating from anything, since its entire existence is based on international treaties.
To put it another way, the EU is a rules-based organization, and amazingly the ECJ's attorney is arguing that the rules don't matter.
Genuine question - would the withdrawal agrrement be a Treaty? If so....
Yes indeed. The withdrawal agreement is an international treaty too, so according to the ECJ attorney's logic, the UK could derogate from certain, uh, provisions of it whenever it saw fit.
The ability to revoke A50 has not been agreed. There has been no ruling.
The Advocate General has indicated his *opinion*. The ECJ will then rule, taking into consideration all information and views, including their own.
True, they tends to agree with the AG more often than not (~80% of the time), but this is not, and never has been, a normal case.
The assumption that everyone made is that the ECJ will rule as it always does in a way which increases the power of the EU.
That's not the case here. This opinion, if affirmed by the ECJ, will greatly, potentially catastrophically, undermine the EU's power to stop governments playing silly buggers.
It could just be showing that the ECJ just goes along with whatever the EU wants at any one time rather than being driven by legal principle.
Presumably a "big, open and comprehensive offer" from the EU cannot be far away? Something stronger than Cameron's "emergency brake" on FoM?
Which is what Boris Johnson wanted.
He wanted to vote Leave so the EU would offer us a really good deal so we'd stay.
In my opinion the only way Remain can win a second referendum is if what is now on offer is significantly better than Cameron's renegotiation. Never mind the economics or politics of it, it's basic psychology. It looks like the EU are moving towards that today, with the AG's ruling and now this suggestion on the rebate - but those concessions only restore the status quo ante.
Agreed that when a public conversation starts about achieving a "good Remain", i.e. special status in the EU which is at least as good as under Dave's deal, and when the negotiations are fast and yield a result that can widely be celebrated as sensible, workable, and beneficial, that will be excellent for the Remain side.
I still doubt that Remain will win a referendum, because the Leave vote was for many voters all about seeking release after so many decades during which popular concerns about immigration had no significant channel available for their expression in general elections, at least none that were considered palatable. Hence the gap between UKIP's voteshare in GEs and its voteshare in other elections. If a human being feels they are about to get a feeling of release and then it gets locked up again they will feel mightily annoyed and they may well want to lash out. The message got sent and it STILL hasn't been heard, is how many will think. This is why I believe it is important that Lord Pearson of Brexit is supportive of Tommy Robinson. Robinson is an odious man but he is not stupid and he is less "me me me" than many politicians who hail from more privileged backgrounds, such as Boris Johnson. He managed for example to work for the Quilliam Foundation without trying to turn it into a Tommy machine. I wonder how well Sunday's London march will be attended.
Lovers of neurolinguistic programming will observe how the phrases "cancel Brexit", "stop Brexit" and "reverse Brexit" are appearing in today's headlines.
But I suspect that a large proportion of the grudgingly-accepting will switch to full-on Revoke if this deal fails - "you had your chance, you had a deal and you blew it".
Yes, that is spot-on. The ERG have blown it in my opinion. If like Michael Gove they'd backed the deal as a reasonable implementation of Brexit (which it is), then I think it would have passed, and we'd be leaving on time next March. By trashing it, they've encouraged Remainers to trash it as well, and if the deal fails there is only one other option, which is to revoke Article 50 either unilaterally (if the Advocate General's opinion is confirmed), or by agreement with the EU.
I think of the deal as being 'a 52% Brexit', which is about what it should be to respect the referendum result.
What a shower our Government is. Refusing to make contingency plans to stop chaos.
What contingency plans do you suggest should have been made to rework Dover to be able to handle a completely different freight model? And should we have taken back control of Calais as well, just to be sure they made the same arrangements their end?
Comments
May never had the first idea about Brexit and has done everything she can to make sure it cannot be completed.
It is just sad that so many useful idiots are taken in by this scam.
It reminds me a bit of the Syrian intervention debate. Both sides essentially agreed on the proposed action but disagreed as to whether the plan should have a blue or red letterhead.
Meanwhile the Green MPs in parliment will fight tooth and nail for remain...
Funny old world.
https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1069923575929466880
Oh dear we sort of tried but it was impossible, what a shame.
And it can't be Brexiteers, as Brexit is pure and good.
It must be someone else's fault.
I also love your belief that it would all have been better if (say) Boris, Davis or fox had been in charge. A belief based, as far as I can tell, on nothing but the strength of their Brexit fervour. To make it clear to you: they're clueless and ineffective. And I could put it stronger than that ...
Here was his mindset before the referendum.
https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/1052267923795038213
As to the substance, blaming Remainers for the Leavers' failure (and there were a lot of leavers and there was a lot of failure) for failing to achieve a sensible Brexit is absurd. Because here we are with as good a deal as it was possible to achieve.
Not that you have the wit or intelligence to understand that, mind.
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1065648460903473152
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1065648473888997378
Anyone on here think of a reason? I'm sure we can, collectively, if we try really, really hard.
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1065691180032294914
And its probably not as good as "Better In" or "Better Together" from the first go round.
He wanted to vote Leave so the EU would offer us a really good deal so we'd stay.
Which is of course a view I have held about her since long before she got anywhere near derailing Brexit.
To think when this process started the then Taoiseach started work on how to keep the border open only to see it cancelled by this hostile successor. Varadkar is the Putin of Ireland and should be treated like it.
Besides if May's government falls it gives Tories 14 days to scramble together a successor they can have confidence in. They should have pulled the plug and gotten Corbyn to lay the confidence motion when this deal was announced.
But still he was ignored so he can't be blamed for any of this. And he was chosen by May anyway rather than someone on the leave side who understood the basic principles.
Are we ready for a fabulous afternoon of CONTEMPT?
*innocent face*
That would be an interesting situation.
The one thing we truly know now that perhaps many people didn't back in 2016 is that leaving the EU is in practice a messy and politically controversial business. Does that justify another referendum? Hardly. It would essentially be the politicians telling the public "we can't do what you want so vote again and get it right this time please". Terribly terribly damaging for our democracy.
If the collective view of parliament is that Brexit is such a ghastly mistake that it must be reversed it follows that holding the 2016 referendum was a ghastly mistake that must be reversed. The honourable (or at least less dishonourable than a 2nd ref) thing to do in that case is to say so, apologize on behalf of David Cameron, promise never to hold a referendum on this matter again, or any matter preferably. and then revoke article 50 and remain.
It says that since A50 is part of an international treaty, that means the UK may derogate from it the same way it may derogate from any international treaty obligation, as is its right as a sovereign state. That's a pretty serious opinion: one that greatly undermines and weakens the EU, since it now has no mechanism to prevent any sovereign state from derogating from anything, since its entire existence is based on international treaties.
To put it another way, the EU is a rules-based organization, and amazingly the ECJ's attorney is arguing that the rules don't matter.
The Advocate General has indicated his *opinion*. The ECJ will then rule, taking into consideration all information and views, including their own.
True, they tends to agree with the AG more often than not (~80% of the time), but this is not, and never has been, a normal case.
The rebate is an anachronism and long-term would be salami sliced away to nothing - our net contributions are now too low relative to other rich nations.
You keep on making a big deal about the fact May is a 'remainer', as if it's some virulent form of 21st century leprosy. Again I ask why you think that any of the likely leavers could have done any better, given their rather poor histories? What's your thinking?
She absolutely ignored everything else. Like Hunter S. Thompson's famous book title, May has been driven by 2 emotions: fear and loathing.
She has such a loathing of migration that it is unpleasant.
Yet her fear of what Brexit entails was so great that she backed remain despite her loathing of free migration.
That has underpinned her entire approach to Brexit. Seeking to end free movement which she loathes but from an afraid approach looking for damage limitation.
That's not the case here. This opinion, if affirmed by the ECJ, will greatly, potentially catastrophically, undermine the EU's power to stop governments playing silly buggers.
It's been a complete shambles.
"Stop The Chaos" would be a good one for Remain.
Leave takes a little more thinking but it has to emphasize the way the establishment are trying to subvert democracy maybe something like: "Vote Leave In The Loser's Vote!
INNNNNNNTERESTINGGGGGG.
They want us to remain so suddenly it's possible.
I still doubt that Remain will win a referendum, because the Leave vote was for many voters all about seeking release after so many decades during which popular concerns about immigration had no significant channel available for their expression in general elections, at least none that were considered palatable. Hence the gap between UKIP's voteshare in GEs and its voteshare in other elections. If a human being feels they are about to get a feeling of release and then it gets locked up again they will feel mightily annoyed and they may well want to lash out. The message got sent and it STILL hasn't been heard, is how many will think. This is why I believe it is important that Lord Pearson of Brexit is supportive of Tommy Robinson. Robinson is an odious man but he is not stupid and he is less "me me me" than many politicians who hail from more privileged backgrounds, such as Boris Johnson. He managed for example to work for the Quilliam Foundation without trying to turn it into a Tommy machine. I wonder how well Sunday's London march will be attended.
Lovers of neurolinguistic programming will observe how the phrases "cancel Brexit", "stop Brexit" and "reverse Brexit" are appearing in today's headlines.