The Brexit Thread

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The LibDem general election line would be hard to sell: "I voted for this deal but I'm now asking you to support a referendum where I will ask you to reject it."

The only sane strategy is to make the Tories own their own shit, whether it's no deal or a bad deal, so you can oppose it in a general election without any double standard. You can point out that Johnson is campaigning in the election for a deal he rejected back in March.

It's not hard at all. They're not voting for this deal, they're voting to have it put to a referendum. It's perfectly simple. It makes the labour position seem like a random couple of pages from finnegans wake.

[E10 Rifle]

Do you think this deal would win a referendum?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

probably not, if anyone made an effort to explain how shit it was.

[Ginger Yellow]

It's not hard at all. They're not voting for this deal, they're voting to have it put to a referendum. It's perfectly simple. It makes the labour position seem like a random couple of pages from finnegans wake.

It's not hard in the abstract, but it's a little hard for a party that claims to want to revoke the Article 50 notice.

[NHH]

Why's that? We want to revoke, but we're clear that needs a democratic mandate, so we think a referendum between this deal and revocation is the best way forward. It's not even abstract.

[Nefertiti2]

It's certainly not sensible

[NHH]

I guess I just don't see it. I mean, of all the talking points during a second referendum, who will give a flying fuck what Swinson's reasons were when voting for it?

[Nefertiti2]

We should just ignore the fact that she making this disastrous bonfire of GB rights likely to win because she hates Corbyn- and isn’t very keen on workers? Ok

[johnr]

I guess I just don't see it. I mean, of all the talking points during a second referendum, who will give a flying fuck what Swinson's reasons were when voting for it?

Indeed. I don't think Swinson's position on this - vote for Johnson's deal but only if it has a Ref attached - is hard to understand/put across, in the abstract or irl. However, it is a profoundly dangerous and silly approach, for the reason Snake outlined above. Most of the Brexit ultras will get behind Johnson's version of Leave, whereas they wouldn't with a Labour version - hence more likely a Remain win. Which is what Swinson, most of Labour, and just about everybody on this board wants.

[Nefertiti2]

Is that what Swinson wants? I think she only wants to build the Lib Dems. That’s why her position is so incoherent.

[Satchmo Distel]

I can't see Johnson offering a referendum so all this is moot. He can blame Swinson for No Deal, however, claiming that she's conceded there was nothing wrong with the deal and should therefore have voted for it.

[Satchmo Distel]

Why is the EU agreeing to Stormont having a vote every four years?

[Ginger Yellow]

Who says it is? The whole point of today's talks was to find some other consent mechanism.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The Lib dems may be terrible people, but their position is not remotely hard to understand. It's what Labour should have done with Theresa May's deal months ago, and we'd have had the referendum by now, and this would all be over.

This, absolutely. There is a chance that Johnson's deal would win. That would be a disaster. There is less chance a Labour-negotiated deal would win (partly due to the party's lack of general interest in wanting it to, partly due to the rabid Brexiteers not seeing it as 'hard' enough). That would be good.

This Idea that you can have a referendum, that doesn't have the fucking savage barbarous type of brexit that about 40% of the UK want on it is nonsense, and needs to stop. That's the thing you need to defeat or this will never stop. Sure you might lose the referendum just like the last referendum was lost, but the alternative isn't Labour's weird bullshit, it's no deal. Even then Labour's bullshit brexit deal, whatever it is, will either obliterate a huge chunk of the tax base, or simply be a surrender of voting rights.

The time has come for Labour to stop acting like a tumour on the remain movement. To stop being the fucking eternally applied Handbrake, that leaves the leadership of the remain campaign to the weird mixture of discredited yesterday's men and women, and assorted amateurs that you see on the TV. But Mostly, I would like a party, and its followers, that have done fuck all to force a second referendum, to stop bitching about these people. They're only there because Labour have decided to effectively sit this one out, and prevent their pro remain MP's doing very much. If they can't fucking stir themselves to fight this important fight, and put aside the seeming fucking compulsive need to point out that they don't like or don't agree with everyone on their side, then what exactly are they for?

[Satchmo Distel]

Who says it is? The whole point of today's talks was to find some other consent mechanism.

The Grauniad here:

The deal due to be signed off by leaders at a summit on Thursday would involve the drawing of a regulatory and customs border down the Irish Sea and a vote for Stormont every four years on the arrangements, but the Democratic Unionist party is still objecting.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...n-irish-border

It seems to contradict other reports.

[ursus arctos]

I have found Nardelli to be quite reliable

[URL="https://twitter.com/albertonardelli/status/1184557765781590016?s=21"]https://twitter.com/albertonardelli/status/1184557765781590016[/URL]

[URL="https://twitter.com/albertonardelli/status/1184558003531501569?s=21"]https://twitter.com/albertonardelli/status/1184558003531501569[/URL]

[Lang Spoon]

The EU has moved as far as it can, this seems a recipe for instability for the Nordie economy unless the Dupper cunts learn to stop worrying and love the Single Market.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I've read that from Nardelli four times, and now I am reconciled to the fact that I'm not going to understand it.

[ursus arctos]

Bottom line would seem to be that the backstop is in place for at least six years

[johnr]

The Lib dems may be terrible people, but their position is not remotely hard to understand. It's what Labour should have done with Theresa May's deal months ago, and we'd have had the referendum by now, and this would all be over.



This Idea that you can have a referendum, that doesn't have the fucking savage barbarous type of brexit that about 40% of the UK want on it is nonsense, and needs to stop. That's the thing you need to defeat or this will never stop. Sure you might lose the referendum just like the last referendum was lost, but the alternative isn't Labour's weird bullshit, it's no deal.

I have a very vague memory that, many pages ago, you were vigorously stating that No Deal shouldn't be a referendum option because it was too crazy a notion to entertain. It's a lot to check back on, so apologies if I've got that wrong.

Also, apologies that you've spent time rebutting one of my posts, cos I'm no longer interested in debating with you on this issue. As I previously hinted, I find your debating style ultra-masculine - 'if I say this thing aggressively and repeatedly and loudly enough then people will accept that I'm right' - and devoid of nuance, doubt and understanding; it's an approach that I try to avoid offline, and equally it upsets me online. So let's leave it there.

[Satchmo Distel]

Bottom line would seem to be that the backstop is in place for at least six years

I'm surprised the EU even agreed to this but I suppose it was this or No Deal.

The "cooling off" period seems vague and I would have thought would be highly unstable. It also undermines the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

[Moonlight Shadow]

The Lib dems may be terrible people, but their position is not remotely hard to understand. It's what Labour should have done with Theresa May's deal months ago, and we'd have had the referendum by now, and this would all be over.



This Idea that you can have a referendum, that doesn't have the fucking savage barbarous type of brexit that about 40% of the UK want on it is nonsense, and needs to stop. That's the thing you need to defeat or this will never stop. Sure you might lose the referendum just like the last referendum was lost, but the alternative isn't Labour's weird bullshit, it's no deal. Even then Labour's bullshit brexit deal, whatever it is, will either obliterate a huge chunk of the tax base, or simply be a surrender of voting rights.

The time has come for Labour to stop acting like a tumour on the remain movement. To stop being the fucking eternally applied Handbrake, that leaves the leadership of the remain campaign to the weird mixture of discredited yesterday's men and women, and assorted amateurs that you see on the TV. But Mostly, I would like a party, and its followers, that have done fuck all to force a second referendum, to stop bitching about these people. They're only there because Labour have decided to effectively sit this one out, and prevent their pro remain MP's doing very much. If they can't fucking stir themselves to fight this important fight, and put aside the seeming fucking compulsive need to point out that they don't like or don't agree with everyone on their side, then what exactly are they for?

This absolutist bollocks from the big parties is a direct result of FPTP, the kind of consensus building more common in PR countries is still alien in British political culture.

[George C.]

"largely dimwitted Brit electorate" seems like a hasty generalization.

It did as you might note, but...

https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1184465365956550666?s=19

[ursus arctos]

I'm surprised the EU even agreed to this but I suppose it was this or No Deal.

The "cooling off" period seems vague and I would have thought would be highly unstable. It also undermines the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

I had a somewhat similar reaction, but there had been significant noises from European sources that a five year time limited backstop would have been acceptable to at least some member states, and this is effectively a year longer. As to the cooling off period, I think the terminology is off (as is often the case with Eurojargon), the way that I read it it is essentially a transition period during which all of the necessary legal and physical infrastructure occasioned by the Stormont decision could be put into place. Finally, I would expect that the EU27 believe that the chances of Stormont functioning at the relevant time to be significantly less than 100 percent, while at the same time believing that the economic case for keeping the arrangement in place is likely to be easier to be made in Stormont than Westminster.

As to the impact on the Anglo Irish Agreement, this is one aspect of the plan as to which the other 26 member states will actually defer to the Republic, as it doesn't really implicate all of the larger EU concerns over a member state's exit.

[Lang Spoon]

The shinners and the anti Reasonable Man Martin wing of Fianna Fáil may well make domestic hay with this apparent capitulation by Varadkar.