AIBU to think we can cancel Brexit and just pretend the entire embarassing spectacle never happened and carry on as before

[CaraCarbonara]

The European Court of Justice has ruled that we can revoke Article 50 without needing consent from the rest of the EU. The EU would love us to stay.

Lawyer David Allen Green tweets
"If Brexit is cancelled, the sensible majority will pretend, with relief, that the entire embarrassing spectalce never happened.

And the minority can have their 'treachery' narrative which, frankly, is all they ever really wanted anyway. Everyone is happy"

What do you think?

Does anyone actually understand what the backstop is? I don't

Clearest explanation of the backstop I've seen:
www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/brexit-explained-why-does-the-border-matter-and-what-is-the-backstop-1.3661518

As for rioting on the streets - the most likely scenario for that is a no deal Brexit with food and medicine shortages

I think this as well - but I keep reading how this won't happen in Britain.

@thepotato

I too wish we could cancel (and technically we can) but things will never go back to normal. We;'ve already lost the European Medicines Agency, the European Banking Agency and a myriad of other things that we were running/hosting for the EU.
Even if we don't leave now we have surrendered most of our influence.

To continue is complete and utter suicide for our country. Why, just because we have voted (based on pure lies) to leave should we continue when we know the damage it will do. I am sick to death of listening to Brexiteers who say we won, get over it when they can't even give any real reason why we should go apart from to stop immigration and not have Brussels control us (which they don't). I haven't heard one thing to make me think that Brexit would be good for us but yet people still want to crack on. It makes me squirm when I see people on TV saying lets' just leave, it'll be ok. No it fucking won't!! I am finding myself agreeing with Churchill on this, “The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter". Absolutely spot on for this shit show. So yes, I think it should be revoked entirely, if people so wish to pursue Brexit then come up with a plan that won't screw the whole country.

A majority did not vote for Brexit. Only 72% of people voted, of those 52% voted leave - so around 37% of the country voted to leave, 63% of the country did not vote to leave.

The debate around Russian influence and lies is a non-entity. People vote by whatever influence they see fit: adverts, ideology, bribes personal tax cuts. If ideology/advertising, the generally understood view of those who study elections is self-reflection - ie: people will seek info that confirms their beliefs and reject messages that conflict with them. Russian trolls and facebook merely streamlined the inevitable.

A second referendum is unlikely to be the magic wand that remainers want. There are 3 underlying causes to the leave campaign - economics, immigration, and locus of power.
Economics has gone from leavers predicting it'll be alright to leavers condemning predictions that it won't. Ultimately, no one really knows, so trying to convert a leaver to a remainer on economic arguments is tricky.
Any immigration problem (ignoring the huge benefit of legal immigration to tackle the pensions bomb and ageing population - already 60% of welfare spending in UK) is not going to be solved by Brexit; it'll just be immigrants from different places. However, stereotypically, the core-immigraion-leaver probably hasn't taken on that nuance of argument.
The locus of power - parliamentary sovereignty and jurisdiction of the ECJ/ECHR - is a correct argument. The locus of power will return to the UK. The only debate is the desirability of that.

If only...

I wish and hope this happens.

I woke up the morning after the referendum to my husband bringing my coffee in and saying "that's it, we're out"

I had a sinking sensation in my stomach which hasn't lifted since

oh please, I would happily be very British and just pretend it was all a storm in a teacup. "Now Mr Juncker, shall we have coffee and a croissant?" Then the country could not be fucked, poor and not so poor getting poorer, while the like of JRM moves all his money out to Dublin so he can get even richer.

As much as I would like that I think it’s rather naive to think we would be welcomed back with open arms and go back to how things where before!

YANBU!

Although I am not sure entirely whether this would be possible.

The whole Brexit thing feels like some sort of time bomb ticking down, and nobody really knows what the effect on the economy and country as a whole will be.

Thinking back to summer 2016, there's a hell of a lot more at stake than simply "making Britain great again" (whatever the heck that means) as some of my friends & acquaintances kept on parroting...

The debate around Russian influence and lies is a non-entity. People vote by whatever influence they see fit: adverts, ideology, bribes personal tax cuts.

We do have some rules around elections and they were apparently broken.
Official Brexit campaign ‘broke electoral law’ by coordinating with another group to bust spending limit

Though I don't disagree people could have done more basic research.

So, people who want a "no deal" Brexit... Exactly how do you plan to feed the country and get vital medication with no trade deals in place? I get that over a number of years we could theoretically build the infrastructure to produce our own food and medicines... But what are people going to do in April when they don't have them?

Some leave voters voted leave because they are clever, educated people who had examined all the arguments and are concerned with fiscal matters and accounting structures. These people are of course all represented on MN and will be on this thread.

The majority of leave voters voted leave because they're sick of all the Polish and Romanian people coming over here, speaking their funny languages, claiming all the benefits and stealing all the jobs.

The latter group are going to be angry regardless of what happens because there isn't going to be any shade of Brexit which results in all the immigrants being kicked out, which is what they're assuming will happen. In that context, they're going to be no more or less angered by a quiet cancellation or second referendum.

We do have some rules around elections and they were apparently broken.

Indeed, and the matter should be pursued. However, bot-derived messaging and advertising drafted in countries outside our jurisdiction kinda makes campaign finance law a waste of time.

Though I don't disagree people could have done more basic research.
Sadly, the utopia of neutral info that the 'net was supposed to provide will never come to be. People buy the Daily Mail or Guardian because it tells them what they already think; which is reassuring. The same will be true for any independent research - they'll find the source that agrees with the view they already hold.

'I woke up the morning after the referendum to my husband bringing my coffee in and saying "that's it, we're out"

I had a sinking sensation in my stomach which hasn't lifted since'

Exactly the same here. And now with yet another delay, and still no certainty whatsoever, it feels like actual torture.

I wonder if she decided to delay the vote as a 'dead cat' strategy to take the attention away from the judgement about how Article 50 can be revoked. If that's not it, then I don't know what the hell she's playing at. Why ON EARTH is she going back to the EU leaders to beg for more concessions which they will not, and cannot, make, and which they have been crystal clear about? Such a waste of everyone's time. It's totally sickening

oh yes to the waking up in the morning... DH was up first, I said "we're still in then?" and he said "no we're out". I was so shocked I sat bolt upright (I dont do mornings) and spent the rest of the day going 'wtf'? And pretty much every day since.

I dont know what she's doing, perhaps this is her last ditch attempt before resignation? ie, gave it one last try, "it now becomes clear I cannot deliver what the country says it wanted, I will hand over to someone else to take it forward in a strong and stable way blah blah".

'I dont know what she's doing, perhaps this is her last ditch attempt before resignation?'

I actually cannot bear to think who might take her place, and what the outcome might be.......

I think it's a great idea!

Brexit has been a total, fucking disaster. The Leave campaign won after a campaign of lies, what they promised voters was never, ever in a million years going to be delivered, and 2.5 years of wrangling has produced a deal that no one wants and which would leave us all considerably poorer. No one voted for that. A better deal is not going to magically appear, whoever the PM is or whoever goes begging to Brussels (although I'd love to see BoJo try, just to shut him up once and for all).

I don't believe there would be rioting in the streets. The people I know who voted for Brexit have never marched for anything in their lives and are unlikely to start now. Ditch the whole disaster now and can we please then go back to normal life and stop wasting so much time, energy, money and airtime discussing this nonsense?

wonder if she decided to delay the vote as a 'dead cat' strategy to take the attention away from the judgement about how Article 50 can be revoked

I think that’s exactly what it was!

oh yes to the waking up in the morning...

Lightning strike at about 6.30 am the morning after knocked out our power for several hours.

I think it was a message from God.

There are some real issues with the way the referendum was run but also the assertion that there was a unifying cause behind leave.
Just thinking about my own family:

• my uncle voted leave because he was a bit racist. My grandmother was still suspicious of Germans. For them, it was an issue of immigration.
• my in-laws genuinely weighed up the pros and cons and in their minds leave was the better option because of fears of being integrated into a super state (the issue for them was not immigration or free movement- it was sovereignty).
• my parents were undecided and probably would have voted leave because of perceptions of high costs of being in the EU but voted remain because their children wanted to stay and they’d not live to see the long-term consequences so went with what me and my siblings wanted.
• I have one friend that voted leave to ‘stick it to Cameron’ and regretted it the day after.

In just a small sample, there was a huge divergence of views and reasoning. It is disengenous to say the deal on the table is the will of the people. Of the people above, one is dead and it would only be my in-laws that would be content with a non-deal. They are wealthy and retired so there would be no impact on them.

I am sure that some people would like it, but surely even those that don't want it want to live in a democracy. If my favourite political party didn't win the general election, I wouldn't want them to come to power anyway because that is not the type of country I want to live in.

'Ditch the whole disaster now and can we please then go back to normal life and stop wasting so much time, energy, money and airtime discussing this nonsense?'

Just a big YES to this. And I agree with you about rioting in the streets Please......

Holiday, I'm sort of glad you agree about the 'dead cat' theory because if that's what she's doing, it makes some sort of sense of the madness. On the other hand, HOW DARE SHE!!! It's all just a big game to them, isn't it? None of them give a shiny shit about anything other than their own careers and their own lovely legacy. It makes me sick

It could be like the

Actor Patrick Duffy got fed up of playing Bobby Ewing so he quit Dallas to go in search of sunlit uplands. He was killed off in the show but, when he realised the grass wasn't greener and wanted to return, the producers solved the dilemma by having his wife wake up to find Bobby in the shower and the realisation that the past year had just been a bad dream.

Theresa May could wake up to find a naked David Cameron in her shower ...