Remainers - What do you want? When do you want it?

[optionalrationale]

We had the referendum, we had the legal challenge, we had the Supreme Court ruling, Article 50 has been triggered. The United Kingdom will no longer be part of the European Union.

So my questions to Remainers are
What do you want? When do you want it?

Here's what I want..

I want the negotiations to go well. I want future relations with our neighbours to be cordial. I want a good deal for UK and the EU. I want us to walk away if their demands are unacceptable (and stem from vindictiveness and to deter other members from following our lead). I want the UK to be free to make good trade deals with any country it wants. I want the UK to lead in creating a new model of trade without excessive interference in each partner's social and political arena.

Does "making it work" mean I have to start sharing all the Facebook memes my Brexit family share about immigrants going home, St George's Day and Farage with a pint telling Merkel to shut up bitch? Is it like that episode of Doctor Who and so if the whole country says Brexit at the same time a sack of shit turns into a beautiful economy?

I mention Canada and Australia because their FTA negotiations with the EU demonstrated how unwieldy a club of 28 countries is to deal with.

Surly there are three options:
Try and make Brexit work
Do nothing
Try and make Brexit fail hoping it will force us to stay in the EU

This is a very odd post (unless you're under the impression that mumsnet is some sort of government thinktank). Maybe anon would like to tell is what practical measures we can take in order to make Brexit fail. I'm sure there will be a number of volunteers to put any suggestions to the test .

Brexit will succeed or fail on its merits; wishful thinking will make no difference to the outcome, whether it's brexiters or remainers doing the wishing.

In all likelihood there'll be a transitional arrangement with the EU for 3 years from March 2019. So, in ~5 years, once the details of the final deal are known, I'd like the opportunity to vote on a) accepting the deal or b) reverting back to status quo EU membership.

This is not an attempt to subvert "the will of the people", but to have a fact based decision of in v out.

I mention Canada and Australia because their FTA negotiations with the EU demonstrated how unwieldy a club of 28 countries is to deal with.

It's a shame you didn't mention India, because the UK's intransigence on FoM has been delaying a deal. This is expected to be more likely without the UK as a full member.

I find it, let's say, interesting, that when Commonwealth countries and the deals that we will have with them are mentioned, it's always Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Never Nigeria, Fiji, Ghana, just plucking 3 out of the air.

I just want the country to not become an economic wasteland before my DCs finish schooling here. Then we can get the fuck out.

We voted remain we won't stay to clean up the carnage for what we didn't want and worked so hard to stop.

The Jolyon Maugham challenge in Ireland will certainly work. Article 50 will certainly be revoked.

I want to remain in the EU. But failing that, I want a competent government with a plan based on facts not fantasy, and the ability to carry it out. Unfortunately none of those options appears to be available right now.

" It took years with the EU because each country and sometimes region (Wallonia) wants to interfere."

I thought that the EU was just a faceless set of dictators from Brussels and no country had any democracy or 'sovereignty' when a member. I am at a loss as to how this is turned around completely and called 'interference' when supposed undemocratic and non sovereign country/region proves otherwise. You mean members of the EU have a say in things? And that is now bad?

Cailleach
How is that bad? It proves the point that the EU is flawed by design. For Wallonia (a tiny, struggling, enclave of Belgium) to stymie a deal that was many years in progress, shows it for what it is, an inconsistent, bureaucratic and intractable mess that has to pretend Greece and Slovenia are well served by a monetary policy designed for Germany.

But this ship has sailed. We are leaving.
I started this thread to find out what you want now?

I still think the choice is a binary one. But perhaps there are more..

1. Hope the Brexit negotiations go as well as possible for us and the EU
2. Hope that Brexit somehow will actually mean Remain (through a technicality e.g, the Maugham challenge in Dublin)
3. Hope that the Brexit negotiations go really badly and we cave in and change our minds (actually reward those who are intent on "punishing" the UK)
4. Get hold of a DeLorean with a flux capacitor...

2) Hope that Brexit somehow will actually mean Remain (through a technicality e.g, the Maugham challenge in Dublin)

You clearly don't understand what the Irish proceedings are about. It's nothing to do with finding a technicality to "Remain". The proceedings seek to establish whether Article 50 is unilaterally revocable. I.e. Can we back out of Brexit and change our minds without needing the other 27 EU states to agree to a withdrawal of Art 50?

In other words: we may use that ability to "Remain", but the proceedings themselves are just to establish whether we have that option. Choosing to actually use it is another matter entirely.

I want:

Positive and constructive negotiations from both sides.

Right to remain and continue to work in current jobs for all eu nationals already here and vice versa for uk citizens in eu.

A deal that allows us access to the single market for a fair cost.

Independence to negotiate other trade deals.

Free movement for all workers with a proper contract.

Thanks G&T.

That doesn't sound like a legal technicality AT ALL.

Thanks for making it crystal clear.

What will you do when if the Maugham challenge is shown up for what it is (a monumental waste of taxpayer's money on legal fees)?

optionalrationale why do you think equipping ourselves with full knowledge of our legal position as we enter into the most complex negotiations we've ever attempted is a "waste of taxpayers' money"? I'd say this knowledge benefits us all, whether Leave or Remain.

And which taxpayers are you talking about anyway?

1) Hope the Brexit negotiations go as well as possible for us and the EU
2) Hope that Brexit somehow will actually mean Remain (through a technicality e.g, the Maugham challenge in Dublin)
3) Hope that the Brexit negotiations go really badly and we cave in and change our minds (actually reward those who are intent on "punishing" the UK)

It's quite possible that it will mean all these things simultaneously. The two year timetable imposes an impossibility, so to get anything close to the "best deal possible" (option 1) a transitional arrangement will need to be agreed. This means that brexit in April 2019 is very likely to look much like remaining (option 2), since the EU is unlikely to agree any transitional status that does not involve the four freedoms. Subsequently, I think it likely that we end up parked in some sort of associate member status indefinitely, as it becomes clear that the only deal on offer will be disastrous and that, in the intervening years, public opinion has changed (option 3).

Of course it depends what happens in the EU over this period, but the EU economy is now growing faster than the UK and the USA, and two out of four far right contenders have been seen off, with good chances of a pro-EU candidate being elected in France (and a dead-cert in Germany).

The Irish taxpayers will have to pay to defend a completely frivolous case

The Irish taxpayers will have to pay to defend a completely frivolous case

I don't agree that it's frivolous. Neither do the vast majority of "Irish taxpayers" who are terrified about what Brexit may do in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Brexiters dismissed those fears about fragile peace and a potential hard border as "Project Fear". Those fears are absolutely real though, and we would all benefit from giving proper attention to them. Ireland welcomes the proceedings to establish the answer to this revocability point.

The question of whether a50 is revocable or not is clearly not a frivolous one. It's a question that the government should have considered and sought to have answered before this farcical process got underway (and the EU should probably have considered the question too).

Kind of odd that such an important question was left to a tax lawyer moonlighting from his day job, huh?

G&T It has very little chance of winning. Even if it did win, it has very little chance of making any material difference to how things will pan out. So it's long shot, built on an inference, teetering on an unlikely hypothesis, overreaching to clutch at illusory straws.

So you're right. Not frivolous at all.

And as Ireland takes out of the EU a lot more than it contributes (unlike us), you could argue it is us that will be us footing the Irish government's legal costs.

you could argue it is us that will be us footing the Irish government's legal costs.
Considering that Brexit has shafted Ireland, perhaps that's a fair recompense. This assumes that the UK bothers to settle its EU liabilities.

I echo a lot of the sentiments above. I'd also like to see a return to grown-up debate where we don't talk about our EU partners as "vindictive" and "unreasonable". To my mind, Britain is the one who has demanded (and gained) multiple exceptions based on a sense of entitlement, allowed its media to whip up adversarial sentiment rather than talk in terms of facts, and failed to rein in the warmongering and jibes of ministers and political figures.

^^This.

G&T It has very little chance of winning. Even if it did win, it has very little chance of making any material difference to how things will pan out. So it's long shot, built on an inference, teetering on an unlikely hypothesis, overreaching to clutch at illusory straws.

You'll need to present some sort of case to defend this argument, which seems to be a series of statements that you simply wish to be true.

The EU appears to be concerned that if A50 were found to be revocable by the UK alone (rather than unanimously) that it would actually strengthen the UK's hand in negotiations, by removing the two-year cliff edge.

So it does not appear to be a trivial question, for either side.

optional geographical proximity is less relevant in a global economy Would you care to back this statement up? I know we don't have evidenced backed plans anymore, just acting on feelings but just for the craic. One of the things I did as I came to the realisation that Andrea Leadsom does not have any brain cells, quite a bit ahead of the Conservative Party, is to do a quick Google of every economy she held up as a model for our post Brexit economy, and guess what? They all do more than half their trade with their neighbours (and have smaller and different economies ) . That is especially true for the ASEAN economies you mentioned, since they are all riding on the back of China's growth into the world's second largest economy (whether they like it or not, and some of them actually do). They all regard Brexit as an opportunity to consolidate the growth of Asian economies over the west though they think we have completely lost our minds. As Xi said "Brexit is proof that democracy is the enemy of good stable government"

And what I want is for somebody /anybody in the Brexit camp to come up with an economic plan that will enable us to recover from the damage done to our sources of global competitive advantage, Services, particularly financial services, science, tech, and the knowledge economy as a result of losing the benefits of access and the associated networks of the EU. May knows this is going to be a big issue which is why she promised unicorns sector deals that she now admits are unicorns not possible.

Absolutely Mistigri .

It is a case which is of benefit to Leavers and Remainers alike. Optionalrationale is opposed to it, I suspect, because she/he is aware that Brexit is built on a flimsy web of lies and is very susceptible to being brought down. Anything, anything at all, that threatens Brexit is to be feared.