Westminstenders: Oh Look is that a fire in the Italian Capital?

[RedToothBrush]

Next stop: 27th Feb.

Where we will apparently have Cooper-Boles II which apparently will pass but still assumes that
a) the EU will grant us an extension despite our fuckwittery
b) that it will prevent accidental no deal, which it doesn't
c) glosses over the minor point that the only way to 100% prevent no deal is to say you'll revoke if everything else fails

Meanwhile in reality we leave in law on 29th March, despite the rest of the law having zero chance of being ready in time. Withdrawal Agreement and No Deal alike.

All that is actually happening is the Tories and Labour fighting amongst themselves. Corbyn is still pretending that Brexit isn't really that important and hoping it will just go away. May is still trying to compromise with the ERG - whom if you paying attention 18 months ago were obviously were never going to compromise on anything - cos they are fuckwitted swivel eyed loons.

Meanwhile the entire country has no other alternative but to assume no deal and act accordingly.

A deal on the 21st March (as is the planned date of the Meaningful Vote) is simply too late for planners. For them no deal has already happened even if it does never come to pass.

The strategy of brinkmanship has destroyed us. We just don't know it yet.

A Split in the Tory and Labour parties may well make matters even worse going forward with further political polarisation.

Where next for Brexit?

Who knows and does it even matter now? The damage is irreversible and will take at least a generation to heal wounds. Economically it may never be recoverable.

FUKD.

Jericho I'm adressing those who still oppose the WA in hope of remain
If we have all now moved on and accept the WA is the least bad option, then that's fine
However, I had the impression some are still fighting against this

OK, we can now start to push for WA approval
and then what to do during transition to get the best possible relationship.

During transition, food, meds & FOM remain as now
What will probably happen is a gradual flow of business out of the UK and into the E27

You aren't listening to us women. BigChocFrenzy You are not hearing what is going on. I wonder why you aren't.

not what your favourite Remain writers and journalists say

I'm in my early 30s with a high IQ (i have proof if you need to see it???) and a low education (i assume no one requires proof of that???) not a child with a favourite sweet.

James Patrick has a good background for understanding the impact on people and not the economics because he is not an economist that is correct...

I'm off for the night...night all ❤💐

{They don't just read our papers - they have intelligence services who've been working flat out to assess what is happening in the UK}
And each EU country has it's own version of GCHQ and have their own leads on interceptions by Russia, Iran, Israel, the USA and many others who have their fingers in the pie.
The UK needs to leave the EU now. It is the drunk teenager waving a knife at a kindergarden, a danger to others and itself.
Damaging the EU would be a far bigger problem than you could imagine, but the UK is too wrapped up in itself to really see this.
The EU can cope with the UK crashing out, although it would prefer it if it didn't. Like the knight in Monty Python, the UK has already chopped a leg off at least. There is no real sign of sense arriving any time soon, so it is best just to go. Although the WA with transition could go on for years which would be a steady trickle away from the UK, it could I presume be speeded up by declaring the UK wants to hard leave in say 12 months, although as there is no sign of significant industrial activity which will replace the automotive and finance industry, it would be pretty crazy to leave any faster.

You are all saying you are worried.
Me too, primarily about those in immediate danger of losing access to meds

The WA will at least safeguard meds & food supplies, both in transition and afterwards
We really need that basic level of safeguarding first, for the most vulnerable

I am looking for ways to minimise the harm of Brexit
As an Aspie, I'm not much good at emotions. I look for solutions

Leclerc I'm looking for ways to help the UK and its population,
because it is my country

and also because the EU will be far less badly hit
Ireland will be badly hit, but the EU have already promised them major aid and 450 million can easily support 5 million.

So it is the UK that needs help ... and we're cutting ourself off from the most likely source
Hence, we need plans, becauase the government prepping is groosly inadequate

I can see both points of view. I think Remain/Revoke is now pie in the sky.

But even if we go with the WA, rather than using the time to negotiate a new trade deal with the large trading bloc beside us, which would be the logical and reasonable thing to do , I can envisage the ERG (or rather, one of their loons) taking over the Conservative Party after the WA and then trashing the backstop - legal international agreement notwithstanding . Given that they're already ready to trash the GFA and blame the EU, I don't see why the WA would be any different

Remember Davis coming back from Brussels in December 2017 and saying we would just ignore the backstop that had been painstakingly negotiated back then to allow talks to move to Phase 2.

Given that by then, the dark money backers will have made their money (and their preparations for the UK fire sale), they don't give a fuck if the UK becomes an international pariah.

Remember how Red finished off her OP to this thread: FUKD

We are truly FUKD

Pinning my hopes on Scottish Independence ......but there is a lot of pain to go through before getting there

{This is not a functioning democracy right now.
Nothing can be passed.}

Sadly that is the UK's problem and it will have to come to it's own conclusion.
The EU is already dealing with political unrest between several other countries on a variety of levels, Brexit by comparison is not far off a 'done deal' in that on 29 March it will have happened and it will be a case of getting the 'cleaners' to implement whatever needs doing. Obviously a mass of work and expense, but it drops from being high drama negotiations. If the UK bankrupts itself then it will not be the EU's problem. I am not saying they would not be concerned, but the UK is big enough and ugly enough to just get on with it.
Greece has a lot of poor citizens. The EU is concerned obviously but it can't intervene directly as Greece is sovereign.

I agree that even talking openly about Brexit here in UK (not on marches, just generally out and about) seems somehow to be goading trouble. I was on my mobile to a friend outside dd's swimming lesson this afternoon and she was saying how she was dissolving a business and laughing at the two very different options given by HMRC about if there is a deal v.s if No Deal. I noticed I was getting some quite hard stares from a lot of the young men going in and out and realised they were probably thinking I was being "unpatriotic" or something. I also am finding it hard to talk about it openly with people I don't know well. A lady at another club said a local school had an "actual Brexit Plan!" but I couldn't quite read her tone enough to see if she was mocking it or thinking it as a good thing. I reacted with "oh wow, that's good - that they are at least planning I guess" and felt the need to be cool about it. I'm not sure where this comes from as i'm really not the type to hide how I feel (esp as I am quite passionate about the topic!) but I have noticed I feel vulnerable being what others might see as "preachy" or "scaremongering". It's another one of those slow declines into a new normal I think. Gradual silencing because you feel you will be ridiculed or, more recently, I fear worse.

Sorry, but what does PMK mean?

The EU are strongly advising remainers to accept the WA

But your average remainer has no power over this. It is only the MPs that can affect this.

Ordinary people still need to tell mps what their preferred option is. They are cloth eared, hard of thinking and out to make a quick buck. The only way to get 'as close a relationship as possible' is to make it clear that we prefer remain and therefore they have to push for something that looks just like it. If we email to say 'I'm a remainer but I want you to accept the W.A' they will interpret that as 'I'm a remainer and now I support brexit'. And from that they will go ahead and do whatever they want with the W.A ... including pushing to just walk away if the ERG don't get what they want.

That's not paranoid. I voted labour to get rid of my tory mp and am now told I am part of the 80% who voted for brexit in the last election. Despite losing lots of seats - TM still decided she had support for her own vision of brexit and has been pursuing it ever since. Anything that can be manipulated into sounding like support for whatever suits what the hard right tories want will be manipulated.
They need an unequivocal 'no' from us if they are to understand we don't want the W.A to turn into a hard brexit or crash out.

And as for this:
We can get paranoid that the ERG would start breaking other international laws:
locking up opposition leaders, shooting them - where do you stop ?

pretty sure someone will have said that about every society that suddenly descended into a fascist dystopian nightmare. If people knew where it would stop, in advance, it would never have started.
It will stop when they get stopped. Now we can try to do that ourselves now ... or we can wait and see and trust them. Why would we trust them?

That's one of the good things about being in Scotland I suppose. I don't know anyone who admits to being a leave voter. Everyone I know is watching this shite unfold in horror.

@LonelyandTiredandLow - hope your username isn't about you, I'm sorry if it is. I too don't talk about Brexit with anyone I don't know and trust. I discussed it today with an E European migrant friend to check they were ok. "I will always be seen as a migrant even though I am a tax paying naturalised citizen " they said

twatty After No Deal, or even WA, do you think Indy support would increase enough for more than the SNP to demand an Indy ref ?

{pretty sure someone will have said that about every society that suddenly descended into a fascist dystopian nightmare. If people knew where it would stop, in advance, it would never have started.}

At some point people need to take a stand and change things rather than just complain.
I feel to have been disowned by the UK so I have to move forwards and no one is going to help me.

BigChoc it really depends how bad things get but yes I imagine it will. That being said, I voted yes in 2014 and the utter shitshow we're experiencing now has made me very nervous about Indyref 2.

Nicola Sturgeon isn't daft though. She knows that it was the financial argument that was weak before and I think there will likely be a different approach taken next time around. I don't imagine we'd have any choice but to join the Eurozone anyway - that's if the EU will have us!

At some point people need to take a stand and change things rather than just complain
What do you do mate?

Also, what is ERG? Thanks.

twattymctwatterson - ditto. I don't know anyone who supported Leave, also probably because I am in Scotland (and I know my constituency was over 70% Remain).

I can understand why pretzels is refusing to write to her MP to say "Support the WA" because that is/well be misinterpreted as "support" for Brexit - in the same way that the votes for Labour and Conservatives are combined to say 80% supported Brexit in the GE

At least I know my vote here in Scotland was (and remains) unequivocally for a pro-Remain Party.

Thoughts of an average back bencher
andrew murrison
@AWMurrison
Years handcuffed to backstop customs union won’t please Leave. But @jeremycorbyn wants permanent - revocable - customs union post #Brexit.
5 year backstop sunset clause beginning to look like basis for 11th hour compromise.

Not quite twigged the whole a time bound backstop problem. And this is a MP who does as he is told not an ERGer

Howdoidothis4eva - there is a separate thread in the Brexit topic for all the abbreviations.

Not sure it has ERG: the European Research Group, the party within the (Conservative) party consisting of c90 Right Wing Loons MPs who hate the EU with all their being and who stand to make a lot of money when the UK leaves allegedly

I was a Scots unionist last Indy ref, although living outside of Scotland so no vote. We had one Indy supporter in the family the rest were for staying. We are now much more evenly split with only one passionate stayer. I can't say that it is typical of Scotland but there has been a noticeable shift in our wider family.

Is anyone else having a 'yeah, right' reaction now to events scheduled for after brexit? I caught a bit of Gardeners Question Time earlier and their advert for their garden party in June, and my immediate reaction was, 'yeah, right, like that's going to happen if we have a no deal'. It's a very weird thing to have a very real potential timeline in your future that actually takes away your future.

It's amazing that UK expats are being treated so well in all 27 countries
When I visited local government offices, they went out of their way to phone up and get advice for me
and I've not heard of any Brit being harassed here

I wish the UK would be as kind, both government & public