Westminstenders: Arse about Face

[RedToothBrush]

Everything about Brexit seems to have been done wrongly.

Setting red lines to rule out a compromise

The attempt to use executive power to trigger A50, that resulted in a court case

Triggering A50 before knowing what the UK wanted

Agreeing to the backstop before any Tory MP understood the GFA

Appointing a Brexit minister before checking he understood where Dover was.

May going on about NI and pissing off the DUP before they were just about to climb down.

Having a Meaningless Vote repeatedly with a gun to head.

Contempt of Parliament and just general fucking up.

Tonight, 3 days before we were due to leave the HoC finally sat down to decide what Brexit outcomes they thought would be a good idea - more than 2years after that should have happened.

And we now we are told the meaningful vote might be may even more meaningless by being wrapped up in the illusive Withdrawal Agreement Implimentation Bill.

Farce doesn't even cover it.

Anyway Indicative Vote results incoming in approx 15 mins.

Corbyn & PV:

"So much hangs on @jeremycorbyn getting his own closest allies to support this."

So much hangs on whether Corbyn continues to obstruct a PV
and if he can't stop it happening, whether he allies with Tory Brexiters to remove the Remain option

Mother The problem is that even if a PV for SM+CU is voted through, it is not legally binding on a future PM / HoC - they could throw it out just as easily as this CU alone.

Listening to what Margaret Beckett said last night in the House and Ken Clarke this morning on Sky News, they never expected to get a definitive "way forward" last night and that it was always going to be an iterative process.

The need to "oppose" for the sake of it in the House of Commons is so ingrained amongst the MPs that even though they could , unusually , vote Yes for multiple options, they couldn't stop themselves playing party politics and voting No for things that their party might not be happy with.

As someone early on this thread suggested, if they were able to confirm pairs of preferred ways forward, or to rank in terms of preferences, then that might have been (or will be) more constructive.

But that is probably too much for their tiny brains and it would make many of them explode with the effort of thinking outside their own party's narrow interest. And forget about the country's best interest

Yep, so only remain ends this nightmare.

So the WA gets through as the least worst of all of the votes?

I imagine it depends on how utterly fed up of TM and the WA people are. And as BJ and JRM et al will follow the DUP, who won't agree the backstop, so won't agree the WA, what is their long game in all of this, still no deal / disaster capitalist bonus time?

It may end up not being the 'least worst' depending on how spooked MPs are, or if they're understanding of the IV process and and buoyed that they get another load of votes on Monday.

No Brexit option is reliable

why the hell couldn't they organise themselves to vote for the "something softer" last night?!

Because they weren't trying to. They were voting for their preferred option(s) so that they could see the general lay of the land. A platform from which to build. Then on Monday they will try again to see if they can get closer to a consensus. Clarke's was surprisingly popular and very close. So that's a good starting point.

If this had been done at the start of the process, rather than May setting her own "red lines", HoC may have found a reasonable compromise that most MPs would be able to sell to both Remain and Leave voters. Which would have prevented the clamour for a PV in the first place. Bloody TM and her need to prove to leavers that she actually wanted to leave is what has scuppered the whole thing. Had a moderate leaver been in charge it may have gone completely differently.

Some political analysts were also expecting all options to be vpoted down
It shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone

The votes showed that sadly the SM option isn't (yet) popular
but at least PV is

Clarke's proposal is only marginally softer than May's proposed deal (as in the PD). In 2016 it would have been considered a "hard Brexit". I don't really understand what the appeal is.

BCF

Its why i have always been against the WA, a blind brexit and loss of sovereignty... as you say scary times and few seem to care.

His CU is indeed similar to May's deal, as I've been saying
Maybe more popular simply because it doesn't come from Maybot, but from Cuddly Ken

Can someone explain (using small words if possible) how the WA/backstop reduces sovereignty?

As I understand it:

• as it stands, we can walk away from EU with no deal, which trashes an international treaty (the GFA), and thus UK becomes an international pariah
• if we adopt the WA then decide to walk away we can ignore the conditions of the backstop, which trashes an international treaty and the UK becomes an international pariah

In either case, we can still simply walk away. And in both cases the consequences are the same. What am I missing?

What happens to the Service Sector? Nobody seems to be talking about it.

Don't understand a CU - Kens or Labours, isn't that what Turkey has? yet huge queues into the EU at the land border, surely regulatory alignment is required too and if you ve that, might as well stay in.

I think the DUP have cottoned onto that any brexit could lead to a poll and no Ulster! (& no DUP)

Largely agree with the point you make about TM needing to prove that Leave meant Leave, Cordelia

Article on how the DUP voted lasted night. If there is anyone on the planet Mumsnet who can interpret their tactics I'd love to understand.

www.google.ie/amp/s/amp.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/how-dup-voted-as-brexit-alternatives-rejected-one-mp-goes-on-solo-run-37958643.html

Customs Union also takes away the ability to sign off goods trade deals - but there again, public sector services like the NHS might still be fair game for the disgraced werrity sniffer former defence secretary's US friends so who cares?

jas The problems are inherent in Brexit and A50, not this particular WA

Any form of Brexit would require a WA that handles the same issues and would have ended up the same -
because the EU wants those issues of actually leaving to be settled that way, whatever else happens

(One exception: there would have been better expat rights without the FOM red line)

These WA issues can be made binding, because they deal with the past, the present and the backstop

It's not possible to make the form of a future relationship binding when it involves years of negotiation, to be carried out probably by different people to those negotiating the actual exit.

Hence Brexit was always going to be a leap in the dark

Goods are covered but not services.

No free movement of people, services or capital under a CU. Goods only. Customs union would prevent us having other trade deals.

So much hangs on whether Corbyn continues to obstruct a PV

How is voting for a PV obstructing it, you really need to explain that to me

CordeliaEarhart i believe, during the WA transition period we are paying in, taking rules, existing and new, with zero say.

The transition period could last many years, after the first 2 years, we'll have (potentially) a different party in Govt...... and a new negotiating "plan" brexit is likely to be never ending.

As in the report I posted, the EU planned several months ahead of the referendum -
decided what they needed to get and the unity required to do so.
The WA contains their requirement list

Even if Cameron had made a plan, the UK was always in a very weak position, with a 2-year deadline to avoid crashing out with far worse damage than the EU faces.

I imagine it depends on how utterly fed up of TM and the WA people are. And as BJ and JRM et al will follow the DUP, who won't agree the backstop, so won't agree the WA, what is their long game in all of this, still no deal / disaster capitalist bonus time?

Just hypothesising, but I think the DUP of 2019 are no longer the same DUP of 2017. Obviously no one has come or gone, but the political landscape they came from has changed beyond all recognition ... and not in a good way.

They may have thought it would be a jolly wheeze to support TM and hammer Brexit through. But (and since there's never enough irony in life) they managed to spectacularly misread the English political mood. Which at times did appear to take the form of a "who can shit the most on Northern Ireland" competition (for which you would hope the prize was not a cup ). Which inevitably stoked a backlash rather than backstop in Northern Ireland of unification looking more appealing by the day.

I think now the DUP feel they are fighting for their very existence. Boo fucking hoo. They are also aware that pretty much any outcome - even revoke - has made a unified Ireland a much closer possibility.

I get most of my ideas from alcohol reading a lot, so am happy to be corrected where wrong ....

focal, did they not just voted with the majority of the tories on each issue and abstained on the ones where there was significant spilt within the tory party? They still want to continue with the confidence and supply arrangement.

I gather Clarke's CU would need to copy over all the SM trade regs,
so very similar to the all-UK backstop

Even so, that wouldn't produce totally frictionless trade.
Only the SM itself can do that

Hence the need for the backstop with this CU too

Also, of course our trade will still be damaged to some extent