Westminstenders: Charge!!!!

[RedToothBrush]

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

mistigri
Corbyn is more like horseradish.
Looks pretty from a distance but impossible to eradicate, never grows particularly well and takes the back of your head off if you actually eat it fresh.

Or maybe a globe artichoke
all leaf and sod all edible parts
takes up loads of space for three small meals a year

Louise are you suggesting a GNU could garner enough Tory votes to counteract "pro-Corbyn element" plus "wouldn't block no-Deal" element of PLP? I really don't see where your anti-Corbyn, anti-Boris majority is coming from?

As some wag pointed out, it's all about positioning ....

Also, from a similar source who seems annoyed Corbyn is portrayed as not trying for Remain ....

" try to try to seize control of parliamentary business and pass legislation to prevent no deal,"

That is very risky, because BJ & the No Dealers ignore the normal constraints on govt behaviour:

a) He could just ignore any motion requiring an extension and / or a GE on a particular day, or whatever else MPs pass

Only the PM can perform these actions and there seems no effective punishment for ignoring motions, especially if MPs wait until the last couple of weeks, so he only has to stonewall that long

b) He could ask for an extension, but make it known through back channels that the UK would then try to wreck all EU business from the inside

In fact, the EU would assume that is what a Tory govt would do, even if there were no threats

It would be the perfect solution for BJ:^
it gets him out of the No Deal hole for a while
and lets him regain BXP voters by hitting the EU

The risks of a VoNC need to be balanced against the certainty of No Deal if MPs keep dithering until time runs out

I suspect what we are seeing is the main parties all trying to push the blame for No Deal onto someone else,
while not actually doing anything themselves to stop it

Even if Corbyn comes out explicitly No Deal he still favours some form of Brexit.

To which of course, he will fall back on the argument that it's the will of the people. His form of Brexit is just as valid as May's or Rees-Moggs, or 17 million others. No one was asked what form of Brexit.

I cannot wait for the "silly season" to be over.
So much speculation and guessing and hot air.
So little actual concrete decision making.
increasingly resigned to the fact that the twonks in Westminster will not be willing / able to avert Hard Brexit

The risks of a VoNC need to be balanced against the certainty of No Deal if MPs keep dithering until time runs out

Not while there are other options.

There are no-deal risks to not calling a VONC but also no-deal risks in calling one.

IMO - the GNU is a unicorn in disguise at the moment. The numbers aren't there. It's also a convenient way to set remainer against remainer. OTOH with backs up against the wall in October, things could look a bit different and compromise might be easier.

I dont know if this is the right place to ask this but its the top thread in the Brexit section.

If Labour/Libdem etc are genuinely trying to stop a 'no deal' Brexit, then why is no one suggesting that a solution would be to get MPs to support the 'Withdrawal Agreement'.

Surly with their support it would have enough votes to pass into law and 'no deal' would become impossible.

Hello newstart1337

My sense is, the WA was so universally unpopular with voters and our representative politicians, it would be almost impossible to bring back. Although pragmatically, passing it, at this point, could literally save lives.

I just don't know.......

it would be almost impossible to bring back
I understand the conservatives could probably never bring it back. But if Labour/Libdem/SNP all said they would now support it, then it could easily get passed. The deal itself seemed as soft a Brexit as it would be possible to get.

I just dont like this pretence that its all about stopping 'no deal'. If MPs wont accept a deal then its all about stopping ANY Brexit.

WA was the divorce agreement not a deal as such. The terms of it could be extended for a few years if requested. MPs hated it for a variety of reasons but all media picked up on was the backstop.

I realise the WA was not the full future deal but passing it would stop 'no deal'. Most people say they are just opposing 'no deal', but MPs never suggest supporting the WA now, which would stop a no deal Brexit and seems much more sensible than a gamble on VOCN + GNU + GE ...

The WA was the start of a ten year deal process
that was too painful for the Brexiters
so they found the excuse to reject it

The WA was predicated on the aim of leaving the CU and SM
that was too painful for the Remainers

so it was dead in the water
and we are now surrounded by circling fins

The WA did not require leaving the SM or CU, because the future framework in the PD was legally non-binding
A future govt could choose to switch to a Norway+++--type Brexit if they chose

What was fixed in the WA was no NI border - with a backstop as the insurance policy in case the govt did choose a future relationship outside the SM

The WA is not a deal but principally a list of the 700 or so legal treaties joining the UK with the EU. It defines what will happen to each of these treaties at the point of departure. This is basically the 'rules of the game'.
The PD, which can be altered, defines which of the 700 treaties will be 'scrapped' by the UK leaving. If all 700 go then it would be a 'hard' Brexit, with the results pretty similar to No Deal. Once the WA (rules) are established, which should have been done in Novermber last year or actually a couple of years ago, the PD and the chioce of which legislation will be changed could have been negotiated. The WA is of course very complicated and wide reaching and it appears that the HoC do not understand it properly and that it is only the first step in a very long process. Had the WA been passed then the UK would have had a 2 year, or probably more, transition period to thrash out exactly what the UK wants.
The 'crash out' as proposed by Boris and chums effectively rips up all these treaties at the stroke of midnight (EU time) on 31 Oct. The EU have stated that they will not conduct any meaningful negotiations until the WA is signed and will expect it to be signed sometime in the future, the contents (all the legislation) is not changing. The UK NEEDS to conduct negotiations with the EU, it is not an option but unfortunately Boris and far too many others fail to understand this.
The 'degree of departure' perhaps keeping some aspects is all within the bounds of the WA, so can be a total departure or minimal, but it has to be negotiated.

"with backs up against the wall in October, things could look a bit different"

That has been the problem all along:

Remainers keep thinking that if they hold out to the end, then enough MPs will blink at the last moment.

Unfortunately, most MPs are not very knowledgeable, competent or brave
and many have decided that No Deal is the least bad option for their party and their own career

From their positions of privilege, they just don't dread No Deal like we do.

And of course, this govt may simply ignore / circumvent any motions requiring them to stop No Deal
Especially if these motions happen only a week or so before Brexit

The WA did not require leaving the SM or CU, because the future framework in the PD was legally non-binding A future govt could choose to switch to a Norway+++--type Brexit if they chose

Such a shame that Stephen Kinnock is not a more persuasive/favoured politician, this is or was his project, I think....

That sounds relatively ideal, BigChoc.

Mea culpa; the toxicity of the political atmosphere here, and my distrust of the then tories and brexiters inflicting the 'brexit' with such gratuitous aggression, constitutional vandalism and racism, made me distrust their insistence on passing the WA.

From where we are now, I see that would have been a wiser choice and you argued that then.

I still wonder about the integrity of so many of the big/funded players, on both sides, in this whole thing........

Totally behind with the thread as I've been celebrating my birthday this week...

Great article here by the FT: "Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and lessons from the 1930's. When is it right to sound the alarm about political turmoil?"

www.ft.com/content/44f96050-ac56-11e9-8030-530adfa879c2

The E27 have agreed that the 3 main terms of the WA - backstop, exit bill, citizens rights - will be preconditions the Uk would have to sign, before post-Brexit trade talks could even begin.

However, the WA itself as a legal document would no longer be applicable, because some terms cannot apply to a non-member

e.g. the UK won't be able to have the same kind of transition period in which it retains all EU benefits except voting

One crucial difference to the A50 process is that after Brexit, any EU member can veto a trade agreement with the UK,
whereas during A50, the decisions are by QMV (although in practice the E27 was always able to came to unanimous decisions)

Happy Birthday, Mojo !
💐 🎂

MPs refusing to support the WA were reflecting their constituents views, it was seen as a sell out by both sides and rightly so.

An arrangement that potentially left us in the institutions of the EU, paying in and zero say, would the govt have even stuck by its agreement? hardly likely.

Talks led by the ERG/far right of the Tory party, what would that have given us?

I still do not believe BJ will take us out on ND, he might not care about any of us but he cares about being re-elected and another 5 years of tory govt with him as PM, nothing corrupts quite like power.

I think BJ will take us out with no deal and when it all goes to shit he will blame the EU and Remainers and his many supporters will believe him.

*That has been the problem all along:

Remainers keep thinking that if they hold out to the end, then enough MPs will blink at the last moment.*

That's not what I am saying ....

There are other routes with a better chance of success that need to be attempted.

Let's not forget that if Corbyn had whipped Labour MPs to support the Cherry amendment we would not be here. People do not trust him on Brexit.