kuro68k wrote: » The British government is going to take it right to the cliff edge and hope that someone else compromises. Of course they have their excuses already lined up if no-one does, only real question is who they will blame.
EdgeCase wrote: » I think you also have to remember in the French situation, the imperial period goes very heavily against their notions of being a very human rights and natural law based modern republic and it was quite contrary to the ideals of the revolution. There’s a sense of conscience about what the French empire was and why it’s not something to have pride in. So, after WWII they were able to distance the modern republic from what had gone before it. It gives them a sense of perspective that I don’t think the UK has. The British Empire, despite its grand scale fizzled out relatively unspectacularly with the country morphing into modernity in the mid 20th century. The EEC membership in 1974 economically represented a step away from the empire and into modernity as a post-war Northern European country. In some ways what happened in Britain with the empire has parallels with what happened in Spain with the end of their dictatorship, it just faded away without any political discussion about what it was or why it was such a deeply negative period. The Republic of Ireland is the only part of these islands that actually went through a clear, totally unambiguous political deimperialisation and in many ways has more in common with most of continental Europe as a result of that. I just think the British still have a very confused relationship with their own relatively recent history. There really isn’t any sense of “imperial” being a bad word in England and there’s lots of rather oddly misplaced pride in what that was in a way you really don’t see in France. It’s also often like people are taking pride in something that they don’t even understand. I find it’s often a very sanitised and filtered version of history. It would be a bit like if we pretended the whole era of institutional abuse never happened and only remembered the mid 20th century in Ireland through some kind of lovely green tinted lens that only saw the pleasant bits. I’m not saying that nobody in England is aware of their history but a large % most certainly don’t seem to be.
Kermit.de.frog wrote: » German Foreign Minister saying SM integrity is non negotiable. What that means is the NI situation must be 100% watertight and by extension, if no land border, checks must be firm between NI/UK to protect SM.
LuckyLloyd wrote: » Telegraph continues to push the 'withdraw the £39B and that will soften their cough' fallacy:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/11/12/theresa-may-running-options-deepening-brexit-mess/ It is right on one point: previous deadlines have been sailed through by May without any decisive course of action. I'm sure she'd love to do that this week if at all possible.
trellheim wrote: » One point I see bandied about is that you cannot bind Parliament ( the UK one). However, how does that relate to treaties and the like ? Surely it can bind itself to abide by treaties.
An Ciarraioch wrote: » Brown proposing that Scotland should be able to negotiate a separate treaty with the EU - the obvious problem being that if they're allowed such treatment then Catalonia, Corsica, Flanders etc will seek the same deal.
charlie14 wrote: » I imagine that if another independence referendum was allowed by Westminster and carried their would be no problem for the EU accepting a Scottish application for members, but they would not automatically be accepted solely on the fact that they were part of the previous acceptance of the then UK as a whole. Like any other country applying for membership they would have to pass the criteria for acceptance
EdgeCase wrote: » They'd have no requirement to be a republic. The Queen could easily remain as figure head of state. She's in that position in Canada, Australia, NZ etc all of which are totally independent of the UK. I'm not saying they shouldn't, rather they don't need to of they don't want to.
EdgeCase wrote: » They'd meet most of the criteria straight off but they'd have to establish a proper state first and also they could not just join with all the UK's existing or legacy opt outs. There's no cake-and-eat-it for Scotland either. The biggest challenge would likely be getting an independent economy running, establishing a temporary currency and then converging with the Euro.
judeboy101 wrote: » Actually, since a monarch can be removed by the HoP, those countries are technically not independent since they would have no say in their own head of state.
Kermit.de.frog wrote: » https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1061982443568332801 Confirmed....
EdgeCase wrote: » Now for the fun bit - actually getting it through cabinet and then past the DUP.
Sam Russell wrote: » Scotland would have a problem because they would have to campaign for independence based on the joining the EU based on the Euro, SM, CU, and possibly a republic, although that last part might not be a requirement. It would depend on when they got the vote.
Hurrache wrote: » They've also been told that Wednesday evening is the latest for a November summit, I doubt it's going to happen.
