Brexit discussion thread VIII (Please read OP before posting)

36% of British respondents would want NI to vote to remain in the UK, 19% would prefer a united Ireland, 36% are indifferent, and the remaining 9% don't know. 75% have never been to the North, while 61% have never visited the Republic.

https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/most-britons-would-not-mind-if-northern-ireland-left-uk-poll-finds

Enzokk wrote: »

It is always interesting to see the what is being said in the mornings. JRM is making a fool of himself by failing to backtrack on the tweet where he mentioned the AfD in a positive way. He backtracked a little by saying he agrees with the opinion they have on the EU but not their policies but this morning he seems to not have expanded on this and cannot name any policies he disagrees with from the far right party.

https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/1113345724262047744

On May's plan, I think we are going to be talking about the trap for a while as it plays out.

https://twitter.com/peterwalker99/status/1113339530772348928

Steve Barclay was on radio this morning and said they want to test whether Corbyn actually wants to leave the EU and that a second referendum as a condition would be very difficult. The comment is that it sounds like a red line.

I heard the JRM interview live and when it was put to him about the AFD he get pure thick with the interviewer. He said the BBC and the show he was on in particular were biased to the left which the same point was made by the MP from Dover on five live who said there was a anti semitism problem in the Labour party(and there is an issue to answer there), but you have an MP for the Conservative party in JRM unable to condemn the comments he retweeted and instead got angry and cried Bias. The phrase those in glass houses comes to mind. The UK is a mess and brand UK is damaged.

Joining forces with the DUP was her biggest mistake.

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

I dunno, he peers out from under those glasses in such a way that makes me think he's a difficult fecker when he wants to be. People are very quick to diminish someone who hung around as a pariah within his own party for 30 years before seizing control of it against the wishes of its parliamentary party and facing down two vociferous challenges to his leadership. He then placed his long held policy desires onto a manifesto, campaigned against the odds, and garnered 40% of the vote when he was polling as low as 25% ahead of the election.

Whether you love or loathe his policies, it is surely objectively obvious that he's a political cockroach at the very least.

I wonder how many people voted for Labour as a response to TM calling a needless election because of her arrogance in assuming that she would get an increased majority. I think that Labour's vote was, in part, a protest vote against TM rather than a positive vote for Corbyn. Most observers believed that Labour had no hope of winning and therefore it was safe enough to vote for them just to send a message to TM.

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

Joining forces with the DUP was her biggest mistake.

Calling a snap election because of ego was her biggest mistake. Having to rely on the DUP was a consequence of that biggest mistake.

Roger_007 wrote: »

I wonder how many people voted for Labour as a response to TM calling a needless election because of her arrogance in assuming that she would get an increased majority. I think that Labour's vote was, in part, a protest vote against TM rather than a positive vote for Corbyn. Most observers believed that Labour had no hope of winning and therefore it was safe enough to vote for them just to send a message to TM.

Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Going back to the campaign itself, it was clear to me that the hard sell to the British public of Corbyn as a dangerous dribbling buffoon backfired when he actually got front and centre on the campaign trail. He performed exceptionally well in the set piece televised pieces in the two weeks before the vote for example.

It has been said on this thread before many times, but the Overton window in British politics has changed. That means Brexit is a thing. It also means #forthemanynotthefew garnered %40 of the vote, up there with Blairism in its pomp. We need to start facing up to that reality, on both Brexit and social politics. People *are* voting differently. It cannot all be dismissed as a protest vote of different hues each time.

EKRIUQ wrote: »

I think they did know exactly what it meant, it was clearly stated on the ballot paper "Leave the European Union".

Norway, Switzerland and others are not in the EU, so going with their type of deals meet the ref.

The problem is that many in the government, including TM, have decided that their version of what leave means is the one and only version and anybody that disagrees is a remoaner and a lover of the EU and thus by extension a hater of the UK.

The more pragmatic approach would have been to enter into talks with no red lines, see what the possibilities were. TBF, Barnier presented the slide right from the start.

TM should have taken that slide and gone around the country with it asking people what precise form of Brexit did they want, from the available options. Instead the UK simply ignored the options and decided that they were so important that the EU would simply tear up the rule books just for them.

I has said many times, in a vacuum this would probably have worked, clearly the EU would like to keep the UK as close as possible. But the EU need to take account of the remaining members and all those countries that currently have deals with them, and then by extension the countries that may decide to trade with the UK rather than directly with the EU.

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Calling a snap election because of ego was her biggest mistake. Having to rely on the DUP was a consequence of that biggest mistake.

Not sure that is true. She was on a relatively slim majority (of course it looks practically epic based on what she ended up with!) and facing into some tough years of negotiation where she needed the majority of her party behind her.

SHe knew she was going to never get them all on board so needed as big a majority as possible and the polls suggested that she was massively popular and in contrast Labour and JC were not and were too busy fighting each other than an election.

Remember that JC was massively disliked by his own MP's.

Of course it all ended terribly and she proved to be a complete liability on the campaign but the underlying reasons made perfect sense.

The longer this debacle continues the greater the chance of a second referendum in my opinion.

Mr.Wemmick wrote: »

There are honest, high standard farmers and meat producers in every country, UK included, and I do not think we should lose the run of ourselves and think all UK meat will be bad.

But isn't that the point? We will have no way of knowing if the meat we are getting is from an honest high standard UK farmer or not if there aren't proper rules and checks on those rules.

Leroy42 wrote: »

That was the first, and probably most important, battle of Brexit between the UK and the EU. Before triggering A50, the UK had the advantage. They could trigger it whenever they liked, work behind the scenes to set the agenda etc.

Whilst TM did fail to stand up against the forces clamouring for it to be triggered, the question needs to be asked of those that were calling for it. The like of Johnson, Davis, the ERG all were demanding no delay. It now looks like a monumental error as it handed the initiative completely to the EU (it was always going to be the case but the UK could have prepared better).

The headlines and support around that time was fully in favour of the trigger. It is not as if TM just went out on her own.

Johnson et al were terrified that the rationale for Brexit would not stand up to any kind of due diligence so they were pushing for what they thought at the time was an irrevocable step towards leaving.

They didn't care about handing any initiative to the EU. They were still fighting the remainers at that stage.

What are the numbers looking like if Corbyn and May reach an agreement. Obviously we don't know if they'll reach an agreement on anything yet.

For a start I assume the SNP and Lib Dems will vote No because they are opposed to Brexit in any form and can't be seen to facilitate it.
DUP will vote No because the WA is still in play although the backstop may not be needed at all if Common Travel, customs union etc. are penciled back in.
Labour defectors that were voting for May's deal initially. Would they prefer a crash out to the a watered down WA?
ERG would rather a crash out too. Those that May had won over initially in the Tories may swing back to a crash out preference as they want fewer ties not more.

Is it too early to be speculating like this?

Mr.Wemmick wrote: »

Well, to be fair, the last scandal of substandard meat within the EU was in Ireland and Spain was it not? 2013/14, if I remember correctly.

There are honest, high standard farmers and meat producers in every country, UK included, and I do not think we should lose the run of ourselves and think all UK meat will be bad.

The standards are only as good as the checks. The Irish inspectors discovered the issue with the horsemeat which was missed everywhere else in Europe (including UK).

Ireland's reputation was enhanced in the last scandal which proves again that disasters happen, its how you handle them that matters.

Edit: By the way, the (horse)meat was not substandard. It just wasn't what it was described as.