Brexit discussion thread XI (Please read OP before posting)

prawnsambo wrote: »

You're missing the point. Corbyn is untrustworthy on the subject of brexit. Until he proves trustworthy, nobody should be nominating him for caretaker PM. Swinson is just articulating that point of view. I find it quite a reasonable one. For all the reasons I have listed. And Swinson is not putting herself forward for the job. What's wrong with that?

And you are both missing my point and providing an example of my point.

I wrote about Swinson - the woman who promised if her party gets a majority she will revoke Article 50 clearly targeting the 48% Remainers so don't be telling me she isn't ultimately after the Top Job and won't be campaigning to get that job when the GE is called- and you wrote about why Corbyn is unsuitable.

Why does Swinson get a free pass?

Corbyn, following a slow, painful, meandering process, in his own head, has settled on negotiating a soft Brexit and putting that and Remain, in a Ref.
Maybe she wants for him to be more prescriptive, but that would seem to ba s good as she might get.
The Lib Dems can, at all times go into a GE having a clear policy of Remain.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

I never said Corbyn should not be examined.

But so should Swinson.

She is putting herself front and centre and drawing her own red lines - but we shouldn't look at her record because she is anti- Brexit?? Her policies shouldn't be scrutinised because she is anti-Brexit??

We should ignore her voting record? Which shows her to have a supported the Tories consistently.

I, personally, think that is naive.

No one who aspires to be Prime Minister and set the agenda for a country - one we share a (potentially fractious) border with - should go unexamined. No matter who they are.

And by examined I mean a look at them - not a but whatabout this other party leader over there, which is what has been happening.

You're missing the point. Corbyn is untrustworthy on the subject of brexit. Until he proves trustworthy, nobody should be nominating him for caretaker PM. Swinson is just articulating that point of view. I find it quite a reasonable one. For all the reasons I have listed. And Swinson is not putting herself forward for the job. What's wrong with that?

prawnsambo wrote: »

People are examining Corbyn because his stance on brexit (and let's not forget that that's what this is about) is about as clear as mud. He's been fence-sitting, holding simultaneously contrary positions and generally refusing to commit to anything right from the very beginning. But somehow, a new leader of the LibDems who's been unequivocally against brexit requires examination?

I never said Corbyn should not be examined.

But so should Swinson.

She is putting herself front and centre and drawing her own red lines - but we shouldn't look at her record because she is anti- Brexit?? Her policies shouldn't be scrutinised because she is anti-Brexit??

We should ignore her voting record? Which shows her to have a supported the Tories consistently.

I, personally, think that is naive.

No one who aspires to be Prime Minister and set the agenda for a country - one we share a (potentially fractious) border with - should go unexamined. No matter who they are.

And by examined I mean a look at them - not a but whatabout this other party leader over there, which is what has been happening.

Thargor

Interesting thread:

https://twitter.com/nicktolhurst/status/1176839648406122497

Can you just imagine the complete and utter sh1tstorm that would be raging over this if it was Jeremy Corbyn or Ed Milliband?

Really don't care which decision the UK would make but hope the opposition can get it to a choice between a soft Brexit and Art 50 repeal.

PeadarCo wrote: »

Just to add to this his stance on Brexit is pretty much in line with both May's and Johnsons before reality hit when they tried to bargain with the EU. May especially tried to strandle both sides of the argument instead of being honest about the compromises involved. The only reason I'd argue Corbyn has got away with it is because he is not PM. Would we be in any different of a situation if he was PM?

Personally I would be frustrated with Corbyn because he has learnt nothing and failed to hold the Conservatives to account from day 1. He could have been honest with the trade offs required and challenged the fantasys put forward by various UK politicians. But no he let them away with it and worked with the Tory government to send the message out that trade offs were not required when dealing with the EU. One of the issues in the UK is that I'd argue people are beginning to realise they were lied to and are very angry. This is something Corbyn is directly responsible for in conjunction with the Tory Party. He failed to oppose them because he appears to agree with their overall policy. He was supposed to be leader of the opposition and didn't do his job on the biggest issue for the UK since WW2

The Lib Dems policy while definitely being very much on one end of the Brexit debate is at least coherent.

Yeah. The continued pretence that there's some sort of good or 'jobs first' brexit out there that could only be grasped by a Labour government is just more fantasy built on the original lies of the leave campaign. But the real problem has been the perceived duplicity. I've lost count of the number of times it's looked like there's been a commitment to one specific approach or another, only for it to be denied, contradicted or watered down by the leadership. I just wouldn't trust the Labour party on brexit if I was a remain voter. Because I've never heard Corbyn once say that brexit is a bad idea.

Professor Moriarty

Water John wrote: »

Johnson attacking the Judiciary!!! He's suggesting that they might be better being appointed by politicians, like the US.
Has this guy lost the plot too or has Cummings been left to totally decide the play book?

That was Cox's suggestion during the week, Johnson just following the playbook. Masks are slipping.

Johnson attacking the Judiciary!!! He's suggesting that they might be better being appointed by politicians, like the US.
Has this guy lost the plot too or has Cummings been left to totally decide the play book?

Strazdas

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

The Mail capitalised letters to actual evidence ratio goes into overdrive with an alleged investigation into the Benn Act:

https://twitter.com/MoS_Politics/status/1178047071519215616

Total paranoia and they're using the "surrender" terminology.

Is Cummings writing their headlines for them?

PeadarCo

prawnsambo wrote:

People are examining Corbyn because his stance on brexit (and let's not forget that that's what this is about) is about as clear as mud. He's been fence-sitting, holding simultaneously contrary positions and generally refusing to commit to anything right from the very beginning. But somehow, a new leader of the LibDems who's been unequivocally against brexit requires examination?

Just to add to this his stance on Brexit is pretty much in line with both May's and Johnsons before reality hit when they tried to bargain with the EU. May especially tried to strandle both sides of the argument instead of being honest about the compromises involved. The only reason I'd argue Corbyn has got away with it is because he is not PM. Would we be in any different of a situation if he was PM?

Personally I would be frustrated with Corbyn because he has learnt nothing and failed to hold the Conservatives to account from day 1. He could have been honest with the trade offs required and challenged the fantasys put forward by various UK politicians. But no he let them away with it and worked with the Tory government to send the message out that trade offs were not required when dealing with the EU. One of the issues in the UK is that I'd argue people are beginning to realise they were lied to and are very angry. This is something Corbyn is directly responsible for in conjunction with the Tory Party. He failed to oppose them because he appears to agree with their overall policy. He was supposed to be leader of the opposition and didn't do his job on the biggest issue for the UK since WW2

The Lib Dems policy while definitely being very much on one end of the Brexit debate is at least coherent.

An Ciarraioch

The Mail capitalised letters to actual evidence ratio goes into overdrive with an alleged investigation into the Benn Act:

https://twitter.com/MoS_Politics/status/1178047071519215616

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Again, I don't disagree.

What I find perplexing is how Boris is, imho, rightly pilloried for playing silly b*ggers.

Corbyn is condemned for either doing nothing or playing silly b*ggers (often both of them at the same time).

But mention that Swinson seems to be playing her own version of silly b*ggers and the response is so often "well Corbyn...".

No, let's not talk about Corbyn - let's take a good look at Swinson. Let's examine this tail that seeks to wag the dog.

People are examining Corbyn because his stance on brexit (and let's not forget that that's what this is about) is about as clear as mud. He's been fence-sitting, holding simultaneously contrary positions and generally refusing to commit to anything right from the very beginning. But somehow, a new leader of the LibDems who's been unequivocally against brexit requires examination?

reslfj

NotToScale wrote: »

....
That and Ireland's an integral part of not just the EU, but the Eurozone. So anything that might push Ireland's economy to the brink could also cause a Eurozone crisis, so that's a rather serious concentrator of minds too.
....

The size of the Irish economy is fairly insignificant compared to the totalEurozone economy or indeed the EU27 economy.

Ireland has a smaller population than Greater Düsseldorf (Regierungsbezirk Düsseldorf) and its population is just under 1/17 of Germany's.

Ireland has a competitive business sector now. It will need to seek new markets and new transport routes from/to the continental EU27. But Ireland and a 'No Deal' Brexit are in itself unlikely to shake the EU27 or the Euro.

A 'No Deal' will be unpleasant for the EU27, but it will be extremely bad for the English industry incl auto and for UK farm+fish, where EU27 tariffs will stop or severely limit its export business.

Lars

Capt'n Midnight

Professor Genius wrote: »

Why not just join the LibDems?

And do Arlene did when she moved from the UUP ended up as leader of the DUP ?

PeadarCo wrote: »

To be honest I don't think they can decide who is an acceptable PM as you say they don't have the numbers. You still need the rebel Tories and it's very unlikely they will vote for Corbyn full stop. The Conservatives are still the largest party. And personally I don't see how having another Brexiter as PM stops a no deal. Corbyn won't get a better withdrawal deal. As Leroy42 has already said Corbyn is still at the stage of having all the benefits with none of costs stage of EU membership. Absolute fantasy land. And grand Corbyn becomes PM and in a matter of weeks as we have same situation. Will Corbyn react any better than Johnson? or is it just a case of rinse and repeat of the last few weeks(ideally minus the court cases) instead this time its the Labour Party splitting instead of the Conservatives. Remember the EU doesn't really care who is the UK PM. And to a large degree it's none of the EUs business, it's a matter for the UK.

Are they playing party politics yes I'd agree. Would making Corbyn PM stop a no deal Brexit in the long run I'd doubt it. One of appeals of Corbyn is his ideological purity and refusal to compromise. Traits that will have to be dispensed with in any negotiations with the EU.

Again, I don't disagree.

What I find perplexing is how Boris is, imho, rightly pilloried for playing silly b*ggers.

Corbyn is condemned for either doing nothing or playing silly b*ggers (often both of them at the same time).

But mention that Swinson seems to be playing her own version of silly b*ggers and the response is so often "well Corbyn...".

No, let's not talk about Corbyn - let's take a good look at Swinson. Let's examine this tail that seeks to wag the dog.

PeadarCo

Bannasidhe wrote:

They will do 'anything' to stop No Deal - as long as 'anything' suits their agenda. Boris could be out on Monday and No Deal absolutely stopped if they stopped playing silly b*ggers. Instead they are prolonging the whole thing until they get their own way. This is a party with 18 seats - 6 of whom are defectors from other parties - looking to 'decide' who is acceptable as a caretaker PM.

To be honest I don't think they can decide who is an acceptable PM as you say they don't have the numbers. You still need the rebel Tories and it's very unlikely they will vote for Corbyn full stop. The Conservatives are still the largest party. And personally I don't see how having another Brexiter as PM stops a no deal. Corbyn won't get a better withdrawal deal. As Leroy42 has already said Corbyn is still at the stage of having all the benefits with none of costs stage of EU membership. Absolute fantasy land. And grand Corbyn becomes PM and in a matter of weeks as we have same situation. Will Corbyn react any better than Johnson? or is it just a case of rinse and repeat of the last few weeks(ideally minus the court cases) instead this time its the Labour Party splitting instead of the Conservatives. Remember the EU doesn't really care who is the UK PM. And to a large degree it's none of the EUs business, it's a matter for the UK.

Are they playing party politics yes I'd agree. Would making Corbyn PM stop a no deal Brexit in the long run I'd doubt it. One of appeals of Corbyn is his ideological purity and refusal to compromise. Traits that will have to be dispensed with in any negotiations with the EU.

Tell me how

This is an old tweet from Femi but was retweeted again earlier today. I don't think it was discussed here previously but maybe it was. It's a long video but is worth watching to hear someone from one of the deprived areas say it rather than a journalist or academic with no connection to the town.

https://twitter.com/Femi_Sorry/status/1152656027730554883

What I found very interesting in this is the part where he talks about 5 or 6 other Sunderland's in the UK, and 5 or 6 Sunderland's in France or Germany or wherever leading to populism.

There are three things I thought about when I saw this retweeted earlier.

One, he is absolutely correct, we saw it in the US as well with a swing towards Trump fueled by disassociated cities and regions. And all countries, including Ireland would do well to remember it. A lot of what was said in the video could just as easily have been someone from Limerick talking about Dublin and the Dublin focused media/politicians we both complain about and say it doesn't exist. We saw a hint of it in recent conversations around Peter Casey.

Two, it is the EU which promotes the support for smaller regions. This is, evidenced by the regional development funds which many countries including Ireland have greatly benefited from and again, the way they have supported Ireland's position throughout the Brexit conversation.

Three, Even given how knowledgeable Femi is on Brexit and the motivations of significant players in it, he said himself in the tweet that it took that conversation with Steven to understand just where the vote came from.

Up to now, Lb wanted to hold off on a VONC for 2 reasons. They mightn't win it and they also want to make Johnson PM to own the Extension, he'll be forces to apply for, thus splitting the Brexit vote.

Strazdas

Leroy42 wrote: »

A detailed plan wasn't done because that would have required research and confronting reality. The EUs position, and thus the UKs options, have been known since pretty much Day 1 after the vote.

But TM wouldn't, couldn't, face reality as to do so would have jeopardized her government.

So they ignored reality and simply created their own version based on a misguided view that the UK had all the power.

The failure is not because they lacked a detailed plan, which they did, but they didn't even have a starting and ending position based in reality.

Remember Chequers? That was supposed to be the reset, to finally put the UK on a firm position and hammer out the tough issues. It was a fudge, a complete and utter disaster which amounted to nothing.

Nobody in the UK can admit Brexit was a utterly moronic proposition voted for by the dimmest section of the electorate.

The basic idea of 'leaving the EU' was drawn up by populists (Farage etc) on the back of a cigarette packet. It's to Cameron's eternal shame that he held a referendum on something without even having a clue if it could be implemented successfully.

PeadarCo wrote: »

The problem is that Corbyn is just as divisive as Johnson. Which says a lot about Corbyn. Labour would be in a far better situation in a general election if their leader wasn't as extreme. However currently both Labour and Tory members value ideological purity above competence which naturally involves compromise. If Lib Dems are trying to appeal to middle of road voters backing either 2 of the extremes doesn't make sense. What the UK needs I'd argue is to see both extremes defeated at the ballot box in the long run anyway. Now obviously that is difficult given FPTP.

Corbyn won't be able to get a better deal at least in terms of the withdrawal agreement. The actual long term trade agreement is different. Given that Labour don't have a defined position what's the point of making him PM when he doesn't have an opinion on the one decision he has to make.

I am not disagreeing with that but none of that addresses the point I made, which you quoted, that the LibDems are paying dirty pool.

They are looking to ignore long established conventions of the HoC to suit their political agenda. That is exactly what Boris is doing.
The LibDems are in no position to take the high moral ground - which they attempt to do - while trying to commit the same 'offences' themselves.

They will do 'anything' to stop No Deal - as long as 'anything' suits their agenda. Boris could be out on Monday and No Deal absolutely stopped if they stopped playing silly b*ggers. Instead they are prolonging the whole thing until they get their own way. This is a party with 18 seats - 6 of whom are defectors from other parties - looking to 'decide' who is acceptable as a caretaker PM.

It had nothing to do with the Labour Party. This is the LibDems playing party politics 'worthy' of the Tories.

A Shropshire Lad

It takes a special kind of arrogance to talk endlessly about 'taking back control' of lawmaking from EU to UK courts, and then to question the unanamous ruling of the UK's Supreme Court.

NotToScale

I can't see how this is going to be even anywhere near resolved by Halloween. They're all off playing party politics.
It's basically going to come down to whether the EU is willing and able to provide another extension or not. At this stage, politically it's going to be a hard call and I think we're overestimating how much attention is being paid to this domestically in most countries. Ireland's quite unique in the sense that we're both very close to the UK physically and also are watching UK media in a huge way, so our window on what's going on is quite different to what most people are looking at.

If you're watching this from the continent, it's a lot more distant. I mean what does your average Irish person know about EU-Swiss issues? They're a bigger issue in France, particularly in the regions close to the border, but that's about as much attention as Brexit seemed to be getting on most of the news programming I've flicked past from France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain etc.

I also think that the UK media and commentary is failing to see that from a continental perspective, Johnson is very much in the category of far-right populist leader, much like Marine Le Pen or similar and that is not going to be pandered to, as it has enormous domestic implications in countries that have issues with far right movements.

The British media has a tendency not to see things from that perspective, rather seeing Johnson as some kind of eccentric chap who's a bit of a laugh.

I've heard people comparing the UK situation to Yugoslavia in the 1990s and I've also seen a huge shift in the understanding of where Ireland's position is. While there's a lot of awareness of Ireland in say France, in the past I have found that there was an assumption that we must be like the UK, in the way that you might assume Austria's very similar to Germany or Belgium to France or NL. However, that has changed and I've encountered a lot of "Oh... now we know why you couldn't get on with them!" and comparisons to the Russia - Ukraine situation and so on. Quite a lot of smaller countries also have histories with large bullying neighbours, so there's a lot of sympathy for the situation.

That and Ireland's an integral part of not just the EU, but the Eurozone. So anything that might push Ireland's economy to the brink could also cause a Eurozone crisis, so that's a rather serious concentrator of minds too. There's a lot more solidarity both because of just neighbourliness but also deep practical concerns. Tories making idle threats to Ireland are actually threatening the Eurozone and EU - they seem to fail to realise that as they're so used to bullying the 'home nations'.

There's only so much more of this chaos can be tolerated. It's dragging on and it's causing a lot of uncertainty and unnecessary risk. Someone's going eventually attempt to call the UK's bluff on this and if it's not a bluff, well they'll go over the cliff. It can't just go on forever.

Rjd2

CelticRambler wrote: »

Probably. That might be why he's decided to follow in his footsteps!

I suspect your comment was intended to be sarcastic; if so, it's based on an out-of-date prejudice. Macron has seen his popularity surge after his feck-off attitude to the Gilets Jaunes.

Fair enough, properly looked now and numbers are better for sure.

I remember they were poor for a while, but obviously things looking up.

He'd be better of joining the Lib Dems, even though he is a soft leaver I think Swinson would welcome him on board.

Professor Moriarty

prawnsambo wrote: »

Is somebody going to tell him that the UK doesn't have a president? And is somebody going to tell the Queen that Rory is now after her job (assuming he can't get the presidency thing off the ground)?

Stewart's solution to the Brexit division is to set up a Citizens' Assembly ala Ireland's Citizens' Assembly. Noble but impractical.

CelticRambler

Rjd2 wrote: »

Is he aware how popular Macron is right now in France?

Probably. That might be why he's decided to follow in his footsteps!

I suspect your comment was intended to be sarcastic; if so, it's based on an out-of-date prejudice. Macron has seen his popularity surge after his feck-off attitude to the Gilets Jaunes.