According to many sources:
Labour is moving towards a compromise plan that would allow Theresa May's Brexit deal to pass but make clear that parliament “withholds support” until it has been put to a public vote, according to multiple party sources.
Three thoughts. First, the last shows just how fractured political briefing now is. Just because someone in a party says something does not mean it can be relied upon. Multiple sources are required.
Second, if this briefing is true then May gets her deal, after all. Her dogged persistence pays. And Labour is choosing to share the flak for it. Which means it, with the Tories, will share the post deal despair that will descend after we have left, which could drive politics in untold directions, but which will certainly drive Scotland and Northern Ireland out of the Union.
And third, what question will be put to the British people? Is it May's deal or Remain? I could live with that. Will No Deal still be required as an option? Will the ERG get their way on that? Or will it be a three way vote, which guarantees the May compromise wins without a majority? Might it even be a French style two stage vote? Pick between three the first weekend and then the best two the next weekend? There is sense in that.
This third point is serious. If the Brexit negotiations have been anything they have been evidence that failing to sequence negotiations correctly is disastrous. Unless Labour sorts out what vote it will get before doing a deal to let May have her way they will have fallen into the same trap and may well find they have guaranteed that the outcome is a No Deal v May's deal vote, which should not be on their supposed table.
Given precedent I strongly expect Labour will get things wrong.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Given the divided state of the country its inevitable that most of us won’t get exactly what we want. The issue is less ‘what do we want’ and more’ what can we accept’.
So the right form of vote is to list the real options – say crash-out, May, Norway and Remain – then ask voters to rank them. Counting would follow STV rules, first redistributing votes for the least-liked option – probably crash-out.
I would vote (1) Remain, (2) Norway and (3) May and I’d expect one of my top two to win.
Something that might be of interest here, is Arrows Impossibility Theorem. It states:
<>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem
I am aware of it….
David Flint says:
“I would vote (1) Remain, (2) Norway and (3) May and I’d expect one of my top two to win.”
I’d like to believe that ‘crash out’ would be least popular, but I’m not confident. Visceral objectors to ‘Remain’ (whom I think are mad, mistaken or bamboozled) coupled with those who would reject ‘Norway’ and ‘May’ as poorly constructed compromises offering no advantage could easily produce the perverse result of ‘crashing out’. The ‘We-told-you-what-we-wanted-last-time’, stubborn brigade would also swell that number.
Of the options on the table my own opinion is that ‘Remain’ is the only sane choice, because all the others are worse, and possibly far worse, than where we were…technically where we still are, apart from the past couple of years’ slippage and wastage.
I’m not confident a majority of UK voters have come to the same conclusion. And I’m pretty sure that very many just want the whole business finished with and are beyond caring what the outcome is. Arrrrrgh !
I hope that you will forgive this somewhat deaf response to the proposition you lay before us, but in this ‘train crash’ Brexit I wished urgently to draw attention to the matter, lest it was soon lost.
I have consistently argued against the immigration policy that is the core of Brexit. My criticism is not only one of principle, for Scotland certainly immigration is vital to the economy; but with equal force it is quite obvious that no British Government will actually ever carry out the immigration policy Brexiteers expect, or at least claim they expect and promote with wild, but deceptively devious optimism. It will not happen, and there is no prospect that it will ever happen – or even be attempted. The Brexit-voting public is simply being duped, on the grandest of scales. Why do I say this? Because the evidence that it will not happen is already before us.
It is certainly true that we should expect that immigration from the EU is already falling; the current state of Brexit negotiations; the rancorous nature of British politics over immigration; the ‘unwelcome’ sign the British Government have ostentatiously hung-up over the country; recent anecdotal commentary among British Businesses dependent on EU immigrants; and the media reports from EU countries like Poland (and others), reporting their nationals returning home, all point in the direction of reduced EU immigration to the UK is already underway. This proposition is, however now confirmed by the facts.
The Guardian, 28th February, 2019 reports that, according to the ONS, net migration from EU countries to the UK fell to 57,000 people in the year to September 2018, (the lowest figure since 2009 – and we may deduce that was a direct consequence of the Financial Crash). This was to be expected; but this information misses the much bigger point. There is a big, big catch for Brexiteers.
The problem for the anti-immigration Brexiteers is that, precisely as I have always believed, there is no intention to attempt to reduce total immigration; but simply to switch the supply of labour from EU to non-EU sources. We are leaving the EU for precisely nothing; or rather a nostalgic trip to nowhere. The evidence that this is already happening, before we have even left the EU is already there, in large quantities; quickly enough to begin to offset the fall in EU labour immigration to the UK. Once EU labour is dissuaded from coming, the onlyBrexit policy Britain has executed effectively; the British Government does not even require to do very much; it is like turning on a tap.
The ONS reports that migration to the UK from outside the EU, over the same periodto June, 2018 rose sharply, with a net addition of 261,000 migrants from the rest of the world, illustrating a steady growth in non-EU immigration over the past five years. We are not reducing immigration, we are simply switching the labour source for continued immigration, on the same scale exclusively to non-EU sources.
QED.
Agreed
There are going to be a lot of angry people who thought Brexit stopped all immigration….
They were always wrong, of course
But they were encouraged to think it
The Guardian reported that a lot of MPs are getting messages from their constituents saying ‘we should just leave; get on with it.’ I suspect those people have seen a few newscasts and read something in the Mail or Sun, given it three minutes thought (if we are lucky ) and then decided we should leave.
The people who told us: “the easiest ever negotiations, 75 million Turks will be able to live here, there will be dozen of trade deals to be signed in four weeks”, and so on, have been proven wrong. They now ask us to accept that WTO rules will be fine. Why should we believe them?
This is the time for Labour to show some leadership and say.’it would be irresponsible to leave without a deal. If we are going to face a loss equal to the financial crisis of 2008 ( Impact assessment 9% if no deal )which was certainly not the forecast of the leave campaign, we should, at least, ask people if that is really what they want.
At times I wonder if Rees-Mogg and the ERG really think no deal is as they say. They are intelligent men. If they don’t, what are they up to?
I saw reference yesterday to the fact that a “no deal” Brexit is illegal under international law. Does anyone know whether this would allow the UK to be sued by other governments, corporations, even the EU, for recompense for damage or losses?
Could make future trading arrangements tricky. Putting all UK overseas assets at risk. Maybe the Chinese could seize one of those aircraft carriers?
But joking aside, a serious question?
I have not heard it
A.Pessimist says:
” Maybe the Chinese could seize one of those aircraft carriers?”
Do you think the Chinese would want one?….Without planes they’re bugger-all use except in a no-fly zone.
@ A.Pessimist
As the Belfast Treaty aka the Good Friday Agreement is an international treaty, registered at the UN and which itself also proscribes infrastructure on the Irish border, crashing out with ‘no deal’ will under either WTO or EU rules require an infrastructure border, because there is no such border in the world without infrastructure. Given this, it is likely, I suggest, that Ireland would take the UK to the International Court.
This would not be good for a country all of a sudden friendless and alone, never mind having just left the largest trading block in the world, trying to negotiate trade deals, when it has proved unreliable in maintaining its international treaties. Who’d want us? We are not the USA.
Dominic Grieve, who although a Tory, is at least a QC lawyer, is also of this view. (So also is my Labour MP).
http://www.progressivepulse.org/brexit/six-impossible-things-before-breakfast
Peter May says:
“This would not be good for a country all of a sudden friendless and alone,[……] when it has proved unreliable in maintaining its international treaties. Who’d want us? We are not the USA.”
No. You are quite right most decent countries wouldn’t want to know, but we we are very much on the American wavelength in this cavalier attitude to all other (we think, inferior) countries and the Americans will bail us out with trade ‘deals’ and be our ‘friend’. This is the Brexiteer position.
It’s a very worrying scenario, because the quid pro quo for US support will be the opening up of what’s left of the state and commonweal to privatisation and market forces.
Anybody who thinks the EU was inflexible in negotiations will get a rude awakening in the unequal relationship we would have with the US as very junior partners without even the security of being part of their federation. No control , little influence and sovereignty in name only.
Our ERG types will sell us out for the spoils that will come their way, not unlike the manner in which the Russian oligarchs pillaged the Soviet Union after the wall came down.
To me this seems as clear as day…. are my fears irrational or exaggerated? I don’t think so.
“Given precedent I strongly expect Labour will get things wrong.”
They’d increase their chances of getting it right by tossing a coin. !!
Dominic Raab was on ‘Today’ this morning pretending to be calm and pragmatic. Amongst his utterances he was being laid back about the possibility of an extension of the Article 50 deadline…..by a couple of weeks. What planet is this mans constituency on ?
The ‘quality’ of thought we’re getting from both sides of the House is just beyond belief. It’s like watching a sort of Danse Macabre.
it is a Danse Macarbe,
they are all dancing around the elephant in the room,
the EU never was the root of our problems,
our problem is that the west has hit the limits of growth and adherence to neo-liberalism just accelerated the speed with which we reached these limits,
until the powers that be recognise the real structural challenges we face and divert from the ‘more business as usual’ model then all they can do is continue to dance around the elephant spouting gibberish,
we are at an impasse, the reality that the plebs can see has yet to climb high enough up the ponzi pyramid to effect those in the ivory towers,
for them Remain = stringing it out a bit longer, Hard Brexit = triggering the end of their fantasy lives,
societal/civilisational collapse isn’t an event, it’s a process and we are within the process now.
Raab was shocking this morning and Humphreys made him sound credible which is even worse.
We are now in an arena of the unknown as far as politics is concerned now. It’s a sort of no-mans land. There are principles littered all over like battlefield corpses with yet more to be added in terms of careers, lost national credibility and economic destruction. It’s become like trench warfare I feel – attrition writ large.
My concern with Labour is that as I read it they still think that the Tories will get the blame and they will the win the next election. There’s no certainty in that at all – even less if Labour associate themselves with what May is doing (it sounds to me as though horse trading on the anti-Semite business might be at work here, but trading on the second vote is the wrong trade). Expecting voters to remember good things you have done tend to be forgotten unless their lives get better – which they won’t at least in the mid to short term after BREXIT.
Labour seem to forget that the way May has set things up is so loose because it gives her room to renege on anything she wants to later on to keep her own party together. So RM is right to question this.
No-one seems interested in addressing the issues with the first referendum despite some wanting another. It’s not good.
There seems to be too little imagination. The Norway option has peeked over the parapet again and I would like to see that go forward if we have to leave – maybe try that out for couple of years?
But honestly – what a mess?!
As for immigration – if May wanted to stop it, all she has to do is look at education. In my line of work, we are so short of bricklayers that they are charging well over the odds because there are so few of them.
Yet in the LA area where I work, schools that have facilities to teach kids vocational skills still have their vocational facilities (where you can be taught to be a bricklayer, builder, joiner, hair dresser etc.,) closed down for lack of funds because of austerity. I was in one last week standing empty doing nothing for just that reason as we had a job on there in another part of the school.
And yet ‘Free Schools’ have been set up – some of them chronically under-attended and on the verge of being unviable using already stretched education resources.
I mean – what is all of that about? Choice for choice’s sake in education has become more important than the outputs themselves!
I don’t about any of you, but I am running out of words to describe such callous stupidity as I am seeing.
I appreciate that you have been critical of the Labour Party at several levels; but I feel that you are doing them an injustice with respect to BREXIT.
First, Labour, even with the Greens, SNP, TIG, Plaid Cymnu and Independents is outvoted by the Tories and DUP. This means that it has to entice Tory dissenters to vote with it. Second, there are perhaps 20, and some say up to 40 Labour MPs who either believe in BREXIT or will support it in the belief they need to do so to save their pay cheque. There is also a third consideration, the Labour Party Conference decision.
Progressively, Corbyn and Stammers have moved towards the point where Labour will support a peoples vote. Tory dissenters have revealed themselves, they have put forward an alternative ‘deal’ so they are not BREXIT wreakers, and they have ensured that, subject to numbers, ‘no-deal’ will be taken off the agenda and Article 50 can be extended.
Corbyn, and it’s mainly Corbyn, has positioned Labour where it has acted reasonably, responsibly, and justifiably to ask the British People to vote on either of the proposals that you put forward — May deal vs Remain; or in extremis if ‘no-deal is still hanging around, then a two-stage May deal vs Remain vs no-deal.
So what is left for Labour to do? Vote to remove the automatic activation of no-deal and negotiate a peoples vote with May. The first is not going to be easy, because May is in control of procedure or as you refer to it as sequencing. The second is not too difficult if he offers her support in passing her Agreement with the EU; it is a price worth paying to prevent a no-deal BREXIT.
I think Corbyn has played a blinder. I’m not too confident in the People.
I really can’t take this seriously
In 2016 team Corbyn told me that they would leave Brexit alone – it was a Tory on Tory issue
And that is what they have always done
Whilst, I have not the slightest doubt, wanting to be out
A blinder? Only for the unsighted, I fear
Despite your scathing comments, I still like and learn from your blog.
But to take issue with your comments:
When would you have started criticising May’s agreement? In 2016? In 2017? Or when she first made public the agreement she had negotiated? An agreement that even surprised her Brexit secretary, who immediately resigned.
May didn’t even discuss her negotiating intentions with her Cabinet or Party MPs, let alone the opposition parties, hiding her intent by appointing her own in-house number 10 negotiator, excluding even her BREXIT negotiators, Labour had little opportunity to say anything until recently. When they did.
Of course it was a Tory issue. It was a Tory issue until they made it public.
If I could see any logic in what you just said I could respond
You seem to have entirely missed my point
Corbyn has said and done almost nothing on Brexit. Even the labour party’s recent conversion to a second referendum was principally the work of McDonnell, Starmer and Watson. I don’t think Corbyn has said anything about it. If that’s called playing a blinder then I must be as blind as a bat.
Just a quick note: Brian There’s still a real struggle outside the Labour party to understand the membership drive policy and the motion carried at the conference is being acted on and it’s not being dictated from the top, many still don’t believe it.
You’re quite right, Lou,
It’s probably quite difficult for people outside the Labour Party, and some MPs within it, to understand that Labour policy is membership driven from the bottom, upwards.
Unlike the Tory Party where policy is handed down from the top-right MPs and donors.
Corbyn has got the Labour Party to the position it wanted, to seek another referendum, unfortunately, it has been diverted by the unexpected; a demand from the ERG for a no-deal Brexit. That has necessitated a deal with May to pass her agreement in order to neutralise the possibility of a no-deal. Notwithstanding that, Corbyn has played a blinder in getting there.
How many times do I have to hear this nonsense?
Brian
I think that you’ve sort of impinged your own point to be honest.
I have very mixed feelings about Labour and Corbyn’s performance in the BREXIT issue because I always try to remind myself that there might always be a new approach or way of doing things that we may all be at times a little too slow to grasp – so used as we have become over the years to certain types of expected political behaviour. So I have tried to keep an open mind and give Corbyn the benefit of the doubt.
Therefore, having said that, there is a very real risk that ‘The People’ (whose unreliability you hint at) will not realise what (if any) benefits Corbyn’s approach is bringing to BREXIT no matter how well intended they are. I honestly do not think that people are interested in such subtleties any more – especially when the consequences of BREXIT begin to bite (no doubt when the strategic stockpiles start to become depleted).
On a more personal note, your comment seems based in accepting a leave position. But for me, given what we know about the conduct of the referendum, a really great politician would have been making the case to stop BREXIT dead in the water.
It was and is not a safe vote. It is irrational and irrelevant. It really Brian, should not be. At all. And that is not just a failure of Corbyn. It’s a failure of a form of English politics that is now coming to the end of the line. If we are lucky.
I only hope that something new comes out of it because we are going to pay a huge price for this folly that is BREXIT. That is why to me Corbyn and Labour also just appear to playing around in the margins of BREXIT issues like someone arranging the veg on the plate instead of heartily tucking into the meal.
It’s all academic. May will (unfortunately) manage to get her deal passed by Parliament. There will be no people’s vote. Then the real negotiations on the nitty gritty will drag wearily on for years. Many of the older Brexit voters of 2016 will have passed by 2025 to the single market in the sky and the younger ones will have emigrated to more progressive and prosperous countries. Scotland may have crashed out of the Union and the six counties of Northern ireland will be united with the other three counties of Ulster. How the rotting residue of the population of England and Wales will feel about the EU or WTO or anything else is a mystery; they’ll probably want to watch endless films about Dumkirk and D-Da.. Maybe they’ll want a people’s vote, if the then Prime Minister Raab lets them; but the EU won’t want the remnant UK back. Too much bother.
In response to Email Address Supplied says:
I live in France, voted remain, I want to remain. Economic, social, political reasons all demand that we remain. I have also now lost my right to vote in any second referendum.
I agree with most of what you say, especially that “…a really great politician would have been making the case to stop BREXIT dead in the water”.
The only politician who could have ‘ stop[ed] BREXIT dead in the water’ was Cameron, at the time the result was announced; but he failed to do that, preferring to resign.
Nobody else was ever in a position to stop it happening. As you say, it’s a failure of British politics, and there a heavy costs to follow whether we have a second vote or not, and whatever is the outcome of the vote.
Fair enough Brian.
Thank you for clarifying your position. I deeply regret you inability to vote again which seems very unfair (even though I’d rather there wasn’t second vote) .
I do feel however that Labour could also have said no to BREXIT. As RM has pointed out, MPs are not mandated by their constituents – the MPs sell their party’s manifesto and get voted in on that.
What continues to fascinate and infuriate me Brian in equal measure is how BREXIT has been handled in such a deterministic way by Parliament.
It completely ignores (1) the amount of time that has elapsed after the vote and (2) the way the perceptions and realities of the original vote have changed, or been revealed or worse (interfered with).
Also, it was a referendum: not a binding general election where first past the post rules. The speed with which BREXIT was seized as an opportunity to win a GE is at the heart of the problem.
Could you explain how you’ve lost your right to vote in a 2nd referendum ? Right now there isn’t one planned & the rules aren’t determined as yet. Is this based on the rules for 2016?
Graham,
I have just completed 15 years out of the UK and lost the right to vote in GE, EU elections, and, I assume, referenda. I have been struck off the electoral register, and don’t appear anywhere. If we remain in the EU, I would have a vote in France.
Ok, referendums are a very poor democratic tool. They are good for short term decision making, useless for long term issues.
But tell me this, just say the government goes for a second referendum and the result further divides the nation and even more people vote to leave the EU, where does that leave all,the remainers?
Richard V.
To try to answer that question I can only tell you how it SHOULD be. And always should have been:
It would mean that we would leave but with a deal that produced as few consequences as possible. In other words, it would be in my view a Norway style deal – preserving our access to the single market at least so that jobs and investment are protected. That would be sensible. Then our ruling elite might feel more comfortable about the sovereignty issue because that is where the problem lies.
That is the only answer if Leave wins again.
As the Leave Liars said: ‘No-one is talking about leaving the single market’. But all of a sudden, engorged by an unexpected win (admitted by themselves), they moved the goal posts and now they want the WTO and the wild west.
The Leave Liars demonstrated their fascism, because they always want more, even though they have everything – like all good Fascists.
It was up to Parliament to either disagree with the result (and given just how corruptly BREXIT was conducted they should have invalidated it) or then go about a rational and organised way to implement it.
But they can’t seem to do that.
But they may well still get a 2.7% pay rise taking their earnings to +£77K a year plus expenses. People like the wonderful and principled Chukka Umunna will be able to add that to the reportedly £60K p.a. he already gets doing a bit on the side in an advisory capacity. No wonder he and many of the other MPs who have their noses in the trough can’t find the time to create an orderly BREXIT or examine the evidence and cancel BREXIT on the basis of obvious fraud.
But ultimately if we have to go Richard V, let us go well – not all half arsed as we seem to be.
Our so called “democracy” has failed us. So has our education system.
Our forefathers, who struggled so hard to get “the Vote” and then progress towards a more civil and fairer society, would weep.
I am not sure you can say “Given precedent I strongly expect Labour will get things wrong.” as that would have required action on their part. To be honest, I have got to the “heaven knows what they will do to our country; where can I hide” state.
As a 70 year old I rather think, with the downturn we will see in the economy and therefore the Tory ideologs deciding that, yet again the only answer is more austerity (for the poor and just managing), I will not live to see much of it and I can only say “sorry” to those of my children and grandchildren’s generation. I imagine, as we have a family member in Australia, my grandchildren will escape but I am not sure what else any of us can do.
My mother is 99 this year and has just moved into a Care Home. I imagine she will just be allowed to die with some sort of euphemism being employed to “help her on her way” as it will not be affordable to keep her there. I, having being born in Germany to British parents just after the war have never previously even thought about my British citizenship being revoked, for a citizenship I do not have but will now wait for the knock on the door – I am sure I must have committed some small misdemeanor at some point.
You may think this is all over the top and, of course, I know it is but strangely that does not stop my fear of it all happening.
As a dual French and Australian citizen I don’t have skin in the game. But do you think it’s realistic, Richard, to think the EU would let Britain remain in on the same terms (i.e. carve-outs, exemptions and privileges) after the bedlam that has ensued since June 2016. I think UK has constantly overestimated its hand when the only cards it has are jokers and knaves.
At present we could still withdraw Article 50, so yes, that could happen.
However, that will not happen. Continuation will now be on a different basis, undoubtedly.