Theresa May offered to quite last night. And the Tories said ‘thank you very much, but we'll ignore all the conditions you attached to the offer'. Rarely has the powerlessness of a prime minister at the end of her tether been so effectively highlighted. There is literally nothing that May can now do. And there is no chance her deal will be approved unless a People's Vote, that would surely reject it, is thrown into the mix. But, still she remains at least nominally in office.
And the indicative votes have not as yet delivered a result, although there are signs that they might.
And the click ticks.
So, what is there to do? I can only see one way through. It is this.
First, May's deal is amended to include the requirement of a People's Vote to approve it. The alternative in that vote would be Remain. People could then vote for Brexit. Labour would abstain to permit this.
Second, May asks for a long extension on Article 50.
Third, May calls a general election.
Fourth, we hold EU parliament elections the same day as the general election. That saves cost.
Fifth, we have the referendum on the deal the same day. That sets the mandate for the new government.
Sixth, a new parliament tries to resolve the mess we are in, come what may. Because, come what may, that is what we have.
I know that's a mega polling day. So what? That's what we have come to. And better to get it done. And people really can handle such things. And this way we move on.
Anyone got a better idea?
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I’m sure we in Scotland could manage FOUR voting papers on the same day 🙂
🙂
The aggregate of UK opinion is to be half in and half out.
So you could ballot on the half in half out options only.
But if you are going to include Remain as a referendum option versus one of the half in options then you must also for balance include leaving on global terms ( often incorrectly called no-deal terms ).
No- because it has been resoundingly rejected by parliament
Being in has been approved by parliament
That is why we are in
I think that’s an ambitious agenda but seems perfectly sensible to me.
That’s the reason I can’t see it happening. The light from ‘sensible’ takes a helluva long time to reach Westminster these days.
Plus I just don’t think it’s in May’s DNA to call a General Election. I can see her resigning and then spending the rest of her life crying into her tea about her personal Night of the Long Knives, but I can’t see her willingly fighting and losing an election.
I could be wrong.
Re Geearkay’s “Night of the Long Knives” comment: in the Scottish Parliament’s First Minister’s Questions today, Nicola Sturgeon pointed out that the norm in politics is for a leader to resign when his/her key policy is comprehensively rejected by Parliament. However, instead, Theresa May threatened to stay in office if she couldn’t get her key policy accepted. Sturgeon went on to comment “May might be the first Prime Minister who tried to fall on her sword but missed!”
A pretty good summation of the Alice in Wonderland events in Westminster
🙂
I do.
But it involves violence and a fair amount of explosives.
No takers?
Fair enough. It would just play on my conscience anyway – left wing humanitarian that I am. Damn it I’m so weak………………..
Channel 4 talked to a polling expert the other day (if after recent polls we can ever trust them again – like orthodox economists) and he reckoned that hardening was taking place in both camps (Leave and Remain) but it is too close to call.
More than ever, Parliament just comes across as a gold fish bowl. To me it is marching towards irrelevance – like the PM. It feels broken – busted.
Lets be clear (Warning – I’m about to have an AOC style rant as they seem to be in at the moment) :
Parliament cannot make a better decision about a dodgy decision. So now, we have to go back to the source of the dodgy-ness (the public, the internet, undeclared interests or declared and tolerated interests (please tell me why?) like pro-BREXIT MPs who stand to make money out of their ‘ moral stance’ and dodgy business men who sit in select committees and cheerfully tell MPs to fuck off) to seemingly get another decision that they themselves are too cowardly to take. So they palm it off to the public who are ripe for more division it seems.
Fuck off. I mean FUCK OFF! No way! Over 600 MPS on at least £77K a year cannot rule even though they know there are problems with the legitimacy of the result.
And then it is left to the EU to stand up for the Remain vote, the 6 million who signed the online petition and the 1 million who marched on Saturday! Only then to be disparaged by Farage. Yet we are told that it is Trotskyist cells we should be fearing when embedded in our most close and strategically important relationship we have far right nationalist jerks like Nigel and Daniel Hannan – sleeper agents for the Eurosceptics – eating away at our relationships.
What are they doing Richard? What is Parliament fucking doing? Dominic Cummings has apparently been found in contempt of Parliament ( the highest court in the land apparently) but remains at liberty but people still go to prison for not paying a TV license or for petty theft when that little libertarian Buchananite bastard stole a whole referendumb and our future!!!
Parliament can make people poorer and poorly, creating shortened, unfulfilled lives with austerity and below inflation support; they can tread on and geld working people’s trade unions, tell police forces to infiltrate trade unions and peace groups to undermine them, get police to beat up those standing up for their rights and stop pickets. They have stood idle (both the Tories and Labour) whilst asset strippers from abroad and within destroy our industry and what is left of it.
They fail to uphold their own laws on companies, taxes, accounting, offshore and responsibility for the NHS. They fail to honour pension commitments whilst bailing out private pensions and privatise perfectly good state institutions (local authorities, the post office, the LNER even ) in order to reduce the state impact on decent wages and conditions in order to promote markets and so-called market discipline (ha, ha ha), encourage markets where markets are inappropriate (the NHS for example) that offer no benefit to what was there before to the end user (but create a nice little income scheme for those who wish to grow their money even more). The transfer of money from the many to the few continues – helped by Parliament.
Yet they can’t stop BREXIT. No – we must be in fear of a right wing response!! The bogey men!! We must be afraid!! It’s so telling. So telling……………….
And so in the end we/I am expected to believe and respect all of this? Really? Well I don’t. The answer is NO.
I’m done with Parliament. I wouldn’t pee on any of them even if they were on fire. I do not recognise them or their supposed authority anymore. They are not for me – nor are they for you.
They are for themselves. All £77K of it (plus expenses) and opportunities it opens up for them in real estate in places like Bristol (Oh hi Cherie and Tony!) and speaking engagements and ‘consultancy’ (Hey, Chukka, how’s the 60K per yer advisory role coming along mate!?).
You know what – I’ve had enough of BREXIT too. What will be will be. In future I will pay more attention to your other areas of work Richard – I’m done with this.
And if this missive is too much for you dear reader – fair enough. I understand. Please accept my apologies for once again baring my rage here. It’s rational place this and deserves a better response but I’ve had enough.
I remain a democrat
And we will get through this
PSR
I feel your frustration. It might not be comforting but you are not alone in feeling this way.
Richard
I know it is imperative we get through this (as quickly as possible I might add) as there is too much at stake.
Meanwhile Republicans in the US are trying to get to grips (and failing, abysmally) with the inevitable freight train collision that is the GND vs neoliberalism. The end result will be catastrophic for one, or catastrophic for all of us.
Agreed, especially re the last comment
Thank you for accommodating my ire. Much appreciated.
Caroline Lucas is my MP I will vote for her again because she’s got integrity. She may well be in a tiny minority amongst the current crop of psychopaths, but lets support them rather than throw the whole thing out? Besides, other than reforms such as replacing FPTP for some form of PR, what would we replace parliament and MPs with?
I would not replace parliament and MPs
And I agree re Caroline – but I am biased as I have worked with her and am happy to count her as a friend
Just to remind all you fans of public participation in politics that residents of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man had no vote on whether to join the EU originally or under the special terms that apply to us, we did not vote in the Referendum and we will not vote in any of the Parliamentary proposals outlined above.
In name Mrs May is not Prime Minister for us so that whether she goes or stays is not our concern – but whatever legacy she leaves behind will apply to us just as much as it does to you in the UK – albeit under different terms which you (and the EU) will determine for us.
As a Manxman (living in Scotland since 1984) I think it is high time the Isle of Man became independent. Might encourage a few more Scots to screw up their courage and get us over the 50% mark in the next Scottish independence vote too.