It means if Parliament votes down the deal May comes back with, given the European Parliament has already made clear there won't be any haggling, we move to a hard Brexit. It's enough to make Anna Soubry want to disappear up her own orifice
Yep, me too. She's wanted to overturn Brexit from the moment she heard the referendum result. Hope she gets deselected by her constituency
Sure, if there's constructive scrutiny and power to bring into effect what the majority of the voting public have voted for. But here, Parliament will be presented with a fait accompli unless they're prepared to go for a hard Brexit. I have this latest vote as a load of pompous remainer MP's and frustrated Tory ex-Ministers trying to derail Brexit or water it down to something meaningless by any means possible. Fortunately, forgetting Soubry and all her spiteful cohorts, at the end of the day, there are enough Labour MP's who won't agree to unlimited EU migration, so we'll head for a Canada type deal, rather than Norway.
Watched a programme last night on Channel 4 about The Channel, the busiest shipping lanes etc... Anyway it focused on small fishermen based in Ramsgate and one or two other areas. This year they've had to contend with a 500 meter wide exclusion zone going the whole width of the channel from Ramsgate to Zeebrugge as there is a major electricity cable laying operation going so that the UK can import electricity into the grid from Europe and give power to some 2 million homes in the south east of England. This has resulted in the fishermen having to travel further from their home port to fish and incur greater costs. Due to EU fishing quotas one chap had to throw back 90% of his catch of skate as he wasn't allowed to land them, but was allowed to catch up to 15 tonnes of prawns in a year, but in the areas he fished there are no prawns. The local fishermen also had to contend with French trawlers fishing in the same area who are allowed to catch huge amounts and deliver them back to France. The contrast was that for a 12 hour day the UK guy earned £140 whilst the French guy was earning €4000 - €5000. No wonder he was keen to leave the EU..... As compensation for the inconvenience of having to fish elsewhere each fisherman received a gizmo tracking device..........
The majority of the voting public chose to leave the EU, they didn't vote for any specific form of Brexit (as I refuse to tire of saying, a significant minority of Leave voters wanted to stay in the Single Market). It is entirely right that Parliament should have the opportunity to scrutinise whatever draft deal May and Davis come back with, and, if they consider it not to be in the best interests of the Nation, send them back to re-negotiate. I strongly suspect that there will have to be either a second referendum or a General Election before we actually leave.
I agree that the rebels’ main motive is the nature of Brexit rather than the claimed parliamentary sovereignty. Equally exposed is the Brexiters’ alleged passion for parliamentary sovereignty, which they jettison at the first opportunity. Conclusion: all politicians are two faced self serving twats. Most important is another bit of poorly thought through legislation from an incompetent government. Post the referendum we had a general election, at which most candidates made their position on Brexit very clear, not least Anna Soubry. She was voted in, which indicates that at least some of Leave voters in her constituency, who were the majority in the referendum, were happy for her to represent them. And she is a representative, not a ****ing delegate, thank goodness. This is how our democracy, which we would apparently go to the wall to defend along with our traditions of tolerance and inclusiveness, works. MPs are not slaves to the majority viewpoint. But well done on picking up on the general tone of the Daily Mail’s bile filled front page editorial, no views other than the 52% allowed! Because we’re putting the Great back in Britain and if the half of you who don’t like it object, you can **** off you traitors! If a deal is signed off by the British Government, the EU Commission, and the EU heads of state in the Council of Ministers, it would have to be in some bizarre way worse than no deal for the EU Parliament and the our Parliament to say ‘try again’. They wouldn’t dare. I bet the UKIPPers in the EU Parliament vote against though.
There were very few Leavers that thought we could stay in the Single Market. I don't know if you saw Andrew Marr on Sunday. He ran a VT of Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Johnson, Leadsom etc all making it absolutely clear that leaving the EU meant leaving the Single Market and Customs Union. They banged on about it daily before the referendum. This idea that Leavers were duped is a fallacy used by entrenched Remainers - sorry. You say that Parliament may send May back to renegotiate. Have you heard what members of the European Parliament are saying? To a man, they are warning that the deal May gets is the only deal, and the alternative is Hard Brexit. Given how entrenched the EU have been to date, I'm inclined to believe them. Second referendum or General election before Brexit? This is the Dianne Abbott view, and is highly doubtful in my opinion.
Tory voters voted for Soubry because she was the only Tory on the paper. Personally, I hope that's changed soon. It's not an exclusive Daily Mail view that there are MP's who want to water down Brexit to something meaningless, leaving in name only. There are a number of well respected political commentators that are putting that view forward. Today, Labour's Andrew Adonis has said that last night's vote was "another step towards defeating Brexit." I agree your last para. As I say in my post to Stroller, if the UK Parliament vote down the deal May comes back with, it's highly unlikely that the EU will give more if May is sent back - it will be "take it or leave it", which is why all this Parliamentary stuff at the moment is pompous crap. Let the government negotiate the best deal. They have the mandate from the referendum last year, and will keep Parliament informed of general progress, as they have done to date.
Yes, leading Remain campaigners said a Leave vote would mean leaving the Single Market, but that was just part of the failed 'Project Fear', and in response to Leave campaigners suggesting that we wouldn't have to (please don't make me post the vid again). Both sides were lying. How about this scenario? May comes back with Canada+++ and Parliament rejects it on the basis that leaving the Single Market will do too much damage to the economy. The EU would happily gives us more time if they thought we were likely to come back seeking a Norway-type arrangement instead. May would have to seek a public mandate for her deal, either via a second referendum or a General Election.
But they don’t have a majority mandate from the most recent vote, the General Election, do they? That was the whole point of the election, for May to get such a huge majority that she could negotiate without referring to Parliament or the country. But she didn’t get it. That’s democracy. But apparently democracy, with its thousand years of British tradition, was, according to the Daily Mail, leading up to a single day in June 2016, and can now be dismantled as it has served its purpose. The executive, legislature and judiciary have evolved to be as they are for a reason - to prevent any one of them (but usually the executive) for getting over powerful. It’s working. If it’s parliamentary democracy you want us to get rid of along with the EU, just say so.
No please don't post that vid again! It was of a poorly known MEP Hannon, and an early clip of Farage (he changed his mind some way before the referendum). This hardly has the weight of the whole of the government of the day saying Leave would mean leaving the Single Market. The reason I don't think your scenario will fly is that, as I say in a post above, there are a number of Labour MP's from Leave constituencies that, while happy with a softer Brexit, could not live with the unrestricted immigration that Single Market would bring, so I think would go with a Canada deal or similar. Not all Labour MP's are Chuka Umuna or Diane Abbott
The likes of Soubry and Clarke aren't interested in some hollow, rubber-stamping Parliamentary vote (rubber-stamping because it will be "take it or leave it" from the EU) What they want is to chip away at the Brexit vote bit by bit, as, for his part, Adonis has admitted. The other Tory rebels are the same. They crow about democracy but it's no coincidence that they are all Remainers. Grieve is a rabid remainer and has no respect whatsoever for the referendum result. There's ulterior motive here, and it's patently obvious.
This is exactly spot on. I knew when I voted to leave that I was voting to leave the single market and customs union. I'll tell you what I'm heartily sick of, is people on both sides of the argument forever indulging in one-up-man-ship."See, I told you so" etc etc etc. I reckon sour pusses like Soubry are hoping that, if they put enough obstacles in the way, brexit will be somehow halted. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the ruling elite somehow manage to fudge the whole thing. If they do, we will see the biggest backlash ever against politicians imo.
I’m not arguing about the motivation. Whatever the motivation, they are, probably inadvertently, doing more to uphold British parliamentary democracy than all those Brexiters like Rees Mogg who crowed about it as the prime reason we should rid ourselves of the polluting influence of the EU. Gove, Johnson and Fox have no problem at all with immigration, but they hitched themselves to Farage to try and win a vote which they thought would further their careers. Hypocrites all. But that’s the way our system works. MPs don’t have to follow the ‘will of the people’ particularly when it is so narrowly and ambiguously expressed as in the referendum.
Agree. A softer Brexit is one thing if it facilitates trade between the UK and the block. But if we end up a vassall state, abiding by all rules including unrestricted immigration but not making any of them, and restrained from making agreements outside the block, this is the worse of all worlds and there would be an anger aimed at the UK political system of an intensity never seen before in this country, more than simply cynicism, and there would probably be a lurch to the extremer end of right wing politics, which is undesirable.
