Very good that would go down well in a Dickens tavern drinking real ale Thankfully there are 16m people singing it’s 2019 you fools and as much as it’s brilliant to hold pride in our wonderful heritage... it cannot return The vote was won that is all that will be remembered... history
Both MacDonnell and Hammond are joining these cross party talks today. I reckon they will move things on a bit as they both believe the same things about Brexit, then May will destroy any progress made by refusing to back it. Do you reckon that the EU has the balls to say no to an extension, daring May to revoke article 50 on the 12th?
Optimistic thought, but Ireland would complain so this is Macron making empty threats again. However, if the unlikely happened, then out of gratitude, I'd go out and buy him the best quality, monogrammed yellow vest, because he seems to be the only person in France that hasn't got one
I'm a little confused by what the Cooper-Letwin bill has achieved. If it obliges May to prevent a No-Deal exit on April 12th, surely this makes revocation the default position in the event of the EU refusing an extension? BTW, what's all this I keep hearing about the UK having to take part in EU 'elections'? I thought the EU was run by unelected bureaucrats?
They key thing apparently, as explained to me by a civil servant at DExEU this morning, is that if the EU27 agree an extension with the UK today/tomorrow, the Government will not need to put this to a vote in the HoC. Because the Cooper Act obligates the Govt to effectively do anything to avoid no deal, the statutory instrument laid to extend A50 is in accordance with this primary legislation and therefore doesn't require a further vote. I'm unclear if this will be the same for future extensions or if it just applies to this one.
What impact does it have should the EU refuse to grant an extension, though? Could May be forced to revoke A50 in order to avoid No Deal?
Only the thick, cannon fodder. Nobody elected Martin Selmayr. He was appointed by Junckers on the old boy network basis
How many British Civil servants are elected Goldie? Selmayr might be high profile but he is a civil servant. Junckers was appointed by the elected heads of the EU 28, as will be his successor - it’s indirect, but your elected representative had a voice. The EU does have a democratic deficit (which would be made better by going properly federal.....) but so does the UK and nearly every ‘sovereign’ nation. There are some parts of Kurdistan that apparently have a real, inclusive democracy, but they are anarchist syndicalists, probably not your cup of tea. There are many valid arguments against the EU, which I doubt will ever be reformed effectively, but the anti democratic one is one of the weakest. You want Article 50 revoked?
Selmayr represents all that's wrong with the EU for me. He's one of the three most powerful people in the EU and we don't have any say. Interesting point on Article 50. May can't leave on a no deal by choice. But if there is no extension, I haven't seen clear advice that the Cooper-Letwin legislation would apply. Otherwise, why wouldn't the EU just refuse to extend. They want to keep the UK in the EU after all. The effect on the democratic process in this country would be nuclear. It's on a knife edge anyway
bit late for this German elite call for radical rethink of EU's Brexit strategy please log in to view this image Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 8 April 2019 • 12:29pm Germany’s former European commissioner has lashed out at Brussels for pushing Britain into an impossible position on Brexit, while three of the country’s top economic think tanks have called for a radical change in the EU’s negotiating strategy. “Brussels has taught us a lesson in how not to deal with a member state that wants to leave. The problem is not on the British side. The problem is on the EU side,” said Günter Verheugen, Germany’s veteran ex-commissioner. He told ARD’s Anne Will show in Berlin that the EU’s negotiating team had made a strategic misjudgement, missed the larger issues at stake and should not try to dictate terms fundamentally unacceptable to London: “We’re not losing a...
I was a Tory MP for 18 years, but I’ve been driven to join Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party please log in to view this image please log in to view this image Written by Michael Brown Michael Brown was a Conservative MP between 1979 and 1997, initially representing Brigg and Scunthorpe, then Brigg and Cleethorpes. Share please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image Forty years ago this week, aged 27, I was formally adopted as the Tory candidate to fight the 1979 general election for the Brigg and Scunthorpe constituency, a previously safe Labour seat since the 1930s. The Conservative Party nationally had refused to admit me to the candidates’ list because I had opposed the Heath Government’s stance on Europe and its prices and incomes policies but, in those days, local associations ruled supreme. The local association liked my boundless enthusiasm and the national party could not be bothered to fight the local decision to select me as everyone (except me) thought I would lose. But on 3rd May that year I won – after three recounts – with a wafer thin majority of 486. Mrs Thatcher welcomed me to Westminster as one of her gains and, although I was a whips’ nightmare, she forgave me my many indiscretions. When her Government tried to dump nuclear waste in my constituency I eye-balled her in her office and said: “Prime Minister, when I am not sitting here, you are not sitting there at that desk.” And although I voted against the Single European Act in 1986, I otherwise supported her enthusiastically, Poll Tax included, to the end of her days. I finally bit the electoral dust in 1997 but accepted my fate with good grace and then became a parliamentary journalist and critical friend of the Tories – until this week. I have always voted Tory except on two occasions: first, in the London mayoral election in 2000 when, to keep out Labour’s Frank Dobson, I voted for the independent Ken Livingstone rather than waste my vote on the Tory Steve Norris. Second, at the European elections in 2014, I voted UKIP in order to help hold David Cameron to his promise to hold a referendum on Europe. Last month, my own local MP, Mark Field, was one of 10 Tories who voted for a motion backing revocation of Article 50 if MPs refuse to authorise No Deal and now the Prime Minister has decided to betray Brexit by asking Jeremy Corbyn to help her cancel Brexit. So my patience has snapped. I now want to see the Tories annihilated. I’ve just paid £50 to join the Brexit Party. I am nearly 70 and don’t want anything from Nigel Farage. I’m too old to stand for the European Parliament – even though his website invites me to volunteer to be considered as a candidate. What finally did it for me was when I heard, last week, on the Today programme, a Tory Party worker canvassing in Somerset for the upcoming local elections. He faced the wrath of a former Tory voter in the aftermath of Mrs May’s Brexit betrayal. Tory party workers are often sneered at and derided by the party hierarchy but, for all their imperfections and elderly prejudices, these people are decent loyalists to their party and their country. But this humiliation to which they are being subjected is the worst they have ever endured. May and her gang should be ashamed of the suffering they have inflicted on these good people. I cannot believe that those still in the Cabinet who profess to be supporters of Brexit have not resigned. What is Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, still doing in Cabinet or indeed the Tory Party after this betrayal? If there is a Tory phoenix waiting to rise from the ashes, it’s certainly not Fox, Leadsom, Gove or any of the rest of the so-called Brexiteers clinging on to the Cabinet table. Nothing in the long history of Tory ups and downs – not even the meltdown in 1997 – compares to the horror of recent days for this once great party. It needs to be put out of its misery forever. The Brexit Party may help in achieving that objective. I have a hunch that millions of Tory voters may be thinking the same.
I read through the Act, and the short answer to your second question is no. The Act is solely about extending A50, and makes no provisions for forcing or even suggesting the Government revoke A50
Another move far too clever for May from Tusk. Have your extension, up to a year if you need it. No more of this going back and forth asking for a few more weeks, in a series of ongoing humiliations for you, what’s not to like! But whatever you do with the time, the existing Withdrawal Agreement won’t be changed.
If May gets offered a longer extension than the 30 June date she asked for, which seems likely, will that need another approval vote in the Commons?
There will be some absolute ****ing fruit loops in the street declaring Farage as the second coming of Jesus.
