21% of the Government’s 118 ministers are in the House of Lords. Is Farage offering a public vote on who would be in his cabinet? Tricky seeing as he won’t even announce the names of his candidates for the next general election, presumably while some heavy vetting goes on to prevent the usual nutter embarrassments. I’m not arguing that the EU system isn’t a disgrace, it is. But ours is not much, if at all, better.
Sorry, I meant Cabinet ministers - something more akin to the current EU appointments. I disregard the junior "civil service type" ministers. The public clearly don't get a vote on who will be in a Cabinet, but they get a vote on the group they will be picked from and who will do the picking. More than can be said for the EU, where it apparently depends on who will get the personal patronage of powerful people including bureaucrats. It's like the court of Henry VIII. Farage's party is only 8 weeks old so let's not be too demanding. He'll announce candidates if a G.E. is announced Vetting is essential. I anticipate the populist nutters will go to UKIP and the whacky Europhiles to Lib Dems to wear the famous yellow vest.
I don’t really have an issue with there being some unelected ministers and the like. My issue with the EU is around size, self-determination, accountability and so forth. We can still remove a government and all its ministers every 5 years or fewer, albeit via an imperfect electoral system. We don’t hold elections for every cabinet seat, so no real issue if the PM makes those choices. As we have seen, we don’t even have to elect a PM through a GE. It’s the dark arts of the civil service that run stuff anyway. We’re all going to hell in a bucket of ****, which sounds like something that would appeal to former Winchester Nambist MP Mark Oates.
Whatever, I just don’t get the need to continually moan on about the EU (not you specifically Ubes) even if it deserves it when we have made the decision to leave and the only people stopping it happen are the MPs in our sovereign parliament, which we get a democratic vote for every few years, winner take all. The argument about the EU has been had and won by those who feel like you (as increasingly I do).
Our Parliamentary system leaves much to be desired, and there's an occasional scandal like expenses or MP's perjuring themselves over speeding fines etc, but it looks pretty decent when compared to the smoke and mirrors EU model imo.
Because...there are a large number of Remainers who are dead set on keeping us in the EU and Bollocks to everything else. And that includes Remainers in Parliament who will try to stop us leaving in October. Her Majesty's opposition is within a whisker of calling for a second referendum. So it continues to be important to look at the thing these people are desperate to hang on to. Once we're out, we can have the same relaxed view as we do in the US Presidential election - although a lot over here get pretty hot under the collar over that too
Er, if the ERG and other hard line Leavers had got behind May’s deal it would all be over by now, and even I would be happy with that. There are a lot of remainers who really have to get over it and move on, but the problem goes beyond them. Something rotten in the state of the UK. The whole fiasco has been good for me though, the scales have fallen from my eyes. Rip it up and start again.
The problem with the deal was that it effectively handed another nation - Ireland - the right to control our national trade, by electing to trigger the backstop and keep us in the Customs Union that would restrict which countries we could do trade deals with. It was never going to be a runner and May was thumpingly stupid to think it would
How else do we solve the Irish border question - will the magic technology be ready by Halloween do you think?
I believe it'll be longer - I've heard 2 or 3 years - so I guess we could stay in the CU until it's ready. The problem is not the CU temporarily, but the CU indefinitely. It'll be interesting to hear what Boris and his team propose once he's in place.
The only reason it's indefinite is that no one can say when the technological solution might be ready. You can't put a time limit on the backstop, because it would cease to be a backstop. Wouldn't you say we should be hearing from Johnson right now what his proposals are, rather than having to wait until he's in place?
If the Irish exercised the backstop to keep us in the CU, there would be no incentive whatsoever to release the UK from it and no incentive to develop a technological solution. A finite backstop encourages all to focus on a technical solution. Yes, I do think we need to hear from Boris on his proposed solution. He has said he will not put in a hard border - if there is one, it will come from the EU or Ireland. But I haven't heard him work that argument through, which he needs to do.
What he does, looking at his time as Mayor of London, is rely on a strong team around him. How successful he is as PM will depend on that team - I imagine they'll be virtually exclusively Brexiteers.
It may be better than you think, Bob. We have burst this blister and leave. This indecision isn't doing the EU any good either
There's no possible solution by 31st October, so, if he's as good as his word (), we'll leave with no deal. How is that good for anybody?
