A month ago I would have said no chance.
Seemingly the deal on offer is doomed to failure. Once it has failed does TM risk failure in a second General Election? Does she instead run another referendum poll – then if the vote is still to leave does she resign?
Interesting times.
Is there going to be a second referendum?
by 104 Comments
The thread where angels fear to tread.
It’s becoming obvious that she will never resign. She won’t call an election either, and the Tories don’t have the candidates or the numbers to challenge her. Why would they?
See you in ’22, guys.
I think we should have a Brexit referendum every year. We can give the broadcast rights to the highest bidder and have a public vote over sixteen weeks, multiple spin-off shows etc.
We could have that instead of pointlessly bothering to be in Eurovision. Our place could be taken by a less internationally-unpopular nation, like North Korea.
Yes.
I see she’s just lost two votes because the government held parliament in contempt by refusing to publish the full legal advice on her deal. The two ministers could spend the week in the Tower.
Maybe. As a remoaner I should be happy about this but we’ll be looking at 6 months of sodding about with no guarantee that remain will win. There are a whole load of imponderables too – what is the question, who leads the various campaigns…I think MPs should earn their crust and there should be a free vote in the HOC on whether to proceed with leaving based on Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, given that they already agree that No Deal, whilst not really an option but rather a default, is highly undesirable. They would probably vote to remain, and the government should then withdraw Article 50 and get on with the more important business of dealing with the genuine issues which led people to vote leave two years ago.
This. Free vote in our Parliamentary democracy, by our elected representatives. End of.
Any that don’t have the bottle, commitment, grit and honest common sense to vote with their brains instead of with self-regarding fear of the likely effect upon their re-election by their constituents will deserve rejection at the next ballot box, however they vote.
And the first Act of Parliament after the vote? Removal of the option for any referendum, on any subject, under any circumstances in future.
Second Act of Parliament after the vote? Exile Cameron and Osborne from the UK for the rest of their natural. Fuck off to somewhere that wants you even less than we do, you utter tossers.
Up Up Up.
All in favour say, Aye.
Dig back three years and you will find a thread I kicked off on the very subject of referendums (and not running your politics by them). They are a very poor tool for democracy.
From the very very young to the very very old, everybody now say aye.
Red Box? You can get ointment for that.
Larry Blackmon says “Oww!”
… sorry, I seem to be stuck in 1986.
From the corners of the world to the centre of the globe – and what a fine globe that man has.
@Vulpes: To butcher Edmund Burke’s quote in paraphrase: ‘a member of parliament must be a representative and not a delegate’. I always dwell on that when recent converts to the voice of the demos jump up and down, chundering on about how the referendum result must stand now and forever.
Yep. Someone has to stand up and say “we’ve done due diligence and all the options are worse than the status quo, so we’re doing the pragmatic thing and cancelling”. I live in hope.
Probably politcal suicide, but so is the mess now.
Everybody seems to be committing political suicide already.
They can’t spout off about “doing the best for the country” if, near the forefront of their minds, they’re actually more concerned with their own career. Political suicide should always be discounted during their thought processes.
A second referendum in my hometown wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference. They were stupid enough to believe what they were told last time and they’ll still be too stupid to see the consequences this time. They just want to get rid of the people down the street who look and sound different to them and can’t see any further than that. They certainly won’t have realised that ‘leaving’ Europe is unlikely to have a blind bit of difference in that respect anyway, nor that most of the people they want shut of aren’t from ruddy Europe in the first place!
The weird thing about that is that Barnsley must be one of the least ethnically diverse towns in the UK.
and the Welsh voted to leave.
Presumably enough of them hadn’t twigged that the westward migrating English weren’t going to be constrained by “controlling immigration”.
Isn’t this how Theresa May has deceived herself. It’s her view too, that the leavers are only concerned with ” taking back control of free movement”
“taking back control of free movement” would be a good slogan for Immodium.
Something to do with shite, anyway.
Some people who are resident in Wales voted leave some of us didn’t. Casual anti-Welsh comments are not very edifying especially from someone who undoubtedly considers himself to be educated and free from the taint of racist bigotry.
Rank hypocrisy.
Sorry Peter, but it’s not hypocrisy at all. It may be tarring everyone with the brush of the majority, so fair cop to that. But overall the Welsh – who voted in the referendum – did vote to leave.
My gripe is with the Leavers who thought they were going to stop foreigners from, er, something or other, and by extension, if that was a major force for voting to leave, I despair that the Welsh, so clearly over-run with immigrants, could have succumbed – only in a majority of cases, of course – to that particular racist overtone.
But I can ameliorate that thought by considering that perhaps they were considering the English to be the objectionable incomers, in which case I understand their attitude even while despairing at their confusion.
My better half is Welsh by the way, if that makes any difference. But she voted to remain.
Smug Lunnun types like to say that we’re all racist in the sticks because we’re not efnickly diverse like what they are. But if you want to hear strident, even racist views on immigration… ask an immigrant. Or the child of one.
Ain’t that right, young master Yaxley-Lennon?
My wife’s uncle is a very vocal leaver. Trouble is, he was a very vocal Scottish independence supporter. Oh how we laughed when the SNP came out and said they wanted to leave the UK and remain in Europe!
The reason he’s a leaver is racism, pure and simple. He has offered no other argument. He’s recently retired and his job brought him face to face with many non-UK nationals, albeit a very high proportion of them would have been tourists. But he has expressed his dislike of the eastern Europeans, coming over here, taking our jobs, getting free houses, getting benefits, etc, etc. At absolutely no point has it dawned on him that his wife of 40 years’ maiden name is Wexelstein, and that’s the anglicised name her father took when he emigrated here from Russia pre-war. He is married to the daughter of a ruddy eastern European immigrant!!!
My dad also happily comes out with a load of racist statements, although he is too stupid to realise that they are racist statements. Most of them are totally unfounded. Some of them were actually fake news, from a satirical website aimed at poking fun of people like my dad. But this racism, intended or otherwise saddens me and saddens my sister. Most of all, it saddens my mixed race adopted brother of 39 years.
The baby boom generation have had life so good, compared to the generations that came before them, as well as many that will come after them, but if the relatives of that age of mine, my wife’s and our friends (scarily, I’d say around 90% of them, although I am from Barnsley, which as Neil said is neither a hotbed of multiculturalism nor a major seat of learning) are anything to go by they don’t half hold some misinformed and vile opinions.
They aren’t. Sweeping generalisation award.
Baby boomer perchance 😉
The BBs are supposed to be the generation that broke with the parochialism of the past, and to be fair many of them did. However, being a very big generation, many didn’t, got left behind and shouted at the television about blokes on TotP wearing make-up.
Similarly, many millennials do not require safe spaces or trigger warnings. The ones I come across at work are tough as old boots. Generational generalisations generally suck.
That’s why I put the caveats in. But I’m pretty certain that it wouldn’t look that much of a sweeping generalisation were you to canvas large areas of my hometown, and there are plenty of towns like it up here (and I dare say one or two down south as well).
Lazy agist generalisations are beyond tedious.
@paul-wad
What a sorry tale you tell of your rels. Good luck and I hope you change their attitudes.
Along the same hypocritical lines, the biggest racist in my family is my 95-year-old maternal grandmother, born and raised in the East End of London, who told anyone in earshot about the first time she saw a foreigner* (she means someone unboarding the Empire Windrush at the docks).
What she failed to tell anyobdy is that her own father was French.
(*) not the word she actually used
Was it Mojoworking at the old place who told the story of his girlfriend’s grandmother turning Jimi Hendrix away from her house due to the colour of his skin?
It doesn’t stop there with our parents. My dad moans about the immigrants just coming over here for free healthcare and benefits, when he hasn’t worked a day since 1982 and boasted not that long ago that he has never paid for a prescription in his life.
Whereas the wife’s parents have the same views, about the immigrants getting council houses, whilst living in one themselves, despite both working and earning well. What’s more, her dad worked for years as a painter and decorator cash in hand, paying no taxes and a year or so ago actually asked us to open a bank account to hide some of the money in. We both work in the financial industry, so even if we were of a mind to do such a thing we’d be treading on very thin ice.
My dad being so right wing is staggering when you consider that I am disabled, my adopted brother is mixed race, one of my step-brothers is a drug addict layabout and the other is gay. I think us four are exactly the type of people these ruddy soundbites he gets on Facebook that he keeps shoving under our noses are targeting! But the thing is, he’s not a bad person. He does a load of voluntary work to help the homeless. He’s the first to offer to help anybody that needs it. So I haven’t a clue where the shite he comes out with comes from.
There’s never any logic to it, sadly. I think reading The Daily Mail shrinks the part of their brains which applies logic.
My mum’s best friend is a Polish immigrant who can’t read or write English. She’s been in the UK, married to a Brit, for 40+ years.
Ditto my mother in law, except she was Spanish not Polish.
To my born-in-Scotland, half-Scottish, half-Spanish, French-raised wife on our wedding day:
“Welcome to the family. You’re all right for a foreigner.”
Not to mention my mum’s mentally-disabled cousin, my drug-addict cousin, my gay flight-attendant cousin, my unmarried benefit-recipient cousin with three kids by three different fathers… I could go on, but you get the idea. They don’t count, somehow.
We don’t talk much, and when we do we don’t discuss Brexit. And then she wonders why her grandchildren don’t like visiting her.
When George Orwell described Doublethink in 1984, where someone believes two things that directly contradict each other, he wasn’t inventing a nightmare future – he was just making an observation about the way people are. It’s not even a particularly English thing, though we’re extremely good at it. They should include it in the Olympics.
The SNP are the current doublethink champions. Doing their best to create a sense of grievance about the problems that would be caused by leaving the economic and political union that is the EU. Problems that could only be solved, apparently, by leaving another, even closer, economic and political union…
Does Nicola Sturgeon have a theoretical physics background?
Being simultaneously in and out* is something called quantum mechanics, as popularised by Schrodinger and his cat.
(*) paging Moose
Why me? I know nothing of the SNP or Nicola Truncheon, or anything else in your post. Is it something to do with Mike Rutherford?
A close relative was a massive fan of Queen for many years – loved Freddie – bought the records, saw them live, even sewed a patch on her favourite jacket. When he died, I made a comment to her about how sad that news was.
She shrugged and said if you’re going to be “that way” you have to expect consequences.
…and they wonder why Freddie stayed in the closet.
Anybody remember Ricky Skaggs?
?
Indicted into the Country Hall of Fame this very year.
….after twenty years + of being showered with shit by people who had previously been his fans.
@Harry Tufnell: come now, even Barnsley must have a few Lancastrians sequestered away somewhere.
No. No point. It wouldn’t be clear enough to solve the problem. At the moment an extension of A50 is probably the best outcome we can hope for.
Well, with a bit of EU money the A50 could be extended to join the A1 at Peterborough.
Hasn’t Helia Ebrahimi got great hair?
Win or lose (probably) the vote on Mrs May’s deal, if the Tories can find a way to avoid a second referendum, then they will not call one.
If they can somehow avoid a free parliamentary vote on what happens next, they will do that too. I don’t imagine Labour will want a free vote either, it must be said.
I’m currently at a conference in Melbourne. There are a couple of other Brits there, and we all arrived in the conference room this morning with our best WTF faces on. We all felt a long way from home, not that it would have made any difference, but it had all been kicking off while we were asleep.
“I thought Australian politics was a clusterfuck, but jeez…” was one local comment.
I prefer this thread to the other one. Much better class of contributor on this one. 😃
Does that mean you’d vote to leave the other thread, but to remain on this one?
Oh I don’t know. I think I’ll take note of the debate, listen to my conscience and decide next Tuesday.
That’s what Brexit has turned us into – a nation divided by the issue. There was a time when you had friends and family who disagreed on the merits of the EU but it wasn’t a big a deal. The only group of people that really got frothy about it were the Conservative Party.
So I am going to straddle both threads as a gesture of peace and love.
If I’m Jacob Rees-Mogg (always liked his dad – he was a big fan of The Stones), who are you?
I’m David Davis – a lazy bastard who lives in East Yorkshire.
Who Breaks A Butter Mountain On A Wheel?
Le Arf!
and other French ports, yes
Yes, Black Celebration, a nation divided. I am beginning to understand the atmosphere there must have been in the country in the English Civil War, though thankfully we are not at the ” actually killing each other” stage, at least not yet.
You people, you come over here, take over our thread….
We doing thread you don’t wanna do. This thread is Wipe Old People Bum-Bums For Minimum Wage of threads. You wanna do this? You go agency. It is opening 4am.
I just want the whole thread to be over
Leave means leave!
(unless you’re HP)
Apropos of which, it seems only women can flounce.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-46471678/did-commons-leader-andrea-leadsom-just-flounce
This explains everything.
Love Means Love
Theophilus P. Wildebeeste for Brexit Secretary.
Surely there has to be another referendum?
Says observer from the Antipodes, where the country I live in changes Prime Ministers as often as Yes lineups.
How quaint! Here PMs never resign, unless – like David Cameron – they just can’t be arsed.
Apparently another referendum is an affront to democracy. So say the Leave Means Leave shower, anyway.
Next week I’m going back to the country where 95% of the citizenry is pissed off for one reason or another. Well done Dave. Happy Christmas, and may your bijou writing shed get dry rot and fleas.
With the Leave means Remain shower in charge, it will take six months to frame the question.
You mean some thought will be put into the question, unlike the last time?
Thinking before voting?
GET ON WITH IT!
(as the guy in the electric chair said)
If there is another referendum, over 65’s shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
It’s no concern of theirs
The actual fuck it isn’t.
I shall be having my 68th birthday in March and I’m hoping to stick around till I’m 90 at least, if I can’t become immortal.
I voted remain, my younger brother (66) voted remain and my older sister (69) also voted remain.
Of course we’re all Soft Shandy-Drinking Southerner mongrels (half Irish), so maybe next time it’s all those Northern Whippet-abusers and Welsh sheep-shaggers who shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
I would say that junking the social chapter has everything to do with the over-65s.
I assume you were being satirical, @fintinlimbin?
If not, what Mike said with knobs on. Except the bit about sticking around till 90…I think.
I shall just leave this here……
I wondered what had happened to Roger Cook.
Yesterday: “The vote will not be delayed.”
Today: “The vote will be delayed.”
Today: “There will not be another referendum.”
It’s all going swimmingly, isn’t it? Anyone with a crystal ball care to predict the future?
I think a vote of no confidence is inevitable now. It only takes the DUP and a few mad Tories to make it happen. Then the fun really starts. Boris Johnson has had a haircut and he’s ready to go for the top job. And be under no illusions, he may well be voted in.
Teresa May looks defeated on this. The photo of her under an umbrella over the weekend is quite a striking image.
The risk for the wannabe Tory PMs is that they will have to make Brexit work. No shortage of MPs opining on what May should do, and how they would stick it to the EU. Bit different when they have to take actual accountability.
It’s time to see one of the Brexiteers take on what they are so passionate about and own the outcome. Up to now they’ve been happy to let May carry the buck.
Leadership challenge is now on.
Is that because we think HP really has gone this time?
Or are we talking about something trivial?
Incredibly, this turn of events actually has nothing to do with anyone on this here site.
I think she will survive the vote but her days are numbered.
All our days are numbered.
Merry Christmas!
Strictly speaking, a PM confidence vote is now on. Leadership challenge to follow, if she loses.
It could be a new PM dawn.
Very good, Moosey. Have the rest of the day off and play in the sunshine.
Ooh goody!
No Moose, that was excellent. Desperately trying to crowbar something in about us all finally being set adrift on a memory bliss. But can’t.
Theresa May is a real PM…. Boris, merely a paper doll.
It’s amazing to watch what’s going on in the UK from the outside. Even Mexican daily soaps have more believable plot turns. Which part of (Quote EU:) »There will not be another round of talks about Brexit« do the British (politicians and voters) not understand?
Meanwhile back in Germany – there’s a poster campaign (in English) from the German government offering “housing grants” and other benefits to people who are willing to return to their home country. 🙂
To be fair I think everyone, politicians and voters, does understand it. Saying it in a way that suggests you believe it buys you some time. The only thing that matters is staying in office for as long as possible, by any means necessary.
So, is HP back or not?
Whoa, Tories you made the decision about May two years ago, you can’t change it, that’s undemocratic.
There’s a lot of woah-ing on the blog these days. It’s like a frickin’ Baltimora tribute site round here.
Whoa or woah? And what about HP?
Whoa or woah? We’re halfway there
Whoa, pigeon on a chair….
Are they not pronounced the same?
And HP… who knows? Perhaps he’s finally been paid off.
I SAID PERHAPS HE… oh please yerselves.
But when Santiago López Fisterra revealed his dirty secret in La Reina del Sur – that was a bit of a jaw-dropper. Teresa and her pals would have to go some to match that.
No.
TM? Transcendental Meditation?
Theresa May. Not that that’s any more relevant.