EU referendum are you in or out

[KlaxonCow]

Bubo!

[merman]

BBC headline: Chancellor "optimistic" about Brexit talks

Sir Keir Starmer: Three days of talks and nothing has changed - no movement from the Conservatives on their red lines, no changes to the "political declaration" (that's the wishy-washy "future relationship with the EU" Theresa Maybe cobbled together to try and get the Withdrawal Agreement through).


Wednesday's EU summit meeting is now crucial...

[PFVA]

And i saw today (in the Guardian) one more new word :

Flextension. It must be flexible+extension

It seems Brexit is creating new words often.

[(o)(o)]

EU now steering May round like cattle in a market.

[VNVObit]

EU now steering May round like cattle in a market.

Well she's getting no assistance over here!

But France has just said "not without a fucking good reason". Lots more resistance this time. Starting to feel like they're going to veto it unless she puts options back up in front of the people.

Macron also has an audience to please and Brexit is not providing any certainty at present. Taking the decision out of the politicians' hands may at least provide an answer even if it is unpalatable

^ hopefully you're more relaxed... though it could be filibustered in the Lords.

According to Sky's Political Correspondent (Tamara Cohen), May's current manoeuvrers result from the threat of a break up of the UK given a no-deal exit. I've bleated thusly since last year.

I don't get why the ERG and their supporters haven't been confronted with this obvious outcome. Why wouldn't it happen or why don't you care? Traitors LOL

Maybe that's what she did at the last Cabinet meeting... I expected immediate resignations, but none came.

Suspect ERG (and supporters) are convinced of England's exceptionalism and identify more as English than British -just my take on their spiel. Haven't heard rational debate from them just accusations against May and anyone else not delivering a "pure Brexit" (whatever the hell that is)

[PFVA]

I'm not particularly fond of Macron but the problem is people across the EU, from left to right are getting tired of this. Brexit is destabilizing Europe. Not that the EU is not difunctonal enough to destabilize itself with or without the UK, with our without Brexit. This has gone for long enough though, so let's come up with a decision. The UK wants to leave, then leave. It it wants to stay then stay. Either way do it once for all so we can all get on with business and adapt to a new situation if that's the case.

And if Brexit has been good for one thing is to unite the rest of us. There is a lot less talk about leaving. From right to left of the political spectrum everybody now prefers to stay in.

[(o)(o)]

[KlaxonCow]

[Cloudane]

When in Rome...

I'm not particularly fond of Macron but the problem is people across the EU, from left to right are getting tired of this. Brexit is destabilizing Europe. Not that the EU is not difunctonal enough to destabilize itself with or without the UK, with our without Brexit. This has gone for long enough though, so let's come up with a decision. The UK wants to leave, then leave. It it wants to stay then stay. Either way do it once for all so we can all get on with business and adapt to a new situation if that's the case.

Hearrrrr hear

I'm honestly at the "just rip the plaster off" stage. I'd 10x rather revoke than leave, and 100x rather revoke than leave without a deal (which I think would be a disaster as we realise the world isn't falling over itself to give us great trade deals after all). It'd be really nice if this sudden talk from May of it being a "deal or remain" decision has some substance to it. But I somehow doubt that will ever happen and I'm really questioning whether even crashing out would be better than the uncertainty of another year long extension and more of the same back and forth, probably still leading to the same situation in April 2020. At least if we fell out on Friday, the worst case scenario as things currently stand, we can concentrate on slowly rebuilding what's left of the country and have something to look forward to. At least "the only way would be up".

I think it'd be a very good idea, whatever happens, for the Lisbon Treaty to have an amendment to article 50 requiring a hard deadline. The ability to negotiate extensions has just led to this endless brinkmanship

[Rhythm]

Problem with any form of Leave is that it's only the start of things, not the end. WA or not, there's a following process that'll need to be adopted as we transition into our new relationship with Europe and the rest of the world.

Revoke will leave us red-faced but able to simply get on with things. Anything else will just be an enormous mess that'll last for years

[zip accident]

Anything else will just be an enormous mess that'll last for years

Lasting for years is also known as stability. I am coming around to thinking that a continuous series of extensions is actually the plan, and always was. That way, no one has to say "you can't have brexit", but it never actually happens either. I'm thinking maybe fifteen years of extensions (whether that be two years at a time, or one month at a time, or a mix of those and everything in between), before anything gets done.

[Cloudane]

15 years of businesses saying "we're moving out of the country because we're not sure what's going to happen with Brexit" would, IMO, be even more damaging than no deal.

At least if we know what's happening, businesses can plan around it. Even if the more globally minded companies still leave, British companies sticking to British supply chains know they can flourish as their competitors leave. I think nationalism is shit, but perhaps less suicide than neither type of company knowing whether it's safe to invest in their presence here.

[KlaxonCow]

I am coming around to thinking that a continuous series of extensions is actually the plan, and always was.

Nah. Never attribute to malice that which can be more than adequately explained by criminal levels of incompetence.

I mean, on the indicative votes, the customs union plan got within 3 votes of victory. We came within a hair's breadth of a working solution - which could have actually happened.

Occam's Razor. Conspiracy requires reliance on some deeply unlikely coincidences in the proceedings so far. While "they're just fucking idiots and don't know what the fuck they're doing or what they really even want" adequately explains it all.

Also, it'd be a dumb conspiracy from the perspective of future General Elections, as no-one's come out of this smelling like roses and May's eviscerated herself by her conduct in that regard and is a political "dead woman walking" now. She's only being left there because, as the poison chalice needs to be drunk by someone, let the condemned prisoner be the sacrifice, as they're dead anyhow.

No, the grand problem is that this isn't a conspiracy. As a conspiracy would at least be extremely well planned. This is just a random chaotic mess, where no-one knows what the fuck they're doing.

[KlaxonCow]

Suspect ERG (and supporters) are convinced of England's exceptionalism and identify more as English than British

Totally. This is "Project Little England" and is all about English Nationalism under the hood (which, yes, needn't necessarily be "racist", per se, but certainly has shades of "English Exceptionalism" to it without doubt - you don't necessarily have to think all the "fuzzy wuzzies" are subhuman, per se, only that you yourself, born British, are an infallible chosen-people "ubermensch" above them all. Or "uber alles", you could even say).

I mean, folks like Boris and Rees Mogg have outright said that the issues around Northern Ireland and a hard border are "trivial". Irrelevant to them, because that's not England, only a "colony" that needs to do what it's told, so fuck them.

They say "UK" but mean England. Or, actually, "the British Empire" because, in their heads, they haven't accepted that that corpse rotted away half a century ago.

And the thing is, this will end the UK. Scotland will leave. Northern Ireland's "loyalty" will be stretched - possibly to breaking point and Irish reunification - by being dumped on the front line of all this shit that they never asked for, while Rees Mogg and others happily call them "irrelevant" to their faces without even blinking.

In that sense, "Project Little England" will succeed... in producing a tiny little England, all on its own, with its head up its own arse.

[rowan]

Today I'm spending most of my day's holiday working on brexit nonsense [same yesterday too] and some twunt just posted a 'vote UKIP' card through the door.

Felt like running out after the guy, to tell him to put rubbish in his own bin instead of my letterbox.