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Record defeat for the British government. What happens next?


Skycaptain

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To save derailing the other thread. We can discuss here the potential outcomes of the government's defeat tonight 

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The DUP has said it will back the government so who knows what will happen. What are the polls saying?

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The DUP will clearly back the government in the no confidence vote because otherwise they'd be voting themselves out of power. If there's a general election, the Conservatives might win and Labour might win, but another Conservative-DUP coalition is a long shot.

 

Basically the chance of both the worst outcome (no deal Brexit) and the best outcome (no Brexit at all) have both gone up today. That's why I'd have been relieved but disappointed if the deal had instead been accepted.

 

Juncker has already tweeted that the chance of a no deal Brexit has gone up. Before the vote, May said that if the deal was rejected, no Brexit was more likely than a no deal Brexit (apparently as an argument for passing her deal... seriously). Let's just hope she's right.

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26 minutes ago, michaeld said:

The DUP will clearly back the government in the no confidence vote because otherwise they'd be voting themselves out of power. If there's a general election, the Conservatives might win and Labour might win, but another Conservative-DUP coalition is a long shot.

 

Basically the chance of both the worst outcome (no deal Brexit) and the best outcome (no Brexit at all) have both gone up today. That's why I'd have been relieved but disappointed if the deal had instead been accepted.

 

Juncker has already tweeted that the chance of a no deal Brexit has gone up. Before the vote, May said that if the deal was rejected, no Brexit was more likely than a no deal Brexit (apparently as an argument for passing her deal... seriously). Let's just hope she's right.

The pound has already risen in value, so I think some in the financial services sector are hedging that this may be the first nail in the coffin for Brexit 

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That's interesting. I was wondering how the markets would react.

 

If there is one ironic crumb of comfort for May today, it's that her mistake of calling a general election wasn't as critical as it looked like it might be. So large was the scale of defeat, with so many conservatives (over a third) voting again their own party, it seems very likely the deal would have been defeated even under the old parliament, when the conservatives had a majority.

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It's fairly obvious what will happen - nothing. Given the mysterious ongoing support from both Tories and DUP, Theresa May will win the confidence vote. The withdrawal agreement will not be renegotiated, the EU has been very clear about that. Even if they did give in to British demands, it would only result in a rejection by the European parliament. This is what British MPs (in particular the likes of Boris Johnson) seem to conveniently forget.

 

So as a result there will be weeks and weeks of more fudge. At best article 50 can be prolonged, which would mean months and months of more fudge.

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2 minutes ago, timewarp said:

It's fairly obvious what will happen - nothing. Given the mysterious ongoing support from both Tories and DUP, Theresa May will win the confidence vote.

There is nothing mysterious about it. But yes, she will.

 

2 minutes ago, timewarp said:

So as a result there will be weeks and weeks of more fudge. At best article 50 can be prolonged, which would mean months and months of more fudge.

No, at best Article 50 can be cancelled right up till the end of March deadline. And, unlike an extension, this can be done unilaterally.

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5 minutes ago, michaeld said:

No, at best Article 50 can be cancelled right up till the end of March deadline. And, unlike an extension, this can be done unilaterally.

True, but I doubt there will be a parliamentary majority for that.

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Yeah, I think No Deal is looking most likely now - too many people are invested in Brexit for the government to walk away. It'd be political suicide for them - if they walk away, nobody will vote for them again as Brexiteers will be furious we didn't leave and Remainers will be annoyed we got to this stage at all; if they go No Deal at least some Brexiteers will stick with them...

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So immediately after the vote of no confidence was announced, Corbyn got up and snarled.   He seems to be a very unpleasant person (besides being anti-Semitic, which frightens me).  What's everyone's opinion(s) of him?

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3 hours ago, timewarp said:

more fudge

mmmm, more fudge...

 

(but seriously, I really hope things work out for the best for everyone affected by what's going on)

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28 minutes ago, Sally said:

So immediately after the vote of no confidence was announced, Corbyn got up and snarled.   He seems to be a very unpleasant person (besides being anti-Semitic, which frightens me).  What's everyone's opinion(s) of him?

General opinion is that he's actually a lovely person, and a good backbencher but not PM material i.e. he's best at working change by protesting the current situation than by leading. He does believe in most of what he says. It's notable that he has been on the right side of history a number of times, when the  government at the time derided him as being too left wing e.g. apartheid, LGBT rights etc.

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7 hours ago, Blaiddmelyn said:

too many people are invested in Brexit for the government to walk away. It'd be political suicide for them - if they walk away, nobody will vote for them again as Brexiteers will be furious we didn't leave

It may not have dawned on the government yet, but I think that they have committed political suicide already. I think that it has been such an appalling shambles up to this point that they have already doomed themselves to a very long period in opposition egardless of what happens now with brexit. 

 

That being the case, they have nothing to lose by doing the sensible thing and cancelling brexit. The only reason they have been pursuing it so vigorously is that they are scared of the electorate and being seen to ignore their wishes; but in reality most polititians knew that remaining is the right thing and wanted to remain anyway.

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34 minutes ago, Ortac said:

It may not have dawned on the government yet, but I think that they have committed political suicide already. I think that it has been such an appalling shambles up to this point that they have already doomed themselves to a very long period in opposition egardless of what happens now with brexit. 

 

That being the case, they have nothing to lose by doing the sensible thing and cancelling brexit. The only reason they have been pursuing it so vigorously is that they are scared of the electorate and being seen to ignore their wishes; but in reality most polititians knew that remaining is the right thing and wanted to remain 

You'd be surprised how many people will still vote for them. People are creatures of habit. And to give May her due, it is almost impossible to negotiate something like this in less than two years. A two party corporate transaction can take months to negotiate. A deal with over 20 parties on so many aspects was never going to get done in two years. I was astonished May managed to get any kind of deal at all in the time she had.

 

In any event, if the government cancelled Art 50, it will give them no room to salvage what they've done. So they are unlikely to do it. Especially as many Brexiteers are happy with a No Deal scenario and have been calling for it from Day 1. It implies that they won't listen to the people (irrespective of my views on the referendum). If they go for No Deal, they still have some room to turn things around. I don't think they'll manage it, and i think the country will be much worse off, but politically, there's not much benefit for them to back out.

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How could they cancel Brexit?  I thought the EU said the UK can't knock on their door and ask to come in again.

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@Sally. The EU doesn't want us to leave. They have openly said that our notice of intention to withdraw can be ripped up at any point until zero hour.

 

Corbout is nothing but a communist, Russian sympathiser who wants Britain to become an annexe of Putin's Russia. He wants to steal all the privatised utilities off the shareholders, renationalise everything and take us back to the bad old days of the 70's when Britain had to go grovelling cap in hand to the World Bank for a bail-out 

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

It's doing nothing to raise the UK's profile as a respectable country at all. A bit embarrassing. For us older folk , who remember the EU as 'the Common Market'...it was originally just a trade agreement between neighbouring nations, but then it became far too large to accommodate all the diversity within its increasing borders.

 

These nations are our allies so we shouldn't be parting in anger, but conversely, IMHO, I don't think we should have been drawn in so close to start with. If we had joined the Euorzone for example, our money would have been worth roughly 88p this morning.

 

Just some musings on it, from someone who is no expert.

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34 minutes ago, Sally said:

How could they cancel Brexit?  I thought the EU said the UK can't knock on their door and ask to come in again.

We have until 29 March to revoke Art 50. ECJ has ruled we can do this unilaterally.

 

If we leave the EU, rejoining will become harder.

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8 minutes ago, Blaiddmelyn said:

If we leave the EU, rejoining will become harder.

Indeed, and you would almost certainly lose the opt-outs that the UK currently enjoys. Rejoining would probably be conditional on the UK joining the Euro and the Schengen area. That is why cancelling article 50 should be given very serious consideration; if the UK goes ahead with brexit, it will be a point of no return; the current status quo will probably be gone forever and there will be no way back to it, even if they do eventually manage to rejoin the EU. 

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54 minutes ago, Blaiddmelyn said:

Especially as many Brexiteers are happy with a No Deal scenario and have been calling for it from Day 1.

In my opinion, a no deal scenario is absolutely unacceptable, and I consider those who are advocating it to be extremely selfish and ignorant.

 

Ignorant because the UK currently has the free trade arrangement with the other 27 countries of the EU, and with the 60 or so other countries with which the EU has trade agreements. They want to rip all that up and go to zero trade agreements? Are they mad!? World Trade Organization rules are the most restrictive of all possible trade arrangements, and the reason countries make free trade agreements is to get away from restrictive WTO rules. 

 

They are selfish because there are many people who's lives will suffer extreme adverse consequences from no deal. It will wreck people's lives. Those who say that no deal and WTO rules are fine probably never set foot outside of England. Places like Northern Ireland and Gibraltar which stand to suffer the consequences are probably completely alien to them, out of sight, out of mind. As are the three million plus Brits who have made their homes in other EU countries who are also terrified that they could become illegal residents literally overnight. And all that for what benefit exactly, what is the trade off that makes all that a price worth paying? None that I can see. 

 

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3 minutes ago, Ortac said:

In my opinion, a no deal scenario is absolutely unacceptable, and I consider those who are advocating it to be extremely selfish and ignorant.

 

Ignorant because the UK currently has the free trade arrangement with the other 27 countries of the EU, and with the 60 or so other countries with which the EU has trade agreements. They want to rip all that up and go to zero trade agreements? Are they mad!? World Trade Organization rules are the most restrictive of all possible trade arrangements, and the reason countries make free trade agreements is to get away from restrictive WTO rules. 

 

They are selfish because there are many people who's lives will suffer extreme adverse consequences from no deal. It will wreck people's lives. Those who say that no deal and WTO rules are fine probably never set foot outside of England. Places like Northern Ireland and Gibraltar which stand to suffer the consequences are probably completely alien to them, out of sight, out of mind. As are the three million plus Brits who have made their homes in other EU countries who are also terrified that they could become illegal residents literally overnight. And all that for what benefit exactly, what is the trade off that makes all that a price worth paying? None that I can see. 

 

That's fair but it doesn't mean we'll be staying in the EU. I hope I am wrong but i think the government is more likely to leave without a deal than cancel Art 50. The entire thing has been about political grandstanding.

 

In fairness, though, Remain did a terrible job when campaigning in the referendum - they were arrogant and unaware of people's problems. They're not really blameless for what happened.

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6 hours ago, Sally said:

So immediately after the vote of no confidence was announced, Corbyn got up and snarled.   He seems to be a very unpleasant person (besides being anti-Semitic, which frightens me).  What's everyone's opinion(s) of him?

I don't think he is an unpleasant person, at best grumpy. I know you're referring to all the shouting he did in that speech, but that's just the normal kind of rhetoric you get from all kinds of politicians in the Commons at times. Theresa May can be very nasty too.

 

As for antisemitism - it's something to be looked at with great care. The media, in particularly the right-wing media, jumped on every antisemitic incident in the Labour party and blamed Corbyn for it, often as an opportunity to campaign against him. I believe his fault is that he is completely naive about antisemitism, like many members of the European left. Sadly he doesn't have the knowledge about the topic to judge everything correctly when he sees it, for example when he didn't recognise that a picture (I believe it was a graffiti) was antisemitic. I do blame him for not educating himself, it's his duty as a politician (and personally I think also as a citizen).

 

The other typical left-wing antisemitism trap he walked into is his support for Palestine and the way he has been going on about it. He was spotted with the wrong kind of people and has nothing to prove that he doesn't share their views. The right thing to do would have been to take a balanced approach and look at both the Israeli and Palestinian perspective. If he doesn't like the Israeli government, he should at least talk to people in the socialist party.

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1 hour ago, Sally said:

How could they cancel Brexit?  I thought the EU said the UK can't knock on their door and ask to come in again.

As Blaidd mentioned, the ECJ ruled that we can cancel Brexit right up till the deadline at the end of March. As far as I know we'd even be able to keep the various exemptions we have if we did that. The EU would probably be incredibly peeved at being messed around for the last 2+ years but somewhat relieved at the same time. At least we'd have served as a nice example for any other country looking to repeat our "stunt".

 

If we do leave, I expect that eventually we'd be allowed to rejoin but almost certainly without any of our current exemptions, e.g. we'd have to join the Eurozone eventually. It would be ironic if leaving meant we were eventually closer integrated than we want to be after rejoining.

 

1 hour ago, chandrakirti said:

These nations are our allies so we shouldn't be parting in anger, but conversely, IMHO, I don't think we should have been drawn in so close to start with. If we had joined the Euorzone for example, our money would have been worth roughly 88p this morning.

And that's what we're losing by leaving - our exemptions from things like joining the Eurozone while remaining an EU member. If there was one main mistake the remain campaign made I'd say it was not making enough of the special privileges we had as a member, which we'd be effectively throwing away by leaving.

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Thanks to all of you for fostering more information for people outside Britain.  

 

Re Corbyn, I've heard some of his speeches, and I regularly watch the PM's appearances in Commons, so I'm used to the bluntness of the MPs and admire it.  However, from how I've heard him speak, he just seems quite nasty.  As far as anti-Semitism, he's not ignorant of the content of what he's said and its impact, and he fully knows what he's done.  British Jews are quite nervous about him as PM.  The countries on the Continent are becoming less comfortable for Jews (to put it mildly), as is America, and to lose England would be very difficult.  

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1 hour ago, Ortac said:

In my opinion, a no deal scenario is absolutely unacceptable, and I consider those who are advocating it to be extremely selfish and ignorant.

It is the nightmare outcome for sure. I think most MPs - apart from a few hardline Brexiteers, e.g. the ERG members - are heavily against it. What worries me, and makes me think Blaidd might be right that it's the most likely outcome unless they can fudge something, is that it's default option. It's what will happen if no-one can agree to anything. It wouldn't require a vote in the Commons to "ratify" no deal. Cancelling Article 50 very likely would.

 

Let's just hope to goodness that someone in leadership puts country above party and does the right thing for the UK, even if it costs them votes.

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Why not just build a wall l across England, remainders on one side, leavers on the other, with minefields and machine gun posts. They thought it would work in Berlin. 

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Just now, Skycaptain said:

Why not just build a wall l across England, remainders on one side, leavers on the other, with minefields and machine gun posts. They thought it would work in Berlin. 

Only if we can get Mexico to pay for it and go into a shutdown if funding is refused, please 😛

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1 hour ago, Skycaptain said:

Why not just build a wall l across England, remainders on one side, leavers on the other, with minefields and machine gun posts. They thought it would work in Berlin. 

Agreed but I am selective about which parts of England-not just north south.

This whole thing has been a shambles-it looks like May will survive today. Corbyn must be mad to even want to be PM right now as he would then be landed with this Brexit mess. I think we should hold a third referendum and see what the people want. 

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I'm just going to avoid England altogether and not set foot in it for a while. I was last there in June last year, but it is no longer the England I know. It has changed, and not for the better. There is an uncomfortable atmosphere.

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