Brexit again...

[Heatwave]

Boris is the Grand Old Duke of York - having marched his ERG troops up to the top of the hill Parliament has made him march them down again.

Something that could have been easily foreseen. Do we really want to trust him as Prime Minister without a European Union to mitigate his more hare brained schemes? Let's just have #BrexitRef2 and everything can go back to normal after we've voted to remain. Boris can even stay in government if he likes - by 2022 Labour will have seen sense and ditched Jezza.

[Heatwave]

3 minutes ago, 1 said:

Exactly, a second referendum would be styled as an updated version of the original question, not a re-run.

Simply putting yes or no on the ballot paper would be a democratic outrage.

I think offering something like:

Leave with the negotiated deal

Leave with no deal

Remain

^ That would be acceptable and in line with democratic principles. It would also sort out the disagreement around "when people voted leave, they knew we could leave with no deal" (or visa versa) by giving tangible data on the subject.

Can't see that as it would effectively split the Leave vote. The Leavers would want to leave with one or the other.

[colin]

10 minutes ago, geosname said:

If we agree a customs union have we actually left?

Yes we will have left the European Union and delivered on the referendum which was to leave the European Union. You can be a member of a customs union and not be a member of the EU. 

[geosname]

19 minutes ago, colin said:

Yes we will have left the European Union and delivered on the referendum which was to leave the European Union. You can be a member of a customs union and not be a member of the EU. 

Does an EU customs union have mandatory conditions?

[geosname]

37 minutes ago, 1 said:

 

I think offering something like:

Leave with the negotiated deal

we have not agreed a deal, we have not negotiated a deal, we have to agree the divorce agreement, withdrawal agreement before we can discuss a deal.

Leave with no deal

I doubt anyone really wants that although some will vote for it.

Remain

 

The above questions split the leave vote and almost guarantee a remain majority...... is that not a definition of rigged as opposed to democratic?

[geosname]

42 minutes ago, Heatwave said:

Boris is the Grand Old Duke of York - having marched his ERG troops up to the top of the hill Parliament has made him march them down again.

Something that could have been easily foreseen. Do we really want to trust him as Prime Minister without a European Union to mitigate his more hare brained schemes? Let's just have #BrexitRef2 and everything can go back to normal after we've voted to remain. Boris can even stay in government if he likes - by 2022 Labour will have seen sense and ditched Jezza.

Do I want Boris as PM..... no

Do I want jezza as PM.... no

Do I want any party to have a huge majority.... no

Do I want the UK to leave the EU ... no

Do I want to see Scotland to leave the union..... don't give a rat's ass

Just making my position clear.

[Fosse69]

55 minutes ago, colin said:

Yes we will have left the European Union and delivered on the referendum which was to leave the European Union. You can be a member of a customs union and not be a member of the EU. 

The so called Norway deal ?

[Fosse69]

1 hour ago, 1 said:

Exactly, a second referendum would be styled as an updated version of the original question, not a re-run.

Simply putting yes or no on the ballot paper would be a democratic outrage.

I think offering something like:

Leave with the negotiated deal

Leave with no deal

Remain

^ That would be acceptable and in line with democratic principles. It would also sort out the disagreement around "when people voted leave, they knew we could leave with no deal" (or visa versa) by giving tangible data on the subject.

3 questions on the referendum paper, how would it be counted? Simple majority or transferable vote? Allow parliament 2 years to decide. I cannot see No Deal being an option unless it is a straight vote against remain as it could split the leave vote if one of the options to leave. Since the referendum caused all the chaos is that not a reason to revisit the options?

[Davebrad]

4 hours ago, geosname said:

Why?...... just curious.

What is a snap referendum...... it would take weeks to sort out and agree and organise.

then it only will be advisory...

[Jacko51]

Slightly off topic but an interesting piece by Daniel Finkelstein in yesterday's Times about the DUP.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-dups-answer-is-always-the-same-no-7vp6dh3rq

The DUP's answer is always the same: NO

Daniel Finkelstein

Sadly the make-up of the Commons has given far too much leverage to a party with a history of stamping out progress

We have all been trying to find something in Brexit that can unite us, heal us, bring us all together. We haven’t done too well so far. But I’m excited to say that I think I’ve found a contender: we can all agree that we have had enough of the Democratic Unionist Party. Not Unionism or the Union. The DUP.

Now, I use the word “all” loosely. Nigel Dodds, the party’s leader at Westminster, likes the DUP. And his wife likes the DUP (probably). The rest of us, however? Not so much.

The reputation of the DUP is that it’s a tough deal-making party. Yet to be a deal-making party you sometimes have to deal. Instead, the DUP is a party that likes to say no. It can be persuaded to say yes only when someone asks whether it would like to spend some public money.

So the DUP said no to the European Union. Britain’s decision to leave the EU, of course, has big consequences for the Republic of Ireland. Some voters in mainland Britain and even some politicians might be forgiven for overlooking this since Ireland is not a priority for them. They might not have thought through the impact Brexit would have on our neighbour. The DUP leadership does not have that excuse. For them Ireland is a priority. So they must have known that there were consequences. Leaving the EU means that for the first time we will be in a different customs area from Ireland.

This leaves three options: create a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland; agree a compromise in which the whole UK remains in the customs area until we find technical solutions to avoid a hard border (broadly Theresa May’s deal); or agree a compromise in which different arrangements for Northern Ireland align it more with the EU and place checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK (broadly Boris Johnson’s deal).

Those — if you say no to EU membership — are the only options. And the DUP has rejected all of them. It has said no to a hard border, no to the May deal and is now saying no to the Johnson deal. It has abstained on no-deal, presumably worried that if it said no to no-deal then the double negative might mean that it had accidentally said yes to something.

During the debates on the government’s withdrawal bill it may be persuaded to say yes to a second referendum and yes to the customs union, even though its actual view is no to both. This is simply because it has seized on the idea that saying yes to these things might be the best way of saying no altogether. If someone actually asked DUP leaders if they really, properly wanted a second referendum they would say no, and if there ever is one, they would vote no in it.

When speaking of the Johnson deal, the DUP MP Ian Paisley this week used the term “no surrender” that was associated with his father, the Rev Ian Paisley, the booming cleric who founded the DUP in 1971 upon the rock of no.

Paisley Sr came to prominence by saying no to the modest Unionist reforms advanced by the Northern Irish prime minister Terence O’Neill. Responding to limited attempts to ameliorate bigotry and discrimination against Catholics, Paisley marched in protest, calling O’Neill “the traitor and the Lundy”, a special Northern Irish term for a particularly bad betrayer.

O’Neill was driven out in 1969. The BBC’s Spotlight on the history of the Troubles, which has just been shown (and which, by the way, everyone should watch) reveals that the authorities believed Paisley was entangled with organisations carrying out the violent attacks that helped tip O’Neill out of office.

So the DUP was created and began its progress, not as the Unionist ally of Conservatives but as the resolute opponent of conservative and official Unionism.

In 1973 came the Sunningdale agreement — an attempt to create an executive for Northern Ireland with power shared between the two communities, nationalist and Unionist. The DUP, of course, said no. Paisley took the lead and a strike was organised and enforced with a generous helping of loyalist intimidation that ended power sharing.

The DUP also said no to the Anglo-Irish agreement in 1985. And for those talking about what does and doesn’t break the Good Friday agreement it is worth noting that the DUP said no to that too. It also said no to abortion, no to gay rights, even no to rock music. “Rock music is satanic,” Paisley said, “and those who have studied it have proved that conclusively”. In 1998 the DUP said no to Elton John playing in Stormont. “We don’t like poofs,” said Paisley Jr.

A full decade after the Good Friday agreement, Paisley Sr, charmed by Tony Blair, finally entered the power-sharing devolved government. Blair’s negotiator Jonathan Powell describes the whole negotiation as torturous, delayed for years by Paisley wanting photos of the IRA decommissioning its weapons so that it might be humiliated. Even then, Paisley’s biographer David Gordon says that his DUP followers found the one political yes of the reverend’s career pretty hard to take and it contributed to his retirement a year later.

Although the DUP now says no to any arrangement that treats Northern Ireland differently to the rest of the UK it hasn’t always been purist about that. When it was in power in Stormont it also said no to the way Great Britain handled its renewable heating incentive scheme. What would be the point of devolved government, it decided, if it was just going to do the same as London?

As a result it created a vast scheme of its own in which people were paid more money to heat their business premises than it cost them. It would have paid you to put radiators on the outside wall. Companies began promoting the scheme under the slogan “Ash for Cash”. Hundreds of millions of pounds were lost.

No one much cared about the scheme when they thought the British Treasury was paying but as it became obvious that this wasn’t the case, the whole thing became a massive scandal. Arlene Foster, by then DUP leader and first minister, had earlier been the energy minister who introduced the catastrophic scheme without grasping the details. She overlooked warnings and her adviser had been installing his own boiler and claiming the money. But she said no to taking responsibility and no to resigning. As a result the Northern Ireland executive collapsed.

These are the people to whom the mathematics of the Commons has given such great leverage. But do any of us have to like it? No.

[email protected]

 

 

 

 

 

[Davebrad]

7 minutes ago, Jacko51 said:

Slightly off topic but an interesting piece by Daniel Finkelstein in yesterday's Times about the DUP.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-dups-answer-is-always-the-same-no-7vp6dh3rq

The DUP's answer is always the same: NO

Daniel Finkelstein

Sadly the make-up of the Commons has given far too much leverage to a party with a history of stamping out progress

We have all been trying to find something in Brexit that can unite us, heal us, bring us all together. We haven’t done too well so far. But I’m excited to say that I think I’ve found a contender: we can all agree that we have had enough of the Democratic Unionist Party. Not Unionism or the Union. The DUP.

Now, I use the word “all” loosely. Nigel Dodds, the party’s leader at Westminster, likes the DUP. And his wife likes the DUP (probably). The rest of us, however? Not so much.

The reputation of the DUP is that it’s a tough deal-making party. Yet to be a deal-making party you sometimes have to deal. Instead, the DUP is a party that likes to say no. It can be persuaded to say yes only when someone asks whether it would like to spend some public money.

So the DUP said no to the European Union. Britain’s decision to leave the EU, of course, has big consequences for the Republic of Ireland. Some voters in mainland Britain and even some politicians might be forgiven for overlooking this since Ireland is not a priority for them. They might not have thought through the impact Brexit would have on our neighbour. The DUP leadership does not have that excuse. For them Ireland is a priority. So they must have known that there were consequences. Leaving the EU means that for the first time we will be in a different customs area from Ireland.

This leaves three options: create a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland; agree a compromise in which the whole UK remains in the customs area until we find technical solutions to avoid a hard border (broadly Theresa May’s deal); or agree a compromise in which different arrangements for Northern Ireland align it more with the EU and place checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK (broadly Boris Johnson’s deal).

Those — if you say no to EU membership — are the only options. And the DUP has rejected all of them. It has said no to a hard border, no to the May deal and is now saying no to the Johnson deal. It has abstained on no-deal, presumably worried that if it said no to no-deal then the double negative might mean that it had accidentally said yes to something.

During the debates on the government’s withdrawal bill it may be persuaded to say yes to a second referendum and yes to the customs union, even though its actual view is no to both. This is simply because it has seized on the idea that saying yes to these things might be the best way of saying no altogether. If someone actually asked DUP leaders if they really, properly wanted a second referendum they would say no, and if there ever is one, they would vote no in it.

When speaking of the Johnson deal, the DUP MP Ian Paisley this week used the term “no surrender” that was associated with his father, the Rev Ian Paisley, the booming cleric who founded the DUP in 1971 upon the rock of no.

Paisley Sr came to prominence by saying no to the modest Unionist reforms advanced by the Northern Irish prime minister Terence O’Neill. Responding to limited attempts to ameliorate bigotry and discrimination against Catholics, Paisley marched in protest, calling O’Neill “the traitor and the Lundy”, a special Northern Irish term for a particularly bad betrayer.

O’Neill was driven out in 1969. The BBC’s Spotlight on the history of the Troubles, which has just been shown (and which, by the way, everyone should watch) reveals that the authorities believed Paisley was entangled with organisations carrying out the violent attacks that helped tip O’Neill out of office.

So the DUP was created and began its progress, not as the Unionist ally of Conservatives but as the resolute opponent of conservative and official Unionism.

In 1973 came the Sunningdale agreement — an attempt to create an executive for Northern Ireland with power shared between the two communities, nationalist and Unionist. The DUP, of course, said no. Paisley took the lead and a strike was organised and enforced with a generous helping of loyalist intimidation that ended power sharing.

The DUP also said no to the Anglo-Irish agreement in 1985. And for those talking about what does and doesn’t break the Good Friday agreement it is worth noting that the DUP said no to that too. It also said no to abortion, no to gay rights, even no to rock music. “Rock music is satanic,” Paisley said, “and those who have studied it have proved that conclusively”. In 1998 the DUP said no to Elton John playing in Stormont. “We don’t like poofs,” said Paisley Jr.

A full decade after the Good Friday agreement, Paisley Sr, charmed by Tony Blair, finally entered the power-sharing devolved government. Blair’s negotiator Jonathan Powell describes the whole negotiation as torturous, delayed for years by Paisley wanting photos of the IRA decommissioning its weapons so that it might be humiliated. Even then, Paisley’s biographer David Gordon says that his DUP followers found the one political yes of the reverend’s career pretty hard to take and it contributed to his retirement a year later.

Although the DUP now says no to any arrangement that treats Northern Ireland differently to the rest of the UK it hasn’t always been purist about that. When it was in power in Stormont it also said no to the way Great Britain handled its renewable heating incentive scheme. What would be the point of devolved government, it decided, if it was just going to do the same as London?

As a result it created a vast scheme of its own in which people were paid more money to heat their business premises than it cost them. It would have paid you to put radiators on the outside wall. Companies began promoting the scheme under the slogan “Ash for Cash”. Hundreds of millions of pounds were lost.

No one much cared about the scheme when they thought the British Treasury was paying but as it became obvious that this wasn’t the case, the whole thing became a massive scandal. Arlene Foster, by then DUP leader and first minister, had earlier been the energy minister who introduced the catastrophic scheme without grasping the details. She overlooked warnings and her adviser had been installing his own boiler and claiming the money. But she said no to taking responsibility and no to resigning. As a result the Northern Ireland executive collapsed.

These are the people to whom the mathematics of the Commons has given such great leverage. But do any of us have to like it? No.

[email protected]

 

 

 

 

 

DUP= Don't Understand Politics...

[1]

34 minutes ago, Fosse69 said:

3 questions on the referendum paper, how would it be counted? Simple majority or transferable vote? Allow parliament 2 years to decide. I cannot see No Deal being an option unless it is a straight vote against remain as it could split the leave vote if one of the options to leave. Since the referendum caused all the chaos is that not a reason to revisit the options?

I hadn’t considered the vote being split. So maybe...

remain

vs

a withdrawal agreement

(a deal in its totally ratified, cast iron state - which can be signed into law the day after the referendum)

[1]

1 hour ago, geosname said:

The above questions split the leave vote and almost guarantee a remain majority...... is that not a definition of rigged as opposed to democratic?

A mere oversight I assure you. 🙂

[Fosse69]

8 minutes ago, 1 said:

I hadn’t considered the vote being split. So maybe...

remain

vs

a withdrawal agreement

(a deal in its totally ratified, cast iron state - which can be signed into law the day after the referendum)

On the day after the referendum, the WA could be signed allowing the Trade negotiations to proceed during the transition period up to December 2020, or even 2022 if no-deal can be avoided. It maybe the case that May`s deal will be chosen for the referendum in preference to the current one.

[mr.hobblesworth]

37 minutes ago, Davebrad said:

DUP= Don't Understand Politics...

The DUP just want a hard border, IMO, and will do whatever it takes to increase the likelihood of that happening. They're vile specimens and their antics during the abortion and gay marriage stuff last week was utterly shameful.