>>85279 This shit is turning us into the US or Venezuela. She's been in office for almost 3 years now, when is she finally going to get her head around how this country works?
It's more like a poltical Stalingrad. Except I don't think Theresa May's got a couple of metaphorical tank armies to unleash into Parliament's over stretched flank. Or summat.
>>85281 >I don't think it's just her though - they've all lost the plot.
That depends on who you mean by "they". She's spent the last three years trying to operate as a dictator, and it clearly isn't working. She came into office unopposed, fought an election and lost, tried changing the rules so she could force legislation through as if she'd won, got into bed with "democratic" fundamentalists who refused to constitute a legislature so they could get favourable policies through direct rule, imposed a bunch of mutually-exclusive "red lines" and was somehow surprised when the resulting offer was predictably poor, refused to listen to the opposition when they told her she was on a hiding to nothing, refused to listen to her own backbenchers when they told her the same thing, refused to listen when people rightly pointed out that her so-called "mandate" to leave the EU was questionable, refused to acknowledge when her own lawyers stood up in open court and admitted they'd known since before A50 that this was the case, agreed to put the matter to a vote in Parliament but postponed it when it became clear she was going to lose, then pulled it halfway through the debate when it was clear she was still going to lose, suffered the biggest defeat in Parliamentary history, put it to the vote again, postponed it again, had her arse handed to her again, has now resorted to outright pork-barrel bribery to try and get it through yet again, and through it all has the utter fucking cheek to blame Parliament for her mess.
Parliament has a problem. That problem is called Theresa.
Can anyone give me an objective view of how the EU itself has behaved through all of this?
I was on the fence about Brexit, I am the furthest thing from a right winger and it's for the same reason I feel animosity to the EU, which is itself a cornerstone of the global neo-liberal free market operation. The media narrative we've seen (and the popular narrative amongst my peer group) is that the UK just needs to sort it's shit out, while the EU basically sits and watches us throw a tantrum.
What role have the EU players caused in all this? Are they making a difficult process harder? Are they, in an ironic way, justifying all those Daily Mail readers whinging about us being oppressed by big mean continentals? Obviously they can't give us a better deal than staying in, but that's kind of the problem isn't it.
I don't know. One thing I'm amazed at is how the fuck May has clung onto power, and I'm convinced it's only because no cunt else is willing to be remembered as "the one that fucked Brexit good and proper".
>>85285 >Can anyone give me an objective view of how the EU itself has behaved through all of this?
Admirably. They have been entirely consistent all the way through, set out their negotiating position very clearly two years ago and have stuck to it like glue. When they've been called on it, they've obliged, and when they've been asked to compromise that position, they've declined.
>The media narrative we've seen (and the popular narrative amongst my peer group) is that the UK just needs to sort it's shit out, while the EU basically sits and watches us throw a tantrum.
This is a surprisingly accurate reflection of the reality on the ground. Juncker, Barnier and Tusk have been extremely patient, and remained cordial and civil up to the point where that patience has been tested, Juncker being a lecherous drunk notwithstanding. The UK government has effectively made its own job in this process needlessly difficult.
The UK was an employee angling for a better deal, talking up handing in their resignation, and the EU was an employer calling their bluff. We handed in our notice, then tried to demand favourable terms for leaving. Now it's our last day on the job, we don't have another job lined up, and we're desperately begging the EU for a better severance package.
Seems to me like she's got it figured that Parliament will delay until the last possible moment. Now in concert with Tusk she has put MPs (including the speaker) on a cliff-edge of her deal or no deal. And Parliament has already voted against a no deal.
Her appeal to the people puts her in an authoritarian light playing the third estate against the second but then MPs are not people who like to feel isolated.
>>85284 I can't help but read this bizarre arrogance in the light of the same kind of deterministic view of politics Cameron had when he called the referendum in the first place. A view where what you want will be done because it's the right thing to do, in the national interest, with the opposition too far left/remain and the backbenchers too far right/leave from May's perspective it probably looks a lot like she's standing in some kind of multi-front centre-ground. Think the kind of shock response that otherwise serious people had to Trump winning - looking for ways that somehow the electoral college could give clinton the presidency, not because she'd won the popular vote but because she was the one who was supposed to win. If you take your victory as historically inevitable, you're going to make bizarre and reality-defying attempts to tick the boxes that confirm it.
>>85286 >They have been entirely consistent all the way through, set out their negotiating position very clearly two years ago and have stuck to it like glue. When they've been called on it, they've obliged, and when they've been asked to compromise that position, they've declined.
Do people not generally think of a refusal to compromise as a bad thing?
>>85286 >The UK was an employee angling for a better deal, talking up handing in their resignation, and the EU was an employer calling their bluff. We handed in our notice, then tried to demand favourable terms for leaving. Now it's our last day on the job, we don't have another job lined up, and we're desperately begging the EU for a better severance package.
>>85289 >from May's perspective it probably looks a lot like she's standing in some kind of multi-front centre-ground
From her perspective, and nobody else's. She couldn't get the judges to back her, and she couldn't get the crowd to back her, so now she's going to sit on the piste where she will refuse to move and have a little cry in the vain hope that it'll change anything.
>Do people not generally think of a refusal to compromise as a bad thing?
That sentence doesn't mean what you think it does.
It's almost like May's serial killer-esque negotiating style of "of course you'll do what I want because I want it" isn't working, never has, and unlike many famous serial killers she lacks the big knife and an erection to make things happen regardless.
God, I thought David Cameron was a berk, but he just didn't really give a shit, which I can get, it's hard to do your best when you're completely uninterested. However, Theresa May seems to genuinely lack the intellect to even have a decent go at being PM, we'd have been better off having the whole country draw lots to see who becomes PM.
Corbyn is being a cunt too. He apparently walked out of the cross party Brexit talks because Chukka was there. At a time when we need all of parliament to work together to get us out of this shit, he let his personal views get in the way.
>>85279 Her actually trying to militantise the electorate AGAINST parliament strikes me as monumentally stupid. The Tories using Scotland to test the Pol Tax left them having to openly court Unionist hardliners like the LOR and the Scottish Conservatives are largely of that ilk now.
The days of moderate conservatism are over. The time of the gammon has come.
Yet again she's trying to be a dictator and finding that people aren't standing for her shit.
After last night's speech, almost a million signatures have been added to a petition calling on the government to revoke Article 50. Official statement from No 10 basically boils down to "LA LA LA CANT HEAR YOU".
She wants an extension to 30 June. She's been told she can have 22 May, if and only if the withdrawal agreement is ratified before 29 March. The conditions they've imposed are entirely reasonable, given that we would otherwise be required by law to conduct elections to the European Parliament.
She's throwing a massive fucking teary all because nobody will just give her what she wants. She's behaving like a "Ronald Drump" from Poundland. At least the real thing has a personal mandate to act like a dick.
There's a revoke petition floating about that's reached 1,152,419 signatures so far
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584 but the page keeps going down
According to Limmy, who is apparently in the know for some reason, it's because of maintenance that's been requested by the govt. "coincidentally".
I wish I could believe the government were competent enough to pull off something even that weakly Machiavellian.
>>85304 >According to Limmy, who is apparently in the know for some reason
Yeah, no. It's probably a joke. Some people have had a look at the code (it's on GitHub somewhere) and it's a poor design choice that's taking it down. Something to do with how it builds the "top" petitions list. Apparently rebuilds it with every signature instead of caching it.
>>85309 Kind of, but I think Theresa May's dad is dead so he can't help her and none of her advisers seem able to stop her, so I'm honestly not sure how this freakshow ends. The Tories really popped off much too soon with that no confidence vote.
>she was asked if she felt she should apologise to MPs, some of whom have said they have been on the receiving end of death threats and harassment over Brexit. She declined to do so, saying instead: "There are passionately held views on all sides of this argument. And yes, as I said, last night I expressed frustration but I know MPs are frustrated too."
What a worm. So weak and out-of-control she won't even slate people who send death threats to MPs because they don't understand how Parliament works; it isn't "passion" it's violence. The quoted text it from the Guardian's liveblog by the way.
>>85309 Theresa lost her voice the other-day so I bet we could get another extension for the flu. We'll go out on the 11th April but nobody post any pictures on facebook.
She was asked if this suggested a shift in public opinion since the referendum three years ago. She responded "we had a referendum three years ago and voted to leave". I swear she's getting stuck in a loop. Have we tried turning her off and on again?
Without a delay, we'll definitely drop out with no deal. Even if MV3 gets through parliament next week, we need several more weeks to get all the necessary legislation through parliament to facilitate an orderly Brexit.
The EU have made a two-pronged offer. If MV3 passes, we get a delay until 22nd of May, which is just about enough to sort out all the necessary legislation to implement May's deal. If it doesn't, we get a delay until the 12th of April, solely to allow us to return to the EU and figure out a plan B. The option of a longer delay is still on the table if MV3 fails (possibly involving a change of government), as is the option of revocation. The 12th of April extension gives us enough time to have a proper debate in Parliament and a series of indicative votes on what the hell we're going to do next.
It's a bit of a fudge, because the key players don't entirely agree on their negotiating position. Merkel is very keen to avoid a no-deal scenario out of an abundance of caution, while Macron sees it as potentially beneficial to France because it would cripple the economy of one of their major competitors. A short delay gives May what she wants, which is suspect is something of a tactical move on the part of the EU. They can't be blamed if/when MV3 fails and May has to come back to the table in an even weaker position. This round of negotiations has revealed to May and the wider public the reality of any Brexit scenario - 27 countries in a room, making a decision about us without our involvement. At the very least, that's likely to sharpen the attention of MPs on the gravity of our situation.
At this point I'm becoming more and more willing for a no-deal scenario. Even as a remainer, you have to sort of begrudgingly accept that any deal they could conceivably have come up with is going to be a gutless compromise that angers everybody and pleases nobody.
What's on the cards for no deal anyway? Leave and do pretty well as the world's largest off-shore tax haven? Crippling political constitutional crisis that brings some long needed change to Westminster? Crash in the housing market leaving millions suddenly able to afford a home?
Honestly I think I'm just beyond giving a fuck any more. It's going to be shit either way and it would still have been as shit as it has been for the past decade if we'd voted remain, so what's the difference.
>Speaking to Reuters after EU leaders agreed with Prime Minister Theresa May that Britain would elect its own members to a new European Parliament if it has not left before the May 23-26 vote, Manfred Weber of the European People’s Party (EPP) said the summit had provided needed clarity on Brexit. Leaders hardened their insistence that Britain should be out of the European Union before the election, so as to avoid casting doubt on the EU legislature’s legitimacy.
>Weber, who leads the EPP in the chamber and is campaigning to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as EU chief executive, said he was concerned, however, that if Britain took up the leaders’ offer to rethink its Brexit plan, stay until next year and send its own MEPs to the EU parliament, that would spell trouble. “A possible participation of Great Britain in the EU elections can lead to a big success for the anti-elite parties in Great Britain. So that is my worry,” the German lawmaker said. “When Jimmy Saville is back with a lot of MEPs in the EU parliament, that will create big problems for all of us.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-weber/keep-Saville-out-weber-wants-no-eu-vote-in-uk-idUKKCN1R31MP
What joke candidates will you be voting for in the potential European Parliament elections, lads?
>>85320 So it made 1 million after it got on the telly and was spammed all over the internet. I don't think you understand how many signatures this is supposed to get before anyone cares with it now exhausting the supply of feckless petition signers.
>>85324 >Honestly I think I'm just beyond giving a fuck any more. It's going to be shit either way and it would still have been as shit as it has been for the past decade if we'd voted remain, so what's the difference.
Maybe if you gave a fuck about issues like trade and access to international institutions you would be able to afford a house?
>>85324 >What's on the cards for no deal anyway?
Utter disaster, just like they've been saying since 2016. But apparently that was just "project fear" innit.
>Leave and do pretty well as the world's largest off-shore tax haven?
In what way would we "do pretty well"? The whole point of a being a tax haven is that the plebs don't get to see any of that money.
>Crippling political constitutional crisis that brings some long needed change to Westminster?
Are you that muppet that keeps whining about Blairites and "managerial centrism" and just wants the whole thing to burn?
>Crash in the housing market leaving millions suddenly able to afford a home?
Plot twist: Just as the prices come down to an affordable multiple of their income, nobody will offer them a mortgage at a reasonable rate.
>>85326 >I don't think you understand how many signatures this is supposed to get before anyone cares with it now exhausting the supply of feckless petition signers.
I hope you're not about to suggest that the referendum three years ago still has any form of legitimacy.
>>85326 >I don't think you understand how many signatures this is supposed to get before anyone cares
10,000 for the Government to respond, 100,000 for them to debate it. "Respond" and "debate" sound like caring to me. It's currently at 3,467,130 over the second of those.
>>85329 There is clearly an ocean of difference between a legitimately organised and run anonymous vote, using the electoral roll and administered by local councils held in a public place, than a little survey on a website.
I was dead against another rederendum, on the basis that it would set a bad precedent for future political foul ups, but given that I can't imagine another mess like this coming around any time soon touch wood, perhaps we should chance it. Although if there isn't a plan if the vote goes for leave again then what's the point? And there probably isn't enough time before the EU Parliament elections anyway. Christ almighty, what a fine mess.
I'll give a couple of highly specific and technical examples, to illustrate the point that most industries face some sort of massive crisis.
The vast majority of acoustic and classical guitars contain some amount of wood from the genus dalbergia. The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species applies to dalbergia species, so you need import and export licenses every time a guitar containing those woods crosses an international border.
You don't need a CITES permit for intra-EU trade, so I can send a guitar from Britain to Germany or vice-versa without a license. A license costs £74 per shipment and involves about an hour of bureaucracy, so many British guitar dealers don't currently ship outside the EU. For some large or specialist dealers that sell across Europe, a no-deal would cost them 30-50% of their sales, which would push many of them into bankruptcy.
The government published a guidance note on CITES shipments in the event of a no-deal, which put the final nail in the coffin. CITES-controlled shipments need to go through a designated point of entry that is competent to inspect the shipment for compliance. Only one postal hub is currently designated for forestry materials, Coventry International. Most couriers use Heathrow as their main hub, so this is already a pain in the arse, but it gets worse. Coventry cannot process exports, so it will be impossible for a British-based guitar dealer to sell most of their guitars internationally.
Most manufacturers rely on measurement equipment to prove that their products are compliant with international standards or contractual requirements. Modern trade depends upon the fact that my micrometer or voltmeter or colorimeter gives the same result as everyone else's.
Measurement equipment needs to be regularly calibrated to remain accurate; to be trustworthy, that calibration needs to be traceable to international standards and certified as such. There's only one body in the UK with the authority to issue certified calibration certificates, the United Kingdom Accreditation Service.
UKAS has delegated authority from the European Accreditation Multilateral Agreement. In the event of a no-deal, UKAS loses that status and can no longer calibrate measurement equipment to European standards. At this point, no UK manufacturer or importer would be able to apply a valid CE mark to their products, which would completely prevent them from marketing their products in the EU.
Many companies rely on CE marking to gain equivalent market authorisation in non-EU countries, so losing the right to apply CE marks would also jeopardise their ability to export to some non-EU markets. Products could be exported via an EU subsidiary or partner for CE marking, but this comes with an enormously long list of caveats, especially if our transport infrastructure is already severely stressed.
There are literally thousands of these highly specific, highly technical issues that would bring some or other industry to a grinding halt. An apparently insignificant sub-paragraph of an international regulation that would send hundreds or thousands of people straight to the dole queue in the event of a no-deal. No deal would be an economic catastrophe, equivalent in scale to the international sanctions imposed on rogue regimes. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it would be the worst peacetime crisis that any democratic nation has ever inflicted upon itself.
>>85327 The concern was in getting enough wood pulp but they've had months to prepare at this point - it's a 'mother-in-law visit' kind of stocking up you want. What you really want to do is stock up on aviation parts and then sell them for a Kings ransom when our resident drone lad shuts down the airports again.
>>85329 It does whether you want it to or not. Even if you do get your second referendum and by some fluke it goes your way there is still the issue of opening Pandora's box of referendums ad nauseum.
>>85333 >10,000 for the Government to respond, 100,000 for them to debate it.
Let's see if I've got this straight. We had a vote on it, which was democratic, but can't have another vote on it, because that would be undemocratic, and MPs voted on it, which didn't go the way May wanted it to so they had another vote, which also didn't go the way at wanted, so now she's demanding a third. May is re-running votes until she gets the right result, but I thought that's what the big nasty undemocratic EU does, or so the Brexit people keep telling us.
>>85339 >It does whether you want it to or not.
So a referendum three years ago on no information which has since been found subject to corrupt influence, both foreign and domestic, is a legitimate expression of public opinion today? Gotcha.
>Even if you do get your second referendum and by some fluke it goes your way there is still the issue of opening Pandora's box of referendums ad nauseum.
Only in the minds of dishonest Brexiteers. In the minds of our with functioning brachronic masturbatorls, periodically testing public opinion is perfectly legitimate. To wit, in the last ten years we've done it no fewer than fourteen times. Someone once said
>If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.
Though I guess this must just be some silly Remoaner talking. Oh, no, wait, it was David Davis, who resigned as Brexit Secretary because May's proposed Brexit wasn't Brexit enough.
Given there's no solution in sight through peaceful means (the party can't remove her, we can't get an election or referendum, and she's refusing to take any of the reasonable options on the table), and May's trying to dictator her way out of this and clearly failing, I'm genuinely worried that the only way this is going to be resolved is if some mad lad storms a Cabinet meeting with a SMG.
Congratulations, lads. We've become a third-world banana republic.
Silly me, I forgot that it works like a magic spell where when it hits a certain number all the members of parliament are teleported into the building.
In a weird way I think this still goes back to justifying some of the leaver type points. I mean, these sorts of things are utterly incomprehensible for most people. UKAS has a big role in my workplace, but come the leave date for no deal, we'd still be doing everything exactly the same. We'd be completely compliant to all those international standards but the stroke of a pen in Brussels would say we're not any more.
It's that abstract sort of intangible change, when for all intents and purposes nothing has changed in the real life every day conduction of business, that people can't get their head round and instinctively dislike- "It just goes to show we were too heavily controlled by them eurocrats!"
I think no-deal could have been less of a disaster if there had actually been some serious planning put into it, some sort of genuine contingency plan. The real shambles here is that the government has tried to play chicken when it doesn't have a winning hand to play with, and now we're fucked.
>>85343 What exactly are you crying about? If the referendum had gone your way I'm sure you wouldn't give a fuck about Obama visiting or whatever else the Leave petition bangs on about.
People ultimately make a decision to vote and for that to happen we implicitly assume they have the basic competence to make their own minds up.
>In the minds of our with functioning brachronic masturbatorls
The remain-ish argument I'd make is "International trade is unbelievably, absurdly complicated. Hundreds of millions of containerloads of freight move around the world every year and it all just works, through an elaborate miracle of coordination. We haven't had to think about most of the stuff that keeps this machine running, because the EU sorts it out for us. That's a big part of why we pay the membership fee. Leaving the EU won't take away any of that complexity, but it will mean that we'll have to figure it out on our own in a massive hurry. It's not impossible, but it'll be a dreadful fucking mess for a very long time. The only people who will avoid being damaged by that mess are the super-rich; everyone else is going to bear some amount of pain. Are we absolutely sure that it's worth the effort?"
I think Brexit has been in part motivated by a sort of Clarksonesque how hard can it be?, with no deal being the ultimate pratfall. There's a loss of trust in institutions which may be partly justified, but it's leading us down a very slippery slope. A lot of people are nostalgic for a time when life was much simpler, but they seem to be ignorant or indifferent to the fact that we were also much poorer.
>>85349 >People ultimately make a decision to vote and for that to happen we implicitly assume they have the basic competence to make their own minds up.
Which is of course why we don't have any rules about what campaigns can or cannot do or what influence can or cannot be brought to bear on the voters.
>>85350 It's because none of the tools usually available to resolve political deadlocks are on the table. As you'd know if you'd actually bothered reading the post you were replying to.
Not him, but it looks like you're the one crying. The "Pandora's Box" thing is a cheap retort by Brexiteers who don't want anyone to steal the result they stole.
It's tantamount to "we can't ask people to vote again, because some of the people who voted the first time are literal fascists and will start shooting people if they don't get their way".
>>85355 That are commit medium-level traffic offences. Or threaten to, anyway. I presume they'll see a pub on the way and get pissed up on a proper British beer like Stella and then forget.
>>85328 >Are you that muppet that keeps whining about Blairites and "managerial centrism" and just wants the whole thing to burn?
No, that's me and I'm rather bothered you'd insinuate I'd say that. Mostly because I know the implication: That you haven't spent sufficient time dwelling on the causal chain that gave us Brexit, which goes back way before Cameron's promise of a referendum.
>>85343 You know while I'm all for a second referendum, I've never liked the whole corrupt influence angle. It's definitely an interesting sub-plot, but it takes a lot of the blame off the dire remain campaign that seemingly learned nothing but the wrong lessons from the Scottish referendum. There's no point getting a second referendum just to cock it up and get an even bigger majority for leaving than the first time.
>>85359 I didn't say it wasn't true, I said it was stupid to focus on when it lets the remain campaign off the hook.
Remain didn't lose because it stuck to the law, it lost because it was utterly incompetent. It took the tactics that lost "no" a 15% lead in the Scottish referendum and applied them to an issue where "Leave" had already regularly polled ahead in the pre-referendum period and "Remain" never had such a massive lead to throw away.
(Though let's be funny, since we're probably all going to starve anyway it would be pretty funny to watch us get a final chance to save ourselves and have the would-be heroes screw it all up.)
>>85360 Evaluation of the relative merits of the campaigns is subjective, and implicitly depends on the legitimacy of the referendum. The corrupt influence is objective, and undermines that legitimacy.
>>85362 It made a difference to me - doing the shopping earlier was a fucking nightmare.
Why can't we have a protest tradition where the big ones happen in dying coastal communities to give them an up-tick in revenue? I don't think anyone wins in this aside from the press who avoid going far. What would happen if one day we actually do move the capital to Morecambe, would people still protest in London?
I don't like Limmy. He's funny, but I don't like him. If he was one of the lads at work he'd be that one everyone goes quiet around because you never really know what kind of awkward and uncomfortable shit he's going to inflict on everyone.
That's the vibe I've always got from him, to be fair. His show and his livestreams often have much the same vibe. Let's not even get started on his vines.
He's a genuinely odd lad, I reckon, not just a surreal comic.
Is he odd, or does he just express thoughts that most of us might have at some point but few of us would willingly express? I think a lot of Limmy's work is very relatable.
I'm assuming that'd fail, then we'd get election (aka referendum v2), Conservatives in the hard/no brexit corner and labour in the soft/revoke corner. No idea who'd win that, would like to see labour win as Jezza has always been very anti-EU.
Failing that we could always, I don't know, make our democracy actually representational
Party lines don't divide neatly enough on the subject for that to happen. Expect the 'independent group' to balloon with remainers under those circumstances and spit the vote nationally in a way where no ones seat is safe. If that sounds like an unrealistic idea then you haven't been paying attention to how unrealistic modern politics is.
>>85499 My money is on it eventually it passing. It's not ideal but she is clawing up votes and I feel that Parliament is mostly playing until the last possible minute on the 11th April. For evidence just look at how blasé Parliament's debates seemed over the SI.
>>85500 I don't see a general election being in anyone's interest. Labour is just as divided as the Tories and will face the same problems once they're asking for something more than voting everything down.
Plus the next GE will likely see Sinn Féin emerge as the largest party in Northern Ireland and Labour inevitably having to seek a coalition with the SNP if they win. We really have enough on our plate right now.
>>85502 The difference is that modern politics breaks for the unrealistic against the former 'sensible' status quo. That makes the independent group less likely.
In the same sort of way, President Clinton is less likely than America electing a dog as president. We're living in the age of the stupid, not the age of the unexpected.
>>85503 >Plus the next GE will likely see Sinn Féin emerge as the largest party in Northern Ireland
That would only help whoever ends up winning. The erosion of the middle has meant that NI is currently represented in Westminster almost entirely by the DUP. All that swing would achieve is reduce the number of sitting MPs, and therefore the number required to achieve a working majority.
>>85503 >My money is on it eventually it passing. It's not ideal but she is clawing up votes
She offered up her own head on a plate and still came up short. The DUP have made it clear that their minds are made up, and all that's left in her own party are two groups of hardliners. She needs Labour votes to carry it, and only a couple of desperate souls have jumped on board so far. The main problem she has now is that she has nothing left to give, so she has to resort to playing chicken.
>>85518 The key question there will be whether that's before or after getting a long extension. Or maybe whether she'll sneakily try and ratify it while Parliament is dissolved. Remember that if there is to be an extension, there will be EP elections in May, and to arrange a general election for the same day the formalities need to be done by April 12. It's already too late to make it happen by the confidence process alone, because that requires a 14-day timeout.
Why are people so outraged about the possibility of new European Parliament elections? Is it just the symbolism of it or is there a real issue with it?
>>85522 I think the EU countries don't want it as the MEPs we elect are likely going to be eurosceptic Brexiteers, who will disrupt the European Parliament.
>>85511 So we're living in exactly the same age that saw Kennedy beat Nixon?
>>85516 Pull your head out of the arithmetic for 5 minutes and consider the big picture. Nationalists want a border poll and they want it while Brexit is ongoing despite the knowledge Belfast will catch fire. The last election saw a Sinn Féin and DUP get equal seats in Northern Ireland Assembly while moderate movements have been brushed aside.
Ultimately it is a single issue that the most strong and stable of governments would struggle with but now we sit with the legislature dictating policy.
Which has been the only card worth anything. Labour's customs union has all the appeal of a wet fart and a GE means we're staying in until 2020 with many MPs looking nervously at their leave constituencies.
