So, this is a thing that just happened [The Guardian]:
MPs have inflicted a humiliating defeat on Boris Johnson by passing a backbench amendment withholding their support from his Brexit deal.
Instead of giving Johnson their backing for his Brexit deal in a “meaningful vote”, MPs passed an amendment tabled by a cross-party group of MPs led by Oliver Letwin by 322 votes to 306 – a majority of 16.
The prime minister will be legally obliged to request a Brexit delay at 11pm under the terms of the rebel Benn act, after the government lost the critical vote.
What does it mean? Fuckifino. Maybe a UK-based jackal will be kind enough to explain it to us dumb Yanks.
Open thread!
Tim C.
It means the basic problem with being conservative; that you can change reality just by wishing it so, might win elections, but it doesn’t make for realistic policy.
Marcopolo
From the twitter feed of the inimitable Ian Dunt (and no, I don’t know how to embed a damned tweet in a comment–feel free to tell me & I may figure out how to do it after a lot of misfires :))
kindness
They really need to let the citizens vote again. Getting the EU to wait for a new vote will be difficult. Getting the tiny minds pro no deal Brexit locals to pull their heads out of their bums problematic. I think the stay in the EU vote would pass but just by the skin of it’s teeth.
Hawes
Basically, Parliament voted to assert that Johnson is a lying weasel, because Johnson is a lying weasel.
This prevents a no-deal Brexit and prevent Johnson from “crashing out” on Halloween. I think it prevents the current deal, because there is no final resolution to several issues, including Northern Ireland
MattF
FWIW, ‘tabled’ in the UK apparently means the opposite to what it means in the US. Just to keep everything simple.
debbie
@Tim C.:
Pity OrangeOne won’t take note of this.
Amir Khalid
The UK-based jackal you’re probably thinking of is watching some English Premier League football right now. We might have to wait.
@Hawes:
It was only to be expected given recent events, I suppose. At what point does Bojo get red-carded as PM?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
You know, it’s almost like Farage and all the other dumbfucks who agitated for this three years ago didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. And all the dumbfucks who have been trying to deal with it since then also don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Almost. But I keep hearing about how conservatives are like the daddy party. Surely they couldn’t be talking about a daddy who gets drunk every night and then beats the wife and children, could they?
Marcopolo
So the vote in parliament on the Brexit deal has been postponed. BoJo is now required to submit a request for an extension for Brexit to the EU parliament. Here is what Dunt thinks will happen:
I’m off to see a cheap $5 Saturday morning movie. Everyone play nice.
Elizabelle
@kindness: Agree with you.
I have never understood why they are treating a joke referendum, which a lot of people did not even vote in, because it was seen as insane, as the last word.
swiftfox
The current lead post at Lawyers Fund & Money is by Dave Brockington, a yank expat involved in SW England politics. Basically this just postpones the agreement by a week.
Elizabelle
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Daddy Vlad.
Can’t recall where I read it, but someone was saying that Brexit was cooked up “in the country houses” — it’s all about the wealthy preserving their wealth. Which would be treated differently under EU standards (if memory serves).
I am sick of these self-dealing pissants. We are afflicted with them, all over.
I am for truly confiscatory tax rates, kicking in at a level that won’t hit your well-earning middle class. There is a huge difference between C suite compensation and what the rest of professionals, who don’t have a company to raid, get.
Tax them very heavily to stop them from buying the politicians and political process and use the money to upgrade infrastructure, provide jobs (because the wealthy and corporations are sitting on beaucoups cash), and — in our “first world” country — provide universal health insurance and care. That is a huge jobs and infrastructure provider.
I am sick of these fucking disruptors. Disrupt THEM.
lurker dean
i don’t understand brexit, but this seemed helpful.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
David Cameron promised the Brexiters a referendum. One was held, Brexit won, and the Tories now feel obliged to drive Britain over this cliff because that’s what the Brexiters said they wanted. At least, that’s my understanding.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Elizabelle: QFT
Hawes
@swiftfox: I think it does more than delay it. It asks for a delay under the Benn Act, because it requires that ALL issues with Brexit, including the intractable NI question have to be entirely resolved before there can be a FINAL FINAL FOR REALS vote on whatever plan Boris thinks he has.
Frankensteinbeck
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Yes. Not even in a joking way. The idea behind being ‘daddy’ is tough love, helping people by hurting someone, usually the people you’re hurting. On a small scale it’s domestic abuse, and conservatives use exactly the arguments that domestic abusers do, like ‘Because you criticized me for being mean, it’s your fault that I flew into a violent rage.’
@Elizabelle:
Like in America, rich greedy assholes and poor racist assholes find it easy to make common cause. They find it especially easy because the rich assholes are even more racist than the poor, and the poor are pretty damn greedy and hate restricting greed on principle.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid: I was in Spain at the time of the Brexit vote, living in an apartment with two young British women, and neither of them voted, nor did any of their expat friends, because they did not think it was going to pass — it was that loopy.
I don’t think that anyone realized what a shit show this could turn into.
Steeplejack
@Marcopolo:
To embed a tweet:
1. Beside each tweet, next to the person’s nym, is a V, or downward-pointing arrow. Click that.
2. Click “Embed Tweet.”
3. At the “Embed This Tweet” screen, copy (all of) the text in the selected box. (The text begins
<blockquote class=
. . .)4. Return to Balloon Juice and paste that text into your comment here.
5. Profit!
ETA: Here’s a link to your quoted tweet, in the middle of a nice long explanatory thread.
Another Scott
@Hawes: This is close to my understanding. No Brexit until the relevant legislation is approved first.
I’ve had the BBC on in the background. Before the vote, BoJo was saying that if the Letwin amendment passed (as it did in the 322/306 vote), then he would take his ball and go home. So no vote on the “real” Brexit agreement today. Then there were maximalist statements out of #10 to appease the Brexiteers while BoJo has to send a letter to the EU by 11 PM requesting an extension or he’s breaking the law.
BoJo seems to continue to be working from his do-what-I-want-or-I’ll-force-you-to-have-a-no-confidence-vote-which-will-trigger-a-general-election-that-I’ll-win playbook. Parliament is continuing to call his bluff and demand that he follow the laws that they pass. It’s hard to say how far BoJo will continue to push this, but Parliament has to continue to insist that they’re not leaving until a government can propose a workable agreement. (And since there is no workable agreement that will satisfy the maximalist Brexiteers, the only thing that makes sense is to tear up the Article 50 request and all the rest and stay in the EU.)
I’m no expert. My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
The morning after the Brexit vote, I was an exam specimen at the University of Malaya’s final exam for a class of final-year medical students. Among the examining professors was an Englishman. After he had looked at me, I asked how the Brexit vote had gone.
“They voted to leave,” he said.
Me: “Oh dear.”
English prof: “That was my reaction too.”
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid: My roommates were very late in getting up that morning. I figured they had been out late partying the night before. Actually, they were in their rooms, crying and commiserating with their friends on social media. They could not believe the outcome, and how it could endanger their future.
eclare
@Elizabelle: Agree 1000%, raise the rates.
Miss Bianca
@Elizabelle: Yeah, and they couldn’t be bothered to vote. Even tho’ their future was hanging in the balance. I don’t fucking get it, I really don’t, this mentality. I’ve voted in EVERY GODDAMN ELECTION I was eligible for since I was 18 years old. Hell, I remember sitting on the floor in a post office in Rome in 1988 with my boyfriend, filling out the absentee ballots we had had sent to General Post (for all the good it did). I simply do not get it. Hell, I was itchy the last time I was in London, because there was an election going on and I just wanted to be Doing Something. Do these young people not accompany their parents as wee ones to the polls? Did they just not get a civic education? WTF??!
OK, apparently it’s time to cultivate a lawn so I can order people to get off it!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elizabelle:
there were a lot of reports of people voting “leave” to “send a message”, confident it would never pass. OTOH, I understand polling for that people’s referendum suggests it would be a close run thing.
I’m not an econ wonk, much less an international econ wonk, but it seems to me the US markets and prognosticators are underestimating the knock-on effect of Brexit
hitchhiker
If you haven’t been in an abusive relationship, it’s hard to convey how very persuasive this argument is. IMO, the reason it works is that it pretends to give the abused person a measure of control over what happens next.
If I’m just good/attractive/pleasing/cooperative/neat/sexy/submissive/whatever enough, this won’t happen again.
In the case of daddy party politics, it’s finally become obvious that we simply cannot please the conservatives enough. Their lust for power derives from needs no one will ever satisfy.
gene108
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Farage and UKIP are on Putin’s payroll, like other right-wing political parties in the U.S. and Europe are.
They knew what they were doing.
They wanted to break Western Europe, so Russia’s power can creep back across Eastern Europe.
The mind boggling thing is the Brexit vote was non-binding. Parliament did not have to push Brexit through. But the Tories decided to do it anyway.
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It always makes me wonder, “what fucking ‘message’ does voting for something you don’t actually want, actually send?”
ETA: I mean, the only time I ever voted for something ‘to send a message’ was for Colorado’s ill-fated attempt to pass single-payer health care. And that was because even tho’ I thought the model was flawed, it was something that I *actually wanted*.
Another Scott
@gene108: Yup.
Even though the Tory parliament subsequently decided to make the Brexit referendum binding, Parliament remains sovereign. They cannot be bound by previous votes. They can, and should, decide on their own what to do now. And the path forward clearly seems to be:
1) BoJo requests extension from the EU, asl the law requires.
2) Parliament orders a referendum vote with 2 questions:
a) accept BoJo’s “deal” and Brexit
b) Stay in the EU
3) When 2b wins, Parliament revokes the Article 50 act, restores the previous EU membership law, etc. If 2a wins, then Brexit only happens when Parliament first accepts all the implementing legislation.
4) Only at that point, is a new general election called.
The Tories may win the next election, but they can’t be allowed to ram through a Brexit that the public and Parliament does not support. The election should not be called until the Brexit issue is resolved and out of the Tories’s incompetent hands.
Not that I expect this to happen, of course – BoJo is too captured by Vlad and the oligarchs to give up easily…
Grrr….
Cheers,
Scott.
Amir Khalid
@gene108:
The Tories feared loss of face (and more importantly, of votes) if they didn’t abide by the result a referendum Cameron had promised to Tory Brexiters, who made up a big chunk of their base.
Frankensteinbeck
@hitchhiker:
I have.
And the same with an abuser. Anyone who votes Republican I suspect as a likely domestic abuser, or victim who hasn’t had a chance to be one themselves yet. They’re running on abuser logic already. Does this mean that relationship and child abuse is thick and rampant and sadistic in our country? Why, yes. Yes, it does.
sylvainsylvain
@Elizabelle:
From everything I’ve read (and my middling-to-poor understanding), neither the Tories nor Labour actually want another referendum, based both on their own ideological perspectives (Tories appealing to their own deplorables, and Corbyn best nag personally opposed to the EU in general) and fear of poor results if another referendum is held. Labour seems to be in a permanent state of failure; all Corbyn can do is head the party, he can’t win elections or inspire anyone to support his plans. The Conservatives are lost up their asses, same as Republicans here.
The fly in the ointment is all the other parties. The LibDems don’t know what they want to be; they go from election to election, barely remaining relevant. The UKIP (nationalist, racist, nutjobs) loom, ready to steal voters away from the Tories if BoJo/whoever’s next aren’t sufficiently nationalist/racist enough. Voters in Scotland, a traditional Labour stronghold, see all of this as a waste of their time, and vote for the Scottish Nationalists – if Brexit passes, they want to have a clear path to leave and join the EU on their own.
In short, Britain’s political problems make ours look simple, and it’s such an effing waste. On both sides of the pond.
Mary G
The EU has passed a tax/financial transparency law that goes into effect Jan. 1. Russians and rich people like BoJo don’t want to comply and have appealed to racists to get out of it.
Ruckus
@hitchhiker:
They want the power in a relationship. The want all the control. If they get it, they usually want more. That power is never enough and equality is not possible. And there are differing kinds of control. The decision making is their’s, often the physical power is as well. My point is that it doesn’t have to fall into a physical fight but of course often does. Domination is the end game, whatever form that takes.
scav
Looking at BoJo &co. does rather make one yearn to nip into one’s TARDIS and pop back to nominate Python’s Twit of the Year for Best Documentary Short.
NotMax
Parliament to Johnson: “Cram it, clown.”
(Assuming the headline is a play on the apocryphal incident.)
Miss Bianca
@NotMax: Ah, yes…”cram it, clown” has been part of my lexicon for almost a half-century now…and, of course, when I heard the story, it had happened in Detroit. ; )
Sloane Ranger
The Letwin amendment was written not just because nobody trusts Boris Johnson but also to stop the mouth breathing Brexiteer true believers from voting tactically to accept Johnson’s deal. If it passed with their votes the provisions of the Benn Act have been met and Johnson doesn’t have to request an extension. Then later on, when the full Bill is debated they find a comma in a place they don’t like and vote against the full Bill. As passage or not of the Bill is expected to be by a handful of votes at best, their defection would lead to the Bill failing to pass. Hey presto, Brexit with no deal.
Uncle Cosmo
@Amir Khalid: We had no idea you were participating in the Italian manned spaceflight program! Mannagia! :^D
Sloane Ranger
Forgot to add that I am on a train travelling home from London after taking part in the Peoples March for a 2nd Referendum. I don’t know how many people are being estimated to have taken part but there was a sea of people everywhere you looked and masses of EU/UK/County flags.
Left before the Rally started. Standing around listening to people speaking through the crackle of a lousy PA system is not my idea of fun.
Ruckus
@Mary G:
The UK has always had a wealth class, old money. Or at least they have had for a long, long time, before we were around. Every society has a wealth class actually but some of them realize that the consistent hoarding of the wealth, with ever worsening conditions for those at the other end of the scale make for an unstable situation. In the modern world there is money to be made, not by labor or innovation but by financial manipulation. But while modern money is a fluid concept, not rigid like a gold standard, it can not run out of control, it becomes unstable and economies and the population suffers from massive inflation or deflation. IOW there is a balance and right now the wealthy are winning, which will make the entire system worse at some point. The new EU law is an idea on control of that balance to keep the wealthy from having everything while the majority suffer and inflation is much harder to control. And the massively wealthy don’t like being just wealthy, they get greedy and want it all. Which makes societies fail.
PIGL
@Elizabelle: because the “voice of the people” gave them the outcome they wanted. no need for the people to speak ever again.
Calouste
The agreement also has to be approved by the European Parliament, and they have already said that they won’t start looking in to it “until those goddamn Brits have made up their fucking mind”*. Whether they think that there is enough time before 10/31 remains to be seen.
* This might not be a literal quote.
trollhattan
Last intermittently sleepless night I heard BBC WS broadcast Boris’ braying prematurely triumphant speech to Parliament–he was so certain he would be successfully successful in delivering the Bestest Brexit in the history of Brexits.
Funny how that seems to be playing out.
trollhattan
@PIGL:
“No take-backs.”
“You break it, you bought it.”
“Sucks to be you.”
Yeah, they seem overly fixated on “carrying out the people’s will.” when “the people” had no idea what the fig they were actually voting on, other than to stick a thumb in the, I dunno, Italians eye?
Calouste
@Ruckus: Really old money in the UK goes back to 1066, the Norman invasion. IIRC, about 15% of the land in England is still owned by descendants of the knights who came over with William the Conqueror.
FelonyGovt
@PIGL: Kind of like how Trump sees things. Because the “people” (actually the Electoral College) voted him in, no one can ever challenge anything he does.
Fleeting Expletive
@Miss Bianca: (filling out absentee ballots). My first presidential vote was in 1972, writing to get a ballot sent to me in Brazil, so I could proudly vote for George McGovern against Tricky Dick. For all the good it did.
James E Powell
@Elizabelle:
I’d bet that quite a few people sat out 2016 for the same reason.
mdblanche
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I heard something on the news yesterday about how there’s not much of a negative economic impact expected from Brexit itself, mainly because the lead-up has already caused most of the expected damage.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: The people thought they were voting for immigrants to leave the UK.
Elizabelle
@James E Powell: I know.
History teaches that we cannot be complacent about anything.
Robert Sneddon
@Miss Bianca:
Actually, if they were resident outside the UK at the time of the referendum it’s possible they COULDN’T vote even if they were British citizens. In the UK the Electoral Register is the list of names and addresses of people eligible to vote in an election. People living abroad for long periods of time (years or decades) usually don’t have a valid address back in the UK that would make them eligible to vote at all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
When I was in Germany in the early 80s, a tour guide said that 10% of all land in (then) West Germany and Austria belonged to a Hapsburg. Though in both cases I wonder how much of that land was purchased and/or inherited or saved by an in-law with a less historic pedigree. I forget which British duke owns a huge chunk of London (around Chelsea, IIRC) because an 18th century ancestor married the daughter of a real estate speculator.
ETA: The family that owns the Downton Abbey house has a similar story, IIRC. It looks the way it does, and they can afford to keep it, because of a massive infusion of vulgar new money around 1800.
trollhattan
@Matt McIrvin:
I can believe that. I remember the skinheads and “Paki bashing” from the ’80s. Or was that the ’70s? Now they have Polish construction workers? Man the battlements!
TaMara (HFG)
Testing the speed of orignal flavor Balloon-Juice.
ETA: Hope everyone is having a great day, I’m off to house hunt.
Jinchi
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Farage and his gang knew what they were doing. They didn’t want a rational and orderly exit deal. They want to crash out of the EU and hopefully cripple western Europe at the same time.
So far everything is going according to plan.
dmsilev
@TaMara (HFG): Good luck, but remember that the bag limit is 4 and you have to throw back anything smaller than a 2-bedroom ranch.
Sloane Ranger
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Duke of Westminster owns large chunks of London, including a lot of the most exclusive areas.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
The Bestest Brexit in the history of Brexits.
That sort of sums up the entire mess in one sentence.
I see that the world is getting to the point that a lot of people will never like and that is that sovereign nations have to work as part of the whole or the entire mess will implode. We are too dependent upon each other to keep the thing running without working towards a common solution. There are just too many of us for that to work much longer. We should be able to see that in our own country, what with states that want to work in reality and states that want to pull up the drawbridge of time and population to stay as they really never were. White male privilege is a symptom of that. Look at that picture of Nancy Pelosi at the WH, talking to those flabby old white men. A perfect reflection of the old conservative guard meets the world of reality, of a world which no longer works because it is exclusive, rather than inclusive. There are too many of everyone for it to work anywhere, any more. Brexit is that old guard, standing up for, well nothing really. Britain can not be the old guard any more than anyone else can, it doesn’t work that way with so many people. Brexiters are those flabby old men sitting there while the rest of the world will run them over just with shear numbers. It’s a metaphor, a call to vote, and we are getting the same message, you can’t leave the world to run by itself or be run by the wealthy and screw you and your lives up, you have to participate, to use your voice and vote.
Booger
Aren’t they going to run out of wrenches or spokes sooner or later?
HinTN
@Amir Khalid: Base, base, base… Why is it always about the wishes of 27%? Yes, I get that they’re 54% of the conservative bloc, wherever you are, but ffs why can we not change that configuration and marginalize them?
Jane2
@Marcopolo: Ian Dunt for the as-it-happens clever and informed snark and @davidallengreen for the constitutional analysis are the best follows to understand what is going on.
Ruckus
@Robert Sneddon:
That can work here in the states as well. I was using my business address as my vote by mail location once and that didn’t work – because it wasn’t a residential address. I went to the office of the registrar and was told that. I asked one question and that was, “So homeless people don’t have a right to vote?” That look I got was priceless. I also got a ballot. The concept that ownership/money gives you the right to vote, rather than citizenship, has to be changed. Of course the wealthy don’t want that, they own more they want a bigger or even the only voice.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Matt McIrvin: Exactly. The problem is there are now 4 million EU citizens settled in the UK. A great deal of them work in the NHS. If Bo Jo doesn’t fulfill on his promise to give them permanent settled status in the UK it will decimate the NHS. Bo Jo and Farage never mentioned that when they were traveling around on the big red bus every day promising billions for the NHS instead of going to the EU. There is no point in building new hospitals if all of the people who would staff them are at risk of being deported. Similarly there are 100s of thousands of Brits who have retired abroad (Spain, France etc.) who are now at risk of losing their reciprocal health care and being at risk of being deported. They sold their houses and bought abroad. If they all come back there is going to be a massive housing shortage on top of the already existing housing shortage. The whole damn thing is a clusterfuck of the first order.
James E Powell
@HinTN:
For the American RWers, the base appears to be ~41%. Their wishes dominate because they turn out every election.
JR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: it’s called “gilding your arms”. Pretty much a feature of feudalism everywhere.
bluefish
@Ruckus:
wish i could get all of that on a t-shirt — well said, right on, thank you
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Spot on, and the next president will be so busy putting out Trumpfires I fear reforging international relationships will be badly hampered. (Recalling the Obama “Apology Tour.”) Regaining our footing as a world leader seems so distant as to be mythical.
Nancy takes so much fire from both enemies and purported allies, and yet again this week, she demonstrates her utter competence, timing and effectiveness. Trump absolutely flounders in his attempts to attack her and rein her in.
Robert Sneddon
@Ruckus: It’s possible for people living abroad, in the EU and elsewhere to maintain a residential address in the UK and use that to remain on the Electoral Register. With that address they can request and use an absentee ballot but they have to be on the Register. It gets updated every year, usually in September. Time was it was a form sent to each address in a ward and filled in with the names and details (age, mostly) of those eligible to vote living at that address. Nowadays it’s done electronically via emails and a web-based form.
Someone who’s moved to live and work in France or Italy or elsewhere and has no real connection with the UK other than extended family can’t maintain themselves on the ER except with difficulty, and possibly they are committing electoral fraud by claiming a residential status they don’t really hold. For something like the EU Referendum I feel there should have been an exception cut out, to allow British residents abroad the chance to vote in this case but elections here are based entirely on the ER and so it was with the Referendum. Note that it was the same for the Scottish Independence referendum a few years before, only people living in Scotland and on Scottish Electoral Registers got to vote. Scots living in the rest of Britain or abroad didn’t get a vote but English, Welsh and Irish people living here even temporarily did.
Another Scott
@Mary G: That’s my understanding as well. I’ve been very surprised (probably naively) that I haven’t seen that mentioned in any of the BBC coverage I’ve seen. It seems to be the elephant in the room…
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
@Matt McIrvin: They’ll get to say hasta la vista, baby to those swarthy Mediterranean types & the pesky Poles – but the irony of it is that the people they really hate are in the UK on Commonwealth preference & won’t be affected at all. While their plutocrats avoid EU scrutiny & Russian Mafiya money bundles continue to pour into London for a wash&dry, jacking property prices way above what any normal person can afford. Prophet!
CaseyL
@TaMara (HFG): Wait, didn’t you just move a little while ago?
@trollhattan: Oh, the US is done as a reliable partner. It isn’t just Trump; Bush II also ruined our international standing, trashing alliances and unilaterally withdrawing from treaties. Now the rest of the world sees the US as always just one election away from being run by corrupt brutes.
Personally, I think the next President-not-Trump (assuming, more in hope than confidence, that 2020 will be a “free and fair” election) will have their hands full cleaning up the domestic mess. And maybe that’s for the best, since our domestic politics are a midden.
Yutsano
@mdblanche: This is decidedly not true, especially if Britain falls out of the EU with no deal. The sudden impact of having a border where there wasn’t one will instantly disrupt trade at all the ports with no clear rules as to what’s what. And that’s just trade. GB is in the most massive of Charlie Foxtrots ever.
Jinchi
@Miss Bianca:
To be fair, a lot of people didn’t vote because they didn’t actually know what “Brexit” meant. In the years since, Parliament has proven that it didn’t either.
It’s perfectly legitimate to skip a vote when you are confused by the implications, and it wasn’t obvious that a vote on a non-binding referendum would put their future at jeopardy. At the time of the vote, the EU had just spectacularly failed to deal with the economic crash, forcing Greece, Italy and Ireland into crippling austerity to pay off debt. If those countries had still controlled their own currencies they could have spared themselves years of pain. The UK not sharing the EU currency probably looked pretty smart.
Parliament could have ignored the referendum. Or Teresa May could have insisted on having a plan drafted up and negotiated with the EU before triggering article 50 and starting the 2 year countdown. And she could have put that plan up for a second vote to confirm that, yes, this is what the people wanted when they voted for Brexit.
A healthy democracy would have been able to withstand a 52%-48% election, mistake or not. The fact that the UK couldn’t, proves that those voter’s future was already hanging in the balance, just waiting for the next catastrophe to strike.
CaseyL
@Jinchi:
A system that isn’t resilient doesn’t survive. Ignorant, non-involved citizens are susceptible to propaganda. I think that problem – ignorance and non-involvement – is one of the reasons some politicians advocate for a year of two of compulsory public service in the civilian sector.
Miss Bianca
@Robert Sneddon: Point taken. However, I believe Elizabelle’s acquaintances were young people who were only abroad temporarily, altho’ I could be wrong about that. I’ve been wrong before.
Jinchi
@CaseyL:
True, but usually the options are for jobs like (or exclusively) military service, the people being compelled are children or just barely adult and they are given no choices or rights of dissent. I’m not sure that really encourages engagement or involvement in a democratic system.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@CaseyL:
But it’s not just the US anymore. It’s spreading. Just look at the UK, Brazil, India, Turkey, etc. Right-wing authoritarianism is on the rise practically everywhere
I think a lot of nations should look in the mirror and ask themselves if they could end up like us; just one election away from being run by corrupt brutes as you say. If we’re not reliable partners than so are a lot of places and cyber attacks are only going to become easier and more common in the future
Aleta
@Jinchi: You might even say that service that trains people to follow orders or believe what they’re told, without discussion and without outside information, isn’t as useful to a democratic system as, for example, service as a teacher or a field that teaches compassion or equality.
John Revolta
@Elizabelle: This is correct. In July 2016 the EU passed the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD) which eliminates loopholes in how rich fucks are able to move their money around to avoid taxes.
Tories want no part of it. The Brexit referendum was in June 2016 when it became apparent that ATAD was going to pass. It goes into effect Jan 1 2020- hence “do or die” Brexit. Tories cleverly sold it as a referendum on foreigners when it was really all about taxes. Now where have we heard that before?
JGabriel
@Elizabelle:
Brexit: How Brits vote for Trump.
MCA1
All I know is I was in Westminster this afternoon (trying to get to the Abbey for the choral Evensong service) and there were four billion people within a 6 block radius of Parliament. Two thoughts:
1. 99% of the people out and about and protesting were anti-Brexit. One wonders what percentage of them didn’t vote and are now pissed at the idiocy of their fellow citizens and working extra hard now to avoid the guilt of not having voted three years ago.
2. Americans could learn a thing or three from people in virtually every other country about not being ignorant complacent fucks and HITTING THE STREETS when they’re pissed off. We could have been done with the Drumpf Debacle a good while ago if we could just turn off the football, pay attention and start marching en masse.
Another Scott
@John Revolta: Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Tehanu
@Elizabelle:
I like it! But with more tar & feathers, please!
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That would be the Herberts. The great-grandfather of the present Earl was the one who bankrolled Leonard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of King Tut, and he was able to do that because his wife was a Rothschild.
Zinsky
It means the Brits also have a gigantic, brain-damaged asshole with one of the worst haircuts in the world, as their putative “leader”.
CaseyL
@Jinchi: I did say “in the civilian sector,” and that is exactly what I meant. Every community could use some long-term volunteer service: helping people navigate social services; working in parks to repair trails and remove invasive plants; volunteering at the local shelters (animal and human); working with local Chicken Soup brigades and Habitat for Humanity projects. Things that get them involved in their communities and teach them how society works.
RobNYNY
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
In the 1990’s, I had a German intern whose family has been rich for over one thousand years. The castle/palace where he was born has its own postal code. He still managed to screw up his life.
James E Powell
@CaseyL:
I think they do it because it’s one of those never going to happen but sounds good to old people things to propose.
Matt McIrvin
@MCA1: When Americans do have mass protest marches, a couple weeks later it’s like it never happened and people are still taking about how Americans never hit the streets. Which makes me think it’s less effective here. Our country is too deurbanized and spread out, for one thing. To get people’s attention you have to block the interstate highways, and then they just pass laws making it legal to run you over.
TomatoQueen
@Tehanu: Leonard? Leonard? You mean Howard Carter.
Frank Wilhoit
@James E Powell: Ignorance used to be the problem. Today it is infantilization.
Barry
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “I’m not an econ wonk, much less an international econ wonk, but it seems to me the US markets and prognosticators are underestimating the knock-on effect of Brexit”
@mdblanche: “I heard something on the news yesterday about how there’s not much of a negative economic impact expected from Brexit itself, mainly because the lead-up has already caused most of the expected damage.”
IIRC, Krugman claimed that economists didn’t really know, because all similar models were for tax/tariff changes. This is a (currently) First World country tearing up 40 years of work on trade, and trashing the last 40 years of investment.
That’s crazy enough, but add in (1) dark money seriously attempting to destroy a country to loot it, (2) Putin et alia, and (3) the f*cking Brexiteers and Tory Party, and who knows what’s going to happen.
Patricia Kayden
Patricia Kayden
@Steeplejack: Thanks. I always wondered how y’all were embedding tweets in your comments. Thought it some complicated, scientific trick. ?
Elizabelle
@sylvainsylvain: Great comment. Sounds correct.
patroclus
Keir Starmer (the Labour Brexit shadow minister) gave the best speech of the entire session; actually explaining in detail what the Bojo agreement would have done – if it is shown on C-SPAN this weekend, I highly recommend watching it. This was because he had actually read it – most MP’s received their copy of the 533-page monstrosity this morning. Specifically, Bojo wants to lower regulatory standards across the board AND to eliminate freedom of movement AND to lower labor standards – this is all based on a letter he sent to the EU in August wherein he said that he wished to alter such standards and, as Starmer pointed out, the UK is allowed to improve/raise such standards now, so the only possibility of “alteration” is to weaken them. Bojo has been promising his hard-liners (the “ERG) all this but he has also been promising the moderate skeptics that he won’t do this at all. And, he has been trying to extort everyone to vote for this deal because a No DealBrexit would be the only alternative.
Letwin has at least temporarily stopped/delayed all that and now, at least, there will be some scrutiny. Of course the Lib Dems and the SNP (their leader made an eloquent speech about how was it possible that NI got the ability to stay in the EU customs union while Scotland couldn’t) and the Green and Plaid opposed it, but thankfully, so did the 10 DUP MP’s (literally making up their minds 1 minute before the vote). If they hadn’t Bojo would probably have prevailed because 9 Labour MP’s voted no and 3 abstained/didn’t vote.
Bojo said he’s still going to try to force it through next week but Speaker Bercow may not allow it. The EU might grant an extension in response to Bojo’s Benn Act required unsigned letter (with 2 side letters saying he really didn’t mean it despite making representations to the Scottish Courts that he did). And the EU might not. More legal action is expected. The situation is unclear. But the 1+ million protesters got their voices heard and were jubilant when the vote was announced. All we can do is stay tuned – it’s a fustercluck of epic proportions.
SPC
@Another Scott: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hapsburg, really? I would expect that in Austria, but would expect a mix in DE including Wittelsbachs, Thurns & Taxis, etc.
Jay C
@Matt McIrvin:
More like:
The people thought they were voting for immigrants to
leavebe thrown out of the UK.