….Or “give people the brexit they voted for”, “the people have spoken”, etc
The air waves are filled with such meaningless and undeliverable rhetoric.
The stark reality is that its not that easy ( I wish it was)….it was always going to be very hard, if not impossible to come up with an “exit deal” that most people would/could support…and lets be in no doubt, the “no deal” proffered now by Johnson (and Farage, ERG, Mogg, etc) has no democratic legitimacy , was never discussed in 2016 and is a real threat to the economic stability of the UK. I wait for the Yellowhammer papers with interest!
There were in 2016 and still today, many different and often incompatible versions of brexit. The Conservative government should have been trying over the last couple of years to focus on a deliverable and supportable single version!
Remember, it was Theresa May who set the red lines for negotiation over two years ago – and that’s where this began to go seriously wrong.
She should have set out a negotiating position that could secure the most support from Leavers and Remainers. This would have included membership arrangements of CU and/or Single Market – a “Norway” model perhaps – which most Remainers could have supported, including me, and which many “leavers” presented as an option for the UK.
Instead she chose to align her red lines with a more extreme form of Brexit to the right of the Conservative party and which reflected her priority to limit “freedom of movement”; a mantra which has infected the Home Office as the Windrush and now the Settled Status injustices demonstrate.
As a result even “moderate” leavers in her own party could not support her deal, as well as the most extreme ERG faction.
Her priority was to try and keep the conservative party together when it should have been keeping the country together.
In the UK (whose unwritten constitution has been alarmingly exposed) parliament is sovereign, we elect MPs as representatives not delegates and part of their “job” is to scrutinise and hold the executive to account. The speaker acts to assert the primacy of MPs and judges uphold the law and make rulings based on evidence. Recent murmurings from ill-informed self-interested commentators and amplified by uncritical media outlets, are seeking to undermine these fundamentals of our democracy.
Mr Johnson has no legitimate grounds to prorogue parliament at the current time – he “leads” a minority government that is committed to “no deal” Brexit that only evangelical Brexiters would support. He is a charlatan and is not negotiating seriously (he has stood down most of the negotiating team) – he is not to be trusted. He and his Etonian entitled Bullingdon rabble are the real threat to our country and our democracy.
The EU is rightly dismayed and tired of the UK – it spent over two years negotiating a deal with the UK (based on the wrong red lines) in good faith. It was Boris and the ERG who voted it down.
A lot of MPs are getting a lot of flack from what I consider to be “anti-democratic forces” – we need to face this down. I know some honest and hardworking MPs who do much good in their constituencies and I know they are exhausted and dismayed by the current situation, and feel powerless given the current direction of Boris Johnson’s government.
These “good people” are not part of the Etonian elite and have no independent wealth or income like Mogg, Johnson, Cameron, Farage and their ilk; these “more money than sense” mendacious charlatans will suffer no personal consequences no matter how damaging a “no deal” brexit is.
In fact people like Mogg may well profit by “betting” against the ££ via his various business and financial trading interests and they are all trying to avoid the EU rules re: offshore assets and tax due to be implemented in Jan 2020. They are taking us for Mugs!
Now we are in a mess…..either the EU gives us time to renegotiate from scratch based on red lines in the centre ground or we “can” the whole arrangement to give the UK room for a more considered debate and discussion. This will mean a written constitution and a federal re-design as a minimum.
Unpalatable as it is for many, the only way out of this mess now, almost certainly, is another referendum on a “deal” that is defined in far more detail than was available in 2016 – perhaps we present the May deal (which the EU have already agreed to). I also think jumping to an election before a referendum may result in us all ending up in exactly the same place we are now!
For those that say, “just get on with it” – well frankly they don’t appreciate the complexity of the situation we are in, or the near impossibility of defining a form of Brexit that can secure support from the majority of the population, let alone those who voted leave.
I was ignorant of most of the complexities in 2016…..I still don’t fully understand it. What I do know is, that you can’t boil it down to a shallow undeliverable soundbite; Johnson and Cummings would like you to think you can….but you can’t. Really you can’t!
Yes it is a bloody mess…and I am particular in how I apportion blame. Theresa May, Cameron (what Danny Dyer said), Farage, Mogg, Johnson, etc are the real culprits. Not Leave voters or Remain voters!
Brexit is becoming a damage limitation exercise and in Wales perhaps, that gives us other options? So now, for me (and until earlier this year I had not considered this) I was, like 000s, at the Wales independence march in Merthyr last Saturday!
Sorry about the rant and I know not everyone will agree with this…..what concerns me even more, is that this huge brexit shambles is taking us away from the far more important and dangerous issue of climate change.
If anyone has the patience….some more of my ranting here re: Brexit & climate change >>> https://swalesmetroprof.blog/2019/05/01/climate-change-brexit-and-the-economy/
Mark Barry 