Brexit Thread 2

[Errkal]

Not surprising. The damage is done though, and he won't be held to account.

I’m surprised he’s going down that route though. I thought he’d double down and say that’d all have been great if the government had done it the way Farage wanted.

By actually leaving he looses his USP if he can swing opinion and stop it he gets to spend years shouting about the evil EU etc and make money, if we actually leave and hard leave he won't be able to make gooseberry fool as we will have what he wanted and can't shout about how we are being dragged down.

[Moggy]

[Squinty]

PROJECT FEAR strikes again.

[Lex-Man]

PROJECT FEAR strikes again.

It's going to be an interesting election if we go through a period of starvation after Brexit. Hopefully somebody will do some kind of planning to stop this being an issue.

[Squinty]

PROJECT FEAR strikes again.

It's going to be an interesting election if we go through a period of starvation after Brexit. Hopefully somebody will do some kind of planning to stop this being an issue.

Don't need to plan. I'm sick of experts telling me I might starve to death. Leave means leave.

And if we do start to starve, we'll eat the bodies of the recently deceased.

[Moggy]

PROJECT FEAR strikes again.

It's going to be an interesting election if we go through a period of starvation after Brexit. Hopefully somebody will do some kind of planning to stop this being an issue.

Don't need to plan. I'm sick of experts telling me I might starve to death. Leave means leave.

And if we do start to starve, we'll eat the bodies of the recently deceased.

Experts don’t know everything, there’s plenty of roadkill around that we can eat. Decent British roadkill!

[Squinty]

PROJECT FEAR strikes again.

It's going to be an interesting election if we go through a period of starvation after Brexit. Hopefully somebody will do some kind of planning to stop this being an issue.

Don't need to plan. I'm sick of experts telling me I might starve to death. Leave means leave.

And if we do start to starve, we'll eat the bodies of the recently deceased.

Experts don’t know everything, there’s plenty of roadkill around that we can eat. Decent British roadkill!

We survived before this! We can do it again!

[That]

You really do see this rhetoric. And it's like, yeah, we probably won't literally starve, but that doesn't mean plenty of other crappy things can't happen.

[Rex Kramer]

twitter.com/Jason_Spacey/status/1003588479266312193

[DML]

I like that arch-remainer is a different word for 'super sensible.

[Alvin Flummux]

It'll hit a 6 on the scale, before rapidly climbing to 12.

[Garth]

twitter.com/Peston/status/1003743559193890816

twitter.com/Peston/status/1003753218650800133

Theresa May is arguably the most cautious and methodical politician of this generation or perhaps any generation.

So it more than beggars belief that today she announced she would be rolling the dice in the biggest parliamentary gamble I can recall being taken by any PM of modern times, by announcing that next Tuesday she will ask MPs to vote a staggering 15 times, on amendments to that important EU Withdrawal Bill which is so central to the UK’s future outside the European Union.

At stake is whether she and her ministers are in charge of Brexit, or whether MPs and Lords will determine our Brexit future.

And tonight the odds of her winning look slim – because rebel Tory MPs, led by Anna Soubry, Nicky Morgan, Dominic Grieve, Antoinette Sandbach and the rest, met and think they have the votes to defeat her.

The point is that they, and Labour, and the Scottish National Party all want the UK to stay in a customs union. And they want a parliamentary vote on whatever Brexit deal she ultimately negotiates with the EU to be “meaningful” in the sense that MPs should be able to instruct her to return to the Brussels negotiating table.

She does not want her hands tied in either respect. But even if a few Labour eurosceptics were to rebel against Corbyn, May will struggle to win.

So on arguably the biggest issue facing the country now or at any recent time, she would become the pawn of parliament, not its leader. To describe her in those circumstances as a lame duck would probably be an insult to the limping quackers.

What’s more, in the event that Labour were to overcome its reluctance to sign up for full single-market membership via joining the EEA club, she would probably lose on that too.

If the Cabinet had already agreed on a customs negotiating position that was unambiguous and clearly practical, she might stand a chance of picking off some of the rebels.

But as she made clear when she met business leaders tonight, ministers are still some distance from proving to themselves that either a reworked New Customs Partnership (NCP) or a reinvented Max Fac would facilitate the kind of frictionless trade that would deliver growing commerce with the EU and an open border in Ireland – and if they cannot prove it to themselves, there is no chance they will be able to bring round parliament.

And when the whips try to strong arm the Tory rebels into abandoning their principles for the sake of the party, they will legitimately query why the foreign secretary looks set to be allowed to vote against the most important infrastructure project this government will push through – the construction of a third Heathrow runway. Why should they be loyal if his disloyalty will be licensed?

One MP said to me that there is a growing view in the Tory Party that the government is “almost resigned to losing the customs union vote”. I got some sense of that when one of May’s most important ministerial allies made only the feeblest of attempts to persuade me that the government “has the numbers” to enforce its Brexit will.

In a way, that might be rational – since the PM heard (again) tonight from the heads of those big international companies that they would rather have customs union membership than any version of Max Fac or NCP.

But if parliament were to boss her in this way, she would – to use that resonant phrase – be in office but conspicuously not in charge. And with her authority so shattered, with her Brexit red lines scrubbed, could she really survive?

As I said, as a politician this is bet bigger than she’s ever made.

https://www.facebook.com/pestonitv/post ... 7416997326

15 Brexit bill amendment votes on Tuesday the 12th of June - that'll be fun.

[Alvin Flummux]

If May doesn't survive the Customs vote, where in Westminster will we be able to find her severed head on a pike?

[Moggy]

Theresa May is arguably the most cautious and methodical politician of this generation or perhaps any generation.

That is definitely arguable.

[Rex Kramer]

That is a strawberry floating disgrace. The single most important set of votes this country has had in a lifetime and they want to jam them all in on an afternoon. Sovereignty and parliamentary democracy, don't make me strawberry floating laugh.

[Moggy]

That is a strawberry floating disgrace. The single most important set of votes this country has had in a lifetime and they want to jam them all in on an afternoon. Sovereignty and parliamentary democracy, don't make me strawberry floating laugh.

Tories gonna Tory.

[Lagamorph]

That is a strawberry floating disgrace. The single most important set of votes this country has had in a lifetime and they want to jam them all in on an afternoon. Sovereignty and parliamentary democracy, don't make me strawberry floating laugh.

The idea is probably to make MPs on the fence about which way to vote so sick of it that they just vote with the government to try and get it over and done with.

[Hexx]

It's more they're telling rebel Tories that a succession of losing votes on one day would bring down the Government, and so trying to get them not to rebel.

I'm going to predict Labor are told whiped to Abstain anyway so it won't matter

[Hypes]

But even if a few Labour eurosceptics were to rebel against Corbyn, May will struggle to win.

I don't get this bit. Surely you'd need lots of Labour MPs to vote against the government to defeat them? Or is he saying that the majority of Tory MPs will???

[Rex Kramer]

It's entirely dependant on what Corbyn orders the Labour whip to do. If he wants everyone to vote against then it would only need a handful, if he asks them to abstain then it'll be carried as a formality.