Neil Moors- Registered: 3 Feb 2016
- Posts: 1,243
So, where next - I assume they'll vote to remove no deal tonight, to extend article 50 tomorrow and then the ERG will want May's deal back in a meaningful vote 3. Subplot with Charlie, it's a free vote on no deal - how bonkers would it be for the MP for Dover, in a free vote, to go for no deal....
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Tonight's vote looks to be a foregone conclusion and I doubt that voting for an extension to article 50 will cut any ice in Brussels. I think the member states as well as the EU are resigned to a no deal conclusion and just want some certainty which any extension would negate. As for Charlie he will just go along with the baying mob that follow him.
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
conclusion to the upheaval in the seat of government is to revoke atrial 50,rework deal after 12 months then another referendum.
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,666
The various groups of MPs together with May's whole government must be making the UK a laughing stock. They pretend to be thinking of their constituents and any business you can think of, but at least they are safe raking in money while some are making plans for when they loose their comfy seat at the next election.
Pablo likes this
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Just Sioux- Location: Kent
- Registered: 22 Aug 2013
- Posts: 49
Histoire répétitive du Royaume-Uni! :
Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 2,915
Perhaps the French know more than we do (copied from M. Bertand's Twitter account):
Either that, or it was a short seminar!
(Not my real name.)
Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 2,915
Charlie's intention: "This evening I be voting to keep no deal on the table - so that we can press the EU harder for the small (and reasonable) changes that are needed to enable the Withdrawal Agreement pass."
(Not my real name.)
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
I don't remember Charlie looking for changes, most recently he has been demanding no deal as he has been convinced by the Mayor of Calais and the port that there would be no hold ups their side!!
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Courtesy of the Times.
The European responses to the resounding defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit deal range from exasperation at the scale of her failure to fear for the future of British democracy. An apocalyptic mood on the other side of the Channel was most clearly expressed by Manfred Weber, a leading German MEP from Angela Merkel’s party, who said the priority was now to get the UK out of the EU at the end of the month so that the “British chaos” would not spread into Europe.
The verdict of the German press was scarcely less damning. Some newspapers blamed Mrs May for “frittering away” the EU’s concessions and tipping her country into a “national crisis” by recklessly inflating the expectations of the hardcore Brexiteers in her party. One dismissed her as an “inept tactician”.
Others warned that Europe’s goodwill had been “exhausted” and said it would be best to deny the British an extension to the Brexit deadline to put the nation out of its misery. Mr Weber, the leading candidate to replace Jean-Claude Juncker at the helm of the European Commission, described the mutinous disarray in terms usually reserved for an outbreak of infectious disease. He argued that permitting the UK to put off its departure would be a dangerous gambit for the EU. “On the European side we are clear: we cannot allow the British chaos to infect and worm its way into Europe,” he told ZDF, a German broadcaster. The news magazine Der Spiegel agreed. “Why the EU should agree to prolong this torment under the given circumstances is not immediately obvious,” it said. “Perhaps it would be better to block off this emergency exit for the British. “Then in a few days they would finally stand on the edge of the cliff and gaze into the abyss. You can be sure that they will not like what they see from this vantage point.”
’Again: no’. How the Flemish newspaper De Morgen reacted to Mrs May’s defeat Franziska Brantner, an MP for the German Green Party and its lead spokeswoman on Europe, said the Brexiteers’ calculation that the EU would cushion the blow of a no-deal Brexit had been sorely misguided. “As harsh as this may sound, we’re not going to do you this favour,” she said. Die Zeit, a German weekly, fretted that the endless deadlock could inflict irreparable damage on the British people’s faith in their political system. “For many decades Britain was considered a model of parliamentarianism,” its columnist wrote. “Out of all the world’s capital cities, you looked to London to see how democracy really worked . . . Now nothing is left of the glory of the past.
“The endless debates on Brexit have split the country, radicalised it and politically incapacitated it. Mutual trust in society has vanished. At the same time, the population is becoming increasingly disenchanted with its politicians.” In Italy, La Repubblica borrowed a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” The newspaper compared the turmoil in the UK to the self-confidence that oozed through the nation as it hosted the Olympic Games in London seven years ago. “This marvellous island has made us dream, from the Bard to the Beatles, from James Bond to Harry Potter,” the newspaper wrote in a front-page editorial. “But Brexit has transformed those dreams into a nightmare. A curse from which the United Kingdom appears unable to free itself, like an island trapped in a tempest.”
In Paris Didier Guillaume, the minister for agriculture and fisheries, said France was considering supplying state aid to fishermen banned from British waters in the event of a no-deal Brexit. “It would be dramatic because a lot of our fishermen fish in those waters and there is no possibility of them moving elsewhere,” he said.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
The PM seems to have finally cracked up, yesterday she told her MPs they had a free vote on tonight's debate then changes it to telling them how to vote, almost as if they take any notice of her.
Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 2,915
BBC: "Labour's Yvette Cooper says there are container ships on their way to the UK which do not know what customs paper work they will need when they arrive." Pretty much the same as now, I would've thought.
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(Not my real name.)
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Maybe she thinks that China, Japan, Taiwan et al are all member states?
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
Neil Moors- Registered: 3 Feb 2016
- Posts: 1,243
Monumental chaos last night, edge of your seat stuff. We are where we thought we would be, but via a slightly different route.
I really do expect the ERG to fall behind the PMs deal now as this really is as good as it can get for them. That said, an interesting decision for Bercow to make as whether he allows MV3 to be tabled, if not sufficiently different to MV2. At the same time, I wonder whether any Tory remainers voting with the PM might now feel empowered now to push for the Labour Customs Union position, given all discipline has broken down.
Final point, noises that Farage and his ilk are trying to encourage one of the 27, possibly Italy or Hungary, to vore down the extension. If the EU can't deal with that level of threat then we do have problems!
Button- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 2,915
There appears to be pessimism on the continent regarding the state of our parliamentary democracy, but I don't see it like that. In fact, I am optimistic for the future; as Mr Elphicke said, they need us more than we need them. Of course, he was talking about the EU and not MPs but, given that my cat and the teddies and lamb on my bed could make a better fist of things, I look forward to a lot of new people clamouring to get into Westminster (and give the electorate a choice).
(Not my real name.)
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
I found it hard to keep up with what was happening with so many votes and cabinet ministers openly defying the PM who seems oblivious to the fact that she doesn't really matter anymore. My feeling is that a few member states have reached the conclusion that the UK is a rogue state and it would be better to not give us an extension despite what the EU want.
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,666
At the moment I am beginning to wonder why I bothered to vote in that referendum with so many MPs ignoring the result, totally disillusioned with our so called democracy.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
The Telegraph has learnt that ministers have already discussed the possibility of a two-year delay.
A total of 18 members of the Government either voted for or abstained from a motion to block no deal for good, despite them standing on a manifesto that promised Britain would be prepared to walk away from the EU without a deal. On Wednesday night it emerged that a senior Government figure – a Remain voter – told the ministers they could abstain without being sacked, in direct contradiction of Julian Smith, the Chief Whip, who was said to be “incandescent”. One MP said: “He went rogue – I don’t think [Mrs May] knew what he was doing. It was part of a plot to get Remainer rebels to block no deal.”
Mrs May is so weakened that she did not sack any of the ministers who defied the whip, who also included Claire Perry, the business minister. Sarah Newton, the minister for disabled people, was the only minister to resign. The Tory Party was on the brink of open warfare as Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, used his Spring Statement to set out an alternative Brexit. He said it was time to “map out a way forward towards building a consensus ... for a deal we can collectively support” – a comment seen as a call to compromise with Labour, rather than pursuing Mrs May’s path of winning over Tory MPs and calling a third vote on her deal.
Mrs May is now under pressure from some Cabinet members, including Mr Hammond, to hold a series of so-called indicative votes on Thursday to find out what Parliament wants. The votes on options that could include a “common market 2.0” and even a customs union would not be binding, but would inform the Government of what sort of deal might command a majority.
If she does not allow such votes, a cross-party group plans to table an amendment to Thursday night’s vote to ensure indicative votes happened next week. MPs rejected an attempt by Brexiteers to change the date of Britain’s exit from the EU to May 22 and then impose a “standstill” period for two and half years to allow a trade deal to be agreed. The so-called Malthouse Amendment was defeated by 374 to 164, a majority of 210. Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, said: “I have never in 27 years as an MP seen anything like what is happening in Government now.”
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
We live in a parliamentary democracy, Jan. Arguably the oldest in the world. We do not govern by plebiscite. If that's what you want, the surely you can have no objection to there being another one, in the light of all the new facts and voters? After all, that's what that font of all wisdom Farage said he wanted.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Things have now gone full circle with Farage urging foreign powers to negate a vote from our sovereign Parliament.