Theresa May’s Brexit deal suffers second defeat in UK Parliament

CNBC ^ | 3-12-2019 | Holly Elyatt

[central_va]

You'll need to ship the components back and forth.

Why back and forth? The parts get shipped in and the cars out.

[gleeaikin]

I thought the British Empire had some serious pressure from Mahatma Ghandi.

[mewzilla]

Maybe something like our Chicken Tax?

[Ohioan]

The Left, internationally, is increasingly at war with the very concept of the independent nation, The attack, in our affairs, goes back over two generations:

Surrender By Subterfuge

[Winniesboy]

I don't like to nitpick with somebody who has a more accurate grasp of the UK/EU/Brexit facts than more or less anybody else round here: but you've repeated a couple of statements which aren't quite right, so I hope you won't mind if I clarify...

First, the N.Ireland border. You say that the Brexiteers want a hard border. Nobody, as far as I know, actively wants a hard border - even the DUP admit the advantages of the open border under the Good Friday Agreement. But they want the only alternative - a customs barrier in the Irish Sea between N Ireland and the UK mainland - even less. It would, in their view, fatally undermine the territorial integrity of the UK. So for the Brexiteers a hard border is the lesser of two evils.

Second, and perhaps more important, immigration. You're quite right to say that for a large number of 'Leave' voters immigration was the dominant issue. But it was not, as you say, immigration from the EU. This was only significant in a few parts of the country such as East Anglia, where a large influx of unskilled East Europeans to the food packing industry and seasonal agricultural labour has been highly visible and has created social tensions in a low population density environment. Elsewhere, EU immigrants typified by the 'Polish plumber' and other highly-skilled tradesmen has been generally welcomed (and incidentally has brought new life to many an ailing Catholic congregation, but that's another story...)

No, the issue for Leave voters in the country at large was immigration in general, particularly immigration from the third world. Now you and I both know this is nonsense, since it has little or nothing to do with the EU. But such was the lamentable lack of knowledge about the EU among the general public, and such was the effectiveness of the Leave campaign in stoking these fears without needing to make explicitly false claims, that very many people believed - still do believe - that the EU was somehow behind it, and that leaving the EU would somehow stem the flow. The realisation that third world immigration has hardly changed at all is hardly going to lighten the dark public mood.

[Eleutheria5]

Well, there’s that old common bond of language between the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica...

[Impy]

If it’s a good deal why is it her fault that the intransigent Parliament won’t pass it? What should she be doing differently?

[SecondAmendment]

Yep, May was put there by the stealth remainers ...

[Cronos]

why is it her fault that the intransigent Parliament won’t pass it? What should she be doing differently? A very good question, or rather three questions:

1. Why is Parliament not passing it? - there are three groups in parliament who are rejecting it
   1. Hard Brexiters who believe that There should be a No-deal Brexit
   2. Remainers who don't want to leave
   3. Labour who want to cause chaos so the Tories disintegrate
2. Why is Parliament not passing it?
   1. The Hard BRexiters believeD that it would make a no-deal the only option
   2. The remainers believed that it would make remain the only option
   3. Labour believed it would shame May into quitting
3. Why is it Theresa May's fault? - because she took the job in 2016 and did nothing, did not plan for what to do with Ireland. She didn't have a defined idea of what Brexit would be and she still doesn't. She defined red lines that were impossible to meet
   
   and she called for an unnecessary election that bound her hands even tighter. Even now she takes no counsel from anyone and just seeks to delay, hoping brinkmanship will win
   
   So, to sum up
   • Appointed David Davis as Brexit Secretary (13th July 2016). Kept him in that position even when it was clear that he was doing nothing and achieving nothing. He resigned - not fired, resigned - in July 2018.
   • Triggered Article 50 (March 29th 2017). There was (and is) no ‘roadmap’ to leaving at the time she (and she alone) did this. Triggering Article 50 sets a two-year fixed time period for arranging an orderly withdrawal.
   • Called an unecessary election (June 2017) partway through the two-year Article 50 process, diverting time and effort from all parties into the campaign. Manages to lose 13 Conservative seats and cannot form a Government.
   • Decides to solve this problem by allying with the 10 MPs of the DUP,Gets them onboard by somehow finding 1.5 billion pounds going spare in the public finances. At a time when the country is undergoing huge and sustained cuts in public spending.(think political bribery)
   • Sets up a bunch of ‘red lines’ in her negotiating position with the EU. The result of these is to exclude certain solutions such as continued membership of the Single Market and Customs Union (e.g. the ‘Norway’ option and various other forms of ‘soft’ Brexit), and to put any possible solution that would fit within the red lines in conflict with the Good Friday Agreement, an international and legally-binding treaty which the UK is signatory to. Refuses to modify the red lines to accomodate this (for example by keeping Northern Ireland in the Single Market), almost certainly because she has to rely on the DUP to stay in power.
   • She then spent two years allowing negotiations to be conducted without involving parliament and indeed having to be forced to give them sight of some documents through court action.
   • Finalises an agreement with the EU (25th Nov 2018). This needs to pass the UK parliament. The vote is scheduled for 11th Dec 2018.
   • Is defeated in three preliminary votes on 4th Dec, including being held in Contempt of Parliament.
   • Announces on 10th Dec 2018 that the vote scheduled for 11th Dec is postponed. Admits that it’s because she would lose the vote. This is rescheduled for 15th January 2019.
   • Vote is put to Parliament on 15th Jan 2019. May loses by the largest margin ever (230 votes). She very narrowly survives a confidence vote held directly after this.
   • Another vote is scheduled for 14th Feb. She loses this one as well.
   • Reschedules another vote for the 27th of Feb. Then postpones it to the 12th of March. Loses this AGAIN

she has made a bad situation almost infinitely worse, as a direct result of her own actions or inactions.

[Cronos]

She wasn't a remainer or a leaver in any sense of the word - she just wants to remain in power

Why was she a remainer ? Well I think she liked being Home Secretary and so she had to stay in the Government to keep the job. As a cabinet member she was bound by collective responsibility and therefore had to support the Government’s policy, or resign. Like everybody else she expected Remain to win so following the official line meant she kept her job without revealing her true thoughts unnecessarily

She's a clinger, not a Thatcher

[Cronos]

Don't compare the US to individual European nations -- the US is massive. It is a world on its own right and can stand in splendid isolation from the rest of the world and do very well

But Denmark or even the UK by itself cannot emulate the USA. Just as the leftist suggestion that the US should emulate Denmark is wrong, the suggestion that Denmark can play at the same level as the USA is wrong. The EU is a confederation. It's not going to be a country. It will be close but NOT be like the Holy Roman Empire in the 1500s - a conglomeration of independent states.

[Cronos]

Language might be common, but now English is the international, i.e. One World language. And Australi-New Zealand are far more closely tied to Asia; while Canada and the USA are on their own trip

[Cronos]

Hi. Thank you for that.

NI. You have put it quite correctly, thank you

Immigration - correct. And third world immigration somehow seems to have caused people to vote against remaining in the EU

[Cronos]

I hope there is a hard no-deal brexit

But I've asked you before - what kind of concessions do you expect the EU to give?

The EU in the past already gave the UK concessions - the Euro, EUROPOL, the Schengen area, the UK rebate, the rebate on the rebate.

The EU had always stated upfront that it cannot and will not compromise its Four Freedoms (as the very existence of the EU was founded on these principles), but everything else was negotiable. It was Mrs May who drew up her “Red Lines” in 2017 which severely curtailed the scope of EU negotiations, resulting in the following very limited options:

The EU’s Brexit concessions include:

• Agreeing to Theresa May’s request for an implementation phase - which she first asked for in January 2017, before she triggered Article 50. This is now better known as a transition period, as there is currently nothing new to implement (or indeed transition to);
• Partially agreeing to the UK government’s request to run withdrawal and future trade talks in parallel. The EU 27 national leaders’ allowed trade talks to begin back in December 2017, once Mrs May and her minister made “sufficient progress” on separation issues and
• And the last EU concession is to offer a treaty based customs union as as backstop to the internationally agreed Northern Ireland backstop. But this treaty will not be included in the withdrawal agreement, but with a reference in the political declaration instead.

What they haven’t done, because they can’t, is abandoned the central principles of the EU: That the four freedoms are indivisible; that getting privileges requires accepting rules and sharing costs (a la Norway, Switzerland, etc.); that getting all trade benefits means being exclusive (not cutting your own deals outside). And that the UK signed a deal for the open border between NI and RoI

What more concessions do you want?

[Cronos]

It looks like parliament voted to rule out no-deal/hard Brexit

I am sad, I had hoped the UK would have had a Hard Brexit.

[Bishop_Malachi]

It will be close but NOT be like the Holy Roman Empire in the 1500s - a conglomeration of independent states.

________________________________________________________

That’s what many thought and hoped when this nation was created under the Articles of Confederation. It didn’t take long for those who sought to centralize authority under the rationale of “Necessary and Proper” to start the obliteration process of regional/local authority. It is a slow but inexorable death of sovereignty.

[Ohioan]

I did not compare any two "nations," except that we are all under attack by compulsion & fear driven enthusiasts, who cannot handle the reality that we are all different, and should each take pride in all that makes us each unique. The Compulsion For Uniformity can only produce very, very, bad results.

[Eleutheria5]

I’ve lately been working with an Australian attorney working from Israel on a case involving an Asian doctor fighting for his UK citizenship. The lynch-pin, uniting all these independent countries is England and the English language. So it was during the Boer War, WW I and WW II. So it is today.

[Impy]

Thank you for the thorough reply.

[Cronos]

No worries - it is a complicated issue. This is not helped by the tons of false statements and news out there. The EU's #1 fault is that it does not acknowledge that Christianity is the root of Europe. We in Poland (I'm not Polish - but I've lived here 10 years and now have citizenship) and others looked at the UK to help us in our economic balance with Germany-France. Now we lost that, but thqankfully Italy is also rising up against the Franco-German axis. And Italy is far, far more socially compatible with our values than the UK

The UK, France and GErmany along with the Netherlands have been anti-Christian against us and others for some time, so losing the UK will only weaken the anti-Christian sentiment in the EU.