Brexited | the worst threads live the longest

Do you think there will be a Deal or No Deal?

  • Total voters
    194
  • Poll closed .
Member 5225 said:
Another thought, if final deal can’t be agreed, does this mean these ‘agreements’ would be thrown out of the window?
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They say not, part of this was an assurance about what would happen in Ireland in the event of no deal. But how would this be enforceable? I genuinely dont know Id be interested if anyone can explain the process.

Take a hypothetical, extreme kind of scenario to make the point. Imagine we made these concessions (eg paying £50bn or whatever, after we claimed there would be no significant bill at all) in order to open talks about the future trade relationship.

Now imagine Barnier turns round and tells us we can whistle for a special trade deal. Say Norway is rejected (because we dont control our borders) and Canada is also rejected (because it doesnt include services, and is therefore about as useful to us in the UK as a chocolate tea pot.) We want something of our own, something bespoke, something crafted to suit our needs. But the EU says no. We have to take one of the options on the table, but neither option is suitable. The Brexit team try to negotiate something but get nowhere. Barnier says if it isnt one of the off-the-shelf deals (Norway or Canada) it is WTO terms.

In that case, would the UK feel compelled to honour the terms of the agreement sketched out thus far in the first stage?

I think each element of the agreement would be treated differently. The bill I think we would end up paying because to not pay would be a default which would be bad for our own economy. There might be an independent arbitration to ascertain exactly what our remaining liabilities were, in terms of things we signed up to while we were members. I heard Davis say he thought an independent body would come up with a number much lower than the EU is coming up with. I have no idea if that is true but I imagine it could be. Either way, I imagine we would pay something so as to avoid defaulting on our debts which would affect market access.

But the rest of it would be much less certain. I dont see what holds the UK to assurances it has made about Ireland, for example. The principle is that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. So the agreement we reached today only means anything as the basis for future agreements. What we agree in stage 2 is valid with the condition that what was agreed in stage 1 is honoured. They can say it works the other way around too (if everything goes tits up in stage 2 we all fall back on what we agreed today) but I dont see how that can be the case. Its just words as far as Im concerned.
 
As a remainer myself why to I get the distinct impression from the tone of the arguments since the announcement earlier today that those in favour of remain are beginning to clutch at straws. Sad though it makes me say I do now believe that May was right and that Brexit means Brexit. We might all differ as to what that actually means but I do now suspect that in 2019 the UK will cease to be a member of the EU. All I can now hope for it that those in favour of Brexit are correct and that in the longer term my country is better off as a result. I have no desire or wish for the majority to be worse off. That some will be adversely affected is inevitable. No policy decision ever made has favoured everyone at the expense of no-one. There have always been winners and losers. As long as the winners outnumber the losers then I for one can live with that even if personally I turn out to be a loser.
 
Let me see if I am getting this right. 18 months of negotiations to end in a same sort of model as Norway? Keep the same 4 freedoms, paying the fee and not having a opinion on the laws made in Brussels?
 
Virgil said:
As a remainer myself why to I get the distinct impression from the tone of the arguments since the announcement earlier today that those in favour of remain are beginning to clutch at straws. Sad though it makes me say I do now believe that May was right and that Brexit means Brexit. We might all differ as to what that actually means but I do now suspect that in 2019 the UK will cease to be a member of the EU. All I can now hope for it that those in favour of Brexit are correct and that in the longer term my country is better off as a result. I have no desire or wish for the majority to be worse off. That some will be adversely affected is inevitable. No policy decision ever made has favoured everyone at the expense of no-one. There have always been winners and losers. As long as the winners outnumber the losers then I for one can live with that even if personally I turn out to be a loser.
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I think James O'brien put it well today when he said both Hard Brexit and No Brexit have both become less likely.
 
SCP said:
Let me see if I am getting this right. 18 months of negotiations to end in a same sort of model as Norway? Keep the same 4 freedoms, paying the fee and not having a opinion on the laws made in Brussels?
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Basically yes, but the fee will be higher and the UK can still jump off the cliff if they so wish.
Business and the City will decide the UK's future in the first part of 2018.
 
Paul the Wolf said:
Basically yes, but the fee will be higher and the UK can still jump off the cliff if they so wish.
Business and the City will decide the UK's future in the first part of 2018.
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I guess thats what they call winning, no wonder I saw today here in Portugal the angry face of Farage on TV, now I understand why.
 
Paul the Wolf said:
Basically yes, but the fee will be higher and the UK can still jump off the cliff if they so wish.
Business and the City will decide the UK's future in the first part of 2018.
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I do so hope you are wrong. Sadly however I must admit that if there are any key players as vindictive has you have been thoughout this debate against the UK then you may well be proved right.
 
Virgil said:
I do so hope you are wrong. Sadly however I must admit that if there are any key players as vindictive has you have been thoughout this debate against the UK then you may well be proved right.
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There's nothing vindictive other than against people like Farage , it's just pure logic and inevitability as far as I'm concerned.
Trying to pretend the NI problem didn't exist is negligence of the highest order, pretending to offer people pots of gold that aren't there is disgraceful. It's all a tissue of lies. My sympathy with people who are so gullible to believe all this has worn thinner as time has progressed.

Hopefully the UK won't be too badly damaged. They could call the whole thing off tomorrow before it's too late and the improvement in the Uk economy would be a wonder to see but they won't.
 
Paul the Wolf said:
There's nothing vindictive other than against people like Farage , it's just pure logic and inevitability as far as I'm concerned.
Trying to pretend the NI problem didn't exist is negligence of the highest order, pretending to offer people pots of gold that aren't there is disgraceful. It's all a tissue of lies. My sympathy with people who are so gullible to believe all this has worn thinner as time has progressed.

Hopefully the UK won't be too badly damaged. They could call the whole thing off tomorrow before it's too late and the improvement in the Uk economy would be a wonder to see but they won't.
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Sorry Paul but you are just coming over as nasty. As someone born in the UK even if no longer resident what the heck did we do to you?....... Whatever it was must have been bad.
 
Virgil said:
Sorry Paul but you are just coming over as nasty. As someone born in the UK even if no longer resident what the heck did we do to you?....... Whatever it was must have been bad.
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Remember that he is currently drinking french water.;)
 
GloryHunter07 said:
I think James O'brien put it well today when he said both Hard Brexit and No Brexit have both become less likely.
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He might be right. But I believe that once we reach a stage where the options are soft brexit or no brexit, then the only possible answer is no brexit. For the simple fact that a soft brexit gives us nothing as an advantage, while retaining the disadvantages.

While I fundementaly disagree with a hard brexit, at least the brexiteers can mantain the narrative of closed borders/control/trade freedom etc.

This middle ground option is a guaranteed loss for all sides, as far as I can see.

If any tories genuinely believe they can make a hard brexit work then they will push for a new PM. Otherwise, they will keep sniping from the sides and blaming everyone else.
 
Virgil said:
Sorry Paul but you are just coming over as nasty. As someone born in the UK even if no longer resident what the heck did we do to you....... Whatever it was must have been bad.
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I don't mean to come over as nasty, I'm very friendly really, believe it or not. I have an allergic reaction to liars. Frustration at why people can't see they're being conned. And I have zero sympathy with racists or xenophobes.
 
Flying high said:
He might be right. But I believe that once we reach a stage where the options are soft brexit or no brexit, then the only possible answer is no brexit.
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Not if democracy in the UK is ever to mean anything in the future. In that area I do agree with our politicians. For right or wrong holding referendums until you get the result you want will result in anarchy.
 
Adebesi said:
Holding referendums at all will result in anarchy.
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Referendums of themselves do not result in anarchy. We had one in respect of jointing the EEC. And another when proportional representation was on the agenda. Anarchy is only likely to happen when the will of the majority is ignored. Simple really or do you honestly not get it?
 
Virgil said:
Not if democracy in the UK is ever to mean anything in the future. In that area I do agree with our politicians. For right or wrong holding referendums until you get the result you want will result in anarchy.
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Democracy doesn't mean much when politicians manipulate voters' decision by lying.
 
Virgil said:
Referendums of themselves do not result in anarchy. We had one in respect of jointing the EEC. And another when proportional representation was on the agenda. Anarchy is only likely to happen when the will of the majority is ignored. Simple really or do you honestly not get it?
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I just think referendums are shit and making out they're the purest form of democracy is wrong. They give people black and white choices when in reality the world is shades of grey. For example, Leave or Remain, without any indication of what Leave would entail. We have been a democracy for a long time and hardly ever had referendums, we elect MPs to make decisions and hold them to account. I prefer that way of doing things.
 
Virgil said:
Referendums of themselves do not result in anarchy. We had one in respect of jointing the EEC. And another when proportional representation was on the agenda. Anarchy is only likely to happen when the will of the majority is ignored. Simple really or do you honestly not get it?
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Anarchy was always going to happen over a toss up of a 50-50 issue, there was no clear enough majority for Brexit to be classed as the "will of the people". You can argue it should happen because more people voted for it than didn't, however it's a slender majority and it barely represents the whole country.
 
Flying high said:
He might be right. But I believe that once we reach a stage where the options are soft brexit or no brexit, then the only possible answer is no brexit. For the simple fact that a soft brexit gives us nothing as an advantage, while retaining the disadvantages.

While I fundementaly disagree with a hard brexit, at least the brexiteers can mantain the narrative of closed borders/control/trade freedom etc.

This middle ground option is a guaranteed loss for all sides, as far as I can see.

If any tories genuinely believe they can make a hard brexit work then they will push for a new PM. Otherwise, they will keep sniping from the sides and blaming everyone else.
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Whilst i agree with the bolded bit, i dont think the Tories or Labour would have the courage to make that decision. We wont "Remain" unless there is anotrher referendum or a Politician wins an election on a clear Remain platform.
 
Virgil said:
Referendums of themselves do not result in anarchy. We had one in respect of jointing the EEC. And another when proportional representation was on the agenda. Anarchy is only likely to happen when the will of the majority is ignored. Simple really or do you honestly not get it?
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Actually Anarchy is the opposite. is the will of the majority without someone telling the others what to do. What you describe is the current politic system here and there
 
FlawlessThaw said:
Anarchy was always going to happen over a toss up of a 50-50 issue, there was no clear enough majority for Brexit to be classed as the "will of the people". You can argue it should happen because more people voted for it than didn't, however it's a slender majority and it barely represents the whole country.
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The organisation of it was abysmal. Richard Dawkins made a good point in the immediate aftermath, which was that in most countries when you are proposing making a significant, constitutional change that will have long term implications you need more than a simple majority, you usually need a 2/3 majority of something like that - you need a victory by a significant enough margin to justify making the change. If you have a something so close to 50/50 there isnt a sufficient mandate for the kind of sweeping changes it entails. You see that in a lot of written constitutions - and for good reason.
 
Adebesi said:
The organisation of it was abysmal. Richard Dawkins made a good point in the immediate aftermath, which was that in most countries when you are proposing making a significant, constitutional change that will have long term implications you need more than a simple majority, you usually need a 2/3 majority of something like that - you need a victory by a significant enough margin to justify making the change. If you have a something so close to 50/50 there isnt a sufficient mandate for the kind of sweeping changes it entails. You see that in a lot of written constitutions - and for good reason.
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Oh dear what a pathetic argument. If I take this at face value then a result 51 to 49 in favour of remaining would have been invalid. Etc, Etc. Only when one side or the other achieved 66.67% of the votes could we have said that the vote to leave or remain would have been legitimate. Now what (in attempting to achieve that outcome) would that have done to the cause of democracy. And which side would ever have achieved it?
 
Virgil said:
Oh dear what a pathetic argument. If I take this at face value then a result 51 to 49 in favour of remaining would have been invalid. Etc, Etc. Only when one side or the other achieved 66.67% of the votes could we have said that the vote to leave or remain would have been legitimate. Now what (in attempting to achieve that outcome) would that have done to the cause of democracy. And which side would ever have achieved it?
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It doesn't make it invalid, the result is what it is - a slender majority on the day thought we should leave the EU. It doesn't mean it's this fantasy of a "will of the people". If the results were reversed, you couldn't say for example that the Leave arguments should just shut up and disappear since practically half the country believed in a different direction.
 
Virgil said:
Referendums of themselves do not result in anarchy. We had one in respect of jointing the EEC. And another when proportional representation was on the agenda. Anarchy is only likely to happen when the will of the majority is ignored. Simple really or do you honestly not get it?
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This one has.
 
The problem isn't necessarily a referendum in itself. The problem is when that referendum is so ill-defined, so unclear, that one side basically gets to make up certain ideas as they go along which sound nice but don't really have any practicality when it comes to application. Being able to 'take back control' in regards to reducing immigration may have sounded nice, but this was always going to be impractical with the Irish border issue, and it was also kind of lie considering we already have certain controls within the EU we'd chosen not to use and had the power to limit non-EU migration if he wished to do so.

Added to that is the £350m for the NHS thing; again, not only a barefaced lie, but not really practical as an assertion to make because the people proposing it weren't running the country but were (for the most part) merely figures within the ruling party.

If we wanted a referendum on Brexit it should've been with a specific type of Brexit in mind. Of course, Brexiters wouldn't have allowed that because they knew that the arbitrary nature of the question was open-ended and benefited them.
 
Cheesy said:
The problem isn't necessarily a referendum in itself. The problem is when that referendum is so ill-defined, so unclear, that one side basically gets to make up certain ideas as they go along which sound nice but don't really have any practicality when it comes to application.
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Yesterday's argument. Shouldn't be and logically isn't, but we've had a year plus of absolutely nobody in politics of any note being at all bothered to point this out. Similar to how Labour under Miliband completely capitulated on the point that Brown caused the global financial crash of 2008. It wasn't true at all but after so long of the Tory narrative being unchallenged when promoting that myth, after a while it became impossible, futile to challenge it.

Brexit was a message that we wanted to leave the CU and SM despite nobody being asked simply because nobody of any significance has ever challenged that point. Including the Labour party.
 
Oscie said:
Brexit was a message that we wanted to leave the CU and SM despite nobody being asked simply because nobody of any significance has ever challenged that point. Including the Labour party.
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No one specified that message, certainly not when some were floating the 'Norway option'. The only major coherent policy message to come from the Brexit argument was giving £350m a week to the NHS.
 
Absolutely. When one side gets to say whatever the hell it wants and there is no recourse because no party that can deliver on its promises exists.

I think they're pretty flawed by their nature. It's possible to have one that works OK I guess. But - I think I said this a few days ago - even when there's a poll on here with only two possible answers I usually find my actual feeling is somewhere between the two. How much more significant when being asked something like Brexit? It just doesn't lend itself to such a binary set of options.
 
FlawlessThaw said:
It doesn't make it invalid, the result is what it is - a slender majority on the day thought we should leave the EU. It doesn't mean it's this fantasy of a "will of the people". If the results were reversed, you couldn't say for example that the Leave arguments should just shut up and disappear since practically half the country believed in a different direction.
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We would have told Farage to shut up and go away having lost the argument. The best he and those like minded could have achieved would have been to ask Cameron to go back and try to negotiate a few more concessions in favour of the UK (almost impossible). No way would the electorate have tried to overthrow the result. All in MHO of course.
 
Virgil said:
Oh dear what a pathetic argument. If I take this at face value then a result 51 to 49 in favour of remaining would have been invalid. Etc, Etc. Only when one side or the other achieved 66.67% of the votes could we have said that the vote to leave or remain would have been legitimate. Now what (in attempting to achieve that outcome) would that have done to the cause of democracy. And which side would ever have achieved it?
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No the idea is that you need 2/3 to change the something not to continue the way things are.

Edit: I'm not saying that we have a redo. We have the result of the Referendum the way it was set up but I think that Cameron was naive when setting it up.
 
Virgil said:
We would have told Farage to shut up and go away having lost the argument. The best he and those like minded could have achieved would have been to ask Cameron to go back and try to negotiate a few more concessions in favour of the UK (almost impossible). No way would the electorate have tried to overthrow the result. All in MHO of course.
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In that scenario Farage and UKIP would still be relevant since nearly half the country agreed with them. There would be no recourse on telling them to shut up and go away.
 
Fully Fledged said:
No the idea is that you need 2/3 to change the something not to continue the way things are.

Edit: I'm not saying that we have a redo. We have the result of the Referendum the way it was set up but I think that Cameron was naive when setting it up.
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Christ no wonder those of us in favour of remain lost the argument if this is the best we can do. On that basis then in the UK we should never have a change of government unless 2/3rds were in favour of a change from the status quo. For goodness sake I do despair. And with that I will leave the floor otherwise I will sadly get more insulting which I have no desire to do. Apologies to one and all if I have offended.
 
Adebesi said:
The organisation of it was abysmal. Richard Dawkins made a good point in the immediate aftermath, which was that in most countries when you are proposing making a significant, constitutional change that will have long term implications you need more than a simple majority, you usually need a 2/3 majority of something like that - you need a victory by a significant enough margin to justify making the change. If you have a something so close to 50/50 there isnt a sufficient mandate for the kind of sweeping changes it entails. You see that in a lot of written constitutions - and for good reason.
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To be fair if Leave got 52% and "lost" in a 2/3rds referendum they wouldve gone mental. Wouldnt have heard the end of it for years (much like the current situation!)
 
Virgil said:
Christ no wonder those of us in favour of remain lost the argument if this is the best we can do. On that basis then in the UK we should never have a change of government unless 2/3rds were in favour of a change from the status quo. For goodness sake I do despair. And with that I will leave the floor otherwise I will sadly get more insulting which I have no desire to do. Apologies to one and all if I have offended.
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To be fair, though, elections happen every few years; a decision like this is expected to last generations. I don't agree with 2/3rd referendums because I think if you need to impose that on a referendum it's inherently flawed in the first place, but it's quite clearly very different to an election which occurs on a regular cycle every few years.
 
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