Advocates say British politics is toxic and a second referendum is the only way to solve Brexit. Which I interpret as implying a second referendum would heal the wounds, calm British politics (at least after the referendum) etc. It would be good to address the issues I raised. Maybe you think they're all good points but the advantages of Remaining outweigh the increased division, risk of No Deal (0% if the Withdrawal Act passed) etc. That's fine I'm just curious. Asking in good faith btw.

If there is a second referendum Remain should offer that they only win if they gets 55% or 57.5% of the vote. And then Leave says OK that's a fair compromise. Both sides tamp down the rhetoric. You'd need No Deal in the referendum which is problematic. And Remain wouldn't agree to it (No Deal or 55%). So IDK. Passing the withdrawal agreement and everyone being slightly miserable is much better (could lead to years more of Brexit negotiations so hardly perfect but least worst option).

This is an interesting thread:



The linked article says "seniors ministers" expect the E.U to offer something like a three year time limit on the backstop. Also "a Cabinet minister" says to bring back May's deal as a last resort as the numbers are there. Personally skeptical the E.U will offer a time-limit if they think May's deal will pass.

More thoughts

i) If Johnson gets a time-limit the withdrawal act passes. He'll siphon off all but a few of the E.R.G. Media, Tory M.Ps etc. will portray it as a big triumph. And as the cabinet minister observes, everyone wants this over. There would be enormous pressure on Labour M.Ps. So 50 Labour M.Ps vote Aye (with the leadership's tacit approval), the rest vote no maintaining their street cred.

ii) Johnson is shameless but can he really bring back May's deal? tl/dr nothing matters but feels like he needs something he can sell as a victory.

iii) What is Lib Dem's Europe policy if a withdrawal act passes and what happens to their polling?

It's the same as some leavers saying the only way to heal the wound is to leave. boris & co say it a lot but it's the sort of things politicians say isn't it? No-one here, from either side, believes it do they?

The division isn't going anywhere whatever we do. I accept that no-deal is worse than deal but not by as much as leaving is worse than remaining. I do think the advantages of remaining outweigh pretty much everything else.

so you think no deal and deal aren't that different?

hmmm.

BTW, I've thought for quite a while all this posturing and positioning will ultimately be bring May's deal more or less intact back to the HoP and they pass it, knowing if they don't they get no deal.

I don't have a "side" (abstained) but yes I do. At least if Labour had supported the Withdrawal Act. Which yes, given various political realities was difficult for them to do. Might be too late now. But if it's passed and a reasonable future relationship agreed, outside a few ultras on either side people will move onto other things. Couldn't imagine Lib Dems campaigning to immediately rejoin (too unpopular) and TBP would be mollified.

edit: changing the franchise for a second referendum won't fly. Whatever the merits of the case it would look bad to every Leaver and probably most Remainers too.

To my UK friends, Is 10/31 Brexit dead?

Johnson out, and the next election the referendum on this?

I suggested such a thing years ago in this thread. 57.5% is way too high. but I'd take 53% (maybe more) and 16 year olds get to vote as they did in the Scottish referendum.


I'm not betting on it but I do suspect a deal is quite likely if boris isn't chucked out. May's deal with some, possibly cosmetic, tweaks. Plus all the goodies already agreed cross party

I've said the same about pressure on labour MPs.

You and I have had this exact conversation . it wasn't that long ago either.

I think you way underestimate what will happen every time something bad happens. Brexit will be blamed and the pressure to rejoin will build. Scotland will quite possibly leave the UK. Not to mention N. Ireland. Unless it's a disaster, other nationalistic, right wing elements in the EU will look at us and think hmmm we can agitate for the same deal as the UK has got.

Meanwhile trump, putin, china etc will seek to drive a wedge between us and the EU at every opportunity.

i) Feel for May if her deal gets passed. Morally she should get to be Prime Minister again. The optics of a man taking credit for a woman's work (especially one he repeatedly trashed) are ... not great. Presumably historians bump her up a bunch in the rankings though.

ii) Who the **** knows how an election would go but I'd feel much more comfortable rooting for a Johnson led Conservative party that readmitted Rory Stewart and booted Francois than the other way round. The Tories are currently veering dangerously towards the demagogic populist right, enough so that I'm entertaining the idea that, and I feel sick typing this, a LOTO led minority government that couldn't pass anything would be better for the country than a Johnson led Brexit-Party-lite Conservatives with a majority.

If No Deal is ruled out and Stewart, Gauke, Hammond etc. readmitted the next election will be an easy choice (Lib Dem led government would still be best and Johnson would be still a charlatan would deserved to lose in humiliating style).

From a perverse pleasure pov I like the idea of May's WA finally passing but with her voting against it. More seriously, May will get a massive boost in the history books if her deal get's passed.

I'm not rooting for either but yes I agree with you about which tory party is better - not close either.

"No Deal" on a referendum is nonsense though - the UK doesn't have a "no deal" relationship with any country in the world except possibly a few we don't recognise like Transdniestria and it's also nonsense to tie politicians hands to not dealing at all. In any case there are already various deals in place if the withdrawal agreement falls.

The actual question is whether the EU should be some third country and we should have corresponding deals in place or we should be a dependency of it and have BRINO type deals in place.

I think anti-EU sentiment can certainly get a bump from the day UK actually leaves, but I also think pro-EU sentiment gets a bump from the mess that Brexit has been.

And historically UK might historically always had one foot on the European continent, but always squarely kept its balance on the other one, analogous to a man carefully dipping his toes to check the temperature.

Even its EU membership was always a bit less on-board than most other states, esp when it came to developments that made the idea of a full union come closer.



*edit* Changed Britain to UK, it's late here.

It would be very dangerously complacent of the EU to think the mess of the brexit process will help if the final destination turns out to be ok. Massively easier to copy the result than to set off bumbling like we have. Worse for the EU is that until we rejoin, it's just waiting for another EU crises to combine with the UK looking relatively ok.

BTW I think the EU are well aware of this.

have a 2nd ref and if remain win. (no idea what would be the brexit part of the ref though, thats a problem)

Then offer a 3rd ref if remain are found to be caught massively lying in their claims, and if after a few years we find out remaining is going to crash our economy to pieces with significant job losses and people will likely die due to not being able to get medicines due to the the decision of remaining.


the whole "cant offer a 2nd ref because we have to do a 3rd" is silly. Acting as if nothing has changed since the first ref. A **** ton has changed, Actual legitimate conversations about how bad leaving is has actually happened since the ref. And so many lies have been shown to just be pure bullshit. (yes i know both sides before someone does a whataboutism).

Does any "brexit" have a majority from the 1st ref from the "will of the people". hell no does it. So many who wanted brexit to mean norway type deal dont want hard brexit. So many hard brexit people dont want norway type deal. To try shove a brexit deal and say "its the will of the people of 17.4m people" is redic. because it just isnt currently.

ignoring results of democratic votes cos you don't like the result is very EU, well done.

Presumably in order to join the EU? Why do you think that when the polls show no higher support for independence now than at the end of 2015 and start of 2016? Are you just repeating what other people have said?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinio...h_independence

It's true there was a boost in the week after the referendum but after the UK gets powers back from the EU and passes them on to the devolved nations, then Scotland will actually have a choice - switching unions would mean giving up one set of powers in order to get another set back - not necessarily more independence at all - the UK also has a dynamic towards increased devolution whereas the EU has one towards increased centralisation. The lack of fun of negotiating the withdrawal agreement with a country they do 3/5 of their total trade with should also be pretty clear at this point.

I'd actually say it's the reverse. Andrew Marr said in the 2015 election coverage when asked if the SNP's result showed devolution had led on an inevitable path to independence, that it probably would have been inevitable whatever Blair had done - they're more likely going to leave if we stay in the EU, because it's more practical to have an internal EU border across GB than a full international one (as we're seeing in Ireland).

Anyone want to do an over/under bet on the number of posts before someone repeats the "Scotland will leave" trope without addressing anything I've written?

I'm just going by it being 55-45 last time and a sense that sentiment has shifted a bit towards independence. Also that brexit probably means boris and I suspect that as a whole they really hate boris & co. Even so I only say 'quite possibly'

I wont address those polls - I think they have minimal if any meaning when there's no vote going on. I think, as with brexit, practical considerations will only be relevant to a small proportion.

edit: Also when you go into a referendum with figures anything like the support of 45% a few years ago then you always have a decent chance of winning.

Exactly right. You have a fractious group of people with competing interests who had 3 years and still couldn't agree amongst themselves what they actually wanted. On one side furious gammons, another disaster capitalists,
another old people, and another who just don't like the idea of straight bananas. It's pretty obvious that these groups will never agree on what they want a brexit deal to look like, and it's pretty obvious that in the absence of such a deal it's either no deal or remain. Ref2 should have those two options only, now that everyone has more complete information about what they're actually voting for. If the people still choose to leave, let's go. But to say the original mandate still exists after 3 years of information about what brexit really looks like is of course utter bullshit.

If you buy a shiny new mercedes and later find out its a cut and shut, you should be given the option to return it. Not only that, you should be furious at the salesman, not the people telling you you've bought a death trap. If you insist that you don't care and you in fact knew it was a cut and shut the whole time, you bought it because of the mercedes badge, then by all means keep it. I'll still think you're awful for endangering the lives of those around you, and may even raise a knowing smile when you drive the economy off a cliff.

Untrue



As much you might think it would be a terrible idea (it would), if you advocate a second referendum and want Brexiteers to find it legitimate a necessary (but probably not sufficient) condition is to include WTO terms as an option, since it's the only option seen as Brexit by ~half of Leavers. ("Brexiteers never mentioned WTO during the campaign so it's not legitimate" is salient but much of the population won't buy it).

I think the point might have been that WTO is a deal.

Scotland doesn't meet the criteria for EU membership. Any recent shift in polling for independence isn't necessarily to do with Brexit but more to do with what is seen as an increasing lurch to the right under Boris and his cabal.

With regards to the leave the UK to join the EU contradiction. It's difficult to explain but for many it's all about independence and whatever it takes to get there so that means unquestioning following of the SNP line, beacuse the SNP are the route to independence and to question them in anyway lessens the chance of that happening. So when the SNP say seperation from the UK and joining the EU is the way ahead they will go with that, despite approximately 1/3 of SNP voters voting to leave the EU. There's a mindset among many who want independence that you get that first and then worry about everything else afterwards. There was also a 'wheesht (it means be quiet) for Indy' campaign which again just means don't ever question or criticise anything the SNP do as it may harm indy.

Of course there's also another underlying issue but I'm not going there

so is ending up exactly like norway "the will of the people" or ignoring the results? I'll be down ending up like norway and having brexit at same time. Even though we may aswell just remain, but at least we respected the democratic will of the people and its what everyone of the 17.4m people voted for.

have a hard time believing all the hardline brexiteers support that idea though and they will claim its not what they voted for. Just like how no deal isnt a majority of what was voted for also.

That's the SNP in a nutshell.

Let England have Brexit, and let Scotland and NI stay in the EU! Great Britain becomes Not-So-Great Britain.