I think this is spot on, Customs Union looks to me the outcome most likely to get a majority. But it will be Customs Union with a backstop of some kind, and it’s hard to imagine that flying with the way the backstop has been demonized.
Totally agree. Which is why it needed a John Major like figure imho.
May and the government should have seen very early on this was not a game they could win or anyone.
They should have heaped it on parliament as a whole and de fanged its political impact to all parties. We would have all been bored to tears of endless committees banging on about fisheries but that would have been preferable to this.
Having the referendum was not to their credit. It was a monumental political blunder. You don’t ask the voters to rule on complicated proposals that not only can’t they understand, you don’t even understand. It’s malpractice on the scale of invading Iraq, perhaps the worst political failure in modern UK history.
Issues like this are what representative democracy is for.
This is very true, and having a lot of stress over one’s lifetime as to where tomorrow’s meals were going to come from during food shortages due to bad harvests and such took a toll. Still, even in the absence of modern sanitation/medicine, it wasn’t unheard of for average people to make it to their early 70s, especially if they lived away from the grime and bad sanitation/water of cities.
Aceris
4011
The passage of the Lisbon treaty was rather controversial, and not just in the UK.
I do agree with you, but if the EU states had anything like the kind of constitutional protections the US has the EU would look nothing like it does.
The EU itself has an even higher bar for constitutional changes of course.
It doesn’t solve the Irish question but it does help a little apparently.
“You would still have an issue with the Irish border, but it’s less existential. Even a full customs union won’t solve this,” added Ms Renison.
“That said, most borders exist due to an absence of a customs union, so it is at least an important part of the puzzle.”
Aceris
4013
Oh look, a @scottagibson post that ignores the context of what I was replying to. WHAT A FUCKING SURPRISE.
If you think the best way to respond to ‘they shouldn’t make such sweeping and complicated changes solely on the basis of narrow popular polls’ is ‘at least they asked the (impossible) question’, then you’re not as smart as I thought you were.
I mean, either you agree they shouldn’t have asked the question, in which case my comment is on point and you agree with it; or you think they should have asked the question, and @CraigM’s criticism hasn’t been answered. To quote someone:
wavey
4015
Tony Blair (I know, I know) put it well recently on a podcast: referendums are usually put to the people to let the government push for a large change, to give them backing for some huge policy they want to enact and feel they need some extra legitimacy for. But this one was a referendum where the government proposing it was instead in favour of the status quo; a gamble that Cameron thought would quieten a wing of his party. So it easily became, amongst other things, a way to protest vote against the government.
Things are so bad I actually miss Tony Blair.
The only solution left to us
Which is completely ducking his point. Yes, Parliament voted to ratify those treaties. In other words, major constitutional change resulting from a single vote requiring a simple majority.
In that context, demanding a different standard for constitutional change in the opposite direction would obviously look like rigging the game. Because it would be.
I think there is a very big difference between a simple majority required in Parliament versus a simple majority in a referendum. Even if you neglect the differences in the decision making process itself, there are other aspects, such as how accountability is handled, or how long one vote can bind a successor, etc.
Edit: moved to Nazi thread
??? We do have pretty tight constitutional protections over here. Not every EU state is the UK.
Yes, in general I’d say it’s much easier for a government to win a vote in the Commons then it is to win a referendum campaign. Governments, by definition, have a Commons majority to call on.
Really? Accession to the Maastricht or Lisbon treaties, bound all successor government irrevocably to living with them. Member nations that want to renegotiate previous treaties never get very far.
Actually, there’s probably more chance of Britain being able to rejoin the EU in a decade’s time then there is of reversing any one of those treaties, even partially.
Oh, you witty soul!
And yes, in practice governments or parliaments can bind their successors. But nobody argues those decisions you cite are unconstitutional or undemocratic to reconsider - just practically difficult to undo.
draxen
4024
Is the EU position hardening against further extensions?
Aceris
4025
I think the argument is that if we had had a system to ensure popular consent for such treaties we would never have got into this situation in the first place.
That I can buy. There are clearly deep problems with our representative democracy if sweeping changes - the old one you mention, or the new ones now - can be enacted wth tiny, if any, majority support.
