We got ourselves a snap election?
wavey
5860
Maybe, but the opposition parties have said not until the anti-No Deal legislation has been passed and locked in. (And who can blame them, with the lengths the Tories have been going to recently to get their own way?) If and when that’s done, it should be election time.
Background for anyone not following the specifics: thanks to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, introduced at the start of the Conservative/ Lib Dem coalition in order to give some guarantee of their agreement, the government can’t trigger an election by themselves any more - they need a 2/3 majority vote in favour, so the opposition parties need to agree. The govt could also pass “notwithstanding” legislation, which would need a bare majority, but which would also need to pass through both houses and be amendable.
strategy
5862
Great that Parliament took back power (at least partly) from the proto-fascist who’s taken over No 10.
Legislating that the UK cannot leave the EU with No Deal doesn’t really help, though - it’s just back to the same circus that May faced. They have to figure out - and soon - what the alternative is; does it mean May’s deal or Revocation of Article 50?
And if your elected representatives won’t do their job, they could at least do the democratic thing and call for a second referendum with a preferential vote for the three actual options for the UK - No Deal, May’s Deal or Remain. I have no idea who would win in such a vote, but it would at least result in a decision supported by the majority.
Menzo
5863
Ugh, you know this would just make it worse. What if the vote was 33/33/33? Or even 40/40/20. Who wins?
Even if it was 30(no deal)/21(May’s deal)/49(Remain) it’d be unclear what should happen.
wavey
5864
Best case scenario, I think, would be that a Labour coalition gets in, renegotiates a deal (one off-the-shelf would do, without May’s red lines there’s more scope here for better deals, e.g. staying in CU/SM), then there’s a confirmatory referendum, that deal v revoke. Really can’t have No Deal on the ballot, due to the GFA.
Tim_N
5866
That’s why @strategy mentioned a preferential vote. You rank the three options based on most preferred to least preferred. Then when the result is 41/30/29, you take the first preference votes of option 3 and redistribute it based on what they preferred second, then either option A or option B will clearly win.
What will probably happen here is that a bunch of people will put May’s deal as number 1, but then put no deal Brexit as number 3, so remain ends up winning. But in this topsy turvy world who knows.
Yep. Preferential voting - either way you’ll get a firm decision for one of the options and a clear mandate.
I’m really not convinced Corbyn/Labour can negotiate a deal that has any better chance to pass than May did - nor that the EU is particularly interested in doing a lot of renegotiation. So I don’t really see that as a realistic alternative. I’m not convinced he can even get into a position where he will have the power to negotiate in the first place - I doubt that a GE will result in anything other than more chaos - that’s why Boris is so keen on it.
magnet
5868
Corbyn does not rely on the DUP, so he can make a deal that resolves the backstop by leaving NI in a customs union with the EU.
Johnson can do the same thing by holding an election and winning enough votes that he no longer needs the DUP to maintain power.
May’s agreement already leaves the NI in the customs union, by essentially leaving the entire UK inside the customs union (unless I’ve misunderstood something). I’m not convinced that there are any additional parliamentary votes to be found by taking the UK out of the customs union immediately.
What I would fear could happen in a snap election, is that you have three “parties” going to the polls on the three positions - “Leave at any Cost” (Tories), “Leave with Deal” (Labour), and “Remain/New Referendum” (Lib Dems) and that either FPTP results in an election that can reasonably be argued to be illegitimate (in terms of popular support) or you end up with a hung parliament where no side is able to muster a majority (i.e., the current situation).
This seems highly likely.
Amending this slightly to:
And if your elected representatives can’t deliver a Brexit deal that doesn’t make us poorer, they should at least do the democratic thing and call for a second referendum with a preferential vote for the three actual options for the UK - No Deal, May’s Deal or Remain (with a brief summary of teh costs and opportunities next to each one, e.g. NO deal = £ immediate cost, disruption to x, breakup of the union, Mays deal = obey the EU rules, have no input, Remain = go back to the way things were before. I have no idea who would win in such a vote, but it would at least result in a decision supported by the majority.
I think you are correct here.
Honestly I don’t see there being any sort of good deal.
May’s deal leaves us worse off and with no seat at the table, No deal leaves us screwed.
I honestly think the best option is to stay in and apply massive pressure on the rest of the EU to reform certain things.
Cormac
5873
After all the bloody drama that the UK created with the Brexit fiasco, I doubt the EU would be very open to their attempts at “pressuring” them in any direction.
BY definition pressure applied is rarely welcomed, except maybe in the case of tourniquets!
My point being that whatever issues people supposedly have with the EU can be fixed within the EU, and as one of the larger member states, we really ought to be participating more in it,m instead of being wilfully complacent and negligent and then complaining about it.
Sure there is, problem is the UK needs something better than a good deal.
Well, here we come to the crux of the matter.
I, and I am not alone, think the deal we had before (technically still have?) including veto powers, rebate etc, was actually a good deal.
And considerably better than anything that has been proposed so far.
Others think not, and think we ought to leave the political side of things, and concentrate on the economy (but we will still have to obey EU rules and regulations if I am not wrong, only this time with no power to change them, so in effect making the claims of EU dominance a reality, in which case one wonders why leave at all…)
Others think a clean break is the best, and to hell with the short term pain (short term being curiously elastic in definition, is 10 to 15 years of 10% GDP lost short term? Is it worth resuming the Troubles in Northern Ireland? Is it worth Scotland breaking away?) as we get to colour our passports blue again, and negotiate our own trade deals (because apparently we can’t negotiate a trade deal whilst being in the EU…)
This morning my recent effort to understand UK politics in general and Brexit specifically paid off when I was introduced to Sweary Bercow.
wavey
5878
I’m okay with the events that are unfolding currently.
