edit: Didn’t see that this was already posted in the CIA thread too
I’ll crosspost here and in the CA/SCL thread (note the date):
The fudge continues with yesterday’s agreement! The deadline is now October, when this withdrawal agreement now needs to be signed, which means it needs to be in formal legalese: and that means resolving NI, somehow.
Of course, by that point it’s not clear what can be done if Britain doesn’t like what’s on offer. It’s far too late to have a political crisis like a general election or another referendum, and there’s no way it could back out. It will be interesting to see what sort of fudge can be reached to extend things beyond October.
But at least we’ve made enough progress to start discussing our downgrade to a FTA.
Technically it’s a very simple fudge. The UK asks for an article 50 extension, and all the other member states agree to it. Boom, done.
Obviously that’s politically very difficult on both sides and would almost certainly bring down the UK government, assuming it hasn’t already gone by then.
Yes, I suppose that’s one way. If we’ve kicked the can down the road to the point where we’ve ran out of road… well, you can extend the road!
As you say, it seems unlikely.
I don’t really see any other way. Without it, the UK ceases to be a member state in March. You can fudge a lot of stuff (as Greece showed), but not that. Now, to a certain extent the October deadline is artificial, but at the same time, the collapse in business (and probably consumer) confidence if there isn’t any legal certainty by then is going to be astronomical. And it would make the hard Brexit option truly a logistical nightmare as there wouldn’t be time to put in place even the most rudimentary measures on customs etc.
Well, I suppose it’s possible we all agree to the transition where we keep everything the same for two years, and promise, cross-our-hearts, to finally resolve this NI thing some time during those two years.
Or maybe Ireland will just cave, and we’ll have a softish border.
UK GDP was estimated at 0.1% in the 2018 Q1. Pretty terrible.
Meanwhile, it’s becoming very suggestive (via a motion this week) that there is no majority in the Commons to leave the Customs Union, and the Lords are certainly against it. There is a big vote on an amendment regarding the CU next month - that may be crunch time.
Nobody knows what happens to the government if HMG lose the vote - previously it might have been enough to bring it all down, but the Fixed Term Parliament Act throws that up in the air. Isn’t politics exciting with an unwritten constitution? You just have to press buttons and see what happens next!
Local elections are next week. I doubt anything will happen until after that, for fear of rocking the party ship mid-elections. But things are looking more unstable than they have since December. Maybe May really will be gone by June (heh).
https://twitter.com/JGForsyth/status/991966117949333504
Most insightful point:
Indeed, it isn’t hard to see how there could be a constitutional stand-off as you couldn’t get to be leader of the governing party without taking a position on Brexit that can’t command support in parliament.
It’s not really a constitutional stand-off so much as a political one. It could be resolved by a pro-customs union coalition government, for instance. Not something we’ve seen before, but not a constitutional problem. Certainly less of one than us crashing out of the EU in a year’s time without a transition, which is what’s going to happen if the cabinet doesn’t figure out what it wants to do pretty sharpish.
Yes, maybe a better way of putting it. It’s still a standoff of a very unusual nature.
There are solutions - such as the coalition you suggest - but there seems limited time left for any to be implemented. Is there even time left for a general election, for instance? It’s getting really tight, as you note.
It’s going to be an interesting summer.
The snap election was called a month and a half out, so in theory there’s plenty of time, if the position of the winning party/coalition is to basically capitulate entirely to the EU’s demands. Which the current government’s incompetence and division is increasingly making the only possible position other than the hardest of Brexits. In practice, I’m not sure there’s time for anything else even without an election. The government has basically done nothing at all on the Irish border over the last six months, and that’s not the only sticking point.
Would the EU be willing to call ‘time’ on things while we sort our mess out internally? There were mutterings of that sort a while ago.
Depends what they thought would come at the end of it. Also, member states and parliament effectively have a veto over extension of negotiations, so if anyone loses patience, that’s that.
Why does nothing make sense any more?
Why is there a Kenyan flag in the thumbnail?
Bad decisions and anger?