Richard28 wrote:

Another interesting bit of information, should the government lose the vote on Tuesday, then the alternative plan that is put forward (within 3 days) is amendable by parliament (Dominic Grieve secured this right in December).

This gives Parliament the power to put all things back on the table, e.g. Single Market, Customs Union, EMA etc etc, even Article 50 itself, or a peoplesvote....

Olddog wrote:

It is not a real power. Whatever the uk parliament votes, it just can't force it on the EU.

noviorbis77 wrote:

SomebodyInTLS wrote:

Did anyone else watch the recent Channel 4 drama about the leave campaign manager (Dominic Cummings?

It was subjective nonsense from the leftiest of channels.

Olddog wrote:

It is not a real power. Whatever the uk parliament votes, it just can't force it on the EU.

Dutchy wrote:

Except for withdrawing article 50. They can do that unilateral.

LJ wrote:

A3801000 wrote:

MPs vote to force the government to announce new Brexit plans within three days if PM's deal fails in the Commons

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46805269

This is crazy. What's the purpose of submitting a new plan after 3 days of the vote. You can be assured that the quality of that plan isn't great.

tommy1808 wrote:

On top of being crazy, it would appear people still don't understand that a Brexit deal isn't a unilateral thing. The only "plan" to come up with in three days is withdrawing the art. 50 notification.

Richard28 wrote:

Olddog wrote:

It is not a real power. Whatever the uk parliament votes, it just can't force it on the EU.

Of course this is true, but the UK can go back to what was originally offered by the EU all that time ago, through Parliament being able to erase Theresa Mays infamous "red lines"

Dutchy wrote:

Two steps:
1. divorce papers --> 2. future trade relationship.

noviorbis77 wrote:

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-46798861?__twitter_impression=true

This is encouraging.

noviorbis77 wrote:

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-46798861?__twitter_impression=true

This is encouraging.

sabenapilot wrote:

Your attitude towards the EU reminds me of a well known quote from CDG:
"A patriot loves his country and is proud of its achievements; a nationalist hates the countries of others and even more so their successes."

Richard28 wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

Your attitude towards the EU reminds me of a well known quote from CDG:
"A patriot loves his country and is proud of its achievements; a nationalist hates the countries of others and even more so their successes."

I've not heard that quote before, sums up many peoples loathing of the EU quite well.

Klaus wrote:

Richard28 wrote:

sabenapilot wrote:

Your attitude towards the EU reminds me of a well known quote from CDG:
"A patriot loves his country and is proud of its achievements; a nationalist hates the countries of others and even more so their successes."

I've not heard that quote before, sums up many peoples loathing of the EU quite well.

And the kicker is that their loathing is mostly based on verifiably false assumptions about the EU.

It is entirely self-contained without any meaningful connection to actual reality, like any other fanatical cult.

Dutchy wrote:

Interesting address by mr. Corbin and his vision on Brexit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZadTDkjRA_U

Dutchy wrote:

Interesting address by mr. Corbin and his vision on Brexit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZadTDkjRA_U

Klaus wrote:

The tragedy is that Corbyn clearly sees Brexit just as a tactical opportunity to get into power and has no actual ideas about it. He just doesn't care, and Labour had made its tactical peace with the lies Brexit is based on instead of confronting them, and they are still caught in that bind of their own making.

A101 wrote:

And you wonder why I’m skeptical about TM/EU ulterior motive when it come to the negotiations

http://veteransforbritain.uk/maysdefencetreaty/

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/news.sk ... s-11603738

Klaus wrote:

The tragedy is that Corbyn clearly sees Brexit just as a tactical opportunity to get into power and has no actual ideas about it. He just doesn't care, and Labour had made its tactical peace with the lies Brexit is based on instead of confronting them, and they are still caught in that bind of their own making.

This is exactly why a first-past-the-post electoral system is such a bad idea: With just two people at the top of the only two relevant parties with their massively distorted seat counts agreeing on a lie there is almost no practical way for that lie to get challenged effectively, to the detriment of the whole country.

jcancel wrote:

After the anti Brexiteers have 100% of Parliament, it's time to get truth and reconciliation. That will mean banning pro Brexit MPs from Parliament and getting financial compensation.....

prebennorholm wrote:

jcancel wrote:

After the anti Brexiteers have 100% of Parliament, it's time to get truth and reconciliation. That will mean banning pro Brexit MPs from Parliament and getting financial compensation.....

No. That would be the fastest way to the hardest Brexit. There is no way a country acting like that can be an EU member. That would violate all treaties.

There is only one way the UK can again become a stable EU member and benefit from it. That is that the Britons in greater numbers begin to seek real information about their own situation and act accordingly. Instead of lying on the sofa and letting the commercial press through the living room alter feed them one-liners about imaginary scapegoats. With ever increasing and dramatic lies in order to maximize commercial exposure count and profit.

For Britain to be a good EU member we need a brighter and better informed British population. They will as their first step also elect brighter MPs, problem solved.

The UK isn't the only country to have fallen into that trap. Together with the USA they have just fallen way deeper than any other country in the developed world. Only the UK and US scapegoats are different.

jcancel wrote:

My scenario would be after the UK has already left and experienced Hard Brexit..

If Hard Brexit is avoided the Brexiteer MPs can keep their money and their comfort.

prebennorholm wrote:

jcancel wrote:

After the anti Brexiteers have 100% of Parliament, it's time to get truth and reconciliation. That will mean banning pro Brexit MPs from Parliament and getting financial compensation.....

No. That would be the fastest way to the hardest Brexit. There is no way a country acting like that can be an EU member. That would violate all treaties.

There is only one way the UK can again become a stable EU member and benefit from it. That is that the Britons in greater numbers begin to seek real information about their own situation and act accordingly. Instead of lying on the sofa and letting the commercial press through the living room alter feed them one-liners about imaginary scapegoats. With ever increasing and dramatic lies in order to maximize commercial exposure count and profit.

For Britain to be a good EU member we need a brighter and better informed British population. They will as their first step also elect brighter MPs, problem solved.

The UK isn't the only country to have fallen into that trap. Together with the USA they have just fallen way deeper than any other country in the developed world. Only the UK and US scapegoats are different.

LA787 wrote:

Some interesting comments about the Meaningful Vote from veteran Eurosceptic MP Sir Bill Cash:

https://www.moggpill.com/all-news/bruge ... ll-cash-mp

rabenschlag wrote:

I sincerely hope that Britain, once it is even greater after brexit and freed from continental interference, will re-start Vickers and make them build a modern VC-10. It is such a sleek plane, and what can be better than the last BOAC livery? That being said, I also have a taste for V bombers. As they made Britain strong and even helped winning back the Falklands, could there be room for a modern Vulcan or Victor? And, as a final hope: Do you think there are chances of Jensen and Bristol being re-activated? That would be a dream come true.

Booker is in reflective mood in his column this week, writing under the headline: "If the Brexit negotiations are a game of chess, Theresa May is dangerously close to checkmate".

Two years ago, after Theresa May's fateful decision that she wanted us not just to leave the EU but to shut ourselves off from "frictionless" access to the export market which provides one pound in every eight we earn as a nation, he tells us that he wrote that we seemed to be embarking on a game of snakes and ladders.

But in this game we were determined to avoid every ladder that might help us to climb the board towards the desired goal, and to seek out every snake which would slide us back down again to square one.

Another sporting analogy since used by others has been that which chess players call zugzwang. This is where a player reaches a position where any subsequent move will be disastrous for him. Such is the position we have boxed ourselves into today, where MPs are this week faced with a choice between the devil and the raging sea.

On one hand our MPs can vote for a deal imposed on us by the EU, which would leave us much worse off than we are now. On the other, we can drop out of the EU with "no deal" for what Mrs May only coyly calls "uncharted territory" although she must now realise this would be a far greater disaster than her own "bad deal".

The real problem, of course, says Booker, is that our politicians have got themselves into such a hopelessly ill-informed muddle that there is no longer a Commons majority in support of any next move we might make. The various vociferous factions all know what they are against, but they cannot agree on any positive move that might dig us out of the gaping hole they have all unwittingly conspired to get us into.

We still hear one lunatic fringe claiming that, if we leave without a deal, we can somehow just rely on those fabled "WTO rules". This is an option that simply doesn't exist, Booker says, because the WTO merely provides principles, which can only take force when used to shape a formal trade agreement.

And while we have to put up the endless propaganda from this source, another bunch clamours ever more loudly for a second referendum, which would take months to set up and plunge the country into an even more toxic state of chaos than it is in already.

For the best part of two years, and with increasing intensity, these groups have been tearing themselves apart over one little bubble of make-believe after another, to the point where we now seem be sliding by default towards the worst possible option of all: an economic, social and political catastrophe far greater than most people have yet begun to imagine, as we shall only discover when it hits us

140+ factual, fully-sourced examples of the impact Brexit is already having on the UK. Jobs going, investment drying up, companies moving assets to the EU, or redomiciling. And all happening as Government burns through £billions chasing a no deal Brexit.

B777LRF wrote:

LJ wrote:

LJ wrote:

It seems that the only UK company awarded a contract doesn't operate any service and doesn't have any vessel at present. Are there any other UK ferry companies at the moment?

Not only 'at present', they've never had a single ship to their name or operated a single service. Not least because they plan to operate out of Ramsgate where the berths are narrow, so narrow in fact they are seemingly unable to find ferries that'll fit.

All in all, a pretty good picture of the UK preparedness for Brexit. A giant clusterfrack, one might say.

ChrisKen wrote:

A101 wrote:

Why would the UK need to step back from regaining full sovereign control.

The UK already has full sovereign control and the benefit of trading/policital clout of being part of the EU block.

Why would the UK keep ploughing on to having a lower world standing, less sway and far less options?

Oh yeah, that's right.....so we can have blue passports

PS:Those passports will have lesser standing than the current, which could be blue if we wanted to anyway.

On passports, I still think the best idea is to let people choose their own colour:

Maroon passport = you can continue to travel freely, work and live across the EU.
Blue passport = you can’t do any of that but you have a blue passport.

Everyone’s happy!

A101 wrote:

Klaus wrote:

I had been talking to Seahawk – a fellow german member – who keeps trolling you UK Leavers around here.

Well least he's keeping himself amused

A101 wrote:

That’s because TM is not a believer in the exist,

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.ft. ... d3531b7d11

SomebodyInTLS wrote:

As I said a couple of months ago, I'm pretty pi$$ed off with Labour's completely not handling of the question as much as I am with May's mis-handling of the question.

sabenapilot wrote:

Word has it the UK is expected to formally request the EU to postpone Brexit shortly after TM losing the vote on her proposed WA.
The EU is currently looking at when the extraordinary leader's summit can be convened to discuss and approve of any such prolongation...
A first technical extention until July is being lined up about to allow TM to figure out what consessions she needs to make to get the WA through parliament, likely centered around a permanent UK-EU Custom Union...
Bye bye Brexit on March 29th and bye bye independent trade policy thereafter.

seahawk wrote:

The EU is preparing itself for all eventualities, one must not make the same mistake as the British and understand every preparation as a signal for a certain outcome.

A101 wrote:

seahawk wrote:

The EU is preparing itself for all eventualities, one must not make the same mistake as the British and understand every preparation as a signal for a certain outcome.

I would not expected anything else from the EU, change just dosnt happen on the UK side. The only real problem I see from the UK perspective is that it should have been expected that a no-deal withdrawal should have been the fall back position and preparation’s done in expectation of no agreement from the start, if a better deal that suited all it was done bonus.

A101 wrote:

I would not expected anything else from the EU, change just dosnt happen on the UK side. The only real problem I see from the UK perspective is that it should have been expected that a no-deal withdrawal should have been the fall back position and preparation’s done in expectation of no agreement from the start, if a better deal that suited all it was done bonus.

Dutchy wrote:

A101 wrote:

seahawk wrote:

The EU is preparing itself for all eventualities, one must not make the same mistake as the British and understand every preparation as a signal for a certain outcome.

I would not expected anything else from the EU, change just dosnt happen on the UK side. The only real problem I see from the UK perspective is that it should have been expected that a no-deal withdrawal should have been the fall back position and preparation’s done in expectation of no agreement from the start, if a better deal that suited all it was done bonus.

Any deal is better then no deal. So let's get the divorce right.....

A101 wrote:

I would not expected anything else from the EU, change just dosnt happen on the UK side. The only real problem I see from the UK perspective is that it should have been expected that a no-deal withdrawal should have been the fall back position and preparation’s done in expectation of no agreement from the start, if a better deal that suited all it was done bonus.

scbriml wrote:

Only brainless extremists think “no deal” is a good thing.

scbriml wrote:

I just watched Corbyn’s interview on The Andrew Marr program. The man is living in a state of complete delusion. At one part Marr actually laughed at one of his responses.