Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Admiral Yi]

Yoda understanding of difficult sometimes can be

[Sheilbh]

Comes over as the actions of a spoilt public school boy who didn't want to do his homework properly.

Britain 2010-2019: The Schoolboy Years

[Zanza]

The EU should grant a week or two extension to allow the ratification of WA2 including the WAIB in both UK and EU parliament. No need for any further delay.

[Richard Hakluyt]

For once I find myself in agreement with the DUP; what strange times we live in. Having a border between NI and the rest of the UK is completely unacceptable unless a broad majority of the NI people give their consent.

....and "prime minister" Johnson is a dangerous wanker and Eton should be closed down for damaging children's healthy development 

[Josquius]

Not granting the asked for extension till next year would be a massive PR mistake by Europe.
I predict however that they leave it till the last second.

[Zanza]

Not granting the asked for extension till next year would be a massive PR mistake by Europe.
I predict however that they leave it till the last second.

Why is it a PR mistake? Outside of more and more meaningless British domestic opinion, no one blames the EU for this shitshow.

The EU needs to get closure on this sorry development and move on. British domestic politics have taken an outsized importance over the last years and taken focus from more important fields of policy.

Johnson and the EU are actually on one side of this versus the delaying parliament. They will do the bare minimum not to trigger a no deal Brexit, but the British had six months to resolve their internal power struggle and did not do anything other than selecting a more hard line PM.

It is time for the EU to get Brexit done. 

[The Brain]

Not granting the asked for extension till next year would be a massive PR mistake by Europe.
I predict however that they leave it till the last second.

Why is it a PR mistake? Outside of more and more meaningless British domestic opinion, no one blames the EU for this shitshow.

The EU needs to get closure on this sorry development and move on. British domestic politics have taken an outsized importance over the last years and taken focus from more important fields of policy.

Johnson and the EU are actually on one side of this versus the delaying parliament. They will do the bare minimum not to trigger a no deal Brexit, but the British had six months to resolve their internal power struggle and did not do anything other than selecting a more hard line PM.

It is time for the EU to get Brexit done. 

Yes, the UK will always blame the EU for anything and everything negative about Brexit, and no one outside the UK will agree.

[Josquius]

Not granting the asked for extension till next year would be a massive PR mistake by Europe.
I predict however that they leave it till the last second.

Why is it a PR mistake? Outside of more and more meaningless British domestic opinion, no one blames the EU for this shitshow.

The EU needs to get closure on this sorry development and move on. British domestic politics have taken an outsized importance over the last years and taken focus from more important fields of policy.

Johnson and the EU are actually on one side of this versus the delaying parliament. They will do the bare minimum not to trigger a no deal Brexit, but the British had six months to resolve their internal power struggle and did not do anything other than selecting a more hard line PM.

It is time for the EU to get Brexit done. 

The UK is edging closer and closer to chucking the whole thing out. People are increasingly getting wise to the tory gaslighting and recognising that the EU has been nothing but decent and fair across this whole thing.
For the EU to then suddenly turn arse hole and push no deal on us just doesn't make sense. It will shatter a large amount of good will and ensure a ultra hard Brexit that is in nobody's interest. It would only prove the paranoia of the extremists about the eu wanting to punish the UK.

I really can't see a good reason for the EU to cut their losses now rather than let the UK have an election and figure out what it wants to do next year. Hopefully sanity will prevail but if not then at least it will become even harder to spin the shittiness of brexit as Europe's fault.

[The Brain]

For the EU to then suddenly turn arse hole and push no deal on us

Now you're in fantasyland territory.

[The Brain]

And surely you realize that by now EU voters want the UK to GTFO? EU governments have voters too, even if UK political discourse doesn't acknowledge that fact.

[Iormlund]

The UK is edging closer and closer to chucking the whole thing out. People are increasingly getting wise to the tory gaslighting ...

Not really. Remain might win now by a few percentage points, but the UK is still torn in two.

This might be hard to accept, but we are better off without you. We need to focus on the Euro and on whether we want to keep expanding east. Not on the likes of Farage or Boris.

Deal with your issues. We'll still be here when you are done.

[Zanza]

I concur with The Brain and Iormlund. The British domestic debate has been poisoned so much and has created such a strong partisanship that Britain cannot be a constructive EU member for the next decade or so. There is no consensus to revoke the A50 notification. It would at best be an extremely controversial policy supported by slightly more than half of the British electorate.

But the EU now needs calm to press onwards with its own priorities and fix other issues. Here is the manifesto of the new EU commission: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/political-guidelines-next-commission_en.pdf
Virtually none of the points there ever featured in the British domestic debate and Britain would certainly not embrace this agenda of the EU for the next five years. Presumably, with its constant anti-EU tendencies in both Labour and Tories, it would just hinder us to implement these policies.

So yeah, it's time for Britain to go its own path for a while and find out what it wants as its place in the world. Leave means Leave. It's time to implement that policy now. You can join EEA and/or the customs union as a member if you want to after the next election and participate in the single market. That seems to be the only part of the EU where at least some British see a value in European integration and cooperation.

[garbon]

But the EU now needs calm to press onwards with its own priorities and fix other issues. Here is the manifesto of the new EU commission: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/political-guidelines-next-commission_en.pdf
Virtually none of the points there ever featured in the British domestic debate

I think you might be mistaking your close viewing of Brexit coverage as representative of British politics in toto.

[Josquius]

Yeah...a glance at that and the top two are the environment and inequality which are pretty huge issues in the UK. Ironically without the issue of inequality the brexiters would never have gotten this far.

For the EU to kick the UK out might be satisfying in the short term, but in the long term it would be a huge mistake. This would guarantee the UK does not slide into a productive EEA like relationship and instead give a hostile, unstable pirate nation right on Europe's border.

Yes, if democracy prevails and the brexiters are thrown back in the sea then the UK will keep moaning about how it hates Europe for some years to come. But give us a decade or so and that generation will be irrelevant. In the meantime we can get back to business as usual rather than continuing the last 3 years forever more.

[Josquius]

Oh.
And lets not let them get away with rewriting history.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43221934