Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[mongers]

Don't worry chaps, it's all going swimmingly.   

[Josquius]

Interesting thing I read today

Senior Govt minister claims Tory vote collapsing in middle class Remain areas: "If you knock on a door and they have books on their shelves, you can be pretty sure these days they're not voting Tory".

[mongers]

Shall I ruin my good mood by watching today's news?

[alfred russel]

Shall I ruin my good mood by watching today's news?

No. Go for a stroll instead.

[mongers]

Shall I ruin my good mood by watching today's news?

No. Go for a stroll instead.

I should definitely do more of that this year, maybe I should contrive to be out of the country during the Brexit meltdown?

[Tamas]

See, this is what I am talking about.

Guardian main news:

Brexit backstop amendment would give May 'enormous firepower'

Article continues:

Theresa May would go back to Brussels with "enormous firepower" to renegotiate her Brexit deal if the Commons backed an amendment watering down the Irish backstop provision, a senior Conservative backbencher has said before a crucial series of votes.

Awesome, no? Let's learn the details of this magic amendment:

Graham Brady said he was hopeful of ministerial support for his amendment, which says the backstop should be replaced by "alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border", even though Ireland has repeatedly stressed such a change cannot happen.

Yes

the backstop should be replaced by "alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border"

I am sorry but Nazi Wunderwaffen made more sense than this shit. But yet it is MAIN NEWS even on a vehemently anti-Tory and anti-Brexit major news site.

I think Britain is really entering a state of mass self-denial.

[Tamas]

Wherever you look, the same godawful spectacle. People with no imagination, repeating the same ideas which didn't work last time. The same old misplaced fears, about the same old referendum result. The same shocking degree of irresponsibility from Cabinet ministers. It's like watching a video of muddy water swirl down a drain, every hour of every day, for months on end.

Even an election wouldn't sort this out. What would be the Tory policy? May's deal or no-deal? It wouldn't make any difference. You couldn't get her MPs on side for either. So even if she got a majority, which she probably wouldn't, she still couldn't pass her bill. Corbyn's Brexit policy is just as demented as hers, but even more vague. Even if he got a majority, he'd be in the same position. An election solves nothing.

There is no fire escape. We are trapped in unconscionable circumstances by people who were warned that this would happen and did it anyway. The only escape route, and it is a desperate one, is for Cooper's amendment to stretch the time and Grieve's amendment, which hands MPs six government-free days in the Commons, to sort out what they're going to do. But even this basic, uncontroversial, bog-standard initiative is being sabotaged by government ministers, the Labour front bench, and MPs' own petrified, self-interested inadequacies.

http://politics.co.uk/blogs/2019/01/25/week-in-review-everything-is-dead-everywhere

[Zanza]

Theresa May has asked her party to vote in favor of the Brady amendment, but it is not officially government policy to attract more Labour backbenchers... wat? And the ERG has already said that they will not vote in favor as it is just an expression of opinion, not a real plan. No shit.

[Tamas]

Theresa May has asked her party to vote in favor of the Brady amendment, but it is not officially government policy to attract more Labour backbenchers... wat? And the ERG has already said that they will not vote in favor as it is just an expression of opinion, not a real plan. No shit.

Yeah. The whole day the big political drama was who would or would not support a motion telling the EU to replace the legal guarantee of the backstop with the sentence "we intend to find a way to have border checks without border checks".

This is embarrassing.

[garbon]

For someone tired of Brexit, you seem to follow it with rapt attention, Z.

[Tamas]

I can understand. It's hard to take your eyes away from such a trainwreck.

[Zanza]

For someone tired of Brexit, you seem to follow it with rapt attention, Z.

I find it fascinating and tiresome.

Fascinating because an old, well-established democracy is in a deep constitutional crisis and there is no obvious way out of the quagmire, fascinating because it is the first Western European democracy that succumbed to populist nationalists which is a general political trend across Western Europe, fascinating because it is about the EU of which I am a big supporter and see it as the future of our continent.

Tiresome, because there are no new arguments or insights now for a while and the process seems to stagnate, everybody is just kicking the can down the road, tiresome because it binds too much energy in the rest of Europe that should be invested into more worthwhile projects like a deeper fiscal union, more service liberalization, a credible defense component etc.

So yes, I definitely follow it closely, but I find it really frustrating as it is so unbelievably stupid in just about every dimension.

[Josquius]

It is long past the time brexit should have fucked off.
Alas the idiocy continues

[mongers]

60 days to go and today Euro Tunnel freight was complaining about a lack of guidance from the government on what needs to be done.

This is a business that moves 500 trucks an hour between the UK and the Continent, around 25% of all UK-EU trade, some 120 billion pounds per annum.   

[Zanza]

Theresa May has announced to the Commons that she plans to return to Brussels and seek to reopen the painstakingly negotiated withdrawal agreement so as to seek legally-binding changes to the Irish backstop.

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/29/brexit-may-to-ask-eu-to-reopen-withdrawal-agreement-over-irish-backstop

Aha, it will be interesting to see the well-prepared, constructive and realistic "alternative arrangements" or changed red lines that she will undoubtedly bring to the negotiation. It would be silly to assume she will just show up there empty-handed and all out of ideas...