Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[garbon]

I liked members of American Congress saying they would ruin a trade deal with America if backstop is removed.

[The Minsky Moment]

Bah Glorious Albion has no need to barter with those riff-raff Americans.  The Empire will provide all the trading partners Britain needs.

[The Brain]

Johnson sends 'ditch the backstop' message to EU via Brexit adviser

Right.

"Please throw Ireland under the bus and discredit the founding ideas of the EU, so Britain can negate all negative effects of leaving. OR ELSE, we will shoot ourselves in both feet and make YOU look like you have integrity."

Don't forget bladder control. OR ELSE they will also lose control of their bladder.

[mongers]

First signs in a long time of some hope :

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-politics-49200636

Brecon and Radnorshire by-election: Lib Dems beat Conservatives

2 August 2019 

The Conservatives have lost a closely-fought Brecon and Radnorshire parliamentary by-election.

Lib Dem candidate Jane Dodds overturned an 8,038 majority to beat Chris Davies by 1,425 votes.

Mr Davies stood again after being unseated by a petition that followed his conviction for a false expenses claim.

Labour were beaten into the fourth place by The Brexit Party.

It was the first electoral test for new prime minister Boris Johnson.
......

It leaves the government's working majority cut to just one, including its confidence and supply partners.

The turnout was 59.6%, down from 74.6% at the general election, but it is the highest for a by-election since Winchester in 1997.

Both Plaid Cymru and the Greens did not field candidates, to try to maximise the Remain vote.

Plaid leader Adam Price said the "spirit of co-operation" between the pro-Remain parties had led to Ms Dodds's election, as he called for a second referendum.

"But if the prime minister is intent on a general election, he should know that Plaid Cymru and the other pro-Remain parties are committed to cooperating so that we beat Brexit once and for all," he added.

....

[Josquius]

Great to see FPTP working in the good guys favour for once

[The Brain]

Still most Conservative MPs sit for rotten boroughs, so it won't be a trend.

[Josquius]

It really does depend on farage I would say. If his group can keep performing well then the Tories should lose their majority.
Problem is this makes it advantageous for the tories to keep being stupid on Brexit.

Or, for another angle, there's northern Ireland. God knows how things will work there. If an anti dup election coalition could appear..?

[Syt]

Sketch from 1996 which seems ... still current? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6a_weyzkY4

Oddly, it doesn't feel like parody anymore

[Admiral Yi]

It really does depend on farage I would say. If his group can keep performing well then the Tories should lose their majority.
Problem is this makes it advantageous for the tories to keep being stupid on Brexit.

So Bo forms a coalition with Farage.  Doesn't sound like an optimal outcome to me.

[garbon]

I think he means they pull enough votes to pull conservative share down to 2nd place, not winning seats.

[Tamas]

Yes, and I know that the Tories think "Farage is taking the loony bin votes, we need to be more lunatic!" but I don't get why.

It isn't working for them. Having a dumb, uninspired communist in charge of Labour is the only thing keeping them afloat.

If they are worried about losing the "radical" votes, why isn't the answer to tilt to the middle to make up for it? Why can't Farage has his cult?

Well, I guess because they don't feel like they belong there.

[Josquius]

Hmm, seems now we're at the tipping point the end of the Tory majority may be sooner than we think:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-mp-defection-lib-dems-brexit-boris-johnson-majority-phillip-lee-a9030576.html

If they are worried about losing the "radical" votes, why isn't the answer to tilt to the middle to make up for it? Why can't Farage has his cult?

Well, I guess because they don't feel like they belong there.

Its not just about feelings, they've firmly married their future to the even at its most moderate "Batshit" policy of brexit.
If they try and fight for the centre then they're competing with the Lib Dems, who have a very well established hold of the policy of sanity, and cede the right to the crazies.
Politically Cameron in his attempts to stop the lunatic fringe splitting off has signed the Tories death warrant.
Alas it seems to be like one of those scenarios where you go back in time and murder baby Hitler only for the replacement to be worse.

[Iormlund]

Yes, and I know that the Tories think "Farage is taking the loony bin votes, we need to be more lunatic!" but I don't get why.

It isn't working for them. Having a dumb, uninspired communist in charge of Labour is the only thing keeping them afloat.

If they are worried about losing the "radical" votes, why isn't the answer to tilt to the middle to make up for it? Why can't Farage has his cult?

Well, I guess because they don't feel like they belong there.

There's no middle to go to anymore. Half the country is pro-remain, so they are not going to vote Tory regardless. Of the other half, as much as 60% has been convinced (by the Tories no less!) that No Deal is the way to go.
The Tories need the Brexit Party to go away, and the only way to do it is going for No Deal themselves.

[The Brain]

Chaos is a ladder. No Deal holds a lot of possibilities for some people.

[Tamas]

This is about Scotland's first minister trying to convince Brits to move to Scotland if they want to stay in the EU:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/06/no-deal-brexit-boris-johnson-bluff-consequences-real


It made me thinking: It does increasingly seem to me like the social cohesion of Britain, and I mean on a country-wide level and scale, is breaking down.

A mere 4 years after the last independence referendum, the Scottish leaders are clearly just waiting for the first faint excuse to call another one (and the first one was moronic to begin with).

The members of the ruling party seem absolutely fine with destroying what has been a single country for 400 years, just so they get their pipe dreams.

In Northern Ireland, it seems the raving lunatics are on the side of staying with Britain. I am not even sure how loud the Catholic side is about joining the Republic because you just can't hear them in all this noise from this far out.

The level of legitimacy at which a decision of historic scale is about to be made is so low (about 90 thousand people offered a choice between a conman and a boring bureaucrat, and now the whole country is stuck with the choice for 3 more years), that it makes a mockery of the concept of Britain being a democracy.

And while, sure, the moronic Brexit referendum saw a 52% victory for Leave, it is now an accepted narrative that the only proper way of dealing with all that is the fullest possible break with the EU, despite the fact that 48%(!!!!!) of those voted wanted to remain part of it.

Etc.

And while all of this is going on, the monarch is silent. What, pray tell, is the point of having a monarch, if she is not supposed to step in at what very well could be the imminent destruction of her realm?


I wonder, if push comes to shove, NI will want to leave, Scotland will leave, will there actually be strong enough support and drive for efforts to keep the country together?

And more realistically, after Brexit happens, how long it will continue to dominate everything? If Brexit is cancelled, there'll be the devil to pay. If there's a no deal crashout, or a hard Brexit, even more people would be seriously pissed off and despondent than if it didn't happen at all. If soft Brexit happens, both sides will be furious. No matter how it ends, people will try to do it another way.