I understand Brexit even less now. Theresa May has offered to throw herself on her political sword to get her desired deal.
What a grotesque Faustian pact they have concocted. In the early evening, Theresa May walked into a committee room in parliament and indicated to her parliamentary party that she would quit if they backed her deal. Journalists and MPs reacted with bewildering innocence to all this. The widespread presumption – laughable when you see it written down in black and white – was that it was true. In fact, it seemed perfectly in line with her usual tactic of saying whatever gets her through the day, then dealing with the consequences of it further down the line. One thing you can always rely on with May is that if there is wriggle room, she will make good use of it. And there was plenty of wriggle room in the vague assurances she offered the parliamentary Conservative party this evening.
But put that to one side. Let’s say it is true. Consider for a moment how disreputable this is. Any deal which requires the resignation of its author in order to get is passed is by default not worth supporting. And any political culture which would require the author of a deal to step down in order for MPs to back it is plainly in a state of advanced decay.
The American political mess I can understand, even if I hate it. Some rich, corrupt parasites have figured out that they can tap into the deep vein of American racism to get the political power to loot the country to their benefit — they’ve been poisoning the black children of Flint, Michigan while lowering their own taxes. I get it. If I had no moral compass and lacked all empathy, I could imagine sucking the country dry for my own profit as a net gain.
But what are the Brexit crusaders going to gain? I’m sure someone can profit from pure economic chaos, as an opportunity to pick up the broken shards of people’s lives and put them in the bank, but it can’t be that simple, can it? If someone were approaching my car with a sledgehammer intending to smash it into scrap, I wouldn’t ask my wife to vote with me on allowing it.
Is it just weird English pride? Co-existing with other partner nations might rankle a population that still remembers being the ruler of a vast empire. Is that it? As American politicians tap into the reliable resource of our racism, are British politicians relying on the sentiment of “Rule, Britannia! rule the waves: Britons never will be slaves”?
I hope it’s not the charisma of the Brexit leadership. Nigel Farage always seems like a dippy used car salesman; Boris Johnson is a clown; Jacob Rees-Mogg…oh, god. The Etonian pomposity. I once listened to him on the internet and felt a rising need to stand on a table and sing the Marseillaise. Another question: how do the British manage to listen to that pretentious snob without rising up in revolution? I wouldn’t be able to do it.
I guess the plan here is to answer my questions by simply plunging ahead and doing the experiment: ripping the country out of the European union, and then sifting through the wreckage to see who, if anyone, profited. One has to admire their dedication to empiricism, at least.
The obvious people trying to benefit are the hard-brexit tories who are all rich and want to live in a deregulated tax haven where they can treat the rest of us like serfs.
The scary one is that there are members of the Labour party who think this way. The leader of the Labour party is a genuine Marxist – I don’t mean the way that the U.S. accuses anyone who supports not murdering sick people is a Marxist, I mean someone who reads Marx and thinks it’s great. He seems to be someone who believes that the best thing that can happen is a messy Tory brexit that leaves the country in a shambles and leads to 20 years of Labour rule. The problem is that – politics aside – he is disastrously bad at leading. Theresa May is the worst PM in my lifetime, and he has lower approval ratings than her. A competent leader would be wiping the floor with her, even if they were a full blown Marxist.
The people’s vote initiative was voted down by a margin of 27. Coincidentally, 27 Labour MP’s voted against it, with another 18 abstaining.
I’ve seen it pointed out several times that Rees Mogg’s father wrote a book all about profiting from economic chaos (providing you are already rich, of course). Wee Smogg himself may already have profited by as much as £7 million, just from the churn caused by the build up to any exit.
It’s all about the money.
Which is why I’m particularly angry at the Lexiteers who support Brexit, despite it being so transparently by and for the sort of avaricious capitalists they claim to despise.
I think the thing which is disconcerting you is your notion that somewhere there is a cunning plan whereby somebody has worked out how they will benefit from this.
The lack of a cunning plan starts with the idiotic reason why referendum was offered, which was in fact an expedient way for David Cameron to attempt to deal with a rift in the conservative party, and which he thought would never actually be carried out, as he thought he would be in a LibDem coalition, who would veto it.
What we are now doing is trying to find a compromise which will satisfy factions with diametrically opposite views, which is essentially impossible. Chuck in the fact that Johnson, Corbyn etc are trying to expoit the situation for their own political gain and you have a recipe for the chaos we see unfolding.
Pretty much what mmfwmc said: rich people want to escape EU regulations, poor people want to feel like they are better than someone else.
The EU has a lot of problem, but there seems to be a genuine attempt at controlling corruption, tax evasion and white collar crime in general, as well as pushing environmental and safety regulations.
The UK has special exemptions from some of these, particularly regarding the banking sector; Brexit might actually allow the EU to close some loopholes.
Hum… that’s perhaps the best reason yet to learn the damn thing. I live in France but don’t know it, despite hearing the local pub owner sinking† it with great gusto every time the French rugby team plays. Which suggests a bar owner poopyhead duo. However, I suppose such a duo would frighten even the mlldly deranged penguin.
† I meant singing, of course, but the Tpyos offering is so amusing — in part because of its accuracy — I left it in.
This might be a little harder to see and understand when you are not used to the Westminster system of government. May’s position of party leader (and hence the prime ministership) is weak. She knows she will be booted soon anyway. The conservatives are in in disarray and if that continues they would likely lose the next election. For some odd reason, a way to avoid that is to fall on ones own sword. So there are other things to consider apart from Brexit. May is a conservative. She doesn’t want those Labour (commies in her mind) to ascend to power. She wants Brexit – she is a Brexitter – and she wants the Tory party to persist. She knows her own power ambition has hit a brick wall and there is no constitutional rule that says she has ‘x’ number of years before anyone decides her fate. They could roll her as leader by the end of the day.
For the ordinary brexit voter, I think it is mainly a British pride issue. It doesn’t help that they see the EU as something external dictating a large proportion of laws to us, rather than something we are an important part of collectively deciding on actually quite a small proportion of our regulations. But even if they had a more realistic view on what the EU is they feel that Britain is special and should stand alone. Anti-immigrant views (which is not quite the same as racism) play a large part but I think the British exceptionalism is more important.
But that wasn’t really the question you asked, was it? Of the MPs who support Brexit, I’d say many of them feel the same way: many of them really do appear to be not all that bright. Other I suspect just pretend to believe that because they see it as the best way to get re-elected.
As for who really benefits, that would be the likes of Rees-Mogg, who as mmfwmc says want to live in a deregulated tax haven. Also American companies who want a free trade agreement so they can destroy the NHS, or export poor quality American food. And the Russians who want to destabilise any western democracies.
The previous commenters are broadly correct – it’s about dismantling EU social and environmental protections, lowering taxes, privatising public services, and so on. The interesting wrinkle is that it was probably never actually intended to come to this – the real plan was to use the threat of Brexit to try and force the EU in a more neo-liberal direction. It just got out of control. Remember how Boris looked like he’d just been diagnosed with cancer of the puppy when it turned out he’d “won”?
There is a very long and detailed look at the various lobbying firms, think-tanks, and individuals behind the whole sorry mess here: Brexit was the result of a corporate lobbying campaign, which backfired.
It’s now gone even more horribly wrong, since it’s turned out that nobody can come up with a way to implement it that can actually get through Parliament… That definitely wasn’t part of anybody’s plan. Well, almost definitely anyway…
Putin.
The European Union was serving as an impediment in the race to the bottom.
As long as one laborer is paid a living wage;
As long as one environmental regulation impedes the full plunder of the planet;
As long as anyone has any privacy or dignity;
Then no rich, heartless son of a bitch is truly free!
“That” did not mean “no deal”. “No deal” isn’t acceptable to Parliament either.
This is a problem of her own making. When she lost her majority at the last election she should have realised this was an indictment of her extreme form of brexit and tried to work with labour to get a softer version. Instead she tried to court the hard right of her party and the DUP, and failed.
We seem to be stuck now with no consensus in parliament for any form of brexit or for remain. What will happen now is anyone’s guess.
Wasn’t Farage the one they interviewed the day after the Brexit vote, and when asked what his plan was, he got angry and said “Plan? We don’t have a plan, THEY (points at opposition) WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE A PLAN!” – much like Trump, they didn’t want to win, they wanted to use the racists and gain political capital by losing. And they screwed it up by underestimating just how many racists they were able to rile up with their bullshit.
It’s nearly essential — well, suggested — to read John Crace’s politics sketch daily column in the Grauniad. Some excerpts from yesterday, Brexit Westminster is like the Crystal Maze on crystal meth:
One of rhe readers observed “Brexit is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, guarded by the Grand Wizards mounted on their unicorns.” Others put it, as have commentators here, the pro-leaving eejits seem to have visions of a loonyberationisque “Singapore on the Thames” low-tax / -regulation anti-foreigner authoritarian slave economy.
It’s the default. Parliament has to vote for something else, or else it’s a no-deal. I am fully aware they have voted against no-deal, but that doesn’t magically mean it won’t happen if nothing else is passed.
I read the “that” as referring to Parliament not passing anything. But not passing anything means a no-deal crash-out, very probably on April 12th.
@1 mmfwmc
Corbyn is not a Marxist. He does say that Marx was a great economist and we have something to learn from him but he rejects a number of areas of Marxist thinking. He is also in the Labour Party and they are far from Marxist.
He is also giving support to both the customs union and the second referendum ideas in the Brexit debacle. The only reason those votes were so close was because of his support. He does have a history of not supporting the EU but it was for very progressive reasons. He did not like the central bank having authority to veto economic reforms that would help the poor in the UK. He is also very critical of the imposition of austerity measure in Greece and elsewhere by the body. He does realize that Brexit is a bad idea for other reasons and campaigned against it in spite of his EU reservations.
As for being a bad leader that is ridiculous. Theresa May lost her majority and nearly her government because of an unexpected surge in Labour support during the last election, the first with Corbyn as leader.
He seems to me to be the real deal of a progressive leader and I get tired of centrist lefties trying to undermine a largely very successful leftist leader who could be elected.
I don’t quite understand Brexit either.
There doesn’t seem to be anything to understand anyway.
Looks like the plan is…No Plan at all!!!
1. The UK is just going to suddenly leave the EU and then make it up as they go along.
.2. Which means the world and the UK won’t know how it works for 5 or 10 years.
.3. The USA should be able to relate to that.
We don’t have any plans for our future either, anyway.
The current Trump regime are simply nihilistic sadists who are destroying anything they can think of.
nomadiq is not quite right. May is not a Brexiteer. She voted to Remain, but decided to ignore her own opinion in the face of the referendum result.
Also, her position as leader of the Conservative party is completely untouchable for another eight months or so, as she defeated a no confidence motion in December 2018. And it’s unlikely that a General Election could be called without her agreement. So she’s ‘safe’ as Prime Minister for the rest of this year, really.
But I completely agree that
#6 I recall that May was remainer – she picked up the mess that Cameron left behind when he cut and ran. She’s made an unholy mess of it, but she is trying to deliver on something she was opposed to.
15: I think the customs union idea is really the best thing for the brit’s relationship with the EU: the way the EU being run does not fill me with confidence for it’s long term viability, with that austerity nonsense, but it’s economic suicide to cut off from it; it allows either cleaner divorce if the thing craters or reintegration if it pulls it’s head out of it’s ass.
@Paul Durrant
I wouldn’t really say Theresa May was a remainer. Like Corbyn (though for different reasons) she claimed to support remain during the referendum but campaigned very weakly. She is clearly very strongly anti immigration given her opposition to remaining in the customs union.
thank you for letting me write my misconceptions of this whole mess:
– I remember when the EU first formed and Britain rejected common currency, the Euro, and maintained the £ (pound) as their form of currency locally.
– I also loved the Monty Python skit, not related, about wanting to tax all foreigners living abroad to cancel their national debt.
– Also appears they have mostly resisted the metric system as too European. Some of there units are metric while roads are still measured in miles. Speed limits are in kph, though, A heady mix of units there.
-Seems the British have continuously struggled too remain not-Europe, with only the narrow Chunnel connecting it to the mainland.
-Seems to me with bias, that this may be part of their Viking heritage. Vikings settled the island as a separate continent to escape the miasma of Europe.
…
I don’t know anything.
Thank you for reading
It’s always leading back to Russia. Destabilising the E.U. is a major geopolitical aim of the Russian government. You only have to look at how Farage makes his money: he shows up in the E.U. parliament, spouts some sound bites that have ZERO to do with what is being discussed, has it filmed and then RT’s YouTube arm monetises it.
No, they’re most definitely not.
@slithey tove
You’re forgetting about the border with ROI. Don’t worry though, most british people forget Northern Ireland (or even Ireland as a whole) exists.
Also our speed limits are in miles per hour. It’s one of the fun ways you can tell you’re in the british occupied part of this island, along with the lack of irish language signage.
slithy tove
Speed limits are gnerally not in kph, they are in mph on road signs and in the highway code. Although you will see lorries and coaches with kph limit roundels on as those are set Europe wide.
The Brexit mess is down to the rich boys making money from the chaos, with the lond term aim of less regulation across the board and privatisation of anything that hasn’t already been sold, no one else is united enough to stop them even though they can see the damage they are causing.
Well, as others have pointed out, there are plenty of factors involved but let’s not discount that racism was one of the selling points in the form of anti-immigrant sentiments. I’ve talked to acquaintances of mine who were pro-Brexit and fear of immigration was definitely a driving factor in their support.
Actually, if you read the link I provided at #8, you’ll see that a lot of it leads back to US corporate lobbyists.
I’m not sure I buy this cunning plan by the rich boys to make money out of the chaos. The CBI and IOD have come out strongly in favour of an orderly and softer deal than the “we want out even without a deal” mob
PS I refuse to use the term Brexiteer, it sounds like some jolly swashbuckling type which most certainly they are not.
And the NKofE† is being operated in a “better” manner?
Threatening the Good Friday Agreement fills you with confidence for the future?
The Irish, and also ex-pats on the continent, will have something to say on all that, as well as (and more vehemently) on the NKofE backstabbing them.
† N.Korea of Europe — a nuclear-armed private estate run by and for a small group of paranoid authoritarians who feast, boast, lie continuously, and are both unable and unwilling to care about other people.
That’s because those people actually run businesses. The rich boys are making money on currency speculation. Different thing entirely.
Ahh – those rich boys. Maybe – but still not convinced they have enough influence. The parasites might benefit as a consequence of the chaos, though.
@mmfwmc and @anna. With respect, I don’t think Corbyn is a Marxist or a successful progressive politician, or even very progressive. He may have read Marx, but I doubt he understood much. His success as a politician is doubtful – in personal terms he managed to get himself elected as leader of the Labour Party and to increase Labour’s share of the vote in 2017 (but they still lost, and it seems Labour collected many disaffected Lib Dem voters) – but what has he ever achieved for others? He went from a minor private school to a poly, dropped out and worked as a Trade Union functionary, became a local councillor, and then an MP. This is a familiar career path in the Labour Party. He spent 30-odd years as a backbench MP who was chiefly noted for voting against his own party. He did this so often that he was sometimes on the right side – as in the case of the Iraq War. But millions of other people were against that, too. Compared to the members of the Atlee government or of the first two Wilson governments, Corbyn has achieved nothing. Last Saturday more than a million people (including my Labour MP) marched through London to demand a People’s Vote on Brexit. Corbyn went to Morecambe, a seaside town 250 miles from Westminster, to campaign for the local council elections.
Those rich boys are the ones in Parliament, like Rees-Mogg and Johnson, so yes they are directly responsible for the whole mess. It was that wing of the Tory party that led Cameron to promise the referendum in the first place and that wing that have been causing May all the problems ever since. Don’t forget the general run of British MP’s do not have to give up their day jobs so these guys are directly benefiting from the chaos they are creating.
Racism was certainly involved at the voter end of things, my former butcher was convinced by the lie that Turkey was about to join the EU and that as soon as it did we’d be invaded by 70,000 Turks, which was published the week before the vote. I don’t think the politicians as a whole care that much, those boys generally just do not let other people (race or class) play in their sandpit.
We’re led by a party not fit for power in a system not fit for purpose:
Where do you think the money behind the Leave campaign came from? 61% of it came from just 5 people.
Even that isn’t the whole picture. Many people in areas with high immigrant populations from Pakistan\Bangladesh voted leave because they thought that was also something to do with the EU.
@lucifersbike
I think Corbyn has breen very successful as labour leader. He started with labour in an extremely weak position after Milliband’s defeat. Both the media (including the guardian at the start) and many in his own party were strongly critical of him before he even started.
Theresa May thought she could easily defeat labour under his leadership. By producing a reasonable, progressive manifesto labour under his leadership managed to beat the odds and reduce the tories to a minority government.
Brexit has put labour in a very awkward position and while I don’t fully agree with the policy corbyn has gone with I still think acorbyn government is the best option we have bar stopping brexit entirely.
@anna #15 – Exactly! (also you have put it much better than I could, especially with a work deadline looming)
He’s my MP and I’ve met him briefly as well as hearing him speak for Remain during the campaign, and I’d say that anna hits the nail on the head.
I saw Rees-Mogg on TV last night for the first time, although I’d known of him for some time.(It’s an easy name to remember.) My first thought was that he looks like Curly Watts from Coronation Street. My mom watched the series when I was a kid, so I ended up watching it too. Of course that was ’70s and ’80s Coronation Street, when characters like Hilda Odgen and the Duckworths were still around, the show had at least some humour to it, and a couple of the cast hadn’t been accused of sexual assault.
@anna 15 & opp… 38: I agree. My one quibble is over the phrase “centrist lefties” — far too kind. More accurately: “centrists with an indefensible lefty self-image” — far too long, I know, but I’m feeling pissed off and pedantic. And functionally some of them are not even centrist. À bas les aristos! Vive la révolution! Home in time for tea!
It’s weird how things get normalised, I remember seeing Johnson and Rees-Mogg on Have I Got News for You years ago and thinking that nobody could ever take them seriously. Same goes for The Donald, too I guess
European press gets popcorn out for another chaotic day of Brexit:
Speaker Bercow has been a hit here on the continent for some months now, ‘Order!’ Why Europeans are turning to John Bercow for light relief in Brexit chaos (video): “The thunderous pronouncements of the Speaker of the House of Commons have become the subject of numerous profiles in European newspapers and a fair few highlights videos shared heavily on social media. One article in a Dutch newspaper suggested: ‘The only order in British politics comes from John Bercow’s mouth in these turbulent days’.”
I do wonder what sort of tragicomedicfarcewhatever Mr Shakespeare would write on, or alluding to, brexit.
Maybe not Brexit, but Shakespeare apparently did write a speech for Sir Thomas More against anti-immigration. So you might guess where his sympathies would lie,
The defenders of Corbyn’s leadership prowess might like to explain how, in opposition to a Tory Party in complete meltdown and a Prime Minister who makes Basil Fawlty look like the acme of competence, Labour is still behind in the polls, and Corbyn’s personal ratings are far worse than hers.
As for what the Brexit crusaders are to gain from May’s deal passsing and her then resigning, the answer is simply, for some of them, the chance to be Prime Minister. If May goes, her replacement will be chosen (from two selected by the Tory MPs) by a bunch of swivel-eyed xenophobes and racists – the Tory Party membership. This replacement will then casually break the terms of the withdrawal agreement, trash what protections workers and the environment have, blame everythnig that goes wrong on the EU and traitorous “remoaners”, and snuggle up to Trump.
It’s quiite an achievement of Sir TM if he also delivered that speech, given the fact that he lost his head almost 30 years before Shakespeare was born.
Shakespeare’s (if indeed he did write it) Thomas Moore speech was spake by the character on(?) Evil May Day… how appropriate.
Corbyn keeps insisting that he’s against May’s deal, but not against Brexit, and that if he were installed as PM he would get a better deal. This despite the fact that multiple sources within the EU have said multiple times that May’s deal is the best the EU is willing to give. It’s a terrible deal, but there is no deal that the EU would ever be willing to sign off on which isn’t terrible for the UK, and only somebody lost in fantasy would think the EU would give away the shop to help out a country which mostly openly despises them and wants to leave.
Corbyn could have made a brilliant move and officially lined up Labour as the “cancel Brexit, hold another referendum” party after the vote of no-confidence against May failed. It would have made him look like the sane person in the room, and brought a lot of hesitant fence-sitters into the Labour camp, at least temporarily. That he did not do this shows that he really doesn’t have good judgement.
Realistically, there are only 3 options:
1. May’s deal, which is terrible and will make absolutely everyone (with the exception of the disaster capitalists) regret Brexit, and possibly end with rioting in the streets
2. No deal, which is even worse and will definitely end with rioting in the streets, and possibly a revolution, albeit probably failed (not exaggerating — the UK’s military has plans in place to impose martial law in the event of a no-deal Brexit, to evacuate the royal family, and has put a control center in a bomb shelter)
3. Call off Brexit, at least temporarily, which could be done quite easily on the excuse of “seeking further clarification from the public” by way of a new referendum. (And it would be very easy to arrange for the referendum to kill off Brexit for good — just list the different Brexit options separately so that Leave voters are split.)
Nothing else is going to work. This has been obvious for weeks. The fact that there are MPs still trying to deny these options just shows how utterly disconnected from political reality British Parliament really is, even the supposedly “good” members.
@The Vicar
Corbyn has said he would back another referendum for a month now. He has said he wanted to honor the voters choice to Brexit so allowed May time to come back with a deal but when it proved inadequate he said he would go with another vote. The fact there is no second referendum is completely on May as she has Labour support.
Everyone wanted an immediate Brexit do over but Corbyn is correct to not just throw out the will of the voters without a really good reason. Democracy is not just getting results we want. Sometimes voters are stupid.
@KG
Right now there are no popular leaders or parties in the UK. Until Brexit is settled one way or the other no one can say much of anything about electoral chances until the fallout is over. My defense of Corbyn leadership is based on the pre Brexit climate which is the only way we can currently judge. The politics of Brexit is unfortunately hopelessly muddled with no chance of making a majority of people happy no matter what your position is.
@anna, #49: just the other day, Corbyn said he only wanted a referendum on the Tories’ “failed” deal, not against Brexit as an idea, and that if he were PM he would negotiate a better deal. I’d say that that’s pretty clear, myself.
@myself, because I forgot this point:
It’s interesting just how much of the weird and terrible behavior surrounding Brexit is and has been purely internal power struggles, rather than anything to do with external realities. Cameron only scheduled the referendum in the first place to quiet dissent within the Tories, most of May’s shenanigans are best understood when viewed through the lens of maintaining Tory control of government, even if it means throwing the whole country off a cliff so that the Tories only control a ruin. The Labour “rebellion” a while back was the “New Labour” backers of Tony Blair trying to regain control of “their” party; Corbyn’s unwillingness to really push against Brexit is because he wants to be PM and doesn’t want to alienate the Leave vote. None of this has anything to do with good governance or policy, it’s just power struggles.
(And that’s paralleled over here in the US, naturally. About a third of Republican proposals are naked power grabs, and the “New Democrats” are willing to nominate useless candidates and pursue counterproductive policy, like the War on Drugs and drone bombing, as long as it maintains their control of the party.)
@The Vicar
Corbyn had a whipped vote to keep the referendum option on the table just last night at a steep personal cost. Several of his front benchers revolted and his leadership is threatened. I think that shows his personally willingness to go the referendum route. Add to that him campaigning for remain in the first place.
@anna, #52:
Ah, yes, nothing says “fit for leadership” like promising the literally impossible to maintain your personal grip on power.
@the Vicar
I am genuinely confused as to what was impossible in that?
@anna, #54:
He said if he were made PM he would negotiate a better deal, rather than cancel Brexit. The EU has repeatedly made it clear that that is not happening. Any claim that “the UK can have Brexit with a deal better than May’s” is a fantasy. (And that’s not, by any means, a defense of May’s deal — the situation is just that bad.) The only way out without a total disaster is to cancel Brexit, and you’re saying Corbyn won’t do that because he wants to keep control of the party.
The Vicar:
I think this is the second thing that went wrong in the whole mess (the first being Cameron actually agreeing to hold the referendum in the first place, believing it would be an easy win for the ‘Remain’ side) – during the referendum campaign, this fantasy is more or less what the Leave side sold as being what would happen, and, thanks to the Remain campaign being rather weak and watery, this went practically unchallenged, which led far too many people into actually believing it. It’s also partially responsible for the current bourach, as a fair number of hard-line Brexiteers are voting against anything bar the promised fantasy (which is more or less an ultra hard Brexit – telling the EU to fuck off, then having them beg for the privilege of doing business with the UK), whereas others are voting against May’s deal because it’s actually not soft enough, as it doesn’t guarantee access to the EU single market or customs union.
Looking at the US and the UK, it really does seem like our two countries are in a competition to see who can do the most boneheaded thing – the US took the lead by voting in Trump, but this utter clusterfuck of a Brexit is making the UK catch up fast.
@The Vicar
That is not at all what I said. Here is what I said in summary of the order in which Corbyn did it with more detail:
1. He campaigned for the remain side in spite of misgivings of some of the details of the EU. He knew that staying was still a better option so his summary was “Remain – but reform”
2. After the Brexit vote he said he would respect the will of the voters and that Britain should get the best deal possible for exit.
3. Time was given for May to get a deal from the EU.
4. May got her deal. He felt that it was a bad deal as it did not achieve the continued access to vital markets and the proper solution to Irish stability that was necessary. He voted against that version of the agreement.
5. He and parliament voted to send May back to try to negotiate a better deal since he respected the will of the voters in regards to Brexit.
6. May failed to get an adequate new Deal. He then proposed a Labour plan for what she be asked for in negotiations. This was voted on and rejected in parliament.
7. Parliament rejected a No Deal exit and the speaker of the house disallowed new votes on a similar deal plan. At this point Corbyn accepted the idea of another referendum on Brexit plans.
8. Parliament continued in disarray and Corbyn decided that a new full referendum and staying in the customs union needed to be on the table because a no deal Brexit would be a disaster. He signalled his willingness to support both. He felt a no deal Brexit was not what voters intended so this option should be there.
9. Votes were taken on both of those plans and Corbyn did the risky personal move of having a whipped Labour vote to support both those proposals. He was rebuffed by some members of his own caucus and this threatens his own leadership.
10. The proposals that would likely lead to the UK staying in the EU in one form or another that just took place failed despite his best efforts not because he was trying to do his own Brexit or because he was solidifying his leadership. You can say he was wrong to not push for a referendum earlier or by thinking that negotiations would get a better deal but you can’t say it was just for personal gain.
@ajbjasus
I loved “Have I got News For you”. I thought Johnsons character was a spot on caricature of a Bumbling Upper Class Twit Who Occasionally Delivered A Spot On Zinger.
Imagine my surprise to learn that he was not playing a character. And that people indeed took him seriously.
a population that still remembers being the ruler of a vast empire…
I have only one family member remaining who remembers the days of Empire and the Raj, WW2 and post-war Austerity in Europe. She’s fiercely Pro-European, and furious with the cohort of Brexiters, most of whom are Baby-boomers who enjoyed all the benefits of EU membership and have no first hand experience of the “Independence” and economic hardship they now want to foist on their children and grandchildren.
Farage and de Pfeffel Johnson were born in 1964, 17 years after the Independence of India, 12 years after Suez, a few years after the Independence of Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, and most of the Caribbean. The only “Empire” they know first hand is the pith helmeted fantasyworld of the Carry On films. The only food rationing they have ever experienced is mummy limiting them to two scoops of icecream at one time.
Cui bono? The ultrawealthy who see an opportunity to dismantle the UK’s financial regulations, workers rights, and environmental laws once free of the EU. Putin who sees an opportunity to weaken NATO. Racist xenophobes.
Vicar@49–
There are no options left. It is now virtually certain that there will be a no-deal Brexit. May’s current deal is dead even if she does fall on her sword; Parliament won’t support it and the EU won’t accept it. Any chance of a repeat referendum is now long gone. The UK is like a drunkard staggering towards a cliff, too intoxicated to change direction and too bellicose to lie down and sober up.
Captain Jeep-Eep–
I share your concerns about the EU’s austerity measures…but the UK seems to think the EU is doing austerity for wimps.
Check. it. out. It’s certainly not a good argument for Brexit.
Brexit is the British spelling of Make America Great Again. They’ll hold their own Eurovision and win it, by darn it.
anna@58,
There are seveal gaping holes in your analysis.
1) Corbyn’s “campaigning for Remain” in the referendum was completely unconvincing. This is not hindsight – it was widely noted, within and beyond Labour, at the time. Labour presented no credible plan to “Remain and Reform”.
2) Since the referendum Corbyn has, disgracefully and more than once, dog-whistled to the racists by blaming low wages on immigration.
3) He could and should have opposed the triggering of Article 50 without a cross-party agreement on the aims of the negotiation, and what to do if those aims were not met – which should at that stage have been: return to the people and say “This is the best we can get – do you still want to go ahead”. Instead, he whipped his party into backing the triggering of Article 50 without any commitment whatsoever from May. Now he’d have lost the vote in Parliament – but it would have put him, and Labour, in a far stronger position later.
4) He and his neo-Stalinist advisors Seamus Milne and Andrew Murray did everything they could to block a commitment to a fresh referendum on whatever deal was negotiated at Labour’s conference. This is despite his supposed commitment to respecting the views of the membership, who are overwhelmingly opposed to Brexit.
5) He has repeatedly wriggled out of any commitment to a fresh referendum. In doing so, he has ensured that when he finally, at the 59th minute of the 11th hour, came out in its support, only his uncritical admirers actually believe he is sincere. Myself, I suspect Keir Starmer (Shadow Brexit Secretary) and possibly John McDonnell (Shadow Chancellor) threatened to resign if he didn’t.
6) He failed to attend the People’s Vote demonstration, one of the two largest in British history (so, to be fair, did Starmer and McDonnell). Even at that stage, he could have put himself at the head of a mass movement to avoid the disasters of a Tory Brexit. Instead, he showed his contempt for it by buggering off to Morecombe.
No, it isn’t. May (or whoever is PM on April 10th) can ask the European Council for a long delay. Probably they will grant it if there’s even a marginally convincing plan to make use of it. This is up to the Commons. If the European Council refuses, there remains the possibility of revoking Article 50. My hunch is that May would rather drag us over the cliff, but that’s not certain, particularly if MPs collectively properly seized control of the business of the House and passed legislation (it would have to pass the Lords too, but almost certainly would) ordering the PM to do so.
petesh@41: “More accurately: ‘centrists with an indefensible lefty self-image’ — far too long, I know, but I’m feeling pissed off and pedantic.”
The initialism “cwailsi” is short and pronounceable. I don’t really believe Google Translate when it tells me it’s Welsh for “pickles” (certainly the available on-line Welsh-English dictionaries don’t believe it!), but, hey.
Russian trolls also supported Brexit, and it looks to me as though they still are. As well as the billionaires, I mean.