Brexit Delay

[Arneb]

Maybe I should be more specific.

It is a good thing because
1, BoJo and his crowd have lied to the country, to Europe and to their colleagues so often, so relentlessly, so consistently, so ruthlessly and so without any hindrance by fact, standards of political reliability or by simple human decency that the more shit flies intio their face, the more kicks in the nuts they get, the better.
2, the facts of paragraph 1 being well-known, the House of Commons closed a loophole into no-deal Brexit land that MPs had every reason to believe BoJo would take: Have them accept the deal, then either slam past them a Brexit law full of deliberate unclarities, loopholes and inconsistencies (because it has to be through in two weeks) or grind the legislative process to a halt altogether and achieve no-deal through the backdoor. Letwin and his colleagues saw that and prevented it in the last moment. I wouldn't generalise to what Ian Blackford said, that you couldn't ever trust any Conservative - but I would certainly say you can't ever trust Boris Johnson and the ERG lot.
3, I may seem old-fashioned here, but three months might actually be better for the actual Brexit law than half a month. Laws made in a hurry are certainly keeping lawyers alive all over the planet (no disrespect to Heid and Richard_A), but they are rarely a good legislative solution to an actual problem.

There is one aspect in the law which I am not sure I find good: That the law allows for more time to legislate a referendum or to stop Brexit altogether. The UK has spent a lot of political capital in Europe, and doing a 180 on Brexit now, after it has paralyzed the Union for more than three years, might completely eradicate what is left of it. There is a lot of of "OK, if you really must go, go. But let's get it over with now. NOW, please" sentiment in the EU, and I admit I share it to a degree. Stop Brexit now and you'll have JRM twanging his way through Parliament for the next 30 years telling everyone how the will of the people was betrayed and the Sun braying on about how every pothole in the country roads (and there are many) is Junckers', Merkel's and the bloody Eu foreigners' fault because they are bleeding us of all the money our hard-working taxpayers earned and which we could use ourselves etc. Maybe Britain really has to go through this in order to see what it's gonna be missing. And maybe it will need the Scottish people to say we'd rather be with the Europeans than with you to make even has-been Imperialists and Little Englanders see they miss a lot just standing on the sidelines.

Maybe Brexit should happen now and we should go from there. The EU will always allow for Bre-entry.

[g-one]

There is a lot of of "OK, if you really must go, go. But let's get it over with now. NOW, please" sentiment in the EU, and I admit I share it to a degree.

Do you think there is enough of this sentiment that the EU will deny the extension?

[Arneb]

No way. We are looking at the ultra-slomo train wreck in awe and helplessness. We had this a few pages up, and basically we all agreed that no-one in the EU wants to be the asshole who pushes the UK over the cliff.

[Heid the Ba]

The EU would like the UK in because we are net contributors and the second largest economy. They just can't be arsed with all the nonsense that comes with it. And they remember that Pig Fucking Davie screwed more concessions out of the EU only a couple of months before he called the referendum.

Meanwhile, we're back at the Court of Session, again.

[Arneb]

That is, of course, true, but also - and maybe more importantly -, we like the UK in because we believe that we are stronger the more we are, the closer we are, the more diverse we are and the fewer countries on the sidelines, the better. The UK is rich and a large economy hungry for labour, but it is also a country that added a different perspective and different traditions towards the mix. I hope to see you Scots back soon.

[Heid the Ba]

Yes, and all that too.

[g-one]

Depending on what happens next November, we might want in too.

[MM_Dandy]

You guys kept Trudeau going, for better or worse. Hopefully, we get our shit together and give 45 the heave-ho sooner or later.

[tubeswell]

[Richard A]

And meanwhile BoJo and his crew cry ever louder about the "broken Parliament". (No, Boris, the British people declined in 2017 to elect the large numbers of hard Brexiteers you wanted them to.) Given BoJo's love of hankering after Britain's glorious imperial past, it kind of reminds me of the song to the House of Peers in Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe. You only need to subsitute "Parliament" for "House of Peers" and "honourable members" for "noble statesmen" and you pretty much have how BoJo, Javed and now Kwasi Kwarteng see it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYpih4lIBP0

[Мастер]

So as I understand it, our highland and lowland friends are still in the EU, and BoJo is not dead in a ditch.

(Written with the "Highlander" sign within sight - one of you knows what I'm talking about.)

[Arneb]

I think agreeeing to fresh elections was risky. they should have scheduled the election for a date after Brexit to have the agreeement legislation in the clear. The way it is, if Britain elects a rabid Brexiteer majority, they can still get their hands on the Brexit terms.

[Heid the Ba]

The English media in a nutshell, can you spot the difference between the headline and the subhead, from The Grauniad:
"UK flood warnings in place across Britain after further rainfall"
"Environment Agency posts 147 warnings in England and Wales after heavy downpours"
For the avoidance of doubt there are no warnings in Scotland, and the Environment Agency only covers England. It no longer covers Wales.

[Lianachan]

(Written with the "Highlander" sign within sight - one of you knows what I'm talking about.)

See you there week of the Grand Prix next year!

[MM_Dandy]

For no real discernible reason, The Washington Post ran an article on the Brexit party members in the EU parliament. I suppose it's newsworthy, I'm just not sure why it is newsworthy now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eu ... story.html

Anyway, the parting quote from a Ms. Claire Fox sums it up quite well:

Get me out of this stupid job,” said Fox, the former communist.

After these few months sitting in the European Parliament, Fox assessed: “It’s deadly dull, technocratic. It’s politics with the guts ripped out of it.”

Plus, she said, “we’re not made to feel very welcome.”

Oh, the horrors.

[Heid the Ba]

Why on earth would they not be welcomed with open arms?

[Arneb]

Fuck off, Brexit Party scum. 6.7 k€, after taxes, plus attendance fees, expenses for personnel, an office, and travels paid, for 7 months, at least? You din't say no to that, now did you? The IRA does their obstruction by not turning up, while you laughed and took the money. Bloody bigots.

[Мастер]

So most of the polls seem to be showing a conservative majority?

What does that do to probability of the various Brexit possibilities?

[Arneb]

I think it means the BoJo will be the next Prime Minister. He'll bring "his" deal through the commons, accept a transition time with relatively close ties to the EU and then have another go at a quasi-no-deal Brexit at the end of 2020. I don't hold much hope for England, but if the resulting probnlems are difficult enough, maybe Scotland and Northern Ireland will manage a secession from the UK and rejoin the EU in short order.

[Heid the Ba]

The problem is that Norn Iron wants to stay part of the UK.

[Arneb]

Yeah. Sad, as a certain US politician would say.

[Lianachan]

A Lord Ashcroft poll in September showed 51% support for a unified Ireland, so it’s not totally clear cut.

[Мастер]

So, looks like Boris the Spider has a majority?

[Heid the Ba]

And once again I live in the only Labour constituency in Scotland, which tells you all you need to know about how fucked Labour is. The only MP is hated by the national leadership who tried to deselect him and his constituency is one of Edinburgh’s nice, leafy suburbs.

[Lianachan]

English turkeys vote overwhelmingly to get Christmas done. Yet again it's very obvious that Scotland is a very different place. Except in not voting Labour, that's about the only thing everybody seems to agree on.