[EU] Brexit negotiations at a standstill

[Noradin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_U...ote_referendum

In particular:

Thank you.

I will see if I find my old notes on the issue (which is unlikely), otherwise I concede the point.

[AeneasBK]

It's what makes the "We're getting back our sovereignty" arguments so hollow.

[Kronik85]

Even a slight improvement is an improvement. Why did they shoot it down? Did they expect they'd get a chance at something better? Excuse me while I laugh my ass off. Most did not even bother to vote.

I voted for AV+, I've voted to keep the Tories out and I voted to Remain. I've done my part. /shrug

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I've rarely criticised the British population as a whole. You're glossing over what I'm actually saying. But I take your point. Drown in your self-pity. I'll strictly stick to the EU side from now on. I'm looking forward to the "arrogant European ass, not even trying to understand us" trope that'll eventually grow.

Sorry for being snappy with you Slant but you knew the answer to the question before you asked it. Waxing poetic doesn't make you look humble.

[Teleros]

But aren't you calling her jeopardising the result for donig just that?

It's a case of what people perceive. If you call a GE before A50 and lose to an anti-Brexit government, you'll be crucified for betraying Brexit. If you call a GE after A50 and lose to an anti-Brexit government, you won't get the blame when the anti-Brexit government cancels Brexit. If in either case you win however, you have to try and screw up Brexit whilst appearing to achieve it - hence Treasonous May's deal.

Not unter every one, I'm just seeing a conspiracy theory being peddled similar to the one that allowed them to gain a foothold.

Only a problem if it's not true .

[Mayhem]

It's a case of what people perceive. If you call a GE before A50 and lose to an anti-Brexit government, you'll be crucified for betraying Brexit. If you call a GE after A50 and lose to an anti-Brexit government, you won't get the blame when the anti-Brexit government cancels Brexit. If in either case you win however, you have to try and screw up Brexit whilst appearing to achieve it - hence Treasonous May's deal.

Why the hell would you be crucified for betraying brexit when in a GE an anti-brexit government was elected? Will of the people much?

[Mormolyce]

I think it was very easy to tell people that nothing would change because on a parliamentary level, nothing would. With AV the first two parties would still get the lion's share of the votes. AV doesn't really allow for any proportionality and it is not a real solution to the electoral problems the UK and the US have. So it would be easy to tell people "Why change the system when it will not change seats around and just make things more complex? Complex things are in favour of the elites stealing your democracy!!!!"

Well, first of all it prevents vote-splitting, which means more people will feel free to vote third party in the first place.

Also preferential systems provide a kind of backup representation: let's say party A has 40% of the vote, party B has 45% of the vote and party C has 15%. But party C is much closer to party A, ie most of its voters pick party A as a second preference. Party A still wins but it's sure to remember it needed party C's preferences, so if party C gets pissed enough with party A they can threaten to tell their voters to swap to party B for second preference instead, and then party A has to adopt more of C's policies to placate them.

In our system, you can choose to allocate your preferences yourself (ie you have to number all candidates sequentially, which can be a real pain in the lower house where there are buttloads of competing candidates) or simply vote for your first preference - in that case your preferences are automatically distributed according to that party's default preference list (which they publish and hand out to voters so everyone can see what they are). That allows these parties to do preference deals with other parties to negotiate their positions.

Honestly nothing's perfect but it's just straight up better.

[Kronik85]

And that sucks But the country did get some level of electoral reform that could have improved things and the majority did not even bother to vote. Those who did, overwhelmingly voted against.

I never said the British Electorate are beyond reproach. What I'm snapping at is Slant essentially humble bragging and waxing poetic about how different things might be if we didn't vote tactically. Tactical Voting isn't even that common (at least pre 2017) where it was around 10% of the vote, in 2017 it was 20% (estimated 6.5 mill) and if we hadn't then we would have had a Conservative majority in the commons.

Figures taken from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a7903961.html if you fancy a read.

[Slant]

Sorry for being snappy with you Slant but you knew the answer to the question before you asked it. Waxing poetic doesn't make you look humble.

I'm not humble. But I'm also not very patient. I'm done talking with you lot about how you do things internally. It's too painful to watch, so I'll lean back and enjoy the show instead. I know I'll come out of this just alright. Watch me give zero fucks.

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I never said the British Electorate are beyond reproach. What I'm snapping at is Slant essentially humble bragging and waxing poetic about how different things might be if we didn't vote tactically. Tactical Voting isn't even that common (at least pre 2017) where it was around 10% of the vote, in 2017 it was 20% (estimated 6.5 mill) and if we hadn't then we would have had a Conservative majority in the commons.

Figures taken from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a7903961.html if you fancy a read.

Ah, see... when I said "I'm wondering" this is the type of informative post that would have been an appropriate response. If we can't ask you guys questions without you snapping like that, well... you're on your own anyway, but you'll be more on your own. :P

[Kronik85]

I'm not humble. But I'm also not very patient. I'm done talking with you lot about how you do things internally. It's too painful to watch, so I'll lean back and enjoy the show instead. I know I'll come out of this just alright. Watch me give zero fucks.

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Ah, see... when I said "I'm wondering" this is the type of informative post that would have been an appropriate response. If we can't ask you guys questions without you snapping like that, well... you're on your own anyway, but you'll be more on your own. :P

I am genuinely sorry for snapping at you Slant, Nigel has his gin whilst I have my rum. You're a bright guy and I know you know or could intuit why people would vote tactically in FPTP system so the question looked a little disengenuous. However if you were asking for facts and figures then yeah, alright then that article I linked seems to have some interesting stuff in there if you haven't read it already.

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I did mention all this earlier, I am just thinking how the campaign against AV might have been like.

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Yeah this is just tragic. In all honesty even 10% seems horrible. I just felt that it needed to be mentioned that the UK did have a chance to at least improve their electoral system and most did not even care. Ultimately it feels like most people there (and in many other countries) simply don't care about their democratic duties (because voting is a duty, not a right).

It's a shit system and I don't think anyone rational will tell you otherwise. At the end of the day you're dealing with a population who's attitude to Brexit right now is "get on with it!", not because of any particular will but born out of being bored of hearing about Brexit. It's safe to say we don't really do democracy very well.

Which, when I think about it explains why FPTP has been popular in the past when it was creating large majorities, the populace just had to vote once every 4-5 years and could then just forget about politics altogether.

[Pann]

It does if you bring party politics into account. Remember, May's original (in this case, supposed) decision on why to call the GE was to strengthen her position in the negotiations. Doing it my way gets the Tories off the hook - "look guys we began the process but lost the GE, nothing more we can do" - whereas a GE before you invoke A50 doesn't, because the Tories would be rightly seen as jeopardising the result by risking a GE.

Whilst it did come back to bite her on the arse May's decision to call a GE was, based on the all the available information at the time, sound. Due to the Fixed Term Parliament Act campaigning for the next general election would have had to have begun whilst the Brexit negotiations were being finalised, by holding another GE in 2017 it ensured that the crucial end period would not be interrupted and helped ensure that there was some continuity to the UK's negotiation position, from the withdrawal agreement/transition period through to the future relationship.

Plus Labour were in absolute disarray and fighting amongst themselves and all polling data suggested that the Tories would win by large margin. (<--the real reason)

[Mormolyce]

I did mention all this earlier, I am just thinking how the campaign against AV might have been like.

Honestly I don't know why you'd need a referendum on something like that, and I can only imagine how poorly informed an electorate is when it votes so strongly against a system that's just objectively superior, and has no particular partisan dimension.

[Kronik85]

Honestly I don't know why you'd need a referendum on something like that, and I can only imagine how poorly informed an electorate is when it votes so strongly against a system that's just objectively superior, and has no particular partisan dimension.

IIRC it was one of the bribes Cameron gave the Lib Dems in order to enter a coalition. Looking back it might have been the genesis of Cameron thinking he could outmanuver his opponents with referenda.

The Tories and Labour wanted to keep FPTP because back then it was still delivering large majorities to them but the Lib Dems wanted electoral reform, may have even been in the manifesto. Brown being the clown shoe he is wouldn't go into a coalition with the Lib Dems so Cameron offered them the referendum knowing it would fail and won himself his first election.

[Mormolyce]

IIRC it was one of the bribes Cameron gave the Lib Dems in order to enter a coalition. Looking back it might have been the genesis of Cameron thinking he could outmanuver his opponents with referenda.

The Tories and Labour wanted to keep FPTP because back then it was still delivering large majorities to them but the Lib Dems wanted electoral reform, may have even been in the manifesto. Brown being the clown shoe he is wouldn't go into a coalition with the Lib Dems so Cameron offered them the referendum knowing it would fail and won himself his first election.

Boy he really fucked a pig's mouth on that one.

You know I didn't really have strong feelings about Cameron but it's hard not to despise someone so goddamn vacuous.

[Noradin]

Only a problem if it's not true .

Thank you for agreeing that it is a problem if it is a conspiracy theory.

Now, unless you have proof that the narrative in question is not in fact a conspiracy theory how about you stop spreading it?

[Pann]

Brown being the clown shoe he is wouldn't go into a coalition with the Lib Dems so Cameron offered them the referendum knowing it would fail and won himself his first election.

It had nothing to do with what Brown wanted to do, going into coalition with the Lib Dems was simply not an option.

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@Nigel Tufnel here's some more polling data that you might find interesting; https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics...tituencies-it-

[Teleros]

Why the hell would you be crucified for betraying brexit when in a GE an anti-brexit government was elected? Will of the people much?

Because you had inherited Cameron's government along with the referendum result, and had plenty of time in which to negotiate it.

Fixed Term Parliament Act

If looks could kill... God I hope that act gets repealed.

Thank you for agreeing that it is a problem if it is a conspiracy theory.

Now, unless you have proof that the narrative in question is not in fact a conspiracy theory how about you stop spreading it?

I don't think you understand. Conspiracies happen all the time, and plenty of them are, in fact, true. If you and a mate get together to hold a secret birthday bash for a third friend... you're conspiring. If you were involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident... you were involved in a conspiracy. If you believe that anti-global-warming people are working together to stop the global warming agenda... you believe in a conspiracy theory.

As to this specific one, I've got people like the Mogg, or Martin Howe QC tearing apart May's deal, so I don't think it's a big leap to go from there to asking cui bono?

[Kronik85]

It had nothing to do with what Brown wanted to do, going into coalition with the Lib Dems was simply not an option.

I remember him saying he wouldn't go into a coalition before the vote was even made. A Labour/Lib Dem coalition would of been 315 seats requiring another 11 from whoever was willing. So yes it was an option.

[kaid]

I find it disconcerting that people can talk about her purposely sabotaging Brexit in this way. The situation there is really really messed up

I am moving quickly to the position that Great Britain is going to lose out, and the only question remaining is will be a moderate loss, or big loss, or a HUGE loss. I hope they can cut their losses, and I hope they can avoid the worst of the landmines that are in their path.

The problem I think is intractable. It was not leave vs remain it was three different mutually exclusive concepts for how leaving would work none of which can work with the others vs remain. Mays last plan probably is about as good as its going to get of trying to square the circle but in the end pretty much nobody is happy with it and a lot going if we are just going to do this why leave in the first place.

This also is a good demonstration when doing changes this massive to your economy you should require a super majority of at least 60% of the electorate. That would give you enough voters to actually push something through to the finish line. If you can't afford to lose anybodies vote then you are never going to push something this massive and impactful through.

[Pann]

I remember him saying he wouldn't go into a coalition before the vote was even made. A Labour/Lib Dem coalition would of been 315 seats requiring another 11 from whoever was willing. So yes it was an option.

No, it wasn't. The DUP held 8 seats and would be unlikely to join with Lab, the SNP had 6 which would not have been enough and are particularly toxic to many English voters so this was not an option, this leaves Plaid, the SDLP, the Greens and the Alliance who between them held 8 seats. There was simply no combination that would have worked.

But perhaps most importantly the Lib Dems rejected Labour's offer of a coalition.

[Omega10]

The problem I think is intractable. It was not leave vs remain it was three different mutually exclusive concepts for how leaving would work none of which can work with the others vs remain. Mays last plan probably is about as good as its going to get of trying to square the circle but in the end pretty much nobody is happy with it and a lot going if we are just going to do this why leave in the first place.

This also is a good demonstration when doing changes this massive to your economy you should require a super majority of at least 60% of the electorate. That would give you enough voters to actually push something through to the finish line. If you can't afford to lose anybodies vote then you are never going to push something this massive and impactful through.

If I had a vote, I would likely vote for May's plan - not because it is good, but because all of the other options seem worse. If the Ireland issue means this is not a proposal that can really be done - that is if it is really a fake plan and not something that can be acted on - then Great Britain has some REALLY rough times ahead.

I think that this is the time when any half way reasonable plan that is mostly realistic just needs to be passed and agreed upon. Uncertainty seems to be starting to hurt Great Britain as much as anything else. Fingers crossed that this turns out not too badly.