View Poll Results: 10 days left, what'll it be?

Voters
92. This poll is closed
  • Hard Brexit (crash out)

    45 48.91%
  • No Brexit (Remain by revoking A50)

    24 26.09%
  • Withdrawal Agreement (after a new session is called)

    0 0%
  • Extension + Withdrawal Agreement

    3 3.26%
  • Extension + Crashout

    9 9.78%
  • Extension + Remain

    11 11.96%
  1. #17221
    Quote Originally Posted by Skroe View Post
    /snip
    No, no... you do love us. You do.

    We're special.

    We are!

  2. #17222
    Quote Originally Posted by UnifiedDivide View Post
    "special"
    None of that please! It's 2019 after all and we are an inclusive, respectful society with no room for that kind of humour. Plus you will set the burner off.

  3. #17223
    Quote Originally Posted by LeGin Tufnel View Post
    No, no... you do love us. You do.

    We're special.

    We are!
    I am not guilty of feeling sorry for May in her dealings with the nest of vipers that is her own party, however she has my deepest sympathy for having to deal with Trump when he knows she's stepping down after his visit. You can only imagine how utterly intolerably smug he's going to be in her presence.

    Actually, no. What the fuck am I saying!? This is on her too. This State Visit is the ultimate humiliation for our UK and I'm glad she's going to be at ground fucking zero for it.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by UnifiedDivide View Post
    You make some fair points, sir. I shall go back to my milkshake.
    On that note, where are all these milkshakes coming from (I'm not being literal here, I know where I can get one although I won't claim to know what the hell is in a milkshake from McDonald's, I can only assume it isn't milk)? These are crimes of opportunity yes? Is there an army of "radical leftists" perpetually armed with milkshakes in case they see someone they don't agree with politically?

  4. #17224
    The Unstoppable Force Mayhem's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rda View Post
    You are talking strictly about the positives of being a bigger power united, and ignoring the negatives. The negatives are these: the EU are slow and inept, the whole is less than the sum of the parts. That's the short version.
    The EU isn't slow and inept.
    Quote Originally Posted by ash
    So, look um, I'm not a grief counselor, but if it's any consolation, I have had to kill and bury loved ones before. A bunch of times actually.
    Quote Originally Posted by PC2 View Post
    I never said I was knowledge-able and I wouldn't even care if I was the least knowledge-able person and the biggest dumb-ass out of all 7.8 billion people on the planet.

  5. #17225
    Quote Originally Posted by rda View Post
    That's a little daring. Standalone UK will of course be less important than the EU, but they are certainly not on the level of Turkey. They have nuclear weapons for god's sake. Their GDP is almost 3x that of Turkey. Etc.
    Turkey actually has geostrategical importance due to its location, the UK? Not so much. Not for anyone allied to the EU.

  6. #17226
    The Insane Acidbaron's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rda View Post
    LOL. Totally. Let's join all countries together because it's going to be better that way. We are generalizing everything, right? So, this seems to be your logic.

    No, me thinking that the UK would be better off outside of the EU does not mean that I think any particular state in the US would be better off outside of the US. The circumstances are different.
    So brexit is only bad because they simply didn't try hard and serious enough, it's good to see that regardless what kind of brexiteer you take they all share one thing in common.

    Delusional or stupid, you may pick one seeing how you guys prefer to simplify hard choices down to 2 simple choices.

  7. #17227
    Void Lord Elegiac's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kronik85 View Post
    I am not guilty of feeling sorry for May in her dealings with the nest of vipers that is her own party, however she has my deepest sympathy for having to deal with Trump when he knows she's stepping down after his visit. You can only imagine how utterly intolerably smug he's going to be in her presence.

    Actually, no. What the fuck am I saying!? This is on her too. This State Visit is the ultimate humiliation for our UK and I'm glad she's going to be at ground fucking zero for it.

    - - - Updated - - -



    On that note, where are all these milkshakes coming from (I'm not being literal here, I know where I can get one although I won't claim to know what the hell is in a milkshake from McDonald's, I can only assume it isn't milk)? These are crimes of opportunity yes? Is there an army of "radical leftists" perpetually armed with milkshakes in case they see someone they don't agree with politically?
    See my avatar.
    Quote Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
    The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk and understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.

  8. #17228
    Quote Originally Posted by rda View Post
    You are talking strictly about the positives of being a bigger power united, and ignoring the negatives. The negatives are these: the EU are slow and inept, the whole is less than the sum of the parts. That's the short version.
    Oh, ok, so that's why the EU came into the negotiations at full steam, with a prepared battle plan and strategic goals being placed well ahead of time so the UK was on the backfoot pretty much before the negotiations started... because the EU is slow and inept. Right...

    Tell me, would you call this withdrawal agreement better for the EU or for the UK?

    And then tell me, who came up with it, because it was really all they could accomplish?

    Thanks, tell me again how the EU is slow and inept. This will be a textbook example of how to assert your position in international diplomacy and trade negotiations... slow and inept, as if.
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  9. #17229
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    This is just embarrassing... Our entire country should be ashamed of themselves for causing this.

  10. #17230
    2nd prime minister out and no one has a realistic plan.

  11. #17231
    Quote Originally Posted by Frozenbeef View Post
    This is just embarrassing... Our entire country should be ashamed of themselves for causing this.
    The embarrassing thing is that almost 3 years in, many MPs still don't seem to grasp what the EU does and what sort of deal is possible in the real world. But it can get worse. Where May genuinely tried to find a realistic solution, but couldn't sell it at home, you could end up with BoJo leading the tories and becoming PM, and you will then realise that the UK can sink even lower into madness. Hell has nine rings. Please try to stay in the first one.

  12. #17232
    Quote Originally Posted by Frozenbeef View Post
    This is just embarrassing... Our entire country should be ashamed of themselves for causing this.
    It's not the entire countries fault. Don't beat yourself up over something you voted against.
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  13. #17233
    Quote Originally Posted by Slant View Post
    It's not the entire countries fault. Don't beat yourself up over something you voted against.
    I just hope that something will come from it, like commons can't go on with the adversarial parliamentary ways it has been going on with since the 1600s (maybe earlier), and that a style more like european countries where consensus is reached is a bett.....

    Oh who am I kidding both sides will double down and it will be even more of a shit show.

  14. #17234
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kallisto View Post
    I just hope that something will come from it, like commons can't go on with the adversarial parliamentary ways it has been going on with since the 1600s (maybe earlier), and that a style more like european countries where consensus is reached is a bett.....

    Oh who am I kidding both sides will double down and it will be even more of a shit show.
    Beg Elizabeth to dissolve the parliament and trigger an election?

    I dunno, lol.
    Quote Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
    The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk and understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.

  15. #17235
    Quote Originally Posted by Slant View Post
    Oh, ok, so that's why the EU came into the negotiations at full steam, with a prepared battle plan and strategic goals being placed well ahead of time so the UK was on the backfoot pretty much before the negotiations started... because the EU is slow and inept. Right...

    Tell me, would you call this withdrawal agreement better for the EU or for the UK?

    And then tell me, who came up with it, because it was really all they could accomplish?

    Thanks, tell me again how the EU is slow and inept. This will be a textbook example of how to assert your position in international diplomacy and trade negotiations... slow and inept, as if.
    The agreement is better for the EU, absolutely. As I said, the UK was utterly unprepared, they were wrong to get into this mess without being serious. This is not at all an example of the EU being not slow and inept. This is the UK falling into all holes with the EU watching, that's it.

  16. #17236
    Quote Originally Posted by rda View Post
    The agreement is better for the EU, absolutely. As I said, the UK was utterly unprepared, they were wrong to get into this mess without being serious. This is not at all an example of the EU being not slow and inept. This is the UK falling into all holes with the EU watching, that's it.
    EU is clearly at fault for making obviously one-sided agreement that then failed to actually get required approval (and as result EU is likely going to lose a lot more then it would get with something actually agreeable).

    Same pattern happened in Ukraine with Association Agreement.

  17. #17237
    Quote Originally Posted by Shalcker View Post
    EU is clearly at fault for making obviously one-sided agreement that then failed to actually get required approval (and as result EU is likely going to lose a lot more then it would get with something actually agreeable).
    I think this happened because the EU wanted to help the UK politicians make a case for staying, this was their idea of help. Plus of course they wanted to send a universal message to all members - exiting is going to be hard, don't try it, etc.

  18. #17238
    Quote Originally Posted by rda View Post
    I think this happened because the EU wanted to help the UK politicians make a case for staying, this was their idea of help.
    Yes, they are too focused on their approach being the only right one.

    Because, really, all that UK wanted is to be able to set restrictions on freedom of movement from the very start. There wouldn't be referendum if that one would be available.

    That EU is unable to solve this in amicable way and can only be dogmatic that "four freedoms are non-negotiable" is on EU.

  19. #17239
    I found this opinion article in The Times today. I'm quoting it all because paywall.

    Quote Originally Posted by Matthew Parris
    Boris Johnson is enough of a rascal to rat on Brexit

    The frontrunner for No 10 might be the only candidate who’d get away with ripping up Article 50 and starting again

    Watching Theresa May’s tearful farewell on the steps of Downing Street I felt intensely the tangle of sentiment and argument, the wrestle of conflicting emotions that now disfigure our politics as they have disfigured her premiership.

    When she spoke of her disappointed hopes I felt sympathy. When she tried to drag in the kindertransport of children rescued from the Nazis — and twisted the words of its pioneer, Sir Nicholas Winton, into an argument for her Brexit compromise — I felt rage and scorn. When her voice cracked I felt pity. When she spoke of the need to seek common ground I felt indignant at a prime minister who stubbornly refused to reach out until her own position was threatened.

    And when she reminded us that it was now up to her successor to secure what she had failed to secure, a Brexit that works for everybody, I felt despair. Will it be Boris Johnson? Have we learnt nothing? To that incompetent scoundrel in a moment.

    For the lack of two attributes, Theresa May’s premiership has ended in failure. The want of these two qualities, unless the next prime minister can supply them, will consign his or her premiership to the same fate. And the missing ingredients? The first is logic, the second honesty. Can Mrs May’s successor supply these? In their absence, British politics chokes. Nothing matters more.

    So to hell with “empathy”, “reaching out”, “listening”, “emotional intelligence” and all that jazz. To hell with Boris’s “charm”, Jeremy Hunt’s “calm”, Matt Hancock’s “energy”, Michael Gove’s “intellect” or Rory Stewart’s “back story”. And brush aside Mrs May’s tears. We’re in for a weekend of psychobabble: a summer pudding of self-pity on Mrs May’s side and, on her critics’ side, oh-so-wise advice on how she could have kept everybody sweet.

    Our politics doesn’t need any further buckets of slop about “seeking the common ground”. Leadership is about so much more than relationship counselling. Process, process, process — the curse of our age, forever flinching from the crunch question, the only question: not of process but of outcome. This is what she couldn’t duck any longer. Her successor will also struggle, and fail, to avoid it.

    What do I mean about honesty and logic? The frontrunner in the race for Downing Street offered a masterclass in his lack of it during the referendum: “My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.” You can’t.

    The Archangel Gabriel couldn’t have delivered Mrs May’s famous “Brexit that works for everyone” promise. It will become fashionable in columns like these to identify things she could have done to get her deal through, and the time (always yesterday) when she could have done them. And I can believe that with Mr Gove’s persuasiveness or Mr Johnson’s amiable bombast, a different prime minister might just have pushed something like her deal over the line.

    But — have we all forgotten? — her deal is for the 22-month transition period, not for Britain’s final status outside the EU. So we’d now be in that transition period, still tearing ourselves apart, for it’s really only about the final status that Brexiteers and Remainers disagree.

    And so to the logic. It’s possible to believe (as I don’t) that Brexit could lead us to glory: but only after a “clean” exit from the EU and the ties that come with membership. And it’s possible to believe (as I do) that we are wiser to remain. But to believe we could benefit from being half-in, half-out defies logic. The ties of membership, or half-membership, are what real Leavers believe hold us back. Real Remainers, meanwhile, share their horror at subjecting ourselves to rules we’ve lost the right to shape. The illogic of compromise that delivers the worst of both worlds would defeat Gabriel, defeated Mrs May, and will defeat whoever succeeds her.

    And so to honesty. Somebody has to square with the British people. She never would. It is about Remain or Leave. We loop back to 2016, but this time with a much clearer grasp of what “Leave” means. Isn’t the Gordian knot cut by putting the question again?

    And here, I don’t mean to queer Mr Johnson’s pitch by putting the wind up his Brexiteer supporters, but must mention one faint hope: a reason for hoping a Johnson premiership would not end in calamity. My Times colleague Rachel Sylvester discussed it in these pages on Tuesday. Mr Johnson might be capable of ratting on his promise to take us out of the EU — and getting away with it.

    The arguments against his suitability are too many for a comprehensive list. Casual disregard for the truth; reckless caprice; lazy disregard for detail; weak negotiating skills (as Whitehall knows); moral turpitude which perhaps we should overlook in politics but which has been so destructive of others’ lives that I cannot forget it; and his failure as foreign secretary to achieve anything but an extension of his notoriety beyond our own shores.

    The man’s a rascal. But like many rascals he’s capable of a big decision. It’s possible to imagine him telling the country that this Brexit business has got into such a poisonous muddle that we need to rip it up and start again: to revoke Article 50, or refer back to the people, or both. He might escape with his life. A Hunt, a Gove, a Hancock or a Javid wouldn’t.

    Be clear: whoever takes over will soon enough need to be very, very bold, one way or the other. Would-be Tory leaders will shortly be wooing supporters with a promise to “go back to Brussels” for a better deal, threatening no-deal Brexit if they don’t. Whoever wins will then have to try. They’ll return empty-handed. What then? Here’s Mr Johnson, speaking in Switzerland today: “We will leave the EU on October 31, deal or no deal ... The way to get a good deal is to prepare for a no deal. To get things done you need to be prepared to walk away.”

    This week the Institute for Government published an important report, suggesting that a PM intent on a no-deal Brexit could thwart parliament by a lightning decision to do it without MPs’ say-so. Be warned, would-be prime ministers: this would be nuclear, a coup against representative democracy and a breach of our unwritten constitution. This way, infamy lies. Gangrene would follow such an amputation. Don’t even think about it.

    That leaves a referendum, a revocation, a general election, or all three. Theresa May’s departing tears are unlikely to be the last shed at Downing Street’s door.

  20. #17240
    Quote Originally Posted by Flarelaine View Post
    I found this opinion article in The Times today. I'm quoting it all because paywall.
    I doubt it. Theresa May refused to do the right and obvious thing with respect to Brexit because doing so would have probably permanently split her beloved Conservative Party.

    Most of her Cabinet have been competing for who is the most Brexity since long before she even hinted her exit, anticipating an eventual exit on her part. They've never taken Brexit seriously enough as to place it above the potentiality of them becoming PM above that.

    Boris Johnson is one of those people, who sold a bunch of lies to achieve the Brexit vote, then sold a bunch of lies as to why he failed in the Cabinet.

    He'll be the most likely to Hard Brexit, because he clearly doesn't think the act of "Brexiting" is something to be concerned with, especially at the expense of his own political aspirations.

    This is the latest entry in a long running thread of "The Modern Western Political class has it so good and thinks they're willing to play games with life, safety and the public good because they don't think anything of consequence can truly befall them". You'd think the Financial Crisis would have taught them (the Western political class) a thing or two on that note, but that's a big fat nope.

    Most broadly, this is evidenced by games involving immigration, while Western work forces will struggle to keep paying for the current public entitlement without growing the work force further (and thus the tax base) through immigration.

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