National News Brexit - the Deal or No Deal poll

Brexit - Deal or No Deal?

  • Deal

    Votes: 51 29.1%
  • No Deal

    Votes: 77 44.0%
  • Call in the Donald

    Votes: 2 1.1%
  • Call in Noel Edmonds

    Votes: 8 4.6%
  • I don't care anymore

    Votes: 37 21.1%

  • Total voters
    175
I don't want No Deal, but with no change on the other side, what are we to do? Remain in purgatory forever more? Or get on with sorting out the many societal ills we have?

We need to move on. We need to fix our roads, we need to fix our schools, we need to invest in infrastructure, we need build a better society and help the poorest live a better life. We have to stop getting so angry over Brexit and move on, before we polarise ourselves forever and stop speaking to each other. And we need to respect votes and the people that voted in that vote. Whatever it entails. If it be Corbyn, McDonnell or Swinson being in Govt, I will accept the public vote, even if I don't like it. Because I will be adult about it.

I believe - and have done for some time, in fact since it became clear that parliament couldn't command a majority for any course of action - that we need to hold a General Election. And we need to do it as soon as possible. Ideally early October.

I'm very much anti-Brexit, always have been. I think it's a bad idea for a myriad of reasons and I resent all the rights I will lose if it goes ahead.
But we know it was marginally the will of the people; and if the representatives of the people can agree to a structure to execute it, then of course Brexit is what should happen - that's how a parliamentary democracy should function.

But if parliament gets bogged down - as it has done - and the people's representatives can't agree on a structure, then we need to elect new representatives. Again, a healthy parliamentary democracy.

Instead we've got a minority of MPs adopting a strategy of bypassing parliament through a series of abnormal technical measures to engineer the solution they want. It's profoundly anti-parliamentary democracy and it's actually angered me far more than anything else that's happened over the past three years. All of a sudden, I don't have representation - instead the "solution" is being imposed (or at least trying to be imposed) without debate and without a majority.

Thing is - I think there's an excellent chance, given the way the country appears to be leaning and the makeup of the electorate, that BoJo would win that general election (as long as he gets Nige on board); it would be a de facto second referendum and would give him the remit to go ahead and undertake a No Deal Brexit if that's what his government believes is right for the country. And in such circumstances, any Remainer complaints would be pretty hollow.

But instead they've chosen a strategy that's crass and cowardly.


Oh, and I agree 100% about the need to move on.
But I'm not sure we'll be able to with a No Deal Brexit any time soon; far too much work to do, far too many key decisions to be made to ensure we can function and far too much short term spending needed to set up the new systems and programs we'll need; borrowing may be getting more expensive for the country as well.
 
Not my words, but pretty much sums up exactly how l feel.about this shitshow:

"People are tribal monkeys. We need to feel that we are a ‘we’. We recognize that as individuals we are nothing, so we need to feel connected to a greater whole, a cause. It’s in our DNA. There’s an old quote from G.K. Chesterton - “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” So these days we are very susceptible to ‘cults’ of all kinds – conventional religions (and sects of those religions), political causes, identity politics – all of which are defined by an exclusivity, blind faith, resistant to scientific evidence and hostility to those outside the group.

If readers from outside the UK can bear with me, I will use the word ‘we’ for the British; I was born on this island (of partly immigrant stock – just like everyone else) and for better or worse, it is my home.
We all have loyalties (we’re not “citizens of nowhere” at all). Our loyalties usually begin with our families and the people around us, the people that we have known and felt closest to the longest. Then we have loyalties to our friends, to our street or village or neighbourhood, to our city or our geographical region, our nation-state, our part of the world; we have loyalties to our co-religionists, people with the same interests in music or art, the same football team, or to people from anywhere with the same political or social outlook. What I cannot understand is how loyalty to the nation-state (a relatively recent creation) is anywhere near the top of the list. For me, it exists somewhere but it lies at the bottom in terms of importance.

So we come to the Brexit fiasco, that has divided our little island approximately 50/50 (along with a massive constituency of ‘don’t know or don’t care’) and has brought a kind of terrible paralysis and bitterness to all political life here. The Brexit cause is fueled by all kinds of nationalist mythology. When I was a child I was taught about the 1914-18 war as being fought between Britain and Germany despite the fact that the Western Front was in France and the French (and of course Germans) lost many more men than the Brits. In World War 2, we are taught that we stood alone. While no doubt it may have felt like that, an idea ably exploited by Churchill, in reality we were supplied by mass convoys of ships crossing the North Atlantic at the cost of thousands of sailors’ lives (and a significant bill to be paid later which hampered post-war UK governments). We are not a self-sufficient island at all and never have been. I was taught that we ‘won’ World War 2, despite the obvious fact that it was won by the Russians and Americans. In the 19th Century, Britain was a rich country (on the back of an exploitative Empire forged by sea-power and slavery), even if those riches were not exactly shared, but wars eventually bankrupt all Empires. I rather like the humourist Marina Hyde’s observation that she believed that the UK was into a post-Empire hangover when actually it appears now that we’re just still drunk.

I remember well that when we entered the European Community in 1975, it was not for the reasons it was originally conceived – to bring an end to wars in Western Europe - but for economic necessity: by the early ‘70s, the UK economy was on its knees. Unfortunately British membership of the EU has largely coincided with 40 years of Conservative rule (the New Labour years not truly challenging their basic free-market ethos). And these years have seen a steady flow of money from public into private hands, a trickle-up economics, resulting in the current mind-boggling levels of inequality and the bitterness that this creates. And the declared intent of the highest profile Brexiteers is to accelerate the process. They are riding a tide of anger over what neo-liberal economics has done to our country whilst all the while promising a more extreme version: our beloved NHS is certainly to go (a process already well underway). These people love the winner-takes-all philosophy of America because if you’re already starting at the top, you have free reign to use your power and wealth to amass more power and wealth. This has nothing at all to do with the EU and everything to do with the deliberate policies of successive British governments. The ruling class have enriched themselves while selling the people a massive con-trick, blaming outsiders for the devastation, whether they be immigrants, refugees or EU institutions. Brexit is a con. If it does happen, yes, life will go on of course; there will be some disruption but planes won’t fall out of the sky, medicines will still be available, travel will still be possible, the water will still run out of the taps. But for the vast majority of people everything will get a little tougher and more complicated and more expensive and dreary, oppressive and cut-off. And all for what?

And all this takes place against a backdrop of impending worldwide ecological catastrophe. The most terrifying number I have read in recent years is that in my own lifetime, there has been a 40% decline of every other living thing on earth other than people. What a legacy! If there has been a time in history when the human race has to be united by necessity, this is it, and yet the opposite is happening. We are busy squabbling and blaming and building walls.

I don’t have all the answers of course - only to try to maintain a sense of scale and reality and compassion and not give into the mass hysteria of our time. The ‘we’ is all of us; it is the Earth."


You lost, get over it.
 
I wish people would say something like it ‘won the vote’ rather than ‘it was the will of the people’. If someone was 52-48 in favour of doing something they’d be pretty much undecided. It wasn’t the ‘will of the people’, it was 17.5m people wanting to leave out of an electorate of 46.5m who either didn’t, or didn’t vote.

Yep vote leave won fair and square, but when you say it’s the ‘will of the people’ you’re trying to make it sound more resounding than it actually was.
 
Affront to democracy? Isn’t an instance of that parliament trying to do the opposite of what the popular vote asked for?
 
>Sheik D..I don't know who wrote the piece you quoted earlier today (post # 2607). The author states "I remember well that when we entered the European Community in 1975".

Really? ...just for the record:

"The Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, took the UK into the EEC in January 1973 after President de Gaulle of France had blocked UK membership twice in the 1960s. This brought EEC membership to nine. In a referendum in 1975 the UK electorate voted to stay in the EEC under renegotiated terms of entry." https://www.parliament.uk/about/liv...rview/britain-and-eec-to-single-european-act/

"Upon the formation of the European Union (EU) in 1993, the EEC was incorporated and renamed as the European Community (EC). In 2009 the EC's institutions were absorbed into the EU's wider framework and the community ceased to exist."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Community
 
The trouble is thay had the EU compromised (most obviously when Cameron wanting help to avoid the leave vote), this maybe would never have happened in the first place.

We had a pretty sweet deal anyway, but the idea that "Cameron came home empty-handed" is - like so many Brexiter articles of faith - a highly contentious claim (to put it politely). He got:
  • An exemption from "ever-closer union"
  • A compromise on benefits for EU workers
  • An opt-out from Euro bailouts
  • A commitment to reduce red tape
All pissed away by the Brexit vote, of course.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35622105
 
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>Sheik D..I don't know who wrote the piece you quoted earlier today (post # 2607). The author states "I remember well that when we entered the European Community in 1975".

Really? ...just for the record:

"The Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, took the UK into the EEC in January 1973 after President de Gaulle of France had blocked UK membership twice in the 1960s. This brought EEC membership to nine. In a referendum in 1975 the UK electorate voted to stay in the EEC under renegotiated terms of entry." https://www.parliament.uk/about/liv...rview/britain-and-eec-to-single-european-act/

"Upon the formation of the European Union (EU) in 1993, the EEC was incorporated and renamed as the European Community (EC). In 2009 the EC's institutions were absorbed into the EU's wider framework and the community ceased to exist."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Community
Fair enough, I was too young to remember it personally, but you are of course right in the timings and terminology.

Doesn't really alter the sentiment though....
 
We live in a parliamentary democracy Peter. Citizens elect MPs to make the necessary laws and decisions for the country. Their role is not to rubber stamp, for example, the result of a referendum vote. Their role is to challenge the efficacy of that vote, even if a majority of their constituents voted in a different way to themselves.

Despite what you and others believe, they are not trying to stop Brexit, that avenue has gone. They are trying to establish a sensible, logical way to leave the EU, and many of them believe that should mean with a deal.

Trying to work out a deal that's best for the country, as described above, is clearly not undemocratic. Suspending parliamentary democracy itself in order to prevent a full discussion on Brexit clearly IS undemocratic, I would suggest.
I agree with what you say and would like a trade deal to be agreed. We’ve now had three years go by with a complete deadlock whereby everything is on hold because of brexit. People of whichever persuasion are thoroughly fed up with the situation.
Unfortunately an election or second referendum might not help the situation we are currently in if a similar result ensues.
Although the situation currently is not ideal it might just result in the MPs allowing a smooth brexit
 
>SD thanks..yes
"The time I think most clearly, the time I drift away
Is on the bus-ride that meanders up these valleys of green and grey
I get to think about what might have been and what may yet come true
And I get to pass a rainy mile thinking of you
And all the while, all the while, I still hear that call
To the land of gold and poison that beckons to us all
Nothing changes here very much, I guess you'd say it never will
The pubs are all full on Friday nights and things get started still
We spent hours last week with Billy boy, bleeding, yeah queuing in Casualty
Staring at those posters we used to laugh at,
Never Never Land, palm trees by the sea
Well there was no need for those guys to hurt him so bad
When all they had to do was knock him down
But no one asks to many questions like that since you left this town
And tomorrow brings another train
Another young brave steals away
But you're the one I remember
From these valleys of green and the grey
You used to talk about winners and losers all the time, as if that was all there was
As if we were not of the same blood family, as if we live by different laws
Do you owe so much less to these rain swept hills than you owe to your good self?
Is it true that the world has always got to be something
That seems to happen somewhere else?
For God's sake don't you realize that I still hear that call
Do you think you're so brave just to go running to that which beckons to us all?
No, not for one second did you look behind you
As you were walking away
Never once did you wish any of us well
Those who had chosen to stay
And if that's what it takes to make it
In the place that you live today
Then I guess you'll never read these letters that I send
From the valleys of the green and the grey."

good stuff.
 
I believe in justice.
I believe in vengeance.
I believe in getting the bastards.
 
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