Petition to Revoke Article 50 - Page 29

And I’m amused at the way bitter Tories (in the main) threaten to disrupt the EU council and fill it with “Nigel Farage MiniMe’s” ... as though they have direct control over who gets elected.  The Tories have shown themselves to be bitter spoilsports when they don’t get what they want ... we’d be utterly crazy to vote them in!!

And here I speak as someone who was a fierce proponent of Margaret Thatcher in the 80’s YES!! I was a raving Thatcherite.

Now I’m older (and wiser? That’s up for debate as well!) and I’m not sure who I support.  Labour .... sort of seems to fit my current worldview ... but I don’t believe Corbyn is trustworthy.  Labour, at least SEEM to be taking the pulse of the Nation, but Corbyn seemed set to go his own way until his party had serious words with him

Corbyn is as ignorant of public opinion as any other mp. He's taken heed of Trumps campaign message of telling the people supposedly what they want to hear but, and I'll take being ridiculed again, I'd rather put my trust in Farage rising from the ashes with a new party than Corbyn with the likes of Yvette Cooper, Dianne Abbot, the ex Labour jail bird Onasanya and his supposed Marxist alliances and other loonies any day.

As for expenses scandals, we seem to be informed of not one but now two expenses scandals, the simple fact the mp's are claiming, (fiddling on the quiet), as much if not more now than when the previous scandal blew up in their faces a while ago, on top of which there are purported to be around 40 involved in profiteering from home sales paid for by public monies which the participants no doubt wanted to keep hidden under the carpet., some to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds !!

Younger voters now coming into the voting "pot" could well be just as angry and tending to vote leave as much as the majority did 3 years ago as a protest vote against these seeming incompetant fiddling ignorant mp's we seem to, subject to a general election currently have to put up with.

As for Theresa May going begging for another extension, cap in shameful hand pleading with the likes of the french president Macron who cant make any sensible decisions without causing yellow vest uprisings whilst presiding over the lowest ratings of any politicians/presidents in modern times, well she just drags us down further and further into the laughing stock doldrums of europe.

How, in all sense and sensibilities can you you/we have a remain focussed so called leader ignore a majority vote in favour of leaving the EU and 3 years after that vote still be ignoring her own mp's and the public vote in favour of pursuing her own agenda, thoughts and beliefs ???????

As before, the mind well and truly boggles !!!

Thats a very good analysis and some very good questions Chevy.

There’s no argument that May is remain focused, but whilst the country voted 3 years ago to Leave, some question now exists as to whether the sentiment remains the same.  Whatever deal is eventually struck, (if a deal is struck!!) it really now has to go back to the very people who said “Leave” in the first place to see if the version of “Leave” now provided is acceptable.

Counterpointing the leaders inability to lead are her MPs shameful “spoiled brat” antics, threatening upset and nuisance if UK has EU elections.  Do they realise just how childish they sound?  Stuck up idiots, born with a silver spoon up their bum, they are far too used to people cow towing to their every whim and not keen on being told “NO”.

Then there is now the threat of legal challenge in the courts to whatever extension May agrees.  Good luck with that, I suggest any right thinking court, wishing to maintain the separation of powers will now merely fall back on the newly minted Cooper-Letwin legislation and state that as the PM is now legally bound to avoid no deal, she has clear mandate to accept whatever extension is put to her in order to comply with legislation.

Brexit is a bust.  Clearly, there is no REAL political will to extract U.K. from the EU, and parliament will do parliament as it has centuries past, whatever “the people” say.  MPs of course know two very important things 1) the public are fickle and their desires and commands by and large can change on a whim; and 2) the public have a notoriously short attention span (again, by and large) and if for the majority, Brexit is not a dearly held ideal (either to Brexit or Bremain), their attention will shift to those things that directly affect them.

Despite some howls of protest, I suspect SOME MPs are listening to what their electorate are saying and this may be reflected in their shifting stance on Brexit

“Younger voters now coming into the voting "pot" could well be just as angry and tending to vote leave as much as the majority did 3 years ago as a protest vote against these seeming incompetant fiddling ignorant mp's we seem to, subject to a general election currently have to put up with.”

80% of voters aged 18-24 (inc new ones unable to vote in 2016) wish to remain in the EU.

Note: Halloween 2019  is May's new Brexit deadline. Handed to her by the EU Council of Ministers. Just enough time for her to call that Final Say Referendum ... She knows it makes sense. Watch the pound go up. Good news for British immigrants living in Spain :)

And now she returns to Parliament for further “cross party talks”, which I would suggest despite the best of will are going nowhere and has said she will again introduce her withdrawal agreement to Parliament whereupon if ratified we can leave before 22 May ..... I do believe our PM is a little delusional!

She stated in the press conference that breaking the deadlock in parliament “would not be simple” and again appears to have discounted the idea of a Third referendum / people’s vote / confirmatory ballot despite growing support.

I think she knows that the PM that calls that will be the PM that goes down in history as the one who reversed Brexit .... I don’t believe that fits with the image she has of herself ......

Latest "Brexit" Views of an interested Paddy:-

1. Extension to 31st October 2019 is a good idea and gives some breathing space to MP's and the British public.

2. The UK can leave before the date and the EU has stated that further extension(s) can happen. This keeps the "They-want-us-out-in-disgrace" brigade quiet. It also confirms that the EU wants the UK to remain within the EU.

3. The ball is back in the court of the UK again. It remains to be seen how it uses the time. There will be EU elections in the UK. A general election is delayed, but inevitable.

4. I think a Confirmatory Referendum will not take place until sometime during 2021. The result is not guaranteed, but there will be five years of young people who didn't vote last time and pretty obviously five years of natural wastage of people who did vote three years ago. My gut thoughts:- Time Heals!

5. I believe Theresa May will resign sooner rather than later. However, the issues will not go away.

5. (i) Side Issue:- Property has never been more expensive in Ireland. There was a lull in prices and a slowing of property sales since December. The general belief here, is that it was because of the Brexit issue. I am informed that property sales have began to move in the past month. Again, this is attributed to the belief that Brexit won't happen.

5. (ii) There is even a hint that property sales in Costa Almería has started to move favourably again. The delay/cancellation of Brexit is seen as the main driver.

I was of the opinion that Chrisso is female (perhaps because of the Irish type of forename and surname - a lady of say Christine O'Sullivan could be called Chrisso). Chrisso's posts are informed and good too. 

Important point missed by me but propagated by Chrisso  . . . . . . . the GBP£ to immediately rise in value. 

All Brits in Spain can breathe a little easier today, for many reasons, even the Old Farts. (But, as usual they'll never own up to being wrong).

And breathing easier I am - I truly hope you are correct about confirmatory vote only in 2021 - as you say, time heals.  If it does go as far as 2021, there is a very fair chance the majority will say “I’ve had enough of this now.  Let’s stay in and get on with life, put this sad episode behind us”

The hard core sceptics who claim to speak for all 17,4 million who voted Leave first time round will of course deny this and say that frustration with the process means leave is stronger than ever.  Fine.  Put it to the vote, let’s see.  That’s democratic.

As an aside, I want to go back to something I mentioned earlier - Moseley.  Does anyone else see a parallel between Nigel Farage and the Brexit party and Oswald Moseley and the brief flirtation with fascism by a segment of the British population in the 1930’s?

Chrisso is just the nom de plume (sorry - don’t yet know the Spanish equivalent) and it’s macho - Chris.

Sadly - as yet my prediction of a rise in sterling against the euro has not yet happened. Apparently it’s the prolonged uncertainty that has held things up...

So where are we now? Neither the U.K. nor the EU will countenance No Deal - and it was not on my 2016 ballot paper. 

May’s fatal flaw was thinking she could carry on regardless without a sufficient majority even in late 2016 and that was then wiped out in 2017. At that snap election Labour obtained its highest ever popular vote in England since Attlee in 1951 so there’s little doubt that any election soon will not give May or her party any succour.

That leaves #ref3 OR a deal that includes a permanent EEA-style Brexit agreed with Labour OR revocation of A50. May will not budge until she’s prised out of her shell in November when the 1922 Committee get another annual chance to evict their leader - although a coup by the cabinet remains possible. 

May must also be aware that for her to dance like a Queen onto the Sept Tory conference podium in Sept (a recent spoof shows her doing this to Talking Heads’ ‘Road to Nowhere’ lol) would not go down well - so she needs a way of getting out of Downing St after achieving some form of Brexit - her one and only goal. To parody Game of Thrones - ‘you had one job to do, just one!’

I can’t see her budging to accept Labour’s customs union - they have already shifted on several of their own red lines, so it’s really her move now. And she will never agree with revocation. My guess is therefore that she will see a Final Say Referendum in August as her escape clause. But she will -

a) have to get on with it as usually it takes 5 months to organise a ref.

b) she will need a Commons majority to do it - are the numbers there?

c) the question - Govt Deal or Remain? - would also need to be agreed.

2021 for a #FinalSay referendum? Too far away IMO. British politics needs to conclude this disaster that was of Tory Party making (in an effort to prevent an 1846-type CornLaws Peelite party split) ASAP.

What looks increasingly like ultimately a Remain outcome from a Summer referendum flows from demographic changes in the electorate since 2016, the economic impact the last three years has already had, and also the frequency with which erstwhile Leavers say they ‘will never bother voting again’. 

Good! 3 million crawled out from blissful ignorance to vote Leave last time, apparently having never voted before. If they now decide to throw their toys out of the pram just because there were so many versions of Brexit - and No Deal and May’s Deal did not suit them - we should shed no tears 😭 and remain profoundly grateful.

You had Oswald Mosely trying to copy the Blackshirts in europe. At the same time even we had Owen O'Duffy leading the Blueshirt movement in Ireland. These of course were small minded people copying what was going on mainly in Germany and Italy. The UK and Ireland will always have bandwagon jumpers.

We have an interesting 6 months ahead. I reckon we should call it a day on the subject and let what is to happen happen. Then about September we can again cross swords or support each other.

29 pages of good debate; I don't think it will ever be equalled on this forum.