202 For
432 Against
May Lost by 230 votes
Well, we wanted a stake through the heart of the Robbins-Selmayr treaty, and that's exactly what Parliament has delivered. They will be weeping into their beer in the Berlaymont tonight.
We're in uncharted waters here.
Right. I'm going to drink a bottle of Prosecco, play some loud music and maybe air guitar. Ahem.
72 comments:
They can still do a lot of damage in ten weeks.
I quite expect a government message on April 1st saying: "April Fools, you thought we were going to leave the EU, didn't you ?"
Don Cox
Problem is, most of those that voted against that deal, would also vote against the eminently sensible "WTO" deal.
And despite this record defeat, the house will probably still state that they have confidence in that harridan.
I agree 100%, right-writes, but for me, that's the beauty of it.
We don't need an election. The Tories can own their own mess fully.
Totally expected.
Prepare for Lisbon Mk2.
The good thing is that the 'pretend Brexit' is now dead, the WA would have legally let us leave, but to all intents and purposes we'd still be in. But it could be sold as 'We are no longer in the EU therefore we've respected the referendum result'.
So what we are left with is a) a real Brexit, under WTO rules, or b) a complete denial of the referendum result and the abandonment of any sense that the UK is a democracy, if they go for an extension of Art 50 or its withdrawal or another referendum ( although I don't think there are the votes in the HoC for the latter).
(a) is good of course, and while (b) is bad, at least no-one can be in any doubt about what would have happened. Better to be stabbed in the front than the back, at least you know who did it, and maybe exact revenge at some later date.
Aye, uncharted territory. The best that could happen is that May resigns and the Tories install a leader that had tthe vision to reinstate the proper negotiated deal: David Davies' pre-chequers deal. Not the post-Chequers capitulation.
Sadly Parliament does not have my confidence to do anything that would result in something that satisfies the referendum result.
And the EU and yUK political-class are shitting bricks. They just cannot understand that the will of the people is NO DEAL.
NO DEAL will do irrevocable damage to the EU, it will be merely an inconvenience to yUK while sensible private sector arrangements are made. That is why EU and the politicos are dazed and confused, the plebs understand that the politicos are no longer needed or required.
DisMay's statement asking what people want reveals everything. Prepare for a panicked visit to Brussels for further instructions and an announcement that "of course it is understood that article 50 can be extended indefinately" and we will carry on voting until the "correct" result is achieved.
Surely you remember your Hammerhouse and Pratchett? Have you forgotten just how hard it is to kill a vampire and make sure it stays dead? There is always some "Lucy" around to resurrect it. Always a Frankenmay who wants to revive the monster with a jolt of parliamentary cross party (and they are judging by the result) support.
I've put my celebratory cigar in the humidor for the day Art 50 is revoked or extended, but the fat lady ain't sung yets.
Tripe. The will, of some proportion of seventeen million, out of sixty-six million is for no deal. Some Leave voters want one though.
So that ain't "the people".
Stop the infantilism, do.
...and a democratic vote won by the majority is ....what? Infantile?
The 'people' are those that voted - screw those who couldn't be arsed to and tough shit to those not old enough to participate. That's what democracy means.
We could, of course, act like the EU and ignore EVERYONE and ANYTHING and just do it 'because we know what's good for you'.
Fucxk off.
Radders.
This is not the end, nor is it the beginning of the end.
But it is the end of the beginning.
Though in fairness Anon a million or so of thse sixty-six million will still be sucking breast milk and a few millions more won't be able to read yet, even if they have mastered the potty.
Ok, we've put Selmayr to flight with his stiletto in the spine but agree wholly with Sobers - now it's an open fight. They will throw in absolutely everything they've got to stop us going, clean, foul and illegal. And they will have insider allies helping them.
So tonight I bless my fortune in having a big stone farmhouse with triple glazing at least 500m from my nearest neighbour, a decent amp and a Speisskamer.
(Alison Krauss and Union Station on number 11, to be followed by Show of Hands..)
Tomorrow, back to work.
I predicted about 60% probability of Theresa May getting her (current) DWA through the HoC, with some Labour help. I own to that.
However until the Tory party show Mrs May the door she won't go. And I think the EU will now offer her some concessions since they've obviously miscalculated, as they did with David Cameron's negotiation.
So I'll stick my neck out again: the most likely outcome is she'll stay, and get her renegotiated WA through the HoC.
I hope I'm wrong.
If only one in twenty Leave voters wanted a deal with the EU, then, because the Leave victory was so marginal, there is no national majority for no deal.
It's that simple.
If you can find reliable evidence that at least 95% of Leave voters want no deal, then you might just have the beginnings of a point.
It would still be psss-weak, because there was nothing in the ballot to exclude a future Parliament's dealings, nor could there be, because they cannot, quite rightly, be bound.
That assumes the remain voters would accept any deal
Sadly I'm convinced you are wrong. The EU sent David Cameron packing and when we voted to leave didn't waver in the slightest. I doubt any PM will get concessions from the EU, it's a political project, protected with almost religious zeal. The best we can hope for is David Davies' negotiated deal (how could the EU refuse it-they had already agreed it), or if the EU refuse, then a full WTO based exit.
Anon, How do you know it is "The will of some proportion of seventeen million"? What proportion? And where is your evidence?
I would prefer a trade deal. But not if we lose our independence. I certainly expect many minor technical deals - mostly because they're not under EU control but are handled by international bodies, treaties and agreements.
However giving away UK independence to get a trade deal is specifically what all Leave voters already voted against. So I would expect near 100% of Leaves to accept the WTO deal if the only alternative is the EU keeping us under subjugation in exchange for a trade deal with them.
Vampires don't actually exist Jack.
Unless the 2018 withdrawal act is repealed before 29th March, we will no longer be an EU member so we can't "stay". We will have to reapply for membership. This is the law
Or am I missing something?
And let's keep a sense of perspective here. This isn't 1940, nor is it 1805 or 1642. Juncker has his hand on a bottle, not a red button that that could release enough nukes to make all of this country look like Tracey Emins bedroom.
Anon said: "... there was nothing in the ballot to exclude a future Parliament's dealings ...". That's not true. There was no provision in the EU Referendum Act 2015 to set aside one of the outcomes, Leave.
Parliament cannot make the offer and then later withdraw it only because they change their minds about one of the two options that Parliament itself provided. That would be retrospective legislation. And a cheat. Leave must mean leaving the EU treaties otherwise, by definition, we will be remaining.
The result of the Referendum does not prescribe what government will look like after leaving, but it does proscribe remaining.
Or am I missing something?-Mark
Not as far as I can see, no (ironically a situation Leavers should be thanking Gina Miller for, because without her case, May would try to 'royal prerogative' it). Which is why I said 'revoked or extended'.
But I fear that Budgie's crystal ball is right and May will still get her abortion of an agreement though parliament...I'm just not sure how atm. I was surprised at the size of the rebellion though- tory MPs and especially brexiteer tory MPs not being renown for their backbone (Davis, Blojo and The Moog being prime examples).
"Unless the 2018 withdrawal act is repealed before 29th March, we will no longer be an EU member so we can't "stay". We will have to reapply for membership. This is the law"
This is the EU, the law is ruled to say whatever they want it to say that day.
There is no time for any new UK legislation. So it's one of three:
a) WTO leave on March 29th,
b) Article 50 delayed,
c) Backstop nonsense is killed as a strawman concession and May somehow gets it through HoC.
c) is possible, IMO, but a tough ask from this far back. But see the Brexit plan from Tory backbenchers this evening. Thin bloody gruel but I could live with it. It will all go down to the wire.
The sinners are the bastards who have thought from Blair onwards that outright lying is acceptable from a politician as a tactic. You might have disagreed with the likes Gummidge or Maggie but they were both telling the truth most of the time and certainly as a default position. Even the Windbag was mostly an honest man until they filled his pockets with euro-gold.
Anon--Fuck off.
Ketch--Your celebration cigar will end up stuck up your arse and set on fire.
1--The EU have nothing to give. They are up shit creek themselves with multiplying foes and trouble on every hand. They show yellow with us then all 27 will be on them like a wolf pack.
2--Art 50 ext--why? The EU can't give so it is just a shit delaying tactic. To do what? Cancel Brexit or arrange a People's Wank? In effect to announce the death of democracy and that no result will ever stand again. The British people are getting more and more angry. Despite endless lying bullshit the remain gang flounders . I would estimate 3-4 million of the cunts tops. They had to triple-by-lies their shite march and apart from a lot of twitting twats they got nothing.
3-ZanU isn't going to do it for them. She is going to make the deal worse by sticking a permanent CU in there and EU employment law. She betrays her own Party to kiss EU arse. 60% of Jizz Corbin's seats are STRONGLY Leave. They won't be bought off by bollocks about employment law. About which they couldn't give one shit never mind two. Jizz supporting her will keep her in to 2022--by which time ZaNU will likely no longer exist. And it will cost him millions of votes.
4- A GE now will literally see the end of the Tory Party. The FFC Treason May can't get a deal that will satisfy the DUP so if she gets some version of her sellout through somehow she loses the DUP and a GE is here. And the Tory Party will largely cease to exist.
WTO Rules Brexit is the smartest and ONLY way to go. But lets have our Yellow Jackets and leather gloves handy as well.
Ecks...settle down now with a cocoa and get to bed you are frothing again.
Ecks, I agree: WTO has always been the best answer. There is no need - and there never was - for a 600 page Withdrawal Agreement. I think I said on referendum day thta the EU couldn't afford to let the UK have a deal at all. I was not thinking that the Tories would fuck up deliberately their golden chance to unite their party and lance the EU boil all in one big open goal. But they did. The long march through the institutions isn't just a red tactic.
May should win the confidence vote and then resign leving the field clear for a Brexit PM to march up Downing Street - in a gilet jaune.
"Backstop nonsense is killed as a strawman concession and May somehow gets it through HoC"
If the backstop went, or at least was time limited, then the WA would sail through the HoC. Its the backstop being permanent that makes the WA such a sh*t sandwich - you're going into negotiations on a free trade deal knowing your opponent will get exactly what he wants anyway if he just blanks you for long enough. And the EU is a past master at legal chicanery, just ask the Greeks. So we'd be screwed from day one. The only free trade deal offered would be even worse than the backstop.
But take out the backstop, or time limit it, then the EU can't just stymie us and refuse to deal, because if they do then we crash out when the backstop ends. Which is why they won't remove or time limit the backstop.........
In the long run, and a) I am Irish and b) we are not there yet, weaponising Ireland was desperately fucking stupid. It shows that the EU will spend the people for the project. And so they lose. Eventually.
As I say, I voted Leave. I will placidly work any hours at any notice for my swaggering employer in return for my lowly pittance. I will hand over my life savings without a murmur, if my kids should dare to stream a film on holiday in our former EU, and I will proudly watch them paddle in untreated sewage in the UK. I will watch loved ones die of lung disease through air pollution with equanimity. If my wife should divorce me, then I quietly accept for the Court to decide what to do with our chiIdren, incomes and property, even if we should agree otherwise. Should I need care, then I compliantly assent that she should be thrown out of our home and it be sold to pay for that. Yes, all of this and more I would willingly do, to be finally free from the oppression of that tiny ring of gold stars on my driving licence, of my very own Human Rights, and of a little piece of burgundy cardboard.
Don't be such a bitter loser, anon. And try not to be so bloody narcissistically self-absorbed.
As JFK said, think not what Britain can do for you but for what you can do for Britain
Bit harsh, Radders.
To my reading, this is a statement which contradicts the oft quoted ‘they didn’t know what they were voting for’.
I think it should be plagiarised by BoJo!
What we have to do now is to ensure that A50 is not delayed.
When the Gov't wanted to invoke Article 50 the courts were involved. Somebody brought an action compelling to get the thing approved in Parliament first.
Well, Parliament approved it, Artical 50 was invoked and if the Gov't wants to change its mind then the Courts should be asked whether they should be allowed to.
Try not to be such a fantasist, who projects his identity into incorporeal entities, such as Britain's imagined historical standing, Raed.
I've seen the pathetic spectacle of grown men weeping over football match results from that particularly idiotic fallacy.
Which 16 MPs didn't vote, and why?
Your gaze is on the past - mine is on the future. Britain is the sum of her people - this glorious melange of talent, skill, inspiration, hope and graft, looking outwards over the oceans, ever expanding knowledge, innovation, exploration, breaking boundaries and always seeking onwards. One nation, secure in itself, endowed with a richesse of genius, far-sighted vision, aspiration, tenacity and inventiveness. Our hand is open to greet the world, to trade, share, learn and offer the hospitality of our nation, the scholarship of our learned institutions, the warmth of our people to those that come as invited guests to our shores.
To the future!
Why do you give succour to the likes of Ecky then, who clearly detests about half of his very own people?
Incidentally, the forebears of those in Dewsbury, Luton and Sparkbrook, who bombed LT on 07/07, were warmly "invited" here in the 1960s, by none other than one Enoch Powell, as the then health minister - nominally to staff the burgeoning NHS.
Anon,
If I may quote that great philosopher Baldrick: "Seethe, seethe, seethe. You're going to turn into a seethe!"
Why don't you go and find a hill somewhere and gather together with all your mates on 29th March. Have a party and don't hold back. After all, the world is going to end the next day.
@Anonymous 21:07...
"If only one in twenty Leave voters wanted a deal with the EU, then, because the Leave victory was so marginal, there is no national majority for no deal."
So does that mean that around 75 MP's with a majority of less than 3.8% (the margin that leave won by), that their position is not worth counting?
Well, various posts here support what I've suspected for some time.
That is, that many Leave voters voted the way that they did largely, maybe even only, to cause what they imagine would be some chagrin to those who payed attention at school, got the interesting jobs, the defined benefit pensions, and who raised happy families by attractive spouses.
In other words, out of hate, and for their fellow countryfolk worse still.
Ecky's are typical of what we see across a myriad threads.
Ecky? I chuckle like a drain when I imagine him in advanced old age, being helped onto the commode by a beefy Somali help assistant, scowling and muttering. He's good value.
The UK has seriously unique opportunities as the next industrial revolution bites - and Brits are up for it. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and sometimes these fall out along lines of cultural identity. Everyone has some talent or ability that UK plc can make use of. And anyone who has travelled in Europe knows that the UK is more tolerant, better integrated and less racist than just about anywhere east of Lowestoft. Not perfect, but better than the rest.
And I really, sincerely and deeply believe that Britain's younger people, her future, will be miles better off in a nation with close ties of friendship, kinship and cultural heritage with the nations of Europe whilst avoiding the fetters, burdens and drogues that come with EU membership.
Yes, all those Swedes, Danes, Dutch etc. will have to be replaced to take care of our ageing population.
And you are right, Raed. They will come from the ex-British Empire. That is, from Pakistan, from Bangladesh, From Nigeria, from Uganda, from Ghana and the rest.
Happy, Ecky?
You should be. You voted for it.
Paid attention
Uhm, you haven't met many care assistants, have you? Or don't you notice the servants? Maybe it's that privileged graduate job that makes you unable to see out past the Farrow & Ball fence ...
Swedes, Danes and Dutch have *never* worked at minimum wage jobs in the UK. They're mostly graduates and professionals and in competition with privileged graduates with secure pensions and attractive quinoa-munching spouses like yourself.
Care assistants are even now largely from Africa, the Phillipines, the world's poorer places.
Thanks Mark. You spotted a typo.
Raed, maybe I was also writing about doctors, radiographers and the like. The NHS is already reeling from the effects of that daft little vote.
Yes, because, like most, UK employment and trade union law is sovereign, apart from H&S, those workers in the UK cannot defend their T&Cs, and are amongst the worst in the EU.
You really do spout such bollocks, such ignorant, uninformed, specious twaddle. It's like responding to a petulant and jejune sixth-former. Just for once, please check the FACTS before you gush your stream-of-consciousness fatuous drivel.
https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7783
Breakdown of NHS staff by country of origin
and Brits are up for it. -Raed
I will placidly work any hours at any notice for my swaggering employer in return for my lowly pittance -Anon
By strange coincidence I am just back from taking coffee with someone far removed from my usual social circle of dead beats and people who find the "Scyld's Funeral passage " of Beowulf, in the original, absolutely riverting- a friend of a friend of a friend kinda thing. This person, whom I shall refer to as 'Jever' (a private injoke) is a household name, at least in the business world, a brit. Jever is at the top of his profession, which is currently something above all the individual CEOS of the companies his employers own. Very much 'Nightcap in a hotel in Milan having come in from Dubai or Bombay, lunch in Washington DC...and, at some point in the future, dinner through a straw in Addenbrooke's cardiac unit. Earns more money than anyone could shove up their noses. Headhunters don't bother contacting him because 1. he can ring up the head of any Multinational on the planet and say 'I can start tomorrow' and 2. his current employer probably owns the headhunter firm anyways.
Whilst he was making me a coffee (from some chrome plated bit of Italian wizardy that probably cost more than my car (ok, not saying much cos my car is a 20+ year old Citroen ZX non turbo diesel that does 0-60 in a month...like i said Jever is waaay out of my comfort zone of acquaintances!) he was also sacking a lot of people in a foreign company. Naturally he didn't tell me the name of the firm and I wouldn't have dreamt of asking. Sacking people (some quite high up) in a different time zone via email from his phone, while making a latte with the other hand. The reason for their dismissal? They had pulled a sicky en mass/not got on top of a sickness problem.
So we got talking about the differences between countries and 'work ethic'. He said this particular firm has sites in the US, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, and Backwardstan. According to him the UK is by far the worst country worldwide for 'sickies', worse even than America (which surprised me). As to why that should be; apparently workers T&Cs in England are far too good, wages too high and it is really difficult to sack someone...at least for absenteeism.
We didn't touch on Brexit, both having been brought up properly not to discuss sex. religion or other contentious topics when meeting people for the first time but I very much got the impression that IF UK.plc wants to succeed post Brexit then there will need to be some changes in employment law to keep us competitive.
That wasn't a typo, you didn't know the difference between paid and payed
Haha! At that moment I clearly didn't Mark. Now find another eh?
As for facts, Raed, could you please try to disprove my claim, that Enoch Powell was responsible as Health Minister, for a major wave of immigration recruitment from India, Pakistan, the W.I etc.?
Jack, what is signally needed to increase the productivity of the UK workforce is to educate them. This country lags much of the Continent badly.
PS. I didn't know it for sure, Mark, but apparently "payed" is also acceptable in that context (a past tense):
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/payed
I have to defend the God-given rights of Brits to throw a sickie - and yes, workers are well-protected. Unless you catch them on TV in the crowd of a test-match (hint: if you throwing a sickie to go see a sporting event, make sure it isn't being broadcast with crowd close-ups)or other prima facie evidence, it's takes aeons to get rid of them. BUT having in my junior days used the sickie for any number of chronic hangovers, I have a certain sympathy.
Wearing my management hat, we got round the problem by linking a 7% annual bonus to zero sickies for the year, falling to zero bonus for I forget what number of sickies. It worked. Sickness fell by half in the first year.
More seriously, low productivity is the curse of our economy. Frequently caused by either underinvestment or arcane working practices. One such is the use of faxes in the NHS - because they're used to it and it suits their antiquated procedures. It costs millions in lost productivity over the alternative - email. Now they're all throwing hissy fits because they've been banned from buying any more fax machines - just about the last market in the world for the things. Kids today have never seen a fax machine.
Well, permanent staff might be reasonably OK Raed, but that's just it. Firms will go to any lengths to employ "contractors", the nominally self-employed, or use ZHCs, thanks to poor UK regulation.
The proportion of Proper Jobs has declined significantly, and pay for the majority has stagnated for years, whatever might have happened at the top.
7% annual bonus to zero sickies for the year, falling to zero bonus for I forget what number of sickies. It worked. Raed
I'm sure it did (and after you with the 'Bad Hangover Sicky' form please-as a proper, but now dry, alcoholic I did have the grace to feel slightly uncomfortable as Jever was explaining things). However what is more likely after Brexit, that firms lobby the government to reduce worker's rights or decide to introduce a voluntary non-sick bonus scheme across UK.plc? And even if they did, no doubt the Unions would scream it was 'discriminatory' against all those workers being imported from countries where the health care is poorer than here.
Jack, what is signally needed to increase the productivity of the UK workforce is to educate them. This country lags much of the Continent badly.- Anon
I would make the case that workers here are overeducated as a whole, overeducated with marxist/SJW shite and things like 'gender awareness'. Things like being able to write your own name or read a manual are considered unimportant compared to seeing docus about the historical VICTIMS of Slavery etc
Jack, you are actually agreeing with me, though I did not expand enough.
The UK has to recruit from abroad, because its own young too often do not have the mathematics, sciences, grammar, and other languages, which are the true markers of intellectual stature, and which form the basis for medicine, engineering, research, design and yes, for nursing too these days.
Degrees such as you suggest are, from a material POV, worthless.
Tuesday night solved nothing. Just another step along the road to who-knows-where. I am even tempted to think No Deal would be the better deal, not because Brexit makes any sense but because the chaos might force our politics into becoming responsive - by bitter necessity.
But underlying all this is a feeling that Brexit has nothing to do with the real problem - that developed nations have a wide slab of population that requires too high a wage to be usefully employable. We might blame this on bad education and poor industrial policies and also on bad housing policies. But even if we sorted these out (and it would take decades) I doubt we could find a productive use for a wide slab of the population. Motivation requires pull as well as push and I don't really see us teaching tensor calculus or Hegelian philosophy to 14 year olds, diminishing returns and all that.
Then there is democracy. An interesting concept and a flexible one but not necessarily very efficient and vulnerable to interest groups. To bring about the New Singapore or even survive economically we might very well have to become a bit more authoritarian. Not perhaps what folk voted for. This is I suspect where the Tory Right is taking us, do as you are told and like it.
Unfortunately the idyllic housing and schools and industries and jobs of the Sunny Uplands are most unlikely to materialise. Look forward to more BTL, harsher Universal Credit, more sharp elbows. On the other hand company cities with company housing may become the new norm. Selling out to the USA? not so likely, the Chinese yes.
Uhm, the UK recruits from abroad *primarily* because our economy demands more workers at all levels and skills than we have available. The UK has a full-employment economy. We're short of fruit pickers and short of SQL (or whatever the latest version is) programmers. But we can't turn our own fruit pickers into SQL programmers just by, erm, raising their 'intellectual stature'. And we'd be even shorter of good fruit pickers if we did.
I'm fed up with shouting. Why do you continue to post such poorly-supported gumph? The UK scores more highly on tertiary educational attainment than France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Austria, Greece, Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Educational_attainment_statistics
Sorry Jim that was aimed at anon above you ..
I agree with much that you say.
As Jim says, the UK cannot offer well-paid jobs for large numbers of unqualified, unskilled UK people.
If you want to restructure the economy to be a higher value, knowledge and skills based one, then the culture of wilful education-immunity, amongst many of the English, historically labouring classes cannot go on.
They are not intrinsically beyond education.
We must dispel the damaging myth, that people are, as a rule, born with their fixed intelligence or lack of it, and that this defines and limits their academic aptitude. Stupidity is largely taught by feckless disengaged parents, and intelligence itself, the thinking skills which make it, can be learnt to a large degree too. However, if a girl is taught at home that knowing Katie Price's baby's name matters more than her very own grammar, and boys that remembering who scored last Saturday is more important than numeracy for instance, then there's little that teachers can do.
And so Remains continue to insist that they know what we voted for, and that we only voted to Leave because we're thick, uneducated, racist, unqualified, idle, feckless, envious, and Brexit makes no sense. This sort of dribbling Remain propaganda seems like an unending fart from the corpse of the proverbial dead horse - it may seem compelling to them, but to us it's just flatulence.
It's pretty basic stuff: Parliament in 2015 gave us the choice of two deals - Remain in the EU under terms re-negotiated by David Cameron, or Leave the EU by exiting the EU treaties. In 2016, on balance, we decided to Leave. Either we do Leave, or democracy in the UK is broken. No amount of wailing or special-pleading can change that.
No.
UK.
Parliament.
Can.
Bind.
Its.
Successor.
Learn it, Budgie.
I have been studiously avoiding the news all day but have now caught up a little bit: the Customs Union and delaying Art 50 seem to be on the cards again? Hmmm I wonder how that one will work out for Teresa....
Anon, Can EU parliaments bind their successors?
Just asking.
And how does "acquis communautaire" come into this or qualified majority voting?
Interesting questions, Mark.
If you look at countries with written constitutions, some of them can change those by a specified supermajority in their legislatures - the US might be such a case.
So in a sense they can bind future assemblies, to the extent that they likely could not reach that supermajority again to reverse the change.
I don't see a reason why, when it comes to law, rather than to constitutional articles - the Treaties - the EU Parliament should be able to bind itself going forwards. Substantive Treaty change would need the agreement of all heads of governments too as I understand it.
Without re-reading a great deal I can't say just now which areas are subject to QMV and which require unanimity amongst the heads of member governments, with the exception of an EU defence arrangement, which I did ascertain would require unanimity, i.e. any member could veto that, as the Cameron said he would. Any member could also veto a new joiner, and a number said that they would never accept Turkey, so that threat was always a Leave lie.
*Although the terms of a common defence policy are now QMV, my reading of the Treaty is that the actual setting up of an EU military force, as a provision of that policy, would require unanimity.
The member countries are represented by their ministers in the Council Of Ministers, where the UK has the maximum population-wighted twenty-nine votes along with Germany, France and Italy as I recall.
The European Council of the leaders generally meets for general, overarching matters.
The Acquis is the body of EU laws passes and precedents set by the ECJ, just as our law is here.
"Tuesday night solved nothing. Just another step along the road to who-knows-where. I am even tempted to think No Deal would be the better deal, not because Brexit makes any sense but because the chaos might force our politics into becoming responsive - by bitter necessity."
Brexit (as in No Deal) is but a first step of a much needed reincarnation needed for the political class in this country. As the Brexit process has highlighted (and as the EU is designed to obfuscate) our political class are self obsessed shit.
We need root and branch replacement and reform. Whether that is 10% achievable remains to be seen.
"No.
UK.
Parliament.
Can.
Bind.
Its.
Successor.
Learn it, Budgie."
Er, Lisbon, Maastrict etc.?
No, Parliament could repeal the relevant Acts and not bother with Article 50, John.
That is exactly what ukip said that they would do if they got a Commons majority, remember? No referendum, just the primacy of Parliament and a manifesto commitment to withdrawal. There's irony for you eh?
It would have crashed the UK's international standing mind, but there would have been nothing unconstitutional from a UK perspective in that.
And can I just say that these Remoaner guardians of democracy are the same bastards found stealing from us through their expenses? Guardians of fuck all but their own self-interest. On balance, and it is not a faultless analysis, the Brexiteers are generally those who sinned least.
What, you mean like cash-in-hand, tax-dodging, ukip-voting, White Van Man does, mongoose?
Anon, It's not Parliament binding its successor it is the people.
26% tops of them can try, but there's no law saying that they can, Budgie.
Anon, Every Parliament is bound by its predecessors - until and unless it enacts a specific piece of legislation to repeal the previous law. There has been no repeal of the 2015 Referendum Act, even if repealing it could nullify the vote. The UK Parliament (and government) continues to be bound by the Referendum result.
That's a self-evident banality. It's like saying marriage is irreversible until someone wants a divorce. The moment that Parliament expresses a different view, that view trumps a previous one.
There is literally nothing in law to prevent that.
But you are implying law-breaking on a massive scale by many people - though a minority - as a threat, I surmise, aimed at overthrowing the Consititution?
As Thatcher said "we do not give in to terrorism".
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