No Deal on Brexit

May's plan was voted down by huge margin. What next?

https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-deal-rejected-by-432-votes-to-202-2/

is the UK more or less dysfunctional than the US?


They can replace their Prime Minister more easily than we can our President. 


They're fukt over there. They're no more together than we are. They had 2 years to come up with a Brexit plan and they did sweet F-A.


They had a year to come up with a plan BEFORE the referendum even took place. No one expected a vote to Leave and now they're all screwed. Not one of those Brexiteers had the nuts to stay in there and finish the job. Bastard Tories and their pathetic opposition have destroyed that country.


But, ridski, Boris Johnson... cheese

Don’t know what to say about Jeremy Corbyn: another no-confidence tabled, but how can that truly change things now?


I have no respect for Corbyn. His obvious interest is in becoming PM.

Corbyn's been gushing and blabbering that he could get a better deal. But, no details. He's done everything possible to spike May's deal, opposing her at every turn, in the hope that a loss of confidence will cause him to be selected as PM or another general election.

Vote for Corbyn or Labor and we'll get you a better deal. Sure. Like vote for Trump and we'll MAGA.


Who the heck knows now, joanne? This is a complete mess. They just took all the money and effed off with it. There was a time when I genuinely thought about moving back home, but these last couple of years I have no idea how much of a home will be there.


ridski, if you decide to come here, you know we’ll share good humour and a love of pantoscheese


I wish our congress was as entertaining to watch.  Overall, it's a crazy situation they're in.


There was a time, when there was a degree of mutual respect and cooperation in politics.  Now:

  • The 2 party system (US) is not only highly dysfunctional, but it managed to lead to the election of a snake oil salesman (to put it kindly).
  • The near 2 party system (UK), also with 'winner takes all' structure, is just as bad.  That they 'didn't think it could happen', and then had no serious plan to deal with the issue when it did, is outrageous.  They need a current day 'Vinnie'.
  • Sweden (still no government), Belgium (two bickering factions), Denmark (weak coalition relying on all center/right parties) and many other countries illustrate the weakness of the multi-party structure.  It might more fairly represent the popular vote, but they get nothing done.

Some of this comes from changing (self-centered) attitudes and indifference (failure to vote).  I fear that we have careened so far away from the Serve Your Country foundation, that we can't get back on track.


We have a multi-party system forced to operate as a two-party preferred, and we also have compulsory ‘show up to vote’, so that voter apathy doesn’t count in the same way. Voter apathy counts as a massive distrust of politicians and political systems and as a complete lack of interest in understanding how our constitutional compact is supposed to work. (If you don’t know how it’s supposed to work, you can’t begin to understand how to change it)

I can’t tell which system is better - ours, the UK’s (at least we both have a monarch who in theory could step in and say ‘enough! Begin again!’), or yours. 



Voting for Brexit was about as lame-brained as voting for Trump.


joanne said:
We have a multi-party system forced to operate as a two-party preferred, and we also have compulsory ‘show up to vote’, so that voter apathy doesn’t count in the same way. Voter apathy counts as a massive distrust of politicians and political systems and as a complete lack of interest in understanding how our constitutional compact is supposed to work. (If you don’t know how it’s supposed to work, you can’t begin to understand how to change it)
I can’t tell which system is better - ours, the UK’s (at least we both have a monarch who in theory could step in and say ‘enough! Begin again!’), or yours. 


 I think a parliamentary system is better. It doesn't stop people from making bad voting decisions -- if someone's concern is how to encourage better electoral outcomes, I don't think such a system is possible -- but it provides a way out of political impasses in a way our system doesn't.

With our fixed term, separate branches approach, we essentially get a chance to elect rival governments every two years which, contrary to the Founders' vision, encourages conflict rather than compromise. We can see the result now with this ridiculous government shut down and the near-misses we've had with the debt ceiling (a bomb I'm convinced will eventually go off if we don't defuse it first). Perhaps worst of all, we keep sliding into what is essentially anti-democratic minority rule, with Republicans doing everything they can to make that the regular state of affairs -- undermining the legitimacy of the whole system.

In a parliamentary system, you don't necessarily avoid a Trump, but you can at least hold new elections to break an impasse once the government has lost the confidence of the voters. I would be curious as to whether parliamentary systems retain higher levels of perceived legitimacy.


I don't get the strong resistance in the UK to holding a second referendum.  If such an important question as Brexit can't produce the same result twice, isn't that clear evidence that it's a bad idea?

And one other thing I wrote here right after the vote which has become even more clear in the two and a half years since is that this vote really screwed the Irish.  And the question of what to do with the Norther Ireland-Ireland border has indeed been one of the most difficult to solve.  


The first vote was non-binding. It should be obvious to the whole country by now that Brexit is brain-dead stupid. I can't imagine there'd be much public blowback if the government just said "never mind, bad idea".


drummerboy said:
The first vote was non-binding. It should be obvious to the whole country by now that Brexit is brain-dead stupid. I can't imagine there'd be much public blowback if the government just said "never mind, bad idea".

to me the worst part of the entire episode is how older people were the ones that drove the result.  It almost seems immoral that they foisted this on the country and the younger people are the ones who are going to have to live most of their lives with the result.  The degree to which Brexit will reduce opportunities for young British people to work or live in the rest of Europe is very discouraging.  Not all that different from how old people in the U.S. stuck us with Trump.



drummerboy said:

I can't imagine there'd be much public blowback if the government just said "never mind, bad idea".

I think your imagination, in this case, might could use a reboot.


tomcat said:
There was a time, when there was a degree of mutual respect and cooperation in politics.  Now:


  • The 2 party system (US) is not only highly dysfunctional, but it managed to lead to the election of a snake oil salesman (to put it kindly).
  • The near 2 party system (UK), also with 'winner takes all' structure, is just as bad.  That they 'didn't think it could happen', and then had no serious plan to deal with the issue when it did, is outrageous.  They need a current day 'Vinnie'.
  • Sweden (still no government), Belgium (two bickering factions), Denmark (weak coalition relying on all center/right parties) and many other countries illustrate the weakness of the multi-party structure.  It might more fairly represent the popular vote, but they get nothing done.
Some of this comes from changing (self-centered) attitudes and indifference (failure to vote).  I fear that we have careened so far away from the Serve Your Country foundation, that we can't get back on track.

 You have not mentioned the worst example :

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-prosecutor-s-office-recommends-to-indict-bibi-for-bribery-in-two-corruption-cases-1.6763653


DaveSchmidt said:


drummerboy said:

I can't imagine there'd be much public blowback if the government just said "never mind, bad idea".
I think your imagination, in this case, might could use a reboot.

 I had a chat with my Mum yesterday, who's still a die-hard Brexiteer despite having seen the clustereff they left behind. She blames May for kicking out all the people who "could've done it right" like Dave Davis and Dominic Raab. Then again, I think my Mum voted UKIP in the 2014 European Parliament elections which led to Cameron calling for the referendum as a way to appease UKIP voters at home and keep them on the side of the Tories.

Still, she is my Mum.


DaveSchmidt said:


drummerboy said:

I can't imagine there'd be much public blowback if the government just said "never mind, bad idea".
I think your imagination, in this case, might could use a reboot.

 "might could"?


drummerboy said:

"might could"?

A useful locution I was happy to pick up in the South.


DaveSchmidt said:


drummerboy said:

"might could"?
A useful locution I was happy to pick up in the South.

 One of my favorites from when I lived there.  That, and ciphering.   I've always been good at ciphering.  


ridski said:


 I had a chat with my Mum yesterday, who's still a die-hard Brexiteer despite having seen the clustereff they left behind. She blames May for kicking out all the people who "could've done it right" like Dave Davis and Dominic Raab. Then again, I think my Mum voted UKIP in the 2014 European Parliament elections which led to Cameron calling for the referendum as a way to appease UKIP voters at home and keep them on the side of the Tories.
Still, she is my Mum.

Out of curiosity, why does she believe Brexit is a good idea? 


basil said:


ridski said:

 I had a chat with my Mum yesterday, who's still a die-hard Brexiteer despite having seen the clustereff they left behind. She blames May for kicking out all the people who "could've done it right" like Dave Davis and Dominic Raab. Then again, I think my Mum voted UKIP in the 2014 European Parliament elections which led to Cameron calling for the referendum as a way to appease UKIP voters at home and keep them on the side of the Tories.
Still, she is my Mum.
Out of curiosity, why does she believe Brexit is a good idea? 

 Because she dropped out of school at age 12 and has never been much of a critical thinker. Her neighborhood has diversified from mostly white with a black and Indian population, to mostly Eastern European, a large handful of which were unemployed and begging in front of cash machines and shopfronts, and she thought this was bad (in reality, it used to be Scottish people and Irish travelers before that... The neighborhood was always a shithole) and blamed Blair and Labour for letting everyone in, thought the UK should shore up the border and stop listening to those pesky EU types who don't live here.

We don't really talk about it much, though, especially after I found out she was seriously considering voting UKIP, so she may have other reasons on top of that.


Taxation without representation.   Way back when in the 70's Britain voted to join the common market (note:common market).  It is no longer a common market just a bastion for Eurocrats to sit on their spotty behinds squeezing blackheads.  The idiots in Brussels don't give a tinker's cuss about the Cumberland sausage.  good riddance to the EU.


Why should some unelected Flemish autocrat in Brussels dictate what Brit mums should and shouldn’t do.


Believe we on this side of the pond fought a war or two over similar circumstances.


Robert_Casotto said:
Why should some unelected Flemish autocrat in Brussels dictate what Brit mums should and shouldn’t do.


Believe we on this side of the pond fought a war or two over similar circumstances.

I thought we fought against "taxation without representation" on this side of the pond. The UK is well re-presented in EU/Brussels at the moment, so this must be for a different reason.



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