Theresa May (Vol.2)
Discussion
elanfan said:
Fully expecting a Tory and Labour wipe out by the Brexit Party in EU elections today. What about Farage for Deputy PM?
That would seem a sensible idea, by way of a Tory/BP the up at the next GE. However there is no chance of it happening with the current Tory leadership. Not just May but the whole parliamentary party and central organisation who would rather be in coalition with Corbyn than leave the EU. Stigproducts said:
I recall when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister there was a lot of talk about how it was the convention, when a governing party changed leader (and therefore prime minister) to call a general election so the voters could rubber stamp the change. Gordon Brown bottled it, because he thought he would be ousted and it was "his turn" so yah boo sucks, and everyone was outraged.
Is that still a thing, and the Tories will likely trigger an election or have they all done away with that now, and we will be stuck with Boris for two years instead of being able to elect Sir Nigel of Farage as the new PM before Oct 31st?
I remember that claim at the time.Is that still a thing, and the Tories will likely trigger an election or have they all done away with that now, and we will be stuck with Boris for two years instead of being able to elect Sir Nigel of Farage as the new PM before Oct 31st?
It sort of fell apart a bit when it was pointed out that John major took over from Mrs Thatcher without an election being called.
Gordon Browns "bottling of it" cost him dear. There was a real feeling had he gone to the polls he would have won at that point.
JuanCarlosFandango said:
That would seem a sensible idea, by way of a Tory/BP the up at the next GE. However there is no chance of it happening with the current Tory leadership. Not just May but the whole parliamentary party and central organisation who would rather be in coalition with Corbyn than leave the EU.
Why would a Tory party that's Eurosceptic enough to get into bed with the BP need the BP?This is how the whole farce started. By trying to shut down the Eurosceptic bits of the Tory party. Going full no deal leave would be a massive gamble and likely turn off as many voters as it gains, even among leavers.
I just hope Labour do badly enough as well and need the moderating influence of the LDs in a coalition.
Bill said:
Why would a Tory party that's Eurosceptic enough to get into bed with the BP need the BP?
This is how the whole farce started. By trying to shut down the Eurosceptic bits of the Tory party. Going full no deal leave would be a massive gamble and likely turn off as many voters as it gains, even among leavers.
I just hope Labour do badly enough as well and need the moderating influence of the LDs in a coalition.
That was my point really. The Tory party is not Eurosceptic enough by a country mile and would sooner a coalition with Labour or just about anyone than a coalition with the BP that would make them actually leave.This is how the whole farce started. By trying to shut down the Eurosceptic bits of the Tory party. Going full no deal leave would be a massive gamble and likely turn off as many voters as it gains, even among leavers.
I just hope Labour do badly enough as well and need the moderating influence of the LDs in a coalition.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Because the UK was fully engaged in "the project" back then. It was at the heart of the EU, leading and guiding and influencing. Goals and directions were agreed and aligned with the UK being a big cat in that particular jungle. But times change, electorates change, govts change, policies change and the UK is a pretty small domesticated cat in the jungle now. It's kind of a shame, I'd have preferred the UK to remain the big bad old jungle cat bossing Europe, but it really is time to fro out of it.
Mark Benson said:
AstonZagato said:
Mark Benson said:
I'm a 'born again' Brexiteer (I voted Remain but it was a head vs heart decision that I've come to regret now we see that 'project fear' has thus far not manifested itself in anything like the dire predictions before the referendum) but I don't think there ever was a 'good deal' to be had - I do however believe an acceptable deal would have been possible with a credible threat of 'no deal'.
We went into the negotiations looking to minimise the harm rather than maximise the opportunity and everything flowed from there.
The people who said that the EU has as much to lose as we do were correct, but the people we sent to the negotiations immediately gave that advantage away. Once you take walking away off the table it becomes simply a begging exercise.
It is an interesting unknown. I too rather believe that, had we entered into the negotiations with "We are going on no deal", we'd now be in a far better position than we are now. However, that ship has sailed. Put even the most rabid "no-deal" Brexiteer into No 10 and we are still faced with the fact that the EU has a WA that they spent 3 years negotiating and they know that parliament is terrified (probably rightly) of an unplanned no deal exit. The EU will not budge. Why would they?We went into the negotiations looking to minimise the harm rather than maximise the opportunity and everything flowed from there.
The people who said that the EU has as much to lose as we do were correct, but the people we sent to the negotiations immediately gave that advantage away. Once you take walking away off the table it becomes simply a begging exercise.
To get back to a point where a threat of leaving without a deal could give us leverage, we'd need to revoke Article 50, plan deeply for a no-deal, build the technical solutions to the NI border problems, ensure we have all the niggly bits like flights, medicine, security-sharing nailed down. Then we could invoke A50 again and negotiate from a position of credible strength.
There are not the numbers in parliament to achieve that. I suspect that an election will end up with just the same muddle as we have at the moment.
I'm not sure what the future holds. We could 'pull the plaster' and leave on WTO, trying to make the best of it or we could revoke until we're better prepared.
Either option will not be welcomed by around 40% of the population while enraging another 10% of the hardliners.
The genie is out of the bottle now though, so we have to do something.
I was (am?) a Remainer, but this negotiation has been predicated on the notion that we would never truly accept No Deal. We never planned for it, and the EU and many others saw through May's feeble "No deal is better than a bad deal" rhetoric. As a Remainer she was arguably the wrong person to be negotiating it at all. Basically, they've held all the cards from day one in the negotiation simply because they knew, or at least very strongly believed, that we wouldn't dare push it to No Deal.
I do believe that we couldn't have got a truly good deal, though, on the basis that the other members would never accept a situation where we essentially get all of the things we want without any of the perceived negatives.
I think "We went into the negotiations looking to minimise the harm rather than maximise the opportunity and everything flowed from there" really hits the nail on the head. Perhaps we should've gone in with No Deal as the starting point, and built up from there. I know that's a simplistic way of looking at it, but what we've got instead - May's deal - is essentially everything the EU wanted, with no meaningful concessions whatsoever, with us leaving in name only.
Whichever way you look at it it's a total shambles and I can't see any good way out of it.
king
I really hope BJ will make his first PM appearance at the Despatch Box in a Harry Potter costume with a souped-up wizard's rod to make all this go away and magically produce the perfect solution we've all been craving. A bit surprised he hasn't been asked to outline this solution by the Tory kingmakers but hey, I'm sure it's all in hand.
If only Theresa had the Ark Royal and Invincible and 20 harrier jump jets like Maggie had for parliament....
She's worked extremely hard to try and get something "best for the UK" from this complete mess, but it has now just sadly sunk to Little England party politics and her attempts have failed.
She has failed, but I admire her, for trying everything to get the best for the UK. She should go and leave the monkey house to rule itself. Her work load over the last 18 months must have been immense.
So we will end up with a hard bump rather than a soft bump it seems and rather than a lot of people being slightly unhappy we will end up with a lot of people being very unhappy.
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