Tag: PeoplesReferendum

Article 50, Brexit, Referendum

How do you ‘just get on with doing it’ when no one can agree what ‘it’ is?

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
Ths blogpost was written on January 2nd 2019.

brexit-referendum-question

As Winston Churchill might have said, but didn’t as, in that quaint American way of describing death, he has long “passed over”, we begin 2019 with the dreary steeples of Brexit emerging once again.

What Churchill actually said in 1922 was: “The whole map of Europe has been changed… but as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again.”

He might well have been talking about the Irish backstop.

Weeks away from March 29th, when the UK is scheduled to leave the EU, and no one can yet say with any certainty what will happen. What an incredible position for a country like the UK to be in. In the face of the biggest constitutional, political, and economic change the country is going to make in over forty years it appears to be deadlocked over what it should do.

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Article 50, Backstop, Brexit, Negotiating, Theresa May

Where next on #Brexit… My Modest Proposal

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This blogpost was written on Sunday, Dec 9th, 2018

BoJo

It is impossible to say what will happen in the week ahead, other than it appears that the May government has little chance of winning the Tuesday’s vote on the proposed Brexit Withdrawal Agreement.

How things play out after that it is anyone’s guess.

Much will depend on Tuesday’s numbers, particularly the government losing margin. Such is the state of things that there are even suggestions in today’s Sunday newspapers that May could delay Tuesday’s vote as she does a “Maggie May” dash to Brussels to demand changes to the deal, specifically the removal of the Irish backstop. Goodluck with that.

No matter what happens, the choice facing the UK is clear: stay in the EU or leave the EU.

Many will say that this was decided by the June 2016 referendum. Since then, however, much new information on what leaving the EU involves and the price to be paid has become available.

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Article 50, Brexit, British Government, Irish border, Northern Ireland

#Brexit and the Politics of Hard Numbers

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blog was written on Aug 26, 2018.

Commons voteIn the end, democratic politics comes down to the brutality of numbers… of hard numbers. Either you have the votes to get measures through parliament or you don’t.

Politics is about being able to count. Ask the Australian politician Peter Dutton about hard numbers. Last Monday he believed he had the votes to oust the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and take the top job himself. He had the votes, as they say in Australia to ‘spill’ Turnbull but lost to Scott Morrison when it came to the decision as to who would replace Turnbull. Dutton counted the wrong numbers.

For a great part of the past 100 years parliamentary majorities and party discipline generally gave UK governments the numbers they needed in the House of Commons.

But not when it comes to Brexit.

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