Tag: Referendum

Brexit, British Government, Brussels, Michel Barnier, Negotiating

#Brexit: Dealing with the EU (Part 2 of a series of 3 blogposts)

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This Blogpost was wrtitten on Monday Sept 16th

bettel

As we wrote last week, it seems to us that if the UK was to “make Brexit work” three things were of fundamental importance.

  1. The government needed to develop a consensus in the UK about what Brexit meant, some form of widely-shared vision of what the UK outside the EU should look like.
  2. Resulting from one, negotiate a future deal with the EU that would minimise the impact of withdrawal on the UK economy and provide for a “good neighbour” relationship for the future
  3. Hope that geopolitical developments across the globe would fall favourable for a UK out of the EU, facilitating the conclusion of new trade deals which would open new export markets.

In last week’s BEERG Brexit Briefing we examined the failure of, first, Theresa May, and now Boris Johnson to attempt to build any consensus in the UK around what Brexit should mean in practice and how this lack of consensus was adversely impacting the UK’s discussions with the EU.

Continue reading →

Backstop, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Theresa May

Exit the May; Enter the Boris? #Brexit

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This blogpost was written on Tuesday May 21st 

theresa-may-boris-johnson

I am slowly losing the will to live. Brexit is driving me to despair. I’m not sure how much more of this stuff I can take. I have tried to make sense of it. God knows I have tried. But no matter how hard I try, and I try hard, I just can’t seem to understand what it is the UK wants. Does anyone?

If indeed you can even say “the UK” as there is little agreement between its four constituent parts, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, over Brexit. But let’s wait and see what numbers the European Parliament elections throw up next weekend. I have little doubt that the “pop-up” Brexit Party of Farage will win about a third of the votes. Which means that two-thirds of the electorate will not be voting for Farage fantasies.

I suspect, when the numbers are sliced and diced, that they will show the UK still pretty evenly split between Leave and Remain, though perhaps with a small lead for Remain. How does any politician deliver major constitutional and economic change in such circumstances without causing deep and long-lasting splits in the community? Quite frankly, it becomes next to impossible to do so.

Continue reading →

2
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.

Continue reading →

7
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.

Continue reading →

8