In the News

[Jubal]

In today's news, the UK parliament voted for a solution to the Brexit deal.

The solution involves mechanisms that don't exist, had been ruled out by the EU before they voted on it, and was ruled out again by the EU within five minutes of them passing it.

They also voted to rule out leaving with no deal. Except that you can't legally do that without an alternative. Which they haven't got and can't agree on. So they can't actually do the thing they voted to do.

My reaction:

[comrade_general]

Return the land to the Welsh!

[Jubal]

From the UK, there is no news, nobody knows what to do ans everything is a mess. The latest farce is that the government plan of "force them to back our deal by running the clock down" has been blocked by the Speaker because after something gets rejected in two of the four largest Parliament defeats on record trying again is taking the piss a bit.

We have literally ten days left to go and nobody even knows what options we have.

[comrade_general]

Hooray!

[Jubal]

I just want them to revoke Article 50 and stop the whole stupid thing at this point. I've very much in the last few years gone from "oh that was bad, I hope we find a compromise" to "this is clearly a mess, let's look for a way to get a democratic mandate to halt it" to "JUST MAKE IT STOP FOR PORTUGALS SAKE".

[Tusky]

Same here, although I can't see how it can

[Jubal]

No, indeed, realistically I have no idea of a way out of this. Which in turn disincentivises me from taking anything but the position I actually want - if there's no route to compromise, there's no point in me trying to adopt a compromising stance.

[comrade_general]

No choice now but to open fire on Fort Sumpter. It's revolution, bitchez!

[Pentagathus]

Make the colonies colonies again!!!!
It seems like we be portugaled lads but we'll just have to wait and see. Which is getting tiresome. Hopefully the impending apocalypse will a bit more entertaining than all this bollocks.

[Jubal]

On the colonies front, it is kinda historical poetic justice that for the first time in history, a major negotiation involving Ireland and the UK is happening where the boot is entirely on the Irish foot. One of the big, early delusions on the Brexit side was that the EU would value German car exports enough that they'd ditch the needs of Ireland and its border issues. A topic on which they have been very, very wrong indeed.

[Pentagathus]

Yeah those plantations really backfired on us. Tbh I'm not sure the border issue would be such an issue if Old Mother Theresa hadn't been relying on the DUP, would having regulatory de-alignment between mainland UK and NI have been a big problem otherwise?

[Clockwork]

It's a fantastic cluster-portugal demonstrating the need for a different political system. It's also not apparent what happens if we just brexit the hell out and leave south ireland to irle.

[Jubal]

@Pent: De-alignment between GB and NI might have been do-able if not for the DUP and Tory right wing, that's true. I think the ERG would've blocked it even if the DUP hadn't, though, so it would have required something much more cross-party, and that's been a basic problem throughout in terms of producing a deal that people could accept.

@Clockwork: Agreed on this showing huge systemic issues. One of the reasons the EU is so baffled by this is that most EU countries have systems that are much more multi-party and consensus driven and used to hammering out deals across the internal political class: the fact in the UK that Labour and the Tories have very, very similar Brexit policies but simply won't agree between themselves for political reasons is bizarre to, for example, Austrians for whom a Socialist-Conservative government is their usual style of governing coalition.

As to what happens if we just crash out - I agree it's unclear, but "a mess in which we come off a lot worse than the EU" seems a pretty good general starting bet. They're better prepared for it and less exposed to the results than the UK is. Like, I think a world in which the UK had super effectively carefully prepared for No Deal and could use that as leverage maaaaay exist in an alternate timeline, but for better or worse that's not the one we're living in. We literally had our government nearly give an emergency No Deal shipping contract to a company with no boats. You go to Brexit negotiations with the government you have, alas, not the one you'd like to have.

[comrade_general]

@CG: Attaboy.

[Pentagathus]

From what I gather our current no deal "plan" is to fall back on WTO terms but using the exact same tariffs and quotas as we have at the moment as a member state. So in the short term at least we'd see literally no benefit to being out of the EU in terms of that sweet sweet free trade. What's the point bruvs. Go hard or go home.