Let's be honest here: If parliament had voted for an early election, a no-deal Brexit would have been inevitable.
Boris would have simply delayed dissolving parliament so the Oct 31 deadline passed while parliament was dissolved. To do so would have been legal and rational.
The opposition would have had to be dumb to fall for that.
That would've been both politically and legally risky. Folks would undoubtedly challenge it on a multitude of legal grounds, some of which could well succeed, and also the general consensus seems to be that Boris' best shot at winning the election is to schedule it before Oct 31 so he can turn it into a vote on no-deal Brexit and scoop up the Brexit Party voter base.
If Boris's main policy is the delivery of a no-deal brexit, and he had a choice to face an election without delivering it, or shortly after successfully delivering it, you think he'd prefer the former?
I mean, I'd prefer to face election as the victorious conquering hero. Unless I thought everything would go to shit the day after no deal.
There should have been an election already. I think it was dishonest not to bring down the government in the recent vote of No Confidence, since it was and is blatantly obvious that absolutely nobody has confidence in Theresa May’s government. But they feared letting Labour in.
Edit to add: I would have thought some emergency compromise might work, eg a moderate Tory who backs the consensus plan as PM, maybe Corbyn as deputy, maybe Keir Starmer as Brexit secretary. Get the Brexit process on an even keel now, agree to call an election later.
That’s probably unthinkable on all sides, though. I feel like Corbyn in particular doesn’t actually care much about Brexit either way, and is much more focused on just winning an election and getting a Labour government in.
Labour and other party members knew this was a trap. But the real reason they abstained is they wanted to truly rule out a no-deal brexit plan and also to further scrutinize the government.
Boris is now forced to ask Brussels for an extension due to parliament taking over the brexit process. Only then a general election can happen.
MPs would then have been voted out for overruling the will of the people.
There was a referendum. Remain lost. Last year we had another General Election, with the Conservatives campaigning on a platform to get Brexit done, and they won decisively.
Legally, Brexit was more like an opinion poll. The proper response would have been to recognize the slim majority's interest in leaving, negotiate a Brexit deal before committing to leaving-no-matter-what, and then put that detailed deal to the voters in a legally binding referendum so they could actually know what they're voting for.
I remain flabbergasted that Brexit happened but wasn't the overwhelming victory of Boris Johnson & the conservative party at the end of 2019 basically a re-statement by the population that they wanted it?
IIRC that was basically a single issue election after which Brexit was more or less fast-tracked without continued internal opposition.
Up until that point there had been a series of delays and rejections of Brexit plans in parliament and it looked like it might not happen.
(I'm not British and have only watched this from afar so I'm actually curious about if this read is accurate.)
Between the leaders of the two largest parties supporting it and a majority of the citizens voting for it, Brexit was definitely going to happen. It's hard to say that it shouldn't have or was a fluke, even though it was a dumb thing to do :(
They had a super easy way out of it: another referendum voting for options, or a referendum on any deal. Nobody could agree on what leaving meant and giving the choice to the electorate would have a) been more democratic and b) probably have kept the UK in the EU as every other option got discussed.
The vote was a close one; it should have been taken into account to come up with a compromise. I think remainers were ready to accept a soft Brexit and everyone would have moved on. It would have represented a loss of influence for the UK (it's going to happen anyway), but it would not have been the shit show that we have seen since then. The soft Brexit proposition exploded right after the vote, and Brexiters started pushing for a very hard Brexit.
I disagree with your statement on the democracy not working at the scale of the EU. The EU is a democratic institution, with limited responsibilities (the UK famously fought back against tighter integration). Recent history in the EU has shown that people are ready for more integration now that the UK is (unfortunately) gone (as seen 2 weeks ago with the common debt).
The strangest thing about brexit is that all it took was one single 50% vote to exit.
After untold time, money, effort and history put into joining Europe, you’d have thought that tearing the whole thing down would have required best of three votes to exit, or a supermajority, or a 12 month cooldown followed by a deciding second vote, or an “time apart” period before ending the relationship.
Instead all it took was some politicking and a vote and it’s over. Seems a huge flaw in the planning of joining Europe in the first place. I suppose they didn't anticipate brexit as a real possibility.
The vote was not ideological and the British don't regret their decision.
What you see is a significant proportion of the business and political establishment and the media trying to make out that the people who voted for Brexit regret it. They don't.
Quite simply the voters did not vote for a deal. The voted for an exit, and the Prime Minister and her cohorts are trying to get a deal from the EU that the voters did not ask for.
At its heart Brexit was a political choice. The voters just wanted out, and instead of accepting the decision and planning for Article 50, they have spent the last 2 years wrangling for some deal Brexiteers did not ask for, and now that time is up they are at a complete loss as to what to do.
If we are going to go by what the people thought, the people didn't think they were going to get a no-deal Brexit. Leave told a whole bunch of lies. Now that the reality of no-deal Brexit has set in, the position has proven unpopular.
All I am saying is that now that we know that is the reality on offer, that the British people should get to vote on it. Since no-deal Brexit will lose at the ballot box, I can understand why its supporters want to avoid such a vote.
I can never understand why no-deal v remain appears to be a reasonable position. A normal response to a closely contested referendum carried out the way this one was would be to find some consensus within parliament for how brexit could be delivered, _then_ enact article 50 to withdraw.
The current prime minister not only kept all opposition parties away from deliberations on how to proceed, but kept her own ministers in the dark while formulating her own policy, which she pursued largely in secret.
So why should the electorate be cheated in this manner? Even now, forms of brexit based on remaining in the EEA have a great chance of having parliamentary support.
The purpose of the extension was to reduce the risk of a no deal Brexit, which Johnson didn't want but was at risk of stumbling into in his efforts to please ultras. Parliament succeeded in its goal, which did not require any of the things you claim.
With the benefit of hindsight, it all worked out well for Johnson: he cowed the party, could renegotiate without much fear of the ultras, and could choose the circumstance of the next election to his best advantage.
The methods he chose to achieve this, though, greatly weakened parliamentary sovereignty.
More a case of UK politicians not doing their job.
What do I expect them to do? Act solely in the interests of their pay packet and party. What should they do? Act in the interests of the nation. That was once supposed to be the point.
They could have sought concessions or adjustments from the EU as precursor to a second referendum. The few times another EU nation has rejected a treaty or some aspect of the Union there's been something of a renegotiation and a second referendum.
Since the ridiculous Fixed Parliaments Act there needs to be a super-majority to call a UK election early. Why not with a referendum for a change of such consequence?
Were the EU not such a divisive issue, for the whole 40 years of our EU membership, within the Tory party, they might have approached the issue with a little more honesty. It could all have SO easily been avoided.
Yes, the proposed deal does do this. Because Boris just wants a quick win and then wants to say that Brexit is done and then wants to win a majority on december 12.
It's one thing to do what's best for the country and what 17.4 million people voted for. It's another thing entirely to do what's best for yourself (that being boris)
Boris would have simply delayed dissolving parliament so the Oct 31 deadline passed while parliament was dissolved. To do so would have been legal and rational.
The opposition would have had to be dumb to fall for that.
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