The DUP are against it. Britain will only leave with a deal if Parliament vote for it (They voted down Theresa May's deal three times). What happens if they don't vote for it is the Boris Johnson will, by law, be forced to ask for an extension. He must accept whatever extension the EU propose. However, it's likely to get more 'interesting' than that.
I've found these flow diagrams very helpful with understanding the process, but it hasn't been updated in a week: https://jonworth.eu/brexit-what-next/
Theres a vote tomorrow on whether to reject a no deal brexit, the the consensus is that will pass, with the PM presumably asking for an extension, so no deal still isn't a given.
I think the consensus is they will just extend instead of actually going through a 100% no-deal Brexit. Seems like a fairly safe bet given the UK can do it unilaterally and how bad it would be.
Well there seems to be a majority of MPs against no deal, theres a vote on that tomorrow. So that would mean May going back to the EU to ask for an extension. That would seem most likely to be until May, before the EU elections. I can't see that being more than a temporary date though. Any other option has to take more time than 2 ish months.
This deal is going to fail because of the pro-brexit contingent of the conservative party. The DUP are against and it looks like the ERG are likely to follow suit once it becomes clear exactly what is agreed. So whilst you're right that they'll face a GE at some point, the people responsible for stopping the deal to leave the EU are likely going to be campaigning for a deal to leave the EU (and then continuing to vote against it if they get elected).
Note: I use the word deal to mean the withdrawal agreement, which is an agreement on how we leave, not on the future direction.
Deadlines
April 12 -- if mays deal has passed, extended to May 22 to allow domestic legislation to be passed to implement the deal
If not passed by then, then uk leaves with no deal
However May's government can ask for an extension at any point up until April 12th. This extension will rely on the UK participating in the EU elections. Those elections can be held if announced by or on April 12th -- there's a reason it's that day and not April 3rd or 19th.
It's almost certain we'll be looking at a long delay, and either a referendum or general election
But isn't this in many ways actually even more risky?
When Parliament gets its vote, the two year exit period will almost certainly be almost over and a vote of Parliament will not be able to stop the exit. Instead it will be a vote on the new arrangements with the EU. So either they just have to rubberstamp whatever gets put to them or - if they vote down these new arrangements - Britain will be left outside of the EU without any new deal in place.
Because the problem is Parliament. We have a deal, it has been voted down four times. Johnson has a clear strategy for Brexit, that is being stymied too.
I think what is unclear to you is the fact that we are leaving the EU. That question is closed. The point of the GE (and Johnson's strategy) is to ensure that we leave with a deal (it is very possible that the EU rejects any extension).
If the deal isn’t passed today, the April 12th deadline is for the UK to come up with a new suggestion.
If the deal fails, the UK could request a longer extension, or even revoke article 50.
The EU has strongly signaled that they’d be open to adjusting the political declaration in favour of a customs union, for example. If the UK were to vote for that early next week, it could in principle be agreed on both sides fairly quickly.
The main EU requirement is that to avoid a no-deal exit on April 12, the UK has to actually do something different, not simply ask for more time. If the UK requested time for a general election or a second referendum, that would probably be accepted by the EU (although it’s not guaranteed).
Johnson voted _against_ the withdrawal agreement twice, and then for it once. If Parliament is the problem, Johnson has been part of that problem. I'm also not sure what his clear strategy is. The current deal would involve going with a deal he has voted against twice and that his Leader of the House of Commons has recently described as "dreadful", and he has shown no indication that he is going to bring it back. The EU has accused him of "pretending to negotiate"[1], so I'm unclear where a new deal would come from.
Furthermore, unless I'm mistaken, I believe it has only been voted on three times.
We know exactly what happens because it’s actually defined in treaties, specifically WTO rules will apply. The UK is a full member of WTO independently of the EU. It’s important to remember that “the deal” isn’t a thing that was mentioned on the pamphlet that went through everyone’s door before the referendum. That just said that the government will implement whatever the people vote for (which was to leave). It’s entirely something the necessity of which was made up after the fact, as a face-saving measure by a political class that badly misjudged the national mood.
It is obvious to anyone who has ever negotiated for anything, ever, that no deal is better than a bad deal. Ask yourself why Remainers are so keen to take that option off the table and keep asking for extensions indefinitely.
Can someone explain what happens next? Will UK really leave the EU? If yes, how long will it take? Will EU ask them to leave or just wait for UK to initiate the process?
Still doesn't guarantee an actual Brexit. My guess is when all is said in done there either is no Brexit or there's a deal that is very close to staying in the Union with a few adjustments. The vote was critical to obtain a negotiating position. I don't see it as the end of the world.
If the House of Lords votes through Cooper-Letwin today, and it gets Royal Assent, then a no deal Brexit has become illegal. If the EU also refuses an extension, then the PM has no option but to revoke.
(There's also a non-orthogonal option of hold a second referendum to let voters decide which option to do, the results of this are likely to depend heavily on what options are actually on the ballot.)
It's not at all clear that a better deal is forthcoming, given more time. Indeed, the current deal on offer is already kicking most of the hard contentious decisions down the road. So the general preference for what should be done amounts to, in decreasing order of desirability, 3, 1, 4, 2 or 1, 3, 4, 2, depending on how people view the EU. But that preference isn't the same preference that's going on for the vocal Brexiteer politician population.
For those people, the EU has been an ideological punching bag for quite some time, which means that admitting that leaving now is not the appropriate action amounts to discrediting their views. So to them, option 3 is the absolute worst option. Similarly, the current deal on offer commits the UK to maintaining a lot of the EU's provisions without a strong say on them, which is still pretty anathema to those who want nothing less than a hard Brexit, making option 1 nearly as bad. This means that the remaining option are to walk away from the current deal and hope that brinkmanship causes the EU to sweeten the deal, or to believe that the worst effects of a no-deal Brexit simply won't happen. So for these politicians, their order of preference is basically the reverse of what it is for everybody.
Essentially, that is the issue. Brexit was sold on a pack of fantasy and lies, and the people in power have the choice of committing to their fantasies are admitting that they've lied. It's rare to find the politician who would admit that the worldview they've committed to for decades is a lie, and you shouldn't be surprised that the Brexiteers are the same way.
Because the ERG ("European Research Group", including MPs like Jacob Rees-Mogg) pushed a UK ammendment to include the March 29th leaving date into UK law, MPs will need to revoke that to make it possible to retract Article 50. It is unclear whether the current pariament breakdown would support removing that ammendment.
The key question is how blocking a no deal Brexit will be implemented, given the rejection of the withdrawal agreement (not a deal!) and the reluctance of the EU to extend the Article 50 period without something different such as a general election or people's vote. There is also the upcoming European Parliament elections in 3 months which -- if the UK stays past that point -- the UK would need to participate in if Article 50 was extended past that point.
A general election is also problematic as it will likely result in another hung parlaiment or slim majority and we will be back where we are. This is especially the case given that Scotland is overwhelmingly SNP, and may gain seats over the Conservatives/Tories.
While a people's vote may be a potential way out of the deadlock, the government (and maybe the majority of parliament) are against it. Even if there is a majority for it, there isn't a majority for what to ask in the new vote. There are MPs that don't want remain on the vote, and there are others that don't want no deal on the vote.
I don't keep up with British politics much so this is me just taking wild guesses from nowhere but I feel like either they'll delay the exit or they'll exit without a deal. If there is another referendum I just can't see it happening the March 29 deadline.
At this point I'm not sure if UK can do much to avoid a major constitutional crisis one way or another. The deal would be seen as betrayal of Brexit by most its supporters, and remaining even more so. Hard exit would make a mess in Northern Ireland, for starters, and then you have Scotland, and not to forget that Remainers actually make the majority of the population in UK as a whole at this point.
At this point a no deal Brexit looks substantially different from the possible-Brexit that was voted upon. Shouldn't there be a new referendum of basically a new question of a no deal Brexit vs Remain? I know very little of British politics, is there some other dynamic at work that pushes to what seems like a strongly economically destructive no deal Brexit?
I've found these flow diagrams very helpful with understanding the process, but it hasn't been updated in a week: https://jonworth.eu/brexit-what-next/
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