Stay in the EU petition

[surge]

I predicted that there would be an attemt to jeopardize Brexit, and the not leaving bit is what I think the outcome will be.

But that's been done by the leaders of the leave campaign more than anyone. Unless the media are only interviewing the least credible voices while ignoring the more thoughtful ones who can say something more than "the will of the people." Who are these credible people? If there is another referendum who should I be looking to listen to in order to give leaving the EU at this time (at this time) a fair shot?

[Rjk]

I predicted that there would be an attemt to jeopardize Brexit, and the not leaving bit is what I think the outcome will be.

You aren't thinking big enough.
The real* plan is for the UK to crash out on a no deal.
The pound immediately begins to plummet, so as a desperate attempt to stop the collapse they fix the value against the Euro £1=€1.
Then after a couple of difficult years the UK asks to rejoin, and the EU lets us back in, with he addition of schengen.
Shops begin to accept euros as well as pounds and before you know it we are back where we belong.

* With precisely as much factual basis as your version of events

[Wales-Bales]

You aren't thinking big enough.
The real* plan is for the UK to crash out on a no deal.
The pound immediately begins to plummet, so as a desperate attempt to stop the collapse they fix the value against the Euro £1=€1.
Then after a couple of difficult years the UK asks to rejoin, and the EU lets us back in, with he addition of schengen.
Shops begin to accept euros as well as pounds and before you know it we are back where we belong.

* With precisely as much factual basis as your version of events

I don't discount your theory, but I came to my own conclusion after witnessing the Tory leadership election, where May was selected unopposed. It was obvious what the plan was going to be

[Rjk]

I don't discount your theory, but I came to my own conclusion after witnessing the Tory leadership election setup. It was obvious what the plan was going to be

I discount my theory, on the basis that there is literally no evidence for it

[Wales-Bales]

I discount my theory, on the basis that there is literally no evidence for it

I don't think you are going to get very far with such a limited mindset.

[lardy]

Yeah come on rjk, up your game, or you will never attain the dizzy heights of averaging over a dozen posts per day on a football messageboard.

[Wales-Bales]

Yeah come on rjk, up your game, or you will never attain the dizzy heights of averaging over a dozen posts per day on a football messageboard.

Says the bloke who needs to be told what to think, and lacks any ability to distinguish fact from fiction. You are the original sheep person

[Rjk]

Says the bloke who needs to be told what to think, and lacks any ability to distinguish fact from fiction. You are the original sheep person

Oh my god.

[Eric the Half a Bee]

It's not just food though is it. I am talking about everything that we buy from them, and the arrangement benefits them more than it does us.

Food question ignored, then. Obviously doesn't matter to us......

[Croesy Blue]

Oh my god.

Imagine having that little self awareness. Between that and the anti Semitic dog whistle conspiracy shite that’s why I had to put him in ignore. Reading his posts is just a waste of time.

[Wales-Bales]

Oh my god.

You obviously haven't been paying much attention during the past few years

[Wales-Bales]

Imagine having that little self awareness. Between that and the anti Semitic dog whistle conspiracy shite that’s why I had to put him in ignore. Reading his posts is just a waste of time.

The what? You better retract that bullshit or you might find yourself in a spot of bother. You are not going to get away with slandering me on a public platform pal.

[lardy]

Oh my god.

He never disappoints, does he? Astonishing consistency really. Have to tip my hat to him.

[the other bob wilson]

Leavers carry on saying that the vote from nearly three years ago should be respected - I agree, and, unless it begins to look like there is no possible way out of the current impasse, I think that things like a General Election or another Referendum are things should be avoided over the coming months and years.

The thing is though that the Referendum was the easy bit and, basically, it told us two things. One, that there was a majority out of those who voted who wanted to leave and, two, that 16.1 million people voted for exactly the same thing (to Remain). However, the simplicity of the 2016 Referendum question which enables leavers, to, rightly, claim victory was also its weakness, because, no matter how much the most vocal leavers now want to claim that 17.4 million voted for a no deal or very hard Brexit, it's simply not the case that all Leavers were united in those aims when they voted - essentially, what happened was that the country informed Parliament that wanted to leave and told their MPs to sort out the fine print on the deal.

Now, I'm one of what appears to be very few people who has some sympathy with Parliament currently because it is totally wrong, in the case of the large majority of MPs, to accuse them of having had three years to sort things out and then castigate them for having not delivered. What has actually happened is that some six months or so after the vote (which included a period where very little happened because the Conservative Party had to find a new leader), a Prime Minister, who has never had her appointment endorsed by the British people in terms of having won an Election with a majority Government, set out her "red lines" in a hard line speech which fed off cheap slogans like "no deal is better than a bad deal".

A couple of months later, this Prime Minister called a snap election (despite having continuously denied she would do so up to then) and proceeded to turn her majority Government into a minority one dependent on the very people who are now probably the biggest single stumbling block to her leaving her job with at least a small part of her reputation intact.

Where I feel MPs can be criticised is over the way they voted by a huge majority to enact Article 50 and so set the 29 March 2019 in stone (or so we assumed!) as Brexit day. That gave a timetable for Parliament to work to, but, until November 2018, constituency MPs, with the exception of the ERG hardliners who, for reasons I cannot fathom, the Prime Minister not only tolerated, but also sought to pacify as much as possible, had no say on how negotiations were going - in essence, for the twenty eight months following the Referendum, there was very little they could do to influence proceedings.

Finally, the Prime Minister who said no deal is better than a bad deal, put forward "her deal" for debate some twenty weeks or so before we were due to leave and then spent much of that time putting things off as she tried to browbeat MPs into accepting an agreement, which was universally panned as being exactly the sort of bad deal she had been so set against. Week after week she told MPs that there were only two alternatives, her deal or no deal, despite it having been defeated by huge margins on the two occasions Parliament had the chance to vote on it.

Finally, we have reached a stage where Parliament is trying to find an alternative to the Prime Minister's deal which, even with her offering to resign if it is accepted by MPs, still does not appear to have sufficient support to be passed by MPs.

Yesterday was the first stage of the indicative votes procedure and, although no one who has truly followed what has been happening recently would ever have thought that Parliament would agree on any of the options debated so quickly, there has been yet more condemnation of Parliament for not delivering "the will of the people" (whatever that means). Theresa May has had not far short of three years to avoid us becoming an international laughing stock by coming up with something that the MPs that she has, almost to a man and woman, tried to keep out of the procedure for as long as possible could accept - surely we can give Parliament until Monday to try and come up with something under the indicative votes process?

I think the UK, and its Parliamentarians, has/have been unlucky in that, at such an important time for the country, we have been landed with such a mediocre bunch of political leaders (I'm not just talking about the Conservative party there either). Yes, MPs are not perfect (the programme on Monday about the expenses scandal ten years ago was a reminder of that), but I believe they are an easy and convenient target when it comes to Brexit - the real fault lies with those who agreed to, then produced far too simple a question for, the 2016 Referendum and the few who have been in a real position to have an influence on negotiations since then.

[Wales-Bales]

He never disappoints, does he? Astonishing consistency really. Have to tip my hat to him.

[the other bob wilson]

I predicted that there would be an attempt to jeopardize Brexit, and the not leaving bit is what I think the outcome will be.

Well, given that there had been people who supported Leave trying to get a Referendum decision from nearly fifty years ago overturned for all of that time, I don't think it takes any special talent to realise that the losers this time around would want to find a way to get what they want - there are going to be remainers insisting on a rerun of the Referendum for years after you and I start pushing up daisies!

[Wales-Bales]

Well, given that there had been people who supported Leave trying to get a Referendum decision from nearly fifty years ago overturned for all of that time, I don't think it takes any special talent to realise that the losers this time around would want to find a way to get what they want - there are going to be remainers insisting on a rerun of the Referendum for years after you and I start pushing up daisies!

That's why I am not too bothered about the outcome. There's nothing wrong with having a bit of banter though, as long as people don't step over the line

[Heathblue]

I thought it was just Clusion that it stalked you, didn't realise it was every topic

[Wales-Bales]

I thought it was just Clusion that it stalked you, didn't realise it was every topic

He must have set a world record for pedaling BS

[Eric Cartman]

Do you have a business selling FMCG or any any other products to supermarkets?

Does it worry you that your views on this (German cars, french wine, they sell more to us) align so closely with lowest common denominator publications like the mail and the express? Hardly a badge of honour for someone who frequently heralds themselves as a neutral observer.

[surge]

Saw this on facebook this morning:

From today's Times:

"I am a Labour MP who voted Remain, representing a constituency that voted heavily to Leave. I’m torn in two. I want to be accountable, I want to be involved, but I sit uselessly and helplessly, trapped in a Commons that’s falling to pieces at a time of national crisis. This diary is my silent scream.

"I’m one of the 650. We’ll all get the blame when the ship sinks, but in truth you might as well have put a dead cat in there instead of me; it would have had as much of a role as I’ve had in the Brexit discussions. Want to know what that feels like? It’s embarrassing, humiliating and hugely, overwhelmingly frustrating.

"At a time of looming disaster, there’s this awful feeling of paralysis. The regional whip told me at the weekend that I’d need to be in Westminster all this week. We don’t know when the votes are coming, what the votes will be or what our position is, but we know we need you there. In other words, we know nothing. But for yet another week, all my constituency engagements have been cancelled.

"We’re not alone. Most Tory MPs know nothing. Right now it feels like most of the cabinet knows nothing. It’s all about one woman, the prime minister, and she’s in a bunker so deep that no one can reach her.

"I sought out some Tory mates last week. They’re very senior in the party. I wanted them to tell me that despite appearances to the contrary, Theresa May was actually a fantastic poker player, that great minds were being consulted and the country was in safe hands. Back came no reassurance whatsoever. Her master plan, it seems, is to survive until the next day. If that doesn’t fill you with terror, nothing will.

"Where’s Labour in all this? It has no voice and no seat at the table. If we were a strong opposition, we’d be challenging a lot more effectively and we probably wouldn’t have tumbled into this black hole quite so quickly. We’d have seen it coming and done something about it.

"We’re not strong on this because we’re so divided. Jeremy’s completely ambivalent. Len McCluskey is really, really against a second referendum but most of the shadow cabinet are Londoners and want a People’s Vote. Jeremy tries to appease both sides, so we’ve never really had a clear position, nor been open about what that is. Keir Starmer’s doing a fabulous job but he’s not in the party’s top tier of decision-making, so the door gets shut on him as much as it does on everyone else.

"You end up with the absurdity of a government with the lowest approval rating for years that’s still neck and neck with Labour in the opinion polls. When you’re chatting with Tories they’ll say, “It’s amazing, we just do one f***-up after another. This government’s a total disaster and yet every time we screw up you lot save us by coming out and doing something worse.” It’s extraordinary, but it’s true.

"When I set off for the Commons today, it felt a bit like leaving for war or the funeral of a close relative. Friends texted to wish me luck. People at the station came up and said I should keep going, that this is survivable. I’m not so sure. I feel darkness and impotence and dread.

"And it’s all so utterly exhausting, which is really weird because physically, obviously, you’re not doing anything, and intellectually you’re not doing anything because you’re not involved in any of the negotiations. It’s more a spiritual weariness and it comes from a sense of foreboding, guilt and helplessness.

"What’s so frustrating is that I know I could contribute. If they let me, I could work on this. If they gave me a role, I’d work until I dropped down dead to try to get the best outcome for this country. Instead you sit there, waiting, in a constant state of anxiety. Because any moment now, something else might go wrong and make things even worse. It’s on my watch but what can I do? Bugger all.

"The terrifying truth is that the democratic structures we all put our faith in have turned out to be made of sand. Yes, I’m an MP. There are hundreds of us here this week. We’re supposed to be taking decisions that will affect our country for generations to come but you know what? Right now I don’t even feel like a tiny cog in this machine. Most of us here are as bewildered as everyone outside the Commons. That’s truly frightening."

We have some very good MPs currently but they seem to be in parties too small and/or too niche to make any real impact, too distanced from their front bench, or part of a working group funded (yet again) in an unclear fashion.

[Wales-Bales]

Does it worry you that your views on this (German cars, french wine, they sell more to us) align so closely with lowest common denominator publications like the mail and the express? Hardly a badge of honour for someone who frequently heralds themselves as a neutral observer.

Not really as I never read the Express or Mail. Haven't you got any better slurs? Come on use your imagination!

BTW you're the one who came up with the rediculous example that you buy more from Tesco than they buy from you.

[Croesy Blue]

Does it worry you that your views on this (German cars, french wine, they sell more to us) align so closely with lowest common denominator publications like the mail and the express? Hardly a badge of honour for someone who frequently heralds themselves as a neutral observer.

The cognitive dissonance to think every outlet is a puppet of some unknown super power controlling everything until they back up a certain view point is unreal.

It’s mad how the conspiracy behind the illegal election or how murdoch’s media empire is basically controlling the politics of the U.K., USA and Australia isn’t interesting to the conspiracy theorists, must be the lack of a Jewish angle.

[xsnaggle]

Oh my god.

Ah Hah!! That proves it!!! Fiction!!!!!

[life on mars]

Hang on, you have been saying for all of that time that Brexit won't happen, unless I've missed something it is still, at the very least, as likely to happen as it isn't - it's a bit early to get all "I told you so" yet.

I have faith in WB , he's shown his worth and metal in the Trump debate .