Finally, The Penny Drops!

[ToraToraTora]

https://news.sky.com/story/eu-leaders-have-accepted-uk-is-leaving-without-a-deal-11778386
So will they just let no deal happen or start negotiating?

[Old_Geezer]

All the more reason to realise that a PM can't just capitulate by signing away our country's rights and expect that to be the end of the matter. Those involved in the attempted betrayal found that such documents get slung in the bin, when they are clearly unreasonable demands on our country. Not worth the paper they're printed on. Common sense tells you that whatever is discussed needs to be ratified unless it's been agreed previously. Even Heath eventually had to hold a referendum, and only won by lying to the public. Which is why so many of us are wise to remainer spin this time around.

[mushroom25]

//Even Heath eventually had to hold a referendum//

er, he didn't. the 1975 referendum was overseen by Wilson and had been promised in labour's 1974 manifesto.

[Khandro]

Signed by whom for whom?

[Old_Geezer]

Mrs May is not just a convenient scapegoat. He was the one that agreed to the demands and signed a worthless bit of paper.

The people of the UK voted in the Conservative Party that Theresa May led on the understanding that they would deliver on leaving the EU. Along with the DUP, and together the Conservatives and DUP formed a Government that negotiated the anti-Brexit deal. Who we still have is irrelevant. It was no Brexit deal, it was a betrayal of all the red lines and so has no chance of acceptance.

The EU will have known this from the start and so must have both desired and played for the resulting situation. It allows them to stay intransigent, and from that point of view it's hardly surprising that they are behaving as they are, because they arranged it. They aren't stupid, they knew there is no agreement until it gets through parliament so won't be thinking anything has been agreed. Well except for the end date (again) of course.

[dannyk13]

But he did get us into the EEC later to become the EU:-
//after winning the decisive vote in the House of Commons by 336 to 244, he led the negotiations that culminated in Britain's entry into the EC on 1 January 1973//
Extracted from Wiki on Heath.

[Old_Geezer]

Details. He couldn't stop it could he. Geeze.

[Khandro]

^ that was for Ellipsis

[Old_Geezer]

SHE was...

[New Judge]

//Mrs May" is a convenient scapegoat. "We" the people of the UK voted in the Conservative Party that Theresa May led, plus the DUP, and together the Conservatives and DUP formed a Government that negotiated the Brexit deal, and that's the Government we still have - the Conservatives and DUP.//

Scapegoat definition: A scapegoat is an event person or object that is used to lay the blame on for all that goes wrong, regardless of the contributions of others.

Mrs May Is not a scapegoat. It was she alone amongst Parliamentarians who “agreed” to the EU’s list of demands. From quite soon after they began there was no contribution from any other MP or Minister in the talks she had with the EU. She conducted them as a lone Parliamentarian aided only by her unelected officials. The blame for the disastrous conclusion to those talks which is having to be dealt with now is hers and hers alone. The “Government” did not negotiate the Withdrawal Agreement. Mrs May did. The first the “Government” knew about it in any detail was about a day or two before it was due to go before Parliament. Ministers had not much more than 24 hours to read a 568 page document.

//No, not forgetting that, but that came later after the withdrawal agreement was signed.//

The WA was never “signed”. Thanks to Gina Miller the Prime Minister did not have the authority to sign it without the consent of Parliament. That consent was not forthcoming. All that happened was that Mrs May had acquiesced to the EU's list of demands and thought she could bully MPs into accepting “her” deal. In true EU style Parliament was asked to vote and vote again when they returned the “wrong” answer. The EU knew that Mrs May did not have the authority to agree the deal (or if they hadn’t their lackies had not been reading the Daily Mail or the Daily Telegraph for them). Their stance was not one of negotiation. It was (and still is) “these are our terms, take them or leave them”.

As a point of pedantry we don’t still have the same government. We have (near enough) the same Parliament but the government (the Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers) were virtually all changed following Mr Johnson’s election as the Conservative leader.

[Khandro]

and further to that litany of disasters ^^. she sacked the Minister for Exiting Europe (D.Davis) & announced she & the civil servant, Ollie Robbins would now 'negotiate' (Davis & Johnson nobly resigned).
Robbins was referred to within the EU as the 'Darling of Brussels'; wined & dined he complied with their every wish, even telling Junker he would like to apply for Belgian citizenship if it all went 'wrong' - we shall see.

[Ellipsis]

> As a point of pedantry we don’t still have the same government. We have (near enough) the same Parliament but the government (the Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers) were virtually all changed following Mr Johnson’s election as the Conservative leader.

If you want it your way, we voted in the Government that was led by Theresa May but not the one led by Boris Johnson.

If Parliament saved us from the Government's deal by voting it down three times, and the Government is now looking at an option to prorogue Parliament in order to push through a "deal" of sorts (no deal) now, would it be fair to call anybody who found the former unacceptable and the latter acceptable a hypocrite?

[Zacs-Master]

Mrs May was the ultimate Scapegoat. No one else wanted the job. She would never have even been considered for PM were it not for Brexit. She was dispensable, ergo NJ's dictionary def is spot on.

[Old_Geezer]

You can not be a scapegoat for your own deeds, only someone else's.

We don't vote in any government. We vote in our representative. The sovereign chooses the first among equals who in turn chooses their cabinet/government. Boris Johnson was most certainly voted in.

[New Judge]

//If you want it your way, we voted in the Government that was led by Theresa May but not the one led by Boris Johnson.//

No we didn’t. We voted in 650 MPs. The Queen invited the person best placed to form a government to do so and she chose her Government of Ministers. When that Prime Minister resigned a new leader of the party that she represented was elected in accordance with that party’s rules. He, as the person most likely to command a majority in the Commons and to form a new government, is invited by the Queen to do so. The electorate does not “vote in” a Prime Minister or government.

//If Parliament saved us from the Government's deal by voting it down three times, and the Government is now looking at an option to prorogue Parliament in order to push through a "deal" of sorts (no deal) now, would it be fair to call anybody who found the former unacceptable and the latter acceptable a hypocrite?//

Matters have unfortunately taken a turn for the worse. In normal negotiations when one party is dissatisfied with the terms on offer both parties would usually get their heads together to see if an alternative can be found. This seems impossible because the Withdrawal Agreement was not a subject of normal negotiations. It was simply a list of demands compiled by the EU.

The UK has decided to leave the EU. It did so following the result of a referendum (which Parliament sanctioned), and the triggering of A50 (which Parliament sanctioned by about five to one). The conditions under which we are expected to leave “without too much trouble” are unacceptable and are not open to renegotiation. Parliament has had a number of goes at determining under what conditions we leave and has rejected them all. The country is now suffering because of this continued delay and prevarication. Suffering, IMHO, far more than if we had left in March without a deal. Desperate times require desperate measures. It needs to be addressed and whether any action the new government takes is considered hypocritical or not is largely irrelevant.

[bainbrig]

I suspect that few on here know the Irish border or its people - people with the same accents in the same language on both sides of the ‘border’.

Since the Good Friday Agreement, even diehard Orangemen have come to hate the silly border dividing up their one country.

Whoever tries to re-impose the daft thing will be, at the least, terminally unpopular.

[Old_Geezer]

Oh dear, poor Eire. But no doubt we'll see more attempts to pin blame on the side who have kept their side of the border open. Logic rarely seems to figure in these things when there's a favourite scapegoat.

[New Judge]

//Whoever tries to re-impose the daft thing will be, at the least, terminally unpopular.//

That'll be nobody then because neither Ireland nor the UK has the slightest intention of imposing a hard border, regardless of the outcome of Brexit. There may be a need to develop some customs arrangements for goods crossing the border but that will not involved checkpoints and sentries.

[Zacs-Master]

Does Ireland get a say? I thought the EU were such dogmatic dictators what they want, they get? And the last I heard they want some sort of border.

[Khandro]

I.m.o. there should already be a border;
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-44336357

[Old_Geezer]

Well leaving it open after Brexit won't change much then. Even so the cops ought to be better at picking up those with false or no proof of identity when here.