Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/14/uk-parliament-votes-to-delay-b.html
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Hear, hear.
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For what purpose though? So may can keep trying to resurrect the rotting corpse of her deal until she gets her way? And what about labour? They now support a people’s vote, no? Today was the chance to vote in favour of it and…
Labour abstained when MPs voted on the referendum proposal, tabled by Independent Group MP Sarah Wollaston, arguing that now was not the right time to push for a public vote.
Unfuck all of them.
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They really do seem to be trying very hard to set up a ‘fuck all the useless gobshites’ party to sweep them all into the dustbin whenever they do get the nerve to face the electorate.
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They’re just delaying it til the end of May.
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The month or the PM? 
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So was this a binding or non-binding resolution?
I am beginning to suspect voting on Brexit by the British Parliament is like the US House of Representatives voting to repealing the ACA under Obama – just a bunch of white guys faffing to please the base.
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It’s pretty ridiculous. They had a vote today to see if they wanted to have an extension, even specifying that the EU would want to have a reason for the extension before they would agree to it. And yet they don’t yet know WHY they want an extension.
There was an amendment, of course, that would have expressed the Commons’ desire for a People’s Vote (2nd referendum), and while much of Labour did in fact abstain, even if all the abstainers had voted for it, it still would have lost. This is disheartening to those of us who think that’s the best idea.
It still seems obvious to me that the best way to get out of the deadlock is to have a referendum and let the public have a binary choice between May’s Deal and No Brexit. (No Deal is clearly not a good idea, and that’s something that even the Commons can agree on, willy nilly the ERG.) Needing time to hold a referendum would be a valid reason that the EU would agree to for the Extension of Article 50. Unfortunately, neither the PM nor the leader of the opposition seem to agree with that.
The PM has known for a very long time she’d need the Commons’ approval for her deal, and yet she set redlines in her negotiations with the EU that forced a deal that they can’t agree to, and she refuses to relax her redlines, insisting that her interpretation of Brexit is clearly what ‘the people’ meant during the Brexit referendum.
My belief is that no one anticipated having to honor the Good Friday Agreement when they were holding the Brexit Referendum (and if they had, then perhaps Cameron wouldn’t have offered it), but I wasn’t following British politics as closely back then, so maybe that was in the popular consciousness and everyone was just chasing unicorns ((no free movement + no customs union) + no border). But admitting that they just didn’t think that far ahead (and so need a second referendum to deal with actual facts) doesn’t seem to be in the realm of their capability.
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It is non-binding, much like yesterday’s rejection of no-deal. Once upon a time, the executive would give it more credence than the current government does. That said, it still serves a purpose in that the EU27 are watching and are very interested in finding out what the Commons can agree to. So far, nothing has surfaced – they just know they don’t want No-Deal and don’t want May’s Deal. It’s starting to look like they also don’t want a People’s Vote.
American who has been following as closely as possible and is still gobsmacked by all of this:
I guess my question is: What kind of drugs are the UK Parliament members smoking when they think that they have much in the way of bargaining leverage against the EU?
I mean, why do they possibly think that they CAN negotiate a better deal with the EU than the one May has presented them? I don’t think that’s May’s deal, as much as it is the EU’s take-it-or-leave-it proposition (based partially on the EU’s claims that it is their deal, take - it - or - leave - it proposition).
I don’t understand why they thought that they would have any different luck from the outset on this - I honestly cannot fathom why they thought that the EU would give them everything they wanted and a pony without any consideration that giving them anything more than the stink eye would be bad for the EU. I mean, normally when this happens it results in violence; they thought they would throw a parade in their honor?
I mean, given all the facts, I think that it’s more likely that George Clinton’s Parliament would pass a drug test than May’s!
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I’d vote for them. I’m not joking any more, how could they be worse than this fuck up?
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Braybe Later
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Just keep kicking the can down the road until people forgot you said you were leaving…
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I think they’re all* aware they’ve had a couple years to work out the existing deal and it’s not going to change with a few more months of negotiation. They’re just trying not to deal with it, because it’s politically poisonous for them. The people who advanced Brexit lied through their teeth about it, knowing they wouldn’t be the ones to have to try to make real the total fantasies they sold the public.
I’m not a Brexit expert, but to me, this just feels a lot like a parallel to the Trump-Republican party in its death throes - the politicians involved know that they can’t fulfill someone else’s impossible promises, that the positions they’re taking aren’t productive, that it won’t get them anywhere, that, in fact, this is a road to ruin, but they don’t want to piss off the reactionaries who voted for it. So they’re engaging in political maneuvering/trying to politically survive in the short term while setting up a situation that will ultimately destroy them and, whatever happens, do serious damage to the country as well. But they can’t not do that, because they’d immediately be forced out of office.
*Well, almost all - some of these guys sound as dumb as the worst American politicians, and they don’t seem to understand anything.
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Two organisations promoting the People’s Vote requested today that no-one vote for Wollaston’s amendment. It looks like they wanted to separate the idea of this extension from the idea of their solution. Not sure if that was a wise course, considering Corbyn and the Labour front bench, but that was what they requested.
They might also want to have a deal in place that can be voted on as one of the PV questions, but any such deal won’t work for the bigoted dolts who voted for Brexit since it will have to allow for free movement of people.
As long as the EU accepts this extension, as it looks like they will, there’s no longer any excuse for delaying a call for a second referendum. Anyone who tries to stop a People’s Vote over the coming weeks – whatever their party – will essentially be declaring himself for hard Brexit and against the future of the UK.
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Yeah, many of the commentators i’ve been listening to today have called it strategic but you had the farce of corbyn approaching the despatch box to say they support a people’s vote and getting, quite rightly, laughed at. Yet again labour have failed to stand by something and they may not get another chance if it’s looking likely that may’s resurrection of the rotting corpse succeeds next week.
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Come on, guys, it’s not that difficult: May is just asking to draw some redlines (e.g. no freedom of movement) that may also have to be green (i.e. work in Ireland) and transparent (respect the Good Friday Agreement.) How difficult could it be?
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