Meanwhile, what the grown-ups are doing

I love it. And it’s depressing. In equal measure.

“[Ireland] won’t be offering more than the basic, self-serving cooperation to the UK any time, soon.”

I would appreciate examples of when that statement has not been true. It looks to me like business as usual.

For some reason I’m not as hostile to Dipper as so many others on this blog so often seem to be, but though far from being an expert on the British constitution (as I imagine he is too), I don’t quite understand why he (@3) seems to think that Britain’s constitutional processes aren’t actually being practiced. I’d concede to what I take would be his view, that had the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled other than it has just done, it would be the Remainers who would be protesting that.

To be sure, I suppose there are many like me who aren’t exactly up to date on the way the SCUK fits into the larger scheme of things—after all, it’s only been around for about a decade. But as I understand it, it’s a modification of the previous Law Lords system and its members are members of the House of Lords, so unlike, say, the USSC (which I imagine many readers of this blog will be inclined, wrongly, to think of when they imagine the SCUK’s powers and relations to the legislature and the executive), the SCUK functions as part of “the Crown in Parliament.”

But I really want to put that last assertion as a question to those on this blog who actually do know something substantial about the UK’s current constitutional arrangements. Thanks to anyone who can enlighten me.

Dipper@3:

I support him because he is the last serious politician who thinks that the votes of 17.4 million people matter.

How long does it take to build an insulin plant? They’ve had three years. I could build one myself in that time. They never meant to leave. They lied from day one. The warnings are just another tool in that battle to overturn the result.

The synthesis of these two assertions is not in line with the rest of what you’re saying. The fact that 17.4m Brexiteers include 0 people who undertook doing so draws into question whether the 17.4m all actually want to crash out like you assert they do when you selflessly speak on their behalf.

To try to tug this back in the direction of the topic, if Brexiteers were serious about crashing out as you insist they all are, there should have been Brexiteers – and particularly Leave pols – independently preparing for or at least agitating to prepare for no-Deal; at a minimum there should have been serious and concerted efforts to publicly making the country aware of what needs done and how to do it. And yet there hasn’t been; there’s just been a blind assurance that elected officials do everything for civvies at some unspecified later date, and bizarre dogmatic assertions by the pols that a magical better deal would immanently appear or else that all the problems would be solved extemporaneously as soon as Brexit occurs. So either many if not most of the 17.4m that you authoritatively waggle about never meant to leave either (or at least never meant to leave with no deal), or they’re all grossly incompetent and reckless despite wanting what was always a real possibility that was never prepared for. The lack of adequate preparation for a no-deal Brexit cannot be sloughed off onto 16.1m Remainers when it was incumbent on the 17.4m Leavers to prepare for it – and to consistently communicate that, raise and maintain awareness of crash-out preparedness, and apply constant public pressure to treat the real possibility of no deal as seriously as it should be. Instead, there were platitudes and now recriminations of Remainers for not doing what the Leavers showed no interest in doing. Whatever else they may be, Leave partisans – all 17.4m of whom you’re asserting want an immediate dangerously chaotic Brexit more than an orderly delayed one – are definitely not acting like grown-ups, and the pols among them are certainly not treating anyone like grown-ups treat other grown-ups.

“Since Maria is prepared to engage in a confident prediction for the next several decades, perhaps she would tell us what’s going to happen in the next five weeks.”

I can confidently predict that it will be much colder where I live in January than in October. What temperature it will be two weeks from today is a mystery.

Mark Brady@8:

Alternately, rather than demanding Maria act as your oracle and/or imputing bad faith based on a private definition, you could do some very basic research to understand what the term you’re misunderstanding actually means.

Late can just as easily mean “mature” as it can mean “nearing its end”, and in this case it sadly does just that.

Just in case:

https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-judgment.pdf

Alternatively, to quote a UK government publication sent before the referendum to all voters:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/517014/EU_referendum_leaflet_large_print.pdfA once in a generation decision
‘The referendum on Thursday, 23rd June is your chance to decide if we should remain in or leave the European Union. … This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.”

Of course, believing a politician’s declaration may be a little unwise.

Dipper, back with more fertilizer, straight from the cow:

To repeat, I don’t support Johnson because he’s a fine upstanding guy, I support him because he is the last serious politician who thinks that the votes of 17.4 million people matter. If he goes, its all over. There is no-one left who thinks that promises in political life mean anything, or that winning elections is a critical part of the political process.

TL;DR Nobody credible supported No Deal at the time of the Referendum, and most of the Leave campaigns were adamant that it would never happen — that a “good deal” was easy to obtain. To argue now that “the 17.5m voters” voted for No Deal is (by Harry Frankfurt’s definition) bullshit.

He leaves out that the original Brexit campaigns were explicit that they WOULD NOT offer a plan, or any specifics (so they could offer to each constituency the version of Brexit that that constituency wanted, and not the other kinds). He leaves out that democracy, while it includes the right for voters’ will to be respected, also includes the right for voters to change their minds — as it seems pretty clear they have. He leaves out that BoJo clearly lied in his advice to the Queen, as is evident to even the least-sighted amongst us.

But there’s no point in going on and on fisking Dipper: he’ll just skip past it and offer up another steaming load.

For those who actually care, they might read two things: Chris Gray’s “Brexit Blog” and Richard North’s “EU Referendum” blog.[1] Gray seems Remain. North is Brexiter avant la lettre, and it’s clear that his disgust and contempt for The Turd-Giver (BoJo) are not because he’s changed his mind about Brexit, but rather that he thinks a No-Deal is sheer barking insanity.

[1] There are those who have pointed out that North has been in the past pretty unhinged himself. And that might be true — I haven’t seen any in the last few years, but I’m 100% willing to believe he has a history of un-hinged-ness. Sure. But his writings seem pretty clear and supported, and as I said, he’s Brexiter avant la lettre, and he’s completely against the insanity of No Deal.

Dipper@14

So Parliament effectively destroyed its own right to be sovereign. They can decide to ignore it, but that’s the biggest vote in UK history torn up and thrown back in the electorate’s face.

The former is only true in your own mind, and the latter makes it clear exactly why. Parliament did not destroy its right to be sovereign by asking the advice of the public. Adding a weasel-word like “effectively” muddies the waters slightly, but it changes nothing – Parliament did not make the referendum binding even though they could have, and even if they had, that Parliament has been dissolved and the new one is not bound by its decision. I.e., they retain their right to sovereignty. You may complain that this requires the parties to go back on their claims and/or promises to implement the result of the referendum and that failing to do so is violating the trust of the people, but as countless people have pointed out, you have no problem with the idea of the parties going back on their claims and/or promises to the voters that No Deal would never happen. You can’t have it both ways; if it’s anti-democratic to delay Brexit or to reverse it because the parties said they’d treat a non-binding referendum as binding, then it’s anti-democratic for Brexit partisans to have portrayed the Leave vote as a vote that could not result in a crash-out. And that’s the sticking point; you know very well that it was only through misrepresentation and legerdemain that 17.4m Britons voted Leave, and you’re fine with Leave campaigners having lied to them to get the tally you support – which means that above all else you must avoid a second referendum because if you’re forced to deal with politicians as honest as you claim to want, there’s no way you could get the referendum outcome you want above all else.

Finally, citing the referendum as the biggest vote in UK history is disingenuous. I can’t imagine that a second referendum would not be a larger vote, yet for all your praise for the will of the electorate you’re vehemently opposed to letting that ever happen. I think we both know whether you’d be in favor of a new referendum in light of changing circumstances and changes in the electorate had Remain netted 52% and Leave 48%, though. If you treat democracy and political obligation to constituents as tools to be picked up or set aside according to ideological expediency – as you do – you can’t expect others to take seriously your simultaneous claims that they represent inviolate principles.

Dipper,

And here we are, three years later, with Parliament having voted to send a letter to the EU saying (and I paraphrase) ‘Name any price and we will pay it. Ask any action we will do it. But please please please don’t make us leave.”

You can’t stop being a poster child for Harry Frankfurt’s _On Bullshit_ for even one minute, can you? Your paraphrase is wildly inaccurate. What Parliament did with the Benn Act, was to demand that the UK government not leave with No Deal, and that if there was no deal, that it must request an extension. Nothing in that prevents the UK from later coming to a deal with the EU, and leaving on those terms.

Also, your statement that you don’t really give a damn about under which terms the UK leaves, as long as it leaves, while it’s your view, does not at all correspond to the actual referendum vote.

And last: you get a vote. A. Vote. One. As in “one person, one vote”. And the UK government tried to implement some version of your vote, for three long years, failing at every point. OBTW, it was an advisory referendum. Advisory. Not a suicide pact. If the referendum had been between “Remain” and “No Deal Brexit”, and Brexit had won, you’d have a point. But that’s not what was on the cards.

“So Parliament effectively destroyed its own right to be sovereign.”

I’s hard to resist pointing out that this same guy just recently claimed Brexit was fundamentally about restoring the sacred sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament.

The enemies of liberal democracy may use the language of “freedom and democracy” but they do so in an Orwellian manner: the manipulation of public discourse by the Murdoch press and dark money (*) is “democracy”, “freedom” is rule by unaccountable strongmen. And of course, lies become truth by repeating.

But we really need to stop taking the bait (as every commenter on this thread including myself has done). Our enemies have exposed themselves sufficiently. Exposing the exposed again and again is pointless. We need to advance our own agenda and stop engaging with right wing lies.

(*) All parties of the extreme right – the Lega, the FPOe, FN, AFD, as well as the Brexiteers – have dark election money scandals and several of their leaders – Strache, Salvini – are on record promising to sell out their country for foreign money.

Brexiteers never got near this until now. May let David Davis ‘negotiate’ but all the time was negotiating behind his back.

I don’t know how May and/or Davis prevented you from building your own insulin plant, as you claim.

The real reason nobody built insulin plants is that the inhabitants of the UK were assured by Brexiters that it wasn’t necessary, that there would be a great deal from the EU that allowed the continued importation of medicine, and that a no-deal was a ‘one in a million chance’ as recently as a couple of months ago. Who would build a bunch of superfluous drug factories under such circumstances?

@ Chetan Murphy “What Parliament did with the Benn Act, was to demand that the UK government not leave with No Deal, and that if there was no deal, that it must request an extension.” Well, this isn’t quite complete and self-consistent is it? The Bill says it must request an extension and that Parliament will vote on that extension. But if Parliament rejects the terms of the extension which the 27 collectively offer then we leave on No Deal, and as Parliament as already ruled that out then this is a rubber-stamping exercise. Describing this as a Surrender Bill seems to be a proper and correct use of the English Language.

@ Niall McAuley. Fine, you don’t like Johnson, I’m not that keen on him myself. Parliament can express their dislike of him through a vote of no confidence, something they consistently fail to do. And politicians who promised to respect the outcome of the referendum and now refuse to do precisely that are on shaky ground when they complain about Johnson’s lack of trustworthiness.

@TM it is Parliament that is voting to destroy its sovereignty by handing that sovereignty straight back to the EU. It seems entirely logical to say that a sovereign parliament cannot hand over its own sovereignty (and that’s what the referendum was about), just as a democratic parliament cannot vote to ban elections.

@ James Wimberley “Are you arguing that a badly worded advisory referendum held three years ago, when the implications for the GFA and the economy were not clear, trumps the UK constitution?”.

The GFA released 428 prisoners of whom 143 were serving life sentences. We have been told we cannot have No Deal because these terrorists or others would return to terrorism. I argued a while back on CT that using the GFA in this way effectively makes terrorism a superior political activity to voting, and you seem to be saying the same.

A court in Northern Irish Court ruled Brexit does not break the GFA. Hence the comments made by politicians on a possible return of terrorism are entirely political. I am not arguing that a ‘badly-worded referendum’ trumps the UK constitution because a court has made it clear that it doesn’t ‘trump the UK constitution’

Stephen Kinnock has been taking a reasonable and pragmatic approach on Brexit. He campaigned for Remain, but has accepted the result and has been proposing alternatives around a ‘Norway’ or EEA option. I could live with this. I’m not insisting on a No Deal exit.
Kinnock’s behaviour simply demonstrates by contrast that most Remainers have refused to accept the referendum result and have themselves been driving towards a No Deal exit specifically so they can reject it.

Dipper@20:

A second referendum – what’s on the ballot paper? Remain versus a deal? Which deal?

The simplest way to handle it would be to retain and repeat the awful and ambiguous question from the first referendum, but follow it up with one or two simple clarifying questions: “If the UK leaves the EU, should the UK leave the EU without first negotiating a trade and customs deal with the EU?” (i.e., is no-deal acceptable) – this would essentially eliminate most ambiguity inherent in the first question, though it wouldn’t eliminate the problem of pro-Leave partisans blatantly lying to the body politic about what is possible with no regard for how they’re undermining public faith in political bodies. You could possibly further add something like “If the UK leaves the EU, should NI be able to remain in the customs union with customs control between NI and the rest of the UK?” (i.e., is an Irish Sea hard border acceptable), but the core ambiguity needing resolved in the original bad question was whether leaving under any circumstances imaginable was better than remaining. Even so, I’d suggest rephrasing the first one to something like “should the UK leave the EU no later than [date]?”, and “should the UK leave the EU no later than [date] even if no trade and customs deal has been negotiated?”.

It’s far from impossible to frame simple, straightforward, comprehensive referendum questions so long as your intent is to determine what the public wants. No amount of vague despair about the impossibility of doing so will change that. It only becomes difficult when your intent is to ensure the public agrees with your preferred outcome.