UK in/out referendum on the EU (Brexit vs Bremain)

{{ It's all turning into a battle for power in the Commons. The PM having lost her power effectively to Parliament is trying to claw it back.

She has announced she will not yet bring her plan back for a 3rd vote until there is sufficient support for it to pass. This is most likely the direct result of the head of the DUP phoning her this morning to say the DUP would not back her plan. As the ERG and Mogg's lot have staked their position pretty much to the DUP's on this then May knows her plan is dead in the water as it stands.

In the meantime the House wants to have a vote to allow alternative plans to be put to votes. These are the so called indicative votes- the idea being various plans are put to the House and voted on to get an idea of what sort of Brexit the House could agree to pass. So a 2nd referendum, repealing Article 50, no deal WTO rules, a Norway or Canada style arrangement- those sort of alternatives.

May however does not like this at all. This is Parliament taking power from the Government as far as she is concerned. As a result, despite the vote on whether the House should have the indicative votes being tabled by a leading Tory with many in his own party behind him, May has announced a Whip to vote against it. In an attempt to prevent the House putting forward any alternatives to her own plan at all. She doesn't even want them heard let alone voted on.
She also said that even if the House does get to vote on alternatives to her plan the government will not be bound by the result of the votes.

So by and large her position remains exactly the same as it has been throughout- its her plan for Brexit or no deal Brexit. And she is not accepting alternatives, she is not going to negotiate with anyone or make a compromise or listen to Parliament. Even Thatcher wasn't this stubbornly dug in at the end and she was mad as a bat in a hat trying to rent a flat from a gnat by then!}}

she is off the scale stubborn

Petty wrote: May has announced a Whip to vote against it.

Wait, back up a moment..
Didn't May's Whip just resign a couple days ago and vote against her? Is there a new whip now, or did they hug and make up?
I'm so confused..

{{Under normal circumstances her Chief Whip would have resigned after publicly critiquing her as he did, or been sacked. These are not normal times and he is still in place- part of May's problems however in getting votes now may be just how much authority has the Whip's Office still got with Backbenchers?- for a Chief Whip authority and respect is everything.

And just to highlight how not normal things are we are here talking about May whipping a vote on an amendment put forward by a senior member of her own party. There is nothing normal about any of this! }}

{{ More manoeuvring, now the government says it will put aside time for the indicative votes, even if the amendment (the one May is whipping against) fails.

"We would set aside time to have a first date debate later this week...we would then consider and consult about what, if any, other time might be needed,"

Ok so why? Well my guess is May seems to think she will lose the vote on the amendment, and that means the House would decide how much time it gives to such votes. What May is promising here is only a single debate, of no given length and the promise to then consider more time. She she seems to be hoping this will be enough to make the amendment unnecessary and so it will fail and control of the debate will stay with May.
Somehow though I suspect what she is offering here is not going to satisfy those who are expecting a reasonable length of time for the indicative vote debates and each alternative considered.
We shall see when the vote happens later. }}

{{{ OK- Letwin, the Tory MP behind the amendment that May is whipping against, says that May's objections as she has laid them out are entirely constitutional, and so asks if what the government is now proposing, to give time to alternatives to be debated, will it be the same as the amount of time and guarantees given in his amendment?

The answer-  "I can't give a commitment immediately for that level of detail. It may be that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State [Stephen Barclay] will be able to respond to that point in greater detail in his wind-up speech," "

So no then! Or more likely 'we were just throwing you a bone, we haven't got any meat on the bone yet, but we are working out all the details on the back of this fag packet to tell you about later!    This is desperate stuff from the government.}}}

{{ Voting on the amendment now. The business secretary has resigned in order to defy the government whip! }}

{{ Defeat for the govenrment- it passed 329 to 302- a hard blow for May- she has lost control over the process now to Parliament and its cost her at least one more Minister. }}

{{ Two more resignations, could well be more yet}}

At a certain point there becomes something strangely, perversely admirable about watching May struggle onward towards her doom.
Like old peglegged Captain Ahab battling Moby Dick against all odds to the very end....

Steven Barclay..

{{ Perverse is the word Dave, and whilst there might be some nobility in her stubbornness to a point, I dont understand many of her political calculations.
Take today. She chose to set the government up against the amendment from her own benches, she chose to make it a Whipped vote on the Tory benches. She could have made it a free vote, she would have got the same result anyway but it would not have forced ministers who went against a whip to have to resign. It was self defeating. Her attempt to enforce power has left her weaker, much like when she held  a general election to increase her Parliamentary majority and came out of it in a minority government. She has a knack for this. She might have Thatcher tenacity to stick to her guns, but Thatcher at the height of her powers was incredibly astute to political manoeuvring and when to apply the pressure and when to reward, and she kept tabs on everything, its what made her so formidable and so dangerous at the same time. May though lacks that political savvy to my eye, that instinct for when to push and when to retreat. }}

yep Thatcher had an instinct for politics but May just carries on single-mindedly regardless neither listening or compromising until she has to. It is a weak kind of stubbornness not a strong one. She was a crap Home Secretary as well, she massively reduced the police force numbers and as for Windrush and the climate of fear, that was disgusting.

{{ Hadn't seen that last one Figg

Right today seems a good day to work out where we are and what's next.

Parliament has successfully for now seized control from the government.
There will be a series of debates and votes on each of the alternative proposed options, with roughly five hours given over to each one, each one will be voted on to judge which if the options is most favoured by the House, and therefore in theory has the best chance of passing. Its expected to last all week and possibly into next.

Meanwhile May is neither happy nor idle. She is still trying to rally support around her deal and seeming to be succeeding, sort of.

The DUP are still sticking to their position, warning their Tory allies on the Brexit side to 'stand firm' and there is good reason for that - you can't trust a Tories word for shit, look how often they remove their own leaders.
And right on cue Mogg is saying he now would support the May deal, arguing May's deal is worse than no deal but better than not leaving at all.
And Boris, less diplomatically says there is no point supporting the deal unless stage 2 is going be handled very differently- which is Boris for 'I'll vote for it if May then goes.' He still has his eye on the prize.

So May encouraged by this, Boris's implied threat not withstanding, is still hoping to bring her own deal back at some point, if not this week then next week after the indicative votes (which it seems she will ignore despite whatever she says).

This quote from David Davis sums up pretty well why there is a chance of May does bring her deal back it might well pass at the third attempt-

"It's not a good deal but the alternative is a complete cascade of chaos."

And that seems to me to be summing up a growing sentiment among MP's- they look bad over this, they are increasingly lacking public credibility and political credibility and maybe its better just to go with May's plan and get it over with than drag out the chaos longer. Weariness might be May's best ally yet.
Her plan, such its ben- push and delay and delay and push until the country has its back to the wall and a choice only between jumping blindly off the cliff or her plan to get down from the cliff, even if it is a bad plan might not have been good politics, but it might still work. She is certainly not going to give it up, no matter how the House votes over the next few days.}}

{{ Interesting PMQ's- May has not refuted questions over her resigning- and she is giving something of an electioneering style barnstorming performance - like she knows its her last, or close to it and is going to go down guns blazing.

'"Yet again, another Tory prime minister is willing to ride off into the sunset and saddle us with another crisis in the UK," says the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford, referring to Theresa May's potential resignation'- BBC }}}

{{ Well its taken all day but she is finally announced she is going as expected.

'Theresa May has promised Tory MPs she will stand down if they back her EU withdrawal deal.
The PM said she would not stay in power for the next phase of Brexit talks on the future trading relationship, at a meeting of the 1922 committee.'- BBC }}

I suppose that means Dominic Raab as PM, a far right sociopath.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{ Well its taken all day but she is finally announced she is going as expected.

'Theresa May has promised Tory MPs she will stand down if they back her EU withdrawal deal.
The PM said she would not stay in power for the next phase of Brexit talks on the future trading relationship, at a meeting of the 1922 committee.'- BBC }}

But that still doesn't guarantee her enough votes to pass, does it?
Or does it???
How are you even supposed to keep score in this game when the goalposts keep moving, the rules keep changing, and you're not even sure who's on which team any more?

How are you even supposed to keep score in this game when the goalposts keep moving, the rules keep changing, and you're not even sure who's on which team any more? - David

{{ This is what makes Parliament such a great spectator sport, if not perhaps the most effective way to run a country

Today's Parliamentary drama was somewhat predictable, it should have been sensational but in current times a PM offering to resign if her own party will just back her one vote before she goes and Parliament voting down every single alternative to May's deal and leaving it with nothing at all to show, is par for the course.

What today's indicative votes did prove beyond a doubt is that there is no appetite for no deal, no chance of a second referendum passing (it got defeated pretty clearly) and Labours alternative Custom Union plan Corbyn has been touting all this time did just as badly.

All this will have cheered May up a bit at least as it accentuates the position she has engineered- that of crashing out, cancelling Brexit or her deal- three unappetising choices, but hers is slightly less shit tasting than the other two to most of Parliament- and on that dubious merit it might pass. But that is a might- even with Boris and Mogg and co now on board saying they will vote for Mays' plan they still dont have a majority to pass it without the DUP (and that is assuming there is not a single Tory rebel, and I think there will be a few, possibly up to a dozen). SNP will continue to vote against it on masse so no worries there, no it will be Labour MP's in Brexit strong north of England seats who might well push May over the line in the end. If May succeeds it will be because Labour have delivered her it.

Meanwhile in Scotland the Parliament voted on a motion that Article 50 should be repealed if Britain faces a no deal Brexit. It passed by 89 to 28. People sometimes wonder the point of such votes in the Scottish Parliament given they can effect nothing and change nothing at Westminster- but the point rather is to arm the SNP in negotiations, rather than speaking on behalf of the SNP, a political party, they can say they speak on behalf of the will of the Scottish Parliament, carrying much more political clout. All part of the devolved power games! }}

{{ Lets just sum up what happened since the Tories came to power.

So they started out in a bad way- everyone in Parliament did as it was off the back of the expenses scandal in which MP's on all sides were found to have been fiddling the books, and those who were not fiddling the books but doing it right were still walking away with scandalous amounts of public money. That's the mood we start in at the end of the Brown govenrment and the start of Camerons.
The Tories also inherited a bust economy in a globally bust economy (thank you bankers world wide, with a special shout-out to the US mortgage sector!).
So the first thing they did was to use this as an excuse to get rid of much of the stuff they have traditionally opposed as conservatives- government spending and social services.
So they froze all public workers wages, then continued to do so, year after year until inflation was outstripping wages, this put a squeeze on the middle class- which is bad for Tories as the middle class vote, and aspiring ones vote Tory.
So stage two of their rule was to enlist the aid of the right wing media in shifting the blame for the economy from rich people like themselves and their banker friends in the counties and all the Lords and Ladies and toffs of the realm, and put it on the poorest and most vulnerable instead who have no voice to protest their innocence with.

A media campaign lasting several years was undertaken vilifying the poor, calling them scroungers, work-shy, lazy, they highlighted the most ridiculous cases they could find with families of 10 children and no working adult, and a slew of 'poverty-safari' tv shows added to the sense the poor were stupid, work-shy, scroungers and criminals, all the usual tricks and in a masterful piece of doublethink, given we all saw the banking crisis happen and be the fault of bankers, they successfully convinced that the middle-class squeeze was caused by the work-shy poor scrounging off the system and the hard earned tax money of the middle-class.

This in turn allowed gave the Tories the political space to go after the poor and govenrment spending, what little the poor get of it that is (the govenrment expenses, paid for by the tax payer, for a meal for two hosted by a Government minister is on average larger than the entire sum a single unemployed person gets to live on for a week including rent)- they introduced the badly functioning, unfair and cruel universal credit system for the unemployment, not only a broken system which failed to deliver the right money to the right people, or any money at all often, but which had so many hurdles, hoops and traps built into it so that the applicant was likely to fail to apply correctly in the first place or fail to meet one of the many activities or criteria required at some point allowing their money to be stopped as a 'punishment'.

They means-tested disabled people, putting them through intrusive tests conducted by non-medical staff- leading to situations where people unable to even walk or dress themselves were told they had to go out to work and had their disability money stopped.
They slashed money to local councils for services to the elderly and disabled in the Community, leading many housebound or without daily assistance. As a knock on result more people went into care rather than being in their own home and care home went under huge pressure, leading to mistreatment and negligence due to shortages and lack of training for staff. A further effect of which is as most care homes are now private businesses demand drove cost, and the expense of staying in a care home went through the roof, with many people having to sell their home to meet their costs.

Suicides from stress related conditions with people faced with sanctions at every turn stopping their money for the slightest infraction (like being a minute late for a meeting, or the man who got sanctioned for having a heart attack on the way to the meeting and missing it, having a heart attack was not considered a good enough reason to have failed to attend!) also went up dramatically.
Continuing there blitz on public spending under the guise of austerity they closed health centres, day centres, support centres for single mothers, immigrants, youth centres, everything and anything they could, especially in inner cities. And the kids that have grown up since then in those poorest places in the last 10 ten years? They are the cause of today's current knife crime epidemic. With no outlets, no chance of escape, nothing to fulfil their minds many turned to gangs for family and direction. And with gangs come the usual stuff, petty theft and robberies, muggings, graffiti and property damage and drugs, and with the last one comes the stabbings.

In the same time period, UK wide use of food banks increased by over 200% and homelessness rose by over 100%.

Then Call me Dave Cameron in fear of losing safe Tory seats in the English south east heartlands of Torydom to UKIP (a party with only a handful of MEP's and two MP's but who got a lot of press, and whose appeal lay almost purely in England) panicked and gave the country a referendum on the EU, splitting the nation down the middle and setting different parts of the UK at odds with each other and throwing the entire Northern Ireland peace agreement into doubt and uncertainty and with it the Union (which was already in trouble, but bare in mind the Tory full name is the Conservative and Unionist Party, they are not supposed to be the ones jeopardising it).

Then Cameron got stabbed in the back and outed and the new Chancellor announced that austerity was over, but the programs under way in terms of cuts and yet to be implemented cuts would still be happening anyway. Oh and to top it all off we were no better off than when they started austerity. How? The government, whilst cutting everyone else's money had broken its own promises on government borrowing, and as they had done so at unfavourable rates we were in fact no better off than when austerity started all those years ago. Plus they gave a lot of tax breaks to the rich, because they are rich and so are all their friends. All we got out of it was the harm.

And now under May, who lets not forget was the Home Office Minister previously who cut all the police numbers and funding and fixed pay, took away bonuses and overtime rates and closed so many of the support systems available to the poor and victims of crime, and we have her rotten deal no one will vote for without a gun to their head.
The Tories are about to take us out of the EU and into completely unknown uncharted territory which no one, including May who is advocating for it believes is a good idea (she voted to remain in the referendum after all).

And all of this is the Tories, from the food banks, to vilifying and punishing the poor for the crimes of the rich, to ripping the nation in bits over Brexit- its all them. Quite possibly one of the worst periods of governance this country has endured since Parliament began. Incompetent doesn't even come close to describing it. Nor the harm they have done to the UK and its people.}}