Since I always feel smarter after reading his comments, I asked Tony Jay if he could share some information with us:
So, I’m sitting there, early hours of Monday morning, chugging pints of home-brew and alternating between watching BBC One’s coverage of the European Election results unfolding in glorious bursts of multi-colour infotainment and posting increasingly incoherent comments about it here at the Jackal Pound. My phone reaches over and taps me on the shoulder. “You got a message”, it sez. Apparently, Anne-Laurie – who I can only presume was three days into a poppers and absinthe binge at this point – thought that asking me to do a guest post on Britain’s latest self-inflicted humiliation would be a swell idea. Clearly this is a mistake, and I apologise, but in the immortal words of one or more of the Rolling Stones, you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes, well, you get this nonsense instead.
First a little background to set the scene. You may or may not know that 2016 saw more than one episode of hostile Russian interference in the electoral systems of a western democracy. You good people were blessed with the constantly weeping pustule of venomous criminality known as President Donald J Trump, while we went one better by voting to leave the world’s largest alliance of advanced economies on the grounds that those blasted foreigners were holding us back, stealing our money and stopping us from getting it on with all of the sexy all of the time. Something like that anyway, the lying shitweasels behind the campaign to Leave scattered like pinstriped cockroaches the second the result of the vote came in and have been deliberately vague about the actual reasons for and tangible benefits of leaving the European Union ever since. We were supposed to Leave back at the end of March, but didn’t, because three years after the Referendum not a single person involved with negotiating Britain’s exit from the EU had been able to find a version of Brexit (fucking awful name, sounds like a breakfast cereal designed to soften painful stools) that doesn’t put a bullet through the head of the national economy and (much more importantly) leave them and their political party holding the bag when everything goes 28 Days Later.
Since we’re still in the EU and will be until Parliament agrees a Withdrawal Act (short version, not going to happen) or October 31st, when the current extension runs out, we’ve had to take part in elections to the European Parliament. Because this is modern Britain, and because the Government of the day is simultaneously woefully divided into rival factions and unified by an animus towards doing anything remotely helpful for anyone without a bank balance of 7 digits and above, only the very bare minimum of effort was put into organising the elections. The general feeling coming from the Government side was “If we pretend it’s not happening we don’t have to talk about it”, leaving the various factions and parties on either side of the Leave/Remain divide free to turn the whole exercise into a proxy Referendum on how the country feels about Brexit. Which I’m basically okay with. Britain’s European Elections have always been mind-numbingly dull affairs characterised by endless variations of the stock phrases. “Blah Blah defending Britain’s interests” and “Blah Blah working with our friends on the continent”. They never say what they actually intend to do as part of the EU, and no one much really cared. Even after the rise of UKIP and the injection of tabloid-fuelled Europhobia into the national psyche the only thing that really changed come election time was the addition of stock phrase three, “Blah Blah sending a message to Brussels” to the mix. With the forces of Leave resolutely opposed to asking the country if it thought, maybe, on reflection, that it would quite like to start unshitting the bed by choosing to Remain after all, then a proxy Referendum on that question would be better than nothing.
So, what happened?
Okay, first things first, the pundits and experts were very clear about what they though was going to happen. Endless vox-pops and opinion polls all agreed on a few salient facts.
Firstly, that the governing Tory Party of outgoing PM Theresa May was going to be brutally punished by its voters for ‘failing’ to enact Brexit. In the Conservative Clubs and underage massage parlours that are their natural habitat the typical Tory voter had no time for all the namby-pamby nonsense coming from Leftist front groups like the Confederation of British Industry, the Bank of England and MI6 warning about how damaging Brexit itself would be to British interests and how utterly, comprehensively disastrous it would be for the UK to drop out of the EU without a negotiated withdrawal deal. They knew better, you see, having graduated with honours from the school of Right-Wing Tabloid bollocks and taken a Masters at the University of Right-Wing Broadsheet pomposity. They wanted their Brexit, preferably without any kind of deal that meant shaking the hand of greasy foreigners, and if the Tories weren’t going to give it to them they’d vote for someone who bloody well would.Secondly, Labour’s policy of ‘constructive ambiguity’ over its Brexit policy, promising to ‘honour’ the 2016 referendum while simultaneously holding out hope that, should every other avenue be blocked, a 2nd Referendum would be the only way forward, had not only run its course but was now actively damaging Labour’s relationship with both Leave and Remain voters, neither of whom felt that the Party was offering them enough of what they wanted. The local elections earlier in the month had given a taste of what that might look like, with big swings amongst mostly Remain voters away from Labour and towards the out-and-out ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ parties like the Lib-Dems, Scottish Nationalists and the Greens. Labour campaigners were loudly complaining that they couldn’t sell this policy at the doorstep without a three-hour Powerpoint presentation and the aid of a full-time marriage councillor. It was looking like a recipe for an electoral kicking that could, depending on how Labour responded, set a precedent for voter-abandonment that would impact Labour’s plan to force an early General Election…. unpleasantly.
Thirdly, the Return of the Frog King. Nigel Farage had fled Britain like a scalded pervert when his wildly profitable grifting operation cum Russo-American disruption campaign accidently stumbled upon enough bubbling racism to ‘win’ the Referendum, leaving his UK Independence Party to topple gracelessly towards its inevitable destiny as the home for really, really racist bastards who aren’t young or tattooed enough for the English Defence League. After bouncing around the Accent-for-Hire shores of the Wingnutosphere for a while he apparently signed a Blood Pact with Stevie “Two-Shirts, Both Brown” Bannon to head up the British arm of his Greater European Fascist Axis. This new Brexit Party was basically just a personality cult based around Farage, with really sketchy funding and a deliberate policy of having no policy other than being called ‘The Brexit Party’, a social-media driven electoral middle-finger to ‘real’ politics, a vehicle for single issue protest votes with a candidate roll that looked like it had simply been copied from an average person’s “Worst Dinner Party Guest List Ever” Twitter stream. By only entering the electoral battlefield a few weeks before the actual vote Farage avoided most of the in depth coverage that could – if the British media got off its collective backside – expose his operation for what it was, and the pundits were postulating that his Brexit Party was on course to top the polls with an estimated 37% to 40% of the vote.
Election Day rolled around. The most notable part of it was the number of European residents in Britain who were denied the right to vote by a toxic mix of Government-led ineptitude, local Government’s without the resources or the time to properly process paperwork, and fuckwit electoral officers being brazenly xenophobic to people with verboten accents. Britain voted on Thursday, but because we don’t do exit polls and the rest of Europe wouldn’t be voting until the weekend (uncivilised, don’t they know the rural folk only come to Town on market day?) it was all a bit of a drawn-out orgy of anticipation until results started coming out late on Sunday night.
By the time the last results had come in and the UK’s share of the 751 seat EU Parliament had been decided, things…. were not that different, apart from the things that were.
Here’s the raw figures. For the pro-Leave side of the debate the Brexit Party gathered 31.6% of the national vote, which is considerably less than the pundits were expecting, and bagged 29 MEPs. The Conservatives got 9.1% of the vote and 4 MEPs, a drop of 14.8% and 15 MEPs from 2014. The UKIP vote went down from 26.6% in 2014 and 24 MEPs to 3.3% and zero MEPs.
On the pro-Remain side, the Liberal Democrats and Greens got 20.3% and 12.1% respectively, which gave them 16 and 7 MEPs. The Scottish Nationalists took 3.6% and 3 MEPs. Plaid Cymry (the Welsh Nationalists) got a whole 1% and a single MEP. Change UK, the breakaway group of anti-Corbyn Labour MPs and anti-Brexit Tory MPs failed to win a single MEP, but they did get 3.3% of the national vote.
Labour dropped to 14.1% of the vote from the 24.4% it got in 2014, losing half of its 20 MEPs. I guess the campaigners on the doorstep weren’t exaggerating.
A few points. Obviously, if you add together all of the vote percentages you can make a few concrete assumptions. The openly pro-Remain parties together took 40% of the vote, kicking the hot shit out of the pro-No Deal Brexit parties’ 34.9%. Yes, it’s shocking and horrifying that at least 34.9% of the people who could be arsed to vote think that just tearing Britain root and branch out of the EU would be fine and dandy, but let’s face it, there are a lot of fucking idiots everywhere and at least the non-idiots outnumber them. Give the vast majority of the Tory vote to the pro-Brexit side and a smaller percentage of the Labour vote to the pro-Remain side (because why not?) then it comes out at about 47% for Leave and 50% for Remain.
Brexit lost this election, anyone who says differently is just lying.
Watching the results come in I went through the same stages every time. Starting with “Dammit! How did Brexit win?” to looking at the change from the last election and realising “Brexit just sucked up the UKIP vote and less than half of the Tories, that’s not surprising” and ending with, “Hang on, they’ve just got the old UKIP MEP slots and taken one or two from the Tories, nothing has really changed”. In an election where the pro-Brexit side was calling on their voters to send a message…. That didn’t really happen.
Only 37% of the electorate could be bothered voting. That’s not great, but on the other hand these were the people who really give a shit about the topic of Brexit. Farage’s neo-fascist cult only got around 12% of the whole electorate, I can live with that.
Fewer people voted Brexit Party than took the time to sign the recent petition to revoke Article 50 (the bit of EU law that lets a member nation leave the Union) and cancel the whole thing. Pro-Brexit wankers were jeering that ‘only’ 6 million or so could be found to sign a petition to end Brexit. They couldn’t even get that many to the polls for an actual vote. Shove that up your “Will of the People” and smoke it you bunch of reckless feckers.Fewer people voted in this entire election than voted Leave in 2016. That’s a huge, huge number of people who obviously aren’t the dedicated, driven British Nationalists they’ve been painted as by pro-Brexit enthusiasts. Would they come out again on the same side in a 2nd Referendum? Are they staying away from the polls because they think they made a huge mistake in 2016? Let’s find out.
What does this mean for the future?
The Tories are in a really, really bad place. When you hear candidates for May’s soon-to-be vacated throne talking about what “the people” are telling them, the people they’re talking about are the only people they ever give two hoots about come election time, their voters, and what they overwhelmingly want is to Brexit ASAP with No Deal. How far are the candidates for Tory leader going to have to go making promises about the hardness of their Brexit when they’ve got Farage’s cult always a bit further to the extreme luring their voters to the Dark(er) Side? If they weren’t the biggest Party in Parliament this would all be hilarious. But they are. So the best we can hope for is that the new Tory leader who does emerge is so way out there towards a No Deal Brexit that a chunk of the Party bolts for Independent status or joins whatever is left of Change UK, costing the Tories their status as biggest Party and forcing a General Election.
Labour are in a bind too. The policy they followed this far kept the Party together long enough for the Tories to self-destruct, but the local and European elections have made it plain that the Parliamentary phase of all this is no longer the thing Labour’s leadership should be concentrating on. If they don’t come out ASAP as the anti-Brexit Party their membership overwhelmingly want then they are not going to win the next General Election anyway, and Corbyn’s project of democratising the Party decision-making apparatus and returning it to its roots as a party of social justice and worker’s rights will be vulture-food. It certainly looks like this lesson has been well and truly learned, with the string of recent announcements that Labour officially won’t accept any withdrawal deal that doesn’t include a 2nd Referendum. Will it be enough to win back enough Remain voters to offset the hit they’re going to take in Leave strongholds? Pointless worrying about it, as it’s not like there’s any other option.
The Scottish Nationalists have cemented themselves as the Party Scotland’s Remain-voting majority trust, with the Tories booted and Labour eclipsed. How this translates to a General Election, and beyond that to the chances of a 2nd Scottish Independence referendum depends a lot on what happens with Brexit. One thing is for sure, if a Leave-voting England drags Scotland out of the EU against its will there’ll be hell to pay. OTOH, should Labour need Scots Nationalist votes to reach a majority in a future hung Parliament you can bet your sweet ass another vote on Independence will be a deal-breaker for Edinburgh.
The Lib-Dems and Greens have done extremely well by planting their flags firmly on the summit of Mount Remain, the disorganised conmen and conwomen of Change UK less so. How the two main Remain parties are going to handle the tactical voting co-operation vital to maximising their continued success in a General Election is… problematic, say the least. In a 2nd Referendum it doesn’t matter, but when they’re competing for the same pool of voters in a First Past the Post electoral system they are in real danger of cock-blocking each other and letting the forces of fuckery sneak in on a unified minority vote. This issue will get even more complicated now that Labour is joining them in the Open Remain cockpit. A lot of Lib-Dem (and to a lesser extent Green) energy has been expended smearing Labour as just as much a pro-Brexit Party as the Tories. They keep that up and Labour will have no compunction in reminding voters good and hard that they only reason the Tories have been in a position to impose Austerity and Brexit on the country is because the Lib Dems sold their soul and joined a Coalition with them in 2010. It could get very nasty, very quickly.
As for Change UK, whatever dudes, you always sucked anyway. Long-term they’ll probably fold into the Lib-Dems, but in the short-term I’ll expect them to hang around so that Tory moderates have somewhere ideologically squishy to land when and if they jump ship from Boris’ Big Adventure.
The Brexit Party is celebrating its ‘big win’ right now, but for all their bluster there’s no escaping the cold, hard reality that they’re just UKIP with a million or so extra disgruntled Tories tacked on. Farage is babbling about them being the inevitable winners of a future General Election, but he said more or less the same thing about UKIP back in the day and they never amounted to more than a fart in a bathtub when the real contest came around. Now that the dust is settling over the European Elections he’s going to be under more and more pressure to say what his Party’s policies are on all of the issues facing this Disunited Kingdom, and even after 2016 I can’t see his toxic stew of personality cultism, libertarian voodoo economics and race-baiting xenophobia getting much purchase outside of the tiny minority who’ve already bought into it. And that’s before his deeply disturbing links to the global far-Right and its demanding moneymen get front-paged day after day. I could be wrong, but it’s entirely possible that this is Evil Mr Toad’s high-water mark, and sooner rather than later the knives will be out for him.
Okay, I think that covers everything. Let’s chat about the Democratic Primaries and the argument for Impeachment instead.
SiubhanDuinne
Let’s not.
That was, as usual, coffee-spit funny and truly, madly, deeply informative. I think Tony Jay should be a front-pager — our designated correspondent on All Things Brit.
scuffletuffle
Not sure I understood everything discussed in this post, but it made me giggle and that’s something! Thanks!
gene108
The 2016 Brexit vote is non-binding. Parliament is not bound by the result. They were free to ignore it. And I think they still are.
Don’t know how ignoring it would play out politically, but I believe it is an option.
Magnus
@gene108: The leave vote is non-binding, but invocation of Article 50 is. Parliament has to revoke invocation of Article 50 in order for the UK to remain in the EU. May stupidly rammed through invocation of Article 50 before getting a deal her party could live with, which is, in part, why the UK is in this mess. If she would have gotten a deal the Tories would support, then UK would be brexited by now. May could not even wrangle her party to support a version of Brexit.
Immanentize
I <3 Tony Jay.
Thank you! Farage wants to hang out with Orban anyway — if only that animal would speak proper English!
Also, TJ, what say you about your own Hairmeister — Broris ("Bad Enough" for sure) Johnson?
MattF
Sounds like the talking heads mostly missed the story and the right-wing schemers got set back. Both positive results.
geg6
@gene108:
This is what I don’t get. Nothing about the original referendum was binding. They should just say fuck it, forget it and be done with it. It’s the the same mindset as the GOP has here. They have decided they must go down with the rotten, rusted, sinking ship. No concern for their own country or people and no concern for how, in the end, may destroy the party or ideological talisman they cling to in the end.
I just don’t get it.
Immanentize
@MattF:
The Big Country? I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to.
TaMara (HFG)
@SiubhanDuinne: You and me both. I’ve been saying for a while he should have keys.
Another Scott
Excellent as always, TJ. Thanks.
Are we/you still in the following situation:
1) EU says there’s no more negotiating to be done. It’s May’s “deal” or nothing.
2) There’s no majority for May’s “deal”.
3) May is a lame duck, and Corbyn and others have said that there’s no guarantee that a new Tory leader won’t do something different so there’s no point in negotiating with her.
4) The clock is still ticking, and unless something changes, the UK leaves the EU with no “deal” on October 31.
I agree with you that the obvious, sensible thing is to scrap Brexit, but is that likely to happen?
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
The timing of this confuses me. The Tories will start their leadership election on what, June 10. This could meander for a while. And doesn’t Commons have a recess somewhere in the Summer?
So, will the Tories actually have time to propose anything new or make a stand for a no deal BREXIT? The EU has already said that the Withdrawal agreement cannot be changed. The Political document or whatever, could be played with, though to what end?
When could a General Election actually happen, and how would this impact BREXIT? The current end date for BREXIT is October 31. Would someone have to ask for a further extension?
I agree that the Conservatives are screwed, and will hurt themselves even more if they select a hard liner (which they probably will do). And it was strange to see Farage’s mug on so many newspapers and UK websites when, as you note, he really doesn’t have the numbers to do much more than hurt himself.
As an outsider, it seems to me that once again the Conservatives (and Labour to a much lesser degree) is making a lot of noise about stuff that they cannot really do much about.
Betty Cracker
So refreshing to focus on someone else’s related yet separate nightmare for a few minutes! Thank you for the play-by-play; I’m less confused than before by the results.
Kent
So how much of this is generational?
I haven’t seen exit poll breakdowns. But is this Brexit party mostly oldsters and the Greens and Lib-Dems mostly younger? Or is it more complicated than that?
Another Scott
@Magnus: Yup.
TheConvesation:
They should get on with it quickly, but I doubt that they will. Leaving the EU is their white whale for too many – even if it destroys much of the economy in the process….
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
I’m liking the new Balloon Juice, International Edition.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Agreed.
PJ
@Baud: The Balloon-Juice Herald-Tribune.
Thanks for this and the mighty prose, Mr. Jay. I hope you have a day job somewhere writing comic stories not-so-tied-to-current-events that I will one day be able to read.
Immanentize
@Baud: @Baud:
Agreed squared.
Sloane Ranger
@Brachiator: This. But it doesn’t prevent Labour and some moderate Tories believing that they have some magic fairy dust that will pursuade the EU to reconsider. Add to this that the cracks are starting to appear in Labour. The majority of Labour MP’s are starting to come out in favour of a 2nd referendum but a significant minority representing constituencies which voted heavily to Leave are just as emphatic against holding one.
I can see both Parties splitting over this and what that will mean for the future I have no idea, except it will get worse before it gets better.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Do we have any idea how sound he is on Rugby Union v. Rugby League? Or milk in first or second? Enquiring minds want, nay, need to know.
low-tech cyclist
I promise I’ll read the rest of your post as soon as I catch my breath from laughing at this!
(((CassandraLeo)))
Fantastic post, Tony. Hilarious and incredibly informative. Would love to see this kind of thing regularly.
Tony Jay
@Immanentize:
A thoroughly nasty piece of work. All ambition, no conscience, utterly focused first, last and always on the health, wealth and well-being of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Ego with a patina of upper class spiffing cluelessness, like someone cloned a cell-scraping from the Prefects toilet at Eton and forced the hideous result to watch Hugh Grant movies until it could simulate humanity. If the Tories choose him to lead them it will signal their final descent into solipsistic irrelevance. The television producers who allowed him to build his persona of ‘Bumbling Boris’ on the BBC have expressed their guilt, but it didn’t stop them trying to do the same thing for Jacob Rees-Mogg, did it?
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: Sent you email.
JPL
@Tony Jay: So do we hope that they choose him?
Rommie
I do wonder if Scotland, and to some extent, Northern Ireland, have had enough of the BS and will vote Independence if given another chance. And, because of that, everything will be done to prevent another chance to vote. Hell to pay indeed.
Edith Head Gave Good Gown
Really enjoyed this post. I learned, I laughed.
Roger Moore
@Magnus:
Perhaps I’m remembering wrong, but I thought the EU wasn’t willing to negotiate until after Article 50 had been invoked.
satby
@Tony Jay: so Johnson and Trump meeting would create a supernova of stupid evil? Because they sound exactly alike.
otmar
@Magnus: the EU only allowed Brexit negotiations to start after Article 50 was triggered.
Yutsano
@Rommie: It would be fascinating if Brexit triggered the final conclusion of the Good Friday accords. Namely, the peaceful reunification of Ireland and NI. It would be hard for Great Britain true but the peace has held. Not to mention Ireland is no longer some rabidly Catholic country anymore.
And if Brexit happens October 31st Scotland puts up the independence referendum on November 1st. They vehemently do NOT want to leave the EU.
low-tech cyclist
@Tony Jay:
OK, this wins the fucking Internet, at least for the day. Where do you want it delivered?
And yes, you should be a front-pager. Good grief, yes. Give us some reason to howl with laughter while our respective nations take turns holding each other’s beers.
rikyrah
Thank you, Tony Jay???
Brachiator
@Rommie:
Scotland may want Independence, but the militant Protestants in Northern Ireland want to remain connected to the UK.
But the BREXIT insanity might lead to the North joining the Republic of Ireland.
Tony Jay
@geg6:
It’s pretty simple. The Referendum allowed the Base of the Tory Party the chance to express their nativist bigotry with the expectation that the Party leadership would do as they were told. Brexit was devised by Tories, promoted by Tories, supported by pro-Tory Media, funded by Tory Party backers. Opposing it after Leave won the Referendum would be a death-sentence to the career plans of ambitious Tory politicians. The fact that it would destroy the country is secondary to the fact that they would get blamed for said destruction, but both reasons explain why Brexit hasn’t happened yet. They can’t go through with it, but they can’t be seen to be the ones stopping it, so they’re stuck, the country’s stuck, and down the drain we spiral.
BC in Illinois
@Tony Jay:
For real. ( I looked it up. )
@Rommie:
This is my big wonder. Will the Tories do a no-deal Brexit (described in the north as “Taking Scotland out of the EU against our will !”), and will that strengthen Scottish nationalism enough to bring about a [successful] Indy-Ref 2? The Scottish National Party seems to be riding high on its success in the European Parliament elections. The Brexit Party (i.e., a slogan) has some support, but the Tories are weaker than ever and Labour in Scotland went down to a flaming defeat.
Sloane Ranger
@Roger Moore: That’s what I remember as well. I remember that there was a delay of a few months during which May tried to get the EU to change its mind. She eventually caved to increasing pressure from the ERU and the right wing press to “carry out the will of the people “.
This entire clusterfuck has been caused by a number of true believers who persuaded themselves of two things.
1. The EU was a failed institution held together only by inertia and once the UK took the lead, other countries would follow us out.
2. Our inate superiority would enable us to divide and rule the nations remaining in the weakened EU allowing us to negotiate separate deals with each one.
I think people like David Davis were genuinely astonished when this didn’t happen and too arrogant to admit they’d made a mistake, choosing to double down instead.
VeniceRiley
@Tony Jay: This sounds so familiar. I’m glad we haven’t devolved into a bewildering number of parties. And I do feel smarter. I’m sure that will be temporary. best luck to getting through all of it.
Roger Moore
@Tony Jay:
But it sounds as if part of the problem is that Labour hasn’t stepped in and done anything. Instead Corbyn has tried to be too clever about exploiting the Tories’ failure. He’s afraid to boldly step in with a strong Remain message and instead is letting the Tories take the brunt while trying not to piss off the Leavers who might otherwise favor Labour. The net result is that he’s looked weak and indecisive and given parties like the Lib Dems and Greens an opening.
Barney
An update on Labour’s behaviour about a new referendum: on Sunday evening, days after the British polls had closed (and after the rest of the EU’s had, for that matter), Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s spin doctor, admitted on TV he had voted for the Liberal Democrats. He has been a prominent voice in the calls for a new referendum, and he said he did it because he was fed up with the Labour leadership arsing around and not committing to it. But he did not suggest it to anyone before the vote.
Today, they expelled him from the party. And he and many others have pointed out the speed that did that with, in comparison with the humming and hahing about expelling anti-semites, which can take literally years (and they sometimes seem to be able to sneak back in) – for which, also today, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has now opened a formal investigation. And Corbyn’s advisers include people who used to be prominent in genuine Marxist parties that put candidates up against Labour.
This does not make the chances of the Labour leadership embracing another referendum look good. I think Corbyn is moderately happy with No Deal, as long as he can blame the Tories for it and say that Labour will be needed to rescue the country from the recession it induces.
patroclus
The European elections were fun and interesting but they don’t change the Parliamentary math, which is that there isn’t a majority to do much of anything – implement May’s deal, implement the new PM’s deal (if there is one), order a 3rd referendum, revoke Article 50 or anything else… The only thing that got a majority was Yvette Cooper’s law to stop a No-Deal Brexit, but that has been rendered otiose because it only applied to the particular circumstances of April. So, the real question is whether she can re-assemble a majority to stop a No-Deal Brexit prior to 10/31; regardless of who is leading the Tories, who will undoubtedly be more pro-Brexit than May ever was. If she can do that, then there will either be another extension or, just maybe, she could also assemble a majority to terminate the Article 50 notice, which IS legally binding until revoked (unlike the non-binding referendum). My guess is that they’ll stop a No-Deal Brexit again but won’t be able to terminate Article 50 and that we will continue in this holding phase until the next General Election (which doesn’t have to happen until 2022).
Sloane Ranger
@Yutsano: Scotland can’t legally hold a referendum without the UK Parliament passing an Act authorising it. I doubt this will happen unless an incoming Government needed SNP votes.
They could go the Catalan route. I doubt if any UK Government would actually try to arrest Nicola Sturgeon at all as the Spanish Government did. I could be wrong BJ could be arrogant enough to try but, even if they just ignored a vote for independence, there would be a shift storm in Scotland they couldn’t ignore.
Magnus
@otmar: @Roger Moore: May needed to negotiate with her own party before she started to negotiate with the EU.
Yes, Article 50 had to be invoked to negotiate with the EU, but May needed to do negotiations with her own party to get an agreement they could support. She had to figure out how to walk the line between her OWN party’s leavers, and the bankers and free-traders who wanted to remain. Instead she invoked Article 50 then called a snap general election for June 2017, in which the Tories lost support. She claimed the election was to strengthen her hand in Brexit negotiations. It made things worse for her and made a smooth Brexit even more impossible.
The problem with Brexit is and has been the Tories. Cameron called for the Brexit referendum as a way of holding the Conservatives together; because they are split. Cameron and May care more about their party than their country.
Corbyn may be just as bad, he’s a leaver too, since the EU isn’t socialist enough for him. So Labour was not a strong parliamentary opposition to leave. Parts of both Labour and the Conservatives want to remain and other parts want to leave. Part of the reason why both parties lost support in the EU elections.
It’s a mess, but the responsibility for the whole mess lies in the lap of the Tories: Cameron for putting party before country, and May for losing support, invoking Article 50, and then not being able to whip her coalition to support her crap Brexit agreement.
Tony Jay
@Another Scott:
No more negotiating anything compatible with May’s red-lines, but the EU has always made it clear they’d be willing to sign off on something a lot less onerous if Britain came to the table without the stick up its arse. OTOH that was before the Euro Elections, which will produce new negotiators and heads of the Commission and Council. We may well have screwed up our leeway for anything other than a straight revocation of Article 50.
Nope. Never was.
Exactly. That’s why the recent talks fell apart.
Yup. Here comes nutcutting time. Something’s got to give because there’s no majority in Parliament for No-Deal.
Eventually I think we’ll have to, but the damage it’s done and will keep on doing? Fuck David Cameron. Fuck him with the pig.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Friend of mine who does banking analyst says the UK has legitimate grievances with the EU, basically Brussels whole attitude is the UK should just sit down, shut and do as it’s told, that the poor countries of the EU should be willing to starve rather than inconvenience the rich EU states. Sort of like if our Constitution allowed New York and California to run amok over the other 48. So that’s what driving the Britexit movement. But the problem is the farce we are witnessing.
Butter emails!!!
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
So which is it? The UK is a rich country, so it should be part of the group fucking over the poor EU members. Sounds like conservative BS to me.
mg_65
Holy shit, Tony Jay, you are a great writer!
(Also informative.)
ruemara
Thanks so much, it makes some sense of this utter fail. Good Lord, we’re a dumb species.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Butter emails!!!:UK is not as big as Germany and France together. Basically Germany and France want it both ways on the union; no internal tariffs but no pork to the poor states to balance the economy.
It sounds like to me this is just like Trump’s trade wars, take a real problem – slam your fist on the table, tell the other side to F-off and then storm out, then wonder why real problem gets worse.
Doug R
@Another Scott:
Didn’t an EU court rule that Britain didn’t have to go ahead with the deal?
Jay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
@Butter emails!!!:
Yeah, it’s Brexiteer BS.
Since the UK joined the EU it has continually used it’s presence to warp EU policy in favour of the UK.
http://bruegel.org/2016/05/brexit-debate-ignores-uks-privileged-position-in-europe/
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/14/perks-end-uk-eu-guy-verhofstadt
Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
The UK has a great deal of power to shape EU decisions. Neither the Conservative Party nor average guy BREXIT supporters give a shit about poorer EU states.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
My take is that we’re getting past the period when Brexit could be fudged and waffled with the old political rules. It’s such a catastrophic disaster on every level, economically, financially, politically, culturally, etc that its steadily burned through all the official and unofficial guide-rails for how things are supposed to work in British Government. Never before has such a huge decision been handed over to a public so badly informed of what they were voting for and against, and the old system has melted down trying to accommodate the stupid decision 17.4 million of them made.
So yeah, time is running out and the push for getting behind a No Deal crash-out is so strong on the Tory side that whoever wins their leadership election might be ball-and-chained into going for one, but that’s the point where something has to give, Tory unity be damned. I forsee a No Confidence vote in this Government being very likely before October 31st, and a General Election in the Autumn. At that point – someone – will go to the EU and ask for a further extension until Britain has a new Government, which they’re more likely than not to give because seeing Brexit rejected is more valuable to the EU than punishing Britain for trying it in the first place.
Then we’ll see what happens.
patroclus
@Doug R: In the case brought by Gina Miller, the ECJ held last December that the U.K. (or any member state of the EU) could unilaterally revoke an Article 50 notice giving its intention to withdraw from the EU. But that would take an Act of Parliament which would require a Parliamentary majority in both the Commons and Lords prior to 10/31. In addition, Parliament would have to enact a re-instatement of the European Communities Act at the same time.
The big news today is that Speaker Bercow announced that he isn’t stepping down (he’s in D.C. and spoke at Brookings this morning) and Chancellor Hammond said that he might support a No Confidence motion if the new Tory PM tried to implement a No Deal Brexit. Both are Tory Remainers and it’s sort of a shot across the bow to the hard Brexiteers who think they can ram a NoDeal Brexit down the world’s throats just so they can out-do Farage. This is a good sign that Yvette Cooper’s majority against a No Deal Brexit will hold and that Gina Miller’s heroic fight against Brexit might succeed.
The Pale Scot
@Another Scott:
I’m sorry Jim, they’re dead
Tony Jay
@Barney:
Sigh.
Campbell broke the very clear rule about Party members not voting for another Party. It’s an actual rule.
Politically it was fucking stupid and whoever gave the order needs kicking in the puds, repeatedly, for being an ignoramus.
If a Labour Party member who opposed Blair’s decision to join Bush in invading Iraq had said live on TV they’d voted for an anti-war Party to send a message to the leadership Campbell would have been out there loudly and contemptuously defending the decision to expel them and threatening anyone who copied them with the same. He knew what he was doing.
There’s a very, very big difference between expelling someone who commits the expulsion worthy act you’re expelling them for live on television and expelling someone because they’ve been accused, not tried and convicted, but just accused, of saying something anti-semitic.
Labour hasn’t hemmed and hawed about expelling anti-semites. It’s tried to make a distinction between anti-semitism (for which you are out) and expressing genuine dislike of Israel’s behaviour and treatment of Palestinians. Some very powerful people do not want that distinction to exist, and that’s not just true in Britain. Ask Representative Omar about it, she’s got an opinion too.
All that said, it was a stupid decision to give the anti-Corbyn shower yet another flawed martyr they can sing songs of woe about.
Immanentize
@Tony Jay:
I think the humiliation of England (seriously, just England and Nothern Ireland mouth breathers) would be prize enough for EU leaders.
“Look there on that wall, a Theresa May. Bagged her in the teens….”
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Wait! You mean to tell me that a country tried to influence an international organization to act in its favor? I bet that’s the first time something like that has ever happened.
The Pale Scot
@Tony Jay:
Actually, that’s movie that could be made
Tony Jay
@JPL:
@satby:
Yes to both.
Tony Jay
@Immanentize:
Well I hope you’re wrong, because there’s about 43 million people in this country who didn’t vote for that shit and don’t deserve to be punished for it. Plus, the EU doesn’t want to be seen as the one – doing – the punishing, not when the various Right Wing movements around the continent would be able to exploit the harrowing visuals of life in Britain going down the drain in their own anti-EU propaganda.
Tony Jay
Night all. It’s late and… bah, it’s just late.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
One of the constant lies of the Brexiteers is that the UK is “hard done” by the EU,
when the reality is that the UK has always taken far more from the EU than it’s given.
@Immanentize:
The EU is not interested in petty humiliation, revenge or “punishing” the UK, ( another Brexiteer lie),
They just want the UK to either shit or get off the pot.
Ladyraxterinok
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Not sure I understand–do you mean UK is a poor nation, therefore EU wants it to just shut up and sit down?
burnspbesq
The results in Ulster weren’t as good as they might have been (the fooking DUP held onto its seat), but i like the look of the Alliance party and its newly elected MEP, Naomi Long.
patroclus
@Tony Jay: Goodnight – thanks for contributing! We appreciate it!
Arguably,Brexit, especially a No Deal Brexit, would be worse for the EU than for the U.K. They buy plenty of goods and merchandise from the U.K. and sell them a lot too. And a lot of U.K. citizens live and work in the EU and a lot of EU citizens live and work in the U.K. Suddenly requiring customs agents at all borders and suddenly imposing WTO tariffs and trade barriers to all that trade and work would be disastrous and chaotic. Not to mention the concomitant effects on the economies of the rest of the world. The EU is the largest and most successful trading bloc in the world (depending on how you count the U.S. + Mexico + Canada) and massive benefits have been gained by the EU member States since its formation. Prior to joining the EEC, which morphed into the EU, the U.K. had significant economic weaknesses, requiring massive and periodic currency devaluations and a lot of turmoil, including deteriorating labor and business conditions. The Brexiteers have either been lying about their history or don’t remember it too well. The U.S. should be hoping for Brexit to fail and for the U.K. to remain a significant part of and, indeed, a leader of the EU.
Doug R
@The Pale Scot:
Paddington 2?
Miss Bianca
OK, so I’m still stuck on the first sentence, because as a home-brewer myself I immediately wanted to know, “so what *is* Tony Jay chugging for his morning pint, anyway?”
Just kidding, I made it all the way through. And laughed. A lot.
Not kidding about the home-brew question, tho’. I have a relentlessly trivial nature.
The Pale Scot
@otmar:
The thing is the UK never discussed among themselves how a Brexit should actually happen. There are limitations of the Lisbon Treaty about how a leaving state makes it happen. But the fact is the UK never came up with a notion of how they could make this happen legally, literally Mays told Barnier “make me an offer” after her speech denoting her red lines of out of the SM, out of Brussels, no freedom of movement, no subjection to the Euro Court of Justice, no Agreements of Regulatory Alignment. They’re going to take back control, which is defined by them as trading on WTO terms. Which means no favorites. China has the same right to sell their livestock in the UK that France has, at the same tariff level and with the same disregard for standards. A country that survives by being Russia’s crime syndicate laundromat is pulling itself out of the International banking system, and their manufacturing capacity lives on making specialized parts for International corporations that can/will find other supply chains; anyone who says differently is oblivious.
Even if Art.50 were revoked, any Brit with an education will be looking to leave, and an EU and USA hoping to find white immigrants to supplement their declining white birthrate will receive the motherlode. Instead of arguing medieval history with the bartender Bernard, an Irishman with a Phd in history at O’Sullivan’s in Elizabeth NJ It will be John from Cumberland. And the playgrounds will be filled with nannies that look like Baby Spice. In a generation England will have a median IQ of 90 as everyone else who can leaves. Native English speakers don’t have the barriers other folks have, there are way more Uk immigrants to Oz than anywhere else
Steeplejack
@Doug R:
Hey! Paddington 2 was actually a very good movie.
TenguPhule
@patroclus:
This is the exact line of thinking that got the Tories into so much trouble in the first place.
The Pale Scot
@Roger Moore:
Labor strongholds are in the north where Leave got it’s big vote total, the twats with pensions are pissed that their kids are leaving and Ni_Clangs have moved in. That’s Brexit in a nutshell.
It’s not just the UK, the whole 1st world is unraveling into Facists and Progs.
God Save Ireland
Roger Moore
@Jay:
Also, they are under no obligation to make Brexit easy for the UK. Their goal is, and should be, to make sure that Brexit doesn’t screw stuff up for the countries that remain in the EU. If one of the side effects of that is that Leavers don’t get the rainbow farting unicorn pony they were promised, that’s on the people who promised it, not on the EU.
The Pale Scot
@Tony Jay:
I don’t set that happening, there’s no majority to stop it. So over the cliff they go. And discover all the opt-outs the UK has carved out for itself are gone. Even if the UK is able to keep the Sterling they are going to have to submit to the IT privacy Acts and the Tax Evasion Laws that have been implemented in the last 2 years. That’s what its all fucking about anyway. England is a laundromat for mob money and they are the USA’s catspaw into EU’s intel ops. Unplugged from that they’re worthless
Roger Moore
@patroclus:
This is just nonsense. The amount of bilateral trade is by definition equal for both sides, but it’s affecting a much smaller economy in the UK than in the remainder of the EU. That means the disruption of the EU will be spread over a much larger base, so it will be less of a big deal.
Jay
@TenguPhule:
And of course, ain’t true.
The EU economy will get bruised,
The UK economy will get several amputations.
Eg. UK air carriers fly globally under EU Agreements. Those disappear the day after Brexit, and the UK hasn’t bothered to negotiate any replacement agreements, with anybody.
patroclus
@TenguPhule: Uh, no. What got the Tories in trouble in the first place on this issue was dumping Edward Heath in favor of Margaret Thatcher in February of 1975. It was Heath and the Tories who took the U.K. into the EEC (later the EU) and enacted the European Communities Act in 1973 and it was primarily the U.K.’s relative economic decline prior to that that led them to do it. Since then, the U.K. has grown into one of the EU’s leading economies and there is no question that London re-emerged as the central financial center of Europe as a result of that to which virtually all EU companies go to raise capital and transact financial services. Jobs flowed to the UK as a result, trade flourished, the pound re-emerged as a strong currency, businesses thrived, labor conflict gradually receded. It was unquestionably beneficial to the U.K. and to Europe and the world as a whole. It was that move – not Thatcher’s labor busting – that re-invigorated the U.K.’s economy after a long period of relative slow growth in the aftermath of WWII. The Tories were the pro-Europe party – Churchill’s Strasbourg speech in 1948 foreshadowed that – and only a minority of Labour (led by Roy Jenkins) were similarly pro-Europe. Jeremy Corbyn, then a backbencher, was in the majority of Labour, when he opposed joining the EEC both in the vote and in the 1975 referendum which confirmed Heath’s move – ironically, the referendum was called by Harold Wilson’s Labour government as a Brexiteer move. Thatcher’s anti-Europe rhetoric (although significantly not her actions) gave rise to the Brexiteer faction of the Tories, which, until Cameron made his idiotic move in agreeing to a 2nd referendum (which he thought his coalition partners – the Lib Dems -would veto), was always small and insignificant.
The parties have now sort of switched – the Tories are now mostly anti-EU and Labour (the voters and most of the MP’s at least; albeit not Corbyn) is mostly pro-EU. Yes, the Tory Brexiteers have used the fact that the EU would also be hurt by the ludicrous Brexit idea as a weapon, but that doesn’t make it inaccurate. In fact, the EU would/will be hurt by Brexit; as will the U.S. and the rest of the world.
patroclus
@Roger Moore: It’s not just trade. It’s financial services, it’s expertise, it’s facility in the international language of commerce (English), it’s close ties to the U.S., it’s the rule of law, it’s the well-developed sense of common law, it’s education, it’s centuries of history of dominating the world economy and it’s also the fact that the new EU Member States are still emerging from decades of nonsensical stagnation and decline while in the Soviet bloc. Yes, the Slovenes and the Latvians etc… will be proportionately less hit in terms solely of trade, but they will be losing a LOT more than just trade.
The Pale Scot
@patroclus:
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa
The EU’s trade total is 5%, the UK’s total is 47%. The EU will establish new supply chains with a year.
patroclus
@The Pale Scot: Bwahahahahahahahhhahahahahhhahahhahhahhahhahhahahhahahhahhhahhaha. It’s not just trade.
TenguPhule
@patroclus:
All the smart international bankers have already fled London. No joke.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Oh, were you serious?
TenguPhule
@patroclus:
EU will get a bruise, the UK will effectively be slitting its own throat, followed by disembowelment and then finally taking a good solid whack at its tallywhacker.
The Pale Scot
@patroclus: Then what else? Money talks, BS walks. You think that because the UK is part of NATO the EU will compromise. The EU see their project as an antiwar effort. If the UK gets hammered by Soviet nucs because they allied themselves with the USA, well too bad for them
polyorchnid octopunch
Jumping in before I read the comments to say, “Nice!”
Really nice to see westminster parliament talk here.
patroclus
@TenguPhule: No they haven’t. No joke. They’ve made contingency plans and some have left, but the various markets (Eurosecurities; LIBOR; CDS’s; derivatives; “offshore” equities; currency arbitrage etc…) all remain headquartered in London and volumes have been increasing. A No Deal Brexit hasn’t really been priced in because May’s ineptitude and lack of a working majority has led most to believe it will never happen. But it would be catastrophic, especially to London. Both the U.K. and the EU would/will be hurt badly. As will the U.S. and the rest of the world. Debating which would be hurt worse doesn’t change that.
Paul M Gottlieb
Who is Tony Jay, and where can I read more of his stuff?
patroclus
@The Pale Scot: I’m really not sure what your argument is. If California pulled out of the U.S., I think most would agree that both the economies of California and the U.S. would suffer because of it. And it wouldn’t just be bilateral trade that would be affected. Why do you think the analysis is so different regarding the U.K. and the EU? I suppose you could argue that California would be proportionately hurt worse because its aggregate economy is smaller, but I think that it would be arguable that the U.S. would suffer more because of what California provides (entertainment; major research universities that gave us the A-bomb, the H-bomb, Silicon Valley, wine, Theranos (oh wait, strike that!) etc…). And even if you did argue that, how would that change the overall point that both would suffer?
Jay
@Paul M Gottlieb:
Tony Jay is a pissed off Brit and Home Brewer who’s lovely coverage of Brexit and Tory Brit bashing in the comments section elevated him to the Front Page today.
Hopefully you will be able to read more of him on the Front Page.
Mary G
Love you, Tony. I tried to read about it, but just got confused. More than two parties is too many. But you wrote a clear explanation with great writing, so thanks.
SectonH
@SiubhanDuinne: Seconded (or am in line for backing that idea, whatever number). Tony on UK Brexit (other political issues too, not that there are any others until In or Out is decided, no really).
What Tony J wrote above is so far and away THE best, never mind the funniest, synopsis I’ve read of the EP election results. His summaries of the Brexit mess have long been the best updates on the… WTAFness going on in the UK. And the funniest.
@Miss Bianca: Me too. What style of brew? I wonders. I might or might not be jealous.
John S.
@patroclus:
I don’t know where you get your information from, but you’re wrong. I work in FinTech, so I have a pretty good idea.
Yes, everyone has had contingency plans but they are being acted upon. Nobody in the industry thinks Brexit isn’t going to happen one way or another, so operations have already begun to move to mainland Europe. And it’s a rather painful shift for things like credit card processing and money transfer licensing, but it is all being shifted away from the UK or has already.
Barney
@Tony Jay: Well, the rule talks about “supporting” someone else. Since he didn’t talk about this before the election, which would have been actual support, but just said after it that he’d voted Lib Dem, that is not necessarily “support”. It would be a debatable point if the Labour leadership were interested in fairness, or actually listening to the majority of their supporters and voters.
But they’re running scared of losing voters in some constituencies, so they’re ignoring most of them. Plus Corbyn has a liking for Brexit, so he’s fine with this. And yes, of course they’ve been hemming and hawing; that’s why the EHRC has launched a formal investigation – its preliminary inquiries have not been able to say “no, they’re doing things fine”.