Finally a senior government minister has done it.

[Suff]

The vast majority of remainers and leavers, those with calm heads, want some sort of deal, that is why the government is negotiating. Unfortunately nobody knows what deal to negotiate for because there never was a plan; that failure is down to government.

And that is where it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

What they want is irrelevant. It is what the EU wants that is relevant because we are leaving and what they want to give us is up to them.

In this negotiation, the EU has its own "wants". However the only way we, the UK will get what we want and need is to deny the EU what it wants.

Those who refuse to even contemplate walking away with nothing hand everything and I do mean EVERYTHING to the negotiating team of the EU.

They want us to lay out, in detail what WE are going to do. As if we have that right or ability. Once we have done that, the EU will simply say "NO" and that is the end of it unless we compromise on what we want.

Did we learn absolutely NOTHING from the Syriza negotiations with the EU?

Apparently not.

And if we believe, for one second, that the anti Tory lobby, about the way Brexit is being conducted, is not highly political in nature; we are deceiving ourselves.

[Workingman]

Once upon a time in Brexitland the cries went out: They need us more than we need them; they export more to us than we export to them; no deal hurts them more than it hurts us; we will slap 35% tariffs on Geman cars (even though WTO rules forbid such) if we get no deal.

Brexiters once wanted a deal, but as they do not seem to be getting their version of a good deal we have to go for no deal. How times have changed.

[Suff]

Many Brexiters wanted no deal at all. In fact I'd say about 90% of the constant Brexiters want nothing at all to do with the EU and are willing to pay the price.

It is the fairweather Brexiters who are creating the majority of the noise in the Brexit camp. For the Remainers, as they lost, it's going to be very little but noise.

In the end it comes down to one thing and one thing only. Tory politics will not allow anything other than an exit from the single market and controls on both the ECJ and immigration. Anything else will tear the party apart.

Which is why the white paper was issued and is being followed.

Everything else is echo chamber. Because when the chips are down and it matters, the EUphiles are not going to trash the Tory party and that is what it comes down to. Ditto a leadership challenge short of mid 2019.

So the press and the remainer echo chamber can make all the noise they want. In the end it comes down to who gets elected next time. And let us not forget there are about 50 Labour seats which stand or fall on Brexit. Hence the conflicting calls in the Labour party on Corbyn to either remain in the single market or get out of the single market.

In short it's a mess because we have such a small majority for Leave. It will all sort itself out in the end.

My take is this. Project Fear turned out to be a complete bust because it was based on what they wanted people to believe. All this current noise is the same. When we finally get out and finally start trading outside of the EU even more, this noise will go away.

[Workingman]

Suff, if all of what you say is true then why didn't the government with A50 lay out a set of non-negotiable demands before the EU and tell them to get back to us or we would walk away?

A few things spring to mind.

Firstly, the referendum. We only rarely do national referendums as they are seen to be taking away parliamentary sovereignty; and when we do hold them we usually make a hash of things - think of the AV ref. That is why they are only advisory and not legally binding. The way the EU one was held was shocking. There should have been a minimum turnout figure and then a minimum pass percentage. It should never have been FPTP on a few percentage points.

Secondly it is the make up parliament and government. 635 MPs have so far declared their preference for Remain / Leave with 482 for Remain and 153 for Leave. Those figures in no way tally with the result of the referendum, which was an almost 50:50 split. They are further skewed when the parties are taken into consideration. Of their 318 seats the Tories / DUP have 137 Leave MPS, Labour have 14, no other party has any at all, though there are two Leave independents. It does not leave any party of government much of a choice but to at least listen to their Remain MPs.

In the end it comes down to one thing and one thing only. Tory politics will not allow anything other than an exit from the single market and controls on both the ECJ and immigration. Anything else will tear the party apart.

Are you sure, given that Tory Brexiteers are outnumbered almost 2:1 in the party? Should that not really read "Tory Brexit politicians will not allow........ or they will tear the party apart?"

I am one of those Remainers, and there are plenty of us about, who now think that we should just get on and get out. Being almost in and almost out serves very little purpose except for the self-interests of the few.

[cromwell]

Look, it comes down to this. We can't get any deal that the EU doesn't want to give us.
So what sort of a deal do they want to give us after we have voted to abandon their project?
A pretty crap one, IMO. It would be strange if they thought any other way.

[Workingman]

Look, it comes down to this. We can't get any deal that the EU doesn't want to give us.
So what sort of a deal do they want to give us after we have voted to abandon their project?
A pretty crap one, IMO. It would be strange if they thought any other way.

Precisely, but because of the closeness of the referendum result and the make up of parliament and the parties within it we have had to play the negotiation game. Things are now so convoluted that we have little option but to continue playing the stupid game.

If only Cameron had set things up differently..........

[cromwell]

It's a very British mess. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we had the vote. But an observer might come to some conclusions on it all.
1. That the referendum was promised by Cameron because he felt Conservative seats were under threat from UKIP in the 2015 General Election. In the event Labour lost lots of votes to UKIP as well.
2. Cameron never actually expected to have to homour his promise of a referendum. All the polls were showing a hung Parliament and the odds were that Cameron and Clegg would get their parties to form another coalition. Clegg would veto any referendum on EU membership as part of that deal and Cameron could walk away from it and blame the LibDems.
3. Having won the election Cameron was very confident that Project Fear tactics would win the referendum vote too, as they had in the Scottish independence referendum. His confidence was badly misplaced.
4. Cameron promised that if he lost, he would "implement Article 50 the very next day" and sick around to guide us through the negotiations to leave. He didn't. He bailed out pretty damn quick and the resulting Tory in fighting left the last person standing as........ Theresa May.
5. Remain were very confident. They had no expectation of losing (until a couple of days before the vote) and no plan as to what they would do if they did lose.
6. Leave were no so confident and similarly had no plan in place for what to do if they won, as they never expected to.
7. Although the country is split very closely on EU membership, the political classes - the people who have to implement Brexit - are overwhelmingly in favour of EU membership.

Sort that out.

[Suff]

WM, I'm fairly sure. You talked about legitimacy of the referendum and rules about first past the post.

This referendum passed both margins by a long way. 72.21% of registered voters voted. That is General election level response. WAY beyond what you would expect for a referendum.

As for FPTP, 51.9% of voters voted to Leave. More than 1M voters more than Remain.

Again, GE level.

Now let's talk about MP's and their views. MP's may hold their views on whether they want to remain or leave, but, in the end, they will vote the way their voters want them to. In this specific case MP's know that if they mess with the vote, against their voters wishes, the voters will vote against them at the next election.

I can guarantee you that if Corbyn had come out talking about "a customs union" at the last election, he would have not taken the seats he did. The overwhelming response from Labour voting UKIP voters, who switched their vote at the last election; was that Brexit was assured because Corbyn was anti EU and would keep labour in line. So they could vote for Labour again and kick May in the teeth. I wonder how many of them are kicking themselves after the latest "Corbyn" speech.

The press and the remain lobby talk about the Tories as if they are the only party with rebels. But reality is this. There are over 100 labour MP's who are threatened enough to vote against the whip if Corbyn tries to bring down Brexit. Almost nobody is talking about that. Corbyn has rather deftly avoided that reality by abstaining Labour or using their vote to defeat the government on side issues and non-important issues.

Had Corbyn tried to go against the MP’s who are threatened by UKIP leaning voters in their constituency, a very different reality would have been presented to the public for them to chew on.

[Suff]

Sort that out.

There is a very different fear going around right now. It's called the "Fear of God" and it was instilled into our MP's by the voters themselves. The voters should do it more often.

I do think that Cameron was surprised by his success at the election. He was, also, under no illusion that it was the promise of a referendum which granted him that win. The fact that Cameron bailed shortly after the Brexit vote can be pinned down to Tory party structure. I'm pretty certain he intended to stay. I'm also pretty certain that he was told that if he decided to stay he would face a leadership challenge within the week. By resigning, he completely defused that situation and allowed the party to choose on a positive note of taking over rather than a negative note of a lack of confidence in their leader.

If you think of it that way, you can see that Cameron wasn't running away from anything. He was, quite bravely, walking the plank. Something Corbyn has been fanatically opposed to doing.

It was also the Labour stance of solid "Remain" which caused them so much damage at the 2015 election. If they had retained that line at the last election, they would have gifted May a very strong lead indeed. it was only Corbyn's anti EU credentials which tipped the balance.

Now the question is this. Do the MP's still fear the wrath of the voters at the next election if they scupper Brexit? I'm inclined to think they do and, in that case, anybody relying on stated "EU" credentials, which are anything other than for Brexit, are betting on a very suspect belief.

And that whole situation is a _very_ British affair indeed.

[cromwell]

Just seen Corbyn on BBC news. I don't know what planet he's on. A new customs union with the EU? No tarriff trade between us and the EU? I can't see that. Why would they bother? All that would do would be to encourage others to leave.