Brexit or Breaksit?

[robkelk]

For some reason, I suspect that if whoever gets the job tries to prorogue Parliament, the Sovereign will dissolve Parliament instead.

(For those not familiar with the terms: adjournment leaves everything that was on the table still on the table, prorogation clears the table but keeps the representatives in their offices, dissolution drops everything and forces a general election.)

[classicdrogn]

"Not meaning what the public thinks it does" seems to be an ongoing theme in the Brexit debac-- ahem, debate, though?

[Black Aeronaut]

I wonder why Her Majesty hasn't exercised that power just yet.  Were I in her position, I would have done it the moment the first Brexit referendum came back and the general populace was like, "Wait, WHAT!?  YOU MEAN YOU WERE SERIOUS ABOUT IT!?"  But that's just me.  :V

I somehow suspect that what she's waiting for is for these jokers in Parliament to well and truly hang themselves with all the rope they've been taking up.  Like once everything comes down to it and they're forced into a No-Deal Brexit.

I tell you, it's gonna be very interesting (in the ancient Chinese sense) if that does happen.  I hope ya'll forgive me for having moments of schadenfreude when the pro-Brexiters start crying out, "What's happening!?  Why can't I buy things anymore!?"

It'll be just as deliciously ironic as the buyers regret all of Bernie's voters had when they cast their ballot for Trump.  "What did you expect, you goddamned fool?  He's got the business acumen of a brick someone soaked in gasoline, lit on fire, and then chucked it into a fucking coal mine!"

[robkelk]

There are some serious constitutional limits on when the Sovereign can dissolve Parliament. Usually, it's when the Prime Minister advises her to, but there have been extremely rare occasions when the rubber-stamp has not been applied. IMHO, it's getting close to where she can exercise that power without the Prime Minister's request, but IANAL.

[classicdrogn]

[nocarename]

Isn't the rule of thumb that the Crown can use its constitutional powers once and then things get adjusted so that doesn't come up again? I suspect that the Queen is holding out for things to be bad enough that not just the public but also the politicians are grateful so she can keep that power in the family. You don't stay a monarchy by not at least trying to play the long game.

[Labster]

[Dartz]

I'm really having a hard time trying to put my thoughts together on the last week or so.

First, we have the whole devolution issue in the North where the DUP first used a quirk of the North's political process to block certain marital and reproductive reforms, before then blocking the parliament when someone tried to call them on the whole cash-for-ash thing - and so eventually Westminster got so pissed at them and their unwillingness to govern that they basically imposed same-sex marriage recognition and abortion rights on the North - but only on the provision that the Stormont assembly hasn't reformed by October 21st.

Arlene Foster is now faced with a choice between Evolution or Devolution.

The next thing is the looming inevitability of a Boorish Johnson as PM. Like, holy fuck. Without even being elected by the people and solely as the whim of the a few rich toffs. And who has, oif course, promised to intentionally porogue the parliament to prevent any blocking of Brexit.

And who merrily threw an innocent civil servant under the bus. I mean seriously - everyone knows that the whole purpose of an ambassador is to give an honest and frank assesment of a state's political leadership - but someone specifically orchestrated this particular mandarin's ousting to the point where his specific sassesments of Donald Trump were made public in a manner sure to rile up Donald Trump and just in time for Boorish to throw him under the bus in the middle of a public debate.

More amusing than that - as utterly detestable as his actions were in this act of publically betraying a civil servant - half the votes have already been cast and there's no take-backsies.

So. Boris Johnson - who puts the whims of a mewling dotard above the honest functioning of his own government - will be Prime Minister of Britain. I mean, what ambassador will dare do their duty when they know the wims of a foreign leader come first?

And look what's back....

The Blight. In Blighty. It'll do fuckall harm in the modern world but, y'know, there's something beautifully fuckin poetic in that.

[hazard]

Sorry, I'm missing context on the whole DUP/Stormont assembly/Arlene Foster thing.

Also, Boris Johnson is guaranteed to be a disaster for the UK, but he might run into the problem that strictly speaking, prorogue is not the PM's power, it's the Queen's.

She might just tell him no. Or abuse a recently passed amendment that forces the UK Parliament into session at least once every 14 days to receive reports on the Northern Ireland situation IIRC in connection with customs and border matters, but I'm not sure.

[Dartz]

DUP are basically religious conservative nutbars and are half the politics in Northern Ireland.

They got involved in a scandle a few years ago whereby they backed a a system of renewable energy grants that basically acted as cash-payouts to people for opening their barn doors and just letting the boiler run flat out. And the payment cost more than the fuel did.

And rather than face the music they withdrew entirely from the Northern Ireland parliament and crashed the thing for years.


Anyway, BJ will be a disaster. Beyond a disaster. It'll be glorious. It'll be gotterdammerung.


I doubt Lizzie will get involved - not in an issue this divisive. The head of state has to stay above the whole thing to avoid splitting the country even further.

[hazard]

Lizzie might not get a choice about getting involved. Unless Parliament manages to pass a vote on stay/deal/no deal it's moving quite squarely towards 'fuck it, we are not deciding, the Queen is.' If only by implication because she did/didn't do what the Prime Minister wanted when Parliament not having made a decision by the time the timer runs out means a flat out no deal/the EU decides, depending on interpretation, and any Brexit Parliament didn't vote on is illegal in British law (and they haven't successfully voted on anything when it comes to a deal except 'deal with it later' and 'Parliament decides, not the PM'). And that'd be a fine mess itself.

As for the DUP/Stormont/Arlene Foster thing, I'm guessing here that Stormont is the location of the Northern Ireland Parliament equivalent and often used to refer to it the same way Westminster is for the English/UK Parliament, and that Arlene Foster is a key player in the DUP.

And that the ash for cash thing has since been resolved and the Northern Irish top level government is functional again.

Or are you saying that whomever is running the show has now been forced to take a stand or otherwise have to deal with a legal, Parliament imposed and extremely undesirable for the DUP policy they didn't at least try to prevent passing?

[Dartz]

It's the sort of constitutional crisis you get stuck with when your constitution is just a few centuries worth of gentleman's agrements. I think, we're sort of ending in a No Deal exit. Nothing's going to stop that now. It's been an inevitability since the snap election - or arguably, an inrvitibaility since Cameron decided that their sole preperation for Brexit would be making sure they didn't loose the referendum.

They have done nothing right. And everything is going wrong.

I'll be on the other side of the planet when the show starts. I'm almost ashamed to miss it.

The government in Northern Ireland is not functional. Stormont is the devolved parliament of Northern Ireland that was created out of the Good Friday agreement - so NI has been sort of rattling along governmentless because the DUP don't want to face the consequences over Cash for Ash scandal. Which has technically been resolved by changing the regulation but not without saddling the NI government with billions of pouinds of payments in the future.

[Labster]

Speaking of constitutional wierdness and potentially involving Her Nibs, renegade Tories may make a Humble Address to the Queen.   The short of is that if Boris wanted to trigger a No Deal, then the Queen herself would have to go to Brussels and represent her country to ask for an extension.

This all sounds completely batshit, from the name of the maneuver to the outcome, and then you realize that people are planning to do this against the presumptive leader of their own political party.

[robkelk]

Speaking of constitutional wierdness and potentially involving Her Nibs, renegade Tories may make a Humble Address to the Queen.   The short of is that if Boris wanted to trigger a No Deal, then the Queen herself would have to go to Brussels and represent her country to ask for an extension.

Reading through the article, that looks to me like non-confidence in the head of government, which is constitutionally-valid grounds in the parliamentary system of the UK (or Canada) for the Sovereign to request someone else become head of government (read: grounds for the Queen to fire the PM). Mind you, IANAL.

This all sounds completely batshit, from the name of the maneuver to the outcome, and then you realize that people are planning to do this against the presumptive leader of their own political party.

In the parliamentary system, the leader leads by the consent of the elected members of the party. Theoretically. But this isn't the usual way to show lack of consent.

[Jinx999]

We don't know what we want.

We don't know how to get it.

But if we continue to flail around and smash things surely we'll get something out of it.

Please ignore the toddlers occupying our government, I wish we could.

Hopefully there's a special room in hell waiting for David Cameron.

[Matrix Dragon]

Hopefully there's a special room in hell waiting for David Cameron.

Goddamn pig fucker...

[Norgarth]

Maybe he can be roommates with Trump.

[Black Aeronaut]

No, that'd be too kind. After all, misery loves company. I'd much rather see both men get locked into a room with radical-militant feminists - and they all happen to have strong rubber bands and very sharp knives on hand.

[Dartz]

There're times when I think Guy Fawkes had the right idea, then I remember he was an anti-0democratic royalist.

And an idiot who knew nothing

Lake Westminster would solve a lot of problems, IMHO

[Black Aeronaut]

Sometimes it takes an idiot to solve a problem caused by a whole lot of idiots - usually by doing something so astoundingly idiotic that it invalidates the previous problem altogether (and in turn usually causes new problems).

Besides, when you have a bunch of idiots in power, they're only going to listen to like-minded idiots or people that play the part because they're scamming them.

[classicdrogn]

Well, perhaps Nov 5th will be when Britain lands and bursts into flames after driving off the precipice. That's sort of what happens when you're playing chicken in your auto but the other guy is in an autogyro.

[Rajvik]

I am going to ask a hypothetical question here, what happens if you are wrong?

Seriously, say there is a hard Brexit and all this doom and gloom that the globalists are predicting fails to occur.

I mean, the entire point of Britain being in the EU was for ease of economic deals like the old NAFTA and part of their argument for Brexit is that Brussels is making more and more policy demands on Britain to include that they take in the middle eastern refugees that have flooded Europe. Where does the EU have the right to make such a demand? That is not a trade agreement, that's policy, and unless Brussels now sets government policy for something that is supposed to be about free trade then the Brits have every right to tell them to go hang.

[robkelk]

I am going to ask a hypothetical question here, what happens if you are wrong?

Seriously,  say there is a hard Brexit and all this doom and gloom that the globalists are predicting fails to occur.

Considering that (a) the UK has practically zero trade agreements that don't go through the EU and (b) the UK is a net importer of food, the chances of there being no fallout from a hard Brexit are so slim that there isn't much point in planning for the contingency. There will at the very least be an increase in the price of food because there will be no mechanisms to import food without export tariffs imposed by the countries shipping food to the UK.

I mean, the entire point of Britain being in the EU was for ease of economic deals like the old NAFTA and part of their argument for Brexit is that Brussels is making more and more policy demands on Britain to include that they take in the middle eastern refugees that have flooded Europe. Where does the EU have the right to make such a demand? ...

It's in the Treaty of Paris, which came into force sixteen years before the UK joined the European Union.

The UK knew full well that this was one of the things that they would have to agree to, and they still asked to join.

[Dartz]

I am going to ask a hypothetical question here, what happens if you are wrong?

Seriously,  say there is a hard Brexit and all this doom and gloom that the globalists are predicting fails to occur.

I mean, the entire point of Britain being in the EU was for ease of economic deals like the old NAFTA and part of their argument for Brexit is that Brussels is making more and more policy demands on Britain to include that they take in the middle eastern refugees that have flooded Europe. Where does the EU have the right to make such a demand? That is not a trade agreement, that's policy, and unless Brussels now sets government policy for something that is supposed to be about free trade then the Brits have every right to tell them to go hang.

Maastricht Treaty.
Treaty of Paris.
et. al

Both treaties the UK agreed to. When you're part of the club you get the benefits of membership - but you also have responsibilities. The UK wanted the benefits without the responsibilities - and assumed they'd get it solely because they were 'great' once - and not because they had any negotiating power now.

The EU is sort of slowly Federalising - in the same way the United Federation of Planets started as a mutual defense pact amongst traditionally antagonistic types.

[hazard]

Or for that matter, the way the USA has been federalising since the Washington administration.