Brexit and General UK politics thread

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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by Dominus Atheos »

Are you sure? My impression was that Article 50 has no reversal mechanism.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by Zaune »

Besides, why would the EU want Britain as a member nation at this point?
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by Juubi Karakuchi »

Apparently, the letter of the law allows Britain to simply retract the declaration at any time in the two years following its issue; meaning the UK can - theoretically - end the whole thing and return to status quo ante-bellum so long as it does so before the end of March 2019. That said, there is a catch;

http://uk.businessinsider.com/eu-brexit ... ked-2017-3
EU leaked document: Britain can reverse Article 50

Adam Payne

Mar. 29, 2017, 12:28 PM 13,937

LONDON — The European Union's official response to Prime Minister Theresa May triggering Brexit states that Article 50 can be reversed, meaning Britain could, in theory, change its mind at some point in the two-year negotiation process.

Britain's ambassador to the European Union Sir Tim Barrow gave the Article 50 letter of notification to the European Commission shortly after lunch time on Wednesday, meaning Britain's formal departure from the 28-nation bloc is now officially underway.

According to a report in The Guardian, a leaked European Parliament resolution, in which EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier played a major role in putting together, says that the UK will be able to revoke Article 50 before it expires.

The resolution states that the UK will be able to revoke its Article 50 notification but this process must be "subject to conditions set by all EU27 so they cannot be used as a procedural device or abused in an attempt to improve the actual terms of the United Kingdom’s membership."

However, the resolution makes clear that Britain cannot use the revocability of Article 50 as a means of improving the Brexit package it agrees with EU or for any other tactical purpose.

The key line can be found on page four of the document titled Draft Motion For A Resolution. It's highlighted here:

L: Whereas a revocation of notification needs to be subject to conditions set by all EU-27 so that they cannot be used as a procedural device or abused in an attempt to improve the actual terms of the United Kingdom's membership;

Britain's judges have not ruled on whether Article 50 is revocable but the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Parliament must vote before Brexit is triggered on the understanding that Article 50 cannot be revoked.
Going on this, my understanding is that while Britain is technically allowed to revoke and end the process at any time, the other members are similarly entitled to establish the conditions under which this takes place. In other words, certain concessions will be applied before Britain can retake its place at the top table. It's hard to say what these will involve, but the underlying thinking will focus on making sure that Britain is in no position to engage in further obstructionism or troublemaking in the future.

That said, this might not be necessary. Many banks and other businesses are already transferring substantial functions (and many jobs) to various European cities; including Frankfurt,Paris, Dublin, and Amsterdam. If a substantial portion of the City of London were to leave, then Britain will have lost its biggest economic bargaining chip. When combined with its loss of general credibility due to the government's handling of Brexit, this represents a serious loss of influence, and would make a British retraction a less unpleasant prospect.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by Juubi Karakuchi »

And just to complicate things further;

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 23626.html
Brexit: Government facing High Court challenge to cancel Article 50

If judicial review is successful, legal mechanism could be nullified and negotiations halted

The latest legal challenge comes after Ms May faced an embarrassing defeat in the Commons at the hands of Tory rebels, and was forced to guarantee Parliament a ‘meaningful’ final vote on any deal Getty

The Government is facing a High Court challenge over the legality of Article 50, in a case it is claimed could bring Brexit negotiations to a halt.

A judicial review being filed in the High Court on Friday contends the UK never made the constitutional decision to leave the EU.

Campaigners argue the referendum result was not ratified by an act of Parliament, which they claim means the triggering of Article 50 is invalid.

While the wording of the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 gave Theresa May the authority to trigger Article 50, activists say the act does not explicitly state that Parliament makes the decision to leave the bloc.

In an earlier case brought by Gina Miller, the Supreme Court established the referendum result was not a constitutionally binding decision to leave the EU and that only an act of Parliament could make that decision.

Campaigners bringing the case to the High Court claim if they are successful, the Article 50 notification could be nullified and negotiations halted until Parliament votes on an act to recognise the referendum result to leave the bloc.

A crowdfunding campaign raised more than £111,000 to launch the legal challenge, with nearly 3,900 people donating to the case.

Elizabeth Webster, a 54-year-old small business owner who ran as a Liberal Democrat candidate for North Swindon in the 2017 General Election, is spearheading the case.

Speaking to The Independent, she said: “We need to get people to see what’s going on. This is not about stopping Brexit, but if we are to leave the EU then it needs to be done in a lawful and orderly way.”

Ms Webster warned that ignoring the proper legal process for Article 50 to be triggered would bring consequences “almost too grave to contemplate”.

She added that any divorce deal and post-Brexit trade deals negotiated with the EU could be struck down if Article 50 was found to be invalid.

“Whether you are for or against Brexit, we believe it is a democratic scandal that the public and Parliament have been misled by Ms May, David Davis and others. It is an abuse of our constitution,” she said.

“If we fudge through this one what will we be fudging through next time?”

Ms Webster said her decision to lead the case was “not taken lightly” and admitted that her family was worried about her security. “I realise that a lot of people are going to be hating me for this,” she said.

The group of activists, led by Ms Webster and represented by Hugh Mercer QC – who chairs the Brexit Working Group of the Bar – and Gwion Lewis, is calling on the courts to make Parliament vote on a new act which would ratify the result of the EU referendum, or call for a second referendum which in turn would be ratified by MPs in the Commons.

The legal argument setting out the alleged invalidity of Article 50 is not new. In an article for Counsel magazine, barrister David Wolchover previously described the letter giving notice of the UK’s intention to leave the EU as “an illusion” and wrote that Ms May’s triggering of Article 50 was a non-event with no legal basis.

Earlier this year, Baroness Eluned Morgan, the Shadow minister for Wales in the House of Lords, said in a plenary session that the Withdrawal Act did not actually notify the EU of the UK’s decision to leave the union.

She warned this “technical flaw” could make it vulnerable to a challenge in court.

Separately, architect Steve Lawrence, who lives between London and Amsterdam, warned Downing Street, Commons Speaker John Bercow, Attorney General Jeremy Wright, the Queen and the European Commission of the risk of the invalidity of the Withdrawal Act, in a series of letters seen by The Independent.

Downing Street’s office confirmed receiving Mr Lawrence’s letters and a petition is also being considered by the European Parliament.

Mr Lawrence, who supports the Article 50 challenge, accused the Government of “using the crown prerogative to circumvent Parliament”.

He told The Independent: “Our parliamentary democracy has been turned upside down. The so-called ‘will of the people’ has been used to beat MPs into submission in passing an act they did not have to pass. This challenge is an attempt to restore our parliamentary democracy.”

The latest legal challenge comes after Ms May faced an embarrassing defeat in the Commons at the hands of Tory rebels with the Government forced to accept changes to its Withdrawal Bill to guarantee Parliament a “meaningful” final vote on any Brexit deal.

Weakened by two departures from her Cabinet in less than two months, Ms May was prepared to climbdown on her promise to enshrine the Brexit date of 29 March 2019 into UK law, shying away from another confrontation with Tory rebels.

The Department for Exiting the European Union said: ”This is a matter for the court. It would not be appropriate for the Government to comment on ongoing proceedings.”
No shortage of twists here.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by Tribble »

At this stage why would the EU want them back as full members? If the UK stays in the single market it will have had to make major concessions, and it will no longer be able to interfere with further development as it would not be a voting member. If the UK leaves the rest of the EU will no doubt get the bulk of London's financial services. So it's kinda a win/win for the EU.

Or maybe they want them back on the condition that the UK no longer gets the rebate, has to join the euro currency and the schengen area, agrees to join a EU military if it is created and the UK fully commits to an ever closer union. Anything short of that and there's no point since the UK would just obstruct things again.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

No doubt about it, we're gonna get fucked over hard. The devil in me wants to see just how much more farcical this is gonna get! :twisted: If only the Brexiteers didn't drag the rest of us down with them.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by Crazedwraith »

Weird brexit story of the day:
The BBC wrote: Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage says he is close to backing a second EU referendum to end the "whinging and whining" of anti-Brexit campaigners.

Mr Farage told Channel 5's The Wright Stuff a fresh vote could "kill off" the Remain campaign for a generation.

He said "the percentage that would vote to leave next time would be very much bigger than it was last time round".

Pro-EU campaigners welcomed his comment, claiming "support is growing" for another referendum.

But Mr Farage's former UKIP colleagues dismissed his suggestion.

And Downing Street said: "We will not be having a second referendum."

Mr Farage was one of the leading figures in the Leave campaign, which won the referendum with 51.9% of votes.

That June 2016 referendum means that the UK is leaving the European Union, with the date for departure set as 29 March 2019. Negotiations are currently taking place between the UK and the EU about how things work afterwards.

During a debate about Brexit on the Channel 5 programme, Mr Farage said: "What is for certain is that the [Nick] Cleggs, the [Tony] Blairs, the [Lord] Adonises will never ever, ever, give up.

"They will go on whinging and whining and moaning all the way through this process.

"So maybe, just maybe, I'm reaching the point of thinking that we should have a second referendum on EU membership... and we may just finish the whole thing off.

"And Blair can disappear off into total obscurity."

His UKIP colleagues did not agree.

But the other side of the Brexit debate were more enthusiastic.

Labour MP Chuka Umunna, of the Open Britain campaign for close ties with the EU, said: "For perhaps the first time in his life, Nigel Farage is making a valid point.

"In a democracy like ours, the British people have every right to keep an open mind about Brexit."

The Lib Dems vowed that in any referendum, they would be "leading the charge" to keep Britain in the EU.
I wish Blair and Farage would both disappear off into toal obscurity truth be told.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

I find it hilarious that Farage of all people is accusing remainers of "whining"! :lol:
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

Henry Bolton stands by lover but 'can't guarantee' Ukip leadership

Well it turns out that the girlfriend of UKIP's (current) leader was caught making racist comments- he did the only thing he could and claimed he dumped her in an effort to distance himself. But then he backtracked and said he'd merenly "put their relationship on hold", so he can't even get that right.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by mr friendly guy »

If he can't even distance himself from the racist bitch properly, why should UKIP keep him as leader? After all, UKIP is officially non racist, and it will never go back on its promises right?
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by ray245 »

To be honest, I think the UK would be better off leaving the EU first, then reapplying for it in a few years time if there is an actual demand for reapplication into the EU-membership.

It would have been a much clearer statement that the UK is actually willingly joining the EU for the sake of European integration, and not merely from the economic benefits of being in the common market. I'm sure there's a sizeable amount of Brits that wishes to stay in the common market, but whether they want to become a fully integrated member of the EU is another question altogether.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

ray245 wrote: 2018-01-16 09:21pm To be honest, I think the UK would be better off leaving the EU first, then reapplying for it in a few years time if there is an actual demand for reapplication into the EU-membership.

It would have been a much clearer statement that the UK is actually willingly joining the EU for the sake of European integration, and not merely from the economic benefits of being in the common market. I'm sure there's a sizeable amount of Brits that wishes to stay in the common market, but whether they want to become a fully integrated member of the EU is another question altogether.
Problem with that is that we'd never get a deal better than the one we have now, which is all the ammunition the leavers would need. And by the time the effects of leaving are fully felt it'll be too late to do anything about it.

Still, I'm sure the £350 million per week will come in handy... oh, wait... :lol:
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by ray245 »

EnterpriseSovereign wrote: 2018-01-17 12:17am
ray245 wrote: 2018-01-16 09:21pm To be honest, I think the UK would be better off leaving the EU first, then reapplying for it in a few years time if there is an actual demand for reapplication into the EU-membership.

It would have been a much clearer statement that the UK is actually willingly joining the EU for the sake of European integration, and not merely from the economic benefits of being in the common market. I'm sure there's a sizeable amount of Brits that wishes to stay in the common market, but whether they want to become a fully integrated member of the EU is another question altogether.
Problem with that is that we'd never get a deal better than the one we have now, which is all the ammunition the leavers would need. And by the time the effects of leaving are fully felt it'll be too late to do anything about it.

Still, I'm sure the £350 million per week will come in handy... oh, wait... :lol:
That's a good thing if the UK no longer have any special deal in place. It's about wanting to be in the EU beyond X financial rewards.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by Zaune »

Besides, most of the Leavers will have died off or be circling the drain in a nursing home by the end of the decade.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by K. A. Pital »

Antibiotics and medicine will prolong the gerontocracy, it is not constructive to just wait for everyone over 45 to die off. And even 35-44 is a contested bracket.

Note that youth turnout is miserable. And note that a lot of the same people who voted yes in 1975 are now the ones pushing for an exit, even a hard one.

Something is wrong.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by ray245 »

K. A. Pital wrote: 2018-01-17 04:21am Antibiotics and medicine will prolong the gerontocracy, it is not constructive to just wait for everyone over 45 to die off. And even 35-44 is a contested bracket.

Note that youth turnout is miserable. And note that a lot of the same people who voted yes in 1975 are now the ones pushing for an exit, even a hard one.

Something is wrong.
Because the ECC is not the EU. At least from the way I understand the UK society's overall attitude towards to the EU, there never was a great demand to see themselves as part of a European political unification project.

The idea of seeing themselves as part of a wider pan-European culture has never been a strong thing in British society. It doesn't help when the strong American dominance in the world meant the British are far more drawn into the Anglo-speaking orbit that is quite distinct from continental-speaking Europe. In my view, it's better to do a clean break with the EU first, let the people experience the ramification of being out of Europe, then in a few years down the line let the British public decide whether they want to rejoin the EU with no misconception about what the EU is all about.

It could resolve the issue for a generation instead of constantly swinging back and forth between staying and leaving. Until the British public actually experience what it means to be apart from Europe from a day-to-day life's perspective, any amount of facts and data will not be enough to swing enough people's opinions.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by K. A. Pital »

ray245 wrote: 2018-01-17 11:04amBecause the ECC is not the EU. At least from the way I understand the UK society's overall attitude towards to the EU, there never was a great demand to see themselves as part of a European political unification project.
The goal of the EEC was the integration into a supranational bureaucracy. If there was no great demand, then the first vote was misguided, just as the Brexit one.
ray245 wrote: 2018-01-17 11:04amIn my view, it's better to do a clean break with the EU first, let the people experience the ramification of being out of Europe, then in a few years down the line let the British public decide whether they want to rejoin the EU with no misconception about what the EU is all about.
In my view, you can't gather worms back into the can. The EU isn't a terribly stable formation, as it turned out. We might yet see more of the same.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by Zaune »

In other, not directly Brexit-related news, "A Conservative MP has apologised for a 2012 blog post in which he suggested benefit claimants should have vasectomies."

At this point I'm counting myself lucky that he's not in the running for Secretary of State for Work and Pensions instead of vice-chairman for youth.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

Zaune wrote: 2018-01-18 08:12am In other, not directly Brexit-related news, "A Conservative MP has apologised for a 2012 blog post in which he suggested benefit claimants should have vasectomies."

At this point I'm counting myself lucky that he's not in the running for Secretary of State for Work and Pensions instead of vice-chairman for youth.
I wouldn't get all bent out of shape over some deleted blog post made six fucking years ago, I doubt anything will come of this if people use an ounce of common sense! :mrgreen:
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by Zaune »

Yeah, well, this seems less funny when you're in the same general category of people this guy was talking about. And I am very, very far from convinced that his views have "matured" in the intervening six years.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

Well, UKIP has issued a vote of no confidence in Henry Bolton's leadership, it's only a matter of time before UKIP collapses entirely. If only this had happened 18 months ago...
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by Crazedwraith »

There are rumours Farage will make a triumphant return. Or start something new.
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by Thanas »

This is a good editorial:
Britain’s imperial fantasies have given us Brexit

As Theresa May is discovering, the UK’s overblown sense of its place in the world has led to overplaying our hand with the EU



In his recent book Behind Diplomatic Lines, Patrick Wright, a former head of the UK diplomatic service, provides an illuminating account of Margaret Thatcher’s worldview. The former British premier wanted South Africa to be a “whites-only state”, and believed the Vietnamese boat people should be pushed into the sea before they reached Hong Kong. In addition, the late prime minister was particularly gripped by “Germanophobia”.

“She seems to be obsessed by a feeling that German-speakers are going to dominate the [European] community,” Wright writes. “Any talk of German reunification is anathema to her.” At one point it got so bad that the former foreign secretary Douglas Hurd claimed: “Cabinet now consists of three items: parliamentary affairs, home affairs and xenophobia.”

So when the outgoing German ambassador to Britain claimed this week that Brexiteers were fixated on the second world war, he was on to something. Referring to the popularity of films such as Darkest Hour and Dunkirk, Peter Ammon said: “History is always full of ambiguities and ups and downs, but if you focus only on how Britain stood alone in the [second world] war, how it stood against dominating Germany, well, it is a nice story, but does not solve any problem of today.” (If the second world war taught us anything, it was that you couldn’t stand alone. They weren’t called “the allies” for nothing.)

There were some sound reasons for voting to leave the EU – although the campaign was rarely fought on them, and wasn’t won because of them. And this nostalgia for a particular, and peculiar, version of our history long preceded Brexit. Remarking on the chant “Two world wars and one World Cup” that rang out whenever England played Germany at football, academic Paul Gilroy wrote, in After Empire: “The boast to which the phrase gives voice is integral to a larger denial. It declares nothing significant changed during the course of Britain’s downwardly mobile 20th century … We are being required to admit that the nations which triumphed in 1918 and 1945 live on somewhere unseen, but palpable.”

But Ammon was only half right. For while the Brexit vote was certainly underpinned by a melancholic longing for a glorious past, the era it sought to relive was less the second world war than the longer, less distinguished or openly celebrated period of empire. For if memories of the war made some feel more defiant, recollections of empire made them deluded. Our colonial past, and the inability to come to terms with its demise, gave many the impression that we are far bigger, stronger and more influential than we really are. At some point they convinced themselves that the reason we are at the centre of most world maps is because the Earth revolves around us, not because it was us who drew the maps.

It was through this distorted lens (“Let’s put the Great back in Great Britain”) that a majority voted to leave. Ammon puts the fantasies down to war stories from Brexiteers’ childhoods. “Obviously every state is defined by its history, and some define themselves by what their father did in the war, and it gives them great personal pride.” But British history didn’t stop after the war. Empire was more recent and, for a considerable element of the Brexiteers’ campaign, more personal.

Douglas Carswell, the sole Ukip MP during the referendum, was raised in Uganda; Arron Banks, who bankrolled Ukip and the xenophobic Leave.EU campaign, spent his childhood in South Africa, where his father ran sugar estates, as well as in Kenya, Ghana and Somalia; Henry Bolton, the current head of Ukip, was born and raised partly in Kenya; Robert Oxley, head of media for Vote Leave, has strong family ties to Zimbabwe. One can only speculate about how much impact these formative years had on their political outlook, (Carswell attributes his libertarianism to Idi Amin’s “arbitrary rule”) but it would be odd to conclude they didn’t have any.

But if echoes of empire reverberated through the campaign, they have also framed our negotiating strategy. The past 18 months have illustrated the journey from hubris to humiliation. For a couple of generations, we have seen our attributes and others’ weaknesses through the wrong side of a magnifying glass; now our diminished state is becoming fully apparent, and, like Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, reciting Kipling in Myanmar, we are struggling to adjust.

his awakening would be funny (abroad they find it hilarious) if it were not so consequential. Johnson told the Commons the EU27 could “go whistle” for an extortionate Brexit bill. They whistled; now we will cough, to the tune of £35-40bn.

During her 2017 election campaign, Theresa May, channelling her inner Thatcher, boasted about being a “bloody difficult woman”. “The next man to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker,” she claimed. In fact Juncker, the president of the European commission, and his team have found May more overwhelmed and befuddled than overwhelming and belligerent. After one Downing Street dinner, European negotiators concluded that she “does not live on planet Mars but rather in a galaxy very far away”.

In a recent private meeting between May and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the two leaders reportedly found themselves in a tragicomic conversational loop. May kept telling Merkel: “Make me an offer.” To which Merkel would reply: “But you’re leaving – we don’t have to make you an offer. Come on, what do you want?” To which May would retort: “Make me an offer.”

A change of leader won’t make this right. Lacking authority and coherence, haemorrhaging relevance and credibility, May is a faithful reflection not only of her government but of the country at this moment. Brexiteers have ostensibly got what they want: Brexit. They assumed we could dictate the terms; we can’t. They assumed we could just walk away; we can’t. They had no more plans for leaving than a dog chasing a car has to drive it. They are now finding out how little sovereignty means for a country the size of Britain in a neoliberal globalised economy beyond blue passports (which we could have had anyway). What we need isn’t a change of leader but a change of direction.

May is no more personally to blame for the mess we are in with Europe than Anthony Eden was for the mess with the 1956 Suez crisis – which provides a more salient parallel for Britain than the second world war. It took Britain and France overplaying their hand, in punishing Egypt for seizing the Suez canal from colonial control and nationalising it, to realise their imperial influence had been eclipsed by the US and was now in decline.

“France and England will never be powers comparable to the United States,” the West German chancellor at the time, Konrad Adenauer, told the French foreign minister. “Not Germany either. There remains to them only one way of playing a decisive role in the world: that is to unite Europe … We have no time to waste; Europe will be your revenge.”

Once again, Britain has overplayed its hand. Preferring to live in the past rather than learn from it, we find ourselves diminished in the present and clueless about the future.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
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A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
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EnterpriseSovereign
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

What do you know, economic forecasts have predicted that the areas who voted leave will be hardest-hit- oh, the irony!

Henry Bolton's gone- nearly two-thirds of UKIP members gave him a vote of no confidence. Some bloke called Gerard Batten will take over until they elect someone new.
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SpottedKitty
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Re: Brexit and General UK politics thread

Post by SpottedKitty »

EnterpriseSovereign wrote: 2018-02-17 09:09pm Henry Bolton's gone- nearly two-thirds of UKIP members gave him a vote of no confidence. Some bloke called Gerard Batten will take over until they elect someone new.
I remember a cartoon from way back in the era of The Two Davids, where one of them complains he can see a time when the whole Liberal party can travel to Westminster on a skateboard. That cartoon only needs the serial numbers filed off... :twisted:
“Despite rumor, Death isn't cruel — merely terribly, terribly good at his job.”
Terry Pratchett, Sourcery
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