EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

How will that possibly happen?

No Tory* hates the deal so much a Corbo govt. - or second referendum - is preferable

* presumably including some rebel Labour and LibDem MPs or somehow the circle is is squared with the DUP.

I thought Mike Harding was dead, am pleased he isn't.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/mike-harding-reads-his-viral-letter-to-theresa-may/

Our latest word cloud casts a light on what we call Hard Remainers.

+1 for Festivus.

What the fuck?
Does Corbyn really think he'll win a GE?

Apparently so. I think, should he still be set on Brexit, that he'd lose heavily.

He'll get battered whatever he wants.
His time has gone.

May's got them over a barrel because the Boundary Review hasn't happened yet. If a new general election is called before that gets implemented, Labour has a chance. After it, none. She neatly (and unintentionally) built Corbyn up into an effective bogeyman when she called the last election. Now she can frighten them with him.

Another challenge appears

How long before the inevitable meme.

1 Attachment

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46419790

Looks like the legal situation around the backstop (which nobody can avoid to use as you dont get all the solutions built in less than two years) may sink May.

There's not really any workaround bar a SM / CU deal or sit it out and splash megacash at new systems then fully exit the EU once done in 5-10 years. It's almost as if this was warned about in 2016...

I'm a bit baffled about all this fuss - it appears to be the AG saying that the terms of the backstop are, erm, what they say they are.

So it's only a problem if the government were intending on signing in bad-faith, and breaking their word.

On the Trump thread this would be called a perjury trap.

Have we had this before...list of untrue EU 'regulations' published in the UK press since the 90's

I think the issue is, when asked this question at any other point, the PM can do a clever word trick/reverse the question/will of the people style dodge.

If the legal advice is published, the government will have answered a question in black and white. Admitting, what everyone knows, but actually it would be there on paper.

This is the state of out politics now. It is so based on false answers/mis-truths and obscurification that a simple sentence on a piece of paper, that everyone already knew, is enough to bring it all crashing down.

That's true, but only because May has been telling different groups of people of different outcomes based on the same underlying set of facts - if she'd been honest from the get-go she would not be in this cat-superposition situation, with the box about to be opened.

Why the Spanish? What we did? No wonder the gammons at work give me bad looks

What confuses me a bit is that I thought an independent panel would decide if the backstop is no longer needed.

Which then leaves the UK to go full Brexit.

Maybe though more scrutiny is not so bad, often the devil is in the detail.

Because it's clear that the UK will never meet the requirements for the backstop not to be needed, until we drop our attitude to FOM.

It's really annoying me that I can't identify this font. Looks like a mixture of Erik Spiekermann's fonts perhaps. But what is it?

meta

Not necessarily, as ROI is not in Schengen.

But to sort out products that meet the EU single market rules and ones that do not AND do that all away from the border while Sweden/Norway can't do that yet, wellllllllllllllllllllll......... it may take a while.

Switserland also has loads of special agreements which will also take a while.

So all this "Brexit will be easy and fast" will be "Slow and difficult" and then in 10 years, maybe, the UK can completely leave and I am not even sure what it wants. Corbyn wants something totally different from the ERG.

@amey: Which cut of Meta has a lower case 'l' with a tail?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s37N8qqtYQc&t=154s

Professor Michael Dougan is back and he has read the whole withdrawal text.