The problem is that Johnson and his Tories would most likely win a general election handily if they were able to deliver Brexit before the election is called. And the opposition knows it, so they try everything in their power to delay him as much as possible. The reason being that his Tories would unify the ~40% of the population who still explicitly support Brexit while the opposition would be splintered, allowing them to win a lot of marginal seats on a plurality without having a majority.

Note that it is HIGHLY unusual for a PM who has lost his parliamentary majority, like BoJo did, to remain in office, to even have requests for a reelection denied by the parliament that doesnt trust him anymore. They also know that they cant outright scrap the whole Brexit thing without subsequently losing their jobs the next time they have to face the voters.

At the same time, BoJo tries to avoid calling for a Brexit extension because that would risk losing his grip over the pro-brexit voters. So perverse political incentives keep up this strange state of affairs with a lame duck PM who wants to step down and call a snap election while the parliament who distrusts him want to keep him in office for the time being.

Yeah, I read the article and the flow chart.


When I think of England, I think of Kings and Queens, aka a monarchy. I think we all know the downsides, that can present. It seems that England then went to the other extreme. The too many hands spoil the soup method.
These days there is far too many people responsible for decision making, it seems.

The Queen, the PM, the Parliament, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and 87,000 parties, and probably a few more governing bodies that I've never heard of. The brexit issue, to me, looks like there's just TOO many folks involved in the decisions. I mean how long has this been going on, this brexit issue. Oh, and I almost forgot Ireland and Scotland, who also seem to have a say in things.

I think the UK has to find a happy middle point somewhere. I have no solutions to offer, as I can barely understand the system as it is. Maybe... the UK should move on from the royalty bit. Haven't geneticists pretty much proven that we're all pretty much the same, anyway?

I kind of like to think of England like in the movie: A Knight's Tale (2001) I always like the actor who played Prince Edward in that movie. He "seemed" to me like he WAS royalty.













I know, I know, it's only a movie. But he "looked" like men would follow him.








/e




This post was edited by Ghot on Oct 18 2019 10:41pm

Here is the whole soundtrack from the broadway play Camelot... my father was a Scotsman, we grew up with this album. I used to know it off by heart. Hell, I still remember 90% of it.

The problem with Brexit, the reason this is all such a mess, is that the British people are fairly evenly split in two blocks who want the whole country to go into vastly different direction on an issue where a reasonable middle ground is very hard to find.
The root of all these issues is that a monunmentally consequential decision like Brexit was allowed to be made on a simple majority. Most constitutions of most countries for good reason require supermajorities of 60 or 66% for decisions like this.

I am aware of the situation. I've been following it since it began. But when a game of football is won by a point....it's... won.
This isn't just the UK, it seems to be a world phenomenon.

Trump won in 2016, and people are still arguing about it. Brexit was voted for the same time, and is suffering the same problems. Canada and their leader, France and theirs. China won't honor it's promises with Hong Kong and N Korea flip - flops every month.
The middle east is still arguing about everything, Kashmir is in an uproar, Central America... etc. It seems the whole world is burdened with the worst indecision... ever.

It seems like there is no one anywhere that's happy. I wonder where it will lead.

Do you support the filibuster in the US Senate, that is, the tradition that most legislation can only pass the Senate if a supermajority of 60 or more senators supports it? Same for conviction in the impeachment process (which even requires 67 senators) or passing new amendments to the constitution.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 18 2019 11:35pm

I GET your point. But Trump whomped Clinton in the Electoral College and no one seems to care that IT was approx. a 2/3 vote.
I don't think anyone anywhere is playing by the old rules anymore.

The status quo all over the world has been shattered it seems. Precursor to a paradigm shift perhaps? I was thinking about the weirdness in the UK and I just realized, it's not just the UK... it's everywhere.
It's almost like it's some unknown airborne virus, that's making everyone desire a seas change or something.

I don't recall ever seeing so much happen at the same time, all over the planet. Maybe the ancient Mayans were off by seven years. Maybe its' NOT December 21, 2012... maybe it's 2019. ^^

Looking like Boris might amazingly edge this one. Latest count has him up by 4. Got to keep them all on board for a few more hours yet though.

The withdrawal agreement outlines the 'divorce' settlement we owe the EU, customs arrangements on the border, commitments to EU laws like labour rights and environmental regulation, tax legislation and text on the likely future relationship between the UK and the EU.

Everything agreed in the withdrawal agreement would have been followed in negotiations in the transition period. There is a lot of lawyer-speak on the future relationship which gives us room to pick and choose in some areas, but the divorce bill, customs arrangements etc are watertight.

Did you think this deal was the complete deal the UK negotiated with the EU for leaving? Oh, my dear boy, it's just started!

I think most countries that you mentioned are getting consumed by ever-increasing polarization. It's tearing societies apart, and it's happening in the United States, in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, in Poland, Turkey, Canada, the Uk obviously, but also in Australia, India and many muslim countries.

The deeper underlying force I see at work here is a crisis of the "liberal, capitalist order", which is caused by globalization. Globalization is dividing the population of most Western countries into winners and losers, it is accelerating the accumulation of capital, it is causing a feel of loss of control over one's own fate (which is a driver of nativist and nationalist sentiment all over the world).



If you go even deeper than that, I think it is caused by overpopulation, by the world getting too crowded to sustain the promise of "wealth for all". The pace at which the "economic pie" is growing cant keep up anymore with the pace with which new "eaters" are joining the party, both through birthrates and the ascent of middle classes in emerging nations. Combine this with climate change which makes "wealth on western levels for the whole world" impossible, and you see why the world is headed towards gigantic, brutal distributional battles.

Battles over trade, intellectual property, climate change, immigration and all of that fundamentally come down to one question: are we, the people of the industrialized world, willing to give up wealth, safety and privileges in order to uphold our morals, human rights and the spirit of international cooperation? Overpopulation and strained environmental resources mean that some parts of humanity will get fucked over hard in the coming decades. As I see it, nationalists in the mold of Trump want to use the head start we, the western/industrialized world, have to win out in the distributional battle, to shift the bulk of the burden to the population of the poor countries/the global south. "Globalists", on the other hand, advocate for policies which at the end of the day come down to us voluntarily giving up the advantages and leverage we would have; to us bearing at least a proportional, perhaps even a disproportional share of the burden.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 19 2019 12:35am