cyprusgrump wrote:Or you could look as a wider, less selective picture eh...?
Of course you will not...
I vote to remain in 2016. A majority voted to leave. If TM had not spunked her majority up the wall in calling the 2017 general election we would probably have left on the 29th March with a deal. If having spunked her majority away she then reached out to try and find a cross party consensus we very likely would have left on the 29th March. Instead she made herself beholden to 10 NI DUP MP's. If the like of ERG group and other conservative MP's had not done everything in their power to try and get a singular means of exit that they and only a minority of the country support we almost certainly would have left the EU on the 29th March. So you go ahead blaming some MP's who do not vote in the commons the way a majority of their electorate indicated they wanted them too, whilst ignoring those MP's doing exactly the same that do support what you want. I personally will continue to lay blame at the door of those who had they behaved differently it would then have made a difference.
I voted to remain. I did not vote to remain on the basis that should a majority vote to leave, I had then given up any right to any democratic say in HOW we leave, though listening to some 'democratic' leavers, this is indeed what they think.
This is what I wrote on another forum on Jun 14 2017, days after the general election, over tow years ago now.
For me this is no longer about 'politics' - it is a matter of maths. It is mathematically possible that a Tory /DUP allaince with a parliamentary total of 328 seats could push through the nine or more bills necessary to deliver on Brexit but it would be the equivalent of flipping heads nine times in a row and these are not the kind of odds you want in order to merely be able to implement a managed exit of the UK from the EU. A deal that can not be implement through the passing of the necessary bills in parliament is not a deal.
Let us be clear however that those 'extreme' Brexiters, those who want nothing other than a total and 'immediate', non reversible, withdrawal from every and all aspects of the EU and who will not accept any compromise at all, regardless of what the consequences may be and regardless of what the majority want, will scream and screech and wail and gnash their teeth. They will rage about 'respecting the will of the people' , whilst ignoring all and any evidence that actually the will of the majority of the people is now that we should, indeed must, have a cross party approach to Brexit. They will do everything in their power to get what they want, use every dirty trick, every distortion and deception. We will no doubt see it here on this forum. Yet in the face of a cross party consensus such will all be to no avail. 50 'rebels' against it in the Tory ranks or Labour ranks, will not matter, will not be able to block the parliamentary bills necessary, will not be able to blackmail the whole country and generations to come to get their way. 75, 100 , 150 - still will not matter in the face of a cross party consensus. The extremist, the ones who will accept no compromise at all on what they want, will be pushed to the margins, where they belong and where they have always belonged, instead of being the ones driving the agenda as they will do more than ever under any attempts to deliver on Brexit from a single party alone, where a mere 5 or 10 of them could hold the entire country to ransom by threatening to 'rebel' against the bills necessary to implement and deliver on Brexit.
I do not know what kind of Brexit agenda a cross party consensus would come up with. It may come up with an agenda that I personally dislike intensely but it really does not matter. We have no time left. We have to now work within the limits of what is possible and all of us have to abandon our 'maximalist' demands in pursuit of delivering a managed exit of the UK from the EU. But let us suppose for a moment that what it looks like is some kind of continued participation in some form of the 'single market' - you know the thing that was the EEC before the EU came along, the thing that during the referendum debate it was widely claimed was the thing we did 'sign up for' and that generally we were 'ok' with. Would this not give us a chance to 'see how things go' without closing future options ? That if in 5 or 10 years after Brexit we were to decide that actually we also wanted to leave whatever form of 'single market' participation a cross party Brexit agenda might deliver, we would be free to do so in a planned and managed manner. Be in no doubt that for some on the extreme Brexit side that is the whole point of seeking a total exit now without any compromise, because if in 5 or 10 or 20 years we come to decide that actually it was a mistake, there will be no way back. No way back if 60% of the people want such or 70 or 80 or 90. For this extremist minority do not just want to throw the baby out with the bath water, they want the baby's throat slit and the mother sterilised as well for good measure.
