You can whimper and stomp your feet as much as you like, you still haven't touched my point: Parliament is under no legal obligation to obey a referendum.
By the Way. . .
- Thread starter Tecumsehsbones
- Start date
It bloody does when 84% of it is elected on a promise to do so.
Parliament needs to remember that it is the servant of the people , not vice versa, and that it is fully expected that it does what the people order it to do.
Rather someone who knows and understands the law than a child who throws tantrums.
You're just an anti-democrat who wants the biggest democratic vote in British history overturned for no reason other than you don't like the result. As a result, it is you who is throwing a tantrum.
COFFEE HOUSE
The new mood of Question Time audiences reflects the changing Brexit debate
Ross Clark
25 January 2019
The Spectator
Earthquakes in public opinion do not happen often, and when they do they can catch commentators unawares. But if you want to see one in motion you should go back and watch the last two editions of Question Time. Until recently, the BBC show could be relied upon to have a loud contingent of groaning audience members capable of drowning out the ‘gammon’ tendency. The programme even managed to find a broadly pro-Remain audience in Clacton, the one and only seat which Ukip ever managed to win at a general election.
But no longer. The arrival of Fiona Bruce has coincided with a sharp change in audience tone. When, last week, there were cheers for Isabel Oakeshott when she opposed any kind of delay to Brexit, I put it down to the programme coming from Derby, a working class industrial town which voted 57 per cent in favour of Leave in 2016. But then last night came Winchester, which in 2016 voted 59 per cent in favour of Remain. And yet there, too, the audience showed impatience with anyone who showed sympathy with the idea of delaying Brexit.
No Deal Brexit cheered on Question Time:
There is now a very firm sentiment which has taken hold in every part of Britain, at every socio-economic level: it is ‘just get on with it’. Calls for a second referendum are fading fast, as is the belief in extending negotiations. People can see that the EU has not the slightest intention of ceding ground on the backstop or anything else. What is the point in stretching out the business any further?
So why are those who demanded a second referendum – who seemed so perky just a few weeks ago – suddenly losing ground? I think there is a very good reason. The tragedy of some Remainers – the fatal flaw in their tactics – is that so few of them have been able to say a bad word about the EU. It doesn’t matter how inflexible, how stubborn the EU has been, how determined it has shown itself to punish Britain, these people just haven’t seemed to have it in them to raise the faintest criticism.
This week a quote from Michel Barnier came to light which sums up what has been obvious for many months. Barnier allegedly said some time ago: “I’ll have done my job if the exit terms are so bad that the British would rather stay”. That is a pretty hostile attitude to take in negotiations which were supposed to be taking place between friends and neighbours. But where were the Lord Adonises, Alistair Campbells, Nick Cleggs, Michael Heseltines, Tony Blairs, Ken Clarkes to condemn him? Nowhere to be seen. Yvette Cooper couldn’t even seem to criticise Barnier this week when he scorned her attempt to get the Commons to vote to rule out ‘no deal’. If she expected help from him, she got just the usual brush-off.The
To those Remainers who have never accepted the result of the referendum (Ken Clarke might be allowed a partial exception to this), the EU has been beyond reproach. They have taken its side every time, cheered every bad word it has said about Theresa May and her team. Take these extraordinary words in a tweet from Alastair Campbell in November 2017 when the negotiations over the Irish backstop first came to a head: “play hardball Leo”. That was a former aide to the prime minister of the United Kingdom imploring the head of a foreign state to hold out for the worst-possible deal for Britain.
The attitude has been akin to that of Jeremy Corbyn, who has spent a 35 year political career almost automatically taking the side of Sinn Fein, Hamas and anyone else who is trying to fight UK interests. They will of course dispute it and say they are only trying to assert that Britain’s interests lie within the EU, but the message that comes across is simply that they want the EU to win and Britain to lose.
The hardest Brexiteers have not shied away from criticising our own government in its ham-fisted efforts to negotiate a decent deal, prepare for no-deal and so on. How much better those Remainers would have come across had they displayed a slightly more even-handed approach and been prepared to acknowledge the stubbornness and unreasonableness of the EU side. Instead, they just cheered and cheered it on.
The public has had enough. If we are going to have a messy divorce in which we are forced to take sides, the winners in the battle for UK public opinion are inevitably going to be those who take our own side.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/...udiences-reflects-the-changing-brexit-debate/
The new mood of Question Time audiences reflects the changing Brexit debate
Ross Clark
25 January 2019
The Spectator
Earthquakes in public opinion do not happen often, and when they do they can catch commentators unawares. But if you want to see one in motion you should go back and watch the last two editions of Question Time. Until recently, the BBC show could be relied upon to have a loud contingent of groaning audience members capable of drowning out the ‘gammon’ tendency. The programme even managed to find a broadly pro-Remain audience in Clacton, the one and only seat which Ukip ever managed to win at a general election.
But no longer. The arrival of Fiona Bruce has coincided with a sharp change in audience tone. When, last week, there were cheers for Isabel Oakeshott when she opposed any kind of delay to Brexit, I put it down to the programme coming from Derby, a working class industrial town which voted 57 per cent in favour of Leave in 2016. But then last night came Winchester, which in 2016 voted 59 per cent in favour of Remain. And yet there, too, the audience showed impatience with anyone who showed sympathy with the idea of delaying Brexit.
No Deal Brexit cheered on Question Time:
There is now a very firm sentiment which has taken hold in every part of Britain, at every socio-economic level: it is ‘just get on with it’. Calls for a second referendum are fading fast, as is the belief in extending negotiations. People can see that the EU has not the slightest intention of ceding ground on the backstop or anything else. What is the point in stretching out the business any further?
So why are those who demanded a second referendum – who seemed so perky just a few weeks ago – suddenly losing ground? I think there is a very good reason. The tragedy of some Remainers – the fatal flaw in their tactics – is that so few of them have been able to say a bad word about the EU. It doesn’t matter how inflexible, how stubborn the EU has been, how determined it has shown itself to punish Britain, these people just haven’t seemed to have it in them to raise the faintest criticism.
This week a quote from Michel Barnier came to light which sums up what has been obvious for many months. Barnier allegedly said some time ago: “I’ll have done my job if the exit terms are so bad that the British would rather stay”. That is a pretty hostile attitude to take in negotiations which were supposed to be taking place between friends and neighbours. But where were the Lord Adonises, Alistair Campbells, Nick Cleggs, Michael Heseltines, Tony Blairs, Ken Clarkes to condemn him? Nowhere to be seen. Yvette Cooper couldn’t even seem to criticise Barnier this week when he scorned her attempt to get the Commons to vote to rule out ‘no deal’. If she expected help from him, she got just the usual brush-off.The
To those Remainers who have never accepted the result of the referendum (Ken Clarke might be allowed a partial exception to this), the EU has been beyond reproach. They have taken its side every time, cheered every bad word it has said about Theresa May and her team. Take these extraordinary words in a tweet from Alastair Campbell in November 2017 when the negotiations over the Irish backstop first came to a head: “play hardball Leo”. That was a former aide to the prime minister of the United Kingdom imploring the head of a foreign state to hold out for the worst-possible deal for Britain.
The attitude has been akin to that of Jeremy Corbyn, who has spent a 35 year political career almost automatically taking the side of Sinn Fein, Hamas and anyone else who is trying to fight UK interests. They will of course dispute it and say they are only trying to assert that Britain’s interests lie within the EU, but the message that comes across is simply that they want the EU to win and Britain to lose.
The hardest Brexiteers have not shied away from criticising our own government in its ham-fisted efforts to negotiate a decent deal, prepare for no-deal and so on. How much better those Remainers would have come across had they displayed a slightly more even-handed approach and been prepared to acknowledge the stubbornness and unreasonableness of the EU side. Instead, they just cheered and cheered it on.
The public has had enough. If we are going to have a messy divorce in which we are forced to take sides, the winners in the battle for UK public opinion are inevitably going to be those who take our own side.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/...udiences-reflects-the-changing-brexit-debate/
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You're just a whimpering child who doesn't understand that referenda have no force in British law.
Remember, stupid, I support Brexit, and I specifically support the hardest, most hostile Brexit possible.
Strictly speaking, May is fulfilling at least the letter of the vote even if maybe not its spirit: she is withdrawing the UK's membership from the EU.
Any literate person understands that the referendum said nothing about hard or soft brexit, but only the ambiguous 'leave.'
If UKIP were smart, it would just call a new referendum to clarify the leave option. For example:
With what should the United Kingdom replace its membership in the European Union?
1. With the present agreement-in-principle.
2. With unilateral global free trade.
To be honest, farage has never clearly defined what was to replace Brexit. He seems satisfied with a no-deal Brexit going on WTO rules and that's it. No-deal would go by WTO rules by default, but the UK could drop all tariffs and quotas immediately afterwards. It's not clear that that's what a UKIP government would do. In short, Farage is proposing the worst kind of Brexit imaginable.
The referendum made no mention of "hard Brexit" or "soft Brexit" for the simple reason that those terms hadn't even been invented before and during the referendum. Similarly, Shakespeare didn't write the word "internet" in any of his plays. Those two terms were invented by the losing Remainers only after the referendum - "hard Brexit" being Remainer-speak for Brexit and "soft Brexit" being Remainer-speak for "a fudge to keep the UK in the EU in all but name".
As it was the referendum was merely a choice between Leave or Remain - and MPs, the people's servants, must act on it or otherwise destroy democracy.
If the referendum wasn't called by Parliament, they are in no legal obligation to comply with it!
It is the equivalent of a petition!
It is the equivalent of a petition!
What's the point in holding a referendum if you are just going to ignore the result if it doesn't go your way?
And the referendum was called by Parliament: it voted 544 to 53 to hold it.
We were then told during the referendum campaign that the result WILL be implemented.
Then, in 2017, 84% of Parliament was elected on a mandate to carry out Brexit.
It's completely wrong to say Parliament has no obligation to deliver it.
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It's completely accurate, and therefore foreign to a congenital liar like you, to say Parliament is under no legal obligation to obey a referendum.
I never gave it much thought until recently...but
It looks like Blacky was right
The referendum was instituted by British Parliament...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Referendum_Act_2015
They should honor it...
It looks like Blacky was right
The referendum was instituted by British Parliament...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Referendum_Act_2015
They should honor it...
I agree. Let me repeat my point, which nobody here seems smart enough to understand:
Parliament has no LEGAL OBLIGATION to obey a referendum.
"Now, have you got that, or do I have to write it in Braille and shove it up your ass?"
-- Commissioner Blakelock, The Gauntlet
I bow to your superior legal knowledge and I have to agree with you
Like I said I never gave the matter much thought until just lately.
I will now post an article that supports you...
I will now quietly go in a corner and fall on my sword....sensei!
Hurts less if you hold it sideways and fall on the flat, grasshopper.I bow to your superior legal knowledge and I have to agree with you
Like I said I never gave the matter much thought until just lately.
I will now post an article that supports you...
I will now quietly go in a corner and fall on my sword....sensei!
Brussels should be careful what it wishes for - resistance from Britain will be hell if it keeps us in
Janet Daley
26 January 2019
The Telegraph
There is, at five minutes to midnight, a glimmering of hope. The European Union might possibly, just maybe, conceivably be about to relent over the Irish backstop, which is the insuperable obstacle to reaching any sort of remotely acceptable agreement.
Judging by the confused and contradictory messages emerging from the previously implacable Fortress Brussels, you might almost think that they had given up on their blood pact with our own Remain fifth column. Perhaps they have concluded that Project Kill-the-whole-thing-off – frustrating any attempt to reach a plausible agreement so that in the end, with a whimper of exhaustion, we just give up the silly idea of leaving – might be a dead duck.
Take, for example, some of the the recent, blessed indications that the rational people who actually run EU operations regard a No Deal outcome as something other than an apocalyptic end-of-days. Xavier Bertrand, who administers the crucial French ports across the Channel, said as much in pretty categorical terms last week: we are confidently ready for that eventuality on our side so if you guys in the UK can get yourselves together, where’s the problem?
Ireland's PM Leo Varadkar is welcomed by European Council President Donald Tusk to discuss Brexit Credit: REUTERS
There are even hints of splits higher up, with the political leaders of some member states apparently suggesting that – contrary to those bloodcurdling threats from the EU Commission – in the event of No Deal, UK hauliers and airlines should continue to have the same rights to operate within the EU as they do now for the indefinite future. Fancy that. At last, everybody – or quite a few people anyway – is starting to talk sense. Could there be something more to this than just making the best of a very bad situation?
Remainers would almost certainly argue that this is nothing more than damage limitation. The French ports are anxious to assure us that they will be able to compete with rival facilities on the European coastline and the Spanish do not want their hugely lucrative British tourist trade to collapse due to restrictions on cheap air travel. So they are taking the necessary practical steps and urging their negotiators not to drive so hard a bargain that it damages their interests irreparably. But given a choice, surely all the various parties would really be much happier if we could be persuaded, with however much coercion is necessary, to stay in?
Well, I wonder. Is it possible that the more comprehending brains in the EU outfit might have come to another quite startling conclusion?
Maybe they have got over their initial shock at the visceral and unrelenting determination of the British to persevere with their resolve to leave, even in the face of the most deafening orchestrated campaign to terrorise them into submission, the sheer, absurd crassness of which has taken so many of us by surprise. (Leo Varadkar wins this week’s prize for gross irresponsibility with his assertion that No Deal could mean an “army presence” at the Irish border, a hysterical claim which, given Ulster’s tragic history, truly beggars belief.)
So could it be that, having looked at this phenomenon and contemplated its consequences, those sensible EU officials and heads of state might be thinking: is this plan of threatening and blackmailing and conniving with a black ops, back channel political campaign to keep the British locked into a system they now hate more than ever, really such a great idea? Never mind the possible damage that could be done by the UK coming out of the club. What kind of hell could they create for us if we succeed in making them stay in it?
After all, the leaders might be speculating in their darker moments, these are the British we would be dealing with – not the poor bankrupt Greeks, or the anarchic populist Italians, or the notoriously illiberal Hungarians, or the autocratic Rightwing Poles. No, this is Britain with its huge economy, its flourishing IT industry, its unique security connections with the Anglophone Five Eyes network, its global defence capability (matched in the EU only by France) and its world-beating financial services expertise. What if all the eloquence and diplomatic finesse of its highly experienced government operators (who, in spite of their recent apparent incompetence are still a class act) were dedicated to – as the Trotskyists used to say – boring from within? Suppose that, licensed as they would be by a furious, galvanised public sense of disgust at having been cheated of their promised exit, the British representation within the EU concentrated all its efforts on organising the resistance to European centralisation? Good grief.
And is that not, when you think about it, the likeliest outcome if, indeed, Continuity Remain gets its way? Far more likely than rioting in the streets (to which the British, unlike the French, are largely disinclined) is the prospect that we would simply take our revenge in the great democratic tradition: by electing to Westminster and to the EU parliament the most ferociously unrepentant Brexit cohort of representatives imaginable.
Those Leave-voting constituencies now being represented in Parliament by irreconcilable Remainers will be able to wreak vengeance not just on their own MPs but on the whole governing consensus that has let them down. The elections scheduled for this May to that ludicrously overblown Strasbourg Parliament are already expected to favour populist, nationalist candidates even from the countries whose governments cleave most strongly to the centrist project like France and Germany, let alone the acknowledged troublemakers to the East.
And there would be Britain, imprisoned but unbowed, with its enraged population urging it on to give respectability and coherence to the resistance movement. The argument for “reforming” from within was lost long ago. Now there could be professionals to organise rebellion and systematic obstruction from within. Britain would have found its natural role in Europe. Message to Brussels: is that what you really want?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politic...areful-wishes-resistance-britain-will-hellif/
Janet Daley
26 January 2019
The Telegraph
There is, at five minutes to midnight, a glimmering of hope. The European Union might possibly, just maybe, conceivably be about to relent over the Irish backstop, which is the insuperable obstacle to reaching any sort of remotely acceptable agreement.
Judging by the confused and contradictory messages emerging from the previously implacable Fortress Brussels, you might almost think that they had given up on their blood pact with our own Remain fifth column. Perhaps they have concluded that Project Kill-the-whole-thing-off – frustrating any attempt to reach a plausible agreement so that in the end, with a whimper of exhaustion, we just give up the silly idea of leaving – might be a dead duck.
Take, for example, some of the the recent, blessed indications that the rational people who actually run EU operations regard a No Deal outcome as something other than an apocalyptic end-of-days. Xavier Bertrand, who administers the crucial French ports across the Channel, said as much in pretty categorical terms last week: we are confidently ready for that eventuality on our side so if you guys in the UK can get yourselves together, where’s the problem?
Ireland's PM Leo Varadkar is welcomed by European Council President Donald Tusk to discuss Brexit Credit: REUTERS
There are even hints of splits higher up, with the political leaders of some member states apparently suggesting that – contrary to those bloodcurdling threats from the EU Commission – in the event of No Deal, UK hauliers and airlines should continue to have the same rights to operate within the EU as they do now for the indefinite future. Fancy that. At last, everybody – or quite a few people anyway – is starting to talk sense. Could there be something more to this than just making the best of a very bad situation?
Remainers would almost certainly argue that this is nothing more than damage limitation. The French ports are anxious to assure us that they will be able to compete with rival facilities on the European coastline and the Spanish do not want their hugely lucrative British tourist trade to collapse due to restrictions on cheap air travel. So they are taking the necessary practical steps and urging their negotiators not to drive so hard a bargain that it damages their interests irreparably. But given a choice, surely all the various parties would really be much happier if we could be persuaded, with however much coercion is necessary, to stay in?
Well, I wonder. Is it possible that the more comprehending brains in the EU outfit might have come to another quite startling conclusion?
Maybe they have got over their initial shock at the visceral and unrelenting determination of the British to persevere with their resolve to leave, even in the face of the most deafening orchestrated campaign to terrorise them into submission, the sheer, absurd crassness of which has taken so many of us by surprise. (Leo Varadkar wins this week’s prize for gross irresponsibility with his assertion that No Deal could mean an “army presence” at the Irish border, a hysterical claim which, given Ulster’s tragic history, truly beggars belief.)
So could it be that, having looked at this phenomenon and contemplated its consequences, those sensible EU officials and heads of state might be thinking: is this plan of threatening and blackmailing and conniving with a black ops, back channel political campaign to keep the British locked into a system they now hate more than ever, really such a great idea? Never mind the possible damage that could be done by the UK coming out of the club. What kind of hell could they create for us if we succeed in making them stay in it?
After all, the leaders might be speculating in their darker moments, these are the British we would be dealing with – not the poor bankrupt Greeks, or the anarchic populist Italians, or the notoriously illiberal Hungarians, or the autocratic Rightwing Poles. No, this is Britain with its huge economy, its flourishing IT industry, its unique security connections with the Anglophone Five Eyes network, its global defence capability (matched in the EU only by France) and its world-beating financial services expertise. What if all the eloquence and diplomatic finesse of its highly experienced government operators (who, in spite of their recent apparent incompetence are still a class act) were dedicated to – as the Trotskyists used to say – boring from within? Suppose that, licensed as they would be by a furious, galvanised public sense of disgust at having been cheated of their promised exit, the British representation within the EU concentrated all its efforts on organising the resistance to European centralisation? Good grief.
And is that not, when you think about it, the likeliest outcome if, indeed, Continuity Remain gets its way? Far more likely than rioting in the streets (to which the British, unlike the French, are largely disinclined) is the prospect that we would simply take our revenge in the great democratic tradition: by electing to Westminster and to the EU parliament the most ferociously unrepentant Brexit cohort of representatives imaginable.
Those Leave-voting constituencies now being represented in Parliament by irreconcilable Remainers will be able to wreak vengeance not just on their own MPs but on the whole governing consensus that has let them down. The elections scheduled for this May to that ludicrously overblown Strasbourg Parliament are already expected to favour populist, nationalist candidates even from the countries whose governments cleave most strongly to the centrist project like France and Germany, let alone the acknowledged troublemakers to the East.
And there would be Britain, imprisoned but unbowed, with its enraged population urging it on to give respectability and coherence to the resistance movement. The argument for “reforming” from within was lost long ago. Now there could be professionals to organise rebellion and systematic obstruction from within. Britain would have found its natural role in Europe. Message to Brussels: is that what you really want?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politic...areful-wishes-resistance-britain-will-hellif/