OK, now that our political “geniuses” are celebrating defeating the government in parliament to give MPs a legal guarantee of a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal struck with Brussels; here are a few thoughts;
- This is merely kicking the can down the road because as of yet there is no consensus as to what’s best for Britain. Some expect Soft BREXIT, some want NO BREXIT with the lines utterly blurred between these 2 position while while others are still keen on a Hard BREXIT.
- The BREXIT referendum mandate is all but utterly broken – and the worse part is that no one who voted Leave has a say about that and no data/analysis has been presented as justification for these twisted choices. As for Remainer’s again they are being mis-represented because their choice was/is NO BREXIT NOT no longer seems a viable alternative with Liberal politicians mostly accepting the Soft BREXIT proposition or at least there is no clarity of choice. In other words both BREXIT/NO BREXIT positions have been morphed into something completely different from their original forms. So this vote in today only places a lid on the deep divisions in parliament in terms of vision/narratives but actually achieves very little in bridging the gap because we’re only kicking the decision time down the road.
- Continued political/economic uncertainty I spoke about in previous posts until final decisions are made. So we need to sit down/cross our arms while other countries are seizing the opportunity to attract UK based investments/businesses. This while our economy is on the fritz and our reputation is taking a beating all over the world thanks to the complete/utter incompetence of our politicians and our broken political ecosystem.
- Assuming that this approach of kicking the can is a wise move, what happens between now/then where government introduces bills/takes actions that are based on the assumption there will be a final deal at the end of run that follows their own narrow vision of best case scenario – particularly that of severing as many ties as possible with the EU as proposed by the hardliners – thus rendering “meaningful vote” by parliament useless or at least making the reversal of such action/bills passed impractical to achieve when considered before the final vote; this not to mention the wasted effort/resources involved in the process. This means that parliament would need proper oversight to ensure these kinds of actions/bills are blocked before they hit the road which would be a complicated proposition considering the lack of consensus on vision and the partisan politics we’ve become accustomed to in parliament.
- When do we address the Russian meddling investigation as a national security matter, or should we also include this in the FinalSay vote? Now how ridiculous would that be?
To sum up I think this approach is another political “fudge” which;
- Will not address polarisation in the country
- Does not provide a pragmatic vision forward that unites the nation and one that is based on proper assessment of the options/tradeoffs beyond the partisan narratives we know quite well.
- A completely undemocratic proposition that shatters the Referendum mandate for Leavers and misrepresents Remainer’s views without providing neither justifications or allowing voters their direct say on these changes.
So, instead of returning to the Negotiations with 1 Position – we suddenly have 3 possible outcomes and everything we do from now until the final whistle has to accommodate for these variants (original government plan – a variant plan – cliff edge ) all mostly based on hypothesis. For the EU this decision is a win-win proposition but we’re the ones ultimately paying for this utter incompetence and so is our country.
If details come to light that change my views presented above I will update this post if/where appropriate otherwise no changes will be made.
Hope this helps!
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