Comment by disgruntledphd2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by disgruntledphd2 | Hacker News Reader

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disgruntledphd2

To be fair, the reason that the UK has not left the EU is because the Tory Eurosceptics refused to vote for Theresa May's deal. Not once, not twice, but three times.

I think that the real issue here is that there doesn't appear to be a majority in Parliament for anything (witness the indicative votes earlier this year, which found no majority for any form of deal).

I think that the reason many MP's are unwilling to let the UK leave without a deal are as follows:

1) It doesn't solve anything. You still need to agree what to do for a future relationship, from a much, much weaker position (only Council of Ministers agreeement for Article 50 deal, versus Council, EU Parliament and all national regional parliaments required for a future trade deal).

2) The EU will not allow any trade deals to happen unless the Irish border, the rights of EU citizens and the money issues are resolved.

3) The UK imports the majority of their food, and WTO tariffs are really high on food, leading to potential problems with food supply (remember that it's November, when not much grows in the UK).

Like, I don't doubt that some MP's want to remain in the EU, but for my money most of them have voted for some form of Brexit deal, with the exception of the rabidly fanatical members of the European Research Group.

Additionally, with respect to the terms offered by the EU: Yes, they will be worse than staying in the EU. By definition, if you leave a club, you no longer have access to the facilities of the club. It would make zero sense for the EU to do a deal for the UK that was better or the same as membership, because no-one would remain in the EU then.

I think that the citizens of the UK have been let down by many of their political representatives, but i don't believe that their desire to remain in the EU is the cause.

I don’t understand point 3. Why would the WTO tariff rate matter, are they not maximums? Couldn’t the UK just set import tariffs to 0 for a period?

No because of the most favoured nation principle. You have to have the same tax rate for everyone, hence if you set it 0% for EU imports, you need to do the same for everyone, and then no one will do a trade deal with you (as they already have no tariffs).

> To be fair, the reason that the UK has not left the EU is because the Tory Eurosceptics refused to vote for Theresa May's deal. Not once, not twice, but three times.

If all the Eurosceptics had voted for May's deal, it still wouldn't have had the numbers to pass. I think its fairer to lay the blame on the opposition parties who voted against it largely to try to create chaos which they thought would lead them to an election they could win.

If the government needed opposition votes to pass a deal, why didn’t they make any concessions to opposition demands?

To the contrary, May’s government only tried to appease the hard-liners in her own party. Johnson has taken it even further in the same direction.

That is completely incorrect. If everyone supporting the UK government at the time had voted for the deal, it would have passed. The ERG and the DUP were the cause of it's failure (and I'm looking forward to the reckoning the DUP get in the next elections as a result of this)>

The pro European Tory votes against the deal together with opposition votes were enough to sink it. Even if the entire ERG had voted for it.

Sorry, which pro-European tories voted against Theresa May's deal? Can you supply a list?

Like, the first vote definitely wouldn't have passed with them, but the third definitely would have.

Now personally, I think the Opposition should have voted for the deal, but the primary respionsibility falls on the government.

At least Guto Bebb, Phillip Lee, Dominic Grieve, Sam Gyimah, Jo Johnson, and Justine Greening (there may be others I’ve missed).

May’s majority including the DUP at the time was 7 (I think - this was after the defections to the Independent Group) so those 6 would have tipped it into a loss on their own.

Cool, fair point. I didn't think that they'd rebelled till later. I still stand by my contention that the withdrawal bill would have passed were it not for the trenchant opposition from the ERG and DUP, but accept that the numbers don't entirely suport my story.

I think to be fair, if the DUP had supported it then there’s a very good argument that that would have changed minds sufficiently elsewhere that it could have passed. Playing counter factuals on this type of thing is very difficult though because, for example, some MPs likely took a view that they wanted to be on the winning/losing side for reasons mostly unrelated to the contents of the deal itself.

It's not the job of opposition parties to vote for the policies of the government.

Otherwise you don't have an opposition, and then you don't have much of a democracy.

It's the job of the government to secure the votes it needs for its policies, and conversely to propose policies for which it can secure the necessary votes.

That's democracy.

That's just not true. If the DUP and the conservatives had voted to pass Theresa May's deal they absolutely had the numbers to pass it, especially given that on each of the votes there were a small number of Labour MPs who voted with it.

Didn't May have a majority of 1 vote (Tories + DUP) through the negotiations though?

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