Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[Brian Shanahan]

Changes a lot of things. His economic policies are insane but on the other hand he'll be taking the crazy catholics away from Le Pen. For the first time I'm wondering if the left (in some form) could make a comeback.

Isn't Le Pen the left (in some form)? Looking at the economics platform it looks that way this side of the pond.

No, she's an out and out neo-fascist. Scion of an Action Francais family, who broke away because they were insufficiently reverential towards Vichy France.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well it looks like Susan Collins doesn't have to worry about getting "primed" anymore...

(I predict DEMs fold because a collapse will cause enough bad blood to cause straight ticket voting which would be a total disaster for the DEMs due to the map. They should have waited ~10 more years before kicking out the blue dogs. It's not enough to dominate California, New York and Massachusetts due the district system. Their minorities should start being able to flip districts in 2024 and then the GOP will rapidly lose ground. The fact that they are going to win doesn't let them off the hook for wasting 20 years for not being willing to turn a blind eye to things for the greater good.)

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well it looks like Susan Collins doesn't have to worry about getting "primed" anymore...

(I predict DEMs fold because a collapse will cause enough bad blood to cause straight ticket voting which would be a total disaster for the DEMs due to the map. They should have waited ~10 more years before kicking out the blue dogs. It's not enough to dominate California, New York and Massachusetts due the district system. Their minorities should start being able to flip districts in 2024 and then the GOP will rapidly lose ground. The fact that they are going to win doesn't let them off the hook for wasting 20 years for not being willing to turn a blind eye to things for the greater good.)

I've now seen that this is incorrect; it was just a vote to even start "talking" about it. I'm sure that the GOP would lose at least two more votes.

Doesn't change my mini-rant that much though...

[MJW (ya that one)]

Getting back on topic even the government is pretty sure it will lose the Brexit court case. However, it would be 7-4 which is actually pretty good due to the political inclinations of the judges and both major parties have said they want to trigger article 50; so there's a good chance Brexit will still happen. I think they are doing this because if Brexit doesn't happen then new elections would have to be called. The Tories would have to take a party line for Brexit so it would be a de facto second referendum which Brexit would win due to their geographic advantage and their ability to steal votes in Northern Ireland and Scotland by using people there who want to leave the UK (edit: I forgot that they would also be no longer hampered by Jo Cox getting shot). Late edit: There's a good chance that UKIP would collude with Tories by agreeing to fold seats that they have no chance of winning; while LD would bleed crazy votes off of Labour.

(I think that the Court's ruling would be correct because it was just a straw poll. If the government could trigger article 50 just because of that they could trigger it at anytime which would be silly because EU stuff has been integrated into UK law. So the government would just be able to annul any law they want.)

Edit: I think the main reason that the referendum was a straw poll is that no-one thought Brexit would win. It only got steam after Junkers messed up by not giving UK an 'emergency brake' which would not being giving the UK special treatment because everyone else has one and the immigration to the UK screws over other members (Poland brain drain).

[Molach]

Funny thing, in Norway most (say, 70 %) politicians/commentators are horrified/disgusted by/with Brexit ...populism, right-wing, all that stuff. Boo.

However Norway voted NO to EU twice, if there were a vote today it would fail spectacularly (70 % NO, 20 % YES, 10 % WHAT IS EU?), and most of those who comment on the terrible Brexit would vote NO again on Norways behalf.

I think there is a certain irony here, but am unable to articulate it properly. Therefore I post.

[Krill]

I think there is a certain irony here, but am unable to articulate it properly. Therefore I post.

QotM

[Rowain]

Funny thing, in Norway most (say, 70 %) politicians/commentators are horrified/disgusted by/with Brexit ...populism, right-wing, all that stuff. Boo.

However Norway voted NO to EU twice, if there were a vote today it would fail spectacularly (70 % NO, 20 % YES, 10 % WHAT IS EU?), and most of those who comment on the terrible Brexit would vote NO again on Norways behalf.

I think there is a certain irony here, but am unable to articulate it properly. Therefore I post.

While Norway is not a member of the EU it has access to the EU-market, for which it pays and allows EU-citizen to live and work in Norway. It has also accepted a lot of the EU-laws. Brexit was done to get rid of EU-citizens in England (at least that was one big argument). So it is justified to be horrified by the reasons why UK is leaving while still finding enough reason not to join under the current circumstances.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Update:

Labour's leader is wavering to force a line-vote but it doesn't matter because unless he forces a line-vote the other way Brexit will still be able to get over 50%. I'm not sure what's going to happen but the betting odds for Brexit winning are still @ ~80%.

May's speech suggests "hard" Brexit but it's still just talk.

I think there's two ways to explain her speech (at least I can think of):

1. It's just talk and she's taking a hard-line opening stance to get the biggest amount of pie possible.

2. The government had informal talks and EU chose to go full-retard: ie Refusing to grant an emergency brake while allowing UK to stay in EU. If this happened it would make UKIP's secondary "democratic-defect" argument strong enough to win on it's own and the EU doing that proves that it's untenable in the long-run so it's actually in the establishment's interest to Brexit to get it over with.

I'll go with #2 just to piss people off and show that it was already over the second Leave won by a single vote: Cannot hold a second referendum because of 'voting until you get it right'--if one vote is good enough to get in then one vote is good enough to leave, cannot hold elections because Brexit would win them for reasons I've written in earlier posts and cannot "soft" Brexit because doing that would defeat the entire point of doing it.

[AdrienIer]

Once brexit was voted it was clear that either the UK would get a far worse deal than it had before or that there would be no real deal signed between EU and UK.
It would be the most ironic thing ever if, after saying for the whole campaign that the EU is not democratic, the UK would go against the will of its people and stay in the EU. In that at least the EU did the most democratic thing and decided that if the UK wants out, let them be out

[MJW (ya that one)]

Once brexit was voted it was clear that either the UK would get a far worse deal than it had before or that there would be no real deal signed between EU and UK.
It would be the most ironic thing ever if, after saying for the whole campaign that the EU is not democratic, the UK would go against the will of its people and stay in the EU. In that at least the EU did the most democratic thing and decided that if the UK wants out, let them be out

If my guess is right trading "emergency break" for not being able to vote is already far worse. Pretty much everyone else has one and not having an "emergency break" screws over other EU members too. So the UK's real options are hard brexit or non-brexit if the EU doesn't even give them that; hence May's speech. It seems to be an awkward time to suddenly push for hard brexit so I'm guessing that this was induced by this pet theory of mine. The EU did this to for ether the UK to stay or force a hard brexit so they can be made an example of. I'm also guessing that the EU's primary plan is actually #1 but that's not going to work for reasons I've outlined. They don't get it because they are not real politicians. This mistake shows the establishment that UKIP was right for not liking non-elected officials and will probably be the final straw to make them really push the shinny red button.