Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

What's the point of trying to speak when you know you are just going to be shouted down? Unfortunately, most protesters are not interested in what the person they are protesting to has to say.

Nobody has to play these games. If Boris can't get his message over one way, he will use another.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

He had a microphone. He didn't know they would protest throughout his Q and A. Generally protestors eventually cease.

He didn't attempt because he was chicken. Ironic in some ways.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

A microphone against a protesting rabble is not a lot of use. Protestors rarely listen, they just disrupt.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

Well there is journalists saying there was no reasonable way he could have conducted a press conference with protesters shouting in the background, he is not a chicken and quite rightly refused to hold it in front of them, No.10 said they did ask for it to be in doors, Luxemberg refused, so they're the ones out of order here.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

Luxembourg have said they were told at the last minute so it’s a bit of he said, she said.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

Both sides blaming each as usual.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

At the end of the day, Boris is a politician, and like all politicians he always has one eye on what his appearances will look like on the evening news. Being yelled at by a rabble in Luxembourg is not a good look and he is entirely within his rights to just decide to sack it off and go home. Yelling ‘chicken’ is a bit childish, which anyone who has ever seen the Back to the Future trilogy should know very well.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

It's evident no new arrangements have been offered regarding the N.I. Border. Boris is wanting the EU to capitulate.

You say Boris is a chicken, but he is certainly playing chicken.

He obviously thinks he has some way to circumnavigate the Benn Bill, no doubt that is what he went to the EU with, and no new deal.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

Actually, they have been making various proposals and scoping the problem, although whether the EU will accept any of it is anyone's guess.

I keep thinking to myself that if the EU wants to protect its own industries, why would it not want a deal?

The backstop is a false reason to give for not accepting the alternative arrangements we are putting forward, because if there is no deal, there is no backstop anyway!

I still say that the obvious answer is to invoke Article 24 of GATT. We could all get on with leaving and talking about the trade deal we want then.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

Boris and his ministers have made themselves absolute hostages to fortune if they are sitting on anything less than an absolute dead-cert (or as near as that as is possible in legal situations). Their pronouncements about us definitely leaving on 31 October have, uncharacteristically in political-speak, left them essentially no wriggle room at all. Yes, Theresa May insisted she was taking us out on the agreed date right up til it was very evident that was not possible, absent a willingness to leave without a deal, but aside from being a very different personality to Boris, May has quite simply used that trick up. If Boris doesn’t lead us out on 31 October, becoming the second Tory PM to make precisely the same coq-up in a matter of months, the Tories will be utterly crucified at the polls, and he knows it.

Only time will tell exactly what they have up their sleeves.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

The talk is edging towards a 'regulatory border' in the Irish Sea. That would appease the EU, it was their idea originally after all, and solve the Irish border problem. So let's see where that goes.

It would be good if they could tell us any of these ideas they have then.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

Don’t have to tell us - be good if they told the EU, though, to facilitate negotiations...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49715705 btw, I think BJ was right to cancel the Press Conference - the noisy mob would have made it impossible for anyone to hear what he was saying.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

Given the article you posted the other day speculating as to the nature of the weakness in the Benn Act (it was you, wasn’t it?), there’s an interesting conundrum brewing.

If Bozza comes back to Westminster with a draft deal and puts it before Parliament, what is the rebel alliance to do next? As the Benn Act is seemingly overridden, in the presence of an agreed deal, by provisions in the earlier legislation, then if they approve it they lose their last possible means of delaying Brexit long enough to push public opinion in favour of another referendum (and, let’s be honest, cancelling Brexit by fair means or foul is all they’re really interested in). Notwithstanding anything in the Benn Act, the procedures previously enacted have the effect, more or less, of letting Boris just get on with it. We leave on 31 October and the inevitable Supreme Court bun fight becomes a side show in which the very worst Boris can be accused of is struggling to discern the will of a parliament so willing to contradict its own Acts.

But if they don’t vote for any modified withdrawal agreement Bozza brings back from Brussels, what then? The cat is out of the bag; it becomes abundantly clear that Parliament can’t, or won’t, affirm anything whatsoever with regards to Brexit. What moral high ground Jezza thinks he has, vanishes faster than ice in Greenland. Even if Boris actually doesn’t have a loophole in his back pocket, standing up against that will make him riotously popular; if he does (and it seems vastly unlikely that he doesn’t), then deploying it will be taken as a great big middle finger to the Brexit-hating Labour Party. Labour can kiss the north of England goodbye just as surely as it has Scotland.

Right now, Jezza and his rebel alliance think they have been tremendously clever, but actually their position is I think really quite precarious.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

That assumes the modified agreement isn’t just TM’s deal with fresh lipstick.

Re: Brexit Development(s) Discussion
 

Yeah.

I think they're probably working that out now. It would put them in a bind but some will break away as there are MPs who really do just want to avoid No Deal so he'll pull some Tories back - like Rory Stewart - and win a chunk of Labour leavers over too so if the ERG don't play up he might have the numbers either way.

They might want a way to ensure he can't avoid letting them pass the legislation required to secure the deal with the EU though and since time would be of the essence there is the prospect of demanding a couple of weeks extension.