More on Brexit
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“Parliament wouldn’t dare do that, i.e. withdraw the request to leave, as that would blatantly be over-riding the result of a referendum.”
As you anticipated, and despite the petition calling for Article 50 to be revoked being allocated debating time on 1 April (appropriate date?), the Department for Exiting the European Union has issued this statement:
This Government will not revoke Article 50. We will honour the result of the 2016 referendum and work with Parliament to deliver a deal that ensures we leave the European Union.
It remains the Government’s firm policy not to revoke Article 50. We will honour the outcome of the 2016 referendum and work to deliver an exit which benefits everyone, whether they voted to Leave or to Remain.
Revoking Article 50, and thereby remaining in the European Union, would undermine both our democracy and the trust that millions of voters have placed in Government.
The Government acknowledges the considerable number of people who have signed this petition. However, close to three quarters of the electorate took part in the 2016 referendum, trusting that the result would be respected. This Government wrote to every household prior to the referendum, promising that the outcome of the referendum would be implemented. 17.4 million people then voted to leave the European Union, providing the biggest democratic mandate for any course of action ever directed at UK Government.
British people cast their votes once again in the 2017 General Election where over 80% of those who voted, voted for parties, including the Opposition, who committed in their manifestos to upholding the result of the referendum.
This Government stands by this commitment.
Revoking Article 50 would break the promises made by Government to the British people, disrespect the clear instruction from a democratic vote, and in turn, reduce confidence in our democracy. As the Prime Minister has said, failing to deliver Brexit would cause “potentially irreparable damage to public trust”, and it is imperative that people can trust their Government to respect their votes and deliver the best outcome for them.
I was at a meeting last night at which one of the speakers, James Heartfield, billed as a writer for Spiked magazine, put the case for Lexit, i.e a leftwing Brexit. His arguments were based on the sovereignty and self-determination of “nations”; the EU could never be democratic as it was an artificial political entity not an organic nation and had no right to impose its will on nations such as Britain was. He defended the view that, despite capitalism being a global system, it was still possible to establish “socialism (although he no longer liked that term) in one country”, with subsidies, control on capital movement, etc. Basically, the sort of “reformism in one country” that Corbyn used to embrace. He also claimed that Theresa May didn’t really want Brexit but was working to betray it. This, coupled with the concept of an organic nation, suggests that Lexit might equally be called Rexit. I am sure he and Rees-Mogg would find they have much in common.
“…His arguments were based on the sovereignty and self-determination of “nations”; the EU could never be democratic as it was an artificial political entity not an organic nation and had no right to impose its will on nations such as Britain was. ..”
Not only Mogg but the Left nationalists too…His argument provides all the ammunition for them. Is the union with Scotland and Northern Ireland organic as Unionists say or imposed as the separatists claim, particularly as both voted to Remain and being deprived of self-determination?
MPs vote by 286 to 344 to reject the government’s withdrawal agreement – on the day the UK was due to leave the EU
Could it be a double-election?
And a second referendum looms closer.
The papers are saying that the Protestant Ulster Unionists of the DUP might settle for the UK staying in a customs union as that would mean no backstop threat of Norther Ireland’s trading regulations being different from the rest of the UK.
That’s always been their red line not a hard Brexit. What do they care about UK capitalism being able to make its own trade deals? And they certainly don’t want a no deal exit as that would lead to Northern Ireland being treated differently. They would settle for anything as long as Ulster is treated the same as the rest if the UK.
The choice May had between the devil and the DUP wasn’t really a choice at all. Either from her point of view was a pact with the devil as she has just found to her cost.
Talk about the legacy of dead generations weighing like an alp on the brains of the living.
Produced by the guy who helped produce the party intro video
According to Rees-Mogg, Jeremy Corbyn is a “known Marxist”. That’s probably news to Corbyn who didn’t know this and who has never even claimed to be one. And of course he isn’t. He is just a known leftwing reformist. In theory Labour and Tories should be able to reach a deal on the future trading arrangements of the British capitalist class; whether or not narrow party politics will allow this to happen in practice is another matter. A real Marxist would tell them both that the trading arrangements of the capitalist class are of no concern to the majority class of wage and salary workers — and not to inflict on the majority class the temporary inonveniences of a no-deal crash-out.
ALB wrote
“A real Marxist would tell them both that the trading arrangements of the capitalist class are of no concern to the majority class of wage and salary workers ”
Corbyn said:
“We believe that the real divide in our society is not between people who voted yes or no for [Scottish] independence. It’s not between people who voted to remain or to leave the EU,” he told party members in Dundee. “The real divide is between the many – who do the work, create the wealth and pay their taxes – and the few, who set the rules, reap the rewards, and dodge their taxes. So let me spell it out: our mission is to back the working class, in all its diversity. And that’s what drives our approach to Brexit.”
Jeremy Corbyn
..but he can not back the working class, he can only aim to govern over them and run capitalism with nicer soundbites. We have been here before with seemingly pro-worker Labour politicians, who came from the working class backgrounds of Glasgows East-end from Maxton, Shinwel, et al.
Matt, that is another point completely. I was correcting the misapprehension that Corbyn didn’t recognise:
“The real divide is between the many – who do the work, create the wealth and pay their taxes – and the few, who set the rules, reap the rewards, and dodge their taxes. ”
You don’t have to be a Marxist to recognise that there are two classes in society. Anyway, there seems to be a concerted campaign amongst the extremist Brexisteers to label (smear, in their eyes) Corbyn as a “Marxist”.
Here’s Andrew Rosindell, Tory MP for Romford. And here’s Ian Duncan Smith calling the whole Labour Party “Marxist”:
Speaking to the BBC in the Palace of Westminster’s Central Lobby, the former Tory leader raged: “This is no longer Conservative government policy. This is policy dictated by what I think is a Marxist and rather nasty Labour party.
In the past they’d have simply called him a “Communist” but that wouldn’t go down so well these days. Hence “Marxist” as their new term of abuse. Even so, I am not sure that, outside the Tory Party and the further-right, it will be taken as this.
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