The plan would never be completely blown out of the water, because at least we'd know what we want! We'd know which direction we wanted to go and have something that we could negotiate towards.Mellsblue wrote:Well it's 18 months down the line with negotiations and a looming deadline and there's still no plan as the one we did put to the EU was blown out of the water. If only we'd done that before triggering article 50! Once your idea is blown out of the water it doesn't matter how much prep you've done as your position has been blown out of the water. If you are saying that we should've war gamed lots of different scenarios then I'd agree but once the EU said, childishly, no negotiations, even back channels, prior to triggering A50 then you're really just spending time pissing in the wind.Puja wrote:Because how can you negotiate if you don't know what you want? Even if a plan was going to get blown out of the water by the EU on first contact, at least we'd know what direction we were aimed in. I don't get your idea that knowing what you would like isn't a prerequisite for a negotiation - how can you try and get things if you don't know what you want?Mellsblue wrote:What’s the point of forming a position if it’s then blown out of the water by the EU? It also avoids the issue that a consensus would never be reached. You ask for a committee proportional to the Commons but this is just having the same argument amongst a smaller amount of people. Opinion would still be split five different ways, as it is parliament, and their recommendation would still need to go through parliament before becoming an official position, and if the basis of that position was agreed to by the EU after negotiations and changes it would then have go back to parliament to be voted on. You can avoid the parliamentary arithmetic.
And the point of having a committee would be to turn the endeavour into a joint "Delivering the will of the people" and sharing the credit/blame, rather than having the absurd current situation where it's an argument over who's delivering the will of the people better and where MPs of similar opinions won't vote on an amendment because the enemy was the one who proposed it. Brexit is the complete renegotiation of our foreign policy, econonic policy and interactions with the world - it's as important as a war and should have been treated like one rather than being petty politics.
I'd mark it as another failure of our absurd voting system, which is designed to vote in local MPs individually, but where most people vote for a party or, worse, the leader. In a lot of areas, it's irrelevant who the actual people are, compared to what colour rosette they're wearing.Mellsblue wrote:If the electorate didn’t vote based on Brexit - and I don’t believe that to be wholly true - then it’s safe to assume that it’s so low down people’s worries that all this media attention and self-flagellation is a monumental waste of time, and that the population as a whole aren’t that bothered about the result. So, let’s just get on with it. As much as I wish the whole sorry mess had never happened.
Puja
I think we must be talking at cross-purposes - I'm not talking about a detailed plan with all the i's dotted and the t's crossed and no room for negotiation that we would present to the EU as a 'take it or leave it' - I'm literally talking about having vague idea of what we wanted Brexit to be and knowing what we wanted to get out of the process.
But at least then it wouldn't be, "Here is the plan of the Conservatives. Here is the plan of Labour. If you vote for the other side, then you are a traitor to your cause." It would be, "Here is the plan. Vote for it if you think it is right."Mellsblue wrote:The committee can be as joint as endeavour as you like but whatever they recommend has to go through the house, which will still be divided as ever. There's also the problem that committees can lead to personal differences taking over the whole show. It's not the panacea you seem to think it is.
The Lib Dems were utterly ineffective and having a charismaless void in place of a leader during a very personality-driven election. FPtP incentivises tactical voting and in areas where it was between Conservatives and Labour, Lib Dem would've been a wasted vote, and Labour ran with enough vagueness that they were seen as the soft-Brexit (or even "They'll change their mind after the election" for some more deluded people) option. Plus, the election pitted two polarising leaders against each other and campaigning was partisan, personal, and vicious - people were less likely to vote for a smaller party if it meant The Enemy would get in.Mellsblue wrote:You may think the system absurd but you've thought there would at least be an increased % of the vote for the Lib Dems if the country were so disgusted by the Brexit situation. Instead the two Eurosceptic parties had their greatest share of the vote for goodness knows how long.
You're right that Brexit wasn't a big issue in the election - people manifestly voted on other things, as can be seen by the fact that Britain's still split down the middle on the subject, while only 12.5% of the vote when to Remain parties. However, that doesn't mean that Brexit's a) not important to people, or b) not important in general. The electorate is just very stupid.
Puja
(apart from the incident with the superglue and the goats). I regard the electorate as a whole as utterly incompetent and underinformed (and yes, I include myself in that, although to a lesser extent than some) and the will of the people to be worth its weight in gold. "For the many, not the few, cause we reckon we can sucker the many with logical fallacies, oversimplifications, and propaganda" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
