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Comment by pmyteh | Hacker News Reader

The current BBC headline is "Brexit: MPs reject Theresa May's deal by 149 votes", which is a better summary of the situation.

For a variety of reasons (legal, procedural, and political) MPs can't simply resolve to reject Brexit, and didn't do so today. What they can do is reject the exit deal that May has negotiated.

Some of them have voted to do this because they want a 'softer' Brexit with a closer ongoing relationship with the EU, or no Brexit at all. Others because they think the deal is insufficiently 'hard', as it envisages some kind of ongoing relationship and they'd rather see a clean break and then deal with the consequences.

The upshot is that we leave at the end of the month with no deal unless something happens, there's currently no majority in Parliament for any of the options, and we look like international idiots.

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> For a variety of reasons (legal, procedural, and political) MPs can't simply resolve to reject Brexit,

There is no legal reason why ministers cannot reject Brexit; given the role of Parliament in the UK system of government, there is very little that ministers could be legally prevented from deciding, since the current (at whatever time it is you are asking the question) Parliament itself is generally the ultimate authority on what is allowed, so much so that it cannot be bound even by past Parliaments.

There are, as you note, political constraints, particularly the problem of there being no majority for any option.

> There is no legal reason why ministers cannot reject Brexit;

There is, for a revocation of article 50 notice to be legal, Parliament has to pass a motion directing the Government to do so[1].

[1] https://ukandeu.ac.uk/revoking-article-50-after-the-ecjs-rul...

> There is, for a revocation of article 50 notice to be legal, Parliament has to pass a motion directing the Government to do so[1].

We're talking here about what MPs can reject or not, and the fact that Parliament must direct the government before the government doing it is legal is not a legal barrier to MPs taking action on it (the form of which action would be an Act of Parliament directing the government.)

The government controls the timetable, so there's a serious procedural obstacle.

This 6 minute video by CGP Grey explains the different possible relationships with the EU available to the UK, and why the UK has so far rejected all of them ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agZ0xISi40E

I particularly liked his followup on the border options available [0]. They all have issues, with the general choices being "Northern Ireland doesn't actually Brexit", "the UK doesn't actually Brexit" and "Northern Ireland has troubles [1] again, because the UK just broke the Good Friday Agreement [2]". That situation's not looking great.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1Yv24cM2os 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement

It kind of glosses over that part of the problem is the EU is pushing for a hard border between the South and the North and the UK doesn't actually want this. The EU has much more to worry about from a porous border than the UK. But it is all kind of irrelevant because the EU has no way of enforcing a border that neither the South or the North want. If the UK stays in some form of relationship they will try to threaten the UK into putting up a border, but if the UK exits hard then they are going to be in the ridiculous position of threatening the Republic of Ireland to put up a wall.

What the North and the South want to do is fundamentally at odds with how the EU works and unless the EU gives the UK a free trade deal which is something the UK would be happy to have it's going to cause lots of problems for the EU. It's kind of weird that the video ignores that the border is a problem for the EU the same way it is a problem for the UK. There is a fundamental symmetry. From the UK perspective I think a lot of people don't care if the porous border undermines trade policy (also, considering how the EU is talking about treating us post-brexit a porous border is going to be seen as a feature rather than a bug) because the Irish issue is more important. However, EU doesn't care as much about the Irish issue and cares more about stuff undermining its perfect union.

There's also the 'smart border' issue.

At the start pro-Brexit politicians were saying the border issues can be resolved to a large or at least good enough extent with technology. Number plate recognition cameras, better IT systems, pre-registration, trusted trader schemes. A bunch of stuff together that'd mean no need for a hard border of the sort of that would set off the IRA blowing people up again.

The EU dumped all over these ideas very publicly, laughed at them, described them as "unicorns", told the UK to get real etc.

Two problems with that attitude:

1. It was a lie and they knew it was a lie. Barnier admitted it would work just a few months ago, after holding the position for years that it wouldn't. France just announced a very similar set of measures to handle the France/UK border. Borders experts had testified that the schemes were workable. The UK doesn't care if there's some leakage anyway so it doesn't even need perfection.

2. It has reinforced the idea in the UK and amongst the population that the EU is willing to go to any lengths to get what it wants. It has literally said to the UK: we insist that the price of leaving us is either terrorism and deaths, or annexation of large chunks of your territory. Entirely reasonable attempts at finding compromise were all rejected with insults and arrogance. This behaviour has not surprisingly infuriated many people, including many members of Parliament.

Welcome to the club! I'm not sure if it's a good club to begin with, but at least the USA isn't alone with its current political status.

Do you personally think that the UK will actually end up leaving the EU in 10 days? If yes, what are the chances of that happening?

It's not impossible, but probably not. I'd give it maybe a 10% chance. There's a clear majority of MP's who don't want a No Deal scenario. Most likely there will be a postponement of some kind, but probably a short one.

What happens at the end of that period is entirely unclear at this point. Leaving without a deal is still a distinct possibility, but probably not the most likely one. I'd give about even odds to some kind of deal being wrangled, and there being another referendum.

Of course, even another referendum doesn't necessarily resolve things. The vote is likely to be close again.

You mean there's only 10% chance than the UK will leave the EU?

That's pretty low!

No, there's only a 10% chance that the UK will leave in 10 days, with no deal. At least, that's how I read nicoburns' answer.

Yep, that's what I meant. Overall chances of leaving the EU I'd put at 50%. Which is really another way of saying I have no clue.

> The vote is likely to be close again

That depends very much what the question is. The vast majority of those pushing for a 2nd ref want it to be a choice between May's WA and Remain. In which case the majority of Leave voters boycott (because there'd be no Leave option as most people understand it) and Remain wins by a landslide. National support for the WA is down in the noise.

Personally, I think that if you're going to do that you may as well just skip the referendum entirely, declare that the whole thing's cancelled and save everyone a lot of bother.

> Personally, I think that if you're going to do that you may as well just skip the referendum entirely, declare that the whole thing's cancelled and save everyone a lot of bother.

I think it's significantly more democratic to have another vote. Most people thought remain would win the first one, but they didn't. If leave won again, we'd definitely definitely have to leave.

> there'd be no Leave option as most people understand it

I question that there is such a shared understanding of what leave means. Leavers seem pretty split between hard and soft options.

I think a recent poll showed only 12% thought the WA respected the referendum result. Another showed 44% - not a majority but a significant (and rapidly rising) plurality - supporting no-deal. Both were polling the general population, not just leavers.

That obviously doesn't mean that all leavers agree, but enough of them do that a WA-vs-Remain re-ref would be a foregone conclusion.

It’s much more democratic to respect the original vote, no?

How? If people have changed their minds due to how the Brexit negotiations have proceeded, then it is democratic to seek and respect that new opinion? If they haven't, then they can make that clear too.

It would only be undemocratic if there was coercion to vote a certain way in the second referendum. But I don't see that happening.

But when does it end? What if people change their minds again?

If leave won again, we'd definitely definitely have to leave.

Leave already won twice. In the first referendum, and then in the general election called by May in which the Lib Dems ran on a "cancel Brexit" platform and lost most of their votes as a consequence.

What we now see is that many of the politicians who claimed they supported leaving the EU and would work towards implementing Brexit have turned around after winning re-election and announced they had lied, they would work to stop the UK leaving. MPs who said "a second vote would be undemocratic" are now saying "we must have a second vote".

The brutal reality is that there is no difference at this point between Remain as a position, and supporting the formal end of democracy in the UK. If a certain argument wins a referendum and then a general election in which both main parties claimed to support it and then Parliament simply tears up all the manifestos, public statements, conventions and speeches, people will conclude there is no democratic way to ever exit the EU and thus the country has been conquered by a political class that is apparently impossible to remove - because if they are willing to lie about their intentions to win election, how can you be sure you're voting for a "real" Brexit supporter?

If even 1% of the people who are watching their winning votes get torn up stop believing democracy works, and turn to extremism or violence, there could be massive problems for the UK. But the EU as an ideology has a sufficiently powerful grip on most MPs that they are apparently willing to take any risks, do anything at all to ensure its victory.

The original vote was 48% to 52%. Older people (Brexit voters) dying off would kill that advantage.

Polls that I've seen show a narrow remain majority. I don't think any specific leave option would win against it. The last vote unified all Brexit voters, so it's hard to see how a specific Brexit would command more support.

There's a lot of politicians who have been very happy criticising every "what do we do now" proposal, without having any constructive alternatives. Even a general election wouldn't really help, as it would force MPs to say what they DO actually want, which the majority of them have been avoiding as far as possible.

On a topic this controversial, MPs love being allowed to vote "no" to everything, but hate being forced to commit to anything constructive - anything they say will be unpopular with some of their constituency, and likely lose them votes. It will be very interesting to see what happens as their ability to criticise without offering alternatives gets closer to being taken away.

This is particularly true of Brexit, as significant numbers of both major parties voted for and against it, so neither party can avoid angering lots of people who would normally vote for them no matter what they do.

It's just insane that that is a valid question.

I hope not; in addition to negotiating an exit deal, there's also a stack of legislative changes that need to be made before exit (deal or otherwise) which are stacked up and waiting. It's nearly impossible to see how that can be done even partially adequately at this point, so any exit would very likely be (1) with no deal (May's won't fly and there's no chance of negotiating another one this month) and (2) totally ill-prepared.

My guess is an overwhelming (but utterly non-binding) rejection of 'no deal' by Parliament tomorrow, followed by a large majority on Thursday asking for a short-term extension of Article 50 to try to sort something out, followed by the EU saying "a year or nothing", followed by public disagreements, followed by an agreement for an extension of between two months and a year. Nobody actually wants a chaotic exit except a few financiers, and we're doing enough damage to ourselves that I doubt the EU wants to enforce a punishment beating at a cost to their own member states' economies.

As for the final outcome, I'd guess:

* No deal (10%)

* May's deal (10%)

* New (softer) deal (40%)

* Second referendum (40%), with any option possible after that from no Brexit at all to the public saying 'sod you all' and demanding a no deal exit.

But anything's possible at this point; we're off the map and predictions on the process I was much more confident on have already been wrong.

Is a second referendum really that likely? I feel like the way they're treating it it's a 5% likelihood.

What option do you think is more likely?

Any leave option has the Irish border question to sort (unless we remain in the customs union I suppose), which is pretty intractable, and already causing low-level violence to start up again in Ireland from what I hear.

And surely we won't choose to stay without a referendum.

I don't keep up with British politics much so this is me just taking wild guesses from nowhere but I feel like either they'll delay the exit or they'll exit without a deal. If there is another referendum I just can't see it happening the March 29 deadline.

I think a postponement is pretty likely at this point.

Postponement doesn't solve any problems. The Irish border issue will remain intractable.

And not leaving after all won't happen either, British pride and dreams of Empire can't handle that humiliation.

My money is on the no deal exit, even though that implies the hard border to Ireland.

> Postponement doesn't solve any problems.

It does solve one problem: that otherwise we crash out with no deal by default.

> And not leaving after all won't happen either, British pride and dreams of Empire can't handle that humiliation.

That's not the only force in Britain though. Plenty of people, especially young people, see themselves as European as much as British. And plenty of people are ashamed of the empire too.

> My money is on the no deal exit, even though that implies the hard border to Ireland.

It could happen, but I don't think anybody is keen to see a resurgence in Irish terrorism, which is not unlikely in a No Deal scenario. And this is even ignoring the significant downsides this would have for the British economy.

If there’s enough delay there will be new elections which would be similar to a referendum.

I'd broadly agree with you. My crystal ball says a short interim delay to before the EU elections, because at the moment theres no plan to timetable for, with a longer delay for something else.

I think if there were a 2nd referendum, it would be remain, if only because all the old people that voted leave have died off. I don't think it would be by a satisfying large margin though.

That's if we get a referendum though. The Overton window has shifted so for over, MPs might just unite on a soft Brexit.

The legislative change issue is an unusual example of vendor lock in. I wonder how much of EU law needs to be done through regulation instead of directives. When it is done through directives it forces governments to pass the legislation so the cost of implementing legislation so the laws don't blow up if you separate from the EU is lower. I guess directives over regulation might not even be popular for governments because they probably don't want to spend time rubber stamping EU legislation.

I also wonder how the EU's legislative arrangements compare to other post-war vassal states. Did Germany and Japan have a legislative mess they needed to clean up when the Allied occupation ended?

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