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posted by martyb on Wednesday September 04 2019, @04:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the Ruh-Roh!-What-happens-now? dept.

Boris Johnson loses Parliamentary majority, faces Brexit showdown

Britain's Parliament returns from its summer recess and is facing a titanic showdown over Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plans to leave the European Union. Here's what we know:

● Johnson has lost his majority in Parliament, with the defection of Conservative Phillip Lee to the Liberal Democrats.

● The opposition, including members of Johnson's party, is seeking to pass legislation to delay Brexit.

● Johnson has said that if his foes succeed he will call early elections.

Live coverage.

List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom by length of tenure

#54: George Canning, 119 days (1827)
#55: Boris Johnson, 40 days (Incumbent) (2019)

See also: Brexit: Tory MP defects ahead of crucial no-deal vote
How Brexit Blew Up Britain's Constitution


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  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by janrinok on Wednesday September 04 2019, @05:29PM (2 children)

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 04 2019, @05:29PM (#889598) Journal

    fishermen will be fucked if we leave with no deal

    Not true at all. British waters become outside the zone of EU fishermen. The UK will have very rich fishing grounds under their own control again and it considerably helps British fishermen.

    the £350 million will be more than offset by the costs of leaving

    Partly true. The £350 million is quite a bit less (about half) but it would still be a saving for the UK. Whether that will be enough to offset the falling £ remains to be seen, but much of that is caused by business uncertainty not by one result or the other.

    it turns out we aren't able to keep all the benefits of EU membership with none of the costs

    The UK will not be able to keep all of the benefits, but that doesn't mean they will have none. Both Germany and France actually want to have trade deals with the UK, but would prefer them to be under EU rules.

    The bottom line is that the people were asked to vote, they did so, and the politicians then changed the rules of what leaving actually meant. This is a serious threat to democracy. Parliament is meant to be there to carry out the will of the country, usually by people voting for one manifesto or another. But this has shown that the politicians don't actually care what the public voted for, they all want to feather their own nests. All sides in the UK parliament are looking after their own political interests and not the interests of the people who voted - the majority of which voted leave. If people now claim that 'they didn't know what it would entail' then they should have thought about it a bit more deeply. But those remainers, who are only slightly less in number than Brexiteers, can see a path to get their own way now despite having already lost the vote. For them, it is a case of we will keep on voting until you vote for the right choice. The majority believe that they already have done so.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04 2019, @10:50PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04 2019, @10:50PM (#889726)

    > The UK will have very rich fishing grounds under their own control

    LOL - if you think the nearshore and 20km-range fisheries around the UK are "very rich" you don't know shit about fish. In very rich fishing grounds, the sea is silver. That's not hyperbole, talk to a real commercial fisherman (not a river hipwader). If you've seen dive videos of schools of fish, that is rich fishing grounds. If there were schools like that within UK waters they'd very quickly be hoovered up by contemporary factory fishboats.

    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday September 04 2019, @11:26PM

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 04 2019, @11:26PM (#889736) Journal

      they'd very quickly be hoovered up by contemporary factory fishboats.

      Or fleets of European fishing boats who have been given the right to fish there by the EU. That is precisely what has happened. How much has the UK fishing fleet declined by since they lost the sole access to the traditional UK fishing grounds?