But precisely, you are voting on laws, not on an abstract "would you rather leave or remain" question.

The referendum should have been held now: "We have this deal prepared, would you leave with this deal, leave with no deal, or remain?"

Meanwhile there have been several conservative speeches in Parliament about the direction they want:

They want May to come up with a better plan for a "No deal" Brexit. To take a much harder stance against the EU in negotiations. THAT's why they voted against her.

I feel like this is going in a VERY different direction than is being implied in the comments here.

And let's be honest here: it might work. In the EU, in all countries where I can understand the language: France, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands there are artikels on the front page of the main newspaper about companies lobbying to force their governments to simply break ranks with the EU in case of "No deal": to have a trade pact with the UK ready to go March 29. In theory, that's not legal, but there is precedent. If the UK can get trade deals with the US (which is not going to be a problem), Ireland, Belgium, France and the Netherlands, the damage of a no deal Brexit will be limited quite a bit. A "fuck the lot of you. No deal !" approach ... it's not out of the question that they actually make it work.

Plus, you know, it's clearly what the majority of the voters want and in theory both the UK and these European countries are democracies. On would think that would make it simple.

And then there's the question of what happens if Juncker gets called on his bluff. AFD, 5*, Lega Nord and FN will certainly see their hand strengthened quite a bit if the UK blows up their EU membership and actually gets away with it. Talk about worst possible outcome for everyone.

The EU should say "ok ... voters decided, sucks, but let's make this work. Let's give the UK a fair exit and a fair trade deal". That is in the interest of everyone in the EU AND everyone in the UK ... with the notable exception of the EU politicians themselves.

Ah, that's not how the EU works when it comes to trade. You're in or you're out.

Non-EU countries make trade deals with the EU who is collectively acting on their member states behalf.

There will _NEVER_ be a "side" trade deal between Britain and an EU member state directly.

Don't feel too bad about not knowing this. The original Minister for Brexit David Davis (& embarrassingly enough a former Europe minister) also didn't know this.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/minister-for-...

> However one of the main basic features of the European Union is that EU countries cannot negotiate individual trade deals without side countries and instead do so as a bloc of 28.

They have broken rank before, they can break rank again.

For example, Switzerland has trade deals that explicitly exclude certain EU member states (notably but not exclusively Romania). France has oil trade deals with African countries and China. And so on and so forth.

And of course there's the Swiss, Denmark and Norwegian middle-ground situations.

> France has oil trade deals with African countries and China.

99% sure that is an impossibility but willing to take a look at any refs/articles you could link?

> Switzerland has trade deals that explicitly exclude certain EU member states

Similarly, pretty sure this is an impossibility. Any trade agreements are with and available to (all members of) the EU under the same set of conditions or they're not and they(Switzerland) would then trade under WTO rules.

1) https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/iran-signs-5b-gas-deal-with-...

Now you could say there's some excuse here. The oil in question technically never enters the EU, so it "doesn't have to" follow EU legislation (which prohibits dealing commercially with Iran). I'm sure if necessary something like that will be pointed out. Maybe it's also "not" Total selling the oil, but obviously they get part of the profit. And I'm sure there's some reason "Iran is not involved at all".

Also worth pointing out: the US has in the meantime successfully forced Total, over the LOUD protest of both French and German governments to abandon this deal.

2) https://www.expatica.com/ch/moving/visas/guide-for-eu-efta-c...

You can see the rules about employing Romanian and Bulgarian citizens (which are EU citizens) in Switzerland are very different from employing, say, French or German citizens. Note that this is one of the things the UK now tells Britain is non-negotiable. Somehow in practice another (labour related) trade deal the EU ... has negotiated it.

Of course, there are historical reasons for this, but of course that's true for all trade deals.

re: 1) That article is about a French multinational oil company entering a commercial agreement with Iran. This doesn't relate to an EU member state doing a "side" trade treaty with a non-EU member.

Any other EU company could have done the same.

re: 2) Seems like that provision was in the agreement Switzerland made with the EU:

from: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/freedom-of-movement_sw...

> Switzerland first activated such a safeguard clause – a controversial instrument of its complex dealings with the EU – in 2012, to limit the number of citizens arriving from certain new member countries who joined the EU in 2004..

From my understanding the Switzerland negotiated clause re Romania and other late joiners was timebound, which is why it was acceptable.

2) employment is not trade. So neither of your examples prove that EU members can negotiate side trade deal.

You might want to read exactly on what point does the fight between the EU and UK is mostly fought ... Yep: labour and movement of people is one of the important points ...

> Let's give the UK a fair exit and a fair trade deal".

They are getting a fair exit and trade deal.

That's what is happening now. Britain seems to be slowly realising that them being part of the EU was more beneficial to them (& the EU) than any other way.

I believe this exact issue was just voted on in the British parliament. I fear they disagree with you pretty damn conclusively:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46899466

PM May's interpretation merits repeating I think:

She will "continue to work to deliver on the solemn promise to the people of this country to deliver on the result of the referendum and leave the European Union"

Having watched the video, it might be relevant to add the response was applause. It seems to me that when push comes to shove, the conservatives seem to be operating under the conviction that another "Exit EU" referendum would have the same result. Whilst I have no way to know if that's right or not, I would argue that they do represent the majority of the people of Britain and therefore know better than I do.

> I believe this exact issue was just voted on in the British parliament. I fear they disagree with you pretty damn conclusively:

As they are entitled to...Doesn't change anything really. Nobody wins with a hard Brexit but there's only so far the EU can go with concessions before it no longer makes sense. That point has been (roughly) hit.

Secondly, that deal being voted down doesn't mean everybody who voted it down thought there was a better deal out there. Labour and friends want to stay in the EU. They wouldn't attend May's planning unless a hard brexit was taken off the table(British version of saying/not US version).

It's quite telling that both Remainers & Leavers viewed the vote failing as a success.

Most economists seem to agree that the EU could make a LOT more concessions with it still being a win compared to a hard Brexit.

So in effect consensus seems to be that the EU is risking a hard Brexit in the same way you do: threaten the British public with exactly what they voted they wanted, in hopes of achieving the opposite (no Brexit at all).

Furthermore: negotiations do not appear to be all that friendly. E.g. https://www.ft.com/content/9c59a204-fc6d-11e8-aebf-99e208d3e... as to how enthousiastic Irish citizens are about this particular problem, read this https://www.ft.com/content/ec894272-18db-11e9-9e64-d150b3105...

I think it's clear that I think this is dishonest, putting the interests of politicians ahead of those of the population, and to boot it's risky. The EU population does not want this at all, quite the reverse. They want trade with the UK to be as unaffected as possible, which of course means a trade deal that's as favorable to the UK as possible. Second the EU population certainly does not want to eat the economic hits that a hard Brexit would bring and expects their politicians to prevent this scenario.

I fear that if an election is called in the UK, which is the almost inevitable outcome of delaying or stopping Brexit, the end result will be a disorderly "fuck you" Brexit when conservatives gain another 10% of the vote with a promised firm hard Brexit negotiating stance. At that point Ireland, and perhaps France will suddenly find that the Euro is a serious impediment to their ability to react to limit the damage, and London will be able to adapt. This will further amplify the already anti-EU parties in France, Italy and Germany, and at this point it won't take much to force centrist parties in both countries to become anti-EU and propagate further.

An additional worry is that we're 10 years into the best economic situation we've seen in Europe in >50 years. This is the situation we're in, with essentially the best possible economic background. That at some point the economy will turn is inevitable, and it will further amplify anti-EU stances like it always does. If politicians find a way to combine both forces to hit at the same time, I don't even want to try to predict what could happen.

be careful with that "neutral explanation". in the last one we got told that private agents hired by social insurances may only observe clients in public spaces, while the law text actually says "public spaces and what's observable from there". i.e. pretty much any Swiss inhabitant can now be put under surveillance in their private homes without any judge order.

This would be considered abuse and such interpretation would likely get thrown out as justification for active surveillance. The law pertains to truly passive surveillance only.

And trying to use such evidence in court could be repealed then as obtained illegally. (Surveillance without a warrant.) The spirit of the law is to allow reasonably incidental recording only. A zoom camera pointed at your window is not covered, neither are directional microphones etc.

Law is not an algorithm. It is executed by judges and jurors.

(Note: not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.)

That would depend on the wording and on legal precedent in the UK some civil service pensioners had changes to their pensions because the wording of the scheme of arrangement used a different three letter word than some other pensioners.

When it comes to surveillance I don't put any trust in the system other than what's strictly allowed / disallowed according to law text. Remember Fichen?

Yes, you are right. Then the opposing committee would point this out in their explanation.

People tend to trust the government much more than opposition committees.

My issue is that people vote based on the fact that they become convinced by other parties instead of developing their own opinions by trying to understand the ramifications of a law. Not saying this is right or wrong, laws are written in a non friendly way so it is not easily understandable by most but I wish more people tried to do the research themselves.