Re:The elite that failed
by AnimalMuppet on Thursday January 17, 2019 @07:14PM
(#18935917)
Holding the referendum was a failure of David Cameron. He tried to use the referendum to shut up a wing of his party. He should have picked a different tool, or else just ignored them.
The wording of the referendum, the non-specificity of it, was an additional failure.
Then Cameron failed in that the referendum passed. This was the opposite of shutting up that wing of his party. He should have campaigned for Remain, instead of just doing nothing. (Shooting down some of the Leave lies would have been useful, too.) The referendum passing is a failure of leadership.
Cameron, apparently tired of failing, bailed at this point, and Theresa May became Prime Minister.
May's first failure was regarding the referendum as binding, when it wasn't.
May got the best deal she could out of Europe. Parliament failed to ratify that deal. That is the success of Parliament, rather than a failure - they saw a bad idea, and they chose not to do it.
But May's failure is her determination to press on with a hard Brexit, even though that is also a bad idea. She seems totally unwilling to stand up and say, "No, this is a bad idea, and we're not going to do it" - and pay the political price for doing so. She acts as though Corbyn becoming PM would be a greater disaster than a hard Brexit.
In fairness, nobody else is willing to stand up and call a halt to this travesty, either. That's a failure of leadership.
So, yes, the 2016 vote was a maelstrom of fail. It wasn't just one event, it was a whole series of them. Events since then have also been a series of failures. The only exception was a moment of sanity by Parliament, in failing to ratify the negotiated deal.
There may be one more moment of sanity to come. If I understand correctly (and I may well not, I'm not in the UK), Parliament gets to vote on a hard Brexit, too. If they reject that, nothing remains but to revoke the invocation of Article 50. Doing so would be the opposite of a failure.
The wording of the referendum, the non-specificity of it, was an additional failure.
Then Cameron failed in that the referendum passed. This was the opposite of shutting up that wing of his party. He should have campaigned for Remain, instead of just doing nothing. (Shooting down some of the Leave lies would have been useful, too.) The referendum passing is a failure of leadership.
Cameron, apparently tired of failing, bailed at this point, and Theresa May became Prime Minister.
May's first failure was regarding the referendum as binding, when it wasn't.
May got the best deal she could out of Europe. Parliament failed to ratify that deal. That is the success of Parliament, rather than a failure - they saw a bad idea, and they chose not to do it.
But May's failure is her determination to press on with a hard Brexit, even though that is also a bad idea. She seems totally unwilling to stand up and say, "No, this is a bad idea, and we're not going to do it" - and pay the political price for doing so. She acts as though Corbyn becoming PM would be a greater disaster than a hard Brexit.
In fairness, nobody else is willing to stand up and call a halt to this travesty, either. That's a failure of leadership.
So, yes, the 2016 vote was a maelstrom of fail. It wasn't just one event, it was a whole series of them. Events since then have also been a series of failures. The only exception was a moment of sanity by Parliament, in failing to ratify the negotiated deal.
There may be one more moment of sanity to come. If I understand correctly (and I may well not, I'm not in the UK), Parliament gets to vote on a hard Brexit, too. If they reject that, nothing remains but to revoke the invocation of Article 50. Doing so would be the opposite of a failure.