Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Whatever you think about it and no matter how you like to define the various terms - I stick to the commonly, internationally used definitions.

Today, thousands marched in Cardiff calling for Welsh independence, with demonstrators saying that Brexit and austerity have increased support for leaving the UK.

The march for Independence was the first of its kind in Wales.

I'm convinced that you just want to engage people in useless discussions.

Have a nice weekend.

Theresa May is under intense pressure to abandon cross-party Brexit talks, after a group of senior Conservative figures, including leadership contenders Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, issued a strongly worded warning against any deal that involved a customs union.

May’s cabinet, and Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, are both due to take stock of the talks on Tuesday, with neither side optimistic about the prospects for an agreement that could secure a majority in parliament.

Meanwhile, the prime minister’s Brexit negotiator, Olly Robbins, was said to be travelling to Brussels for talks with EU officials on whether the political declaration could be changed, in a bid to break the deadlock.

The BBC said Robbins will explore how quickly changes could be made to the declaration if the government and Labour could come to an agreement.

In a letter to the prime minister, former cabinet ministers including Gavin Williamson, who was sacked earlier this month over the Huawei leak, the former Brexit secretaries David Davis and Raab, and former foreign secretary Johnson, cautioned her against any deal involving Corbyn’s central demand of a customs union.

They told her such a move would be “bad policy and bad politics”, as it would contradict the 2017 Conservative general election manifesto and force the UK to open up its markets automatically to any countries with which the EU strikes trade deals in future.

“We believe that a customs union-based deal with Labour will very likely lose the support of Conservative MPs like us who backed the withdrawal agreement in March (in many cases very reluctantly), and you would be unlikely to gain as many Labour MPs to compensate,” said the letter, obtained by the Times.

“More fundamentally, you would have lost the loyal middle of the Conservative party, split our party and with likely nothing positive to show for it. No leader can bind his or her successor, so the deal would likely be at best temporary, at worst illusory.”

The fragility of May’s leadership, and the threat it presents to any deal being deliverable, has been discussed openly in the cross-party Brexit talks, which resumed on Monday.

Labour is demanding what it calls “entrenchment”, a legal underpinning for any promises made by the prime minister, to prevent a future leader unpicking them.
In signing the letter, Johnson and Raab underlined Labour’s fears, by making clear they would aim to sweep away any deal that involved a customs union.

The presence of 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady’s signature on the letter is also significant, as he is charged with the job of conveying backbenchers’ views to the prime minister.

A catalogue of errors by the Home Office has led to a loss of access to £600,000 of EU funds earmarked for the most deprived people in Britain and has put a further £2.9m at risk, it can be revealed.

The government had tried to claim the money for Theresa May’s flagship policy of helping the victims of modern slavery, but Sajid Javid’s department missed the deadline to recoup the ringfenced money.

Under the watch of the home secretary, who has ambitions to replace May in Downing Street, the UK has been left as the only EU member state to fail to deliver aid to its citizens through the programme, and it is still yet to make an application for the remainder of the £3.5m that was available.

The €3.4bn European Aid to the Most Deprived fund was established as an attempt to help member states meet a poverty reduction target of “lifting at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty and social exclusion” by the end of 2020.
[...]
But the Home Office did not draw up the necessary paperwork and secure the agreement of the European commission in time. As a result, the UK failed to claim the initial tranche – £600,000 – of its allocation under the fund by the end of 2018.

The Home Office then set a target of having a proposal ready to submit to the commission provisionally by the end of March 2019, with the programme of works scheduled to begin in July 2019, and with the fund becoming operational in the UK by the end of the year.

As of this week, the proposal has neither been completed nor implemented, raising concerns further funds are going to be lost due to the department’s failures.
[...]
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Working with the European commission, the Home Office has worked hard to secure funding to support victims of modern slavery and those being resettled in the UK. Given time constraints and commission rules, we were not able to claim all of the funding before the deadline.

“We are grateful to the commission for contributing to our important work supporting some of the most vulnerable.”

Claude Moraes, a Labour MEP who chairs the European parliament’s home affairs committee, said: “This further damages the reputation of the Home Office.

“In or out of the EU cooperation and alleviation of the suffering caused by modern slavery is a priority on both sides. And critical EU funds are there – there is no excuse.”

Downing Street has hinted that the Commons vote on the withdrawal agreement bill will be make or break for Theresa May’s future as prime minister, as a member of her cabinet said defeat could kill off the deal entirely.

No 10 said the key piece of Brexit legislation would be voted on in the week beginning 3 June, and talks with Labour would continue in the meantime.

May’s spokesman declined to confirm explicitly that the prime minister would see it as the last act of her premiership if she were to lose the vote at the bill’s second reading, but said May understood its significance.

“Clearly the significance of this piece of legislation can’t and I suspect won’t be underestimated,” the spokesman said. “The absolute determination and focus of the government will be to get this thing through and passed.”

Speaking to the Lords EU select committee, Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, suggested the vote would be the final throw of the dice for the deal negotiated with the EU’s Michel Barnier.

“I think if the House of Commons does not approve the [bill] then the Barnier deal is dead in that form and I think the house will have to then address a much more fundamental question between whether it will pursue … a no-deal option or whether it will revoke,” he said.

May faces a punishing week when the Commons returns from recess, including the vote on the withdrawal bill, a three-day visit from Donald Trump and the Peterborough byelection, a tightly contested seat being fought by the Tories, Labour and the Brexit party.

No 10 would not put a timeframe on publishing the bill, which MPs would expect to happen before the Whitsun recess at the end of next week, but it insisted the vote would happen that week.

“We want to make progress as quickly as possible but we are talking about getting a significant bill which has lots of clauses through both houses of parliament, and we have to allow due time. It’s not possible to give a firm prediction of how long that will take,” the spokesman said.

David Jones, a former Brexit minister and member of the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs, told the BBC’s World at One programme a defeat would be the end of the road for this government’s strategy.

“I think actually that No 10 now realise that once this has been introduced, if it is rejected, that is the end of the government’s strategy, and it is really high-stakes politics,” he said.

Jones said May had staked her “personal prestige” on the withdrawal agreement. “She’s had three rebuffs now, and I think it’s very hard to see where she goes after a further rebuff if the bill, when it’s rejected, can’t be reintroduced. If that bill is rejected then it seems to me the whole policy is dead and can’t be pursued any further.”

A spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn confirmed Labour would not support the withdrawal agreement bill unless a cross-party deal was reached. “There is no agreement and we need the government to make further moves,” the spokesman said.

“Without an agreement and real compromise and movement by the government coming out of these talks then we are talking about a withdrawal agreement bill that is based on the same botched Brexit deal that has been rejected three times already by parliament.”

The Democratic Unionist party’s Westminster leader, Nigel Dodds, said it was highly likely May’s deal would be defeated again unless the prime minister could “demonstrate something new that addresses the problem of the [Irish] backstop”.

Theresa May, seeking to bring back her Brexit bill to MPs next month with little prospect of success, seems fated simply to add another layer to the bedrock of contempt by doing so. In Germany a century ago they fell out of love with parliament, with terrible consequences. In Britain today we seem to be doing the same, and without grasping what could be at stake.

The political landscapes of Brexit Britain and Weimar Germany are scarily similar

Quote:

Theresa May, seeking to bring back her Brexit bill to MPs next month with little prospect of success, seems fated simply to add another layer to the bedrock of contempt by doing so. In Germany a century ago they fell out of love with parliament, with terrible consequences. In Britain today we seem to be doing the same, and without grasping what could be at stake.

At least, we have the experience of putting on such an exhibition as a warning.
Besides that, your summary (of the Weimar Republic?) seems to be quite outlandish and not related to facts.

Talks between Labour and the government aimed at breaking the Brexit impasse have ended without an agreement.
Corbyn blamed what he called the government's "increasing weakness and stability", saying the discussions had "gone as far as they can".
No 10 said progress had been made in some areas, but the talks, which began six weeks ago, had been "challenging".

The British government is considering its next steps, including trying to win over dissenting lawmakers, after talks to find a Brexit compromise with the opposition Labour Party ended, PM May's spokesman said.

Does Britain's future lie in Europe? In 1988, long before the prospect of Brexit, the queen spoke about the issue with a German diplomat. A document viewed by DER SPIEGEL shows that she held a very clear view.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II had to hold back during the Brexit debate, but she was apparently an early believer in the United Kingdom's integration into the European Union. This is revealed in a diplomatic cable written by Ambassador Rüdiger Freiherr von Wechmar after his farewell visit to the queen as he left the German Embassy in London in 1988. The document is held in the German Foreign Ministry's political archive.

The cable, originally written in Germany, states that Queen Elizabeth II left "no doubt that the future of Britain lies in Europe."
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The cabinet has agreed Theresa May's plan for her Withdrawal Agreement Bill, including compromises intended to attract the support of Labour MPs.

It includes the idea of a temporary customs relationship operating until the next general election.

Other elements include guarantees to maintain environmental standards and workers' rights after Brexit.

The bill will be put to a vote in early June, and if it fails, the PM is likely to come under intense pressure to quit.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government wants to resolve swiftly the issues of whether to hold a second Brexit referendum and what type of post-Brexit customs relationship to have, May’s political spokesman said on Tuesday .

He said that if parliament approves the first stage of Brexit legislation then a vote between two options on future customs arrangement should be held as soon as possible to allow discussion with the European Union at a summit in June.

The exact timeline and format of the vote on whether to hold a second referendum on leaving the EU was not yet decided, but the government wanted to resolve it as soon as possible, he added.