Plenty of parliamentary business has been conducted this week @Don. Most of it in committees and resolutely split along party lines.
I find it bewildering tbh that anyone could look at parliament and see anything non-partisan or co-operative or for the good of the UK in the last few weeks. What we’re actually seeing is a fracturing and the exposure of naked power. Those in power are interested in preserving it at all costs and the sheer breadth of views as to how to achieve that from no deal; through to sacrificing a PM exposes a decades long fault line for which we’re all going to suffer.
The opposition by and large have forgotten what that means but are again largely positioning themselves as regards how they’ll stand as this plays out. Will they be behind Corbyn as a PM or positioning for a leadership bod or someone else’s leadership bid.
How exactly is the UK benefitting from any of that pray tell?
Saying that, I find the references to the UK utterly bewildering. It roughly translates as England. Maybe throw in Ireland but nothing nuanced or complex beyond “hard border”. The Scottish and Welsh perspectives on this are wholly absent beyond some caricature Scottish nationalist sound bites. This in itself is a tragedy. Scottish and Welsh perspectives are complex and extend way beyond bare nationalism and yet where’s that in all this? This Parliament wants to tackle extremism and yet all of the above is feeding an inevitable nationalist agenda which will terminally fracture the union. Reaping what you sow doesn’t even begin to cover it. I’m not actually against further home rule but how that comes about is critical. This certainly isn’t the way.
I don’t think Parliament, at an institutional level, is incompetent. No doubt, like all organisations, they have their fair share of individual incompetents.
I think their current difficulties arise because the majority of MPs believe the public got the referendum result wrong, but, in general, they won’t publicly say so. So they are having to contort themselves in order to reconcile their divergent private and public opinions - which of course are irreconcileable.
As to David Davies (et al), I think you are being a tad unfair to them all. TM has maintained a very secretive approach to Brexit, even to the exclusion of her Brexit ministers. At the, now infamous, Chequers meeting, Davis was presented with TM’s deal when he had been advocating/pursuing a “Canada-Style” agreement, so had no option other than resigning. His successors didn’t fare any better in the face of TM’s continued secrecy.
I wonder how many here, critical of the PM eh al. have read the deal. Sadly, for work, I have. It casts much of this discussion in a very different light.
We’ll take him. After all, you all on the home front seem to be doing just peachy without his Blairite soul. Kudos for putting indicative votes behind you and moving onto negotiations with Jeremy.
Lol. Wasn’t really my point but if we were to worry about representation based on population then one would immediately question why the Irish are having such a big say.
All the above in not far of the mark. I’ve always questioned the qualifications & negotiation experience gained at a high level of all the Brexit negotiators. Faceless career diplomats aside, David Davis worked for Tate & Lyle & seems he was mainly involved in business mngt & restructuring. Theresa May worked in financial services at BoE & others. I don’t get an impression of experience in negotiations at the highest level