It's Brexit decision day. Johnson has negotiated a (terrible) deal in theory, but it's looking likely to fail in the nation's parliament. Johnson continues to pledge that the UK will withdraw from the EU on October 31st no matter what. That's not a promising combination of facts. It's looking like ERG reactionary isolationists who want a no-deal Brexit are probably going to get their way.

Looks like the "deal" is basically no hard customs border (inland) and northern ireland, will stay part of the EU customs block.
So a "part" of great britain will have differnt rules and customs, than the rest of the kingdom.

That said it actually looks like the UK plans to HONOR its Good Friday agreement, for peace in ireland.

The back lash this will get though....

DUP will vote this down, Im not expecting this to make it through the parlament in the UK.

"Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the deal sounded "even worse" than what was negotiated by the PM's predecessor, Theresa May, and "should be rejected" by MPs. " - bbc

May had 3 "deals" that all fell apart in parlament.
Getting a "fair" agreement between the UK and EU is all good and well..... the problem is the government doesnt seem to want anything.

Guess what awaits us is a Hard Brexit, with the UK crashing out, a Hard border, a worse economy, and war like fights at the border in Ireland.

Half the people who voted Brexit did so because they look lowly towards indians, pakistanis, bangladeshis, afro caribbeans etc ironically those groups have zero to do with the EU or the Eurostates. If Brexit does happen all that will happen Britain will have to strengthen ties with the Commonwealth to make sure goods are kept flowing in and out of the country.........What will happen is them Commonwealth countries may ask the UK government to easing of visas for workers students etc

So imo you may see an increase or influx of people from those groups ive listed above after Brexit which is funny as thats what certain people voted Brexit to get them out of the UK in the first place but the opposite will happen. If that happens i will just laugh LMAO

Not unlike Theresa May's similar deal with the EU, this one too was rejected by the UK parliament yesterday while roughly one million protesters against Brexit demonstrated outside, waving EU flags and signs with slogans like "I'M 17 AND BREXIT STOLE MY FUTURE" and "UK AND NORTHERN IRELAND AT PEACE, NOT IN PIECES" and pulling floats like one of "Demonic Cummings", demanding a second Brexit referendum in the largest protest action organized by the People's Vote campaign to date. Jo Swinson, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, and and actor Patrick Stewart (perhaps best known for his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation) were among those to address the crowd.

The defeat of Prime Minister Johnson's Brexit deal in the parliament was met by jubilation in the streets and legally obliged Johnson to send a letter to European leaders requesting an extension of the Brexit deadline until January 31st of next year. He was legally required to send such a letter after the parliament crafted and voted for the Benn Act early last month in response to Johnson suspending parliament until after October 31st, the current Brexit deadline. The UK's Supreme Court subsequently ruled that Johnson's suspension of parliament was illegal and ordered MPs back to work, which is why the aforementioned vote could be held yesterday in the first place.

Johnson has always maintained that he would obey the Benn Act, yet also persisted in committing himself to the United Kingdom leaving the European Union on October 31st anyway, leading to confusion over how he might respond to a last-minute Brexit deal being voted down by the parliament. We now know the answer: he responded by sending not one, but three letters to EU leaders:

1) a cover note from Britain's EU envoy explaining the government was simply complying with the law,
2) an unsigned photocopy of the text that the law forced him to write, and...
3) a third letter in which Johnson outlined his opposition to an extension.

The move has proven massively controversial and could draw legal challenges. The opposition Labour Party's finance minister, John McDonnell, for example, said that Johnson "is now treating parliament and the courts with contempt" by sending out the two additional letters, as they clearly weren't in keeping with the spirit of the Benn Act. Repeating his predecessor's failed strategy of simply holding the same deal up for multiple votes, Johnson has said he intends to hold a second vote on this same deal next week.

Immediate economic disaster awaits if Brexit occurs at the end of the month as scheduled without a deal. Social disaster that awaits if there is anything other than a Brexit deadline extension.

Brexit’s still not going to happen.

and that's exactly why ppl say (hard and/or no deal) Brexit is an economic disaster, because it means the UK would be canceling free trade agreements (which is a grave understatement, as "no trade barrier" agreements are a hundred times better than FTAs) with 27 of their closest neighbors, cancel a further 4 FTAs with the EEA states, cancel all existing FTAs the EU has (Canada, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Switzerland, the 50 poorest nations, ...) all in one fell swoop

a hard Brexit means significantly, significantly, significantly less free trade for the UK, as the EU represents the biggest network of free trade agreements ever in existance

In my last post here, I concluded on the note that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was planning to put his unpopular Brexit deal up for a second parliamentary vote after it was defeated the first time in mid-October in an approach similar to the failed strategy of his predecessor. Here's an update:

The parliament refused to even vote on Johnson's Brexit deal a second time. In the meanwhile, the EU granted the UK a three-month extension of the Brexit deadline that would postpone the country's departure from the EU until January 31st. However, Johnson had been legally forced to request the extension, as his infamous three letters made very clear, and didn't actually want one, so it was widely believed that he wouldn't accept the extension offered by the EU, and instead that he would have the UK crash out of the EU catastrophically on Halloween, as he had always pledged to, even without a deal.

Following these developments, Johnson called for a new election to be held on December 12th. The curious thing about that was that, in the UK, calling an election suspends the parliament, and you'll notice that December 12th is obviously a much later date than October 31st. Therefore, the practical effect of calling an election under the aforementioned circumstances would have been to suspend the parliament a second time for the duration of the Brexit debate and process and then some. (As noted in my last post, Johnson had already tried to do exactly that before at the end of the summer, but the UK's Supreme Court ruled his previous move in that regard illegal and recalled the parliament.) Parliament called the essence of Johnson's cynical move and overwhelmingly voted against holding a new election. Finally, boxed into a corner, Johnson reluctantly agreed to the EU's three-month extension of the Brexit deadline before trying to call a new election again. Under these new circumstances, the parliament overwhelmingly agreed to hold a new election scheduled for December 12th, as said new parliament will now certainly be constituted well before the Brexit deadline rather than well after.

So that's where we are. THIS should be interesting! This new election will, for all intents and purposes, mainly function as a second vote on Brexit. Polling over the last month indicates that, as of this date anyway, the principal beneficiary of this election will be Jo Swinson's Liberal Democrats, who are expected to improve significantly on their 7% share of the vote in the 2017 election. Specifically, all polls conducted over the last month show the Liberal Democrats enjoying the support of between 15 and 21% of likely voters; a change in their fortunes that's likely owed to their taking up a hardline pro-remain stance under the new leadership of Jo Swinson. Their new votes are expected to come mainly at the expense of the current main opposition Labour Party, which has waffled a lot on the subject of Brexit under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who clearly favors a soft Brexit personally. Current polling suggests that Labour and the Liberal Democrats would emerge almost tied in the popular vote if the election were held today, so this could be kind of a disaster for Labour and a clear signal of the left's broad rejection of Brexit and of Jeremy Corbyn's non-leadership on this most defining issue of the day.

On a related note, I'd like to highlight something else in connection to the Brexit debate: since the Brexit vote in 2016, the United Kingdom's MPs have received an unprecedented volume of threatening messages in various forms (mainly online). I'd also like to highlight that these threats have been disproportionately directed at the nation's female MPs specifically, with the result that many of them have come to find the political climate too frightening and dangerous and have opted to step down from their posts of late in response. As you can see at the link, the five MPs receiving the largest volume of threatening and abusive messages since the 2017 election are all specifically women who oppose Brexit. The vitriol, in other words, is coming disproportionately from one side of the Brexit debate (supporters of Brexit) and it's being applied with a clear sex bias against women. It's worth remembering that these threats can be very, very real. Labour MP Jo Cox (also female), for example, was murdered in the lead-up to the 2016 Brexit vote for believing that the UK should remain in the EU, and there was a terrorist bombing outside the parliament building the following year.

Personally, I take particular exception to the volume of threats and intimidation that have been directed at Scottish National Party MP Joan Cherry, who is kind of a heroine of mine. According to a chart in the linked article, she has received the second-highest volume of threatening and abusive messages since the 2017 election. Joan Cherry has been perhaps best known for two developments this year: in the first half of the year, she invited Meghan Murphy to speak to the Scottish parliament about proposed reforms to the UK's Gender Recognition Act that a number of women's groups in the country oppose in a rare parliamentary defense of radical feminists. Scotland subsequently opted to stop consulting only transgender movement activists on the proposed reforms and added women's groups to their consultation process as well, and also put gender identity curricula in the Scottish school system on hold pending review. These were, and remain, unprecedented legal victories for gender critical women's groups on the issue. The other move Cherry has become (probably even more) famous for this year was her successful legal action against Boris Johnson's summer suspension of parliament.

It's also worth noting, I think, that the MP receiving the absolute largest volume of threatening and abusive messages from the start of the Brexit debate until now has been, by a wide margin, Diane Abbott, who was the UK's first black female lawmaker.

Just wanted to enter those points into this discussion.

I feel like that should be kept out of this thread..... you could make your own about the matter instead.
It ll just lead to trolling, or sidelaneing the discussion at hand (brexit) (not sexism or politicians getting threats)

Really? The "side" points I made are all statistically factual, sourced, and directly related to the Brexit debate. How am I being unfair here?

I'm not allowed to discuss the attitudes of Brexit supporters and the tone of the Brexit debate on a thread dedicated to the topic of Brexit?