Is a Gerneral Election the only way to break the Brexit gridlock?

Today MPs voted to extend the Brexit deadline but also voted (by about 80%) not to have a second referendum. May has pretended to offer labour MPs a deal and offered almost nothing, gone back to Brussels to renegotiate what couldn't be renegotiated and failed. Tory MPs voted to have a leadership contest but then voted to (more or less) keep her in place.

Its a PM with no authority, leading a party with no majority trying to deal with a complex historically important issue which nobody in the country can agree on. We can't extend the deadline forever and something has to give. I think eventually there will be some kind of Brexit but not a hard Brexit and nobody will be happy.

The twin truths are that the referendum voted to leave the EU and that there is no mandate to change that. Also that Brexit is more complex than anyone imagined and that it can't deliver what it promised.

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

Frank52 · 70-79, M

Leaving the EU was a proposition full of contradiction and confusion from conception. It was a coalition of various ideologies (Left and Right) that believed in some vague idea of freedom from 'foreign rule' and looked back to a time that never existed when the UK could do what it liked to whomever it wished. Some genuinely believed in the need to have Parliament as supreme and final arbiter of all that is good in British society. Well they've got it.

We will leave, I'm sure. The die is cast. The PM in charge of this was always going to be incapable of surviving beyond the execution of the result of the referendum because so many people were bound to be disappointed (perhaps a mild description) with where it ended up. How to bring the country together again? Just give me the date on which on was last 'together' and we might see where we are heading. There WAS a time when debate was more civil (but not less passionate) and that might be a possible place to return to, but only of anyone wants it.

jackjjackson · 61-69, M

That pretty much sums it up. The citizens were simply si k of the “what is” and anything seemed better and still seems better .... @Frank52

Frank52 · 70-79, M

@jackjjackson The last part of your comment ('still seems better') I don't see eye-to-eye with you on, BUT you are right in that for many they were in such dire circumstances they used the only way they felt they had to rage against the system. A grave indictment of the state of politics, I'm afraid.

jackjjackson · 61-69, M

The “establishment” didn’t make a good case and their obstructionist behavior since had made them look worse. @Frank52