Brexit, of course...

They are just as split, undecided and incompetent on the brexit issue as the other lot, it has always been an issue where no party really know its mind
Except for UKIP of course.

All politicians want to be in power more than they want anything else. Their campaigning and beliefs are based upon trying to work out what's going to be popular next so that they can be stood in front of it when it happens.

And that most definitely includes Sir Vince Cable. Where does he stand on banking reform and regulation these days? I can never remember which week it is that he supports light touch and which week heavy regulation. Never mind Central Bank control. And that's just the one that springs easily to mind.

The trouble is there is no party which is even close to capable and the few individuals are spread across the incapable ones.
What we need for most of the big issues Brexit, NHS, Elderly Care, Pensions, Housing, we need cross party government which can lay the party dogma to one side to find the right compromises.

I know that's a bit of an impossible dream but it is what we need

Oh and we mustn't disrespect Scotland :-)

Oh nooo!

www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/foodanddrink/gin-shortage-uk-brexit-a3861766.html

Unfortunately he can't because, albeit for different reasons, Labour is as split as the Tories. Some, probably including Corbyn, are ideologically opposed. Others represent leave voting constituencies and are either scared for their seats or feel their electorate requires them, whatever their own thinking, to be delegates for leave. I spent several minutes last week swearing out loud while Crewe's Labour MP posited the latter case in a radio interview.

Cameron took the referendum straight from the playbook of Harold Wilson*. He thought he'd get same cross party support as Wilson got then. He didn't account for the effect that Labour's co-operation in the 'No' campaign in Indyref had on it's 2015 result in Scotland and the chilling effect that, together with Corbyn's election and consequent lukewarm attitude to EU, had on his plan. 

*There's also a bit of me that says Cameron thought that as an Eton man he was a much smarter politician then the Grammar School boy from Huddersfield and could do this thing better and with his eyes closed. 

I don't think stopping Brexit now would be the right thing anyway.

Firstly because like it or not, lied to or not, clueless or not the majority that voted, voted to leave.
Secondly because a substantial amount of people want Brexit and the subject will *never* go away if we don't exit.
Thirdly, because our common sense and intelligence are already in the toilet, if we do a U-turn now our credibility will join them.

But mostly because Pandora's box cannot be closed.

We are on a path, however it works out. Not leaving, or delaying leaving, will not return us to where we were, it will just take us to a different chaos. Whatever we do companies, institutions, people etc have started planning and organising their lives bearing in mind Brexit and then won't stop because we do.

Companies, for example, will simply think "we're changing our plans again, we're not relying on this lot's strategy going forward and letting them drop us in the chaotic shit-pit ever again".

So rather than back-tracking we will be better to work out and manage a new route which will takes us toward a point/situation which probably won't be that different from where we would have ended up anyway.

Though the truth is and will remain, the fundamental difference will be that we are not called members. I very much doubt that in the fullness of time there will be *any* other difference.

Brexit will not change the future, it just makes the journey ridiculous and us a laughing stock.

The thing about yesterday's calamity wasn't entirely about brexit though. It was a transference of power from Parliament to the Executive. Parliament is no longer as sovereign as it was, and that's dangerous for our entire democracy. So much for taking back control.

On the brexit bit of it though, whilst I don't accept Otto's argument about having to leave now, it is probably what is going to happen, in the way he describes, and he's right that every path now necessitates chaos and division. However, I think all possible outcomes of remaining are superior to all possible outcomes of leaving, so I still think we should remain.

The outcome yesterday is to rely on a The Speaker to invoke a "meaningful" vote in the event of no deal. There is already a campaign against Bercow from within his own party, and I can no envisage a rap up of that and an attempt to install a Speaker who will then fail to deliver on May's promise, which is the wafer thing fag paper on which Grieve and others backed down. Kudos to the 6 Tories who didn't, but it's too little, too late.