Britain - Brexit: Parliament votes to reject calls to revoke Article 50 and cancel Brexit - by Adam Bienkov

The House of Commons has voted to reject calls to revoke Article 50 and cancel Brexit after more than 5.8 million people signed a petition calling for Britain's exit from the EU to be reversed.

Members of Parliament voted by 184 to 293 against a motion brought forward by the Scottish National Party to make revoking Article 50 the "default" position if the Commons fails to ratify a deal.

May's government responded formally to reject the petition to revoke Article 50 on Tuesday.

The result came after MPs voted on a series of "indicative votes" on Brexit. Other options put to the vote included leaving the EU without a deal, holding a second referendum and remaining in the Customs Union. None commanded a majority.

Note EU-Digest: It looks like Theresa May still wants to force the parlementarians to vote for her deal eventually. Hopefully Parliament will allow a referendum on the  details of the agreement reached between the EU and Britain.  

Read more: Parliament votes to reject calls to revoke Article 50 and cancel Brexit

Britain - Brexit: EU cannot betray increasing majority in Britain who want to remain in the EU says EU president Tusk

EU cannot betray 'increasing majority' who want UK to remain, says Tusk

Read more at: 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/27/donald-tusk-majority-uk-stay-eu-article-50-brexit?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

Britain-Brexit-Revolt: MPs seize control of Brexit process by backing indicative votes amendment - by Heather Stewart and Jessica Elgot

A second referendum - the best way to go

 MPs  today Monday seized control of the parliamentary timetable for a series of “indicative votes” on the next steps for Brexit – but Theresa May declined to say whether she would abide by the outcome.

An amendment tabled by former Tory minister Oliver Letwin passed, by 329 votes to 302, defeating the government, as MPs expressed their exasperation at its failure to set out a fresh approach.

Government sources confirmed that three ministers resigned from government in order to back the Letwin amendment: foreign affairs minister Alistair Burt, health minister Steve Brine and business minister Richard Harrington.In all, a total of 30 Tory MPs rebelled to vote for it.

After gathering Brexit-backing grandees at her country retreat of Chequers over the weekend and consulting DUP leader, Arlene Foster, and the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, on Monday, May concluded she could not yet win sufficient backing for her twice defeated deal.

The cross-party group – led by Letwin and Labour’s Hilary Benn – gave MPs a series of votes on the alternatives to May’s deal, such as a second referendum, softer Brexit or revoking article 50.


MPs seize control of Brexit process by backing indicative votes amendment

EU - British relations: petition to revoke article 50 passes more than 1 million signatures

The British population emotionally, but not properly informed about the consequences, voted for Brexit with a razor thin majority three years ago. It is time for the British Political establisment to swallow their pride and say they made a mistake, revoke article 50, and return to the safety and economic prosperity of the EU. It would certainly be a showing of great statesmanship.

See also: 
http://www.ladbible.com/news/uk-petition-calling-to-revoke-article-50-passes-million-signature-mark-20190321?source=facebook

British Brexit Disaster: EU fears short article 50 extension will mean no-deal Brexit in June - by Daniel Boffey

EU officials fear Theresa May is setting the UK on course for a no-deal exit at the end of June because she will not have the political courage to ask for the longer Brexit delay they believe she needs.

Senior figures in Brussels have been war-gaming the likely next steps by the British government, and believe a delay to the UK’s exit date of 29 March is inevitable.

But they fear the prime minister’s strategy of seeking simply to survive from day to day will lead to her requesting an inadequate short three-month extension for fear of enraging Brexiters in the Conservative party.

EU officials and diplomats said the danger of the UK then crashing out in the summer was an underappreciated risk given that the escalation of no-deal planning and the cries of betrayal by Brexiters would give momentum to a cliff-edge Brexit.

On Thursday the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, became the first cabinet minister to admit that the two years of negotiations allowed under article 50 may have to be prolonged, describing the Brexit impasse as “a very challenging situation”.

EU sources suggested it was unlikely that the heads of state and government of the 27 member states would reject such a request given the pressure that would be applied from the business community.

On Thursday, Portugal’s foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, said he believed a delay would be the wisest course given May’s hopes of a renegotiation.

Read more: EU fears short article 50 extension will mean no-deal Brexit in June | Politics | The Guardian

Brexit : Britain between a rock and a hard place: First EU response to article 50 takes tough line on transitional deal - by Daniel Boffey

"Brexit and the Mouse that roare": sorry to see you go Britain

Britain will not be given a free trade deal by the EU in the next two years, and a transition arrangement to cushion the UK’s exit after 2019 can last no longer than three years, a European parliament resolution has vowed, in the first official response by the EU institutions to the triggering of article 50 by Theresa May.

A leaked copy of the resolution, on which the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has been a close conspirator, lays bare the tough path ahead for Britain as the historic process of withdrawing from the trade bloc begins.

Across 11 pages of clauses, May is warned that the EU will stridently protect its political, financial and social interests, and that the position for the UK even during the transition period will not be as positive as it is today.

A withdrawal agreement, covering financial liabilities, citizens’ rights and the border in Ireland, will need to be accepted by a qualified majority of 72% of the EU’s remaining 27 member states, representing 65% of the population. The agreement would then need to be approved by the European parliament, voting by a simple majority.

Barnier has said that any free trade deal, to be struck after the UK leaves, would be a “mixed agreement” requiring ratification by the national parliaments of the 27 states, plus consent by the European parliament.

Sir Tim Barrow, the UK’s permanent representative to the EU, delivered a letter to the European council president, Donald Tusk, at 12.30pm notifying the EU of Britain’s intention to leave, as May stood up in the House of Commons to make a statement to MPs.

Addressing a press conference half an hour later, Tusk said: “There is no need to pretend that this is a happy day, neither in Brussels or in London. After all most Europeans, including almost half the British voters, wish that we would stay together not drift apart.”

Tusk said that Brexit would bind the remaining 27 member states together, and that the council and the European commission had a strong mandate to protect the EU’s interests. But he added: “As for me I will not pretend I am happy…”

One positive development following Brexit. It brought the other 27 member states  of the EU with a population of close to half a billion people closer together with no one of its present leaders ready to call a referendum or announce they would be leaving the EU 

EU-Digest

Britain: Deloitte agrees not to bid for Government contracts after leaked Brexit memo row - by Steven Swinford

One of the world's biggest consultancies has agreed not to bid for central Government contracts for six months following a furious row with Theresa May over a Brexit memo.

Last month a consultant working for Deloitte claimed in a two-page memo that civil servants were struggling to cope with more than 500 Brexit-related projects amid Cabinet splits.

The memo prompted a withering response from Downing Street, which dismissed the memo as "unsolicited" and accused Deloitte of "touting for business".

Deloitte last night issued a statement saying that it had put forward "a plan for working with central Government to put this matter behind us".

It said: "Deloitte regrets the publication of the two-page note, and has apologised for the unintended disruption it caused the Government. The note was intended for internal audiences and was not a Deloitte point of view."

Downing Street declined to comment on the arrangement with Deloitte.

At the time the memo was leaked, former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said the consultancy should be stripped of Government contracts, while other Eurosceptic Conservative MPs suggested the document had been released in an attempt by Remain campaigners to frustrate Brexit.

Note EU-Digest: The Deloitte Memo also shows that Britain's government is ill prepareed  to cope with BREXIT's article 50  

Read more: Deloitte agrees not to bid for Government contracts after leaked Brexit memo row 

Brexit on hold?: May Unbowed by Ruling Pledges to Hold to Brexit Timetable - by Thomas Penny and Kit Chellel

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May pledged to stick to her Brexit timetable after a court ruled that she needs Parliament’s permission to begin negotiations.

The government immediately said it will appeal the decision, adding that it believes the legal process will allow Britain’s exit from the European Union by mid-2019. The prime minister’s spokeswoman, Helen Bower, said plans to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty by the end of March remained unchanged.

“The British people made a decision in the referendum and it’s the job of the government to get on with delivering the decision of the British people,” Bower told reporters in London on Thursday. “Parliament will have a role to voice its views through debates.”

The pound -- the worst-performing major currency of 2016 -- rose to a three week high against the dollar on the ruling even as lawmakers said it didn’t call into question the decision to quit the EU.

Read moreMay Unbowed by Ruling Pledges to Hold to Brexit Timetable - Bloomberg

Britain: UK dug herself a deep hole with Brexit as the pound starts to reach par with the euro or even lower

Denis MacShane writes in the Globalist “Brexit means Brexit” – is the slogan of the new British Prime Minister, Theresa May. She returns from a holiday of walking in the Swiss Alps to face the policy nightmare bequeathed to her by her predecessor David Cameron.

If the new British leader bothered to change any money at Zurich’s Kloten Airport, she would have found that the British Pound is on track to have the same value as the euro.

That is how far and how fast the English currency has lost value since the Brexit vote.

Meanwhile, the other principal woman leader in Europe, Angela Merkel, has set off on a sequence of meetings with EU leaders ahead of a full gathering of all EU heads of government – minus Britain’s Mrs. May – in Bratislava on September 16th.

Mrs. Merkel has acknowledged that she considers the outcome of the Brexit vote “irrevocable.”

That statement, certainly made out of respect for British democracy, should not mean that nothing could change in the interpretation of the vote over the next months and years.

What Merkel and other EU leaders should avoid at any cost is to create a self-fulfilling inevitability that is not justified.

When Mrs. Merkel and her fellow EU leaders meet, they have a crucial decision to make. Do they hurry to push Britain out of the UK on the assumption that the plebiscite vote, in which 63% of the British electorate did not vote for Brexit, was and is the last word?

Or do they leave some time for the British to realize that the successful Brexit campaign was built on a bunch of demagogue-ish 1930s type of populist lies — like the claim that 75 million Turks were about to join the EU and would arrive in England?

Or the lie that the UK could keep access to the EU Single Market and that Brits would be able to live and work freely in Europe, even as London introduced controls to stop Europeans living and working in Britain.

No question, those lies, perpetrated by Boris Johnson and others, did win the plebiscite. But it is also fair to say that most English voters that were pro-Brexit have not yet had a chance to comprehend fully the economic consequences of losing unfettered access to the EU’s single market of 500 million middle class consumers.

here are two stages to Britain fully leaving the EU. Under the EU Treaty’s Article 50, a member state that wants to leave has to announce its intention.

After the announcement has been made, there are two years of technical talks on such details as to who pays the pensions of the British officials who will be dismissed and what happens to the European Medicines Agency or the European Banking Authority — both located in London.

The next stage commences once Article 50 talks are over. Jean-Claude Piris, the EU’s former chief lawyer reckoned it will take at least eight years to iron out any kind of satisfactory UK-EU deal on trade access and the rights of British citizens living in Europe.

Pascal Lamy, the former WTO director general and EU Commissioner also dismissed the idea that a final EU-UK trade deal is achievable without years of negotiation.

It has taken the EU and Canada eight years to agree to a relatively modest trade deal that now has to be ratified by all 28 EU national parliaments.

Bit by bit, the extent of the Brexit lies is now coming home to the British public. This does not invalidate the plebiscite but robs it of any moral authority to be the unchangeable voice of the nation".

Note EU-Digest: Now the British Public has seen what disasters Brexit is causing they might want to call for a second referendum?

EU-Digest

EU-Britain: British Arrogance after German leaders demand Brexit clarity from new British PM

Arrogance will come and hound Britain

Reuters reports that German leaders stepped up the pressure on Britain's incoming prime minister Theresa May on Tuesday by demanding she swiftly spell out when she will launch divorce proceedings with the European Union.

"The task of the new prime minister ... will be to get clarity on the question of what kind of relationship Britain wants to build with the European Union," Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference.

Her finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said clarity was needed quickly to limit uncertainty after Britain's shock choice for 'Brexit', which has rocked the 28-nation bloc and thrown decades of European integration into reverse.

May, 59, will on Wednesday replace David Cameron, who is resigning after Britons rejected his advice and voted on June 23 to quit the EU. On arriving and departing from Cameron's last cabinet meeting, she waved a little awkwardly from the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, shortly to become her home.

She will face the enormous task of disentangling Britain from a forest of EU laws, accumulated over more than four decades, and negotiating new trade terms while limiting potential damage to the economy.

The pound was up 1.2 percent against the dollar at around $1.3150, boosted by the appointment of a new prime minister weeks earlier than expected after May's main rival dropped out.

But it remains more than 12 percent below the $1.50 it touched on the night of the June 23 referendum, reflecting concerns that Brexit will hit trade, investment and growth.

The German leaders spoke after May's ally Chris Grayling appeared to dampen any hopes among Britain's EU partners that her rapid ascent might accelerate the process of moving ahead with the split and resolving the uncertainty hanging over the 28-nation bloc.

Grayling, the Leader of the House of Commons, said there was no hurry to invoke Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which will formally launch the process of separation and start the clock ticking on a two-year countdown to Britain's actual departure.

"I think Article 50 should be triggered when we're ready. The most important thing right now is we do what's in our national interest," Grayling told Sky News.

"We get ourselves ready for the negotiation, we decide what kind of relationship we want to negotiate, and then we move ahead and trigger Article 50. We'll do it right, we'll do it in a proper way, we'll do it when we're ready."

Note EU-Digest: What arrogance by the British, after they decided to leave the EU, they are now dragging their feet to evoke article 50 ( divorce agreement) and also dragging the 27 EU member states into their self evoked economic and political disaster. If Britain keeps dragging their feet one can only hope the EU uses some more direct methods to protect itself, and kicks them out.   

EU-Digest