How can EU have any pudding

So, something I forgot in my last entry about the insanity that is Brexit.

The length of the delay in leaving the EU means that we have to hold elections for the EU parliament.  This is what May was desperate to avoid.  But, it’s happening.

I’d expect them to get a much bigger turnout than ever.  Now, they are done under proportional representation, which means that the dominance of the two biggest parties matter less.

It’ll definitely go along Leave/Remain.  This is bad for the Tories and Labour, who are both split on the issue.

In the pro-Remain camp, I’d expect the Lib Dems to do well.  They’ve always been pro EU and very quickly rebranded themselves as THE pro-Remain party after the referendum.

The SNP have the advantage that, while the country as a whole went narrowly Leave, Scotland went over 60% Remain.  They’ll do well.

The Independent Group, now an official party called Change UK (that’s right, they’ve gone from being TIGgers to being CUKs) will probably do nothing.  At the moment, they are a handful of MP’s.  I’m not sure they really are actually in a position to compete in the election, but we’ll see.  Can’t see them doing well.

The Greens, as much as I support them, will likely do nothing.

On the pro-Leave side, UKIP are done.  Since Farage was finally allowed to step down as leader, they’ve fallen apart and are now openly of the far right.  Likely wipeout.

Then there’s the Brexit Party.  The latest brainchild of Nigel Farage, they are likely to do well.  But that’s entirely down to the cult of personality around Farage and the decline and fall of UKIP.

It’ll be interesting.

I’ll answer the questions I got now.

@jaythesmartone asked:

Once this all passes and there is no EU for Scotland and London what will happen with the rest of the world like Canada? Will Canada have to make new tariffs for the imports and the exports? And will tourism change? IE Passports and currency?

This all depends on the type of trade deals we get.  At the moment, even if we get a deal with the EU, we will be trading with the rest of the world under WTO rules.  Which means that any tariffs we impose on goods from one country have to be imposed on everyone else (except the EU if we have a trade deal with them).  So we wouldn’t be able to, for example, offer zero tariffs on cars from Japan without offering the same to the US.  Tourism will likely not change immediately.  You’ll still need a visa.

@seablue4u asked:

I thought Brexit is what people wanted? So why don’t they just agree to leave? 

First of all, it’s not exactly what everyone wanted.  Leave won the referendum 52 – 48, which is actually within the margin of error.  Further, only two countries in the UK actually went majority Leave and 3 out of the 5 countries were in favour of Remain.  The “will of the people” line is massively overplayed.

This is why absolutely nothing can get through Parliament.  The whole thing has been ridiculously mismanaged.

Now, we could actually have left quickly after the referendum.  We still could.  All we need to do is revoke the legislation that took us in to begin with.  This is a ridiculous idea.  Not only would it be the hardest of hard Brexits, which will fuck up the economy for years, of not decades, we’d also be screwed when it comes to trade deals.  Who would trust us when we’ve shown we’re willing to ignore what we’ve agreed to and do what we want?

Will