UKC

I have just received a terse email from the Department for Exiting the European Union that they will not revoke Article 50. The tone of the email is that you can petition as much as you like, but we are not listening, nor are we open to debate. 

We are sailing into 1984 terrain here.

I presume the other 5.7+ million who have signed the online petition are getting the same email.

It depends what the MP's do I guess?

That was always going to be the case though wasn't it?

As already said it depends on the MP's.  Maybe the petition will go some way to swaying events along with the march and other signs of a change in public opinion.  

I read 1984 again the other day to provide cheerful distraction from current events.  

My experience is that when the CEO of a public company feels the need to send a letter to shareholders saying that he isn't going to do something the chances are that he will and he will be out of a job within a week.

I suspect the same applies to statements from the current government.

I received an email saying it would be debated in parliament next week.

Maybe the DEEU just doesn't like you

me too.

For myself it was never about revoking article 50 (which I didn't expect them to do unless the petition went of 17.5 million) but to show the strength of public feeling on the subject and give the "no dealers" a kick in the goolies

It wasn’t just you, I got 4.5 million emails back to all my different addresses.

It did have the tone of an email sent just to me though basically telling me off for being undemocratic!

The wording looks as though its come straight out of our Dictator's mouth without any consultation with the Government or Parliament.

As you say 1984.

The Governments position at this moment is that it will still honour the Referendum.
However, it will be debated in Parliament where MP's of all persuasions will have the opportunity to change that position.
Sounds fairly democratic to me and certainly better as to what is happening in the USA.

Fair enough

You what? The government didn't want to involve parliament at all. It had to be taken to court by a private citizen to stop us leaving the EU by royal prerogative. It got all the way to the Supreme Court which forced the government to give parliament a say. Any involvement of parliament now is against the government's will, it is utterly contemptuous of parliament.

And in any event it WAS debated in parliament. Parliament had made its will clear. Twice. There is no majority in favour of leaving the EU. That should have been the end of it, and would have been if May was more concerned about the country than party politics and her legacy. 

Hardly. 

Imagine if there had been a petition and a march in Russia or China..  It would be highly likely that the organisers and participants would have had a knock on the door by now. (Not that they have the freedom to even start a petition). 

These kind of events didn't go down that well for the Catalans either. I'd imagine the Hungarian government would have been so laid back either. 

Or look at the USA, trump doesn't get what he wants. They'll just shut the government down and people suffer. 

All this 1984 stuff is nonsense, whilst the political wrangling is a farce on the surface, it is parliamentary procedure and it's only going to make Brexit softer, plus the real negotiations haven't started yet. The weaker the Tories are and an absence of a strong leader is only likely to increase the odds of a soft Brexit and / or second referendum. 

Even now the talk among many is switching from "my deal or the highway" to Norway or Canada plus options. 

In the absence of the leader of the opposition, the best thing for the UK would be for the various so called deserters to form a party, have it officially recognised, appoint a leader and become the new opposition party in all but name.

They voted twice not to accept TMs deal. That's not the same thing.

They did vote by a massive majority to put in article 50 two plus years ago. 

It is the same thing: they twice voted down the best offer that the negotiators came back with at the very end of the negotiating period. If this was any other matter we would all agree that the parliament's decision should be respected and that would be the end of it.

But because Theresa May knows that the first line of her obitutary will be written about these events, she goes on TV in desperation and says she that alone can divine the "will of the people" and that the people's actual elected representatives are getting in her way of her supreme executive power. You can't call any of this "democractic" just because a ill-concived and illegally executed referendum delivered a borderline result three years ago.

Unfortunately (from my viewpoint) a majority of MPs either do not want to remain or think the 2016 vote must be followed. Only this morning a Labour spokesman reiterated that Labour as a party does not support Remain. For the Tories Andrea Ledsham also said she is amazed that people still consider thwarting "the will of the people" (even though its quite possibly not the will of the people Now). Thus the result of next week's debate on not leaving seems obvious. In fact it may be counterproductive in that once the idea of rescinding/remaining has been defeated it may be harder to bring it back to parliament afterwards (as TM has found with her deal). 

IMO the indications are still that the probable current majority of the electorate are screwed.

I've had both emails.  Upshot is it gets debated next monday.

What was the question they voted on?

These are really only pre negotiations, setting the terms or the boundaries of the real negotiations yet to come. 

Debates resulting from petitions take place in Westminster Hall, not the commons chamber itself. They're often sparsely attended and afaik can't create any substantive change.

https://www.parliament.uk/petition-debates

Ah. The real negotiations is when our elite negotiating team are going to leap in to action and get everything we want from the EU, yes?

Remind me exactly how many concessions the government has obtained from the EU in the entire time since the initial reveal of the withdrawal agreement?

My recollection is that it's gone something like this:

UK govt: We want a, b, c

EU: b is OK, but we've got to have x, y, z in there too.

UK populace/parliament: That sucks! Try again.

UK govt: We want a different agreement!

EU: No.

UK govt: *re-jigs presentation of the exact same deal behind the scenes to try and make it more palatable* 

UK populace/parliment: That sucks! Try again.

Repeat the last four steps as many times as you can before your will to live runs out.

Edit: And lets remember that *everyone* hates the state we will be in during the withdrawal period. It will be expensive and we will have conceded any influence we had. We will also be past the point where we can unilaterally revoke our withdrawal (I think?), so our negotiation position now is going to seem roses compared to what it will be then.

What did you expect?

Although I signed and went' marching, and will be marching this week too (different cause) but I don't expect any of it to make a difference, it's all bollocks!

My only hope, at least for this weeks demo, is for the people involved to know they aren't forgotten about, and that someone, somewhere, is thinking about them and supporting them.

If they don't want to listen to us then we can demonstrate our point at the ballot box.

I have just had my card through about local elections in May. Why not everyone who's against leaving voting LibDem ? (I know local and national are not the same, but the activists at local branches are responsible for the choice of MP and local councillors alike).

Now I don't normally suggest to anyone regarding voting any particular way, but with both Tories and Labour humming the same tune, maybe the only way that we can kick them into sensible action is to commence wiping both parties out at the ballot box until we get representatives in place that have the same point of view as we have.

That's true, but we can still send a strong signal to our MPs by making the petition as big as possible before the date, and making the debate the most watched stream in the history of petition debates.

Quite a major concession earlier on in the negotiation was the EU agreeing to extend the backstop to the whole of the UK to prevent a border being created in the Irish Sea.

...but that's about it. Apparently the EU aren't willing to rip up their 4 Freedoms to please a non-member. Who'd have thunk it? 

I've had no email so far, is that because I live in France (although email was my gmail account) & they have cross checked with the electoral roll ? Or has everyone living outside the UK been ignores even though many would be eligible to vote?

I also received the second email, which was politely worded.

It does matter, however. For one, it prevents the EU27 to close the door on extension options. See e.g.,

Donald Tusk: "Appeal to EP: You should be open to a long extension, if the UK wishes to rethink its strategy. 6 million people signed the petition, 1 million marched. They may not feel sufficiently represented by UK Parliament but they must feel represented by you. Because they are Europeans."

No, it's because some poor soul has to type 6 million emails...

given the way this government operates I wouldn't be surprised if that was true