[Michael Cantor]

Poetry, John. Stick to poetry. Don't embarrass yourself.

[William A. Baurle]

**Edited. Too much beer.

[John Whitworth]

What is it in my post that you object to, Michael? I cannot believe you are an apologist for Dubbya and Blair who killed muslims by the hundred thousand. Has Trump killed a single one?

Dubbya and Blair of course killed thousands of their white countrymen too, if that counts.

Oh, and this morning brings the news that I was right about Brexit too. We are out, out, out!

[Nigel Mace]

You are indeed going to be 'out' - and we, John, are going to stay 'in'. The polls here, run for extremely anti-independence clients, can no longer disguise the rise in the YES side.

However, one thing that puzzles me about you 'Brexitanians' is why your love for parliamentary sovereignty is expressed by cheering for a bill which will 'give' - itself a revealing word - your sovereign parliament only a vote on whether to accept a previously completely unknown 'deal', or the extreme alternative of seeking to gain membership of the WTO in order to trade under the harshest terms in the world.
Last night, your government voted down every amendment that would have 'allowed' - revealing term again - the vote on the yet to be negotiated 'deal' be be a real choice, rather than Hobson's.

Now why is this protecting, let alone regaining, the sovereignty of parliament? - or is that not at all what your lot meant by "taking back control"?

[John Whitworth]

I don't give tuppence for the sovereignty of Parliament, Nigel. MPs everywhere can be bought. It is the sovereignty of the people I care about. If you wish to be independent, the best of luck to you.
Oh, the word is Brexiteers. As in Musketeers. We delight to swashbuckle.

[Nigel Mace]

That is refreshingly frank, John.

On which principle, I assume that you would be happy to see any 'deal' being put to a popular vote in a referendum - with the real alternatives of EITHER voting for it OR by voting against it, retaining the staus quo, i.e. membership of the EU?

Now that would be a real exercise of popular sovereignty, would it not?

[John Whitworth]

Things are going very well as they are, Nigel. Why would I meddle with it? You want to do the old EU trick of getting people to vote and vote again until they get it right. No thanks. We are finished with that. You aren't of course. But you trust those ole commissioners, don't you? Don't you?

[Nigel Mace]

Ah - you have limits to the popular will when it comes to discovering the full facts! I thought you had more confidence in the outcome of your 'Brexit'. You should approve of such a vote - that is if you really meant that the people should "take back control".

After all, if your May, Boris and Farage are as wonderful as you led us to believe, what could possibly go wrong? Surely you are not suggesting that their 'deal' would be so dreadful that the 'people' would prefer the EU membership that they - in provincial England and in Wales - spurned in June. So surely a new poll on the new 'deal' would not only be the fulfillment of your principles but a dead cert for your viewpoint to win.

Wouldn't it?

[John Whitworth]

As I said, why meddle with something when it's going your way. There IS another vote quite soon but we will win it just as we won the last. I think Labour will have lost a couple of by elections by then and there will either be two more Tories or one Tory and one Ukipper. So we will win even more easily.

Let me get this straight. You vote a government in for five years and after one of these years you ask the people then whether they still like it? Is that your system?

Suppose Scotland voted for independence. Would you have another vote a year later to see if the people still liked it? Would you?

[Nigel Mace]

In 2013, the Scottish Government published their proposals for Independence in a White Paper of enormous detail - a book of 670 pages.
That is the kind of detailed prospectus which does not require there to be any second vote to legitimise a referendum majority.

So, John.... if the Scottish Government had produced a White Paper on independence as flimsy and insultingly vacuous as that produced by May, fewer pages (49) of actual text than even the piddling number of words in the only operational clause of the Article 50 Act - and do it, like her, after the vote - then in circumstances of such manifest government irresponsibility, I would have favoured a second referendum in order to confirm or reject what had been subsequently negotiated.

If your 'Brexit' ideologues were the democrats they pretend to be, they would not now proceed to conclude any Brexit negotiation until it had been properly presented in a similarly full White Paper for democratic consent - or, if rejected, accept a return to the status quo ante. The truth, however, is very clear to see. The 'Brexit' vote in provincial England and in Wales is being used as a very thin disguise for an undemocratic right-wing coup. The only people "taking back control" in England now, are the extreme right-wing of the Tory Party and their jackals in the unpleasantly xenophobic ranks of Ukip - a combination whose democratic legitimacy is vanishingly small.