EU chief Frans Timmermans' 'love letter' to Britain about Brexit

'You have decided to leave.
It breaks my heart, but I respect that decision.
You were in two minds about it, like you have always been in two minds about the EU.
I wish you had stuck to that attitude, it served you well and it kept all of us in better shape.
Was it necessary to force the issue?
Not at all.
But you did.
And the sad thing is, I see it is hurting you.
Because the two minds will still be there, even after you have left.
In the process so much unnecessary damage has been done to you, and all of us.
And I fear more will follow.

'Truth be told, I felt deeply hurt when you decided to leave.
Three years later I am just sad that a member of our family wants to sever our ties.
But at the same time I find comfort in the thought that family ties can never really be severed.
We’re not going away and you will always be welcome to come back.'

I was a strong Brexiteer. Now we must swallow our pride and think again.

- I was a strong Brexiteer. Now we must swallow our pride and think again | openDemocracy
Peter Oborne writes here in his personal capacity:
- There’s zero chance of a sensible Brexit amidst the pandemonium and hysteria at Westminster just now
- Take Tusk’s offer
- The economic arguments for Brexit have been destroyed by a series of shattering blows
- Britain’s departure from the EU will be as great a disaster for our country as the over-mighty unions were in the 1960s and 1970s
- When hedge-fund managers and the Communist Party see eye-to-eye on any question, it’s time to be concerned
- Well done Britain for challenging remote oligarchs based in Brussels
- The European Union is not a dictatorship
- The UK will be weaker and more isolated
- Like almost everybody else I underestimated the importance of the Good Friday Agreement
- Phrases such as 'vassal state', 'empire' and 'supplicant' do not even remotely characterise our relation with Europe

Спросите любого психолога, когда худшее время для принятия решения.
Они согласны, что это когда вы страдаете от истощения и эмоционального коллапса.

...Sometimes politicians make promises that they know they are powerless to deliver.
At other times they use Brussels as a whipping-boy for unpopular decisions they would have made in any case.
This has created a real problem for democracy across Europe.
Not just in Britain.

I come back, then, to a proposition that sounds lame – as quiet good sense so often does.
Just this, and this alone.
Suspending Brexit will be greatly preferable to the alternative.
How many important decisions in our own lives, too, have had to be taken on such a chilly and unexciting consideration?
It’s time for a long pause.

How the UK lost Brexit battle.

- How the UK lost Brexit battle – POLITICO

I think it is pretty much all over, except for the shouting.
With yesterdays indicative votes in the HoC, my personal belief is that we’ll end up in a no-deal Brexit.
There is no clear road forward. TM’s deal is dead. Only two options remain, no-deal or an extension.

An extension would require elections to the EP.
Those elections would automatically turn into something akin to a put-it-to-the-people-vote, something the Brexiteers cannot/will not allow.

Why a no-deal Brexit is still on the cards.

- Bluff, blackmail and brinkwomanship: why a no-deal Brexit is still on the cards | Andrew Rawnsley | Opinion | The Guardian
Don’t panic! Don’t panic! You need not spoil your Christmas by worrying that Britain is walking the Brexit tightrope without a safety net because the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, has announced that the armed forces are on standby.

Standing by to do what exactly? That is not clear. Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, is redeploying civil servants with expertise in disaster management to no-deal emergency planning. And Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has declared himself the world’s biggest purchaser of fridges so that the NHS has somewhere to keep stockpiles of critical medicines. He recently told colleagues that, in the event of a bad Brexit, he could not guarantee that people would not lose their lives. Choose Brexit – and you may die. They certainly didn’t put that on the side of their campaign bus.

The obvious thing to say, but worth emphasising nevertheless, is that those who willed this Brexit nightmare on our country did not reveal that it would require such costly and alarming measures. They sold it as liberation day, not doomsday. Do you recall Boris Johnson and his gang telling us that leaving the EU could mean putting troops on the street, establishing a “war room” in the NHS, emergency airlifts of medicines, leafleting every household with advice on how to cope with food shortages and deploying those with experience of dealing with the aftermath of tornadoes, epidemics and tsunamis? No, me neither. It was supposed to be a piece of cherry-topped cake, not a humiliating national calamity.

Lord Heseltine’s speech to the House of Lords.

- Watch Lord Heseltine’s rousing speech to the House of Lords on Brexit | Latest Brexit news and top stories - The New European

My Lords, this debate has repeated arguments that most of us have used over many years but I do not intend to go back over any arguments that I have expressed. They remain in my mind as convincing as they have been throughout my political life.​

I have to say that, of the many speeches and moments of memory in this debate, my noble friend Lord Howard proclaiming that he is not a rebel will long live in my memory. He provided the explanation that he had rebelled against his party on only three occasions. If I had risen in my place to say that I am not a rebel the place would have dissolved into hysterical laughter, but I have rebelled against my party on only three occasions.

The first was when they wanted to resist the race relations legislation of the former Prime Minister, Mr Callaghan. I revolted and the Tory party changed its mind. I revolted against the poll tax. I brought the poll tax to an end. The poll tax went and the Tory party won a subsequent general election. It is perfectly true that I defied a three-line Whip in this House over the issue of a meaningful vote. I was hauled out of my dinner with my wife in Wiltons in Jermyn Street for the poor old Chief Whip to axe me from the job that I was doing in government at the time. I say to my noble friend Lord Howard: “Be careful where you go tonight”.