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LAST UPDATE | 9 Jul 2018
BRITAIN’S BREXIT MINISTER David Davis resigned last night in a major blow for Prime Minister Theresa May as she struggles to unite her party behind a plan to retain strong economic ties to the European Union even after leaving the bloc.
Just two days after warring factions in May’s cabinet approved the plan in a bid to unblock negotiations with Brussels, long-time eurosceptic Davis announced he was stepping down in a letter scathing of the agreement.
“The general direction of policy will leave us in at best a weak negotiating position, and possibly an inescapable one,” he wrote to May.
Friday’s agreement, which came after marathon talks at the Prime Minister’s country retreat, would “make the supposed control by Parliament illusory rather than real”, he added.
British media reported that junior Brexit ministers Steve Baker and Suella Braverman had also resigned.
Davis was particularly critical of the proposal for a “common rulebook” to allow free trade in goods, saying this “hands control of large swathes of our economy to the EU and is certainly not returning control of our laws in any real sense”.
“I am also unpersuaded that our negotiating approach will not just lead to further demands for concessions,” he said, concluding that his post required “an enthusiastic believer in your approach, and not merely a reluctant conscript”.
May replied in a letter saying that her Brexit plan was in line with her commitment to leave the European single market and customs union.
“I do not agree with your characterisation of the policy we agreed,” she said, asserting that it “will undoubtedly mean the returning of powers from Brussels to the United Kingdom”.
“I would like to thank you warmly for everything you have done over the past two years as Secretary of State to shape our departure from the EU,” she added.
Interview
Speaking this morning on BBC Radio’s Today show, Davis defended his resignation and said that the reason he didn’t step down on Friday after the Cabinet meeting was because it needed to be thought through “carefully” and done “properly”.
He said that as secretary he would have been “front and centre” in delivering May’s Brexit strategy, and that that wouldn’t have been plausible given the well-known reservations he had.
He said that the measures set out in May’s plan would put Britain in a weak negotiating position with the EU. The ”common rulebook” he said would make it impossible for Britain not to agree with EU rules.
If it did decide this, he said that meant that the Northern Ireland backstop could be triggered which would be a “sword of Damocles” hanging over the British government.
“It seems to me we are giving too much away too easily,” he said.
Davis said it was important for May to appoint a new Brexit Secretary who agreed with her approach, and he said that he didn’t not want her to resign as prime minister.
Irish response
In response to the resignation, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that matters affecting the British cabinet were “a matter for the prime minister”.
“We welcome that fact that the British cabinet agreed collectively on detailed proposals for the future relationship between the EU and Britain on Friday, and we look forward to seeing greater detail in the UK’s White Paper later this week,” Varadkar said.
“There’s still a lot of work to do, particularly from the British side. Time is running out.
The commitments the UK has already signed up to must be translated into the Withdrawal Agreement and we need to intensify efforts on all outstanding issues, especially the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland.
“Brexit in name only”
Davis was appointed two years ago to head up the newly created Department for Exiting the European Union after Britain voted to leave the bloc in a referendum.
He became the public face of Brexit, leading the British delegation in talks with Brussels, although his role had been increasingly overshadowed in recent months as May and her aides took a bigger role in the negotiating strategy.
The 69-year-old had reportedly threatened to quit several times over a perceived lack of firmness in Britain’s negotiating stance but had remained strictly loyal to the prime minister in public.
May is due to address parliament soon to explain her plan for Britain to adopt EU rules on goods after Brexit, amid anger from MPs in her own party who want a cleaner break and businesses who say it may still cause economic harm.
She is set to tell MPs there have been “robust views” on Brexit among cabinet members and is also expected to announce a replacement for Davis.
Conservative MP Peter Bone said Davis had “done the right thing”, adding: “The PM’s proposals for a Brexit in name only are not acceptable.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading Brexit hardliner, told Sky News: “This is very important. It raises the most serious questions about the PM’s ideas. If the Brexit Secretary cannot support them they cannot be very good proposals.”
Ian Lavery, chairman of the main opposition Labour Party, said: “This is absolute chaos and Theresa May has no authority left.”
May’s plan would create a free-trade area with the EU for goods, to protect supply chains in areas such as manufacturing, while maintaining flexibility for Britain’s dominant service sector.
It is unclear whether Brussels will accept this, after repeatedly warning Britain it cannot “cherry-pick” bits of its single market.
With reporting from © – AFP, 2018
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As much as I’m against the abolition of the Seanad, the senators themselves are making me doubt myself over the last while.
Me too, they come across as a crowd of amateurs.
either that or the media seems to be paying more attention to their cockups which wouldnt be entirely impossible
@Alan “cockups”, great pun
Spot on, I’d say. Cock-up a day in there, I reckon.
This is a genuine question, I’m not trying to troll: What is the advantage of having the Seanad in it’s current form? What powers does it have and how have they used them?
Looks like I’ll be voting on this in a couple of months and I dont know much about it!
Always look on the bright side…this proves at least that she can read…
I rest my case the senator is guilty as charged! Guilty of making headlines and using somebody elses comments! Absolute fool
An independent thinker? Methinks not!
I bet you plagiarised that ;)
Jeez some parents really p1ss me off.
Don’t buy your child a smartphone or tablet and leave them to view what ever they want .
.
Plus porn is the least of their worries when there are sites like ‘bestgore’ etc available .
And Facebook for all sorts to groom your kids .
Wake up and police your own kids.
whats this bestgore website you speak of ?
I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume its along the lines of rotten.com
Exactly
Quite a bit of uncensored Middle-Eastern head-chopping sort of stuff
NOT FOR THE FEINT-HEARTED OR THE PC BRIGADE !!
Remember that time enda robbed Obamas speech right in from him in dublin
Was it plagiarism, though? I mean, most took it as a respectful homage, since even Obama smiled when he got to the part that quoted Obama.
This was more like a person spoofing, since the columnist was not there to acknowledge her work, or defend the parts that were quoted.
Still, I wonder if she will be branded the new ‘spoofer’ or maybe ‘spooferess’? There was a TD from a while back who stole an entire speech that a colleague of his made a few years ago.
There is proof, if proof was needed that senators, or at least this one don’t even bother to do there own background work.
Abolish them I say.
WONT SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN….
Yeah.
Be a parent!
Why should we be surprised by plagiarism? Surely it is the least of their faults?
No this is getting completely blown out of proportion, if this was to come into force it would give the government more leeway to start thinking of monitoring us full time on our activities on the internet! if parents are worried about children coming across porn on the internet do what i did and block these websites from the family computer! there going to come across it in magazines and newspapers anyway but blocking out the porn websites at home is at least a start !! anyway why anytime england enforces a law, ireland hop up and think they have to follow suit Jeez talk about mother republic
Simple solution, set up Net Nanny or similar software on your PC, and block all the offending websites.
Installing something that monitors our web usage is far too similar to Prism, and that is causing the US way too much hassle right now.
Simpler still. Buy a netgenie router and block dodgy sites at the point if entry to the household. Any and all devices coming in with you or your children’s friends are then blocked at source…… simples! Netnanny and other parental control softwares need to be policed on individual devices. Not so with a net genie.
An unheard of senator plagiarising from a journalist as a contribution to the senate. Meanwhile being paid whopping salaries and expenses by the state. Anyone who will miss this ladies contribution when the senate goes (hopefully) need only buy the Sunday times each week.
* lady’s
A senator who commented that fluoride causes downs syndrome should not be known for her ability to think critically on her own…its a damning disgrace that we have such people in positions of power, the Seanad is broke I’ll be glad to see it gone, though really it should be an elected position, staffed with minds not loose tongues in need of a licking ground.
‘ “It was my intention to attribute her work during my contribution something which I sadly failed to do,” O’Brien, the co-founder of the Jack and Jill Foundation and Lily O’Brien’s Chocolates, admitted in a statement to TheJournal.ie today.’
Well, we all know which road is paved with good intentions.
This sums up how much thought and research so many people in power put into their proposals in this country.
“Oh, I read a an article once. It convinced me. I won’t do any further research because I’m uncomfortable with having my opinions challenged. Let me read it to you.”
This proposed filtering system is dangerous. It’s difficult to argue against it because it’s being cleverly worded to suggest that it will make child porn and videos of rape illegal when, obviously, they are already illegal. It’s far too easy to descend into a swarm of jokey innuendo and ignore the crux of this.
This will have no impact on stopping paedophiles discovering or producing child porn. These people do not operate on pornhub. They operate beyond the reach of search engines, on the deep web or otherwise.
As for children, it is staggeringly easy to set up effective filters on your computer if you feel your child may stumble upon questionable content. This proposed system would give parents a false sense of complacency about internet security and they may become even more hands off if this were to come into effect.
Im actually surprised FG dont just tax it. Sure why not? They’ve taxed everything else.
Is that not what they’re doing with the new broadcasting charge?
Hope she’ll be prosecuted under “No Sh*t Sherlock’s” new copyright law.
Of course, I’m assuming that what’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose too.
Wow that is pathetic. Was she paid by FG to do this in order to help their populist anti senate campaign?
Sure she copied the chocolate too. That is what she does. Getting paid for her ego boosting is immoral.
More talking through one’s F it would appear
People should start parenting their children properly and leave the fupping Internet alone!
If they blocked porn and torrents all that would be left is one website called bringbackthepornandtorrents.com
They abdicate responsibility. Putting tech in kiddies hands is like asking them to go play in traffic.
The Net is a grown-up, real world place. Who would want their child to read TheJournal.ie?
… and yes I said yes I will Yes. Oh that’s Joyce. No, no, never, oh, that’s Paisley. There’s nothing worse than people copying you, than people not copying you, oh that’s Wilde……….. I give up.
Sure its normal ,Enda robbed his policies from The “Dummies guide to Economics”
Wow…. Another genius kissing her own arsehole…. Try using your own brain for a change…
It was the fluoride in the water that gave her memory loss: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amx5gcbRCLk
Shameful plagiarism. I actually watched her give that speech on dail tv. Cringe.
I’m guessing she’ll get quite the shock if she ever gets around to comparing Playboy with Hustler. The whole porn debate is similarly being skewed from child porn to now all erotic imagery of any kind. Daft. And of course there are already filters in google, browsers and parenting software that can be bought.
Going back in time not forward typical of this government
What worries me about the possibility of blocking porn sites is another situation where the government are wading in with censorship. I personally believe we as adults can view what we want and choose and that it be up to the adults to police there own pc rather than the government policing our Internet. Next thing we’ll know is tv3 will be block coz of controversial program’s. I can see Ireland turning into a nanny state where everything is monitored and restricted we’ll all be programmed robots shuffling around
Is this the women who set up the Jack and Jill foundation??
If so then she has done good work, she’s not a stupid women.
Add to that, she was appointed to the Seanad by Enda, seems to me Enda’s cronies may be doing this type of thing on purpose to prime the public before the referendum.
What a feckin egiot!! She didn’t have time to write her own speech because Home and Away was on!
In the other hand is a risk for the freedom of expression…some web pages are blocked in ireland like thepiratebay.com and in other countries some others…
I bet Enda kennys cronies will cost a lot more than the Seanad
Let’s take another example of a fire-bucket as a reason to burn the building.
Never mind if other told it before…well told
Intended as repositors of the wisdom of the more experienced members of society ; self-serving and dishonest senators of average intellect and dubious honesty will ensure that there will be no counterbalance to the populist idiots of Dail Eireann.
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