Posted by on December 10, 2018 11:09 am
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Events in England — particularly those of this weekend — are yielding a single lesson that liberals, progressives, and Democrats can apply to the Trump crisis.

The last 24 hours alone have delivered a double blow to Vladimir Putin’s isolationist UKIP nationalists’ campaign to leave the EU. The first was a ruling from the European court:

The European Court of Justice has ruled the UK can cancel Brexit without the permission of the other 27 EU members.

The ECJ judges ruled this could be done without altering the terms of Britain’s membership.

A group of anti-Brexit politicians argued the UK should be able to unilaterally halt Brexit, but they were opposed by the government and EU.

The decision comes a day before MPs are due to vote on Theresa May’s deal for leaving the EU.

The ECJ ruled that the UK can unilaterally revoke its withdrawal from the EU, broadly following the non-binding opinion given last week by a senior ECJ official – the advocate general.

The statement from the court said the ability for a member state to change its mind after telling the EU it wanted to leave would last as long as a withdrawal agreement had not been entered into, or for the two-year period after it had notified the bloc it was leaving.

If that two-year period gets extended, then a member state could change its mind during that extra time too.

A deal-or-no-deal vote in British Parliament on Brexit had been scheduled for tomorrow. UK Prime Minister Theresa May and her Tory/UKIP fellow travelers are scrambling to postpone the vote:

Theresa May is to call off Tuesday’s crucial vote on her Brexit deal in the face of what was expected to be a significant defeat by Tory rebels.

Government sources have said the prime minister is set to tell MPs about the delay in a statement at 15:30 GMT.

Downing Street had been insisting the vote would go ahead. … DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said the situation was “quite frankly a bit of a shambles” and the PM was paying the price for crossing her “red lines” when it came to Northern Ireland.

Theresa May’s deal has been agreed with the EU – but it needs to be backed by the UK Parliament if it is to become law ahead of the UK’s departure.

The lesson here: change does not come overnight, and is nurtured by consistent, clear messaging that is stepped up and/or clarified incrementally as the situation changes (see these articles from February and May, when the prospects of stopping Brexit looked bleak). It’s a timely point in the wake of last Friday’s filings by Robert Mueller and the Southern District of New York, which confirmed long-known or assumed facts about failed wine and steak mogul Donald Trump’s presidential campaign:

  • Trump himself played a key role, arguable THE key role, in campaign-related payoffs to adult film director and actor Stephanie “Stormy Daniels” Clifford and former Playboy model Karen McDougal (directing these payments, as making them, is a felony); and
  • Russians agents engaged in interactions with at least 14 Trump associates during Trump’s presidential campaign and transition, and Mueller more than dropped a hint he has Team Trump dead to rights on what the pompadoured chaos agent in the Oval Office incessantly denies as “No collusion!”

So be patient, let Mueller quietly do his work and incoming House leaders (including Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, who are now using the two “i” words in press appearances) adjust the messaging, and take a minute to call your Congresscritters and let them know where you stand on what they should do.

Pro tip: get their chief of staff’s name and call them too!