The March 29th deadline for the UK leaving the EU has passed. Eight separate votes were taken in the UK parliament this week, each motion exploring an alternative to the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal. All failed. Then the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal was voted on for the third time and it also failed, by 58 votes.
No one can accuse the UK of not being democratic!
The missed deadline has been moved to 12th April with the consent of the EU.
As previously the Irish Border presents an impossible problem for those Brexiteers wishing to leave the European Customs Union behind. Remaining in the Customs Union would remove the need for a border but is a bridge Brexiteers will not cross.
One Brexiteer asked the question, “What is liberty for if not to govern ourselves?”
It is a good question but approx. 44 years too late! He did not appreciate his Prime Minister giving him the very limited choice of her deal or no deal! Even the Prime Minister’s offer to resign after her deal is passed failed to carry any impact.
With her ‘Brexit means Brexit’ slogan she allowed leaving to be defined in the hardest possible terms. She activated article 50 (giving a time line of two years to exit date) without knowing what she wanted. She set down red lines that locked Westminster into a deal that her party opposed. She did not show any flexibility in creating a cross party consensus in the British national interest. Instead she hoped to ‘run down the clock’ using the pressure of a deadline to get her deal passed.
Of course the numbers were against her from the start. Reliance on other parties to vote for you is always problematical and without them she did not have a majority.
Did you ever ask yourself why things seem to be stacked against you? It’s not God’s redemptive plan that is in difficulty but life in this old broken world is designed to remind us that we are not in heaven yet.
Don’t expect things to go right. Our frustrations are there for a purpose. They call us back from relying on ourselves to dependency on the living God (Romans Chapter 8 verses 18/21). Flowers wither, food spoils, things decay. God lets pieces of his creation go against us so increasingly we are freed from asking earth to give us what only He can give (1 Peter Chapter 1 verses 3/9).
By God’s grace he ages our bodies also so that we may be weaned from the notion that this is our home. This world will never function right until the Lord returns and in the meantime we are to “live out our time here as foreigners in reverent fear” … “knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot “(1 Peter 1 verses 18/19).