Brexit discussion thread IV

J Mysterio

I think its about EU funded infrastructure projects.

Peregrinus

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

It depends on the sort of choices are given.

A "take it or leave it" referendum is of no use to a Remainer.

Especially if the "deal" is still only a wish list to be presented to the EU rather than a pre-approved one.

The proposal is to wait until a deal has been negotiated, and then present that for ratification in a referendum.

One possible attraction for HMG is that it might be a way of outflanking ERG opposition to a negotiated deal.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

And there's also the problem of the EU not agreeing to concessions if they vote against a deal.

That wouldn't be a problem as far as HMG and the remainers were concerned; it would be a positive advantage. They would make it clear that if this deal is rejected, no better deal is or will be available.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

They should use PR choices because Brexit is complex and it would be too easy to skew the choices to get the desired result.
- Remain
- Deal
- Leave without Deal

Obviously they should, but it would be a novelty in the UK (or indeed here) to do such a thing in a referendum.

Bit cynical wrote: »

I think before a return to full membership could be on the ballot paper, it would need to be legally established that article 50 could be withdrawn. To my knowledge, that has not yet been established.

A possible option might be that the UK would seek to revoke article 50 or, alternatively, apply for reentry to the EU in the event of the exit occurring.

I think it would have to be this, unless perhaps the EU indicated that if the UK were to seek to withdraw Art 50 notice it would agree.

But there's no fundamntal problem about a referendum - especially an "advisory" referendum - which mandates the government to pursue a particular policy, rather than endorses a done deal or an already-enacted law. After all, that's exactly what the 2016 referendum did.

First Up wrote: »

An internal UK ballot means diddly-squat. The only vote that matters to the EU is that of the UK parliament.

The UK electorate can vote for whatever it likes

Yes. But the UK parliament is much more likely to, e.g., vote to revoke Art 50 notice if they have a referendum mandating them to do so. So the EU would, I think, be happy to give them the time and space to seek such a mandate (e.g. by agreeing to an extention of Art 50 notice to allow time for a referendum).

Sam Russell wrote: »

Unless of course it is:

Yes: Grand, deal sorted.
No : Go back and renegotiate - or do not leave, as crash out is not an option.

No. The EU will not wear this. Once they negotiate a deal which HMG accepts, if it is rejected in Parliament or by referendum that's it. They are not going to turn around and offer a better deal.

If a deal is agreed between UK and EU negotiators, there are only three possible options in a referendum:

1. Accept the deal.
2. Reject the deal and crash out.
3. Reject the deal and revoke Art 50.

A referendum could of course be run offering only two of those options - 1 and 2, or 1 and 3. Or a preferential-voting referendum offering all three.

If there's no deal agreed, then the only referendum you can have is a simple binary:

1. Crash out
2. Revoke Art 50.

Peregrinus

murphaph wrote: »

I still lay most of the blame at Cameron's door but she created those ridiculous red lines when there was an escape route there for her. I believe she bought into the Brexit hype in the aftermath of the referendum. Terrible judgement.

Brexit could not have been the utter train wreck that it is without the combined efforts of both Cameron and May. No one person could have pulled off such a catastrophe single-handed. They are going to have to share the Nobel prize.

osheen

They are going to have to share the Nobel prize.[/quote]

It looks more like they will have to share a new category of Darwin awards

Silent Running

There is a lot of talk of leavers wanting to reverse course. Is this because of the "onmishambles" that May has made of Brexit, or because they are born again Europhiles?

If it's the former and Brexit is reversed, the old fire will still be smouldering and may well flare up again in a few years time. Britain will return to being an anchor on the good ship Europe. If the latter, what has changed their minds? Other than staring into the abyss, that is.

Peregrinus

Silent Running wrote: »

There is a lot of talk of leavers wanting to reverse course. Is this because of the "onmishambles" that May has made of Brexit, or because they are born again Europhiles?

False dichotomy. They may not be "born again Europhiles"; they may reckon that the EU still has problems and drawbacks, but leaving is more problematic and delivers less benefits than they were led to believe. And they may not necessarily blame May for this; they may now realise that brexiting inevitably involves hard choices and high costs. They may now realise that nobody could ever deliver they kind of brexit that thought they were voting for.

The truth is there'll be a range of opinions among born-again remainers. Some may blame May, and think that if someone else were in charge the whole thing could have been pulled off successfully. Others may reckon that no-one could do it. And still others may simply reckon that the actual brexit on offer is not good, and may be agnostic on the question of whether a good brexit is even theoretically possible. The don't have to take a position on that unless and until somebody actually offers them a good brexit, and if this particular push for brexit is derailed, then the second time around brexiters are going to have to come up with a much more credible brexit than the candy-floss that won the
2016 referendum. Which, of course, they will be unable to do.

Silent Running

Peregrinus wrote: »

False dichotomy. They may not be "born again Europhiles"; they may reckon that the EU still has problems and drawbacks, but leaving is more problematic and delivers less benefits than they were led to believe. And they may not necessarily blame May for this; they may now realise that brexiting inevitably involves hard choices and high costs. They may now realise that nobody could ever deliver they kind of brexit that thought they were voting for.

If we were talking about the ordinary Brit, I could see your point. The "omnishambles" talk is coming from serious business leaders who looked at Brexit and thought it was a good thing for them, and their respective businesses. Surely someone in that kind of position didn't believe the guff from Johnson, Farage, et al. They thought Brexit was the right thing, and probably still do.

Peregrinus

Silent Running wrote: »

If we were talking about the ordinary Brit, I could see your point. The "omnishambles" talk is coming from serious business leaders who looked at Brexit and thought it was a good thing for them, and their respective businesses. Surely someone in that kind of position didn't believe the guff from Johnson, Farage, et al. They thought Brexit was the right thing, and probably still do.

Do you have anyone in mind? Most business leaders that I have seen quoted either always thought brexit was a bad idea, or (a minority, so far as I can see) though it was a good idea and still do.

Are there many who initially supported it but now oppose it?

Silent Running

Peregrinus wrote: »

Do you have anyone in mind? Most business leaders that I have seen quoted either always thought brexit was a bad idea, or (a minority, so far as I can see) though it was a good idea and still do.

Are there many who initially supported it but now oppose it?

Just reading the link in this post made me think about it.

Rhineshark

Peregrinus wrote: »

Do you have anyone in mind? Most business leaders that I have seen quoted either always thought brexit was a bad idea, or (a minority, so far as I can see) though it was a good idea and still do.

Are there many who initially supported it but now oppose it?

There does seem to be a quiet steady dribble over to Remain and polling has been getting more definite that way too, albeit we're not looking at landslides here.

Thing is, if it's a poll they don't like, the more driven Leavers descend to rubbish polling, dismiss it as desperate Remainerism and go back to the dogmatic argument of 52% won, get over it.

I've literally just read a conversation on that question and the few remaining committed Leavers swarmed it. They are getting very nervous.

Peregrinus

Silent Running wrote: »

Just reading the link in this post made me think about it.

Only one of the four companies that the article looks at has a CEO who favoured leaving, and he's not the one to whom the "omnishambles" quote is attributed.

Bloomberg has been running a series since February in which they follow four companies through the Brexit period. They intend to run it for twe years, i.e. to February 2019. Of the four, only one ever saw Brexit as positive; the other three saw it as problematic right from the start. In the latest report, two of that three have become more pessimistic than they were at the beginning, while one was unable to comment since it's in the run-up to a public share offering.

The pro-Brexit guy is the CEO of EBAC, who make water coolers, dehumidifiers and the like. He's still pro-Brexit, but blames both politicians and civil servants for the direction which Brexit is taking. Presumably he thinks it could take a better direction, although the article isn't that specific about what that direction would be.

Peregrinus

Rhineshark wrote: »

There does seem to be a quiet steady dribble over to Remain and polling has been getting more definite that way too, albeit we're not looking at landslides here.

Thing is, if it's a poll they don't like, the more driven Leavers descend to rubbish polling, dismiss it as desperate Remainerism and go back to the dogmatic argument of 52% won, get over it.

I've literally just read a conversation on that question and the few remaining committed Leavers swarmed it. They are getting very nervous.

They've been nervous right from the get-go. One of the striking aspects of the Brexit story is how angry and insecure Leavers have consistently been, even though they actually won the referendum and control the government, and Brexit is being implemented with the serving of Article 50 notice and the enactment of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

A rough measure for how well Brexit is going at any time: how many stories do you see in which Brexiters claim credit for something, and how many do you see in which Brexiters assign blame for something? If the latter outweigh the former, it means that Brexiters think Brexit is going badly.

RobAMerc

Peregrinus wrote: »

The pro-Brexit guy is the CEO of EBAC, who make water coolers, dehumidifiers and the like. He's still pro-Brexit, but blames both politicians and civil servants for the direction which Brexit is taking. Presumably he thinks it could take a better direction, although the article isn't that specific about what that direction would be.

“ If we stop trading with Europe, it wouldn’t be a big problem.” Not even for him, he says, even though about 80 percent of his water coolers are sold to EU countries.

Elliott’s response: Be my guest.

“Airbus are going to leave,” Elliott said. “Please go. We’re going to use those 14,000 people to make something else.”

I think he is quite clearly an idiot - a guess would be things are going well for EBAC anyway and he is blaming Europe ?

Peregrinus

I'm tempted to the same conclusion.

But.

We only know what Bloomberg tells us. And they only quote a couple of sentences from him. Presumably he said rather more, and they have edited it down for the purposes of the article. And presumably he would have said more again if asked the right questions.

I'm not suggested that Bloomberg is biassed; just that they only print his words to the extent that they are relevant and useful for the focus of the article, which is current business sentiment. They didn't ask him about the Brexit he wanted; just about the Brexit he expects to get.

If you asked him he he thought brexit should go, and what he would do to get it there, then you might conclude on the basis of his answers that he was an idiot. (Or you might not.) At the moment we can only suspect that he is an idiot.

lawred2

Peregrinus wrote: »

I'm tempted to the same conclusion.

But.

We only know what Bloomberg tells us. And they only quote a couple of sentences from him. Presumably he said rather more, and they have edited it down for the purposes of the article. And presumably he would have said more again if asked the right questions.

I'm not suggested that Bloomberg is biassed; just that they only print his words to the extent that they are relevant and useful for the focus of the article, which is current business sentiment. They didn't ask him about the Brexit he wanted; just about the Brexit he expects to get.

If you asked him he he thought brexit should go, and what he would do to get it there, then you might conclude on the basis of his answers that he was an idiot. (Or you might not.) At the moment we can only suspect that he is an idiot.

it's possible the water cooler section of his business accounts for less than 10% of his bottom line or something...

As opposed to 80% of the bottom line.

Hard to believe that anyone in business would be so blinded by ideology as to be so blase about a big chunk of their business..

So maybe it was selective reporting..

But then this is Brexit and it wouldn't the first time that reality was denied. Hard core Brexiteers seem to have a lot in common with flat earthers, climate change deniers, anti vaxers etc in their abilities to blindly deny and discount evidence in favour of their ideologies.. So anything is possible.

trellheim

Harking back for a moment to the ports thing : its all about grants. Google TEN-T infrastructure. Unless we cross fingers and hope that TIR plates will cut through the Calais kerfuffle the cycle time on EU container boxes to and from the continent is probably going to double

Leroy42

lawred2 wrote: »

it's possible the water cooler section of his business accounts for less than 10% of his bottom line or something...

As opposed to 80% of the bottom line.

Hard to believe that anyone in business would be so blinded by ideology as to be so blase about a big chunk of their business..

So maybe it was selective reporting..

But then this is Brexit and it wouldn't the first time that reality was denied. Hard core Brexiteers seem to have a lot in common with flat earthers, climate change deniers, anti vaxers etc in their abilities to blindly deny and discount evidence in favour of their ideologies.. So anything is possible.

Many of them are firmly of the view that there is only upside to Brexit. They will be free of the tyranny of the EU, with their unelected reps and laws that nobody voted for. From the interviews, vox pops etc that I have seen, it is pretty clear to me that they feel that nothing at all will actually change upon Brexit.

So even if 80% of his business is the the EU, he doesn't see any of that changing. They will get a FTA, he already had his customers and they like the product.

And maybe he does have a product that people can only get from him and would be willing to put up with delays and/or higher prices.

breatheme

Some Brexit supporters argue that whatever loss of money/convenience is worth it "to regain sovereignty". I'm just lumping him with those Brexiteers.

Nody

Leroy42 wrote: »

Many of them are firmly of the view that there is only upside to Brexit. They will be free of the tyranny of the EU, with their unelected reps and laws that nobody voted for. From the interviews, vox pops etc that I have seen, it is pretty clear to me that they feel that nothing at all will actually change upon Brexit.

So even if 80% of his business is the the EU, he doesn't see any of that changing. They will get a FTA, he already had his customers and they like the product.

And maybe he does have a product that people can only get from him and would be willing to put up with delays and/or higher prices.

Don't forget the idea that he'll now be able to cut corners; same with the Dyson founder with his factory in Malaysia hoping (expecting) he'll be able to import them cheaper to the UK and hence make more profit (he's also pushing for the CAT to be paid by the UK as he got huge farms currently benefiting from it). Hence it's not so much they expect to need to raise prices and see trade barriers (since they all expect seamless FTA) but that they can profit further from UK being out side. The fact that there will never be seamless trade etc. is simply poor negotiation from the UK in their eyes rather than realizing it would never be that way.

Leroy42

breatheme wrote: »

Some Brexit supporters argue that whatever loss of money/convenience is worth it "to regain sovereignty". I'm just lumping him with those Brexiteers.

Yeah, that seems to be a standard line. But then you ask them what the level of loss would be and what effect it would have on them, their family and their friends and they never have an answer.

IT goes back to thinking that there isn't really a cost, and any cost will be borne by someone else.

Yet you could ask the very same people if they are willing to pay an extra 5% in taxes and you would get dogs abuse.

trellheim

Yeah, that seems to be a standard line. But then you ask them what the level of loss would be and what effect it would have on them, their family and their friends and they never have an answer.

IT goes back to thinking that there isn't really a cost, and any cost will be borne by someone else.

Yet you could ask the very same people if they are willing to pay an extra 5% in taxes and you would get dogs abuse.

I have to say I do look at some of this through the lens of Irelands fight for independence - I can't really blame people for ideologically wanting out from EU at any cost ( no matter what ) if you view it as the oppressor. That said that analogy really breaks down if you push it hard.

kunst nugget

trellheim wrote: »

I have to say I do look at some of this through the lens of Irelands fight for independence - I can't really blame people for ideologically wanting out from EU at any cost ( no matter what ) if you view it as the oppressor. That said that analogy really breaks down if you push it hard.

I don't think it's really the same thing. The problem for England is that they went from being an oppressive empire pre-world war 2 to having to work with other countries to create a shared vision for the continent. I think it runs completely contrary to the empire mentality that is a huge part of their collective psyche.

We were trying to escape from the dominance of the UK, the UK wants to regain that dominance again.

Leroy42

trellheim wrote: »

I have to say I do look at some of this through the lens of Irelands fight for independence - I can't really blame people for ideologically wanting out from EU at any cost ( no matter what ) if you view it as the oppressor. That said that analogy really breaks down if you push it hard.

I certainly think that there is an element of that in the Brexit cause, wanting to take back control, freedom etc etc.

Of course as you have said, it breaks down under even the mildest examination. If it were really true, then the UK would be looking to get away from NATO, the UN, WTO etc etc.

But certainly the EU has been sold, for decades, as an oppressor of the UK.

ancapailldorcha

kunst nugget wrote: »

I don't think it's really the same thing. The problem for England is that they went from being an oppressive empire pre-world war 2 to having to work with other countries to create a shared vision for the continent. I think it runs completely contrary to the empire mentality that is a huge part of their collective psyche.

We were trying to escape from the dominance of the UK, the UK wants to regain that dominance again.

I've never seen anything substantial to support this. I believe that Brexit (and Trump) came about due to a perfect storm of economic stagnation, a financial crash, soaring rent prices, an elite making off like bandits, a dysfunctional electoral system designed to alienate the electorate as much as possible and a shadowy cabal of arch-Eurosceptics who are happy to wreck the economy for their own gain and/or vision of Little England.

lawred2

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I've never seen anything substantial to support this. I believe that Brexit (and Trump) came about due to a perfect storm of economic stagnation, a financial crash, soaring rent prices,an elite making off like bandits, a dysfunctional electoral system designed to alienate the electorate as much as possible and a shadowy cabal of arch-Eurosceptics who are happy to wreck the economy for their own gain and/or vision of Little England.

Brexit is unlikely to change any of that

Jim2007

trellheim wrote: »

I have to say I do look at some of this through the lens of Irelands fight for independence - I can't really blame people for ideologically wanting out from EU at any cost ( no matter what ) if you view it as the oppressor. That said that analogy really breaks down if you push it hard.

Not even close. Most of the veterans back in the 1960s were very strongly in favour of Ireland joining the EEC as it was and indeed the IFA open it's Brussels office several years before our admittance to membership.

The veterans were not isolationists, in deed the believed very strongly that Ireland had a right and even an obligation to take is place among the nations of the world be the UN, the EEC as it was, or any other international body.

ancapailldorcha

lawred2 wrote: »

Brexit is unlikely to change any of that

Of course but what you have to bear in mind is that most people are not politically engaged and those who are do not spend much of their free time on Politics fora such as this.

For some, the referendum was an opportunity to make a real choice. In fairness, UK elections of late have offered scant little of this. Cameron, Clegg, Blair and Brown all adhered to roughly the same ideology with few differences. This ideology was implemented in such a way that most of the country was basically abandoned hence the rise of UKIP and Brexit.

trellheim

Not even close. Most of the veterans back in the 1960s were very strongly in favour of Ireland joining the EEC as it was and indeed the IFA open it's Brussels office several years before our admittance to membership.

The veterans were not isolationists, in deed the believed very strongly that Ireland had a right and even an obligation to take is place among the nations of the world be the UN, the EEC as it was, or any other international body.

With respect, you may be picking me up wrongly - not that Ireland should not have joined. rather that theres an element that can be understood, that a nation may want to stand on its own two feet , i.e. Brexit. its only an element though.

kunst nugget

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I've never seen anything substantial to support this. I believe that Brexit (and Trump) came about due to a perfect storm of economic stagnation, a financial crash, soaring rent prices, an elite making off like bandits, a dysfunctional electoral system designed to alienate the electorate as much as possible and a shadowy cabal of arch-Eurosceptics who are happy to wreck the economy for their own gain and/or vision of Little England.

Like you said, all these issues created a perfect storm, but both victories were grounded in an appeal to past glories - Donald Trump and his MAGA slogan and the tabloids played on notions about the Empire during the campaign and ever since.

lawred2

trellheim wrote: »

With respect, you may be picking me up wrongly - not that Ireland should not have joined. rather that theres an element that can be understood, that a nation may want to stand on its own two feet , i.e. Brexit. its only an element though.

Well that misguided thinking is predicated on membership of the EU meaning that a country is not "standing on its own two feet". The EU is democratic organisation with democratically elected representatives from all member states...

But ill informed idiots will be easily told otherwise - useful fools for Tory agendas.

The comparison to the Irish Independence situation is weak