Brexit Discussion Thread VI

Anthracite

brickster69 wrote: »

They are not leaving, they have to leave !

Hmm. I've read this a few times and it still makes no more sense than the first time.

Enzokk

mickoneill31 wrote: »

So in the age of everybody having a smartphone and social media to get proof of your claims we have to go to an event to see the militant moron lefties.
It's just an unlucky coincidence that the videos we see all over the place are the militant moron guys on the right.

Do you even believe the stuff you're typing yourself?

Everyone had their phones out recording yesterday, but somehow they missed all the militant lefties. They were so busy recording themselves hassling Owen Jones and Anna Soubry that they forgot to record the lefties doing the same it seems.

Silent Running

Thomas_IV wrote: »

Wasn't the first time she got harassed and complained about it publicly. But this doesn't bother the Police nor does it bother the 'infamous' PM May and her cabinet which created and nurished the hostile environment set out to make foreign nationals leave the UK but also includes every anti-Brexit person.

The Brexiteers will certainly and finally achieve the break up of the UK itself and even that's not what they want, it's what they'll get in the end. It is just a matter of time as by their delusions they'll most certainly crash out of the EU with no deal, unless commonsense prevails at the very last minute.

Don't be too sure they don't want the UK to break up. I recently spoke to a Brexiteer in England. He would be quite happy for Scotland and Wales to be cut loose. He thought of them as dead weight and would be a brake on England's success after Brexit. Successful Mother England is the goal of Brexit in the mind of some Brexiteers.

LuckyLloyd

Are British people not ashamed at how low their societal discourse has sunk? Or are they simply beyond shame? Or is it okay because there are yellow jacket protests in France so anything goes?

Peregrinus

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Are British people not ashamed at how low their societal discourse has sunk? Or are they simply beyond shame? Or is it okay because there are yellow jacket protests in France so anything goes?

No, plently of them (on both sides) are very despondent about it. On one view the Brexit movement has long been fuelled by people who think that British politics, and the British political system, haven't worked for them or for people like them for a long time, and are angry about that. And now they're matched by people who look at the clown-car-heading-for-a-cliff that is the UK political system attempting to engage with Brexit, and who also conclude that, yeah, the British political system is quite seriously broken. It's possibly one of the few things you'd find widespread agreement on that spans the Leaver/Remainer divide.

Zubeneschamali

Peregrinus wrote: »

now they're matched by people who look at the clown-car-heading-for-a-cliff that is the UK political system attempting to engage with Brexit, and who also conclude that, yeah, the British political system is quite seriously broken.

I don't think driving the clown car off the cliff is going to improve matters.


I am really amazed that young people are taking all of this so quietly- their future is about to go up in smoke, and they are Keeping Calm and Carrying On. Why haven't 5 million of them marched on Westminster and threatened to burn it down?

mickoneill31

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

I don't think driving the clown car off the cliff is going to improve matters.


I am really amazed that young people are taking all of this so quietly- their future is about to go up in smoke, and they are Keeping Calm and Carrying On. Why haven't 5 million of them marched on Westminster and threatened to burn it down?

When I was in my 20s I wouldn't have had much of a clue about this kind of stuff.

EdgeCase

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

I don't think driving the clown car off the cliff is going to improve matters.


I am really amazed that young people are taking all of this so quietly- their future is about to go up in smoke, and they are Keeping Calm and Carrying On. Why haven't 5 million of them marched on Westminster and threatened to burn it down?

In my discussions with younger English relatives they largely either don’t care at all or they’re totally unaware of why this matters and think the world will just go on exactly as is and that it’s all a fuss about nothing.

There’s a lot of disaffected youth and people who don’t really relate to politics at all.

They’re also not immune to absorbing all sorts of nonsense from the tabloids and elsewhere.

Leroy42

mickoneill31 wrote: »

When I was in my 20s I wouldn't have had much of a clue about this kind of stuff.

What the massive national debate going on when you were in your twenties?

And what was the access you had to information at the time?

We have 24 hour news, smartphones. Brexit is everywhere you look.

FrancieBrady

Leroy42 wrote: »

What the massive national debate going on when you were in your twenties?

And what was the access you had to information at the time?

We have 24 hour news, smartphones. Brexit is everywhere you look.

The days of radical students/young people are long gone.

prawnsambo

mickoneill31 wrote: »

When I was in my 20s I wouldn't have had much of a clue about this kind of stuff.

This kind of stuff hasn't happened before. I don't think there's been anything like it in Britain since the second world war.

mickoneill31

Leroy42 wrote: »

What the massive national debate going on when you were in your twenties?

And what was the access you had to information at the time?

We have 24 hour news, smartphones. Brexit is everywhere you look.

Calm down there. I was implying that I had other priorities as a young adult. Doesn't mean they were the right priorities. There's always some massive national debate going on. Brexit isn't the first.

Brexit is everywhere (over here).
The UK is a bit different. Some of the people over there think it's already happened. I'm pretty sure they have the same opportunity for access to information as we do.

In social media you can get into a bubble so you only see what you agree with and if you don't read decent newspapers or pay attention to the news it's going to pass you by (if you're not interested). I'm not excusing it and I don't think it's good but I'm just saying what my experience was in my 20s and it was pretty much the same for my peers. It's not 100 years ago.

A mate of mine was showing me his mothers Facebook feed. She's English and is a fan of Brexit. Anything political in her feed is all anti EU and pro Brexit. Our social media encourages these bubbles. All she needs to add to that is read the Mail or Telegraph and she'll be pretty sure that Brexit is the what everybody wants. Then add in the mainstream media who seem to have Farage on or a Tory or Labour MP saying how Brexit is best for the country and you have all the bases covered.

Thomas_IV

Silent Running wrote: »

Don't be too sure they don't want the UK to break up. I recently spoke to a Brexiteer in England. He would be quite happy for Scotland and Wales to be cut loose. He thought of them as dead weight and would be a brake on England's success after Brexit. Successful Mother England is the goal of Brexit in the mind of some Brexiteers.

My reference was to the very ones who initiated this Brexit crap and deluded the people by their false and hatefilled propaganda. It might be that the example of that one Brexiter you met stands for others too.

CelticRambler

EdgeCase wrote: »

In my discussions with younger English relatives they largely either don’t care at all or they’re totally unaware of why this matters and think the world will just go on exactly as is and that it’s all a fuss about nothing.

In mine, they're either riled up, but frustrated at the lack of choice in what they can do (i.e. understand that the FPTP system is rotten, and besides, there's no-one fresh and imaginative to vote for); or they're applying for Irish (or other EU) passports and de-Britishising themselves.

Most of their peers, on the other hand, believe that Brexit is something old people go on about, and not as banter-worthy as X-factor or What-Meghan-Did-Next or whatever "tragic" defeat was suffered by their favorite soccer team.

Podge_irl

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Lift ?

That "lift" means the libdems don't even have a quarter of the seats they had when the referendum was first promised.

The referendum was promised as part of the election though so its a slightly disingenuous comparison. The LibDems were crushed because of the coalition government though you would like to think people might re-visit their opinion of the LD performance given they've seen how the Conservatives have acted while ruling alone since.

EdgeCase

You also have to remember they've almost the polar opposite concept of what their relationship with the EU is to your average Irish person and have grown up in an environment that's almost always presented it as a negative or an external force that's been imposed upon them.

You can't really grow up with that in the background for your entire life and it not to have rubbed off to some degree.

The country is basically split down the middle and I find the divide is more about large urban and affluent vs small urban / rust belt areas.

It was very easy to spend time in London, Manchester and plenty of other places and have absolutely no idea what was going on in mid sized northern cities and towns and so on.

Ireland's actually FAR more homogeneous in terms of politics. We also have a system that was quite literally designed to create debate but always build consensus, rather than pitting two sides against each other in a tribal war.

It's very hard to explain just how tribal the UK can be in terms of politics if you've never lived there. It's something that sometimes fades into the background and can then become very starkly visible when tensions build.

You pick your tribe and apply your labels: people generally do quite strongly identify as a social class which can mean all sorts of things beyond the classic description. They also tend to describe the world in terms of class in a way that we don't and Americans don't. Even though it's a country with good social mobility it still clings to that in culture.

I know people with PhDs who had two professionals as parents who would identify as hardcore working class because they're from "the North" and I've other friends who grew up in relative poverty but are social climbers and consider themselves middle class and then you've upper class types who are highly privileged and most just avoid mentioning it, unless you turn up at an event where everyone went to Eaton or similar and all of a sudden you're very much the outsider. That also jumps out in work environments in London - on several occasions it was fairly clear that there was an old school tie network alive and well and it's far, far more blatent than anything I've see in Ireland. I'm not saying we're immune to it, but it's just not quite as baked into culture.

The class badge feeds into politics in a way that doesn't really exist here. You get people attempting to describe Ireland and Irish politics in terms of UK class divides and left/right dichotomy but it doesn't really work that.

That creates political tribes and I think to a large degree Brexiteer Vs Remainer has kind of exposed that divide in much the same was as Tory vs Labour did in the past before both parties reached out to the centre. It defines what newspapers you read and defines all sorts of things about attitudes and behaviours and expectations.

You've got working class / people who identify as such who include left wing and right wing and politically disaffected types, all of whom have identified as Brexiteers. They're perceiving remainers a middle class elite who go to university, sip lattes, read the guardian and watch newsnight etc

Trump tapped the same divides in the US but in England that's even easier to do as it's a far more engrained divide.

I would suspect what you'll see in England over the next few months is the beginnings of what will turn into something akin to the Poll Tax Riots, only far worse as it's brought out the far right this time. You can see the lines being drawn and the football hooligan type rhetoric building.

You either get civil unrest due to the right wingers not getting what they think Brexit is. Or, you'll get it after a crash out Brexit should the economy become very badly damaged.

Either way, I think you're in for turbulent times in England and you've also got inspiration for angry street protests coming from France, even if the English counterparts have a very different rational, they're adopting the same symbols and so on.

I just think we're looking at chaos in England over the next few months, regardless of what the outcome is.

Hurrache

Don't know how Davis hasn't been pensioned off to a retirement home yet
https://twitter.com/PeterKGeoghegan/status/1082551727537221632

Thomas_IV

mickoneill31 wrote: »

...

A mate of mine was showing me his mothers Facebook feed. She's English and is a fan of Brexit. Anything political in her feed is all anti EU and pro Brexit. Our social media encourages these bubbles. All she needs to add to that is read the Mail or Telegraph and she'll be pretty sure that Brexit is the what everybody wants. Then add in the mainstream media who seem to have Farage on or a Tory or Labour MP saying how Brexit is best for the country and you have all the bases covered.

That's exactly the way it works.

EdgeCase

Hurrache wrote: »

Don't know how Davis hasn't been pensioned off to a retirement home yet
https://twitter.com/PeterKGeoghegan/status/1082551727537221632

This all stems from a notion that if the UK stands there holding a gun to its own head that the EU will have to give it everything it wants to avoid a financial meltdown.

It's the most deranged and irresponsible diplomacy I have ever witnessed.

igCorcaigh

Peregrinus wrote: »

No, plently of them (on both sides) are very despondent about it. On one view the Brexit movement has long been fuelled by people who think that British politics, and the British political system, haven't worked for them or for people like them for a long time, and are angry about that. And now they're matched by people who look at the clown-car-heading-for-a-cliff that is the UK political system attempting to engage with Brexit, and who also conclude that, yeah, the British political system is quite seriously broken. It's possibly one of the few things you'd find widespread agreement on that spans the Leaver/Remainer divide.

That despondency is a global phenomenon now, and has been for some time. Brexit and Trumpism are symptoms of it.

And I still don't see any genuine attempt by the political system to address the underlying causes of it. Which makes for "interesting times".

Thomas_IV

EdgeCase wrote: »

You also have to remember they've almost the polar opposite concept of what their relationship with the EU is to your average Irish person and have grown up in an environment that's almost always presented it as a negative or an external force that's been imposed upon them.

You can't really grow up with that in the background for your entire life and it not to have rubbed off to some degree.

The country is basically split down the middle and I find the divide is more about large urban and affluent vs small urban / rust belt areas.

It was very easy to spend time in London, Manchester and plenty of other places and have absolutely no idea what was going on in mid sized northern cities and towns and so on.

Ireland's actually FAR more homogeneous in terms of politics. We also have a system that was quite literally designed to create debate but always build consensus, rather than pitting two sides against each other in a tribal war.

It's very hard to explain just how tribal the UK can be in terms of politics if you've never lived there. It's something that sometimes fades into the background and can then become very starkly visible when tensions build.

You pick your tribe and apply your labels: people generally do quite strongly identify as a social class which can mean all sorts of things beyond the classic description. They also tend to describe the world in terms of class in a way that we don't and Americans don't. Even though it's a country with good social mobility it still clings to that in culture.

I know people with PhDs who had two professionals as parents who would identify as hardcore working class because they're from "the North" and I've other friends who grew up in relative poverty but are social climbers and consider themselves middle class and then you've upper class types who are highly privileged and most just avoid mentioning it, unless you turn up at an event where everyone went to Eaton or similar and all of a sudden you're very much the outsider. That also jumps out in work environments in London - on several occasions it was fairly clear that there was an old school tie network alive and well and it's far, far more blatent than anything I've see in Ireland. I'm not saying we're immune to it, but it's just not quite as baked into culture.

The class badge feeds into politics in a way that doesn't really exist here. You get people attempting to describe Ireland and Irish politics in terms of UK class divides and left/right dichotomy but it doesn't really work that.

That creates political tribes and I think to a large degree Brexiteer Vs Remainer has kind of exposed that divide in much the same was as Tory vs Labour did in the past before both parties reached out to the centre. It defines what newspapers you read and defines all sorts of things about attitudes and behaviours and expectations.

You've got working class / people who identify as such who include left wing and right wing and politically disaffected types, all of whom have identified as Brexiteers. They're perceiving remainers a middle class elite who go to university, sip lattes, read the guardian and watch newsnight etc

Trump tapped the same divides in the US but in England that's even easier to do as it's a far more engrained divide.

I would suspect what you'll see in England over the next few months is the beginnings of what will turn into something akin to the Poll Tax Riots, only far worse as it's brought out the far right this time. You can see the lines being drawn and the football hooligan type rhetoric building.

You either get civil unrest due to the right wingers not getting what they think Brexit is. Or, you'll get it after a crash out Brexit should the economy become very badly damaged.

Either way, I think you're in for turbulent times in England and you've also got inspiration for angry street protests coming from France, even if the English counterparts have a very different rational, they're adopting the same symbols and so on.

I just think we're looking at chaos in England over the next few months, regardless of what the outcome is.

I think that this post sums it up really and the future prospect is rather bleak and more so when considering the reality that is to be expected when Brexit hits them (Brexiteers) home and they finally realise how much they've been led up the garden path.

Thomas_IV

EdgeCase wrote: »

This all stems from a notion that if the UK stands there holding a gun to its own head that the EU will have to give it everything it wants to avoid a financial meltdown.

It's the most deranged and irresponsible diplomacy I have ever witnessed.

Well, by that imagination, I wouldn't move a finger to hold them back from pulling the trigger on their own.

igCorcaigh

Thomas_IV wrote: »

I think that this post sums it up really and the future prospect is rather bleak and more so when considering the reality that is to be expected when Brexit hits them (Brexiteers) home and they finally realise how much they've been led up the garden path.

They'll probably blame the EU and/or the government.

Leroy42

EdgeCase wrote: »

This all stems from a notion that if the UK stands there holding a gun to its own head that the EU will have to give it everything it wants to avoid a financial meltdown.

It's the most deranged and irresponsible diplomacy I have ever witnessed.

Well, it is akin to the type of strategy followed by NK in terms of threatening the US. NK are well aware that any attack by them will lead to severe retribution, probably even massive death and destruction. But they gamble on the notion that the US will baulk at the threat of death and destruction to them as they have more to lose.

The UK are following the same 'logic'. While the outcome may well be far worse for themselves, they are banking on the EU being the grown ups in the room and not opting for the cliff edge.

It is desperate and shows a total lack of responsibility either to their own country of the wider international community, but at this stage they have nothing left to offer.

Even the latest wheeze from TM, that she is looking for assurances that a FTA will be completed by 2021, and thus remove any need for a backstop, is pie in the sky. They couldn't agree on how to leave in two years, what makes them think they can carry out a far more detailed and complicated negotiation within that time. And as Ian Dunt points in his recent article, the same divisions within the government and the HoC will still exist when the time comes to ratify any trade deal. Why would things be any different at that point?

EdgeCase

igCorcaigh wrote: »

They'll probably blame the EU and/or the government.

They'll blame whoever the tabloids decide to blame and the finger pointing certianly will not be directed at themselves. That's the one thing you can be very sure of.

prawnsambo

Leroy42 wrote: »

Well, it is akin to the type of strategy followed by NK in terms of threatening the US. NK are well aware that any attack by them will lead to severe retribution, probably even massive death and destruction. But they gamble on the notion that the US will baulk at the threat of death and destruction to them as they have more to lose.

The UK are following the same 'logic'. While the outcome may well be far worse for themselves, they are banking on the EU being the grown ups in the room and not opting for the cliff edge.

It is desperate and shows a total lack of responsibility either to their own country of the wider international community, but at this stage they have nothing left to offer.

Even the latest wheeze from TM, that she is looking for assurances that a FTA will be completed by 2021, and thus remove any need for a backstop, is pie in the sky. They couldn't agree on how to leave in two years, what makes them think they can carry out a far more detailed and complicated negotiation within that time. And as Ian Dunt points in his recent article, the same divisions within the government and the HoC will still exist when the time comes to ratify any trade deal. Why would things be any different at that point?

Never mind that none of them have ever negotiated or ratified a trade deal. The same lack of experience that's so evident in this fiasco will only be writ larger when there's serious negotiation to be done.

Leroy42

Seems as if the queues at Dover are even worse than have been put out already.

Story in the FT about

Trucks would face six-day queues to board ferries at Dover if new customs checks in the event of a no-deal Brexit were to delay each vehicle by just 70 seconds, according to government-commissioned research.

https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1082392124153311233

EdgeCase

The problem with that strategy is the EU will also assume that the UK government and its negotiators are grown ups.

They're not playing games and there won't be anyone, to catch the UK if it does fall. They would get assistance from the IMF but it certianly doesn't have the scale to bale out an economy that size

seamus

EdgeCase wrote: »

It's the most deranged and irresponsible diplomacy I have ever witnessed.

Davis is most likely another one who's moved all his money offshore. The UK holding out for unicorns is in his best interests.

Thomas_IV

igCorcaigh wrote: »

They'll probably blame the EU and/or the government.

I have not the slightest doubt about that as it will go that way, but maybe others who are not on the side of the far-right and right-wing thugs may try to get hold of those MPs who voted for this crap and maybe the one on the top of the list will be Farage, the very initiator of all that Brexit sh1te.

Some many Brexiteers are peope who have been deluded, other many Brexiteers are just plain stupid and swallow everything that comes from their Brexit leaders. What they both have in common is that they never really questioned the whole Brexit propaganda and that is something for which every single one of them is responsible for themselves.

But with a Labour leader who is himself a proven Brexiter, despite all his ill-efforts to deny it, the Remain camp is still on the losing side and this article below just shows that Corbyn is the master of ignorance because he will not follow the demands that come from his own Party basics, say members and other Labour representatives.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/08/labour-grassroots-step-up-anti-brexit-pressure-on-jeremy-corbyn

Labour grassroots step up anti-Brexit pressure on Jeremy Corbyn
200 party branches expected to support push for second referendum on leaving EU

I've been following this Brexit topic closely for the past 2 1/2 years and it is really sickening to watch them two big parties in the UK gambling with the future of the younger generation which is mainly pro-EU and just some of them are still for Brexit, despite all the facts they know.

It is - as usual - all just about being in power which is quite the core of politics, just that with Brexit it is more than that and Corbyn can dump his marxist-socialist manifesto already cos there won't be that much money left after Brexit to finance his aims and program set out in his manifesto of 2015. What followed after that in the years since is nothing but the same just put in new phrases.

If it wasn't for the threat this Brexit poses on the Republic of Irelands economy, but also opens up new opportunities as UK based companies are already about to re-locate their HQs to other EU member states, one could say (given some anti-Brit sentiments and a growing feeling of satisfaction by the expectation to see the Brits suffer from their own shoot in the foot), they deserved it for what they did to Ireland for more than 700 years and more so cos they have brought it all onto themselves by themselves.

I neither have such sentiments nor that feeling, as for I watch this idiocy going on in despair. More so with despair as a growing nationalism across the EU is following the same patterns just that by now, the majority of the People in the many EU member states are not following the delusions brought up their own far-right parties in their countries. Brexit will state an example for many, but one has to draw the right and rational consequences from it. That means that the EU has to reform itself and this is also the task for every national govt of the EU member states as well cos they are responsible for the way the EU developes in the first place but this is a point from the many facts which are a) always omitted by the anti-EU politicians and b) is overlooked by the many anti-EU followers.

I hope that when Juncker is retired from his present office, the EU will start with reformations cos with him in office, there is no progress but just stagnation.