Brexit discussion thread IX (Please read OP before posting)

J Mysterio

[Deleted User] wrote: »

He was elected Mayor of London before Brexit was a major issue, so he was already a well known figure but don't forget that he was a remainer three years ago.

Three years is a long time in politics. Boris is PM because of his Brexiteer credentials, it cant be argued otherwise. It is also true that he has banged the Brexit drum since the vote result, when he went with the 'incorrect' article. Since that time, he has done his bit to lie, obfuscticate and spread propoganda.

J Mysterio

fash wrote: »

Of concern is that brexit does not solve the drivers that led to brexit - it makes things (economically and socially) worse. The situation will only get worse when brexit happens and they need to look for traitors to explain why the glorious revolution has failed.

As mentioned, it will likely be the EU, 'refusing to negotiate' which caused NDB. It can be framed as Versailles - world powers (in this case the EU), conspiring to ensure that the UK is kept down. They can tap the nationalism well again, (untill it is eventually and inevitably exhausted).

The concern is where they go from there. Worst case scenario is they jump straight into the US bed, a country which is also on a dark path, and make UK - EU and UK - Ireland relations (particularly as concerns NI), even worse. A bonfire of standards and regulations !

Sam Russell

J Mysterio wrote: »

As mentioned, it will likely be the EU, 'refusing to negotiate' which caused NDB. It can be framed as Versailles - world powers (in this case the EU), conspiring to ensure that the UK is kept down. They can tap the nationalism well again, (untill it is eventually and inevitably exhausted).

The concern is where they go from there. Worst case scenario is they jump straight into the US bed, a country which is also on a dark path, and make UK - EU and UK - Ireland relations (particularly as concerns NI), even worse. A bonfire of standards and regulations !

Let us hope that Nancy Pelosi has our backs.

Strazdas

fash wrote: »

Of concern is that brexit does not solve the drivers that led to brexit - it makes things (economically and socially) worse. The situation will only get worse when brexit happens and they need to look for traitors to explain why the glorious revolution has failed.

It's quite shocking the way they are smashing ahead with Brexit, knowing that it is toxic and deeply divisive. You'd have to wonder if there is any emotional intelligence among the Brexiteers. Even the 50p Brexit coin thing is symbolic of the crassness and divisiveness of the issue.

Leroy42

They firmly believe they are right. Just as we think that eventually the UK must come to its senses, they believe that the UK is so important as to be ones that will be proven right.

Yesterday IDS claimed that a mistake the UK had made was to treat the EU as friends and expect the same in return. When in fact the EU had simply treated it like a business negotiation.

They see the US diving in to try to get closer to the UK, part of a bidding war with the EU. Which of you needs and wants us more.

Even the recent interview with the Chancellor about the negative GDP. He blamed it on Q1 stockpiling, caused entirely by the Tory party. With not a hint of an acceptance that the Tories were not massive quarterly fluctuations based on bad decisions.

J Mysterio

Strazdas wrote: »

It's quite shocking the way they are smashing ahead with Brexit, knowing that it is toxic and deeply divisive. You'd have to wonder if there is any emotional intelligence among the Brexiteers. Even the 50p Brexit coin thing is symbolic of the crassness and divisiveness of the issue.

The 50p Brexit coin is a handy way for the Exchequer to take in a bit of extra cash as their currency is crashing. Genius really as they will sell the coins for more than they are worth.

Also another nice bit of Brexit propoganda for the gullible to get excited about.

fash

Strazdas wrote: »

It's quite shocking the way they are smashing ahead with Brexit, knowing that it is toxic and deeply divisive. You'd have to wonder if there is any emotional intelligence among the Brexiteers. Even the 50p Brexit coin thing is symbolic of the crassness and divisiveness of the issue.

They have to proceed with no deal because there is no deal which they can agree on. Any deal will come with some downsides and there will be a majority opposed to any concrete form of brexit. Hence no deal - the only form of brexit without nuance. Thus even though it is divisive for remainer types, for brexiters it is pure and holy - the holy virgin brexit. As the remainers are divided, (see how no-one is saying "we will stop no deal whatever it takes, whatever the cost"), who cares what they think - uniting leave voters is sufficient.

Water John

There are voices in the HOC saying 'we will block no deal, whatever the cost'.
Some Tory MPs are willing to bring down the Govn't to stop it, not many, but maybe enough.
For some it may be their last duty as public representative.

Strazdas

fash wrote: »

They have to proceed with no deal because there is no deal which they can agree on. Any deal will come with some downsides and there will be a majority opposed to any concrete form of brexit. Hence no deal - the only form of brexit without nuance. Thus even though it is divisive for remainer types, for brexiters it is pure and holy - the holy virgin brexit. As the remainers are divided, (see how no-one is saying "we will stop no deal whatever it takes, whatever the cost"), who cares what they think - uniting leave voters is sufficient.

They've completely reinvented the narrative though. Elephant in the room is that No Deal represents the total failure of everything that was promised in 2016. Nobody on their side can even admit that Brexit has failed and the British public were sold a pup.

fash

Strazdas wrote: »

They've completely reinvented the narrative though. Elephant in the room is that No Deal represents the total failure of everything that was promised in 2016. Nobody on their side can even admit that Brexit has failed and the British public were sold a pup.

Well that is it: either you admit "ha, ha, looks like we were wrong, oops!" or you press forward to a "pristine" no deal and blame those sabotaging the wonderful amazing dream. Considering those selling Brexit were always spivs, there was only ever 1 option.

Strazdas

fash wrote: »

Well that is it: either you admit "ha, ha, looks like we were wrong, oops!" or you press forward to a "pristine" no deal and blame those sabotaging the wonderful amazing dream. Considering those selling Brexit were always spivs, there was only ever 1 option.

It's the denial of the failure of Brexit that is the most galling. No Deal is not just "a Brexit outcome". It's the absolute failure of everything that was promised by Vote Leave in 2016.

Having said that, you have millions of Leave voters now claiming they voted for No Deal....lying to themselves in other words. When you're dealing with this level of delusion and lies, perhaps the trashing of the UK economy is the only thing that will snap them out of it.

fash

Strazdas wrote: »

When you're dealing with this level of delusion and lies, perhaps the trashing of the UK economy is the only thing that will snap them out of it.

It will only be the historians who will say that. Those who voted for Brexit will die believing in it.

upupup

The British Empire has a history of subjugating People.
They started on their own people first...ie royalty,nobles vs peasants.
They then went out into the world with this standard of civilization and really believed that they were better and this is still ingrained in the rich and the poor of the empire..over 50% of the population

They have tried to put the "Eu in their place"/subjugate, but it hasn't worked.
They now have no one to subjugate so they are back to doing it to their own people and this can be seen in BREXIT!.its a cultural thing in the same way we have our own cultural problems but theirs is out of control and it can not be put back in its box.
It needs to run its course and no amount of evidence will change their view(not all but over 50% of the population)

The remainers are now being "subjugated":( and this is why they seem quiet

jimmycrackcorm

I'm amused that the Brexiteer cabinet are claiming that they should not be subject to the agreement negotiated under May given their change of cabinet.

It's like a group of underage teenagers trying to buy alcohol from a shop and they send in one guy who gets refused only to try send in a second, all while the shop assistant is watching them outside the window.

greencap

Strazdas wrote: »

It's the denial of the failure of Brexit that is the most galling. No Deal is not just "a Brexit outcome". It's the absolute failure of everything that was promised by Vote Leave in 2016.

Having said that, you have millions of Leave voters now claiming they voted for No Deal....lying to themselves in other words. When you're dealing with this level of delusion and lies, perhaps the trashing of the UK economy is the only thing that will snap them out of it.

just too bad theyll take europes economy with them. (lesser extent)
especially us.

J Mysterio

Here was an interesting angle in the Irish Times (has been saved in an open tab for a few days!). There are views of several senior Irish ex diplomats here, whose views are all worth looking at, but to quote one from the article:

Britain has always struggled to take Ireland seriously, say Irish ex-diplomats

Through years spent operating at the top of Anglo-Irish relations, Irish ex-diplomat Séan Ó hUigínn detected what he sees as a curious gap in British thinking when dealing with Irish matters.”

Ó hUigínn has good reason to know. One of the most distinguished diplomats of his era, he served as joint secretary of the British-Irish Secretariat in Belfast, established after the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985; led the Anglo-Irish division in the Department of Foreign Affairs; and served as Ireland’s ambassador to five different countries, including the United States.

Speaking to The Irish Times in his Dublin home this week as fears grow of a no-deal Brexit, Ó hUigínn said issues Britain would take seriously in any other context “can be disregarded if it comes with an Irish label”.

Mirroring the attitudes of other senior officials who dealt with British-Irish relations at key moments over the past 40 years, Ó hUigínn, now retired, views Brexit as a policy that “seems unhinged”.

... “The British do not engage very willingly with or about Ireland, ” Ó hUigínn says. “Burke said that the English have only one ambition in relation to Ireland, which is to hear no more about it. And that is still not a bad working maxim if you want to analyse British relations.

“When they have to focus on it, there is another mechanism which comes into play which I would call the Irish anomaly. Something that would be taken very seriously in another context can be disregarded if it comes with an Irish label. The Border is a classic example of this.

“Why didn’t the British focus on the fact that they had an extensive land border with the European Union? The answer is that it was in Ireland. It wasn’t serious.”

An exhibit of this, he argues, were comments made by former UK Brexit secretary David Davis just days after the initial Brexit joint report first containing the backstop, the insurance policy to avoid a hard Border, was signed in December 2017.

Davis told the BBC the backstop was “much more a statement of intent than it was a legally enforceable thing”.

“He gave a very broad wink to the British public,” says Ó hUigínn. “This is Irish stuff. Don’t take it too seriously. And I think there’s a kind of psychological shock among the Tories that the Europeans don’t seem to grasp this fundamental convention.”

briany

Strazdas wrote: »

They've completely reinvented the narrative though. Elephant in the room is that No Deal represents the total failure of everything that was promised in 2016. Nobody on their side can even admit that Brexit has failed and the British public were sold a pup.

Brexiteer politicians have successfully wriggled out of every single promise they made in the lead-up to the ref, either by playing with semantics or by blaming the EU and Remain supporters for sabotage.

It's been most helpful to the Brexit side that literature concerning what, exactly, Brexit would look like was so very, very thin on the ground. When the Scottish government set out its independence campaign, it made a 600-page book on what it intended Scottish independence to look like. The Brexiteers distributed a poxy leaflet.

Strazdas

briany wrote: »

Brexiteer politicians have successfully wriggled out of every single promise they made in the lead-up to the ref, either by playing with semantics or by blaming the EU and Remain supporters for sabotage.

It's been most helpful to the Brexit side that literature concerning what, exactly, Brexit would look like was so very, very thin on the ground. When the Scottish government set out its independence campaign, it made a 600-page book on what it intended Scottish independence to look like. The Brexiteers distributed a poxy leaflet.

They never expected to win of course. One of the key explainers of the Brexit shambles is that Johnson, Farage, the right wing press etc fully expected the referendum to be lost, hence all the lies.

They've spent the last three years trying to create a narrative of how Brexit is a good thing, even though it was always a terrible idea. This process has failed, so now they have switched to No Deal being a good thing.

briany

Strazdas wrote: »

They never expected to win of course. One of the key explainers of the Brexit shambles is that Johnson, Farage, the right wing press etc fully expected the referendum to be lost, hence all the lies.

They've spent the last three years trying to create a narrative of how Brexit is a good thing, even though it was always a terrible idea. This process has failed, so now they have switched to No Deal being a good thing.

Did none of the leading Brexiteers read the polls? It was neck and neck in the run up to the referendum. I'd have been hedging my bets.

Sam Russell

briany wrote: »

Did none of the leading Brexiteers read the polls? It was neck and neck in the run up to the referendum. I'd have been hedging my bets.

I think they believed their own lies, and besides it was too late to formulate plans.

They never thought about the border in NI.

Kermit.de.frog

Sam Russell wrote: »

I think they believed their own lies, and besides it was too late to formulate plans.

They never thought about the border in NI.

Most of them thought we are still part of the UK and didn't even know there was a border in my opinion.

Really.

Sam Russell

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Most of them thought we are still part of the UK and didn't even know there was a border in my opinion.

Really.

I think those were too young to vote, or never watched the news from 1969 to 1995. I doubt the 30,000 troops that guarded it were in any doubt about the border.

Kermit.de.frog

Sam Russell wrote: »

I think those were too young to vote, or never watched the news from 1969 to 1995. I doubt the 30,000 troops that guarded it were in any doubt about the border.

I'd say most Brexit voters (i don't mean obviously military or people with experience of the border) either genuinely didn't know or didn't care that there was a border here. The evidence for one or the other or a mix of both is pretty overwhelming to be honest.

Lackadaisical

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Most of them thought we are still part of the UK and didn't even know there was a border in my opinion.

Really.

I've encountered some incredible ignorance in the UK about where Ireland is, what the Republic of Ireland is and so on. I remember one example of going to a doctor in London when I was over there for a few weeks on a business trip and bringing my EHIC card. She looked at me in total befuddlement as to why I didn't have UK national insurance number (their version of a PPSN). I explained I was from Ireland and she said "but that doesn't explain why you don't have an NI number. Do you not have an NHS number?!" I explained again that it was a different country and this appeared to be the first time in her life that she actually raised that the Republic of Ireland wasn't just like Scotland or some slightly different UK jurisdiction.

It surprised me, as I would have assumed that a GP would have a good bit of general knowledge, but clearly it just never crossed her focus at any stage!

She was absolutely charming and very happy to help, but just this was the first time that she'd ever thought about it.

She also explained that it confused her because she'd encountered people from the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey etc and had assumed maybe it worked a bit like that and that some of the Scottish NHS systems are also completely different.

I wouldn't necessarily say it's any kind of wilful ignorance on most people's parts, rather they were simply never told the facts about their nearest neighbours or even about how the jurisdictions within the UK itself work. They also don't tend to assume we're 'foreign' as Irish and British people have that special status under the CTA the nationality doesn't really matter. I think they genuinely largely seem to think Ireland's just another UK region, unless they've actually paid attention to it.

It's remarkably ignorant, but then again ask your average Irish person to name a few English counties and you get the same kind of bewildered blankness. The same occurs if you ask Americans about Canada or French people about the language divide in Belgium or something like that. People often have far less knowledge than they think they do!

I think though when it comes to people talking about European affairs on TV and any MP at this stage, not knowing the facts about this stuff is utterly inexcusable at this stage.

briany

Lackadaisical wrote: »

It's remarkably ignorant, but then again ask your average Irish person to name a few English counties and you get the same kind of bewildered blankness. The same occurs if you ask Americans about Canada or French people about the language divide in Belgium or something like that. People often have far less knowledge than they think they do!

Ah, now here. I may not now exactly where to place Derbyshire on a map, but I do know where England is located and that it's a separate country. British people not even realising that Ireland is a separate country is a whole other level of ignorance. What were they learning in geography class? How do their extrapolation skills fail so spectacularly when they hear the words, "Northern Ireland" listed in the constituent countries of the UK?

volchitsa

Sam Russell wrote: »

I think those were too young to vote, or never watched the news from 1969 to 1995. I doubt the 30,000 troops that guarded it were in any doubt about the border.

Well they very often used to find themselves "accidentally" on the wrong side of it back in the day, so perhaps those of us who were sceptical about their motives were being too harsh, and they genuinely didn't grasp the whole concept?

johnnyskeleton

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

I'm amused that the Brexiteer cabinet are claiming that they should not be subject to the agreement negotiated under May given their change of cabinet.

It's like a group of underage teenagers trying to buy alcohol from a shop and they send in one guy who gets refused only to try send in a second, all while the shop assistant is watching them outside the window.

By that logic, Theresa May wasnt bound by the referendum because it happened under Cameron. But I guess consistency is a valuable commodity these days!

Lackadaisical

briany wrote: »

Ah, now here. I may not now exactly where to place Derbyshire on a map, but I do know where England is located and that it's a separate country. British people not even realising that Ireland is a separate country is a whole other level of ignorance. What were they learning in geography class? How do their extrapolation skills fail so spectacularly when they hear the words, "Northern Ireland" listed in the constituent countries of the UK?

Well, I've been asked "is there a sea between the North and South of Ireland".
I've had a UK company send my phone number to a US company as +44 353 21 555 XXXX. The same company in the states figured it out, and asked me "Are you sure the address is Cork T23 XXXX, United Kingdom.. we didn't think it was..." I've dealt with tourists who were shocked to discover that £ sterling aren't accepted in Cork.

The one I regularly get is people demanding to be able to pay by BACS rather than IBAN and not accepting that I want payment in Euro not Sterling, as per the invoice and agreement.

I also had "I thought it was the same country, you have 3 pin plugs!"

Generally the level of general ignorance about the geography is mind-boggling, but I mean it seems to apply to their own internal geography too.

The aspect that shocks me most is the cognitive dissonance that allows them to disown 19th century Irish history, as if we just ran the country into the ground all by ourselves. Even reading a book that referred to "Irish refugees fleeing the famine to Britain." when at the time Ireland was part of the UK and they were simply fleeing from a UK region that had been so mismanaged (by their government) that people were literally starving. Every one of the Irish who fled to the US in the 19th century in starving circumstances were British citizens/subjects and were departing from the UK. An independent Ireland didn't exist at the time.

Nobody talks about Irish independence as the partial dissolution of the UK, which it was.
Nobody mentions that they shelled and burnt their own cities i.e. Dublin and Cork.

Also, they seem to think Northern Ireland's not part of the UK when it is causing any kind of turmoil it's suddenly "Ireland" and when anyone suggests that it might leave it's "the UK.." When you look at it objectively, almost the entire 'troubles' occurred in the UK (with the notable exceptions of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings), the entire conflict occurred in Northern Ireland (a part of the UK) and the major atrocities that were committed beyond that were mostly in England. Yet, somehow it's seen as somehow our problem!?!

Whether you've a nationalist or unionist outlook, the cognitive dissonance and selective blindness in British circles is baffling at times.

It's very much a case of "those who don't know their own history are doomed to repeat it."
I think the UK absolutely needs to take ownership of its past here. I'm not saying they should wallow in it, but they should know it in much the same way as they know about the order of Tudor kings in huge detail.

johnnyskeleton

What I cant figure out is the line about not putting up a border in the event of a no deal, so there will only be a border if Ireland puts it up. Even the (relatively) smarter Brexiteers parrot this line e.g. Jacob Rees Mogg.

But I just cant see how that is compatible with taking control of their borders.

Re: the Taoiseach meeting the Prime Minister, Im guessing he will just restate what has been said before, maybe with some future relationship talk. But the ourpose of meeting is purely goodwill, for Ireland to say at least we tried. I cant see anything else coming of it

Kermit.de.frog

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

What I cant figure out is the line about not putting up a border in the event of a no deal, so there will only be a border if Ireland puts it up. Even the (relatively) smarter Brexiteers parrot this line e.g. Jacob Rees Mogg.

But I just cant see how that is compatible with taking control of their borders.

Re: the Taoiseach meeting the Prime Minister, Im guessing he will just restate what has been said before, maybe with some future relationship talk. But the ourpose of meeting is purely goodwill, for Ireland to say at least we tried. I cant see anything else coming of it

A meeting makes no sense for Johnson. The reason he won't meet with leaders in Europe is because he does not want the optics of being told 'no' and being sent on his way.

Can't see this meeting happening for some time.

In fact it would not surprise me if the G7 is the only time he meets Merkel and Macron ahead of a UK general election.