Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

If your suggesting Labour should have tried to stop article 50 I would say you are dead wrong. The vote happened and should have been ratified.

And if you think Labour are currently sitting round saying nothing you haven't been paying much attention.

I didn’t think that the factuality of the *consultative* nature of the 2016 referendum needed to be revisited this late in the debate, particularly between posters like us long well-versed into facts and nuances of ‘all things Brexit’.

There was no constitutional imperative to ‘ratify’ anything and, given the narrowness of result, arguably not much more of a political imperative either. The political testiculations that followed June 2016 in the UK, and eventually resulted in triggering Article 50 were naked political opportunism by the Conservatives, with no regard whatsoever for regional vote variances, never mind the collective national interest. Labour just followed the mood music conducted by the Tories, aided as they were by the red tops.

I don’t think Labour are “sitting round saying nothing”: I see that Labour are riding many of the Tories 2.0 proto-fascistic narratives that appeal to an ever-narrower set of elderly and nationalist voters, and not doing much of any opposing to the government’s ever more autocratic measures. To all intents and purposes, perceptually, they’re just waiting their expected turn at the troughs come 2024.

Then again, given the Tories’ ongoing jerrymandering of electoral boundaries, voting mechanisms (e.g. IDs) and more, they may come a fresh cropper again then.

I’m just back from spending Xmas with the Brit in-laws. South Yorks / Bassetlaw area, ex-mining/steelworks country, pure Labour heartland (since fallen in thrall to Tories 2.0 ofc). If you care to find my post(s) of the time of my last visit there last year (April ‘22 IIRC), in which I lamented the clear pauperisation of the area since we left in 2018…it’s got vastly worse since. Unsurprisingly. More businesses shut, others noticeably downscaled, major A roads in dire disrepair, health and Council services on their @rse, (…) It felt like a third world country, some hole in the furthest reaches of Eastern Europe coming out of a few decades’ worth of failed Communism. It’s not provincial Russia or Belarus (as you’d see them on e.g. YouTube dashcam vids and such)…but that’s the perceptible direction of travel.

What is Labour proposing to help them get out of the rut? Beside less immigrants and an end to Channel dinghies? A referendum about rejoining? Rejoining is not in their gift, so would be just more electioneering and little else.

Watching that show made me think for the first time that the Brexit vote could actually pass. Corbyn was totally unenthused about the EU.

But he did make lots of effort in trying to build his own image - the opening of that episode of The Last Leg was ridiculous.

EU nations have their national champions that receive indirect protection and subsidy via local tax rebates like German car makers, French electricity producers, Spanish football clubs etc...

When the Apple tax case was being examined another example showed how a French domestic industry reduced its CTR to 0% via local tax options which is most likely where the common CTR was proposed as a compromise. The level playing field is more like a heaving carpet of compromises.

Just as a point of order for the avoidance of doubt: I haven’t been laying “the article 50 thing” at Labour.

I have laid Labour’s endorsement of it in the HoC, at its feet. Labour’s job, as a functional opposition acting in the common general interest, was to oppose it as hard as it could, given the socio-economic forecasts of the time (validated since, currently running at 5.5% GDP hit) and the total absence of plans/direction/policies/proposals about what form ‘Brexit’ should take, in the context of the Article 50 procedure timescale and its irreversible character (the CJEU case which determined its reversibility was not run until much later). Instead, 3-line whip to jump off the Brexity procedural cliff with the shouty gammonesque Tory lemmings.

Theresa May’s government hand delivered the Article 50 notice to the president of the European Council in Brussels on 29 March 2017.

The most notable Court case about the Article 50 notice was the Miller case, filed at the time because May’s government was proposing to deliver the notice without Parliamentary due process or approval, and from which Parliament’s sovereignty was restated. It was a seminal case, and it pays well to remember why it even had to be taken, in this supposed ‘mother of all democracies’ 🙄

On the balance I think corbyn thought EU membership a distraction from his domestic class war agenda. He actually resonated well compared to May whereas his jingoism was trumped by bojo.

But labour as a party remained neutral and decide on a later date. Indeed 25 mps wrote to corbyn asecond vote would be toxic . https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-45640548

So the membership, MPs and voters were remain. Therefore Labour as a party did not lean leave as was suggested.

The leadership was pro leave as I said but half heartily went with the position of the majority of the party.

At the time of the vote, no-one was particularly interested in Labours views on the matter.

From a broadcasters point of view, it was far more politically sexy to have a debate line up of say Heseltine, Osbourne & Rudd up against Hannan/Farage, Leadsom/IDS and Boris Johnson. Heavy hitters, and a bit of blue on blue Tory infighting. The Labour Remain campaign (headed by Alan Johnson) was marginalised. Sadiq Khan, Hilary Benn and Chuka Umuna contributed a bit but no-one was particularly interested. It didn't help Corbyn that he was only in the leadership job for a few months so his opinion was unimportant.

Crucially, I think it's clear that Cameron never asked for Labour help as he thought he was going to win anyway, so the full mobilisation of the Westminster machine never happened. I suspect Cameron was annoyed that Gordon Brown had got so much of the credit for the Scot Indy Ref win, and wanted the glory himself this time.

That’s a great summary. I think that labour were completely outplayed and outsmarted would th regards to the process and machinery from closing down parliament at the queens signature to any knowledge or constructive challenge on the article 50 process. But they probably were comfortable with that as they believed that the conservative brexit negotiators would get the agreement that had been tacitly agreed in high level. It was on nobody’s horizon that they would we would be left with a complete lack of deal and calling it a triumph.

Labour were completely lacking any.person that was capable of bringing the correct requirements to everyone’s attention so that they had a control of the benchmark of what should be in place. It’s no coincidence that Nigel Farage and Tim Martin from Wetherspoons had such a considerable input into the debate. I can’t think of any labour superstar who was dependable. Indeed we had your one dianne about using her fingers as she tried to explain police budget spends.

The use of the term "rejoining" risks complicating the discussion, because it implies that Britain will enjoy the membership advantages it had up to the date of leaving. This is not the case: it will be an application for new membership, along the same lines as Ukraine, Serbia or Albania.

By the time such an application comes to be made, there would be no certainty that the United Kingdom included the same constituent countries, and it's entirely possible that two of the current regions will have already been admitted to the EU, or have an application in the works. Furthermore, it's possible that the regulatory environment and overall socio-political objectives of in what remains of GB and the future EU will have diverged to a non-neglible degree. So the relative value of having England&MiscellaneousAdjacentTerritories as a member would not warrant anything like the concessions and opt-outs offered to the UK in 1973.

Talk of re-joining by the most enthusiastic supporters frequently implies that it would only be a question of clicking the T&Cs check-box and paying the membership fee. There is rarely any acknowledgement that what remains of the UK will have to bow down before the EU and politely request admission to the club. Some member states in a future EU weighted more towards the east than the west might decide that they haven't had quite enough time to enjoy the fruits of their new-found influence on policy making and suggest that Britain sits on the sidelines for a while longer.

Indeed, the whole 'sovereignty' thing has been blown out of the water in the last 12 months. Some vague, nebulous concept of how laws are drafted and meanwhile Brexit UK is heading into a big recession and is powerless to stop it. I've also seen suggestions that the EU countries actually have far more sovereignty than Britain because of their collective clout and bargaining power i.e. being part of a powerful team brings many freedoms in fact.