You will never make wazzock Brexit absolutists happy. Its always betrayal, always has been since we joined, and still is now that we "Sadly we have a Government that hasn't implemented Brexit". And will continue to be betrayal whatever happens. We're already seeing the return of FUKUK as a political threat to the Tories and that will only grow. They can't be bought off like last time as what they want is impossible to deliver. So watch as FUK candidates destroy the Tory majorities in seats across the country.
It will be interesting (and painful) to observe the parallels between the Tories and the headbangers and the Republicans and MAGA
Both tried appeasement
Both are now infiltrated and infected
How either of them eventually expels the poison will be instructive
I would quite like the Conservative and Unionist Party to tell the Brexiteers to fuck off and try their luck with the electorate, but I don't see it happening. Yet.
It will be fascinating to watch. Utter tools like Lee Anderson and the guy I can't be bothered to look up in Blackpool. These people not only speak against their constituents, they actively blame their constituents for the mess they are in. So at the election we will have someone like Anderson shouting abuse at the local WWC, and a REFUK candidate demanding that WWC people will only be free once they allow Rees-Mogg to chain them to the treadmill to generate power.
As I have said many times the red wall is not stupid. Its now patently obvious what the Brexit game is, and having been promised the moon on a stick, told it was easy then realised there is no stick, they are not going to back either Tory Morons or FUKUK morons. I expect large numbers not to vote for anyone.
You will never make wazzock Brexit absolutists happy. Its always betrayal, always has been since we joined, and still is now that we "Sadly we have a Government that hasn't implemented Brexit". And will continue to be betrayal whatever happens. We're already seeing the return of FUKUK as a political threat to the Tories and that will only grow. They can't be bought off like last time as what they want is impossible to deliver. So watch as FUK candidates destroy the Tory majorities in seats across the country.
It will be interesting (and painful) to observe the parallels between the Tories and the headbangers and the Republicans and MAGA
Both tried appeasement
Both are now infiltrated and infected
How either of them eventually expels the poison will be instructive
I would quite like the Conservative and Unionist Party to tell the Brexiteers to fuck off and try their luck with the electorate, but I don't see it happening. Yet.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
Rejoining with no referendum, especially if winning party gets under 50% of the vote, is a fantastic way to give an immediate leave (again) campaign moral justification given we left after a referendum.
If pro-EU types actually want us to stay in then getting the authority of a referendum is helpful. The alternative, scummy, way of making it impossible to leave by integrating us as much as possible as rapidly would just piss people off even more.
We elect politicians to make the key decisions that impact peoples lives. The Brexit referendum was totally unnecessary and was used to lance the filthy boil in the filthy Conservative party.
We are thus in a suboptimal position where we will continue to fall back internationally. It may take 10 years or so the correct this self inflicted calamity.
You will never make wazzock Brexit absolutists happy. Its always betrayal, always has been since we joined, and still is now that we "Sadly we have a Government that hasn't implemented Brexit". And will continue to be betrayal whatever happens. We're already seeing the return of FUKUK as a political threat to the Tories and that will only grow. They can't be bought off like last time as what they want is impossible to deliver. So watch as FUK candidates destroy the Tory majorities in seats across the country.
It will be interesting (and painful) to observe the parallels between the Tories and the headbangers and the Republicans and MAGA
Both tried appeasement
Both are now infiltrated and infected
How either of them eventually expels the poison will be instructive
I would quite like the Conservative and Unionist Party to tell the Brexiteers to fuck off and try their luck with the electorate, but I don't see it happening. Yet.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
Surely the assumption is that Starmer is lying to red wall voters about his stance on Brexit the way he lied to Corbynite Labour members about his stance on cultism?
Tactically I think both were the right approach. He could like to cranks knowing they would leave / get expelled anyway. He can lie to the red wall as they are already noting there is no stick on offer to stick the moon on, and will be receptive to Starmer's shock discovery of that once in government.
The idea that Labour will implement that part of their programme is as funny as thinking Ken Clarke would stick to his economic programme post-97. Which if you recall Clarke himself chuckled at and said there was never any intention to do the 2 years of hair-shirtism done by Labour post-97 when it stuck to his plan.
. And, it has given us more flexibility in foreign policy, as we are no longer bound by the CFSP, which meant we could act faster on things Ukraine
Poland and the Baltic states did more for Ukraine, more quickly while being in the EU.
The EU took a long time to reach a political position on Ukraine and, when it emerged, it was clearly influenced by embarrassment at the UK and US taking the lead on things like supplying arms, cutting tariffs and strong unambiguous statements of political support. That's different to the Baltic States and Poland looking to their own defences and screaming blue murder at the EU to do more, which they still haven't fully stepped up to do.
I think some on the other side are just temperamentally unable to accept that the EU itself has any disadvantages, or ever gets it wrong, which is precisely why their histrionics over the benefits of Rejoin should be so readily dismissed.
Morning all! I watched the interview with Rishi Sunak, and was impressed by the number of times he referred to “stopping the boats“. I’m all in favour of preventing people risking their lives, crossing the channel, but I am equally in favour of people with the right to asylum achieving asylum here. I have a feeling that our p.m. is in favour of the first, but opposed to the second!
Brexit is an institution. An institution that is yet to deliver any benefits whatsoever. There is nothing on the horizon. Whether you were Leave or Remain the sensible thing to do is to ask what was the point.
In an era where growth is the priority, Brexit is an institution holding us back.
This simply isn't the case. Brexit has ended our domestic politics being dominated by federalist initiatives of the European Commission and the European Council, and questionable rulings of the European Court of Justice. It has ended any further moves to Ever Closer Union. And, it has given us more flexibility in foreign policy, as we are no longer bound by the CFSP, which meant we could act faster on things Ukraine and, also, weren't under political pressure to join the EU vaccine programme (heavily criticised on here at the time) which allowed us to do our own thing.
Yes, it also raises non-tarrif barriers in trading with the continent and the price of that agility, dynamism and independence is we have to accept those costs and take the risk of leading by example from the outside, rather than slowly influencing behind closed doors - not always successfully - within the European institutions.
Both positions are perfectly reasonable ones to take. The EU also suffers from high inflation, sclerotic growth and higher unemployment- even within the eurozone - and it's own web of political problems.
Readmission would reduce the UK-EU trading barriers, at the price of all the political costs listed above, and that's about it. It would solve none of our short, medium and long-term problems and once we were back in we'd be having exactly the same frustrated debates as before.
It is not a solution to anything. The reason emotions are so high about it is because Values - the Rejoin movement are hoping to exploit present frustrations over the economic situation to further their internationalist political objectives, and possibly then some, and it's as plain as day to anyone who's looking properly.
The Leave campaign made a lot of promises that turned out not to be true. The government insisted on the hardest possible Brexit deal short of no deal at all. The issue is not Brexit itself, but the way it’s been done. Because of that, there is an opportunity to rethink it and make it much less onerous. That’s the way to some palpable positives appearing. If this route is not chosen, though - if the experienced costs continue to significantly outweigh the perceived benefits - the pressure to Rejoin is only going to increase.
Look, even I am able to see that the present form of Brexit isn't politically sustainable - and I would have always been happy with EFTA or even EEA-EFTA with an emergency brake and said so as much throughout 2017-2019 - but that does not mean the answer is to swing to the other extreme, pretend it never happened, *and* join Schengen and the Euro on top.
That is simply barking and likely to lead to an even nastier backlash the other way in future when the consequences of that political and economic straitjacket become apparent.
The median position of the typical British voter has been and remains what it has always been: membership of a common market, freedom to travel for work and pleasure (within reason) and good relations, but no political or economic union or judicial supremacy outside these islands.
. And, it has given us more flexibility in foreign policy, as we are no longer bound by the CFSP, which meant we could act faster on things Ukraine
Poland and the Baltic states did more for Ukraine, more quickly while being in the EU.
The EU took a long time to reach a political position on Ukraine and, when it emerged, it was clearly influenced by embarrassment at the UK and US taking the lead on things like supplying arms, cutting tariffs and strong unambiguous statements of political support. That's different to the Baltic States and Poland looking to their own defences and screaming blue murder at the EU to do more, which they still haven't fully stepped up to do.
I think some on the other side are just temperamentally unable to accept that the EU itself has any disadvantages, or ever gets it wrong, which is precisely why their histrionics over the benefits of Rejoin should be so readily dismissed.
Isn't the point that the EU isn't really that relevant on this one? You said that being out of the EU meant we could act faster on Ukraine. But Poland is in the UK and did more faster than we did on Ukraine.
. And, it has given us more flexibility in foreign policy, as we are no longer bound by the CFSP, which meant we could act faster on things Ukraine
Poland and the Baltic states did more for Ukraine, more quickly while being in the EU.
The EU took a long time to reach a political position on Ukraine and, when it emerged, it was clearly influenced by embarrassment at the UK and US taking the lead on things like supplying arms, cutting tariffs and strong unambiguous statements of political support. That's different to the Baltic States and Poland looking to their own defences and screaming blue murder at the EU to do more, which they still haven't fully stepped up to do.
I think some on the other side are just temperamentally unable to accept that the EU itself has any disadvantages, or ever gets it wrong, which is precisely why their histrionics over the benefits of Rejoin should be so readily dismissed.
Isn't the point that the EU isn't really that relevant on this one? You said that being out of the EU meant we could act faster on Ukraine. But Poland is in the UK and did more faster than we did on Ukraine.
Poland is not in the UK. And it didn't act faster than we did in Ukraine, it was simply the strongest voice within the EU calling for action.
Brexit is an institution. An institution that is yet to deliver any benefits whatsoever. There is nothing on the horizon. Whether you were Leave or Remain the sensible thing to do is to ask what was the point.
In an era where growth is the priority, Brexit is an institution holding us back.
This simply isn't the case. Brexit has ended our domestic politics being dominated by federalist initiatives of the European Commission and the European Council, and questionable rulings of the European Court of Justice. It has ended any further moves to Ever Closer Union. And, it has given us more flexibility in foreign policy, as we are no longer bound by the CFSP, which meant we could act faster on things Ukraine and, also, weren't under political pressure to join the EU vaccine programme (heavily criticised on here at the time) which allowed us to do our own thing.
Yes, it also raises non-tarrif barriers in trading with the continent and the price of that agility, dynamism and independence is we have to accept those costs and take the risk of leading by example from the outside, rather than slowly influencing behind closed doors - not always successfully - within the European institutions.
Both positions are perfectly reasonable ones to take. The EU also suffers from high inflation, sclerotic growth and higher unemployment- even within the eurozone - and it's own web of political problems.
Readmission would reduce the UK-EU trading barriers, at the price of all the political costs listed above, and that's about it. It would solve none of our short, medium and long-term problems and once we were back in we'd be having exactly the same frustrated debates as before.
It is not a solution to anything. The reason emotions are so high about it is because Values - the Rejoin movement are hoping to exploit present frustrations over the economic situation to further their internationalist political objectives, and possibly then some, and it's as plain as day to anyone who's looking properly.
The Leave campaign made a lot of promises that turned out not to be true. The government insisted on the hardest possible Brexit deal short of no deal at all. The issue is not Brexit itself, but the way it’s been done. Because of that, there is an opportunity to rethink it and make it much less onerous. That’s the way to some palpable positives appearing. If this route is not chosen, though - if the experienced costs continue to significantly outweigh the perceived benefits - the pressure to Rejoin is only going to increase.
Look, even I am able to see that the present form of Brexit isn't politically sustainable - and I would have always been happy with EFTA or even EEA-EFTA with an emergency brake and said so as much throughout 2017-2019 - but that does not mean the answer is to swing to the other extreme, pretend it never happened, *and* join Schengen and the Euro on top.
That is simply barking and likely to lead to an even nastier backlash the other way in future when the consequences of that political and economic straitjacket become apparent.
The median position of the typical British voter has been and remains what it has always been: membership of a common market, freedom to travel for work and pleasure (within reason) and good relations, but no political or economic union or judicial supremacy outside these islands.
So the question is how do we get back to sanity. You have rightly defined the EU as not being the EEA or EFTA or CU. And yet all the proto-Brexiteers screamed blue murder about how all those things really are the EU and we had to leave everything or we hadn't really left.
Normal voters don't understand any of this but they are receptive to gas-lit falsehoods. They have now realised that nirvana isn't quite as it was described and are increasingly uninterested in "no no, this isn't nirvana, we haven't got there yet, you've been betrayed".
The 2023 round of the Tory civil war will make this even starker. The EU Freedoms thing is all about making the red wall easier to exploit. Rip up rights, red tape, regulations - all the things that keep them safe at work and protect their rights to things like holidays. Just like the money the government promised it would replace EU farming subsidies with, the replacement won't be the same, won't cover the hole, will leave people worse off and sore about it.
So in 2024 we have Tory MPs telling people who are demonstrably worse off that actually they are better off. If they feel any different it must be their fault. And RUKFUK candidates demanding red wall voters punish themselves harder.
Suddenly the "why can't we protect our rights and go back to free trade with a huge market" feels less threatening than it did a decade ago...
Brexit is an institution. An institution that is yet to deliver any benefits whatsoever. There is nothing on the horizon. Whether you were Leave or Remain the sensible thing to do is to ask what was the point.
In an era where growth is the priority, Brexit is an institution holding us back.
This simply isn't the case. Brexit has ended our domestic politics being dominated by federalist initiatives of the European Commission and the European Council, and questionable rulings of the European Court of Justice. It has ended any further moves to Ever Closer Union. And, it has given us more flexibility in foreign policy, as we are no longer bound by the CFSP, which meant we could act faster on things Ukraine and, also, weren't under political pressure to join the EU vaccine programme (heavily criticised on here at the time) which allowed us to do our own thing.
Yes, it also raises non-tarrif barriers in trading with the continent and the price of that agility, dynamism and independence is we have to accept those costs and take the risk of leading by example from the outside, rather than slowly influencing behind closed doors - not always successfully - within the European institutions.
Both positions are perfectly reasonable ones to take. The EU also suffers from high inflation, sclerotic growth and higher unemployment- even within the eurozone - and it's own web of political problems.
Readmission would reduce the UK-EU trading barriers, at the price of all the political costs listed above, and that's about it. It would solve none of our short, medium and long-term problems and once we were back in we'd be having exactly the same frustrated debates as before.
It is not a solution to anything. The reason emotions are so high about it is because Values - the Rejoin movement are hoping to exploit present frustrations over the economic situation to further their internationalist political objectives, and possibly then some, and it's as plain as day to anyone who's looking properly.
The Leave campaign made a lot of promises that turned out not to be true. The government insisted on the hardest possible Brexit deal short of no deal at all. The issue is not Brexit itself, but the way it’s been done. Because of that, there is an opportunity to rethink it and make it much less onerous. That’s the way to some palpable positives appearing. If this route is not chosen, though - if the experienced costs continue to significantly outweigh the perceived benefits - the pressure to Rejoin is only going to increase.
Look, even I am able to see that the present form of Brexit isn't politically sustainable - and I would have always been happy with EFTA or even EEA-EFTA with an emergency brake and said so as much throughout 2017-2019 - but that does not mean the answer is to swing to the other extreme, pretend it never happened, *and* join Schengen and the Euro on top.
That is simply barking and likely to lead to an even nastier backlash the other way in future when the consequences of that political and economic straitjacket become apparent.
The median position of the typical British voter has been and remains what it has always been: membership of a common market, freedom to travel for work and pleasure (within reason) and good relations, but no political or economic union or judicial supremacy outside these islands.
Yep, I agree. But if the median position is not close to being delivered, the question becomes: is membership of the EU so onerous that it’s worth the sacrifices we have to make to stay out of it?
The challenge for all politicians is to Move On from Brexit. You don't get anywhere in politics trying to refight a battle you lost - and both the remain and leave absolutists believe they lost.
I cannot see how there will be any consensus about a move to rejoin the EU so it puzzles me that it keeps being raised. We left, it will remain a political football until the giffers die off so we're not going back until a big majority across politics wants it. Not that the "EU" will stand still - who knows what it will be in the 2040s when we're asking to join?
What we can do is accept the reality of where we find ourselves and take action to fix it. The 2023 round of the Tory Civil War will be instructive. The mouth foamers plan insurrection to smash through the removal of "EU regulations" stopping them exploiting red wall peons for bigger profits. As the antithesis of what the WWC thought Brexit was to deliver, this will not only hurt the Tory poll ratings but also shift the wider thinking about where we are and where we are going.
You will never make wazzock Brexit absolutists happy. Its always betrayal, always has been since we joined, and still is now that we "Sadly we have a Government that hasn't implemented Brexit". And will continue to be betrayal whatever happens. We're already seeing the return of FUKUK as a political threat to the Tories and that will only grow. They can't be bought off like last time as what they want is impossible to deliver. So watch as FUK candidates destroy the Tory majorities in seats across the country.
That isn't to then deliver a cakewalk for Labour. People are ANGRY and things have got worse. Delivery needs to be sizeable and rapid and frankly isn't going to happen because we lack imagination in our polity.
. And, it has given us more flexibility in foreign policy, as we are no longer bound by the CFSP, which meant we could act faster on things Ukraine
Poland and the Baltic states did more for Ukraine, more quickly while being in the EU.
The EU took a long time to reach a political position on Ukraine and, when it emerged, it was clearly influenced by embarrassment at the UK and US taking the lead on things like supplying arms, cutting tariffs and strong unambiguous statements of political support. That's different to the Baltic States and Poland looking to their own defences and screaming blue murder at the EU to do more, which they still haven't fully stepped up to do.
I think some on the other side are just temperamentally unable to accept that the EU itself has any disadvantages, or ever gets it wrong, which is precisely why their histrionics over the benefits of Rejoin should be so readily dismissed.
Isn't the point that the EU isn't really that relevant on this one? You said that being out of the EU meant we could act faster on Ukraine. But Poland is in the UK and did more faster than we did on Ukraine.
Poland is not in the UK. And it didn't act faster than we did in Ukraine, it was simply the strongest voice within the EU calling for action.
I hear you. I also heard Johnson and the Tories trumpeting about refugees as we uniquely threw up the barriers and ensured that most stayed in countries like Poland...
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
If you had interesting and articulate views on the subject, and an audience here which is undoubtedly more intelligent than the average TV watcher, you wouldn't be able to stop yourself expounding them. I am guessing television means in the QT audience and the national press is below the line in the guardian.
Those who wish to rejoin the EU should just chill and relax for at least 5, more likely 10 or 15, years, as absolutely nothing is going to happen before then, regardless of election outcomes. I suspect Starmer/Labour won't go further than closer relations until/unless he has two GE victories under his belt.
So instead of getting stressed about the forlorn hope of rejoining, those of us who would like to be in the EU should just sit back and enjoy the epic battle, largely on the right, between "Brexit has been betrayed!" and "Oh no it hasn't!". It will be depressingly entertaining.
Nick Tyrone has a good substack post which expresses the same view (even comparing Brexit to Star Wars: the Phantom Menace).
"This is why Labour’s position on Brexit at the moment is absolutely the correct one for the times. They can’t say that The Phantom Menace (aka, leaving the EU) is bad yet - too many people aren’t ready for that truth bomb. Instead, they are proposing something akin to The Phantom Edit. This was a cut of Episode 1, done online by fans, which took the supposed worst bits of the movie out - all of Jar Jar Binks, huge portions featuring the annoying kid - in an effort to make the film “good”. At that stage, a lot of people still felt that Phantom Menace could have been great or at least okay, so long as you fixed certain elements of it. The Phantom Edit eventually helped everyone heal a little by demonstrating that, even when you took the very worst bits of it out, it’s still a crap movie with a plot that makes zero sense. There is simply no way to make it good."
We also need the Tory Party to become relatively sane again and to actually have a leader who has the guts to confront the ERG. I suspect Dura_Ace is right in that Badenoch will probably succeed Sunak following an election defeat by courting the ERG and the headbangers within the Tory Party membership. If the Tories get beaten comfortably the election afterward again, I suspect, finally, at that point they'll realise they cannot placate the ERG.
Brexit was not nearly as an important decision as people on both sides of the divide like to pretend for reasons that quite escape me. The result of this pretense is that those in favour blame our relative economic failure over the last couple of decades on our membership of the EU rather than placing it where it really belongs, our political class. Similarly, those in favour of EU membership like to pretend that all the problems we have had since we left are a result of Brexit rather than a continuation of exactly the same problems that we had when we were members.
So, to take an example, has Brexit had anything to do with our lack of investment? No. We continue to have a highly disproportionate share of direct foreign investment into Europe. This is good and bad of course. One of the reasons for this is the horrendous trade deficit which we had in the EU which has continued.
Has Brexit done anything in respect of our lack of training and poor productivity? No. We continue to allow a very high level of immigration, indeed it is at record levels. We have not solved the elasticity of supply for labour that the EU gave us. We have not incentivised our employers to invest in training. We continue to have low wages, low productivity and a disappointing standard of living, just as we have had for the last 20 years.
Those in favour of Brexit, like @Luckyguy1983, argue, well at least we now have greater freedom to address these problems. I have some sympathy for this argument but so far, as he acknowledges, the government has made very little use of these powers and some of the proposed changes are controversial.
Those against claim that our current trade is being adversely affected and simply ignore the fact that our exports to the EU are at or near record levels despite their own problems with domestic demand. There are literally dozens of things that are having more effect on exports, imports and our terms of trade than Brexit. We effectively have a free trade deal with the EU right now. That is not the problem.
Brexit is a displacement activity which stops our politicians and indeed far too many of our contributors having to address the hard stuff. It may be that those in Scotland who have seen exactly the same phenomena with independence over the last 30 years recognise this delusion more easily. I agree with @RochdalePioneers that we need to move on. The EU was used as an excuse by our political class for far too long. There are no longer any excuses. Start addressing the problems.
. And, it has given us more flexibility in foreign policy, as we are no longer bound by the CFSP, which meant we could act faster on things Ukraine
Poland and the Baltic states did more for Ukraine, more quickly while being in the EU.
Yes significantly more than UK , Boris grandstanding to pretend he was Churchill II really helped him only a lot.
To be fair, the early, explicit and sincere support by Johnson for Ukraine was genuinely helpful to Ukraine, as it occurred at a critical time when things could have gone differently. The training plan is also important and continuing. Overall though the US and EU contributions have become more significant in both volume and capability.
The debate is now over Germans donating Patriot missiles, and a pan European programme for donating Leopard 2 tanks. There is some complicated logistics required in making this a viable way to equip new Ukranian brigades, but looks like it will happen.
Brexit was not nearly as an important decision as people on both sides of the divide like to pretend for reasons that quite escape me. The result of this pretense is that those in favour blame our relative economic failure over the last couple of decades on our membership of the EU rather than placing it where it really belongs, our political class. Similarly, those in favour of EU membership like to pretend that all the problems we have had since we left are a result of Brexit rather than a continuation of exactly the same problems that we had when we were members.
So, to take an example, has Brexit had anything to do with our lack of investment? No. We continue to have a highly disproportionate share of direct foreign investment into Europe. This is good and bad of course. One of the reasons for this is the horrendous trade deficit which we had in the EU which has continued.
Has Brexit done anything in respect of our lack of training and poor productivity? No. We continue to allow a very high level of immigration, indeed it is at record levels. We have not solved the elasticity of supply for labour that the EU gave us. We have not incentivised our employers to invest in training. We continue to have low wages, low productivity and a disappointing standard of living, just as we have had for the last 20 years.
Those in favour of Brexit, like @Luckyguy1983, argue, well at least we now have greater freedom to address these problems. I have some sympathy for this argument but so far, as he acknowledges, the government has made very little use of these powers and some of the proposed changes are controversial.
Those against claim that our current trade is being adversely affected and simply ignore the fact that our exports to the EU are at or near record levels despite their own problems with domestic demand. There are literally dozens of things that are having more effect on exports, imports and our terms of trade than Brexit. We effectively have a free trade deal with the EU right now. That is not the problem.
Brexit is a displacement activity which stops our politicians and indeed far too many of our contributors having to address the hard stuff. It may be that those in Scotland who have seen exactly the same phenomena with independence over the last 30 years recognise this delusion more easily. I agree with @RochdalePioneers that we need to move on. The EU was used as an excuse by our political class for far too long. There are no longer any excuses. Start addressing the problems.
A point of order if I may. Your statement about immigration numbers being at record levels. Whether it is accurate or not in the UK, it is worth reminding you that our levels are a small percentage compared to other countries. Its the same as "we're full up" and "we can't take all these asylum seekers" when we take very small numbers compared to France, Germany etc.
Our basic problem is denial. We can't accept that we are in the mess we are in. You mention things like foreign investment - do you have figures as to how much of it sticks long term? Because "foreign investment" gets fanfared, an assembly plant gets built thanks to big tax incentives, and a few years later it closes for good. What we need is DOMESTIC investment long term. Which we don't have and haven't had for 40 years thanks to the implementation of the spivocracy in the 80s.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Question - how are you defining the EU? If "EU" is things that aren't the EU such as the EEA, then yes I suspect we will either rejoin or at the very least dynamically align with the "EU" under Starmer.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Question - how are you defining the EU? If "EU" is things that aren't the EU such as the EEA, then yes I suspect we will either rejoin or at the very least dynamically align with the "EU" under Starmer.
"If "EU" is things that aren't the EU such as the EEA"
Hang on, can you be in the EU but not the single market?
Our basic problem is denial. We can't accept that we are in the mess we are in. You mention things like foreign investment - do you have figures as to how much of it sticks long term? Because "foreign investment" gets fanfared, an assembly plant gets built thanks to big tax incentives, and a few years later it closes for good. What we need is DOMESTIC investment long term. Which we don't have and haven't had for 40 years thanks to the implementation of the spivocracy in the 80s.
Here's an idea: over the last 40 years we developed a massive trade deficit with the rest of Europe thanks to the single market. Why don't we reintroduce some minor trade barriers to level the playing field and restructure our trade?
I hear you. I also heard Johnson and the Tories trumpeting about refugees as we uniquely threw up the barriers and ensured that most stayed in countries like Poland...
Most stayed in countries like Poland because they are next door. Even so over 200,000 visas were issued through the two main UK schemes, and 150,000 people came to the UK.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Question - how are you defining the EU? If "EU" is things that aren't the EU such as the EEA, then yes I suspect we will either rejoin or at the very least dynamically align with the "EU" under Starmer.
"If "EU" is things that aren't the EU such as the EEA"
Hang on, can you be in the EU but not the single market?
No, but you can be in the single market and not the EU. Because the EEA is not the EU. As correctly described by Farage et al in the early days before competition for the soul of Brexitism created this "unless we leave EURATOM we're still in the EU" nonsense.
Those who wish to rejoin the EU should just chill and relax for at least 5, more likely 10 or 15, years, as absolutely nothing is going to happen before then, regardless of election outcomes. I suspect Starmer/Labour won't go further than closer relations until/unless he has two GE victories under his belt.
So instead of getting stressed about the forlorn hope of rejoining, those of us who would like to be in the EU should just sit back and enjoy the epic battle, largely on the right, between "Brexit has been betrayed!" and "Oh no it hasn't!". It will be depressingly entertaining.
Nick Tyrone has a good substack post which expresses the same view (even comparing Brexit to Star Wars: the Phantom Menace).
"This is why Labour’s position on Brexit at the moment is absolutely the correct one for the times. They can’t say that The Phantom Menace (aka, leaving the EU) is bad yet - too many people aren’t ready for that truth bomb. Instead, they are proposing something akin to The Phantom Edit. This was a cut of Episode 1, done online by fans, which took the supposed worst bits of the movie out - all of Jar Jar Binks, huge portions featuring the annoying kid - in an effort to make the film “good”. At that stage, a lot of people still felt that Phantom Menace could have been great or at least okay, so long as you fixed certain elements of it. The Phantom Edit eventually helped everyone heal a little by demonstrating that, even when you took the very worst bits of it out, it’s still a crap movie with a plot that makes zero sense. There is simply no way to make it good."
We also need the Tory Party to become relatively sane again and to actually have a leader who has the guts to confront the ERG. I suspect Dura_Ace is right in that Badenoch will probably succeed Sunak following an election defeat by courting the ERG and the headbangers within the Tory Party membership. If the Tories get beaten comfortably the election afterward again, I suspect, finally, at that point they'll realise they cannot placate the ERG.
I think Steve Barclay is probably the most likely next Tory leader now if Sunak loses
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Inspires one ….. me, anyway ….. to go back to voting LibDem. Or moving on to vote Green!
Brexit was not nearly as an important decision as people on both sides of the divide like to pretend for reasons that quite escape me. The result of this pretense is that those in favour blame our relative economic failure over the last couple of decades on our membership of the EU rather than placing it where it really belongs, our political class. Similarly, those in favour of EU membership like to pretend that all the problems we have had since we left are a result of Brexit rather than a continuation of exactly the same problems that we had when we were members.
So, to take an example, has Brexit had anything to do with our lack of investment? No. We continue to have a highly disproportionate share of direct foreign investment into Europe. This is good and bad of course. One of the reasons for this is the horrendous trade deficit which we had in the EU which has continued.
Has Brexit done anything in respect of our lack of training and poor productivity? No. We continue to allow a very high level of immigration, indeed it is at record levels. We have not solved the elasticity of supply for labour that the EU gave us. We have not incentivised our employers to invest in training. We continue to have low wages, low productivity and a disappointing standard of living, just as we have had for the last 20 years.
Those in favour of Brexit, like @Luckyguy1983, argue, well at least we now have greater freedom to address these problems. I have some sympathy for this argument but so far, as he acknowledges, the government has made very little use of these powers and some of the proposed changes are controversial.
Those against claim that our current trade is being adversely affected and simply ignore the fact that our exports to the EU are at or near record levels despite their own problems with domestic demand. There are literally dozens of things that are having more effect on exports, imports and our terms of trade than Brexit. We effectively have a free trade deal with the EU right now. That is not the problem.
Brexit is a displacement activity which stops our politicians and indeed far too many of our contributors having to address the hard stuff. It may be that those in Scotland who have seen exactly the same phenomena with independence over the last 30 years recognise this delusion more easily. I agree with @RochdalePioneers that we need to move on. The EU was used as an excuse by our political class for far too long. There are no longer any excuses. Start addressing the problems.
A point of order if I may. Your statement about immigration numbers being at record levels. Whether it is accurate or not in the UK, it is worth reminding you that our levels are a small percentage compared to other countries. Its the same as "we're full up" and "we can't take all these asylum seekers" when we take very small numbers compared to France, Germany etc.
Our basic problem is denial. We can't accept that we are in the mess we are in. You mention things like foreign investment - do you have figures as to how much of it sticks long term? Because "foreign investment" gets fanfared, an assembly plant gets built thanks to big tax incentives, and a few years later it closes for good. What we need is DOMESTIC investment long term. Which we don't have and haven't had for 40 years thanks to the implementation of the spivocracy in the 80s.
Immigration is simply the flow of people. What is more important is population density to which immigration is being added or taken away. England is a very densely populated country, particularly in the south. Scotland isn't and we don't have anything like the same issues.
I agree that we need to encourage domestic investment and the growth of indigenous firms. I also think that the challenges that EU rules supposedly imposed on this were much over stated. Most other EU countries didn't seem to have anything like the problems with favouring domestic suppliers that we did. It was another pathetic excuse.
We should address these issues by tax policies that encourage investment, education policies that provide the skills that such potential employers need and infrastructure policies which facilitate the trading of such businesses. None of this is a breach of even our current rules but we do not focus on it. Instead we talk about independence or Brexit as if these were silver bullets one way or the other.
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
“I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it”
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
Brexit is an institution. An institution that is yet to deliver any benefits whatsoever. There is nothing on the horizon. Whether you were Leave or Remain the sensible thing to do is to ask what was the point.
In an era where growth is the priority, Brexit is an institution holding us back.
This simply isn't the case. Brexit has ended our domestic politics being dominated by federalist initiatives of the European Commission and the European Council, and questionable rulings of the European Court of Justice. It has ended any further moves to Ever Closer Union. And, it has given us more flexibility in foreign policy, as we are no longer bound by the CFSP, which meant we could act faster on things Ukraine and, also, weren't under political pressure to join the EU vaccine programme (heavily criticised on here at the time) which allowed us to do our own thing.
Yes, it also raises non-tarrif barriers in trading with the continent and the price of that agility, dynamism and independence is we have to accept those costs and take the risk of leading by example from the outside, rather than slowly influencing behind closed doors - not always successfully - within the European institutions.
Both positions are perfectly reasonable ones to take. The EU also suffers from high inflation, sclerotic growth and higher unemployment- even within the eurozone - and it's own web of political problems.
Readmission would reduce the UK-EU trading barriers, at the price of all the political costs listed above, and that's about it. It would solve none of our short, medium and long-term problems and once we were back in we'd be having exactly the same frustrated debates as before.
It is not a solution to anything. The reason emotions are so high about it is because Values - the Rejoin movement are hoping to exploit present frustrations over the economic situation to further their internationalist political objectives, and possibly then some, and it's as plain as day to anyone who's looking properly.
The Leave campaign made a lot of promises that turned out not to be true. The government insisted on the hardest possible Brexit deal short of no deal at all. The issue is not Brexit itself, but the way it’s been done. Because of that, there is an opportunity to rethink it and make it much less onerous. That’s the way to some palpable positives appearing. If this route is not chosen, though - if the experienced costs continue to significantly outweigh the perceived benefits - the pressure to Rejoin is only going to increase.
Look, even I am able to see that the present form of Brexit isn't politically sustainable - and I would have always been happy with EFTA or even EEA-EFTA with an emergency brake and said so as much throughout 2017-2019 - but that does not mean the answer is to swing to the other extreme, pretend it never happened, *and* join Schengen and the Euro on top.
That is simply barking and likely to lead to an even nastier backlash the other way in future when the consequences of that political and economic straitjacket become apparent.
The median position of the typical British voter has been and remains what it has always been: membership of a common market, freedom to travel for work and pleasure (within reason) and good relations, but no political or economic union or judicial supremacy outside these islands.
Yep, I agree. But if the median position is not close to being delivered, the question becomes: is membership of the EU so onerous that it’s worth the sacrifices we have to make to stay out of it?
On standard terms, I'm afraid it is.
The EU needs to be flexible if it wants a constructive collaborative long-term relationship with the UK, and vice-versa, and sensitive to the politics.
We got here because of its dogmatic one-size-fits-all position, that brooked no criticism, and its arrogance in unceremoniously ignoring any democratic rejection.
Our basic problem is denial. We can't accept that we are in the mess we are in. You mention things like foreign investment - do you have figures as to how much of it sticks long term? Because "foreign investment" gets fanfared, an assembly plant gets built thanks to big tax incentives, and a few years later it closes for good. What we need is DOMESTIC investment long term. Which we don't have and haven't had for 40 years thanks to the implementation of the spivocracy in the 80s.
Here's an idea: over the last 40 years we developed a massive trade deficit with the rest of Europe thanks to the single market. Why don't we reintroduce some minor trade barriers to level the playing field and restructure our trade?
A valid argument. So why haven't we introduced trade barriers to EEA imports? We demanded such barriers be erected, then failed to build the infrastructure or hire the staff or create the computer system, then Rees-Mogg abandoned it for good as imposition would be an act of "self-harm".
Meanwhile the French had it all in place early, blockade all out stuff as they eagerly did before the single market, and laugh at us. If what you want is a good idea, why have our government imposed it ONLY on exports?
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Thank goodness level headed Brexiteers don’t indulge in such paranoid fantasies about Starmer’s secret EUrophillia.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Question - how are you defining the EU? If "EU" is things that aren't the EU such as the EEA, then yes I suspect we will either rejoin or at the very least dynamically align with the "EU" under Starmer.
"If "EU" is things that aren't the EU such as the EEA"
Hang on, can you be in the EU but not the single market?
No, but you can be in the single market and not the EU. Because the EEA is not the EU. As correctly described by Farage et al in the early days before competition for the soul of Brexitism created this "unless we leave EURATOM we're still in the EU" nonsense.
The original point by @glw was that Starmer had ruled out rejoining the Single Market. Therefore, by definition, he has ruled out rejoining the EU. I'm not sure why you were arguing the point.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Inspires one ….. me, anyway ….. to go back to voting LibDem. Or moving on to vote Green!
Which makes sense as that is their policy. My beef is with the people asserting that Labour is going to do something Starmer ruled out in December.
That said I don't really get Starmer's position either, it's like saying "I'm going to get fit" and then ruling out exercising to achieve it.
Brexit is an institution. An institution that is yet to deliver any benefits whatsoever. There is nothing on the horizon. Whether you were Leave or Remain the sensible thing to do is to ask what was the point.
In an era where growth is the priority, Brexit is an institution holding us back.
This simply isn't the case. Brexit has ended our domestic politics being dominated by federalist initiatives of the European Commission and the European Council, and questionable rulings of the European Court of Justice. It has ended any further moves to Ever Closer Union. And, it has given us more flexibility in foreign policy, as we are no longer bound by the CFSP, which meant we could act faster on things Ukraine and, also, weren't under political pressure to join the EU vaccine programme (heavily criticised on here at the time) which allowed us to do our own thing.
Yes, it also raises non-tarrif barriers in trading with the continent and the price of that agility, dynamism and independence is we have to accept those costs and take the risk of leading by example from the outside, rather than slowly influencing behind closed doors - not always successfully - within the European institutions.
Both positions are perfectly reasonable ones to take. The EU also suffers from high inflation, sclerotic growth and higher unemployment- even within the eurozone - and it's own web of political problems.
Readmission would reduce the UK-EU trading barriers, at the price of all the political costs listed above, and that's about it. It would solve none of our short, medium and long-term problems and once we were back in we'd be having exactly the same frustrated debates as before.
It is not a solution to anything. The reason emotions are so high about it is because Values - the Rejoin movement are hoping to exploit present frustrations over the economic situation to further their internationalist political objectives, and possibly then some, and it's as plain as day to anyone who's looking properly.
The Leave campaign made a lot of promises that turned out not to be true. The government insisted on the hardest possible Brexit deal short of no deal at all. The issue is not Brexit itself, but the way it’s been done. Because of that, there is an opportunity to rethink it and make it much less onerous. That’s the way to some palpable positives appearing. If this route is not chosen, though - if the experienced costs continue to significantly outweigh the perceived benefits - the pressure to Rejoin is only going to increase.
Look, even I am able to see that the present form of Brexit isn't politically sustainable - and I would have always been happy with EFTA or even EEA-EFTA with an emergency brake and said so as much throughout 2017-2019 - but that does not mean the answer is to swing to the other extreme, pretend it never happened, *and* join Schengen and the Euro on top.
That is simply barking and likely to lead to an even nastier backlash the other way in future when the consequences of that political and economic straitjacket become apparent.
The median position of the typical British voter has been and remains what it has always been: membership of a common market, freedom to travel for work and pleasure (within reason) and good relations, but no political or economic union or judicial supremacy outside these islands.
Yep, I agree. But if the median position is not close to being delivered, the question becomes: is membership of the EU so onerous that it’s worth the sacrifices we have to make to stay out of it?
But we don't have to make those sacrifices. In that sentence you are as guilty of Brexit induced fanaticism as the ERG headbanging purists. The endpoint of all of this is not one of the two extremes - rejoin the EU or (symbolically) blow up the channel tunnel. It always has been somewhere in the middle approximating to EFTA/EEA membership. That is a position that would satisfy the overwhelming majority of sane people in this country and only demands 'sacrifice' from the fanatics.
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
“I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it”
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
Brexit was not nearly as an important decision as people on both sides of the divide like to pretend for reasons that quite escape me. The result of this pretense is that those in favour blame our relative economic failure over the last couple of decades on our membership of the EU rather than placing it where it really belongs, our political class. Similarly, those in favour of EU membership like to pretend that all the problems we have had since we left are a result of Brexit rather than a continuation of exactly the same problems that we had when we were members.
So, to take an example, has Brexit had anything to do with our lack of investment? No. We continue to have a highly disproportionate share of direct foreign investment into Europe. This is good and bad of course. One of the reasons for this is the horrendous trade deficit which we had in the EU which has continued.
Has Brexit done anything in respect of our lack of training and poor productivity? No. We continue to allow a very high level of immigration, indeed it is at record levels. We have not solved the elasticity of supply for labour that the EU gave us. We have not incentivised our employers to invest in training. We continue to have low wages, low productivity and a disappointing standard of living, just as we have had for the last 20 years.
Those in favour of Brexit, like @Luckyguy1983, argue, well at least we now have greater freedom to address these problems. I have some sympathy for this argument but so far, as he acknowledges, the government has made very little use of these powers and some of the proposed changes are controversial.
Those against claim that our current trade is being adversely affected and simply ignore the fact that our exports to the EU are at or near record levels despite their own problems with domestic demand. There are literally dozens of things that are having more effect on exports, imports and our terms of trade than Brexit. We effectively have a free trade deal with the EU right now. That is not the problem.
Brexit is a displacement activity which stops our politicians and indeed far too many of our contributors having to address the hard stuff. It may be that those in Scotland who have seen exactly the same phenomena with independence over the last 30 years recognise this delusion more easily. I agree with @RochdalePioneers that we need to move on. The EU was used as an excuse by our political class for far too long. There are no longer any excuses. Start addressing the problems.
A point of order if I may. Your statement about immigration numbers being at record levels. Whether it is accurate or not in the UK, it is worth reminding you that our levels are a small percentage compared to other countries. Its the same as "we're full up" and "we can't take all these asylum seekers" when we take very small numbers compared to France, Germany etc.
Our basic problem is denial. We can't accept that we are in the mess we are in. You mention things like foreign investment - do you have figures as to how much of it sticks long term? Because "foreign investment" gets fanfared, an assembly plant gets built thanks to big tax incentives, and a few years later it closes for good. What we need is DOMESTIC investment long term. Which we don't have and haven't had for 40 years thanks to the implementation of the spivocracy in the 80s.
Immigration is simply the flow of people. What is more important is population density to which immigration is being added or taken away. England is a very densely populated country, particularly in the south. Scotland isn't and we don't have anything like the same issues.
I agree that we need to encourage domestic investment and the growth of indigenous firms. I also think that the challenges that EU rules supposedly imposed on this were much over stated. Most other EU countries didn't seem to have anything like the problems with favouring domestic suppliers that we did. It was another pathetic excuse.
We should address these issues by tax policies that encourage investment, education policies that provide the skills that such potential employers need and infrastructure policies which facilitate the trading of such businesses. None of this is a breach of even our current rules but we do not focus on it. Instead we talk about independence or Brexit as if these were silver bullets one way or the other.
Tax is a very relevant argument. We have two basic issues: property and business. With property a lot of Tory donors have made a lot of money having the London property market act as a global reserve currency. Hence the skyrocketing of prices where largely empty property is traded and sold, dragging London house prices and with it the rest of the UK to places that normals struggle to afford.
And business tax? We offer big business huge tax cuts as a reward for not paying their employees properly, not training and developing them. Not investing in capacity. I have no problem with cutting Corporation Tax provided we get a return on that investment. But again, too many spivs making a bomb and sending donations to the right places.
The UK is a backwater because we sell everything good off abroad for a short term profit and spiv fees. We need to invest our money long term. Like the Germans do. Like the French do. The EU is a red herring, a distraction from the fact that shit management and communist unions managed to make us uncompetitive in the 70s, then we decided to parcel it up and sell it off in the 80s.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Question - how are you defining the EU? If "EU" is things that aren't the EU such as the EEA, then yes I suspect we will either rejoin or at the very least dynamically align with the "EU" under Starmer.
"If "EU" is things that aren't the EU such as the EEA"
Hang on, can you be in the EU but not the single market?
No, but you can be in the single market and not the EU. Because the EEA is not the EU. As correctly described by Farage et al in the early days before competition for the soul of Brexitism created this "unless we leave EURATOM we're still in the EU" nonsense.
The original point by @glw was that Starmer had ruled out rejoining the Single Market. Therefore, by definition, he has ruled out rejoining the EU. I'm not sure why you were arguing the point.
Because EU and EEA seem interchangeable to Brexiteers. Even alignment with the EEA is screamed as "not delivering Brexit"
Our basic problem is denial. We can't accept that we are in the mess we are in. You mention things like foreign investment - do you have figures as to how much of it sticks long term? Because "foreign investment" gets fanfared, an assembly plant gets built thanks to big tax incentives, and a few years later it closes for good. What we need is DOMESTIC investment long term. Which we don't have and haven't had for 40 years thanks to the implementation of the spivocracy in the 80s.
Here's an idea: over the last 40 years we developed a massive trade deficit with the rest of Europe thanks to the single market. Why don't we reintroduce some minor trade barriers to level the playing field and restructure our trade?
A valid argument. So why haven't we introduced trade barriers to EEA imports? We demanded such barriers be erected, then failed to build the infrastructure or hire the staff or create the computer system, then Rees-Mogg abandoned it for good as imposition would be an act of "self-harm".
Meanwhile the French had it all in place early, blockade all out stuff as they eagerly did before the single market, and laugh at us. If what you want is a good idea, why have our government imposed it ONLY on exports?
Indeed the failure to impose import checks is one of the most curious of Brexiteer policies. We have added a one way barrier to trade affecting only imports, albeit with some impact because lorries don't want to return empty after 2 days in a lay-by queueing to get out.
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
“I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it”
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
Heathener is Jack Monroe and I claim my £5
That’s actually a pretty good guess. They have the same philosophical vapidity mixed with a bizarrely firm moral view of the world. Also: moments of bourgeois boasting followed by performative poverty done really badly
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
“I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it”
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
And, yet, "as a teacher" she can afford to book a nice foreign holiday (in term time) at the same time as the King's coronation in May later this year.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Question - how are you defining the EU? If "EU" is things that aren't the EU such as the EEA, then yes I suspect we will either rejoin or at the very least dynamically align with the "EU" under Starmer.
"If "EU" is things that aren't the EU such as the EEA"
Hang on, can you be in the EU but not the single market?
No, but you can be in the single market and not the EU. Because the EEA is not the EU. As correctly described by Farage et al in the early days before competition for the soul of Brexitism created this "unless we leave EURATOM we're still in the EU" nonsense.
The original point by @glw was that Starmer had ruled out rejoining the Single Market. Therefore, by definition, he has ruled out rejoining the EU. I'm not sure why you were arguing the point.
Because EU and EEA seem interchangeable to Brexiteers. Even alignment with the EEA is screamed as "not delivering Brexit"
But they are interchangeable when it comes to membership of the EU, which was the original point by @glw.
Brexit is an institution. An institution that is yet to deliver any benefits whatsoever. There is nothing on the horizon. Whether you were Leave or Remain the sensible thing to do is to ask what was the point.
In an era where growth is the priority, Brexit is an institution holding us back.
This simply isn't the case. Brexit has ended our domestic politics being dominated by federalist initiatives of the European Commission and the European Council, and questionable rulings of the European Court of Justice. It has ended any further moves to Ever Closer Union. And, it has given us more flexibility in foreign policy, as we are no longer bound by the CFSP, which meant we could act faster on things Ukraine and, also, weren't under political pressure to join the EU vaccine programme (heavily criticised on here at the time) which allowed us to do our own thing.
Yes, it also raises non-tarrif barriers in trading with the continent and the price of that agility, dynamism and independence is we have to accept those costs and take the risk of leading by example from the outside, rather than slowly influencing behind closed doors - not always successfully - within the European institutions.
Both positions are perfectly reasonable ones to take. The EU also suffers from high inflation, sclerotic growth and higher unemployment- even within the eurozone - and it's own web of political problems.
Readmission would reduce the UK-EU trading barriers, at the price of all the political costs listed above, and that's about it. It would solve none of our short, medium and long-term problems and once we were back in we'd be having exactly the same frustrated debates as before.
It is not a solution to anything. The reason emotions are so high about it is because Values - the Rejoin movement are hoping to exploit present frustrations over the economic situation to further their internationalist political objectives, and possibly then some, and it's as plain as day to anyone who's looking properly.
The Leave campaign made a lot of promises that turned out not to be true. The government insisted on the hardest possible Brexit deal short of no deal at all. The issue is not Brexit itself, but the way it’s been done. Because of that, there is an opportunity to rethink it and make it much less onerous. That’s the way to some palpable positives appearing. If this route is not chosen, though - if the experienced costs continue to significantly outweigh the perceived benefits - the pressure to Rejoin is only going to increase.
Look, even I am able to see that the present form of Brexit isn't politically sustainable - and I would have always been happy with EFTA or even EEA-EFTA with an emergency brake and said so as much throughout 2017-2019 - but that does not mean the answer is to swing to the other extreme, pretend it never happened, *and* join Schengen and the Euro on top.
That is simply barking and likely to lead to an even nastier backlash the other way in future when the consequences of that political and economic straitjacket become apparent.
The median position of the typical British voter has been and remains what it has always been: membership of a common market, freedom to travel for work and pleasure (within reason) and good relations, but no political or economic union or judicial supremacy outside these islands.
Yep, I agree. But if the median position is not close to being delivered, the question becomes: is membership of the EU so onerous that it’s worth the sacrifices we have to make to stay out of it?
But we don't have to make those sacrifices. In that sentence you are as guilty of Brexit induced fanaticism as the ERG headbanging purists. The endpoint of all of this is not one of the two extremes - rejoin the EU or (symbolically) blow up the channel tunnel. It always has been somewhere in the middle approximating to EFTA/EEA membership. That is a position that would satisfy the overwhelming majority of sane people in this country and only demands 'sacrifice' from the fanatics.
Starmer's problem is that voters most in favour of EEA and EFTA over rejoin are in the Home counties and unlikely to vote Labour.
Leave voters in the redwall likely prefer the Boris deal or even the May deal over rejoin and EEA and EFTA as they avoid restoring free movement
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Inspires one ….. me, anyway ….. to go back to voting LibDem. Or moving on to vote Green!
Yes, I am between these two myself. I don't see the point in voting Starmer for the same policies, only with a face like a slapped arse.
Brexit was not nearly as an important decision as people on both sides of the divide like to pretend for reasons that quite escape me. The result of this pretense is that those in favour blame our relative economic failure over the last couple of decades on our membership of the EU rather than placing it where it really belongs, our political class. Similarly, those in favour of EU membership like to pretend that all the problems we have had since we left are a result of Brexit rather than a continuation of exactly the same problems that we had when we were members.
So, to take an example, has Brexit had anything to do with our lack of investment? No. We continue to have a highly disproportionate share of direct foreign investment into Europe. This is good and bad of course. One of the reasons for this is the horrendous trade deficit which we had in the EU which has continued.
Has Brexit done anything in respect of our lack of training and poor productivity? No. We continue to allow a very high level of immigration, indeed it is at record levels. We have not solved the elasticity of supply for labour that the EU gave us. We have not incentivised our employers to invest in training. We continue to have low wages, low productivity and a disappointing standard of living, just as we have had for the last 20 years.
Those in favour of Brexit, like @Luckyguy1983, argue, well at least we now have greater freedom to address these problems. I have some sympathy for this argument but so far, as he acknowledges, the government has made very little use of these powers and some of the proposed changes are controversial.
Those against claim that our current trade is being adversely affected and simply ignore the fact that our exports to the EU are at or near record levels despite their own problems with domestic demand. There are literally dozens of things that are having more effect on exports, imports and our terms of trade than Brexit. We effectively have a free trade deal with the EU right now. That is not the problem.
Brexit is a displacement activity which stops our politicians and indeed far too many of our contributors having to address the hard stuff. It may be that those in Scotland who have seen exactly the same phenomena with independence over the last 30 years recognise this delusion more easily. I agree with @RochdalePioneers that we need to move on. The EU was used as an excuse by our political class for far too long. There are no longer any excuses. Start addressing the problems.
A point of order if I may. Your statement about immigration numbers being at record levels. Whether it is accurate or not in the UK, it is worth reminding you that our levels are a small percentage compared to other countries. Its the same as "we're full up" and "we can't take all these asylum seekers" when we take very small numbers compared to France, Germany etc.
Our basic problem is denial. We can't accept that we are in the mess we are in. You mention things like foreign investment - do you have figures as to how much of it sticks long term? Because "foreign investment" gets fanfared, an assembly plant gets built thanks to big tax incentives, and a few years later it closes for good. What we need is DOMESTIC investment long term. Which we don't have and haven't had for 40 years thanks to the implementation of the spivocracy in the 80s.
Immigration is simply the flow of people. What is more important is population density to which immigration is being added or taken away. England is a very densely populated country, particularly in the south. Scotland isn't and we don't have anything like the same issues.
I agree that we need to encourage domestic investment and the growth of indigenous firms. I also think that the challenges that EU rules supposedly imposed on this were much over stated. Most other EU countries didn't seem to have anything like the problems with favouring domestic suppliers that we did. It was another pathetic excuse.
We should address these issues by tax policies that encourage investment, education policies that provide the skills that such potential employers need and infrastructure policies which facilitate the trading of such businesses. None of this is a breach of even our current rules but we do not focus on it. Instead we talk about independence or Brexit as if these were silver bullets one way or the other.
Tax is a very relevant argument. We have two basic issues: property and business. With property a lot of Tory donors have made a lot of money having the London property market act as a global reserve currency. Hence the skyrocketing of prices where largely empty property is traded and sold, dragging London house prices and with it the rest of the UK to places that normals struggle to afford.
And business tax? We offer big business huge tax cuts as a reward for not paying their employees properly, not training and developing them. Not investing in capacity. I have no problem with cutting Corporation Tax provided we get a return on that investment. But again, too many spivs making a bomb and sending donations to the right places.
The UK is a backwater because we sell everything good off abroad for a short term profit and spiv fees. We need to invest our money long term. Like the Germans do. Like the French do. The EU is a red herring, a distraction from the fact that shit management and communist unions managed to make us uncompetitive in the 70s, then we decided to parcel it up and sell it off in the 80s.
Completely agree. On tax of businesses the important factor is the real rate of tax. The likes of Amazon paid almost no tax in this country for years because they were investing heavily in building their business. I have absolutely no problem with this providing that investment is increasing employment, skills and productivity in this country. The fetish about the actual rate of CT is another delusion. If we gave £2 of tax relief for each£1 invested here we could have a much higher rate that would penalise those who simply sweat the assets and run the business into the ground.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Inspires one ….. me, anyway ….. to go back to voting LibDem. Or moving on to vote Green!
Yes, I am between these two myself. I don't see the point in voting Starmer for the same policies, only with a face like a slapped arse.
I don't think it's necessary to do that to yourself before casting your ballot.
Our basic problem is denial. We can't accept that we are in the mess we are in. You mention things like foreign investment - do you have figures as to how much of it sticks long term? Because "foreign investment" gets fanfared, an assembly plant gets built thanks to big tax incentives, and a few years later it closes for good. What we need is DOMESTIC investment long term. Which we don't have and haven't had for 40 years thanks to the implementation of the spivocracy in the 80s.
Here's an idea: over the last 40 years we developed a massive trade deficit with the rest of Europe thanks to the single market. Why don't we reintroduce some minor trade barriers to level the playing field and restructure our trade?
A valid argument. So why haven't we introduced trade barriers to EEA imports? We demanded such barriers be erected, then failed to build the infrastructure or hire the staff or create the computer system, then Rees-Mogg abandoned it for good as imposition would be an act of "self-harm".
Meanwhile the French had it all in place early, blockade all out stuff as they eagerly did before the single market, and laugh at us. If what you want is a good idea, why have our government imposed it ONLY on exports?
The fact is that our trade deficit with Germany has shrunk from £25 billion to £15 billion, with exports higher than before the referendum and imports down.
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
But they are interchangeable when it comes to membership of the EU, which was the original point by @glw.
The most Starmer can deliver sticking to his guns is some close alignment, but he has now effectively ruled out the EU and EEA, and probably EFTA as there is little point to joining that without the EEA. Starmer is advocating what I would call a hardish Brexit. There are plenty of Brexiteers on here who would happily see the UK in EFTA. At the time of the referendum Starmer's position would have been considered quite extreme.
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
“I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it”
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
Heathener is Jack Monroe and I claim my £5
That’s actually a pretty good guess. They have the same philosophical vapidity mixed with a bizarrely firm moral view of the world. Also: moments of bourgeois boasting followed by performative poverty done really badly
The Guardian interview with Jack Monroe is a really interesting piece. She seems to be rather bulimic with money, and while has been poor at times, much was self inflicted by poor life decisions. Her campaigning on poverty is not invalidated by her chaotic lifestyle, indeed quite typical of how a lot of people mis-manage their finances. She is at times infuriating, but at the same time engaging and charismatic. People are complicated.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
We've got Remainers all but arguing that Starmer is secretly plotting to take the UK back into the EU, when only last month Starmer ruled out even rejoining the Single Market. Fantasists doesn't even come close, they are crackers.
Russia was openly negotiating an alliance with the UK while secretly negotiating the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The Pact itself openly ruled out even alliances with enemies of the other party, never mind operation Barbarossa which therefore obviously never happened.
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
“I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it”
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
Heathener is Jack Monroe and I claim my £5
That’s actually a pretty good guess. They have the same philosophical vapidity mixed with a bizarrely firm moral view of the world. Also: moments of bourgeois boasting followed by performative poverty done really badly
The Guardian interview with Jack Monroe is a really interesting piece. She seems to be rather bulimic with money, and while has been poor at times, much was self inflicted by poor life decisions. Her campaigning on poverty is not invalidated by her chaotic lifestyle, indeed quite typical of how a lot of people mis-manage their finances. She is at times infuriating, but at the same time engaging and charismatic. People are complicated.
Did I say I disliked her?
I find her comically contradictory and occasionally irritating, but I can also see someone with major mental health issues so I (personally) cut her a large amount of slack
I’d probably feel different if 1. I didn’t slightly fancy her and 2. I was actually poor and felt patronised by her poverty theatre (as some poor people do: see Twitter passim)
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Interesting piece in The Observer today on just that topic.
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
“I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it”
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
And, yet, "as a teacher" she can afford to book a nice foreign holiday (in term time) at the same time as the King's coronation in May later this year.
Baffling. Truly baffling.
She’s either a blatant liar, a bizarre fantasist, or a bot
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Cos Brexit has really stopped unwanted migrants coming here
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
I never said it wasn’t. But we do still have some kind of control over this immigration (tho we should have much more - especially with the dinghy people)
Migration is going to be a huge issue and won’t be helpful to the Rejoin cause
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
“I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it”
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
Heathener is Jack Monroe and I claim my £5
That’s actually a pretty good guess. They have the same philosophical vapidity mixed with a bizarrely firm moral view of the world. Also: moments of bourgeois boasting followed by performative poverty done really badly
The Guardian interview with Jack Monroe is a really interesting piece. She seems to be rather bulimic with money, and while has been poor at times, much was self inflicted by poor life decisions. Her campaigning on poverty is not invalidated by her chaotic lifestyle, indeed quite typical of how a lot of people mis-manage their finances. She is at times infuriating, but at the same time engaging and charismatic. People are complicated.
Did I say I disliked her?
I find her comically contradictory and occasionally irritating, but I can also see someone with major mental health issues so I (personally) cut her a large amount of slack
I’d probably feel different if 1. I didn’t slightly fancy her and 2. I was actually poor and felt patronised by her poverty theatre (as some poor people do: see Twitter passim)
I, on the other hand, have no idea who Jack Monroe is. Cultural diversity in action!
You will never make wazzock Brexit absolutists happy. Its always betrayal, always has been since we joined, and still is now that we "Sadly we have a Government that hasn't implemented Brexit". And will continue to be betrayal whatever happens. We're already seeing the return of FUKUK as a political threat to the Tories and that will only grow. They can't be bought off like last time as what they want is impossible to deliver. So watch as FUK candidates destroy the Tory majorities in seats across the country.
It will be interesting (and painful) to observe the parallels between the Tories and the headbangers and the Republicans and MAGA
Both tried appeasement
Both are now infiltrated and infected
How either of them eventually expels the poison will be instructive
I would quite like the Conservative and Unionist Party to tell the Brexiteers to fuck off and try their luck with the electorate, but I don't see it happening. Yet.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
Surely the assumption is that Starmer is lying to red wall voters about his stance on Brexit the way he lied to Corbynite Labour members about his stance on cultism?
Tactically I think both were the right approach. He could like to cranks knowing they would leave / get expelled anyway. He can lie to the red wall as they are already noting there is no stick on offer to stick the moon on, and will be receptive to Starmer's shock discovery of that once in government.
The idea that Labour will implement that part of their programme is as funny as thinking Ken Clarke would stick to his economic programme post-97. Which if you recall Clarke himself chuckled at and said there was never any intention to do the 2 years of hair-shirtism done by Labour post-97 when it stuck to his plan.
Your approval of what you perceive to be outright dishonesty in a party manifesto is quite grotesque.
There is a pool of voters - 10-20% or so - in every European country who hold to a mix of authoritarianism, social conservatism, nationalism, disaffection with ruling elites, and Euroscepticism. Such voters find the fantasies of radical rt opposition parties perenially attractive
What such voters wish for cannot be delivered by any actually existing govt, and their low trust in politics means they are unwilling to accept disappointment. Cons who think they can compete with Farageist fictions while in govt are kidding themselves.
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
Presumably all those Brexiteers who said EU FOM was racist and exclusionary will be welcoming these non EU migrants with open arms.
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
“I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it”
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
And, yet, "as a teacher" she can afford to book a nice foreign holiday (in term time) at the same time as the King's coronation in May later this year.
Baffling. Truly baffling.
She’s either a blatant liar, a bizarre fantasist, or a bot
Shocking that people on PB pretend to be other than they really are!
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
“I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it”
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
And, yet, "as a teacher" she can afford to book a nice foreign holiday (in term time) at the same time as the King's coronation in May later this year.
Baffling. Truly baffling.
She’s either a blatant liar, a bizarre fantasist, or a bot
Troll. I think she posts here early in the day to garner enough material to have LOLs with her mates on mumsnet about how she has been winding up the gammons again.
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
The EU took a long time to reach a political position on Ukraine and, when it emerged, it was clearly influenced by embarrassment at the UK and US taking the lead on things like supplying arms, cutting tariffs and strong unambiguous statements of political support. That's different to the Baltic States and Poland looking to their own defences and screaming blue murder at the EU to do more, which they still haven't fully stepped up to do.
None of that has anything to do with British membership of the EU.
The UK could have done exactly what they did for Ukraine while being an EU member and other EU members have done more.
So tout the British aid to Ukraine as some sort of specious Brexit benefit doesn't really stack up.
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
But they are interchangeable when it comes to membership of the EU, which was the original point by @glw.
The most Starmer can deliver sticking to his guns is some close alignment, but he has now effectively ruled out the EU and EEA, and probably EFTA as there is little point to joining that without the EEA. Starmer is advocating what I would call a hardish Brexit. There are plenty of Brexiteers on here who would happily see the UK in EFTA. At the time of the referendum Starmer's position would have been considered quite extreme.
Brexit was not nearly as an important decision as people on both sides of the divide like to pretend for reasons that quite escape me. The result of this pretense is that those in favour blame our relative economic failure over the last couple of decades on our membership of the EU rather than placing it where it really belongs, our political class. Similarly, those in favour of EU membership like to pretend that all the problems we have had since we left are a result of Brexit rather than a continuation of exactly the same problems that we had when we were members.
So, to take an example, has Brexit had anything to do with our lack of investment? No. We continue to have a highly disproportionate share of direct foreign investment into Europe. This is good and bad of course. One of the reasons for this is the horrendous trade deficit which we had in the EU which has continued.
Has Brexit done anything in respect of our lack of training and poor productivity? No. We continue to allow a very high level of immigration, indeed it is at record levels. We have not solved the elasticity of supply for labour that the EU gave us. We have not incentivised our employers to invest in training. We continue to have low wages, low productivity and a disappointing standard of living, just as we have had for the last 20 years.
Those in favour of Brexit, like @Luckyguy1983, argue, well at least we now have greater freedom to address these problems. I have some sympathy for this argument but so far, as he acknowledges, the government has made very little use of these powers and some of the proposed changes are controversial.
Those against claim that our current trade is being adversely affected and simply ignore the fact that our exports to the EU are at or near record levels despite their own problems with domestic demand. There are literally dozens of things that are having more effect on exports, imports and our terms of trade than Brexit. We effectively have a free trade deal with the EU right now. That is not the problem.
Brexit is a displacement activity which stops our politicians and indeed far too many of our contributors having to address the hard stuff. It may be that those in Scotland who have seen exactly the same phenomena with independence over the last 30 years recognise this delusion more easily. I agree with @RochdalePioneers that we need to move on. The EU was used as an excuse by our political class for far too long. There are no longer any excuses. Start addressing the problems.
A point of order if I may. Your statement about immigration numbers being at record levels. Whether it is accurate or not in the UK, it is worth reminding you that our levels are a small percentage compared to other countries. Its the same as "we're full up" and "we can't take all these asylum seekers" when we take very small numbers compared to France, Germany etc.
Our basic problem is denial. We can't accept that we are in the mess we are in. You mention things like foreign investment - do you have figures as to how much of it sticks long term? Because "foreign investment" gets fanfared, an assembly plant gets built thanks to big tax incentives, and a few years later it closes for good. What we need is DOMESTIC investment long term. Which we don't have and haven't had for 40 years thanks to the implementation of the spivocracy in the 80s.
Immigration is simply the flow of people. What is more important is population density to which immigration is being added or taken away. England is a very densely populated country, particularly in the south. Scotland isn't and we don't have anything like the same issues.
I agree that we need to encourage domestic investment and the growth of indigenous firms. I also think that the challenges that EU rules supposedly imposed on this were much over stated. Most other EU countries didn't seem to have anything like the problems with favouring domestic suppliers that we did. It was another pathetic excuse.
We should address these issues by tax policies that encourage investment, education policies that provide the skills that such potential employers need and infrastructure policies which facilitate the trading of such businesses. None of this is a breach of even our current rules but we do not focus on it. Instead we talk about independence or Brexit as if these were silver bullets one way or the other.
Tax is a very relevant argument. We have two basic issues: property and business. With property a lot of Tory donors have made a lot of money having the London property market act as a global reserve currency. Hence the skyrocketing of prices where largely empty property is traded and sold, dragging London house prices and with it the rest of the UK to places that normals struggle to afford.
And business tax? We offer big business huge tax cuts as a reward for not paying their employees properly, not training and developing them. Not investing in capacity. I have no problem with cutting Corporation Tax provided we get a return on that investment. But again, too many spivs making a bomb and sending donations to the right places.
The UK is a backwater because we sell everything good off abroad for a short term profit and spiv fees. We need to invest our money long term. Like the Germans do. Like the French do. The EU is a red herring, a distraction from the fact that shit management and communist unions managed to make us uncompetitive in the 70s, then we decided to parcel it up and sell it off in the 80s.
Completely agree. On tax of businesses the important factor is the real rate of tax. The likes of Amazon paid almost no tax in this country for years because they were investing heavily in building their business. I have absolutely no problem with this providing that investment is increasing employment, skills and productivity in this country. The fetish about the actual rate of CT is another delusion. If we gave £2 of tax relief for each£1 invested here we could have a much higher rate that would penalise those who simply sweat the assets and run the business into the ground.
So why do we allow it? I keep pointing the finger at the Tories and rightly so - they directly take a cut from the spiv set. But Labour didn't do remotely enough to make any changes stick. Something needs to change - the two party rinse and repeat of the same narrow policies is a total failure. Which is why I can understand the driver that pushed voters towards brexit even if it was the wrong answer to the right question.
Since it is directly relevant to this current discussion I will repeat what I said on here two days ago.
I think it is a mistake on all sides for people to underestimate the link between the popularity or otherwise of the Government/current issues and the Brexit/Rejoin question. I obviously stand to be wrong but I would predict that after a couple of years of the Tories being out of Government and things improving (I hope) under Starmer, that the dissatisfaction with our position outside the EU would ease. All the more so if Starmer does some of the sensible, non ideological things that are available to him to improve relations with the EU. This is why I have no great fears about the UK rejoining the EU any time soon (or ever). Starmer is not daft enough to try it yet and the longer he leaves it the less likely it is to happen
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
“I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it”
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
And, yet, "as a teacher" she can afford to book a nice foreign holiday (in term time) at the same time as the King's coronation in May later this year.
Baffling. Truly baffling.
She’s either a blatant liar, a bizarre fantasist, or a bot
Shocking that people on PB pretend to be other than they really are!
At least I consistently stay in character!
It’s fine to say whatever you like on PB, it’s fine to be whoever you want to be, however if you volunteer descriptions of your personal life, or claim some authority from personal experience, you can expect blow back when your claims become so absurd it is clear you are lying
You will never make wazzock Brexit absolutists happy. Its always betrayal, always has been since we joined, and still is now that we "Sadly we have a Government that hasn't implemented Brexit". And will continue to be betrayal whatever happens. We're already seeing the return of FUKUK as a political threat to the Tories and that will only grow. They can't be bought off like last time as what they want is impossible to deliver. So watch as FUK candidates destroy the Tory majorities in seats across the country.
It will be interesting (and painful) to observe the parallels between the Tories and the headbangers and the Republicans and MAGA
Both tried appeasement
Both are now infiltrated and infected
How either of them eventually expels the poison will be instructive
I would quite like the Conservative and Unionist Party to tell the Brexiteers to fuck off and try their luck with the electorate, but I don't see it happening. Yet.
Does part of your revenge fantasy against the Conservatives involve voting for a pro-Brexit Labour manifesto?
Surely the assumption is that Starmer is lying to red wall voters about his stance on Brexit the way he lied to Corbynite Labour members about his stance on cultism?
Tactically I think both were the right approach. He could like to cranks knowing they would leave / get expelled anyway. He can lie to the red wall as they are already noting there is no stick on offer to stick the moon on, and will be receptive to Starmer's shock discovery of that once in government.
The idea that Labour will implement that part of their programme is as funny as thinking Ken Clarke would stick to his economic programme post-97. Which if you recall Clarke himself chuckled at and said there was never any intention to do the 2 years of hair-shirtism done by Labour post-97 when it stuck to his plan.
Your approval of what you perceive to be outright dishonesty in a party manifesto is quite grotesque.
Is that 1883 in your username and what manifesto are you on about?
It won’t be people like us who decide on the future of Brexit. For the politically engaged it’s a dialogue of the deaf. I struggle to think of anyone I know who has changed their mind on Brexit since around 2018.
It’s the politically disengaged who briefly thought about Brexit around the time of the referendum, then got in with life. Those are the people who are more likely to have changed their minds.
For me it’s simply a very personal question of identity. I want to be in the EU, I want to be part of the project, for good or bad. I want to be able - at least in theory - to do that 12 month cycle of nice places I mooted last night. As it stands I’d get to the end of March: Alps and my 90 visa free days would be up.
The EU took a long time to reach a political position on Ukraine and, when it emerged, it was clearly influenced by embarrassment at the UK and US taking the lead on things like supplying arms, cutting tariffs and strong unambiguous statements of political support. That's different to the Baltic States and Poland looking to their own defences and screaming blue murder at the EU to do more, which they still haven't fully stepped up to do.
None of that has anything to do with British membership of the EU.
The UK could have done exactly what they did for Ukraine while being an EU member and other EU members have done more.
So tout the British aid to Ukraine as some sort of specious Brexit benefit doesn't really stack up.
I don't think you know how the CFSP works nor how the EU setting tarrifs works.
Starmer is, of course, not pro-Brexit. Nor is he a liar. He is simply a realist. His stance is down to the simple fact that Brexit (for good or evil) has happened.
Does anybody seriously think that now would be a good time for Labour to advocate re-opening all the horrendous Brexit wounds of the last six years or so? It wouldn't just be electorally suicidal, it would be damaging to the fabric of the nation. Starmer has the sense to recognise this, that's all.
Rude intemperate intolerant people who are full of bigotry and little intention to listen, let alone be kind and open.
Sex and gender are so complex and these bear pit environments too readily simply turn into angry and hate-filled places where there's very little gentle engagement with all the nuances. I have in fact been on national television several times discussing the topic and I've written in the national press on it.
On forums with some topics, as with Jehovah Witnesses, it's better to walk away.
It's a female thing not to want to have a cock fight.
Ok Leon.
She really isn’t my sock puppet. If she was mine I’d make her crazier and funnier, and there’s no way I could be arsed to post earnest asseverations about trans issues at 6am
I am in 100% agreement with @DavidL's excellent post on Brexit. Really, it said it all. I would prefer a pro-British Government within the EU to what we have outside the EU. But we weren't given a referendum to sack our own Governing class, we were given a Brexit referendum. As far as that went, the British public made the sensible choice.
It's a astonishing how quickly and how thoroughly the Leavers have allowed the case against EU membership to wither and die. Brexit is becoming seriously niche. Those still in favour need to get the big guns in to ram home the message that Brexit, despite all the evidence to the contrary, was rational, beneficial and good. I'm talking Boris and Dan Hannan doing a speech a week here.
The EU took a long time to reach a political position on Ukraine and, when it emerged, it was clearly influenced by embarrassment at the UK and US taking the lead on things like supplying arms, cutting tariffs and strong unambiguous statements of political support. That's different to the Baltic States and Poland looking to their own defences and screaming blue murder at the EU to do more, which they still haven't fully stepped up to do.
None of that has anything to do with British membership of the EU.
The UK could have done exactly what they did for Ukraine while being an EU member and other EU members have done more.
So tout the British aid to Ukraine as some sort of specious Brexit benefit doesn't really stack up.
I don't think you know how the CFSP works nor how the EU setting tarrifs works.
Our basic problem is denial. We can't accept that we are in the mess we are in. You mention things like foreign investment - do you have figures as to how much of it sticks long term? Because "foreign investment" gets fanfared, an assembly plant gets built thanks to big tax incentives, and a few years later it closes for good. What we need is DOMESTIC investment long term. Which we don't have and haven't had for 40 years thanks to the implementation of the spivocracy in the 80s.
Here's an idea: over the last 40 years we developed a massive trade deficit with the rest of Europe thanks to the single market. Why don't we reintroduce some minor trade barriers to level the playing field and restructure our trade?
A valid argument. So why haven't we introduced trade barriers to EEA imports? We demanded such barriers be erected, then failed to build the infrastructure or hire the staff or create the computer system, then Rees-Mogg abandoned it for good as imposition would be an act of "self-harm".
Meanwhile the French had it all in place early, blockade all out stuff as they eagerly did before the single market, and laugh at us. If what you want is a good idea, why have our government imposed it ONLY on exports?
Indeed the failure to impose import checks is one of the most curious of Brexiteer policies. We have added a one way barrier to trade affecting only imports, albeit with some impact because lorries don't want to return empty after 2 days in a lay-by queueing to get out.
Brexiteers are not an homogenous bloc. The extreme free-traders will applaud the absence of import tariffs or restrictions. Other Brexiteers are protectionist by instinct and welcome reduced imports from Europe which they see as exploiting us. Probably most never gave it much thought. This is why we should have settled on a vision for Brexit before leaving.
The EU took a long time to reach a political position on Ukraine and, when it emerged, it was clearly influenced by embarrassment at the UK and US taking the lead on things like supplying arms, cutting tariffs and strong unambiguous statements of political support. That's different to the Baltic States and Poland looking to their own defences and screaming blue murder at the EU to do more, which they still haven't fully stepped up to do.
None of that has anything to do with British membership of the EU.
The UK could have done exactly what they did for Ukraine while being an EU member and other EU members have done more.
So tout the British aid to Ukraine as some sort of specious Brexit benefit doesn't really stack up.
I don't think you know how the CFSP works nor how the EU setting tarrifs works.
Come back when you've done a bit more research.
So what did the UK do that would have been impossible inside the EU?
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
Presumably all those Brexiteers who said EU FOM was racist and exclusionary will be welcoming these non EU migrants with open arms.
My local big sainsburys in Camden is a fascinating barometer of London’s demographic change
There used to be one small corner devoted to foreign foods, plus a World Foods section with mirin and laksa paste
Now about 10% of the store (and growing) is dedicated to Asian, Halal, East European, Brazilian, Indian, plus a bit of Irish and North American. They have things I’ve never seen before - which is fun
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
Presumably all those Brexiteers who said EU FOM was racist and exclusionary will be welcoming these non EU migrants with open arms.
My local big sainsburys in Camden is a fascinating barometer of London’s demographic change
There used to be one small corner devoted to foreign foods, plus a World Foods section with mirin and laksa paste
Now about 10% of the store (and growing) is dedicated to Asian, Halal, East European, Brazilian, Indian, plus a bit of Irish and North American. They have things I’ve never seen before - which is fun
This has happened in the last year
Perhaps they are trying to appeal to travel writers rather than changing demographics?
Oh FFS this was one of the USPs of Twitter. What sets it apart now?
Everything is going long form....e.g. tiktok now doesn't limit video length, which again was its USP. Also, its become so common for people to do a thread that is 10+ tweets long or a screen-cap of a note with lots of text.
One of the most compelling opportunities to lance the boil, which hasn’t been pursued for multiple political reasons (except in Northern Ireland) would be regional or city level single market membership. One country two systems.
Say for example Brighton elects for special status. Or Oxford, Liverpool or wherever (London might be too divisive for the rest of the country). People who want to live and operate within the EU and with EU free movement rights can do so. People who don’t, stay out. We know it works in principle through the combination of the GFA and NIP in Northern Ireland (and in Gibraltar and elsewhere).
We also have live examples of differing trade rules in specific locations through Rishi’s Freeports.
If these EU Hong Kongs succeed they provide a useful pilot for the rest of the country, if they fail then they’ll quickly lose popularity.
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
Presumably all those Brexiteers who said EU FOM was racist and exclusionary will be welcoming these non EU migrants with open arms.
My local big sainsburys in Camden is a fascinating barometer of London’s demographic change
There used to be one small corner devoted to foreign foods, plus a World Foods section with mirin and laksa paste
Now about 10% of the store (and growing) is dedicated to Asian, Halal, East European, Brazilian, Indian, plus a bit of Irish and North American. They have things I’ve never seen before - which is fun
This has happened in the last year
One of the old bags from the WI in our village recently visited London for the first time since 1987. The experience has shocked to her core and caused her to supplement her all consuming hatred of Harry and MM with an obsession with immigrants.
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
Presumably all those Brexiteers who said EU FOM was racist and exclusionary will be welcoming these non EU migrants with open arms.
My local big sainsburys in Camden is a fascinating barometer of London’s demographic change
There used to be one small corner devoted to foreign foods, plus a World Foods section with mirin and laksa paste
Now about 10% of the store (and growing) is dedicated to Asian, Halal, East European, Brazilian, Indian, plus a bit of Irish and North American. They have things I’ve never seen before - which is fun
This has happened in the last year
Same in Sainsbury's here (although perhaps in part due to the way they've arranged the shelves recently; a lot of the foods were already there). Similarly a lot of space is now taken up by plant-based "meat and milk" products.
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
Presumably all those Brexiteers who said EU FOM was racist and exclusionary will be welcoming these non EU migrants with open arms.
My local big sainsburys in Camden is a fascinating barometer of London’s demographic change
There used to be one small corner devoted to foreign foods, plus a World Foods section with mirin and laksa paste
Now about 10% of the store (and growing) is dedicated to Asian, Halal, East European, Brazilian, Indian, plus a bit of Irish and North American. They have things I’ve never seen before - which is fun
This has happened in the last year
Same in Sainsbury's here (although perhaps in part due to the way they've arranged the shelves recently; a lot of the foods were already there). Similarly a lot of space is now taken up by plant-based "meat and milk" products.
The EU took a long time to reach a political position on Ukraine and, when it emerged, it was clearly influenced by embarrassment at the UK and US taking the lead on things like supplying arms, cutting tariffs and strong unambiguous statements of political support. That's different to the Baltic States and Poland looking to their own defences and screaming blue murder at the EU to do more, which they still haven't fully stepped up to do.
None of that has anything to do with British membership of the EU.
The UK could have done exactly what they did for Ukraine while being an EU member and other EU members have done more.
So tout the British aid to Ukraine as some sort of specious Brexit benefit doesn't really stack up.
I don't think you know how the CFSP works nor how the EU setting tarrifs works.
Come back when you've done a bit more research.
So what did the UK do that would have been impossible inside the EU?
Come back when you've learnt how to spell tariff.
I've always quite you're quite bright, if a little disturbed.
Maybe you're actually secretly a bit thick and desperate that no-one sees it.
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
Presumably all those Brexiteers who said EU FOM was racist and exclusionary will be welcoming these non EU migrants with open arms.
My local big sainsburys in Camden is a fascinating barometer of London’s demographic change
There used to be one small corner devoted to foreign foods, plus a World Foods section with mirin and laksa paste
Now about 10% of the store (and growing) is dedicated to Asian, Halal, East European, Brazilian, Indian, plus a bit of Irish and North American. They have things I’ve never seen before - which is fun
This has happened in the last year
Same in Sainsbury's here (although perhaps in part due to the way they've arranged the shelves recently; a lot of the foods were already there). Similarly a lot of space is now taken up by plant-based "meat and milk" products.
Otherwise known as the junk food aisle ;-)
Cows are now running adverts extolling "beef and dairy".
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
Presumably all those Brexiteers who said EU FOM was racist and exclusionary will be welcoming these non EU migrants with open arms.
My local big sainsburys in Camden is a fascinating barometer of London’s demographic change
There used to be one small corner devoted to foreign foods, plus a World Foods section with mirin and laksa paste
Now about 10% of the store (and growing) is dedicated to Asian, Halal, East European, Brazilian, Indian, plus a bit of Irish and North American. They have things I’ve never seen before - which is fun
This has happened in the last year
Same in Sainsbury's here (although perhaps in part due to the way they've arranged the shelves recently; a lot of the foods were already there). Similarly a lot of space is now taken up by plant-based "meat and milk" products.
My sense is that's gone off the boil in the last year or two.
I’m reading Douglas Murray’s “The strange death of Europe”
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
Non-EU immigration is up. That's non-EU and not via the EU and exploiting FOM.
Presumably all those Brexiteers who said EU FOM was racist and exclusionary will be welcoming these non EU migrants with open arms.
My local big sainsburys in Camden is a fascinating barometer of London’s demographic change
There used to be one small corner devoted to foreign foods, plus a World Foods section with mirin and laksa paste
Now about 10% of the store (and growing) is dedicated to Asian, Halal, East European, Brazilian, Indian, plus a bit of Irish and North American. They have things I’ve never seen before - which is fun
This has happened in the last year
One of the old bags from the WI in our village recently visited London for the first time since 1987. The experience has shocked to her core and caused her to supplement her all consuming hatred of Harry and MM with an obsession with immigrants.
I sympathise with the old bag. I thrive on newness and change and I don’t have an issue with immigration (I just wish we got more immigrants from, say, Vietnam instead of Somalia). I also park myself in foreign countries quite regularly
But at times I find the speed and scale of change unsettling. People who come to london once a decade will be profoundly astonished
One of the most compelling opportunities to lance the boil, which hasn’t been pursued for multiple political reasons (except in Northern Ireland) would be regional or city level single market membership. One country two systems.
Say for example Brighton elects for special status. Or Oxford, Liverpool or wherever (London might be too divisive for the rest of the country). People who want to live and operate within the EU and with EU free movement rights can do so. People who don’t, stay out. We know it works in principle through the combination of the GFA and NIP in Northern Ireland (and in Gibraltar and elsewhere).
We also have live examples of differing trade rules in specific locations through Rishi’s Freeports.
If these EU Hong Kongs succeed they provide a useful pilot for the rest of the country, if they fail then they’ll quickly lose popularity.
What you're describing would be many times more complicated that the NI protocol and the EU wouldn't be remotely interested in it.
The EU took a long time to reach a political position on Ukraine and, when it emerged, it was clearly influenced by embarrassment at the UK and US taking the lead on things like supplying arms, cutting tariffs and strong unambiguous statements of political support. That's different to the Baltic States and Poland looking to their own defences and screaming blue murder at the EU to do more, which they still haven't fully stepped up to do.
None of that has anything to do with British membership of the EU.
The UK could have done exactly what they did for Ukraine while being an EU member and other EU members have done more.
So tout the British aid to Ukraine as some sort of specious Brexit benefit doesn't really stack up.
I don't think you know how the CFSP works nor how the EU setting tarrifs works.
Come back when you've done a bit more research.
So what did the UK do that would have been impossible inside the EU?
Come back when you've learnt how to spell tariff.
I've always quite you're quite bright, if a little disturbed.
Maybe you're actually secretly a bit thick and desperate that no-one sees it.
When they tested us at BRNC I was exactly on on the median IQ though I can't imagine that the multiple motorcycle accidents, fistfights and at least two episodes of G-LOC have made me any cleverer.
Comments
As I have said many times the red wall is not stupid. Its now patently obvious what the Brexit game is, and having been promised the moon on a stick, told it was easy then realised there is no stick, they are not going to back either Tory Morons or FUKUK morons. I expect large numbers not to vote for anyone.
We elect politicians to make the key decisions that impact peoples lives. The Brexit referendum was totally unnecessary and was used to lance the filthy boil in the filthy Conservative party.
We are thus in a suboptimal position where we will continue to fall back internationally. It may take 10 years or so the correct this self inflicted calamity.
Tactically I think both were the right approach. He could like to cranks knowing they would leave / get expelled anyway. He can lie to the red wall as they are already noting there is no stick on offer to stick the moon on, and will be receptive to Starmer's shock discovery of that once in government.
The idea that Labour will implement that part of their programme is as funny as thinking Ken Clarke would stick to his economic programme post-97. Which if you recall Clarke himself chuckled at and said there was never any intention to do the 2 years of hair-shirtism done by Labour post-97 when it stuck to his plan.
I think some on the other side are just temperamentally unable to accept that the EU itself has any disadvantages, or ever gets it wrong, which is precisely why their histrionics over the benefits of Rejoin should be so readily dismissed.
I watched the interview with Rishi Sunak, and was impressed by the number of times he referred to “stopping the boats“. I’m all in favour of preventing people risking their lives, crossing the channel, but I am equally in favour of people with the right to asylum achieving asylum here.
I have a feeling that our p.m. is in favour of the first, but opposed to the second!
That is simply barking and likely to lead to an even nastier backlash the other way in future when the consequences of that political and economic straitjacket become apparent.
The median position of the typical British voter has been and remains what it has always been: membership of a common market, freedom to travel for work and pleasure (within reason) and good relations, but no political or economic union or judicial supremacy outside these islands.
Normal voters don't understand any of this but they are receptive to gas-lit falsehoods. They have now realised that nirvana isn't quite as it was described and are increasingly uninterested in "no no, this isn't nirvana, we haven't got there yet, you've been betrayed".
The 2023 round of the Tory civil war will make this even starker. The EU Freedoms thing is all about making the red wall easier to exploit. Rip up rights, red tape, regulations - all the things that keep them safe at work and protect their rights to things like holidays. Just like the money the government promised it would replace EU farming subsidies with, the replacement won't be the same, won't cover the hole, will leave people worse off and sore about it.
So in 2024 we have Tory MPs telling people who are demonstrably worse off that actually they are better off. If they feel any different it must be their fault. And RUKFUK candidates demanding red wall voters punish themselves harder.
Suddenly the "why can't we protect our rights and go back to free trade with a huge market" feels less threatening than it did a decade ago...
Good post
https://nicktyrone.substack.com/p/this-week-in-brexitland-december-334?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
"This is why Labour’s position on Brexit at the moment is absolutely the correct one for the times. They can’t say that The Phantom Menace (aka, leaving the EU) is bad yet - too many people aren’t ready for that truth bomb. Instead, they are proposing something akin to The Phantom Edit. This was a cut of Episode 1, done online by fans, which took the supposed worst bits of the movie out - all of Jar Jar Binks, huge portions featuring the annoying kid - in an effort to make the film “good”. At that stage, a lot of people still felt that Phantom Menace could have been great or at least okay, so long as you fixed certain elements of it. The Phantom Edit eventually helped everyone heal a little by demonstrating that, even when you took the very worst bits of it out, it’s still a crap movie with a plot that makes zero sense. There is simply no way to make it good."
We also need the Tory Party to become relatively sane again and to actually have a leader who has the guts to confront the ERG. I suspect Dura_Ace is right in that Badenoch will probably succeed Sunak following an election defeat by courting the ERG and the headbangers within the Tory Party membership. If the Tories get beaten comfortably the election afterward again, I suspect, finally, at that point they'll realise they cannot placate the ERG.
So, to take an example, has Brexit had anything to do with our lack of investment? No. We continue to have a highly disproportionate share of direct foreign investment into Europe. This is good and bad of course. One of the reasons for this is the horrendous trade deficit which we had in the EU which has continued.
Has Brexit done anything in respect of our lack of training and poor productivity? No. We continue to allow a very high level of immigration, indeed it is at record levels. We have not solved the elasticity of supply for labour that the EU gave us. We have not incentivised our employers to invest in training. We continue to have low wages, low productivity and a disappointing standard of living, just as we have had for the last 20 years.
Those in favour of Brexit, like @Luckyguy1983, argue, well at least we now have greater freedom to address these problems. I have some sympathy for this argument but so far, as he acknowledges, the government has made very little use of these powers and some of the proposed changes are controversial.
Those against claim that our current trade is being adversely affected and simply ignore the fact that our exports to the EU are at or near record levels despite their own problems with domestic demand. There are literally dozens of things that are having more effect on exports, imports and our terms of trade than Brexit. We effectively have a free trade deal with the EU right now. That is not the problem.
Brexit is a displacement activity which stops our politicians and indeed far too many of our contributors having to address the hard stuff. It may be that those in Scotland who have seen exactly the same phenomena with independence over the last 30 years recognise this delusion more easily. I agree with @RochdalePioneers that we need to move on. The EU was used as an excuse by our political class for far too long. There are no longer any excuses. Start addressing the problems.
The debate is now over Germans donating Patriot missiles, and a pan European programme for donating Leopard 2 tanks. There is some complicated logistics required in making this a viable way to equip new Ukranian brigades, but looks like it will happen.
Our basic problem is denial. We can't accept that we are in the mess we are in. You mention things like foreign investment - do you have figures as to how much of it sticks long term? Because "foreign investment" gets fanfared, an assembly plant gets built thanks to big tax incentives, and a few years later it closes for good. What we need is DOMESTIC investment long term. Which we don't have and haven't had for 40 years thanks to the implementation of the spivocracy in the 80s.
Hang on, can you be in the EU but not the single market?
I agree that we need to encourage domestic investment and the growth of indigenous firms. I also think that the challenges that EU rules supposedly imposed on this were much over stated. Most other EU countries didn't seem to have anything like the problems with favouring domestic suppliers that we did. It was another pathetic excuse.
We should address these issues by tax policies that encourage investment, education policies that provide the skills that such potential employers need and infrastructure policies which facilitate the trading of such businesses. None of this is a breach of even our current rules but we do not focus on it. Instead we talk about independence or Brexit as if these were silver bullets one way or the other.
The other day you told us you are so poor you are only boiling a kettle once a day, then storing the hot water in a thermos to save 1.7 pence
You must write for some exceptionally ungenerous newspapers
The EU needs to be flexible if it wants a constructive collaborative long-term relationship with the UK, and vice-versa, and sensitive to the politics.
We got here because of its dogmatic one-size-fits-all position, that brooked no criticism, and its arrogance in unceremoniously ignoring any democratic rejection.
Have they learnt their lesson?
Meanwhile the French had it all in place early, blockade all out stuff as they eagerly did before the single market, and laugh at us. If what you want is a good idea, why have our government imposed it ONLY on exports?
That said I don't really get Starmer's position either, it's like saying "I'm going to get fit" and then ruling out exercising to achieve it.
While they argue about the cause, there is no denial from the Brexiteers that Brexit as it exists today is a shitshow.
And business tax? We offer big business huge tax cuts as a reward for not paying their employees properly, not training and developing them. Not investing in capacity. I have no problem with cutting Corporation Tax provided we get a return on that investment. But again, too many spivs making a bomb and sending donations to the right places.
The UK is a backwater because we sell everything good off abroad for a short term profit and spiv fees. We need to invest our money long term. Like the Germans do. Like the French do. The EU is a red herring, a distraction from the fact that shit management and communist unions managed to make us uncompetitive in the 70s, then we decided to parcel it up and sell it off in the 80s.
Psychologists would find you a fascinating case study.
Baffling. Truly baffling.
Leave voters in the redwall likely prefer the Boris deal or even the May deal over rejoin and EEA and EFTA as they avoid restoring free movement
It’s not for the faint hearted or Woke. It is also rather good, and a devastating analysis of the migrant crisis of the 2010s
Which makes it relevant to this debate. I am pretty sure we will soon be looking at another, even bigger migrant crisis. Something that will dwarf the last. Climate change isn’t going away, Africa and the MENA are still in bad shape, in the main
The EU will be flooded with unwanted migrants. At that point Schengen, Free Movement and the EU as a whole might look like really bad news, and Brexit might seem an inspired choice
Events, dear boy. Events
The world is a cruel and deceitful place
I find her comically contradictory and occasionally irritating, but I can also see someone with major mental health issues so I (personally) cut her a large amount of slack
I’d probably feel different if 1. I didn’t slightly fancy her and 2. I was actually poor and felt patronised by her poverty theatre (as some poor people do: see Twitter passim)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/08/racism-rebranded-how-far-right-ideology-feeds-off-identity-politics-kenan-malik-not-so-black-and-white
Oh, wait...
Migration is going to be a huge issue and won’t be helpful to the Rejoin cause
What such voters wish for cannot be delivered by any actually existing govt, and their low trust in politics means they are unwilling to accept disappointment. Cons who think they can compete with Farageist fictions while in govt are kidding themselves.
https://twitter.com/robfordmancs/status/1612043658924101635
The UK could have done exactly what they did for Ukraine while being an EU member and other EU members have done more.
So tout the British aid to Ukraine as some sort of specious Brexit benefit doesn't really stack up.
I think it is a mistake on all sides for people to underestimate the link between the popularity or otherwise of the Government/current issues and the Brexit/Rejoin question. I obviously stand to be wrong but I would predict that after a couple of years of the Tories being out of Government and things improving (I hope) under Starmer, that the dissatisfaction with our position outside the EU would ease. All the more so if Starmer does some of the sensible, non ideological things that are available to him to improve relations with the EU. This is why I have no great fears about the UK rejoining the EU any time soon (or ever). Starmer is not daft enough to try it yet and the longer he leaves it the less likely it is to happen
It’s fine to say whatever you like on PB, it’s fine to be whoever you want to be, however if you volunteer descriptions of your personal life, or claim some authority from personal experience, you can expect blow back when your claims become so absurd it is clear you are lying
I’ve put @Heathener on mute
It’s the politically disengaged who briefly thought about Brexit around the time of the referendum, then got in with life. Those are the people who are more likely to have changed their minds.
For me it’s simply a very personal question of identity. I want to be in the EU, I want to be part of the project, for good or bad. I want to be able - at least in theory - to do that 12 month cycle of nice places I mooted last night. As it stands I’d get to the end of March: Alps and my 90 visa free days would be up.
Come back when you've done a bit more research.
Does anybody seriously think that now would be a good time for Labour to advocate re-opening all the horrendous Brexit wounds of the last six years or so? It wouldn't just be electorally suicidal, it would be damaging to the fabric of the nation. Starmer has the sense to recognise this, that's all.
Jack Ma to give up control of fintech giant Ant Group
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64192382
Come back when you've learnt how to spell tariff.
There used to be one small corner devoted to foreign foods, plus a World Foods section with mirin and laksa paste
Now about 10% of the store (and growing) is dedicated to Asian, Halal, East European, Brazilian, Indian, plus a bit of Irish and North American. They have things I’ve never seen before - which is fun
This has happened in the last year
Say for example Brighton elects for special status. Or Oxford, Liverpool or wherever (London might be too divisive for the rest of the country). People who want to live and operate within the EU and with EU free movement rights can do so. People who don’t, stay out. We know it works in principle through the combination of the GFA and NIP in Northern Ireland (and in Gibraltar and elsewhere).
We also have live examples of differing trade rules in specific locations through Rishi’s Freeports.
If these EU Hong Kongs succeed they provide a useful pilot for the rest of the country, if they fail then they’ll quickly lose popularity.
Maybe you're actually secretly a bit thick and desperate that no-one sees it.
Peak vegansignalling was c. 2019.
But at times I find the speed and scale of change unsettling. People who come to london once a decade will be profoundly astonished