Just as the EU was blamed for most things before Brexit the reverse is now happening .
I can imagine it’s frustrating for Leavers but what goes around comes around !
This blame-Brexit campaign is possibly going to succeed as well
I used to scoff at predictions we would Rejoin. Now I am not so sure at all. Tho the Rejoiners need to act fairly fast - next 5-10 years - because the UK will in time pivot further away from the EU, as it necessarily develops a new economic model that actually works
As shown on TV last night
Yep. I can see the polls and I can see the trend. We are possibly heading for Rejoin if the Rejoiners play it cleverly
That said the Remainers have shown crass ineptitude and boorish arrogance in the past, and if they allow people like you to be heard, gloating, sniping and bitterly exulting, they will badly miss the window of opportunity
We left. We were told leaving the EU would be beneficial to the nation. Shouldn't the Leavers who told us to suck up our defeat in 2016 be cracking on with making Brexit work?
Everybody should.
Brexit's fucked. Lost cause. It's like one of those doddery, blind 19 year old Labradors that people can't bear to have euthanised because they loved its younger self so very much. So they persist with cocktails of drugs and 2 grand vet bills while kidding themselves they see signs of improvement as they clean up yet more liquid shit.
Nope. Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. What we do from here is for everyone to decide. Everyone does want to make the country better than it is at the moment, right?
"Brexit was a mistake. An act of self-harm based on a delusional outdated view of Britain and the world. What do you have to say for yourself, Leavers?"
"It happened."
This is about where we are with the debate, I think.
This debate should be over. The Brexit facts are these:
We have left
We have little prospect of joining any time soon, including "best of both worlds" arrangements such as the Single Market
Brexit causes friction, reduces opportunities and influence, and makes us poorer
The debate should be how we deal with this, eg
Brexit reduces our tax base. Should we raise taxes to maintain public services or accept these will be degraded?
Should we join EU initiatives such as Galileo as second-class participants, but these initiatives might be useful to us?
Do we dynamically re-align our regs with EU equivalents to stay in line with changes made by the EU?
Do we agree a more liberal visa regime with the EU to partially allow citizens and enterprises to go about their business?
etc
All of which boils down to “How do we manage the decline?” rather than “How do we take advantage of the opportunity?”.
So long as government keeps looking to answer the first question, the decline is inevitable.
So what's your alternative list of opportunities ?
*Ditch HS2, or bring the current work to some sort of reasonable conclusion - perhaps build a garden city at the end of it that we were planning to build anyway.
What has HS2 got to do with the EU - it's core infrastructure that has been sold inappropriately since the very first announcement.
HS2 (in it's initial enterity) is core infrastructure to allow more trains to / from London and Birmingham while allowing increased capacity for slower local services on the old lines.
And given you started with a completely irrelevant hobbyhorse topic - I doubt you've given the other ideas any thought either.
Regarding the origins and the inexplicable ability of this project to radically increase its costs whilst never getting shitcanned, you may find the following blogpost from back in 2015 (when this was a slightly less expensive white elephant) interesting:
At the time the TENs were outlined in the Treaty of Rome, the original Trans-European Network Member States were not obliged to upgrade or complete existing infrastructure. But this changed when such obligations were included in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
In 2011 the European Commission put forward two more proposals which significantly overhauled the operation of TEN-T. The first moved the programme from a voluntary to a compulsory basis (i.e. Member States would be forced to introduce transport network changes specified in an EU Regulation). For this, the UK Government estimates it would cost between £64 and £137 billion. The second proposal was for a Connecting Europe Facility to put the budget for TEN-T on a multi-year footing and this would obviously see a significant increase to the budget.
As for the merits of the project itself, I'd be interested to read a single cost-benefit analysis where it returns more than its current projected cost.
It would appear to be you who needs to give these issues more thought, not me. Like most extreme remainers, you aren't prepared to contemplate the fact that the EU has always worked via national Governments implementing its agenda (and obliging the EU by helpfully absorbing any flak), because it doesn't fit with your narrative about complaining right wing Tories 'blaming the EU for everything', which along with 'The Sun' is your main way of dismissing the loss of the referendum. The truth is that whilst some complained, UK Governments of all colours have swiftly and quietly implemented EU directives and memoranda disguised as their own reforms.
What is now apparent is that the same people see the fact that we've actually left the EU as no impediment to continuing exactly the same practise.
Comments
http://www.theeuroprobe.org/2015-088-hs2-controlled-by-eu-not-our-gov/
Excerpt:
Increase of Finance, Loss of Sovereignty
At the time the TENs were outlined in the Treaty of Rome, the original Trans-European Network Member States were not obliged to upgrade or complete existing infrastructure. But this changed when such obligations were included in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
In 2011 the European Commission put forward two more proposals which significantly overhauled the operation of TEN-T. The first moved the programme from a voluntary to a compulsory basis (i.e. Member States would be forced to introduce transport network changes specified in an EU Regulation). For this, the UK Government estimates it would cost between £64 and £137 billion. The second proposal was for a Connecting Europe Facility to put the budget for TEN-T on a multi-year footing and this would obviously see a significant increase to the budget.
As for the merits of the project itself, I'd be interested to read a single cost-benefit analysis where it returns more than its current projected cost.
It would appear to be you who needs to give these issues more thought, not me. Like most extreme remainers, you aren't prepared to contemplate the fact that the EU has always worked via national Governments implementing its agenda (and obliging the EU by helpfully absorbing any flak), because it doesn't fit with your narrative about complaining right wing Tories 'blaming the EU for everything', which along with 'The Sun' is your main way of dismissing the loss of the referendum. The truth is that whilst some complained, UK Governments of all colours have swiftly and quietly implemented EU directives and memoranda disguised as their own reforms.
What is now apparent is that the same people see the fact that we've actually left the EU as no impediment to continuing exactly the same practise.