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It was said of the Thane of Cawdor that “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.” Well Britain may not be an ambitious murderer driven to evil deeds by superstitious prophecies (though some on the Remain side or in Continental Europe might well think otherwise). And it has not left anything yet. But two months on from the referendum, the swift defenestration of one ruler, his replac…
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When the voters were finally asked they voted differently to that expected. Are we now to be sent away until the country comes up with the "correct answer?" Sarkozy is again proposing just this approach though not as yet elected but in the dark corridors of the EU it's going to be considered a way forward as it has been previously. Don't like the first vote, don't worry ignore as its not binding its advisory we will change the front cover no one will notice. Is anyone seriously suggesting a vote to remain would have been for a second treated in such a way. It would have been binding and settled for ever. .
People became cynical when the " political union" was part hidden intentionally on occasions. Those that led this EU government were effectively unelected and could not be removed at ballot boxes. They held sway over a large number of people and could criticise and condemn safe in the knowledge they could not be removed certainly be the voters. That and newspapers constantly reporting on European decisions as what Merkel wants or the French want that carries the day creates perceptions that are unhelpful and just sowed further confusion.
Why does a single trade block need its own flag, national anthem , army , courts system, passport system and parliament (x 2 in different locations) and common currency? Even meddling down to the small items by insisting we place a blue flag and yellow stars on our number plates? (Ok you can have GB sticker for the pedantic.)If they had just been honest and just said we are aiming for the United States of Europe which is effectively what we have they may have done better in selling the brand
The EU has created the conditions for the present situation and being up front at the start may well have led to a different outcome. They still don't get it though even now.
Cheers Ms Cyclefree, how things have changed in the last 43 years, from a common market I could happily live with, to a federal state I could not. - So long, and thanks for all the fish.
The EU and UK have so many common interests, both current and future, that your approach should be seen as the obvious one. My worry is two-fold:
- this is, as you state, a bit Gaullist for the UK, which with its pragmatic approach to policy-making tends to be very reactive, rather than philosophical, and so is not really the UK's style
- the EU seems so hell bent on making Brexit sufficiently uncomfortable that I fear it will blind them to the attractions and commonsense of your approach.
http://www.usatoday.com/opinion/
Unfortunately its logic may not reach those souls who are Trumpeters.
Of course if the Deutsch Bank drama continues unfolding, in ways not necessarily to the advantage of the German government or ecoomy, it could be 'a whole different ball game':
Hedge funds have started to pull some of their business from Deutsche Bank, setting up a potential showdown with German authorities over the future of the country’s largest lender.
https://www.ft.com/content/42ec5f88-8620-11e6-a29c-6e7d9515ad15
Nor does this editorial represent unqualified support for Hillary Clinton, who has her own flaws (though hers are far less likely to threaten national security or lead to a constitutional crisis). The Editorial Board does not have a consensus for a Clinton endorsement.
Some of us look at her command of the issues, resilience and long record of public service — as first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of State — and believe she’d serve the nation ably as its president.
Other board members have serious reservations about Clinton’s sense of entitlement, her lack of candor and her extreme carelessness in handling classified information.
But overall, I'd say pretty fair.
The Clinton endorsement from the "Arizona Republic" is noteworthy. First Dem they have picked. Again the driver is Trump's awful candidacy rather than huge enthusiasm for Clinton, which indeed nationwide will be the factor that puts her in the White House.
Britain Elects @britainelects 8h8 hours ago
Stow (Cotswold) result:
LDEM: 64.9% (+21.0)
CON: 35.1% (-21.0)
Britain Elects @britainelects 8h8 hours ago
Liberal Democrat GAIN Stow (Cotswold) from Conservative.
Britain Elects @britainelects 8h8 hours ago
Adeyfield West (Dacorum) result:
LDEM: 49.5% (+24.4)
CON: 22.2% (-4.6)
LAB: 15.8% (-8.7)
UKIP: 10.9% (-12.7)
GRN: 1.6% (+1.6)
Britain Elects @britainelects 8h8 hours ago
Liberal Democrat GAIN Adeyfield West (Dacorum) from Conservative.
Elsewhere LibDem, Tory and Labour holds.
This is one of the principle reasons I voted Leave, and how I convinced my (Bulgarian) wife to also vote Leave: for the UK to lead an alternative model for Europe.
That might not happen in the next 2-4 years, and a new European settlement can only mature and develop once we have left, but we will remain the 2nd largest economy in Europe and its joint largest military power.
That gives us influence and the opportunity to be an alternative epicentre for European leadership. Once we have left, there will be little the EU can do about it.
Brexichosis: the psychosis-like changing of a previously respected, and level-headed, poster in response to the Brexit vote into a hyperbolic obsessive, who sees armageddon in every story, because their thoughts and emotions have become so impaired contact has been lost with reality.
A degenerative brain disease that leaves the unfortunate sufferer with the same cognitive abilities as Liam Fox...
I see there is still some abuse of Remainerhood on this thread.
One would thought that Brexiters, having won the referendum, would have moved on to impassioned discussion of the opportunities ahead of us as the Singapore of the North Atlantic.
That they prefer to yah boo perhaps indicates a fear, rather than excitement, about what happens next.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3814830/Would-like-don-t-know-m-not-hungry-Restaurant-s-clever-menu-fussy-children-takes-Internet-storm.html
Britain has no vision for Europe. It had one at one point when Maggie whipped through the single market reforms, before her regret in doing so.
It will be a messy divorce, with both parties seeing themselves as the injured party. No one listens to their ex for advice, and rightly so as it is always self serving.
We have made our bed and now have to lie in it. No sympathy shags are likely.
And the Brexiteers on Twitter went mental
Just loved that paragraph. An excellent thread header.
What we need to be clear about is that we have a wide range of common interests with the EU where we want to continue working together closely and in co-operation. I have mentioned some of these before but they include security, patents, the European arrest warrant, mutual enforcement of decrees, tax policies, environmental concerns and a wide range of common standards. We need to be clear that we will positively engage with the EU on all of these issues, that we want tariff free trade for our mutual benefit. I almost put a but in there but there really should be no "buts" on any of that.
If those in Brussels had ever believed in subsidiarity I think we might have stayed. But they didn't. They believed in a nation state of Europe with ever more trappings of a State and common decision making. Fair enough. If the peoples of Europe really want that good luck to them. I suspect we will find that we were not alone in having reservations about it but that is their decision. And we made ours. But we can and should still be friends, possibly even friends with benefits.
You are starting to look obsessive and unhinged, and it's not just me who's noticed.
British consumer morale rocketed back to pre-Brexit levels in September, a survey found, confounding expectations that the vote to leave the EU would wreak more lasting damage on Briton's willingness to spend.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-consumersentiment-idUKKCN11Z341
(Original Reuters/non £££)
The courage and indefagitability of the British people have just blown that strategy out of the water.
One point of information, the referendum was now over three months ago, not two as stated in the first paragraph - unless this has been in OGH's inbox for a while!
What I found particularly interesting about the Nissan story isn't that they said they'd up sticks and leave if there was a hard Brexit, because they didn't, it was that they expected the UK Government to compensate in other ways.
That could include corporation tax cuts, or more flexible employment law, some deregulation or investment incentives.
As always, there are both costs and benefits to leaving the EU.
"The urge to destroy is also a creative urge"
The key now isn't the supporters though, they're going to vote for him anyway - it's the floating voters in the swing states.
And hence the importance in Dave's "crap deal" of our specific opt out of...ever closer union. Under that banner we could have opted out of any number of initiatives over and above those we would regardless have rejected (EU army, etc). And if we thought we were still getting bulldozed we could have elected a party to ensure we bloody well did opt out of them.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
But Dave's doc is arguably one of the most misunderstood pieces of negotation we have seen. Immigration aside, where it was an abject failure.
An irrational fear of BREXIT stoked by naive acceptance of the more alarmist BREXIT prophesies (yes, George Osborne, I'm looking at you). Subsequent failure of these prophesies to happen can be brushed aside by continuously repeating 'But we haven't BREXITed yet - just you wait! You'll see then! I was right all along' in response to each new piece of evidence which contradicts the word of Osborne.
So how do we think we should go forward? That's what I think we should be asking.
A very elegant thread, @Cyclefree, as ever, but sadly illustrates that none of us, not even your enlightened self are anywhere beyond a "something must be done" position.
We must all be grown up...new settlement..let's be sensible..
Fine, but all this starts from our red line on immigration and the possible EU response. The rest is details.
Or to use your analogy of a divorce, like one party saying I want the children, now let's talk sensibly about the sandwich-maker.
The way forward is Hard Brexit. Unless we want to follow EU directives without even the slightest say in how they are written then we need to leave completely.
We all remember things like the working time directive being introduced as health and safety legislation rather than employment legislation, precisely to get around some countries' opt outs etc.
When people like PJoR are voting Democrat or considering not voting you really should put the conspiracy theories away.
Will that do?
http://crfb.org/blogs/analysis-donald-trumps-health-care-plan
The people who will vote Trump are ordinary people who have seen life get harder, wages fall, job insecurity rise, all the while being told they are racist crass luddites by the wealthy liberal 1% who have taken an ever bigger share of the pie.
Liberals are so consumed with hatred of Trump that they are blind to why someone like Trump has got into the position that he is in.
Trump may win, he may not, if he dosent, four years of Clinton will see to it that someone like him, possibly more extreme, does win. And they will only have themselves to blame.
To give an example, there is nothing generous about imposing unemployment on the young forcing them to leave their homes in order to preserve a currency and save bond holders from the consequences of their folly. It is perfectly legitimate and, indeed, open-hearted and generous, to be in favour of the European ideal but to think that the EU has taken a wrong path and that it would be better, all things considered, for Britain's future to be outside it.
http://tinyurl.com/z24zqe9
This sums it up:
With ultra-low interest rates reducing the cost of servicing a mortgage, a homeowner in their late 20s spends around 15% of their household income on housing costs, while those renting spend 30%.
It is possible to have a relationship, a good one, with someone without being married to them or even having sex with them.
Our Foreign Sec seems to want us to be a Turkey!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/29/clinton-campaign-rolls-out-a-few-dozen-more-republican-endorsements/
Fortunately, the voters grasped that.
The lasting significance of Trump might be that he has fractured prior assumptions about the Republican coalition by showing the appeal of the Tea Party and other right-wing groups was that they were outsiders (a NOTA vote, if you like) and had nothing to do with their right-wing policies. Indeed, it goes further than that because Trump has also exposed that many Republican voters do not even support mainstream Republican positions like free markets.
The debriefing in both parties after this election will be extensive. The losing party will be quicker to understand this than the winner, and will be better placed to field a group of good candidates in 2020.
The one thing that's almost certain is that this will be a one term presidency.
Bloomberg
BREAKING: Deutsche Bank shares fall below €10 for first time - follow our coverage https://t.co/64SID8b5K2 https://t.co/ShvZziPx1x
But. Two snags about this one.
First, it doesn't actually suggest what we might propose, so it's hard to get a feeling for whether it's possible to develop a vision that most of us would find attractive: the temptation is to project whatever we'd personally like (e.g. Jeremy would say, "Yes, Cyclefree is right, we should have a Europe that reinforces compulsory social protection and controls on multinationals"). We can all agree that a positive arrangement would be nice, but the devil really is in the detail, or at least the chapter headings.
Second, the EU is really not in the mood to listen to bright ideas from Britain on what they should be like. The analogy to a divorce is the spouse who has lived in a period of mingle amity and irritation with a difficult partner for many years. The partner has said they're going to walk out. That's a shame, but oh well. But what's this - the partner has a detailed plan for what I should do after they leave? FFS. If you're going, let's sort out who gets what and then just... go.
Not what some Remainers were saying on 27 June:
" Observation at work as trading in RBS and Barclays shares are suspended
In hindsight Dave and George didn't go hard enough on the economic consequences of a Leave vote. "
" HA HA
HA HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
We were warned there would be chaos. There is now chaos. There will be different visions of how to resolve the chaos. Should we ask voters? "
" What a mess.
I had some interesting conversations with friends in the City over the weekend. The mood could scarecly be blacker. One friend who has recently retired from a senior position with a Japanese bank, and who is definitely not someone prone to exaggeration, said he thought it was the end of London as the leading financial centre in the timezone. "
I wont put names to quotes to spare embarrassment.
Meanwhile the steady disintegration of the German banking sector is today's business news.
Not being licenced means avoiding a yearly audit that would ask difficult questions about buying paintings and paying personal legal fees from foundation cash.
It is starting to look like a death of a thousand cuts for Trump. I thought it would be a giant flame out but instead he goes down with a slow leak.