Because leaving the EU means we automatically leave Euratom? And we're leaving the EU because we have a referendum and the country voted to leave?
It doesn't. It would be possible to leave the EU while remaining in Euratom, though the EU probably wouldn't like it because it would end the practice whereby since 1957, all three original Communities expanded or contracted together.
The question on the Brexit paper was only about the EU. I doubt that many people will want to die in a ditch over the ECJ's jurisdiction of Euratom matters.
This article is rated by the lawyers on Twitter. It looks like we do have to leave Euratom.
Because leaving the EU means we automatically leave Euratom? And we're leaving the EU because we have a referendum and the country voted to leave?
Honestly, you Remainers...
Switzerland participates as an Associate Member.
Yep. The day we leave the EU (and Euratom) we'll rejoin Euratom as an associate member and nothing will change.
We may well remain in Euratom as a full member, though more probably, membership will be transferred to associate status. But I agree, unlike with the EU, it's likely that nothing much will change there unless it becomes a lever exercised for other purposes and a deal can't be done because of disagreements about the EU.
I think almost everyone thinks that should happen (apart from the few who really do believe that Euratom is part of the evil inveiglement) but how the government is dealing with what should be the easy bits of Brexit gives no confidence whatsoever that these things will be sorted. So, it is wholly legitimate to point out what a bad, botched Brexit would mean.
We do seem to be having to warn of dooms that even Remainers couldn't have imagined and, what is more, the lack of majority has not even come into play thus far and cannot be blamed for this.
That it has to such an extent even before we get to any point where we should be having a proper clash, like over the Brexit bill, is really scary.
I left uni with a £200 overdraft in the mid 80's having of course benefitted from no tuition fees and a (modest) grant. There were even other little add ons like housing benefit to pay the rent in the holidays BUT there were a fraction of the numbers of students/graduates there are now, and that was the effective national trade off. Consequently, I and my then gf (now wife) could buy a two bed terrace in a provincial city with a 5% deposit before we were 24, even with interest rates at 10% (and soon to be 12%). I suspect that sounds like total fantasy to those under 30 now.
Now it was not all milk and honey: There were 3 million plus unemployed (in a much lesser population). Wages were in real terms lower and "stuff" in general to put in your house was way more expensive in real terms than it is now, (TV's were pretty much the same nominal price for instance (and picked up a whopping four channels) washing machines, furniture (no IKEA then) etc ditto), so there was an element of swings and roundabouts to a monthly budget compared to now. The rule of thumb assumption longer term then for me was "10% interest rates, 5% inflation" - which of course eroded the capital debt fairly efficiently after a few years.
The problem as I see it is, though the young earn more in real terms than we did they are in the mire because, of the present need for a 20% deposit, increasing demand from population increase (for a variety of reasons including longevity), smaller households, a lack of increase in supply, and prices which already would've risen steeply because of these, being turbo charged by rock bottom interest rates which temporarily increased "affordability", before cancelling out that very "affordability". It's a right pickle.
What to do? Build big time, and then build some more. Accept we cannot have a 100% open door to 440M across a continent to pitch up here whenever they wish, and put up interest rates. I'm sorry but some local negative equity and even a slowdown are lesser of the evils we face. The ultra low interest rate policy is mispricing two huge assets: houses, by inflating the price, and pensions, by increasing the size of fund required for a decent income. These are distortions of biblical proportions. One is (visibly) hurting primarily the young, the other (less visible, but just as real) the middle aged and old.
Still, it's a very silly point. Yes of course if you tweak growth down and don't tweak spending down, you eventually run out of money. However, the premise makes no sense, since of course governments would tweak spending down in such a scenario (or, if they didn't, the markets would take matters into their own hands).
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
There were of course very good non-economic reasons for voting Leave - or indeed Remain - and we shouldn't implicitly dismiss them by reducing everything to an accounting exercise.
But on a 50 year timescale, making assumptions about an ongoing effect of 0.1% is ridiculous. I'm all for modelling, but really.
This really does seem to be a silly-season story. There is nothing for the UK and EU27 to disagree about on this issue, so they'll agree. There are much bigger things to worry about, such as the money and the trade deal.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
May's debacle has of course totally vindicated Gordon Brown's decision not to hold an election in 2007. He wasnt being "chicken". he was being wise. The fact is that every prime minister since we became a democracy who held a "snap" election before four years had elapsed despite having a working majority has lost his or her majority. It happened in 1923 when Baldwin called an election after just one year of a parliament. It happened in 1974 when Heath called one after three and a half years. This parliament will need to run for at least four years before another election unless the Tories lose 7 seats in by elections, or unless the government is defeated in a vote of confidence or budget. There might come a time with a new leader and good polls that the Tories might want to be defeated in the Commons and an election precipitated because despite the new received wisdom since the election that Corbyn is good for Labour, I still contend that he is a big liability.
You have forgotten Eden who called a snap election in Spring 1955 and went on to triple his majority.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
'Many' might be an exaggeration, but I would grant there was a strand that admitted there could be short-term impact.
There is nothing for the UK and EU27 to disagree about on this issue, so they'll agree.
There is not practical value in leaving, and disruption and expense while we try and replicate existing arrangements.
So we'll do it anyway because...
We'll do it because that's what the people decided. Wrong decision, probably, but there we go. Either way, purely bureaucratic stuff about EURATOM is a complete sideshow.
On the flip side of things today, isn't Sturgeon and Corbyn meeting Barnier a bit like Cameron turning up in Georgia in 2008?
It's a bit unfair Barnier meeting with opposition figures in the UK. May cannot do the same as the EU doesn't have opposition figures. Just people under different labels cheering on the same Commission agenda.
Perhaps Barnier believes that Mrs May and the Tories will be in opposition before 2019? Meeting the next incumbent and other major players is merely preparation ....
Because leaving the EU means we automatically leave Euratom? And we're leaving the EU because we have a referendum and the country voted to leave?
Honestly, you Remainers...
Switzerland participates as an Associate Member.
Yep. The day we leave the EU (and Euratom) we'll rejoin Euratom as an associate member and nothing will change.
We may well remain in Euratom as a full member, though more probably, membership will be transferred to associate status. But I agree, unlike with the EU, it's likely that nothing much will change there unless it becomes a lever exercised for other purposes and a deal can't be done because of disagreements about the EU.
I think almost everyone thinks that should happen (apart from the few who really do believe that Euratom is part of the evil inveiglement) but how the government is dealing with what should be the easy bits of Brexit gives no confidence whatsoever that these things will be sorted. So, it is wholly legitimate to point out what a bad, botched Brexit would mean.
We do seem to be having to warn of dooms that even Remainers couldn't have imagined and, what is more, the lack of majority has not even come into play thus far and cannot be blamed for this.
That it has to such an extent even before we get to any point where we should be having a proper clash, like over the Brexit bill, is really scary.
Yes I'll concede "the Euroatom thing" sounds a bit of a dog's breakfast an associate status is fine by me. These kind of deeply technical hook ups don't faze me at all, and yes Remainers are right to point out some of this finer detail on these kind of issues Although Mr O'Leary's apocalyptic suggestions about flights on March 29th 2019 sound to me like an airline boss heavily reliant on UK flights for his business model, getting his retaliation in first.
But, contrast with my morning, where at the exact same time Carwyn Jones was in front of Barnier, I had a meeting with a civil servant from the Welsh Govt whose job it is to liaise with various manufacturers in S Wales. Automotive is, it was stated, very concerned about Brexit mostly due to customs and lead times, fair enough. However, nobody else is. This individual is tasked, amongst other things, to go around getting the mood music and feed it back up the chain to the politicians in Cardiff, who (and I quote) "are just not listening" to how relaxed folk are, The consensus is the reduction in January, and then hopeful abolition, of Severn Tolls will be of far greater significance as the Bristol/Newport/Cardiff area gets a boost.
..... Either way, purely bureaucratic stuff about EURATOM is a complete sideshow.
Until it impacts on real people's treatments by reducing, delaying or increasing the cost of much needed isotopes. Then it becomes part of the 3rd rail of British politics - the NHS. Fiddle with it and you (politically) die.
Mrs C, Barnier isn't negotiating with the opposition. Until now, I think he's played a fairly straight bat, but this is meddling in domestic politics.
Still, it will've been nice for three opponents of the UK to have a little chat together.
Really Mr Dancer? I could have sworn that I heard that Mr Corbyn was leader of the opposition and Mrs Sturgeon the leader of what is effectively Scotland's opposition.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
'Many' might be an exaggeration, but I would grant there was a strand that admitted there could be short-term impact.
That must have been lost among all the claims from the Leave team leaders that leaving would make us richer, see more public spending and lower taxes, as millions of Turkish immigrants overran a collapsing EU.
@Mortimer I left uni with a £200 overdraft in the mid 80's having of course benefitted from no tuition fees and a (modest) grant. There were even other little add ons like housing benefit to pay the rent in the holidays BUT there were a fraction of the numbers of students/graduates there are now, and that was the effective national trade off. Consequently, I and my then gf (now wife) could buy a two bed terrace in a provincial city with a 5% deposit before we were 24, even with interest rates at 10% (and soon to be 12%). I suspect that sounds like total fantasy to those under 30 now.
Now it was not all milk and honey: There were 3 million plus unemployed (in a much lesser population). Wages were in real terms lower and "stuff" in general to put in your house was way more expensive in real terms than it is now, (TV's were pretty much the same nominal price for instance (and picked up a whopping four channels) washing machines, furniture (no IKEA then) etc ditto), so there was an element of swings and roundabouts to a monthly budget compared to now. The rule of thumb assumption longer term then for me was "10% interest rates, 5% inflation" - which of course eroded the capital debt fairly efficiently after a few years.
The problem as I see it is, though the young earn more in real terms than we did they are in the mire because, of the present need for a 20% deposit, increasing demand from population increase (for a variety of reasons including longevity), smaller households, a lack of increase in supply, and prices which already would've risen steeply because of these, being turbo charged by rock bottom interest rates which temporarily increased "affordability", before cancelling out that very "affordability". It's a right pickle.
What to do? Build big time, and then build some more. Accept we cannot have a 100% open door to 440M across a continent to pitch up here whenever they wish, and put up interest rates. I'm sorry but some local negative equity and even a slowdown are lesser of the evils we face. The ultra low interest rate policy is mispricing two huge assets: houses, by inflating the price, and pensions, by increasing the size of fund required for a decent income. These are distortions of biblical proportions. One is (visibly) hurting primarily the young, the other (less visible, but just as real) the middle aged and old.
And above all, end the stupid Tory policy of selling off Council houses on the cheap, ending up with buy-to-let spivs. If there were publicly-owned cheap housing that people could rent at fair prices, they could start to save up in order to by their own home.
..... Either way, purely bureaucratic stuff about EURATOM is a complete sideshow.
Until it impacts on real people's treatments by reducing, delaying or increasing the cost of much needed isotopes.
Which it won't. This is like saying that if you change car you need to tell your insurer. Yes, you do, and if you don't you could end up with a big bill or even in jail. In this case, yes, new arrangements have to be made. Since no-one at all disagrees with that, and there is zero controversy about it, it's a purely bureaucratic exercise.
..... Either way, purely bureaucratic stuff about EURATOM is a complete sideshow.
Until it impacts on real people's treatments by reducing, delaying or increasing the cost of much needed isotopes.
Which it won't. This is like saying that if you change car you need to tell your insurer. Yes, you do, and if you don't you could end up with a big bill or even in jail. In this case, yes, new arrangements have to be made. Since no-one at all disagrees with that, and there is zero controversy about it, it's a purely bureaucratic exercise.
Fair enough. As with all things Brexit, I shall wait and see.
There was no train station in the 1970s , although the train from eastleigh airport ( 6 minute drive by car) now called Southampton Parkway took the same time as today. There are hundreds of small towns like Hedge End around the country where normal people live and work quite happily and maintain a very good standard of living, especially compared to the 1970s and 80s. There is just too much doom and gloom written on this site which is not relective of vast swathes of the UK.
This all comes back to land and housing. ...
Of my close Oxford mates (say 15), all in our early 30s, only 4 of us have our own houses.
...
If it beyond the majority of the academically elite to buy a modest house by the age of 30
Of my close Oxford mates (say 15), all in our early 30s, only 4 of us have our own houses. Myself not included (though I life with my gf, who does). Only 2 of them did it without parental help. The ones who don't are not in any way extravagant. They often baulk at anything more expensive than Sainsburies or Cafe Rouge, or shared holidays in rented villas with mates to keep the costs down. They don't go on regular minibreaks to Venice. Or get smashed every weekend. And they're all in demanding jobs, publishing, charity lobbying, tech.
My life is comfortable largely because of the luck I've had in building an online bookselling business at exactly the right time: from a macro point of view, as the market exploded, and from a personal POV at the right time of life, in my 20s, when I could cope with taking very little out of the business for many years. Those who have bought houses are either management consultants, lawyers, or doctors.
If it beyond the majority of the academically elite to buy a modest house by the age of 30 in the current interest rate environment, then I think something is wrong. Largely because this suggests it will be beyond the majority of millennial Brits to do so without, and in some cases even after inheritance.
Contrast this to my Dad, who has a non-graduate management-accountant junior bought a house at 27 with 7-8% interest on his mortgage.
If the Tory party can crack housing, and the personal aspiration and empowerment that goes with it, we'll be in power for a generation. If we can't, we'll be out of it for just as long.
Absolutely correct. A generation of young people, other than the ones with better off parents, currently feels lost and powerless. If they get the opportunity to have a reasonable house with a garden, with a reasonable commute to a decent job, they will remember this time very, very positively and reward the government that provided it to them. If we don't, our politics will head in a Latin American direction, with an anti-capitalistic population that swings between different types of populism.
We need to be aiming for 300k new homes a year, with most of them family homes.
I don't understand. I couldn't afford "a reasonable house with a garden, with a reasonable commute to a decent job" until I was 48. I didn't realise I was entitled to it sooner.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
Casino Royale repeatedly used the phrase "Short term pain for long term gain" here on PB. I do not know about others though ...
I have asked many how long "Short term pain" should be expected to last - 6 months, 6 years, 6 decades???? There seems to be a bit of a silence on that one.
There was no train station in the 1970s , although the train from eastleigh airport ( 6 minute drive by car) now called Southampton Parkway took the same time as today. There are hundreds of small towns like Hedge End around the country where normal people live and work quite happily and maintain a very good standard of living, especially compared to the 1970s and 80s. There is just too much doom and gloom written on this site which is not relective of vast swathes of the UK.
This all comes back to land and housing. ...
This, a million times this.
Of my close Oxford mates (say 15), all in our early 30s, only 4 of us have our own houses. Myself not included (though I life with my gf, who does). Only 2 of them did it without parental help. The ones who don't are not in any way extravagant. They often baulk at anything more expensive than Sainsburies or Cafe Rouge, or shared holidays in rented villas with mates to keep the costs down. They don't go on regular minibreaks to Venice. Or get smashed every weekend. And they're all in demanding jobs, publishing, charity lobbying, tech.
If it beyond the majority of the academically elite to buy a modest house by the age of 30 in the current interest rate environment, then I think something is wrong. Largely because this suggests it will be beyond the majority of millennial Brits to do so without, and in some cases even after inheritance.
Contrast this to my Dad, who has a non-graduate management-accountant junior bought a house at 27 with 7-8% interest on his mortgage.
If the Tory party can crack housing, and the personal aspiration and empowerment that goes with it, we'll be in power for a generation. If we can't, we'll be out of it for just as long.
Bit of catch 22 in housing. With 3d printing, kit housing and things like shipping container conversion there is the ability to mass produce very affordable housing of good quality, but that would have a catastrophic effect on the bricks and mortar market. On the other hand, why are we building houses that cost 200,000 when we can build them for 10 or 15 grand and sell at 3 times that figure? So you could sort it, but you'd hollow out wealth, and the price politically would be extreme.
Can you give an example of anyone who has built a house for £10k and sold it for £30k or £200k?
@Mortimer I left uni with a £200 overdraft in the mid 80's having of course benefitted from no tuition fees and a (modest) grant. There were even other little add ons like housing benefit to pay the rent in the holidays BUT there were a fraction of the numbers of students/graduates there are now, and that was the effective national trade off. Consequently, I and my then gf (now wife) could buy a two bed terrace in a provincial city with a 5% deposit before we were 24, even with interest rates at 10% (and soon to be 12%). I suspect that sounds like total fantasy to those under 30 now.
Now it was not all milk and honey: There were 3 million plus unemployed (in a much lesser population). Wages were in real terms lower and "stuff" in general to put in your house was way more expensive in real terms than it is now, (TV's were pretty much the same nominal price for instance (and picked up a whopping four channels) washing machines, furniture (no IKEA then) etc ditto), so there was an element of swings and roundabouts to a monthly budget compared to now. The rule of thumb assumption longer term then for me was "10% interest rates, 5% inflation" - which of course eroded the capital debt fairly efficiently after a few years.
The problem as I see it is, though the young earn more in real terms than we did they are in the mire because, of the present need for a 20% deposit, increasing demand from population increase (for a variety of reasons including longevity), smaller households, a lack of increase in supply, and prices which already would've risen steeply because of these, being turbo charged by rock bottom interest rates which temporarily increased "affordability", before cancelling out that very "affordability". It's a right pickle.
What to do? Build big time, and then build some more. Accept we cannot have a 100% open door to 440M across a continent to pitch up here whenever they wish, and put up interest rates. I'm sorry but some local negative equity and even a slowdown are lesser of the evils we face. The ultra low interest rate policy is mispricing two huge assets: houses, by inflating the price, and pensions, by increasing the size of fund required for a decent income. These are distortions of biblical proportions. One is (visibly) hurting primarily the young, the other (less visible, but just as real) the middle aged and old.
And above all, end the stupid Tory policy of selling off Council houses on the cheap, ending up with buy-to-let spivs. If there were publicly-owned cheap housing that people could rent at fair prices, they could start to save up in order to by their own home.
I didn't. Rented privately then bought a house with a 10% deposit borrowed and paid back, from my parents
..... Either way, purely bureaucratic stuff about EURATOM is a complete sideshow.
Until it impacts on real people's treatments by reducing, delaying or increasing the cost of much needed isotopes.
Which it won't. This is like saying that if you change car you need to tell your insurer. Yes, you do, and if you don't you could end up with a big bill or even in jail. In this case, yes, new arrangements have to be made. Since no-one at all disagrees with that, and there is zero controversy about it, it's a purely bureaucratic exercise.
The EU will agree to stuff that's in their interest. They won't be minded to replicate Euratom outside of Euratom just for us, as the DExEU seem to be asking for. As far as they are concerned that's what membership is for.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
'Many' might be an exaggeration, but I would grant there was a strand that admitted there could be short-term impact.
That must have been lost among all the claims from the Leave team leaders that leaving would make us richer, see more public spending and lower taxes, as millions of Turkish immigrants overran a collapsing EU.
On here they did. Are you possibly suggesting that PB under the line is not pivotal to the political Zeitgeist of the nation??
But, yes, perceived individual economic self interest almost entirely drove the referendum result, and what little wider mention there was of short-term pain did not cut through.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
Casino Royale repeatedly used the phrase "Short term pain for long term gain" here on PB. I do not know about others though ...
I have asked many how long "Short term pain" should be expected to last - 6 months, 6 years, 6 decades???? There seems to be a bit of a silence on that one.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
Casino Royale repeatedly used the phrase "Short term pain for long term gain" here on PB. I do not know about others though ...
I have asked many how long "Short term pain" should be expected to last - 6 months, 6 years, 6 decades???? There seems to be a bit of a silence on that one.
It was never about the money though.
OK if the EU are determined to play silly buggers and adopt a negotiating style that seems to consist so far of "here are our terms, please surrender now", there may well be short term pain, all of which is unnecessary, and brought about by the EU's paranoia that their precious four freedoms aren't in reality that popular as a whole with Mr and Mrs Average European and the edifice could crumble if someone (ie us) points out the Emperor has no clothes. Not that I think any crumbling of others, who are in different circumstances to us will happen actually (ironically, please note M Barnier et al), nor, if other nations are happy enough with it, would I wish it on them.
I'll admit too the Govt seems shaky too as to having a 100% coherent message - let's be frank, however, I want to still live in a proper vibrant democracy till I peg out, and there is no way I can see the Austro Hungarian Empire reborn writ large is going to be that, still less anything I would want to give my loyalty to in any way whatsoever.
The unceremonious sacking of the second most powerful figure in her own party was in hindsight her biggest mistake. It wasn't that he led a private army of followers it's that he knew how to manipulate opinion from his position as editor of London's most popular paper.
He was Iago to Theresa's Othello.
I look forward to the book "The Fall of the House of May and my part in it" by George Osborne.
Nothing Osborne has done since his sacking (and don't forget his behaviour before, which led to it) has led me to think that dismissing him was anything other than the right decision.
Cameron has a class Osborne will never match.
I was a great supporter of Osborne but his behaviour since becoming editor of the Standard has been utterly childish and pathetic and he has lost me completely. He should be honest and leave the party and join the Lib Dems. It is very sad really
If Osborne had behaved with more class and humility since, like Portillo or Balls have, and shown he was the bigger man, his reputation might have rehabilitated and he'd be welcomed back with open arms.
Instead he's made "vengeance" his modus operandi, which says an awful lot about him.
'Vengeance' and/or 'the truth' ?
Conservatives like Osborne and TSE have been proved right about May. Osborne's not responsible for the failure of the GE campaign, or the decision to hold it. Instead of shunning them, perhaps other Conservatives should be listening to them.
Conservatives like Osborne and TSE are highly factional, sneer at those who disagree and make very clear it's their way or the highway.
If you can't see why that might not be the most effective way to win people over, then I can't help you.
I am far from convinced that the Europhobic wing of the Conservative Party should be throwing around accusations of factionalism against other Conservatives.
Mrs C, Sturgeon leads a party that overtly exists to end the UK. Corbyn's a self-declared friend of Hamas and Hezbollah who was giving succour to the enemies of this country even as they bombed us.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
Casino Royale repeatedly used the phrase "Short term pain for long term gain" here on PB. I do not know about others though ...
I have asked many how long "Short term pain" should be expected to last - 6 months, 6 years, 6 decades???? There seems to be a bit of a silence on that one.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No it was not. The Leave campaigns were quite clear. It was sold on anti-immigration and the £350m per week lie.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
You obvious have a better class of voter in your area, Richard!
Believe me, the voters round my way were by and large blissfully unaware of the consequences. Some even believed what it said on the side of that bus. :-(
..... Either way, purely bureaucratic stuff about EURATOM is a complete sideshow.
Until it impacts on real people's treatments by reducing, delaying or increasing the cost of much needed isotopes.
Which it won't. This is like saying that if you change car you need to tell your insurer. Yes, you do, and if you don't you could end up with a big bill or even in jail. In this case, yes, new arrangements have to be made. Since no-one at all disagrees with that, and there is zero controversy about it, it's a purely bureaucratic exercise.
The EU will agree to stuff that's in their interest. They won't be minded to replicate Euratom outside of Euratom just for us, as the DExEU seem to be asking for. As far as they are concerned that's what membership is for.
Exactly, but nobody's listening.
When reality bites, they can argue with it. It seems no one learns in UK politics until reality boots them well and truly up the ar*e.
Thus Brexit, Student Loans and the housing debacle.
Still, it's a very silly point. Yes of course if you tweak growth down and don't tweak spending down, you eventually run out of money. However, the premise makes no sense, since of course governments would tweak spending down in such a scenario (or, if they didn't, the markets would take matters into their own hands).
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
There were of course very good non-economic reasons for voting Leave - or indeed Remain - and we shouldn't implicitly dismiss them by reducing everything to an accounting exercise.
But on a 50 year timescale, making assumptions about an ongoing effect of 0.1% is ridiculous. I'm all for modelling, but really.
You might as well go full in and confirm that it's too early to judge the consequences of the French Revolution.
Had anyone on the Leave side made such an idiotic proposition during the campaign, Leave would have lost for sure.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
Casino Royale repeatedly used the phrase "Short term pain for long term gain" here on PB. I do not know about others though ...
I have asked many how long "Short term pain" should be expected to last - 6 months, 6 years, 6 decades???? There seems to be a bit of a silence on that one.
Enough to propel the Tories into a long term of richly deserved opposition should be sufficient.
I posted this a few days ago, and I'm reposting now, to ensure this gets lost in the curse of the New Thread but anyway:
We've had various dire (and not so dire) predictions of what will happen when we leave the EU because we appear to be heading towards 'hard' Brexit. Has anyone run predictions on what might happen to the UK if we DIDN'T leave?
Picture this. Tomorrow morning, Theresa May comes out of Downing Street and announces, "After another glorious weekend of hill walking with my husband Philip, I have decided that leaving the EU is just too hard. It will cause too much of a economic shock and I can't in all good conscience allow the UK to suffer in this way. Therefore, I am asking the EU to accept our withdrawal of the Article 50 notification we delivered three months ago."
Assuming they accept, what do people actually think will happen? Both, how the EU will react, and how those who voted LEAVE and would still vote LEAVE would react (and those who voted REMAIN but are democrats first and foremost)?
As a vague idea, I suspect the EU would respond with a list of conditions that are virtually unpalatable anyway (yes, we'll accept the withdrawal provided you [accept the rebate is gone/join the Euro/join Schengen/pay more money to us] (or all four)).
For the UK population (especially those who voted LEAVE), I suspect the answer may be live ammunition.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
You obvious have a better class of voter in your area, Richard!
Believe me, the voters round my way were by and large blissfully unaware of the consequences. Some even believed what it said on the side of that bus. :-(
Well, some people voted Labour a few weeks ago. In a democracy, you're allowed to vote for stupid things, which are against your own interests.
..... Either way, purely bureaucratic stuff about EURATOM is a complete sideshow.
Until it impacts on real people's treatments by reducing, delaying or increasing the cost of much needed isotopes.
Which it won't. This is like saying that if you change car you need to tell your insurer. Yes, you do, and if you don't you could end up with a big bill or even in jail. In this case, yes, new arrangements have to be made. Since no-one at all disagrees with that, and there is zero controversy about it, it's a purely bureaucratic exercise.
The EU will agree to stuff that's in their interest. They won't be minded to replicate Euratom outside of Euratom just for us, as the DExEU seem to be asking for. As far as they are concerned that's what membership is for.
Exactly, but nobody's listening.
When reality bites, they can argue with it. It seems no one learns in UK politics until reality boots them well and truly up the ar*e.
Thus Brexit, Student Loans and the housing debacle.
Continental politics mostly involves PR, coalitions and compromise, and there is plenty of scope for dumb proposals to get dropped well before getting anywhere near implementation. In the Uk, if we're not careful one person's whim gets imposed on all of us.
How many Remain voters would vote for a USE? For abolishion of the pound and adoption of the Euro.
Remain presently have the 'satisfaction' of appearing smug and unified, but they aren't either.
It obviously hasn't sunk in yet what an epochal mistake it was for the sceptics to win the referendum. Prior to last June you would have been right but the demonstrable failure of Brexit has polarised a debate that is only going in one direction.
Still, it's a very silly point. Yes of course if you tweak growth down and don't tweak spending down, you eventually run out of money. However, the premise makes no sense, since of course governments would tweak spending down in such a scenario (or, if they didn't, the markets would take matters into their own hands).
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
There were of course very good non-economic reasons for voting Leave - or indeed Remain - and we shouldn't implicitly dismiss them by reducing everything to an accounting exercise.
But on a 50 year timescale, making assumptions about an ongoing effect of 0.1% is ridiculous. I'm all for modelling, but really.
You might as well go full in and confirm that it's too early to judge the consequences of the French Revolution.
Had anyone on the Leave side made such an idiotic proposition during the campaign, Leave would have lost for sure.
Zhou was referring to 1968, not 1789. A diplomat present at the time called it a misunderstanding that was 'too delicious to invite correction'.
I posted this a few days ago, and I'm reposting now, to ensure this gets lost in the curse of the New Thread but anyway:
We've had various dire (and not so dire) predictions of what will happen when we leave the EU because we appear to be heading towards 'hard' Brexit. Has anyone run predictions on what might happen to the UK if we DIDN'T leave?
Picture this. Tomorrow morning, Theresa May comes out of Downing Street and announces, "After another glorious weekend of hill walking with my husband Philip, I have decided that leaving the EU is just too hard. It will cause too much of a economic shock and I can't in all good conscience allow the UK to suffer in this way. Therefore, I am asking the EU to accept our withdrawal of the Article 50 notification we delivered three months ago."
Assuming they accept, what do people actually think will happen? Both, how the EU will react, and how those who voted LEAVE and would still vote LEAVE would react (and those who voted REMAIN but are democrats first and foremost)?
As a vague idea, I suspect the EU would respond with a list of conditions that are virtually unpalatable anyway (yes, we'll accept the withdrawal provided you [accept the rebate is gone/join the Euro/join Schengen/pay more money to us] (or all four)).
For the UK population (especially those who voted LEAVE), I suspect the answer may be live ammunition.
This is just nonsense. If the EU is fed up with us, they will let us go, regardless of what we might subsequently want. If, on the more likely other hand, they would want us to stay, then pretty much everything we had before will be on offer again. The national humble pie, humiliation of Farage and the Brexiteers, and proof that leaving the EU means heading for disastrous waters will be reward enough.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
'Many' might be an exaggeration, but I would grant there was a strand that admitted there could be short-term impact.
That must have been lost among all the claims from the Leave team leaders that leaving would make us richer, see more public spending and lower taxes, as millions of Turkish immigrants overran a collapsing EU.
I thought the main message that cut through for many was "Take back control ".
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
Casino Royale repeatedly used the phrase "Short term pain for long term gain" here on PB. I do not know about others though ...
I have asked many how long "Short term pain" should be expected to last - 6 months, 6 years, 6 decades???? There seems to be a bit of a silence on that one.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No it was not. The Leave campaigns were quite clear. It was sold on anti-immigration and the £350m per week lie.
The Leaver Bus.
Farage's poster.
Groudhog day all over again.
The EU costs a fortune to run, and that fortune is contributed pro rata by member states.. It also has express and well-known redistributive policies - taking from the rich countries and giving to the poor. We are one of the biggest and richest countries. So if we weren't net payers of hundreds of millions the question would be why the feck not? The fact that £350m was an overstatement ("a lie" in primary school terms) is neither here nor there: the claim was absolutely true in substance.
As for "anti-immigration", first it can be subsumed under sovereignty - it's pretty crucial to sovereignty that you make your own decision who enters. Secondly you are trying to turn it into a slur when it isn't. Looking at the way people lived and died in Grenfell Tower, do you not think that a bit less immigration and consequently a bit less pressure to live 20 to a flat would be a brilliant idea from everyone's POV, including the immigrants? Or are you going to produce a disgusting sleight of hand argument wants controls on immigration -> anti-immigration ->anti-immigrant -> xenophobe -> only pretending to mind about Grenfell Tower because the victims were mainly not white?
Still, it's a very silly point. Yes of course if you tweak growth down and don't tweak spending down, you eventually run out of money. However, the premise makes no sense, since of course governments would tweak spending down in such a scenario (or, if they didn't, the markets would take matters into their own hands).
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
There were of course very good non-economic reasons for voting Leave - or indeed Remain - and we shouldn't implicitly dismiss them by reducing everything to an accounting exercise.
But on a 50 year timescale, making assumptions about an ongoing effect of 0.1% is ridiculous. I'm all for modelling, but really.
You might as well go full in and confirm that it's too early to judge the consequences of the French Revolution.
Had anyone on the Leave side made such an idiotic proposition during the campaign, Leave would have lost for sure.
Zhou was referring to 1968, not 1789. A diplomat present at the time called it a misunderstanding that was 'too delicious to invite correction'.
In which case you are out on your own in the lunacy stakes.
Brexit was a great protest movement but also the 'dream' that was never supposed to come true. The looks on Gove and Johnson's faces when they actually won tells you all you should need to know.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
You obvious have a better class of voter in your area, Richard! Believe me, the voters round my way were by and large blissfully unaware of the consequences. Some even believed what it said on the side of that bus. :-(
Of course they believed it, Mr Punter. It was the line put forward by that nice Mr Johnson, that nice Mrs Leadsome, that nice Mr Gove, that nice Mr Davis etc etc. It is very strange that all these very nice, very intelligent people now don`t have a clue, and have to go grovelling to Jeremy Corbyn, of all people, asking him to tell them what they ought to do.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
Casino Royale repeatedly used the phrase "Short term pain for long term gain" here on PB. I do not know about others though ...
I have asked many how long "Short term pain" should be expected to last - 6 months, 6 years, 6 decades???? There seems to be a bit of a silence on that one.
It was never about the money though.
OK if the EU are determined to play silly buggers and adopt a negotiating style that seems to consist so far of "here are our terms, please surrender now", there may well be short term pain, all of which is unnecessary, and brought about by the EU's paranoia that their precious four freedoms aren't in reality that popular as a whole with Mr and Mrs Average European and the edifice could crumble if someone (ie us) points out the Emperor has no clothes. Not that I think any crumbling of others, who are in different circumstances to us will happen actually (ironically, please note M Barnier et al), nor, if other nations are happy enough with it, would I wish it on them.
I'll admit too the Govt seems shaky too as to having a 100% coherent message - let's be frank, however, I want to still live in a proper vibrant democracy till I peg out, and there is no way I can see the Austro Hungarian Empire reborn writ large is going to be that, still less anything I would want to give my loyalty to in any way whatsoever.
Thing is, there aren't any practical benefits to Brexit. It doesn't make us better off in any way or a solve any real problems we have. And as long as we want to stay in the European system for trade, regulation etc, we're not going to see many sovereignty improvements either. Instead we are going to go through massive and long drawn out disruption to no real purpose. At a certain point people are going to say, why are we doing this?
So the Repeal Bill is going to abandon protection of fundamental rights despite reassurances to the contrary as early as during the referendum campaign. What a surprise.
Still, it's a very silly point. Yes of course if you tweak growth down and don't tweak spending down, you eventually run out of money. However, the premise makes no sense, since of course governments would tweak spending down in such a scenario (or, if they didn't, the markets would take matters into their own hands).
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
There were of course very good non-economic reasons for voting Leave - or indeed Remain - and we shouldn't implicitly dismiss them by reducing everything to an accounting exercise.
But on a 50 year timescale, making assumptions about an ongoing effect of 0.1% is ridiculous. I'm all for modelling, but really.
You might as well go full in and confirm that it's too early to judge the consequences of the French Revolution.
Had anyone on the Leave side made such an idiotic proposition during the campaign, Leave would have lost for sure.
Zhou was referring to 1968, not 1789. A diplomat present at the time called it a misunderstanding that was 'too delicious to invite correction'.
In which case you are out on your own in the lunacy stakes.
In thinking that Brexit is a generational decision? Hardly.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
I'm afraid you give the electorate credit for having listened and analysed the issue which i think was not true. After years of conditioning by the press and the promise of a painless departure and £350 million for the NHS they thought it was a no brainer. Many people still don't understand why the asian family next door are still here as we voted out to get rid of them.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
I'm afraid you give the electorate credit for having listened and analysed the issue which i think was not true. After years of conditioning by the press and the promise of a painless departure and £350 million for the NHS they thought it was a no brainer. Many people still don't understand why the asian family next door are still here as we voted out to get rid of them.
so that would be the Indians brits hoping the pakistani brits leave
The EU costs a fortune to run, and that fortune is contributed pro rata by member states.. It also has express and well-known redistributive policies - taking from the rich countries and giving to the poor. We are one of the biggest and richest countries. So if we weren't net payers of hundreds of millions the question would be why the feck not? The fact that £350m was an overstatement ("a lie" in primary school terms) is neither here nor there: the claim was absolutely true in substance.
As for "anti-immigration", first it can be subsumed under sovereignty - it's pretty crucial to sovereignty that you make your own decision who enters. Secondly you are trying to turn it into a slur when it isn't. Looking at the way people lived and died in Grenfell Tower, do you not think that a bit less immigration and consequently a bit less pressure to live 20 to a flat would be a brilliant idea from everyone's POV, including the immigrants? Or are you going to produce a disgusting sleight of hand argument wants controls on immigration -> anti-immigration ->anti-immigrant -> xenophobe -> only pretending to mind about Grenfell Tower because the victims were mainly not white?
I do not think that the Grenfell Tower population's packing density was because there were so many immigrants that we have to pack them in like sardines. I think it was because housing costs in London are insanely high so the only way to afford somewhere for low-paid people is to have lots of them contributing to the rent.
As for the £350m per week being ".... absolutely true in substance." - the amount matters. If the slogan had been "£5 per week for the NHS" it would have had zero traction so the amount does make a difference.
The NHS will never see £350m per week from Brexit, nor will it see £150m per week either because the truth is that there will not be ANY savings from Brexit because our WTO "short term pain" will gobble up any savings we make.
Still, it's a very silly point. Yes of course if you tweak growth down and don't tweak spending down, you eventually run out of money. However, the premise makes no sense, since of course governments would tweak spending down in such a scenario (or, if they didn't, the markets would take matters into their own hands).
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
There were of course very good non-economic reasons for voting Leave - or indeed Remain - and we shouldn't implicitly dismiss them by reducing everything to an accounting exercise.
But on a 50 year timescale, making assumptions about an ongoing effect of 0.1% is ridiculous. I'm all for modelling, but really.
You might as well go full in and confirm that it's too early to judge the consequences of the French Revolution.
Had anyone on the Leave side made such an idiotic proposition during the campaign, Leave would have lost for sure.
Zhou was referring to 1968, not 1789. A diplomat present at the time called it a misunderstanding that was 'too delicious to invite correction'.
In which case you are out on your own in the lunacy stakes.
In thinking that Brexit is a generational decision? Hardly.
Given that you think in such terms, it's odd that you don't seem to have considered the political effects of launching a divided population into such an endeavour. How do you crush the saboteurs, to coin a phrase, without abandoning democracy or worse?
The EU costs a fortune to run, and that fortune is contributed pro rata by member states.. It also has express and well-known redistributive policies - taking from the rich countries and giving to the poor. We are one of the biggest and richest countries. So if we weren't net payers of hundreds of millions the question would be why the feck not? The fact that £350m was an overstatement ("a lie" in primary school terms) is neither here nor there: the claim was absolutely true in substance.
As for "anti-immigration", first it can be subsumed under sovereignty - it's pretty crucial to sovereignty that you make your own decision who enters. Secondly you are trying to turn it into a slur when it isn't. Looking at the way people lived and died in Grenfell Tower, do you not think that a bit less immigration and consequently a bit less pressure to live 20 to a flat would be a brilliant idea from everyone's POV, including the immigrants? Or are you going to produce a disgusting sleight of hand argument wants controls on immigration -> anti-immigration ->anti-immigrant -> xenophobe -> only pretending to mind about Grenfell Tower because the victims were mainly not white?
I do not think that the Grenfell Tower population's packing density was because there were so many immigrants that we have to pack them in like sardines. I think it was because housing costs in London are insanely high so the only way to afford somewhere for low-paid people is to have lots of them contributing to the rent.
As for the £350m per week being ".... absolutely true in substance." - the amount matters. If the slogan had been "£5 per week for the NHS" it would have had zero traction so the amount does make a difference.
The NHS will never see £350m per week from Brexit, nor will it see £150m per week either because the truth is that there will not be ANY savings from Brexit because our WTO "short term pain" will gobble up any savings we make.
What, in your view, are the factors which make housing costs in London insanely high?
The number makes a difference when the differences are of order of magnitude, otherwise not really.
I don't defend the Leave campaign; what I do say is that Remain complaints about it tend to translate to "we lost by being a load of lazy, complacent, dishonest, patronising arses, somebody has to take the blame and it won't be us".
I posted this a few days ago, and I'm reposting now, to ensure this gets lost in the curse of the New Thread but anyway:
We've had various dire (and not so dire) predictions of what will happen when we leave the EU because we appear to be heading towards 'hard' Brexit. Has anyone run predictions on what might happen to the UK if we DIDN'T leave?
Picture this. Tomorrow morning, Theresa May comes out of Downing Street and announces, "After another glorious weekend of hill walking with my husband Philip, I have decided that leaving the EU is just too hard. It will cause too much of a economic shock and I can't in all good conscience allow the UK to suffer in this way. Therefore, I am asking the EU to accept our withdrawal of the Article 50 notification we delivered three months ago."
Assuming they accept, what do people actually think will happen? Both, how the EU will react, and how those who voted LEAVE and would still vote LEAVE would react (and those who voted REMAIN but are democrats first and foremost)?
As a vague idea, I suspect the EU would respond with a list of conditions that are virtually unpalatable anyway (yes, we'll accept the withdrawal provided you [accept the rebate is gone/join the Euro/join Schengen/pay more money to us] (or all four)).
For the UK population (especially those who voted LEAVE), I suspect the answer may be live ammunition.
I voted remain and now support leave as the democratic vote of the people. It does help that I have always been eurosceptic but at this time in the process I do not have a clue how this concludes.
I hope for a concensus which there is in the HOC for some EEA style relationship but I cannot see how we return or even cancel A50. Those who are convinced we will stay need to answer the question as to whether we vote for UK MEP's in 2019 elections and just how disruptive that event itself would be as the Brexiteers vent their fury at their perceived betrayal (for clarification I am not a hard Brexiteer)
Furthermore would the EU want a divided semi hostile EU member back in it's fold.
I read the set arguments of both remainers and leavers on here with their constant repetitive narratives making no headway in persuading each other but in truth compromise has to be arrived at and the sooner the HOC comes together for consensus the better. No one is going to thank the hard liners in both camps from resulting in a destructive settlement.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
You obvious have a better class of voter in your area, Richard! Believe me, the voters round my way were by and large blissfully unaware of the consequences. Some even believed what it said on the side of that bus. :-(
Of course they believed it, Mr Punter. It was the line put forward by that nice Mr Johnson, that nice Mrs Leadsome, that nice Mr Gove, that nice Mr Davis etc etc. It is very strange that all these very nice, very intelligent people now don`t have a clue, and have to go grovelling to Jeremy Corbyn, of all people, asking him to tell them what they ought to do.
A lady of my acquaintance wailed that she would be very upset if what it said on the bus turned out not to be true and the NHS did not improve as a consequence. You have to feel sorry for such simple souls, and to be fair the Remain side told its share of porkies too. I don't honestly believe though that the bus fib was anything like decisive. There was a whole range of factors in play, some reasonable, others less so. The trouble now is that whatever drove the Brexit vote didn't really add up to anything you could call a coherent set of economic and political plans that might serve the Nation for generations to come. On the contrary, there were probably almost as many notions of what Brexit meant as there were Brexit voters!
Now the Government has to sort out the mess. Well there's some justice in that. They made it, after all - with some help from one or two others who should have known better, of course - but basically the Government owns it and has to deal with it.
How? Well, if I were that clever....but I'd definitely start by replacing the incumbent at No.10 !!
I posted this a few days ago, and I'm reposting now, to ensure this gets lost in the curse of the New Thread but anyway:
We've had various dire (and not so dire) predictions of what will happen when we leave the EU because we appear to be heading towards 'hard' Brexit. Has anyone run predictions on what might happen to the UK if we DIDN'T leave?
Picture this. Tomorrow morning, Theresa May comes out of Downing Street and announces, "After another glorious weekend of hill walking with my husband Philip, I have decided that leaving the EU is just too hard. It will cause too much of a economic shock and I can't in all good conscience allow the UK to suffer in this way. Therefore, I am asking the EU to accept our withdrawal of the Article 50 notification we delivered three months ago."
Assuming they accept, what do people actually think will happen? Both, how the EU will react, and how those who voted LEAVE and would still vote LEAVE would react (and those who voted REMAIN but are democrats first and foremost)?
As a vague idea, I suspect the EU would respond with a list of conditions that are virtually unpalatable anyway (yes, we'll accept the withdrawal provided you [accept the rebate is gone/join the Euro/join Schengen/pay more money to us] (or all four)).
For the UK population (especially those who voted LEAVE), I suspect the answer may be live ammunition.
This is just nonsense. If the EU is fed up with us, they will let us go, regardless of what we might subsequently want. If, on the more likely other hand, they would want us to stay, then pretty much everything we had before will be on offer again. The national humble pie, humiliation of Farage and the Brexiteers, and proof that leaving the EU means heading for disastrous waters will be reward enough.
Except Guy Verhofstadht (the EU parliament's chief Brexit negotiator) has said we'd be welcome back but only into a new Europe that accepts all the other obligations other members do.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
You obvious have a better class of voter in your area, Richard! Believe me, the voters round my way were by and large blissfully unaware of the consequences. Some even believed what it said on the side of that bus. :-(
Of course they believed it, Mr Punter. It was the line put forward by that nice Mr Johnson, that nice Mrs Leadsome, that nice Mr Gove, that nice Mr Davis etc etc. It is very strange that all these very nice, very intelligent people now don`t have a clue, and have to go grovelling to Jeremy Corbyn, of all people, asking him to tell them what they ought to do.
A lady of my acquaintance wailed that she would be very upset if what it said on the bus turned out not to be true and the NHS did not improve as a consequence. You have to feel sorry for such simple souls, and to be fair the Remain side told its share of porkies too. I don't honestly believe though that the bus fib was anything like decisive. There was a whole range of factors in play, some reasonable, others less so. The trouble now is that whatever drove the Brexit vote didn't really add up to anything you could call a coherent set of economic and political plans that might serve the Nation for generations to come. On the contrary, there were probably almost as many notions of what Brexit meant as there were Brexit voters!
Now the Government has to sort out the mess. Well there's some justice in that. They made it, after all - with some help from one or two others who should have known better, of course - but basically the Government owns it and has to deal with it.
How? Well, if I were that clever....but I'd definitely start by replacing the incumbent at No.10 !!
The unceremonious sacking of the second most powerful figure in her own party was in hindsight her biggest mistake. It wasn't that he led a private army of followers it's that he knew how to manipulate opinion from his position as editor of London's most popular paper.
He was Iago to Theresa's Othello.
I look forward to the book "The Fall of the House of May and my part in it" by George Osborne.
Nothing Osborne has done since his sacking (and don't forget his behaviour before, which led to it) has led me to think that dismissing him was anything other than the right decision.
Cameron has a class Osborne will never match.
I was a great supporter of Osborne but his behaviour since becoming editor of the Standard has been utterly childish and pathetic and he has lost me completely. He should be honest and leave the party and join the Lib Dems. It is very sad really
If Osborne had behaved with more class and humility since, like Portillo or Balls have, and shown he was the bigger man, his reputation might have rehabilitated and he'd be welcomed back with open arms.
Instead he's made "vengeance" his modus operandi, which says an awful lot about him.
'Vengeance' and/or 'the truth' ?
Conservatives like Osborne and TSE have been proved right about May. Osborne's not responsible for the failure of the GE campaign, or the decision to hold it. Instead of shunning them, perhaps other Conservatives should be listening to them.
Conservatives like Osborne and TSE are highly factional, sneer at those who disagree and make very clear it's their way or the highway.
If you can't see why that might not be the most effective way to win people over, then I can't help you.
I am far from convinced that the Europhobic wing of the Conservative Party should be throwing around accusations of factionalism against other Conservatives.
Are you called me europhobic, JJ?
I am a conservative. I respect all other conservatives from all parts of the party: JohnO, TSE, DavidL, David Herdson, Richard Nabavi, Cornish Blue, Topping, Royal Blue, TP, Mortimer..
I have intervened multiple times on here when it's got factional with sides throwing accusations on here.
I find it deeply frustrating when anyone does it, and it's finished us before.
Because leaving the EU means we automatically leave Euratom? And we're leaving the EU because we have a referendum and the country voted to leave?
It doesn't. It would be possible to leave the EU while remaining in Euratom, though the EU probably wouldn't like it because it would end the practice whereby since 1957, all three original Communities expanded or contracted together.
The question on the Brexit paper was only about the EU. I doubt that many people will want to die in a ditch over the ECJ's jurisdiction of Euratom matters.
This article is rated by the lawyers on Twitter. It looks like we do have to leave Euratom.
In what way is it desperate ? It's abundantly clear that no one would benefit from our de facto participation ending just because of the linkage between the two treaties. For the EU to use this as a bargaining chip in the Brexit negotiations would be entirely irresponsible, and completely at odds with the way it has conducted itself so far. It is one thing to play hardball on single market/four freedoms, and the settling of UK 'liabilities'; quite another to cause buggeration just for the sake of it.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
I'm afraid you give the electorate credit for having listened and analysed the issue which i think was not true. After years of conditioning by the press and the promise of a painless departure and £350 million for the NHS they thought it was a no brainer. Many people still don't understand why the asian family next door are still here as we voted out to get rid of them.
I honestly do not get this idea that £350 million for the NHS was some sort of lie.
Given that we (well, others - I abstained) were not voting for a government, the "for the NHS" tag was clearly a suggestion, not a promise by anyone, because a Leave vote would not put anybody into a position to implement it. It would just make it possible, if the government wanted to do that.
And re the amount, well, yes, some of the £350 million comes back, so perhaps the net figure applies. But also perhaps not. Having rendered £350 million a week unto Brussels, it is the latter's decision where and how to spend that portion that comes back, not ours. So conceivably, one could choose to spend none of it in the manner the EU chooses, and instead route all of it to the NHS.
Of all the arguments about how mendacious the Leave campaign was, this strikes me as among the weakest. It is like saying that Corbyn said in the election that he'd set up a National Care Service, but has not done so, and is thus a wicked liar.
I don't defend the Leave campaign; what I do say is that Remain complaints about it tend to translate to "we lost by being a load of lazy, complacent, dishonest, patronising arses,
How many Remain voters would vote for a USE? For abolishion of the pound and adoption of the Euro.
Remain presently have the 'satisfaction' of appearing smug and unified, but they aren't either.
The problem I had with supporting Remain in the referendum was precisely that for all I knew, to vote Remain would indeed be to vote for abolition of the pound and adoption of the euro.
I don't defend the Leave campaign; what I do say is that Remain complaints about it tend to translate to "we lost by being a load of lazy, complacent, dishonest, patronising arses,
I posted this a few days ago, and I'm reposting now, to ensure this gets lost in the curse of the New Thread but anyway:
We've had various dire (and not so dire) predictions of what will happen when we leave the EU because we appear to be heading towards 'hard' Brexit. Has anyone run predictions on what might happen to the UK if we DIDN'T leave?
...
Assuming they accept, what do people actually think will happen? Both, how the EU will react, and how those who voted LEAVE and would still vote LEAVE would react (and those who voted REMAIN but are democrats first and foremost)?
As a vague idea, I suspect the EU would respond with a list of conditions that are virtually unpalatable anyway (yes, we'll accept the withdrawal provided you [accept the rebate is gone/join the Euro/join Schengen/pay more money to us] (or all four)).
For the UK population (especially those who voted LEAVE), I suspect the answer may be live ammunition.
I voted remain and now support leave as the democratic vote of the people. It does help that I have always been eurosceptic but at this time in the process I do not have a clue how this concludes.
I hope for a concensus which there is in the HOC for some EEA style relationship but I cannot see how we return or even cancel A50. Those who are convinced we will stay need to answer the question as to whether we vote for UK MEP's in 2019 elections and just how disruptive that event itself would be as the Brexiteers vent their fury at their perceived betrayal (for clarification I am not a hard Brexiteer)
Furthermore would the EU want a divided semi hostile EU member back in it's fold.
I read the set arguments of both remainers and leavers on here with their constant repetitive narratives making no headway in persuading each other but in truth compromise has to be arrived at and the sooner the HOC comes together for consensus the better. No one is going to thank the hard liners in both camps from resulting in a destructive settlement.
The bitterness will last generations
Indeed it will.
The problem with the HOC 'coming together' is that there are pretty fundamental divides in the governing party with the slimmest of majorities (assuming DUP support), and an opposition which sees its electoral interest in not coming to any agreement with the government, but rather allowing them to twist in the wind.
It is an utterly toxic situation, and I do not see it ending well.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
You obvious have a better class of voter in your area, Richard! Believe me, the voters round my way were by and large blissfully unaware of the consequences. Some even believed what it said on the side of that bus. :-(
Of course they believed it, Mr Punter. It was the line put forward by that nice Mr Johnson, that nice Mrs Leadsome, that nice Mr Gove, that nice Mr Davis etc etc. It is very strange that all these very nice, very intelligent people now don`t have a clue, and have to go grovelling to Jeremy Corbyn, of all people, asking him to tell them what they ought to do.
A lady of my acquaintance wailed that she would be very upset if what it said on the bus turned out not to be true and the NHS did not improve as a consequence. You have to feel sorry for such simple souls, and to be fair the Remain side told its share of porkies too. I don't honestly believe though that the bus fib was anything like decisive. There was a whole range of factors in play, some reasonable, others less so. The trouble now is that whatever drove the Brexit vote didn't really add up to anything you could call a coherent set of economic and political plans that might serve the Nation for generations to come. On the contrary, there were probably almost as many notions of what Brexit meant as there were Brexit voters!
Now the Government has to sort out the mess. Well there's some justice in that. They made it, after all - with some help from one or two others who should have known better, of course - but basically the Government owns it and has to deal with it.
How? Well, if I were that clever....but I'd definitely start by replacing the incumbent at No.10 !!
Who would do any better. It is a poisoned chalice
The shortage of credible candidates is a problem, as anyone can see, but putting the decision off is going to make matters worse, not better.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
The difficulty with that argument is that nowadays the Conservatives always do go in for trying to scare people into voting the way they want. They do not present rational arguments - just exaggerated or even invented threats. That is now their modus operandi. And both sides of the Referendum were headed by these Tories, using the same scare tactics.
So nobody really believed any of the threats they were making - not until now, and we can all see for ourselves how dreadful things are. The Conservatives now must be the most untrustworthy party in the history of our democracy.
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
Really? I didn't hear much of that. I was listening.
Casino Royale repeatedly used the phrase "Short term pain for long term gain" here on PB. I do not know about others though ...
I have asked many how long "Short term pain" should be expected to last - 6 months, 6 years, 6 decades???? There seems to be a bit of a silence on that one.
Yes, that was me. I've said short-term pain, medium-term not much difference and long-term gain.
Here's why: I don't think Brexit is that big a deal. We will have a close trading relationship with the EU whether we are inside or out, the only question is how long the politics takes for that to be established. Similarly adjusting our new world-wide trading web into an established status quo.
The main thing at the moment is uncertainty leading to a pause on investment, and the same leading to a slightly devalued Sterling driving inflation. But our economy is not something that depends on our EU membership like an umbilical cord. It is fundamentally strong and will continue to grow and develop, perhaps in new and different ways too but grow it will.
Most of what you see at the moment is a very heavy lobbying effort designed to take advantage of the Government's weak parliamentary position. If TM had a large majority, much of it would have taken place privately.
I think 3-5 years of subdued growth, picking up in the 2020s and looking all fine by 2030.
Still, it's a very silly point. Yes of course if you tweak growth down and don't tweak spending down, you eventually run out of money. However, the premise makes no sense, since of course governments would tweak spending down in such a scenario (or, if they didn't, the markets would take matters into their own hands).
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
There were of course very good non-economic reasons for voting Leave - or indeed Remain - and we shouldn't implicitly dismiss them by reducing everything to an accounting exercise.
But on a 50 year timescale, making assumptions about an ongoing effect of 0.1% is ridiculous. I'm all for modelling, but really.
Still, it's a very silly point. Yes of course if you tweak growth down and don't tweak spending down, you eventually run out of money. However, the premise makes no sense, since of course governments would tweak spending down in such a scenario (or, if they didn't, the markets would take matters into their own hands).
Taking a 50 year timeframe is absolutely the right approach to Brexit - the decision is of that scale. Indeed many Brexiteers conceded that the short-term impact was certainly increased risk and quite probably involved some lost growth, so Brexit needs framing on a generational timescale to (potentially) show positive economic returns.
There were of course very good non-economic reasons for voting Leave - or indeed Remain - and we shouldn't implicitly dismiss them by reducing everything to an accounting exercise.
But on a 50 year timescale, making assumptions about an ongoing effect of 0.1% is ridiculous. I'm all for modelling, but really.
There may have been a few who couched the advantages in terms similar to Casino, but for the most part Brexit was sold on abstractions like Sovereignity, Freedom and Independence.
No voter can possibly have been unaware of the fact that Brexit was a huge eonomic risk, and would probably make them substantially poorer at least for some years and possibly much longer. That was one thing which was made 100% clear, not only by the government and the Remain campaign, but also by virtually all economic experts and authoritative bodies. A majority of voters decided to go ahead anyway, but no-one can claim they weren't warned.
You obvious have a better class of voter in your area, Richard! Believe me, the voters round my way were by and large blissfully unaware of the consequences. Some even believed what it said on the side of that bus. :-(
Of course they believed it, Mr Punter. It was the line put forward by that nice Mr Johnson, that nice Mrs Leadsome, that nice Mr Gove, that nice Mr Davis etc etc. It is very strange that all these very nice, very intelligent people now don`t have a clue, and have to go grovelling to Jeremy Corbyn, of all people, asking him to tell them what they ought to do.
They have to go grovelling to Corbyn because their ability to command a majority in the HOC for whatever their original plan might have been was utterly compromised by May's election gamble. Ideas don't really come into it; the need to get the opposition to buy in to the process does.
From a disinterested perspective, it's not unreasonable to ask Corbyn what he would do, as his manifesto suggested that Labour could achieve a Brexit which retained all the benefits of EU membership - a claim just as delusional as those of the Tory brexiteers.
I am far from convinced that the Europhobic wing of the Conservative Party should be throwing around accusations of factionalism against other Conservatives.
Are you called me europhobic, JJ?
I am a conservative. I respect all other conservatives from all parts of the party: JohnO, TSE, DavidL, David Herdson, Richard Nabavi, Cornish Blue, Topping, Royal Blue, TP, Mortimer..
I have intervened multiple times on here when it's got factional with sides throwing accusations on here.
I find it deeply frustrating when anyone does it, and it's finished us before.
I don't want to see that happen again.
"Are you called me europhobic, JJ?"
I have rarely, if ever, heard you say much positive about the EU, and during the referendum you said you could see no reason why anyone would want to remain. So yes, I do think that cap fits. If you think I'm wrong, please avail us to the reason why you think you're not Europhobic?
"I respect all other conservatives from all parts of the party"
Yet above you wrote: "Conservatives like Osborne and TSE are highly factional, sneer at those who disagree"
Comments
I grow more confident by the day that Brexit will never happen.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/heres-why-were-probably-going-to-have-to-leave-euratom
The DExEU have published a position paper on nuclear materials handling. It's a bit desperate: pretty please, EU, don't change a thing.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/article-50-and-negotiations-with-the-eu
We do seem to be having to warn of dooms that even Remainers couldn't have imagined and, what is more, the lack of majority has not even come into play thus far and cannot be blamed for this.
That it has to such an extent even before we get to any point where we should be having
a proper clash, like over the Brexit bill, is really scary.
@Mortimer
Yes there's a lot in what you say for sure.
I left uni with a £200 overdraft in the mid 80's having of course benefitted from no tuition fees and a (modest) grant. There were even other little add ons like housing benefit to pay the rent in the holidays BUT there were a fraction of the numbers of students/graduates there are now, and that was the effective national trade off. Consequently, I and my then gf (now wife) could buy a two bed terrace in a provincial city with a 5% deposit before we were 24, even with interest rates at 10% (and soon to be 12%). I suspect that sounds like total fantasy to those under 30 now.
Now it was not all milk and honey: There were 3 million plus unemployed (in a much lesser population). Wages were in real terms lower and "stuff" in general to put in your house was way more expensive in real terms than it is now, (TV's were pretty much the same nominal price for instance (and picked up a whopping four channels) washing machines, furniture (no IKEA then) etc ditto), so there was an element of swings and roundabouts to a monthly budget compared to now. The rule of thumb assumption longer term then for me was "10% interest rates, 5% inflation" - which of course eroded the capital debt fairly efficiently after a few years.
The problem as I see it is, though the young earn more in real terms than we did they are in the mire because, of the present need for a 20% deposit, increasing demand from population increase (for a variety of reasons including longevity), smaller households, a lack of increase in supply, and prices which already would've risen steeply because of these, being turbo charged by rock bottom interest rates which temporarily increased "affordability", before cancelling out that very "affordability". It's a right pickle.
What to do? Build big time, and then build some more. Accept we cannot have a 100% open door to 440M across a continent to pitch up here whenever they wish, and put up interest rates. I'm sorry but some local negative equity and even a slowdown are lesser of the evils we face. The ultra low interest rate policy is mispricing two huge assets: houses, by inflating the price, and pensions, by increasing the size of fund required for a decent income. These are distortions of biblical proportions. One is (visibly) hurting primarily the young, the other (less visible, but just as real) the middle aged and old.
There were of course very good non-economic reasons for voting Leave - or indeed Remain - and we shouldn't implicitly dismiss them by reducing everything to an accounting exercise.
But on a 50 year timescale, making assumptions about an ongoing effect of 0.1% is ridiculous. I'm all for modelling, but really.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/essential-principles-nuclear-materials-safeguard-equipment_en_0.pdf
This really does seem to be a silly-season story. There is nothing for the UK and EU27 to disagree about on this issue, so they'll agree. There are much bigger things to worry about, such as the money and the trade deal.
So we'll do it anyway because...
But, contrast with my morning, where at the exact same time Carwyn Jones was in front of Barnier, I had a meeting with a civil servant from the Welsh Govt whose job it is to liaise with various manufacturers in S Wales. Automotive is, it was stated, very concerned about Brexit mostly due to customs and lead times, fair enough. However, nobody else is. This individual is tasked, amongst other things, to go around getting the mood music and feed it back up the chain to the politicians in Cardiff, who (and I quote) "are just not listening" to how relaxed folk are, The consensus is the reduction in January, and then hopeful abolition, of Severn Tolls will be of far greater significance as the Bristol/Newport/Cardiff area gets a boost.
Still, it will've been nice for three opponents of the UK to have a little chat together.
Of course, by then we will have Brexited
Macron sets out his reform timetable for 2018
http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2017/07/13/20002-20170713ARTFIG00135-macron-precise-l-ambitieux-calendrier-de-ses-reformes-pour-2018.php
I have asked many how long "Short term pain" should be expected to last - 6 months, 6 years, 6 decades???? There seems to be a bit of a silence on that one.
https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/885469377470111744?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
He's right, of course.
But, yes, perceived individual economic self interest almost entirely drove the referendum result, and what little wider mention there was of short-term pain did not cut through.
OK if the EU are determined to play silly buggers and adopt a negotiating style that seems to consist so far of "here are our terms, please surrender now", there may well be short term pain, all of which is unnecessary, and brought about by the EU's paranoia that their precious four freedoms aren't in reality that popular as a whole with Mr and Mrs Average European and the edifice could crumble if someone (ie us) points out the Emperor has no clothes. Not that I think any crumbling of others, who are in different circumstances to us will happen actually (ironically, please note M Barnier et al), nor, if other nations are happy enough with it, would I wish it on them.
I'll admit too the Govt seems shaky too as to having a 100% coherent message - let's be frank, however, I want to still live in a proper vibrant democracy till I peg out, and there is no way I can see the Austro Hungarian Empire reborn writ large is going to be that, still less anything I would want to give my loyalty to in any way whatsoever.
The Leaver Bus.
Farage's poster.
Believe me, the voters round my way were by and large blissfully unaware of the consequences. Some even believed what it said on the side of that bus. :-(
When reality bites, they can argue with it. It seems no one learns in UK politics until reality boots them well and truly up the ar*e.
Thus Brexit, Student Loans and the housing debacle.
Had anyone on the Leave side made such an idiotic proposition during the campaign, Leave would have lost for sure.
How many Remain voters would vote for a USE? For abolishion of the pound and adoption of the Euro.
Remain presently have the 'satisfaction' of appearing smug and unified, but they aren't either.
We've had various dire (and not so dire) predictions of what will happen when we leave the EU because we appear to be heading towards 'hard' Brexit. Has anyone run predictions on what might happen to the UK if we DIDN'T leave?
Picture this. Tomorrow morning, Theresa May comes out of Downing Street and announces, "After another glorious weekend of hill walking with my husband Philip, I have decided that leaving the EU is just too hard. It will cause too much of a economic shock and I can't in all good conscience allow the UK to suffer in this way. Therefore, I am asking the EU to accept our withdrawal of the Article 50 notification we delivered three months ago."
Assuming they accept, what do people actually think will happen? Both, how the EU will react, and how those who voted LEAVE and would still vote LEAVE would react (and those who voted REMAIN but are democrats first and foremost)?
As a vague idea, I suspect the EU would respond with a list of conditions that are virtually unpalatable anyway (yes, we'll accept the withdrawal provided you [accept the rebate is gone/join the Euro/join Schengen/pay more money to us] (or all four)).
For the UK population (especially those who voted LEAVE), I suspect the answer may be live ammunition.
The EU costs a fortune to run, and that fortune is contributed pro rata by member states.. It also has express and well-known redistributive policies - taking from the rich countries and giving to the poor. We are one of the biggest and richest countries. So if we weren't net payers of hundreds of millions the question would be why the feck not? The fact that £350m was an overstatement ("a lie" in primary school terms) is neither here nor there: the claim was absolutely true in substance.
As for "anti-immigration", first it can be subsumed under sovereignty - it's pretty crucial to sovereignty that you make your own decision who enters. Secondly you are trying to turn it into a slur when it isn't. Looking at the way people lived and died in Grenfell Tower, do you not think that a bit less immigration and consequently a bit less pressure to live 20 to a flat would be a brilliant idea from everyone's POV, including the immigrants? Or are you going to produce a disgusting sleight of hand argument wants controls on immigration -> anti-immigration ->anti-immigrant -> xenophobe -> only pretending to mind about Grenfell Tower because the victims were mainly not white?
Brexit was a great protest movement but also the 'dream' that was never supposed to come true. The looks on Gove and Johnson's faces when they actually won tells you all you should need to know.
or is it vice versa ?
As for the £350m per week being ".... absolutely true in substance." - the amount matters. If the slogan had been "£5 per week for the NHS" it would have had zero traction so the amount does make a difference.
The NHS will never see £350m per week from Brexit, nor will it see £150m per week either because the truth is that there will not be ANY savings from Brexit because our WTO "short term pain" will gobble up any savings we make.
The number makes a difference when the differences are of order of magnitude, otherwise not really.
I don't defend the Leave campaign; what I do say is that Remain complaints about it tend to translate to "we lost by being a load of lazy, complacent, dishonest, patronising arses, somebody has to take the blame and it won't be us".
I hope for a concensus which there is in the HOC for some EEA style relationship but I cannot see how we return or even cancel A50. Those who are convinced we will stay need to answer the question as to whether we vote for UK MEP's in 2019 elections and just how disruptive that event itself would be as the Brexiteers vent their fury at their perceived betrayal (for clarification I am not a hard Brexiteer)
Furthermore would the EU want a divided semi hostile EU member back in it's fold.
I read the set arguments of both remainers and leavers on here with their constant repetitive narratives making no headway in persuading each other but in truth compromise has to be arrived at and the sooner the HOC comes together for consensus the better. No one is going to thank the hard liners in both camps from resulting in a destructive settlement.
The bitterness will last generations
Now the Government has to sort out the mess. Well there's some justice in that. They made it, after all - with some help from one or two others who should have known better, of course - but basically the Government owns it and has to deal with it.
How? Well, if I were that clever....but I'd definitely start by replacing the incumbent at No.10 !!
in case no one has noticed.....
I am a conservative. I respect all other conservatives from all parts of the party: JohnO, TSE, DavidL, David Herdson, Richard Nabavi, Cornish Blue, Topping, Royal Blue, TP, Mortimer..
I have intervened multiple times on here when it's got factional with sides throwing accusations on here.
I find it deeply frustrating when anyone does it, and it's finished us before.
I don't want to see that happen again.
It's abundantly clear that no one would benefit from our de facto participation ending just because of the linkage between the two treaties. For the EU to use this as a bargaining chip in the Brexit negotiations would be entirely irresponsible, and completely at odds with the way it has conducted itself so far.
It is one thing to play hardball on single market/four freedoms, and the settling of UK 'liabilities'; quite another to cause buggeration just for the sake of it.
Given that we (well, others - I abstained) were not voting for a government, the "for the NHS" tag was clearly a suggestion, not a promise by anyone, because a Leave vote would not put anybody into a position to implement it. It would just make it possible, if the government wanted to do that.
And re the amount, well, yes, some of the £350 million comes back, so perhaps the net figure applies. But also perhaps not. Having rendered £350 million a week unto Brussels, it is the latter's decision where and how to spend that portion that comes back, not ours. So conceivably, one could choose to spend none of it in the manner the EU chooses, and instead route all of it to the NHS.
Of all the arguments about how mendacious the Leave campaign was, this strikes me as among the weakest. It is like saying that Corbyn said in the election that he'd set up a National Care Service, but has not done so, and is thus a wicked liar.
Remain in what, exactly?
The problem with the HOC 'coming together' is that there are pretty fundamental divides in the governing party with the slimmest of majorities (assuming DUP support), and an opposition which sees its electoral interest in not coming to any agreement with the government, but rather allowing them to twist in the wind.
It is an utterly toxic situation, and I do not see it ending well.
So nobody really believed any of the threats they were making - not until now, and we can all see for ourselves how dreadful things are. The Conservatives now must be the most untrustworthy party in the history of our democracy.
Here's why: I don't think Brexit is that big a deal. We will have a close trading relationship with the EU whether we are inside or out, the only question is how long the politics takes for that to be established. Similarly adjusting our new world-wide trading web into an established status quo.
The main thing at the moment is uncertainty leading to a pause on investment, and the same leading to a slightly devalued Sterling driving inflation. But our economy is not something that depends on our EU membership like an umbilical cord. It is fundamentally strong and will continue to grow and develop, perhaps in new and different ways too but grow it will.
Most of what you see at the moment is a very heavy lobbying effort designed to take advantage of the Government's weak parliamentary position. If TM had a large majority, much of it would have taken place privately.
I think 3-5 years of subdued growth, picking up in the 2020s and looking all fine by 2030.
Provided Corbyn doesn't win.
From a disinterested perspective, it's not unreasonable to ask Corbyn what he would do, as his manifesto suggested that Labour could achieve a Brexit which retained all the benefits of EU membership - a claim just as delusional as those of the Tory brexiteers.
I have rarely, if ever, heard you say much positive about the EU, and during the referendum you said you could see no reason why anyone would want to remain. So yes, I do think that cap fits. If you think I'm wrong, please avail us to the reason why you think you're not Europhobic?
"I respect all other conservatives from all parts of the party"
Yet above you wrote:
"Conservatives like Osborne and TSE are highly factional, sneer at those who disagree"
That's an odd sort of 'respect'.