Categories
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Brace yourselves for the impending train wreck of the Brexit n
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Brace yourselves for the impending train wreck of the Brexit negotiations
The biggest avoidable catastrophe of the twentieth century was the outbreak of the First World War. A single act of terrorism emanating from a small pre-modern state was allowed by mishandling by several different nations to escalate into a war that devastated a continent. Historians continue to argue to this day about the causes. It is often observed that the Russian mobilisation plans entailed rigid planning. The steps that the Russians took that were necessary to undertake war became steps that made war almost inevitable. The process became the plan.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Typo in the title. I was wondering what happened in 1014.
What happened in 1014?
second:
That has to be what Alastair is alluding to.
Edited extra bit: damn. Just checked, and Canute's reign began in 1016.
Now I feel like a fool.
Then we should have had a realistic idea of what that was before invoking Article 50, instead of trying to use Article 50 as a way of strong-arming the EU into letting us have our cake and eat it.
We actually did canvass quite a lot of people in their mid-to-late-20s (who are presumably the people who would've benefitted from the supposed "promise" on writing off student debt), but they rarely mentioned tuition fees at all, they were mainly concerned with the NHS, cuts generally, lack of good employment prospects, Corbyn's personality as compared to May's, and very occasionally, Brexit. The people who talked about tuition fees were usually parents, but this would usually be by reference to kids who were going to university in future, and how they didn't think it was fair for them to be saddled with debt - no-one ever mentioned that they had kids who'd already gone through Uni, and that they'd heard Labour were going to write off their already-accumulated debts.
*Innocent Face*
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/07/im-a-leaver-who-would-be-happy-for-a-second-referendum/
https://twitter.com/george_osborne/status/889846022696042496
https://twitter.com/braddjaffy/status/889845264458162176
Aethelred came back and took over from the Danes. Brexit in 1014 - it did not last though.... By 1016 the Europeans were back in charge.
A parallel for our times?
There won't be a war, even metaphorically. We wouldn't win it (metaphorically) either.
I recommend this article for anyone interested in the EU position:
https://twitter.com/WeyandSabine/status/889561390578638850
World War One broke out not so much because of Russian train timetables but because the to-be-combatants were less scared of not going to war than they were of going to war. They were more scared of compromise than they were of conflict - and they were scared of compromise (or, if you prefer, of backing down), because they anticipated a war as likely and there was an unusual coincidence of belief that if it was going to happen then it was better that it happened when it did than in a few years time.
All of which has parallels with Brexit. Both sides feel affronted by the hard line taken by the other. Neither wishes to compromise on the large items they see as fundamental. These are more salient facts than the 2-year deadline (which can be extended, if necessary).
From Wikipedia ...................
Domestically, the Liberal Cabinet was split and in the event that war was not declared the Government would fall as Prime Minister Asquith, Edward Grey and Winston Churchill made it clear they would resign. In that event, the existing Liberal Cabinet would lose their jobs. Since it was likely the pro-war Conservatives would be elected to power this would lead to a slightly belated British entry into the war in any event, so wavering Cabinet ministers were also likely motivated by the desire to avoid senselessly splitting their party and sacrificing their jobs
British Foreign office mandarin Eyre Crowe stated:
"Should the war come, and England stand aside, one of two things must happen. (a) Either Germany and Austria win, crush France and humiliate Russia. What will be the position of a friendless England? (b) Or France and Russia win. What would be their attitude towards England? What about India and the Mediterranean?"
So the Liberals and Foreign Office mandarins jointly responsible for a million UK deaths and 1.6 million UK wounded - all for the sake of less bad relations with some countries after the War.
This can only end one way. The Brexiteers will lose.
You can edit PB using your bus pass? Technology really has come a long way.
I would have preferred that we seek our departure via a treaty rather than invoking Article 50. This might have required an implicit threat to grind Brussels to a halt via non-cooperation had they not been willing to engage on these terms.
What's done is done, and the consequences may well be as Alastair Meeks states, though I remain hopeful that there is more agreement behind the scenes than we have been told. But regardless of the two-phase approach, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
Personally I think a last-minute deal of some sort must be the default expectation, but then again maybe no-one will blink.
Instead, they now seem rather oddly to be complaining that the UK hasn't been clear what it wants. No, I can't my head round that either, we've been very clear - the question is, to what extent are they willing to accomodate us?
So, the most likely scenario is some kind of deal which limits (but doesn't entirely eliminate) disruption, causing a mild recession, perhaps. Given the political risks, and the number of players involved, there still remains an unacceptably high chance of disaster for both sides - maybe a 10% to 20% risk of an economic crash as bad as 2008/9.
I certainly won't be moving my pension fund assets back into UK-focused investments yet, therefore.
PS EDIT: the fact that Davis is willing to be seen to lose is great. If we can negotiate things that we want in return for the EU's own sense of self-esteem that seems like a very good bargain.
Are you telling us that's not the case?
In theory, yes, Britain could have stood aside and watched Germany fail in 1914 but probably win in 1916/17, gaining huge advantages from loans and arms production to both sides and consolidating a global leadership role. Overall, never mind for the UK, that would probably have been a better outcome but I don't think it was ever realistically an option. There might be a good alternative history thread in it though.
He'll happily own it. And he deserves a peerage afterwards.
PS I'm now wishing I'd written an analogy to the events of 1014.
As for the disaster. It won't be good for either side. But it will be a whole lot worse for us.
And let me not even get started on Dr Liam Fox's Department for International Incompetence.
PS I don't expect net payments to EU countries to be much if any less than now, going forward. In fact we will WANT to pay, as a way of buying back some of the influence we have lost. Hypothesis to be tested, I grant you.
The Tory Party is almost entirely behind Brexit, as is the leadership of the Labour Party. That is more than sufficient, as neither is at all likely to change in the next 18 months.
It would however be fair to say that we would have done much better to oppose Germany but by Naval action (particularly bloackade) until such time as we had built up our army strength to the point where an Expeditionary Force would have made a real difference. As you, David, are no doubt aware, the Force we did send was small, and ineffective not just because of the ineptitude of French and Haig but because it was singularly ill-equiped fr the task.
Naturally I am hindsighting, but we should be really proud of what our forefathers did on our behalf. German hegemony on mainland Europe was never an acceptable option, in theory or practice.
Political leadership is very unstable and highly likely to change in the next 18 months.
If we'd committed no troops to Europe until we'd built up the army, the Germans and their allies would have conquered the whole continent in the meantime.
Not entirely true. IIRC Germany's military planners most feared a war on two fronts, i.e. versus Russia and France at the same time. The solution arrived at was to beat France quickly by attacking her, then turn on Russia. Germany's war planning was to involve Russia in any war with France, and vice versa.
Given existing allegiances, this is constructively not far off Germany indeed actively wanting a continent wide war, in that she feared she would lose any other kind.
It is absolutely pointless to dig over the causes of WWI as if they are going to provide some BREXIT insight now, particularly as there is no single authoritative view on the causes of WWI.
If the government had taken this to heart, we could have avoided trying to maintain much larger forces and competing in technological arms races that we could never have afforded in the post war period. We should have concentrated on rebuilding our economic strength (as De Gaulle recognised) instead.
I think the ruling classes and man in the street were both deceived by the 'victory' of 1945. It was undoubtedly a moral victory, and the right thing to do, but a defeat in all other respects.
I tend to take a better view of French, Haig and the other leaders of the day than some. What were they supposed to do? They couldn't sit on the defensive for three years and wait for tanks to be developed and ultimately, the staffs did develop tactics which won the war (it's not as if the French, German, Austrian, American or Russian generals had any greater success). The unfortunate fact was that the war broke out at a time when the defender had an unusually strong advantage.
Even so, I do wonder about your final point. Would a German victory have been so disastrous? To answer that does depend on when it happened. A war that ended by Christmas 1914, as it might have done had Joffre not performed miracles to reorganise his defensive line while the Germans bore down on Paris (something that the BEF did play a small but possibly critical role in), would have produced a different peace from one which dragged on to 1917 and saw France collapse after being bled white at Verdun. The simple answer is that I don't know. I do know, however, that by continuing past the summer of 1917 produced such horrific consequences for the rest of the 20th century that almost anything would have been better.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/25/politics/navy-ship-iran-arabian-gulf/index.html
The first German move in the event of Russian declaration of war on Germany would thus be to invade France via Belgium.