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Do you think there will be a Deal or No Deal?

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So 3 hours to go until the UK reorientates itself from big EU decision maker to supplicant at the court of King Donald and King Xi. Freedom indeed...
 
sun_tzu said:
Yup... I can see (whatever is left of) the uk joining the single market (paying as much for access as we Do now only without a say ) in 10-15 years
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I think it will go the other way. In five years time rejoin will only poll 20-25% and be a minority not much talked about position outside the lib Dems.
 
Siorac said:
That article is basically a more eloquent way of saying "it was because of the immigrants". Some choice excerpts of it were particularly egregious, and somewhat ironic in an article railing against supposed lies.



Right away, this is not, strictly speaking, true: it wasn't a majority of the "national community" but a majority of those who turned up to vote that day. Not quite the same thing. But it's a minor quibble compared to some things to follow.



See, this is the kind of thing that gets you labelled stupid. Because, frankly, a whole lot of decisions that affect a country will be taken outside the country. That's just how the world works now. The point of the EU is to make sure that those nations that MUST co-exist will not screw over each other with their decisions. That Germany cannot simply introduce a tariff that destroys, I don't know, Slovenia's export of tiny plastic cocks.



The UK is not governed by the EU. That is simply a lie. Nothing more, nothing less. So that "idea" he's talking about here is simply fiction.



Right, right, I'm sure. Does anyone really actually believe this? Unless that outlook really was just about "let's have fewer immigrants".



But this, this right here! This one is simply disgusting. There's really no other word for it. It subtly implies that all the above is the EU's fault and the only way to solve these problems, to end this "dreary existence" is to leave the EU. This is the crux of it: the UK's problems are someone else's fault! (This part also happens to contradict one of the first sentences of the article: "And this decision, contrary to the liberal view of citizens as autonomous individuals who are mainly driven by self-interest, was never rooted in transactional considerations about money." - apparently, it was after all.)



Again, they never lost it. Will the UK exit every single international agreement that puts any obligations on its participants? Or what does national independence mean then?



I'm sure voting for the Conservative Party en masse will make that happen.



Again, a clever bit of fibbing. One in three sounds good - but it also means that two-thirds of black and ethnic minority voters backed Remain - apparently, the vast majority did not actually believe that minority rights are under threat if Britain remains in the EU. And then there's this bit from HIS OWN LINK: "White British were the most pro-Leave, followed by those of Indian background who were almost twice as likely to support Leave as other minority groups. There were much higher levels of support for Remain amongst Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Black Caribbean and Black African groups – on average a quarter being more pro-Leave than Remain."



You just know that the link will point to a 2014 study (that is to say, it's pre-referendum) that begins with this:

The British, it seems, are becoming meaner and more inward looking: less willing to help the poor, more suspicious of immigrants and narrow in their interpretation of who counts as “truly British”.

All the study says is that racial prejudice declined compared to the 80s, based on measuring "social distance". Which has very little to do with Brexit potentially unleashing a new wave of racism but hey, who cares?



Well, no fecking wonder: they are dreaming about sending home those dirty Poles, Romanians, Hungarians and so on. Some of them are probably dreaming about sending home the Pakistanis and such but of course those people will be disappointed, since that is not an EU issue.

In all, this article was very typical of the whole Brexit process.
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fecking Bravo. Bravo.
 
Hoof The Ball said:
Possibly an exercise in futility, but, for anyone out there who has a firm grasp of economics, trade policy, international relations, etc, can anyone explain what the potential upsides are to all this?

I think it's been fairly established by rather well informed individuals on what we have to lose because of Brexit, but does anyone have any thoughts on what could improve because of it? I'd like to think that there's at least a possibility that in the complexity of the situation that there's some things which conceivably could change for the better?
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There was some random woman in the street who was happy we left because now we can be an island again. So that's nice.
 


https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/sajid-javid-abandons-pledge-end-21389005

Sajid Javid has been accused of abandoning his pre-election pledge to end austerity after he ordered ministers to identify savage cuts for departmental budgets. The Chancellor promised just months ago that no department would have to shrink their budgets in 2020. But today he wrote to cabinet ministers, asking them to draw up cuts of up to 5% of their spending plans.They’ve been told to go through their budgets “line by line” and be ready to justify any spending plans and projects they want to keep.In the note, Mr Javid wrote: “We have been elected with a clear fiscal mandate to keep control of day to day spending. “This means there will need to be savings made across government to free up money to invest in our priorities.”

But in Mr Javid’s spending round speech, just three months before the election, the Chancellor declared he had “turned the page on austerity.” Mr Javid said: "No department will be cut next year. Every single department has had its budget for day to day spending increased at least in line with inflation. "That's what I mean by the end of austerity."
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Also quick tip, having an northern accent doesn't make you working class.
 
nimic said:
That seems just a tad absurd? 20%? You must be quite the optimist on how this is all going to go for Britain.
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I think it will be fine and then people won't bother with the faff and will focus on other things.
 
Well, goodbye lads. I hope that what I think about Brexit is wrong and you suceed and prosper. After all you deserve as much as anyone else in the world: Total Annihilation for mother earth to thrive
 
Abizzz said:
Essientially it's Britain solving all of it's problems by getting rid of the scapegoat.
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I don't for a moment believe that the EU won't be used as a convenient scapegoat in the UK anymore.
 
Siorac said:
That article is basically a more eloquent way of saying "it was because of the immigrants". Some choice excerpts of it were particularly egregious, and somewhat ironic in an article railing against supposed lies.



Right away, this is not, strictly speaking, true: it wasn't a majority of the "national community" but a majority of those who turned up to vote that day. Not quite the same thing. But it's a minor quibble compared to some things to follow.



See, this is the kind of thing that gets you labelled stupid. Because, frankly, a whole lot of decisions that affect a country will be taken outside the country. That's just how the world works now. The point of the EU is to make sure that those nations that MUST co-exist will not screw over each other with their decisions. That Germany cannot simply introduce a tariff that destroys, I don't know, Slovenia's export of tiny plastic cocks.



The UK is not governed by the EU. That is simply a lie. Nothing more, nothing less. So that "idea" he's talking about here is simply fiction.



Right, right, I'm sure. Does anyone really actually believe this? Unless that outlook really was just about "let's have fewer immigrants".



But this, this right here! This one is simply disgusting. There's really no other word for it. It subtly implies that all the above is the EU's fault and the only way to solve these problems, to end this "dreary existence" is to leave the EU. This is the crux of it: the UK's problems are someone else's fault! (This part also happens to contradict one of the first sentences of the article: "And this decision, contrary to the liberal view of citizens as autonomous individuals who are mainly driven by self-interest, was never rooted in transactional considerations about money." - apparently, it was after all.)



Again, they never lost it. Will the UK exit every single international agreement that puts any obligations on its participants? Or what does national independence mean then?



I'm sure voting for the Conservative Party en masse will make that happen.



Again, a clever bit of fibbing. One in three sounds good - but it also means that two-thirds of black and ethnic minority voters backed Remain - apparently, the vast majority did not actually believe that minority rights are under threat if Britain remains in the EU. And then there's this bit from HIS OWN LINK: "White British were the most pro-Leave, followed by those of Indian background who were almost twice as likely to support Leave as other minority groups. There were much higher levels of support for Remain amongst Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Black Caribbean and Black African groups – on average a quarter being more pro-Leave than Remain."



You just know that the link will point to a 2014 study (that is to say, it's pre-referendum) that begins with this:

The British, it seems, are becoming meaner and more inward looking: less willing to help the poor, more suspicious of immigrants and narrow in their interpretation of who counts as “truly British”.

All the study says is that racial prejudice declined compared to the 80s, based on measuring "social distance". Which has very little to do with Brexit potentially unleashing a new wave of racism but hey, who cares?



Well, no fecking wonder: they are dreaming about sending home those dirty Poles, Romanians, Hungarians and so on. Some of them are probably dreaming about sending home the Pakistanis and such but of course those people will be disappointed, since that is not an EU issue.

In all, this article was very typical of the whole Brexit process.
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Well done.

The more I read the more angry I got with that article. The claim that leavers areore open than remainers was particularly silly. Looks like he is cobbling together all kinds of suspicious claims to defend the theory in his book.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
As an overall point, the likes of Matt Goodwin and Eric Kaufman make no bones about the fact that it's about globalisation and immigration, both Brexit and the national populism movement across the world. The key difference is that they perceive the specific issue to be about the pace of demographic change which causes social and cultural insecurity among the majority, rather than the base accusations of racism and so on that generally come from the left. Specific to the UK, this was compounded by the failure of pro-globalisation governments through Blair and Cameron to pay heed to the warnings of growing discontentment and do anything about it. The actual referendum was a bit of political happenstance with Cameron making a terrible judgement call and misreading the mood entirely.

Contrary to the common perception after the referendum, the biggest indicator that a constituency would vote leave was if it had experienced a higher level of demographic change in a short space of time. They refer to this as 'cultural displacement'. Working class communities tend to be the areas that receive the highest amount of immigrants and when the number is larger the immigrant groups tend towards their own homogeneous groups which creates 'parallel lives'. The indigenous community then feels fractured and 'displaced'. Tending towards homogeneous groups is quite natural. Eric Kaufman claims that research shows that even people who identify as socially liberal also tend towards racially homogeneous areas for living in and racially homogeneous relationships. In homogeneous communities people feel safe and reinforced, the cultural similarities make social intercourse easy. They argue that these dynamics have to be understood and managed; and that the left approach of moral grandstanding and/or 'kill it with fire' is entirely self defeating and divisive.

I do feel that your second and third points are shallow and disingenuous, are there any other supernational political or economic unions on this earth that involve ceding as many powers as members of the EU have to?

I think you are overreacting to the his point about what remainers were trying to sell, the remain campaign was asking people to vote for the status quo. It was an undeniably alienating to those feeling disenfranchised.

I'm not sure how he can frame his point about the 1 in 3 minority voters that voted Leave? I think his broader point that their voices went completely unheard in the narrative is a solid one.

Admittedly the study showing the decline of racial prejudice in the UK is too old to satisfy. There are countless other more recent studies that show the UK to be one of the least racially prejudice countries in Europe, including this one from the EU itself.

https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-2018-being-black-in-the-eu_en.pdf

I think that they're both worth listening to as they have been predicting events like Trump, Brexit and Election 2019 for a long time. Their opinion is that the left in the UK just doesn't understand the dynamic it nor doesn't have the tools required to cope with it and as a result won't get into power anytime soon



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Look, your first two paragraphs are very reasonable and absolutely worthy of discussion.

The article itself, however, was still full of self-congratulatory rubbish. I still can't get over the idea that people wanted more working class MPs and social equality - and therefore voted for Brexit and the fecking Conservative Party.

And this actually touches on another thing. If someone criticises the EU for embracing neoliberalism a tad too enthusiastically, I have every sympathy for that viewpoint. It's perfectly reasonable to challenge the EU to stand up to big business when their single-minded pursuit of profit hurts people.

But that's not what's happening in the UK! Instead you gave the reins to the Republican Lites, the party of deregulation and tax cuts for the rich and austerity. The phrase "regulatory shackles" appears with alarming frequency in pro-Brexit content and it signifies the main criticism towards the EU: that it has not fully sacrificed everything on the altar of Reagan and Thatcher, that neolib/neocon thinking doesn't dominate it completely.

Which is why the whole Brexit has always been a cynical, dishonest ploy: rich people want to get rid of any and all obstacles to accumulating even more wealth and for that purpose they decide to prey on the attitudes described in those first two paragraphs of yours.
 
DavidDeSchmikes said:
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I agree with his point about accepting Brexit, but to say that the EU is just a trading block for millionaires is bull! The EU is also a bastion of human rights, workers rights, freedom of movement and its populations general well-being. This will become ever more apparent as the Tories start eradicating all these protections, that are in the interest of the general public, in favour of the interests of the lucky few.
 
Rams said:
I agree with his point about accepting Brexit, but to say that the EU is just a trading block for millionaires is bull! The EU is also a bastion of human rights, workers rights, freedom of movement and its populations general well-being. This will become ever more apparent as the Tories start eradicating all these protections, that are in the interest of the general public, in favour of the interests of the lucky few.
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I feel like he’s trying to appear more ‘neutral’ these days.
 
nimic said:
It will never cease to amaze me that these guys have managed to convince so many Britons that they are the representatives of the common man, while the other side are the elitists.
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It's a bigger scam than Trump. The idea that Might, Boris, Garage and co are fighting for the little man.
I've said it many times, this whole thing was about immigration.
The only way a bricklayer from Hull thinks Mogg is fighting for him is if he thinks Mogg is defending his identity by preventing all these immigrants from coming.
 
Fingeredmouse said:
I don't find it particularly to be a counter argument. I think that the conflation of societal issues in the UK with EU membership is precisely at the heart of the issue many remainers have with the Leave vote. I think people have long understood that Brexit votes wanted decisions made in their own country and to control immigration. The sovereignty and xenophobia angle would surely be the stock position of the caricatured remainers discussed within this article. When people say that they didn't know what they were voting for this is not what is meant and it seems a deliberately shallow reading to suggest otherwise. The extent to which we could control our immigration and make our own laws was generally not understood (few people on either side fully understand this) and the expectation that leaving the EU will address the concerns of people wishing for change is generally the position that remainers have attacked.

The argument that remain lost due to remainers being sneery and myopic and insulting is as shallow, unhelpfully divisive and vague an argument as that remain lost because leave voters are all easily manipulated racist idiots. It is, however, the current prevalent narrative and I look forward to years of commentators coming up with new angles to undermine and subvert the hot takes of previous articles for years to come.
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Replying to this rather than your post in the other thread.

Goodwin’s views are not a hot take, he’s been predicting and charting the collapse of social democracy in the West for 15 years. Trump, Brexit and the general election 2019 are manifestations of the growing political undercurrents that he's been describing throughout that time. They are incidental and not defining. I get the feeling that you still think this is fundamentally an economic argument drawn along the traditional political lines in the UK. Goodwin and Kaufman both argue that this is missing the point completely. That it’s rather about cultural displacement of the majority, specifically in working class areas. They both argue that these concerns have to be appreciated legitimately and addressed, not mocked or shouted down with accusations of xenophobia or racism etc. Kaufman argued that the way to manage the issue would be to offer policies that reassure the culturally displaced factions that the rate of demographic change can be better controlled or slowed down so their place in the world will not be taken over by globalisation. Brexit and the Tory manifesto 2019 offered this so through Brexit they will be getting exactly what they voted for - ‘taking back control’ over immigration specifically.

I‘d recommend watching the videos I posted because I do believe that what they have to say is important for the left going forward, if they ever want to get into power that is.
 
My grandfather fought at the allies side during WW2. Malta being close to Italy he saw the rise and fall of fascism there and how most italians suddenly switched from huge fascist fans who thought that the country was at the cusp of building the second Roman empire into avid partigiani fans. Its amazing how no Italian I've met would state that his grandfather was a Mussolini sympathiser even though there was a time when most Italians were indeed fascists. Its strange how these children of 'partigiani' are so keen in putting Salvini in government. At least Mussolini loved all Italians although he loved himself more.

Anyway if Brexit goes tits up then rest assured that the same will happen. Most British will denounce ever supporting Brexit and will claim that they were pro EU all along.
 
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