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Brexit

Started by vandermolen, May 01, 2017, 10:14:35 PM

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Que

Quote from: nodogen on August 13, 2017, 10:53:03 PM
Q,
It's a cold day in hell when a tory jumps ship 😉

Ah, you might be right....  It would mean the end of their party.


Oh dear....

Philip Hammond and Liam Fox's Brexit transition plan is a pipe dream

Now what... ? ::)

Q

Spineur

As I have said previously a special transition regime has to be approved by every one of the 27 members states, while requesting an extention of the 24 months negotiation period to say 36 months does not.

So yes this vague and vaporous transitional period is a pipe dream.

Their article shows how unprepared they still are, in spite of  their eager "we are ready" statement.


nodogen

Quote from: Que on August 14, 2017, 12:36:14 PM
Ah, you might be right....  It would mean the end of their party.

Q

Call me biased and ignorant, but it seems to me that (in the UK at least) the left is generally driven by fairly fixed ideas. As the popularity of these ideas wax and wane so does the popularity of the party/s of the left. On the other hand, the right seems quite simply (ruthlessly,efficiently) to be driven by the desire to be in power. Ideas are of secondary importance and so can be ditched, recalled, reshaped, created at will, depending on what the drive for power requires. As Orwell said, power is not a means, it is an end. Because of this hollowness at the heart of the right wing there is less need or likelihood for tories to "jump ship."

Mr. Minnow

#123
Quote from: nodogen on August 14, 2017, 02:32:55 PM
Call me biased and ignorant, but it seems to me that (in the UK at least) the left is generally driven by fairly fixed ideas. As the popularity of these ideas wax and wane so does the popularity of the party/s of the left. On the other hand, the right seems quite simply (ruthlessly,efficiently) to be driven by the desire to be in power. Ideas are of secondary importance and so can be ditched, recalled, reshaped, created at will, depending on what the drive for power requires. As Orwell said, power is not a means, it is an end. Because of this hollowness at the heart of the right wing there is less need or likelihood for tories to "jump ship."

There is a lot of truth in this, but the one issue to which it does not seem to apply is Europe. The anti-EU headbangers ensured that their party got slaughtered at the 1997 election but they didn't care. It's an obsession for them, and Brexit is their ideological G-spot.

It's looking more and more possible that we really could crash out with no deal at all. The EU has made it abundantly clear that we aren't going to get a "have our cake and eat it" deal. Whatever we get is going to be significantly worse than what we have now, and is therefore going to do a lot of damage. Labour won't want to support a deal that inflicts major damage on the country, so they'd almost certainly have to vote against it (I suppose in theory they could abstain, but that would hardly be a credible stance on an issue of such monumental importance). Even a bad deal will only happen if we agree to pay the "divorce bill", or at least a very substantial portion of it - but that will be too much for the Brexit zealots to stomach, so they would probably vote against it as well, albeit for very different reasons. In which case it won't get through the Commons. And obviously the sort of deal that would be acceptable to the hardcore Brexiteers would be completely unacceptable to Labour, the other opposition parties and more moderate Tory MPs (to say nothing of the EU). It's looking really grim.

nodogen


nodogen

Grim indeed, Mr Minnow.

On a happier note, when I catch sight of the front pages of the Mail and the Express there seems to be an ever mounting hysteria. I think eventually the rage will reach such a pitch it will cause the actual copies of the papers to spontaneously combust.

nodogen

Mr Minnow,
Is your avatar Mr Austerity himself, George O. ????

I had an Osborne avatar once, but soon found it too unsettling. So I changed it back to Enoch Powell.

Mr. Minnow

Quote from: nodogen on August 15, 2017, 05:20:59 AM
Mr Minnow,
Is your avatar Mr Austerity himself, George O. ????

I had an Osborne avatar once, but soon found it too unsettling. So I changed it back to Enoch Powell.

https://www.youtube.com/v/A5qrlOOPwZ8


Mr. Minnow

Quote from: nodogen on August 15, 2017, 01:15:02 PM
I'd have to say: what the fuck?


🙀

Seaside Treats was my introduction to Cardiacs and my initial reaction was similar to yours - in fact it's the usual reaction for anyone unfamiliar with them. After the five minutes of The Consultant's Flower Garden finished and it said "the end" I was wondering what I'd just seen. Then my friend said "it's not the end, there are three songs to follow and it gets even stranger." He was right!

nodogen


Mr. Minnow

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/16/uk-government-border-proposals-ireland-brexit-position-paper

Two bits of this stood out for me:

QuoteBut to understand how this seems to the Irish government and to most people on the island, imagine you are in a decent job. It is reasonably paid, apparently secure and the working environment is quite amicable. Your neighbour, who you like but do not quite trust (there's a bit of history there) comes to you with a proposition. She's establishing an extremely risky start-up venture with a high probability of catastrophic failure. Will you join her? Well, you ask, what are the possible rewards? Ah, she says, if – against the odds – everything goes splendidly, you'll get the same pay and conditions you have now.

This is, in essence, what the British government is offering Ireland. If everything goes fantastically well, you'll end up with, um, the status quo.

QuoteThis is why the position paper, for all its nice words, feels less like a serious attempt to find solutions and more like an early move in the blame game that will unfold when those solutions have not been found. It claims the moral high ground: Britain is utterly opposed to a hard border. Thus, when the EU responds by saying that a hard border follows inevitably from a decision to leave the customs union, it will be the EU's fault.

The disconnection from reality of the UK government's approach - I was about to say "strategy" but I think that would be giving them far too much credit - is such that it is indeed starting to appear as though they've looked into the abyss, realised what a colossal shitshow Brexit will be, and concluded that the only way they can save their necks is by adopting positions that they know the EU can't possibly agree to. And then blame the EU for not agreeing to those things. At which point the narrative will no doubt be that the EU is out to punish us.

Maybe the hardcore Brexiteers like Fox still believe their own guff about the sunlit uplands, but the less ideologically committed must have started to realise that Brexit is like blowing your own feet off with a shotgun as you're about to start running a marathon.





André

Quote from: Spineur on August 13, 2017, 02:51:00 AM
If I would be a European negotiator on the Brexit team, my patience would be running low

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-idUKKBN1AS0XP

This speech of Esteban Gonzales Pons, European deputy, reflects my feeling at the moment

https://www.youtube.com/v/dhiMNCyXcFg

A really great speech, and one that absolutely reflects how Europe is seen from this side of the pond - well, the northern part of the pond, I should say  :).

vandermolen

Quote from: André on August 17, 2017, 05:12:09 AM
A really great speech, and one that absolutely reflects how Europe is seen from this side of the pond - well, the northern part of the pond, I should say  :).
Yes - a truly great speech. Thank you for posting it.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

vandermolen

"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

nodogen

If the UK really does have to leave the EU, Labour seem to be overtly becoming the "soft Brexit" option. Politically this is a good move - in terms of popularity within the Party and the country at large. Also it puts great pressure on the Tories, which is always a good thing. 😼

Mr. Minnow

#136
Quote from: nodogen on August 28, 2017, 12:30:28 AM
If the UK really does have to leave the EU, Labour seem to be overtly becoming the "soft Brexit" option. Politically this is a good move - in terms of popularity within the Party and the country at large. Also it puts great pressure on the Tories, which is always a good thing. 😼

The Tories seem to be feeling the pressure already. Headline in tomorrow's Torygraph: "Britain's fury at 'unhelpful' Barnier". Or, to put it another way, Barnier is sticking to the negotiating brief he's been given. You know, the one that he can't change - and couldn't change even if he wanted to - and which can only be changed by the other 27.

It seems they may be finally starting to realise that the Brexiteers were engaged in nothing more than empty bluster when they assured us that when push comes to shove the EU will back down. We've already had Boris concede we'll have to pay a divorce bill, which is a rather different attitude to his previous comment that the EU can "go whistle". Still, at least we're represented in these negotiations by a team of true statesmen with a well thought-out strategy - we could easily have been stuck with a bunch of delusional f**kwits who don't know their collective arse from their elbow. Just imagine!

John Copeland


nodogen

Quote from: Est.1965 on August 29, 2017, 02:26:47 PM
Brexit Negotiations?

LOL

What's the take on all this in Scotland? How do you see it panning out (within Scottish politics)?

Mr. Minnow

Scottish independence would surely be a foregone conclusion if the Tory Brexiteers try to use Brexit as a way of turning Britain into Tax Haven-on-Thames. It's an ideological dream which they might well try to push as "our only hope" if the negotiations with the EU go tits up and we crash out with no deal. I can't see the Scots wanting to be chained to a country cast in the image of hard right nutters like Rees Mogg, Patel and Raab. They would surely vote for independence in droves. If they did I wouldn't blame them, in fact Scotland might then start to look very attractive indeed to quite a few people south of the border.