Brexit

[Mr. Minnow]

What I find interesting is that Labour's left wing (Corbynistas) stuck to their traditional script of "reckless, grandiose political projects driven by half-baked, fanatical ideology".... Which means Brexit is driven by both of the outer sides of the political spectrum with the more sensible middle sandwiched in between, abondended by a misguided or intimidated electorate.

I don't mean to be alarmist, but if I were British I wouldn't just worry about Brexit but also about what comes next....

Q

To be fair, Corbyn campaigned for Remain, despite his history of euroscepticism. He was criticised for not campaigning enthusiastically enough, but if he'd taken the line that the EU was just terrific it would have lacked all credibility, especially after decades of anti-EU tabloid poison. And while Labour's manifesto at this year's general election may be left wing by British standards, it didn't really amount to anything much more radical than European social democracy. The constant cries of "Venezuela!" from the likes of the Daily Mail really are utter bollocks. Corbyn didn't do so much better than expected at the election because he's a fire-breathing revolutionary, he did so largely because he took a clear anti-austerity line. Even Tory MPs have reported that their experience of the campaign was that many voters - even including many of their own voters - were sick of austerity. Unfortunately for them they're the architects of austerity and there's not really a way for them to distance themselves from it.

[Que]

Fair enough....   But I think Corbyn was less than not ethusiastic, he was reluctant.
But he had to do so, after all...... that was the consensus in the Labour party....

After the referendum he didn't lift a finger to steer away from Brexit, he even came up with reasons why Brexit wasn't such a bad idea.
I think for him the current situation is a blessing: it will kill two birds with one stone and he will get rid of the Tories as well as the EU.

Will Corbyn when he takes power after Brexit and the implosion of the Conservative Party rejoin the internal market and the customs union?
He might, but I'm  not so sure....

Q

[Jo498]

What I find interesting is that Labour's left wing (Corbynistas) stuck to their traditional script of "reckless, grandiose political projects driven by half-baked, fanatical ideology"....

Wouldn't many call the EU itself a "reckless grandiose political project"? If not many had thought along similar lines, Brexit would hardly have been appeared so attractive.

[Mr. Minnow]

Fair enough....   But I think Corbyn was less than not ethusiastic, he was reluctant.
But he had to do so, after all...... that was the consensus in the Labour party....

After the referendum he didn't lift a finger to steer away from Brexit, he even came up with reasons why Brexit wasn't such a bad idea.
I think for him the current situation is a blessing: it will kill two birds with one stone and he will get rid of the Tories as well as the EU.

Will Corbyn when he takes power after Brexit and the implosion of the Conservative Party rejoin the internal market and the customs union?
He might, but I'm  not so sure....

Q

I think that the British left's views on the EU have changed somewhat, and that applies to Corbyn as well. There's no doubt that in the early 80s they were unequivocally hostile to the EU, as they saw it as a capitalist club. This culminated in Labour's 1983 manifesto, which included a pledge to take Britain out of the EU (without a referendum if I remember rightly). But from that point on, as the EU started to incorporate a social agenda, the British left found it increasingly attractive, especially with a very right wing government at home steadily undermining social protections wherever it could. That process has gone into overdrive since the financial crash, with Cameron and Osborne introducing a series of unbelievably vicious cuts against those who could least afford them. As a result, there is a genuine fear on the left, shared by Corbyn, that the hard right of the Tory party will use Brexit as an excuse to pursue an ultra-Thatcherite agenda, shredding public services and the welfare state even further and turning us into a country of minimal taxation, public spending and workers' rights. That fear is a rational one - we've already heard such noises coming from Rees-Mogg, there are also previous statements arguing for this from the likes of Priti Patel and Dominic Raab, and the economists who supported Brexit include people such as Patrick Minford, a fanatical Thatcherite who apparently acknowledged that such an approach could well decimate our manufacturing and agricultural sectors - but doesn't think that would be too much of a problem. It's therefore no surprise that most of the left now views the EU a lot more positively than it did 30 years ago.

I agree that Corbyn's initial response to Brexit wasn't his finest hour. His call to trigger article 50 immediately was not well judged, though to be fair he may have assumed that the government had some sort of plan in place for that - an assumption which would not have been unreasonable, even though it turned out to be wrong.

As to whether he would take us back into the single market and customs union, I think he might well want to. I could see a compromise position emerging in which he takes us into the EEA, which would mitigate the worst of the economic damage while allowing him to say he'd respected the referendum result. But he can't advocate such a position yet for two related reasons: first, there hasn't yet been much of a swing against Brexit from leave voters (polls suggest there has been a modest degree of movement towards Remain, but not much). Second, he's having to walk a tightrope in terms of trying to manage the split in Labour's vote: on the one hand, working class Labour voters in poor, deindustrialised towns who largely voted leave, and middle class metropolitan voters who mostly voted Remain. As long as those leave voters still support Brexit, any attempt to keep us in the EU - or even the EEA, which the Tory Brexiteers are portraying as effectively staying in the EU - would probably lose him a lot of those leave voters. Hopefully, when those voters see the damage caused by Brexit and start to feel that Brexit is hurting them personally, they might be more receptive to either staying in the EU, or at the very least a much softer Brexit. Even then it will be a battle though, given that the press, which is dominated by the right, will spin either of those options as a betrayal by "treacherous Remoaners". Corbyn has therefore been dealt a very difficult hand. So far, the occasional misstep aside, I think he's playing it about as well as could be expected in the circumstances.   

[Que]

Wouldn't many call the EU itself a "reckless grandiose political project"? If not many had thought along similar lines, Brexit would hardly have been appeared so attractive.

Definitely a grandiose political project, though its materialisation has been gradual, spanning over half a century.

Reckless?  I think the introduction of the Euro without a sound political foundation was rather reckless (blame Mitterand, and Kohl for agreeing to it.)

But overall the EU has made Europe a safer place than it was ever before.

Q

[Turbot nouveaux]

^^ Well said, Mr. Minnow.

[Mr. Minnow]

^^ Well said, Mr. Minnow.

Thanks

Interesting Guardian editorial on the Irish border:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2017/nov/19/the-guardian-view-on-brexit-and-the-irish-border-britains-shameful-dereliction

I wish I could say that the Brexiteers have given this issue the due weight and attention it clearly deserves and that the article is therefore inaccurate. Unfortunately they haven't, so it's not. The lack of focus on this problem during the referendum campaign was appalling, as is the complacency with which it's been treated since. Whenever I've seen leave voters asked about this, the usual response has been "well no-one wants a hard border so it will be down to the Irish if it happens." I'm not sure if they genuinely don't understand the implications of leaving the customs union and single market, or they do understand but just don't give a shit.

[Mr. Minnow]

I did once own an Austin 'Allegro' and it did, indeed, break down all the time.

I bet you felt British and free though.

[André]

I did once own an Austin 'Allegro' and it did, indeed, break down all the time.

Well, the Germans had the Trabant and the French had the 2 chevaux...


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BN2DIXHDlmI

I'll bet you weren't so badly off with your Austin, Jeffrey !

[kishnevi]

Thanks

Interesting Guardian editorial on the Irish border:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2017/nov/19/the-guardian-view-on-brexit-and-the-irish-border-britains-shameful-dereliction

I wish I could say that the Brexiteers have given this issue the due weight and attention it clearly deserves and that the article is therefore inaccurate. Unfortunately they haven't, so it's not. The lack of focus on this problem during the referendum campaign was appalling, as is the complacency with which it's been treated since. Whenever I've seen leave voters asked about this, the usual response has been "well no-one wants a hard border so it will be down to the Irish if it happens." I'm not sure if they genuinely don't understand the implications of leaving the customs union and single market, or they do understand but just don't give a shit.

Question from the other side of the Pond.  (I think I know what the answer is, but I don't know for sure.)

Does membership in the EU automatically preclude Ireland from maintaining an open border? More broadly are countries in the EU limited in the terms of trade agreements  they can make with nonEU countries?

BTW, I once worked for a man who had a Jaguar. It was at the mechanic's almost every week. He finally traded it in for a Mercedes-Benz.

[Que]

Question from the other side of the Pond.  (I think I know what the answer is, but I don't know for sure.)

Does membership in the EU automatically preclude Ireland from maintaining an open border? More broadly are countries in the EU limited in the terms of trade agreements  they can make with nonEU countries?

Any customs area has to be a closed system.
If Ireland and NI had an open border while NI was outside of the EU, all imports would enter the EU through that border to avoid import duties and checks on EU health & safety standards. Once goods enter the EU customs union, they can freely circulate. This is called "free movement of goods" and forms, together with the free movement of services, capital and perons, the foundation of the internal market - "The four freedoms".

The UK doesn't want to remain part of the internal market nor of the customs union, but still insists on the continuation of "frictionless" trade with the EU.

Anyone who can figure that one out is IMO eligible for the Nobel Prize in economics....

Q

[Jo498]

Well, the Germans had the Trabant and the French had the 2 chevaux...


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BN2DIXHDlmI

I'll bet you weren't so badly off with your Austin, Jeffrey !

I drove a 2CV for over 10 years and it was reasonably reliable. A Brexiteer could probably also argue that Britain used to build better cars before they joined the common market.

[vandermolen]

I drove a 2CV for over 10 years and it was reasonably reliable. A Brexiteer could probably also argue that Britain used to build better cars before they joined the common market.

OT
My 2CV was very good in snow. It never quite recovered from my ill-advised decision to put it through a car-wash. 

[zamyrabyrd]

Definitely a grandiose political project, though its materialisation has been gradual, spanning over half a century.
Reckless?  I think the introduction of the Euro without a sound political foundation was rather reckless (blame Mitterand, and Kohl for agreeing to it.)
But overall the EU has made Europe a safer place than it was ever before.

You've got to be kidding! Unvetted immigration throughout the EU is at the CAUSE of grotesque, bloody terrorist attacks.
If it weren't an already agreed on policy from back then, all those countries who opened their doors to the Trojan Horses would not have been so in accord with one another. Even countries like Greece who thought they would benefit from economic mooching is paying the price with wave after wave of "refugees" on their shores they cannot cope with.

[nodogen]

I bet you felt British and free though.

Too right. As long as I get a blue passport I don't care about the economic self-harm the headbangers want to inflict. Let's go back to good old European wars too. Those bloody foreigners that picked our fruit n veg and saved lives in our hospitals need to go back home so that we can bomb them.

[nodogen]

Fair enough....   But I think Corbyn was less than not ethusiastic, he was reluctant.
But he had to do so, after all...... that was the consensus in the Labour party....

After the referendum he didn't lift a finger to steer away from Brexit, he even came up with reasons why Brexit wasn't such a bad idea.
I think for him the current situation is a blessing: it will kill two birds with one stone and he will get rid of the Tories as well as the EU.

Will Corbyn when he takes power after Brexit and the implosion of the Conservative Party rejoin the internal market and the customs union?
He might, but I'm  not so sure....

Q

I think Corbyn is ambivalent about the EU, as am I. The pros outweigh the cons, but the neoliberal aspect is a concern, which is what did for Greece.

[Mr. Minnow]

He's at it again:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-safety-standards-workers-rights-jacob-rees-mogg-a7459336.html

Common sense policies for a happier Britain. Marvellous.

[nodogen]

He's at it again:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-safety-standards-workers-rights-jacob-rees-mogg-a7459336.html

Common sense policies for a happier Britain. Marvellous.

I reckon he's a plant by Labour to ensure a massive Labour victory.

[Que]

You've got to be kidding! Unvetted immigration throughout the EU is at the CAUSE of grotesque, bloody terrorist attacks.
If it weren't an already agreed on policy from back then, all those countries who opened their doors to the Trojan Horses would not have been so in accord with one another. Even countries like Greece who thought they would benefit from economic mooching is paying the price with wave after wave of "refugees" on their shores they cannot cope with.

You must be kidding, since the admission of immigrants from outside of the EU is the primary perogative of the individual member states.... 
And that includes the UK.....

http://ec.europa.eu/immigration/who-does-what/more-information/explaining-the-rules-why-are-there-eu-rules-and-national-rules_en

Obviously, European countries admitted people they shouldn't have admitted.
Unfortunately, judging from its track record,  the US doesn't seem to have done much better....

Q

[nodogen]

Obviously, European countries admitted people they shouldn't have admitted.
Unfortunately, judging from its track record,  the US doesn't seem to have done much better....

Indeed. The worst was the immigration of religious extremists in 1620.