Thread: Brexit - It's Still On!

Originally Posted by DrB0b

If you think the EU is responsible for high prices you are in for one hell of a shock when the UK leaves. Do you know what protectionism means? Being a member of the EU means the UK BENEFITS from EU protectionism.

Er, how could the UK benefit from EU protectionism, when you also rail against the EU being a protectionist racket?

Bit of a stretch, even for a fully committed you!

Originally Posted by jabir

Bump Dos's middle of the road liberal Marxist and your comrades end up with the key to DS

Originally Posted by jabir

Difficult to grasp, eh?

Originally Posted by cyrille

They only finished their copies of 'The Ladybird Book of Economics' recently.

This thread really is a microcosm of the BREXITer bonfire of stupid engulfing the UK.

Don’t be trying to take the moral high ground. It’s overcrowded up there with a near 50/50 split of morons on both sides.
Remainers fear change, quite common among older people.

Brexiters fear the Lisbon treaty and the EUs slavish adherence to it.

Originally Posted by Switch

No deal will inevitably lead to a properly negotiated settlement, instead of the strait jacket agreement that the EU wishes U.K. to accept now.
No deal will leave the EU with an obligation to retain UK as a valble export market. The union insists on retaining access to UK money, markets and defence, as an absolute minimum. Once no deal is enforced, the tables are turned.

The EU gamble worked, with a bit of help from our glorious leader. No-deal always was our trump card, leaving us free to renegotiate fairer terms from a position of strength, until Parliament was persuaded to burn it or lead the country back to the caves.

Originally Posted by jabir

The EU gamble worked, with a bit of help from our glorious leader. No-deal always was our trump card, leaving us free to renegotiate fairer terms from a position of strength, until Parliament was persuaded to burn it or lead the country back to the caves.

Only in U.K. parliament. Unless the MS derail it, hard Brexit is still the default. This is why Juncker has become flexible suddenly.

Originally Posted by DrB0b

If you think the EU is responsible for high prices you are in for one hell of a shock when the UK leaves. Do you know what protectionism means? Being a member of the EU means the UK BENEFITS from EU protectionism.

No it doesn't as we are a net importer of shit and and have to apply all EU tariffs on goods from outside the EU. If we are ever allowed to leave and as long as we leave the customs union we are free to scrap these tariffs thus making shit cheaper.

^ Good luck with that idea. More profit on less acceptable goods, at higher prices to the consumer, is the more likely outcome

^ + ^^

Both right, in principle goods should be cheaper though retailers will rake it in citing Brexit as the hollow excuse for higher instead of lower prices.

Could also lead to high street wars which would be a useful distraction from other high street wars.

Originally Posted by buriramboy

Brexit a Tory project?

The Referendum was part of the Tory GE campaign manifesto due to infighting within the Tory party.

The Tories then carried out the Referendum.

The Tories then triggered A50 and were the sole party in all the exit negotiations and still are.

On what planet is Brexit not a Tory project?

Originally Posted by NigelFarage

Bob thinks taxing cheap rice from least developed countries to try to get Brits to buy Italian rice that sells for twice as much per tonne is helping them. Real smart.

You're being silly again

This short video makes some good points:



Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the different positions, we are overwhelmingly seeing two repeated behaviours:

1) The leavers are very upfront and direct in what outcome they want while the bedwetting remoaners are totally dishonest insomuchas, they claim every which argument under the sun while denying the fact that they are just trying to delay and hinder Brexit to stop the process of Brexit itself; at least the SNP have been honest about this from day 1, and to some extent the Liberals too, but the remoaner Labour and Conservatives are completely dishonest - they are not here to compromise, they want to stop Brexit (now, you can argue the merits of stoping Brexit, but I'm not talking about that - I'm talking about the honesty of one's position).

2) The leavers are supporting the will of the people. The bedwetting remoaners are not. Again, you can argue the purpose of a parliamentary democracy and an appointed second house, but that's not my point here - the point is: the leavers are supporting the will of the people while the remoaners are trying every tactic to subvert it.

Hence, the honest bedwetters on this thread really have no choice, but to claim the masses are stupid and should be ignored - something few MPs are willing to do because they will be voted out. A large amount of these remoaner MPs, such as Cooper and Nutter Soubry, will simply lose their elected positions during the next election.

Originally Posted by NigelFarage

If they want their £39 billion and their BMWs to keep flowing I expect them to do it in record haste.

Then you will be very disappointed.

Originally Posted by Bettyboo

but to claim the masses are stupid and should be ignored

It's not a claim, its a fact that Brexiteers are stupid and the rational reaction should be to ignore the malformed opinions of stupid people.

I hope that is honest enough for you.

The Newport by-election brings in another Remain supporting MP. Another hard line brexit constituency changing to remain.

Now people actually know what they are voting for!

So I would say 'egregiously ill-informed' rather than 'stupid'.

Though obviously there are brexiters in the middle of that Venn diagram.

This piece may well chime with some posters on this thread, as they patiently try to explain again and again such things as the four freedoms to the Brexiters. "While many Brits have strong emotions about the EU, they rarely have a strong understanding" its author writes. How many times has this been proven on the thread? buribungholeboy has frequently commented on how he feels posters living overseas don't really understand Britain's arguments.

Well, maybe it's more that many of those in Britain just do not understand the EU?

BRUSSELS — So here we are at the supposed Brexit cliff — a political crisis and diplomatic crisis rolled into one — and I have a confession. I’m thoroughly bored by it all.


I suspect I’m not alone.


For those beyond Brussels and London, maybe just starting to tune in, here’s some advice. Let go of any illusions that this drama is about trade protocols, residency rights or the status of the Irish border. The histrionics going on in the United Kingdom aren't even really about its impending departure from the European Union — or about Prime Minister Theresa May’s tenuous attempts to cling to power. Brexit is the story of a proud former imperial power undergoing a mid-life crisis. The rest of the world is left listening to Britain’s therapy session as they drone on about their ex-spouse, the EU: When will they stop talking and just move on?


The promise of Brexit at the time it narrowly passed in a national referendum in June of 2016 was that it was a way for Britain to feel big again — no longer hectored by the EU bureaucracy in Brussels, no longer treated as just one of 28 members in an unwieldy confederacy. "Britain is special," the Brexiteers assured British voters, who cast their ballots accordingly.

The last two years have revealed something different: For the first time in modern history, Britain is small. Having sailed into the 20th century as an empire, the U.K. spent the second half of the century shedding nearly all of its colonies — and as a result much of its economic and military might. But that was ok, in part because the U.K. — a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and a nuclear power — had a close ally in the United States. But even more importantly, it was alright because, just as decolonization was drawing to an end, the U.K. joined an emerging economic and political power: the EU.

The U.K. finally overcame French objections and joined the bloc in 1973, seven years before it lowered the Union Jack in its last African colony and more than a decade before it struck an agreement with China to hand over Hong Kong. Britain’s imperial history and 45 years of membership in the EU — where London was a dominant voice — is why it is struggling to conduct diplomacy as the middling power it is now becoming. Accustomed to issuing colonial diktats or throwing its medium-sized weight around a medium-sized pond, the U.K. simply doesn’t seem to know how to play the game of give and take needed to negotiate with a far larger partner.

It is perhaps because of this history that many people in the U.K. are so awfully uninformed about the EU. Its political and journalistic classes are simply unused to having to consider the opinions of others. I can’t say I’m surprised. From various perspectives — now as a journalist, formerly an adviser to both the U.K. government and the EU, and always a citizen of the Commonwealth — I’ve been immersed in Brexit and Britain’s identity complex for years.

While many Brits have strong emotions about the EU, they rarely have a strong understanding. I feel like a kindergarten teacher every time I speak on the issue. It is fashionable to blame an irresponsible U.K. media (including the country’s most famous sometime-journalist, now leading Brexiteer MP Boris Johnson) for stoking misunderstanding about the EU for decades. Long before Macedonian troll factories and Russian bots there were the editors of the Sun tabloid newspaper.


But what about the millions of people who consumed those fibs and the spineless politicians who avoided the hassle of correcting them? We blame Greeks for blowing up their economy and hold accountable big-spending governments for saddling future generations with excessive debts. Britons don’t deserve a free pass: It’s time they reckoned with what they sowed through 45 years of shallow EU debate.

It is Britain’s unique ignorance that makes Britain so boring. Ignorant about its leverage and ignorant about the EU, the U.K. is coming across as clumsy and caddish. Nothing tells the story better than the sad stop-start diplomacy of Theresa May. The prime minister is an appropriate leader for a shrinking Britain — one without a clear or consistent vision, whose efforts at both navigating Brexit and her own political survival seem driven by awkward improvisation. Her frequent mad dashes across Europe underline how the U.K. lost the negotiation before it had begun. May flies across the Continent with fanfare, but her trips are always driven by domestic pressures — not a desire to find common ground with those on the other side of the table.


Meanwhile, EU negotiators have laboriously and quietly toured every capital, building up their united front before the talks started. Chief negotiator Michel Barnier could find himself locked in a thousand black cars, and it wouldn’t matter: He’d step out smiling every time. Britain’s political contortions are symptoms of an almost willful lack of understanding: The U.K. doesn’t know what it wants from the EU, and doesn’t really know what it wants from getting out.


For decades, as one of the EU’s larger — and more troublesome — members, London secured itself special deals inside the EU. It won rebates from its budget contributions and opted out of the euro and Schengen rules governing border checks. It now feels entitled to similar treatments as it leaves. Today Britain wants things it already has (frictionless trade with the EU), without continuing to pay the price other EU members pay to have it (the legal, economic and political constraints that come with EU membership). London’s demands are simply unrealistic, as anybody with more than a passing familiarity with the EU can tell you.


Balancing competing interests is difficult enough for individual countries. Look at U.S. Congress, the German federal system, or even the mighty French presidency trying to cope with the yellow vest street protest movement. Doing the same across 27 countries is even harder. Negotiations take time, and any sudden sharp policy change has the potential to disrupt the EU’s equilibrium.


The deal on offer is the best London is going to get — simply because it is the best Brussels is going to be able to offer. And yet, cheered on by two ex-U.K. Brexit negotiators who barely bothered to show up in Brussels and negotiate, British politicians are lining up like whiny children to demand the remaining 27 EU countries make amendments to the Brexit deal.


Britain has a lesson to learn. What a global power can pass off as “exceptionalism,” for a medium-sized country simply comes across as ingratitude.

Ryan Heath is POLITICO’s political editor.

https://www.politico.eu/article/brex...thdrawal-deal/

Originally Posted by Troy

The Newport by-election brings in another Remain supporting MP. Another hard line brexit constituency changing to remain.

That's not my understanding at all, Troy, if you mean Newport West.

1) Newport West has been held by Labour candidate PaulFlynn until his death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Flynn_(politician)

Paul Flynn campaigned to remain in the EU:https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics...endum-35616946

Paul Flynn also campaigned for a second referendum:https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-wales...ond-referendum

The MP Paul Flynn was a remainer and continued to be until his death.


2) Ruth Jones has been voted into the strong Labour constituency as a Labour candidate. Her views seem to parallel the Labour party line: adhere to the Brexit result and leave; have a second people's vote final say:



The new MP for Newport West says she will support leaving in June with a negotiated settlement.


3) Newport West is a Labour area. &, Newport West voted to leave 56/44. Labour campaigned on supporting the referendum result.


4) Labour made a massive effort on this:



https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/p...abour-16084405

..but still:

- their majority fell by 60%
- turnout was exceptionally low at 37%.
- a swing from Labour to Conservative of 2.4%.
- UKIP's vote quadrupled.


Conclusion:
- there was no MP change here from leave to remain; there was an MP change from "remain" to "leave in a negotiated settlement with maybe a confirmation vote". If anything, that's a softening.
- 56% to 44% isn't really hardline Brexit... &, the constituency has not changed from wanting to leave (there's a lot of micro-analysis on that), but has rather stayed the same or strengthened.


https://inews.co.uk/news/newport-wes...-john-curtice/


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics...slump-turnout/


https://teakdoor.com/speakers-corner/...ll-on-452.html

Originally Posted by NigelFarage

You really are deluded if you think labour stronghold Newport would drop labour because of brexit and if you think its constituents have shifted their brexit views.

I think I might have just sent you a red that was aimed at Cy... If I did then sorry about that...

Originally Posted by NigelFarage

Anne Applebaum, an outspoken American journalist who keeps quiet about her husband having served in Tusk's Poland cabinet and the Polish passport she got though him which allows her to work in London.

Why, the scheming little bitch!

She probably thinks that gives her contacts and helps her do her job too.



You utter nutter.

^^Another spectacular leap of reasoning from Bournemouth's bottom feeder, there...

I guess I now heartily agree with everything this woman I've never heard of has ever typed, on topics that have nothing to do with the thread...

^ From someone who's spent over a decade pretending to be other people.

Yeah, the truth must be really impressive.

Originally Posted by cyrille

So I would say 'egregiously ill-informed' rather than 'stupid'.

Which of the Brexiteers from this thread would qualify as 'not stupid' ?

Umm...can I get back to you?