This is the LBC call that James O'Brien took earlier, the guy who called is scum, James didn't call him that, and gave him the rope to hang himself with
I notice that Remainers have gone quiet now. I argued from the day of the referendum itself that the Remain majority in our elite would not allow us to leave. As Ken Livingstone once said, if voting changed anything they would abolish it. Our Remain led government has capitulated and effectively overturned the referendum result. I hope the more thoughtful amongst Remainers will consider the longer term consequences of this for our political system. If 17 million of us cannot shift the political establishment what chance is there of getting any radical changes put in place?
I notice that Remainers have gone quiet now. I argued from the day of the referendum itself that the Remain majority in our elite would not allow us to leave. As Ken Livingstone once said, if voting changed anything they would abolish it. Our Remain led government has capitulated and effectively overturned the referendum result. I hope the more thoughtful amongst Remainers will consider the longer term consequences of this for our political system. If 17 million of us cannot shift the political establishment what chance is there of getting any radical changes put in place?
Again, for the second time at least, nothing has been overturned, we voted to leave the EU and we are.
You can conjure up some imaginary betrayal of 17 million people if you like but it's plainly obvious that the vote of those 17 million only asked for one thing in common - for the UK to leave the EU, and we are. If you thought you were being asked any more or less than a straight "yes" or "no" question then, again, that's on you.
I notice that Remainers have gone quiet now. I argued from the day of the referendum itself that the Remain majority in our elite would not allow us to leave. As Ken Livingstone once said, if voting changed anything they would abolish it. Our Remain led government has capitulated and effectively overturned the referendum result. I hope the more thoughtful amongst Remainers will consider the longer term consequences of this for our political system. If 17 million of us cannot shift the political establishment what chance is there of getting any radical changes put in place?
I notice that Remainers have gone quiet now. I argued from the day of the referendum itself that the Remain majority in our elite would not allow us to leave. As Ken Livingstone once said, if voting changed anything they would abolish it. Our Remain led government has capitulated and effectively overturned the referendum result. I hope the more thoughtful amongst Remainers will consider the longer term consequences of this for our political system. If 17 million of us cannot shift the political establishment what chance is there of getting any radical changes put in place?
That's a weird statement given that the three posts prior to yours were all from remainers. Did you also notice that it's been night time and that people have probably been in bed? I personally haven't checked the news yet this morning, but will do when I've got my Life fix. Has something new happened overnight, or are you referring to yesterday's border announcement? If so I wouldn't take too much notice of it. From what we've seen so far, the government hasn't got a clue and things head first in one direction and then another. Nothing's sorted until everything is. And why would I be quiet on the back of that news anyway? Soft brexit is still brexit and I'll still be losing rights that I currently enjoy.
*posts before 9am on a Saturday* I notice Remainers have gone quiet then!
You forgot to add CharltonLife was down from around 8pm yesterday and most of us would have been enjoying our Friday nights instead of Googling Orwell quotes.
Whilst I am totally a remainer, and if I could would reverse the referendum result and make it all go away, the result (yes one of very questionable 'democracy') is the result. Therefore I am not at ease with personal attacks on this thread unless it is in retaliation to somebody who starts it first. We are in the middle of this mess, I certainly agree that the winners won and should get on with it, and as a result they should expect incoming, but I would counsel people to ease off the personals where possible.
Whilst I am totally a remainer, and if I could would reverse the referendum result and make it all go away, the result (yes one of very questionable 'democracy') is the result. Therefore I am not at ease with personal attacks on this thread unless it is in retaliation to somebody who starts it first. We are in the middle of this mess, I certainly agree that the winners won and should get on with it, and as a result they should expect incoming, but I would counsel people to ease off the personals where possible.
I always think that when anybody gets personal it is usually because they have lost the argument.
Whilst I am totally a remainer, and if I could would reverse the referendum result and make it all go away, the result (yes one of very questionable 'democracy') is the result. Therefore I am not at ease with personal attacks on this thread unless it is in retaliation to somebody who starts it first. We are in the middle of this mess, I certainly agree that the winners won and should get on with it, and as a result they should expect incoming, but I would counsel people to ease off the personals where possible.
I always think that when anybody gets personal it is usually because they have lost the argument.
Guess you lost when you started personally attacking people using Orwell quotes or accusing them of wanting to overturn democracy (a blatant lie).
I notice that Remainers have gone quiet now. I argued from the day of the referendum itself that the Remain majority in our elite would not allow us to leave. As Ken Livingstone once said, if voting changed anything they would abolish it. Our Remain led government has capitulated and effectively overturned the referendum result. I hope the more thoughtful amongst Remainers will consider the longer term consequences of this for our political system. If 17 million of us cannot shift the political establishment what chance is there of getting any radical changes put in place?
You won, get on with it
Well now that DR Liam Fox will be more in the lead re the Trade issues I’m sure all will take a turn for the better:-)
Whilst I am totally a remainer, and if I could would reverse the referendum result and make it all go away, the result (yes one of very questionable 'democracy') is the result. Therefore I am not at ease with personal attacks on this thread unless it is in retaliation to somebody who starts it first. We are in the middle of this mess, I certainly agree that the winners won and should get on with it, and as a result they should expect incoming, but I would counsel people to ease off the personals where possible.
I always think that when anybody gets personal it is usually because they have lost the argument.
Guess you lost when you started personally attacking people using Orwell quotes or accusing them of wanting to overturn democracy (a blatant lie).
Come on @Fiiish you have been having a pop all the way through and I think afka picked you up on your continuing narky posts at one point. Having said that you come up with some crackingly good shit sometimes which on occasions is quite entertaining.
Now what about that nice Mr Gove. Keep your friends close etc...
The recent government buzzword cliches seem to be "we are where we are" and "nothings agreed until its all agreed" replacing "strong and stable" and "Brexit means Brexit". Could the government please provide some analysis and some predictions/projections and have a grown up debate with the electorate.
As others have said we are merely at the end of the beginning, *anything can happen between now and whenever. The government have merely got us to the second stage (did it really need 18 months and mass cabinet junkets to Florence!).
If I was a Brexiteer I would be as pissed off as us Remainers have been for the last 18 months as what you have been promised (implied or otherwise) has not been delivered, the referendum must now appear to you as ridiculous and inconclusive as it has done to us Remainers. A simple in/out does not cover the nuance of feelings or options or changing of facts.
The Tories are absolute masters at this kind of thing, we have had three referenda in the last five/six years the first was the utterly pointless PR one where all the opportunities, variables and possibilities were ignored to bring our democracy into the 21st century and instead it was 'keep it as it is' or have this 'not very good option'. No national debate, no education of the public, no chance to actually change anything. The Tories got the Lib Dems into a coalition on this promise and then royally shafted them, at the time the LDs were a possible modern force for change now look at them.
Next came the Scottish Devolution vote were Labour became the human shield for the Tories, persuading enough Scots to stay but at the same time cutting there own throats with their own voters in Scotland and then being accused at the next election of wanting a coalition with the SNP. Where was the national debate, where was the conversation about the Union and what it means in the 21st Century. Labour very nearly imploded after the 2015 election with strong calls for a new party, the Tories had nothing to lose in Scotland and subsequently actually gained enough to keep them in power.
And finally we have the EU vote where this time the Tories used UKIP and its voters to stay in power with a binary question that it could never hope to deliver an answer on, unless the answer was to remain. We had Cameroon's pathetic attempt to pretend that he had won concessions from the EU, we had the ridiculously negative 'project fear' from the government and the promises of whatever-you-like from the Leavers (who also just happened to be the government). There should have been several stages of conversation with a range of options to be explored but instead we are treated like idiots and only given a yes/no possibility. Again look at UKIP now, they have fared even worse than the LDs and returned to being a party of no importance with its rump sucked into the Tory party.
So the point of my semi-coherent rant is that we have all been screwed again, by the Tory party again (possibly by Cameroon again), by foreign owned media again. Why wasn't our relationship with the EU explored and debated over years, why weren't the various options debated and voted on one by one with opportunities to change our mind as evidence was brought to light or negotiations brought different possibilities.
We have wasted time, energy and billions of £££s on this to get to a place slightly different to where we were before*. Meanwhile there are so many things happening in the country that need to be fixed, from the NHS to having the smallest military in 200 years and from investment to housing and they have been kicked into the long grass.
The recent government buzzword cliches seem to be "we are where we are" and "nothings agreed until its all agreed" replacing "strong and stable" and "Brexit means Brexit". Could the government please provide some analysis and some predictions/projections and have a grown up debate with the electorate.
As others have said we are merely at the end of the beginning, *anything can happen between now and whenever. The government have merely got us to the second stage (did it really need 18 months and mass cabinet junkets to Florence!).
If I was a Brexiteer I would be as pissed off as us Remainers have been for the last 18 months as what you have been promised (implied or otherwise) has not been delivered, the referendum must now appear to you as ridiculous and inconclusive as it has done to us Remainers. A simple in/out does not cover the nuance of feelings or options or changing of facts.
The Tories are absolute masters at this kind of thing, we have had three referenda in the last five/six years the first was the utterly pointless PR one where all the opportunities, variables and possibilities were ignored to bring our democracy into the 21st century and instead it was 'keep it as it is' or have this 'not very good option'. No national debate, no education of the public, no chance to actually change anything. The Tories got the Lib Dems into a coalition on this promise and then royally shafted them, at the time the LDs were a possible modern force for change now look at them.
Next came the Scottish Devolution vote were Labour became the human shield for the Tories, persuading enough Scots to stay but at the same time cutting there own throats with their own voters in Scotland and then being accused at the next election of wanting a coalition with the SNP. Where was the national debate, where was the conversation about the Union and what it means in the 21st Century. Labour very nearly imploded after the 2015 election with strong calls for a new party, the Tories had nothing to lose in Scotland and subsequently actually gained enough to keep them in power.
And finally we have the EU vote where this time the Tories used UKIP and its voters to stay in power with a binary question that it could never hope to deliver an answer on, unless the answer was to remain. We had Cameroon's pathetic attempt to pretend that he had won confessions from the EU, we had the ridiculously negative 'project fear' from the government and the promises of whatever-you-like from the Leavers (who also just happened to be the government). There should have been several stages of conversation with a range of options to be explored but instead we are treated like idiots and only given a yes/no possibility. Again look at UKIP now, they have fared even worse than the LDs and returned to being a party of no importance with its rump sucked into the Tory party.
So the point of my semi-coherent rant is that we have all been screwed again, by the Tory party again (possibly by Cameroon again), by foreign owned media again. Why wasn't our relationship with the EU explored and debated over years, why weren't the various options debated and voted on one by one with opportunities to change our mind as evidence was brought to light or negotiations brought different possibilities.
We have wasted time, energy and billions of £££s on this to get to a place slightly different to where we were before*. Meanwhile there are so many things happening in the country that need to be fixed, from the NHS to having the smallest military in 200 years and from investment to housing and they have been kicked into the long grass.
"Could the government please provide some analysis"
You really haven't been keeping up with the news here have you !
The recent government buzzword cliches seem to be "we are where we are" and "nothings agreed until its all agreed" replacing "strong and stable" and "Brexit means Brexit". Could the government please provide some analysis and some predictions/projections and have a grown up debate with the electorate.
As others have said we are merely at the end of the beginning, *anything can happen between now and whenever. The government have merely got us to the second stage (did it really need 18 months and mass cabinet junkets to Florence!).
If I was a Brexiteer I would be as pissed off as us Remainers have been for the last 18 months as what you have been promised (implied or otherwise) has not been delivered, the referendum must now appear to you as ridiculous and inconclusive as it has done to us Remainers. A simple in/out does not cover the nuance of feelings or options or changing of facts.
The Tories are absolute masters at this kind of thing, we have had three referenda in the last five/six years the first was the utterly pointless PR one where all the opportunities, variables and possibilities were ignored to bring our democracy into the 21st century and instead it was 'keep it as it is' or have this 'not very good option'. No national debate, no education of the public, no chance to actually change anything. The Tories got the Lib Dems into a coalition on this promise and then royally shafted them, at the time the LDs were a possible modern force for change now look at them.
Next came the Scottish Devolution vote were Labour became the human shield for the Tories, persuading enough Scots to stay but at the same time cutting there own throats with their own voters in Scotland and then being accused at the next election of wanting a coalition with the SNP. Where was the national debate, where was the conversation about the Union and what it means in the 21st Century. Labour very nearly imploded after the 2015 election with strong calls for a new party, the Tories had nothing to lose in Scotland and subsequently actually gained enough to keep them in power.
And finally we have the EU vote where this time the Tories used UKIP and its voters to stay in power with a binary question that it could never hope to deliver an answer on, unless the answer was to remain. We had Cameroon's pathetic attempt to pretend that he had won confessions from the EU, we had the ridiculously negative 'project fear' from the government and the promises of whatever-you-like from the Leavers (who also just happened to be the government). There should have been several stages of conversation with a range of options to be explored but instead we are treated like idiots and only given a yes/no possibility. Again look at UKIP now, they have fared even worse than the LDs and returned to being a party of no importance with its rump sucked into the Tory party.
So the point of my semi-coherent rant is that we have all been screwed again, by the Tory party again (possibly by Cameroon again), by foreign owned media again. Why wasn't our relationship with the EU explored and debated over years, why weren't the various options debated and voted on one by one with opportunities to change our mind as evidence was brought to light or negotiations brought different possibilities.
We have wasted time, energy and billions of £££s on this to get to a place slightly different to where we were before*. Meanwhile there are so many things happening in the country that need to be fixed, from the NHS to having the smallest military in 200 years and from investment to housing and they have been kicked into the long grass.
Very good. We can all agree that our political leadership is pathetic all round.
Please advise if I have misunderstood. A long time ago Vlad found a patsy called Nigel to destabilise the UK as part of his plan to break up the EU and NATO. Nige was good at what he did, convincing many that it was possible to exist in a bubble where reality couldn't touch us. To bring people on board he used the ineffective leadership and weakness of national government, latent racism, the simplistic and often dishonest national historical myth, the wholly predictable migration of peoples from developing to more developed economies and his own "visionary" pathfinder self identity to attack the decaying Conservative party and separate the traditional Labour voter from the Labour party. Like Van der Lubbe, Nige torched parliament and believed he was striking a blow in tune with his own misguided ideology but in reality was just a tool. Many other "visionaries" who were jealous of Nige now started to spout their own Nirvanas to the people and some were so economical with truth but liberal with promises that the people were swivel eyed and desperate to believe that one of them must know what they were doing. Nige was so effective and the leadership of Labour and Conservative so weak that they allowed Nige to prosper, helped no end by the bizarre amount of publicity he was given by the broadcast and printed media. By now Nige had sown the seed of a new Britain much like Moseley's but with lounge suits and less pomade, many people signed up to this vision just as they had at the Albert Hall and Olympia in 1934. Supported by Viscount Rotherdacre, Nige successfully panicked the Conservative party into committing a prolonged and somehow fascinating suicide. Labour were struck dumb by what they liked to believe was strategy but was actually the realisation that they were relieved to be out of the hot seat in a time of complete chaos. Most troubling of all the people had become so blinkered that some believed they were destined for paradise whereas others believed they were on the way to hell but in reality were part of a slow decline that was inevitable, relentless and would end in automation and Asian domination of economic affairs. Nige by this time had slid into the background to fantasise about his place in the history books but of course sadly for him posterity had been edited and he had already become a footnote just like Moseley. Vlad was celebrating a job well done. He had sent refugees from the middle east to take down Merkel and create the big German nationalist bogey that was beginning to trouble those on its borders and France had assumed the leadership of Europe. The French had always managed to get it wrong and Vlad knew that Macron was enough of a Napoleon in his own mind to eventually bite off more than he could chew. So Britain, France and Germany screwed, central and eastern Europe all on the end of pipeline that Vlad held the keys for and agent Orange in the Whitehouse. Now Vlad was free to worry about those far more worrying Asian rivals.
You are an intelligent man. I think you understand the implications of the capitulation that happened this week.
There was no capitulation! The UK is now aligned with majority opinion (and Labour policy) to stay within or "very close" to the CU and SM. Absolutely nobody ran a campaign against the "common market" . Therefore it is absolutely disingenuous of IDS and Farage to start claiming that this is what "leave" voters supported.
Farage and Foster do not lead the 52%just as the Lib Dems tried and failed to be the party of the 48% opposing the referendum result. Try as they might, the tiny minority of alt-right oppositionalists have been unable to derail this process of leaving and our economy. Perhaps they should leave the Conservative and Unionist Party given that they don't particularly care for the Union with either Scotland or N.Ireland?
Your view on the electorate is very valid given the reasons for the result, not least the elite spending very little time addressing issues affecting the electorate in the regions who voted by a landslide to leave. The UK has one of the highest coeficients of inequality in the world and one comment summed it up for me in the referendum post mortem. An uber bright academic from LSE or Kings complete with PhD had been touring the regions and debating Brexit in church halls etc. So when he espouses the view that "leave" would mean a reduction in GDP, somebody in the crowd retorts: " that's your bloody GDP not ours!"
That was what woke me up to the causes of the result - so no regrets from me.
I notice that Remainers have gone quiet now. I argued from the day of the referendum itself that the Remain majority in our elite would not allow us to leave. As Ken Livingstone once said, if voting changed anything they would abolish it. Our Remain led government has capitulated and effectively overturned the referendum result. I hope the more thoughtful amongst Remainers will consider the longer term consequences of this for our political system. If 17 million of us cannot shift the political establishment what chance is there of getting any radical changes put in place?
Again, not a capitulation and thoroughly predictable but your statement triggers a number of thought. This process encouraged record numbers to vote who then expect the politicians to pay attention and address the issues. The blue party are doing no such thing with the numbers in the budget going on the root causes being miniscule.
The result shocked, challenged and then galvanized the Labour Party - since the election, Starmer has provided answers and the next election will see clear space between the two parties. The blue party will stand there stating "we delivered Brexit - it was really hard!" Given that the EU was never the cause of the problems, our government will have spent four years delivering not much and of course fighting with itself. Unless the government throw billions at the regions instead of tax cuts for corporations then those 17M who voted for Brexit will not be impressed. And these people have a taste for voting for change. Whilst the U25s see it as cool to vote.
We are on a journey where it's important to move forward with as many segments on board as possibly. All of the linguistic ambiguity in phase one of the EU talks was designed as a way to move forward with all of the contrasting views and interests. Some might say that the Irish have saved us from Farage?! What can be stated with certainty is that the EU was originally formed to avoid conflict between member states. And this process has so far revolved around maintaining the GFA so as to avoid war in N.Ireland.
This process doesn't answer the 17M who voted leave is not down to the process. Leaving the EU was simply the wrong question! As stated by @Southbank there is appetite for a radical shift away from austerity. Especially given that we used to be the 5th biggest economy in the world with 2% growth per annum?
The recent government buzzword cliches seem to be "we are where we are" and "nothings agreed until its all agreed" replacing "strong and stable" and "Brexit means Brexit". Could the government please provide some analysis and some predictions/projections and have a grown up debate with the electorate.
As others have said we are merely at the end of the beginning, *anything can happen between now and whenever. The government have merely got us to the second stage (did it really need 18 months and mass cabinet junkets to Florence!).
If I was a Brexiteer I would be as pissed off as us Remainers have been for the last 18 months as what you have been promised (implied or otherwise) has not been delivered, the referendum must now appear to you as ridiculous and inconclusive as it has done to us Remainers. A simple in/out does not cover the nuance of feelings or options or changing of facts.
The Tories are absolute masters at this kind of thing, we have had three referenda in the last five/six years the first was the utterly pointless PR one where all the opportunities, variables and possibilities were ignored to bring our democracy into the 21st century and instead it was 'keep it as it is' or have this 'not very good option'. No national debate, no education of the public, no chance to actually change anything. The Tories got the Lib Dems into a coalition on this promise and then royally shafted them, at the time the LDs were a possible modern force for change now look at them.
Next came the Scottish Devolution vote were Labour became the human shield for the Tories, persuading enough Scots to stay but at the same time cutting there own throats with their own voters in Scotland and then being accused at the next election of wanting a coalition with the SNP. Where was the national debate, where was the conversation about the Union and what it means in the 21st Century. Labour very nearly imploded after the 2015 election with strong calls for a new party, the Tories had nothing to lose in Scotland and subsequently actually gained enough to keep them in power.
And finally we have the EU vote where this time the Tories used UKIP and its voters to stay in power with a binary question that it could never hope to deliver an answer on, unless the answer was to remain. We had Cameroon's pathetic attempt to pretend that he had won confessions from the EU, we had the ridiculously negative 'project fear' from the government and the promises of whatever-you-like from the Leavers (who also just happened to be the government). There should have been several stages of conversation with a range of options to be explored but instead we are treated like idiots and only given a yes/no possibility. Again look at UKIP now, they have fared even worse than the LDs and returned to being a party of no importance with its rump sucked into the Tory party.
So the point of my semi-coherent rant is that we have all been screwed again, by the Tory party again (possibly by Cameroon again), by foreign owned media again. Why wasn't our relationship with the EU explored and debated over years, why weren't the various options debated and voted on one by one with opportunities to change our mind as evidence was brought to light or negotiations brought different possibilities.
We have wasted time, energy and billions of £££s on this to get to a place slightly different to where we were before*. Meanwhile there are so many things happening in the country that need to be fixed, from the NHS to having the smallest military in 200 years and from investment to housing and they have been kicked into the long grass.
"Could the government please provide some analysis"
You really haven't been keeping up with the news here have you !
I am reposting a post I made 2 months ago which might explain why me and other leavers are not on this thread. It has been obvious for a long time that the remainer led Tory Government would sell out the 17m Leave voters. Today's agreement capitulates on all the key things that leaving the EU would mean and confirms what I wrote below. They are selling out the 17m and the political consequences of this will happen down the line.
'The UK is being slowly suckered into a very bad deal with the EU. May has conceded publicly and privately that the UK will pay about 40b Euros for effectively a transition deal, ie a prolongation of UK membership of the EU until at least 2021. In exchange the UK has received precisely nothing except vague assurances that a trade deal will be discussed at some point, which we all knew would have to happen anyway.
In the meantime there is nobody in the EU or in the German government (the only one that really matters) who has said anything other than that the 4 freedoms are indivisible, ie that continued membership of or access to the single market will involve continued free movement of labour and jurusdiction by the ECJ.
So, we have committed to pay a large sum of money for what? In order to be told at some future point, when it suits the EU and after France and Germany have been able to lure businesses to their countries because of the indecision they themselves have prolonged, that access to the single market will mean effectively continued control by the EU under another name.
In the 4 years during which this charade is being played out, the Remainers who dominate political discourse in this country will continue to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt in order to demoralise those who supported Brexit. Look, they will say, we have lost money, we have a worse trade deal and no extra sovereignty, is it worth leaving the EU for this?
Those of us who want to see the referendum result carried out need to realise that the choice is not between a bad deal and no deal, but between Brexit and no Brexit.
This “selling out” nonsense really makes me laugh. What’s now loosely agreed and what’s on the table is the reality of what Brexit actually is and I’m sure it comes as quite a shock to you brexiters who voted for the la la land painted by the lying self serving politicians you choose to believe. For reasons god only knows.
I am reposting a post I made 2 months ago which might explain why me and other leavers are not on this thread. It has been obvious for a long time that the remainer led Tory Government would sell out the 17m Leave voters. Today's agreement capitulates on all the key things that leaving the EU would mean and confirms what I wrote below. They are selling out the 17m and the political consequences of this will happen down the line.
'The UK is being slowly suckered into a very bad deal with the EU. May has conceded publicly and privately that the UK will pay about 40b Euros for effectively a transition deal, ie a prolongation of UK membership of the EU until at least 2021. In exchange the UK has received precisely nothing except vague assurances that a trade deal will be discussed at some point, which we all knew would have to happen anyway.
In the meantime there is nobody in the EU or in the German government (the only one that really matters) who has said anything other than that the 4 freedoms are indivisible, ie that continued membership of or access to the single market will involve continued free movement of labour and jurusdiction by the ECJ.
So, we have committed to pay a large sum of money for what? In order to be told at some future point, when it suits the EU and after France and Germany have been able to lure businesses to their countries because of the indecision they themselves have prolonged, that access to the single market will mean effectively continued control by the EU under another name.
In the 4 years during which this charade is being played out, the Remainers who dominate political discourse in this country will continue to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt in order to demoralise those who supported Brexit. Look, they will say, we have lost money, we have a worse trade deal and no extra sovereignty, is it worth leaving the EU for this?
Those of us who want to see the referendum result carried out need to realise that the choice is not between a bad deal and no deal, but between Brexit and no Brexit.
This “selling out” nonsense really makes me laugh. What’s now loosely agreed and what’s on the table is the reality of what Brexit actually is and I’m sure it comes as quite a shock to you brexiters who voted for the la la land painted by the lying self serving politicians you choose to believe. For reasons god only knows.
What I believed then and now is that our elites are so tightly bound to the EU, mainly as a shield for their own incompetence as well as self interest, that we would not have left even if 34 million people had voted for us to do so.
I am reposting a post I made 2 months ago which might explain why me and other leavers are not on this thread. It has been obvious for a long time that the remainer led Tory Government would sell out the 17m Leave voters. Today's agreement capitulates on all the key things that leaving the EU would mean and confirms what I wrote below. They are selling out the 17m and the political consequences of this will happen down the line.
'The UK is being slowly suckered into a very bad deal with the EU. May has conceded publicly and privately that the UK will pay about 40b Euros for effectively a transition deal, ie a prolongation of UK membership of the EU until at least 2021. In exchange the UK has received precisely nothing except vague assurances that a trade deal will be discussed at some point, which we all knew would have to happen anyway.
In the meantime there is nobody in the EU or in the German government (the only one that really matters) who has said anything other than that the 4 freedoms are indivisible, ie that continued membership of or access to the single market will involve continued free movement of labour and jurusdiction by the ECJ.
So, we have committed to pay a large sum of money for what? In order to be told at some future point, when it suits the EU and after France and Germany have been able to lure businesses to their countries because of the indecision they themselves have prolonged, that access to the single market will mean effectively continued control by the EU under another name.
In the 4 years during which this charade is being played out, the Remainers who dominate political discourse in this country will continue to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt in order to demoralise those who supported Brexit. Look, they will say, we have lost money, we have a worse trade deal and no extra sovereignty, is it worth leaving the EU for this?
Those of us who want to see the referendum result carried out need to realise that the choice is not between a bad deal and no deal, but between Brexit and no Brexit.
This “selling out” nonsense really makes me laugh. What’s now loosely agreed and what’s on the table is the reality of what Brexit actually is and I’m sure it comes as quite a shock to you brexiters who voted for the la la land painted by the lying self serving politicians you choose to believe. For reasons god only knows.
What I believed then and now is that our elites are so tightly bound to the EU, mainly as a shield for their own incompetence as well as self interest, that we would not have left even if 34 million people had voted for us to do so.
Yeah, so tightly bound they allowed a ridiculous referendum to happen in the first place. Deary me...
Fintan O'Toole, in the subscriber section of the Irish Times, suggests that the DUP may have cause to regret the week's events.
Fintan O’Toole: In humiliating May, DUP killed the thing it loves
The DUP’s brinkmanship and manoeuvring have exposed Britain’s powerlessness
It has never seemed more apt that perhaps the greatest work of English literature, William Shakespeare’s King Lear, is about the consequences of a capricious loss of authority. Lear gives up his kingdom for no good reason and everything falls horribly apart. In his madness and despair he utters the most scathing lines every written about political power: “Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar? . . . There thou mightst behold the great image of authority.”
The great image of British authority this week was Theresa May travelling to Brussels on Monday essentially as a beggar, a suppliant desperately in need of the European declaration of “sufficient progress” in the Brexit talks – and the bark of Arlene Foster peremptorily ordering the British prime minister to take back the promises she had made.
Theresa May was experiencing the double Irish, capitulating first to the Irish Government and then uncapitulating on the orders of a very different Irish force, the Democratic Unionist Party. And then, in the early hours of Friday morning, there was a further twist – both May and the DUP essentially signing up to what had been agreed on Monday. It was a startling display of British powerlessness: there can hardly be a more unfortunate military manoeuvre than the retreat from a retreat.
But the image of cracked authority that will linger longest was Foster sweeping down the Stormont staircase on Monday afternoon, like the star of a Busby Berkeley musical flanked by her all-male chorus line, to deliver her royal command: Northern Ireland must leave the European Union on exactly the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom.
It was an apparent moment of historic triumph: no Irish party leader had seemed to hold this much sway over a British prime minister since Charles Stewart Parnell and William Gladstone. But this historical parallel should have given the DUP pause. It is one thing for an Irish nationalist to lord it over the Brits, quite another for a unionist and “British” party to do so.
For Foster’s historic triumph was also a historic mistake. Each man, wrote Oscar Wilde, kills the thing he loves. The DUP on Monday helped to kill the thing it purports to love: the power and prestige of Britain.
It is easy to understand how exhilarating that moment must have been for the DUP in general and for Foster in particular. A year ago this month she was in very deep trouble over the cash-for-ash scandal, facing demands to stand aside. It seemed possible that her political career might come to an ignominious end.
Crucial deal
She cannot have dreamt then that she would find herself at the centre of European affairs, being able to call the British prime minister out of a meeting in which she was about to make a crucial deal and send her back in to say, in effect, “Mrs Foster says I’m not allowed to play with you any more.”
The utterly unexpected result of the UK general election in June, in which the DUP soared and the Tories plummeted, was a vertiginous spin of the wheel of political fortune that had left her at an apparent summit of power.
It is also easy to understand why the DUP felt it had to issue its diktat on Monday. It was right to see May’s agreement to guarantee “full alignment” between the two parts of Ireland after Brexit as a defeat.
However technocratic the language, the agreement meant that Northern Ireland would, in practice, have to mirror both the customs union and the single market. That would mean that there were only two possible conclusions to the Brexit process, both of them unpalatable to the DUP. Either there would be a border in the Irish Sea or the UK as a whole would in effect stay in the customs union and the single market. The DUP’s shock was almost certainly genuine.
Exhilaration and shock are powerful emotions, especially in combination. They provoked a response that was, for four thrilling days, highly satisfying for the DUP but, in the longer term, likely to prove disastrous.
The party is anchored in two, closely related things: the preservation of the union and a sense of “Britishness” as a strong and stable identity. The union is the DUP’s external orientation, Britishness its internal tribal marker.
Barking at the beggar
If it were able to stand back and coolly appraise what it did on Monday, it would have to conclude that both of these things have been severely and perhaps permanently damaged. For both of them, like all political constructs, depend on an image of authority rather grander than the farmer’s dog barking at the beggar.
The union is not a God-given reality: it is a recent political construct, and a fragile one. It has to be held together by the aura of power radiating from Downing Street. That goes doubly for Britishness, especially in the fraught context of Northern Ireland: it is a way of identifying not just with a country but with an idea of greatness.
By making May and the British government seem ridiculous, all the DUP achieved was to make it more likely that they would have to capitulate on all the red lines of a hard Brexit
In a famous passage of The English Constitution Walter Bagehot wrote of the need to preserve the illusion of the monarchy: “We must not let in daylight upon magic.” The same is true of the British prime minister: at least in the conduct of vital international talks, she or he must exude authority.
And what the DUP did on Monday was to rip aside the curtains and let a cruel, harsh daylight in on poor Theresa May. As at the end of a cheap vampire movie, her authority crumbled to dust in front of the watching world. And with it went whatever magic still attaches to the image of postimperial Britain.
By barking at May and having her cower in obedience, the DUP exposed the weakness of the very thing it purports to uphold. But the embarrassment was not just for May personally or even for her supporters. This was the mortification of Britain itself, the abject humbling of a once-feared power.
This is not a smart thing for the DUP to have done. It aligned the party more firmly than ever with the enemies of May’s gradual shift towards pragmatism.
In doing so it has alienated a swathe of British opinion that would now prefer to see the DUP as a foreign body in its body politic. You don’t save the union by making so many of its citizens revile you.
And for what? In the end, by making May and the British government seem ridiculous, all the DUP achieved was to make it more likely that they would have to capitulate on all the red lines of a hard Brexit. It accidentally confounded the desires of its own allies among the extreme Brexiteers by creating the circumstances in which Britain has effectively had to agree to be bound by the regulations of the single market and the customs union.
The sword it was waving at the Irish government turned out to be a pin that pricked both its own moment of power and the bubble of Brexit’s grand self-delusions.
I am reposting a post I made 2 months ago which might explain why me and other leavers are not on this thread. It has been obvious for a long time that the remainer led Tory Government would sell out the 17m Leave voters. Today's agreement capitulates on all the key things that leaving the EU would mean and confirms what I wrote below. They are selling out the 17m and the political consequences of this will happen down the line.
'The UK is being slowly suckered into a very bad deal with the EU. May has conceded publicly and privately that the UK will pay about 40b Euros for effectively a transition deal, ie a prolongation of UK membership of the EU until at least 2021. In exchange the UK has received precisely nothing except vague assurances that a trade deal will be discussed at some point, which we all knew would have to happen anyway.
In the meantime there is nobody in the EU or in the German government (the only one that really matters) who has said anything other than that the 4 freedoms are indivisible, ie that continued membership of or access to the single market will involve continued free movement of labour and jurusdiction by the ECJ.
So, we have committed to pay a large sum of money for what? In order to be told at some future point, when it suits the EU and after France and Germany have been able to lure businesses to their countries because of the indecision they themselves have prolonged, that access to the single market will mean effectively continued control by the EU under another name.
In the 4 years during which this charade is being played out, the Remainers who dominate political discourse in this country will continue to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt in order to demoralise those who supported Brexit. Look, they will say, we have lost money, we have a worse trade deal and no extra sovereignty, is it worth leaving the EU for this?
Those of us who want to see the referendum result carried out need to realise that the choice is not between a bad deal and no deal, but between Brexit and no Brexit.
This “selling out” nonsense really makes me laugh. What’s now loosely agreed and what’s on the table is the reality of what Brexit actually is and I’m sure it comes as quite a shock to you brexiters who voted for the la la land painted by the lying self serving politicians you choose to believe. For reasons god only knows.
What I believed then and now is that our elites are so tightly bound to the EU, mainly as a shield for their own incompetence as well as self interest, that we would not have left even if 34 million people had voted for us to do so.
Comments
http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/james-obriens-response-to-racist-brexit-voter/
Our Remain led government has capitulated and effectively overturned the referendum result. I hope the more thoughtful amongst Remainers will consider the longer term consequences of this for our political system. If 17 million of us cannot shift the political establishment what chance is there of getting any radical changes put in place?
You can conjure up some imaginary betrayal of 17 million people if you like but it's plainly obvious that the vote of those 17 million only asked for one thing in common - for the UK to leave the EU, and we are. If you thought you were being asked any more or less than a straight "yes" or "no" question then, again, that's on you.
We are in the middle of this mess, I certainly agree that the winners won and should get on with it, and as a result they should expect incoming, but I would counsel people to ease off the personals where possible.
Now what about that nice Mr Gove. Keep your friends close etc...
As others have said we are merely at the end of the beginning, *anything can happen between now and whenever. The government have merely got us to the second stage (did it really need 18 months and mass cabinet junkets to Florence!).
If I was a Brexiteer I would be as pissed off as us Remainers have been for the last 18 months as what you have been promised (implied or otherwise) has not been delivered, the referendum must now appear to you as ridiculous and inconclusive as it has done to us Remainers. A simple in/out does not cover the nuance of feelings or options or changing of facts.
The Tories are absolute masters at this kind of thing, we have had three referenda in the last five/six years the first was the utterly pointless PR one where all the opportunities, variables and possibilities were ignored to bring our democracy into the 21st century and instead it was 'keep it as it is' or have this 'not very good option'. No national debate, no education of the public, no chance to actually change anything. The Tories got the Lib Dems into a coalition on this promise and then royally shafted them, at the time the LDs were a possible modern force for change now look at them.
Next came the Scottish Devolution vote were Labour became the human shield for the Tories, persuading enough Scots to stay but at the same time cutting there own throats with their own voters in Scotland and then being accused at the next election of wanting a coalition with the SNP. Where was the national debate, where was the conversation about the Union and what it means in the 21st Century. Labour very nearly imploded after the 2015 election with strong calls for a new party, the Tories had nothing to lose in Scotland and subsequently actually gained enough to keep them in power.
And finally we have the EU vote where this time the Tories used UKIP and its voters to stay in power with a binary question that it could never hope to deliver an answer on, unless the answer was to remain. We had Cameroon's pathetic attempt to pretend that he had won concessions from the EU, we had the ridiculously negative 'project fear' from the government and the promises of whatever-you-like from the Leavers (who also just happened to be the government). There should have been several stages of conversation with a range of options to be explored but instead we are treated like idiots and only given a yes/no possibility. Again look at UKIP now, they have fared even worse than the LDs and returned to being a party of no importance with its rump sucked into the Tory party.
So the point of my semi-coherent rant is that we have all been screwed again, by the Tory party again (possibly by Cameroon again), by foreign owned media again. Why wasn't our relationship with the EU explored and debated over years, why weren't the various options debated and voted on one by one with opportunities to change our mind as evidence was brought to light or negotiations brought different possibilities.
We have wasted time, energy and billions of £££s on this to get to a place slightly different to where we were before*. Meanwhile there are so many things happening in the country that need to be fixed, from the NHS to having the smallest military in 200 years and from investment to housing and they have been kicked into the long grass.
You really haven't been keeping up with the news here have you !
A long time ago Vlad found a patsy called Nigel to destabilise the UK as part of his plan to break up the EU and NATO.
Nige was good at what he did, convincing many that it was possible to exist in a bubble where reality couldn't touch us.
To bring people on board he used the ineffective leadership and weakness of national government, latent racism, the simplistic and often dishonest national historical myth, the wholly predictable migration of peoples from developing to more developed economies and his own "visionary" pathfinder self identity to attack the decaying Conservative party and separate the traditional Labour voter from the Labour party.
Like Van der Lubbe, Nige torched parliament and believed he was striking a blow in tune with his own misguided ideology but in reality was just a tool. Many other "visionaries" who were jealous of Nige now started to spout their own Nirvanas to the people and some were so economical with truth but liberal with promises that the people were swivel eyed and desperate to believe that one of them must know what they were doing.
Nige was so effective and the leadership of Labour and Conservative so weak that they allowed Nige to prosper, helped no end by the bizarre amount of publicity he was given by the broadcast and printed media.
By now Nige had sown the seed of a new Britain much like Moseley's but with lounge suits and less pomade, many people signed up to this vision just as they had at the Albert Hall and Olympia in 1934. Supported by Viscount Rotherdacre, Nige successfully panicked the Conservative party into committing a prolonged and somehow fascinating suicide. Labour were struck dumb by what they liked to believe was strategy but was actually the realisation that they were relieved to be out of the hot seat in a time of complete chaos. Most troubling of all the people had become so blinkered that some believed they were destined for paradise whereas others believed they were on the way to hell but in reality were part of a slow decline that was inevitable, relentless and would end in automation and Asian domination of economic affairs.
Nige by this time had slid into the background to fantasise about his place in the history books but of course sadly for him posterity had been edited and he had already become a footnote just like Moseley.
Vlad was celebrating a job well done. He had sent refugees from the middle east to take down Merkel and create the big German nationalist bogey that was beginning to trouble those on its borders and France had assumed the leadership of Europe. The French had always managed to get it wrong and Vlad knew that Macron was enough of a Napoleon in his own mind to eventually bite off more than he could chew. So Britain, France and Germany screwed, central and eastern Europe all on the end of pipeline that Vlad held the keys for and agent Orange in the Whitehouse. Now Vlad was free to worry about those far more worrying Asian rivals.
Farage and Foster do not lead the 52%just as the Lib Dems tried and failed to be the party of the 48% opposing the referendum result. Try as they might, the tiny minority of alt-right oppositionalists have been unable to derail this process of leaving and our economy. Perhaps they should leave the Conservative and Unionist Party given that they don't particularly care for the Union with either Scotland or N.Ireland?
Your view on the electorate is very valid given the reasons for the result, not least the elite spending very little time addressing issues affecting the electorate in the regions who voted by a landslide to leave. The UK has one of the highest coeficients of inequality in the world and one comment summed it up for me in the referendum post mortem. An uber bright academic from LSE or Kings complete with PhD had been touring the regions and debating Brexit in church halls etc. So when he espouses the view that "leave" would mean a reduction in GDP, somebody in the crowd retorts: " that's your bloody GDP not ours!"
That was what woke me up to the causes of the result - so no regrets from me. Again, not a capitulation and thoroughly predictable but your statement triggers a number of thought. This process encouraged record numbers to vote who then expect the politicians to pay attention and address the issues. The blue party are doing no such thing with the numbers in the budget going on the root causes being miniscule.
The result shocked, challenged and then galvanized the Labour Party - since the election, Starmer has provided answers and the next election will see clear space between the two parties. The blue party will stand there stating "we delivered Brexit - it was really hard!" Given that the EU was never the cause of the problems, our government will have spent four years delivering not much and of course fighting with itself. Unless the government throw billions at the regions instead of tax cuts for corporations then those 17M who voted for Brexit will not be impressed. And these people have a taste for voting for change. Whilst the U25s see it as cool to vote.
We are on a journey where it's important to move forward with as many segments on board as possibly. All of the linguistic ambiguity in phase one of the EU talks was designed as a way to move forward with all of the contrasting views and interests. Some might say that the Irish have saved us from Farage?! What can be stated with certainty is that the EU was originally formed to avoid conflict between member states. And this process has so far revolved around maintaining the GFA so as to avoid war in N.Ireland.
This process doesn't answer the 17M who voted leave is not down to the process. Leaving the EU was simply the wrong question! As stated by @Southbank there is appetite for a radical shift away from austerity. Especially given that we used to be the 5th biggest economy in the world with 2% growth per annum?
This “selling out” nonsense really makes me laugh. What’s now loosely agreed and what’s on the table is the reality of what Brexit actually is and I’m sure it comes as quite a shock to you brexiters who voted for the la la land painted by the lying self serving politicians you choose to believe. For reasons god only knows.
Editorial:https://irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/brexit-london-bows-to-a-new-reality-1.3320543.
The effect of the talks to date: https://irishtimes.com/business/economy/brexit-fudge-proves-to-eu-that-uk-is-an-incompetent-negotiating-partner-1.3320214.
The outlook for the Conservatives: https://irishtimes.com/opinion/cliff-taylor-conservatives-will-have-to-start-abandoning-their-brexit-lies-1.3320649.
On how the negotiations have affected the political fortunes of Fine Gael:https://irishtimes.com/opinion/pat-leahy-varadkar-ends-2017-on-a-high-thanks-to-brexit-talks-1.3320611.
Diarmaid Ferriter, Professor of Irish History at UCD and cultural and political commentator (and a good laugh), on the DUP's position: https://irishtimes.com/opinion/the-dup-acts-as-if-brexit-is-everyone-else-s-problem-1.3319173.
And a suggestion that we should consider the talks on the Irish dimension of Brexit in a wider context than trade: https://irishtimes.com/opinion/why-we-must-broaden-the-brexit-debate-1.3319198.
Fintan O’Toole: In humiliating May, DUP killed the thing it loves
The DUP’s brinkmanship and manoeuvring have exposed Britain’s powerlessness
It has never seemed more apt that perhaps the greatest work of English literature, William Shakespeare’s King Lear, is about the consequences of a capricious loss of authority. Lear gives up his kingdom for no good reason and everything falls horribly apart. In his madness and despair he utters the most scathing lines every written about political power: “Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar? . . . There thou mightst behold the great image of authority.”
The great image of British authority this week was Theresa May travelling to Brussels on Monday essentially as a beggar, a suppliant desperately in need of the European declaration of “sufficient progress” in the Brexit talks – and the bark of Arlene Foster peremptorily ordering the British prime minister to take back the promises she had made.
Theresa May was experiencing the double Irish, capitulating first to the Irish Government and then uncapitulating on the orders of a very different Irish force, the Democratic Unionist Party. And then, in the early hours of Friday morning, there was a further twist – both May and the DUP essentially signing up to what had been agreed on Monday. It was a startling display of British powerlessness: there can hardly be a more unfortunate military manoeuvre than the retreat from a retreat.
But the image of cracked authority that will linger longest was Foster sweeping down the Stormont staircase on Monday afternoon, like the star of a Busby Berkeley musical flanked by her all-male chorus line, to deliver her royal command: Northern Ireland must leave the European Union on exactly the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom.
It was an apparent moment of historic triumph: no Irish party leader had seemed to hold this much sway over a British prime minister since Charles Stewart Parnell and William Gladstone. But this historical parallel should have given the DUP pause. It is one thing for an Irish nationalist to lord it over the Brits, quite another for a unionist and “British” party to do so.
For Foster’s historic triumph was also a historic mistake. Each man, wrote Oscar Wilde, kills the thing he loves. The DUP on Monday helped to kill the thing it purports to love: the power and prestige of Britain.
It is easy to understand how exhilarating that moment must have been for the DUP in general and for Foster in particular. A year ago this month she was in very deep trouble over the cash-for-ash scandal, facing demands to stand aside. It seemed possible that her political career might come to an ignominious end.
Crucial deal
She cannot have dreamt then that she would find herself at the centre of European affairs, being able to call the British prime minister out of a meeting in which she was about to make a crucial deal and send her back in to say, in effect, “Mrs Foster says I’m not allowed to play with you any more.”
The utterly unexpected result of the UK general election in June, in which the DUP soared and the Tories plummeted, was a vertiginous spin of the wheel of political fortune that had left her at an apparent summit of power.
It is also easy to understand why the DUP felt it had to issue its diktat on Monday. It was right to see May’s agreement to guarantee “full alignment” between the two parts of Ireland after Brexit as a defeat.
However technocratic the language, the agreement meant that Northern Ireland would, in practice, have to mirror both the customs union and the single market. That would mean that there were only two possible conclusions to the Brexit process, both of them unpalatable to the DUP. Either there would be a border in the Irish Sea or the UK as a whole would in effect stay in the customs union and the single market. The DUP’s shock was almost certainly genuine.
Exhilaration and shock are powerful emotions, especially in combination. They provoked a response that was, for four thrilling days, highly satisfying for the DUP but, in the longer term, likely to prove disastrous.
The party is anchored in two, closely related things: the preservation of the union and a sense of “Britishness” as a strong and stable identity. The union is the DUP’s external orientation, Britishness its internal tribal marker.
Barking at the beggar
If it were able to stand back and coolly appraise what it did on Monday, it would have to conclude that both of these things have been severely and perhaps permanently damaged. For both of them, like all political constructs, depend on an image of authority rather grander than the farmer’s dog barking at the beggar.
The union is not a God-given reality: it is a recent political construct, and a fragile one. It has to be held together by the aura of power radiating from Downing Street. That goes doubly for Britishness, especially in the fraught context of Northern Ireland: it is a way of identifying not just with a country but with an idea of greatness.
By making May and the British government seem ridiculous, all the DUP achieved was to make it more likely that they would have to capitulate on all the red lines of a hard Brexit
In a famous passage of The English Constitution Walter Bagehot wrote of the need to preserve the illusion of the monarchy: “We must not let in daylight upon magic.” The same is true of the British prime minister: at least in the conduct of vital international talks, she or he must exude authority.
And what the DUP did on Monday was to rip aside the curtains and let a cruel, harsh daylight in on poor Theresa May. As at the end of a cheap vampire movie, her authority crumbled to dust in front of the watching world. And with it went whatever magic still attaches to the image of postimperial Britain.
By barking at May and having her cower in obedience, the DUP exposed the weakness of the very thing it purports to uphold. But the embarrassment was not just for May personally or even for her supporters. This was the mortification of Britain itself, the abject humbling of a once-feared power.
This is not a smart thing for the DUP to have done. It aligned the party more firmly than ever with the enemies of May’s gradual shift towards pragmatism.
In doing so it has alienated a swathe of British opinion that would now prefer to see the DUP as a foreign body in its body politic. You don’t save the union by making so many of its citizens revile you.
And for what? In the end, by making May and the British government seem ridiculous, all the DUP achieved was to make it more likely that they would have to capitulate on all the red lines of a hard Brexit. It accidentally confounded the desires of its own allies among the extreme Brexiteers by creating the circumstances in which Britain has effectively had to agree to be bound by the regulations of the single market and the customs union.
The sword it was waving at the Irish government turned out to be a pin that pricked both its own moment of power and the bubble of Brexit’s grand self-delusions.
won, lostWhateverGet over it
;0)
bothall sides have 'lost'.Have to see how this progresses before we know real details.