Brexit: give me a positive effect (2022 remastered edition)

[SteveS1]

Believing the EU to be A Good Thing does of course entail a pretty strenuous denial of some awkward realities, but it seems that lots of us can manage that OK.

There is nothing on that scale that would not contain awkward realities, NATO the UN, anything.

That's your opinion, with which I profoundly disagree.

You don't just disagree, you persist with the notion that anyone who thinks the UK was to a large extent better off inside the EU than isolated from it must believe the EU is without faults or issues. They don't.

You are not a stupid person so I don't really understand why you persist with that line other than to deflect from the very real harm this exercise is causing.

 

[TheDecameron]

Withdraw what?

Devolved government. They’ve had it taken away already and it’s happening again. Meanwhile the British Government is about to break international law and the fools were told Brexit was about ‘taking back control of their laws’.

 

[eternumviti]

I'm not at all sure that a referendum for NI to leave the Union is incumbent upon a Stormont government being in place, it is incumbent upon a majority of the citizens of NI expressing their wish to leave the Union. How that process would actually take place either with or without Stormont I'm not sure.

Enlighten me.

 

[Brian]

We have our current PM and cabinet thanks to Brexit. A constant reminder of where it has and is taking this country.

I understand what you mean but I disagree.

We have our current PM and cabinet thanks to there being no compromise on a soft brexit. There was plenty of opportunity, not least made possible by Bercow, but scuppered by remain MPs who were in a majority. I watched it all unfold in Parliament, as I’m sure many others did.

 

[Seeker_UK]

... almost completely incoherent rant from which I can unpick a heap of exaggeration, a lot of false conflation of causes and effects ...

 

[Brian]

Some things are constant, Nick, and others aren't. In three years time we will have a Labour government with different policies, but the European Commission will still be there, furtively advancing the EU project without the consent of Europe's citizens, and those citizens will still be unable to do much about it.

I’m hoping we will be saved from further tory damage in 2 years time and the rebuild of the country can start.

 

[ff1d1l]

A frothing, almost completely incoherent rant from which I can unpick a heap of exaggeration, a lot of false conflation of causes and effects in which there are odd things that I don't have an argument with but that have either little or sfa to do with brexit, all of it entirely intertwined with a seething fury and loathing for the current pm and the current government, a smattering of narrow self-interest, and something that equates to either a complete contempt for, or a total misunderstanding of, the basic principles of sovereign democracy, probably both.

And for all of your raging fury about and apparent hatred of this Union of countries and its (current) leadership, absolutely no acknowledgement of the brutality, grasping ambition, structural and democratic incoherence and sly furtiveness of - and deficiency of real consent for - the EU project.

Your posts are imbued with an increasingly furious, spittle-flecked and invective-ridden contempt for the views of anyone - and there aren't that many of us here - who doesn't happen to share your often pretty obscure, ill-constructed and highly partisan opinions on Brexit, the UK, the EU, and the principles of democracy. It is very clear that that contempt extends to those who hold those opinions.

So, reduced to ad hom. Address the argument. And stop, as you did in your other answer as well, attributing to me words I didn't say.
The johnson is brexit's midwife, his government the handmaiden. I don't see how you could argue orherwise, but if you fancy tossing out another word salad, please try. So all tory destruction, since the ref, is brexit, pure and simple.
I have a respect for democracy, but I can see a rigged one, where many peoples votes make not even a statistical difference, for what it is. We are moving towards PR here in Wales, for the Senedd. Let's hope we're leading by example.
As a fan of democracy, you'll no doubt be quite devastated by the loss of the right to protest, the gerrymandering of constituencies and the disenfranchisement of the young and poor who do not have photo ID. Another brexit sovereignty gain! Huzza!
And how about the upcoming democratic cherry on the cake, loss of the Human Rights Act? Yebbut sovereignty...
I see you have yet to enumerate your many legislative disappointments pre brexit, and the copious triumphs you have personally enjoyed since...

 

[TheDecameron]

We’re not quite there yet. The more pressing matter is maintenance of the Protocol that the majority effectively voted for and through it preservation of the open border with the rest of Ireland.

 

[ff1d1l]

...and the fools were told Brexit was about ‘taking back control of their laws’.

I know one of them ...

 

[laughingboy]

I understand what you mean but I disagree.

We have our current PM and cabinet thanks to there being no compromise on a soft brexit. There was plenty of opportunity, not least made possible by Bercow, but scuppered by remain MPs who were in a majority. I watched it all unfold in Parliament, as I’m sure many others did.

The political reality in 2018-19 was that, in parliament, there was no majority for any single course of action. I suspect that this reflected the population at large: many of those who voted for Brexit did not want a 'hard Brexit', so it is unlikely that there was a majority for any single course of action, at any point on the remain-leave spectrum.

I have some sympathy for your argument that the people voted to leave, therefore we should leave. But by the time it got to 2019, the people who could have compromised were rightly highly concerned that a vote for 'soft Brexit' would not end matters. By that time, popular sentiment had been whipped up that 'they are trying to deny the will of the people', and staying in the Single Market/Customs Union would have been portrayed as a 'betrayal'. The argument would have run, we didn't vote to leave only to remain locked into trade and legal arrangements that we did not negotiate. We would still have been on a course for 'hard Brexit', only enacted by degrees. Farage, the ERG and the agenda-setting power of the right-wing press would have ensured that no compromise would have been good enough.

So, my position is that it is not right to blame those who tried to resist doing harm to the country, even if - tragically - the result was maximum harm. This was path dependence in action. The problem pre-dates 2018-19, and the blame lies entirely with the Tories, who needed to neutralise UKIP, and promised a vote without thinking through the consequences. A binary in-out vote on a question that needed to describe a course through a garden of forking paths was an invitation for demagogues to whip up division. And once Theresa May, in her Jan 2017 Lancaster House speech, chose to make 'control of our laws' and 'control of immigration' two of her red lines, the die was cast. Hard Brexit was all but inevitable, it was just a question of how and when it would arrive.

 

[TheDecameron]

EU membership turns out to have been one of the adhesives that pretty much held the U.K together. Brexit is the expression of one faction only and only in one part of the U.K. You’re now seeing what happens when the glue is taken out.
The grimmer irony is that the provisional wing of the Brexit movement, much of it located on the Government benches, were convinced that Brexit would bring about the break up of the EU and instead it presages the break up of the British Union.

 

[TheDecameron]

Gove has resurfaced! On TV studio rounds this morning he has announced that the govt will not deliver their “Levelling Up” manifesto pledge to build 300,000 new affordable houses.
What he did do though was “warn the EU that on the N.I Protocol, all options were being left on the table”.

This is the collapse of democracy.

 

[Kirk]

Raab: Nothing's off the table when it comes to the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Journo: So a border poll is a real possibility?

Raab: No!

Journo: And what about just sticking to the agreement as it is?

Raab: Definitely not!

Journo: That's 2 things off the table already.

 

[TheDecameron]

Who’d have imagined this never ending war with the EU would be so politically useful?

 

[Brian]

The political reality in 2018-19 was that, in parliament, there was no majority for any single course of action. I suspect that this reflected the population at large: many of those who voted for Brexit did not want a 'hard Brexit', so it is unlikely that there was a majority for any single course of action, at any point on the remain-leave spectrum.

I have some sympathy for your argument that the people voted to leave, therefore we should leave. But by the time it got to 2019, the people who could have compromised were rightly highly concerned that a vote for 'soft Brexit' would not end matters. By that time, popular sentiment had been whipped up that 'they are trying to deny the will of the people', and staying in the Single Market/Customs Union would have been portrayed as a 'betrayal'. The argument would have run, we didn't vote to leave only to remain locked into trade and legal arrangements that we did not negotiate. We would still have been on a course for 'hard Brexit', only enacted by degrees. Farage, the ERG and the agenda-setting power of the right-wing press would have ensured that no compromise would have been good enough.

So, my position is that it is not right to blame those who tried to resist doing harm to the country, even if - tragically - the result was maximum harm. This was path dependence in action. The problem pre-dates 2018-19, and the blame lies entirely with the Tories, who needed to neutralise UKIP, and promised a vote without thinking through the consequences. A binary in-out vote on a question that needed to describe a path through a garden of forking paths was an invitation for demagogues to whip up division. And once Theresa May, in her Jan 2017 Lancaster House speech, chose to make 'control of our laws' and 'control of immigration' two of her red lines, the die was cast. Hard Brexit was all but inevitable, it was just a question of how and when it would arrive.

Good post.

I agree there was no agreement on a single course of action, but that imo was entirely down to folk in Parlisment who wished to overturn the referendum result. There was a clear majority of MPs in favour of remain, there should have been compromise and agreement on a soft brexit. The tory ERG is a minority faction. The times I listened to tory MPs complaning about their party but they would not put the country before party when it came to the crunch.

 

[eternumviti]

So, reduced to ad hom...

Well yes, my reaction precisely when the realisation came that dickheads had voted for this nebulous sovereignty...dickheads

 

[TheDecameron]

Night is day and day is night:
“There is no concensus here in favour of the Protocol. The Protocol is damaging our economy. The Protocol is risking the peace in N.Ireland”- Jeffrey Donaldson, DUP.

Google translation:
“The majority of parties and the public support the Protocol. The Protocol has seen N.Ireland’s exports to the EU actually rise by 65%. If you don’t get rid of it, the Loyalists will get the guns out again”.

 

[eternumviti]

So, reduced to ad hom. Address the argument. And stop, as you did in your other answer as well, attributing to me words I didn't say.

There was no ad hom from me, I merely pointed out that your anger is very frequently (see above) directed at the man rather than...the argument.

If I attributed words to you that you didn't say, I apologise. I know exactly how incredibly irritating it is.

The johnson is brexit's midwife, his government the handmaiden. I don't see how you could argue orherwise, but if you fancy tossing out another word salad, please try. So all tory destruction, since the ref, is brexit, pure and simple.

Brexit has many midwives, amongst them Macmillan, Heath, Major, Blair, Cameron and yes, Johnson, the majority (some would say all) of them of course tories, and all of them either narrowly or broadly 'establishment'.

Almost forgot - Farage. Certainly 'broadly tory', but interestingly, not establishment.

I have a respect for democracy, but I can see a rigged one, where many peoples votes make not even a statistical difference, for what it is. We are moving towards PR here in Wales, for the Senedd. Let's hope we're leading by example.

You don't gaf about sovereignty, you are furiously pro-EU, you haven't an iota of respect for the result of the largest democratic vote ever to have taken place in the UK, but you have a 'respect for democracy'. It doesn't add up, any of it.

I'm all for the debate about reforming the electoral system, and for a properly informed decision to be (democratically) taken at the end of it.

As a fan of democracy, you'll no doubt be quite devastated by the loss of the right to protest, the gerrymandering of constituencies and the disenfranchisement of the young and poor who do not have photo ID. Another brexit sovereignty gain! Huzza!

I am indeed. I'm not quite clear about what any of it has to do with brexit though, and similar or in some cases much worse has been in evidence on the other side of the channel.

And how about the upcoming democratic cherry on the cake, loss of the Human Rights Act? Yebbut sovereignty...

There's a valid debate to be had about whether or not to HRA is entirely fit for purpose, and whether it has or has not been hijacked by the burgeoning HR legal industry. I'm not sure where I stand on it at the moment.

I see you have yet to enumerate your many legislative disappointments pre brexit, and the copious triumphs you have personally enjoyed since...

I've set out many, many 'disappointments', as you put it, in the conduct and processes of the EU, and I have not claimed any legislative triumphs since brexit. If and as I do, I'll happily set them out.

 

[SteveS1]

Gove has resurfaced! On TV studio rounds this morning he has announced that the govt will not deliver their “Levelling Up” manifesto pledge to build 300,000 new affordable houses.
What he did do though was “warn the EU that on the N.I Protocol, all options were being left on the table”.

This is the collapse of democracy.

He was speaking in some strange accents at times, perhaps the Columbian marching powder is taking it's toll.

 

[freefallrob]

If you believe that the EU is A Good Thing, then there are no tangible benefits to leaving it.

Believing the EU to be A Good Thing does of course entail a pretty strenuous denial of some awkward realities, but it seems that lots of us can manage that OK.

Now you're putting words in my mouth....