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Have no bottle.

Rodrat

pfm Member
Well it appears they will ‘make brexit better’ I was rather hoping they would have the bottle to campaign on rejoining now that all the brexit lies are being exposed and the impact on our economy is clear.
 
The arguments for rejoining are as ill-informed and fantastical as were the arguments for leaving.

There is not 1 chance in 3327495538730087 (approx.), that the UK could rejoin the EU under the same terms and conditions as we left on. The effects of rejoining are predictable only in the very sketchiest of detail.

Maybe picked up on the long-running thread about Brexit benefits, but an interesting and bfief comment on R4 this morning - Brexit has resulted in a 20% reduction in exchange rate £-US$ (from $1.50 to $1.20) and as most commodities on the world market, from wheat to oil to iron ore, are traded internationally in US$, the UK has seen price rises in these of 25% due to that alone - we now spend 83p for every $, instead of 66p.
 
There isn't yet an appetite to go back in. It's too soon. We need to have a few years of enjoying those sunlit uplands before we realise that there's FA to eat up there and that the better pastures were what we left behind. 52% voted for a return to the past. It's time to live there and learn that an Austin Cambridge is actually a really, really crap car compared to a 2015 Ford Mondeo.
The problem with nostalgia is that it just ain't what it used to be.
 
This was predictable.
The European states will tax anything that comes from the UK, and so buying anything British has become an act of faith – hi-fi included.
What a deal eh?
Worse (for us in this case), any imported goods will be the object of the same absurd taxes, even if you wanted to give your LP12 away to me! Yes, you buy nothing – just carriage – but you are ransomed the same :)

Welcoming you back would be great, but quite a task. And you’d probably have to drop the Sterling, a thing of the past in my opinion, and one of the causes of the Brexit disaster. Being a Tory must be hard these days…
 
Just like the British pound, the Tories, QE2…
Sorry.
A modern Britain should be European.

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The European states will tax anything that comes from the UK,

Sort of agreed, although it is actually tarriffs rather than tax - splitting hairs. That said, the same applies to most UK proucts exported to most of the rest of the world, the EU is no different - remember the import duties on UK products introduced by Trump?

But it is also what was voted for when voting for Brexit - the vote was to leave the biggest free-trade area in the world - it is THAT simple and was an absolute fact it would happen.
 
I’m disappointed that Labour can’t even bring itself to suggest that having a cautious look at joining EFTA might be a solution to some of the problems we’re beset with. No commitment to join, but floating the idea and planting the germ of a plan in the mind of the public. You could gauge the public response, see whether EFTA, or even EEA membership might have broad support.

Have they somehow judged that it’s still too early even for that? Do they view that as not a good option in itself? Or what?
 
They are afraid of the tabloids: ‘We need to say/not say these things because they might lose us the election’. Once elected, the line will be ‘We need to say/not say these things because they might lose us the next election’.

The trouble is that such an attitude risks Labour being perceived as both spineless and without any actual ideas.
 
I'll be surprised if EU countries welcome back the UK with open arms when it applies to rejoin. Why would they expose themselves to sitting in a room with wreckers like Farage or his ilk again? Some sort of deal will be possible in a few years but it will likely be a trade deal wher UK accepts the terms but has little negotiating power. As for joining EEA or EFTA they already have a pecking order of member countries so why would they welcome an aggresive UK which would expect to be the mini superpower in the group. We can wish and hope for any change in the views of the UK voters but any meaningful changes to UK status relies on what the other partner thinks of UK and when UK government acts illegally and throws away treaties it has signed up to whenever it wants the other side will be very, very careful in any negotiations.
There can be as much hand wringing on the UK side as various parties like but UK is not the decision maker.
 
I can imagine Kier is keen to get back the red wall voters who it would appear were keen to get out of the EU. I wonder who they will blame when they start losing their jobs?
 
Unless the UK rejoins EFTA at some point in the next decade it will become one of the poorest economies in the developed world, and remain so. I think reality will impinge on ideology at some point, but not yet.
 
UK polls for rejoin currently stand at 41% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_United_Kingdom_rejoining_the_European_Union_(2020–present)). If one assumes Scotland is a far higher return (the region which the SNP will win anyway), then the main battleground is England and Wales which would be less keen to rejoin.

If the aim is to win the GE, then the trick is not to alienate huge chunks of voters who hold the key to your success (as stated in other threads it's England / Wales seats that determine Labour government). Brexit still remains divisive and a bit of a compromise, to accept the 2016 result, but making a better go of the situation than the incumbent government (*), is the only viable strategy as far as Brexit is concerned if they are to have a cat in Hell's to win in 2023/4.

(*) a bit of pragmatism over dogmatism would work wonders, like @sideshowbob states above, rejoin EFTA and a whole host of common standards.
 
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The grim prospect is that we haven’t even bottomed out yet- the same ideologues are currently working to destroy even the present agreement with the EU and beyond that, what other aims do they have for society? The clues are already here in the law breaking, suppression of protest and xenophobia. Farage and his ilk haven’t gone away, they’ve mutated and are on the hunt for internal enemies this time.
 
Unless the UK rejoins EFTA at some point in the next decade it will become one of the poorest economies in the developed world, and remain so. I think reality will impinge on ideology at some point, but not yet.

Ideology is a useful profit generator.
 
There is not 1 chance in 3327495538730087 (approx.),

Can you verify that ratio? :D Ah, I see it's a negative ratio equating to zero. A snowball's chance in Hell rather than London to a brick on, then.:)

I think there are a lot of problems to be sorted before even thinking of reverting to the status quo ante. Furthermore, I wonder if Brexit would even constitute an issue, with the exception of the Irish question, had the shit not hit the fan with Covid, the Russian invasion, poor domestic governance and loose economic policy creating severe headwinds for the future.
 
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Can you verify that ratio? :D Ah, I see it's a negative ratio equating to zero. A snowball's chance in Hell rather than London to a brick on, then.:)

I think there are a lot of problems to be sorted before even thinking of reverting to the status quo ante Furthermore, I wonder if Brexit would even constitute an issue, with the exception of the Irish question, had the shit not hit the fan with Covid, the Russian invasion, poor domestic governance and loose economic policy creating severe headwinds for the future.
That is easily answered. Compare and contrast the performance of those countries which remained in the EU with the country which has left it (bearing in mind that we were promised that Brexit would make things better rather than worse).
 


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