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Brexit: give me a positive effect... V

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eternumviti said:
I don't know whether you refer to it as a 'meme' or a cliché, but the currently fashionable leftlibremain one by which Cameron/Osborne austerity is in some kind of divine isolation responsible for brexit is of course utter cobblers. The British public have a had a major, and increasing, issue with the European project since Cameron and Osborne were still hanging on their respective mothers' teats.
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Cameron must have been weaned extraordinarily late, as we didn't join the EEC until he was six.
 
eternumviti said:
I don't know whether you refer to it as a 'meme' or a cliché, but the currently fashionable leftlibremain one by which Cameron/Osborne austerity is in some kind of divine isolation responsible for brexit is of course utter cobblers. The British public have a had a major, and increasing, issue with the European project since Cameron and Osborne were still hanging on their respective mothers' teats.
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I'm not sure you aren't misrepresenting the 'current leftlibremain' position a bit, here. I think we all recognise that the Brexit vote stems in large part from the belief, fostered by generations of politicians, that the EU is responsible for all our ills, and the UK is singlehandedly credited with our successes. This certainly predates austerity, but the 'major and increasing issue' the British public had was fed to them by self-serving media and politicians. It doesn't necessarily represent the truth.

<snip> sovereignty belongs to the people, and it is they who gift it to our representatives in Parliament, who are elected at the ballot box in regular plebiscites. Political authority therefore belongs to those who govern only through the consent of the people. This fundamental principle has been at the core of the development of great societies since the ancient Greeks, and undoubtedly beyond, and was confirmed again and again by almost anyone of note in the political arena in the last three centuries, from Lincoln and Jefferson through to Churchill. You will find plenty of famous quotes to that end, including indeed your own, which implies not that sovereignty lies with one man, but with the collective.
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Yes, but the definition of 'the collective' is not fixed, is it? Looking at your last three centuries, only the last one has had anything approaching the sort of 'fundamental' principle you espouse here. Unless and until you have universal suffrage, you don't have the sort of 'consent of the people' that your sort of sovereignty demands. So whither sovereignty when only the ruling classes got to vote? And, over those three centuries, the 'collective' has gone from disparate kingdoms to a (reasonably cohesive) union of four nations. That, surely implies a trend, so why can't it continue? I do, however, take your point about the pace being forced, and it's a fair one.

I would argue strongly with your statement that sovereignty is of diminishing importance in the globalised world. The events of the last 6 months or so particularly, and indeed the spasm of which brexit is, I think, just one manifestion, have shown very clearly that sovereignty is alive, well, and extremely fashionable. And in a globalised world essentially run by enormous, faceless corporations which write their own rules and the individual counts for nothing beyond commodification, people need more than ever to have something over which they retain some sense of belonging and control.
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We can argue endlessly about whether that sense of 'control' is any more real, or less illusive for the British people than for the EU citizenry; our difference is, I suspect, that one of us thinks the British have more agency nationally and less within the EU, whereas one of us thinks the British sense of agency is largely made of smoke and mirrors, and that real control of government does indeed rest with the power brokers, the large corporations, and those who fund our political parties to serve their own interests. If you take this latter view, then surely you must acknowledge that the illusion of sovereignty is increasingly invalid.

Horse-trading between countries has indeed always happened. A cumbersome and virtually autonomous technocratic proto-dictatorship of Europe is not necessary for that horse-trading to continue as it always has done. Indeed, the the horse-trading between individual states continues despite the EU, and perhaps because of it too. Have you not watched it happening in the past half year?

Your post seems to insinuate that Heath didn't lie, because he used the word 'sacrifice', and we sacrificed nothing.

I disagree.
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In this era of ever larger power blocs - the USA, Russian Federation, China, the smaller parties risk being preyed on, and the EU is a bloc which has the political and economic clout to stand its ground and resist (or at least, withstand) the tide of events. So if we did sacrifice anything, we surely gained much in return. You may disagree that the sacrifice was worth it, but I'd be interested to learn of anything we forewent (and could potentially now recover) that you feel was not a good exchange.
 
eternumviti said:
The British public have a had a major, and increasing, issue with the European project since Cameron and Osborne were still hanging on their respective mothers' teats.
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This will be why they voted more than two to one in favour of retaining membership in 1975......
 
eternumviti said:
I don't know whether you refer to it as a 'meme' or a cliché, but the currently fashionable leftlibremain one by which Cameron/Osborne austerity is in some kind of divine isolation responsible for brexit is of course utter cobblers. The British public have a had a major, and increasing, issue with the European project since Cameron and Osborne were still hanging on their respective mothers' teats.

As a complete aside, don't let it be forgotten that the EU were the standard bearers of austerity. The EU institutions used it to preserve their precious project (a doctrinal one, incidentally) when it was under threat, rendering millions out of work and driving people to poverty in both youth and old-age, and sometimes to suicide, in the process.
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ET, I shall counter your response by doing what you, CB and like-minded others do, which is to Google and selectively use information that backs up my assertion :)
Nevertheless this quite straight forward and extensive report accords with my recollection that membership of the EU was a non-issue except for the rabid right-wing of the Tory party (going back a long way). The referendum was only about keeping the Tory party together and to mend splits. Cameron mis-calculated and we find our selves in the current pickle.

btw...the Tory party austerity, unnecessary and frankly economically illiterate as it was , was driven by pure dogma. The EU governments generally exited austerity much earlier than the UK when they saw how counter-productive it was. The Tories clung on to it because they want to privatise everything and reduce the size of the state because that's what they do.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/14/the-european-union/
 
Colin L said:
Nevertheless this quite straight forward and extensive report accords with my recollection that membership of the EU was a non-issue except for the rabid right-wing of the Tory party (going back a long way).
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And, lest we forget, the rabid left-wing of the Labour Party (leaving the EEC was part of Labour's 1983 manifesto).
 
Yes, Michael Foot, predecessor of the magic grandad and just as effective. Being anti-EU is a proper horse-shoe policy
 
Colin Barron said:
The equivalence of the 2019 general election and a referendum was that the GE removed many of the remainers from Westminster, and removed all talk of 2nd ref or just forgetting the referendum took place. I suppose in one way you may be correct in that a 2nd ref may have resulted in calls for a 3rd ref if the electorate gave the wrong answer again.
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Thus proving the point.
 
eternumviti said:
I don't know whether you refer to it as a 'meme' or a cliché, but the currently fashionable leftlibremain one by which Cameron/Osborne austerity is in some kind of divine isolation responsible for brexit is of course utter cobblers. The British public have a had a major, and increasing, issue with the European project since Cameron and Osborne were still hanging on their respective mothers' teats.

As a complete aside, don't let it be forgotten that the EU were the standard bearers of austerity. The EU institutions used it to preserve their precious project (a doctrinal one, incidentally) when it was under threat, rendering millions out of work and driving people to poverty in both youth and old-age, and sometimes to suicide, in the process.



I take your point - or points - though they seem to comprise a sort of cobbled together mish-mash of quotes and vague ideals. To begin with, sovereignty is very much more than a 'conceit', a word that seems almost designed to belittle the monumental efforts of countless people, some of them justifiably famous, many more unknown, who strove both to protect the people of these countries (and in the process, most of the European ones) from brutal dictatorship, and who fought for universal suffrage in the first half of the 20th century. This is important, for sovereignty belongs to the people, and it is they who gift it to our representatives in Parliament, who are elected at the ballot box in regular plebiscites. Political authority therefore belongs to those who govern only through the consent of the people. This fundamental principle has been at the core of the development of great societies since the ancient Greeks, and undoubtedly beyond, and was confirmed again and again by almost anyone of note in the political arena in the last three centuries, from Lincoln and Jefferson through to Churchill. You will find plenty of famous quotes to that end, including indeed your own, which implies not that sovereignty lies with one man, but with the collective. The converse, or inverse, of this, is dictatorship, even if it is merely a relatively benign dictatorship by ideologically-driven bureaucrats and technocrats.

Societies evolve around a set of customs, habits, rules and a sense of shared history and folklore. Countries are societies to which people have a sense of belonging, of responsibility, of control, and of a sense of safety. Such societies evolve, and the collective increases in size and even geographical scope, but only at a human pace, measured at least in generations. This evolution cannot be forced, because to attempt to do so will bring a sense of alienation, and of loss of control, and there will always be a reaction.

I would argue strongly with your statement that sovereignty is of diminishing importance in the globalised world. The events of the last 6 months or so particularly, and indeed the spasm of which brexit is, I think, just one manifestion, have shown very clearly that sovereignty is alive, well, and extremely fashionable. And in a globalised world essentially run by enormous, faceless corporations which write their own rules and the individual counts for nothing beyond commodification, people need more than ever to have something over which they retain some sense of belonging and control.

Horse-trading between countries has indeed always happened. A cumbersome and virtually autonomous technocratic proto-dictatorship of Europe is not necessary for that horse-trading to continue as it always has done. Indeed, the the horse-trading between individual states continues despite the EU, and perhaps because of it too. Have you not watched it happening in the past half year?

Your post seems to insinuate that Heath didn't lie, because he used the word 'sacrifice', and we sacrificed nothing.

I disagree.
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Are you arguing for absolute sovereignty? As you know, sovereignty can be shared on many levels, and it can be in Britain's interests to do so - or is 'sovereignty' just a fancy way of saying 'enemy', in this case invading Germans?
 
Nero said:
Perhaps you are just a little oversensitive then. I always prefer forums where the issue is discussed. I think 1,977 posts is enough. Enjoy.
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Ah right. That must be it. Obviously you're not oversensitive, given your complaint in #1975 is the only one you see fit to make.

I too prefer it when the issue is discussed, rather than chaff such as:
TheDecameron said:
I honestly find much of it incomprehensible, referencing fictional posts then arguing with them. In the post above, if I’m getting this right, it appears openly fictionalised content was admitted to then debated with. There seems to be a blurred boundary between what’s real and what’s unreal.
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TheDecameron said:
I honestly find much of it incomprehensible, referencing fictional posts then arguing with them. In the post above, if I’m getting this right, it appears openly fictionalised content was admitted to then debated with. There seems to be a blurred boundary between what’s real and what’s unreal.
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BRDF in action. He's a victim of his own success.
 
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