Brexit What Happens Next Thread ---multiple merged threads.

[IMHAL]

16 minutes ago, NoHPCinTheUK said:

Does anyone here remember why the English landed in NI in the first place? 

The protocol has nothing to do with the EU or common market, Gibraltar is basically EU territory now. It’s about the control of the island of Ireland and the Irish Sea. 

Washington should be extremely careful what they wish for. Without NI, and maybe Scotland in the future, England’s 500 years strategy would be cancelled. And a weakened England would be grazing ground for foreign powers like Russia, China and others. Right at the core of NATO and 20 miles from the continent. 
 

Also Brussels aka Berlin and Paris should recognise the extremely dangerous corner where England is right now. 
I have no idea whether the Europeans and the Americans have a plan should the UK collapse. I doubt the Americans have any clue about it, but I fell the European might have a grasp of what the scenario could probably be. 

This is the greatest crisis since WWII. We could start calling things for what they are. 
 

We should have thought about the consequences before voting Brexit.......Oh...we did!

[MonsieurCopperCrutch]

4 minutes ago, NoHPCinTheUK said:

The same vital strategic value NI and Ireland had 500 years ago. Making sure you control the island and the sea channel where someone could in the future move their army and invade England. England is on an island and islands dont have borders. 
 

It was about settling Protestants and converting the native Catholics. 

[NoHPCinTheUK]

2 minutes ago, yelims said:

Who do you think is planning to invade England and why?

This is not a smart question. Do you start building a roof when you see the rain coming? Are you absolutely certain than in 50 years time someone might not try to invade England from France or Spain? 

[NoHPCinTheUK]

Just now, MonsieurCopperCrutch said:

It was about settling Protestants and converting the native Catholics. 

Why? Why bother doing that? 

[slawek]

18 minutes ago, NoHPCinTheUK said:

And a weakened England would be grazing ground for foreign powers like Russia, China and others.

That is already the case. Russian influence in the UK politics is not negligible. Now the UK strategy is getting closer to China. We know how will this end.  China tactic is using economic ties to control other countries. The UK could be a Hong Kong in reverse.    

[yelims]

1 minute ago, NoHPCinTheUK said:

This is not a smart question. Do you start building a roof when you see the rain coming? Are you absolutely certain than in 50 years time someone might not try to invade England from France or Spain? 

I didn’t realise that the Tories have cut the NHS mental health services so much..

 

but let’s entertain your fantasies for a minute, last time UK was at (world) war the threat came from that small channel to south east, I guess should invade north of France again to create a “buffer zone” right?

 

And before that there was a successful invasion... with many of you descending from invaders ... a few centuries earlier also from east.

 

you should get back on your medication and not forget that your country signed up to good Friday agreement under the watch if Americans. I realise brexiteers think nothing of signing international treaties and then try to walk back, but at what stage does your island turn into a North Korea?

[slawek]

 

[zugzwang]

15 minutes ago, NoHPCinTheUK said:

This is not a smart question. Do you start building a roof when you see the rain coming? Are you absolutely certain than in 50 years time someone might not try to invade England from France or Spain? 

The British invade France and Spain every summer to escape the rain. Global warming might encourage some movement in the opposite direction I suppose.

[yelims]

It didn’t take long from taking away more rights from people and moving further up the authoritarian axis for the Brexshit fascists to start dreaming about invasions, barely days.

[kzb]

5 hours ago, jonb2 said:

Haven't you got it yet? Who the feck cares?

It doesn't matter what YOU think - you were used by a mere handful of maggots who simply wanted to enrich themselves. Now they have everything they want and there is NOTHING you can do about it.

'Levelling up' - don't make me laugh! They don't give a toss.

Did you vote Labour in 1983?

[kzb]

4 hours ago, zugzwang said:

The Left is still anti-EU. It's the Blairite centrists who are not.

https://www.counterfire.org/news/18251-left-anti-eu-campaign-launched

 

So if it had been a left-wing Brexit, would that have been OK by you?

And

Did you vote Labour in 1983 ?  If you were not old enough, would you have voted Labour given the chance?

[Young Turk]

5 hours ago, kzb said:

These days Labour being left-wing and Cons being right-wing is very disputable!

Do you mean they are quite similar, or do you mean Labour are right-wing and the Conservatives are left-wing? (I agree they both have a lot of moderates and are quite similar, but doubt there is much actual overlap - Labour MPs and voters more right-wing than Conservatives, or vice versa)

I thought your position that there is likely to have a shift towards Brexit as people age was based on the observations that older people are more likely to vote Conservative and more likely to have voted Brexit. 

5 hours ago, kzb said:

Well done for recognising there are Labour leavers.  As far as this lot on here are concerned, Brexit is a shady far-right conspiracy and any nice leftie should love the EU unconditionally. 

Far-right and far-left could both have reasons for wanting to leave the EU. Some people argue that leftists should have opposed Brexit, as it will be a "Tory Brexit." First of all, there was a chance that the Conservatives would be out of power by the time Brexit occurred. Then the question is whether the Tory nature of Brexit will be permanent.

5 hours ago, kzb said:

It's a mystery to me how that belief system came about, after the unions, Tony Benn and, more recently, Corbyn were known to be anti-EU.  Labour stood on a platform of exiting the EEC in the 1983 election.

 

The big mystery to me is how the left evolved from Euroscepticism in the 1970's and early 1980's, to this self-righteous elite of Europhile superior beings we see before us now.  That is the real question.

Labour, Britain and the EEC/EU have all changed significantly since the days of Benn and Foot. It's probably a combination of these factors which caused such a change of direction.

Wasn't Labour more left-wing then? Labour has had a moderate leader for more than 25 years, with the exception of Corbyn (Corbyn was as radical as Foot, but faced far more opposition). 

Wasn't the left-wing case in the 1980s largely related to the way it constrained economic policy? 

This is not persuasive to the moderate left.

Also, mass immigration wasn't an issue then, but is now. The far left could oppose this for economic reasons, but the moderate left are more likely to support it for social reasons.

These factors made it quite a marginal issue for moderates (I think it was similar on the right). People who did not have strong reasons for opposing the EU often still found a lot of fault with it, but they were aware things could get worse if we left, or the transition could be very costly.

5 hours ago, kzb said:

There was very little trickery involved.  People knew which way they were going to vote before the campaigns started.

What do you think was trickey?

It seems very implausible that people knew which way they would vote. People often change their minds in party elections, where they have a default position (Who did I vote for last time? Are the incumbents doing a good job? What were the opposition like when they were last in power?) People had much less to go on with regard to Europe, as it's relation to everyday life was less clear for many people, so it's likely people were more likely to be persuaded by the campaigns.

Did the polls indicate no change in support? I thought support for leave increased over the course of the campaign.

5 hours ago, kzb said:

I don't think people clearly differentiated between the EEC and the EU.  It was seen as the same thing.  Quite likely they experienced the price increases, beef mountains and wine lakes shortly after we joined and thought this is crap I'd vote against it if I could.

On this particular narrow question, i.e. EU membership, we have clear evidence that a cohort changed over time.

In 1975 it was about economic policy and in 2016 it was about much more than that. Also, much had changed in Britain as a consequence of our member in the intervening years. In order for the percentages voting "no" and "leave" to be comparable, people would have required knowledge of the consequences of membership in 1975.

Your claim is is contrary to the Eurosceptic position. Some remainers pointed to the high support for Europe in 1975, but Eurosceptics responded by saying that they were promised no political integration. Not only did the Eurosceptics oppose political integration, but it turns out this was very important leave voters. Remain politicians were surprised that "project fear" didn't work and remain voters were surprised that leavers were more concerned with "sovereignty" than material economic conditions and were even prepared to endure negative economic consequences.

[kzb]

13 minutes ago, Young Turk said:

Labour, Britain and the EEC/EU have all changed significantly since the days of Benn and Foot. It's probably a combination of these factors which caused such a change of direction.

Wasn't Labour more left-wing then? Labour has had a moderate leader for more than 25 years, with the exception of Corbyn (Corbyn was as radical as Foot, but faced far more opposition). 

Harold Wilson left-wing?

We came closer to having a left wing government with Corbyn than ever before.  Foot was never going to get anywhere it was obvious.  

I don't believe what has changed is some kind of reasoned mental debate about the EU changing direction.  It's far more emotional than that, look at the level of hate on here, nearly 5 years on.  We have left wingers screaming and crying over Brexit, yet only 30-odd years ago the left wingers supported Brexit. 

It's a massive turn-around, the left transitioning from being anti-EU to hysterical Europhilia in only 30-odd years.   I've not seen it explained satisfactorily yet.

[Riedquat]

1 hour ago, yelims said:

It didn’t take long from taking away more rights from people and moving further up the authoritarian axis for the Brexshit fascists to start dreaming about invasions, barely days.

Who's the one with the abusive tone towards those with different political views that's usually a sign of someone at a political extreme?

[kzb]

2 hours ago, NoHPCinTheUK said:

Why? Why bother doing that? 

When you look back at history Protestant vs Catholic has always been massive.  Caused more death and destruction than anything.  Don't ask me why, in the future people will be asking what was that all about?

[pig]

4 hours ago, Gigantic Purple Slug said:

Well 6 in 10 people think they are handling it badly, 50% of those think they are handling it very badly according to this poll.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/21/what-do-britons-think-governments-handling-covid-1

Which to me generally bears out in my assessment, that they have done pretty much average, neither good nor bad, although the general publics view currently appears somewhat biased towards the bad side.

As the vaccine takes effect my guess is that those numbers will even out, but may tip back towards the bad side if we see a lot of economic hardship.

All that indicates is that 40% are out of their mind lol.

I'd guess its actually more like 20-30% with the rest being people who haven't really followed events that closely.

Essentially, governing countries is the one thing populist governments are almost designed not to be good at. Really good at everything else though.

[pig]

1 hour ago, yelims said:

It didn’t take long from taking away more rights from people and moving further up the authoritarian axis for the Brexshit fascists to start dreaming about invasions, barely days.

Its a type of mindset actively looking for trouble - used to have a friend a bit like that.

Always got into fights in pubs/clubs. Every single time it was something stupid the other guy(s) did. The only way I got through in the end was pointing out that fine, all those times it was the fault of the other guys, but why was he the only guy who got into fights every fecking time in our entire circle of friends ?

Additional problem is that Leavers are egged on by professional trolls looking to promote division in Europe.

[Young Turk]

34 minutes ago, kzb said:

So if it had been a left-wing Brexit, would that have been OK by you?

I was sceptical of Brexit due to the high costs and risks it entailed. If I found the case for a left Brexit more persuasive than the case for a right Brexit, that still wouldn't persuade me it was worth it, because the case would still rely on a lot of wishful thinking ("we believe the consequences of our desired policies will be very good") and there would still be a lot of barriers to implementing their vision ("we believe we have a big enough Parliamentary majority to overrule the moderates/rebels in our party" and "we think we will be popular enough without weakening our vision to bolster electability with some who oppose part of our vision"). 

Both on the left and the right that seems wildly utopian.

I think if the left considered Brexit part of their platform they should have implemented if they won in 2017 or 2019. But I don't think they should have done it just because of the referendum. I find it odd that a lot of contemporary far-leftists (e.g. those on Novara Media) reluctantly came around to Brexit after the referendum (despite still believing it will be bad), but stand by their other positions that were more soundly beaten in recent elections.

1 hour ago, kzb said:

Did you vote Labour in 1983 ?  If you were not old enough, would you have voted Labour given the chance?

I wasn't old enough, but I might well have voted Liberal.

The seat I grew up in was 61% Conservative, 32% Liberal, 6% Labour in 1983!

[pig]

1 hour ago, kzb said:

So if it had been a left-wing Brexit, would that have been OK by you?

And

Did you vote Labour in 1983 ?  If you were not old enough, would you have voted Labour given the chance?

This Brexit is so brainless its not even left or right. Its about as intelligent as beating up a load of women on Clapham Common because populism demands a dominatrix response to political protest.

[kzb]

2 minutes ago, pig said:

This Brexit is so brainless its not even left or right.

Oh come on.  We know what a right on leftist you are. 

Answer the question, would you have voted Labour in 1983?

[yelims]

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/gei/goodsexportsandimportsjanuary2021/
 

so not only did balance of trade swing from 400m euro in favour of uk exports to Ireland to 400m in exports from Ireland to UK (deficit for uk now) for January 2022 compared same months previous year

 

our exports to China are almost same as exports to UK

 

how is that possible that a small EU country able to trade so easily while being an Eu member? Brexiteers insisted that Eu made it harder for companies to trade globally yet it’s quite clear that is not case

 

yet another lie so

 

 

[NoHPCinTheUK]

3 hours ago, yelims said:

I didn’t realise that the Tories have cut the NHS mental health services so much..

 

but let’s entertain your fantasies for a minute, last time UK was at (world) war the threat came from that small channel to south east, I guess should invade north of France again to create a “buffer zone” right?

 

And before that there was a successful invasion... with many of you descending from invaders ... a few centuries earlier also from east.

 

you should get back on your medication and not forget that your country signed up to good Friday agreement under the watch if Americans. I realise brexiteers think nothing of signing international treaties and then try to walk back, but at what stage does your island turn into a North Korea?

What a funny way to engage in a conversation this is. 
Anyway, the answer is that England can only control the waters in the immediate exclusive zones. That’s a fact and the sooner the public realise it the better it is. In this scenario NI is, and will be, a key aspect. 
On top of that let me just spend a couple of words around Brexit and this wet dream about Global Britain, since you have called me a brexiteer. 
 

Global Britain doesn’t simply exist, nor any idea of Empire 2.0 in any form. A global power is only defined as such if it controls maritime routes. In year 2021 England couldn’t make sure ships would easily navigate from India to Liverpool through the Med. It’s the US and the countries along the route deciding if it’s free water or not. The safest market to access without deploying too much navy steel is America. 
I once read about a new hi tech empire, where money and services travel through submarines cables and satellites, with Britain as a champion of the digital revolution. 
Sadly, the UK doesn’t own any of these technologies, the US are the emperor of the invisible economy and they won’t let you eat are they table, you can pay and use their tech of course. Good friendship would serve the purpose. 
 

 

 

[yelims]

1 hour ago, Riedquat said:

Who's the one with the abusive tone towards those with different political views that's usually a sign of someone at a political extreme?

Abusive? I think my tone is quite restrained towards neo nazis as possibly some of them have mental issues 

 

you might not have a problem with fascism but I rather my kids not grow up next to a country following German footsteps of a 100 years ago

[yelims]

3 minutes ago, NoHPCinTheUK said:

What a funny way to engage in a conversation this is. 
Anyway, the answer is that England can only control the waters in the immediate exclusive zones. That’s a fact and the sooner the public realise it the better it is. In this scenario NI is, and will be, a key aspect. 
On top of that let me just spend a couple of words around Brexit and this wet dream about Global Britain, since you have called me a brexiteer. 
 

Global Britain doesn’t simply exist, nor any idea of Empire 2.0 in any form. A global power is only defined as such if it controls maritime routes. In year 2021 England couldn’t make sure ships would easily navigate from India to Liverpool through the Med. It’s the US and the countries along the route deciding if it’s free water or not. The safest market to access without deploying too much navy steel is America. 
I once read about a new hi tech empire, where money and services travel through submarines cables and satellites, with Britain as a champion of the digital revolution. 
Sadly, the UK doesn’t own any of these technologies, the US are the emperor of the invisible economy and they won’t let you eat are they table, you can pay and use their tech of course. Good friendship would serve the purpose. 
 

 

 

I know Brexiteers wanted to go back in time, did you happen to get out of the reTardis in 19th  century on your way to Global Britain sunny uplands?

[Young Turk]

39 minutes ago, kzb said:

Harold Wilson left-wing?

I'm not very knowledgeable about that period, but I thought he was in between the far-left (e.g. Benn, Foot, Corbyn) and the Blairites (Blair, Blown, Milliband, Starmer).

Was the country more left-wing around that time? (More left-wing economic system anyway: nationalised industry, prices and incomes policy, more progressive taxation)

Also, hasn't the voter base of the Labour Party transformed significantly since New Labour?

51 minutes ago, kzb said:

We came closer to having a left wing government with Corbyn than ever before.  Foot was never going to get anywhere it was obvious.  

Doesn't this observation undermine your argument?

It is widely acknowledged that Foot was too left-wing to win a general election. If the far-left of the Labour Party weren't electable, is it likely their views on Europe were widely shared?

55 minutes ago, kzb said:

I don't believe what has changed is some kind of reasoned mental debate about the EU changing direction.  It's far more emotional than that, look at the level of hate on here, nearly 5 years on.  We have left wingers screaming and crying over Brexit, yet only 30-odd years ago the left wingers supported Brexit. 

It's a massive turn-around, the left transitioning from being anti-EU to hysterical Europhilia in only 30-odd years.   I've not seen it explained satisfactorily yet.

There are two separate questions here:

1) Why did voters switch from voting "yes" in 1975 to "leave" in 2016? (Do we have a breakdown by age of the 1975 vote? Is it possible that young, left-wing voters were more likely to vote "no" so the shift is not so dramatic?)

EU Immigration and sovereignty were central issues in 2016 and had been since the 1990s, but weren't on the agenda at all in 1975. It is quite likely that someone voted "yes" as they favoured the economic policy and "leave" because they opposed freedom of movement, and they would have opposed freedom of movement in 1975 and would have still favoured the EU's economic arrangements in 2016 (indeed some Brexit campaigners were insisting the economic arrangements wouldn't be disrupted).

Some people might have changed their views, but that isn't necessary to explain voting a different way on a different question with different circumstances.

2) Why do leftists today tend to have such different views?

The far-left have always been a minority in this country, but they were more prominent in the 1980s than today. So again, I'm not sure it is views of the left changing, but a broader group, containing more moderates.

 

I think a big part of the screaming and crying was the shock and the fairly close result (do we ever see this kind of response when people lose as expected, by a landslide?) Then it was magnified by the Internet (the level of political engagement online is also quite new).

People haven't become hysterical Europhiles. They only emerged in response to the Eurosceptics. There was hardly a pro-European movement in response to the Referendum Party or UKIP. You could accuse them of being hysterical anti-Eurosceptics.

As I said, the best case for remaining was the conservative case that leaving was likely to be bad, so remaining was probably preferable despite its faults. People tried to drum up support as that is the best way to win a vote. But that was posturing. They weren't actually pro-Europeans.