Brexit
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- Bluejam1
"David Davis, the Brexit secretary, has been threatened with legal action over his refusal to publish 50 secret studies commissioned on the impact of Brexit."
- hans_glib1
Here's an interesting op-ed piece from the times today:
Politics is stuck in a hall of mirrors, where nothing is quite as it seems and nobody means exactly what they say. Theresa May is presiding over Brexit, a policy that she opposed in last year’s referendum campaign on the grounds that it would make the country poorer and less safe. Even now the prime minister cannot say whether she believes it is right for the UK to leave the EU but she is taking the country out anyway.
Damian Green, the first secretary, goes so far as to say that he would vote Remain again if there were another ballot tomorrow, yet he is de facto deputy of a government committed to breaking with the rest of Europe in a harder than necessary fashion. Philip Hammond faces calls for his sacking from Brexiteers who accuse him of being too pessimistic — but still the chancellor has endorsed a departure from the single market and the customs union that the Treasury fears will do devastating economic damage. The home secretary is sitting in a cabinet that has approved a plan which only a few months ago she was arguing could make the country more vulnerable to terrorist attack. Another cabinet member wishes the transition period would last for “50 years”.
Across Whitehall, ministers are holding their red boxes with one hand, and their noses with the other, as they see the biggest change of their lifetime unfolding on their watch, even though this is a revolution they do not believe in. No wonder the government seems so anxious and uncomfortable. “We are trapped in a box,” admits one minister. “Parliament feels frozen by the referendum but people voted for a fantasy we can’t deliver. They can only have Brexit if they’re prepared to suffer the pain.” It is an extraordinary situation. In the past, ministers have resigned from the government in principle over much less. This is not so much a constitutional mess as an ethical one, with ambiguity on all sides.
Those who have seen Mrs May privately in recent weeks describe her as stricken and stunned. On one occasion she sat in silence for almost ten minutes while the visitor she had invited to see her waited for her to lead the conversation. He left the meeting deciding she no longer wanted to be prime minister. The internal contradiction of her position must be taking an emotional as well as a political toll. According to reports in the German press, she appeared “tormented” at her dinner with Jean-Claude Juncker last week.
There is an institutional as well as a personal incongruity in Whitehall, with most senior civil servants opposed to Brexit. Even in the Department for Exiting the EU many officials believe they are masterminding a policy against the national interest. In the Commons, MPs voted for Article 50 which started a process towards an outcome a majority of them want to prevent.
Anna Soubry, the pro-European MP who resigned from the government last year, admits she is relieved at no longer being a minister. “I don’t believe the majority of people in the government want the hard Brexit they’re now pursuing,” she says.
The Brexiteers will claim this is the dreaded “elites” closing ranks against “the people” but there is of course a clash between the representative democracy of parliament and the direct democracy of a referendum. In any case, it’s not only the former Remainers who are internally torn between political expediency and economic reality. Michael Gove and Boris Johnson both campaigned for Brexit but now seem uncertain about what it should mean. They wanted to shake things up but never expected to win. Like the robbers in The Italian Job, they were “only supposed to blow the bloody doors off”.
Although friends say the foreign secretary now has the “zeal of the convert” about leaving the EU, he has always been in favour of immigration. He is also nervous about the short-term impact of Brexit. He once told me that the economy would follow the path of a Nike tick if we voted to leave, going down before soaring up. He knows that those in the poorest parts of the country who voted for Brexit to improve their lives can ill afford even this short-term dip and there is no sign of the £350 million a week he promised for the NHS. Mr Johnson’s effervescent optimism has the feel of Peter Pan telling the children to clap to keep Tinker Bell alive.
David Davis and Liam Fox may be true believers but even their dreams are slowly adjusting to the reality of Brussels negotiations. The Tory party is so dysfunctional that the Conservative voice on Radio 4’s The World At One yesterday was Suella Fernandes, who happily laid into the Confederation of British Industry as leader of the European Research Group of Tory Brexit-supporting MPs, although she is also parliamentary private secretary to Mr Hammond, who presumably takes a rather different view about Britain’s leading businesses. In the hall of mirrors, images ricochet around and identities become confused.
Labour is in its own gallery of glass. Jeremy Corbyn, an instinctive radical who has for years seen the EU as part of a capitalist conspiracy, now looks in the mirror to see himself attempting to preserve the status quo for a transitional period at least. John McDonnell has floated the idea of staying in a reformed single market, even though the left has always resisted the controls on state aid that belonging can bring. Meanwhile the Labour moderates sit meekly by while their leader takes the party in a direction with which they totally disagree. One MP told me that Mr Corbyn’s leadership was a “moral” question for him. He was so opposed to his policies on defence, national security and public spending that he did not want him to become prime minister. Yet he and many others remain on the Labour benches because they hope one day to reclaim their party.
None of this is black and white. It would be easy to accuse the Remain-supporting cabinet ministers, or the Labour moderates, of hypocrisy, but that would be a cheap hit. In both cases, decent people believe they must respect a democratic mandate, whether that is the Brexit referendum or the Labour leadership election. They are staying in their positions because they hope to make what they see as a bad situation better. Yet the profound lack of trust in politics will only be exacerbated by the perception that so many politicians are doing the opposite of what they believe.
The voters demand honesty and authenticity, yet the reality at Westminster is dissembling and ambiguity. There will be more than seven years’ bad luck when this hall of mirrors comes crashing down.
- tl:dr: it's a fucking mess and no mistakehans_glib
- fubarBluejam
- A total shitstorm. And that fucking Murdoch rag helped deliver it. It's that bad even they are renouncing it. Surreal.fadein11
- Even the BBC admits the EU has no legal position asking for any kind of payment and that this is a bargaining chip. immigration is only required because the...trooperbill
- ...welfare state is a huge ponzi scheme and as the population grows the pension payments keep growing. its mainly the bankers and city of london that are...trooperbill
- ...concerned with trade as the smoke and mirrors paper trading of fictitious money is whats keeping the country afloat at the mo. hence mays tax haven suggestiotrooperbill
- We don't pay = shit or no deal. Legalities are irrelevant unfort.fadein11
- and we could have controlled immigration without leaving, most EU immigrants are not long term. Are you getting confused with other forms of immigration?fadein11
- Slight edit to my original comment - The Murdoch Times did come out Remain in the end... A move put down to him hedging his bets, i.e. right either way.fadein11
- About that payment. The UK and all other member states agreed a budget in 2013 for investment projects. Some are underway, others are not yet.monoboy
- These are spending commitments. Agreed, singed off and put into planning. To not pay would renege on promises made to our biggest trading partners.monoboy
- Who would then have to make up the shortfall, leading to higher bills, cancelled projects and most likely further austerity.monoboy
- It is not a divorce bill. Nor a punishment payment. But an obligation. To those we call our friends.monoboy
- Ironically, some of these investment projects would be in the UK.monoboy
- The UK media are spreading misinformation at the behest of vested interests. Tax dodging billionaires who no longer want to pay a penny for social democracy.monoboy
- Fax_Benson0
- "or do you know anyone who has" = make it up if you have to.Fax_Benson
- "I once said no to a croissant in Starbucks and the waitress rolled her eyes and said 'you'd probably prefer and eccles cake instead'." Dirty bastards.monoboy
- ^ seriously? I'd make a complaint.mugwart
- Me too, they should actually sell Eccles cakes in Starbucks.detritus
- fadein110
Grimsby seeks “Brexit exemption” for port industry despite voting 70% OUT
Lol
- https://i2.wp.com/cd…Bluejam
- i for one am looking forward to cheaper fish now those pesky forrinners won't be able to hoover it all uphans_glib
- lol bluejamfadein11
- 70% OUT = all of it apart from fishing. Simple.Fax_Benson
- A v.small minority of leave voters actually thought things through before doing what their shit newspaper told them to.fadein11
- Fax_Benson0
Excellent podcast with John Gray.
Really good on the myths of Corbynism and Brexit and everything else.
The other episodes are worth checking out - always interesting.
- detritus1
UK Cities apparently astonished to learn they won't be eligible to apply for the European City of Culture in 2023... 4 years after we'll have left the EU.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entert…
Really? I mean, REALLY?
"It's particularly extraordinary especially as the bids have just gone in. ... And to wait until all the work had gone in and turn around and say, 'You can't do this' - it's shoddy treatment of Leeds and the other cities have worked so hard."
- Genuine tantrumsFax_Benson
- haha. the rise of the idiots.fadein11
- With 60 years of misery ahead they'll have plenty of other shit to worry about.PhanLo
- tbf the belfast/derry bid is being used to set precedent for NI special status with EU and Irish gov so not totally pointless.kingsteven
- as if belfast/derry city of culture bid has an bearing on current negotiations.fadein11
- it'll have a small effect on a local level... mostly pointless, just not totally.kingsteven
- lowimpakt0
this morning Labour's Kate Hoey said that Ireland will have to pay for a post-brexit border.
Trumpian scale of stupidity from the brexit camp again.
- Having failed to come up with a solution, brexiteers are now saying that it's a problem invented by the Irish in an attempt to push NI towards reunificationFax_Benson
- it's amazing how little about Ireland's ability to block brexit negotiations has been reported in the UK press up until this point.kingsteven
- I'm not sure reunification is the intention of the majority of Irish TDs - people here understand the gravitas of a unification referendum...kingsteven
- Also, worth pointing out that Kate Hoey is from Belfast? Misguided, but TBF she's one of the only ones in that camp talking about the Irish govt. role.kingsteven
- There's definitely a vibe here that we'll have a wild west vibe up here post Brexit... give that a couple of years - then referendum ;-)kingsteven
- Bluejam0
"A Downing Street source said: “We now have at least six months of stories about wedding bullshit while we continue to fuck everything into a cocked hat."
- sad but truehans_glib
- All they need is a Royal death and they are sorted for another year on top of that. Just in time for Brexit to finally hit.face_melter
- She's a photographer's dream. How does she pull those faces ? Merkel has had the same quietly furious expression in every photo for a decadeFax_Benson
- ^ seen the guy above Fax!
Jokes aside its just this strange English upperclass. I call it the cunt genemugwart
- PhanLo0
Peter Howson - 'What cost Brexit' - 2017
- kingsteven1
Here we go lads...
What should have signalled the end of brexit, instead signals the the end of terrorist ceasefires and the start of Irish unification...
It was so inevitable yet the DUP will go bananas, there would have been no brexit without them, no Theresa May government without them and this is against the core of their agreement! At a time when May has already halved her support within the Brexit camp, they've just stuck the boot in their main political ally! Amazing really.
Hahah... I'm off to buy guns and research customs scams :-D
- One Tory MP said today that the Ireland issue was no big deal. Should be fine. Like Brexit, all good.PhanLo
- if NI don't have to do brexit, we'll just have to do extraFax_Benson
- Amazing. This is the result of the govt. advertising for prof. negotiators and no-one applying because the pay was absolute fucking peanuts.face_melter
- Now we have bubbleheaded MP's with nationalistic agendas and no trade experience laying a foundation of shit for generations to come.face_melter
- but we got our sovereignty back and our borders are secure... ugh.fadein11
- Love or hate him we are likely getting a Corbyn govt in the near future. 40% of our GDP will disappear with nothing to fall back on.fadein11
- Living in the EU, I face the (albeit remote) possibility of being shafted hard, without the dinner and small talk beforehand.face_melter
- I'll should be ok, with almost 10 years of residency and full-time employment but my UK passport is practically useless now. Fuck these silly cunts.face_melter
- the fact that there isn't a viable alternative to this shit is the most depressing thing about it.Fax_Benson
- have a few friends in similar situation. hope it works out.fadein11
- Bluejam0
"It is understood the 53-year-old former Ukip leader will be entitled to an annual pension of £73,000 when he reaches the age of 63.The pension could be part-funded by Britain’s estimated £50bn Brexit “divorce bill”, which Farage has criticised as too large ..."
https://www.theguardian.com/poli…
what. a. cunt.
- oh dearfadein11
- I hope this spineless, utterly self-serving hypocrite gets his face smashed in before this is all over.detritus
- Repeatedly.detritus
- Again and again.detritus
- Forever.detritus
- you would have thought after that helicopter crash, he might have had an epiphany and do good in the world.Bluejam
- nope.
just turned up the cunt levels to 11.Bluejam - I'm genuiely surprised neither this guy nor Boris have been jumped. Trouble is, the metropolitan elite are all flop-wristed nancies...detritus
- Johnson is a big unit. He'd have some serious malcoordinated heft. Like trying to duff up a large chesterfield on wheels.Fax_Benson
- lol @ comments.fadein11
- He's going to end up gail with Bannon. Mark my words. I hope they both get a cell with a battle hardened jihadist with a penchant for bumming old rich dudes.monoboy
- Because that would be terrible.monoboy
- lol monofadein11
- lowimpakt0
wales and scotland now looking for a special deal if Northern Ireland gets one.
- Then London, then half of Grimsby..detritus
- at this rate nearly half the country will be wanting to stay.Fax_Benson
- lmaokingsteven
- Cornwall is about to be severed from the mainland UK left to float off towards it's own personal post Brexit utopia.fadein11
- Cornwall is the best/worst example of this idiotic scenario.fadein11
