The Brexit Thread

[Retro]

Now that the tide is finally, super belatedly, turning against brexit, I think it's time to start a thread about it. All this deference to brexit that so many showed, including Remainers with influence, like politicians and pundits for all these years was annoying as hell. No wonder brexit happened. Oh and if anyone wants to call it brexshit, they're welcome to.

Everyone's welcome to comment, Remainers / Rejoiners like me, leavers, the unsure and also those from other countries with an opinion about it.

Given brexit's extreme, controversial and emotive nature, I'm relaxing a bit, the usual rules of niceness on NZ for this thread. Therefore, terms such as gammons are allowed and the other way, too. Plus, if you think someone's being a bit of a blockhead about brexit and has got some cognitive dissonance going on perhaps, more robust language can be used if you wish. However, a big no-no is swearing at another member. Such language will be removed and the user advised not to do it again. A small amount of general swearing, as per the usual Forum Rules, is allowed.

I'll kick it off with a few articles and videos about brexit and the growing backlash. Feel free to add your own, along with any comments you'd like to make.

---

Ros Atkins doesn't mince his words about brexit:

Ros Atkins on... Brexit and the UK economy

Rishi Sunak says he wants to build an economy that embraces the opportunities of Brexit.

www.bbc.co.uk

With a bit of luck, with the tide turning, Starmer will stop spouting the infuriating "make brexit work", changing it to "let's reverse brexit", "rejoin the EU", or similar. Notice how they're all three word slogans which seems to be the requirement for getting an idea across these days.

Brexit: Rejoining EU takes record 14-point lead in latest poll

Economic problems driving support for reversing Brexit ‘mistake’

uk.news.yahoo.com

Phil Moorhouse of A Different Bias gives his informed analysis and opinion in these videos, newest at the top. He's made 100s of these and releases a couple per day, so it's worth keeping up with them.

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[Arantor]

Starmer is in a bit of a bind about it though. He kinda screwed up Labour’s position with the “second referendum” stuff, and at this point in time recognises that there’s still enough Leavers that he needs to get on side even amongst the traditional Labour supporters. One does not ignore potentially half the electorate if one wishes to win.

I think he’s sitting back hoping that it will become so bad that even the more ardent Leavers start calls for a partial rejoin (customs union and single market) at which point he can push forward on it.

Not only does that suck in the meantime, it also reinforces how little power the Opposition really has here. Especially now that Sunak is in and the Tories are bouncing back a bit in the polls.

 

[Retro]

Some hero Remainer posted this on Facebook:

 

[Tiffany]

I can't participate much because I'm not all up to date on Brexit, for and against, but I can certainly pose a question or two?

For example, Brexit came to be because the UK wanted to separate from the European Union, if I've go that much right? Is the main issue that the UK is stronger remaining in the Union and Brexit kind of broke the UK? You can correct me if I have all of that wrong. Just an American's most basic understanding.

 

[Retro]

You got the gist of it, Tiffs. I'm sure there's a decent Wikipedia explanation of it somewhere though. Essentially, it was a massive con job on the British public, with lying and cheating on a scale I've never seen before. Horrible stuff.

 

[Arantor]

Oh where to start, where to start.

OK, so at a very simplistic level - and it is a massively simplistic level - you can think of the EU as a loose coalition of countries, a bit more loose than the US of A is. The EU is federal level, each country is a state. Each country has its own laws and rules, but it has common ones aligned with the whole system. The currency situation is a bit more complicated, as is the travel situation but it's *mostly* the case that until Brexit you could go travel, live and work anywhere in the system. (We won't get into the drama that is the Schengen area vs the Common Travel Area, it's not relevant.)

The UK leaving after 40-odd years of being a member is like if, I dunno, New Jersey decided it didn't want to be in the union any more. It's not the largest contributor economically to the system, but it's sure as heck not the smallest - the UK is still notionally in the largest economies of the world, somehow.

On the one hand you have the sovereignty argument: that the UK doesn't have total control over its own rules, that by being part of the EU it has to accept some rules from the EU. Sure, it does, but as a member of the EU, it had the ability to vote for or against rules too. The approximate equivalent is NJ saying 'you know what, I don't want your federal rules, I want to make my own rules for *my* benefit'. And on paper, sure, that makes sense, you don't want to be bound by laws you don't have control over - but being in the EU meant we had some control. And... guess what, if you're going to *sell* to the EU, you still have to follow the EU's rules on the relevant goods and services; no EU company is going to accept services from a UK company over an EU one if the UK isn't following GDPR (because at some point we're getting rid), for example.

And part of the propaganda machine was to talk about rules that were deliberately made to seem obtuse for the sake of 'undermining Britishness'. e.g. before the EU, Britain had a dark blue passport. When we joined the system, we adopted the burgundy colour along with most of the EU, and this was an injustice that we couldn't have our blue passports. There was, of course, nothing to say we couldn't - merely we just went with the default because why not? If it had been a serious matter, we could at any time have had a blue passport, except it was only weaponised by the Brexiteers.

Then of course there was the matter of the crown marking. The crown marking is on a pint glass to indicate that it is a proper pint glass, capable of holding 568ml of liquid. The glasses also have a CE mark to comply with some other EU legislation. Apparently the CE mark means we couldn't have a crown logo and something something sovereignty. Of course, if one bothered to read the actual legislation, it would be very clear that this interpretation is utter nonsense, but it *sounds good* for the Brexiteers and agitators.

Then there are the complaints about immigration; if you have freedom to travel all over the EU to live and work as you see fit, coming to the UK means more people using the same resources that are shared with everyone. Apparently this includes benefits, because apparently those coming from the EU don't pay tax or something. There is precisely zero history of legal economic migrants being net positive for the economy.

There is also the latent racism; "Britain for the British", whatever the heck that's supposed to mean. I think it means all the people who are suitably white and uncultured swines who care not beyond our borders because there's only foreigners over there. (I am not a fan)

So, that's ultimately the deal: take back control (so we can have blue passports etc.), we get to curb immigration (except we're letting in more non-EU people than before because shockingly, the EU people aren't coming here and we have labour vacancies), and our net exports are way way down (because the EU did what the EU was always going to do and put up the trade barriers because we're not part of the club).

The question must be asked why anyone would willingly want to close off our neighbours and largest market. Well, Britain is no longer run for the benefit of the populace; it is run for the benefit of the very wealthy. From the vote onwards, our currency has devalued, and several events have occurred that specifically dropped its value - these, if you can have some idea when they're coming, are ideal for profiteering by short-selling. Especially if you know that there will be recovery not long after that you can also profit from.

And of course, if you happen to be a business owner, being able to get rid of the EU rules means you can cut back on safety standards, workers' rights, etc. etc. - it becomes much easier to exploit the workforce and drive down your costs in the name of pure naked profit.

That, and the fact the EU was about to push a whole raft of laws about off-shore tax havens that would have been quite inconvenient for some of the more... vocal and extremely wealthy backers, like Britain's richest man who doesn't even live here because tax.

As for ongoing consequences, Scotland and Northern Ireland both voted very strongly to stay; they feel that they are not being listened to, so Scotland is agitating to leave and rejoin the EU under its own steam, and Ireland may well figure out unification (which is ultimately a problem caused by British occupation and not relinquishing it completely at once) just to be rid of us.

The "Conservative and Unionist Party" is not holding up well right now; its views and values on display are neither conservative (fiscally, morally, practically) nor unionist.

 

[Retro]

There were a helluva lot more than five, you can be sure of that.

Five EU laws that we can agree were good for us

Many people still feel passionately about the benefits of EU membership

yorkshirebylines.co.uk

 

[Arantor]

You know what’s really tragic and weirdly ironic? For all the banging on about illegal immigrants, we had fewer of then due to shared deportation laws with the EU about sending people back to other countries. This immigration “invasion” rhetoric (which is terrifying in its implications) is caused in no small part *by* their unbridled ambitions!

 

[Retro]

It's true, I remember this being one of the warnings by the Remain side which were dismissed as "project fear" by Farage and his cronies. And now, we were proved right once again. Tragic for sure that brexit wasn't strangled at birth.

 

[Tiffany]

This is the first time I get the Brexit vs. Remain in the EU debate, thanks to this discussion thread. When you all explain it (eg. the economy, trading, regulation, employment abuses, currency devaluation, the passport book color change, immigration, job wages, labour vacancies, party racism). I now understand how destabilizing this has been for the UK people, especially since the UK has been part of the EU for forty years. I also didn't realize that the UK has been part of the EU that long. Ireland, I was somewhat familiar with, because there was a time pre-pandemic, we had considered Ireland and I had taken some time to understand Ireland's history and the cause of their divide, which came up as I was researching passports and where you could or could not go, based on your passport and where you live and of course the Schengen passport system, (referred to has the Golden passport here in the US) which that is another topic as you mentioned.

 

[Crims]

Either someone is refreshing this page or we're getting a lot of hits via search queries.

 

[Crims]

The question must be asked why anyone would willingly want to close off our neighbours and largest market. Well, Britain is no longer run for the benefit of the populace; it is run for the benefit of the very wealthy. From the vote onwards, our currency has devalued, and several events have occurred that specifically dropped its value - these, if you can have some idea when they're coming, are ideal for profiteering by short-selling. Especially if you know that there will be recovery not long after that you can also profit from.

I've met a lot of Brexit voters, all of which seem to despise the Tory party.
I have a hunch that it's because I'm not in main areas of London that I have a lot more communication with midlands, though I think that the main reason for the vote is discontentment with the political class. Years of austerity creates a vacuum of where the wealth goes, which is to Tory areas, and main cities and almost nothing to the less populated areas. The EU for example, is the one that actually funded most of Scotland's infrastructure. It's not because of Brexit that it's going to the very wealthy, it's because of the very wealthy that the people chose to do Brexit. Call it unwise, sure.

 

[Retro]

Given that this is the definitive thread on brexit on the whole web, it's gone viral.

 

[Arantor]

Part of the problem is that the Tory party is fundamentally split down the middle between the conventional conservatives and the neo-liberal hardliners who both think of themselves as Tories, just they're extreme ends of the Tories.

Consider that what was UKIP folded itself quietly back into the Tory party once Brexit was 'done'.

 

[Crims]

Part of the problem is that the Tory party is fundamentally split down the middle between the conventional conservatives and the neo-liberal hardliners who both think of themselves as Tories, just they're extreme ends of the Tories.

Consider that what was UKIP folded itself quietly back into the Tory party once Brexit was 'done'.

I agree. It's just austerity for austerities sake. I did have the thought earlier about how they've pretty effectively used divide and conquer on voters either way.

 

[Tiffany]

I agree. It's just austerity for austerities sake. I did have the thought earlier about how they've pretty effectively used divide and conquer on voters either way.

American voters are manipulated the same way.

 

[Crims]

American voters are manipulated the same way.

Yep. The thought occurred to me when we had two main parties that retroactively tried to brand a neutral vote.

 

[Tiffany]

Yep. The thought occurred to me when we had two main parties that retroactively tried to brand a neutral vote.

In America, the republican politicians that waffle in the middle of their party, trying to be neutral but usually going against their own parties dogma are known as rhino's. The democrats are represented by a donkey and the republican's (GOP- Good old party) are represented by an elephant. Don't even know how that got started? Both parties have serious problems with the people.

 

[Crims]

Short poll: how many people believe that brexiteers are a cult ideology? Keeping the thread alive for posterity, as there's a resurgence in brexit news. Age bracketing seems the focus.

 

[Retro]

Cult, totally. And driven by Russia to divide and weaken the West.

 

[Arantor]

And if you watch the events of today and the Scotland situation, it’s even more telling that they don’t see the hypocrisy.

 

[Arantor]

One must admire Suella Braverman's commitment to her current role. Faced with an MP asking a very awkward question, she commits to not answering it, knowing that the truth would be... eviscerating.

The question posed, essentially... "if I were a 16-year-old fleeing from a war-torn country, with family in the UK, what is the legal route I can take to get here" and her answer was, basically silence to avoid saying "we made it so there isn't one so they're all illegal".

 

[Tiffany]

They can come to America, everyone gets in, no questions asked. No ID... no problem, not vaccinated (any) ...no problem, no money...no problem, need medical attention....no problem.... no borders right now. Yes, I'm not happy about what's happening at our border, because it is a serious problem.

 

[Crims]

One must admire Suella Braverman's commitment to her current role. Faced with an MP asking a very awkward question, she commits to not answering it, knowing that the truth would be... eviscerating.

I concur.
Would love to see some comparisons of how we're failing compared to the rest of Europe.

 

[Retro]

Crims, check out this video from A Different Bias.

He does two videos a day like this and it's well worth subscribing.

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