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Brexit Discussion Thread number 3

Started by Dr Rock, July 22, 2018, 10:47:12 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

gib

haha look at their teeth and terrible spelling, good grief


biggytitbo

Good interview with Larry Elliot here (yes Spiked, but Larry Elliot has a pretty good record on economic matters imo) - https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/10/19/the-establishment-is-trying-to-keep-us-in-the-eu/

Some key points -

QuoteThe big opportunity is just to do things differently. Big economic shocks give you the space and the ability to say, hang on, the status quo is no longer a valid option, we want to do something different. That's the overarching thing.

There are also a number of freedoms that you get from being outside the EU. You get to have your own trade policy, you have much more freedom in terms of industrial strategy, you're not bound by EU rules that might hinder you from renationalising chunks of industry.

To me, the economy is really run in the interests of one particular region. The geography of Europe means that London and the south-east are plugged into the central European core of the EU and the rest of the country is a different planet. I want to rebalance the economy away from the Remain-voting areas to the Leave-voting areas. I think that's what those areas were really demanding when they voted to leave.

QuoteThere are an awful lot of people on the left who see their task in life now as being to turn Britain back to how it was on the day before the referendum. But if you'd gone back there and talked to people on the left and asked them, 'Do you think David Cameron and George Osborne's Britain is really working?', they would have said: 'No, no, no! There's a balance of payments deficit, a north-south divide and rising inequality...'

QuoteTo be honest, I'd rather have a clean Brexit than what currently seems to be on offer: staying in the EU in all but name, with no say over how things are run. That's the sort of outcome that May is aiming for. That seems to be how the British establishment has sorted out the 'Brexit problem'. Having put a lot of pressure on people to vote a certain way and being disappointed, it is now trying to find a backdoor way to keep Britain essentially in the EU – or so closely aligned that people will eventually say, 'we might as well be in'.

If the Remainers get their way, the votes of all those people will be proved to be completely worthless, and nothing will really change. The people who run this country don't give two hoots about people in Stoke-on-Trent and Hartlepool and all those places that voted heavily for Leave. But if the vote is reversed, what sort of backlash are we going to get in four or five years' time? I think we could see a really aggressive form of right-wing politics. There is going to be a massive alienation in those parts of Britain, who will feel, rightly, let down.

Elliot is making a point here that's not mentioned nearly enough, and that's the utter black hole at the heart of the remain manifesto. They literally have nothing to say about any of the deep seated fundamental issues that caused brexit, what to do about them, or what to do about the manifest problems with the EU. They are totally bankrupt and only have one policy, getting us back by any means to the status quo, a status quo from which they benefited but half the country got fucked over. It's all well and good constantly going on about how some high profile brexiters have 'no plan', but they have absolutely nothing to offer the 52% who voted to leave themselves. The fucking cheek of the "people's vote" lot, who genuinely couldn't give a shit what 'the people' vote for, or what they think, they just want us back in the EU and back to the world in which they were doing great thanks and those other, terrible unpeople can fuck off back into their place.


doppelkorn

We're still in the EU. What's happening now is a cack handed attempt to legally disentangle us from it.

It's proving more difficult than many imagined it would. Why do you think that is?

Paul Calf

That really is a steaming pile of bollocks, biggy.

Quoteyou're not bound by EU rules that might hinder you from renationalising chunks of industry.

We know that this is based on - let's be charitable - a misreading of the situation as it is. I'm not even going to go into the specifics because they're well-rehearsed on here.

QuoteTo me, the economy is really run in the interests of one particular region. The geography of Europe means that London and the south-east are plugged into the central European core of the EU and the rest of the country is a different planet. I want to rebalance the economy away from the Remain-voting areas to the Leave-voting areas. I think that's what those areas were really demanding when they voted to leave.

It's not really clear how leaving the EU is going to help, or how being in the EU prevented us from doing this.

QuoteThere are an awful lot of people on the left who see their task in life now as being to turn Britain back to how it was on the day before the referendum. But if you'd gone back there and talked to people on the left and asked them, 'Do you think David Cameron and George Osborne's Britain is really working?', they would have said: 'No, no, no! There's a balance of payments deficit, a north-south divide and rising inequality...'

Are they the only options? Britain out of the EU or Britain wound back to 2016?

QuoteIf the Remainers get their way, the votes of all those people will be proved to be completely worthless, and nothing will really change.

If the Labour party get their way, all the votes of those people who voted for the Conservatives in 2017 will be worthless.

If public opinion has changed, shouldn't we measure that and proceed accordingly?

Fambo Number Mive

QuoteThere are an awful lot of people on the left who see their task in life now as being to turn Britain back to how it was on the day before the referendum. But if you'd gone back there and talked to people on the left and asked them, 'Do you think David Cameron and George Osborne's Britain is really working?', they would have said: 'No, no, no! There's a balance of payments deficit, a north-south divide and rising inequality...'

These people still don't think that the Britain pre the EU vote was working. It's not like the only two options are leave the EU or have a Cameron and Osborne style UK. They want to change the UK from Tory Britain and want to stay in the EU.

QuoteTo me, the economy is really run in the interests of one particular region. The geography of Europe means that London and the south-east are plugged into the central European core of the EU and the rest of the country is a different planet. I want to rebalance the economy away from the Remain-voting areas to the Leave-voting areas. I think that's what those areas were really demanding when they voted to leave.

And will this change when we leave the EU? The Tories don't care about the North. They could have rebalanced the economy away from Remain-voting areas if they want (although I think that would be a terrible way of choosing how to rebalance the economy). For example, they could have built HS3 a lot earlier and not farted about with HS2, moved more public sector roles out of London, improved local public transport, done something about Northern Rail, built HS4 from Wales to Dublin under the sea, got rid of austerity.

biggytitbo

Quote from: doppelkorn on October 19, 2018, 08:56:35 AM
We're still in the EU. What's happening now is a cack handed attempt to legally disentangle us from it.

It's proving more difficult than many imagined it would. Why do you think that is?


It's by design, to 'protect the integrity of the EU'. Everything about the EU is designed to be as irreversible as possible, so those pesky ballot boxes never interfere too much.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Paul Calf on October 19, 2018, 08:58:20 AM
That really is a steaming pile of bollocks, biggy.

We know that this is based on - let's be charitable - a misreading of the situation as it is. I'm not even going to go into the specifics because they're well-rehearsed on here.

It's not really clear how leaving the EU is going to help, or how being in the EU prevented us from doing this.

This depends on whether you believe the powers that run the uk and the powers that run the EU aren't fundamentally the same, with the same aligned set of goals and same worldview. It's quite clear now its not us and them, its us and them and them, the EU is an empowering mechanism for the worst neoliberal forces in the UK, not some kind of check on them as the mythology of the centre left would have it.

QuoteIf public opinion has changed, shouldn't we measure that and proceed accordingly?

I think you need to get past the notion that this is anything to do with public opinion or indeed they remotely care what we think. Public opinion only mattered this time due to a total freak set of occurrences. That's why the 'peoples vote' is one of the most contemptuously, chillingly Orwellian named things in modern political history. Right now its all now about the corporate power structure and political establishment (both indivisible from the EU itself) instigating this massive psyop of traumatising the british people into getting back in their box, doing as their told and reversing their votes, because they got it so dangerously wrong the first time.

You also need to move beyond this obsession with a small faction in british politics who do not hold real power - the likes of Reese Mogg and Gove, who represent some backward notion of a rose tinted 1950s Britain. They are just chancers using the opportunity of the status quo getting shattered by brexit to push for their minority agenda. They just don't have any kind of popular support to get anywhere, whereas the faction of British politics represented by Corbyn is now more aligned with the general public than any other party. It's their opportunity to take.


Cuellar

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 19, 2018, 08:44:00 AM
Elliot is making a point here that's not mentioned nearly enough, and that's the utter black hole at the heart of the remain manifesto. They literally have nothing to say about any of the deep seated fundamental issues that caused brexit, what to do about them, or what to do about the manifest problems with the EU.

Because the issues that caused Brexit had very little to do with the EU and more to do with Tories and austerity.

Do you want to go back to Cameron and Osborne? Well no, but they weren't forced on us by the EU. We didn't get Tory government after Tory government because we were in the EU. Seems a remarkably irrelevant point.

Alberon

Say that it's true that completing Brexit stops the rise of the far right in Britain for now.

A few years down the line the public are going to see that nothing has changed apart from the economic hit of Brexit and the weaker position we're in when it comes to trade deals. Then this right wing threat, if it exists, will re-emerge.

Brexit in of itself will do nothing to reverse the north south divide.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Cuellar on October 19, 2018, 09:22:16 AM
Because the issues that caused Brexit had very little to do with the EU and more to do with Tories and austerity.


Wrong, austerity is written into the EU's DNA, as is the Tories neoliberal fanaticism, the most fanatical EU supporters are the architects of austerity, Cameron, Osborne, Hammond et al. The current EU is Thatcherism, instituted in treaty.

Cuellar

So what Corbyn policies wouldn't he be allowed to implement if we were in the EU?

Paul Calf

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 19, 2018, 09:21:44 AM
This depends on whether you believe the powers that run the uk and the powers that run the EU aren't fundamentally the same, with the same aligned set of goals and same worldview. It's quite clear now its not us and them, its us and them and them, the EU is an empowering mechanism for the worst neoliberal forces in the UK, not some kind of check on them as the mythology of the centre left would have it.

I think you need to get past the notion that this is anything to do with public opinion or indeed they remotely care what we think. Public opinion only mattered this time due to a total freak set of occurrences. That's why the 'peoples vote' is one of the most contemptuously, chillingly Orwellian named things in modern political history. Right now its all now about the corporate power structure and political establishment (both indivisible from the EU itself) instigating this massive psyop of traumatising the british people into getting back in their box, doing as their told and reversing their votes, because they got it so dangerously wrong the first time.

You also need to move beyond this obsession with a small faction in british politics who do not hold real power - the likes of Reese Mogg and Gove, who represent some backward notion of a rose tinted 1950s Britain. They are just chancers using the opportunity of the status quo getting shattered by brexit to push for their minority agenda. They just don't have any kind of popular support to get anywhere, whereas the faction of British politics represented by Corbyn is now more aligned with the general public than any other party. It's their opportunity to take.



Ok. You lost the point so now you're squashing the ping-pong balls.

You always do this, every time you're challenged on a specific point and have no answer. You panic and treat the person who's engaged you as though they're 8 years old and have never heard of the EU.

I'd like you to acknowledge that this is what you've done, but that would require basic self-awareness.

Paul Calf

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 19, 2018, 08:44:00 AM
The fucking cheek of the "people's vote" lot, who genuinely couldn't give a shit what 'the people' vote for, or what they think, they just want us back in the EU and back to the world in which they were doing great thanks and those other, terrible unpeople can fuck off back into their place.



You're aware we had a 'people's vote' in 1973?

jobotic

"a small faction that hold no real powe". Oh do fuck off. This is the faction you have been arguing on behalf of all along so don't try that "what, little old us?" crap.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Paul Calf on October 19, 2018, 09:33:27 AM
You're aware we had a 'people's vote' in 1973?


1975. On a false prospectus.

Cuellar


Paul Calf

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 19, 2018, 09:44:49 AM

1975. On a false prospectus.

Oh, so you do know.

How was it a 'false prospectus'?

Alberon

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 19, 2018, 09:44:49 AM

1975. On a false prospectus.

"We send the EU £350 million a week. Let's fund our NHS instead"

Quote from: Alberon on October 19, 2018, 09:23:07 AM
Say that it's true that completing Brexit stops the rise of the far right in Britain for now.

A few years down the line the public are going to see that nothing has changed apart from the economic hit of Brexit and the weaker position we're in when it comes to trade deals. Then this right wing threat, if it exists, will re-emerge.

Brexit in of itself will do nothing to reverse the north south divide.

Basically.

Tommy Robinson's appearance on Newsnight was not an accident. Anjem Choudary's release from prison being the top story this morning is not an accident.

The groundwork for the next populist shit-fit is being laid before our very eyes. Why fix the north-south divide when we can throw them another "other" to lash out at?

biggytitbo

Quote from: Cuellar on October 19, 2018, 09:28:01 AM
So what Corbyn policies wouldn't he be allowed to implement if we were in the EU?


The direction (irreversible) of the EU is towards 'market liberalisation', its written into multiple clauses in their various diktats. This argument that there's nothing stopping us from nationalising x,y and z misses this point, there's nothing specifically prohibiting it, at least yet, but these areas should also have to be open up to third party and private companies too. The fierce opposition by corporate power and their political cronies to a radical Corbyn manifesto would therefore have a staunch ally in the EU, who would be constantly using their various market liberalisation rules to thwart his nationalisation and economic agenda. It is what will happen, and only the clean break of getting out altogether can prevent it.

MojoJojo

I like how you state stuff as if it's fact without anything to back it up.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Alberon on October 19, 2018, 09:51:46 AM
"We send the EU £350 million a week. Let's fund our NHS instead"

One bus, not even amongst the main reasons anyone voted, vs a booklet urging us to remain sent to every household in the country, instant economic armageddon, mass unemployment, an emergency austerity budget, and every household £4000 worse off. All blatant lies for which the remain camp have never been held to account.

biggytitbo

Quote from: MojoJojo on October 19, 2018, 09:58:32 AM
I like how you state stuff as if it's fact without anything to back it up.

The corporate and financial powers and the neoliberal centrist political and media establishment that run Britain are in total lockstep with the EU and will use it as a tool to defeat Corbyn at every opportunity if the voters dare get him into power.

Agree or disagree?



Dr Rock

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 19, 2018, 09:58:53 AM

One bus, not even amongst the main reasons anyone voted

Rees-Mogg on the TV yesterday regarding a longer transition period: 'We have a pot of money we can either give to the EU or spend on making Universal Credit work properly.' Same bogus choice being used, must think it works on some people.

doppelkorn

Unbelievably poor from you today, biggy.

When the complexity of an issue overwhelms you, it's easier to say that some bad men are planning it all in a room.

Fambo Number Mive

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 19, 2018, 10:03:10 AM
The corporate and financial powers and the neoliberal centrist political and media establishment that run Britain are in total lockstep with the EU and will use it as a tool to defeat Corbyn at every opportunity if the voters dare get him into power.

Agree or disagree?

The media establishment doesn't include the Sun, Telegraph, Mail, Express, or Star then?


Paul Calf

QuoteI once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. 'That's easy,' he replied. 'When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.'
    --Rupert Murdoch

Rupe there, joining the increasingly astonishing roll-call of unlikely anti-establishment heroes.

Bhazor

Ahhhh titty still playing the "working class" angle? That's a shame.

Quote from: biggytitbo on October 19, 2018, 09:21:44 AM
I think you need to get past the notion that this is anything to do with public opinion

Ahhhh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa. Peoples vote suddenly doesn't matter I guess. Oh well.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Dr Rock on October 19, 2018, 10:04:08 AM
Rees-Mogg on the TV yesterday regarding a longer transition period: 'We have a pot of money we can either give to the EU or spend on making Universal Credit work properly.' Same bogus choice being used, must think it works on some people.


Stop listening to Jacob Rees-Mogg is my advice mate.