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Brexit Discussion Thread VI

johnnyskeleton

Hi folks, as Theresa May has won the vote of no confidence and we are heading into Brexit day early next year, I thought for the new thread people might give their summary of their views on Brexit to date before we get into the more day to day discussions.

So what do you think about what has happened so far? Who has come off well, who has come off badly?

Where do you think Brexit is going? What is going to be the likely impact on Ireland, Northern Ireland, the rest of the U.K. and the E.U. respectively?

Both this thread and the Mark V thread will remain open simultaneously for the next day or so and Mark V will be closed as it gets closer to the server busting 10,000 mark. Hopefully we can set down a solid foundation now for a top quality thread to come!

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downcow

SNIP. Please don't just paste links here.

downcow

kunst nugget wrote: »

Anyone watch the London fireworks display? Some very EU touches thrown into it, I thought. A snippet of Serge Gainsbourg's Je T'aime, U2's Vertigo with it's Spanish/Portuguese count-in and the French National anthem snippet from the Beatles All You Need is Love.

And great to recognise the close relationships. We are not leaving Europe. We are leaving the eu

road_high

downcow wrote: »

And great to recognise the close relationships. We are not leaving Europe. We are leaving the eu

which means jack **** without the ability to trade freely tariff free without regulatory impediments.
Sounds like a statement straight of the ERG book of Brexit catchphrases!

foxyladyxx

downcow wrote: »

And great to recognise the close relationships. We are not leaving Europe. We are leaving the eu

Apologies .. but I wonder if many feel like I do?

It is good riddance!!

murphaph

EdgeCase wrote: »

It reminds me of the Irish print media in 2007/8 when we were all going to have a soft landing and anyone who said otherwise was just being hysterical or talking down the economy.

That's a good analogy really. People who had invested in property simply did not want to even countenance that the bubble was about to burst. It's similar insofar as leave voters genuinely don't want to believe they made a terrible mistake so the head goes into the sand.

murphaph

kunst nugget wrote: »

Anyone watch the London fireworks display? Some very EU touches thrown into it, I thought. A snippet of Serge Gainsbourg's Je T'aime, U2's Vertigo with it's Spanish/Portuguese count-in and the French National anthem snippet from the Beatles All You Need is Love.

I watched it (boring old farts we are) and remarked to the missus that next year they'd be handing out sparklers instead. It's really weird to think this is the last time London will ring in the new year as an EU capital.

murphaph

downcow wrote: »

And great to recognise the close relationships. We are not leaving Europe. We are leaving the eu

This line which comes straight from the Brexiters handbook always amused me as it's leave types who always referred to the EU as "Europe" or "Brussels".

Strazdas

downcow wrote: »

And great to recognise the close relationships. We are not leaving Europe. We are leaving the eu

What does that actually mean though? If you're rejecting the EU and all it stands for, you're pretty much rejecting 'Europe' as well.

I don't think I'm misrepresenting this either. Brexiteers say they are disgusted by the EU flag and anthem and the concept of EU citizenship.

dfx-

Strazdas wrote: »

I can only guess the British media are seriously failing their readers / viewers. Half the population think they won't be negatively impacted by Brexit in the slightest.

I don't think that's unexpected or failing them at all. From living in England, most colleagues at University level don't engage with the probable enormity of it.

Amongst the regular population of a city that voted leave, it's no different. A persevering attitude reigns supreme and if there was a second vote, they'd still vote to leave. And for no deal above remaining.

It's ultimately a question they should never have been asked. But regardless of the media, if you keep asking them, you'll get the same answer.

Tell me how

dfx- wrote: »

I don't think that's unexpected or failing them at all. From living in England, most colleagues at University level don't engage with the probable enormity of it.

Amongst the regular population of a city that voted leave, it's no different. A persevering attitude reigns supreme and if there was a second vote, they'd still vote to leave. And for no deal above remaining.

It's ultimately a question they should never have been asked. But regardless of the media, if you keep asking them, you'll get the same answer.

I've heard similar from family members and friends living in the UK.
One guy said that most in the area he is in (near Stoke) think that the EU are being awkward and don't want them to leave but eventually they will get their way.

But, if so many still believe they should leave after the fiasco of the last 2 years, who is being mislead? Is it those who think it will be a disaster, or those who think they must leave and they will be fine?

Strazdas

dfx- wrote: »

I don't think that's unexpected or failing them at all. From living in England, most colleagues at University level don't engage with the probable enormity of it.

Amongst the regular population of a city that voted leave, it's no different. A persevering attitude reigns supreme and if there was a second vote, they'd still vote to leave. And for no deal above remaining.

It's ultimately a question they should never have been asked. But regardless of the media, if you keep asking them, you'll get the same answer.

Part of the problem is that Britain has never had any real debate or discussion about EU membership or the UK's role in Europe (not in recent decades anyway).

The press were just sniping away at the EU for many years and calling it a Nazi style dictatorship etc. The complete lack of engagement with, or knowledge of, the EU has led us to where we are today.

Tell me how

Strazdas wrote: »

Part of the problem is that Britain has never had any real debate or discussion about EU membership or the UK's role in Europe (not in recent decades anyway).

The press were just sniping away at the EU for many years and calling it a Nazi style dictatorship etc. The complete lack of engagement with, or knowledge of, the EU has led us to where we are today.

I'm not sure about that. Given that various people/groups and particularly UKIP and Farage has been very vocal on wanting to leave Europe for several years, it has formed a significant part of national conversation for a long time.

Schengen, the Euro were all proposed and implemented with very vocal discussion taking place in the UK in general and in West Minister.

David Cameron proceeded the referendum with a period of negotiation with Europe which again was eagerly watched and discussed back in the UK.

They have had a conversation, they just reached an outcome we would disagree with.

Scoondal

downcow wrote: »

And great to recognise the close relationships. We are not leaving Europe. We are leaving the eu

Well they can't physically leave Europe. But they probably want that too.
London can do what it wants but UK is leaving European Union.

Scoondal

kunst nugget wrote: »

Anyone watch the London fireworks display? Some very EU touches thrown into it, I thought. A snippet of Serge Gainsbourg's Je T'aime, U2's Vertigo with it's Spanish/Portuguese count-in and the French National anthem snippet from the Beatles All You Need is Love.

Oh, suddenly they like us. Thought they hated us foreigners polluting their precious country.
Can they please decide ? PLEASE DECIDE...then we can start our future relationship. Do you like us or not ? We need to move on...I need to move on...you need to move on...

Scoondal

downcow wrote: »

And great to recognise the close relationships. We are not leaving Europe. We are leaving the eu

I totally agree.
You mention "we are leaving the eu".
I am not a citizen of U.K., and I am totally in favour of U.K. leaving E.U. according to the democratic wishes of U.K. citizens.
You voted to leave and you can leave. With a deal or without a deal, U.K. should leave E.U..
Some people cannot accept this simple concept.
I am 100% with you.

jochenstacker

foxyladyxx wrote: »

Apologies .. but I wonder if many feel like I do?

It is good riddance!!

Always fascinating how this gets rationalised.
To the average Joe there will be very little concrete difference to Brexit in practical terms.
At best you will live in the same house, drive the same car, work the same job, watch the same telly, go to the same pub, so the only things you gained from Brexit is rainbows and unicorns.
You will however be worse off financially and that will be the only practical difference.
You will not live in some fantasy Great British Empire.
And that is if you're not one of the millions of people who WILL be worse off, be that farmers, fishermen, production workers, office staff, transport and so on and so on. If you don't lose your job and house.
There will even be NO difference in regulation.
Everything you export to the EU will still have to be manufactured to those pesky regulations you hate so much, because they are not some senseless EU dictat as you are so fond of believing, but simply the minimum requirements if you want to do business internationally.

You were sold dragons and fairytales and the Brits were naive children to believe the rubbish they were fed by what amounts to political trolls.
Of course your pride now forces you to jump into the abyss, rather than admit it's nothing but childish idiocy.
A lot of people will jump up and howl now, but I'm sorry, this is the reality of the situation and one of your own making.

lawred2

kunst nugget wrote: »

Anyone watch the London fireworks display? Some very EU touches thrown into it, I thought. A snippet of Serge Gainsbourg's Je T'aime, U2's Vertigo with it's Spanish/Portuguese count-in and the French National anthem snippet from the Beatles All You Need is Love.

I did

The 'London is Open' tagline had me rolling my eyes.

A bit late for all that really

Enzokk

downcow wrote: »

This is exactly the point I am making. Both sides stretched the truth.

Okay, if you are going to make assertions about numbers (now £400m a week instead of the £350m per week) or you will be making statements like this you will need to back it up with some links and comment on why you form your opinion based on those links. Otherwise it seems like you are just posting based on feelings and as with the Brexit referendum when you deal with feelings and emotions there is almost 0% chance of anybody being able to change the way you feel with facts that are presented.

As to your assertion that because the economy didn't go into recession as per the predictions, please tell me if any of this scenario happened either that was said will cause the economy to go into recession. Did David Cameron trigger article 50 right after the result?

Then you have to look at the steps the Bank Of England took in the period after the referendum and what impact it had. There was no way anybody could have predicted the exact steps that Mark Carney would have taken and thus any predictions made before would not be accurate, or at least not accurate enough for some.

This is the Bank of England's all-action response to Brexit

Faced with the shock to the economy of the Brexit vote, the Bank of England had a choice. It could sit tight and hope the storm would quickly blow over, or it could assume the worst and act accordingly.

Perhaps understandably, Threadneedle Street has decided to go for the all-action approach. It was slow to react to the great recession of 2008 and 2009, and was not going to be accused of making the same mistake twice. The risks of doing nothing were higher than the risks of providing oodles of fresh stimulus.

To be sure, the Bank could have waited until it had more evidence of how the economy was doing post Brexit. But changes to policy take time to work, so the case for early and aggressive action is strong. As Mark Carney put it, there is a case for stimulus and there is a case for stimulus now.

The backdrop to the four-part package is the assumption that there is going to be a marked slowdown in activity as a result of the 23 June referendum. Recession is avoided, but only just and only because the Bank’s nine-strong monetary policy committee (MPC) assumes that lower interest rates, a new scheme to encourage commercial banks to pass on lower borrowing costs and £70bn worth of additional money creation will boost activity over the coming months and years.

Even so, the Bank has cut its growth forecast for 2016 to 2018 by a cumulative 2.5% of GDP. That represents the biggest ever downgrade between any two of its quarterly inflation reports that have been produced for the past 23 years.

CelticRambler

Scoondal wrote: »

Oh, suddenly they like us. Thought they hated us foreigners polluting their precious country.
Can they please decide ? PLEASE DECIDE...then we can start our future relationship. Do you like us or not ? We need to move on...I need to move on...you need to move on...

You obviously don't watch the Proms - something I always regarded as one of the best annual manifestations of Great British Pride. Well, after the referendum went the "wrong" way, instead of the usual sea of Union Jacks, the hall was full of EU gold star flags.

London voted overwhelmingly to remain. I have no problem with Londoners hijacking any televised event to push a pro-EU message at the Leave voters in Little England.

Gerry T

downcow wrote:

I donâ€™t have the time or the energy to respond to all that. Problem is you seem to think remain told truth and leave told lies. The fact is they both equally stretched the truth. Take your first point about the bus. My understanding is that the bus said there would be Â£350m available to health service that is currently going to Eu this is factually correct (or as was pointed out this week it was under estimated actually over 400) this is the money that wonâ€™t go to Eu so our elect reps in UK can decide to do with it what the wish incl health service. As for the remain predictions. We were told by great and good that the economy would crash the day after the referendum if we voted out (not after we left - the day after the vote). This patently did not happen, indeed the is all time record high employment in UK today. So while this nonsense continues I think we are headed out fast as people can see the spin of the remainders. And I say this as someone who didnâ€™t vote because I was neutral. I am growing more of a brexiteers everyday

Just catching up so sorry if this has been answered. It's been shown the net contribution from the UK is in the region of 7.5b, give or take a couple of million. That's close to 145m a week.
It's also been estimated that the UK economy has slowed and since brexit is 2.5% behind where it would be, mostly attributed to brexit. This has cost the UK a growth of 500m a week, to me that aligns pretty close with a financial disaster post a vote.
Now the UK haven't yet replicated the 40 or more departments that they avail of as part of the EU, ones the UK will have to replicate post a hard brexit. Neither does it account for additional customs officials for your global WTO trade.
Brexit hasn't happened yet.
I'm on my ph so difficult to link but with the staggering inaccuracies in you post I think it would be more beneficial for you to go do some honest research.

downcow

CelticRambler wrote: »

You obviously don't watch the Proms - something I always regarded as one of the best annual manifestations of Great British Pride. Well, after the referendum went the "wrong" way, instead of the usual sea of Union Jacks, the hall was full of EU gold star flags.
.

This is fairly typical of the problem with the two sides in this debate and the blinkers they are wearing. You say “the hall was full of EU gold star flags”. Do me a favour and google images of it. Yeah sure there was a small group who brought Eu flags (note they are all together in a bunch and have exactly the same flag - coincidence I guess). To suggest the hall was full of Eu flags and the UK flag was missing - we’ll need I say more?

downcow

Gerry T wrote: »

Just catching up so sorry if this has been answered. It's been shown the net contribution from the UK is in the region of 7.5b, give or take a couple of million. That's close to 145m a week.
It's also been estimated that the UK economy has slowed and since brexit is 2.5% behind where it would be, mostly attributed to brexit. This has cost the UK a growth of 500m a week, to me that aligns pretty close with a financial disaster post a vote.
Now the UK haven't yet replicated the 40 or more departments that they avail of as part of the EU, ones the UK will have to replicate post a hard brexit. Neither does it account for additional customs officials for your global WTO trade.
Brexit hasn't happened yet.
I'm on my ph so difficult to link but with the staggering inaccuracies in you post I think it would be more beneficial for you to go do some honest research.

You’re missing the point. I am not holding the bus up as an example of brexiteer honesty. I am pointing out that both sides stretched the truth to its limit and the bus is an example of that.
And you are back again quoting net, the bus referred to gross

prawnsambo

downcow wrote: »

You’re missing the point. I am not holding the bus up as an example of brexiteer honesty. I am pointing out that both sides stretched the truth to its limit and the bus is an example of that.
And you are back again quoting net, the bus referred to gross

Did the bus say that? And did it say that the gross is never remitted. Deductions to the gross amount are made prior to remittance.

And the grossest lie is that this money would ever be saved. The cost of duplicating the delegated functions of the EU would wipe that amount out completely. As is becoming abundantly clear.

Gerry T

RobMc59 wrote:

No disrespect,but as British citizens isn't it normal for people from NI to be loyal to the Queen?

No, NI is a special case because of the good Friday agreement. First the UK practically removed all border infrastructure/presence and allowed republicans feel like they live in a single ireland. ROI then changed it's constitution, by referendum removing it's legitimate claim to the territory of NI and in direct response to you both the UK and ROI govts allow any citizen of NI to hold a UK or Irish passport. Why would someone living in ni, that identifies as Irish, holding a Irish passport show any loyalty to the queen of an occupying country.

lawred2

downcow wrote: »

You’re missing the point. I am not holding the bus up as an example of brexiteer honesty. I am pointing out that both sides stretched the truth to its limit and the bus is an example of that.
And you are back again quoting net, the bus referred to gross

The bus did in its backside refer to gross. Show us one single bit of corroborating evidence to back up that ridiculous statement..

It said 350m for the NHS.

It did not say 350m less deductions for the NHS.

Seriously, and you have the gall to pontificate about honesty...

listermint

lawred2 wrote: »

The bus did in its backside refer to gross. Show us one single bit of corroborating evidence to back up that ridiculous statement..

It said 350m for the NHS.

It did not say 350m less deductions for the NHS.

Seriously, and you have the gall to pontificate about honesty...

No point responding to this. The whole penchant is to spread disinformation in the guise of having a both sides discussion and then shout about echo chamber when people ignore them.

Its a tried and tested method and quite frankly it is backed by external forces. They sow the seeds and gormless people pick it up and continue it.

I have a good friend who has a form of Asperger's and spends their entire day promoting anti EU propaganda and pro russian information he holds Putin up as a strong man. Its these types of people that third party actors target .

murphaph

Scoondal wrote: »

Oh, suddenly they like us. Thought they hated us foreigners polluting their precious country.
Can they please decide ? PLEASE DECIDE...then we can start our future relationship. Do you like us or not ? We need to move on...I need to move on...you need to move on...

The fireworks would have been dictated by the London mayor's office I suspect and London is solidly anti Brexit.

wavehopper1

lawred2 wrote: »

I did

The 'London is Open' tagline had me rolling my eyes.

A bit late for all that really

London voted remain at 60%. Regionally, only Scotland was higher. I thought it was a shout out to the many Londoners who must be feeling very hemmed in right now in their own country.

Sam Russell

downcow wrote: »

You’re missing the point. I am not holding the bus up as an example of brexiteer honesty. I am pointing out that both sides stretched the truth to its limit and the bus is an example of that.
And you are back again quoting net, the bus referred to gross

I think you are missing the fundamental question of the Brexit vote.

1. Those that voted remain voted for the status quo. That is they knew exactly what they were voting for.

2. Those that voted to leave voted against staying in the EU. Now they had no unified vision of what, if anything, they were voting FOR.

The lies told by the leave side were based on:

1. A fictitious amount of money remitted to the EU, (which was about 1% of the UK Gov spending). It was deliberately inflated, with no mention of the rebate, or the compensating cost required to duplicate the pooled EU agencies to function as a state in the world.

2. The bare faced lie about immigration being under the control of the EU, despite the lion's share of immigration for non-EU countries. The lack of using any valid restrictions allowed under EU rules.

3. The emotive line about 'taking back control of our laws and our borders' which turned out to be total BS. Turns out not one Brexiteer can identify one EU law that they want to take back, and now they want an open EU border in NI.

4. The racist push showing hoards of immigrants heading towards the UK, implying that Turkey was going to join the EU, and unleash huge numbers into the UK.

Any lies told by the Remain side were pointless since everyone knew what remain meant. No-one knew what Leave meant, because it meant all things to all people. It could mean whatever you wanted it to mean - pure populism.

No, Brexit was driven by lies, foreign money, Russian bots, illegal spending, and very dodgy people with hidden agendas.

Now we see a £14 million contract going to a £2 start up company to provide shipping services. The company was formed on 5 th April 2017, just one week after Article 50 was lodged. Wonder what is behind that?

Less than 90 days to go, and no-one knows what will happen.

FrancieBrady

listermint wrote: »

No point responding to this. The whole penchant is to spread disinformation in the guise of having a both sides discussion and then shout about echo chamber when people ignore them.

Its a tried and tested method and quite frankly it is backed by external forces. They sow the seeds and gormless people pick it up and continue it.

I have a good friend who has a form of Asperger's and spends their entire day promoting anti EU propaganda and pro russian information he holds Putin up as a strong man. Its these types of people that third party actors target .

I think it is as simple as regretful, but still proud Brexiteers trying to create an..'we was misled by both sides' scenario tbh.
Seeing a lot of it as more and more see the writing on the wall.