Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

I suspect there will be a period of scapegoating to be gone through first. Brexit was all about oversimplifying a complex issue and telling the easily-led what they wanted to hear. Any admission of Brexit's failure is likely to involve responses in a siilar vein, with finger-pointing at remainers and foreigners in particular. It could indeed get quite ugly.

The well organised Remainer that is able to frustrate the sunny uplands and ruin everything about Brexit is the same as the foreigner that comes in to take all the jobs and pushes down wages and claim benefits and sit at home at the same time.

Always someone else, that is the main take.

It's interesting though that the failure of Brexit coincides with the massive problems in the British economy (plus the fall in popularity of Johnson and the the Tories. This makes it much more difficult for the Brexit zealots and disciples to defend their scheme. If it was such a wonderful idea, it would be able to power through other negative things that were happening in the UK economy - when in reality we can see it is making things much, much worse.

The problem I see is that you're using logic to poke holes in Brexiteer reactions to the failure of an idea that wasn't passed for logical reasons in the first place. The issues with the UK economy are just as likely to be explained away by blaming them on the EU punishing the UK or the failure of remainers to get behind the Great Idea. Sure, thinking people won't be fooled but it's not the thinking people who are going to cause the ugliness anyway, it's the lumpen Brexitariat.

I agree that the millions of hardcore English Tories / Johnson supporters / Brexiteers are a lost cause, but there are not enough of them to shape the narrative going forward. Even to get their Brexit project over the line in June 2016, they needed several million floating voters to join them. They never were a majority of the English public at any point.

Re. the EU “always caving at the last minute”: you’d think the Tories, for all their faults and contradictions, would have got at least a smidgeon of introspection and, even if not getting on-message, then at least let a little reality permeate their positioning by now.

Ever since Barnier’s very first day on the job way back when, the EU hasn’t “caved” once. The UK has, at every single turn.

And recently, the EU granted the Commission extra powers and autonomy (unprecedented amounts thereof, according to some commentators) to handle EU-UK relations going forward. I.e. and not to put too fine a point on it, an extra-large stick. With nails and stuff. Very little reports and media noises about that one. But expect it to make some noise before long.

Boris wasn't thick enough to actually trigger Article 16 - Truss is.

Triggering A16 would be better than enacting legislation that just disavows the protocol. A16 means talks. Most of the Brexit bunch thinks it means something else.

N.I. secretary is often a joke post anyway. I doubt the secretary actually has any influence over anything regarding N.I. especially since devolution.

Can only guess, but probably needed some kind of permission or whatever (carnet?) to bring over all the cycling gear from the UK for holding the event and didn't bother (we never needed anything like that before, it's only Spain - almost home from home!) and maybe Customs went after them.

So could be the cost of the permission & some fine/fee for not bothering to do it right and get that. Article says they were planning the event during the transition period and it wasn't held due to Covid.

I think maybe what Brexit (or form of it selected by UK govt.) meant has never fully sunk in with many people in the UK so they think all these awkward changes are punishments, creating paranoia that officials in EU member states are constantly out to "get them" for being brave & brexiting.