one out all out: a brexit from the modern world and every one of its problems please (we're all gonna die lol)

it just seems weirdly far down on their list of plans or priorities. If someone can correct me on that i'd be pleased, obviously.

Even if they did say something, no-one would notice, no-one is listening to anything other than Brexit.

Except if there's an election, when I think Matt and history are right : only nutters have the EU as a deciding factor

all that hot air expended on an option that's not even possible
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/07/norwegian-politicians-reject-uks-norway-plus-brexit-plan

I'm seriously at a loss as to whether Remain-but-Racist is more or less delusional than Brexit-but-Only-The-Nice-Bits.

I don't think you can credibly wrap yourself in the cause of Better Brexit and just try and ignore the anti-immigration hysteria that helped drive it. The kinds of structural reforms that Corbyn is talking about could well reduce that hysteria over time (by making people more economically secure) but substantive change will take time - probably more than the lifetime of one Parliament.

Certainly longer than it takes for Brexit voters to start wondering why we haven't just ended immigration already. And make no mistake the right wing press will be hammering those migration figures on a daily basis.

Ireland faces food shortages and will suffer a bigger economic hit than Britain in the event of a no-deal Brexit, according to leaked government papers.

Cabinet ministers and Brexiteers have seized on the papers, obtained by The Times, as they believe their contents could let Theresa May put pressure on Ireland to drop the “backstop”.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/warning-of-food-shortages-in-ireland-gxlf36k8p

This will go well.

Lads.

I don't think you can credibly wrap yourself in the cause of Better Brexit and just try and ignore the anti-immigration hysteria that helped drive it

What percentage of pro-brexit sentiment would you attribute to immigration? I mean, I don't have an answer to this , but from my own admittedly limited dealings with strong brexit advocates, immigration didnt seem particularly high up. yes it was there but definitely behind "hate Brussels", "Britain is too great to be part of some crappy club", weird existential reasons I couldnt make head or tail out of, and "I hate regulations"

Mystic Meg here on the opinion pages of the very same paper on the Norway "option": https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/07/mps-brexit-norway

normally just assume people say they're motivated by those things because it's a lot more acceptable than saying 'hate forrins'

yeah, i was gonna say

'hate brussels' and 'britain is too great' just a subset of hate forrins sentiment in any case

This food shortages/economic hit thing is such a load of bollocks tbh! For one, it’s not Ireland that should be worried about food; it is, iirc, the most food secure country in the world and secondly ANY Brexit hurts Ireland but it’ll hurt NI a great deal more (obviously). That the headbangers are trying to be like “maybe the Irish don’t realise!!!!” is just laughable, contemptible and predictable as fuck. We know; fuck you.

I think Brexit wonks tend to think and phrase things differently but yes, immigration (and by extention national identity) was the absolute centre of the Brexit campaign and it polls regularly near the top of voters' concerns. That and the mythical extra cash for the NHS were the two main messages that cut through, in a way that more abstract concerns like 'sovereignty' don't.

Having said that I don't think you should discount 'things obviously aren't working so fuck it let's change something' as a massive driving factor.

normally just assume people say they're motivated by those things because it's a lot more acceptable than saying 'hate forrins'

― single bed mentality (||||||||),

Sure, but for example, my right wing super pro-brexit cousin has no interest in reducing immigration, says whoever can come. Is all up in this sovereignty game instead.. He may be an outlier but he doesnt want any reductions in immigration or movement

I would say he's an outlier. I've heard TV reporters say a lot of people they interview don't like saying it's about immigration on camera but that's what they say off camera.

Battle of the Anecdotes there.

I know a lot of rabid Brexiters who aren't shy about expressing their views on forrins and immigration doesn't come up much. Of course in a broader sense sovereignty and taking back control are entirely about poisonous thicko nationalism but I'd say immigration is not so much a driver as an inevitable corollary

I mean a lot of the places with the least tolerance of immigration in the abstract have the fewest actual immigrants, so I'd say that holds true. But "... of our borders" has usually been the subtext to "take back control", when the likes of Farage or Johnson weren't being explicit about it at least.

The idea that we have a real functioning democracy or that those fuckers in Westminster somehow represent the "sovereign will of the British people" is one of the worst lies underlying the whole Brexit "debate" and the one that is apparently not allowed to be questioned at all in the BBC / Guardian, etc.

yes i've always taken it ('it") as a fairly blurred bundle of "make britain great again" stuff based on how things (in certain ways correctly) felt better even for the less well off in the 70s and 80s (and 90s!), as projected back onto a mythical pre-immigration pre-EU 50s or 30s or whatever, and hence an extremely powerful (if not at all practical) wish aggressively to press reset (including elements like "take that london down a peg or three")

how to handle this: lots of proposed practical-sounding large-goal policy activity wrapped up in an attractive counter-myth
how to deliver the attractive counter-myth when almost the commercial entire press is working against it one way or another: i have literally no idea :(

Anecdotally again, I have heard several people say it's about immigration - other patients and their visitors in the hospital complaining about the NHS and saying it'll be better after Brexit when they kick the foreigners out and look after our own first etc, and my wife has been stuck in patient transport with people like that a lot (sometimes they are the drivers, taxi driver stereotype) (she is an immigrant but people don't really see her as one because she's American, perhaps ironically she's half-Polish) and tbh I've seen a fair few TV interviews with people complaining about Eastern Europeans although I expect they seek those people out

Fuck me, found out this morning the Norway option means joining Schengen. So that's never getting through the House even if it's on offer.

(i've been rereading roland huntford's demolitions of the scott of the antarctic myth to destress in the final stages of my book's delivery and OMG LOL the stuff abt the british addiction to amateur muddling through w/o getting yr head round the technicalities of process is uncannily descriptive of much of the present, just re e.g. the unavoidable practicalities of how trade treaties work -- actually probably not as hard as learning to ski! but kind of important and important too that grown-up media knows how to get this kind of thing across and why it matters. huntford is a bitter thatcherite in some ways but also extremely hostile to the edwardian brit empire and its smug delusions abt itself, so it's all desolately pertinent)

(i shd write this up elsewhere i think and not interpose it on this thread tho)

Scott, who dies along with four of his men only eleven miles from his next cache of supplies, became Britain's beloved failure, while Amundsen, who not only beat Scott to the Pole but returned alive, was largely forgotten.

if scott is treesa may who is amundsen

Barnier, Varadkar, Sturgeon, take your pick really

“I’m just going outside and may be some time”/At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

Feel like there’s plenty of ridiculous and precious little sublime in this never ending shitshow.

Of course in a broader sense sovereignty and taking back control are entirely about poisonous thicko nationalism

“Sovereignty” in as much as this crowd goes on about it has always confused the fuck out of me as a foreigner, like how the fuck does anyone say that to an Irish person with a straight face.

if scott is treesa may who is amundsen

The Norway Option.

we need the 'remain but ban london' option to be moved forward, it has something for everyone

I should reread that book again. An eternal favorite.

This food shortages/economic hit thing is such a load of bollocks tbh! For one, it’s not Ireland that should be worried about food; it is, iirc, the most food secure country in the world and secondly ANY Brexit hurts Ireland but it’ll hurt NI a great deal more (obviously). That the headbangers are trying to be like “maybe the Irish don’t realise!!!!” is just laughable, contemptible and predictable as fuck. We know; fuck you.

― gyac, Friday, 7 December 2018 09:51 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes this is note-perfect imo

maybe

idk maybe the tories have forgotten they cant just shoot us if we dont pack the ships with food these days

time to break up Big London imo

idk maybe the tories have forgotten they cant just shoot us if we dont pack the ships with food these days

stop giving them ideas

To undo the damage - the breaking of the social contract that I guess began with Thatcher and sped up under austerity and may go even further due to Bexit - will take several parliaments.

Certainly longer than it takes for Brexit voters to start wondering why we haven't just ended immigration already. And make no mistake the right wing press will be hammering those migration figures on a daily basis.

But having a leadership that doesn't cosy and play along will help - as will ending austerity. This will take place in a climate where newspaper circulation is down too. Online of course is toxic but it does allow for a plurality of views.

Its all slow, awful work.

debunk the myth that is holding the delusory and toxic imagined community that is london together

OMG LOL the stuff abt the british addiction to amateur muddling through w/o getting yr head round the technicalities of process is uncannily descriptive of much of the present, just re e.g. the unavoidable practicalities of how trade treaties work

I want Route One Brexit.

Pulis-brexit

Get Andy Carroll round the negotiating table, they'll never have seen anything like him before.

rip moaty need you now more than ever

I think trying to predict the disruptions is kind of a fool’s errand; not overly convinced by any government’s ability to predict economic outcomes.

gascoigne turning up to the perimeter of the talks with a kfc would be fuckin good stuff tho

I'm told someone called Phil Nutsall has just quit something called UKAP.

Rebrand Ukip as Football Dads Against Islams and Peeds, job done

"Football Dads Against Islams and Peeds (unaffiliated with Fathers 4 Justice)"

Think I shd've got Cosplay in there somehow as a tribute to Yakkety-Yaxley-Lennon's realprole fetish

xp
or you could just truncate it down to burnley fc supporters club.

Obviously this has nothing to do with a drift to the right and everything to do with no longer being able to look respectable to the sort of people who will happily indulge in a bit of ninth-hole racist banter but might feel a bit squeamish about marching on Whitechapel or kicking an immigrant's head in.

It's nineteenth hole, you'll never be a member tsk tsk