"oh you don't get me I'm the end of the union": lol brexit is how we're all gonna die

let’s let people vote for insulin shortages and the deaths of their colleagues

― ||||||||, Friday, 18 January 2019 12:06 (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can let it continue to be threatened with no mandate or risk an actual but very unlikely mandate

otherwise youre just keeping it on the agenda

There are worlds between people who describe themselves as ‘anti-globalisation’ and those who say they’re ‘anti-globalist’.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a certain anti-globalist school of thought on the left according to which late capitalism has impelled a race to the bottom that ultimately benefits no one other than the international, eminently mobile (I'm tempted to say migratory) ruling class: neither the workers in developing countries who slave away for a pittance nor those in developed countries who are now unemployed. Hence there's a tendency – especially in recent years, perhaps in response to the far right's gains – to espouse a localized, borderline nationalist discourse as a corrective to these ills, even on the left.

― pomenitul, Friday, 18 January 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes but as you say its one school of thought.

think may's nodding-dog act to the will of the people as if anyone voted for hard brexit is shithousery of the highest and she's almost completely getting away with it

this is v OTM and nicely put - and I do take your point that we're currently perilously close to getting it with no mandate so why not risk seeing what the actual mandate is for

Yeah it's becoming increasingly obvious that enough Leavers don't just want to leave, they want a particular flavour of Leave and there isn't anything approaching consensus on what that is. Remaining in the EU is more popular than any of the other options.

the lack of consensus is OTM too but I don't feel comfortable banking on the ultimate conclusion in a hypothetical near-future 2-way or even 3/4-way ref, let alone with imago's counting method. I am v much in a bubble so perhaps I have a distorted view but I am disturbed by the number of tweets, comments, voxpops etc from people now certain they did indeed quite deliberately vote for hard brexit and so did everyone else

Seems like some widespread worldview retconning (yes, smug snobby elitist Remoaning, sorry) but if these comments are even 20% real then I'm not sure how anyone has got so many self-proclaimed no-nonsense cynics to go along with such flagrant goalpost-moving tbh

This is what someone (aged about 60) on the Charlton forum just posted, verbatim:

By way of a contrast. Last evening I had what was at times a rather heated discussion with three extended family members, all of whom voted and are still fully behind a Brexit including no deal. As you can imagine from my views on this thread I vehemently argued the opposite stance. Without going into the minutiae of our discussion which encompassed every aspect of Brexit and it’s consequences. We finally ended up at a no deal Brexit and why pretty much everyone agreed that it would be wholly damaging. You want to know what they all unanimously agreed ? They thought that 90% of any of the pain and difficulties this country experienced after a no deal Brexit would be because the EU and particularly the French (at the ports) would make damned sure that it would be as problematic as possible. There view was that all the problems with things like documentation, existing agreements, membership of EU wide organisations could be just rolled over if the EU wanted to. They (the EU) just want to be difficult. The Irish border question was a complete numbfuck. It’s our border and we should be able to do whatever we like with it. All the reasons above were cause enough for us (the UK) to tell the EU that we are out on 29th and just get on with it. If they want to play hard ball then so can we and we’re able to have the empire Commonwealth that will trade with us.

Now you might say that these views were extreme and the view holders were pretty stoopid. I couldn’t possibly comment but my point here is that these views are still out there and in numbers that are scary. Each of my last nights opponents were quoting or saying their friends were of similar in view. Now it might not now be 52% that hold views of a similar flavour but I’m thinking that it’s still upwards on 45%.

The country is really split and broken. I have no idea where we go from here or how we get there. There are troubled times ahead, of that I’m sure.

This goes deep into the psyche of an entire generation tbh - a sort of aggressive infantilism. I wonder what caused it. I wonder if it's curable

this goes back to the point about cameron fleeing the scene ASAP after the vote - he had the opportunity to put his foot on the ball, and frame what people voted for ie what brexit meant. instead because he was a chancer of the first order he abdicated responsibility and a whole host of other (including harder) brexits started competing in the vacuum. no deal has the virtue of perceived simplicity/clarity at least

Going back to 'Norway plus' for a second, I definitely got a kick out of Norwegian MP Heidi Nordby Lunde's commentary from last month:

Really, the Norwegian option is not an option. We have been telling you this for one and a half years since the referendum and how this works, so I am surprised that after all these years it is still part of the grown-up debate in the UK. You just expect us to give you an invitation rather than consider whether Norway would want to give you such an invitation. It might be in your interest to use our agreement, but it would not be in our interest.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/07/norwegian-politicians-reject-uks-norway-plus-brexit-plan

Yeah, I chuckle every time seeing 'Norway' still being mentioned after that tbh. The gall etc

xxp dunno if Cameron sticking around would have helped, he would surely have been ousted if he hadn't walked. Chances of that stupid cunt guiding the country safely through this mess, lol.

Probably more damaging was decision of Labour mps to immediately plunge party into civil war and completely abdicate the field.

why would Norway need to give permission for the eu and the UK to make a similar deal

Norway has their own specific agreements with the EU.

...which the UK would need Norway’s permission to join.

Yes but they're not copyrighted, surely you just need the UK and the EU to agree to similar terms.

Obv not "just" but I don't think people talking about a Norway deal literally mean partnering up with Norway

can the UK not just* lift that model off the shelf and augment it as required ?

*doing a lot of work in this sentence

Yeah obv it would be a huge and unlikely undertaking and there would be different clauses on lutefisk but

think may's nodding-dog act to the will of the people as if anyone voted for hard brexit is shithousery of the highest and she's almost completely getting away with it

Idk, did people really vote for "brexit but with a particular type of deal or no thanks"? I'm not sure these people exist in significant numbers. The fact that the prevailing narrative is "just get on wi it" and not "lets do this right". Every single leave person I've met looks at any kind of deal as a con. Has the public ever had any real appetite for any kind of deal?

What is the Norway model?

Even if Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein did grant a temporary stay, it could take up to twelve months for Britain to complete the joining process, while exit day is just months away at the time of writing.

interesting post cam. in Manchester there have been a lots of deals between the university and Chinese authorities esp wrt graphene, and over the last few years there's been a huge rise in the number of Chinese students, some of whom stick around after, and who largely seem v wealthy, sometimes absurdly so, ubering to and from their luxury city centre flats, their outfits always a couple of steps ahead of the other students, and not really having much in common with the more established poorer, and more trad Chinese community here afaict. i'd guess those students' attitudes are more determined by being rich than anything else. Manchester doesn't really fit the quaint harry potter ideal like Cambridge, and the image which is pushed abroad is often focused on modern/globalist things like the endless array of new buildings, research and sergio aguero.

This is completely false - Labour are slightly ahead in the polling average, and in the last two polls are 2 and 3 points ahead - and it's made all the worse by @HackneyAbbott being ridiculed over it. Both @IsabelOakeshott and the BBC should apologise. pic.twitter.com/xyupJXGSOe

— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) January 18, 2019

keep hearing this 6pts ahead (from Soubz the other day as well) nonsense and not seen any polls to back this up, glad someone else has noticed.

I'm not sure these people exist in significant numbers.

i also don't come across many pro-Brexit people who have a nuanced, cautious take on ensuring we get the best deal for the economy and human rights

Invite just arrived to an election planning meeting, oh joy.

GE on 28/02

:D

sorry forgot the ‘?’

D:

Thinking appears to be that if the deal doesn't pass we'll really need one by then, and if it DOES pass it's 95% likely to be with a backstop and so the DUP will be incensed and pull support for the govt in which case we'll also need one.

GE on 28/02

― ||||||||, Friday, 18 January 2019 13:22 (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fp for tease

Three Cabinet ministers, and a further six junior ministers, have told their local party associations to prepare for an early election. https://t.co/4lWqpDtGBq

— Stephen Bush (@stephenkb) January 18, 2019

"go back to your constituencies and prepare for lol we're all going to die"

It’s our border and we should be able to do whatever we like with it.

No call for posting this when I'm not allowed drink at work.

oh good, that'll help

that will definitely give a very clear mandate for, errr, something, not just waste time with all of its likeliest outcomes leaving us just as paralysed as we currently are

I don't think that date is a real one btw

It’s not a real one, I’m parsing that as shorthand for “ASAP”.

dae it dae it dae it dae it dae it

otherwise we’re on the shitebag timeline

btw re the Times article abt the DUP/Customs Union, today's Guardian politics liveblog now (well, since 11:58) includes:

Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, has just put out a statement saying the Times report is not true. She said:

The report published in the Times this morning about the DUP is inaccurate and no doubt designed to undermine efforts to get the necessary changes to the withdrawal agreement.

The prime minister is very clear on our position. We have been consistent that for us it is the backstop which needs to be dealt with.

For the future we want an agreement which returns control of our money, our laws and our borders through a UK wide free trade arrangement with the EU.

The story in the Times is an attempt to cause division. Such tactics are not new to us and as in the past will not succeed.

RIP faint sense of hope I felt reading that article (also slightly dashed in the Ireland edition but not the GB edition - thank you, work subscription to LexisNexis - with an extra final paragraph saying "Meanwhile, Simon Coveney, the tánaiste, told the Dáil the EU would be helpful but the withdrawal agreement was not open for renegotiation", which was not super-clear about whether he'd said that specifically regarding the all-UK CU option or in general)

Honestly I don't think Cameron sticking around would have made the slightest bit of difference, if people had been prepared to listen to him we wouldn't have ended up in this situation in the first place.

interesting thread

The DUP's strategy has always been to erode the GFA & power-sharing gradually, which means pushing Brexit but not so far as to trigger a backlash in NI. This means they were always likely to favour an outcome closer to that proposed by Labour than the Tories. https://t.co/ArdyO3dxCg

— David Timoney (@fromarsetoelbow) January 18, 2019

pic.twitter.com/8cPIAWnHqb

— tom 🕺 (@ttgg321) January 16, 2019

off brexit and relating to the previous conversation on local government funding, i thought this article on boosting local economies left behind by austerity with a mixture of co-ops, collectives, local procurement and local gov mandated business policies (min wage) was interesting. pioneered in cleveland (US) and preston (UK).

i say “off brexit” but obviously this is very much a response to the logic of austerity/tory ideology.

I think other models of trying to get investment in the north have focused on investing regional city areas and transport links to them to avoid jam spreading. that’s partly as a consequence of the limited investment - you have to focus your efforts, partly because many travel into those city hubs *from* these towns.

i think this should be complementary to that view as this is local rather than central gov investment.

this relates to pomenitul’s post about localised/nationalist leftism. i do think there is a fairly sizeable aspect of this in the left - in The Rise and Fall of the British Nation i *think* David Edgerton would argue it’s inherited from the post-war nationalist policies of self-sufficiency as a model for future leftism. here - if you’re not locally based it’s going to be more difficult for you to win contacts even at a lower cost. while all this doesn’t necessitate antagonism to migratory labour, it can allow it fairly easily without explicitly stated rules for how it should be allowed/managed/protected.

i think we see a bit of the above in corbyn’s stance now and labour policy more generally. there is the turn towards nationalisation, the wariness of european free movement without clear structural statements about workers. whether such a policy - particularly the sort of nationally-focused vertical integration of industry which i think is the Labour policy - is wise, doable, affordable or sensible in a Just in Time model of globalised supply chains and financing is hard to say. it may be all of those things! but it does also feel a bit like its prior assumptions are those of 1950 rather than 2020.

TEHRESA DO IT U COWARD
https://medium.com/@Bickerrecord/why-a-feb-28th-election-might-happen-20bcd62349f4

That’s a pretty convincing read

Seems legit to me, but I worry that no-deal headbangers will kill us all nonetheless.

This happened in Scotland:

The SNP MP was eventually escorted from a library by policehttps://t.co/nLXaayd3Rp

— The National (@ScotNational) January 18, 2019

A lot there hangs on the idea that article 50 can be revoked with a view to retriggering in the foreseeable future. I think that's far from uncontroversial.

I'm not convinced that can happen, in fact I think it's been explicitly ruled out.

By which I mean the ECJ ruling is that the UK can revoke Article 50 if it wants to stay in the EU, not to buy itself more time to leave at a later date.

his earlier post (linked through from the one above) adds some additional colour https://medium.com/@Bickerrecord/hope-for-revoke-4f3f7548c746

Some caution is needed here, as paras 148–156 of the ECJ verdict on the Wightman et al. case, which confirmed that the UK can revoke unilaterally, also made clear that “A further limit on the exercise of the right of unilateral revocation arises from the principles of good faith and sincere cooperation”, but as a lay reader I cannot see that a proper Revoke & Deliberate process would fall into the category of ‘bad faith’, even if it were to keep option open for later reinstatement of the Article 50 process on new reasoning.

It probably works better if you can only revoke once: it then has the same mind-focusing effect on Brexiters that the no-deal does, without being insane and lethal.

Yes but if it amounts to an automatic IN CASE OF EMERGENCY STOP BREXIT button will enough MPs be persuaded to vote for the amendment in the first place? Seems unlikely.

If it’s a choice between an emergency cancellation vs an emergency catastrophe I think you could swing it. But point def taken

plenty of insane and lethal middle aged losers torching mps houses and invoking wat tyler amirite