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

how do get NS for free again? Sorry I've asked this before.

hey dumb American here I struggle to keep up and understand what's going on, is there a good place to start?

thanks!

The absolute core is a belief that England/Britain/the UK - let's be honest, mostly England - has some kind of manifest destiny.

This is correct imo. Immigration is bundled up in it but, to fall back on a terrible cliche, the country has never really reckoned properly with the end of Empire.

The concept that there was a substantial Lexit component to the referendum result is certainly a myth that some alphabetically terminal posters like to put about.

No, that wasn't it. Someone was arguing that fears over immigration wasn't that big a factor in the Brexit vote - based, I think, on their experience with Brexit supporters. Brexit rather than Lexit supporters, in case of confusion.

'it is terrible but I still want it' should be the conservative party strapline

channel 4 news reporting that dark money facebook adds are signal boosting 'no deal' in large numbers

how long until it garners 40%+ support

ums my top tips for understanding brexit are:

1. it's not a short term thing so getting an understanding of the history of the EU and the UK's relationship with it is essential for any proper analysis
2. don't just read & listen to ppl in london

I thought we passed that point a fortnight ago. Doesn’t surprise me, all the loony 🇬🇧😂🤣 accounts on twitter with their 80s hair and 70s teeth are pushing this one hard as well.

This is correct imo. Immigration is bundled up in it but, to fall back on a terrible cliche, the country has never really reckoned properly with the end of Empire.

I don't think the country ever reckoned properly with having Empire either. CF that excellent piece way upthread about this weird self-image of WWII winners which handwaves away the fact that Britain went into an economic and military powerhouse, not the plucky underdog.

We used to be like the billionaire pretending all his wealth is down to grit and hard work and bootstrap-pulling, now we're the same billionaire gone broke and muttering darkly to himself about enemies and rejecting all his friends.

went into *it as

if your question is what's going to happen in the next 2 months, i *think* this is the set of possibilities

what’s more likely?

Dublin/EU come round to the idea of changing/ junking the backstop in line with Brady amendment majority of 16 and that also getting ERG backing.

Or 16 Conservative MPs voting for a permanent customs union & EU going for that? (Lab amendment lost by 31)

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) January 30, 2019

xp
David Edgerton is really good at clearing away all that ww2 propagandistic underdog nonsense/inherent declinism that paints a fake picture of the scale of the BE and its resources in that era.

A lot of what determined our entry into WWII and our subsequent strategy was based on calculations of the best interests of the Empire, yep.

Always cringe when I catch myself typing "our", lol

ums my top tips for understanding brexit are:

1. it's not a short term thing so getting an understanding of the history of the EU and the UK's relationship with it is essential for any proper analysis
2. don't just read & listen to ppl in london

― ogmor, Wednesday, 30 January 2019 19:30 (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

3. Read John Harris articles
4. Make sure you do pay attention to people in London, because it gives you a much greater perspective on one of the central issues used and abused in the referendum: there are 3m+ immigrants in London, with both the highest rate of immigration and highest numbers in the country, and hardly anyone who lives alongside them voted leave; in comparison many constituencies voted Leave without a daily experience of immigrants. That may or may not tell you something.

3. Read John Harris articles

3. Read John Harris articles

not sure if serious

Those people used to live in London then moved to the country on account of all the immigrants iirc.

2xp

The various Brexit-related videos John Harris has done for the Guardian are OK (despite he)

not sure if serious

― ||||||||, Wednesday, 30 January 2019 20:43 (three minutes ago)

I was lampooning ogmor

thank fuck! it's bad enough occasionally hate-reading JH's myopic London-centric smugness on autism/SEN matters, but on fucking Brexit as well ..nooo!

but ogmor is quite often very otm.

He is! His London hate/prejudice is therefore doubly baffling.

As a clueless out of touch Londoner I sometimes find myself wondering if members of the provincial angry white working class have developed some kind of secret early warning system for use when John Harris is spotted chuntering around their town centre while people are just trying to get on with their shopping.

london is bad not good this is canon

think harris actually *lives* on the welsh border somewhere, he wrote a piece abt moving out of london in like 2006

londoners are ok, i am one (tho born and brought up on the welsh border lol) (i moved in 2006 iirc)

i have been to london on several occasions, it’s a solid 7/10 imo

I lived in Plumstead/Woolwich for a couple of years. I was always in awe of the history of the area, and the City itself. But not so much in awe of living in a room with a shared kitchen fer' the bloody rent of a 4 bedroomed house.

^^^

London gets far too much attention paid to it as it is.

well you see in 1649 Oliver Cromwell invaded Ireland...

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 30 January 2019 18:41 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fwiw i regret how uh testy the thread on american racism got but cmere listen this isnt great

Sorry to go on about this but it is a semi-mystery/irony to me that I would really like Single Transferable Vote in general elections as I believe it would break down the two-party system and make voting for smaller parties less risky, giving them and their voters a chance to be heard - and yet since STV was introduced in NI Assembly elections the harder parties on each side of the divide have become more and more entrenched...

― a passing spacecadet, Wednesday, 30 January 2019 11:58 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It probably deserves a separate thread but the growing trend in Australia is for conservative Liberal and National MPs to get (fiscal conservatives, headbangers/knuckledraggers on the environment, immigration and social issues)to get challenged by independents, often female former liberals who feel pushed out by the knuckledraggers. If Tony Abbot and Josh Frydenberg get rolled by independents it will be happy days even if they aren't replaced by labour or the greens who couldn't win in those seats anyway.

Anyway, STV should be pushed for because it seems like a much better way of rolling out an MP who is out of step with a constituency on certain issues but not on others.

I THINK YOU GUYS ARE GONNA BOMB GERMANY!

What just happened during the closing headlines on the BBC’s 6 o’clock news? Voice over about Theresa May heading back to Europe over black and white archive of presumably RAF aircraft during WW2. WTF? pic.twitter.com/zl3jRLpUBb

— Simon Cousins (@FroggySimon) January 30, 2019

lol the BBC preparing the nation for war

if you hear Churchill tonight, let me assure you he's dead

Not dead, just in that cave with King Arthur ready to ride to the rescue at our hot of greatest peril.

veiled threats to nuke/firebomb Berlin haven't been put on the table for a long time tbf!

yeah usually it's "nuke Dublin"

even then its just by yknow having sellafield

curious ilxors looking in from abroad should be careful if they do accidentally read some stuff written from outside london as they might miss insights from ppl who think "read things that are not x" means "don't read x" or even "read john harris"

You did however express the specific opinion before that London ilxors should be excluded from the uk politics thread, in jest or not, so, you know, you have form

pretending that you never had this animus and that my jokey interp was shockingly off, is however, cute

why grapple with the structural forces driving regional inequalities and their concomitant resentments when you can just pathologise everyone as they complain abt them?

there is no chance that a curious ilxor looking in from abroad wld fail to hear lots of london takes, but given that plenty of ppl in the media do not have much of an understanding of what ppl think outside the metropolis I think its worth having a broad diet and developing an awareness of geographical context as well as historical context.

guys can we get back to the important work of dunking on chinless conservatives / praying for the advent of fully automated luxury gay space communism / fantasising about cannibalism itt pls

https://i.redd.it/zbqaz7b589nz.jpg

Do you kids want to be like the real Brexit process, or do you just want to squabble and waste time?

Mr Blobby shall lead us in this brave new world.

Blobby is pretty chinless that much is true.

Also definitely laughed seeing Jeremy Hunt float extending A50 today.

xp his deranged state suggests he is not unacquainted with the pleasures of guzzling human flesh