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

xxp they meant "don't make me emigrate from my homeland" - they just presented it in the shittest way possible

I'm a revolting internationalist liberal don't make me pay roaming charges I'd die.

The Antonin Scalia Law School announced Saturday that Brett Kavanaugh will co-teach a course this summer on the "origins and creation of the US Constitution" in Runnymede, England.

Makes sense.

The point is, this view isn’t benign & it goes way beyond just being annoying and twee

BOOM

Regardless of whether it goes through or not Labour needs to whip for a second referendum just to shut these guys up for a bit.

the big "is there anything else we should leave while we're at it?" referendum?

And honestly it is so incredibly wearying that people keep hijacking this issue to make a point in some intercenine Labour Party bollocks.

What exactly is 'this view' other than 'British people like making jokes about stereotypes of British people'?

Pro-tip read the paragraphs in order

Fair point - I assumed that 'annoying and twee' related to the placards because of the tone before.

5 million people on yesterday's march and yet not one of you took a picture of my "Let's control immigration within the existing framework of EU law (e.g repatriate EU nationals after three months if they have not found a job)... and then have a bloody nice cup of tea!" placard.

— Simon Hedges (@Orwell_Fan) March 24, 2019

Most people are embarrassing doofuses who don't have a detailed grasp on complex international relations. Twee bullshit on a placard might be the best way of winning over Leave voters.

our allies on this one issue must be perfect else we should leave

All the worst signs are actually by Leave plants only I see thru it

Most of those twee placards are about signalling how very sensible people are. I can't see that particularly winning over leave voters.

meanwhile:

Lol that Vince Cable stood down last week and now there’s a Lib Dem leadership contest happening and we all just collectively didn’t notice or care

— Eve Livingston (@eve_rebecca) March 24, 2019

It's a problem of a lot of people who don't really like protests finding themselves protesting. Everything is a qualification or justification of their protest ('I don't cause a fuss, not like those disabled people or union workers etc.)

yes, very correct dowd.

xp

can't believe UK politics isn't talking about some cable getting buried at the swinson roundabout.

UK politics doesn't have enough bandwidth to care about two simultaneous tory party leadership contests

lmao

Lads,, lads,, not, lads

Bulk of Brexit is not "nothing really matters" but ffs acknowledge "nothing really matters" or live this nonsense forever

I thought Cable was the only Lib Dem Mp? What do they need any more for?

His statesmanlike ability to defend the shot status quo lends them credibility apparently if you're a middle class cunt

(i'm so sorry this is so long - i was just working some things through and when i looked up there were a load of words).

as a few people have noted, the UK is probably home to the most fervently pro-EU constituency in Europe. I was looking ahead, and back a bit as well, and wondering how well, even if we re-engage with Europe, we will handling being part of the difficulties of being politically in the EU.

The movement is full of paradoxes.

The handling of migrants was (during the Syrian peak, and remains abysmal. Migration of this sort is only going to increase, as people become wealthier, and with the likely impact of climate change. This will place immense pressure on Europe, but it seems clear the best, possibly the only way of handling this pressure, is through the EU – a fragmented Europe would be a disaster. The EU was at least engaged in the serious politics of how to handle large movements of people, even if this has so far not resulted in anything like an adequate response, whereas the UK has not been practising serious politics on migration for a long while now.

Whenever the Olympics is brought up as a sort of high water mark for progressive, inclusive politics in the UK, I remember that it was at the Olympics in London that Mario Draghi made his 'whatever it takes' comment, and it was still a full two years later that this finally resulted in a movement out of the paralysis that had gripped the liberal institutions that constituted the troika (ECB, IMF and EU). The fact that these institutions were completely unable to avoid socialising the immense financial failure, in order to avoid debt contagion across the Eurozone, is one of the key factors in the second aspect of the crisis of legitimacy of neoliberal politics (the first was the catastrophic and systemic failure of Hayekian free market economics to be able to regulate itself, and after that failure, to save itself). For a while, on the back of the notorious Rogoff/Reinhart excel error, Europe (and UK) were in austerity lockstep. The EU much later, painfully later, acknowledged that growth was a better way to reduce the share of debt than by freezing spending. Again, of course, the Tories continued to pursue austerity, a fact that should have made it clear, if it wasn't blatantly clear already from the fact it was the Tories, that this was a continuation of a post-Thatcherite radical politics based on shrinking the power of the state, and the distribution wealth through tax cuts rather than social spending, which no matter the rhetoric, always enables a shift of wealth to capitalists. (As the classic budget curves, with some additional help for the very poorest, and tax cuts for the very wealthiest, with everyone else worse off, helped emphasise).

Point being, the EU bear a very high level responsibility for the rejection of their politics – the example of Hungary, consequent on their failure to extend dollar liquidity eastern european states, resulting in a painful IMF loan, the combination of which handed the Hungarian far right a huge amount of ammunition.

The reason we perhaps see this less well here, is because the Tories have more aggressively pursued austerity, with an explanatory rhetoric of anti-immigration, nationalism, and culture wars to distract from the basics of material concerns - flags instead of food. You look at those absolute c*nts, and the easy conclusion is that their vicious radicalism is considerably worse more than the (fiscally and socially) liberal framework of the EU.

the social effect of brexit - that it broke a legal, political and social framework for many people's identity (passports yes, but also having been born and brought up in the EU) - has understandably had a huge impact on how people feel about themselves and their country. I definitely include myself here. But as several people have pointed out here, we do ignore the political side of it at our peril. If we want to be part of the EU, the same people who wave the flags will have to fight for it and also sometimes fight against it. it's not like if we don't do brexit it's a case of 'phew that was close'. And it's not at all clear that enough has changed in the Eurozone that would see a different response second time around.

Will there be a second time around?

An Italian banking crisis is currently seen as likely. Unlike Greece, Italy is both too big to fail and too big to save. The slowdown in global growth, mainly the result of China's growth deceleration with a significant impact on Germany's exports, could increase the likelihood of this, and the consequent crisis could easily break the Eurozone.

I don't want to be too pessimistic – the EU pretty much exists to handle this sort of framework threatening crisis. But the way it has responded so far does not indicate, as with so many of the institutions and people who participated in that period, that they are at all capable of realising that they are responsible for the types of politics they abhor from their centre of the supposed horseshoe.

they are still stuck on the belief that politics is in some way a positive sum game. this underpins liberalism in its widest umbrella - the neoliberalism on one side, the belief that the free market maximises wealth generation - and many forms of social democracy on the other, exemplified by New Labour, that the greater the wealth generation, the greater the benefits. Assuming instead that it is not a positive sum game, and that as we have seen so clearly over the last decade, there are winners and losers, means that the story becomes about wealth distribution, rather than a rising tide of maximal global financification raising all boats the fastest. Social democracy seemed unable to contain its reasonable logic that wealth creation is necessary to distribute wealth by realising that uncontained profit chasing had the power to destroy the society it was supposed be helping fund.

Once you assume it is not a positive sum game, it becomes about wealth distribution, then it becomes about the power to distribute money, ie the politics of parties representing different material interests. The solutions driven/managerial/technocratic/centrist belief that there is a 'right' answer is clearly then a politics of the past, and this in sum is the crisis of legitimacy, something many people in Europe have perceived. Once you have that realisation, you realise the horseshoe is a valid image in the sense that it is an attack on the centre, but that an attack on the centre is not an attack on politics, it is an attempt to reassert politics.

it is difficult to imagine wanting isolation though. The benefits of being part of a semi-federalised free trade and movement bloc in an increasingly globalised world are considerable (in fact our previous EU membership credentials, with a high level of separation and veto, and our own exchange rate, is about as powerful as you can imagine given our location). globalisation has resulted in two giants, China and the US, and clubbing together makes sense on a level of survival, even if its economic ideological expression is dubious at best.

but if we feel panic, as well as that psychological oppression and loss of identity, that the shits opposing progressive politics have got their way, it's probably worth remembering that while the immediate political, social and financial impact of brexit are difficult to predict, and those of no deal undoubtedly traumatic on an individual and social level likely to threaten lives, livelihoods and wellbeing, and create extreme general turbulence (and not in a good way), the economic modelling suggests we are still not worse off financially than we are now, only than we would have been otherwise.

http://i67.tinypic.com/ibzw9e.png

this will not help my brother with drugs necessary to his treatment if we crash out, or assuage that intense sense of anger at the casual destruction the tory party have wrought on our society, politics and economy, but i am wary of describing brexit as irrevocably damaging.

Just wanted to get that off my chest - i've been trying to mentally articulate it for a couple of days - sorry again for the length.

The Antonin Scalia Law School announced Saturday that Brett Kavanaugh will co-teach a course this summer on the "origins and creation of the US Constitution" in Runnymede, England.

Makes sense.

― nashwan, Sunday, March 24, 2019 5:45 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It does, actually - there's a small piece of land around there that's permanently ceded to the US, a war memorial.

i should perhaps add that that screed isn't really direct *at* anyone here, but more provoked by the dutch person i spoke to the other day, who thought democracy had gone insane and thought the sensible people who understood how to work in a business environment should be in charge.

thought this was worthwhile
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/03/i-work-in-the-civil-service-and-it-will-resist-a-corbyn-government

love some longform fizzles!

When you look at the figures of the Chinese slowdown, their current growth rate is something like growing an economy the exact size of the UK every 2 years was how I heard one finance head describe it! But how the slowdown that effects Germany could still be quite drastic.. I think?

as a few people have noted, the UK is probably home to the most fervently pro-EU constituency in Europ

Only since the vote, though. Before that people were apologetically supportive of the EU.

yes, sorry, that's correct and what i meant to say – it's born of the response to the brexit vote.

now lying in bed fretting about the failure of that post to accommodate ireland: characterising europe by its extreme failures itself fails to acknowledge its use as a pragmatic space of shared political negotiation. i think the general point that EU is better than no EU despite it failings is fine.

but the conclusion reads glib and complacent with ireland in mind.

sweet naif just phoned profesional bowler hat-wearing cunt Stephen Nolan to whine about that awful DUP i cried tbh

xp dw about it, I think it was clear what your post meant (even if I’m not informed enough to actually reply to it, sadface). Get some sleep!

i was gonna let him stew for a bit tbh

nothin personal but yknow 800 years and all that

also havent gotten thru yr big post yet fizzles but lookin fwd to it

#FBPE

about signalling how very sensible people are. I can't see that particularly winning over leave voters

ha ha

More Leave voters had to have been people who didn't really get what they were voting for, and consider themselves nice sensible English folk, than were frothing racist nutbags, though. If there was an opposition party in the UK rn (*larger than the SNP I guess), it should have been possible to make the case over the last few years, months and weeks that Leaving is very un-sensible and far from the interests of the country or populace.

(alt option for an opposition: to have campaigned that the vote shows that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the EU, so it behoves the UK to change it from within by electing MEPs who actually turn up to work, etc etc.)

rip big man

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D2dKr_WWkAEQ38X?format=jpg&name=large

Thanks for that long post, Fizzles.

sun really sticking their neck out there

lol, so funny.

It's nice being on the other side of her indefatigablity for once

If there was an opposition party in the UK rn

uh john bercow + yvette cooper + anna soubry + dominic grieve + david allen green + assorted jolyons not party enough for ya ?

https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/metro-news-s3-prod/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Header_2374479_16.9-1024x575.jpg
heard someone refer to IDS rolling up at Chequers in his vintage open top sports car.. lol some random psycho in a huge articulated lorry take the cunt out pls!

I was more of a 20 years hard labour when I saw that.

New week old fight!

* that corbyn is somehow the main problem

(as per gyac) I don't think anyone believes this, though? What people do believe is that they should be able to affect people on their side more than their opponents. If May is unmoved by a march that's 90% Labour voters, that's understandable. Corbyn, not so much. (also lol Theresa May taking notice of anything ever)

* that brexit is more important than a programme to look redistribution of wealth especially regionally with the consequence that
* brexit is somehow more important than getting rid of the tories

I don't think this is a valid binary - functionally speaking, Brexit is the Tories (so, one of the arguments I can see for his hands-off position is to maintain this link - though I think this is both unbecomingly cynical and running out of road). Brexit is the culmination of Tory policy and Brexit is the thing that will fuel any embers of the Tory party after the current flameout. Some fluffy Lexit may exist in an alternate dimension, but chasing after it ignores everything about the current actual world.

Also of course "you care about this so you don't care about that" is a bigger Tory trap than anything else mentioned here in the last two days.

wins' friend desire to go back to 2015 is daft of course, but it's worth noting that the damage done up until then would be reversible to an extent that Brexit won't be.

Also for the love of Jesus, could everyone stop talking about "the cause of Brexit"? There were a lot of them! For a really tight victory! We should be fighting them all!

It’s a fantasy to pretend remaining solves all those existing ills too.

Aye, but no-one thinks this? The EU isn't a panacea that cures all, but it still does more good than harm - it didn't stop the Tories from doing a lot of horrible shit, but it also stopped the Tories from doing a lot of horrible shit, and has done more good for workers' rights over the last thirty years than any elected UK government.

The labour 2017 voter coalition is real and precarious. They are getting pushback on the doorstep during local election campaigning about supporting a public vote! Had they gone full remain in 2016 or 2017, how many seats would they have won? Is anyone here confident in saying they wouldn’t have been steamrollered by the press pushing a “betraying Brexit!” narrative? Because I’m certainly not.

I'm not sure how much more steamrolled they could have been? But yeah, as with the Ash Sarkar thread, they threaded the needle that they felt that had to, but the time for that has ended.

Anyway, here's something we can all agree on:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/24/tory-islamophobia-row-15-suspended-councillors-quietly-reinstated

I didn't know about that because my only source of news is the bbc.

Just a point on Fizzles's excellent post. I wonder whether the EU would ever be the instrument by which you address borders and migration during a climate crisis or at any other time. The movement of people was in conjunction with a movement of goods and money, facilitating commerce/transaction.

There is no doubt you need coordinated action but the EU is full of inadequacies. They are unable to see migrants as people with rights to a life anywhere. People's attitudes will need to change, and leadership will be needed - but it's unlikely to come from the EU.

The EU and the Tories have both enabled austerity. Fantasy to pretend that one or the other have done more harm. Sides of the same coin.