Is Brexit actually going to happen?

[gosub]

I don't go along with this incompetence line... How do you imagine "negotiations" having gone better?

Shock resignation of EU ambassador a 'wilful destruction' of expertise <avoid this

 

[teuchter]

*putting a constitutional hat on*

before we get to the negotiations, let's consider the constitution of the house of commons. the paper-thin majority theresa may enjoys has been supplied by probably the most reactionary party in parliament. the brexit majority was itself fairly narrow - hardly a resounding declaration for sundering all ties with europe. if i'd been theresa may i would have convened a constitutional conference to establish a negotiating position and vision for the future involving the labour party, lib dems, snp etc in the process, for the purposes of i) incorporating them into the decision-making process and easing its passage through parliament; ii) gaining the benefits of other people's ideas and outnumbering 'the bastards' within her own party, iii) this being a statesmanlike act which would hopefully lead on to g.e. success. it would be a clear example of putting country before party.

i wouldn't have put britain's most prominent liar in charge of foreign relations. i wouldn't have put david davis in charge of the negotiations. i would have found someone with the right qualifications, who had been involved in negotiations before, ennobled them and drawn on their expertise. i would have put article 50 through parliament after summoning the convention i mentioned, trumpeting it as an example of the westminster parliament exercising sovereignty, something we'd see a lot more of in future.

what we have is a brexit where the government doesn't have a negotiating position, where they've been repeatedly humilitated by the eu negotiators, where they've been embarrassed by repeated defeats in the lords, and where the tory party still has great divisions over europe which this entire pitiful exercise, if was intended to achieve anything, was expected to put to bed.

the narrowness of the brexit vote should have allowed a range of now-discarded options to be tabled, e.g. membership of efta, retaining membership of the eea or customs union etc. there was the possibility of arranging things so that the membership of the european union lapsed but that at least part of the hostile environment we're now familiar with was avoided. what we have is a position in which many of the worst aspects of this country have profited from the brexit process and many of the best have been sidelined. the way in which may has said 'no no no' has at every turn stoked support not for the conservative party but for reactionary racist and radical right groups: it is impossible to me to think that the current furore about stephen yaxley-lennon could have occurred without the atmosphere may has played such a role in creating.

if may was in any way competent she wouldn't have discarded so early options which could have played a role in healing differences over brexit, where the european union was itself left but ties to some of its programmes e.g. cultural and educational ones remained. she wouldn't have put some of britain's most mediocre minds in charge of our relationships with the eu and foreign powers. she wouldn't have created such great divisions within parliament, but worked to minimise them.

but then of course if she'd done anything competent that would have been out of keeping with her past career.

Is something like you describe above what you think most people were expecting to happen when they voted leave?

 

[Pickman's model]

your account misses the key and central sticking point of brexit, which i dont think you've addressed and which the government is addressing: to a majority of people vote Leave meant above all end of free movement, it meant control of borders - it means points based immigration. It was at the heart of the campaign and public perception. The tories recognise that and are attempting to at least pretend that that is what they want to happen. To not do so would be a betrayal to Tory voters and vast majority of Leavers in general.

A cross-party whatnot that you suggest would've quickly resulted in a retain free-movement agreement position. Cue civil war/betrayal of the people. Even Labour are on the same page as the Tories on that. That was always going be hanging over the negotiations and is the ultimate stumbling block.

as a result of leaving the eu there would of course be changes in immigration: it's implicit in no longer being a member. the extent of that change and the actual policy any administration comes up with, that's up for debate. i don't think it necessarily means points based immigration, other policies are available. you asked me to imagine how the negotiations could have gone better and i answered that question, i didn't realise you wanted a different question answered too.

 

[gosub]

Is something like you describe above what you think most people were expecting to happen when they voted leave?

I was. And the pamplet the government sent out said it would be one of three options...presumably to be decided by Parliament-all binned now pretty much

 

[Pickman's model]

Is something like you describe above what you think most people were expecting to happen when they voted leave?

yes, i think most people expected there to be a form of negotiation before any departure occurred.

 

[ska invita]

as a result of leaving the eu there would of course be changes in immigration: it's implicit in no longer being a member. the extent of that change and the actual policy any administration comes up with, that's up for debate. i don't think it necessarily means points based immigration, other policies are available. you asked me to imagine how the negotiations could have gone better and i answered that question, i didn't realise you wanted a different question answered too.

Forget about the points based bit (although that's what it will have to be if free movement ends), my point is your version would quickly lead to keeping free movement and that's why it was never going to happen in a right-lead (in campaign and government) brexit.

 

[Pickman's model]

Forget about the points based bit (although that's what it will have to be if free movement ends), my point is your version would quickly lead to keeping free movement and that's why it was never going to happen in a right-lead (in campaign and government) brexit.

my point is that my version wouldn't have been tried because theresa may's an incompetent fuckwit.

as it is, immigration shows no signs of declining to the levels promised by the cameron administration and quite frankly i don't think any brexit is going to reduce net immigration to the levels suggested by brexit campaigners. apparently 285,000 non-eu citizens arrived in the uk last year (https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-migration-non-eu-net-migration-to-uk-overtakes-from-eu/) - it's just another page of the false prospectus brexit was sold on.

 

[philosophical]

your account misses the key and central sticking point of brexit, which i dont think you've addressed and which the government is addressing: to a majority of people vote Leave meant above all end of free movement, it meant control of borders - it means points based immigration. It was at the heart of the campaign and public perception. The tories recognise that and are attempting to at least pretend that that is what they want to happen. To not do so would be a betrayal to Tory voters and vast majority of Leavers in general.

A cross-party whatnot that you suggest would've quickly resulted in a retain free-movement agreement position. Cue civil war/betrayal of the people. Even Labour are on the same page as the Tories on that. That was always going be hanging over the negotiations and is the ultimate stumbling block.

There are a lot of interpretations of what brexit means and I think your interpretation is one of many. The 'key' factor you suggest, free movement, is one of many opinions. Others mention 'democracy', own trade deals, control of laws amongst the reasons they voted.
Which factor is supposed to take precedent is part of this godawful shit show.

 

[Pickman's model]

your account misses the key and central sticking point of brexit, which i dont think you've addressed and which the government is addressing: to a majority of people vote Leave meant above all end of free movement, it meant control of borders - it means points based immigration. It was at the heart of the campaign and public perception. The tories recognise that and are attempting to at least pretend that that is what they want to happen. To not do so would be a betrayal to Tory voters and vast majority of Leavers in general.

A cross-party whatnot that you suggest would've quickly resulted in a retain free-movement agreement position. Cue civil war/betrayal of the people. Even Labour are on the same page as the Tories on that. That was always going be hanging over the negotiations and is the ultimate stumbling block.

sure, weren't we told that the result was a massive 'fuck you' to the political classes? the result's a lot of different things to different people and even the people who declare brexit means brexit don't know what it means.

 

[ska invita]

my point is that my version wouldn't have been tried because theresa may's an incompetent fuckwit.

my point is that it couldnt be tried as it would lead to keeping freedom of movement, too soon and too explicitly. If the Tories want to keep freedom of movement it'll have to be done by the back door and the kick to long grass option. They know that and labour knows that too. Only game in town and both playing it.

 

[DotCommunist]

Nearly half (49%) of leave voters said the biggest single reason for wanting to leave the EU was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”. One third (33%) said the main reason was that leaving “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders.” Just over one in eight (13%) said remaining would mean having no choice “about how the EU expanded its membership or its powers in the years ahead.

For remain voters, the single most important reason for their decision was that “the risks of voting to leave the EU looked too great when it came to things like the economy, jobs and prices” (43%). Just over three in ten (31%) reasoned that remaining would mean the UK having “the best of both worlds”, having access to the EU single market without Schengen or the euro

#


this was exit poll data

 

[Pickman's model]

my point is that it couldnt be tried as it would lead to keeping freedom of movement, too soon and too explicitly. If the Tories want to keep freedom of movement it'll have to be done by the back door and the kick to long grass option. They know that and labour knows that too. Only game in town and both playing it.

do you recognise this question?

I don't go along with this incompetence line... How do you imagine "negotiations" having gone better?

no mention i can see of immigration in there. perhaps you could point it out. which is why i answered that question and not the one you're harping on about now. "my point is"? your point is you don't actually know how it would have gone. because a negotiation is a dynamic debate to arrive at a compromise. you're wittering on and on and on about "it's all immigration": but it isn't! so many different reasons have been adduced for the referendum ending the way it did that they can't all be true. pls tell me why i should believe your immigration thesis more than any of the other theses which have been advanced.

 

[ska invita]

sure, weren't we told that the result was a massive 'fuck you' to the political classes? the result's a lot of different things to different people and even the people who declare brexit means brexit don't know what it means.

No, in realpolitik terms brexit means no more freedom of movement..
Brexit didn't happen in a vacuum, it happened in an openly xenophobic atmosphere and that cat is out the bag now... there are wider political forces at work here.

If May said we're keeping freedom of movement today the Tory party would implode, racist and xenophobic attacks would go through the roof and negotiations would collapse completely while Britain goes into some form of civil war. Its not an option. That civil war might still yet come tbh.


I was talking with someone yesterday (a leaver as it happens) who was saying that in the break up of Yugoslavia all the ethno national wars started after a yes no referendum. Czechoslovakia split without a referendum held... And did so peacefully. We weren't talking about brexit but I think it's an interesting dynamic to be conscious of.

 

[ska invita]

#


this was exit poll data

I'm aware of that... Three things, that poll shows wether immigration was first priority or not, not whether it's important at all, say in second place.

Secondly those who want an end to freedom of movement have a lot of power, both in the political parties , ballot box and in the streets

Thirdly realpolitik agrees it's about freedom of movement, that's why both Tories and labour are getting in such convoluted positions to eat cake and have it... The eat cake stuff is all about freedom of movement.

 

[Pickman's model]

No, in realpolitik terms brexit means no more freedom of movement..
Brexit didn't happen in a vacuum, it happened in an openly xenophobic atmosphere and that cat is out the bag now... there are wider political forces at work here.

If May said we're keeping freedom of movement today the Tory party would implode, racist and xenophobic attacks would go through the roof and negotiations would collapse completely while Britain goes into some form of civil war. Its not an option. That civil war might still yet come tbh.


I was talking with someone yesterday (a leaver as it happens) who was saying that in the break up of Yugoslavia all the ethno national wars started after a yes no referendum. Czechoslovakia split without a referendum held... And did so peacefully. We weren't talking about brexit but I think it's an interesting dynamic to be conscious of.

don't talk such rot. "in realpolitik terms brexit means no more freedom of movement". but elements of freedom of movement will continue. "brexit didn't happen in a vacuum". brexit hasn't happened yet. "there are wider political forces at work here". are there? and what are those pray tell? the tory party may well yet implode without any mention of freedom of movement, because there is no endgame here which will allow its mps to remain within one party without a great deal of intellectual gymnastics.

unlike yugoslavia the uk has been a polity for hundreds of years. unlike yugoslavia there isn't a great history of weapons training in british schools, indeed very few people in the uk have ready access to a firearm. even though successive conservative and labour governments have peeled back some of the strands holding british society together it's shrill and alarmist to say there may well be a civil war. perhaps you could delineate the sides for us.

 

[Pickman's model]

anyway a thread about potential civil war here a new british civil war? complete with poll

 

[Riklet]

Yugoslavia broke up for a lot of complex reasons not related to a yes no referendum. There was no divisive vote which led to the SF breakaways and subsequent war (and only in some parts anyway).

1.3 million majority on a yes no referedum seems like a big difference to me. A clear majority for leaving all key parts of the EU. It's shit we are stuck with the Tories mishandling it but let's not kid ourselves - it would be a complex mess with anyone else in charge. This fantasy of a multi party well organised happy tea-drinking sit down to sort things out well before 2019 is a very naive British fantasy.

That is the nature of negotiations with the EU, especially now that the big hitters in the EU have got Italy, Trump and new government in Spain to worry about too, on top of the naughty boys in Poland and Hungary. And a rising populist far right is now making moves across the continent. Does anyone think fudging Brexit will change any of that?

I'm not going to line up with dead wood business leaders and politicians who have been fucking it all up for 10 years. People who want another referendum until they get a different result. People who think it meant we shouldnt leave the customs union, should keep full EU freedom of movement (oh but not for the thousands of poor fuckers turning up daily on Europe's shores) because otherwise it'll be the end of the world. Oh and we should basically keep paying in billions without getting any political say and without getting anything positive in return.

Im not opposed to more referendums in theory, or a vote on the final deal in theory, but considering who's pushing for it, it seems like shooting ourselves in the foot to be doing the EU leaders' dirty work for them. Making everything apart from the status quo seem like such a nightmare that nothing changes - now we've never seen that before!

 

[Anju]

I don't think there were ever going to be any negotiations, at least not between us and the EU. It was always going to be a shopping trip with very limited and limiting choices for the UK. Basically an EU meal deal.

We certainly did need to negotiate our own position but any chance of that is long gone as nobody was prepared to admit that what was offered by the leave campaign was not achievable. Even with the considerable time Pickmans Model has spent dreaming of being TM he has only come up with May++. Just adding more voices to the debate is never going to lead to a more focused outcome and then you still have the we told you what to do out means out of everything people, the ones flocking to Tommy Robinson now. The ones who aren't racist and the ones who prefer to say they want decisions about the UK made in the UK or control of our own laws rather than control of immigration because it sounds better but it's the same thing at the end of the day.

It's not incompetence that's the problem. It's just a willingness to fuck up everything in order to stay in government. I suppose we will see how strong that desire is when Tory remain MPs have their chance to vote against their party.

 

[Pickman's model]

I don't think there were ever going to be any negotiations, at least not between us and the EU. It was always going to be a shopping trip with very limited and limiting choices for the UK. Basically an EU meal deal.

We certainly did need to negotiate our own position but any chance of that is long gone as nobody was prepared to admit that what was offered by the leave campaign was not achievable. Even with the considerable time Pickmans Model has spent dreaming of being TM he has only come up with May++. Just adding more voices to the debate is never going to lead to a more focused outcome and then you still have the we told you what to do out means out of everything people, the ones flocking to Tommy Robinson now. The ones who aren't racist and the ones who prefer to say they want decisions about the UK made in the UK or control of our own laws rather than control of immigration because it sounds better but it's the same thing at the end of the day.

It's not incompetence that's the problem. It's just a willingness to fuck up everything in order to stay in government. I suppose we will see how strong that desire is when Tory remain MPs have their chance to vote against their party.

yeh you think it was considerable time, in fact it was 30 seconds.

 

[DotCommunist]

The ones who aren't racist and the ones who prefer to say they want decisions about the UK made in the UK or control of our own laws rather than control of immigration because it sounds better but it's the same thing at the end of the day.

ah the secret racists who lied on the exit polls.

 

[Pickman's model]

Yugoslavia broke up for a lot of complex reasons not related to a yes no referendum. There was no divisive vote which led to the SF breakaways and subsequent war (and only in some parts anyway).

1.3 million majority on a yes no referedum seems like a big difference to me. A clear majority for leaving all key parts of the EU. It's shit we are stuck with the Tories mishandling it but let's not kid ourselves - it would be a complex mess with anyone else in charge. This fantasy of a multi party well organised happy tea-drinking sit down to sort things out well before 2019 is a very naive British fantasy.

1.3m sounds like a big difference to you. but in percentage terms it's not all that great. you'd be a rubbish pm because you'd go, ok let's ignore the 48% of the country who wanted to remain and go full speed ahead with the 52%. you do that, as theresa may's doing, and a very large proportion of the country will be very unhappy. if any constitutional convention or whatnot had gone ahead, and it had turned into a clusterfuck the obvious thing for may to do would have been to say 'we approached colleagues in other parties in a spirit of bipartisanship to deliver the best deal for the british people. this has not happened as the parties wish to refight the brexit campaign instead of moving on and so i have asked the queen to dissolve parliament for a general election in six weeks time which i expect will return an increased mandate for my negotiating position' or words to that effect. the snp, labour, lib dems portrayed as wreckers, and may might have pulled it off.

That is the nature of negotiations with the EU, especially now that the big hitters in the EU have got Italy, Trump and new government in Spain to worry about too, on top of the naughty boys in Poland and Hungary. And a rising populist far right is now making moves across the continent. Does anyone think fudging Brexit will change any of that?

I'm not going to line up with dead wood business leaders and politicians who have been fucking it all up for 10 years. People who want another referendum until they get a different result. People who think it meant we shouldnt leave the customs union, should keep full EU freedom of movement (oh but not for the thousands of poor fuckers turning up daily on Europe's shores) because otherwise it'll be the end of the world. Oh and we should basically keep paying in billions without getting any political say and without getting anything positive in return.

Im not opposed to more referendums in theory, or a vote on the final deal in theory, but considering who's pushing for it, it seems like shooting ourselves in the foot to be doing the EU leaders' dirty work for them. Making everything apart from the status quo seem like such a nightmare that nothing changes - now we've never seen that before!

i don't think any referendum's going to return a democratic mandate for reasons i've explained upthread. so leave me out of the deadwood business leaders etc.

 

[butchersapron]

earlier some in the thread were taking time out of bemoaning how thick the general public are to express suprise at fortress europe's camps, but here's a piece from Malik in todays observer which talks about where the camps are located now.

The Sunday Essay: how we all colluded in Fortress Europe | Kenan Malik

Malik barely scratches the surface there tbh - even though it's probably all news to the pro-eu types, easily passed over and forgotten news at that. Stathis Kouvelakis has a blisteringly angry piece in the latest New Left Review that takes an in-depth look with special attention on Greece and the role of it at both external border and internal border as a laboratory for the 'radicalised neo-liberalism' of the EU.

Borderland: Greece and the EU’s Southern Question

European integration since the 1980s has led to the construction and expansion of a specific institutional entity, the EU, which confiscates the name of ‘Europe’ to conceal at the symbolic level the operation of exclusion that lies at its core. The extent to which this hybrid construct, partly inter-governmental, partly supra-national, is based upon sheer coercion is, for the most part, barely visible to the populations living ‘inside’ it.

Greece stands at the intersection of at least three regions of broader significance: the Balkans, Southern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. All three share a common status of ‘in-betweenness’, sometimes considered as an advantage—as suggested by the metaphor of ‘the bridge’ or ‘the crossroads’—but more often as a predicament. [2] European, but not quite Western; Christian, but neither Catholic nor Protestant; the alleged original site of European culture, but also, for many centuries, part of an Islamic multi-ethnic empire; peripheral and ‘backward’, but economically inextricable from the Western core of the continent; dependent and dominated, but never part of the modern colonized world—Greece appears as a true embodiment of those tensions. Exploding after decades of seemingly successful European integration, the recent double ‘crisis’ of which it has been the epicentre—the debt crisis and the migrant crisis—confirmed its identity as Europe’s ‘Other within’. [3] Both marginal and central, its singularity thus revealed the cracks multiplying through the European edifice, as well as the latter’s role in the increasing instability and disruption affecting the broader region.

It was thus not by chance that the ‘refugee crisis’ exploded with spectacular violence in Greece, bringing it to the centre of public attention throughout Europe. I put the term in inverted commas to emphasize that there is nothing neutral about its adoption. Why was it that the arrival of around a million ‘refugees’ or ‘migrants’—again, the choice is significant—in a polity of 510 million, should have been, in and of itself, a ‘crisis’? In reality, its representation as such, above all by the EU authorities and member states, powerfully seconded by media commentary, was fully a part of the problem. The spectacle of humanitarian disaster—images from the summer of 2015 of a child’s body washed up on the beach, the mass arrivals on the Greek islands, the crowds at Budapest Station—briefly brought into the light of day a long-repressed reality. Its matrix lay in the lethal character of the liberal-capital ‘Fortress Europe’ regime which the EU has been building for decades, and its relation to the neighbouring zones of North Africa and the Middle East, where the EU powers have been major protagonists in the wave of wars and civil disruption that drove such numbers to flee.

Liz Fekete's new book Europe’s Fault Line: Racism and the Rise of the Right has an extremely detailed and in-depth chapter (Chapter 7 - The Market in Asylum and the Outsourcing of Force) that really demonstrates the EU's extension and militarisation (not to mention profit making) of borders. I really think there would be outrage on the well meaning liberal left if they ever really were told what the EU was up to - or made the effort to find out for themselves. Or at least there would have to be if they were to remain consistent in their oft declared principles.

 

[Pickman's model]

I really think there would be outrage on the well meaning liberal left is they ever really were told what the EU was up to. Or at least there would have to be if they were to remain consisten in their oft declared principles.

i think a lot of the liberal left turn a nelsonian blind eye to this sort of thing, as they don't want to make a choice of outrage or acquiesence.

 

[Pickman's model]

Malik barely scratches the surface there tbh - even though it's probably all news to the pro-eu types, easily passed over and forgotten news at that. Stathis Kouvelakis has a blisteringly angry piece in the latest New Left Review that takes an in-depth look with special attention on Greece and the role of it at both external border and internal border as a laboratory for the 'radicalised neo-liberalism' of the EU.

Borderland: Greece and the EU’s Southern Question







Liz Fekete's new book Europe’s Fault Line: Racism and the Rise of the Right has an extremely detailed and in-depth piece that really demonstrates the EU's extension and militarisation (not to mention profit making) of borders. I really think there would be outrage on the well meaning liberal left is they ever really were told what the EU was up to. Or at least there would have to be if they were to remain consisten in their oft declared principles.

do you have a pdf of europe's fault line?

 

[butchersapron]

do you have a pdf of europe's fault line?

Will pm in a minute

 

[danny la rouge]

the ones who prefer to say they want decisions about the UK made in the UK

Or the ones who would have preferred the Council of Ministers to quietly keep on enforcing its border regime in North Africa, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

 

[Anju]

yeh you think it was considerable time, in fact it was 30 seconds.

That's still a long time to be her.

 

[Anju]

ah the secret racists who lied on the exit polls.

Not necessarily lying just taking the easy on the conscience and self image road to keeping foreigners out.

 

[Anju]

Or the ones who would have preferred the Council of Ministers to quietly keep on enforcing its border regime in North Africa, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

I didn't realise that would all collapse if we left. Maybe next year we will change our mind on taking in some of the refugees stuck in Italy rather than our current policy of taking none.

It's not exactly quiet either.

 

[butchersapron]

I didn't realise that would all collapse if we left. Maybe next year we will change our mind on taking in some of the refugees stuck in Italy rather than our current policy of taking none.

It's not exactly quiet either.

Perfect example of what i meant above by "easily passed over and forgotten news". Exquisite idiotic timing.