Is Brexit actually going to happen?

[Pickman's model]

I'm not taking any bets in pounds: A 5-pound bag of potatoes, three onions, four leeks, a good-sized turnip and two carrots says we won't have a no-deal Brexit by the end of March.

I'll see your veg and raise you a celeriac and a pound of runner beans

 

[butchersapron]

My prediction is in 10 years the Tories will have sold off the NHS, reduced regulation to US levels, shifted taxation to indirect hugely, reduced social safety nets to as low as they can politically get away with without civil insurrection, etc, etc. And i think these ‘stupid incompetents’ will succeed. I hate them don’t get me wrong but underestimate them at your peril. They do lie you know?

You do understand that the tory party - the one with these medium-long term evil plans you briefly outline - supported and campaigned to remain in the EU and that most tory MPs today still want to remain. Would that not suggest that if you are correct about their intentions then these super competent politicians deciding that they can best achieve this under the aegis of the EU (probably looking at the EU doing what you outline in country after country in europe over the last decade+) then this throws up[ serious doubtsd about your and others analysis of what both the EU and remain is?

 

[SpookyFrank]

FYI panic buying season is a great time to shoplift.

 

[butchersapron]

Today's little oddity is that a no-deal brexit would leave the UK in economic tatters whilst apparently the impact on eu countries of the other half of the deals that disappear or are significantly delayed would be minimal to non-existent. Certainly not enough to shift the EU over anything at all.

 

[mauvais]

It'll be great news for air quality in London.

I suspect people burnt more fuel sitting in queues for petrol stations &supermarkets than they would have otherwise.

 

[Yossarian]

I'll see your veg and raise you a celeriac and a pound of runner beans

You think I've never gambled before? I'll raise you four parsnips and ... drum roll ... three brown bananas. They might look a little rough but the browner, the sweeter.

 

[Pickman's model]

You think I've never gambled before? I'll raise you four parsnips and ... drum roll ... three brown bananas. They might look a little rough but the browner, the sweeter.

I'll raise you a cabbage, half a pound of peas and a tangerine

 

[SpookyFrank]

I'll raise you a cabbage, half a pound of peas and a tangerine

Shelled or unshelled peas?

 

[Yossarian]

I'll raise you a cabbage, half a pound of peas and a tangerine

A tangerine?? You're just making shit up now, no deal. What am I supposed to counter that with, a bag of lemons, a watermelon, and a pint of maple syrup?

 

[Pickman's model]

Shelled or unshelled peas?

They're petit pois

 

[Pickman's model]

What am I supposed to counter that with, a bag of lemons, a watermelon, and a pint of maple syrup?

Yes

 

[cupid_stunt]

Meanwhile remain groups are already using fake news in Facebook advertising, apparently brexit threatens endangered animals.

 

[SpookyFrank]

They're petit pois

And where are you going to get these poncy french foods from once the drawbridge goes up eh?

 

[Pickman's model]

And where are you going to get these poncy french foods from once the drawbbridge goes up eh?

They'll be smuggled

 

[Winot]

I suspect people burnt more fuel sitting in queues for petrol stations &supermarkets than they would have otherwise.

Luckily they’ve closed most of the petrol stations in inner London.

 

[maomao]

Petits pois (plural on the petit too, it's French) are just peas that have been picked a bit early. They also can be bought shelled or unshelled.

 

[TopCat]

Meanwhile remain groups are already using fake news in Facebook advertising, apparently brexit threatens endangered animals.

What sort? Furry cuddly animals?

 

[cupid_stunt]

What sort? Furry cuddly animals?

All sea-life, plus orangutans, no doubt playing on the publicity surrounding the banning of Iceland's Christmas TV ad.

 

[Yossarian]

What sort? Furry cuddly animals?

Definitely not plucky robins and lovable hedgehogs.

 

[redsquirrel]

. They don't give a shit. The #3blokes in a pub podcast is really good if you haven't seen it. Jason Hunter really knows his stuff.

That would be the Jason Hunter that supports CETA that wants TTIP. Never mind I'm sure that this bunch of libdem twats will save us from the Tories.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Petits pois (plural on the petit too, it's French) are just peas that have been picked a bit early. They also can be bought shelled or unshelled.

Cool. Coincidentally I've started selling this great new boutique product called petits pommes. They might look like crabapples, but they're actually artisan micro-apples from carefully selected orchards, produced by only the beardiest, most authentic country folk around. Be the envy of all your friends and buy now, only £17.99 for 500g.

 

[mojo pixy]

I'm not taking any bets in pounds: A 5-pound bag of potatoes, three onions, four leeks, a good-sized turnip and two carrots says we won't have a no-deal Brexit by the end of March.

I'll see your veg and raise you a celeriac and a pound of runner beans

You think I've never gambled before? I'll raise you four parsnips and ... drum roll ... three brown bananas. They might look a little rough but the browner, the sweeter.

I'll raise you a cabbage, half a pound of peas and a tangerine

I've been growing opium poppies in a secluded location. I'm in for 100ml of raw poppy milk

 

[mojo pixy]

no deal.

O fuck, here we go....

 

[paolo]

Not that Corbyn would ever accept the will of the party members (2nd ref unanimous), but on the basis of voters sounds like 2ndRef is likely to be fully dead from Labour, if the PLP takes this vote as indicative:

Voters less likely to back Labour with 'stop Brexit' policy, leaked poll suggests

 

[redsquirrel]

Not that Corbyn would ever accept the will of the party members (2nd ref unanimous)...

Cue Inigo Montoya meme

 

[Raheem]

Not that Corbyn would ever accept the will of the party members (2nd ref unanimous), but on the basis of voters sounds like 2ndRef is likely to be fully dead from Labour, if the PLP takes this vote as indicative:

Voters less likely to back Labour with 'stop Brexit' policy, leaked poll suggests

That looks very much like a leak with an agenda, and the data mentioned in the article doesn't look like it supports the headline. The number of people more likely to vote Labour being less than the number less likely might sound like bad news for second ref supporters, but it looks like it includes people who are very unlikely to vote Labour anyway on the one hand and people who are already very likely to do so. What's needed is data about potential switchers, not about the opinions of the whole electorate. The data it does give about switchers is less dramatic and just as useless (at least the way the Guardian has written it up). Slightly fewer Tory to Labour switchers compared to the number of Labour voters less likely to vote Labour. Note that there is not equivalence between the two groups, because people less likely to vote Labour may still vote Labour and if they don't, it doesn't mean they will vote Tory.

 

[killer b]

2nd ref unanimous

have you just redefined the word 'unanimous'?

 

[paolo]

have you just redefined the word 'unanimous'?

Good catch. Majority?

 

[killer b]

Good catch. Majority?

I'm not sure it's that much of a priority for most members. While most of them would prefer to remain, would like a second vote and would vote to remain if there was one, only a third of the party actively oppose current policy. (see near the bottom of this).

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Not that Corbyn would ever accept the will of the party members (2nd ref unanimous), but on the basis of voters sounds like 2ndRef is likely to be fully dead from Labour, if the PLP takes this vote as indicative:

Voters less likely to back Labour with 'stop Brexit' policy, leaked poll suggests

From the IWCA:

“Coming out unequivocally against Brexit damages Labour less in purely electoral terms than coming out for it, as much of Labour’s working class base deserted the party long ago. The Oxford researchers Jon Mellon and Geoffrey Evans found in 2014 that ‘Labour’s move to the ‘liberal consensus’ on the EU and immigration left many of their core voters out in the cold a long time before UKIP were an effective political presence. These voters left Labour in 2001, 2005 and 2010.’ Labour accepting the liberal agenda on first Brexit, and then presumably everything else, only further exacerbates this process.

If one wants to give the Corbyn leadership some credit, one might say they at least have some vestigial awareness of the danger taking this path entails. When Transport Secretary Chris Grayling recently said that blocking Brexit would 'open the door to extremist populist political forces in this country of the kind we see in other countries in Europe’, Labour’s David Lammy accused him of ‘gutter politics’ and ‘appeasement’ while Nick Ryan of Hope Not Hate said the remark ‘simply plays into the hands of those extremists seeking to use Brexit as a platform to boost their profile.’

While Grayling’s timing may well have been cynically motivated, the observation is not wrong. What most of the political, economic and media elite have wanted since the Brexit vote is as close to neo-liberalism as usual as possible, with the minimum of disruption emanating from this democratic aberration. Should they succeed, any semi-competent populist right movement would be able to adopt a narrative of class and democratic betrayal, and position themselves as the alternative to the entire condescending liberal establishment. It’s a narrative that would have resonance for one simple reason: there would be a good deal of truth to it.

And where the BNP took over half a million votes at the 2010 general election, close to a million in the 2009 Euro election, and UKIP 3.8 million votes in 2015, this narrative would in the first instance have a pool of 17 million disproportionately working class Leave voters to pitch to. So while middle-class ultra-Remainers like to pitch the idea that Brexit = fascism, it is the contempt for democratic expression, and the longer-term fundamental retreat from class politics by the left, that creates the imminent risk. Furthermore, there is nothing the Labour party can do to address this: it is a task for the class itself and those who believe in it as the ultimate agent of change.