The big Brexit thread - news, updates and discussion

[Pickman's model]

The underlined bit is important and formed the basis for a lot of Leave votes. The rest of your post is how Remain were thinking.

I haven’t seen any polls (there are some I’m sure) but there’s been a fair bit of reporting of staunch Leavers who are now happy we’ve left and don’t care about the downsides. That may of course change.

Empty vessels so often make the loudest noise

 

[mojo pixy]

Apart from the zealots who thought leaving the EU was an end in itself and never mind the consequences, I thought the RW argument boiled down to a nationalistic belief that the British are inherently better at making and doing things than people in other countries, and Britain's former dominance in manufacturing and world trade could be restored if barriers that supposedly caused unfair treatment were removed.

That does sound familiar...

(EtA, in all fairness I think the number of exemptions and opt-outs the UK enjoyed with its EU membership was in fact some small evidence of how well we can get what we want out of johnny foreigner. I'm still amazed the people who really think in such terms couldn't see that.)

 

[Pickman's model]

Apart from the zealots who thought leaving the EU was an end in itself and never mind the consequences, I thought the RW argument boiled down to a nationalistic belief that the British are inherently better at making and doing things than people in other countries, and Britain's former dominance in manufacturing and world trade could be restored if barriers that supposedly caused unfair treatment were removed.

And despite everyone knowing that in a crisis one sinks to the level of one's training the Tories thought they'd rise to the occasion against people who had some notion of how to negotiate

 

[brogdale]

Empty vessels so often make the loudest noise

True of both sides of the argument, of course.

Throughout the 5+ (?) years of discussion on here about Brexit I've rarely been convinced that many of those (emotionally) defending the supra state status quo were very well informed about the entity they wanted to remain part of.

Now that the battle is over, I think it would be quite interesting to see the more remain minded folk respond to the Perry Anderson LRB pieces that butchersapron posted.

Here's the third in the series:
Perry Anderson · The Breakaway: Goodbye Europe · LRB 21 January 2021

 

[The39thStep]

Maybe wine import businesses aren’t as key as they are to the ‘frictionless trade’ posters on here .

So he predicts plonk going up by a quid and up by two quid for decent wine.
He also predicts he is leaving the UK with his family because of brexit. Well the latter might be true. Certainly wine at the moment is the same price as before Christmas.

First they came for the wine importers

 

[brogdale]

The underlined bit is important and formed the basis for a lot of Leave votes. The rest of your post is how Remain were thinking.

I haven’t seen any polls (there are some I’m sure) but there’s been a fair bit of reporting of staunch Leavers who are now happy we’ve left and don’t care about the downsides. That may of course change.

An overview of Brexit (right/wrong) polling over the last year:

 

[kabbes]

Apart from the zealots who thought leaving the EU was an end in itself and never mind the consequences, I thought the RW argument boiled down to a nationalistic belief that the British are inherently better at making and doing things than people in other countries, and Britain's former dominance in manufacturing and world trade could be restored if barriers that supposedly caused unfair treatment were removed.

There were two main understandings of Brexit on what we might broadly term "the right", which I have laid out in recent-ish pages. One was exactly as you said -- the idea that Britain is being "held back" and "stuck" in Europe, prevented from taking its rightful place as queen of the trading nations. This is an internationalist construction of a nationalist dogma, with interesting comparisons to the Remain position, which is a more 'pure' internationalist dogma. And it also has interesting comparisons to the other right-wing construction of Brexit, which was a purely nationalist one -- Europe is a cultural threat that is undermining what is distinctive about Britishness and needs to be defended against. These two chief Brexit constructions were as different from each other in aim and principle as they each are to the Remain position.

The former construction of Brexit is yet to play out because, as rutabowa points out, fifteen days is way too early for those with this value system to admit defeat. The latter construction has already had successes and will continue to do so as long as the direction of travel is a retrenchment away from European connections.

Neither right-wing construction of Brexit was interested in whether the bureaucracy and admin of European trade would be interrupted in the months after Brexit. Pointing out that people might have more trouble importing wine or exporting langoustines is as relevant to those with the nationalist construction in particular as it would be to relevant to Remainers that being in Europe was a threat to the use of Imperial weights and measures. It's just people talking past each other at that point.

 

[alex_]

The most common defence always seems to be "well they deserve it I don't like X,y, z because fuck the bourgeoisie"

“Let them eat lobster” ?

 

[mojo pixy]

Fifteen days (eighteen now) is too early to see much, that is clear. What is becoming clearer every day that passes is that the lies that got Leave voted for by a v.likely decisive number of people, were indeed lies. This is going to continue to poison the whole situation, and whether or not 'Remain lied too' is irrelevant because Remain lost and now we're here, and the people who Lied for Leave are still in charge, for the next four years.

What bothers me most about it'll be shit but it'll get better wherever it originates, isn't whether or not it's true, but that it comes across every time I encounter it as underpinned by a tacit it'll be shit for most people but probably not me (for unstated reasons). There has been very little of I'm set to lose my job / family / home / life but I think this is all a good idea anyway and it appears that Leavers across the spectrum see the fallout of Brexit as someone else's problem really.

 

[andrewc]

Shellfish fishermen protesting in Westminster.

 

[Badgers]

We can trust the Conservatives on all matters

 

[brogdale]

We can trust the Conservatives on all matters

It's the fish that he rejects....

 

[Smangus]

Those immediately affected by Brexit - fishermen, importers, trucker etc are the ones having the initial headaches atm. Most people won't feel this until further down the line, inflation, job losses, less choice in the supermarket or whatever form that takes for them. I think most of us are more concerned with the pandemic atm tbh.

If Covid didn't exist I think there would be a lot more MSM focus on this stuff, the optics are totally different from normal atm.

 

[Smangus]

Better buy your trampolines quick...

Trampoline prices 'to soar 50% on shipping costs'

Brexiteer spoilsports

 

[Winot]

Better buy your trampolines quick...

Trampoline prices 'to soar 50% on shipping costs'

Brexiteer spoilsports

No Brexit bounce-back

 

[ska invita]

The RW argument promised something much more short-to-medium term I think - such is the necessary nature of populism I suppose. It sometimes acknowledged there would be some disruption and consequences but not really anything long term. The lack of planning, the years it takes to make trade deals etc were mostly dismissed.

I think if you asked Leave supporters whether they expected and were willing to accept significant interim consequences, making it worse to make it better, the majority would say that's not what they were sold.

Jacob Rees Mogg to his credit said it would take 50 years to build a new CANZUK buccaneering empire

 

[Badgers]

Is this accurate?

 

[ska invita]

Also worth mentioning the total absence of detail, in terms of how we actually get from here to there. From any quarter. Just "well it has to be better!" like a credo. How? How will it get better? What does 'better' look like and how do we get there on a practical level? I missed this part of the debate. I'm not sure it actually happened anywhere. The whole thing was emotional and now all we're left with is the residual anger that got us here. No actual plan for how to get there.

There was lots of detail - key things i remember: 350 million for the NHS a week, breaking free from EU red tape, freedom to make new trade deals, the promise of deregulation

 

[ska invita]

Is this accurate?

whats a travel exemption mean?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

There was lots of detail - key things i remember: 350 million for the NHS a week, breaking free from EU red tape, freedom to make new trade deals, the promise of deregulation

That was the r/w brexit argument. Part lies, part fantasy.

I've never seen any detail from a lexit pov as to how you get from leaving the EU to a better place.

 

[steeplejack]

View attachment 249804

Is this accurate?

More context needed. What is this, where is it from, etc

 

[ska invita]

I've never seen any detail from a lexit pov as to how you get from leaving the EU to a better place.

same struggle as always, minus one less straight jacket

 

[mauvais]

Here's the third in the series:
Perry Anderson · The Breakaway: Goodbye Europe · LRB 21 January 2021

I haven't got all the way through this and indeed not given it the most attention, but there seem to me to be some deeply questionable assertions in this piece.

It spends a lot of time trying to pin a significant root cause for Brexit on Gordon Brown's decision not to join the Euro, and it also describes the US/UK subprime mortgage crisis which indeed the UK was highly exposed to, without any real (at least early) mention of the massive European credit crisis, which it was not.

Had Blair pushed through accession to the EMU after 2001, or even after 2005, the outcome of the referendum would have been very different. It was his failure to override Brown, and lock Britain into the single currency when the economic going was still good for the country, that handed victory to Leave. For one lesson of the Monetary Union is crystal clear. Ceteris paribus, once a country is inside it, fear of the consequences of departure trumps all else if the issue is tested at the polls. The nearest a people came to leaving the single currency despite this was the Greek rejection of the Troika’s terms for a bailout in the referendum of 2015.

I do see what it's trying to do here - in too deep to get out, too big to fail. But in this alternate reality where we joined the Euro, we probably still would have been heavily exposed in our own way to the US-initiated crisis and then, as the US recovered, exposed again to the EU one, and honestly at that point I think Brexit and returning to the pound would have looked like a pretty fucking good idea all round.

Perhaps this is for a different thread.

 

[ska invita]

ive never made it to the end of anything perry anderson has written, not sure who is at blame for that

eta: found out recently his name is Peregrine. Top fact.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I haven't got all the way through this and indeed not given it the most attention, but there seem to me to be some deeply questionable assertions in this piece.

It spends a lot of time trying to pin a significant root cause for Brexit on Gordon Brown's decision not to join the Euro, and it also describes the US/UK subprime mortgage crisis which indeed the UK was highly exposed to, without any real (at least early) mention of the massive European credit crisis, which it was not.

I do see what it's trying to do here - in too deep to get out, too big to fail. But in this alternate reality where we joined the Euro, we probably still would have been heavily exposed in our own way to the US-initiated crisis and then, as the US recovered, exposed again to the EU one, and honestly at that point I think Brexit and returning to the pound would have looked like a pretty fucking good idea all round.

Perhaps this is for a different thread.

Problem with counterfactuals is that you very quickly get into imponderables. For instance, the UK property price bubble started to inflate in earnest in 2002. How might joining the euro a year earlier have affected that? By the time you get to the credit crunch six years later, all kinds of different things could have happened.

 

[mojo pixy]

There was lots of detail - key things i remember: 350 million for the NHS a week, breaking free from EU red tape, freedom to make new trade deals, the promise of deregulation

yes, the wish lists were endless, the to do lists less impressive.

 

[Supine]

 

[mojo pixy]

something fishy afoot?

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

View attachment 249804

Is this accurate?

whats a travel exemption mean?

This is the UK's Covid response, tightening up the borders to prevent so many arrivals. Not Brexit related in any way.

 

[andysays]

BBC website reporting 15 - 20 trucks in Whitehall