The Brexit Thread

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Diable Rouge wrote:

Tubbs, I'm not sure that tusk is saying anything too visionary. What he's saying is pretty obvious to any member of the EU-27 who thinks about it for any length of time. The flipside of it is that what happens to britain, combined with a fear of the Americans and the russians is going to push more and more people towards the EU, and help drive the further integration of the EU.

Indeed, that may already be happening, with the SPD gaining on the CDU in Germany, Hamon rising in the French polls, and both the AfD and the PVV either stalled or going backwards. That said, Greece is reportedly on the brink of default, again.

There have been two major changes already to how the EU is run in response to the various recent crises. the first is the Fiscal compact treaty which has massively increased the amount of EU oversight over the budgetary process. Essentially Govts have to show their budgetary plans over the next five years, and they have to include all of the liabilities that they have accrued. That is going to fundamentally change how countries are run and will force medium and long term planning on all the govts of the Euro. (It completely changed the fabric of the last Irish general election) It has also fundamentally altered the way that govts can spend windfalls like surges in capital gains tax, or the windfalls from a property boom.

They've also substantially increased and centralized banking regulation and oversight, while relaxing customs regulations. The next step now that the UK is out of the way is to agree a common corporation tax base, and start making corporations pay some fucking tax. The EU isn't interested in Austerity. The EU is only interested in whether or not you are collecting enough tax to cover your spending. It's up to individual govts to decide if they want to do that by increasing taxes, or cutting spending, or a bit of both. Agreeing a common method for calculating tax liabilities should have a fairly impressive impact on the collection of corporation tax right across the european union, and should help fund a substantial expansion in investment.

people are a lot more likely to be supportive of the EU if they can see that it is the only way to get corporations to pay tax.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

I think if you saw Trump and Trump Brexit coming, you've got vision. Customs Union and Hillary Clinton is a mile from what we have now. I didn't see that happening.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

He may think you can pray away the gay, but Stephen Crabb isn't completely insane

[Snake Plissken]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

“There could be another rude awakening for the public when they realise that Brexit will not mean a cut in immigration after all,” he said.

Oh, so it is the public's fault that they are unaware of the ramifications of Brexit on immigration. Not the politicians, campaigners and media who have been misleading them for years.

[Slightly Brown]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Snake Plissken wrote:

“There could be another rude awakening for the public when they realise that Brexit will not mean a cut in immigration after all,” he said.

Oh, so it is the public's fault that they are unaware of the ramifications of Brexit on immigration. Not the politicians, campaigners and media who have been misleading them for years.

I don't think they were mislead: they marched gladly, with ignorance by their side. Anyway. The fact that the economy is being propped up by consumer spending/dipping into savings shows most people still don't have a fuqing clue what's coming.

[Guy Profumo]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Slightly Brown wrote:

“There could be another rude awakening for the public when they realise that Brexit will not mean a cut in immigration after all,” he said.

Oh, so it is the public's fault that they are unaware of the ramifications of Brexit on immigration. Not the politicians, campaigners and media who have been misleading them for years.

I don't think they were mislead: they marched gladly, with ignorance by their side. Anyway. The fact that the economy is being propped up by consumer spending/dipping into savings shows most people still don't have a fuqing clue what's coming.

And of course, that each and every one of the Fash made sure they voted in this one.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: He may think you can pray away the gay, but Stephen Crabb isn't completely insane

He would have been the best Tory leader available. Argued for big investment programme too.

Like Nicky Morgan, he's found that the combination of EU support and opposing same sex marriage makes you fall down a hole in the Tory party.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

I think being a pray-the-gay-away weirdo in a parliamentary party full of closet homosexuals is never going to be a winner.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

He looked embarrassed at his vote too. Didn't do proper frothing for the grassroots.

[Diable Rouge]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Funny, but none the less true for all that.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

That's an amazing diagram in its own rights.

[GCostanza]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

**** Alert!

[N est à?]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

He looked embarrassed at his vote too. Didn't do proper frothing for the grassroots.

He's drawn a line in the san- ah, fuck it.

[Benjm]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

The Times front page today suggests that British Expats in the EU are potentially going to get stung by May's refusal to guarantee the position of EU residents here. At one level this is bleeding obvious, but I thought that the emphasis was interesting in that so far the right wing papers seem to have been quite happy to play along with helping the government to set up their vengeful EU punishment excuse in advance, rather than identifying the UK as the architect of its own misfortunes.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

The Brexit elite in action.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-economy-idUKKBN15V2IZ

And staking a claim for the world's worst analogy.

Even if Britain could not retain tariff-free access for exports to the EU, it would not benefit from imposing "tit for tat" tariffs on EU imports, said Patrick Minford, professor of economics at Cardiff University and the group's chair.

"It sounds counter-intuitive, but it's like you get into a fight in the streets, and someone says 'I'm going to do you!' Do you say 'I'm going to do you' ...? I would suggest you walk away," Minford said at a briefing for reporters.

Minford - who was an early supporter of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's free market policies in the 1980s - said Britain should use leaving the EU as an opportunity to scrap all import tariffs it is currently obliged to impose on goods from outside the bloc.

This would lower prices for consumers by 8 percent and boost the size of the economy by 4 percent, he estimated.

[Sean of the Shed]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

So in the absence of any other leaders right now, do we all follow Tony Blair into battle against Brexit?

[Alderman Barnes]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Oh Christ, of all the people to stick his oar in, it had to be him.

I mean, he's right in this case, but surely even he can't be deluded enough to think that his endorsement is anything but the kiss of death.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

He's probably not even thinking in terms of the electorate, more "opinion formers". Nicola Sturgeon was impressed, I see, and confident enough that it doesn't make her a Blairite warmonger to say so. We are where we are, where people putting their head above the parapet are few and far between. I've had to keep praising Scottish Nationalists and Orange Book Lib Dems. I'd guess he can get a hearing with prominent Remainers who are being too quiet at the moment.

I see he's been accused of "sabotaging" the Copeland by-election, as if he can dominate the news media for a week, and as if there's a big group of people who'll vote for the current mess but be tipped over the edge by Blair.

[Nefertiti2]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Has anyone done more to sabotage the European union than Tony Blair, though?

The decision to back Bush in Iraq was, amonst other things a decision to say that the alliance with the USA was more important than the one with Europe.

Blair could have stood with our French and German Partners- as German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer famously told Rumsfeld he was not convinced. Not only would he have strengthened the rule of law but it would have helped people see the benefits of Europe. Many of those who rightly loath Blair for Iraq back Brexit instead of remembering that the Eu offered us a chance to say with our allies an unequivocal "no". A Labour Party ready to engage properly with Chilcot could have made that crucial Pro EU point. Instead, everything was done by press and PLP to let the guilty off the hook.

The disastrous consequences of Iraq include not just hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths.
the war in Syria and the wave of refugees which has given ammunition to the hard right.

Puzzling too was the refusal to make use of transitional arrangements to limit initial numbers from new European Union countries. - the regulations allowed it to be spread gradually over seven years, avoiding the shock that some areas felt.

There are many other ways Blair damaged our relationships with the EU, whilst ensuring that it was still a convenient scapegoat. Going on holiday with Berlusconi, for example, was disgraceful. Had he given the Referendum he promised we'd still be in the EU and hadd he delivered the change to the electoral system he promised the Tories would be history.

[E10 Rifle]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

So, are the liberals defending Blair's latest intervention comfortable with the blatantly racist dog-whistle in this:

There is, in some parts of the country, a genuine concern about numbers from Europe – real pressures on services and wages. But for many people, the core of the immigration question – and one which I fully accept is a substantial issue – is immigration from non-European countries especially when from different cultures in which assimilation and potential security threats can be an issue.

Is this the fightback? "European foreigns are OK and we must unite and rise up as one. Browner, more Muslims foreigns are not OK, and we're all over your Legitimate Concerns about those bastards"

If Farage had said that, those same liberals would be (rightly) right into him over it.

If this is the fightback, it's fucked already. Fighting racism with different racism. Marvellous.

[Alderman Barnes]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

It's over, isn't it? Britain's gone.

The Tories have predictably closed ranks and gone full UKIP, while Labour are all over the place. Either they're up to some weird Lexiter stuff, or triangulating their way around "legitimate concerns". The only ones sticking up for Europe are the Liberals, Blair and fucking Mandelson, who are precisely the reason why Remain lost. Everyone else is crapping on about the Will Of The People, or "des Volkes Willen" as they used to call it around here.

Fuck that, I'm out, and I'm glad I'm out.

[E10 Rifle]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

But Blair's doing "Legitimate Concerns" bollocks too, just focusing it on people who are browner, poorer, and let's face it, a bit too Muslim. How his pan-European chauvinism helps us at all here is something I'm evidently not sophisticated enough to understand.

The worst thing about Brexit is the racism. Yet some of the most outspoken opponents of Brexit don't seem to be worried about racism. And they too are happy to indulge it, as they did at times in their piss-awful campaign during the actual referendum.

[Alderman Barnes]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

I know. I'm not disagreeing with you at all there. But if all that's left is Blair and this shit, which is not only pandering to racism but also calculated shit-stirring, then there really is no hope.

I never got a fucking say in it anyway, so forgive me if I say that I've had it with that country.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

I'm happier with Blair, on the whole, than Corbyn and McDonnell. And here we are- Wilders. Le Pen. Trump. Putin. And Brexit, it's all part of the same shit and incredibly dangerous.

Where are Pinky and Perky, those experts on peace? Nowhere. And smearing people who do get it as pissing in the face of the British public.

[Alderman Barnes]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

No. How could you even give Blair the time of day after the mess he left? But I had higher hopes of Corbyn and McDonnell. What the hell do they think they're playing at?