The Brexit Thread

[Snake Plissken]

Even if you don't say all that now, I think you have to be saying at least "We'll do whatever it takes to protect our people" or similar, and be more open that these unpalatable things are a possibility to get us out of the really deep shit.

Labour should be doing precisely what they are doing - which is shutting the fuck up. At the moment, the Tories are in a circular firing squad, the newspapers are beginning to turn on them and even the bloody TV pundits are starting to ask awkward questions. (Well, Peston is. The BBC is too busy either hailing Theresa May as the second coming of Martin Luther King or turning itself into the Tommy Robinson Channel.)

If Labour start putting some kind of plan into the public eye it will get completely shredded. Either by reality or lies. Either way, the Brexiteers will have a nice big target to aim at instead of each other. This is what happens when they don't have an excuse. Like I said, Raab basically demanded that Labour offer up a proposal for him to have a go at. May is reduced to begging Labour MPs for support.

Bloody hell Tubby, it's almost as if you want Corbyn to fail.

[anton pulisov]

Such a shit show. Government can't get a Westminster majority for any kind of deal. Logical step would be for May government to fuck off and resign in the "national interest." Instead they will blame the EU.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Not so fast?

https://twitter.com/ninadschick/status/1051464842098475008?s=21

To be honest, When I read DR's posting of the first tweet, the first thing that occurred to me was that there was a big bit missing from those tweets. The UK is going to have to stop pretending to itself that the backstop is going to be time limited. The laws surrounding when and how you have to raise a hard border aren't going to change in three or four years. The EU aren't demanding no hard border in Northern Ireland between 2019 and 2022, and then it's going to be grand. They're demanding no hard border at any point.

It's a similar sort of self delusion that they have when it comes to cake. The Disturbing thing I get from watching the English media (particularly the Guardian) is that they print these breathless stories about the latest moves in Europe, yet fail to check the stories for reference to Cake, or references to a temporary solution to what is clearly a permanent problem.

[ursus arctos]

It’s what happens when you have a stenographic press almost entirely reliant on briefing, rather than one capable of actual analysis.

We keep learning the same lesson over here.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Sunlit uplands latest. It's "go down fighting" now.

https://twitter.com/andreajenkyns/status/1051366874250907653

You have to say that semiotically, Brexit really is fascinating, see below (have put article in extenso because of paywall). It’s as if the aporia that Brexit has evidently become to all but a few fanatics, but always was of course, has backed the hard Brexiters into a corner with only their last-ditch, hawkish WWII jargon to fall back on.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/b...-war-v9cbqnnqn

Brexiteers must stop trying to refight the war

Thinking of Britain as a plucky little island standing alone against European tyranny is both unhelpful and inaccurate

Like a vast super-tanker splitting the seas and leaving waves for miles behind, it was a time so epic, heroic, cataclysmic that our nation still moves in the wake of it. Almost 75 years since VE Day, the Second World War remains our national obsession, to be celebrated and dissected again and again. Darkest Hour and Dunkirk smashed the box office. Bestseller lists almost continually feature tomes on the war; Amazon has more than 20,000 books on Churchill alone. That symbol of 1940s pluck, the Keep Calm and Carry On poster, has been co-opted into banality by everyone from greetings card writers (Keep Calm and Eat Chocolate) to the pro-life movement (Keep Calm and Love Your Unborn Baby).

“Enough!” some argue; let’s Keep Current and Move On. I don’t agree. World-war wallowing brings us pride, pleasure and a reminder that our freedoms were fought for. I bow to no one in my fascination with the war and reverence for those who won it. Yet I cannot help but wonder whether this national obsession is partly responsible for leading us to Brexit and the mess we are in.

Before Leave voters froth, let us state the obvious: the desire to break from the EU was largely inspired by current, rational concerns — around high levels of immigration, for instance. But many times in the past two years I have wondered whether some Brexiteers are also partly animated, perhaps subconsciously, by the events of 75 years ago. Those championing Brexit overload the debate with war-like metaphors: “surrender” to Brussels, “victory” over the EU, Theresa the appeaser waving the Chequers proposal like Neville Chamberlain’s piece of paper. Witnessing the vitriol directed at bland, bureaucratic Brussels, we might question whether the roots of all this lie deeper than missed trade opportunities and myths about bendy bananas.

As we know, the age profiles of the Leave and Remain camps were markedly different. People over 65 voted Leave by two to one. These are people who grew up in the immediate shadow of the war, whose parents played their part in the good versus evil fight of the 20th century. Samuel Johnson once remarked that “every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier”. Could it be that many of us feel inadequate for not participating in an important national endeavour, such as the wartime Britons did?

How else to explain the constant analogy-drawing between Brexit (which threatens the end of a 40-year trading partnership) and the Second World War (which threatened the end of the civilised world)? During the referendum, Nigel Farage’s campaign bus played the theme from The Great Escape, to the joy of supporters. The former Ukip leader has warned that a Brexit transition period would create “Vichy Britain”, while John Longworth, co-founder of Leave Means Leave, declared that any extension of the transition would be “the biggest capitulation since Munich 1938”. Earlier this summer Iain Duncan Smith wrote an article denouncing the Confederation of British Industry for sounding alarms on Brexit, noting that in the 1930s its forerunner the Federation of British Industry “supported. . . the appeasement of Nazi Germany”. Traitors and quislings everywhere! The Conservative MEP David Bannerman even called for Britain’s Treason Act to be updated to apply to citizens showing “extreme EU loyalty”, making Lord Haw-Haws of millions of us.

Then there is the man who has spent years trying to taxidermy the memory of Winston Churchill in order to wear it like a too-large coat. Before the referendum Boris Johnson compared the EU to Hitler in its attempt to unify the continent, calling for Britain to be the “heroes of Europe”. Last year he warned the bloc not to “administer punishment beatings to anybody who chooses to escape, rather in the manner of some World War Two movie”. At last year’s party conference he spoke of the broad sunlit uplands coming after Brexit, praising the voters as though they were stoical wartime citizens: “We are not the lion. . . That role is played by the people of this country. But it is up to us now. . . to let that lion roar.” He might simply have quoted Churchill’s original: “I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar.”

If all this was just an exercise in nostalgia it would not matter much, but the infusion of the Second World War into the Brexit narrative has led people to believe some unhelpful things. The story of 1940 has caused many to think that isolation is in itself glorious and desirable. Of course we must be proud that Britain stood alone, but to choose isolation over partnership is not inherently noble or inherently British; it is foolish, as Churchill himself believed: “There is at least one thing worse than fighting with allies — and that is fighting without them.”

Another unhelpful idea bestowed on us by our war fixation is that to speak out against potential calamity betrays a lack of Blitz spirit. When some have raised alarm at talk of medicines and food being stockpiled, we are reminded that our grandparents suffered much worse. With a bit of grit, guts, blood, sweat and tears we can survive anything. The broadcaster Piers Morgan recently tweeted that “Britain prevailed over two world wars during the last century. I’m sure we can prevail over Brexit, however it unravels”. As one wag replied, it should have been a slogan on the famous red bus: “Brexit: Won’t be as bad as either world war.” The point is that yes, we can be stoical if necessary, but why willingly choose a situation that is going to require stoicism?

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of our war-worship is the way it has encouraged the casual elision of evil bastards back then with earnest bureaucrats today. Forty years after Basil Fawlty had a melt-down in the dining room we are still gaffing away, blaming German dominance for all our woes. This language has been poisonous to relations with Europe. Earlier this year the outgoing German ambassador to the UK, Peter Ammon, called the perception that his nation dominated the EU “a horrible story” and described the reaction back home when he told them how often he was confronted with it: “They say, ‘this cannot be true. You are joking. That is absurd.’ ”

Ammon continued that “if you focus only on how Britain stood alone in the war, how it stood against dominating Germany, well, it is a nice story, but does not solve any problem of today”. He is right. National pride is healthy until it curdles into arrogance and hubris. We can love our history and learn from it, but we cannot live it again.

[ursus arctos]

Hasn't that idiom been the default of the hard right for decades?

I've seen it applied to football, holidays, vegetables, industrial action . . .

[Moonlight Shadow]

It seems to entirely define English identity nowadays, that Burke guy was on the money with his 'idealised past' stuff ..

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1051582157527965697?s=21

[ursus arctos]

Precisely, ms.

It's up there with Confederate "Lost Cause" mythology, the Dolchstoßlegende and a host of equally daft and damning examples.

[Moonlight Shadow]

We have the 'Sonderfall' thing in Switzerland...thankfully now a thing for our more provincial cantons rather than our urban ones.

[San Bernardhinault]

But! We survived the Blitz! Why do you keep telling us Brexit will be bad? Why do you hate Britain and non-sequitors?

[ursus arctos]

Sonderfall is Swiss German for "American Exceptionalism"

[Diable Rouge]

It seems to entirely define English identity nowadays, that Burke guy was on the money with his 'idealised past' stuff ..

No surprise, of course, that he was Irish.

[Diable Rouge]

The Irish Ambassador to the UK, Adrian O'Neill, doing an excellent job bursting bubbles on Radio 4 now.

[Moonlight Shadow]

No surprise, of course, that he was Irish.

He really, really wanted to be English though...

[SouthdownRebel]

From that Times article quoted above:

Of course, we must be proud that we stood alone

No, no, no. This misconception is entirely the problem. We only stood alone if you discount:

- Canada
- Australia
- New Zealand
- India
- Dutch East Indies
- South Africa
- The Free French, including those from the - French colonies who refused to support the Vichy government
- Polish pilots and cryptographers
- Czech pilots and resistance fighters
- The Dutch Navy (especially its merchant Navy) and Dutch Caribbean oil industry
- China
-The Congolese troops who fought the Italians in East Africa on behalf of Belgium
- Greece
- Yugoslav partisans

I could go on. The UK shouldn't be proud that it stood alone because it's a myth born out of propaganda, at no point did we ever actually do so. One specific example - the Battle of Britain was won in part thanks to the contribution of Polish and Czech pilots and thanks to oil from the US and Venezuela that the exiled Dutch government allowed the UK to ship through Aruba and Curacao.

[sw2borshch]

Who doesn't?

Anyway, it's obvious enough to be trite as all hell, but Britain stood alone with India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Sudan, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Cyprus, Malta, Nigeria, Tanzania, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Yemen and a whole bunch of other places that I can't quite remember at 7.25 on a Monday morning.

[sw2borshch]

Aha!

[sw2borshch]

My sixth form Russian teacher's late husband was a Polish Battle of Britain pilot, fact fans.

The lady herself had something of a life story before she met him - an ethnic Ukrainian who lived in the part of Poland that the Soviets conquered when the less bad half of the Pact of Steel joined WW2, her family/village was kidnapped by the state and resettled in a forest in Karelia. The Soviets at least had the decency to dump them somewhere where there were a few log cabins.

[Benjm]

My sixth form Russian teacher's late husband was a Polish Battle of Britain pilot, fact fans.

A former landlord of mine was too. The Spitfire was a popular name for Polish restaurants in England, post-WWII. I think that there is still one in Hammersmith.

[Guy Profumo]

He really, really wanted to be English though...

Or vice versa in the case of Andrew Bridgen MP

https://twitter.com/PropertySpot/sta...24600600289281

[Tubby Isaacs]

Labour should be doing precisely what they are doing - which is shutting the fuck up. At the moment, the Tories are in a circular firing squad, the newspapers are beginning to turn on them and even the bloody TV pundits are starting to ask awkward questions. (Well, Peston is. The BBC is too busy either hailing Theresa May as the second coming of Martin Luther King or turning itself into the Tommy Robinson Channel.)

If Labour start putting some kind of plan into the public eye it will get completely shredded. Either by reality or lies. Either way, the Brexiteers will have a nice big target to aim at instead of each other. This is what happens when they don't have an excuse. Like I said, Raab basically demanded that Labour offer up a proposal for him to have a go at. May is reduced to begging Labour MPs for support.

Bloody hell Tubby, it's almost as if you want Corbyn to fail.

I don't think "never interrupt your opponent when they're making a mistake" applies here, Snake.

The "mistake" is going off a cliff that screws up Labour's programme.

The alternative is that, by leaving the field to May, she stitches something and looks like a genius. "Do you think Labour would have been tougher?" "Labour didn't even have a policy" etc.

Are the ERG really going to put Corbyn in anyway? He's a threat to their money (the onshore bits anyway). My money is on the money winning over "trade deals" or whatever else they have to jettison.

[SouthdownRebel]

Tubbs, if May does manage to stitch something together she would rightly be hailed a genius, because doing so involves reconciling the irreconcilable. It's been obvious from day one that the Irish border would end up being the eventual undoing of the whole process and, two years later, they're no closer to coming up with anything workable that all sides will agree on. Everything else that we're hearing is about being seen to have tried really hard so that the blame can be cast elsewhere when the whole thing inevitably fails. A hugely expensive two year game of "cover your arse".

[Tubby Isaacs]

She got killed in the Commons today, by the sound of it.

Here's something to focus her mind.

PARIS (Reuters) - AstraZeneca (AZN.L) will keep its freeze on manufacturing investments in Britain if the country’s exit from the European Union fails to give enough clarity on future trading relations, the drugmaker’s chairman was quoted as saying on Monday.

[Nefertiti2]

BBC just not reporting Corbyn at all on the News