The Brexit Thread

[Tubby Isaacs]

I spelt his name wrong. It's "Keen".

Steve Kean is the bloke who used to manage Blackburn.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Paul sees a chance to advance Hard Brexit a bit.

Paul MasonVerified account
@paulmasonnews
"They broke my fingers one by one" ... welcome to the Europe of Juncker and the EPP

[Tubby Isaacs]

This going to be the line. EU is rightwing anti-democratic elite, we need to get right away from it.

Paul MasonVerified account
@paulmasonnews
The same right wing EU elite - the EPP - that crushed Greek democracy saying nothing as Rajoy crushes Catalan democracy. That's why EU issue

Rajoy wasn't exactly driving policy on Greece, and Angela Merkel isn't ordering the Spanish police about.

[Lang Spoon]

Paul Mason is an arse. Best ignoring the spanner, he’s never going to have influence on policy.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Probably right.

Jez booted out Richard Murphy, so I need to trust his judgement more.

[Nefertiti2]

The EU would have been happier with Rajoy ignoring the referendum, I should think.

Keen is retweeting Aaron Bastani, that profound thinker, on democracy now.

Aaron Bastani (shouldn't you be calling him Bazza or something equally patronising as you do Corbyn) has a PhD in political communication from The University of London. I haven't read it but setting up Novara media producing a shower regularly with sometimes extremely good analytical content and getting people like David Harvey from the left Richard Angell from the right to appear on it is a pretty substantial achievement, I'd say. Wish I'd achieved as much at his age .

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The EU didn't really say very much when the UK govt was shooting unarmed nordies by the score. It's not really the sort of thing that they get involved in.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Aaron Bastani (shouldn't you be calling him Bazza or something equally patronising as you do Corbyn) has a PhD in political communication from The University of London. I haven't read it but setting up Novara media producing a shower regularly with sometimes extremely good analytical content and getting people like David Harvey from the left Richard Angell from the right to appear on it is a pretty substantial achievement, I'd say. Wish I'd achieved as much at his age .

I don't give a rat's arse what qualifications he's got, or what Jez has or hasnt got. Why me giving him a nickname should offend you so much, God knows. I liked Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown more than Corbyn, who's grown on me, but I didn't get fussed by people giving them nicknames. I always call Brown "Gordo" myself, as it happens.

Bastani's a clown who was tweeting bollocks about democracy and the Greek referendum. A clown.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Aaron Bastani
@AaronBastani
Eurozone/ECB is destroying Italy, Greece & even France. Spain fragmenting. The order is going - liberal left can't stay in denial forever.

Clown, like I said.

Aaron Bastani
@AaronBastani
Italians, especially supporters of the 5SM, will be watching this and thinking a future in the EZ might not be so great.

Clown.

[johnr]

This going to be the line. EU is rightwing anti-democratic elite, we need to get right away from it.



Rajoy wasn't exactly driving policy on Greece, and Angela Merkel isn't ordering the Spanish police about.

Rajoy has thanked the EU for its support.

[Tubby Isaacs]

They didn't support the skull cracking, as far as I know. That's the game Mason is playing here.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

This has very little to do with the eu. This is the spanish govt making an almighty hames of internal policing. I can't imagine that anyone is too pleased or impressed with what's going on, but they're not going to say very much in public. Policemen beating people, and far worse has happened in europe since the foundation of the eu, and only had consequnces when court cases have wound up in the ecj and the human rights aparatus many years later.

[johnr]

They didn't support the skull cracking, as far as I know. That's the game Mason is playing here.

They didn't not support the skull cracking either, which I think is his point.

[Tubby Isaacs]

No, but it's an important ally doing it. Countries don't steam into allies, inside or outside the EU. It's politely called "diplomacy".

Throwing "Juncker" in as though he's breaking fingers is the sort of rubbish Kippers do. It would be like somebody blaming Delors for Britain killing unarmed civilians in Northern Ireland.

Mason also managed to retweet a fake bit of EU law out.

[Nefertiti2]

Clown, like I said.



Clown.

I don't really see what's wrong with either of those quotes. You might not agree but I don't tohinkneither are clownish.

[johnr]

Yes, he was bloody stupid throwing in Juncker, as you say.

Countries can steam in to allies though - Belgium has - especially when they've been as shit as Rajoy has today. One wonders what form the support he has had from the EU consists of.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I don't really see what's wrong with either of those quotes. You might not agree but I don't tohinkneither are clownish.

He's trying to tie the ECB into Spanish police beating up Catalans. It's Kipper "the EU's falling apart stuff", and underplays what the nation states could be doing. All the places he's mentioning are growing faster than Britain.

What's Five Star got to do with anything? I didn't know that they've basically dropped leaving the Euro. Same as the Front National, so you know, maybe the Euro's better than Bastani thinks.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yes, he was bloody stupid throwing in Juncker, as you say.

Countries can steam in to allies though - Belgium has - especially when they've been as shit as Rajoy has today. One wonders what form the support he has had from the EU consists of.

Fair play to Belgium. And to Corbyn too.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Actually, clown was a bit strong for Bastani.

I've been reminded of Nick Timothy.

His solution to the NI Border problem? "NI decides".

[Patrick Thistle]

The EU didn't really say very much when the UK govt was shooting unarmed nordies by the score. It's not really the sort of thing that they get involved in.

Back then Spain still had Franco, so it's all relevant.

[Lang Spoon]

Ahem! Both Spain and the UK were EU members and still shooting assumed ETA or ‘RA heads.

[Snake Plissken]

https://twitter.com/JGForsyth/status/914456504425738240

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I don't really see what's wrong with either of those quotes. You might not agree but I don't tohinkneither are clownish.

no man, they are clownish. Those countries completely fucked themselves up, and the EU is lending them money to tide them over, and telling them to get their fucking act together. There are a wide range of ways to have your act together. You can be a social democratic paradise like Denmark, an FDI hunting export driven open economy like Estonia, or you can be like Germany, if you're a large country. These are three very different countries, with very different goals, but they have their shit together. But essentially it boils down to Don't inflate fucking bubbles, collect enough tax to cover the amount of spending you want to carry out, try and make it as easy as possible for people to set up business in your country, and export the shit out of whatever they are making. That's it basically.

If you don't do this, you essentially wind up making shit of your economy. Italy and greece basically did the same thing, except Greece went much further down the road of using borrowing to inflate a bubble. But broadly speaking, they under collect taxes, they paid far too much to pensioners simply because of their population pyramid, they used the public sector as a means to distribute patronage, resulting in under resourced, overstaffed public sectors that don't remotely come close to meeting the needs of a modern economy, but require you to fill out a lot of unnecessary forms, and pay a lot of transaction taxes, in lieu of a proper property tax. and they made up the difference with a load of borrowing, and they did it over such a long period of time, that eventually they reached a point when no-one would lend them any more money. Doing this shit was wildly popular in these countries, and the cornerstone of many an election victory.

The bad things that happen next aren't the fault of the EU or the ECB. This model has simply run out of road, and in the case of greece, smashed itself into a wall and set itself on fire. And what the fucking fuck is the EU or the Ecb supposed to be doing to France? France is simply doing what france has always done. Whatever the fuck it likes, and anyone else who doesn't like it can fuck off. Unfortunately that's not a really successful long term strategy in the modern global economy, and they have to tweak things a bit, before the same thing happens to them as is happening to italy. But the EU isn't doing anything to France, other than politely suggesting that they stick to the terms of treaties, that their democratically elected governments agreed to, through the legal means required in that country, because it's in their own long term interests.

This man is a fucking clown. What would happen to Italy outside the Euro? Nothing good I suspect.

[anton pulisov]

no man, they are clownish. Those countries completely fucked themselves up, and the EU is lending them money to tide them over, and telling them to get their fucking act together. There are a wide range of ways to have your act together. You can be a social democratic paradise like Denmark, an FDI hunting export driven open economy like Estonia, or you can be like Germany, if you're a large country.

Or export unemployed people, like Ireland and Poland.

There's so many options.

But how can France also be like Germany? Germany is essentially bleeding France dry by undercutting them, knowing full well that French unions won't put up with cuts. So the Germans simply state that France needs to 'reform' ('reform' apparently means to take in a massive former Warsaw Pact country and use it to devalue your country's wages). But if France somehow convinces their unions to undercut Germany, then surely that means that Germany's competitive advantage evaporates? Just like how every airline can't be Ryanair, not every country can be Germany.

The problem with the Euro is that it doesn't fucking work for all these countries simultaneously. Germany is making a killing off of it because they've figured out how to game the eurozone. So of course Germany is going to say, "we must respect the treaties that were democratically agreed." Except when it comes to ignoring surplus rules, which they are allowed to flout.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yep.

Five Star explain their policy on the Euro:

Carla Ruocco, a prominent 5-Star deputy, told Reuters the referendum was “a negotiating tool” and said: “Big investors and markets should be able to distinguish it from the real intentions of a 5-Star government on the subject of the euro.”

That's the thing with populists, they're always so straight talking. And very bad negotiators, by the sound of it. I reckon even I could beat that bloke at poker.

Unlucky they changed policy on the Euro, given that, per Bastani, their supporters are going to be more opposed to the Euro than ever because Catalonia.