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

    This is good – 10 ways to resist hard Brexit.

    Remarkably, it doesn't include agreeable lunches with Polly Toynbee or sneering at Jeremy Corbyn on the internet.

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

      Yeah, and what JohnR said. Fuck Clegg, and fuck the firing-at-their-own-feet wing of the Remain campaign (Osborne, Cameron et al): the best thing they could do is admit their own partial responsibility for this shitstorm and fuck off from public life forever.

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

        So, Brexiteers look nostalgically on the era of the death penalty, blue passports, Imperial measures and corporal punishment.

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

          Tubby Isaacs wrote: Arthur Scargill thinks Brexit is great and coal mines are going to reopen.

          I want to play him at cards for money.
          He's right you know Tubbs. There is a planning application for a new coal mine in West Cumbria near Whitehaven going through the system right now. It will be built on the old Marchon Industrial site but won't unfortunately be using the old rope hauled incline to get the coal trucks out but conveyor belts instead.

          Stick to playing happy families for now.

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

            You really have to be Irish to get this one.

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

              This one's good:

              Now is not the time

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

                So, Brexiteers look nostalgically on the era of the death penalty, blue passports, Imperial measures and corporal punishment.
                Well, yes. Have you met a Kipper or a Tory lately?

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

                  Diable Rouge wrote: You really have to be Irish to get this one.
                  Ah, that's brilliant.

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

                    Clegg and his party were staunch defenders of EU membership.

                    Compared with what's at stake now his role in the Coalition is trivia.

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

                      John, Corbyn supported leaving until some unspecified time recently. He made a ridiculous nod to it in his leadership campaign.

                      He'd have brought us to this disaster yonks ago. All that stopped him being Labour''s stooge in an earlier referendum campaign was that previous Tory leaders had more sense than Cameron.

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

                        Compared with what's at stake now his role in the Coalition is trivia.
                        There's a complete absence of cause and effect analysis in this contention. As if Brexit suddenly fell from the skies in 2016, and separated everyone neatly into goodies and baddies. Clegg's dreadful performance in government, his going-along with the cruelties of the 2010-15 administration, lit a bonfire under his own party's credibility and chances, and helped fan the very flames of last year's vote. His role in the coalition is not trivial – it is a factor that has led us to this year's disaster.

                        Just because he's on the right side on this issue doesn't absolve him of responsibility for the other side winning. Same goes for corrupt nest-feathering cruel cunt Osborne and the ever-evasive Cameron. They are not our friends. They owe us apologies.

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

                          My point is that Clegg's role in the coalition - and the absolutely disastrous outcomes of it on already hard-up people all round the UK - directly impacted upon the Referendum result, negatively, big time. That Corbyn became leader of a party that wasn't in power 10 months before the vote, that was/is horribly split, and before that was at the very best a fringe player in the party, doesn't mean that much. He had/has reservations about the EU, but as even bloody Angela Eagle noted, he was up and down the country like a blue-arsed fly campaigning for In (although he's apparently such a shit leader who couldn't persuade anyone of anything anyway, so I do wonder why his contribution is deemed so important).

                          Which Tory leaders - John Major? Margaret Thatcher?

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

                            One thing about Clegg is that nobody who voted Lib Dem on a 'better than Tory' front wanted to do that again after the Coalition. The collapse of the Lib Dems in 2015 handed seat after seat directly to the Tories. The South West of England was always yellow and it turned blue overnight.

                            What's getting me are the memes popping up defending the older generation for (statistically) voting for Brexit. The meme is something like : "You mean those people who fought and died for your freedom, you ungrateful skunks..."

                            Except it wasn't those older people (most of whom are now sadly dead) - it was the post-war generation, the baby boomers who are now in their 60s and 70s who voted Brexit in droves. I remember reading that people who are still alive who remember the war generally voted to remain in.

                            I guess this is just part of the patriotic glurge that true patriots want a totally independent UK but it's annoying me as much as any of the other Brexiteer truth-bending.

                            I've seen some of that Clegg documentary where he came to Wales. He was talking to one young lad who said that among "older people" it was immigration that made them vote out - and they did so because they didn't have the experience that younger people did of growing up with and going to school with people from different cultures. Or in other words, racism based on ignorance.

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

                              Thatcher was practically a Europhile compared to present Tories - though she got a rebate, she never actually argued that the UK should leave, more took a Cameronian viewpoint, so she would have been a Remainer.

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

                                There's a complete absence of cause and effect analysis in this contention.
                                As indeed there is in your attempt to attribute all the blame for austerity to the Lib Dems and none to Labour. If Labour had made slightly less of a disaster of the public finances in the run up to 2010, so as to not leave them in crisis, or even if they'd been slightly less crap at persuading the public to vote for them in 2010, so as to win enough seats to give them a majority in an alternative left-centre coalition rather than Tory-Lib being the only arithmetical majority short of a 7 party shambles, then yes your point might be credible. But the wider point is that now is now, Labour are a pitiful waste of space for the foreseeable future, and the Lib Dems are the vigorous, coherent and cohesive opposition to hard Brexit. Which is why our membership has more than doubled in a year.

                                {Edit: sorry, that came out more provocative than intended. I let my irritation get the better of me. I am just so fucking sick of hearing people trash the Lib Dems for their share of responsibility for the 2010-15 Coalition actions whist completely ignoring both the financial and the parliamentary arithmetical realtiies of the post 2010 election situation. My own view is that Clegg et al mishandled it badly and let themselves get completely shafted, at the cost of course of the poorer half of society as much as at the cost of their own political futures. I doubt they'd repeat that mistake. Anyway, probably around half the members of the Lib Dems now weren't in the party before 2015. Such as myself for example.]

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

                                  I think fault is 90% one man. The essay crisis party hack Murdoch stooge former PM.

                                  Austerity was a factor, I recognise that, and I give credit to those who opposed it. But a long time Lexiter who opposed it still comes out behind, surely on this issue.

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

                                    If Labour had made slightly less of a disaster of the public finances in the run up to 2010, so as to not leave them in crisis,
                                    Or if we'd told the truth about why they were in a mess – rather than either meekly going along with, or insufficiently rebutting, the dishonest Tory narrative about what caused the big deficit. A dishonest narrative the LibDems were happy to go along with when in government. But yeah, if we're doing all that, Labour made mistakes around the 2008-10 period, mistakes that all the other main parties would have made too, but in a probably more amplified way.

                                    Also, the economy was growing again by May 2010.

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

                                      And yeah look, Corbyn isn't much cop on Brexit - for one thing he's not quite in tune with the newer younger Labour left's more Remainish stance – and he can be criticised for muddled messages on it, but he's not responsible for it – he's much less responsible for it than some who are now getting lauded just because they were Remainers.

                                      Like I said, it's not goodies v baddies.

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

                                        E10 Rifle wrote:
                                        If Labour had made slightly less of a disaster of the public finances in the run up to 2010, so as to not leave them in crisis,
                                        Or if we'd told the truth about why they were in a mess – rather than either meekly going along with, or insufficiently rebutting, the dishonest Tory narrative about what caused the big deficit. A dishonest narrative the LibDems were happy to go along with when in government. But yeah, if we're doing all that, Labour made mistakes around the 2008-10 period, mistakes that all the other main parties would have made too, but in a probably more amplified way.

                                        Also, the economy was growing again by May 2010.
                                        Agreed.

                                        Just on the LibDem coherent opposition thing, didn't one or two of their gaggle of MPs abstain on the Art50 vote or something? If so, doesn't leave them with much.

                                        As for 'now' EEG, how are the LibDems going to be any more effective than Labour is opposing the hard brexit? What are they going to argue differently for when it comes to workers' rights, EU nationals, etc, and how might their small number of MPs achieve anything important? (This isn't asked as a sneer, I'm genuinely interested.)

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

                                          I've seen some of that Clegg documentary where he came to Wales. He was talking to one young lad who said that among "older people" it was immigration that made them vote out - and they did so because they didn't have the experience that younger people did of growing up with and going to school with people from different cultures. Or in other words, racism based on ignorance.

                                          but there's only 2000 net non uk migrants to Wales a year. I mean it's so low, that Professional footballers probably make up a meaningful chunk of it. There's only 165,000 people in wales from outside the UK. There's four times as many english people living in wales. Most foreign born migrants who live in wales, have moved there from other parts of the UK. Wales is barely richer than eastern Europe if you take the cost of living into account.

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

                                            E10 Rifle wrote: And yeah look, Corbyn isn't much cop on Brexit - for one thing he's not quite in tune with the newer younger Labour left's more Remainish stance – and he can be criticised for muddled messages on it, but he's not responsible for it – he's much less responsible for it than some who are now getting lauded just because they were Remainers.

                                            Like I said, it's not goodies v baddies.
                                            There's one of those memes going around that says 'Leave lied. Remain lied. But it's Corbyn's fault for being honest'.

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

                                              The problem with Corbyn isn't that he lied. It's that he's hardly expressed anything at all. He hasn't explained why leaving's a terrible idea. He hasn't said why we should remain in the single market. He hasn't argued the case for free movement of people within Europe. He hasn't offered a strategy to prevent Brexit. He hasn't offered a strategy to delay Article 50 - and in fact whipped his party to vote for it. He hasn't offered a strategy to push for soft Brexit. He's done absolutely fuck all, and said absolutely fuck all of any use. It's easy to be honest when you say nothing, and do nothing.

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

                                                That's not really just corbyn's fault though. No-one in UK politics south of scotland has a fucking clue what the EU is for or about or how to proceed.

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

                                                  But I blame Corbyn more than most because he's leader of the major left wing party in the UK, so I'd expect him to lead, and I'd expect him to offer reasons why we shouldn't go along with a nationalist bullshit Brexit which offers nothing to labour (or Labour), and destroys all kinds of rights. Instead he's about as useful at reducing the damage Brexit will do as a battenberg cake is at reducing the damage an assassin's bullet does.

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

                                                    Clegg changed his position on cuts after the election. That was utterly disreputable as well as wrong.

                                                    But he should be an ally now. We need the Lib Dems to take Tory votes like in the 90s. The Tories need to be made to look out on a limb to defeat Hard Brexit.

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