Hard Brexit or Hard Brexit

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, but that's peanuts, and the long term impact, the cost to the economy and to people's incomes, will be worth it because we're getting our blue passports back.

[Clinton Huxley]

Those "Europeans" will soon realise that they need us more than we hate them. They'd all be speaking Prussian now if it weren't for the stern bosom and alabaster thigh of Britannia.

Any moment now, thousands of those damned continentals, with their sausages and haircuts and baroque venereal diseases will march through their quaint capitals, begging us to stay.

[Svartalf]

Sie, mein Herr, sind ein SchweinHund, und England ist Dreckland.

[JimC]

All this crap about how the economy will dip when we leave is further proof that we are right to leave.

How can you be independent, when the remainers are saying that we can't afford to leave.
There are two options, leave now, or become more and more dependent. That's what the EU wants, every country in chains.

So what if the economy takes a dip? It's worth it for freedom. What kind of a dip did the economy take, when we last had to fight off the Europeans? So what? It was worth it a million times over.

No deal is the best option, if the Europeans want to piss about. That way, if they want to fuck up our exports, we fuck up theirs. If they block our financial services, we block their wine and cheese. They should match it up, Euro for Euro.

Buy Aussie wine and cheese! And Kangaroo meat!

[Brian Peacock]

We'll happily accept Ozzie economic support after B-Day, but not your migrant barstaff or rugby players with dubious antecedence


EU leaders say single-market access for goods a nonstarter.

The difficulty the government find themselves in is having to attempt tp deliver what the Leave campaign promised - all of the benefits but without any of the costs or obligations. Unfortunately those promises were always unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky dreams. This means fundamentalist Brexiteers have had to recast and reify Brexit as having always been about pulling up the drawbridge and severing all political and economic links to the EU. Putin must chuckle about that every morning over his kasha and tvorog.

Mrs May has a choice to make, and it's a choice about the future of the Conservative party. Does she want to render the Tories a toxic brand for a generation and be seen as the sitting PM who presided over the break up of the party, or does she want to be seen as the PM who saved the Tory brand by putting the national interest above politics. As it stands though either a hard or soft Brexit offers both possibilities. One thing's clear, she can't dillydally for much longer.

[mistermack]

This is rubbish. The campaign was just that. A campaign for a referendum. There was no manifesto. Both sides exaggerated. Like I've said before, it's an adversarial way of making a decision.

You put up OPINIONS and invitations to see it your way, and the other side do the same.

To extend that logic, when we went INTO the EU, it was portrayed as a trading bloc. It wasn't described as the political and legal self-regulating monster that it's becoming.

So we were sold lies when we went in. You can't have it both ways.

[Brian Peacock]

[mistermack]

So a cunt calls a prick a twat.





He's not the greatest thinker out there.

[Scot Dutchy]

This is rubbish. The campaign was just that. A campaign for a referendum. There was no manifesto. Both sides exaggerated. Like I've said before, it's an adversarial way of making a decision.

You put up OPINIONS and invitations to see it your way, and the other side do the same.

To extend that logic, when we went INTO the EU, it was portrayed as a trading bloc. It wasn't described as the political and legal self-regulating monster that it's becoming.

So we were sold lies when we went in. You can't have it both ways.

That IYHO. The UK knew very well what it was entering as it was made very clear what the aim of the organisation was. There were no lies but Maggie tried to take over in the normal British arrogant way but failed miserably. When the veto was removed on a massive area of power the tories realised they were just another EU country a situation that an ex-colonial power found impossible to accept.

Now they are fucked. It hurts and it is going to hurt even more. Time to get out the axel grease.

[mistermack]

Time to get out the axel grease.

I think you'll find that the Dutch have bought it all up. Bending over for the Germans must use up quite a lot.
Has Frau Merkel told you how many more boat people you have to take yet? I suppose Holland will be notified, when they have decided.

[Scot Dutchy]

Time to get out the axel grease.

I think you'll find that the Dutch have bought it all up. Bending over for the Germans must use up quite a lot.
Has Frau Merkel told you how many more boat people you have to take yet? I suppose Holland will be notified, when they have decided.

WTF are you fucking on about. Again as always you have not got a bloody clue or maybe you find very difficult to understand with your small adversarial mind that 28 countries can negotiate a compromise. For Brits it impossible for four people to agree. The Brits cabinet is divided to nth. degree. May will need a new supply of axel grease when the Orange Scrotum comes on the 13th.
That 51st state position is looking very tempting.

[mistermack]

Yes it's easy for the EU to negotiate a compromise. Just ask Frau Merkel what she wants.

Job done.

[Scot Dutchy]

Your ignorance is truly amazing. Looking forward to being the 51st. State of the US of A? You will need a tanker load of axel grease for that one.

[laklak]

Cosmoline and gun oil. That's what they'll need when we give 'em the 2nd Amendment. They can keep their cricket, as long as it stays within state borders.

[Brian Peacock]

This is rubbish. The campaign was just that. A campaign for a referendum. There was no manifesto. Both sides exaggerated. Like I've said before, it's an adversarial way of making a decision.

The point I was making is that the the ardent Brexiteers in the Cabinet have wedded themselves to a hard, cliff-edge Brexit as the only possible kind of Brexit - and in so doing they claim that this is what they meant all along. Sure, nobody on the Leave side campaigned on a specific manifesto commitment regarding one type of exit over another, but that's not to say that those now agitating for a clean-break, non-negotiated exit haven't made some pretty astonishing and exaggerated claims during the process:

• That Brexit wasn't about immigration (and that immigration wouldn't fall) but about Parliament 'taking back control'. It's interesting that fundamentalist Brexiteers in the Tory party are now forcing the government to resist giving Parliament exactly that kind of sovereign power when it comes to striking a negotiated settlement over a no-deal flounce.
• That leaving the EU would liberate £350 million a week for the NHS. This claim was repeated as many times as it's been roundly debunked, to a point where Leavers have had to 'fess up and acknowledge it was drivel. Now Mrs May and her aspiring health secretary are saying that any additional funds for the NHS (or any department) will have to come from general taxation post-Brexit. There will be no B-Day windfall.
• That we would retain access to the EU single market and that negotiating a trade deal would be "the easiest thing in human history.", and that anyone who disagreed was propagandising for "Project Fear". How's that working out?
• That we'd save £2 billion a year on our energy bills (Johnson: "that's over £60 per household") by removing VAT on energy, although nobody making this claim could quite explain it, either in mathematical terms or in relation to the market conditions which might bring this about - particularly as we're a net importer of energy.
• That we'd avoid a brain-drain and remain a world leader in science, technology, research and development despite the fact we spend the least as a % of GDP of any G8 nation in that area, that the Chancellor has slashed the science and development budget to a mere £6 billion total for the period 2016-2021, and that we're about to loose the £7 billion a year we received in EU research grants. And let's not forget that without a legally binding negotiated settlement all UK-EU joint science programs will be summarily severed on B-Day, if not before.

Yes, my OPINION is that the prospect of no-deal Brexit is an avoidable calamity, and that the Leave campaign made promises they couldn't keep and some they couldn't possibly know were true (and some they probably knew were lies). And my OPINION is qualified by the stuff above and the other stuff I've been posting recently. One thing it isn't qualified by though is the mere repetition of bold and baseless claims and assertions about the merits of my position, such as the opinions commonly forwarded by those who extol the virtues of leaving the EU and the probable perfectibility of a Britain outside of the EU.

What the Remainers campaigned on is irrelevant now because we're leaving the European Union, but if this is evidence as to the merits of an "adversarial way of making a decision" then the lesson here seems to be that misdirection, unevidenced claims, and bare-faced lies are fair game if one's adversary is ultimately defeated.

You put up OPINIONS and invitations to see it your way, and the other side do the same.

Indeed. And yet when those opinions are qualified and challenge the Brexit orthodoxy they're dismissed as the disingenuous ravings of "Project Fear", as lies touted by malignly unpatriotic enemies of the people, saboteurs, and mutineers, and those challenging the orthodoxy become the subject of four-page exposés of their personal iives and death threats from members of the public.

To extend that logic, when we went INTO the EU, it was portrayed as a trading bloc. It wasn't described as the political and legal self-regulating monster that it's becoming.

So we were sold lies when we went in. You can't have it both ways.

That's rather simplistic, reductive, and revisionist. How can we have a multi-national trading alignment without regulatory and legal alignment? And how can we achieve any of that without a framework for political discussion, agreement, and remedies for disputes? It seems to me that the complaint here is that the world changed between 1973 and 2016 when we had every right to expect it to remain the same. Even Boris knows how good an argument that is...