Brexit Penny Dropping?

[Roxanne]

8 minutes ago, woolley said:

Where were you going with it then? Why did you raise the spectre of Hitler's Germany in relation to this? Were you saying it might end there? It's the sort of thing that gets lazily trotted out at the mention of any action perceived to go against liberal levels of tolerance that have become endemic.

I am advocating taking steps aimed at stopping criminality and deporting any alien offenders who prey on society. I am not targeting that at any particular minority, and nor am I in favour of exterminating or persecuting anyone.

OK.

[woolley]

35 minutes ago, Roxanne said:

OK.

Oh. That was an anticlimax. My submissive side was expecting the sharp end of your tongue. 😇

[Roxanne]

Just now, woolley said:

Oh. That was an anticlimax. My submissive side was expecting the sharp end of your tongue. 😇

Yes. It was meant to be.

You're far too over caffeinated today today for me to engage with you.😘

[manxman1980]

2 hours ago, woolley said:

Dream on. The people who own the country have it back. They won't be making that mistake again.

Who do you mean when you say "the people who own the country have it back?"

The Crown?

The wealthy land owners?

The dubiously funded think tanks?

The media barons?

1 hour ago, woolley said:

This is happening all over Europe, and it's nothing to do with Brexit.

What do you make of the election result in Spain then?  Doesn't really fit your world view.

[woolley]

14 minutes ago, Roxanne said:

Yes. It was meant to be.

You're far too over caffeinated today today for me to engage with you.😘

I just shouldn't engage with nutters. There's no profit in it, and it doesn't get me anywhere. I don't think I've ever had cause to take issue with you, but I didn't see the relevance of Germany to a law and order issue. Anyhow, it appears to have been dealt with satisfactorily according to the other thread.

[woolley]

24 minutes ago, manxman1980 said:

Who do you mean when you say "the people who own the country have it back?"

The Crown?

The wealthy land owners?

The dubiously funded think tanks?

The media barons?

What do you make of the election result in Spain then?  Doesn't really fit your world view.

The wealthy. The "old" money.

Spain? Inconclusive. I think it's symptomatic of the malaise stalking the capitals of Europe. It's a long process.

[The Voice of Reason]

7 hours ago, manxman1980 said:

@The Voice of Reason so sovereignty wasn't an important issue in the Scottish Referendum? 

I have heard very few Brexiteers support an IndyRef2.  Typically the response is that it was a once in a generation vote and they should now accept being largely governed from Westminster. 

The Hero of Brexit, Nigel Farage, made it clear that had the EU Referendum gone the other way by the same margin then it would be far from over as far as he was concerned. 

Scotland voted 55.3% to remaining in the UK and 44.7% in favour of independence.   

(EU Referendum results were 51.89% leave and 48.11% remain for comparison.)

Those are some pretty close results that could easily sway either way depending on the mood of a nation.

Who said sovereignty wasn’t an important issue in the Scottish referendum? It was, but having considered it Scotland decided it was better off being part of the Union. That’s fair enough. But on the issue of UK sovereignty the people of theUK made the collective decision to leave the EU.

Very few people ( apart from the discredited SNP) support an IndyRef2.

Yes it was supposed to be a once in a generation vote and having rejected independence Scotland should now be largely governed from Westminster. It’s what they voted for. Why deny them that which  they voted for in a democratic referendum?

 

This business about the EU referendum vote  being close. Yes it was, so what? The majority of the electorate were in favour of leaving.

As I have said on a few occasions if the result had been Remain, by however small a majority then it matters not what Farage says.

I know  and you know (or should know) if there had been a similar slim majority in favour of remaining in the EU, there  would be (quite rightly) no re run. So it’s a totally moot point and I’m not sure why you are bringing it up.

[manxman1980]

5 hours ago, woolley said:

The wealthy. The "old" money.

I assume that is sarcasm? 

5 hours ago, woolley said:

Spain? Inconclusive. I think it's symptomatic of the malaise stalking the capitals of Europe. It's a long process.

They right were expected to walk that election but it didn't go that way did it?

Brave decision to call the election in the circumstances.  The Tory Government clearly don't have the same nerve.

[woolley]

20 minutes ago, manxman1980 said:

I assume that is sarcasm? 

They right were expected to walk that election but it didn't go that way did it?

Brave decision to call the election in the circumstances.  The Tory Government clearly don't have the same nerve.

Turkeys don't vote for Christmas. You don't think old money still owns the country?

[manxman1980]

13 minutes ago, woolley said:

Turkeys don't vote for Christmas. You don't think old money still owns the country?

Old money? Partially.  Also lots of new money who hold old money in high esteem.

I am just amazed that you didn't say the electorate or the person on the street...

[woolley]

5 minutes ago, manxman1980 said:

Old money? Partially.  Also lots of new money who hold old money in high esteem.

I am just amazed that you didn't say the electorate or the person on the street...

I'm amazed you're amazed.

[manxman1980]

17 hours ago, woolley said:

I'm amazed you're amazed.

Essentially what you are saying now is...

The claim that the electorate voted for the sovereignty of the UK Parliament is at best a red herring.

What they voted for was to return the country to the wealthy elite (presumable excluding the liberal elite). 

Please do clarify if my interpretation of your last couple of posts is incorrect.  I hope you can now understand why I thought your response to my question was sarcastic.

Genuinely puzzled now over your reasoning.

[woolley]

7 minutes ago, manxman1980 said:

Essentially what you are saying now is...

The claim that the electorate voted for the sovereignty of the UK Parliament is at best a red herring.

What they voted for was to return the country to the wealthy elite (presumable excluding the liberal elite). 

Please do clarify if my interpretation of your last couple of posts is incorrect.  I hope you can now understand why I thought your response to my question was sarcastic.

Genuinely puzzled now over your reasoning.

They voted for the sovereignty of the UK to lie with the UK Parliament, and not to be compromised by legislation from outside. Beyond that, the UK Parliament is subject to all kinds of political influence and patronage, and it's far from perfect. Whether the stables there need mucking out or not is a matter for the British, not for Brussels. In the interim, I prefer to be ruled by our bastards rather than theirs.

[P.K.]

Another Brexit nonsense hits the dust:

"The UK will retain the EU’s product safety mark indefinitely, in the latest climbdown from proposed post-Brexit changes, after the government bowed to pressure from industry and manufacturers.

"The CE (Conformité Européenne) mark is used by the bloc to certify that a wide range of items – from electrical goods and construction materials to medical devices and toys – meet safety standards.

"The safety marking had been expected to be replaced by a new UKCA (UK Conformity Assessed) mark for goods sold in Great Britain from the end of 2024, after several extensions to the deadline for the changeover.

"Businesses had called on the government to extend the use of the CE mark, saying that forcing them to meet new UK rules, which would initially duplicate EU product standards, would add significant costs at a time when many have been trying to get over the disruption caused by the pandemic and stubbornly high inflation."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/01/uk-eu-safety-mark-brexit-climbdown

What's not mentioned is that the UK will no longer be able to certify anything with the EU's product safety mark. That can now only be done in an EU member country. More buggerance for the UK courtesy of the precious brexit..

[The Voice of Reason]

PK can put this book on his Christmas list.

 

What Went Wrong with Brexit, by veteran journalist Peter Foster, is a strange, credulous book that prefers the pro-EU point of view

ByDaniel Hannan26 August 2023 • 1:00pm

 

Brexit Derangement Syndrome is a terrifying condition. It can take intelligent people and turn them into the type of activists you see outside Parliament wearing blue berets with yellow stars. Consider the case of Peter Foster who, for many years, wrote sensible reports for this newspaper, and was latterly its Europe Editor. Even then, Foster didn’t disguise his distaste for Brexit: he gave prominence to forecasts suggesting that Britain’s economy would tank, he wanted to stay in the customs union, and he was one of the earliest supporters of the “backstop” – which removed Ireland’s incentive to push the EU to a more open trade-deal. In general, however, he strove to be informative, not declaratory.

Not any more. In What Went Wrong with Brexit, every gloomy report by a Europhile think-tank is quoted as objective truth, and every Eurocrat is treated as a disinterested expert. In his accounts of the past and his recommendations for the future, Foster praises British concessions to the EU as mature and sensible, while condemning any assertiveness as unrealistic. For example, he thinks it obvious that the UK should sign up to whatever regulations the EU might adopt in future, at least as regards food and veterinary standards. To see how odd that notion is, try flipping it around and demanding that the EU accept “dynamic alignment” with the UK, arbitrated by our supreme court.

At no stage does Foster recognise that the EU can be vindictive or inconsistent. At Salzburg in 2018, Theresa May offered to accept Brussels standards unilaterally and even to pay for the privilege; but, conditioned to reject every British proposal, EU leaders said no, thereby missing their best chance to have the kind of tight relationship that Foster wants. This episode goes unmentioned. 

Indeed, this is a book which makes no pretence at balance or nuance. Brexit is presented as an unmitigated calamity with no upsides at all. Foster mentions Covid-19 in passing, but the idea that paying people to stay home for the better part of two years might have a more serious impact on our economy than a change in our trading patterns is not considered.

Polemics have their place: I wrote one myself before the referendum. But I did so as, so to speak, a columnist rather than a news reporter. Foster started at the Telegraph under Charles Moore, who liked to hire correspondents who disagreed with the paper’s line, knowing that this would make them police their own biases. 

 

Since Foster moved to the Financial Times three years ago, however, it seems as though such restraints have come off. Again and again, he gives his stories an anti-Brexit angle. Trade deals are portrayed as threats to British farmers, and the UK’s recognition of the EU’s CE kitemark, which the FT might have hailed as a welcome step towards mutual recognition and jurisdictional competition, is howled down as a Brexit failure. Most recently, Foster claimed – in a news piece, not on the opinion pages – that proposed changes in our intellectual-property rules to allow easier imports were a Brexit-driven threat to our creative industries.

That, reader, is what you get here for 175 pages – pamphleteering dressed up as analysis. And, no doubt, it will sell. A terrifying number of people are unable to move on from the 2016 referendum. Some actively wish for Brexit’s failure so as to be able to say “I told you so”. Yet it isn’t even as though they had a plan to rejoin. Foster accepts that such a move is off the menu, and instead he proposes various ways to deepen our co-operation with the EU. But you feel, somehow, that all this is secondary. Like 18th-century Jacobites, the #FBPE crowd have no real plan beyond insisting to one another that they were right all along. This book is for them.