Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Agelastus]

Yes, both as a member of the EU and via a bilateral loan to Ireland.

I was unaware of the EU loans. 

Any idea how much the UK is owed?

The bilateral loan to Ireland was for 3 billion Euros or so.

The exact proportion of the EFSM monies or IMF monies (where we are the fifth(?) largest contributor) that we are on the hook for I don't know.

As noted, however, the Lion's share of the bailout was done by the Eurozone members - their EFSF potential liability if all funding is used is something like 570 billion Euros compared to the 60 billion of the EU as a whole via the EFSM.

I'm not saying that we contributed a lot, just that it's not true that we didn't contribute at all.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. I mean for years UKIP was a fringe Eurosceptic party with a constitutional niche interest (a bit like the Lib Dems and their constant support for electoral reform) and the Euroesceptic right would win about 5-10% of the vote (if you include Eurosceptic Tories - remember William Hague's 2001 campaign 'One week to save the Pound!').

Farage's genius and insight after 2004 was that he was able to leverage that niche constitutional obsession with immigration into a far larger vote with a far larger, and different, base. So he was an ex-City trader, an ultra-Thatcherite and that was the original base of UKIP. With immigration they became a party of the working class - and changed policies on all sorts of things because of it. It'll be interesting to see how they now develop. But the Leave campaign very much used that insight - immigration after 2004 turned Euroscepticism from a mainstream Tory/right-wing obsession into something bigger and deeper. As the article I posted earlier said the Remain campaign was based on the Tories in 2015 and was about saying 'it's not worth the risk' but it's difficult for that to win when the vote that's mobilising is often made up of people who don't normally vote and who don't think there's a future for them or their communities anyway.

On the left I think it's even worse because I am talking about a bubble of politically interested or active lefties who cared about Greece and inequality and austerity. But the disconnect on the left is huge because Europe was such a core part of New Labour's modernisation. So that video as RH pointed out was in Ed Miliband's constituency. Their MP was not just staunchly pro-European but Ed Miliband. And I think that's the case across the country that these areas are often represented by people who on a few issues totally disagree with and disdain their constituents. As I say the odd thing is how much the Labour areas made the Leave vote happen and yet the fight for the Labour party is between centrist pro-Europeans with New Labour grandees who won't consider that not imposing transitional controls in 2004 may have been a mistake and Corbyn's hard-left that is basically anti-European but pro-open borders. It's striking that I think neither of those fighting factions is actually looking like representing the working class historic base of the Labour Party.

I've said before I think a lot of these are general global and European problems. I don't think this will be the end of this sort of thing unless we can work out an answer.

[Sheilbh]

The British just voted for their probably biggest changed in postwar foreign policy, triggered a considerable constitutional crisis over something that is not the cause of the problem and for a policy that will not cure the symptoms or the disease. Your side winning sure looks like a gigantic loss from this side of the Channel. 

What's done is done, but now the fight's really on to define the sort of country we become. I think everything's to play for which is an exciting opportunity.

May you live in interesting times?! 

Yeah. Got a Labour Party meeting tomorrow to discuss Corbyn. I'll hold my wheesht until I know roughly what way the room's going....

It's odd. There's a lot of fear and loathing of the ultimately privileged and entitled like me against people who aren't which I really dislike. But I go to Scotland every year and it does remind me of the sort of atmosphere that's been up there since the Indy Ref in a good way as well.

[The Larch]

Sheilbh, I'm sorry because I appreciate you, but I can't make heads or tails about your position anymore. I don't know if it's because I'm tired and it's late or because your posts and the articles you quote are really really long and complicated, but I just don't get it. You seem to be doing an awful lot of rationalizing about what has been (or at least what seems to have been) basically a knee jerk reaction against inmigration and other assorted nebulous "others". You seem to want things to happen that are in direct contradiction with the referendum results, but still seem eager about it.

[Tamas]

Sheilbh, the notion that a well-defined national identity helps to reduce hostility against ethnic minorities and/or foreigners goes straight against every empirical evidence of every nation ever since the birth of nationalism. 

[The Larch]

Sheilbh, the notion that a well-defined national identity helps to reduce hostility against ethnic minorities and/or foreigners goes straight against every empirical evidence of every nation ever since the birth of nationalism. 

And it's not as if it isn't already pretty clear what is an English identity.

[Josquius]

I see people mention greece a lot but really don't get how the eu is somehow to blame there.
Europe stopped greece from going under.

[Zanza]

The first impression is not that this will help to reduce xenophobia: 50% rise of hate crimes since referendum
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/brexit-race-hate-crime-eu-referendum-met-police-a7121401.html

[Tamas]

Sheilbh, I'm sorry because I appreciate you, but I can't make heads or tails about your position anymore. I don't know if it's because I'm tired and it's late or because your posts and the articles you quote are really really long and complicated, but I just don't get it. You seem to be doing an awful lot of rationalizing about what has been (or at least what seems to have been) basically a knee jerk reaction against inmigration and other assorted nebulous "others". You seem to want things to happen that are in direct contradiction with the referendum results, but still seem eager about it.

He is an idealist, praise be.

[Zanza]

I see people mention greece a lot but really don't get how the eu is somehow to blame there.
Europe stopped greece from going under.

Not the right thread, but Greece did go under. And didn't surface yet either...

[Tamas]

I see people mention greece a lot but really don't get how the eu is somehow to blame there.
Europe stopped greece from going under.

They should have kept financing a failed overspending state, because workers' rights and protect the opressed and evil international je... bankers!

[Admiral Yi]

I see people mention greece a lot but really don't get how the eu is somehow to blame there.
Europe stopped greece from going under.

It's rooted in the 5th grade logic that austerity is bad and no austerity is good.

[The Larch]

Sheilbh, I'm sorry because I appreciate you, but I can't make heads or tails about your position anymore. I don't know if it's because I'm tired and it's late or because your posts and the articles you quote are really really long and complicated, but I just don't get it. You seem to be doing an awful lot of rationalizing about what has been (or at least what seems to have been) basically a knee jerk reaction against inmigration and other assorted nebulous "others". You seem to want things to happen that are in direct contradiction with the referendum results, but still seem eager about it.

He is an idealist, praise be.

I do get and understand idealism, but he's bordering on not wanting to see the reality in front of him territory.

[garbon]

There's a lot of fear and loathing of the ultimately privileged and entitled like me against people who aren't which I really dislike.

I think Brexit is only going to amplify that, unfortunately.

[Sheilbh]

Immigration was why it happened (though polling actually says that Leave voters put that second after 'laws that govern the UK should be made by the UK'). There are rational reasons for that anti-immigration feeling, which isn't just racism or xenophobia. Personally I think that some of it is just anti-immigration but there are also other strands that feed into that: cultural and political alienation; loathing of the 'elite'; being left behind.

So what's interesting and positive is a lot of Leave voters were people who hadn't voted before because this was the first time they think their mattered, but were in solid working class communities.

Personally I also think there is a very solid left-wing argument to leave the EU (as I say: hard right fiscal policy, right social policy and Fortress Europe - it's not something that without the European flag and label any left-winger would support). Having said that I don't want the UK to dissolve and I don't want the Tories to create post-EU Britain/England. So I was a reluctant Remainer.

But we are where we are. I hate the snobbishness and sneering of other people like me at people who aren't like us and voted differently. It's a London thing but for all our diversity lots of people in this city are from a very similar educational and class background, have similar cultural views and are now hating on people who are different. So we need to stop talking down the vote (and its voters) and actually accept it. Maybe if we'd listened to this howl from deep England before it wouldn't have got this far.

It's also now very exciting because I think everything is to play for - especially English national identity. The first thing is that 50% of people aren't racists but now the racists think that 50% of people agree with them and we need to get them back under their bridges. On that front I find the whole 85% supporting permanent residence for EU citizens positive and the reaction to the increase in hate crime.

After that there's a big fight for what this country becomes whether it's open or close; social or offshore; one country or several. People talk as if the 48% were actually a tiny minority or have somehow disappeared, but they're still there and if they stop griping they'll be key in shaping what we become. So I think this is a big risk which I wouldn't have taken, but to use a Blair line the kaleidoscope is shaken and it's up to us now to reorder and I'm optimistic