Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Barrister]

Marvellous Zanza.

Now let us know if the EU can get them all ratified.  CETA is still waiting, four years after it was negotiated.

[Zanza]

After the issues with CETA, they changed the treaty design so that the member states would not have to ratify, only the EU parliament. That's currently under review by the ECJ for the Singapore agreement. 

[Razgovory]

How was that proposed amendment to work? How could they have force UK to have customs union with EU, if EU didn't allow it?

I think the idea was that thus the UK would be forced to get an arrangement that'd mean customs union, i.e. soft brexit.



But otherwise yes. There is all this chaos, at the end they will have a mish-mash of a "white paper" and then the EU will just say "nein" and it will be all for nought.

I wonder if the prestige of the UK will ever recover from this.

I wonder if the UK will recover from this.  This may end with Scotland trying leave.

[Valmy]

It seems bizarre to me that the British Government would do such a reckless and radical thing against their own interests with such a tiny popular mandate.

[Josquius]

It isn't against the own interest of the thatcherites.
Both in a selfish sense of making a few million for themselves out of it and an ideological sense of destroying the state.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Your definition of Thatcherite being "things and people I don't like" 

Here is a speech by Thatcher about the single market :

https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107219

I think that speech is fairly typical of her view towards the EU; a strong dose of both pragmatism and patriotism.

[Josquius]

Your definition of Thatcherite being "things and people I don't like" 

No, I mean actual Thatcherites in the truest sense. Not just talking about brexiters as a whole. 
For the far right brexiters its just about hurting other people and ignorant nationalist nonsense rather than any plan to profit for themselves.

Here is a speech by Thatcher about the single market :

https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107219

I think that speech is fairly typical of her view towards the EU; a strong dose of both pragmatism and patriotism.

Thatcher founded the modern Brexit movement.
This was the famous speech :
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107332

We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.

When looking at attitudes to Europe in British politics you have to remember what a stark border 1988 was with the unions being convinced to flip into supporting a social Europe whilst the neo-liberals, who until then had saw Europe as their baby, turned against it.

[garbon]

So a matter of only seeing the things you dislike and dismissing the good?

[Josquius]

So a matter of only seeing the things you dislike and dismissing the good?

I'm not saying anything radical here. Delors at the TUC and Thatcher's Bruges speech are landmark events.
Sadly not as well known amongst the general public as they should be but for those interested in European matters that Thatcher quote is THE quote of the brexit movement.

[garbon]

Wikipedia references that moment and notes that Thatcher's position on Britain and its relationship to the EU was complicated - with both pro and anti positions.  Which is what you get out of a combining of your post with RH.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I don't see that Thatcher's comments about utopianism make her a rabid brexiter. If anything she has been vindicated by events; the dismissal of the strength of nationalism making a lot of the EU's current problems even worse.

But I have to go to the dentist now for a complex procedure, so will have to bow out of the discussion for the time being. I'd be very interested to see what more neutral observers make of the speeches.

(BTW, is it my imagination or are those speeches light-years ahead of the drivel which is served up today?)

[garbon]

The stupid is catching.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article214403694.html

A billionaire hired a Brexit strategist to help divide California

A political strategist who helped lead a controversial Brexit campaign was hired to work on a ballot measure that would split California into three states.

Tim Draper, a tech billionaire and the main proponent of the plan to divide the state, reported a payment to Gunster Strategies for less than $6,500 in November related to a successful effort to gather enough voter signatures to land on the 2018 ballot.

The Washington D.C. firm and its CEO Gerry Gunster played a key role in the United Kingdom's vote to exit the European Union in 2016 through a controversial "Leave.EU" campaign. Britain's Electoral Commission later fined the campaign for failing to disclose payments to Gunster Strategies and other violations..

Gunster Strategies did not respond to requests for comment and directed an inquiry to Jessica Garcia, a spokeswoman for the "Cal 3" campaign. Garcia declined to explain Gunster's role in the ballot measure.

The breadth of Gunster's involvement in the campaign has not been divulged in state filings thus far. Draper personally funded the signature-gathering effort as a "major donor," and the single payment to Gunster is buried in the tech mogul's state filings. Citizens for Cal 3, the campaign finance committee supporting the measure, has not filed any spending reports yet.

"It's ironic that billionaire Tim Draper is paying a D.C.-based team that has a history of deploying the Trump techniques of divisiveness and a disregard for the facts to run his campaign to split up the Golden State," said Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for the opposition campaign ONECALIFORNIA. "Californians take great pride in our state, and the sleazy politics of division that Draper's consultants used in their Brexit campaign will have no appeal here."

Arron Banks, the main financial backer of Leave.EU, previously credited Gunster for crafting an "America-style media approach" and advising him that "facts don't work," according to The Guardian. Banks told The Guardian that campaigns have to "connect with people emotionally. It's the Trump success."

Though I guess this dude and Musk are trying to pave the way for radical wealth distribution legislation.

[Josquius]

Wikipedia references that moment and notes that Thatcher's position on Britain and its relationship to the EU was complicated - with both pro and anti positions.  Which is what you get out of a combining of your post with RH.

His link comes from the start of 1988.
Mine comes after Delors spoke at the TUC.
She started very pro-Europe, but over time as it became more developed and interested in social protections she turned against it.

Before 1988 and you're really looking at a completely different political landscape for Britain and the EU with the left tending to be anti-EU, seeing it as some big neoliberal plot to reduce wages and undermine unions by allowing easy access to alternative foreign suppliers.
The right meanwhile saw it as purely about free trade, reducing barriers, increasing competition, etc... and this was a good thing.

As Europe developed however, the basics of setting up free trade having being established, it began to become interested in setting in place minimum standards of social protections and workers rights. Which considering this was what the right had just spent a decade demolishing... Well it led to a complete and total flip in views between the left and right.

[Tamas]

Boris "sociopath dimwit" Johnson is having his resignation speech at the moment.

It is infuriating.

My favourite part has been how the Northern Ireland border question is "overpoliticised" and everyone just gave up instead of giving his remote custom checks idea a try.

The mind boggles.

And this fucker never meant it. I remember his face when the referendum results was in. He was scared shitless. He thought Remain would win and he'd just score some good points for a future coup against Cameron.

[The Brain]

He's your next PM, anointed by Pope Trump, the Vicar of Putin.