Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Richard Hakluyt]

Smith, or IBS as I childishly call him, does not seem to be very bright. I do wonder if the pool from which we draw our political "talent" is very small and shallow.

[Siege]

Wow. You guys still talking about Brexit?

[Valmy]

Wow. You guys still talking about Brexit?

Of course. We have many British posters.

[garbon]

Wow. You guys still talking about Brexit?

It still hasn't happened, sweetie.

[Zanza]

Wow. You guys still talking about Brexit?

We will be talking about it at least until mid 2019.

[Tonitrus]

It's not completely unheard of - the US government paid for the construction of the Alaska Highway in Yukon since it's Alaskas only land connection to the continental US.

And we got you suckers to maintain it all these years afterwords. 

[MadImmortalMan]

Is there a thread for Italy? 

[Pedrito]

Is there a thread for Italy? 

Luckily, no :facepalm:

L.

[Jacob]

Agelastus - I don't think it's supposed to be a big change coming according to T&T. Rather I think it's their hope that a big change is coming, if you see the difference?

Anyhow, are you still as supportive of Brexit now as you were during the vote?

[garbon]

More Trumpian and less Brexit but funny nonetheless. Particularly as the tweet meme grew.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/rossalynwarren/british-people-are-taking-the-piss-out-of-an-american-writer?utm_term=.juVPpRlY0#.htY258Dej

British People Are Taking The Piss Out Of An American Writer For Saying London Has Turned "Islamic"

My friends just returned from London. Shocked. Hadn't been in 20 years. Said London is gone - all Islamic.

My friends just returned from Hastings. Shocked. Hadn't been in 950 years. Said Saxons are gone - all Normans.

My friends just returned from Palaeolithic Britain. Shocked. Hadn't been for 10000 years. Said Homo heidelbergensis are gone - all Sapiens.

[CountDeMoney]

Lol all Sapiens

[Agelastus]

Agelastus - I don't think it's supposed to be a big change coming according to T&T. Rather I think it's their hope that a big change is coming, if you see the difference?

I don't think "hoping" is quite the right word, either; they think that a "change" is only common sense and inevitable so they take any sign of it happening as the world making sense again.

Even when the evidence they have is a by-election, an event that's notorious for throwing up results that are promptly reversed at the next election, and a not-quite-normal example of the type at that.

Too add to my earlier comment, here's a quote from a polling site about Goldsmith -

- while some conservative MPs came to help him out, he did not have the might of the Conservative party machine behind him, while the Lib Dems appear to have thrown the kitchen sink, worktop, cooker, etc. at it.

A more interesting datum is how successful Liberal Democrat candidates are being in local council by-elections (they are normally reasonably successful in these, but the trend has been higher than usual this year.) Which may indicate the Electorate have "forgiven" the Liberals. This is not being reflected in national polls yet, though.

Anyhow, are you still as supportive of Brexit now as you were during the vote?

Pound's dropped more than expected.

Immediate economic shock has been less than expected.

Idiots on both sides are being as idiotic as ever in their pronouncements (more idiot comments from the "Brexit" side though, I must admit, but we've had some real zingers from "Bremainers" as well.)

Europe playing "hardball" (expected.)

Europe saying "not one without the other" concerning free trade and free movement (expected and accepted - hence why the assessment I agreed with was always for short to medium term economic pain followed by gain.)

Europe saying "no trade talks until after exit completed" (not expected, and bloody stupid given how much of the EU's activity, and our commitments to it, are related to trade. How do you not talk about it in context of the Common Fisheries policy, for example; licensing of Spanish etc. boats and allocation of catches is essentially trade, landing said catches also.)

Tyr and Mongers in hysterics (expected, but getting repetitive.)

Tory government not immediately guaranteeing rights of EU citizens already in UK (not expected and disappointing but perhaps sensible given recent European comments.)

Immigration still at near record highs (expected - since despite the rhetoric fundamentally we're not seen as a bunch of suddenly racist pricks by most Europeans. And, despite the unclear position, most Europeans expect to be "grandfathered" in because even the "Brexit" side say that this should happen. Except maybe Tamas, who doesn't seem to expect this for some reason; I'm not sure why - maybe he's less trusting concerning the rationality of European governments regarding our own citizens living in Spain etc. than Britons are.)

Discussion of immigration still stupid as hell (no, we are never dropping it below 100,000, but then that was never the point for me. As I said to Tamas earlier I don't mind immigration levels of 2-300,000 net as long as it's controlled; if the government says, "this is what we need" then that's that. At the moment we have half of our immigration utterly uncontrolled with the result that we're making stupid, and offensive, decisions about immigrants from other countries in a vain attempt to compensate for a figure that always turns out to be higher than we think it's going to be.)

In total...yes, still supportive. I'm not going to change my mind and have "Bregret" overnight even if I did hesitate for an unusual length of time in the voting booth. I've been in the "unenthusiastic to outright anti-" EU category since at least the mid-1990s, so I've waited 20 years to have the chance to make the choice I did earlier this year.

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[The following section is definitely emotional, not rational. Don't for a second think that I don't realise that.]

Fundamentally, I don't feel European and the more I learn about the history of our relationship with Europe the less I trust our "partners". Better to get the pain over with now and try for something better than continue an on-going political "death by a thousand cuts". We should have learned our lesson with the last minute "ambush" of the Common Fisheries Policy hours before our application to join was received in 1970. Yet we persevered for the next 40 plus years. Enough is enough.

[garbon]

Can I ask...what are you hoping that the UK gets out of Brexit? Like where do things ideally sit in say, 5 years time?

[Josquius]

Hoping is the right word.
Though it is a hope based on logic and analysis.
The common silly dismissal you see of a party following an anti brexit policy is that leave won in most seats by a small majority whilst leave votes tended to stack in a few places.
However, it is important to remember the AV referendum and the reason the lib Dems were do keen on it. The British system is broken, parties typically win seats with less than half the electorate voting for them. This has really historically been massively to the detriment of the lib Dems.
So if you've the tories, labour and maybe ukip promising brexit, then you've the lib Dems promising the opposite.... then even in some places that went leave if the lib Dems can play it right and get enough remain voters to come out and vote for them I can see them winning a lot of seats.
I doubt it will be as big a boost for them as the SNP enjoyed post indy ref, but it might gain them a fair number of seats. Perhaps even enough to stop the tories forming a majority. Which is a bright light in these days of labour turning on the people and the far right on the march.

[Agelastus]

Can I ask...what are you hoping that the UK gets out of Brexit? Like where do things ideally sit in say, 5 years time?

A difficult question to answer. Partly because my anti-EU feeling started on the political side, not the economic. And partly because I honestly don't believe everything will have shaken out in five years. I'll muse about a few things below, so excuse me if I ramble.

Economically?

Ideally, in five years time, we'll have trading arrangements in place with Europe, ones not as favourable as currently but ones that are acceptable. There'll have been some gains (better control of our fishing grounds being the most likely) and some losses (Euro derivative trades being the most obvious, and probably the most economically damaging*.) Overall probably a net loss in the short term.

We'll have new or renewed deals with the Commonwealth, the old former white dominions certainly and hopefully with India as well. [Australia and New Zealand's reaction to the vote being most heartening given how much damage we did them by joining the EEC in the first place.]

Our economy will have rebalanced a little towards the rest of the world, both in terms of exports and imports, but I don't expect a miracle; I expect for the next three to four years to be ones of at best depressed growth, so we're not likely to be some new "European Tiger" economy in five years, no matter what the ardent Free Trade wing of the "Brexit" coalition say.

A stable £ around the $1.35 - $1.40 level.

Immigration?

I'd expect it to fall to around 200,000 a year, but no less than that and quite probably more. As long as the figures are capable of being realistically planned for in advance we can handle those sorts of levels.

[We really need to reconsider the issue of high-rises, though. It's not a fallacy to note that we do have less land than France or Germany, especially given the proportion of it that isn't really suitable for being built on.]

Diplomatically?

We'll still be a part of NATO (assuming, allowing myself to be a little hyperbolic here, it survives Trump) and other international organisations etc.

Including the ECHR.

We should still have things like the recent Lancaster House Treaties with the French operating. Bilateral agreements like that should survive the exit from the EU.

The Republic of Ireland will still be in the EU but outside Schengen, so the CTA survives.

Domestically?

We'll have a vocal campaign by people wanting to re-enter the EU, because we're a Democracy. It'll not be getting much traction though, despite the high level of "Bremainers" as someone will, by then, have pointed out that all our exemptions (such as from the Euro) die with our exit and will never be allowed again.

Scotland will still be a part of the Union (which is looking more likely now than I thought it was on Referendum night - there's no evidence that the result has moved Scottish opinion on from the Independence referendum result, although that may change as exit terms are negotiated.)

The money we no longer pay Europe will either have been invested in science and technology to counter the probably real threat of a brain drain or simply not spent (lowering our budget deficit by a small but politically significant amount) - no, I would not put it directly into the NHS as was suggested during the campaign.

[Fantasy moment - Labour will have fallen apart leaving the Liberals (as the Liberal-Democrats) to restore their position as one of the two main parties in our Parliament. The Tories will be the main opposition to the SNP in Scotland getting 30% of the vote or more and several Westminster seats.]

We'll have a Tory government having won a second straight majority.



All in all a not very exciting view, really.


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*Not that we were likely to keep them long term anyway; we've already had to go to the courts to block the ECB once. It's not like the ECB, France and Germany would have given up on this issue long term.