Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Syt]

How it started (2016) vs. how it's going (2021).

[Syt]

Also, the Daily Express's price seems to have gone up by almost 50%, too, from 55p to 80p

[Tamas]

It's the price to pay Syt so we can keep the NHS understaffed.

[Tamas]

So the No. 10 spokesperson is defending Johnson that he can stay in charge just fine from Spain, which is cool, but perhaps slightly goes against the government message urging Britons to go back to work before Tory sponsors end up having financial losses on their commercial properties.

[Josquius]

To be far heinz recently said prices would be going up globally which they have been doing for some time.

Alas thats the problem with brexit fucking things up so much. Just the first 5% has to be down to something else that effects everyone then that's all that will be blamed other than the 95% that unique to the UK for some mysterious reason.

[Valmy]

Still waiting for Brexit to deliver the 10,000 unicorns for every fairy princess it promised.

[Tamas]

To be far heinz recently said prices would be going up globally which they have been doing for some time.

To be fair the sooner people stop eating beans on toast the better. Even the idea is revolting.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Northern Ireland isn't integral to the UK. Its always been a weird semi UK place that sort of does its own thing.
One of the main things the good Friday agreement delivered was effectively making it operate as semi part of the UK and semi part of Ireland. The weird halfway place is where it has to be for peace.

Then it should be shed off, it can be its own country until it feels comfortable enough with joining RoI. I don't know of very many countries that would willfully choose to have such a poorly structured union as the UK, and then act like it has no agency about it. I think that's one of my chief distastes for the British the last 20 years. The French are annoying because they continue to think they are more important than they really are. The British are annoying because they seem to think that they have no agency to address any issue at all, and the only proper way for a country to exist is to muddle around from one ineptitude to the next.

[mongers]

Northern Ireland isn't integral to the UK. Its always been a weird semi UK place that sort of does its own thing.
One of the main things the good Friday agreement delivered was effectively making it operate as semi part of the UK and semi part of Ireland. The weird halfway place is where it has to be for peace.

It is, otherwise we're just* Great Britain. 



* this may include elements of being better off without it.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I also think the whole British feigned incapability is part of why Leave won, to be frank, the powers that be had decades where they could have likely addressed some of the core issues that allowed the Leave types to fester and figures like Farage to get way more attention than he ever should have. The response instead was to just sort of tut-tut around and assume it'll all work out, certainly better than if anything was like, actually attempted to fix the problems.

[Tamas]

I also think the whole British feigned incapability is part of why Leave won, to be frank, the powers that be had decades where they could have likely addressed some of the core issues that allowed the Leave types to fester and figures like Farage to get way more attention than he ever should have. The response instead was to just sort of tut-tut around and assume it'll all work out, certainly better than if anything was like, actually attempted to fix the problems.

As much as I am bitter with the British ruling class, that's not true. The Brexit referendum was our result of the same cultural processes which resulted in Trump in America. Which may be the same what you described, but it's far from an exclusively British thing. It just had an exclusively British outlet.

[Josquius]

And trump in the UK and brexit are in large part very much down to the fact that we actually do lack agency with our limited democracies

[garbon]

I also think the whole British feigned incapability is part of why Leave won, to be frank, the powers that be had decades where they could have likely addressed some of the core issues that allowed the Leave types to fester and figures like Farage to get way more attention than he ever should have. The response instead was to just sort of tut-tut around and assume it'll all work out, certainly better than if anything was like, actually attempted to fix the problems.

As much as I am bitter with the British ruling class, that's not true. The Brexit referendum was our result of the same cultural processes which resulted in Trump in America. Which may be the same what you described, but it's far from an exclusively British thing. It just had an exclusively British outlet.

Did Cameron have to offer it up on a referrendum?

[Tamas]

I also think the whole British feigned incapability is part of why Leave won, to be frank, the powers that be had decades where they could have likely addressed some of the core issues that allowed the Leave types to fester and figures like Farage to get way more attention than he ever should have. The response instead was to just sort of tut-tut around and assume it'll all work out, certainly better than if anything was like, actually attempted to fix the problems.

As much as I am bitter with the British ruling class, that's not true. The Brexit referendum was our result of the same cultural processes which resulted in Trump in America. Which may be the same what you described, but it's far from an exclusively British thing. It just had an exclusively British outlet.

Did Cameron have to offer it up on a referrendum?

Did the GOP have to let Trump run on their primaries?

[Sheilbh]

Still waiting for Brexit to deliver the 10,000 unicorns for every fairy princess it promised.

Sure - but the scenarios painted by the Remain campaign (on a similar abuse of statistics) also haven't happened: house prices to fall by 20%, 3.3 million jobs directly reliant on EU membership, an income tax increase of 8-10 percentage points or each household being £3-6,000 worse off.

I think, as the Remain campaign chair has since said, George Osborne got a little too into his role and that's part of the reason real economic damage is just written off by some convinced Leavers. More generally I think everything's still within the expectations most people had of where this might end up. We've not had the sunlit uplands or the cliff into catastrophe, because neither were ever likely.

Did Cameron have to offer it up on a referrendum?

I think probably a referendum - in 2005 Labour and Tories wanted a referendum on the EU constitution and the Lib Dems wanted an in/out referendum; in 2010 the Lib Dems want an in/out referendum on any new treaty that transferred competences and the Tories wanted a "referendum lock" on all future EU treaties; in 2015 Labour and Lib Dems were promising an in/out referendum on any new treaty (the theory being that people wouldn't vote out so this might be the only way to get any new treaty through) and the Tories were promising an in/out referendum. It's incredibly contingent because I think 2016 was probably the worst moment to have the referendum, on the hand I think it was only a matter of time before there was a referendum and I'm not convinced just delaying it ends in a different result.

I think there was probably a sense that we'd reached the very limits of what the last "consent" exercise in 1975 could manage without going back to voters. The thing I don't get is why Cameron chose this referendum - Brexiters in the Tory Party had historically advocated a three-choice referendum (stay/leave/renegotiate). The theory was it would give a British PM a clearer mandate to seek a change - possibly even moving to the EEA. My suspicion is that it was just his arrogance/insouciance - he'd already taken a risk on the country's very existence and won.

I have seen it called "the UN of crime" due to the sheer number and national diversity of criminal groups operating there.

It has always been the sleaziest city in Spain. Think Boardwalk Empire with sun and beaches. There was a big crackdown in the 2000s but it has come back with a vengeance.

He's apparently staying in Zac Goldsmith's villa which is probably less sleazy than Blair's occasional holidays in the Berlusconi villa (the mind recoils) but not much

So the No. 10 spokesperson is defending Johnson that he can stay in charge just fine from Spain, which is cool, but perhaps slightly goes against the government message urging Britons to go back to work before Tory sponsors end up having financial losses on their commercial properties.

The thing that strikes me with the Treasury denial is that strongly suggests business and especially heavy industry won't be getting any bail out (yet) if the Treasury are denying even considering it. Which is a choice

Alas thats the problem with brexit fucking things up so much. Just the first 5% has to be down to something else that effects everyone then that's all that will be blamed other than the 95% that unique to the UK for some mysterious reason.

There was an excellent Sunday Times piece (and not just because they entirely agreed with me) on disentangling covid and Brexit effect. It was by Anand Menon and Jonathan Portes and their basic conclusions were there's bit of each in every issue, but: pay gap/weird pay fluctuations = covid; HGV crisis = Brexit; labour shortages = mainly covid; weak trade performance = Brexit; rising prices = covid.

It makes me honestly wonder what the future is for Northern Ireland. I don't really understand the jumbled approach to it that has been taken, I think there needs to be a decision made--Northern Ireland is as integral to the United Kingdom as London or Manchester, and thus its border with the EU is the land border with the Republic of Ireland, not the Irish Sea that separates it from the rest of the UK, or Northern Ireland is not integral to the UK. In that latter case, frankly, they should be preparing to transfer the polity over to the Republic's control.

I think it is probably a bit weird. But they're an integral part of the UK because a majority want that and feel British, if a majority don't want that and feel Irish then Ireland is unified. That's the law already. Northern Ireland is a conditional part of the UK.