Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Duque de Bragança]

Anecdotally Brexit seems to have severely hurt British fish exports.

Most of British fish was exported to the EU IIRC. Brexit would mean Brits to get their own fish waters back, to keep on selling them to the EU, instead of having pesky EU fishers taking their cut.
Guess what happened...

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - and you look at a map of how areas voted and fishing areas are among the strongest Brexit backers. It is - like car manufacturing in Sunderland, for example - one of the many sad examples of the areas and communities that most strongly supported Brexit being probably  most badly hit by it economically.

[Zanza]

Why is that sad? They had agency and got what they voted for. Much sadder for the 48%.

[Sheilbh]

Well the flipside of that is that in very broad terms the 48% are generally in areas and classes that are best placed to do fine after Brexit. Urban areas, service sectors, graduates are going to experience less relative pain. Their relative material success will be hurt less.

But also maybe it's just the old lefty in me that I find thwarted/disappointed radicalism sad

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally on free speech/cancel culture I'm a little uncomfortable with the whole situation in Wakefield with the schoolboy and the Quran - not sure if anyone's been following it? Doesn't look great from what I've seen.

[Richard Hakluyt]

We only managed a very few years with no blasphemy laws 

[Duque de Bragança]

Par for the course for that (theoretical) theocracy.  Still no Fiderum Defensor in the vernacular language with Carolus III? 

[The Larch]

But also maybe it's just the old lefty in me that I find thwarted/disappointed radicalism sad

Oh come on. Go support some white power skinheads too, they're also radicals. 

[Sheilbh]

Oh come on. Go support some white power skinheads too, they're also radicals. 

Well obviously not - I also dont' really feel sorry for tankies.

But Brexit isn't beyond the pale - it's always been within the big mainstream parties in the UK the entire time we've been in a European Community (and before). Some of the politicians I most admire from the past were passionately anti-EU (Clem Attlee, Hugh Gaitskell, Barbara Castle, Michael Foot), of course some were also very pro-EU (Roy Jenkins).

And also I don't support Brexit I just think it's not the root of all evil in British life, that it was a legitimate democratic decision (and the result of one referendum and two general elections) and that undoing it will be really, really difficult (and require a similar democratic event). I wouldn't start from here - but it is where we are and I feel more sorry for the people who will be worst hit even if they had a political opinion I disagree with. Honestly I find the "democracy as comeuppance/consequences" thing sort of repulsive - it's why I always hate that "London independence" nonsense you sometimes get people spouting.

[The Larch]

And also I don't support Brexit

Keep telling yourself that. 

[Sheilbh]

Keep telling yourself that. 

It was, as is clear, the wrong decision.

I'm more ambivalent on Scotland but I'm basically a unionist in regards to Scotland - and I think it's similar. Brexit matters vastly less to me (and I think the country) on a purely emotional level than the union.

But if that's the decision that happens then while I'll be sad, I think we'd just have to live with the consequences and do the best we can out of the situation.

But I wouldn't make that fight the centre of all my political opinions half a decade later.

Edit: I'd add that I've always thought and still do that the most likely outcome of Brexit was a Lexit option - that the divergence will happen from a more left perspective. Fundamentally I don't think there's really much political support necessary for a "Singapore-on-Thames" model, while I think the forces that led to the Brexit vote and subsequent re-alignment/"red wall" seats are basically pushing the centre leftwards. I could be wrong but I still think the post-Brexit consensus will probably be a far more interventionist one than the Thatcherite consensus - this also reflects wider global trends and in my view they helped create the conditions for Brexit as well as shaping what post-Brexit will likely, it's all mutually reinforcing.

[Tamas]

Keep telling yourself that. 

It was, as is clear, the wrong decision.

I'm more ambivalent on Scotland but I'm basically a unionist in regards to Scotland - and I think it's similar. Brexit matters vastly less to me (and I think the country) on a purely emotional level than the union.

But if that's the decision that happens then while I'll be sad, I think we'd just have to live with the consequences and do the best we can out of the situation.

But I wouldn't make that fight the centre of all my political opinions half a decade later.

I don't think its making the fight the centre, but we cannot just dismiss Brexit as having been done and dusted - sure it is in terms of immediate politics but it is important to acknowledge the damage it's still doing and will continue to do.

[Sheilbh]

I don't think its making the fight the centre, but we cannot just dismiss Brexit as having been done and dusted - sure it is in terms of immediate politics but it is important to acknowledge the damage it's still doing and will continue to do.

I agree.

But I think there is "in the long run we're all dead" side to this. In terms of immediate politics Brexit is done. The route to re-join or to anything like EEA or customs union or whatever else is going to be through a big political campaign. I don't see that happening. I'm honestly a bit baffled that the Lib Dems haven't just pivoted to hard-core re-join or that hard-core Remain ultras haven't taken over the Lib Dems. It feels like they just expect it to happen. I think they can be a bit snooty about "politics" as a way of doing things - which sort of makes sense if you've spent the previous 6 years building your political identity around "expert opinion", the "grown-ups" etc v "politics" that there's a risk that you end up contemptuous of how to achieve change in a democracy. To make Brexit not done and dusted in the long term requires an effort to make it a political issue in the short-term which is going to be achieved through political parties, campaigns, protests etc - not through some moment of conversion because of bad news #276. In a way, while it's not for me, if people want to re-join or change the relationship then someone needs to make it the centre of their politics

In a similar way I think it is important to acknowledge the political cost of any formally closer relationship with the EU - from customs union to full re-join. A lot of the commentary about it seems to entirely ignore the politics of it. It's either basically we invent a time machine or that it would somehow just be frictionless. The fundamental issue of Britain's relationship with Europe is that, unlike most countries, there is not and never has been a settled consensus view across the political spectrum on that relationship. That means it won't be frictionless. It will suck up time and energy in the civil service, in government, in parliament and be contested every step of the way. So the "one cool thing you can do to improve your economy" style commentary on Brexit is maddening. On a purely abstract level if it was just a model it would be very easy and obvious - but that's not reality. So the argument needs to be not just that it will make things better but that it'll outweigh the political and opportunity costs. This is why I think Starmer's approach is totally right.

Relatedly I think there is a "project fear" angle to this. The worst case scenario that George Osborne was pumping out on Treasury letterheaded paper did not happen. It was always absurd (and I think as "dishonest" as anything on the Leave side) to be pushing projections based on the UK leaving the day after the referendum without a deal in the way that he was. Brexit is going to do damage to the UK economy - that doesn't mean it's the only or the most important thing going on in Britain's economy. I think it discredits/undermines the effort of pointing out the real consequences when people are trying to pin every bit of bad news on Brexit - regardless of what reporters, industry or eeconomists are saying. Especially in a context where there's obviously huge global disruptions to the economy: covid lockdowns, covid reopenings, one of the world's biggest energy producers invading one of the world's largest agricultural producers. People aren't stupid and they're aware there's other stuff going on.

But I also think a vastly bigger issue than Brexit is that Britain's business model in the Thatcher/Blair years is dead - Brexit is definitely a part of that. But I think it was more or less already over after the crash and the UK hasn't really had a growth model since 2008. It's why everyone is talking about productivity - because ours hasn't grown in 15 years. Re-joining or whatever else would, as the BofE say, improve growth by 0.25% a year - I think fixing our growth model would make a far bigger impact. Productivity wasn't growing and the economy wasn't doing great in 2008-2016 and or since. I think we need to understand and fix that. Which for a start I think means accepting that we're not Germany and cannot simply be Germany however much politicians and public opinion on both sides would wish that we were

[Zanza]

For something as inconsequential as you make Brexit sound it sure took a lot of political time over the last decade in British politics.

[Richard Hakluyt]

The country was split down the middle as regards EU membership, while the elite was perhaps 80% in favour, very difficult to achieve consensus.