The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[blandy]

25 minutes ago, Awol said:

@blandy  If Ireland was in Schengen then I’d agree. As it’s not I reckon we can negotiate something with Dublin about monitoring movement into the island of Ireland - in both directions. That could involve ID checks at the ferry ports - happens for aircraft already so not unprecedented. The issue is goods more than people & that’s soluble. 

We're not in Schengen either, and like the Irish, we can go and live and work anywhere in the EU, and EU folks can come and live and work in the Uk or in Ireland right?

So any EU citizen can move to Ireland, no problem. Then with no border, what's to stop them simply wandering across into N.Ireland, and then into (if they wish) mainland Britain? nothing, that's what. No control.

[blandy]

27 minutes ago, Awol said:

or accept what the parties actually in charge have said: No hard border.

They are all talking while negotiations are ongoing. Hence some degree of I dunno, position setting is in play, "we don't want a border" "there will be no border" and all that plays well with the UK and Ireland and the EU, so they all go along with that line, yet the technicalities, rather than politicians tend to point in a different direction.

link

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FactCheck spoke to Aoife O’Donoghue, Professor of Law at the University of Durham to understand the issue.

She explained that the no-border option is off the table: “that’s gone. If the UK had chosen to stay in the customs union and the single market, you could do that. But in deciding not to, that means there has to be some form of border.”

Academics at the Universities of Birmingham, Durham and Newcastle, including Professor O’Donoghue, explained why in a recent policy paper:

“Any approach which does not involved the UK remaining within the EU Single Market and the EU Customs Union will result in the imposition of some physical border controls because the legal guarantees of regulatory equivalence, mutual recognition, and non-barriers will require checks.”

This view was echoed by the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, who told the Irish parliament that while he would work with all parties to avoid a hard border, “customs controls are part of EU border management. They protect the single market. They protect our food safety and our standards.”.

 

[Chindie]

BBC News coverage of this this morning has been a parade of swivel eyed Brexiteers (including the complete moron that is Owen Paterson giving a long diatribe of nonsense) and odd May supporter. There's been I think 1 Labour voice and none against Brexit.

[Chindie]

Vince Cable on for about 30 seconds. Mentions second vote, suddenly they're out of time, they desperately needed to read out Tory tweets they've read 4 times in the last hour.

Replaced with a May toady you've never heard of or seen before saying the same shit every other government brown nose has said.

Edited December 12, 2018 by Chindie

[villaglint]

 

[bickster]

30 minutes ago, Chindie said:

BBC News coverage of this this morning has been a parade of swivel eyed Brexiteers (including the complete moron that is Owen Paterson giving a long diatribe of nonsense) and odd May supporter. There's been I think 1 Labour voice and none against Brexit.

Radio 4 managed to find Barry the Gardener in 10 seconds flat, must have been creating a topiary dogturd in the Blue Peter Garden when it happened

[mjmooney]

Speaking as a Corbynite Labour supporter, I find his stance (or lack of it) very frustrating. 

I don't agree that he is 'ideologically' anti-EU', despite his awareness that it's mostly a club for capitalists. He supported remain before the referendum, admitting that his feelings were 30% against, 70% for (due to the social clauses, mainly). He got pilloried for being wishy-washy and not 100% committed one way or the other, but I found it a refreshingly honest assessment, unlike the ovedsimplified soundbite politics we usually get. 

Unfortunately, like May, he's since adopted the 'will of the people' line in the face of all commonsense - probably because he thinks any other approach would scupper any chance of his winning a general election. 

The problem is that the majority of his supporters (based on virtually everybody I know, and social media) are overwhelmingly anti-Brexit. Hence my comment upthread that I would even vote Tory if they would reverse it - it's that important. 

Of course, as it stands, we have no choice at all (short of wasting a vote on the LibDems) - it's either Tory catastrophe or Labour catastrophe. 

The country is committing suicide. 

[bickster]

22 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

dmitting that his feelings were 30% against, 70% for (due to the social clauses, mainly). He got pilloried for being wishy-washy and not 100% committed one way or the other, but I found it a refreshingly honest assessment, unlike the ovedsimplified soundbite politics we usually get. 

It was an oversimplified soundbite in itself. A ten year old could have avoided the question he was asked. his answer was deliberate and it's intention was to garner the exact reaction it did

[desensitized43]

21 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Speaking as a Corbynite Labour supporter, I find his stance (or lack of it) very frustrating. 

I don't agree that he is 'ideologically' anti-EU', despite his awareness that it's mostly a club for capitalists. He supported remain before the referendum, admitting that his feelings were 30% against, 70% for (due to the social clauses, mainly). He got pilloried for being wishy-washy and not 100% committed one way or the other, but I found it a refreshingly honest assessment, unlike the ovedsimplified soundbite politics we usually get. 

Unfortunately, like May, he's since adopted the 'will of the people' line in the face of all commonsense - probably because he thinks any other approach would scupper any chance of his winning a general election. 

The problem is that the majority of his supporters (based on virtually everybody I know, and social media) are overwhelmingly anti-Brexit. Hence my comment upthread that I would even vote Tory if they would reverse it - it's that important. 

Of course, as it stands, we have no choice at all (short of wasting a vote on the LibDems) - it's either Tory catastrophe or Labour catastrophe. 

The country is committing suicide. 

3

I was agreeing with this 100% until this point. I know from a number of my friends and family that would categorise themselves as "old socialists" or "old labour" that there are definitely pro-brexit labour voters who support Corbyn completely.

Just as an example, my uncle is unbelievably pro-Corbyn and pro-Brexit. Like you point out, he says it's a disgusting capitalist club and essentially a Thatcherite project. He wants to nationalise vast swathes of the UK infrastructure including power, transport, manufacturing...basically pretty much everything. He doesn't see a way we can do that under EU rules.

When I've debated his stance with him in the past I've pointed out that capitalism isn't going anywhere and neither is the EU. We can leave their capitalist club and fall back to WTO rules which is only another, albeit more brutal capitalist club. Unfortunately, those on the far right of the Tory party and the far left of Labour are both living in a fantasy palace of their own construction, unwilling to compromise one iota.

[mjmooney]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

It was an oversimplified soundbite in itself. A ten year old could have avoided the question he was asked. his answer was deliberate and it's intention was to garner the exact reaction it did

Of course. But it was still more honest than EU = 100% good or EU = 100% bad. Which was kind of what the referendum distilled down to. 

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, villaglint said:

 

If there are people scrolling through this thread who looked at this post and thought, 'nah, won't click it, too much faff', I would urge you to change your mind. It takes 2 minutes to read and is very important. 

[Chindie]

Ivan Rogers is worth listening to. The Brexiteers cheered him off when we went, but he was one of the first bellweathers of the actual process of Brexit going tits up.

[magnkarl]

Corbyn today in PMQ's: "The time for dithering and delays is over". 

May I suggest to the right honourable gentleman that he should've grown a spine during the referendum process and actually offered a clear alternative? 

This PMQ's is like an episode of Yes Minister, one idiotic remark from one side, repeated by an even worse remark from the other side. All the while Junker and Tusk are stroking their proverbial white cats in swivel chairs in Brussels.

[snowychap]

2 hours ago, Awol said:

You can project your own logic onto it or accept what the parties actually in charge have said: No hard border. 

It's not his own logic, though, is it? It's the logic dictated by the situation.

And by hard border, I'm not meaning a reintroduction of watchtowers and regular border posts on the actual line between NI and Ireland.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, mjmooney said:

Of course. But it was still more honest than EU = 100% good or EU = 100% bad. Which was kind of what the referendum distilled down to. 

Yes and no. In a choice between remain or leave, heads or tails, the line 30% tails 70% heads is just a weak fudge. Like May, at the time he basically hid. For all that the issue is massively complex, leaders need to lead. Neither him nor May have done that. 

[mjmooney]

11 minutes ago, blandy said:

Yes and no. In a choice between remain or leave, heads or tails, the line 30% tails 70% heads is just a weak fudge. Like May, at the time he basically hid. For all that the issue is massively complex, leaders need to lead. Neither him nor May have done that. 

I don't think either of them hid. They backed remain. But they didn't dare stick to their guns in the face of the referendum result. 

 

[HanoiVillan]

20 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

I don't think either of them hid. They backed remain. But they didn't dare stick to their guns in the face of the referendum result. 

This is correct. 

I don't really know why it's so hard to accept. No leader of a national political party with realistic aspirations to power was going to turn around after the referendum and say 'well, you voted, but screw that, I'm not doing it'. It's not about Jeremy Corbyn's politics. Tony Blair wouldn't have done so either. No amount of 'leaders just have to lead' green-lanternism is going to avoid the fact that there is, and was, a political mandate for leaving the EU, and that that needs to handled carefully. 

[bickster]

1 hour ago, mjmooney said:

I don't think either of them hid. They backed remain. But they didn't dare stick to their guns in the face of the referendum result. 

 

This incident was before the referendum

[villakram]

5 hours ago, Awol said:

@blandy Pete, your still refusing to engage with the clear statements from Brussels, London & Dublin: under no circumstances will either party allow a hard border, including no-deal. 

Logic dictates that the parties would therefore negotiate a solution, assuming that such arrangements aren’t already sat on the shelf. 

The backstop IS a British creation designed to keep us tied to the EU, that’s why May has consistently dodged all specific questions about alternatives. If she engages it unravels. 

You should start with paying attention to how things are going.

[blandy]

Just now, bickster said:

This incident was before the referendum

Yes exactly. They both barely showed their faces and made token efforts to “support” remain. May, IMO, didn’t want to contaminate herself with either side of her party and Corbyn didn’t want to (rightly) share a platform with the likes of Cameron, but also hadn’t any actual genuine belief in remain. He’s an EU sceptic, he doesn’t like the way things are, the way the world is. Which is fine. Good even, but while it’s almost admirable in a person who is, I dunno, someone you’d meet in a bar or Cafe, I kind of want a potential PM to be a bit more proactive. He’s got these dreams, he’d tell you over a pint, if the world wasn’t like it is, we could have unicorn milk and Venezuelan ideals and utopia. No mate, you’ve had enough, I didn’t hate the 70s that much either, but y’know, maybe look around you a bit and see if you can’t adjust a tad to where we are now? Oh , alright, I’ll get you a taxi back to your potting shed where you can talk to the flowers about bringing back 3 channels of TV and revolution.