Boris, Farage and Gove re Brexit-“Never have so few done so much damage to so many with so little ability to execute what they lied about.”

They could have picked one. Any one. They could have gone for a singapore model or tried to establish some socialist manufacturing utopia. They could have put in a tax structure like Ireland and tried to make us a tech centre or put in place regulations like Luxembourg to make us a centre for investment management. They’ve chosen not to do any of these things because Starmer is so worried about upsetting some of the electorate he ends up doing nothing at all.

to clarify - i did not want brexit. But given we’re stuck with it now, it’s surely the job of the government to make the best of it which should not be just managed decline which is what we have now

Agree there were a few women but the leaders of both sides were all male and they featured heavily

By far the most convincing for Leave, at the time, to me was Gisela Stuart. Not only a long-term Labour MP, but also German.

What struck me watching the BBC programme was the almost total absence of women . It was white men of a similar background. We had closed narrow thinking. Combined with arrogant mindsets.

I remember the author of the original article here, Michael Heseltine, saying that Boris looked for which direction he thought people were running and then ran to get ahead of them. Johnson was obviously a complete charlatan - at Oxford he was elected as a Social Democrat - he certainly never has any 'vision'.

ETA And his uni campaign manager was Michael Gove.

TBH, I don’t see the ECtHR rulings on immigration as that big a deal. The problem is more the accretion of supervisory power over states’ law-making and implementation generally.

It is a bit sad that many rabid anti-ECHR voices, including politicians who should know better, don’t make the broader case for withdrawal so that the subject can be properly debated.

I wouldn’t be so fast or blasé to throw away something so valuable.

The ECHR is undergoing reforms of its own (recently the Chisinau declaration for example), and can be reshaped into something which works in the age of irregular migration at scale. I’d rather reshape it from the inside than remove it, be subject to a far-right authoritarian government and not have the protections it affords for myself.

Of course it is fair to pick up on this. The Singaporean reference was just a convenient shorthand for the type of outwardly looking, aspirational economy we had (and have) the ability to try to create.

Good(ish) education, helpful geography, English fluency are all benefits we have in common with Singapore. But Singapore is tiny, almost a city state and its own laws and politics have developed from its history. Indeed we have colossal natural advantages over Singapore.

So no I am not suggesting a slavish copying of Singapore (which would be ironic given its own history) but a broader recognition that having a huge public sector, and a turgid economy and a nervous defensive outlook on life risks impoverishing us all.

And that if we had more collective confidence then there are other more positive ways to lead ones life both at the personal and international level through innovation and not being afraid of changing.

Okey dokey. I can’t bear Reform so can’t disagree there. And we do need to maintain international cooperation.

But I can’t see much of a case for remaining in the ECHR, or not simply repealing the HRA and un-domesticating Convention law.

The ECHR was intended to prevent a genocidal monster from rising again in continental Europe. Its mutation by interpretation into what we have today is another thing altogether. The ECtHR has lost its way. It’s not offering us anything that UK law couldn’t provide and is trampling on states’ proper jurisdiction. There are other signatory states that are voicing misgivings about the application of the Convention.

Jonathan Sumption is very good on this. I recommend his collection of essays.

Reform, which wants to:

Withdraw from the ECHR
Withdraw from the UN Refugee Convention
Withdraw from the WHO
Withdraw from the UNFCCC / Paris Agreement

and which has strongly criticised the International Criminal Court.

Absolute banana republic ambitions there, as though isolation is a workable strategy in the 21st century. Clearly a ploy to significantly weaken Britain further by damaging our support network, institutions and alliances.

It would definitely have required big adjustments but we could have been a bigger Western version of Singapore and possibly super successful. Could still be. Economic growth, higher wages etc. @KateSixer I didn't want to quote your whole post but this claim deserves further discussion

Do you really want to pivot to a Singaporean style economy?

The majority of the land owned by the state, 80% of people living in property also owned by the state. They get to buy a 99 year lease.

40% of Singaporean residents are foreign born, some who have become citizens, and some who are on work visas

With regards to the economy, as it's highly dependent on global trade so there's risk of shocks, the cost of living is very high, but they do have a high GDP.

The Singaporean economy is very centralised, finance, logistics, trade services etc, the UK one is far broader.

It's very much controlled centrally by the state.

They also have a really high Gini coefficient, a huge wages disparity

It's also an urban state, no farming or rural economy at all.

Which party is that? And why? And is the banana republic something to do with withdrawal from the ECHR?

Then we really shouldn't let a party into government that aims to turn us into a corrupt banana republic.

I’ve never seen EU membership as an especially single party line, other than for the Brexit Party and UKIP, obviously.

But if you want to get all (main) party political about it, there’s little mileage in touting Labour as a policy machine. Starmer announces a policy one month and then abandons it the next.

As for the Tories bringing about Brexit, the Tory leadership was pro-remain. What the fuck were Labour doing about it under Corbyn?

Because having come to power with a promise to do the political equivalent of clean the Augean stables they have done nothing and watched the dung heap get bigger!

Because the first thing they did was to pay off the train drivers. They paid off the doctors yesterday. Because they increased taxes on employment without thinking it might impact on job destruction. Because they are economically illiterate.

Because the Renters Rights Bill is already backfiring. Because they borrow more money every year than they can pay back. Because they think the only answer to everything is to tax more.

Because they are in hock to the unions. To their own back benchers. Because people who vote for them are predominantly in the public sector so they can't properly reform our dire public services. Because they are not intelligent and debate like teenagers with no experience of the world.

Ah so many reasons!!!! Glad I got that off my chest. But they are honestly unutterably shite. And yes the last lot were too but these ones promised to do better.

I’m with you. I was and always will be pro european. But given we are where we are i’d have preferred if they went in with an actual plan for how to make the best of it.

Problem is nowhere near a majority of the UK want what you outline which is a much smaller state, more personal accountability, less / no nhs etc. Most people don’t want that. I know plenty of lefties who voted brexit as they thought it would bring manufacturing and mining back to the UK (plonkers). And of course most people don’t want that either.

With labour’s massive majority starmer could have pushed through ‘a’ vision. Any vision. But of course he has none, add it to the pile of disappointments of his pathetic leadership

I have a slightly different perspective on this.

Yes I think all the named suspects deserve the severest criticism.

But for a slightly different reason. The UK is in relative decline. Look, for instance, how much richer the US has become over the last 20 years than the UK.

Brexit was not the cause of this decline which is long standing but has potentially contributed to it.

Those named leaders failed to even attempt to make a case for how they were going to build a strong independent prosperous UK prior to the referendum.

But there was a case to be made. There still is. Had the Brexit discussion been framed as part of a deliberate pivot of the UK to a more dynamic economy, with lower taxes, smaller, more efficient govt and a pro business growth economy, we could have done very well.

It would definitely have required big adjustments but we could have been a bigger Western version of Singapore and possibly super successful. Could still be. Economic growth, higher wages etc.

But by not doing this, by framing Brexit as a narrow choice with no real consequences for people positive or negative (other than the £350m pw for the NHS FFS) , by not leading the debate with a discussion of the sort of country we aspire to be, they were criminally derelict in their duty.

Since then with a succession of equally culpable spineless hand wringing politicians actually doing nothing different in the UK post Brexit than we were doing before, we have, as a result now got have all the disadvantages of not being members and taken advantage of none of the freedoms that could still be available to use.

This will be the damning verdict of history on our spineless and insipid leaders.

And that criticism continues to apply to Starmer, Burnham, Reeves and the rest because we could even now do things differently for the long term benefit of the country.

Rather than acknowledge that we are in a new factual situation and seek to take advantage of the freedoms we now have, they think padlocking themselves to EU policies without even being a member is the best idea they can come up with.

What pathetic people they are.

Interesting that you are so concerned about others having what you deem to be "pointless" discussions about Brexit and yet that doesn't seem to prevent you from making utterly pointless comments of your own.
I'm not sure if you understand how mn works.
And, if anyone could answer my question about what all this 'discussion' (i.e. making sweeping allegations about the mental capacity and motivations of the people who vote differently from them) would acheive i'll be happy with that.

But why don’t you look it up yourself if you’re interested rather than asking strangers online to do the work for you?

i can see someone has sent you links, i bet you won’t even read them before dismissing as biased in some way.

I always wonder what level of factual analysis would actually make people of this mindset change their minds?

BTW a lot of remoaners would have been pretty happy to be proved wrong. I’d rather not live in a miserable country that’s in a death spiral and can’t afford to repair its schools and hospitals. I’m not happy we’re f-cked.

Why not google it? The office for national statistics, the bank of england and the london school of economics amongst many many others have done studies doing just this.

Sorry but we’re the laughing stock of the world. There were ‘brexit’ style campaigns in the netherlands and scandinavia pre 2016. They’ve all shut down. The Danish equivalent of Nige literally gave a speech saying having seen what a sh1t-show it’s been for the UK he decided it was actually better to stay in the EU on balance. He shut down the Danish equivalent of UKIP.

As you will already know, it isn't possible to do this precisely, however here is some analysis for you.
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/brexits-impact-on-the-uk-economy/
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/the-economy-forecast/brexit-analysis/
https://www.nber.org/papers/w34459
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/new-research-finds-uk-investment-up-to-18-per-cent-lower-as-a-result-of-brexit
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.london.gov.uk/media/111689/download&ved=2ahUKEwi9puiNvIiVAxX2QkEAHV94LkUQFnoECEYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3GS2GQ8rE9n8obt_zwvf0F

Seriously? Ten years on from the vote and you still don't know the economic damage of Brexit?🤯🤯🤯 The damage was evident before Covid hit. It had been happening for over 3 years before Covid and 4 years before Putin went to war.😒