Westminstenders: Break Up or Make Up?

[RedToothBrush]

The next week or so appears to be yet another crunch point (not that any of these crunch points have actually resolved anything so far).

The EU is set to outline the plan for Ireland. Which everyone thought had already been outlined and agreed already. And it had been admitted was legally binding.

Except apparently we don't want to do that, and we are now crying about how the EU want to break up Britain (nothing to do with England wanting to leave the EU and Scotland and NI wanting to stay in it of course).

Jeremy Corbyn has now apparently decided that the customs union is a good idea. David Davis and Liam Fox have responded by saying that this would stop us making our own trade deals. Yes this has obviously stopped Turkey, and why aren't we doing as much trade with China etc as Germany anyway? A vote in the HoC looms before Easter. Will Tory rebels support.

Will Jeremy Corbyn bow to pressure over the single market too? The customs union alone does not stop the border issue in Ireland. Nor does it stop ridiculous queues at Dover. I'm not sure Corbyn is one for listening though. He's got a whiff of power and democracy and reality is just a hindrance to utopia.

As for the Great Repeal Bill. Word has it, its not going too clever in the HoL. The conservatives had something of a show of strength with an unusual number turning up for the debate. But few on the backbenches were willing to speak in favour of...

It all feels like we are making no progress at all. We are still bleating on about cherry picked deals as if this is a negotiation. Its not.

I have seen comments about big business leaving along the lines of 'well we don't need those fat cats anyway.' I think there is a disconnect in some people's minds between big business (and banking in particular) and jobs.

I really believe we will end up back in the EU, but with the obligation of being a full member with the Euro etc; The irony being that brexiteers will have brought about the demise of the pound. The alternative being us becoming little America, which I suppose could happen too.

Another thing I've been pondering is JRM constantly whining about tariffs on oranges because Spain. I find myself shouting at the TV 'it's because we're part of a team Jacob. It's what you do for a member of your team' . Which makes me wonder about the ability of brexiteers to work as a team and compromise.

Another Brexit casualty which affects my family. Our EU citizen dentist is retiring at the end of this month. His wife works for the EMA so they are relocating. Otherwise, he would probably have gone on for a few more years. Thanks Brexiters for causing me to lose a good dentist sooner than I should have done.

The alternative being us becoming little America, which I suppose could happen too.

I think a lot of the Tory right wing would love to be part of the USA.

Rather topically:

Sam Coates Times
‏*@SamCoatesTimes*
Exc: EU banker bonus cap - which UK bitterly opposed - could stay after Brexit. The Times is told “it’s a matter for negotiation”

I found this somewhat surprising. But Whitehall sources clear that the EU bonus cap will be a subject for the upcoming negotiation (and therefore not definitely being scrapped)

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d363f90e-1ffd-11e8-a25c-0a92182647c9

I really believe we will end up back in the EU, but with the obligation of being a full member with the Euro etc

I hope you're right but I see more of a dystopian vision.

I hope you are right about ending up back in. Of course losing our hard won rebates in the process.

I expect many remainers would have clung onto the £ with an illogical nostalgia, but this whole process makes you more radical and I for one would certainly now embrace the euro.

but with the obligation of being a full member with the Euro etc
I cannot see why.
The Euro still has significant problems due to the fiddles done by Greece when it was set up.
Other EU countries have decided to stay outside the Euro

Until the issue of cross border bonds is sorted out by Germany, I cannot see why the EU would bother kicking that particular hornets nest.

Yes I was always ambivalent about the Euro. But now I wouldn't mind so much.

I think that whole discourse about banks and big business is still very prevalent and still incredibly effective, SusanWalker. You see it on MN and, due to the current circumstances of our particular historical moment, it's very prevalent in the Labour Party - which is, still, the main Opposition. And that, of course, is a problem. Story after story appears in the media about business switching support to Labour (for example, no City logos behind Teresa May when she delivered that last Brexit speech - that's a huge deal) but there is no amplification because our present Opposition wants to make it very clear that it is not a Party of big business. Never mind that 'a Brexit that works for jobs' necessarily has to be involved with business ...

I'm in two minds about the Polly Toynbee article and Mr CBI's speech.

I'm not sure businesses are keeping quiet. From what I can see, businesses are increasingly reaching out to try and speak directly to people. They moved, quite some time ago, from speaking quietly to government and began using media and social media to express concern.

John Lewis and Sainsbury's are obvious examples. Sainsbury's have now twice made very serious, very public announcements about their concerns with regard to food supplies. And yet the story meets a kind of 'noise reduction', 'baffling' effect in the media. The message could not, I think, be more direct - and yet I don't think many people seem to have heard it - let alone taken it on board.

Likewise John Lewis. I wonder how many people - outside those of us who are passionately interested in Brexit - actually even remember their warnings re Brexit?

Ryanair's warnings are pretty much dismissed as maverick ravings.

Goldman Sachs' relocation was done via social media - again, directly to the public.

LonelyPlanetMum's list is pretty shocking. But where is the long-running section in mainstream media, an actual section in newspapers or on the nightly news, dedicated to covering the most significant post-war decision the UK has made, that examines Brexit in a collated - scrutinised over time and in a unified - manner, which could actually present such a list and analyse it? There isn't one. Instead, Brexit is treated as a series of disconnected news items.

And Mr CBI's speech itself? Yes, it was an exhortation to businesses to go public but it was also a message in itself, directed at the public. And where has that message been reported with the gravity it needs?

I thin there is a huge, huge problem with regard to reporting, amplification and dissemination. It goes way beyond businesses not telling their stories - in fact, I'd say that it is part of the reason why businesses are remaining silent (in so much as they are). If you can see that going public - and big businesses are going public - results in a temporary storm of vilification followed by utter silence and indifference, there isn't much of an incentive to go public.

I also think that another huge issue is that Brexit radicalised a whole section of the electorate, and a large section who are not, generally, interested in politics. I don't think anything anyone says - any message - is going to reach that group.

Really, if it were down to messages and stories - even stories of job losses and businesses closing/leaving the UK - the impact papers would have been enough. Seriously, 16% reduction in GDP in the NE? That, really, should do the trick.

Two former Prime Ministers speaking out, pretty much saying that the current government is not acting in the nation's interest? That should be enough.

It's not, though.

Somehow, somewhere, there is a massive disconnect with reality - and I really am not sure that there exists a message that can break through that.

Just renewed the family’s EHIC cards before summer hols. The expiry date on the new ones is in 5 years’ time (I was wondering if it would be March 19) but there is a covering letter saying that the cards are only valid if the bearer is actually entitled to EHIC. Can’t remember if they came with the same letter last time?
I am feeling increasingly depressed - a kind of “soggy”feeling beneath daily life - by all the news and how helpless I feel about our future ☹️

Sainsbury's have now twice made very serious, very public announcements about their concerns with regard to food supplies.

Their pisspoor stock control and logistics puts them at the head of the queue (apparently).

I hope that the newly radicalised includes the young, who will keep up the fight. I am not at all interested in the older Brexit voters who don't normally vote and have sunk back into torpor. I am feeling angry right now, about losing the best dentist I have had in 30 years, with Brexit being the catalyst for his departure. I feel angry with the Brexit Arms crowd who have spent 20 months crowing and crowing but are now a) bored, (which makes you wonder how invested they were in the EU, or b) apparently happy with Theresa May's proposals even though they have little of substance in them or c) have mysteriously disappeared. None of them have a clue about the Irish situation and I see none of them rolling up their sleeves to start building this new UK which can apparently trade with parts of the planet not yet discovered.

or the Brexit Arms crowd tell us to google it when they can't be arsed to back up their statements.

I am pretty sure the EHIC cards didn't come with qualifications when I renewed mine in January last year.

Somehow, somewhere, there is a massive disconnect with reality - and I really am not sure that there exists a message that can break through that.

That't the realisation I've come to also. There is nothing that can be said or done which will get through to people. I see it in my own family. Intelligent, relatively well education people who are so entrenched in their position that nothing will change it. My mum has lost all contact with 2 of her children and most of her grandchildren because of it, but it won't make a blind bit of difference, she's still banging her tamborine on the back of the brexit bandwagon.

I feel angry with the Brexit Arms crowd who have spent 20 months crowing and crowing but are now a) bored, (which makes you wonder how invested they were in the EU)

They weren't. The most baffling thing about Brexit is how 80% of the population who - let's not mince words - hadn't a fucking clue about the EU, how it worked, what it did for them - suddenly became experts after reading a pamphlet. If only medicine and engineering were as easy, eh ?

And, now, 2 years on, the more incredible thing appears to be that after 2 years of discussion, the number of people who know fuck all about the EU is still 80% (or whatever it was pre referendum).

The ability of the English to keep themselves ignorant, when all around are learning is truly a marvel of the modern age. Indeed, it probably explains the British Empire. But it does more harm than good.

she's still banging her tamborine on the back of the brexit bandwagon.

And will no doubt be grumbling when food prices rise, or shortages hit. Thankfully all my family were Remainers to a greater or lesser extent, (one a bit lukewarm), mind, so we haven't had the family fallings out. Even my then 93 year old MIL thought long and hard, didn't really feel well informed enough, but voted Remain.

I hope we get some sort of tipping point - think of how positive the UK was in 2012 about the Olympics - I think we could justifiably feel proud of the country then, but then we got a tipping point the other way, and nastiness and xenophobia egged on by the right wing Press and the Tory party ruled the day.

Peregrina The 'bored' crew are the ones I see as having been radicalised. And the ennui is, I think, an inevitable correlative to the initial radicalisation. The radicalisation, pro-Brexit, happened - and it then has no supplement or possible means of extension over time.

It's very, very annoying. How do you argue with something that is essentially nebulous and disengaged? And comprised, in large part, of boredom?

I know I wimble on about it but I've often thought how irritating it is that, come election time, so much attention is paid to 'swing voters' and that that group is often not a group of passionate, disinterested, non-aligned voters, who avidly follow politics, without an actual Party commitment, but is more often a group who don't, actually, give much of a shit about politics most of the time and are woefully under-educated in matters political and uninformed by choice.

I realise that you, inevitably, will get attention paid to this group, and have a small group of them, as examples, on the main television channels. And they will be treated as oracular and some sort of belwether, etc. And that this happens because they are, indeed, representative of the groups the main parties have to reach, blah, blah.

But it annoys me because, by definition, they're not interested in politics.

And that group, in a way, is the section of the electorate that Leave managed to mobilise. In fact, that section squared. And it is infuriating that the economy is being trashed to placate, appease this group.

Of course they're bored.

DGR, I wasn't talking about the general populace, although what you say is true. I was specifically talking about the posters on 'another thread'.

I go to a discussion group sometimes and just before the Referendum we had a discussion about the EU. Most of us are well educated people, but precious few of us knew much about it or how it worked, which we admitted much to our embarassment. I was perhaps one of the better informed but I studied politics years ago, as part of my degree. One friend in the group told us how all her husband's Cornish relatives were going to vote Leave - apparently oblivious to the help the EU had given them.

I've thought for a while that the genius of the UKIP/Leave campaign - tapping into the disaffected who didn't usually vote would be a one-off and unsustainable.

After all, there was a reason these people weren't voting before.

So they've come out, voted, and now completely disengaged (as UKIP polling results show).

So the rest of us are now scrabbling around, desperately trying to appease a bunch of people who probably think we've left the EU already.

Remember, there are some people who are surprised when you tell them the earth goes around the sun.

My mother has swallowed the Daily Mail hook line and sinker. We live in Sweden and she was going on and on about how awful it was here and how women couldn't walk down the streets anymore, because the Daily Mail said so. I was so angry because not only is it not true, she knows it's not true because she'd been here for a fortnight a couple of weeks before her rant. What the Daily Mail tells her overrides even her own first hand experiences.

Then she voted brexit despite having a child and grandchildren living in another EU country and another child working for an EU institution in the UK. I would bet my hat that the impact it would have on her own offspring didn't get a moment's consideration. And I know now she moans about how none of us are talking to her and how upset she is because she doesn't know what she's done wrong.

But selective absorb tin of information is not unique to this country.
www.google.co.uk/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/5165670/vaccine-skepticism-northern-league-five-stars
I see parallels between people's engagement with the eu issue and the vax issue

I go to a discussion group sometimes and just before the Referendum we had a discussion about the EU. Most of us are well educated people, but precious few of us knew much about it or how it worked, which we admitted much to our embarassment.

Yes, but admitting ignorance - and working to correct it - is laudable, and should be encouraged. Certainly nothing to be ashamed of ... after all how else do we learn.

(Apropos of unexpected learning, while snowed in over the weekend, I caught some iPlayer treats, one of which was Dan Snows "How the Celts Saved Britain". I was fascinated to realise how little I knew of the history of our sister island in the British isles. However I was incredibly pleased to have learned. I can highly recommend it - and am a little that I missed it first time around. But DS was 13 then .... )

All of that said, most Brexiteers seem to go out of their way to remain ignorant - in fact it's one of their defining characteristics.

Now as someone whose only half-British, I'm probably not qualified to discuss such things, but I can't help but feel a good word for someone who decides to remain wilfully ignorant is "bigot". Pure and simple.

As I was typing MimpiDreams gives a dictionary example of wilful ignorance.

Of course they're bored.
One thing I noticed, was that of all the countries of the UK - Scotland had either the lowest or second lowest turn out in the EU referendum - England and Wales, at least, being a fair few percentage points higher. I can't help but wonder if - after the massive turnout on indieref - there was a bit of a feeling of political ennui in Scotland - a large section just couldn't be bothered to go out to the polls again.

It does make me think that if we did (god forbid) go for a second referendum, that we might end up with a completely different set of results - not because opinions have changed as such, but because there would be such a large section of the electorate that just wouldn't show up this time.

If you think back to the picture of the march for Brexit and its handful of people (although they won- they need to get over it - what exactly are they marching for?) - and compare it to the pro EU marches and protests - all the passion, determination and engagement is on one side.