Why do Rees-Mogg and the ERG want no deal so much when it will screw up the country?

[RussellSprout]

I don't understand why, given the economic damage no deal will cause, they are so keen on it.

Is it purely about free market economics?

Can anyone explain?

Yes tax is a part of what they want but it's only a small part. There's an ideological shift in the survival of the wealthiest mentality.

I think we should be very cautious about what this ideological shift will mean. The JRM/Fox/ ERG are our equivalent of what has happened in the US.

Google the Koch brothers or Rebekah and Robert Mercer for parallels.

The old American dream has evolved. In the same way -over here -Thatcher's dream of grocers~daughter made good has evolved in a worrying way.

There is an extra class spin mixed in with it because that's our thing.

However if you want to understand the ERG ideology I think there are lessons to learn from the US..

www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/09/22/libertarianism-vs-meritocracy/?utm_term=.e63b42d8bdc8

Because he and Farage and the like have already made millions short-selling on Brexit, either way they win. They don't give a F about ordinary folk, least of all the ordinary Brexiteers unwittingly doing their work for them.

This explains a lot if you fancy a read.
www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/09/mystic-mogg-jacob-rees-mogg-willam-predicts-brexit-plans

Yes lonelyplanetmum, I agree. I also think that the average Brit really has no idea how much worse things could get here in terms of healthcare costs and employment rights in particular. How would MN feel about having three weeks’ maternity leave or being unable to afford prenatal care? There is a lot of money to be made from destroying employment protections, gutting welfare and linking healthcare to employment. No deal would open us up to this, among other things.

So why don’t keavers believe it or worry about it? Heads in the sand doesn’t get close to it! We now have the lowest rate of investment in the last 10 years. Well done leavers. We will be facing recession soon. All business and the unions are against Brexit but Farage and MPs who have hardly done a days work in their lives, let alone run a business or negotiate anything, know better! They don’t. We are already in trouble. It won’t get better by leaving and yet the heads remain in the sand. The Conservatives are no longer the party of business. Business is utterly fed up with them and distraught.

They get off on making the peasants suffer

I also think that the average Brit really has no idea how much worse things could get here in terms of healthcare costs and employment rights in particular.
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This 1,000 times over. A million times over.

Logically Why would anyone think the controlling right wing of the Tory party moaned endlessly about spending a tiny 0.7% GDP on EU membership. Why would they then be genuinely supportive of spending over 60% of GDP on health, education and welfare?

Does anyone believe that they are supportive of workers' rights when they brought in illegal employment tribunal fees that caused employees' claims to fall by over 75%?

I think it's because people listen to soundbites and rhetoric about helping the just about managings and not looking at actions. You need to look at politicians' deeds not their words.

Several family members went for a conservatve club lunch with JRM in January (don’t know how they could do it but they did).

He more or less said to them that he didn’t want to leave with no deal. Basically, he throught that MPs coudl play a very dangerous game of ‘first to flinch’ with the EU and that some last-minute deal would be offered on 28th March. Why he thought this would be an acceptable strategy for the government with its current tenuous hold on power is anybody’s guess.

My mother came out of the lunch feeling ‘reassured’ by him that, whatever the outcome, we would legally have to leave on the 29th March. Ha ha ha. I told her a the time ‘don’t bet on it’ but apparently JRM Knew more than I did. Turns out he was wrong and I was right.

The roots of this lay in far-right NeoCon political philosophy, a project inspired by the likes of Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss.

The idea is that a small elite can become the godlike owners and rulers of the Earth by co-opting the romantic beliefs of the less-educated. To quote Strauss:

"Our own principles, including the belief in progress, will become as unconvincing and alien as all earlier principles had shown themselves to be. ...The only way out seems to be ... that one voluntarily choose life-giving delusion instead of deadly truth, that one fabricate a myth."

You lot really have it bad don't you with your conspiracy theories and total dislike of JRM. I think he's a twat and is the very embodiment of the worst of the posh public school system who has been brought up and lives in another universe to the rest of us. So how on earth do you think a far right group is going to push any ideas of reducing workers rights or changing the ethos of our health service?
Maybe people might notice. Maybe people might not vote for them. Maybe others in Parliament might just vote it down!

Doubletrouble99 Maybe look at it the other way round.

If EU laws no longer apply, ask yourself why a Tory government would want to uphold standards for employees.

Ask yourself who benefits when health insurance is tied to employment.

Who benefits when healthcare is privatised.

Who benefits when education costs increase and student loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy.

Who benefits when food standards are lowered.

Take a look at the US if you want to see what could happen here. There is a lot of money to be made if we lose EU membership. That is not a conspiracy theory.

This is why they are so desperate to leave. ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/company-tax/anti-tax-avoidance-package/anti-tax-avoidance-directive_en

Thinking members of the current government want to reduce workers' rights is not conspiracy theory..

So how on earth do you think a far right group is going to push any ideas of reducing workers rights...Maybe people might notice.

People often don't notice people’s rights being reduced- as it happens slowly.

For example people didn’t really protest when the Tories introduced fees in employment tribunals.

The number of claims workers could bring dropped by 70% as a result. Sacked workers had to pay £1,200 to pursue unfair dismissal and discrimination etc claims. Basically it left workers' rights technically in place but very difficult for people to enforce.

The unions challenged the fees and the Government fought to keep them. The judges once again stood up to the government and said the fees were illegal. The courts said the government had acted unlawfully against working people.

So there is a very real recent example of reducing workers' rights without people really caring. It didn't affect their voting allegiances either.

So after that attempt at reducing rights failed

Liam Fox has said the EU working time directive is a “burden”

Boris Johnson has called employment regulation “back-breaking”.

Make no mistake deregulation of workers' rights are on the agenda.

https://www.ft.com/content/8d5dbf2e-f20f-11e7-ac08-07c3086a2625

I honestly think they believe the grown-ups will somehow sort it all out.

I had a polite conversation with a Leaver on Twitter - not someone yelling Remoaner or Traitor but I still kept getting "arrangements will be made" like these just dropped from heaven.

The government won't start by removing maternity leave or anything too obvious. @lonelyplanetmum is right.

TUPE will probably be one of the first to go. This protects your rights if a company gets taken over, the govt has long had its eyes on it because it makes it slightly more difficult for private companies to rip off the public sector workforce when they take over a public sector contract. Expect the removal of TUPE to be lauded as "enhancing opportunites" which it will - the opportunity to make money by shafting employees.

JRM estimates that it will be about 50 years before UK feels the full benefit from leaving the EU. My youngest will be 65 then. So not much help.

HPFA - some people always think that the grown-ups will sort it all out.

• It's fine to carry on using antibiotics when it's not necessary because, if we develop a problem with antibiotic resistance, "they" will just invent new antibiotics.

• it's silly and hysterical to worry about climate change because "they" will find a way to sort it out.

I actually don't think it would be all that difficult to slash maternity rights in this country. There's been years of quiet propaganda about women having too many rights, woman playing the system, maternity rights have a chilling effect on businesses, maternity leave being unfair to colleagues, "why should we fund her lifestyle choices?" etc etc. Certainly, some of us would fight tooth and nail against any attempts to reduce women's rights, but I genuinely believe that there are huge numbers of people out there who believe that "the pendulum has swung too far" and that maternity rights should be massively stripped back.

Yes, new arrangements will be implemented slowly, so people don't really notice the direction we are gradually heading in.

Also, it will be done in such a way that negatives will appear to be positives. Think about the sale of council houses, that was portrayed as wholly positive and anyone who mentioned the detrimental effect of fewer social houses was dismissed as someone who wanted to deny the benefits of home ownership to working class people. We can now see that it was a bad thing, but at the time it was seen as a social good.

The same could be done with the NHS; it won't be a case of ending it, it will be a case of giving everyone the opportunity to access private healthcare. Yes, it would be more difficult but branded in the right way people would go along with it.

I agree, SaskiaRembrandt. Plus a lot of effort has been put into fostering an "us and them" attitude (including years of media propaganda). A lot of people have been sold the idea that "scumbags and freeloaders should have fewer rights" , and they may only belatedly realise that it affects them too.

Look at my mother, who sneered at me when I said I'd like to do legal aid work ("oh look, dohangoversgetworse wants to work for scum!"). A few years later, she was very upset to find that she couldn't get any financial help to enable her to obtain family law advice.

I agree that we will undoubtedly witness the gradual erosion of rights and regulations particularly relating to employment, food standards, heath and safety and the environment. Sad thing is that most people are just oblivious to it all, naive and too trusting maybe.
Also privatisation by stealth and non disclosure agreements. Just look at how the probation service was privatised and huge swaithes of the nhs too (sexual health services as an example ) without most people being aware of it until as usual it goes wrong. Dominic Raab and priti Patel amongst others apparently wrote a book a couple of years ago about their neoliberal vision for the uk and I suspect this is what they are ultimately hoping to achieve.

Fox has already taken over full control of international trade negotiations. He has now bypassed the accountable government department that did this previously to his sole control.
Several things wrong with this. Fox may not stay in charge (even if he was any good).
The department of negotiators had years of experience and are presumably a team working together.
The fact that this change was made very quietly, almost secretly strongly suggests that the cabinet are prepared to use underhand means to remove democratic processes.

There's been years of quiet propaganda about women having too many rights, woman playing the system,

Yes looking at those who agitated for this mess in the Tory party I don't see them prioritising women's rights tbh.

Despite equality legislation there's an underlying undercurrent that has never gone away. For example more than three out of four UK companies still pay their male staff more than their female staff. In 9 out of 17 sectors in the economy, men earn 10 per cent or more on average than women.

It doesn't take much for that undercurrent to swell.

JRM estimates that it will be about 50 years before UK feels the full benefit from leaving the EU.

I wouldn't even give that the tenuous credit people seem to be giving this statement. Look how fast the world is moving. 3 years is already a long time. Who will hold JRM accountable for his statement then? He'll be long gone.
Understand: 50 years = NEVER, no benefits whatsoever.

It's a devious tactic to appeal to Brits' natural patience. 50 years gives an admittedly far off goal but a goal all the same. It's so devious!