Just how exactly are we going to 'bring the country back together'?

[KennDodd]

Both candidates for PM have claimed they can do this. I heard a Tory party member interviewed on the radio saying that the best way to do this was a 'no deal/WTO/crash out because we'll all be in it together and it'll be like the war'.
I don't know how these wounds are going to heal.

LonelyTiredandLow Keep wondering if Mr Dyson might be LifeContinues

I don't think he can be because Dyson is quite tall and LifeContinues describes himself as a small man with a big car.

For fucksake, LifeContinues. I made myself a promise not to engage with your goading but this has really annoyed me. You DO NOT LIVE HERE. It is irrelevant what you 'support'. You will not be living with any of the consequences of any of this. You will not be eating chlorine washed chicken, so who gives a fuck if you support it or not?

Word for word - this

I think we’d all do well not to engage with life anymore as he is clearly only here for a weird kick.

As I’ve said before, it’s downright weird a man who doesn’t even live in the EU. spending hours and hours posting, on a predominantly female forum, exactly the same soundbites, none of which he can elaborate on.

From earlier:
{Nothing will work apart from revoking A50, or a GE IMO

There is not a PM or even a Party that would revoke A50. The consequences would be;

UK proves to its people and the World that it is an undemocratic Country.}

The UK does not have to be democratic to trade with others.
It can have a regime like N Korea and it will still trade with others. It may not then have so many immigrants wanting to come, so it could almost be a 'bonus' for those of the leave/ isolationist mentality.

Even revoking wouldn't heal the divisions though, I don't see how when there are so many viewpoints and so much anger and bitterness.

Including myself in that btw, I am fucking furious at this shitshow and being spoken for by far right scumbags in a position of power.

There are battle lines drawn, not of my making. It's up to the ones who drew them to make the first move towards reconciliation.

The UK does not have to be democratic to trade with others

Pecisrly. Politics should not influence.

In a simple world, remainers and leavers would be represented by their democratically elected MPs and a majority opinion would prevail. Our MPs were elected on a range of manifesto promises or simple party loyalties, so their remit is rightly far wider than just this single topic but this means that the structure of government has failed to address the cross party issue properly. Theresa May decided she would implement the answer regardless of the quality of the information provided before the question was answered, this being the biggest error of all, so that's the point I would like us to be able to retrace our steps back to. Unfortunately there isn't a politician around who would try to reset the clock so we could do it better a second time by forming a cross party group of specialists to produce a single version of the truth about the full implications of leaving. Say two years of work for a few hundred people - that level of detail. That would be my suggestion in preference to a referendum, because if leave win again, it would not change our current uninformed and unplanned approach to leaving.

The other problem is that the EU would not allow us to revoke because if only to reconsider our position (which would be my recommendation to heal the wounds), revocation would not be "in good faith". My understanding of "in good faith" means that we would have to give up ideas of leaving for now. So we could only ask them to extend and I doubt very much that they would agree to that either now that the Brexit party is the joint largest single party represented in the EU Parliament.
So I think we are lumbered with a) no extension; b) no referendum, and c) no resetting the clock with a revoke/start again approach, although I'd massively favour the third if only anyone would champion it.

Ruling all those out as impossibilities, the only way to heal the divide is to make a success of leaving with a massive package of stimulus, attracting new business and reshaping the economy. It's very high risk but it's the only hope.

I have reached the point where I really want nothing to do socially or professionally with anyone who voted leave and who does not bitterly regret their vote.

MeganBacon
Good analysis.
I would like to add that both your solutions B and C suffer from the problem of the well being poisoned, or the old 'take an egg out of a cake' in that so many lies and entrenched ideologies will completely overshadow a 'reasoned' debate. There are still those shouting project fear, so it needs a strong dose of 'project reality' to actually wake up those that still have their head in the sand.

It is difficult to see much less than a 10% hit on UK commerce, be it price rises, or tax or any other real world financial mechanism. There is also the strong likelihood of significant manufacturing losses.
The UK treasury has modeled this, in several variants but still the leading politicians are ignoring this or at least parking it quietly in a corner and doing the 'shouty' stuff as a distraction.
Where would your proposed 'massive stimulus come from? I am not disagreeing with you but wonder if you think this is a likely possibility.
The 'pots of cash' that BoJo, Farage and Hunt are nothing like the amounts of stimulus that the UK needs, as it is not just a boost that it requires but a wholesale reboot of all the industry that has been lost over the last 30+ years. The amount proposed (about 6 Billion?) neatly covers the costs of repairing the UK's road network.
I think Farage said something about 200 Billion, that is more like it, but unfortunately about 8 times what the treasury has 'available'.

I have reached the point where I really want nothing to do socially or professionally with anyone who voted leave and who does not bitterly regret their vote.

That’s pretty much where I’m at too

Thing is, because they are all gobshites, I know who, among my FB "friends " - mums of dd's primary school classmates- is a No Dealer.

That’s pretty much where I’m at too

Yup.

Brexit talk is banned at my workplace, we are required by the nature of our job to be a close, tight knit team and divisions mean we can't function as such.

If I'm mid incident with a service user who is displaying violent behaviour I need to be able to trust the people I work with to help us both. Division would be catastrophic.

{Brexit talk is banned at my workplace, we are required by the nature of our job to be a close, tight knit team and divisions mean we can't function as such. }
The division that causes it to be necessary to not talk about Brexit will be the thing that really breaks the UK.

Prior to the referendum a personal 'non acceptance' of 'others' was an individual matter, but Brexit has deliberately poured salt into any relationships (not quite the right expression) and as such it will be very difficult to get back.

The division that causes it to be necessary to not talk about Brexit will be the thing that really breaks the UK

I absolutely agree. It's a dreadful shame, it really is. The vote and everything that came with it has literally drawn a line right down the middle of the UK. The Union was already on a shoogly peg, this has shattered it.

1Tis
I want to believe that my option c could work because in the final analysis, education and evidence should be the path to common ground. I think a lot of ill temper is because the subject is far too massive and everyone picks one or two favourite "facts" to shout at each other which are either distorted/untrue/wishful thinking/taken out of context or relatively unimportant in the grand scheme. Having one version of the truth, a document produced by non-political specialists, with clear distinction between fact, conjecture, and forecast, would help with that. But as I say, too late now probably.

I think it doesn't cost anything to offer new businesses tax breaks - if it is new tax revenue not yet included in any projection, it isn't a loss to give it away. And much as people sneer at the magic money forest, that exists too - countries issue debt/get into debt all the time and pay it back when times are better. I don't know how much capacity there is there. But the EU are thinking of restarting their quantitative easing programme and we have that too, although our economy sounds more likely to need tightening than theirs.

That's a nice idea but we all know how brexiteers feel about facts and experts.

{ countries issue debt/get into debt all the time and pay it back when times are better.}

The likes of BoJo saying they won't pay the £39 Billion that the UK already owes (or will do by end 2020) won't go down well with the IMF or any other lending facility. The 'Tourettes on drugs' policy the UK has followed over the last 3 years will not be forgotten by the serious money people around the world.
Borrowing either money or 'goods' from China, as many countries already have, comes with strings attached. Borrowing from the EU is one thing, as they are at least on the same playing field and have the same commitments to it's citizens.

When you look at the activities and statements of UK politicians and government from 'outside' the UK, it is getting very difficult to see any rational plan.

I could accept Brexit if DD and I could keep our EU citizenship rights/ freedom of movement. I still think Brexit is a terrible idea and it has already caused me a lot of stress and cost me money. But I could accept it. Now we know we’re not going to get “the easiest trade deal in history”, why are we still not considering the Norway-style deal Nigel Farage kept talking about? It’s not great, but the alternative is far worse.

I’m so embarrassed to be British. Ann Widdecombe is one of my MEPs and her recent speech comparing the British to slaves rising up against their oppressors made me cringe myself inside out. Clearly, she and sniggering Nigel weren’t aware of the irony.

I think the "serious money people" draw a very clear distinction between not paying something because you are disputing that it is owed (the £39 Bn) and not paying something because you don't have it. It won't be the IMF lending to us, we are not quite that bad! And in any case look at the records of people like Ursula von der Leyen ("Germany's own Chris Grayling" ) who is being investigated for giving IT consultancy contracts to the firms where her children work and Christine Lagarde who is under investigation for fraud - our people may be bad but not worse than others who will probably soon be holding high office in EU/ECB.

MeganBacon
By your train of argument about Ursula, BoJo should be disqualified from being PM not least as he has a whole string of parking fines for leaving his car on double yellow lines (IIRC).
Playing fast and loose with the realities of Brexit and having been considered a security risk.

Ursula has not been disqualified, nor will she on that basis, and I didn't say that she should be (I don't know). My argument is that ours aren't any worse than theirs and was in response to your point about not being able to find investors because of their view of out "tourettes on drugs" politicians. If that were true, US would be bankrupt by now. It won't make any difference.

You haven't quite caught the point I was trying to make.
For Farage, or one of the others to try and 'borrow' £200 Billion it will be through a world bank not high street/commercial.
Threatening that you won't pay your bills rings alarm bells especially at a time when the 'risk' of the UK may well be reassessed. (Moodys/ Standard and poors?).
The people that matter outside the UK are watching this shitshow with eagle eyes. In nature, the weakest get picked off first by the hyenas. The UK has dropped it's guard and the vultures that are sitting on a fence are getting interested.

As an observation, the best people to lead for example HMRC would be successful tax dodgers as they know every loophole and low down trick.

I am pretty sure that disputing a payment on legal grounds is not a reason for a credit rating to be reduced. Being less able to pay is a reason (and probably will be).
Having a moral obligation which is not met may be significant for future trade agreements, I don't know, but that's a different discussion.

What is the dispute with the £39 b owed?

Because so far I've not heard anything else beyond "we don't want to".

They're well able to, they found a fuck ton of cash to buy give the DUP, and a fuck ton for the ferry contract with no ferries didn't they?

Refusal to pay is not a good look, and refusal to honour deals isn't either.

It's extremely simplistic to think it won't have any impact.

If your friend owed you £20 and didn't return it, would you loan them more?

Or if your friend's notorious financially feckless mate asked to borrow £100 would you lend it?

In the heat of Lisbon:
Would you lend money to a friend who pays money back to other friends without actually owing it? No you wouldn't because that friend would very quickly be broke and would likely give your £100 to someone else for no good reason.
A person or entity with a robust framework for deciding what is owned and what is not is a better credit risk than one who is not.

The Scottish independence negotiations will be interesting. If we are to be responsible for a proportion of UK debt, then we also have rights of a proportion of UK assets.

And UK assets are worth more than UK debts obviously, otherwise the UK would be bankrupt.

So it will be a nice position to be in.