The Brexit Arms: Here it is! MERRY BREXIT!!!

[DustyDiamond]

We did it!!!

We saw off Jezbollah, Mao-ZeMcDonnell & Head-Girl Jo 🙌🙌🙌

✊🥀

We got Brexit! (...finally... 🙄)

The HoC is painted Blue for Brexit & it's oven ready 😍

Dominic Raab is looking sexier than ever & will be returning for my our viewing pleasure which is the BEST RESULT OF ALL! 🥰🥰

To the tune of Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody':

🎵 🎶 🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶

IT'S CHRIIIIIISTMAAAAAAS!!!!!!!

So we booted John & Jez & head-girl Jo-o-o
And we gave our vote to Bo-oris & co-o-o

We can GET THAT BREXIT DONE now...
We can start to hope again!
Now the Marxists have been consigned to the biiiiin

So here it IIIIS - MERRY BREXIT!
Everybody’s having fun!
Loook to the future now, it’s only just be-gu-u-un

Now we’re laughing at the Corbyn Cult implo-o-ode
And we’re snorting as momentum start to fo-o-old...

Coz we’re on the Boris love train!
And it’s going full steam ahead!
How we CHEERED when all those seats flipped BLUE from re-e-ed

So here it IIIIS - MERRY BREXIT!
Everybody’s having fun!
Loook to the future now, it’s only just be-gu-u-un

🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎶

Much festive cheer to all in the Arms!
🍾 🥂 🍻🍷

As ever, all are welcome - only one rule:

DON'T BE A TWAT!!

Note: I am a shit host, and not a patch on previous Landladies - I don't cook, I don't clean & I don't prepare drinks. I am a selfish bellend. If you want feeding, there's a microwave in back & a shop down the road. If you want drinks just help yourself 😘 - it's a free bar 🎉🥳🎈

Hi everyone - loving this thread, very informative and funny. I've been reading various political ones to get a sense of what's happening and what people think. Oddly I was pointed here by one which claimed this one was "racist" and ill informed (very clearly not true!), which made me curious.

DH and I have different political views but I've been very put off by the very odd views coming from the left - good friends & family have called Tory voters 'thick' which I think is very offensive. They literally know no one who said they were voting Tory and genuinely seemed to believe labour would win and if you didn't want that you basicallly want children dying in the streets. A friend was almost in tears when DH told her he was voting for Boris... unbelievable. I think we are off the dinner party list now

Autumn: so what happens if you say you don't wish to discuss it

I haven't actually said I don't want to discuss it so far. In one instance I have expressed my concern and respect for a passionate labour friend who is devastated and is spouting all the usual remainer spiel.
My family members are young people who are involved in EU funding projects so they are more directly affected. They just angrily talk over any defence or optimism I utter, so I'm not engaging any further and we can avoid the subject hopefully for the most part. We gave them our vote for the referendum so they can't hold that against us.

Twattage, yes, fingers crossed for common sense and for the UK gvmt committing asap to paying contributions to Erasmus+.

It's going to be too late for the students who would want to access funding for 2020-21, sadly.

And a lot of water has flowed under the bridge in the meantime, with EU students tired of a lack of visibility and concerned they won't be welcome in post-Brexit UK and EU partners very irritated by the Erasmus information on the Gov.UK website.
It said that potential incoming students from the EU might not be able to take part in Erasmus exchanges with the UK any longer and that for more information they should contact their home universities.
Thos universities have been awaiting clarification for a very long time from the UK and were thus unable to answer such queries.

I suspect that Erasmus+ input, if input there is, from the UK will focus on research and not student mobility, but I'd love to be wrong.

SingingLily

The Peru agreement is provisional, but it still permits trade so can't really be described as not existing, can it?

I know TTIP has bitten the dust and until the US has a different president it probably will stay that way. It doesn't prevent trade, but the current situation doesn't simplify it, either.

The EU has no trade deal yet with China, but the latter are keen to access that market. Their comments in past months suggest they view the post-Brexit UK market as insignificant by comparison.

Good morning all.
Epic if you’re reading warm wishes to you
They nearly came to blows over a man 😂😂
Don’t worry Raise it all ended well. I couldn’t fall out with my drinking pals after they made me so welcome in the Arms.
Looking forward to hearing the Queen’s Speech later.

hospitality I see.

Boswell "It's the hypocrisy that annoys me.
I was on a thread where one of the arch remainers admitted to having a huge income! But if I express worry about 400 applicants for one cashier job in Tesco, then I'm racist etc."

--
this is one of my pet hates too. Well, I was accused of being a "nativist" last time.

I am sad about Starmer’s Wikipedia page being edited.

He’s a good potential leader of the Opposition .

He shouldn’t need to hide behind anything...he’s worked hard and made money. Doesn’t mean he has nothing to offer a potential Labour electorate.

Welcome dkl

We're most definitely not the fetid, racist sewer of culturally illiterate, uneducated xenophobes that we're painted as elsewhere...!
(Actual descriptors used by others for posters on these threads 🙄)

Agree 🦆, "He shouldn’t need to hide behind anything...he’s worked hard and made money." - something that he should be proud of, not something he should try to hide

It's (again) the woefully lacking middle-class analysis of 'how the working class think'.

We're widely considered to be (as a PP pointed out) a parody of cap-doffing, 'salt-of-the-earth', heart-of-gold', 'nobly poor', under-educated lot who resent success & hanker for class war (led by the benevolent 'progressives') by which our shackles will be smashed

Utter bullshit

Perhaps if they actually listened to what we're telling them, instead of telling us what we're thinking, things would be different? 🤷🏻‍♀️

He shouldn’t need to hide behind anything

This is very true. But this is where the Labour party are at these days. It's a sin to be seen as successful or wealthy. Class is pitted against class. The working class painted as though they all hate anyone wealthy. Therefore the labour party lens on the world says the Keir should hide his wealth and success and talk about his working class credentials instead. It's bonkers.

auld yes I agree it has turned into a shit-show which as far as I can read, has been bottlenecked because there was a possibility of no deal. Hopefully it can get positively sorted out as we now move forward.

Really crap for anyone who wanted to study abroad in 2020-21, I agree :(.

I too was worried the referendum would be overturned, and when I expressed my fear that that would undermine democracy, I was condescended to and told on several MN threads that 'I didn't understand democracy'. I was told that my arguments for Leave were 'beyond naive'.

MN is such a hostile place for Leavers - it is part of the metropolitan bubble (except for corners like this thread). Or is it simply that Remoaners took over, shouted the loudest, hurled abuse after abuse until the silent majority shut up?

All that theorising on the Westminsters thread, those endless posts hoping and scheming how to make Remain win, thos posters who thought they were so clever and the rest of us so thick... Well, it makes me smile.

Afternoon all
Just catching up. This is thought provoking on the subject of Empire.

"And why would Brexit voters be interested in empire anyway? Many come from towns that have been left behind by political and economic developments of the past 40 years, but it’s not as if they were enriched by empire prior to this. As Janan Ganesh points out in the FT, the regions that ‘shaped and were shaped by empire’ – ‘London, the old metropole; Scotland, the source of many settlers and administrators; Manchester, not just the empire’s industrial centre but its liberal intellectual heart; and the port cities of Liverpool and Bristol’ – all voted Remain."

www.spiked-online.com/2019/09/16/its-remoaners-who-are-nostalgic-for-empire/

Important to bear in mind that GV is just a voice among many, albeit the loudest and most extreme. What concerns me more from his LibDem conference speech was his assertion that replacing Left and Right with monolithic Centrism is desirable. Obvs he was preaching to the choir at the LibDems but without Left and Right there is no Governing Party and no Opposition to critique it - see my earlier objections to PR.

Both my older DDs studied Higher History at school. Topic 1 was all about Edward hammering the Scots etc etc. Topic 2 was all about the Glasgow Tobacco Lords and slave traders etc etc. Sadly most Scots only watch Braveheart having swerved their History in favour of Modern Studies. Left to me, I would make History compulsory and Modern Studies an optional adjunct later on. Then perhaps there wouldn't be so much claptrap romanticism of Scottish supposed victimhood.

Therefore the labour party lens on the world says the Keir should hide his wealth and success and talk about his working class credentials instead. It's bonkers.

The Labour Party had been like this for as long as I remember. All the hypocrisy over MPs sending their children to private schools while publicly espousing comprehensives etc. Come to think of it, class hypocrisy is an age-old Leftist phenomenon - think of middle-class Lenin wearing a worker's cap, and the Soviet politburo members sending their kids to different, better schools than the 'proles'.

It's what happens when ideology rules.

Autumn, I mentioned it upthread but we've got extended family coming to stay for a couple of nights between Christmas and New Year. I knew they were Labour and they knew we were Conservative but the family bond had always held regardless. However, they've long since drunk the Momentum kool aid and are now in full Evil Tory Murderer/Racist Leaver mode. They really cannot be reasoned with. I can't even calm them down. It was a shock to realise how far left they'd moved and how consumed by hate they are. I will endeavour to keep politics firmly off the agenda while they are here but, given the undertones of the rant I got over the phone the other evening, I am genuinely worried they will do something entirely stupid like blame the Jews for Corbyn's defeat - and that would be a bridge too far for me. I don't actually care if they call me a Tory bitch - in my professional career, I've been called a whole lot worse than that and shrugged it off - but racism of any kind I will not tolerate. They'll be shown the door.

I'm a teetotaller but I may just turn to drink

Singing if they blame the Jews, I'd be showing them the door as well.

that said, I am quite strict. My late father was, unfortunately, prone to outbursts of anger - usually about nothing if you know what I mean - and one day I sent him home because I said "I will not have this level of irrational anger in my flat and you can't come back till you've learned to behave".

he was very shocked and tried to play the "how you could do this to me" card for about 6 weeks and then realised that I really meant it. It didn't matter who it was, someone spitting bile for no reason is simply not permitted in my home. If they had a recent trauma or something to excuse it, maybe, but he didn't.

Your rellies might try to claim recent trauma, though, I guess.

Autumn, your father and my mother might have been identical twins - I know exactly what you mean.

Your rellies might try to claim recent trauma, though, I guess.

It will be a mere pinprick to the trauma they'll experience if I have to throw them out. I can't promise to be gentle with them. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

In other news, from the Spectator:

"Corbyn appoints English MP as shadow Scottish secretary

At the election, Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary Lesley Laird lost her seat and the party was left with just one MP in the country, Ian Murray, who has been critical of Jeremy Corbyn. Today the Daily Record’s Torcuil Crichton reports that Corbyn has passed over Murray for Laird’s replacement as shadow Scottish secretary – instead he’s appointed Tony Lloyd, the MP for Rochdale."

So he's overlooked Scottish-born and bred Ian Murray in favour of Mancunian Tony Lloyd as shadow Scottish Secretary because Ian Murray is not a true believer.

#LaboursNotListening again.

mama - I think mumsnet is probably quite champagne socialist in many parts (I don't really know, I mostly lurk, it is only recently I have been brave enough to find one small corner of the internet on this thread, where I can say what I really feel).

My friendship group is also left-leaning, metropolitan elite and remain skewed. Hence why I dare not say how I voted IRL. People were so outraged in 2016 and still can't believe it - I think they would all assume that I voted the same as them.

Tbf there would have been absolutely zero chance of Ian Murray accepting a shadow cabinet post with Corbyn as Leader. He wouldn't in 2015 or 2017 and probably wouldn't have in 2019 even if Labour had won.

Ian Murray is doing his best to sound quietly vindicated, as opposed to cock-a-hoop atm.

Ah, thank you for that, Howabout. I'm trying to think of a Scottish born Labour MP who represents an English constituency but perhaps there aren't any.

On Sir Keir and the Labour Party's class roots obsession. I did some research yesterday on the original Keir. His parents were a ship's carpenter (step father a miner) and a domestic servant - same as my heritage. However neither Keir Hardie nor I could be described as WC in adulthood. Neither is Sir Keir nor Lady Emily imho.

Class seems to be far less ingrained in Scotland, perhaps because like the US we are a Nation of immigrants and emigrants. (Burns may have been a farm hand writing about the condition of the working man but he spent his whole life seeking patronage to escape it). This is another part of the issue arising from Labour having lost its Scottish hinterland.

There was nothing working class about privately educated Tony Blair but it was never questioned in Scotland or elsewhere. His alma mater is the Scottish equivalent of Eton, not any old private school for the aspiring MC. That said Blair's father had a similar background to Sir Keir and also rose to become a barrister and academic.

Off the top of my head - Pat McFadden is Scottish. He was re-elected as MP for Wolverhampton South East in 2019.

Just for added hilarity the head of Scottish Labour in the Scottish Parliament is Richard Leonard, a Yorkshireman (he has lived in Scotland for over 30 years and under Nippy's rules you only need to live here 3 months to be Scottish - sadly you can also lose your Scottishness just as easily)

Anyone else disappointed the Queen didn't proclaim Her Government will Get Brexit Done?

I used to write boilerplate legalise for a living. I wouldn't use it to sell a political message. This is Sir Keir's worst failing imho.

per BBC
"“We are a nation, no better or worse than any other... as a nation, our future, whatever we choose that to be, must be in the hands of people that live here”

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon calls for the “opportunity to consider” independence"

Masterclass in effective communication from another Lawyer.

"A Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission will be established. Work will be taken forward to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act"

Queen's speech in full for anyone interested.

www.gov.uk/government/speeches/queens-speech-december-2019

(sorry for the spammy blockposting style atm - bit busy irl but trying to follow along and contribute)

Hi all, apols for being such an irregular poster, I have been taking a step back after seeing some of the threads. On the subject of why remainers can't accept it - I was a very conflicted Remainer who accepted the democratic vote and was very worried about the Remain attempts to throw any spanner they could in the democratic works. But there was something on LBG a few days ago about how we are never taught how to lose these days, everyone gets a prize at prize day and at sports day etc, and how this has made it impossible for people to accept they can't always be the winner. They explained it better than I just have. I really don't understand why people think their will can take precedence over the democratic will and the mental gymnastics people use to convince themselves it's okay to do that are just staggering.