Westminstenders: The Final Week

[RedToothBrush]

Our final week in the EU...

I went to bed early last night but it took me ages to fall asleep, long enough that I can report no fireworks here (very Remain area).

This morning DCat woke me up by standing on my face as per usual, and I startled her by weeping copiously.

Thing is, although I am very sad, mostly I am really really angry. I'm not yet sure how to channel that anger, but won't be going towards "healing" or "coming together" not least because those are empty cowardly weasel-words from those who are still trying to shuck the blame for their glorious victory.

Your garden is beautiful, prettybird. Can I pre-book a little spot for my tent?

Morning.
It will be intetesting to see what happens between now and December.
We have our very own version of Trump in power and a majority far right govt.
May the force be with us x

Fireworks in our street last night, and a house opposite mine has Union Jack bunting on it. But this is a very small (in every way, especially spirit) Brexity Suffolk town.

I am sad, but fortunately I am also sufficiently rich to weather this and get the hell out when the time is right. I feel sorry for the people who didn't vote for it. The others - not so much.

Well, the 2016 vote is over and done with. People can stop talking about traitors and such. It is not relevant in the context of the referendum anymore (not saying being called a traitor ever was, but some felt it entitled them to connect the two).

The negotiation of a future trade deal is a different issue and may fall short of expectations and assurances by some ignorant agitators/politicians.

No need to wait until December. We have five months to decide if we need an extension to the extension of the extension. If not, it's BRINO or No Deal all over again.

No deal certainly falls short of expectations and assurances given by ignorant agitators/politicians. Remember when the UK supposedly held all the cards and could simply dictate the terms it wanted.

My EU flag will continue to fly from my window. We are into the wait and see what deals we can get period now. I'm praying we will all be ok but I know many won't and that's makes me angry.

I'd love to test the IQ of all voters and see if there was any correlation between IQ and how they voted. Also between income brackets and how they voted.

Also all the objections to paying a divorce bill and continuing to pay contributions once we ceased to be a member seem to have melted away.

Looking out from my lounge windows onto a very gloomy Rhine,
but there is loads of room for tents here too

• and Brits can move to Germany right up unitl 31 December !

Couldn't sleep last night either. In a remain area and can confirm there were no fireworks at all, nothing.

I thought about you the other day BCF when listening to the radio about some Chinese artist who had moved from Berlin to Cambridge because he found the people in Berlin rude. It was actually a really funny piece and talked about how the Berlin public transport bods had done adverts depicting how rude or brusque their staff were.

Thought it was interesting that Boris seemed to have allowed Nige to be the one taking all the adulation for getting Brexit done, whilst he did a pre-recorded speech for the nation. The start of trying to disconnect himself from the blame ? Think that caused the media to be a bit irked ? Interesting too that the Mail went with killer virus today on their front page and not Brexit.

We have to stay here. Disabled children, carer, own conditions. Need to weather the storm as best as possible. I will carry on digging the church garden to prepare the way for a vegetable patch so we can supplement diets if it all goes tits up.

Well, I've decided today is the day I join a political party. Small gestures in face of powerlessness and all that. Plus I will encourage my DD to follow JRM's example and advocate tirelessly for 30+ years to rejoin. Will it take as long as he campaigned for the UK to leave??

Did anyone see the Washington Post's headline declaring that Brexit was a victory for "the anti establishment forces"? Bizzare. Couldn't be a more establishment victory than if the Queen had been Leave's poster child...

I was too sad to post last night. Relations between our countries (I'm in Ireland) had improved so much in the years before the referendum. I'm sad to see you leave the EU and sad that we (in Ireland) are now a little more geographically isolated from our EU partners. I'm fearful for the future of Northern Ireland and I sincerely hope that this move doesn't lead to any further bloodshed there. I also hope that this move doesn't lead to a reduction in the standard of living for my neighbours in the UK. From a purely selfish point of view, any impact on your economy will also impact on ours.

A massive thanks to the many knowledgeable posters here who have taken the time to share their knowledge and analysis with the less well informed - and have done so with considerable patience and good humour. I have enjoyed your company over the past few years.

I will continue to read and mostly lurk.

BCF I would like to wish you a very happy retirement.

Brexit was a victory for "the anti establishment forces"?

Yes there was always an anti establishment element but as of today the anti establishment tendency switches direction.

There will now be an inevitable even greater pro EU swing. The numbers who always saw the EU positives will now be swelled by a jigsaw of others. The pro NHSers, the anti establishmentarians, the anti Tories, the cup half empties, the contrarians, the life bemoaners, the anti Americans, the anti Trumpians all swell the numbers who are opposed to our current path.

The force and swing of taking back control now starts to weigh towards rejoin.

We have to stay too Blackeyed - older, disabled husband with a degenerative condition and other health concerns - . I do feel trapped. If it were just me I’d be looking to get the hell out of Dodge.

Decided last night that I couldn’t let myself spiral and that sanguine would be my watchword. Realised that wasn’t going to work when I woke up with a leaden feeling of loss. Last shreds of (false) optimism were driven out watching Breakfast television (I know, only myself to blame). First Daniel Hannan saying it was good to see the crowds in Parliament Square last night looking happy when any crowds there in the last three years had all looked angry - a total misrepresentation of the very good natured Remain protesters at all the marches.

Then the oat cake manufacturer who vote to leave despite the fact his factory had been built with EU funding. Apparently half his workforce are East Europeans and they all wanted Leave to win too.

‘course they did...

Also BCF a very happy retirement and more time to help us keep the flame alive. 💐----

Glaswegians have a long tradition of putting a traffic cone on the Duke of Wellington’s head 😂. This was yesterday's version 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇺

This tweet made me smile. One firework goes off at 11pm last night and someone opens the patio door and shouts EffOff. Brexit Day in microcosm.

twitter.com/RussInCheshire/status/1223381646281510914

LonelyPlanet I see what you're saying re: that some of those who voted to Leave were doing so on a 'protest' vote and so anti-establishment in terms those Leave voters seeing the EU / Brussels as the establishment. A slightly different demographic from those who voted out of pure old fashioned racism or those who voted Leave to regain the Empire.

I was thinking of how these (allegedly anti-establishment voters) were most assuredly manipulated by the very English establishment in that BJ, JRM etc are as establishment as they come. Similar to those who voted for Trump to 'drain the swamp' I suppose.

Excellent article. So many quotes in it that are worthy of repeating - but read the whole thing.

Here are a few:

What makes Britain’s independence day different from those that have gone before it that its prize is a freedom nobody else wants

And

We have become the first country to throw off the yoke of an oppressor whom nobody else considers themselves oppressed by. We have won our freedom from our own imagined nightmares. We have liberated ourselves from the terrors of the monster under the bed that was never there. We are the children that never grew up.

And

Brexit's ultimate tragedy is that it has broken the very thing it imagines itself to have restored: national identity, national cohesion.

....

The prime minister urges healing – but he is the disease, not the cure. What do we do next? Are we to accept defeat, make peace, all the while knowing that, were the shoe on the other foot, Farage and company would be doing absolutely nothing of the sort?

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-nigel-farage-parliament-square-a9312436.html

So much for “healing” and “unity” and “all pulling together”:

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/01/guilty-men-remain-elite-will-never-forgiven/

"The Guilty Men of Remain will never be forgiven"

BJ, JRM etc are as establishment as they come.

Rather like all those fine, upstanding middle-American Christians who whose oppositon to moral permissiveness and coastal capitalism led them to vote for a pussy-grabbing New York property developer.

As the prophet of Neoconservatism Leo Strauss put it:

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

I went to bed early last night but it took me ages to fall asleep, long enough that I can report no fireworks here (very Remain area)

There were a few here, but it was very few. And some of them seemed like one-offs, almost as if someone was just letting one off to mark the moment, rather than any kind of celebration.