Anyone changed their minds

[Baileysforchristmas]

From being a remainer to a Brexiteer on here?

@Christmasjoy I had no idea that was the situation in Italy. I’m so sorry, it sounds dreadful 😔

@Christmasjoy

I have personal experience of Italian Covid rules as I have a house and business there. Italian lockdown last year was far more thorough and thoroughly policed. The road out of lockdown more organised.
Rules are changing everywhere on a daily basis: that is the nature of a pandemic with successions of waves.

Anti-EU feeling in Italy is stoked as it is here by the hard right among whom fascism has never gone out of fashion.

The current polls are a reflection of the feeling that Italy did not get sufficient support from the EU at the start of the pandemic.

However – Italy is set to receive as much as €209 billion from the bloc’s coronavirus recovery fund. Where else but the EU would they get that kind of aid?

As you say Italians have no financial help from the government. It is in a very fragile position - financially, economically & politically. It was already in a mess before Covid & now it will be a lot worse.

The UK will survive outside the EU, albeit with ongoing economic stagnation & hardship: without the EU Italy will fall apart. Regardless of hard right grandstanding - ime Italians are all too aware that, for good or bad, their best interests lie with the EU.

@TatianaBis Did you see my previous post? M5S is not far right. The anti-EU sentiment isn't just Salvini. Lots of Italians don't want bailing out by the ESM for the reasons I stated upthread.

I've been in Italy since October and any kudoz they might have won from the well-organised 1st lockdown has now evaporated. This 3rd?4th? (I've lost count) lockdown is stretching everyone to breaking point. It isn't well organised, the kids are off school and going crazy at home, haven't seen their friends for months and we live day to day with zero idea of when it will end or even what zone we're supposed to be in today. At the moment we're waiting till 6 April for the next epic Decreto.

IME Italians (not that I'd presume to know what their best interests are), like the Greeks and lots of French and Spanish people, are having a proper think about how the EU actually benefits them. Lots of rage about the vaccine fiasco.

Not that I give a shit either way, one corrupt set of suits is much like another. Time will tell, the truth will out.

[quote TatianaBis]@Christmasjoy

I have personal experience of Italian Covid rules as I have a house and business there. Italian lockdown last year was far more thorough and thoroughly policed. The road out of lockdown more organised.
Rules are changing everywhere on a daily basis: that is the nature of a pandemic with successions of waves.

Anti-EU feeling in Italy is stoked as it is here by the hard right among whom fascism has never gone out of fashion.

The current polls are a reflection of the feeling that Italy did not get sufficient support from the EU at the start of the pandemic.

However – Italy is set to receive as much as €209 billion from the bloc’s coronavirus recovery fund. Where else but the EU would they get that kind of aid?

As you say Italians have no financial help from the government. It is in a very fragile position - financially, economically & politically. It was already in a mess before Covid & now it will be a lot worse.

The UK will survive outside the EU, albeit with ongoing economic stagnation & hardship: without the EU Italy will fall apart. Regardless of hard right grandstanding - ime Italians are all too aware that, for good or bad, their best interests lie with the EU.[/quote]
Hi, I live here too and I am italian citizen since birth but lived a long time in the UK before coming back.
I agree with the right pushing italy to leave and italy is no way the same financial positions to leave as UK and nor would I vote for it but I have to disagree with the lockdown process having lived through it for the last year day in day out and see the effect it has had on family friends and local business here in our town I cannot say it has been a good thing.
Of course we need to be cautious because of the hospital especially in the deep dark south where I am but what is going on is not a solution.
The amount of new criminals is mind blowing, people turning to crime as there is no work (wasn't much before) so what few jobs there were have been are now gone in our area.
I cannot speak about the North have never lived there and all my family and friends are full southern too but from what I have seen in the local and nation papers everything is rebounding quicker up there when they are in lower tiers.
Of course the south had many more problems than the North before all of this with crime, mafia, finance etc and this feels like it is really tipping it all over the edge and if it is not resolved soon we will travel backwards and fast.
Where I live it has only truly been accessible for tourists in the last 15 years before that it was far too dangerous, so you can understand the concern of how easy it would be to slip back into the old ways and fast.
Italy is a beautiful country with beautiful people but the goverment for many years has messed up the red tape is astonishing and if the lockdowns, vaccine etc are not sorted soon I do fear for the country long term as do many other italians around me.

@Christmasjoy that is a sobering read, I wish you all the best and our Italian friends, I hope all of us are out of this pandemic soon, can I ask if Italy had a big shipment of AZ vaccine would the Italians use it?

@PersimmonTree

It is not trade that is unequal within the EU, all member countries operate on precisely the same trading rules. There are different national economies and taxation systems, and some are wealthier & healthier than others. It is not uncoordinated tax systems that lead to bailouts but the economic problems endemic in those countries of which taxation (specifically the tax aversion of S.European states) is only one aspect.

I have never said Euroscepticism is solely le vice Anglais - hard right nationalism is on the rise everywhere. But if you recall the last such wave right wing populism that started 100 years ago: every single regime fell apart. Populism promises falsehoods it cannot deliver. When the truth is discovered, rebellion and disillusion set in. Authoritarianism seems to promise security and protection at first but it doesn’t take long for people get fed up of lack of freedom & curbs to civil liberties.

To break down the referendum vote by age is not to say that no under 50s voted to Leave, simply that they were the minority.

As regards Italy – I said 'hard' right not 'far' right. Five star is hard right populism, the Tories are currently dominated by hard right but they’re not far right.

Lockdown is driving everyone up the wall in every single Covid struck country. It is not particular to any particular nation.

@peregrina,

'Yes, but many of the Leaver posts are what the EU has done wrong. I haven't seen all that many on what the EU has done right.

BTW it still is a collection of Nation states'

The EU is not 'Europe', it is a collection of member states and institutions. Disagreeing with some of the actions of these is not being anti-Europe. Indeed, even feeling uncomfortable with the whole project is not being 'anti-Europe' or any of the nations or people within it. This conflation is helpful in othering anyone who disagrees with the project.

As for your 'correction' of my previous post, countries within the EU are probably best regarded as quasi-sovereign or 'member states', a halfway house between being nation states and subsumed into the union, a point well made in this article:

www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/from-nation-states-to-member-states-european-integration-as-state-transformation/

I would sincerely hope once the pandemic is over that there is an international reckoning and the questions are asked about which countries handled it well, and which could have done better. Then to see what lessons can be learnt for the future - so New Zealand did well, but has low population densities outside the main cities and is remote. Taiwan, also an island nation handled it well, is not remote from mainland Asia and is densely populated.

The revue might happen so I shouldn't be too pessimistic.

So what exactly has the UK gained from Brexit?
What are the specific up sides?

@ListeningQuietly,

Again with the sound bite questions!

The vaccines are almost certainly an upside. Of course you can make the argument that legally we were still in the EU and we could have done it anyway.

However, if we were still full members with no intentions of leaving, we would have been very heavily pressurised to join their procurement effort.

@peregrina,

I think we will see a high correlation between countries where powerful politicians had STEM degrees and those that handled it well.

The Taiwanese vice president was an epidemiologist. Merkel is also handling it well (degree in Science), though she is losing power almost visibly and has backed down over Easter, I suspect despite her better judgment.

OK, so the vaccines are a disputed given.

What else ?
What will be the benefits after the vaccination story is in the rear view mirror?

countries within the EU are probably best regarded as quasi-sovereign or 'member states',

I skimmed your link and it appears to be one man's opinion. If you recall Parliament has “remained sovereign throughout our membership to the EU” despite “not always feeling like that”, the Brexit White Paper says.

What applied to the UK applies still to the others - they were and are sovereign even if some people don't think (or feel) they are.

As for the EU not being Europe - very very few Brexit supporters post anything about non EU European countries, unless it's mentioned in the context that they might join. There are no mentions of them on this thread, not even of Norway, Iceland or Switzerland who aren't in the EU.

@Christmasjoy - I am sorry that things are tough where you are but my experience in the North, even in a red zone, is completely different. I haven't come across anti-EU feeling, most people are respecting all the rules (which are a lot more easy-going than last year) and there has been government assistance for businesses - maybe not enough but it's not true that it doesn't exist.

@ListeningQuietly,

We are never going to agree here but, as I said upthread, there will be times when our ability to make decisions quickly will be of huge benefit to us. The vaccines are symptomatic of this, but far from the only thing where this will be useful.

There will indeed be other times where being a behemoth of 27 nations is useful.

It will take time to play out. I don't have the 'solution', but nor do you or anyone else right now. It is not a Mathematics problem be solved but a complex system with virtually an infinity of inputs.

@christmasjoy Could you post a link to the poll that says 70% of Italians want to leave the EU? I can't find it. A recent poll showed an INCREASE in the number of Italians supporting the EU:

www.ansa.it/europa/notizie/rubriche/altrenews/2020/11/20/quattro-italiani-su-cinque-vogliono-unue-con-piu-poteri-per-affrontare-pandemia_9c5c0a4c-91ba-432b-9e79-d061d6ea3b87.html

However, if we were still full members with no intentions of leaving, we would have been very heavily pressurised to join their procurement effort.

Not necessarily - at one time we had an Roy Jenkins as President of the EU Commisson and Leon Britton as a Commissioner - so that the time when we had a commitment to the organisation, we might well have used what was regarded as our pragmatic position to get better deals. Post 2010 with Cameron, when the ERG/UKIP were pulling the Tory Party strings - no. So it depends how far you want to go back.

It will take time to play out.

It will, but that is not what the leading Brexiters promised. It's only now that they are saying it might be 10 years or 50 years.

can I ask if Italy had a big shipment of AZ vaccine would the Italians use it?

Yes, there have been problems with the vaccine rollout but I think the situation has been misreported in the British press. We do have the vaccine! I was vaccinated on Tuesday - at a huge exhibition centre. All really well-organized, hundreds of appointments throughout the day and that is continuing. Lots of people want and are getting the vaccine.

@Peregrina,

But many remainers on here were stocking food and torches on the basis that a deal was impossible and that we would be short fuel and food by now. They were portraying the U.K. post Brexit as a ‘Mad Max’ apocalyptic society.

There was a lot of ridiculous hyperbole on both sides.

So Johnson managed a bad deal. As for shortages of food - we have noticed that the supermarket is often out of things - tomato puree was one last time I looked.

As for N Ireland - what is the position there now? It seems to have gone from the news.

A family member who lives in Paris believes the U.K. supermarket shelves are empty here. I think he (like several on here) think ‘Little Britain’ is a documentary rather than a caricature.

I think a shortage of tomato purée is a hardship that I can just about endure...

I have noticed that, as opposed to the normal 50 choices of jams at my local Waitrose, sometimes recently there are only about 30. I somehow make do.

I think I will need to post a pic of my local supermarket next time I go to dispel those who continue to want to push the food shortage narrative.

And, as for massive food inflation (again insisted as a fact here by many), the Feb food and catering RPI was +0.2% yoy.

@TatianaBis

From experience of asking Brexiters to outline their grievances with the EU, the usual answer is a list of gripes that have nothing to do with the EU.

Brexiters need to understand two things long term:

1. Countries cannot function optimally economically without easy trade with their closest neighbours, hence global trading blocs. For that reason we will be forced to limp back to the EU. For economic reasons alone we may have to rejoin the SM + CU within 10 years. We cannot trade effectively without it.

1. The socio-demographics most strongly associated with the Brexit vote are a. the lower educated, lower skilled, lower income bracket and b. the over 65s regardless of skill and income bracket.

Once the over 65s are gone, there will not be sufficient support to maintain a national anti-EU stance in the population: Remain is in the majority in all under 50 age groups. Every year more young people qualify to vote, and young people are mainly EU positive. They are also more at ease with multiculturalism and globalism than the over 65s many of whom grew up in a predominantly white English Britain.

In short: there is no question we will go back eventually, the only issue is when. But the EU will not countenance a return until the hard right populism has been thoroughly defeated.

I don't agree at all! Im in my 40's, professional job and i voted leave. So did the majority of my younger and same age group colleagues. Could just be that we work in the NHS and see the consequences of " free movement" day in day out? Who knows 🤷‍♀️

Could just be that we work in the NHS and see the consequences of " free movement" day in day out?

This surprises me because almost everyone I know who works for the NHS voted Remain because of all the NHS staff who were affected. An Italian friend has just left her NHS job and returned to Italy because of Brexit. What do you mean but the consequences of free movement?

@Gerla we work in a huge town with a very very high immigrant population from Eastern Europe. The hospital simply cannot cope with the usage of A&E as a proxy GP surgery, the massive increase in birth rates to name but two. This is without mentioning the housing situation. The freedom of movement was meant to work both ways but how many uk citizens moved to Poland for example? In reality it just didn't work and people felt overwhelmed.