Brexit mega thread : part 9 : Winter is Coming

[Chevyimpala67]

Part 10 of our long running thread.

Not sure what to say, really, other than it is worse than I feared.

Strap in, folks. It's gonna be a rough ride...

Owen Patterson has a long history of wanting to have his cake and eat it too.

That's how it looks to me.

Problem is this (amongst other things) leaves me politically homeless. One of my red lines is "Won't vote for any party that still believes in Brexit Unicorns."

I can only conclude that the two major parties have polling data that more voters have a red line of "Must not Betray Brexit because BeLeaving is More Important than Reality."

(See this thread for Exhibit A).

>"Won't vote for any party that still believes in Brexit Unicorns."

If youre 'homeless', aren't you saying that you won't vote for a party that doesnt explicitly say it will reverse brexit?

Dont you see that any party saying that, which currently has a chance of taking power, would provide tories and the mail etc with an easy attack point, much better than 'but corbyn'?

Every subsequent political interview would have to waste some time on this rather than cover policy.

Saying they want to 'make brexit work' actually precludes nothing - and gets this subject off the opposition interviews but given the growing clamour from other areas, lets the media pressurise the tories.

Even sunak's statement about not going back to free movement doesnt preclude renegotiation - like winter, that is coming, faster than i'd thought.

no vision from Starmer, nothing on NHS, nothing on pay, nothing on where these 1000s of nurses/GPs/AHPs are going to come from, nothing on tuition fee's, nothing on social care

At least, not much commentary on policy work unless it is going on but not being advertised? Which would be frustrating.

Perhaps no party is being explicitly anti Brexit, but Starmer doesn’t have to be so explicitly and markedly anti-immigration viz his CBI speech.

He came across as hectoring business, wagging a finger at them for ‘relying on cheap labour’ but without acknowledgement of government’s role in perpetuating the status quo vs guiding wages and productivity through tax and investment policies.

I was also unimpressed about painting all ‘business’ with the same brush seemingly not differentiating SMEs struggling on wafer thin margins and global enterprises deliberately using wage and tax arbitrage strategies.

Initially, I was so pleased thinking that an adult had taken over Labour. Now, I am struggling to know who to vote for.

Personally I wish Yvette Cooper was the leader. I don’t dislike Starmer he’s a good bloke but he doesn’t seem to have a vision.

>he doesn’t seem to have a vision.

This is a tory myth/soundbite.

The whole 'great british energy' is visionary, addresses our biggest problems, extends far wider than just energy and is actually a route to growth that gets the cash to do stuff.

Where do you want the vision?

Even sunak's statement about not going back to free movement doesn't preclude renegotiation

One thing we now know about Tories, is they are very good at making statements they later contradict.

Rumours are that Hunt is a marked man as the Remainer in the woodpile.

@FrankieStein403 Personally, I’m not looking for vision so much as evidence that there is serious policy work going on right now so that they’d be a party ready to govern. When people say ‘vision’ doesn’t this usually mean some sense of direction for the country?

A political party must have some sense of which laws, regulations and policy they see as effective (however defined by that party) and those that are not. Which requires a coherent and coordinated policy strategy. Maybe this is happening. I don’t have that sense but can only go by headlines. If you’re closer to the party, do you?

No its not, if he included the fossil industry then fair enough... simply not eye catching enough... nationalise NS gas production plus renewables... and offer the UK far cheaper energy? thats a vision!!!.

I listened to his entire CBI speech, it was awful.. as i said earlier.. could easily have been a left of centre Tory delivering it.

I want vision on nhs retention, pay, recruitment, tuition fees... how about education? again, pay and retention.

Then there is the EU.. Brexit cannot be "made" to work, he seemed to not realise that the old meme of the closer the trade deal, the closer the regs and laws...

I do however understand the anti EU hate he would get if he eased his stance but this is a very dangerous horse to ride, esp as the public mood on brexit is fickle.... but this does not mean he cannot have a "vision" on other matters.

I would call political vision - a clear direction for the country and clear policy strategies across the board so we know who they are, what they stand for, and what to expect if they’re elected.

All I’m really sure of at the moment is that I disagree with them on women and Brexit.

@Mirabai I’m also concerned that Starmer doesn’t seem to understand the concerns being raised by women. This is especially puzzling coming from a lawyer and former head of CPS used to being precise with the meaning of words. Whilst I’d never vote Tory, I feel politically homeless these days.

The head of CPS who commissioned much-needed, much-quoted research into false allegations of rape and domestic abuse which was of fundamental importance to women.

I’ve always voted Labour but right now I’m not sure who they are.

Saying they want to 'make brexit work' actually precludes nothing

It also means nothing.

This thread has discussed, frequently, the empty meaningless slogans spouted by Leavers and how the intervening 6 years have produced no Brexit positives, unless you're a xenophobe (and masochistic!). There's nothing but the empty meaningless slogans.

Why would I vote for some more empty meaningless slogans, just because they're supposedly coming from the "naice" side? Especially since, whenever they do mention any kind of faux-detail (e.g. in the CBI speech) it's still the same "Foreigners Baaaaaad" bogeyman song sheet that the other explicitly Brexitatious parties sing from.

Plus, while we're on the subject of empty unthinking slogans and disbelief in reality, that's another red line. Women's sex-based rights.

And to clarify, I have other red lines such as "Do not shit all over the poor, and heap rewards upon your super-rich pals, while fucking up the economy for ordinary people" and "Stoking the culture wars pretending to have a War on Woke whilst not actually protecting women's rights, but at best not actively ripping them up unlike Labour/LD/Greens, is just opportunistic bullshit" - so that's multiple strikes against the Tories.

Michael the snake Gove on R4 this morning being asked bluntly to state one way that business is better off with Brexit could only waffle on about leaving the CAP.

If only he’d have left it at that without going on to praise ‘his’ new replacement policy. It doesn't seem that the industry agrees with him on the brilliance of his the replacement policy 🤔

Direct payments from the EU currently account for an average of 61% of UK farms' net profit. Without these, 42% of farms would have made a loss between March 2014 and February 2017.

NFU President says: Expecting farmers to run viable, high-cost farm businesses, continue to produce food and increase their environmental delivery, while phasing out existing support and without a complete replacement scheme for almost three years is high risk and a very big ask.

www.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/new-uk-agriculture-bill-changes-inefficient-and-overly-bureaucratic-policy.html

www.farminguk.com/news/government-needs-to-get-serious-about-uk-farming-in-2022_59589.html

www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/09/farm-subsidy-plan-risks-increasing-the-uks-reliance-on-food-imports

@DrBlackbird please don't call him the snake. It's so unkind to snakes.

He looked more like a snake's prey when asked about the Michelle Mone PPE contract this morning

Brexit: Don't scrap EU rules, firms and unions say

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63741465

Bosses and workers - an interesting alliance,

Express Brexit poll

www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1700862/brexit-poll-single-market-european-union-spt

You couldn't make it up, it's 52% to rejoin, 48% to stay out.

Well, as we all know, that's a HUGE margin of victory ✌️

Businesses - especially really big ones - don't tend to waste energy on hypotheticals. They only start to speak up when it looks real.

So be prepared for a steady stream of stories about various businesses and industries wanted exemption from Brexit.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/25/meta-facebook-seeks-government-protection-from-jacob-rees-mogg-eu-law-bonfire

Beth Rigby skewers Jeremy Hunt over Brexit 👏

Hunt throws a tantrum towards the end 🤷‍♂️

twitter.com/implausibleblog/status/1595915632612081666?t=1pK04x7597sabE0r8LZnuw&s=19

That Express poll

Well I voted on it just for the sabotage and I imagine others might have done the same, but still...

Imagine what the percentages would have been in 2016 if the question had been "Should the UK leave the EU and harm the economy"?