UK EU Referendum Aftermath

[IdleRich]

So they have published Operation Yellowhammer apparently (dunno if it's redacted or what). So when they were saying they wouldn't obey the Grieve motion was that just bollocks or what? Anyway, let's see what it says....
Edit: they are not releasing the documents relating to the poroguing.

[IdleRich]

It's here I should say https://assets.publishing.service.go...ptions_CDL.pdf

[version]

Tom Newton Dunn
‏Verified account @tnewtondunn

Brutal official response from Tories on Brexit Party’s election deal offer. A senior Conservative source: “Neither Nigel Farage nor Arron Banks are fit and proper persons and they should never be allowed anywhere near government”. Boris clearly wants to kill this dead.

5:07 AM - 11 Sep 2019

Tom Newton Dunn
‏Verified account @tnewtondunn

Asked why senior Conservative source thinks Farage and Banks are not fit and proper persons for Govt: “All our experience of dealing with them leads us to believe that”. Very tough to go back on that.

5:12 AM - 11 Sep 2019

[Mr. Tea]

Gotta love the implication that Boris Johnson is "fit and proper" to hold the job of PM.

[IdleRich]

Gotta love the implication that Boris Johnson is "fit and proper" to hold the job of PM.

That was my first thought too.... you'd think they've burned their bridges as far as an alliance goes anyway.
But back to Yellowhammer - I agree with Grieve when he said "If people see this then Brexit is dead" - it's awful, even though it seems like what they spent today doing was changing the title from "Base scenario" to "Worst case scenario". I just don't see how anyone who sees this could still be in favour if they have a brain or a conscience... so it will make no difference to most Leave voters obviously.

[Mr. Tea]

Was it on here on FB or somewhere else - can't remember - anyway, someone was talking about a radio talk show where they'd heard some woman phone in and say "I don't care about the consequences, we've said we'd do it so now we've got to do it". There is the collective madness in the air. The idea of the Brits as stolid, dependably moderate people who didn't have much truck with violent revolutions or irrational behaviour or extremes of left or right - the Bagginses of Europe - is surely now a quaint thing of the past.

[IdleRich]

I saw a tweet that said that they were willing to accept anything up to and including death to get Brexit.

[IdleRich]

Truly amazing comment on the Mail

"Yellow Hammer - what a load of rubbish - Plan for a worse case scenario - most of which is complete guess work. Written by certain types which we know only too well are remoaners who phone into radio stations spreading more fear.. a totally useless document - unless of course you didn't have a clue on how to buy anything from Amazon." -

That's it, we can get round the problems by ordering from Amazon cos they don't obey the laws of physics.
Can it be real?

[Mr. Tea]

I saw a tweet that said that they were willing to accept anything up to and including death to get Brexit.

If it was only people who thought this who were at risk then I'd be OK with that, really.

It's the insistence on inflicting it on everyone that's so fucked up.

A large part of the population has gone insane, hasn't it? I mean the people insisting it'll all be fine and *the government's own report* is just "fearmongering" are one thing. The people who've actually accepted it'll probably be a disaster but want it more than ever - fuck knows. Ballardian death-drive if ever such a thing existed, surely.

[baboon2004]

But back to Yellowhammer - I agree with Grieve when he said "If people see this then Brexit is dead" - it's awful, even though it seems like what they spent today doing was changing the title from "Base scenario" to "Worst case scenario". I just don't see how anyone who sees this could still be in favour if they have a brain or a conscience... so it will make no difference to most Leave voters obviously.

I don't think this whole thing has anything to do with logic or reality or worst case scenario reports at this point - it's a quasi-religious article of pure faith to many that Brexit must be done. The problem is that a lot of people who think in that way, may well have been consistently lied to over a long period of time, to the point where the concept of truth is pretty free-floating/meaningless, so their rejection of this report can be understood, as mad as it might seem. The times of listening to logic are gone, by a long chalk.

I don't know where that leaves us, but I'm pretty sure that it's not a case of winning an argument at this point. It's about winning a fight. I think Remain will lose if it thinks the former. The language needs to be more emotive, about the fact that the key Leavers are con-men, cheats, liars, hypocrites, disaster capitalists...
Reminds me of that line from the film Frances: "Why couldn't they see it?"
Answer:because they don't care.

And the problem is that while Boris Johnson is losing on all 'normal', 'rational' metrics, he is building a kind of personality cult about 'breaking the rules'. It doesn't matter how many votes he loses in parliament, unless one of those votes achieves something decisive. It's like that I**n D****n Smith quote, about him going to prison as a martyr for Brexit. The language isn't incidental, neither was Johnson's line about 'i'd rather die in a ditch'. It's upping the ante, continually - language around religion, around violence.
Authoritarianism is always cultish though, of course.

[version]

Merkel warns of danger to EU of Singapore-style UK on its border | UK poses threat if it fails to match regulation standards of bloc, says German chancellor - https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...thames-no-deal

Angela Merkel has highlighted the economic danger posed by Britain if it is allowed to become a Singapore-on-Thames as Boris Johnson’s Brexit envoy outlined a plan to ditch the UK’s commitments to stay aligned to the EU’s social and environmental standards.

In talks with European commission officials, the prime minister’s negotiator, David Frost, insisted that the UK is seeking a “clean break” from an array of the bloc’s regulations, a policy choice from the new British government that has caused alarm in other EU capitals.

As the UK’s new vision was laid out in Brussels, the German chancellor, speaking in the Bundestag, said she was determined to strike a deal with Johnson but that a no-deal Brexit could not be ruled out.

Merkel also warned of the economic threat that the UK could pose. Johnson had privately told EU diplomats during his time as foreign secretary of his desire to build a “buccaneering” Britain, which has been seen as an indication of his plan to recast the UK as a low-tax and low-regulation state.

Merkel’s comments indicate the difficulty that the British government will face in striking what it has described as a “best in class” free trade deal if it fails to match EU standards on goods, workers’ rights, tax and the environment, among others.

EU sources have said that the UK will need to sign up to more onerous, level playing-field obligations than Canada due to the UK’s proximity and the size of its economy.

Diplomats in Brussels said that the British government would be presented with a “Canada minus minus”, potentially including tariffs on some goods, if it seeks to strike a free trade deal without the full array of commitments currently contained in the political declaration on the future relationship agreed with Theresa May.

[version]

I don't think it has shown how flawed our political system is.

By its very nature, being PM carries with it the risk of destroying the whole country. By design, we are able to elect people who could in-theory take a course of action that literally wrecks the country.

It is meant to be up to the personal insight and suitability of the leader that they will not use this wrecking-ball capacity to do incredibly divisive things. David Cameron misused this power by holding a referendum that he knew was not defined, in which the course of action he wanted (remain in the EU) represented a certain course of action over which there was no ambiguity, whereas the other option he thought would never be picked (leave the EU) represented an absolute infinity of actions, most of which would constitute a gross act of national self-harm if we attempted to enact them quickly.

It is the ultimate moral folly of a leader to take a risk that might personally pay off for them, at the expense of the entire nation. David Cameron is a rich man, so it cost him personally nothing to gamble with our EU membership because it stood to secure him the role of Prime Minister, but should it fail he merely goes back to being an incredibly wealthy person. But loss for the nation means that we've become locked into a totally ambiguous, unenactable and highly divisive issue of nationalism.

This constitutional crisis doesn't represent a flaw in our system. The Prime Minister needs the power to create the crisis we're currently in, and the people who vote nationalistically and elect charlatan gamblers who create crises need to see the consequences of their little-Englander mindset.

Brexit, the resultant loss of our wealth, the resultant loss of our national standing, the years of political paralysis and the ongoing humiliation of watching attempts by Britain to throw its weight around fail over and over, are the philosophical reckonings that the racist little-Englanders who claimed they knew what they were voting for and strutted around squawking "you lost, get over it" deserve. Absolutely all of this is necessary, and it doesn't represent a flaw in our system. Being at square 1 3 years after the vote, begging for extensions and slipping further and further down the list of wealthy countries is the reckoning the fools who voted for Brexit need. This nation needs this humiliation to play out to its fullest, so that it becomes part of our national consciousness to comprehend the folly of nationalism. We are having the same reckoning the people of Germany had for their racist folly at the end of World War 2, at a fraction of the cost.

Thoughts?

[IdleRich]

Thoughts?

Well obviously Cameron was... cavalier in the way he did the vote, either criminally incompetent or close to, surely no-one would seriously dispute that.
I dunno what it means about our system, at the moment it's being tested to breaking point but if it can hold the executive to account, force them to obey the rules of parliament and we can finally ask for an extension, debate Yellowhammer and find an actual method which takes us legitimately back from the crevice we're staring into then I'd say it has withstood that test. I'm not that convinced it will happen though.
And also I'm not that impressed by the argument he's making above3 which is basically to say that a political system should have the capacity to totally fuck up the country if it's full of idiots cos that's the only way they will learn. All countries have a lot of idiots so I'd rather the system was built as strongly as it possibly could be to prevent that with good checks and balances. Of course, if every single person in the country was hell bent on dropping a nuclear bomb on their own heads then no checks and balances could prevent that... but short of that level of insanity I'd like the stops to have teeth.

[Mr. Tea]

Has anyone else noticed an increased occurrence of phrases like "extreme Remainers", "Remainiacs" and so on? It just struck me that the Overton window on Brexit has now moved so far that simply maintaining the UK's existing legal and economic relationship with the EU can now be painted as a sort of radical position.

Maybe it's just a case of fallacious balance, or the idea that if a NDB is extreme, then its opposite - no Brexit - must be extreme, too. Which sounds a bit like saying that if shooting yourself in both feet is an extreme measure, then not shooting yourself in either foot is also extreme, so shooting yourself in only one foot is a good, sensible compromise.

[sadmanbarty]

Has anyone else noticed an increased occurrence of phrases like "extreme Remainers", "Remainiacs" and so on? It just struck me that the Overton window on Brexit has now moved so far that simply maintaining the UK's existing legal and economic relationship with the EU can now be painted as a sort of radical position.

Maybe it's just a case of fallacious balance, or the idea that if a NDB is extreme, then its opposite - no Brexit - must be extreme, too. Which sounds a bit like saying that if shooting yourself in both feet is an extreme measure, then not shooting yourself in either foot is also extreme, so shooting yourself in only one foot is a good, sensible compromise.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...e-peoples-vote