Brexit Day

[Mr. Tea]

Well we've had half a decade of people pretending Brexit is a rerun of WWII and this has kicked that up into a whole new intensity, would be my guess. Johnson loves the idea of being Churchill 2.0 and I guess a lot of people are buying into that?

 

[IdleRich]

Which country is that, I'm not completely sure right now. A few candidates... but when the dust settles it should be very clear. Inquiries all over the shop I hope.

 

[john eden]

People tend to back leaders in uncertain times but it might also be Boris’ Churchill tribute act (as Tea says). Also the cap doffing of the media until a few days ago?

 

[john eden]

Good point, maybe I'll write a letter to Johnson saying "Yo, stop being such a dick".

That will use less stamps than writing to the electorate. Good plan.

My guess is that there will be a reckoning with Johnson but it will take a while to play out. There are already signs of people scrabbling around for scapegoats.

 

[Mr. Tea]

My guess is that there will be a reckoning with Johnson but it will take a while to play out.

I really, sincerely hope so. The question is how much more damage he can do while he's there.

 

[IdleRich]

This is interesting I think. Probably should have been big news but like everything else (along with the US government admitting that they have been in contact with aliens - I think that's right) everyone has missed it cos we can only think about Coronavirus these days

https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/brex...ess-lobby-blows-hole-in-johnsons-brexit-plan/

 

[IdleRich]

6 boats of illegal migrants picked up in the Channel already today, I expect most to be in 4 Star Hotels within a couple of days.

Farage tweeting today... I mean is he so irrelevant that he has to bang on about this stuff that surely no-one in their right mind gives a shit about right now? Seriously who gives a fuck about this?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Well, no-deal it is, then: https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-formally-rejects-brexit-transition-period-extension/amp/

 

[john eden]

Meanwhile in the EU:

Polish president issues campaign pledge to fight 'LGBT ideology'

Andrzej Duda launches ‘family charter’ to appeal to base as election race tightens

www.theguardian.com

 

[Mr. Tea]

Meanwhile in the EU:

Polish president issues campaign pledge to fight 'LGBT ideology'

Andrzej Duda launches ‘family charter’ to appeal to base as election race tightens

www.theguardian.com

You might have to explain to the hard-of-thinking among us what the fuck this has to do with Brexit, exactly.

 

[john eden]

Well it’s the latest example of the continuing degradation of the EU I guess. I’m sure you will say at this point that you’ve already covered this off when we discussed Orban and that your position is that the EU is far from being a utopia.

I just think it’s worth seeing the whole picture. The UK, the EU, our respective trajectories and problems. I guess I could start another thread about it but they are linked.

 

[Mr. Tea]

So we're better off out of it, before we get contaminated by awful Polish homophobia, and retain our nice progressive, inclusive culture under the cuddly old Tory party?

And the relevance of all this to the likely economic effects of a no-deal Brexit is... what?

I can usually see where you're coming from even when I don't entirely agree with you, but this 'red UKIP' stuff you come out with sometimes is just mystifying.

 

[john eden]

Well whether we are better off out of it or not remains to be seen. My post was a general one and not a direct response to yours. I guess it is an interesting question to ask though, about the relevance of Poland and Hungary edging towards fascism and what effect this has had on the negotiations. Fucked if I know but I’d be interested to find out more.

Are UKIP well up for gay liberation now? It’s exhausting keeping up with it all.

 

[Mr. Tea]

My post was a general one and not a direct response to yours.

OK, but you can hardly blame me for being confused when your post came less than three hours after mine in a thread that had previously been inactive for over a week.

 

[john eden]

Well you seem perpetually confused so I agree that to blame you for it would be uncharitable.

As a number of people have pointed out to you on several occasions, you could save yourself a lot of confusion if you took people at face value rather than racing ahead to ascribe the worst possible motivations sitting behind what they have written.

 

[Mr. Tea]

And the very fact that Poland and Hungary are enacting shitty laws like this, although obviously terrible news for the people they're going to affect, surely demolishes one of the central arguments used by Euroskeptics on both the right and the left - the idea that the EU is a "superstate", or is becoming one, in which individual member states all have to kowtow to Brussels and have no sovereignty of their own?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Well you seem perpetually confused so I agree that to blame you for it would be uncharitable.

As a number of people have pointed out to you on several occasions, you could save yourself a lot of confusion if you took people at face value rather than racing ahead to ascribe the worst possible motivations sitting behind what they have written.

But what does it even have to do with the EU in general, never mind with Brexit? It's not happening "in the EU", it's happening in one particular country that happens to be in the EU. I don't see how it has anything to do with the EU at all, beyond being part of a populist reaction against the EU - a reaction that you, to some extent, sympathise with?

 

[john eden]

Cultural and economic sovereignty are two different things. Clearly economic stability is more important to the EU than the small matter of the lives of women and minorities in its member states.

I find that troubling and think it marks a new phase in the degeneration of the EU.

If that doesn’t interest you - if you think that what is happening in the EU is completely irrelevant to a discussion about Brexit then you can demand that I start a new thread about it or you can suck it up I guess.

 

[DannyL]

You could argue the EU is profoundly illiberal if you look at the way it treats immigrants from outside the Eurozone, in areas like Greece. There are sizeable migrant populations in prisons in Libya that are put there by EU forces, with the EU turning a blind eye to abuse as long as they don't make it here.. Fortress Europe etc. I'm sure these policies would find an echo in attitudes towards minorities expressed by the govts of Hungary and Poland.

If most anti-EU politicing in this country was about that sort of thing, I'd be much more against it that I am - but it isn't. It's usual just rank nationalism, dressed up.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Cultural and economic sovereignty are two different things. Clearly economic stability is more important to the EU than the small matter of the lives of women and minorities in its member states.

I find that troubling and think it marks a new phase in the degeneration of the EU.

If that doesn’t interest you - if you think that what is happening in the EU is completely irrelevant to a discussion about Brexit then you can demand that I start a new thread about it or you can suck it up I guess.

You seem to be arguing both that the EU doesn't have enough influence over its member states, and that the UK should be free of that influence.

Moreover, how is Brexit supposed to help gay people in Poland and Hungary? Or Syrian refugees in Greece and Italy? What actual concrete good can it do them? It's a movement spearheaded by the very people who care the least about vulnerable groups, whatever the EU's failings may be.