Brexit, aka, the UK Becomes a Clown Car of the Highest Order

Politics and religion
863

I understand that EU is a peace project, but the whole Euro as a monetary union has well known economic issues (e.g. individual countries cannot adjust interest rates to suit individual needs). And the response from the EU last year was “financial waterboarding” of Greece (in the words of Yanis Varoufakis, ex finance minister of Greece). The dream of peace got ahead of reality, but EU at this point has zero plan for radical surgery.

Even after Brexit EU leaders seem intent to muddle along and then call this a solution. The very fact that they are playing hard ball with UK means that they think they are still on the right track, but all the economic arguments against monetary union in its present form are still here. If Brexit isn’t an enough a wake up call (as if the on going problem with the Euro and refugees aren’t enough), then maybe this dream of peace is just a flight of fancy and deserves to die.

864

The problem with the Euro is that it’s half finished, and the UK was a large part of why. Still, what’s done is done, I don’t expect there’s much of an appetite to finish the construction now. Not terribly optimistic.

As for the EU playing hard ball with the UK, it has nothing to do with thinking the EU is on the right track, and all about not giving their own “Brexit” people ammo. The people the UK is going to have to deal with have a material interest in the UK floundering outside the EU. I don’t mean the people as the people of each country (though that might also be true in some cases), I mean the politicians. Playing hard ball helps Hollande. It helps Merkel. It helps any politician who isn’t Euro-sceptic and who has Euro-sceptic opponents at home. AKA almost all of them.

If giving the UK a good deal means Le Pen gets to be president, you can be sure that good deal isn’t going to come.

865

They could have enticed UK back into the fold and said “all is forgiven if change your mind about Brexit, dear”. No, it was a hard “GTFO, now”. They want to make an example of UK rather than give it wriggling room to do a u-turn.

I find the politics of Farage, Le Pen et al distasteful, but then why on earth are people keep voting for them? Brexit shows that in addition to xenophobia there is another element of anti-establishment in it. It is the 1% vs 99% thing. If it were all racists voting for out, it could never have gone past 50%. Farage could not even get enough people to vote him into the parliament. It is the traditional working class Labour supporters who also voted for out. The economy of EU simply isn’t working for the working class. And London has one of the least affordable housing markets in the world (here in Auckland it is just as unaffordable). So unless the mainstream parties start proposing serious reforms to make EU more equitable, the far right (and by extension the far left) will gain in strength.

866

There is no changing your mind about Brexit, not unless things somehow turn really rosy. The EU is used as an excuse in the UK for every unpopular policy and in the papers for everything. You want to add “They forced us to go against our democratic wishes” to that too?

How long until Farage is PM, in a Britain where everything that goes wrong is the fault of the EU and those traitor politicians who didn’t go with the public’s vote? Especially now, that the rest of the EU can easily disregard wishes from the UK, since nothing the EU does will be good enough to be called a win for the UK, and we’ve seen just what a LOL the threat of leaving is.

It’s only a matter of time. Leave now, or stay in and see public opinion erode even more until a politician who will pull the UK out gets voted in. Or, I guess, British opinion does a 180º on the EU… while still being used for politicians as the reason for why things are shitty, and papers for anything they want to. Not going to hold my breath.

And it’s not just the EU that isn’t working for the working class. It’s the world, it’s globalization, it’s automation, it’s politicians who have decided the social is a fixed problem, and now only the economic matters. Voting to leave the EU won’t fix that, but if that’s the only target you have, people will go for it.

867

The Brexit negotiations haven’t even started yet, so I think it’s too early to say that the EU is playing hardball. What they have been saying is that they want article 50 activated as soon as possible, to avoid a prolonged period of uncertainty, which would hurt both the UK economy as well as those of the remaining EU countries. They’ve also said that they will not engage in informal negotiations before article 50 is triggered, which seemed to be what Boris Johnson was planning. The reason is that it would allow the UK to hold the EU economies for ransom indefinitely (although this would also hurt the UK), and it’s worth noting that the EU tendency to hold informal negotiations is part of the criticism against the EU for being undemocratic.

The UK parliament and future government does still have the option to openly say that they will ignore the referendum, but as Darthmasta points out, this would probably lead to the next election in the UK being primarily about the EU, and would probably lead to more votes for UKIP, and the tories and possibly Labour becoming more hostile towards the EU. In the long run, the UK would probably leave anyway. If you’re suggesting that the EU should now offer even more concessions to the UK, in return for the UK staying, that would almost certainly lead to any number of EU countries threatening to have their own referendums, unless they also get special treatment, and would in my opinion ruin the EU. Let’s not pretend that what Cameron was doing wasn’t blackmail, and continually giving in to blackmail is just really bad policy.

I definitely agree that poverty and inequality is a major part of why many people voted to leave the EU, but the fact is that while the EU has been very much pro-austerity, the UK has been doing the same for decades. Rather than blame “the economy of EU,” the British people would be much better served by blaming their own governments over the past decades. Of course, those governments have been very active in shifting the blame to the EU, with the help of a large part of the press, and this was one of Camerons big problems during the referendum. How does a politician explain that many of the criticisms he’s levelled against the EU over the past decades were misleading at best, and that much of the blame for the current grievances of the British people is actually his own (and his predecessors’)?

868

Farage’s craven resignation means he will never be PM and almost certainly will never win another election at any level. But candidates eager to assume his repulsive mantle will undoubtedly step forward. The leading Conservative PM candidates can be distinguished from UKIP people mainly through their smug assumption of power, wealth, and privilege, not through politics and policy.

869

The majority (if not all and including inability to vary interest rates for individual member states) of the current problems surrounding the Euro can be solved or remedied by further integration.
The largest impediment to integration has been the UK.

Yaris Varoufakis is one of the last people to quote when it comes to economics or the Greek situation, and if you can claim that Greece was ‘financially waterboarded’ with a straight face, one can equally claim that Greece played moral hazard bluff with the EU and blinked first. The difference is, the latter has some sort of factual basis, the former is an ideological statement without any sort of empirical basis.

It’s also interesting to note that you claim the EU essentially saying “Well, that’s your decision and we want you to follow through with it as soon as possible to avoid uncertainty” as hardball. How is that by any meaning of the term, hardball?

Unless, again, it’s an ideological statement rather than a factual one - similar to how Teiman has been making.

870

So there was a lot of pre-Brexit polling which showed Stay as having a slight majority.

Has there been any notable/widespread polling done after the fact, now that things are somewhat settling down, especially now that all the chickenshits who advocated for Leave have resigned?

Specifically polling of “how did you vote” vs. “what do you wish you voted”? Would be curious to see whether the “Regrexit” crowd is actually a significant number of people.

871

Here is one from a week ago, finding that 5% of Leave voters and 2% of Remain voters have changed their minds.

872

Farage lunched with Murdoch, Liam Fox the day before his resignation. Fox was in the leadership contest, but his speech was little more than a pitch for Foreign Secretary. Murdoch looks to be backing Andrea Leadsom, a ultra-reactionary ultra-religious rabidly-brexit homophobic hatemonger who is likely to put Farage in the House of Lords and give him a cabinet position.

Andrea Leadsom has attracted loads of UKIP entryists who have joined the Tory party (yes, im going on about entryism again) and will vote in the leadership contest alongside the already reactionary Tory grassroots (rich racist pensioners), so she could well be the next Prime Minister, She will then face a Tory backbench rebellion from the majority of Tory MPs as they oppose her.

So we have TWO parties wracked with entryism and extremist leadership and members, both with rebellious MP’s doing everything they can to stop their batshit insane leaders from driving their parties off a cliff.

Corbyn has just about succeeded in his dream of destroying the Labour Party, it will be split within a month or two. I’ve no idea whats going on with Labours position on brexit, the entire party is locked in a row about Chilcot report, Iraq and Blair, and its now at the stage that Momentum are hand-delivering death threats to Labour activists, vandalising Labour offices and organising massive hate mobs against rebel MPs on social media.

Oh, and yes, Brexit, the collapse of the UK economy, the death of the pound and what ever else is linked to it.

The MP in charge of Brexit organisation in Whitehall, expenses fiddler and security risk Oliver Letwin, has spent a few weeks concluding that there is no plan, there still isnt a plan, no one knows what they are doing, no one has the skills or experience to deal with this, and the entire legal apparatus of the UK is in disagreement on what is a completely new sector of constitutional law.

The UK government is completely dysfunctional.

873

Congratulations, Britain. You’ve managed to make Italy go, “That’s some fucked up governance.”

874

[quote=“kedaha, post:869, topic:78214, full:true”]The majority (if not all and including inability to vary interest rates for individual member states) of the current problems surrounding the Euro can be solved or remedied by further integration.
The largest impediment to integration has been the UK.[/quote]

This is my reading too. It might just me being a natural optimistic, though.

875

The former or the latter?

Take the case of individual member states’ inability to vary interest rates - look at the USA and the answer as to how it can work is crystal clear:

Fiscal transfers in a fiscal union. It is that obvious, and that simple.

The divergence between high growth high employment north, and low growth low employment south? Fiscal transfers in a fiscal union.

876

Because who needs Varoufakis’s and the Greek government’s first hand information on the suffering of the Greeks under EU prescribed austerity, when the Eurocrats and EU leaders have pages and pages of reports? Even the IMF came out and said the fiscal programme Greeks are on is unsustainable, there has to be debt-write off in addition to structural reforms. The economic argument against the present course is simple: because nowadays EU bailout money goes straight into paying interest of their debts, NOT paying off debts. And because of austerity, the whole economy contracted, and tax take is decreasing rather than increasing. In other words, because of austerity, the Greeks are now in even greater debt and less able to pay off their debt than before.

If Greece is a person not a country, then what normally happens is that this person is declared bankrupt, and his/her debt is written off/take a serious haircut such that it is within the means of the bankrupted person to pay back later. And bankruptcy basically means this person is treated as a child when it comes to financial matters, every expense has to be scrutinised by someone else. This is what IMF is suggesting. However EU will insist on only HALF of this solution, the treat-Greek-as-a-child part, not the debt haircut/write off part. They would rather let Greece healthcare system collapses because of zero money, rather than wipe off some of the debts in the name of European solidarity.

Does this sound right? How is this not “financial waterboarding”? So this is “ideological” thinking?

As to whether it is democratic to overturn the referendum, I think it is an open question. It should be up to the people of UK to decide what their want to do. Constitutionally referendums in UK is not binding. It was just part of the political platform of the Conservative government last election to put EU membership to a vote AND respect the outcome.

And it is obvious that if Cameron tries to call up Brussels today and trigger Article 50, someone will be there to PHYSICALLY stop him from doing that. The question of how to trigger Article 50 constitutionally is still not clear. Some say you need (the democratically elected) parliament support, which is quite impossible to get at this point. Some say the PM already has the power. It is a big mess.

They say Brexit is a divorce. In a divorce it could be amicable, or it could be antagonistic. Or, if both parties feel like it, they could even do a u-turn. Right now Brussels’s attitude is antagonistic and leaves UK with little room to manoeuvre. Yes UK brought it on itself, but EU could have been a bit nicer.

877

Varoufakis wanted to be a rockstar economist. He failed at both. The rest of what you said also has nothing to do with anything even remotely like ‘financial waterboarding’. Greece was tortured?

You mean, Greece was faced with making the decision of accepting a bailout with conditions or attempting to go it alone, failed to even try meet those conditions repeatedly, and eventually used public opinion and referendums as a bargaining tool only to have its bluff called?

Yes, financial waterboarding. Certainly.

Go look at any of the structural reform programs Greece signed up to. See how they repeatedly refused to do meaningful structural reform to one of the most corrupt and poorly performing European economies, thus forcing ever higher tax hikes as they failed to rein in spending. See how they antagonised every potentially ally or supporter in Europe with their tactics.

Yes.

This is ideological thinking. You clearly both know nothing about the circumstances, nor give a toss. You want the EU to be the big bogey man and the unfortunate thing called reality absolutely will not stop you telling everyone that it is the big bad bogey man.

Here is the Greek debt in 2011:
https://agenda.weforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2011greece-993x768.png

Here is the Greek debt in 2015:
https://agenda.weforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015greece-993x768.png

It would have been a lot cheaper and have had far more likely chance of eventual repayment in the EU had bailed out member states and EU banks rather than Greece, and kicked it to the kerb.
They didn’t, and your claims about financial waterboarding are as ludicrous and baseless as everything else you appeared to have posted thus far about the EU.

That isn’t to say that huge mistakes weren’t made with Greece, or that both parties had equal bargaining power, or that Greece doesn’t remain a problem constantly on the horizon.

Hey Soma, here’s a question: Does the shipping industry in Greece still enjoy tax exempt status despite representing north of 1% of GDP?

878

If Greece were still in control of its own currency, then it would also have had the option of devaluation. That would inflict some pain as well, but arguably been worth it.

879

The Eurozone problem is that these countries can’t borrow in their own currency (because they don’t control the euro) and therefore can’t devaluate in response to recession to make their workers more attractive. That would be fine if they also couldn’t run up their own debts or if the resources of the other Euro-using countries were available to pay those debts. But they aren’t, and countries don’t want to become states in a union like the US. Was UK the main impediment to that?

880

Exactly. It’s worth keeping in mind that the US federal budget is around 3.8 trillion, more than the GDP of any individual state. So when there is a local fiscal crisis somewhere, DC is usually capable of buying their way out of it.

In contrast, the EU budget is around 150 billion. When things went wrong in Greece, the response was to shuffle around their national debt. It’s understandable that the Greeks wished they still had access to the same monetary mechanisms that every non-EU country can access.

881

If you ignore the human misery caused by the bailout conditions, then OF COURSE you don’t see it as financial waterboarding. It is like saying waterboarding is JUST an interrogation technique.

Now I’m not saying the Greece government is blameless. How on earth did they rack up so much debt? What financial sorcery did it use to convince the market that they can service the debt? What is with the chronic tax evasion in all sectors of the Greek society? Etc.

It was not an issue of cost, it was a political decision to NOT give Greece a haircut or write off of any kind. It was the Germans saying “we are not going to give a free ride to those financially irresponsible Greeks, end of discussion”. And they got the Greeks to agree by going nuclear: “if you don’t agree with our bailout conditions, then you are out of Europe”. You can say EU called Greece’s bluff, or you can say the EU held the Greeks’ European aspiration in hostage for their own sake. You can call it whatever you want. But look what happens to this “agreement”, the Greeks are dragging their heels on reforms every step of the way. So as far as I can see, that hardline stance is a lose-lose.

Whereas what normally happens with bad debt is write off/haircut + forcing the debtor into bankruptcy. Carrot (writeoff/haircut) and stick(bankruptcy). So far EU only ever used the stick. And there is NO obvious end in sight for Greece.

So if you IGNORE the counter-productive nature of the human misery visited upon the Greeks, then OF COURSE you don’t see what happened to Greece as “financial waterboarding”.

882

Because they lied, they had the power of Rupert Murdoch and his media pushing their agenda, Cameron has been a horrible person for years, and people are getting more racist and blatant about it. Seriously it’s obvious as heck why this passed. The EU did more for Wales than “England” had done for an eternity, yet Wales voted for Brexit. Wales is distinctly less educated along with the rural areas than other zones. But people put their faith in the “Daily Mail” and would rather listen to a disgusting, gross, balloon like Murdoch than the likes of Stephen Hawking.

Ironically, the people are stupid if they think the new ruling party is going to do anything about housing issues in London. It’s like saying Trump is going to make Manhatten real estate affordable for the Poor and Middle Class. It is not going to happen. The UK’s best bet was getting out from under Tory heels and going Liberal. But instead they went even deeper right. This is the kind of crap that led to some very bad people rising to power in the 1930’s.

Hate is a very powerful force.