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

It seems the geniuses who govern us have finally realised that, actually, you can’t have an open border with Ireland outside the customs union, unless you have a hard border between NI and the rest of the UK. So of course it’s a perfect time to legislate a hard Brexit date. As if the negotiations weren’t under enough time pressure as it is.

Yanis Varoufakis is a typical snakeoil salesman and the conspiracy theory he is peddling in that interview lacks substance and, more importantly, proof . I suppose that if your mindset is already fixated on secret evil plans that THEY are hatching, it’s not a huge leap to hear his rambling and reach the ridiculous conclusion that he is “one of the smartest men in Europe RE: economic politics”.

Oh wow, I disagree entirely. What makes you believe he is a snakeoil salesman?

I don’t think what he said in the soundbite I linked is a conspiracy theory - it makes a lot of sense to me. Brussels aren’t interested in a mutually advantageous deal because it’s more important to them (politically) that they make an example of any country that attempts to leave Europe.

He claims that the French and German ‘authoritarian masters’ of the EU have a secret plan to hurt the UK as a form of warning for the other EU members. He provides no proof for such a plan and he’s discussing it as if it is an established fact. It makes a lot of sense to you because you’ve already made up your mind about the EU so you accept any idea that lines up with your own thoughts and you reject any that does not, regardless of evidence. You share this trait with the alt right in general and Trump fans in particular , assuming you are not one yourself.

I don’t think it’s a secret plan so much as an openly stated goal: we cant, and won’t, be better off outside the EU than in it. They’ve said this repeatedly. Whether that’s the EU hurting the UK, or the UK hurting itself is a more nuanced question, but he’s hardly wrong on this point.

There are no “authoritarian masters” of the EU, there’s no secret plan to hurt anyone, the EU negotiation team have transparent goals which have been highlighted long before the vote itself. They are mainly focusing on the rights of the EU citizens living in the UK, the settlement regarding the UK’s financial obligations and the clarification of the UK’s status after the exit.

But the EU does expect Britain’s example will dissuade other countries from leaving. And that example is not only partly determined by the EU itself, but also appears to be in the interests of the EU.

What Juncker said is what the experts have warned about since this mess started. The fallout is a consequence of the vote itself, not the consequence of a EU plan to hurt the UK.

The thread has been quiet since the Ref so the Americans just aren’t seeing the level of disaster facing the UK.

The disaster facing air traffic, nuclear regulation and industry issues, the loss of nuclear medicine supplies, the ports issues, the customs issues, 200 miles of trucks parked end to end across SE England, the end of peace in Ireland, the job losses, the end of vast swathes of manufacturing industries, the finance sector is leaving, the wholesale rerouting of supply lines out of the UK is happening right now, the end of the agriculture of many crops, the loss of food sufficiency, the food poverty, even minor things like the restriction of bands and media/entertainment cross border traffic, the movement of law and accounting offices due to regulation, a cultural shift to open xenophobia and racism, the rise of ethno-nationalism, all of these facts stated before the referendum are happening exactly as foretold, and there is little of no planning for any of it.

I’ve seen one Brexiter publicly apologise for his choice, horrified at the resulting rise in racism. One. (on a Labour forum) Just one damn person out of 17m fuckers. The UK is shithole.

Not to mention that it would likely be a disaster even if it was being handled in good faith by hard working, competent people who had planned as carefully as they could. It is not.

There was another argument elsewhere where I laid out the project plan to initiate article 50. it would have taken years but infrastructure and replacement organisations/depts/regulators would have been planned and budgeted for, and then 2 years to action them whilst talks continue.

Its’ like NASA planning a moon landing after they launched a rocket that was given to them because this is a NASA that doesn’t have any scientists.

The correct way to leave the EU would have been via treaty (re)negotiation (you can leave any treaty… you know? You don’t need a ‘mechanism’ to do it!). The correct way was not via Article 50 - and certainly not without several years of planning and infrastructure spending to replace the things we were losing!

It would take a decade, probably more, to do what it attempting to be done in one year (two years minus a general election at the beginning, and ratification by EU parliament at the end).

‘No deal’ remains unthinkable - we will pay a high price, but I can’t imagine we won’t cobble something together so that planes will still land, food will still be imported, etc.

What won’t happen, it looks more and more likely, is anything beyond a very basic arrangement that will stop us starving or travelling. This is one hell of a low bar, and it’s going to cripple the economy for years to come.

On the Northern Ireland border specifically: As a practical matter, doesn’t it kind of make sense for there to be a hard border between Northern Ireland and Britain? (Similarly with a hard border between Gibraltar and Britain). I mean, to go from one to the other, you have to use air- or sea- ports that already have provision for customs and immigration. I know the Ulster residents would hate it, but purely as a practical matter isn’t it the way to go?

Edit: oh, misread. Yes, probably. But the DUP propping up the government will never allow it.

and as they are a bunch of terrorists they’ll start killing people as well as shenanigans in Parliament.

If it came to that, I could well imagine a restart of the Troubles. I don’t know if a sea border is in violation of the Good Friday Agreement.

But it won’t come to that. The DUP would bring down the government first.

It’s the only way to be outside the customs union (or equivalent) and not have a border between NI and RoI, but as the others say, the DUP won’t stand for it. As I said a while back, the UK government’s various red lines are mutually incompatible, which is largely why we’re in this stalemate, barreling toward the hardest of Brexits.
I’m genuinely astonished at how ill prepared and stupid the government seems to have been, though I guess I should have known better given that Gove, Johnson and Fox were three of the four ringleaders. If they don’t flesh out substantive positions soon on the exit bill and NI very soon, we will basically have two options — cave completely and either revoke article 50 or accept what amounts to EEA membership but probably on worse terms, or crash out in 2019 with no deal, economic and legal chaos, and a massively hostile Europe.

Today’s Brexit idiocy, the UK government is throwing a tantrum because various UK cities won’t be allowed to be the European City of Culture in 2023. You know, the competition that is only open to EU/EFTA member states.

It’s like they expected Brexit would mean they get all of the benefits of being a member of the EU without any of the responsibilities.