Sure. “Play a role” doesn’t equal “largely driven by”.
Look, I wasn’t setting the house on fire, I was merely spraying the fire that already existed with Lighter fluid. The damage to the house was largely driven by the fire already there.
But an open question is why Brexit went from a largely fringe movement that Very Serious People dismissed to suddenly getting both a referendum and a surprisingly successful Leave campaign. Especially as the Leave campaign was run by a couple of guys widely considered to be clowns.
Both Farage/Johnson and Trump were able to punch way, waaaaay above their weight class in 2016. Funny that.
I don’t think you can really compare Corbyn and Boris’s attitude towards Russia. Seriously I think you are letting your own prejudices blind you here. If nothign else in respect of the Referendum noone at the time (outside of Aaron Banks and co) really knew what the Russians were up to - this predates all the revelations about the extent and impact of Russian social media manipulation on the US election. I don’t recall the same fake news thing playing as large a role in Brexit - there was a lot of the usual political lying, and Russia absolutely fanned the flames on socmedia, but it didn’t have the same character as the reports I saw out of the US campaign.
I’m not just talking about Boris either - as far as I’m aware pretty much all the key cabinet Brexiteers are very much anti-Putin (though I don’t know about Fox).
My whole point is that you have a much clearer understanding of Brexit if you see it and it’s actors as an independent thing, rather than assuming the situation is identical to Trumpism. The Farage/Trump comparison is absolutely fair, and there’s a lot of mileage in looking at commonalities between populism in the US, UK and various European states, but at some point the parallels break down.
Farage had been punching well above his weight class for a long time, which ultimately is why we got the referendum - to shoot UKIP’s fox. Anyone not immersed in a left wing bubble would know Johnson was a heavyweight, especially back in 2016 and in terms of his ability to sway public opinion.
Forget Russian influence for a second. What is it with this cabal of politicians with really bad hair? What’s really going on here?
I did a lot of highway commuting last year and fell upon Farage’s talk radio show. I hadn’t know much about him before, but he can be extremely charismatic and can talk his way out of anything, make a hard stance sound moderate by how he frames his arguments and plays off the opposing viewpoints. He is not a bombastic blowhard like Trump, more of that sugar-coated weasel type, but yeah, I see his appeal and how he did what he did, even without outside help.
Once the referendum was called, it was always going to be close. The polling showed that. The only thing surprising about the success of the campaign was how terrible the Remain campaign was. Which itself wasn’t massively surprising in retrospect given that the PM, nominally a Remainer, was at the top of a largely Euroskeptic party, and the other major party is led by a strong Euroskeptic.
And, again, it wasn’t a fringe movement. It was forcefully advocated by the Mail, the Sun, the Express, and the Telegraph. It hadn’t happened before because there was no Article 50 until recently. The Tory party has periodic Euroskeptic fits (cf Maastricht, the ERM). This was the first major one after the Treaty of Lisbon. Cameron made a catastrophic misjudgment on how to handle it.
Sadly given Corbyn is a die hard Brexiter there is zero chance this can end up with calling off the whole Brexit fiasco. Most likely we just end up with Corbyn implementing this disaster instead of May. Unless by a miracle one of both of them are replaced by a leader who is a remainer then we are still doomed.
Whatever happened to David Cameron? Did he disappear off the face of British politics completely after he stepped down? He’s a remainer. Does he ever comment on politics since he left? Any chance of bringing him back?
Ya, this is totally true, and I already conceded that this is the case. “Largely driven by” was an overstatement on my part.
After all this time, I’m still sort of baffled as to what British folks actually think they will gain from Brexit. I mean, gain in the real, tangible, day to day sense. Apparently a vague, emotional sense of sticking it to the wogs is about all that is necessary to call it a good thing?
PS - I’m aware of the irony of this image used in this context. It works on many levels!
As far as I can tell there are three types of Leave voters:
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Remainers who thought they were protesting against evil leaders with symbolic votes.
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Racists and xenophobes.
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Idiots who have some inchoate notions of the glory days of the Empire and for no clear reason believe that somehow leaving the EU will bring them back.
So as someone completely unfamiliar with UK politics, is there any remote chance at this point that Brexit won’t happen at all? Like, is there a process by which people could vote on it again, and if such a process exists, is it likely at all to happen at this point?
There’s no process as such. The government could call a referendum if it wanted to and had the votes for it. Realistically that’s only going to happen if the current government falls, which admittedly is pretty likely, but even then it’s highly debatable whether a replacement government would. Only the Lib Dems are actually calling for one.
Also, you have to bear in mind, even if that were to happen, it’s far from clear that it could actually be stopped, at least on terms Britain could stomach.
We are likely heading there, though I’m doubtful there will be a vote of no confidence at all.
There doesn’t need to be referendum; just political will (which seems unlikely).
Hmmmm. On the minus side: UK government thrown into crisis.
But on the plus side: the UK government now has a very plausible excuse for ghosting Donnie. (“Sorry we can’t meet you at the airport, but something came up at work… just grab an Uber and we’ll have drinks at the hotel. Uh, if we have time.”)
Did the UK already start the ball rolling, in terms of stuff from the EU side? I thought they did something already that means they can’t just say, “Just kidding guys! We’re cool with the EU.”