Brexit needs honesty. The unicorn everything we used to have and more argument isn’t true and can’t ever be true, short of the world somehow going back to the days of Empire. Brexit is a tradeoff.
Might still make sense to the people of Britain…
Thanks.
The irony of Brexit is that the argument for Brexit is identical to the argument for the break-up of the United Kingdom. If Britains need Brexit for reasons of self-determination and sovereignty, why don’t the Scots and the Welsh and the Northern Irish need UKexit for reasons of self-determination and sovereignty? It used to be argued that they had sovereignty because they had a voice, but Scotland voted overwhelmingly against Brexit. Where is their voice now? Why should their lives be fucked by bureaucrats in London?
Honesty isn’t going to fix the current mess unless it leads to ‘pretend the entire thing didn’t happen’.
Is that true? Or much like other stuff printed on the side of buses, not really?
I think the stockpiling stuff is true, the government just announced the need to stockpile medicines, food, etc in case of a hard no-deal Brexit.
But blood? Yikes…
Yes, includes blood, plasma, etc.
Guess the UK’s blood supply is integrated with the EU, and maybe the UK doesn’t produce enough / have enough in stock?
Is anything not extremely integrated?
“People will not be summarily executed in the streets without reason!”
“You will not be raped by bears!”
“Houses will not be systematically set on fire by the fire departments!”
I’d say one of those statements might be true.
Charlie Stross put up a blog post of pessimistic post-no-deal-Brexit predictions that’s a fascinating read, in the “look at that fascinating trainwreck” sense. And he claims this isn’t a worst-cast scenario, which is probably true but not by a whole lot. Might make a good fiction novel, if it wasn’t so close to reality.
I think the plan is to prevent us getting to that stage.
In order to do so, Parlaiment must vote for whatever mess Theresa May brings back from Brussels, no matter how unappealing it is. Right now, everyone notes, that seems unlikely. Labour have repeatedly said they will vote against it (it will not pass their ‘tests’, which they cobbled together from HMG claims about what their future deal would do).
The government talk of how bad ‘no deal’ would be is interesting, because there’s an obvious downside: it’s making them look even worse. “What government would enact policy that had such risks to its populace?” people are saying. It is genuinely scary to wake up and hear a completely non-political BBC radio presenter puzzling over announcements of government ‘stockpiling’ on the 8am news.
But it is preparing the ground: the deal must go through Parliament, and the only way that happens is if the vote is cast in a light that makes MPs vote for it. The strategy is clear: the vote will be phrased as a choice between whatever mess Theresa May has brought back from Brussels, and the ‘no deal’ chaos the government itself has been laying out the stark, terrible reality of.
It may work.
It may not; the deal may got voted down anyway. That might lead to an extension of Article 50 for us to have a new general election, or it might genuinely lead to ‘no deal’. The EU, for their part, have already been working on dispelling fears of the latter by suggesting the former is the most likely outcome of any step-change in British politics.
Or May might not bring anything back from the EU. Again, I have no idea what happens then. Presumably a GE before ‘no deal’ chaos.
But as far as I can tell, this is the new plan. A desperate survival strategy from the government.
Long ago upthread, @Aceris and I laid out very different views as to what the ‘political declaration’ will look like, as required by Article 50. I expect we may soon find out what it will really look like.
This whole process has certainly been very different from my understanding of how it would work!
Well, you’re not alone there!
I’ve been expecting a pushback from Parliament, or even Tory grass-roots, for some time, but that seems never to have happened. And I did half wonder if the EU would let the Ireland border problem be resolved by another fudge, but no sign of that yet.
I’m really lost as to how this will play out.
I’m also surprised at how hard the UK stance is so far in the process I think the UK understimated the EU’s willingness to keep the core freedoms united, and the EU underestimated the UK willingness to really block freedom of movement.
I’m increasingly convinced we are (sadly) headed to a hard Brexit. I hope I’m wrong but I think the chances have certainly risen significantly over the past few months.
It was clear from the start that the Brexit movement were selling a unicorn: All the benefits of EU membership with none of the obligations of EU membership. With that as the hard line, there was never going to be a solution.