It reminds me of World War 1, in which everyone was surprised by how everyone reacted, despite having ample evidence of how everyone would react.
Without the death and destruction.
Well, that remains to be seen.
Who decides if there’s another referendum or not? The current government? Or is the first one legally binding? Can a re-election be forced by a vote of no-confidence? With Labor currently a mess, would that make things worse?
(Sorry for the string of Yank questions.)
Yes, the government (technically parliament, but it’s not going to be put to a vote unless the government wants to). No, it wasn’t legally binding. Even if it were, a second one could supersede it. Yes, a no-confidence vote would trigger an early election, if not overturned within two weeks.
Depends what you mean by worse. Labour may be a mess, but not as much as the Tories. It’s extremely likely the government would lose its majority, especially if a strong tactical anti-Brexit vote was mobilised.
This speech sounded to me like announcing hard Brexit to the World…
That’s certainly how the markets have taken it. The pound is down a full cent against the dollar since she started speaking.
But isn’t the problem that Corbyn is big on Brexit too? So it’s not like Labour is going to save you.
Corbyn strikes me as the worst thing in politics right now.
And that’s up against some stiff Bojo etc competition.
Corbyn’s at best a soft-remainer, arguably pro-Brexit, but he also leads a party whose membership is overwhelmingly remain (especially among the young, where Corbyn’s support is concentrated), so he’s not really free to set Labour policy the way he’d like it. Labour’s stated policy isn’t where I’d like it to be, and frankly it’s pretty disingenuous, but it’s also pretty clearly aimed at first unseating the Tories and then negotiating as soft a Brexit as possible, potentially including full-on remain, but most likely something Norway-like. Norway’s a shitty place to be in in the abstract, but it’s a damn sight better than anything the Tories can or will deliver.
Norway-light is hilarious because they still have to pay EU fees and follow EU regulations, but they get absolutely no say in the matter.
I’m pretty frustrated by Corbyn. I feel like he needs to pick a stance and start pounding on a drum. I’d prefer he pick a Remain stance and pummel the Tories with it, but even a Norway-deal would be fine enough, if he could start shouting it from the hilltops. But I feel he’s in a corner somewhere intellectualizing with himself under his breath with his back to the microphone. For someone who should be rallying troops he’s like a cricket in a dogfight.
That’s why it’s a shitty place to be in. The Brexiteers are right about that. They just don’t have any better alternatives, other than becoming a slash and burn neoliberal unregulated tax haven, right at the time that such places are finally getting the global pariah status they deserve.
If I remember correctly, the key reason Norway has not joined the EU is that they want to retain their own currency. Membership in the EU requires you to align your currency to the EUR and at some stage convert to EUR. The EU fees give them access to the inner market, the schengen agreement and all the different EU programmes. They seem to be happy to pay for that access. Of course it helps, Norway is stinking rich from saving their oil income rather than spend it on blingbling like the Gulf states has done so the EU fees are not significant for them.
I agree that it seems odd to pay all that money without getting a voice in the decision making, though we do something similar in Sweden when we refuse to convert to the EUR so we are not part of Eurogroup (exercises political control over the currency and related aspects of the EU’s monetary union).
Here is a good introduction to how the Norwegians view their EU agreement.
Well all of these solutions seem like a step backwards to what we already have.
No obligation to join the euro.
Veto powers. …
😮
Yes, The UK membership was the best of all worlds. No obligation to join the EUR and all the benefits of the four freedoms.
Brexit is vision of setting sail into the sunset to find the edge of the world…and what is beyond.
Corbyn has been a hardcore Lexiter for decades.
His core team are Duginist sympathisers (Murray just wrote a diatribe in the NS how the Deep State are after him and Corbyn. Yes, Trump/InfoWars deep state) and openly position themselves alongside Putin in wanting chaos and disruption of a no deal brexit.
It’s their thinking that you can burn the granaries and starve the peasants into their glorious revolution basically. I wouldn’t expect anything else from a party whose leadership team have spent the last few decades in the CPBG (or offshoots) or allied to their cause. I don’t think many here are familiar with the hard left tbh, it’s just not a thing in the US, but if you don’t know them and their history you mighty not understand the history of Lexit.
I am also ignorant here. I mean, i am aware of the gulag, and the phases of the revolution etc.
Animal farm is a wonderful educational story :).
Since they ‘openly position themselves alongside Putin etc’ it will not be difficult to produce some examples of them so doing. Got any?
EU is a neoliberal project. EU is capitalist. EU is a strong opposition to Russia.
and various disproven myths like “EU wont allow nationalisation of industries”
Corbyn’s EU position (from here)
- Jeremy Corbyn voted for Britain to leave the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1975 European referendum.
- Jeremy Corbyn opposed the creation of the European Union (EU) under the Maastricht Treaty – speaking and voting against it in Parliament in 1993. During the 2016 referendum campaign, Left Leave highlighted repeated speeches he made in Parliament opposing Europe during 1993.
- Jeremy Corbyn voted against the Lisbon Treaty on more than one occasion in Parliament in 2008.
- In 2010, Jeremy Corbyn voted against the creation of the European Union’s diplomatic service.
- Jeremy Corbyn voted for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in 2011 (breaking the Labour whip to do so).
- In 2011 Jeremy Corbyn also opposed the creation of the EU’s European Stability Mechanism, which helps members of the Euro in financial difficulties. (This vote is a good example of how Corbyn votes with hardcore Euro-sceptics. Only 26 other MPs joined him in voting against, and in their number are the likes of right-wing Euro-sceptics such as Peter Bone, Douglas Carswell, Bill Cash, Ian Paisley Junior and John Redwood.)
- Jeremy Corbyn opposed Britain’s participation in the EU’s Banking Authority in 2012.
- In 2016 his long-time left-wing ally Tariq Ali said that he was sure that if Corbyn was not Labour leader he would be campaigning for Britain to leave the EU, whilst his brother Piers Corbyn also said that Jeremy Corbyn was privately opposed to Britain’s membership of the European Union.
- Jeremy Corbyn went on holiday during the 2016 referendum campaign and his office staff consistently undermined the Remain campaign. He refused to attend a key Remain campaign launch and also attacked government ministers for publicising the Remain case, saying they should also have promoted arguments in favour of Leave vote. The Director of the Remain campaign, himself a Labour member and candidate, said, “Rather than making a clear and passionate Labour case for EU membership, Corbyn took a week’s holiday in the middle of the campaign and removed pro-EU lines from his speeches”. During the referendum campaign, Leave.EU highlighted Corbyn’s attacks on Europe made in 1996.
- The day after the European referendum in 2016, Jeremy Corbyn called for the immediate invocation of Article 50 – the two-year notice to leave the EU – much quicker than even Theresa May wanted.
- In December 2016, Jeremy Corbyn voted in Parliament in favour of the UK leaving the EU and for the process to start no later than 31 March 2017.
- Jeremy Corbyn three times voted in February 2017 in favour of the Prime Minister starting the process of leaving the European Union.
- During the 2017 general election, the independent Channel 4 Factcheck service found very little difference between Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May over Europe.
- In the summer of 2017, Jeremy Corbyn opposed Britain remaining in the Single Market. He even sacked from his team Labour MPs who voted in favour of membership of the Single Market.
What a post.
Thanks.
Educational on a Saturday morning.