Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/01/paralysed-by-brexit.html
…
2 Likes
Only an idiot who voted for Brexit or one who authorised the referendum and won’t entertain the thought of a do-over couldn’t have seen this coming. Paralysis? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/07/that-sinking-feeling.html
21 Likes
Jeremy Corbin must hurl himself into the breech so that Labor can take the blame for the unavoidable collapse. It’s the only responsible thing to do!
10 Likes
I am really getting worried about my friends in the UK. Never thought I’d see the day when Britain was this much crazier than the US. 
10 Likes
Don’t worry, one way or another the Tories will pin the entire train wreck on Labour and (ironically, given his own nostalgia-driven Euroscepticism) Corbyn.
The only real way to make this whole mess go away is to have another referendum, but Corbyn has been many days late and many pounds short on calling for that.
At least they’ll have “adequate” food supplies.
3 Likes
I wouldn’t worry too much. After all you just had a prospective Supreme Court judge crying and bawling at a committee of your legislators about how much he loves beer, God and his high school football buddies.
I think your craziness levels are still holding up quite well (and I haven’t even mentioned Ye yet).
9 Likes
Wouldn’t work. The Euro-hatred is too ingrained by now. It’d just infuriate the Brexiters and they’d keep on and on until they finally get their way.
All we can do is get it over with and survive as best we can.
3 Likes
Corbin’s pro-Brexit mutterings have been the main reason I think he’s a garbage leader. I know there’s a huge tendency on the British left to look at Corbin with cartoon-starry eyes and go, “Ooooo, a socialist!” But he strikes me as a man who made up his mind about everything years ago and refuses to change his mind, no matter how circumstances change. That’s deadly for any leader, much less someone who’s supposed to hold progressive values.
9 Likes
Indeed, which given it’s not the end of the world, will be really useful.
I had really hoped to be long dead by the time our narrative made it around to the “Global Fascist Dictatorship” chapters. 
2 Likes
It’s worth a try. I remember during the aftermath of the referendum a lot of people who voted Leave said “wait, what did I just vote for?” Now that all the compelling lies have been exposed the new ones that the hardcore Brexiters will come up with won’t be as effective.
May herself knows that that the plot of land she’s whistling her way through is a graveyard, as @heng’s link attests. But she’s caught in the same no-turning-back-now death spiral thinking that contributed to the start of the Great War.
He shares that characteristic with a lot of Baby Boomers. Corbyn in particular can’t escape the constricted worldview formed in the late 1960s and 1970s when any solution (or policy to oppose) could be found within the context of a UK that existed outside the EU.
As usual, anyone under age 55 has been screwed over. The moment that the living memory of Fascism 1.0 died out was the moment that right-wing populism started making its comeback.
9 Likes
I’ve been thinking for a while that civilization has got so civilized, it thinks it’s uncivilized to defend civilization. “Well, we could stop the Nazis, but we’d get our hair mussed, and I just went to the salon.”
1 Like
I struggled to put a like to that but you can already see us heading toward the hardest of exits from the EU and Stross was being conservative in his assessment. Another general election in the new year is probably the minimum safe bet right now.
3 Likes
This goes beyond Popper’s Paradox. People have just forgotten their history. It’s arguable that we were spared a nuclear war in 1962 in part because JFK happened to have recently read “The Guns of August.”
6 Likes
Dear U.K. citizens,
My recommendation is you throw all your tea into the harbour. And start over with a new government.
– U.S.A.
5 Likes
Corbyn may be cynical. He may just be in this for his job.
But he’s right. Maybe he’s seen this play out too many times in the UK, maybe he’s paid attention to what just happened in America.
The Tory-Blairite economy is a nightmare clusterfuck for everyone except people who can afford descent(heh, that’s what I can afford) decent habitation in London. When it became apparent to punters that they were getting screwed, the Tories blamed it all on the EU. The Blairites knew that was not true, but also were all in on austerity, so instead they just sat by arguing that this was the best of all possible worlds and the reason you needed to vote for them over the Tories was that they would put a few pounds into preschool. Or maybe that was Hillary, I don’t remember. Anyway, punters are dumb, but not that dumb. I give them that much credit.
At this point, the only way for the punters to believe that the Tories were lying about the EU will be for them to see it happen. Tory economy, no EU deal, and finally, “Are you better off now than you were before?”
With anything short of an overwhelming Labor majority, enough to counter the Tories and the remaining Blairites, Corbyn will be stuck with a Tory-Blairite economy, one term in office, and further down the toilet for the non-wealthy UK.
5 Likes
The fact that neither of the two biggest political parties in this country are defined by their position on Brexit is just mind-boggling. Neither can commit to anything without losing control of their party, and any new leader wouldn’t be any better off.
The fact that the third biggest political party did have a clear position on Brexit and somehow still came a distant third in the last election shows that the electorate don’t know what they’re doing either.
I figure ‘no deal’ is better than any fudged-up bodgery that we can scrape together from where we are now.
1 Like
I’m always glad when a country’s Know-Nothing 27% learns things the hard way (assuming they learn at all). The problem is that they drag everyone down with them. In this case there’s a good chance that they’ll precipitate another global economic meltdown (which these spiteful losers will enjoy as long as everyone gets a taste of their misery).
3 Likes
Perhaps, but the only likely alternative is slow-rolling the same, with more time for the elites to sort out their New Zealand real-estate holdings.
Here is the thing. The british gouverment can STILL call this off, they can retreat from article 50 anytime untill the actual Brexit next year and say “Well, sorry Europe, that whole thing was a stupid idea. Lets work together to find a better solution for the EU.”
But they wont.
They would rather safe face and commit national suicide, drive off the cliff on a course set by some etonian twats and 30 years of Murdochs anti EU propaganda.
What really baffels me is the arrogance and delusion on the british side. They think they can actually keep all of the perks of an EU membership and give up all of its duties.
This will not happen.
The EU is interested in making the divorce as painfull as possible for the UK. Not only will they make them pay, the will make them bleed. This happens not out of spite, its out of selfinterest. It is about making the UK an example for any EU member that just considers thinking about leaving the Union. Its in the interest of the of the survival of the european project to turn a post brexit Britain into an economic desaster zone that has a lower standart of living than most of the balkans. I think that Paris, Berlin and Brussles are speculating that an economic desolate UK, or whats left of it if Northern Ireland and Scotland leave, will be coming crawing back in a few years, to rejoin the union, and that they can dictate London the conditions then.
10 Likes
