Brexit was deeply thought out… by those who did not have the best interests of the U.K. in mind.
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“There’s just the vulture of foreign capital wheeling overhead, waiting for the beasts to die.”
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Is it? I seem to recall that it was a non-binding referendum. Yet every action seems to have been taken like it’s binding.
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Smuggle?? The UK is not even doing any proper checks on what is coming in anyway (Brexit: full controls on goods entering UK will not apply until July 2021 | Brexit | The Guardian) They whine about sandwich-gate but from the EU you can bring anything to the UK because nobody is looking 
But the smuggle route through Ireland could get ugly indeed, nothing romantic about that. It is fun when it is things like the occasional bottle of booze or illegal er… gentleman’s special interest literature but when drugs, weapons, and human trafficking gets involved… no, thanks.
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The few people outside my liberal bubble I was unfortunate to interact with on this seemed to think there’d be Q-style rounding up and deporting of all immigrants on the day after the referendum. They also seemed to resent being called racists.
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Yeah, really. I mean, this makes me laugh:
" …free trade and free movement has not been the reality…"
I mean, who could have possibly foreseen that leaving a free- trade and movement pact, and replacing it with… nothing would result in a negative impact to trade and movement? Gosh, you’d have to be some sort of witch to have known that was going to happen!
They didn’t have to imagine it, even, as that was explicitly what Brexiteers were promising. There were a number of similar scenarios that were promised by various people involved, but they were all clear that what wasn’t going to happen was this, where “this” is exactly what did happen.
Some bits of the Brexit promise were always going to get ignored. They made choices about which promises they ignored in the negotiations that resulted in this outcome. (Many of those choices were predictable, though, given who was involved and how incompetent they are, but they weren’t all inevitable.)
As mentioned, the impossibility is a political one for England, because of the Tories. For Scotland, on the other hand, where they voted against leaving, they’ve made sure to maintain compliance with EU regulations as they’re aiming for a quick return upon exiting the UK. But I understand that whole process looks like the better part of a year, at least. (And if Scotland leaves the Union, the conservatives apparently get control of the remains of the UK for at least a generation, so they’re not too fussed about it.)
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Even amidst all the lies the leaders pushing Brexit seemed to legitimately believe that the UK (or England mainly) were important and powerful enough that other nations would have to give them special treatment. That they could unilaterally dictate terms to their benefit. That everything they labelled critically British, from jam to Wellingtons, was important enough to make them an economic power house.
Particularly Johnson and his set, they seem to actually be delusional about the pull they had and their position in the world. Hell straight up until the end they were still talking about the Republic of Ireland like it was still part of the UK. And they refused to deal with the border problem adequately until both the EU and US told them that they wouldn’t get any sort of trade deal with a border in NI. Like it never occurred to them that other nations could simply say no.
Voters were sold a lie, but by people who believed a fantasy.
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This is how you identify the unpopular Tories. The kool kids didn’t let him in on any of the good scams.
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Boris is a big bumbahole, but he’s not stupid, he’s very good at promising shit he absolutely doesn’t believe in, primarily for his own benefit, or the benefit of a fellow grifter…
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With that being said, the following general election gave the pro-Brexit Tories a majority and a mandate to proceed. That was, so to speak, the 2nd plane that crashed into a tower.
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The next UK general election is likely to be in May of 2024 (though this is not set in stone the way it is in the US). If a Breëntry party won enough seats to form a government, they could start the process of rejoining immediately – AFAIK there is no fixed timeline for that, and in practice it would be made up on the fly since no country has ever rejoined before.
It would be astonishing if the Garbage Island electorate went for that, but people do vote for astonishing things so who knows.
Some EU member states might make a show of opposing Breëntry (as they did in the seventies), but ultimately there’d be no reason for the EU to not allow it.
There is a major technical obstacle, though, which is that the UK previously had special exemptions from some of the things that are now required of new member countries, such as joining the Schengen open-borders arrangement, and more significantly, a commitment to the Euro. At this point, I don’t think even the most hardcore Europhile would say that was a good idea, and there’s also no way the EU could waive the requirement entirely.
As far as I can tell, the best possible outcome for the UK would be to rebuild most of its relationship to the EU on a piecemeal basis, over decades, with no hope of ever getting as good of a settlement as what we just gave up for less than no reason ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ oh well
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This is coming across as a “both sides” argument, which I don’t think was your intent?
D candidates and pols quite regularly release very detailed, multipoint plans to address things. R pols, (or whatever the local term for the populist party is) generally, do not.
Making it seem like this is something “all politicians” do isn’t realistic.
If your point, though, is that this is why these people keep winning, yes. Agreed. Infuriated, but agreed.
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Sure is. But his actual actions and approach speak to some one who really did think he had more power and control than he did. Because England. Though of course always very careful to say Britain.
Honestly it be about the biggest win the EU could get out of it. Proof that leaving the EU really is that bad of an idea.
Especially since it’d likely come with the exact concessions you’re talking about.
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I trust Boris about as far as I can throw him, he is as far as I can tell, the best example of the old saying “how can you tell a politician is lying?”
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I would argue that it is a dynamic that affects both parties, but has been fully embraced by the GOP in a way that it hasn’t been by the Democrats. Arguably the reason Biden was nominated was that he was seen as the best way to beat Trump rather than as the politician whose policies were embraced by the majority of Democrats. It’s not that he hasn’t put out policy papers describing his positions but that being against Trump has been a great unifying force within the Democratic party. Contrast that with the GOP that didn’t even put out a new party platform for the 2020 election. They didn’t even make a pro forma effort to define what they were for except Trump, and he has defined his politics almost exclusively by what he is against.
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Valid point. And more to “why they win” than “what they do.” The point I was getting at is that one side does do the hard policy work to find ways to move towards things they want. The other really doesn’t. (Except, maybe, Stephen Miller, and he’s an evil being.)
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I’m not familiar with “the queen’s meddling in legislation.” Would like to know more. I agree with you about the mythic basis of Brexit, as being so much more of a motivation than any mere technocratic concerns, like what would be materially best for the UK citizenry. After all, it’s been said many times that even if they all suffer and the worst happens, it’s STILL better, just because. So there. It’s the same issue with figuring out people’s “interests”. It’s certainly true that those of us who are more pro-European and more center-left tend to believe we know what people’s interests should be and shake our head at their perverse resistance. For many, frustratingly, cultural imperatives dominate material concerns.
There is a certain element among the elite who seem to believe that “experts” are there to be their servants, and only needed because they, the elite, don’t have the time or they could figure it all out themselves with nothing but their native guts and cunning. That’s certainly the Trump effect. It’s the guy at the country club bar having his scotch rocks and opining about … well, just about anything.
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Indeed. Some of us spent most of the period whilst the legislation to enable the referendum was going through saying that it needed to have safeguards (especially a four-nations majority i.e. that all four constituent nations of the UK would need to vote the same way) and were continually told that all this was unnecessary because referendums in the UK can only ever be ‘advisory’.
And then the ‘official’ government leaflet that went to every household said “the government will implement your decision”, which instantly effectively made it binding. Even though the leaflet had no power to do that. (And let’s leave aside the question of how “remaining” in the EU was a decision that could be implemented…)
In a sense, the groundwork for this fiasco was partially laid by the Scottish Independence Referendum the year before. Because that too didn’t have any safeguards but - luckily for the government - the outcome didn’t go the ‘wrong’ way. If it had ended up as, say, a 52-48 victory for Independence, we’d have heard all the “non-binding” arguments then…
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I’m interested in British constitutional law but not in any way an expert. I’m interested in the US too but British is barking !
And again, in case you would trust the current queen as she is beloved, I think most British people see Charles is a dick:
The fact that it is so secretive is important for me as we don’t know the extent of its use, nor if it’s part of a whole category of secret law. This should be a major constitutional crisis, but won’t be because brexit and the Tory oligarchy press.
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Calling de Pfeffel a liar would actually be a compliment but he’s a bullshitter because at least a liar wants you to believe their lies, a bullshitter doesn’t care and just spews bullshit.
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