Realistically it’s the most achievable option, except that a difference in trade laws between NI and the rest of the UK would break the Good Friday agreement, which would be bad for Eire, and so the EU won’t allow it.
1 Like
Oh and don’t forget making it far easier for their mates in the US to get the UK to agree to any old crap in order to get a trade deal.
The US has been banging for years under successive administrations about how horrible it is that EU citizens don’t want to allow the sort of shit that US agribusiness gets up to.
6 Likes
Oooow.
That timing.
Bloody Sunday: Derry awaits decision on possible murder trial
Meanwhile, in London, DD tweets:
This all now depends on the Attorney General’s legal advice.
If I’m not mistaken, that means the Tories are delegating the decision and the blame on a specific person (and their staff, but publicly only one person).
Holy fuck, lawmakers, are you out of your minds? Get your shit together and don’t blame the GA if you fuck up two years’ negotiations.
3 Likes
That’s a little unfair. It’s true in a strict sense but once one concedes that the referendum was to be followed in some way - and I think that was probably inevitable given the political situation - then the red lines follow equally inevitably from what little one can glean from why people voted out.
It’s clear the main drivers were freedom of movement, freedom of movement, freedom of movement and lightbulbs and bendy bananas, etc.
Once you want to get rid of freedom of movement, all the rest has to go too. The customs union, etc. all go hand in hand with freedom of movement.
That is a fundamental tenet of the EU (and it’s one of the few genuinely positive things about the institution in my view).
The crazy and incompetent thing about how May and co. have handled this was the belief that somehow they could get a deal that would allow them everything they wanted without requiring them to accept anything they didn’t.
Also forgetting about Northern Ireland (not unusual for English politicians) and calling a general election based entirely on a campaign of “Jeremy Corbyn’s a red menace!”/“Strong and Stable”.
The reality from the outset was that anything that was going to satisfy those who voted to leave would have to be a clean break from the EU with possibly some kind of limited free trade deal afterwards.
Efforts in the withdrawal period should have been focused on untangling the EU/UK relationship, creating time and methodologies for undoing and replacing the 60 odd years worth of joint institutions and regulations as @bobtato said.
That is in fact what the withdrawal agreement provisions in the Treaty are for.
But no, we had to try and get everything sorted out now. Probably for the reasons @bobtato says.
No, I think Jonbly meant the Republic leaving. That would work.
As of course would Northern Ireland leaving the UK.
Yes, if we’re going to have a ‘wall’, we need to actually build one. It’ll be a wonderful example of British engineering (obviously we’ll have to get the Chinese to actually design it and be in charge of building it but we’ll make sure at least 20% 10% 5% 2.5% British people are employed in building it).
3 Likes
Why would the young people of today turn into Leavers as they grow older, given that the Leave position of the older folks is not based on just them being old, but rather on misguided nostalgia and exposure to years and decades of fearmongering?
5 Likes
I think you want Scotland having a little overlap outside of GB because of Shetland and Orkney.
2 Likes
I think Lurks has it - There is an odd nostalgia for Blitz/Dunkirk/Empire spirit that many leavers never actually experienced first hand - but we sold on through the 50’s through 70’s - A time when things were not always great in the UK (Suez, recession, unemployment, rationing, loss of Empire, labour disputes, housing shortages etc)
10 Likes
Reminds me of a Henning Wehn joke;
“I was there in the Blitz!”
“You were 7 years old, you were nothing but a drain on resources.”
11 Likes
This isn’t strictly true - Turkey being one such example.
2 Likes
Hasn’t that been the British stance on all things relating to the EU since Margaret “I want my money back” Thatcher anyway?
4 Likes
Fair enough - although I’ll defend my mistake by claiming that’s a customs union, not the customs union.
It’s a rather different beast to the EU internal market among member states.
1 Like
To a certain extent, although Maggie’s stance towards the EU was far more nuanced than the Conservatives would like to claim.
What’s interesting is that despite having had that attitude for years and not getting anywhere with it, they still don’t appear to have learned anything.
3 Likes
Low-information voters are frustrated because they are only interested in changes happening instantly, like when the NHS and motorways and mass house-building happened overnight after the war (although mostly, the change they’re after atm is “no foreigns”). So when the Brexit referendum shows up, offering exactly that fantasy, of course they jump at it.
Only, the abrupt change after the war was only possible because there was a massive fucking war that killed millions, and it’s easy to build new houses when the old ones have been blown up, and easy to nationalise the health industry when the whole economy has been under martial law for 5+ years. “Rapid change” and “collateral damage” are sides of the same coin.
Brexit suicide bombers are well aware of that, which is why the horseshit about the Blitz Spirit is such a ready reference. The correct response is “yes, we survived the Blitz… and then we literally, physically killed the people responsible for it.”
7 Likes
Not all that likely. A referendum to secede and become independent would have a better chance than a referendum to secede and join the Republic of Ireland. Even if NI did break away from the UK, somehow, the unionist demographic (and the DUP) is strong enough to prevent any serious reunification effort.
Shetland, maybe: but if Orkney, then also the entire Outer Hebrides.
1 Like
And of course, it’s also not true. All of things didn’t appear overnight. They took ages and lots of effort.
To the extent that I would say we still haven’t recovered from the Second World War (possibly not even from the First). There’s still plenty of bits of Britain that are roughly concreted over car-parks where there used to be buildings.
That is conveniently forgotten. It’s a wonderful feature the British have to be able to take something that is very recent and act as if it has always been the case or act as if something never was the case, even if they were doing it five minutes ago.
I do wonder whether that’s what Orwell was referencing with Big Brother.
For the rabid Brexiters I come across, that is the implication, yes. Only they mean the rest of the EU.
You get a lot of talk about “national humiliation” because the EU negotiators didn’t bow and scrape to “our Prime Minister” enough or immediately give in to our demands.
They don’t mean that we made ourselves a laughing stock. They mean that we should send over some gun boats and remind Johnny Foreigner not to laugh at Englishmen. And they do mean English.
5 Likes
And yet who formed a good working relationship, and apparently a personal friendship, with former IRA member (and alleged IRA commander) Martin McGuinness, as First Minister and Deputy First Minister of the devolved Northern Irish administration.
People are weird. Maybe it was an example of “only Nixon could go to China”?
3 Likes
There’s been a widely held concept that people and populations grow more conservative with time.
But that doesn’t seem to be holding up anymore. And may be more based on the significant rightward shift the US (and thus the boomers) underwent post 60’s. And I think there was a similar one in the UK. And the original “generation gap” concept from the same time.
That doesn’t really seem to be holding up. Even entering their 40s and 50s kids these days seem to be staying exactly as liberal as they always were, not shifting right as they age.
Personally I don’t really see that. The pathway for reunification already exists, and can be triggered at any time. But more importantly reunification let’s NI just stay in the EU, and join a stable (relatively) ecconomy. Rather than going to the back of the line for membership, and having to figure shit out from scratch. That’s the hold up/problem with Scottish independence. Plus it leaves an unresolved territorial claim by the Republic of Ireland.
While the Republicans, and potentially the South might be happy with that solution. Unionists certainly won’t. And that path still institutes a hard border within the Republic. Which is bad, even under those circumstances.
The only way either of these things happen is if they can solve more problems then they cause, and if the negatives are better than Brexit. Don’t think that’s true of Independence. And I don’t think that’s the case unless Brexit leads to the hard border.
As someone totally clueless about the Irish unification issue: Is there really a realistic majority for unification? What about the DUP? Are they able to torpedo a political push for a referendum and/or able to mobilize a significant part of the population?
1 Like
