That is a profoundly depressing read today of all days, it should come with a trigger warning. What to choose for the pull quote? At the risk of quoting the entire thing i think i’ll go with this…
I look around the country that raised me and I see a place made crabbed, narrow, and suspicious, nursing what remains of its rotten pride after eight years of pointless austerity that only made us a duller and drabber place. We used to be a cultural powerhouse. Now we’re trying to interest global markets in major exports that appear to be largely marmite, political equivocation, and Ed Sheeran. So much has been lost, and there will be so much more loss to come, even for those who were convinced they had nothing to lose.
Hopefully, now that A50 has actually been triggered and negotiating can start, the brexiters who are blithely imagining that they can have their cake and eat it are going to get a very rude awakening.
I hope and suspect that every proposal that the UK sets forward will go like this:
“So, what would it take to allow $thing_we_want”
“Free movement of people.”
My favourite so far was May’s “a more outward-looking” Britain. She must be referring to all the extra border guards they’ll need.
I’m quietly confident that this doesn’t end with me getting deported (although it would almost be worth it to see the immigration wagons rounding up scores of anglo-saxons for a change), but I still have this powerful urge to rewatch Children of Men and get drunk on Scottish beer tonight.
I was watching the debate in Parliament over the Great Repeal Bill (anagrams: Legit Pallbearer; Large Pill Rebate), but couldn’t take it any more. Even though I lived in England pre-Maastricht and thought it wasn’t completely terrible, that long dark stretch between the end of WWII and the flourishing of the EU is just a really strange time for Brits to get nostalgic for, and the people in charge seems to have no idea at all about what will happen next.
Ahh yeah, the great repeal bill. AKA the bill that’ll allow us to jettison all those pesky EU laws and regulations we don’t like such as worker’s rights, environmental protections, data protection, basic human rights etc.
People surprised by entirely predictable thing, news at 11.
So the UK wants to negotiate what happens after exit before agreeing the terms of the exit, and have been told to piss off by France and Germany. They’re trying to use EU citizens and security concerns to blackmail the EU into giving them what they want, and they’re drawing lines in the sand that Spain won’t accept, who, like all other 26 members, have a veto over the trade deal that the UK needs.
And the first step of leaving is to enshrine all those EU laws they hate so much into UK law.
This is going to go brilliantly.
What price 10/20 years of omnishambles, then a return to the EU, only minus all those vetos they fought so hard for, and having to give up the pound?
I’ll give that a like for superb presentation but certainly not for content. As will self put it, fa-ridge and his ilk are - “grubby little opportunists who are riding the coattails of history”.
