I am in the UK and often I, too, want a hardest of hard Brexits. It’s the only way to forever silence Rees-Mogg, Farage, Johnson, Davis, Fox, et al and render them persona non grata.
But beware. Stupid is NOT cured by pain. Errors may be recognised, but they won’t be the ones you and I observe.
When whole countries ‘hurt’ and when perception (or reality - ‘perception IS reality’) says it is largely the fault of ‘them over there’, then as sure as night follows day, ‘them over there’ eventually (and it can take decades) gets to understand their blame (accepted or not) and physically feel the consequences.
All that guff about the EU being responsible for nearly three-quarters of a century of peace in Western Europe, is of course mostly guff. Nevertheless, there’s a hard but swelling grain of truth in there.
Yes, but thanks to the (already existing) requirement to show photo ID before travelling from Northern Ireland to the mainland, they’ll have to stay in Northern Ireland.
Which mainland Brexiters have amply demonstrated is not really the UK as far as they are concerned.
Ah, the “never in our lifetimes” actual internal UK border checks the DUP is sworn to die over?
And this would be photo ID that Stena (Ireland-UK ferry operator) describes as
British or Irish citizens travelling on our Irish Sea routes do not need a passport to travel to Britain or Ireland but are advised to take a form of identity. A driving licence, citizenship card or utility bill will usually suffice.
A utility bill, you say? Gosh, thwarted again.
Others do say it must be photo ID but I have not found specific prescriptions. Some say a Bus Pass will do. Darn, thwarted at every turn. How jealously these British guard their identity and the means to proclaim it. /s
Yes, well that happens when you don’t have a legally mandated form of identity document…
This may amuse you:
It’s genuinely interesting to read the exact same discussions from 1950.
Also the mention of the very efficient and effective controls on the US-Mexico border may amuse/depress some given the current climate.
Thanks. I am only two paragraphs in and already (A Hansard typo apart) I have been stopped in my tracks by a Lieut.-Col. Hyde being the member for Belfast North and also suggesting travel/identity documents might be orange! What a wit!?
But some serious points that seem to have changed little in the ensuing 68 years. (Emboldened text by me.)
the reason for the continuance of this system is the possibility that undesirable aliens may be able to enter Great Britain from Eire by way of Northern Ireland. I wonder why there should be so many more undesirable aliens than there were in 1939 (when the controls were first instituted) when we had no such system. I shall be glad if the Under-Secretary of State would tell us who the undesirable aliens are and why they should now be regarded with suspicion any more than they were 11 years ago.
And in response
The root of the matter is that before the war the Irish Free State had an immigration system on our lines; their policy regarding the admission of aliens was similar to ours and the two immigration services worked closely together. The immigration officials visited each other, got to know each other’s methods of working, and the policy of the respective Governments was the same. If, for instance, the Irish Free State admitted an alien on certain conditions, we automatically applied the same conditions to him if he came to the United Kingdom, and vice versa. Further, no one admitted to the Irish Free 847 State would be denied admission to the United Kingdom, and vice versa. Over the control of aliens the Irish Free State and the United Kingdom were one unit.
Today, the Irish Republic has no longer the same immigration sytem or the same policy with the result that the Irish Republic admits many aliens who would not be qualified to come to this country whether on a Ministry of Labour work permit, as a distressed relative, or under any other category.
And finally
The question arises: If there is to be control, where it should be exercsied?
(A second Hansard typo)
Yes, that is, and has for a long time been, and will for a long time be the question. The question May and co seem unable to answer because they’d prefer it wasn’t a question. And the pesky EU keeps asking it.
To be fair to the Hon. and gallant Lt. Col, he did also suggest they could be red, white and blue… I’m sure that would have gone down equally well.
He seems to have been a fairly interesting chap actually:
I also found this bit (just after your second excerpt) interesting:
If the Irish Republic would once again join with us in working a common system for the control of aliens, then we would for this purpose become a single unit, and these annoying travel cards could be abolished. What is necesasry [sic] is that the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic should agree to follow a similar immigration policy, to set up a similar system of immigration control, and to agree that any alien who had been admitted to the Irish Republic or the United Kingdom and who got into the other country, would be accepted back if the second country did not want him to stay there.
Hmm… working together with other countries to create a common system, following similar policies and setting up similar control systems. Where have I heard that idea recently?
It’ll never catch on.
I’m saying there isn’t a reasonable solution once you take a hammer to the working system. I think there is a long run political solution, but those solutions don’t fit a Brexit timeline. There was a great solution, not jumping out of a major trade and political union without a plan.
Welp, I’m sure nobody saw this coming. Nobody at all 
If I was a UK citizen, now would be the time to panic. If you hadn’t already of course. Time is running out.
Also don’t forget that there are hard remainers who may not survive a hard brexit, myself among them. I do not consent to being a sacrifice to other peoples xenophobic idiocy.
I also do not consent to being such a sacrifice. But as a hard brexiter too, I am not certain quite what you actually mean by “who may not survive a hard brexit” (either metaphorically or literally).
I’m not a brexiter in any way. I cannot see how it can be done in a sane way now (even a soft Brexit, and Lexit was a fantasy from the start) which is why I am a hard remainer. We need to do whatever it takes to stop the Brexit People’s Front crack suicide squad from fucking up millions of people.
I can use myself as an example, but I’m know I’m not the only one in this kind of situation.
I need medication to manage my health problems. If I don’t have access to them I will have to deal with increased pain and anxiety, as well as the effects of not having my hormones. Not taking them won’t directly kill me, but as I have to manage suicidal desires regularly (pretty much daily ever since the far right decided that brexit was permission to be shitty to other people). As NHS mental health care is massively underfunded at the best of times I have little hope of being a priority.
Oh fuck. Utter idiocy and tiredness. I meant to type ‘hard remainer’ and didn’t. In my defence, Newsnight was distracting me at the time with MP after MP banging on about the intrigue in Westminster today. But my error is a new low! Apologies. ;-(
I see your point. I am also dependent on daily medication to maintain my health (stop it declining any further, or at least slow its decline). It is scary.
To me this looks like people are arguing about whether to take the life boat or build a raft, while the ship is sinking. So strange, they should be focusing on the huge turmoil coming their way you’d think.
These people are delusional. The turmoil is not huge and a little turmoil is a small price to pay for whatever their delusions also tell them lay beyond.
I think it’s more like a load of passengers on a non-sinking boat who suspect it may be going to a port they do not like, and to make it worse the captain and crew have consistently failed to do anything about the frequent bouts of bad weather everyone’s been complaining about, so they think it may be better to abandon ship and build a new one from a platform of their lashed together life-raft, and head off to what looks like calmer waters but which the captain and crew keep telling them means passing through the worst storms ever to get there. Meanwhile the sharks are circling (having promised loads of wood and sailcloth, etc for this epic mid-sea boat-build) and licking their lips. To make sure their plan will win, these passengers have first holed the ship above the water and are now preparing to do it below the water, because not enough of the unwilling passengers have joined them in making plans for their life-raft yet. Too many of them are interested only in arguing about exactly where the hole should be, and how big. Each faction believes that if it can win THIS argument, everything else will follow naturally and calm waters will suddenly appear over the horizon, as if by magic, but if they lose it, they will end up drowned.
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