His opinion- the best course of action is to “make Brexit work”. Which seems untenable.
I have this vague memory that UK had quite sweet deal when it was in the EU. Guessing that won’t happen again.
Was Brexit devised to work?
Yes. It was a French intelligence operation.
I agree that the UK needs to go through some fundamental changes (up to and including its continued existence) before it could sensibly rejoin: It would have to get over its post-imperial hangups about its place in the world and the deluded notion that it is still a great power, it would have to drop its mindset of shitty atlanticism (preferring always to copy American ideas that don’t work instead of European ideas that do.), reform its welfare system so that it was compatible with the four freedoms, find an off-ramp from the rentier capitalism that has held sway over the land for the majority of the last 120 years (save for a brief interlude post war). And most fundamentally, it would have to reform its corrupt and archaic political system before it could join the club of modern democracies with huge problems that make up the EU (Sidelong glance at Poland and Hungary).
But this article just gets so many things fundamentally wrong. At a quick glance-
- The Euro isn’t fundamental to the EU - Denmark has its own opt-out, Sweden doesn’t want to join and is under no obligation to make any progress in that direction, and the countries of Southern Europe had a much harder time recovering from the whole 2008 thing because of their membership of the Euro.
- The Shengen treaty isn’t fundamental to the EU either- Ireland, Denmark, and the new EU countries in the east are all testament to that
- The UK never had opt-outs from the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Tory governments kept on trying to push that line, and it was a major propaganda point in brexit- people were able to take cases to the EU court and win
- The idea of a “single associate membership” isn’t going to fly because it would unavoidably upgrade or downgrade a number of nuanced relationships the EU has with its near neighbours- the countries in the EFTA, The customs union, the pile of treaties Switzerland has with the EU, possible new candidate countries and so on.
Not sure if a larger international effort will follow this:
The US has been cagey about sending in troops to help deal with this ongoing tragedy… Something needs to be done, though.
… I think a significant number of Leavers believed they would magically get the Empire back 
Great job, now you’ve made Putin all sulky again.
Nah, the deuxieme bureau wouldn’t have tricked all our fishing boat owners into signing up for their own bankruptcy; they’re much more direct with dealing with boats they don’t like 
If we were offered all the Brexit options instead of the yes/no question then remain would have been the clear winner. There was never any consensus on what Brexit meant, except maybe racism/sexism/ablism/homophobia/transphobia.
“Brexit means Brexit” /s
North Korea: What 900 escapees?
