Rolling Brexit Links/UK politics in the neo-Weimar era

oh I don't think we can just cobble together a replacement mark, I've no idea what the positive answers are. positive answers only have a chance of developing when you recognize what's broken tho.

I've met so many affluent flag-waving shire Tories who are 100% pro-Brexit, and the vote would not have happened without them, but they're erased from the debate altogether.

OTM

There is that awful Brexit Street program on R4 where they interview inarticulate legit concern bigots with Geordie accents. I don't think they have featured any m/c Tory heartlands bigots yet, but usually after two minutes I switch to the world service.

#OperationBeacon

https://voteleaveuk.com/2016/11/03/if-parliament-votes-against-article-50-operation-beacon-will-begin-immediately-to-enforce-brexit/

Misread that as 'OperationBacon' ...

From Operation Bacon: "Article 61 of Magna Carta which has never been repealed, it is our true sovereign law."

Obviously this is crackpot nonsense and only has validity if you write your true name in CAPITALS.

incidentally, googling "Article 61 of Magna Carta" takes you deep into menk territory -- a bit further you meet Daniel Hannan coming the other way, as he argues that the Battle of Hastings 1066 was England's nakba.

Lol

https://twitter.com/DemocratsOnline/status/794521856980099072

All 33 of their followers maybe?

Some of the comments on that Beacon post are amazing. Reads like the facebook parody column in Private Eye. I'm struggling to distinguish the windups from the genuine swivel-eyed frothers

Suspect this is not serious:

Why should Parliament have a say in this? We got rid of the EU Parliament in June so now it is time to tell the UK Parliament where it gets off. It is anti-democratic for MPs to expect to have a say in what Britain does. Who do they think they are? We don’t need them and could save a lot of money by getting rid of them. People who say Brexiteers voted to make the UK Parliament sovereign are mad. We just want Nigel Farage to be the sovereign. Get rid of the Queen too. King Nigel the Great.

My personal favourite so far, though:

My tip for protests: Make and bring your own drum

I like how they bang on about "the 52%" which you could with absolutely equal honesty describe as "the 37%"

kind of confused by what Operation Bacon mean by "Brexit", it doesn't really define it anywhere I can see on their website

gradually everything is melting into the Freemen thread

Brexit means Brexit, duh.

People are completely deluded if they think this means Brexit is being blocked in any way. Even if Parliament does vote against Article 50, even if the Lords blocks it, it'll be the fuel for a monstrous betrayal narrative that will force it through eventually anyway.

Blocking it might be counterproductive when the alternative is to let the dire economic consequences become more apparent and wait for public opinion to turn with the hope of voting against it in the future. A second referendum looks more and more likely eventually. As the does the prospect of Britain actually reapplying for EU membership within our lifetimes.

The backlash against this shit, when demographics evolve, will be massive.

The genie's out of the bottle now anyway - part of me wants the hard Brexit that fucks up as much as predicted so that people can go "see? This is what you wanted all along". The better part of me knows that this is nihilistic and that lots of people will suffer unnecessarily just so that point can be made.

I suspect the Freemen stuff derives -- via family tradition , if you like, with all the mutation that may entail -- from proto-political dissent carried over from the UK into the US in the 18th and early 19th century, when the Norman Yoke was a live protesters' meme and, in absence of anything, self-educated artisans really did research themselves back to stuff like Magna Carta to try and fashion a counterculture to that era's equivalent of neoliberalism. Cobbett called it "Old Corruption" or sometimes just "The Thing".

It predates working-class agitation (because it predates the large-scale industrial working class) and locks at a subterranean level back into 17th century puritanism (which also feeds into American politics, of course). There was a lot of self-taught lawyering.

(I was also reading something a couple of days ago -- which I actually wasn't very impressed by, but this point was interesting -- that some of the democratising political triumphs in Britain in the 19th century, particular the repeal of the corn laws, directly preceded and were a partial cause of the Empire becoming a good deal more institutionally rapacious overseas, to counteract the rising costs of the changed political economy. I think it's more complicated than this -- the British navy was a key guarantor of the slave trade in the early 18th century, for example -- but it's true that some of the UK's better institutions, for example universal education and access to healthcafe, evolved out of the needs of Empire as much as they did from from agitation, and right up until the 1950s at cost of the ruled in the rest of the Empire. There's a sense in which what's happening right now is payback for all of that; and that Trump and the Farage falange are degraded descendents of currents in Brit history that were bottom up less than they were top down. A little, anyway.)

As the does the prospect of Britain actually reapplying for EU membership within our lifetimes

Can't see that being a realistic option - surely we'd have to accept the Euro & Schengen (assuming those things still exist, which is not guaranteed of course!)

The genie's out of the bottle now anyway - part of me wants the hard Brexit that fucks up as much as predicted so that people can go "see? This is what you wanted all along". The better part of me knows that this is nihilistic and that lots of people will suffer unnecessarily just so that point can be made.

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAObAAAAJGM2MjQzYmNiLWY0MGItNDNlMC1iN2ViLTJmZTFjODUyZDk1YQ.png

I'm firmly in the 'hard Brexit that fucks up as much as predicted' camp tbh. (my ex is English)

lol no hard feelings then

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-legal-challenge-martin-mcguinness-refuses-to-rule-out-sinn-fein-mps-entering-westminster-to-a7397201.html

Teresa May, uniting the nation

Xxp jokes obv Banana, wish you all the best

People are completely deluded if they think this means Brexit is being blocked in any way.

I don't think anybody thinks this really, except some screaming Leavers who didn't understand it going in and don't understand it coming out. Plus disingenuous tabloids suggesting it blocks Brexit.

But it does offer a chance to do it as close to right as this thing can be done — and opens the door to building in a safety valve of some kind

Personally I think there is no "right way" to do this for the UK. It will be damaging in *every* way: economically, socially, humanely. There is no "safety valve". In theory, sure, you could try and bake in some looser regulations for the finance sector to prevent them from moving house. And maybe Juncker et al will throw a bone here and there, but in any case you will lose.

In essence the UK is a kingdom that decided (with a v slim majority, but still) to turn inwards, to shy away from globalization, turn their back on Europe. In a world where bonding up and aligning is even more important than ever. And the cynical truth is it will affect the poor and the mundane the most: sending a parcel overseas will be more expensive. Phoning will be more expensive. Flying to the Costa del fucking Sol will be more expensive. Giving talented people the opportunity to work in England will get harder and more restricted.

UK choosing isolation, choosing looking inward instead of outward, is a disastrous choice. But I fear it's not the UK alone: there will be many nations following this in the not so distant future.

(And parliament getting involved prob just means May can make Labour somewhat an accomplice to all this, make the Vote Stay camp partly responsible. And the months and months of bickering and agony and further downfall of the left tbh)

("The poor and the mundane" was v poorly phrased, didn't mean to imply the former equal the latter)

It would be fun to be actually in favour of Brexit. You would feel that a really big good thing was happening.

Or would you just be constantly worried about people supposedly subverting and diluting it?

I am against Brexit.

The safety valve i mean is a Tusk style one where the deal is presented to the public again and they can can the whole idea.

(ffs ILX is obsessed with that album)

Hardly a safety valve but a complete turnover of "the people's wish". I will help you hope for it but I can't see it happening. Xp

Lol Tom

That's the thing. If it becomes three years of "they'll make us vote again until they get the result they like1!1!1!!!" its fucked. If it becomes "you get to say if you think the Brexit deal is a good one" that could work.

The margin isn't that big, after all. And polls have Remain in the lead. Why are we so scared of these cunts? (By which I mean the hard-right shit-stirrers, not every Leaver)

They own the newspapers.

Blocking it might be counterproductive when the alternative is to let the dire economic consequences become more apparent and wait for public opinion to turn with the hope of voting against it in the future. A second referendum looks more and more likely eventually. As the does the prospect of Britain actually reapplying for EU membership within our lifetimes.

doesn't it feel more likely that actually more EU countries will follow us out of the EU and we will have a lovely fascist Europe? cf National Front second place in France, with elections next year, or the Netherlands, where the Eurosceptic party is in the lead with elections soon to come

or the Netherlands, where the Eurosceptic party the fascist, racist party is in the lead

Agree with you tho, said it before: Brexit and its ugly fascist nature is what will happen to many other EU countries.

Kier Starmer stanning for immigration controls
http://www.politico.eu/article/keir-starmer-britains-last-remaining-hope/

Ctrl F "legitimate"

Oh hi, I had an idea earlier..

http://www.johnpye.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Backing_Britain_Badge-smaller-2.jpg

Could we get some badges like these, but with "I'm Blocking Brexit" ?

I think that'd be good, thought it through and owt..

That Politico article is painful in how much the writers want Starmer as leader.

I don't think many countries will be clamouring to leave the EU when they see what happens to the uk post exit.

Depends how that gets spun though. Britain turning into a shit-tip may be a fact but these guys don't gi a fuck about facts

I've seen a small shift in Denmark. We had a referendum last year on whether or not DK should let the parliament let DK stay in Europol - it's all a bit complex, but basically people are afraid an agreement would include European immigrant politics as well - which was voted down. But the nay-sayers promised that it would be easy to get a special agreement with Europol, which of course has turned out to be untrue. At this point almost every other party is openly accusing the DPP - Danish Peoples Party, the Danish UKIP, basically, though they've refused to have anything to do with UKIP - of deceit and lying. They're definitely playing on the fact that people has seen the chaos after Brexit, and that the same thing could be said to have happened here on a smaller scale.

I voted no in that referendum as well, btw. The whole question was weaselly done to assure everyone that we could still be as uncaring to refugees as we wanted, and I couldn't stand that bullshit. It's all a bit lol to me, much less serious than Brexit.

France would be the one I'd be worried about.

Way stronger far right and equally belligerent post-imperial boner.

Le Pen was six points ahead of Sarko in the last public poll I saw but still only had 28% of the vote - which is 28% too much but probably not enough to stop Juppé being the next president. If a handful of the old-guard French industrialists lined up behind her she'd have a chance. I'm still not entirely convinced that any of the large Western European countries could go full fash until fascism serves the interests of capital, which Le Pen doesn't, but that might be naive.

The bickering US left could learn something from the French socialists in their willingness to vote against le pen, no matter what. Obviously that was a while ago - not sure they have the discipline to do that again - and the centre-right won't return the favour.

see capital doesn't even need fascism in power, it just needs it to hold enough gravity to persuade leftists that a vote for the status quo is always a necessary sacrifice

That's what people who died fighting the nazis were doing.