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

Neither Jolyon nor Moscow

Especially when it's boiled down to "well, Germany hasn't started a war yet, so the EU's doing its job", like Germany wouldn't have very strong cultural, historical and pragmatic reasons not to do that, EU or no EU.

This sentence doesn't make a lot of sense? The reasons why there is a EU, and why the road to it started in 1945, are those same reasons. And obviously the two different effects of those reasons are wobbling in different ways 70 years later.

As an EU national living in the UK I had a very hard time summoning the kind of enthusiasm that ppl around me were showing

Entirely the opposite here - I was already largely pro-EU, largely through paying attention to "But the government have their hands tied by the ECHR", and the UK are more than putting in the work to keep it the more attractive option.

The narrative that the EU is there to protect the peace -- which was iffy anyway by 1960 -- has totally fallen apart given the way it holds a gun to countries that step out of line.

1957..

the reaction of some people who seemed quiescent or complacent through years of post-Thatcherism rankles as well: this is the point where you decide to get all righteously indignant? cheers, excuse my shrugs.

White British person talking there.

Andrew, yeah, peace lead to the EU, the EU didn't lead to peace. Obviously an enterprise like the EU couldn't have been conceived in a time of warfare between European nations, but I don't think it follows that the EU is the only defense against a return to that. It's not like the European nations that aren't in the EU are constantly plotting to take over their neighbours, innit.

I lived in Portugal previous to moving to the UK, so I saw the uglier sides of EU economic policy firsthand. It's difficult to reconcile that with the idealised vision a lot of UK leftists have.

Really I tend to think the main problem with the European Union has always come down to lack of communication - from my experience it just means radically different things to people in Portugal, Germany, the UK, the Czech Republic...and of course it would, different countries different contexts. But there seems to be very little awareness of what it means outside one's country.

Sorry that was unnecessarily pissy but given the particularly harsh politics of immigration this has ushered in (or magnified), indignation is too mild a response if anything.

Like I agree with you in principle. The ongoing destruction of the welfare state is worse than Brexit, or at least it would be if the two weren't exacerbating one another, but it doesn't have that sudden cathartic cut-off point and it has been mostly done by stealth. It's the difference between death by a thousands cuts and a sudden guillotine dropping, and I can see why one seems more traumatic than the other.

Obviously the technocrats who are only now understanding what it is to be at the sharp end of a big political defeat are terrible.

and I guess it's the technocrats and the holiday home in Francers that I'm really pissy with - the Toynbees. but you're right, it's good to be reminded regularly of the ugly race politics that this is accelerating and legitimizing.

obvious point to make -- obscured in the lexit argts whether from the bennite english-exceptionalist perspective or not-the-minister pseudo-left bien-pensant croissant-munchant virtue-signalling -- is that the EU is a big baggy cluster of clashing opposites running uneasily along yet attempting, in its maddening secretive sluggish way, to attempt to set out technocratic solutions for genuine problems

but "technocratic" very often = "don't bother us with yr democratic wishes, we are EXPERTS, you are mere PUNTERS"

for example greece-as-longterm-problem = how to fold economically straitened (and currently unfruitful) outlier regions into the whole w/o simply establishing a permanent unaddressed funding transfer* between member states (from successfully well off to intrinsically poor)

such transfers are currently not really allowed by the EU, but happen anyway bcz they need to happen (everywhere when i say EU I may well mean ECB or some such, look it's fiddly and this is ilx, i'm not on trial)

(EU said we will give you "a fvckton of mostly german money if you abide by our requirements abt transforming yr region into one that makes money rather than just sucks in eurotransfers 4EVAH", greece said "we will take all this money but frankly fvck yr so-called rules, also give us much more money", germany said "hang on we have voted NOT to give any more money", eu said "OK here IS a lot more money, tho much less than you asked for or needed lol, btw our rules are now even more punishingly stringent and arguably counterproductive", greece said "fvck you fvck you fvck you fvck you fvck you wait we have nowhere else to go for such money ok then fvck you but we accept ps fvck you")

(viz there is both an element of unresolveable conflict AND an element of managed undemocratic solution here, some of the latter according with EU regulations norms and practices, some of it frankly bending them) (bending is good! but also risky and tricky, and generally the most counter-democratic of all)

the problem elements don't at all go away if the top-down technocratic management bits are simply stripped out or shut down: of course bcz this is my foolish politics i wd HOPE that the widening of democratic institutions will be able eventually to tackle these problems, but we need first of all to be honest abt what the problems ARE

(this^^^ is btw why all poshkid chatter of gulags and stalinstalgia etc is so ludicously lolsome: bcz here's what the revolutionary socialist states were bad at -- being even slightly honest w/themselves abt the problems they faced) (surprise surprise: democracy is how you air and explore probems)**

at the moment the uk europhiles are not being honest w/themselves abt the realities of europe-as-top-down-structure -- but the brexiteers are more deluded still

(the lexiteers are mostly choosing to sit on the margins saying "our turn next", which is fine if yr a tiny splinter group far from any hope of power, but is like super-sucky if yr actually a party in official opposition, sorry corbz) (i remain a benn-sceptic)

**the underlying issue of how to achieve honesty is minimally adequate media, which in the uk especially we seem a long way away from

apologies maostalgia is funnier than stalinstalgia, my post = fail

Glasnostalgia
A feeling of longing for a time when America had a single, well-defined enemy and Reagan was president.

damn u urban dictionary

In other news The Daily Trollegraph is Andy Coulson's new PR client.

a fox in every henhouse

Experts setting out technocratic solutions would be fine - if they worked.

Annoyingly they only work to the extent it keeps the show (precariously..) on the road..

Ah I'm not suggesting it's the only defense, but it's both a totem and a canary in the coal mine. And yeah it uses trade as the glue (and as carrot, and as stick), with the liberal effects that come with it - I'd rather if comity between nations sprang forth naturally from the breast of all myself.

And fair point it does vary per site, the Irish story of my generation (rafts of my friends happy to declare themselves Europeans first) is no doubt affected by considerable EU investment in our youth.

Not sure if Julio's actually clear what a gun is..

problem we* actually have to solve (by defn *can't* be solved technocratically) is that expertise** and honest communication*** currently go together like water and phosphorus

*i don't mean ilx (except i kind of actually do)
**when burnham wrote "the managerial revolution" (1941) he wrote it as an ex-trot with stalin etc admiringly in mind
***communication being a two-way thing obviously

People are avoidably suffering and dying in Greece and other austerity-battered countries and that's the fault of the EU and its response to the crisis, but comparing it to a war still feels facetious and stupid.

Obviously the EU has been hugely imperfect and the cuddly band of nations thing feels ludicrous given what's actually happening, but 50+ years of peace is an enormous achievement given the history of the continent. Whether that peace is/was likely to hold given the current approach to keeping the band together is another thing entirely.

I suspect the technocrats are right about Brexit and it isn't going to be metropolitan hummus drinkers who suffer.

Also lol why would you hire a PR adviser who managed to destroy one of the oldest newspapers in the country through generating bad PR? If this is a technocracy then bits of it have very little regard for technical ability.

It's a PR move by a different PR firm hired by Coulson's own PR firm to make the Osborne thing look better.

Yeah, I'll agree that the gun to the head metaphor is gilding the lilly a bit - nations always have the option to, haha, pull a brexit, and the reason this never gains traction in the Eurozone crisis countries is we know that would spell economic disaster much worse than what has already happened.

Would still be very hesitant to identity the EU as responsible for 50+ years of peace; surely this is down to factors that, again, tie into the creation of the EU but would still be present otherwise - namely the cold war/eastern bloc and the various wirtschaftswunder in different Western European nations. There was no longer any geopolitical reason for conflict after WWII and afaict there still isn't - even if the worst comes to pass and we arrive at some insane far-right dystopia surely this would result in European nations marching hand in hand to defeat infidels in the Middle East long before they'd turn on each other?

It's not like the European nations that aren't in the EU are constantly plotting to take over their neighbours, innit.

uh, subs check this

mass media's woes in respect of the technics issue fit somewhat into their own path-determined bubble -- but in some ways is advance guard of wider problems

given the mass deskilling that desk-top publishing (and wapping) enabled, several layers of expertise were lost to the industry, in which were embedded all manner of tacit wisdom abt how newspapers interacted w/their readership -- grizzled old subs who'd worked their way up from paste-pot boy etc and knew how to edit on the stone, now replaced by glib young college grads w/new wave haircuts and tony parsons shoes, who had a DEGREE in MEDIA and cd quote DICK HEBDIGE and liked KIND OF BLUE and blah blah

everything swiftly went to the (isle of) dogs -- telegraph is basically now the barclay twins' crap fanzine

(sorry i am right now puzzling thru the good and bad effects of 60s and 70s countercultural media: still unwilling entirely to pull a "god this was all a horrible waste of time wasn't it?" as have quite a lot emotionally invested in it, plus a kickstarter fund i am not quite ready to embezzle** for the Greater Revolutionary Good)

**j/k contributors the CORE OF THE NEST EGG is RING FENCED

that's de-skilling rather than desk-illing OR IS IT 😫

xxxp That's an interesting speculation about endgame of European/western hypernationalism being a revival of the Crusades, if you like, rather than internecine war among the rich countries.

RIP

https://www.speakerscorner.co.uk/media/image/Des-Lynam-P.jpg

wait don't we blame wogan?

just checking in, have ukip disbanded yet

Arguably a lesson of the times is that anything good is going to be a cluster of clashing opposites held in check by a more solid construction.

No wait, that's a pie isn't it? Mmm, chaos pie.

xp no but Douglas Carswell was on TV just now talking about reaching out to the 48%

Jolyon and the Jing Jang Jong

xp lol fuckin oddball

if anyone can unite the 48% it's political pinball douglas carswell

tbf he's reigning uk champ of this facial expression

he does have an unfair advantage tho by dint of having a face that seems partially melted on one side

no but Douglas Carswell was on TV just now talking about reaching out to the 48%

To what purpose? Other than 'keeping Douglas Carswell in a job'?

He's not a single-issue politician: keeping him on TV is also close to his heart.

(It was a subtitled big screen in office building atrium as I was passing)

Yeah, I'll agree that the gun to the head metaphor is gilding the lilly a bit - nations always have the option to, haha, pull a brexit, and the reason this never gains traction in the Eurozone crisis countries is we know that would spell economic disaster much worse than what has already happened.

The EU will make sure the UK isn't getting a nice deal out of this otherwise several countries would take this option.

Whether I know what a gun is (and you know I'm a peaceful person and never held the thing!) what happened to Greece was different to Art 50 - they had to take the only deal on offer as they wanted to stay in the EU - or to try to work wiht the EU.

in centuries to come, fancy paintings of this historic moment will be, er, painted:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8FZvMcXkAAzW5U.jpg

*just moments later, tusk petulantly knocks union jack stands over and shrieks w/frustrated super-villain rage*

Just uploaded from my crates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg3kenARW0c

The A50 letter suggests the government are planning to use security expertise and intelligence access as the main intimidation tactic selling point in post-Brexit deal-cobbling.

From a reporter on Twitter:

Labour's Kelvin Hopkins tells Theresa May he is celebrating Article 50 as it will "make possible the socialist future" he has always wanted.

I do not get these lexiteers at all. Is he delusional? Whatever the future, Labour's chance of handing Britain an socialist future are zero iirc.

actual letter printed in ransom-note graphics (like trump's to merkel), hence the secrecy re the delivery

tbh given johnny rotten's thumbs up they shd have projected it in this form on dover cliffs

exiting the eu allows uk to pursue socialism glabally

lal

gunter glieben glauten glaben

ich möchte glauben

http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2017/03/29/theresa-may-world-needs-eu-values-sdg-orig.cnn