the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

not many people who voted Brexit cared about customs unions or thought about Northern Ireland

they just want to say "we stuck it to them"

ultimately it should be quite easy to satisfy this sentiment without really doing anything as silly as leaving the eu

this seems really obvious?

I assume until negotiations are closed and there can be some paperwork on how badly Team May has fucked everyone over, that 60/40 isn't likely. The middle two quartiles of any given population really prefer to not give a shit about important stuff until it's on the doorstep.

tombot, there are actually really no lines in the sand. there is a single paragraph of EU Constitution that describes article 50/ as nobody really thought anyone would be mad enough. it's possible to just kick the can down the road indefinitely really

i don't think it is easy tho, what deal could possibly be made that would appease the sovereignty/stick it to the technocrats bloc? the question for remainers is really about whether there are enough shook middle ground voters who can be persuaded to switch sides. i'm not sure that most of the serious remainers really care about what the political fallout of that kind of turnaround might be.

second referendum in the near future would be a disaster. leave would win and the issue would be double underlined for two generations

there's no good outcome from a second referendum whether it's another Leave vote or a fractional Remain. the pols that are making this the focus of their efforts right now are just idiots.

rename it UK+EU and give everyone in England a special hat that only they are allowed to wear

tbf from this side of the pond that's basically how it looks already. except I think you mean "a special currency"

not many people who voted Brexit cared about customs unions or thought about Northern Ireland

― plax (ico), Saturday, April 28, 2018 10:16 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

brexit voters not really caring about or understanding the details of the customs union or the single market etc just seems to make it easier for the hardcore brexiteer politicians and pundits to frame anything other than the hardest of brexits as the metropolitan elite undermining the expressed will of the british ppl etc etc, which is impossible to counter with technical arguments about the consequences of leaving the CU etc, because as you say, that's not really what it's about for most people

I've thought about that, we just say that Jacob Rees mogg is trying to sabotage Brexit by getting stuck on all this customs union and trade agreement bean counting when we should just be getting down to brass tacks and making sure those Brussels sprouts respect our freedom hats

if he really cared about Brexit he wouldn't keep criticising this government who busy staring at the heads of all the EU countries

Everything we know about everything that we’ll find out over the next six months is that it’ll only move the needle in one direction - a definite leave vote is far from impossible. I realise that ILX is bound, for reasons, to the idea that no-one ever changes their minds.

honestly, no reason to have a second referendum

and look, I'm Irish and in Ireland there's no EU referendum that people don't enjoy just as much the second time

" I realise that ILX is bound, for reasons, to the idea that no-one ever changes their minds."

start reading some Western European history, dawg. Instead of that Marvel shite (not meant as a serious swipe and in jest!)

honestly though, just make juncker get a face tatt of Vera Lynn

and start rapping?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Db5m55UXcAUumOq.jpg

S Times back on track.

I want a freedom hat

Twitter appears to be blocked where I am but I am sure someone has pointed out Sasha Talavera - the Swansea academic who came up with the data for that study - is a professor of Finance and happens to be one of the founders of Vox Ukraine, a free-market lobbying / analytics group with a pretty clear agenda when it comes to Russia.

If only Putin knew some of us would become FSB moles if he just put a couple of grand in our accounts. I had a dream last night that I was on an impossibly huge yacht and someone (possibly a Putin employee) was offering me a house with an indoor swimming pool if I worked for them, but then I was going in circles forever and couldn't get to some room where I had to go to accept the job!

Dreams now! Is there anything those Russians haven't infiltrated

Well at least the latest weather front from Russia is apparently going to be a heatwave, rather than the invading "Beast" that was completely to blame for Windrush, UK GDP flatlining etc.... Anyway, Corbyn can get some pro-tips from that other 80's Soviet mole outed by the Sunday Times, Neil Kinnock.

Jo Johnson being asked about Amber Rudd on Peston now - he supports her remaining in post. Iiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnteresting dinner table for him tonight.

Amelie's husband is no gentleman, for sure.

start reading some Western European history, dawg. Instead of that Marvel shite (not meant as a serious swipe and in jest!)

No, that is a fair point, my knowledge can be a little patchy for biographical reasons. Is there anything in particular you’d recommend, I’ve been meaning to make my way through the Hobsbawms at some point?

Obviously something that would be handy for a 60:40 split at another referendum would be some sort of massive gammon apoplexy.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-deal-talks-latest-eu-immigration-free-movement-offer-a8326101.html

I honestly don’t get second referendum people. The first one was massively toxic and horrific; even if Remain had won I don’t get how people expected the country to just carry on as before? We’d probably be seeing UKIP polling high again if that had happened.

There’s also no public support for a Remain vote even after almost two years of continuous bad news, higher prices in the shops, and even the the threat to the union.

It’s not that people can’t change their minds; it’s that the evidence so far is that they aren’t doing so.

xp
I'm not much of a reccommender AF tbh, but will go with what I'm currently on, currently am on Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, which is a lot of fun tbh. Last night I learned that Lloyd George's geographical knowledge was barely infant school level!

The Welsh Wizard didn't even know where Slovakia was.

reasonable, since Slovakia only came into existence in 1993

#GeographyPedant

well why were they discussing it at the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty? And also he wan't sure about New Zealand and huge swathes of North Africa that lines were being drawn on.

I suppose they were discussing it in the context of the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the constitution of Czechoslovakia, that part of the world was known as the "Czech Lands" (or alternatively Bohemia and Moravia) and the "Slovak Lands" and both were parts of the Austrian part of the dual monarchy IIRC

lots of "new countries" petitioning for independence at this juncture, so maybe a pass. But for someone leading the BE his geography was still erm.. rocky to say the least.

yeah fair enough, as I say I'm just being a pedant really!

Not picking on you gyac, you’re just the third one to say it - but that’s a bullshit strawman. There is no-one in this country* that now thinks that we’d carry on as before in the case of a remain vote either at the first referendum or some putative second one. But things are toxic and horrific now, in concrete ways - I’d take UKIP in the polls again vs their most crippling desires being played out, damaging people and families and institutions.

I’m not unbiased of course - I’m a European in the U.K., specifically an Irishman, so I’m bound to the two countries that will be (are being) most fucked by this.

*statement void if Tony Blair is in the country, but how likely is that?

xp

No worries Neil, I'll kill you last :p

Well neither am I, for exactly the same reasons. I have never felt more foreign or unwanted in this country than I have in the last two years. I am not saying all that out of some desire for things to continue as they have!

that part of the world was known as the "Czech Lands" (or alternatively Bohemia and Moravia) and the "Slovak Lands" and both were parts of the Austrian part of the dual monarchy IIRC

*Actually* Slovakia was part of the Hungarian empire*

*looked it up on Wikipedia

dangerous game is pedantry!

Seeing as May has a 2:1 degree in geography, perhaps I shouldn't ride Lloyd George too hard.

hah hoisted by my own petard!

^^^ it’s ‘hoist’

*ducks*

it's 'with your own'

*also ducking*

Board Announcement:

Neil's pedantry card has been revoked indefinitely, his statutory right to appeal has also been revoked until he can sort out his gramma ffs!:)