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

Being part of the EU is like an identity thing for a lot of people.

I mean, yeah? You don't really need the 'like' there.

Andrew, without wanting to go back to ground we've already covered: to see the EU as part of yer identity isn't really something that extends across most of the EU, and means radically different things in different pockets of it, so I don't think it's a given.

I'm not sure what you mean by that last. I'm not suggesting that everyone in the EU considers themselves European - apart from anything else, this would require me to ignore the fact that the UK is in the EU. But nor should it be news that people do consider themselves European, and consider it a good thing.

Being European is not the same thing as being in the EU. The conflation of the two - and consequently the idea that exit from the EU is an attack on your identity as a European - is what has always puzzled me about many of the UK people I've met. It seems divorced from how the EU is perceived in most of its member states.

the greatest trick the devil ever pulled etc

Fwiw I also dunno if I'm entirely comfortable w/ the idea that being European-qua-European is a particularly good thing, what with us having collectively raped and looted the rest of the world for centuries before becoming vaguely respectable by virtue of standing next to the US and letting their monstrosity make us look good. But that's a separate conversation.

pretty sure Greek people are still proud to belong to the EU

They fucking love it.

I think they love it more than we do tbh.

if you love milquetoast capitalism, you'll fucking love the EU

Being European is not the same thing as being in the EU. The conflation of the two - and consequently the idea that exit from the EU is an attack on your identity as a European - is what has always puzzled me about many of the UK people I've met. It seems divorced from how the EU is perceived in most of its member states.

― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 13 May 2018 11:48 (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think that's because the boris johnson imagination of the eu has managed to completely capture the popular narrative in this country so that its only seen as a load of belgian spoilsports with measuring tapes and clipboards shutting down hospitals for veterans because the door handles fall well outside common market guidelines. but there is a definite sense in other countries that participation in european institutions actually does contribute to a sense of national identity; a modern and internationalist placing of oneself in the world. Definitely I knew a lot of people that felt very strongly about this in Ireland when I lived there. One boyfriend in particular who would literally slap an EU flag on anything. This was like 2006 11`

To be clear, the EU is rather horrible. Its rhetorics of open-borders completely at odds with the heavy policing of its peripheries. It is a neoliberal expropriative machine at the service of global finance, etc etc. But the symbolic meaning it has in forming a kind of identity is real. In this sense I don't think it is possible to discount the very different experience that other European countries have had in their recent history of: colonialism, fascism, Stalinism.

v otm

Sure, they're not identical - the vision of Europeanness from the EU is the one that doesn't involve your Youtube suggestions being clogged up with people talking about European Destiny. It is designed as a reaction to proto-neo-Nazis.

I could definitely been clearer about that, you're right.

plaxico otm, but 'horrible', as they say, may depend on what you're comparing it to. As an example, the last million times I've heard a UK politician complain about being forced to do something by the EU, I've been firmly on the side of the EU - that impression accretes.

Sure, they're not identical - the vision of Europeanness from the EU is the one that doesn't involve your Youtube suggestions being clogged up with people talking about European Destiny. It is designed as a reaction to proto-neo-Nazis.

Come on now. The EU was designed as an economic counterweight to the US and USSR; it does not hold a monopoly on anti-nativist thought, and that kinda binary is part of what frustrates me about having these discussions in the UK.

but there is a definite sense in other countries that participation in european institutions actually does contribute to a sense of national identity; a modern and internationalist placing of oneself in the world.

Yeah, we had that in Portugal in the late 80's/early 90's - I even had a Panini sticker album about the EU! - but post-Eurozone crisis and enforced austerity from the EU, we've been pretty well cured of that. Same scenario amongst the other PIGS, from my experience.

The founding myths of the European Union - fraternity amongst peoples, rising back up after the trauma of two world wars, all that - are of course very inspiring but if you've paid attention to what the EU has been up to in the last decade or so it's pretty clear they have zilch to do with what the organisation functions for, and to frame the debate purely in those terms leads to this naive discourse that both a lot of leavers and remainers buy into, that it's about saying yay or nay to a set of "European values" that include bureaucracy and paternalism if you're pro-brexit or anti-nationalism and pacifism if you're anti.

FWIW I'd say the vast majority of people in this country just didn't notice the EU unless their attention was being explicitly drawn to it, which was usually via the right-wing press or when they were at the airport.

'Identity' is a particularly slippery issue here, given we are mostly talking about people who have never lived outside the EU - and when people disparage 'identity politics' they generally aren't talking about white British identity politics, which are never ever framed as such. I'd argue that the number of people who consider the EU to be part of their identity is dwarfed by the number that consider 'Britishness' or 'Englishness' part of their identity - and with it separation from EU, controls on immigration etc, which is the whole fucking problem.

(Of course the EU has not been a great advert for itself in recent years but I really don't think its behaviour towards Greece comes into it for many people in this country. And the cuddly brotherhood of nations thing, whatever's lurking behind it, is not easily dismissed when you consider most of the rest of Europe's history.)

Ultimately a lot of Brexit sentiment essentially boils down to English chauvinism of various stripes, and when you consider who always ends up at the shit end of it, opposing English chauvinism might actually be more important in the long run than the make-up of the British economy, or who leads the Labour Party, even if those issues can't be neatly separated.

I mean the number of British people who consider the EU to be part of their identity (although given the level of anti-Europe, anti-immigration sentiment in several other European countries, maybe I don't need that caveat).

FWIW I'd say the vast majority of people in this country just didn't notice the EU unless their attention was being explicitly drawn to it, which was usually via the right-wing press or when they were at the airport.

This was my point exactly. British "on-the-continent" separatism is continuous with but no identical with EU-regulations-gone-mad sentiment. I was just trying to point out that there is an existing sentiment that sees the EUs institutions as framing a certain kind of modern european identity. It does seem like this idea is so alien in England that I have literally never heard one English person espousing it in a way that feels convincing. There's always this awkward harking back to WWII.

plaxico otm, but 'horrible', as they say, may depend on what you're comparing it to. As an example, the last million times I've heard a UK politician complain about being forced to do something by the EU, I've been firmly on the side of the EU - that impression accretes.

― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, 13 May 2018 12:45 (fifty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes of course. the EU is horrible, but its better than many of the alternatives we can imagine, in particular the JRM "if its good enough for India" hellscape that lights up the eyes of the victorian-capitalist-brexiteer. Just because Donald Trump is terrible doesn't mean we have to pretend that Hillary was not also terrible. And there are definite positives we can say about the European Court of Human Rights and european standards for health and safety etc.

Yeah, we had that in Portugal in the late 80's/early 90's - I even had a Panini sticker album about the EU! - but post-Eurozone crisis and enforced austerity from the EU, we've been pretty well cured of that. Same scenario amongst the other PIGS, from my experience.

― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 13 May 2018 12:51 (fifty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is certainly not universal. the arrival of the troika in ireland definitely raised a lot of questioned and heightened a sense of ambivalence about the EU in Ireland, but I think Ireland's modern self-image as a tech and services country and its continued post-crash confidence is intimately tied to a shift from british colony to EU member and the very different notion of global participation implied in that.

I wasn't using "identity" in a context of identity politics here - it's more about projecting a set of values onto an institution and seeing any criticism of that institution as an attack on those values.

FWIW I'd say the vast majority of people in this country just didn't notice the EU unless their attention was being explicitly drawn to it, which was usually via the right-wing press or when they were at the airport.

Totally agreed! And I'm not under the misconception that anyone voted for Brexit in solidarity with Greece (and Spain, Italy, Portugal - hate to be pedantic about this, and Greece has definitley been hit the hardest, but I find it suspect how the only crisis that gets talked about is the one where the govt offered resistance against austerity). What angers me is not seeing a higher degree of informedness amongst ppl who cheerlead for the EU - the entire discussion around brexit, to an outsider, often feels entirely divorced from its political realities.

And the cuddly brotherhood of nations thing, whatever's lurking behind it, is not easily dismissed when you consider most of the rest of Europe's history.

Ok, we've definitley had this conversation on this thread before, but I maintain that the European Union is a consequence of peace in Europe, not an instigator of nor an assurance against it. What lead to this peace (apart from the obvious trauma of two conflicts as horrendous as the continent had ever seen) was a boom in propsperity, partially motivated by the creation of different welfare states and lesser inequality etc etc That's still the best guarantee we have against further conflict, I'd say - and while in the UK the EU definitley has nothing to do with the dismantlement of these securities (UK govts having been enthusiastically perpetuating it against themselves), in other countries the EU is the main culprit.

this is certainly not universal. the arrival of the troika in ireland definitely raised a lot of questioned and heightened a sense of ambivalence about the EU in Ireland, but I think Ireland's modern self-image as a tech and services country and its continued post-crash confidence is intimately tied to a shift from british colony to EU member and the very different notion of global participation implied in that.

I'm sure! And I don't mean to suggest that every country aside from the UK has become euroskeptical or cynical about the EU's advantages - very little is universal in the EU as it currently stands, and the problem of a lack of awareness/communication w/ the realities of other countries is definitley not a problem restricted to the UK. There's radically different discussions about what the EU means and what it's there for as you go from country to country, which was part of my initial point, you can't really build an identity around that.

There's radically different discussions about what the EU means and what it's there for as you go from country to country, which was part of my initial point, you can't really build an identity around that.

replace the EU with literally any traditional identity group and country with person and it means about the same?

Nah, you're over-relativizing there. A country may mean different things to its different inhabitants, but there is a certain amount of consensus on what issues have to be discussed, there is a certain media-set agenda that ppl abide by - otherwise this thread would be an impossibility. I'm not talking about some airy conception of EU values here, I'm talking about what its actual function is, in very concrete terms.

No, I'm not over-relativizing at all.

even my soft unionist dad says he'd now vote for a United Ireland if there were a border poll. I don't think Rees-Mogg and the hardline Brexit types can actually comprehend how the mood is shifting https://t.co/VyxtEqISPc

— Rachel 4 Yes on May 25th (@Rachelagain) May 15, 2018

Mogg might find ppl not doffing their caps and saying "g'day squire" if he ventured outside of his fantasy bubble.

odd that may might be twitchy about the public making unexpected decisions when prompted

Imagine being such an absurdly posh + spoilt brat as JRM is, that you can literally talk as much fantasy based spurious hare-brained claptrap as you like, and grown-ups don't even interrupt you and actually treat you like a very seriously important player. That's a big part of what is so wrong with this fucking country.

The only reason he's considered important is because he might be able to take the government down, regardless of how harebrained he is. If he wasn't, May would just ignore him rather than tiptoeing around him. I don't really recall anyone paying much attention to him as anything more than a backbench crank before the GE.

For what I can tell there's a reasonably clear customs union majority in the Commons if the Cabinet is minded to go for one, so it's unlikely JRM can have that much of an effect, but he's clearly considered a threat to someone.

His threat is also due to his (perceived) power to get the ERG to send the 51 48 letters to the 1922 committee that would cause an vote on May's leadership, though?

Theresa May’s inner Brexit cabinet is preparing to meet again, with ministers pessimistic about breaking the customs deadlock after Jacob Rees-Mogg said hard Brexit MPs would not back down.

Ahead of the subcommittee meeting on Tuesday, Rees-Mogg, who heads the European Research Group of pro-Brexit Conservative MPs, said he was not minded to take a more conciliatory position. “If we were to do so it would completely undermine the heart of why we voted to leave, rendering our almost-reclaimed sovereignty a myth,” he said.

heaven forfend that our sovereignty become a myth

Strong and stable government.

yes, JRM's standing as a player re: the parliamentary party and 1922 committee is easy enough to understand. But I also meant the manner of total deference from "heavyweights" like the Dimbleby bros, who just stand off and give the cunt the mike, but wasn't clear about that!

Oh yeah that shite is inexcusable

i'm out of the loop these days. why does JRM has the power to take the government down?

He chairs the European Research Group (ERG), about 60~ Tory MPs all in favour of hard Brexit. They could force a leadership challenge, which could bring the government down, or they could abstain from government votes/side with Labour, meaning the government couldn’t pass through any legislation. If May had won that 100+, they could be safely ignored, but since she didn’t...

are those 60 hard brexit tories really that unified that one person can make them do (or not do) a thing? last time i was following this stuff closely they all hated each other.

The ERG night have internal disagreements but 62(?) of them signed a letter to the pm putting across their view of what Brexit should be, and JRM was elected by the same people. They are probably more unified than either of the two main parties, but then they’re a single-issue interest group.

got it. thank you

the Boris dad-sprint out of parliament before he would face a Thornberry question on the Gaza massacre was about as amusing as something can be under the abysmal circumstances, but what a cunt. Didn't post it in case it was fake RT shit, but it looked genuine.

Really needed the Benny Hill music for that.

Overweight creepy comedian, a relic of the 70s, tarnished by persistent accusations of sexism and racism.. and Benny Hill. Thought I'd get that out there before the writers of HIGNFY do.

This is really good from Diane Abbott:

Abbott says there isn’t anything uniquely saintly about the Windrush generation. She argues they have done what all migrants do - contribute economically and culturally

— Maya Goodfellow (@MayaGoodfellow) May 16, 2018

Great speech in general although I would prefer terms like "contribute" to not even figure.

yeah that type of speak really needs to be fucked off, like as if the disabled and working poor don't get demonised enough already.

I meant to add the unemployed as well, of course

Did Abbott actually explain her opposition to an amnesty recently - given that statement about all migrants 'contributing'? There are better ways to frame all of this (which indeed a few others such as Lucas have tended to express better lately albeit under less scrutiny).

Owning the left by nationalising the trains.

Meanwhile this is comedy:

1/ This was, on reflection, a truly farcical escape attempt. Firstly, Javid's officials seemed stunned to see journalists. In the EU Parliament. They genuinely thought the Home Secretary could come to Brussels and we wouldn't find out about it, which is astonishing naivety. https://t.co/5ADDGlCINQ

— Nick Gutteridge (@nick_gutteridge) May 16, 2018

Also a bit surprised to learn that Express/Sun journalists bother to go to the EU Parliament tbh.

https://res.cloudinary.com/jpress/image/fetch/c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:eco,w_800/https://inews.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/SSSSSSS.jpg

Magid Magid, new mayor of Sheffield and the first Green mayor, deserves to be itt

omg