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

lol

Yes, good luck finding deep enough waters for nuclear submarines anywhere else in the UK but Scotland. Pay up or shut up.

I briefly got in what the brits would call a row with a far-leftie on twitter who earnestly believes ash sarkar is a psyop and I need to lie down

seems legit

shd've told them to literally go fuck themselves

http://www.itv.com/news/2018-07-19/chief-whip-julian-smith-cannot-keep-his-job-say-tory-mps/

Fucking w/pairing is startlingly stupid. It might get you one vote, but with a margin like that do you really, really want to get into the business of trying to make sure you can get the entire DUP to rock up from Northern Ireland at v. short notice? (Actually, didn't that happen in the 70s? Lots of hospital-bed-wheeled-to-chamber voting etc)

1. This is a very big deal - Theresa May is reportedly going to denounce the Irish border 'backstop' at a speech in Belfast tomorrow. https://t.co/4D6cuVt63o

— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) July 19, 2018

holy fuck at that thread, good luck UK

This has been a genuinely astonishing couple of weeks from May. I’m not sure what, in terms of British leadership, you could compare the depths of her cowardice to. idk how she isn’t too embarrassed to get up in the morning.

I think she’s ultimately just delaying having to deal with the ERG, rather than expecting the EU to cave in to a raft of increasingly impossible demands, in the hope that when the implications of crashing out become clearer to the public but it’s a terrible strategy and, unless there are parallel secret negotiations going on with the EU27 behind the scenes, leaves her negotiating Brexit looking like a lunatic.

*in the hope that when the implications of crashing out become clearer to the public they will be on board with a compromise

My background knowledge is cursory but this is a kind of flabbergasting development. I truly hope that the yknow armed sectarian conflict doesn’t pick right up where it left off.

.@theresa_may says 70 "technical notices" for businesses and households will be published in Aug and Sept setting out how we can all prepare for a no-deal Brexit (should that be what happens). Yikes

— Robert Peston (@Peston) July 18, 2018

Reprint of the Dig For Victory posters pending, I assume.

I’m 99.5% sure the UK will fold like a cheap ironing board before it gets to that stage but the slight possibility they won’t has me idly considering exit strategies.

better start stockpiling some canned basics!

If May had any sense of shame she would have died of embarrassment by now. I can't even stand her, but still feel the odd twinge of sympathetic embarrassment on her behalf, so embarrassing is her game.

xxp I don’t really have ANY faith in this analysis.

All signs are pointing to the government preparing to foist the blame on variously the EU, Ireland and anyone who stands in their way of getting a deal that takes all of the benefits of EU membership but none of the costs. The situation in NI is more fractious than it’s been in a long time. Couple this with a media keen to offer coverage to the most revanchist and nakedly bigoted people in the country, and it’s incredibly dangerous territory. Even if they somehow fudge a deal they will still have divided all the country and stirred up so much trouble for people.

You can blame this on the Tories - Europe has taken down three prime ministers and will no doubt take down May as well - but British exceptionalism and short-term thinking is behind every twist and turn here. They will fuck the UK but they’ll fuck Ireland too and if that leads to unity in my lifetime, it’s no less than they deserve.

Oh and by the way, fuck the complicit media letting people parrot “no deal is better than a bad deal” completely unchallenged. That something favoured by maybe 10% of people at an absolute maximum is seriously under consideration is nothing less than a dereliction of duty and everyone who let this shit go by unchallenged or undiscussed deserves to be completely ashamed.

wow otm.

Yep.

I should say I am a naturally pessimistic person (no shit) and I hope what SV says is true, but I am almost as angry this morning as I was when the vote happens and regardless of the outcome nobody should ever forgive or forget this.

two most likely outcomes BRINO or no deal ?

I’m confused. I thought after the 2017 GE the parliamentary arithmetic meant that hard brexit was dead in the water but all of a sudden everyone seems to be talking up the prospects of no deal being the most likely deal ?!

It would be dead in the water if May was prepared to oppose it, but she isn't. It's difficult to overstate how colossaly, dangerously irresponsible she's been in trying to cling onto her job - which is obviously untenable - for so long. Or at least it would be if her likely successors weren't all even worse.

I can only assume she believes that Corbyn or the right of the Conservative party would be so damaging she needs to cling on in order to save the country from itself but it’s not a sustainable position. At some point she is going to have to face up to the ERG.

It's more about the terror of going down as Britain's worst post-war Prime Minister I think.

On page 2 of the FT this morning was an article saying that the government is going to ‘waive’ collection of customs duties and some customs inspections for a period after Brexit which sounds like they just worked out how complicated and expensive that is and how unprepared for it they are. The lost revenue will be billions.

that ship has definitely sailed xp

I can only assume she believes that Corbyn or the right of the Conservative party would be so damaging she needs to cling on in order to save the country from itself but it’s not a sustainable position. At some point she is going to have to face up to the ERG.

I'm not sure why she would object to the the right of the Conservative Party, she seems to be dancing to enough of their tunes.

She’s a racist authoritarian but I think she’s a racist authoritarian who is under fewer illusions about Britain’s global competitiveness in a situation where European airspace is closed, where the entire financial services industry has decamped to Frankfurt and Dublin, where food costs 50% more, etc, than Mogg is.

it's just super-cool that we're being steered off into the abyss by a pm no-one voted for

It's both sobering and making-me-want-to-drink that this era of unfathomable challenges is in the hand of perhaps the worst politicians in living memory, across the board.

it's an all-star lineup of idiots, fucking idiots, total fucking idiots and michael gove

She’s a racist authoritarian but I think she’s a racist authoritarian who is under fewer illusions about Britain’s global competitiveness in a situation where European airspace is closed, where the entire financial services industry has decamped to Frankfurt and Dublin, where food costs 50% more, etc, than Mogg is.

Yes, she did well to stand up to him for 5 seconds.

gyac otm

yeah

good mourning obv

extremely good country

great britain amirite

is this just the unwinding of an untenable nation, regardless of the trigger

i mean, aside from the uh "hassle", is the twenty-year end result of ireland united and dealing with/repatriating hardliners, scotland being a proper country like us, and wales being england for the non-english leaving england nakedly england without empirical uk figleaf a welcome progression if nothing else

potentially. i guess - just gotta get through the years of subsisting on soup consisting entirely of twigs and flavoured with pebbles first

well

look

i mean

it only killed a few million of us didnt it

and transatlantic travel is a piece of piss these days as i understand it

it was different for youse tho, we're actual human beings over here iirc

I love it that Tories are breaking up the UK by accident, definitely a very cunning flan. I'm ready for a steady diet of tree bark, clay and exhumed human corpses!

oh don't worry there'll be plenty of fresh ones to chew on first

The thing that Mogg etc don't seem to realise is that a disastrous hard Brexit is probably the single quickest route to Schengen and the Euro, because if the worst case scenario happens then enough people in the country will be screaming to get back into the EU. Unless they find a version of Brexit that broadly works for enough people then the whole cause is fucked.

it only killed a few million of us didnt it

A price always worth paying!

super-grim lol @ the thought of my idle “I wonder what my ancestors did to survive the Famine?” thought being answered by “guess we’re going to find out!”

At least ye are on the side of the Irish Sea with all the beef and cheese.

it's almost like being entirely insulated from hardship from birth and raised on a steady diet of swivel-eyed ideology and constant reassurance about your special status makes you an idiot xp

This shower of absolute fucking idiots

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/991570/Brexit-news-Dominic-Raab-Michel-Barnier-meeting-Chequers-White-Paper-ridiculed-errors

seeing rumours that 5pm tonight will see an announcement that Prince Phillip has died

a single bright spot in a sea of darkness