worst reason to go ahead with brexit

you can vote for the best reason too like i dont rly care about the result tbh unless its 49.5-50.5 in which case its clearly the most binding shit ever

You missed "failing government set the controls for the heart of the sun and locked the cockpit door"

musnt grumble, seatbelt sign is on

it'd be a shame to have spent two years talking about brexit and then not brexit, right

daraghmac you cursed Londoner, #FBPE, Fred, er, fantasy unicorn... any of those work?

i can literally match each of these to a poster in the uk politics thread, some who even live in other countries who brexit would not affect, but that would be cruel and i have to teach early tomorrow.

they are all magnificent options, A+ poll

*some of whom. clearly not cut out as a teacher

Missing a “let’s do it and be legends” option which is more or less a “bring on the free market hellscape, my hedge fund in Ireland will make me a mint” option.

"That tiny Greece, with an economy that amounts to 1–1.5 percent of EU GDP, should have been made the pivot for this disaster twists European history into the image of bitter caricature. It is a spectacle that ought to inspire outrage. Millions have suffered for no good reason. But for all our indignation we should give that point its full weight. The crucial words are “for no good reason.”

The words of a bitter tankie? nah LSE alumnus who teaches in top US universities actually!

let’s do it and be legends

let’s do it and be legends

They're all bad but the staining of UK's pure democracy one is probably the most annoying. The Farageists will cry betrayal whatever happens so whats the point of tiptoeing around them and in effect letting them win twice?

Ordinary voters have plenty of other more valid reasons to be enraged and disillusioned by the state of our democracy that aren't going to go away whatever happens and will probably get worse.

Polling data, probably, but the idea that it doesn’t make much difference because things can’t get meaningfully worse is as wildly optimistic as the most starry-eyed FBPE-er.

Meanwhile if we're talking democracy then the fact that nearly everyone in the country under the age of 45 voted Labour in 2017 should have been taken as evidence of a backlash. It was also a backlash against austerity but they can't be separated.

The fact that the Tories didn't heed this backlash and tried to carry on as before citing The Will Of The People is a big reason why we're in this mess. There isn't actually a democratic majority for what they're trying to do. Even in most leave voting constituencies you had 40%+ voting Remain and that's more than enough to swing a seat at a GE.

The main hole in the 'third referendum here we go' argument is that the idea of holding one would be sufficiently horrifying or wearying to enough voters that any leader proposing it would be unlikely to win a majority.

A more pertinent argument is the damage that would be done by a structural rise in support for the Far Right but I think that's going to happen regardless.

It drives me mad that the news media is Trying To Understand Populism instead of standing up to racism, and it is especially galling re: Brexit that its focus is on ‘those left behind’ when those people, on their own, were not enough to trigger the Leave win. For that - getting a referendum in the first place, and having sufficient numbers to push Leave over the line - we have to look to the well-off bigots I’ve always called Golf Nazis. We would not have Brexit but for the Golf Nazis, and the news media needs to look at them more than it needs to go on another John Harris-style poverty safari ooop North.

I hate the way the bbc keeps referring to the Italian far-right party as "anti-establishment". I know they are completely in thrall to j Peterson thought at the moment, which probably means not calling a fash a fash and all that, but fuck off guys.

Definitely using the term Golf Nazis from now on.

A more pertinent argument is the damage that would be done by a structural rise in support for the Far Right but I think that's going to happen regardless.

Yes, absolutely. Brexit will not appease them.

We'll also see a much more advanced institutional hostility to non-white, non-Anglo people than May and Javid have been able to get away with to date. I can't envisage a situation in which laws introduced to determine which European people are eligible for medical treatment, bank accounts, etc, won't be used disproportionately to make the lives of non-white British people harder, a situation in which the relaxation of labour laws won't disproportionately affect British minorities, etc.

do it and be legends not afaict an ilxor trait but take the mustnt grumble as the personality type equivalent i think

Where's "cause I've misplaced my magic wand that will instantly slam on the brakes"

i have no blobs and i must poll
— harlan ellison

where is 'can finally indulge cannibalistic urges' option

^yes I feel unrepresented

"terrified of staining UK's pure democracy" is the funniest reason

A more pertinent argument is the damage that would be done by a structural rise in support for the Far Right but I think that's going to happen regardless.

This was previously my argument but I’ve come round to your way of thinking. I guess it’s inevitable when the literal government are enabling this all the way to the bitter end.

The stealing of corpses from cemeteries became so common that in many regions armed guards had to be posted on their gates. Hunting and killing people for their flesh was also a common phenomenon. In the town of Pugachev it was dangerous for children to go out after dark since there were known to be bands of cannibals and traders who killed them to eat or sell their tender flesh. In the Novouzensk region there were bands of children who killed adults for their meat...

Moreover, the craving for human flesh which starving people can easily develop once they have eaten it was not peculiar to any social class. Hungry doctors often succumbed to eating it after long spells of relief work in the famine region, and they too stated that the worst part of the experience was "the insuperable and uncomfortable craving" which they had acquired for human flesh.

lol we're all gonna taste quite good with a bit of garlic and some stock

Sulking tankie ftw

Where's the 'then we can get back to being a British Empire again' option?

also known as 'the empire strikes back' option

Actual answer for me is that Brexit just isn't that big of a deal. The problems this country is facing won't be sorted by going ahead or not with Brexit. People are dying from austerity, racism and nationalism and inequality have always been ever present and this is all an expression of problems that aren't going away.

Brexit presented as a point of national suicide/Barbarians at the gates is just not my angle. The work to dismantle this stuff is ongoing in whatever way we can, with bigger problems on the way.

I think ShariVari nailed it upthread with "the idea that it doesn’t make much difference because things can’t get meaningfully worse is as wildly optimistic as the most starry-eyed FBPE-er."

Basically: This poll is bad and wrong. Please feel shame for posting it.

the only hope sustaining the most vulnerable in our society is to have an austerity-reversing budget rejected by the EU

Oh things may get far, far worse but being a member of the EU or not won't have anything to do with it. It's a side-issue.

Sulking tankie ftw

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 21 November 2018 11:14 (twenty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3

greece can tbh tho eat my ass

If it was a side issue then the people most invested in making things worse wouldn't be so single-minded in their pursuit of Brexit.

the only hope sustaining the most vulnerable in our society is to have an austerity-reversing budget rejected by the EU

The fantasy of the benign cuddly EU is as annoying as any of the poll options but given the UK is outside the Eurozone and with its own central bank the EU would have no authority to do this afaik.

that's my understanding too, it's part of the UK's long-running balancing act on the edge of the EU, but you'd think from all the noise that it's a shame we're not deeply embedded in the european project

their austerity policy is what will tear the EU apart in the end.

I won't lie and say there isn't a touch of glee in the prospect of ye/we getting back in but shackled to the Euro*

*it superseded the drachma, the pound sterling can get it.

Yeah the Eurozone deficit rules that came into force around 2011 or so were part of a bundle of legislation that Cameron opposed for other reasons. There were a lot of idiots who jumped to its defence under the rationale that if Cameron opposed it then it must have been good. In reality it was the economic effect of Mogadon at best and actively harmful and destructive at worst.

what irks is not so much the idea that the EU is benign so much as the idea that it represents a stable and sustainable alternative to the chaos of brexit. the european project has always been deliberately engineered to be unsustainable; jean monnet's approach was to create a series of provisional agreements and institutions that would require further action down the road. get your foot in the door and we'll work the details out later is not so far from 'let's do it and be legends'

Never settle for anything less than absolute perfection.

No results found for "jean monnet still gleaming".

the charge is not imperfection but a deliberate/necessary dishonesty and lack of clarity in the way it has developed & will develop. cf. the ongoing european constitutional shitshow

I thought dismissing ppl who have strong rational dislikes/criticisms of the EU/The Clintons as narcissists or Utopian dreamers was more of an American approach to political discussion, pom.

Except Britain already has special status and is to an extent insulated from the worst aspects of that - eg the need to brutalise its own citizens in order to preserve an unworkable currency union, rather than just for shits and giggles as our government prefers. We're quite likely to apply to rejoin at some point in the future on almost certainly inferior terms.

the special status was never going to last

ive never been able to parse legitimate concerns from yknow 'legitimate concerns' but i wasnt built for modern life tbf

I come from a country wrecked by would-be communist ideology, a country that has almost always benefitted from modelling itself after the West. It is currently ruled by the same cartoonishly incompetent party in all but name and by the Orthodox Church, which is an extension of Russian colonialism in all but name. It is a complete and utter disaster that serves to further cement an age-old culture of petty theft and corruption so forgive me for not seeing the EU as the chief culprit here. That being said, you're obviously entitled to your British perspective (and I don't meant this sarcastically).

(Forgive the redundancies.)

I don’t think the argument is that it’ll ‘stain Britain’s pure democracy’ as much as Britain’s democracy is old and creaky and it might not survive a broken hip.

xxp chief culprit wrt what?

The current state of Europe as whole.

The current state of Europe as whole.

That's so vague as to be meaningless, no?

I don't think the EU is the main culprit in the rise of far-right nationalism in Europe. I do think it's the main culprit for a disastrous austerity policy that has some pretty huge damage to much of Southern Europe. I mean, by definition!

I don't know about Greece and Italy, but much of the EU money we receive in Romania gets embezzled by ex-'communist' businessmen who have successfully curbed the judiciary struggle against corruption by painting the National Anticorruption Directorate as Soros/EU tools. Hungary and Poland are worse still, as far as I can tell. Is the EU to blame?

Putting pressure on governments to cut government spending is not a sensible way to fight corruption.

my argument is that the nature of the relationship between the EU & britain
is uncertain, in flux and seemingly chaotic not just bc of current British incoherence and incompetence but also and more fundamentally bc the EU is provisional and unsustainable and constantly evolving in obscure and undemocratic ways.

this uncertainty around the EU makes it's increasingly aggressive economic programme alarming but it also makes it the only real vessel of hope I can see for britain politically, and the best chance at making lasting fundamental changes to what is probably the longest enduring extant political system itw and perhaps even ending its domination by what must be the most successful political party of all time. you don't need to be optimistic abt the EU to think it's preferable to westminster.

you don't need to be optimistic abt the EU to think it's preferable to westminster

does not apply if you support "the most successful political party of all time" of course, the reasons for which are surely part of the issue and hence part of the headwind non-supporters currently face

wow this turned int

Damn phone. Meant to offer condolences to darragh on this thread turning into an actual conversation

i have a rep for aha peevishness but rly im v easygoing

mentions of 32 counties, none, obv

Only playing :)

This whole topic is more civil when we let each other think half baked feelings out loud instead of demanding some kind of lol orthodox realism

yeah

its a v interesting behemoth when removed from actual daily politics

See pomenitul is off on his Zizek routine again.

Don't worry, the Maoist militias will soon emerge from the maquis and all shall be well again.

otmor

If it was a side issue then the people most invested in making things worse wouldn't be so single-minded in their pursuit of Brexit.

The '08 crash was an opportunity for Osborne and his class to enact austerity and I see Brexit as a continuation of that.

It doesn't change the overall picture where people need to own all of the wealth they create. Being in the EU or out of it is neither here nor there.

HUNGARY: we elected a fascist despot

ITALY: yeah we elected some of those too

THE EU: Hmm. This is a major challenge. Perhaps we need a new consensus on migration. We b--

ITALY: we have a budget deficit of 3%

THE EU: HOW FUCKING DARE YOU. YOU ARE RISKING THE WHOLE EUROPEAN PR

— ▀▀▀▀▀▀ (@immolations) November 21, 2018

It doesn't change the overall picture where people need to own all of the wealth they create. Being in the EU or out of it is neither here nor there.

By that logic the overall picture hasn't really changed in 40 years (or 100 years lol). I think that might be a little too much perspective for people who have experienced an obvious negative material change in their lives over that time, not to mention the people who are about to experience another one.

Or more than 100 years, since modern capitalism really.

The material change is experienced whether we are in or out of the EU. Yes if its a no deal its a disaster but that's the set-up of the system. No deal today, or something else tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

essentially narrator otm

35 votes prob also wins a reref iirc

Well it's done now

the spread of votes here suggests that an actual resolutin may be diff*executed*

like tbh i was happy enough with those options at the time and tk knows i dont as a rule like to overestimate any electorate nor system of representatives but fuck me even i never considered "bored of discussing it now" as the winning ticket

as usual, time has revealed me to be just another naif cloaked in protective crank casing eh

it'd be a shame to have spent two years talking about brexit and then not brexit, right

― rob, Wednesday, 21 November 2018 01:17 (eleven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

this guy otoh, this guy knows whats up

German "punk" bands being denied entry to the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/13/german-band-may-have-been-refused-uk-entry-because-they-have-day-jobs