How do we resolve the Brexit mess?

[Mr Kobayashi]

I completely understand why it never happened. My point was pointing out to say 'we didn't want EFTA' is wrong because voters were never asked and at least a proportion of those that voted leave will have listened to Gove and Farage and others and believed them when they implied a version of EFTA was on the table,and possible.

Semantically, you are right. But not in reality, Brexit was meant to be a vague idea and mean different things to different people in order to drive through the most extreme version.

It was the wet dream of spoilt rich people who felt they didn't have enough money and power already and had to hark back to the golden age of empire.

I don't see how it would have ever played out differently. All the politicians involved were jostling for their positions, their prosperity was decoupled from the prosperity of their country or even the success of their policies in government.

If Maggie May had been willing to sacrifice her party for the good of the country then it might have been different, but the government would have collapsed and she'd have been immediately out of a job.

A "grand coalition" type of Brexit Government would have been necessary to push through EFTA or any other freedom of movement betrayal. Such a coalition has never happened before in our parliamentary system.

 

[inbetween]

Wasn't it the lack of regulatory standards that led to the Global Financial Crash?

By tearing up the rules, you give organisations carte blanche to mis-treat staff, ignore safety standards, basically whatever the product, the public will have no idea how it is produced. Most "rules" are there to protect the end user.

Are you actually advocating the way China goes about doing things?

I'm not arguing to reduce workers rights, I'm talking about market rules and frictions. If the EU was in favour of reducing those frictions then the UK would have a free trade deal today but we haven't. The EU prefers to instead protect its internal domestic market despite the fact that quite clearly it is dying.

The other things you have mentioned such as worker rights have no relevance whatsoever. We can have strong worker rights without relying upon a political juggernaut to do it all for us. We have very decent worker rights today and Labour are strengthening those rights, plainly the EU need to exist for this to happen.

The financial crisis was nearly 20 years ago. Has the EU reacted and recovered rapidly from it? Of course not, the Eurozone still hasn't recovered from it. Spain and Italy have not returned their economy to its equivalent size to pre-2008, it's unbelievably bad. The US economy has doubled in size in that time period, China has quadrupled in size! Europe is being swallowed alive, the market is dead!

 

[Vic]

But we didn’t want EFTA!

As next best thing, it was the obvious way to deal with a 52/48 vote, but the mad Brexiteers wanted their mad 100% outcome (or even madder, they wanted unicorns and cakeism).

Whether the other EFTA members wanted us throwing our weight around in EFTA (with mad Brexiteers saying "this isn't the Brexit we voted for") is another matter.

 

[Vic]

If you're talking about the,likes of Norway in terms of a relationship, unfortunately Johnson and his cronies ruled that out and so it became a non starter.

We never did "give all the money" as we had a significant rebate that was exclusive to the UK.

Norway? "We could be like Norway..." (Nigel Farage)

 

[The perfect fumble]

That's a logical argument based on reason. Do you think that would have cut through with people who are of average or below average intelligence that vote was mostly influenced by emotion?

I happen to live in the archetypal southern market town that voted as a majority for Brexit for racist reasons that now has noticeably more African immigrants working in health and social care.

Labour has to find a way for reason to cut through, they really have no choice. If they don't we all have to dance to Farage and the Daily Mail.

The west has fallen prey to shysters and hucksters at both ends of the political spectrum, for far too long the centre left has not created a consensus around the real problems faced by men and women in the street and without that broad mutual understanding, no solution can be found, and why? Because in the absence of a consensus the centre left can't sell it.

The centre right is in a worse state, compassionate capitalism was always a hard sell, fundamentally because it was bollocks. But historically the conservatives have done well, at least electorally, because a kind of patrician, civic duty, make it up as you go along fudge sufficed, it was kind of where post-war Britain was anyways.

But that came to an end in the 80s, the nail in the coffin of the post-war social contract

Thatcher kicked out the wets and Reagan did the same across the Atlantic, and in doing so they started a revolution, the outcome of which they couldn't imagine. Now the Thatcherites and Reaganites are the new wets and they've either lost control of their respective parties, or in the process of doing so, and why? Because they opened a window to the mad and the bad to their right, fantasists and crooks who've now outflanked them.

A reality based, class centred and ruthlessly honest centre left is the only hope, Labour isn't there yet and the odds are it'll never get there, but if it doesn't we're fucked. Reform won't replace the Tories, but that's not their mission, they want the Conservatives to be Reform in all but name and as for the left? When folk like you and I are ostensibly on the left, the idea we could build a consensus around tea or coffee is a stretch.

 

[Vic]

It was, though it was Gove that spoke of a free trade area from Iceland to Russia, it was Farage that advocated the Norway or Swiss models. I think both were to stupid to realise what it meant for free movement hence their back pedalling into a hard brexit. It fooled many voters though including sorry to say my parents who went on to regret their vote.

Hey, that's my line...

Not just Gove though - a deeply dishonest bit of the official Leave campaign. "Some claim we will not get a trade deal but there is a European free trade zone from Iceland to the Russian border and we will be part of it. The idea that Britain will be the only country in Europe not to be part of this zone is silly."

 

[Vic]

They could point out that the loss of free movement has not brought down the number of people arriving, and those folk arriving now tend to stay, whereas under free movement large numbers went back home or to pastures new over time.

And even the most ignorant racist must've noticed that all those Poles, Romanians, Estonians with their orthodox Christianity, Catholicism and white skin, have now been replaced with Nigerians, Asians and various other folk whose skin colour and religion they've always detested.

Don't forget the Bloviator made a point of saying the EU was racist because it favoured white people (most of the EU citizenry).

 

[bluethrunthru]

Hey, that's my line...

Not just Gove though - a deeply dishonest bit of the official Leave campaign. "Some claim we will not get a trade deal but there is a European free trade zone from Iceland to the Russian border and we will be part of it. The idea that Britain will be the only country in Europe not to be part of this zone is silly."

and there in a nutshell was the "they need us more than we need them" attitude. They thought we could leave and nothing would change it would just allow them to get around the coming EU tax changes.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

Labour has to find a way for reason to cut through, they really have no choice. If they don't we all have to dance to Farage and the Daily Mail.

The west has fallen prey to shysters and hucksters at both ends of the political spectrum, for far too long the centre left has not created a consensus around the real problems faced by men and women in the street and without that broad mutual understanding, no solution can be found, and why? Because in the absence of a consensus the centre left can't sell it.

The centre right is in a worse state, compassionate capitalism was always a hard sell, fundamentally because it was bollocks. But historically the conservatives have done well, at least electorally, because a kind of patrician, civic duty, make it up as you go along fudge sufficed, it was kind of where post-war Britain was anyways.

But that came to an end in the 80s, the nail in the coffin of the post-war social contract

Thatcher kicked out the wets and Reagan did the same across the Atlantic, and in doing so they started a revolution, the outcome of which they couldn't imagine. Now the Thatcherites and Reaganites are the new wets and they've either lost control of their respective parties, or in the process of doing so, and why? Because they opened a window to the mad and the bad to their right, fantasists and crooks who've now outflanked them.

A reality based, class centred and ruthlessly honest centre left is the only hope, Labour isn't there yet and the odds are it'll never get there, but if it doesn't we're fucked. Reform won't replace the Tories, but that's not their mission, they want the Conservatives to be Reform in all but name and as for the left? When folk like you and I are ostensibly on the left, the idea we could build a consensus around tea or coffee is a stretch.

Or maybe save yourself the paragraphs and accept the obvious. Labour doesn't need to sell reason, it needs to sell a narrative.

The way of telling people why the country is the way it is and how they will make it better. They did a very mild and timid version of this in order to get in to government.

All that money spent on advertising consumer products doesn't appeal to people's logic but to their emotions, who they are, who they see themselves as, who they want to be.

That's how a referendum will be won in the future.

Not by the prospects of a rise in x% in GDP or cost of foreign holidays.

 

[bluethrunthru]

lucky buggers