Brexit: A New Era for the UK?

[Stavros]

The UK has an unusual dilemma, because the engineers of Brexit never expected to win the Referendum, and had no plan to implement the most profund change to the country's trading relations in 50 years, given that before entering the European Economic Community in 1973, the UK had been part of, indeed a founder member of the European Free Trade Area (1960).

So it is not so much 'Get Brexit Done', but 'How to Make Brexit work', and so far the dislocations to trade make it hard to justify separate trade deals with New Zealand, Australia and Japan when in terms of value they are nowhere near as beneficial as being part of the EU's Single Market.

Covid-19 may have distorted the processing of Brexit, but it seems to me that unless the EU breaks apart, the UK must, at some time in the next 5 years, find a way to gain access to the Single Market again. There may now be a critique of global supply chains -to be replaced with what cost-effective arrangement? -, and a diminution of trade with China, but the UK has been part of an interdependent global economy arguably since the formation of the Honorable East India Company in 1600. It has never been an independent state, in economic terms, and basically, we don' know how to be one, and the influx of foreign direct investment seems to me to prove this point.

Left to stand alone, the UK would fall over. Now, because of Brexit, we are on crutches. I see a wheelchair coming not so far into the future. Electric vehicles like vaccinations are not a magic bullet that will solve the problems of production and trade, we can't survive on solos. We are an ensemble.

[obslam]

And idiots like Obslam actually voted for and continue to support this shit show.

Actually I didn't. I just accepted the democratic majority. And the virtual irrelevancy of it.

The idiots are those who can't accept that Brexit is yesterday's news and just hasn't turned out to be anywhere near as important as they predicted. To anybody with knowledge, it was always going to be a sideshow.

Fortunately, the UK is a very successful country, with an incredibly solid economy, and great place to live. A country where anybody can achieve anything they want to - if they are willing to work for it. Of course, those who haven't done so well, having wanted everything handed to them on a plate to them instead of working for it, often disagree.

[Stavros]

-Brexit as Yesterday's news, that has been a permanent topic of the news bulletins since it started.

-An irrelevance? Since 2016: Three Prime Ministers, Two General Elections- in any other advanced democracy this would be classified as poitical instability.

-A sideshow that has seen the Conservative Party torn apart by Brexit, lifelong members expelled because they don't agree with the leader, even Thatcher did not expel her critics. And this is not a fringe party, but the party of Government.

-A successful country
--where Brexit devalued the Pound sterling by 17% in the first six months of Brexit;
--a successful country that has over 2,000 food banks;
--where the low-paid have their wages topped up by 'in-work benefits';
--where the social care system and the NHS both have staff shortages in part due to EU citizens leaving because of Brexit;
--where trillions of dollars of daily trade on the Stock Market has moved from London to Amsterdam and Paris;
--where inflation is rising, debt mounting, government spending is out of control -£37 billion spent on a useless 'test and trace' system to tackle Covid-19-
--where a shortage of HGV drivers has led to the Govt issuing visas to citizens of the EU so they can work in the UK;

-As for Northern Ireland and the contradictions of Brexit- Government policy is: 'fuck Northern Ireland, and fuck International Law'-as neat a summary of Brexit as you can get.

Is the UK a great place to live? Yes, in many of its aspects it is.

But has the quality of life declined since 2016? For me it has. Poly Toymbee, grand-daughter of Arnold, has defended the Blair Government, using this as the argument-

"By 2010, the Labour government had lifted a million children and a million pensioners out of poverty. I once chronicled Labour’s social programmes and their effects from 1997 to 2010. Spending on the NHS rose by an average of 7% a year, more than since it was founded in 1948. Waiting lists, which had been the NHS rationing system, fluctuating with spending, were reduced to near zero by 2010 for the first time. Though social care was never resolved, local authorities had more money to cover its rising costs. After 2010, the NHS suffered the leanest years in its history. Delaying operations adds to risk – and the great rise in the waiting lists to more than 4 million people in England happened well before the pandemic.

Then there was the abrupt closure of most of Labour’s 3,500 Sure Start children’s centres – the greatest social vandalism of the decade. Here, right from the birth of a child, families could be helped early. Here were centres of support with midwives, health visitors and mental health teams – every service within pram-pushing distance. It was a network of help, a haven for victims of domestic abuse, an early warning for any delayed development in a child. Not only has most of that gone, but health visitors have been cut right back. There is fewer than one school nurse for every 10 schools in England, yet these are vital support for children seeking help. Schools have lost staff, their funding per pupil now below 2010 levels."
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...t-cruel-policy

It never needed to be like this, Brexit has been a one-way street to a dead end. Now ask, who has benefited most from Brexit?

[Jericho]

And idiots like Obslam actually voted for and continue to support this shit show.

Yeah, there's definitely a hamlet somewhere missing its fornicating imbecile.

[obslam]

It's strangely satisfying seeing, from the front page, that there have been replies but not being having to read them due to having placed the trolls on the ignore list!

[Jericho]

Well folks, it's astonishing, I stand corrected.
The sunlit uplands of Brexit have been revealed to me...Nah, I'm kidding, it's still shit...And now it stinks of rotting fish, too!

How dare those fucking French stick to our deal...That *we* brokered!

[Laphroaig]

-Brexit as Yesterday's news, that has been a permanent topic of the news bulletins since it started.

Still ongoing.

https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2021-10...eement-with-eu

Plus there's a number of other things that have yet to be fully implemented.

I think we all know who the real troll on this thread is...

[Stavros]

It's strangely satisfying seeing, from the front page, that there have been replies but not being having to read them due to having placed the trolls on the ignore list!

In an Open Democracy, free debate is essential to its survival, which is why there is a crisis in the US as politicians and broadcast media people who support Trump's lies seek to re-invent historical events we have all seen with our own eyes, and condemn anyone who disagrees with them. In the UK, Brexit now is simultaneously present in most Government policy, but neither the Government nor much of the media wants to openly debate it.

obslam has a right to ignore people whose posts he doeesn' agree with, but looking back, what did he ever contrbute to the Brexit debate other than references to Government bonds which are not even central to the management of Brexit? His right not to debate in someone else's hands would simply shut it down.

We are in danger of reproducing the characteristic of a one-party state without the bloodshed and violence that has often created them, though in the US at least some people are wondering if the time has come to re-do 1776 with killings attached, presumably so that their new United States will be White and Christian. The UK version of such people, 'Tommy Robinson' has few supporters, and is his own worst enemy, but he does exist (and is supported from the US by Paul Gosar, no surprises there) -but with a feeble opposition party in the UK, and the Governing party in the US in conflict with itself, the decisions made since 2016 may turn out to have long term consequences more destructive than was considered possible at the time.

How can Democracy survive if the people don't believe in it?

[Stavros]

Too late for me to add to the comment in the post about violence-

"In a January [2021] poll conducted by the American Enterprise Institute, researchers asked respondents whether “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” Thirty-six percent of Americans, and an astounding 56 percent of Republicans, said yes."
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazi...xt-insurgency/

[obslam]

Yes, Stavros, hence I blocked him.

As I wrote before, Brexit makes very, very little difference to 99.9% of UK lives. The majority of people can see this, not surprisingly, at it's quite clear.

I just feel sorry who can't get over democracy not going the way they wanted.