Brexit: A New Era for the UK?

[Stavros]

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.

If you are reading this obslam, then I have to say your indifference to the facts is breathtaking. Brexit is not just a matter of a democratic decision resulting in something I am opposed to. In the past, General Elections have brought Conservatives into power I was opposed to, whose policies I opposed, but who I could oppose in the political realm through active politics to throw them out of office in subsequent Council and General Elections.

The difference is that Brexit is the consequence of a Referendum whose result, in my opinion, was not sufficiently emphatic for it to be implemented -legally, in the UK a Referendum only has an 'advisory capacity' for the Government- Cameron could have noted the result, but refused to implement it, on the basis that the winning margin was too narrow, and that the absentions from the vote meant it was not meaningful for so important a topic.

In the past, conditions were attached in order to ensure that any result of a Referendum be emphatic, hence the failure of the first attempt to devolve power to Scotland in 1979-

"The Scottish referendum of 1979 was a post-legislative referendum to decide whether there was a sufficient support for a Scottish Assembly proposed in the Scotland Act 1978 among the Scottish electorate. This was an act to create a devolved deliberative assembly for Scotland. An amendment to the Act stipulated that it would be repealed if less than 40% of the total electorate voted "Yes" in the referendum. The result was that 51.6% supported the proposal, but with a turnout of 64%, which represented only 32.9% of the registered electorate. The Act was subsequently repealed."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_S...ion_referendum

Brexit ranks differently from other Referenda and General Elections for one stunning reason: it cannot be reversed.

Given the importance that the EU had on the UK since 1973, it is an astounding decision made all the more potent by the fact that even its most passionate advoctes, such as Boris Johnson, did not believe in it, and only took part to pursue a completely different political issue, in Johnson's case, a long-estabished contempt for David Cameron dating back to the days when they were pupils at Eton College. The structural changes that Brexit entails, not only concern the relationship the UK has built up with the EU since 1973, but threaten the very integrity of the UK, and these were all evident issues throughout the 2016 campaign and since.

It is undeniable the damage that Brexit has done to the UK (see link below), just as it is true the UK must adapt to the changes it has chosen for itself, even if this means the national wealth relative to EU membership declines over the next say, 10 years. Given the astronomical costs of Covid-19, some of which like the price tag for a failed Test and Trace system, at £37 bllion, could have been avoided, we appear to be in a position that Brexit has created a form of Government which is shaped, not by rational decision-making, but by hopes and prayers and whistling in the dark.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59070020

The repudiation of international law on Northern Ireland, and the current spat over fishing rights in UK waters for French fishermen are two cases of the reckless nature of Brexit, which may not affect 90% of the British public, but which is not irrelevant for having a terrible impact on the other 10% -or are we now to parcel up British opinion into percentages and decide which ones are worthy of support and which are not?

I have always understood the hostility to 'Ever Closer Union' but have also been aware that ever since Edward Heath's Tory Government took the UK into a Federalist project, it has lived in denial of that reality, the whole process from both Governing parties amounting to a staggering absence of open and honest debate about why we joined the EEC/EU in the first place. I would, nevertheless, argue that the UK made a better job of EU membership than is claimed, with all the menaingless waffle about Sovereignty being a token example.

It is a simple fact that the UK created the European Free Trade Area in 1960 because in it's post-Imperial world, the UK could not survive economically without being part of the Interdependent, Global Economy it had been part of since the formation of the Honourable East India Company in 1600. One reality was to be replaced by another. The reaity is that Boris Johnson's Global Britain is a fantasy, worthy only of a fantasist who has convinced himself, apparently since the age of 12, that he is a great man destined to do great things.

Brexit is so much more than a local issue about Gilts and Salmon.

[Jericho]

As I wrote before, Brexit makes very, very little difference to 99.9% of UK lives.

Stop lying.

[Stavros]

Imagine a situation in which the Government of the UK did not intervene in the economy, an economy left to market forces, thus, an economy that did not receive the £400 billion that in reality was pumped into the UK economy because of Covid....hence the mixed messages -

"On the face of it, 2021 was an absolutely corking year for the economy. Britain has had some boom years in the postwar period – 1973 and 1988, for example – but the 7.5% growth last year was the fastest of the lot.
However, 2021 can’t be seen in isolation. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are correct when they say the UK had the fastest growth in the G7 last year, yet what they normally omit to add is that it came after the UK had the biggest contraction of any G7 nation a year earlier.
The real story is that the economy collapsed by almost 10% in 2020 and then recovered most of the lost ground last year. Activity in the final three months of 2021 was 0.4% lower than in the final three months of 2019 – the period immediately before the pandemic struck. By way of comparison, the eurozone is back to where it was pre-Covid, while the US is operating more than 3% above its level in late 2019."
https://www.theguardian.com/business...n-in-isolation

As for Brexit, well....
"UK exports of goods to the EU have fallen by £20bn compared with the last period of stable trade with Europe, according to official figures marking the first full year since Brexit."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...ons-data-shows

Do read the details, as provided by the Devil.

[Jericho]

I'm sure The Sun readers will come up with many benefits of Brexit, as requested by Jacob Rees Mogg.

The tories are jut taking the fucking piss now!

[Stavros]

I'm sure The Sun readers will come up with many benefits of Brexit, as requested by Jacob Rees Mogg.

The tories are jut taking the fucking piss now!

Why bother the Sun readers when Jacob need only talk to Michael about his proposal to scrap VAT, which he proposed in 2019 and hasn't happened, or scrap VAT on energy bills, his latest election-winning ruse...?

Gove on scrapping VAT -
https://www.politicshome.com/news/ar...brexit-economy

Why scrapping VAT and restoring the Sales Tax like the one the UK had before it joined the EEC in 1973, is a bad idea-
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/...-help-imports/

Useful overview of current tax, excise and duty regulations
https://www.instituteforgovernment.o...ers/tax-brexit


Or, why not scrap all but the most basic taxes? Isn't that what Steve Baker wants?

[Stavros]

Boris Johnson did really say that he signed the Eu-UK Trade Agreement with its Northern Ireland Protocol, but didn't believe the EU would actually implement its provisions...!...but this comment in an article by Simon Jenkins in yesterday's Guardian sums up a lot of what has been happening given that Brexit is being exposed for the catastrophic mess that it still is, unresolved in Northern Ireland, 'the graveyard of British politics'...

Posted by Hibernica, on the 16th May 2022

"Welcome to Brexit.Britain has turned its back on its most lucrative markets. It has decided to become a Third Country, thus ensuring it has more EU rules to obey than it did as a member. Control has been lost. Sovereignty has been reduced. Brexiteers have delivered the opposite of everything they claimed they wanted.
But Northern Ireland was always going to be the biggest problem. The Good Friday Agreement ensured that you can't be a Unionist and a Brexiteer. The two positions are incompatible. And yet the Democratic Unionist Party and the Conservative Unionist Party both backed Brexit. The Union is being destroyed by Unionists.
So Johnson, in order to keep up the pretence that he delivered Brexit, decided to smash the union while simultaneously claiming to be in favour of it. The DUP have gone mad. But that's just a typical example of post-Brexit British politics; Brexiteers keep whinging incessantly about the impact of Brexit.
Johnson's latest move is to suggest that there should be changes to the protocol rather than an end to the protocol. That means he has accepted that there has to be a border between NI and GB; he is taking the first step towards the break up of the United Kingdom.
He will claim that isn't the case. But that will be another lie."
Boris Johnson created this Brexit mess in Northern Ireland – and he should own it | Simon Jenkins | The Guardian

[Stavros]

And this from Rafael Behr, which also points out that Labour's position is weak thereby giving the people responsible for Brexit a free ride.

"The Conservative party was happy with Brexit, but not for long. A deal that was great in 2019 is now not great. What could fix it? What change would bring enduring satisfaction? The answer is obvious to anyone familiar with the patterns of English Euroscepticism – nothing. There is no concession big enough, no deal good enough, just as no single fix can end the cravings of a drug addict. The long-term solution is to get sober. That is not on Liz Truss’s agenda. On Tuesday, the foreign secretary informed parliament of a government plan to assert its own version of the Northern Ireland protocol. That is a threat designed to prod the EU into renegotiating the 2019 withdrawal agreement, which was itself the outcome of a renegotiation made necessary because Theresa May had done a deal that Conservative MPs also didn’t like.One reason continental leaders don’t want to talk about changes amounting to a new treaty is their certain knowledge that the Tories would be dissatisfied again soon enough. Another reason is that a revised deal would involve trusting Boris Johnson, which EU governments have done before and which no one does twice."

Ending
" The constitutional mess that Johnson has made of Northern Ireland is so far the gravest episode, but unlikely to be the last. The problem isn’t that the protocol cannot be made to work as written, but that it was written to enact a Brexit that doesn’t work."
Reality check: the Northern Ireland protocol isn’t the problem, Brexit is | Rafael Behr | The Guardian

[Stavros]

Carol Cawalladr's journalism has been vindicated in the Courts, and raises new questions about the extent of Russian involvement in the Brexit referendum campaign. Given what we know about the long term strategy Putin has had to re-establish Russia as one of the world's most powerful states, comparable to the position the USSR held before 1991 -we can see how he may have viewed the long-established hostility to European integration in parts of England as an opportunity to weaken Europe in general, and the EU and the UK in particular.

For Boris Johnson, the problem is that his personal links to Russia, in part through the Lebedev family, his affairs with at least one if not more Russian women since 2019, and the funding of the Conservative Party, raise questions about his refusal to be transparent on all these transactions, with his zealous support of Ukraine a side-show to deflect further investigation.

So, was Johnson aware that Banks and the rival Leave campaign was so indebted to the Russians? What was Farage's role in this, given the suspicion that it was he who handed Assange the Wikileaks documents on the US Democrats -is there a link between the Russians-Farage-Wikileaks-Trump?

Brexit was without doubt an English project, but its benefit to the Russians at least suggests that in addition to the lies that were told by both Leave campaigns in 2016, we were lied to about the extent of Russia's involvement. From the vantage point of 2022 with what we know from Litvinenko through eastern Ukraine, from Salisbury to today, Putin has played a blinder, even if he has so far failed in Russia and actually weakened his country.

Lots yet to play for.

"“The four meetings on 6 November 2015, 17 November 2015, 19 August 2016 and 18 November 2016 were probably not the full extent [of] Mr Banks’s meetings with Russian officials.” There were reasonable grounds to believe numerous other meetings occurred. She regards Banks’s words in an email on 19 January 2016 that he intended “to pop in and see the ambassador as well” were “suggestive of a relationship in which he could visit the Russian ambassador with ease”.She said the statement by Andy Wigmore, spokesman for the Leave.EU campaign and Banks’s business partner, about why he retracted his claim that Banks was in Moscow in early 2016 as “not credible”. Nor was Banks’s claim that he received a document entitled “Russian gold sector consolidation play” from a British associate, not a Russian oligarch.
Boris Johnson’s government came to power on the coat-tails of Brexit. It has refused to investigate Russia’s continuing attacks on western democracy and our information systems. Johnson personally intervened to delay publication of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report. He continues to refuse its demand for an inquiry."
Arron Banks almost crushed me in court. Instead, my quest for the facts was vindicated | Carole Cadwalladr | The Guardian

[Stavros]

Six years of lies, incompetence, stupidity and arrogance, and for what?

‘What have we done?’: six years on, UK counts the cost of Brexit | Brexit | The Guardian

[Stavros]

Brexit has failed, ten times over. One is not surprised, nor by the commitment to poverty and failure made by Rishi Sunak and Mary Elizabeth Truss.

Spiralling inflation, crops left in the field and travel chaos: 10 reasons Brexit has been disastrous for Britain | Brexit | The Guardian