Brexit: A New Era for the UK?

[Stavros]

OK, apologies for being pedantic and wanting to correct what you wrote - and I am sorry if you are struggling with Brexit.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that I have had enough of people (not necessarily you) who still want to moan about a referendum with a clear result that took place almost five years ago. They would be better concentrating on their own lives, when the true affects of Brexit will only have any long-term meaningful affect on the lives of a very, very small handful of people.

For the vast majority, virtually nothing material will change for them...

For a good example, a large part of the moaners can't even tell you when we left the EU - yet they want to claim that life worsened markedly when we did! It's pathetic.

The 'pedantry' is really due to the fact that the UK transitioned out of the EU and at any one time between 2019 and 2021 many people were confused as to what our status was- some, including members of the Govt, are still not sure where the international boundary between the EU and the UK is, given that is has not been demarcated, but appears to exist.

I also think the irony of your post is that it is not so much the 'moaners' who have a point, but those who voted to Leave and who, if they are in the fishing industry, see their live exports and other goods rotting away, or prevented from making a smooth exit to the EU as a result of the technicalities that were approved in the EU-UK Trade Agreement that has more or less trashed most of what Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and the other 'vilains' promised us in 2016. From being told the UK would not be leaving the Single Market to being told we have to, there lies the not so mysterious fact that Johson and his crew never bothered to finesse the detail because they didn't care about it. Not so long ago, Lord Lamont even insisted he was not bothered about the economics of Brexit because for him at was the politics that mattered.

I think the fact is there has been a double dose of lies comparing 2016 to 1970. In their 1970s manifesto, the Conservatives said they would open negotiations on entering the EEC, but that the final decision would be made by the British people -this did not happen until 1975 when Labour was in power but I have not seen any evidence that Heath intended to bring it to Parliament or a referendum in what would have been his first term as PM. Crucially, for the politics, Heath never mentioned 'Ever Closer Union' which has been in the first sentence of every 'Euro' Treaty since Rome in 1957 because it defines the purpose of the relationship that member states enter into. We were told we were joining a 'Common Market', and not a Federalist project, indeed, Federalism was never mentioned until it became a matter of contention between Margaret Thatcher and Jacques Delors in the 1980s. And though Blair said in 1997 he wanted the UK to be 'at the heart of Europe', he never believed in 'Ever Closer Union', indeed if that phrase meant anything to him, it was a description of the UK's Atlantic relationship.

The UK was never fully committed to the EU project, indeed, I think we needed to make a decision on that, and regret the one that was made though I can't do anything about that. But it also begs the question of Scotland's view that if it were independent, it would apply for EU membership, because that not only requires Scotland to adopt the Euro, it must surely sign up to 'Ever Closer Union' because I can't see the EU giving Scotland all the 'opt-outs' it gave to the UK given the small size of the economy.

As for the impact, yes indeed, there are long term consequences, but now we have the long term impact of Covid to add to the exit from the EU. Because the Single Market imposes the sort of rules that were not there in the 1970s, I doubt even seasonal labour is open to young people who want to do something different somewhere outside the country but not so far away, and Jericho's point abut Portugal is important too, though Portugal may pass laws making residency easier, but not sure about that.

We have yet to know if the Brexit Levies that have created a crisis in the fishing and export industry are 'teething problems' or long term realities, and it is not clear to me if the Govt is attempting to re-negotiate the Trade Agreement to sort these problems out. The situation with Musicians and Performing Artists is aso one I don't think will change, because, again, the rules now are different from what they were before the Single Market Act, and as I don't see any change over the next 10 years Brexit has been a catastrophe for the arts in Britain.

Thus I am with most experts who say that the UK will adjust to the reality of being outside the EU, but that the economy will not grow at previous levels -I don't think it will exceed 2% a year- and that money saved from the EU budget will not be enough to compensate for losses from trade, and so far that is mostly in goods, as we have yet to see how the exit affects Financial Services in general, and the City of London in particular.

How Covid affects work itself, such as commuting to an office, with knock-on effects on transport is still too early to tell. But what also matters is that the lies keep coming from Boris Johnson, with little or no imaginative let alone the practical alternative from Keir Starmer. But for Dominic Raab to dismiss all the current woes on the basis we need 'ten years' to deal with Brexit is a stab in the back and an insult to all, as it is rather like telling an 18-year old, the next ten years of your life have been cancelled, get over it!

We went from being part of a stable order, to disorder. We had access to the largest single market in the world on our doorstep, now we are not part of it. Looking back is no longer an option but to the question, what does the UK want? -there seems to be no coherent answer.

[obslam]

It's interesting that back in 2016 the Brexiters claimed there would be great benefits from leaving the EU. Now their best argument seems to be that most people won't notice any difference.

I'm willing to bet that most people's lives were unchanged in 1973 when the UK joined the EU. Is there a difference between people moaning about Brexit and people who previously moaned about the EU?

I voted leave, but I never thought or claimed it would make our lives better. My opinion was and remains that staying in would have made our lives worse in the decades ahead. I don't see the EU existing in its current form 20 years from now.

[Stavros]

And the inherent dilemma is the fact that we never solved the relationship between politics and the economy in the EU -many Leave advocates claimed they were happy to be part of the Single Market, but could not accept Ever Closer Union, and that at some point in the future the UK would not be able to opt out of that. It is a fair point, though in defence I would argue had we had the debate on Ever Closer Union before 2016 we would at least have been able to make a judgment based on a more open and wider understanding of what the EU is all about, though even then I think Leave would have won the Referendum -the English think they are better than the Continentals, it is that crude, and that stupid. Indeed, had Ever Closer Union been discussed at the beginning, I doubt even Heath could have taken us into the EEC. But it has been important for Europe because of the Continent's bloody history and the fact that France and Germany have been key players in its origin and development with the smallers states such as Belgium and the Netherlands keen associates of the project.

The dilemma for the UK has always been that alone, the UK economy is worse off when it is not part of a European trading bloc, as was clear from the membership of EFTA which the UK helped to create in 1960. Indeed, the UK created one European trading bloc, and was a prime developer later of the EU's Single Market, yet Daniel Hannan and people like him claim the UK would be better off on its own when all the evidence suggests the opposite is the case, even with the major changes that have taken place to the economy since 1979.

Lastly, the sovereignty issue is the oddest one, because sovereignty is a slippery concept and should be 'treated with care'. The UK never lost control of its borders or its laws, so 'take back control' was just a slogan, and where for some it mattered, it had more to do with prejudice agaist non-EU immigrants. On issue such as climate change there is obviously no sovereignty, but neither does the UK control the value of its own currency, and just as the UK ceded a degree of authority to the EU in matters of law, so it has ceded legal powers to the United Nations, though I don't recall anyone campaigning against our membership of the UN.

I voted Remain for economic and politica reasons -the UK economy was better off in the Single Market rather than out of it; and I approve of European Federalism because I despire Nationalism, which is a pox on humanity. I thought my generation and my parents generation had defeated the Nationalists, even though we knew they had not gone away- but they were an iirritant on the fringes of politics. The new breed of Nationalist anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Vaxx and 'anti-Woke' activists offer nothing positive for the world I live in, but they exist, and they must be confronted, and it seems every generation but be educated into the crimes of the past these people deny and seek to revisit upon us, as was shown in the US on the 6th of January.

[Jericho]

I voted Remain for economic and politica reasons -the UK economy was better off in the Single Market rather than out of it; and I approve of European Federalism because I despire Nationalism, which is a pox on humanity. I thought my generation and my parents generation had defeated the Nationalists, even though we knew they had not gone away- but they were an iirritant on the fringes of politics. The new breed of Nationalist anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Vaxx and 'anti-Woke' activists offer nothing positive for the world I live in, but they exist, and they must be confronted, and it seems every generation but be educated into the crimes of the past these people deny and seek to revisit upon us, as was shown in the US on the 6th of January.

That's the problem though, init. Anyone who tries to teach British *history* isn't going to be in their job very long.
(I learnt more about Coulson when he was thrown in the bay than I ever did in the 100 odd years his statue was upright).

[Stavros]

That's the problem though, init. Anyone who tries to teach British *history* isn't going to be in their job very long.
(I learnt more about Coulson when he was thrown in the bay than I ever did in the 100 odd years his statue was upright).

Indeed, the problem of what British history consists of, who decides the curriculum, and who teaches it has never been solved. The Conservative bias means on one level for many years the 'top down' approach used the various dynasties that have ruled, with additional support for the establishment of Church-Military-Judiciary-Parliament so that one can take in the wars, Christianity, political change and so forth, but when economic and social history entered the fray in the 1960s-70s the acrimony began, because history is a mess of highs and lows, and I know I never heard the word slavery when I was in school, but I am old enough to have been marched into the schoolyard on Empire Day (24th May) to watch the Union Jack being hoisted up a pole.

The Industrial Revlution is crucial to the history of modern Britain -to teach it one has to balance the achievements of science and engineering in partnership with capital to explain agricultural machinery, cotton mills, coal mining, the railway engines, etc -but surely this must also explain how slavery and empire provided Manchester with the cheap cotton it used to make its more expensive and desirable goods? And the textile mills destroyed the weavers who had populated towns and villages to make the people clothes, a grim history documented in part of EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class- but should a text by a Marxist be acceptable, or for that matter, to describe factory conditions in the 19thc, the most read chapter, probably the only chapter of Marx's Capital Vol 1 most people have read, ie Ch 10: The Working Day -? Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1851) is a rich text of description, but does anyone use it to teach 19th century history in school, when it is one of the most eloquent books of its kind?

All history is edited, in part for practical reasons to make it possible to teach 2,000 years of history to schoolchildren, but also to edit out the diffculties and the controversies, which can be explored at University level. I wonder how many schoolchildren have heard of Thomas Rainsbrough, one of Cromwell's leading naval commanders, who, in the Putney Debates in 1647 declared, much to the concern of both Cromwell and his General, Ireton-

"I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, Sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Rainsborough

The fate of this early advocate of 'oone man, one vote', was assassination the year after his incendiary remarks in Putney...thus history is, often literally, a battlefield.

What will future historians make of Brexit? A tragic mistake, or a Liberation from Continental Europe?

[Jericho]

What will future historians make of Brexit? A tragic mistake, or a Liberation from Continental Europe?

With the benefit of hindsight, supercomputers (to keep track of the lies), and a degree in forensic accounting...the biggest heist in history.

[Stavros]

I wonder if Covid has pushed Brexit off the news as the No 1 item? The threat to the integrity of the UK might appear to have receded with regard to Scotland, and Alex Salmond's spite-filled attempt to sabotage the party he used to lead, though the appeal of Independence there remains high among the people who matters most, the voters. But it is in Northern Ireland where the contradictions of Brexit present what seems to be a problem without a solution that is not a United Ireland -or the UK as a whole, rather than just NI- returning in some form to the EU's Single Market.

The article linked below concerns the Democratic Unionist Party and their delusions with regard to both Brexit and the Good Friday Agreement, which they opposed throughout the negotiating period, until they didn't, the late Rev. Ian Paisley realizing that if they did not agree to it, they would be powerless -he agreed to it and formed an alliance in the power sharing exective with former Quartermaster of the Provos, Martin McGuinness -no such spirit of compromise now -but as Susan MKay argues, this is turning into one of the most profound challenges to the Union of the United Kinndom and Northern Ireland since the Treaty of 1921, but without any leading politician with vision of guts to see it through to its most obvious conclusion, thus-

"Speaking to the Welsh affairs committee, Mark Drakeford said that the union was effectively over. There was “no institutional architecture” to make the UK work, and the current prime minister’s approach to the devolved nations was “ad hoc, random and made up as we go along”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ood-friday-dup

[obslam]

"Speaking to the Welsh affairs committee, Mark Drakeford said that the union was effectively over. There was “no institutional architecture” to make the UK work, and the current prime minister’s approach to the devolved nations was “ad hoc, random and made up as we go along”.

Ad hoc, random and made up as we go along sounds like a very good description for Mark Drakeford!

When it comes to the Union, I am sure he realises that Wales has a very different legal standing to both Scotland and Northern Ireland.

[Stavros]

Ad hoc, random and made up as we go along sounds like a very good description for Mark Drakeford!
When it comes to the Union, I am sure he realises that Wales has a very different legal standing to both Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Wales is an irrelevance, that has been the English position even before their cherished Brexit. Even one of my oldest friends doesn't care about the place, and he was born and bred in Cardiff.

So what do you have to say about Nothern Ireland, or the UK Government signing a Trade Agreement with the EU and then deciding to ignore the legal obligations that it contains, because of the brutal fact that so far, Brexit Kills Jobs? When Boris said, 'Fuck Business', he meant it. Michael Gove, presented with the factual evidence that trade in goods is on the point of collapse offers an alternative which claims the opposite, but without a single shred of evidence, thus proving that the English never really thought their Brexit would be anything but a roaring success -and like Trump in his Florida prison, refuse to accept the reality even when it slaps them in the face.

It really is simple -Brexit Kills Jobs. Perhaps that is why the English Kill Truth?

[obslam]

You claim your facts as facts but denounce others as lies. And do you think the PM ever really said 'fuck business' as you think he did?

There is zero evidence as yet either way as to whether Brexit will cost net jobs. Some people will lose jobs but other, new jobs will also be created.