Cycling Related

That's it.

/thread

......I'm sort of resigned to it happening and being a total clusterfuck. The challenge is how to get back into the EU as quickly as possible again. The only little bit of brightness to come out of this, is that once the public realise they've been duped it will be the end of the Conservative Party and many of their odious members of parliament.

I suppose I have to go to this.

I would be there, except that I have a ticket for another event today, but bearing in mind the success of the gigantic "Don't Attack Iraq" march back in the day I don't hold out much hope of a result. I still think it's important to do it if you can though.

Wot??? Only 500,000 turned up.....

Sorry, I got that wrong......police estimate 670,000

Seen at yesterday’s march

Rocky wrote: ↑

5 years ago

8D773481-1172-4CAF-99C4-770DA71C8CE7.jpeg

Seen at yesterday’s march

I'm not going to read it unless it's written on a bus.

I wrote this elsewhere, in response to a typically ludicrous bit of unthinking Brexitism. The person who did that unthinkingness has been gracious enough to admit he was wrong. Not everyone will agree with all of it, but doing it has clarified my thinking a bit.

I remain utterly convinced that the only way out of another five years of madness - either while we negotiate an exit or while we discover that a chaotic no-deal Brexit is utterly terrible (I suspect the analyses to date have underestimated how terrible because they assume some deal) - is to suspend the whole thing.
----

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the intellectual paucity of the Brexit case. There seem to be three main arguments regularly made in favour of Brexit.

The first is based on the proposition that in a democracy the will of the people must be respected. Yes - it must. But the way we do that is by holding regular elections to make sure that the will of the people remains the same. Often it doesn't - that's fine, that's democracy. People change their minds. Those who are running scared of a second (actually, third) referendum are anti-democratic.

The second is based on the proposition that what Britain really needs is free trade. Tim "Wetherspoons" Martin seems to be running this argument at the moment, using his pubs as billboards. What the proponents of this argument overlook is that 66% of our trade is currently completely or partially free thanks to our membership of the EU. Even if we could instantly sign free-trade agreements with all our target markets they wouldn't replace what we're about to lose.

The third is based on the proposition that Britain has been a rule-taker from the EU - "vassal state" is the latest bit of hyperbole. As anyone who has been close to any EU negotiation will tell you this is manifestly false. The UK has been one of the main architects of the EU rule-book, starting with the single market. It is essentially an Anglo-Saxon pragmatic architecture overlaid with French and German nuance.

Having said that, it's possible to construct at least two reasonably intellectually coherent arguments in favour of Brexit - and it astounds me that no-one has made either with any seriousness.

The first is that the EU doesn't bring us enough free trade, so we need to be free to supplement the trade we get through the EU with other trade agreements. That argument takes you down a Switzerland/Norway route of cleaving as closely as possible to EU rules to secure trade with the EU. Yes, it means being a literal rule-taker (although both Norway and Switzerland are pretty influential on the EU) and paying money for access, but the result would be that the economic benefit would more than outweigh the cost.

The second is what seems to underpin the Corbyn position - although like so much of what passes for thought in Labour it's thoroughly half-baked. This posits that the EU is a neoliberal conspiracy (the position also skates over the fact that "neoliberal", like "socialist" and "fascist" is a term used carelessly to mean "something I don't like") which gets in the way of doing protectionist things like restricting immigration, nationalisation and running an unbalanced budget. If you accept (I don't) that the EU stops you doing those things the logical position to aim for is again a Norway/Switzerland relationship, in lockstep with regards to trade and those bits of employment rights that are good, but rejecting some of the more business-friendly rules.

Given all of this, and the complete farce of the negotiations so far, there must be an extremely good chance that any kind of Brexit still on offer will lead inexorably and very rapidly to the UK rejoining the EU. So if I were a Brexiteer I'd be arguing strongly and loudly for delay - or EEA membership at the worst - so that I could construct and then make a case that leaving the EU was actually good for the country. As it stands, by this time next year the Tory party will be dead and it will be painfully obvious to all that trusting May, Johnson, Gove and Davis with anything more substantial than running a corner shop was a monumentally stupid thing.

None of this addresses the real substance underlying Brexit - which was a howl of rage aimed at a convenient whipping-boy about the enormous economic gulf between London and the South-East on the one hand and the North of England on the other, and about the enormous chasm between the government's rhetoric of success and the felt reality of increasing poverty for many. Which is, in turn, a legacy of far too many years of British amateurism and underinvestment.

^^^^ that is about the most coherent and reasoned thing I have read on the subject in the past three years, I may be stealing large parts of it.

The Tory Party is becoming so toxic with hate speech like this becoming normalised:



Yvette Cooper's response is worth posting



After what happened to Jo Cox, I am appalled at how low some people are stooping. I do hope that the fall out from Brexit means that the Tory Party gets wiped out.

I do actually think the PM is doing a good job, on a hiding to nothing, but sending the right message.

As PM she obviously has to respect democracy and give lip service to Brexiteers whilst at heart a Remainer and quietly (and inevitably failing) to negotiate a BINO.

Greg wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I do actually think the PM is doing a good job, on a hiding to nothing, but sending the right message.

As PM she obviously has to respect democracy and give lip service to Brexiteers whilst at heart a Remainer and quietly (and inevitably failing) to negotiate a BINO.

Respecting democracy would be for her to:

- accept the very explicit advice given to Parliament before the referendum that it was not a binding referendum;
- acknowledge that voters were lied to and thus some were potentially not able to make an informed decision;
- give the public the final say on any Brexit deal, including the option to reverse the original decision.

I don’t envy May’s current position but I cannot agree that she’s doing a good job. If she was, she’d be honest with the public... and she’s not being. Instead, like Blair, she’ll do anything and say anything to cling to power.