Capitalism has been taking the piss for a number of years now and while none of us are anywhere near informed enough on the subject to pass authoritative judgement my hunch would be that Brexit made very little difference with this, either way. Hell, it might have stalled it if anything given the vast majority of people assumed it wasn't going to happen, even on the actual night.
The only part of that sentence/question any of us can be absolutely sure of is the incompetent leadership bit, as we all know we had that. Offering the referendum in the first place being a prime example.Originally Posted by Magic
Lol then you don't change anything, durrr?
Look at the graph mate, I can't tell you everything.
You what?
I'm saying that our relationship with the European Union and trade in general is/was incredibly complicated and I can count on one hand the number of people who spoke about it during the run up that sounded like they had any clue at all. For everyone else it was an ideologically driven decision. i.e. they loved/didn't like foreigners, they wanted sovereignty, they wanted open borders etc.
As a result the information to prove whether it could have been a good thing just isn't there, as it wasn't in proving it would be a bad thing. The only thing we know was that in the aftermath of it we had a series of the least competent governments in my lifetime, so it's probably fair to say it had no chance with those people at the helm.
Labour might be messing things up a bit but at least it looks like they're actually working. The rank incompetence and lies overshadowed this point, but I should think July last year was the first time for a while that number 10 saw a full day's work put in.
If things are good/bad/indifferent and your leadership is terrible then you don't change anything.
The leadership was fine/tolerable before the vote, it was after that point it all went to shit (as anyone vaguely competent legged it), at which point you simply can't row back on the vote without giving up all pretence that you're an actual democracy.
The difficulty with democracy is that it's absolutely right that people should have a say in how they are governed. However, unfortunately, a sizeable portion of the population is thick as pigshit and doesn't know how to vote in their own best interest.
When the referendum was looming, every single expert in their field was saying it would be a disaster within their field.
The only people saying it was going to be great were people whose arguments were lies (obviously so at the time and proven to be subsequently).
Surprisingly, it's been shit. Now the people in favour are all "well yeah it's shit like you predicted but that's not it's fault".
A competent leadership wouldn't have allowed a vote like this.
Any excuse to repost this.
Blair allowing large levels of immigration via the EU gave euroskeptic movements a lot more credibility in the long run, Farage was mocked as a caricature but his movement managed to pressure a referendum vote: if it hadn't have been called it would have just been continually brought up until it did happen in my opinion. Same way as if Remain had won by anything other than a landslide we would be going round and round debating another referendum to the point it was in election manifestos: Scotland wants a do over doesn't it?
Doesn't this somewhat, once again, underscore one of the main reasons it happened? All of the experts in their fields were living comfortable lives completely happy with the status quo, and entirely oblivious to the fact that it really hadn't been working as well for a substantial percentage of the population? Why are you voting to make yourself worse off only works if one of the options is presented as being actually better and, for a lot of people, let's just keep doing what we've been doing for 40 years didn't seem like the most inspiring sell.
As Spikey said, a vote to give the ruling class a bloody nose is as good an explanation as any. That said ruling class, including all of the experts in their fields, had no fucking idea it was coming is entirely emblematic of the society they had presided over creating.
The great irony of the time being that there was an actual old fashioned socialist primed to take advantage and he/they bottled it, and were then lampooned for believing in a magic money tree which it turned out was real and was able to see an extraordinary transfer of wealth away from the government just 2 years later.
The same 'but economy graph goes up' logic led to the collapse of the democrats in the face of Trump.
Legal immigration. Farage was using images of Syrian refugees trapsing in to Romania or somewhere shit.
The referendum was preceded by a decade of stagnation and worsening living standards for large parts of the country, all overseen and endorsed by the 'experts', which is always strangely absent from any analysis attempted by the losing side which prefers to imagine that everyone woke up one day and got conned by a bus.
I don't doubt this, but it would be nice to see a quantum of that shit. It's all well and good saying our economy has stagnated (it has), prices are ridiculous (they are) and public services are shite (yep, het-trick), but doesn't this repeat across all of Europe too?
It's a measure of how badly the argument was handled from both sides that there aren't simple measures to demonstrate just how shit it has been. Instead, I'm left listening to Jame's O'Brien take callers detailing paperwork issues.
I hate that argument as it's the political equivalent of blaming 'the players' - and while it's true, nobody, not a single person, gets into politics without knowing this so to be good at their job they need to allow for that.
It was because rich people wanted to make more money, which they did. And not content with that, they wanted to make even more money, which they have.
Tale as old as time.
Well yeah, it transpired that he was very much not confident. First rule of offering a referendum, you need to know what the result will be.
That said, we very nearly did something worse a few years before by offering that stupid AV referendum.
The bloody nose explanation is, in my view, wrong. People who had nothing chose to role the dice as they knew they'd still have nothing by not rolling them. They also knew they might lose a bit by rolling them, but if you already have nothing, who cares.
Someone please clarify something for me:
After Brexit, what regulations have changed that wouldn't have been possible under the EU? Surely that is the reason to get out of the EU stronghold. If you just leave but keep all your idiotic regulation in place, then of course it won't turn out well, will it?
It's not wrong, it's just not true for everyone. There won't be any single correct answer. For example, plumbers, they were 10 a penny when we had a Polish people hiding under every rock. You struggle to find one now, and they want £100 just to turn up when you do, so Brexit has worked quite well for Dagenham Dave who didn't want them comin' over 'ere, stealin' ah jobs.
Now... delivery drivers on the other hand.
That's pretty much what happened, yeah. We have all of the downsides of being a member of the EU, with none of the Benefits. A tale that is told throughout the last 14 years of Tory Leadership in many different fields.
Closely followed by exactly what to do.
Remember when they kept telling us austerity was like house hold debt and cutting back on your Sky package?
The challenge is when Europe is your biggest market, you still need to produce products to their standards so you end up keeping the majority of the rules from before. Similarly, EU companies aren't going to change their standards to sell to the UK market (relatively small) so you end up at mostly status quo.
UK market isn't relatively small for EU. 2nd biggest behind US, and will now only increase in importance if there are US tariffs.
Main reason EU have been hostile to date in terms of trade concessions is that they don't want to encourage any other countries and their various populist movements to leave the bloc. That can only go so far, though.
Our current Cunt-in-Chief was one the main ones behind torpedoing that.
Yes, Mr literal knight of the realm establishment status quo thank you very much, what a shocker.
I meant it more in the sense that you have stated, where you feel the current offering has failed you, then you are inclined to choose the other even where that choice appears nonsensical to the experts in the field.
Looks like Mexico folded.
I mean, "folding" is the right thing to do here, especially if it fucks the cartels in any way. Trudeau retaliating with tariffs shows that he is as stupid as Trump, just a bit more refined.
Avocado back on the menu.
"Mexico had agreed to send 10,000 members of its national guard “to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the US, in particular of fentanyl”. In return, the US had agreed to work to prevent high-powered weapons crossing the border into Mexico."
I mean...lol.
She should have set 50% tariffs on US products instead. Make Mexicans even poorer. That'll show him!
Ontario is full out war on the US. OUT goes American booze, OUT goes starlink, OUT goes provincial contracts to US companies.
Make Canadians poorer! Cut their internet! That'll show him!
Lancashire has retained it's population of Polish bargain tradesmen and nymphomaniac psychopathic blondes and I'm all in favour of it.
All this better not stop me being able to get Atomic Torpedo.
Poor sales guy must be suicidal. 100m contract ripped up, ouch.
Given the subtext/justification for this tariff business with Mexico and Canada is immigrants and fentanyl flowing across the land borders, and China is apparently supplying the raw materials for drug manufacture, what is the rationale for a trade war with the EU? Can the President really just do whatever the fuck he likes? Got to say I'm rather loving the bonfire of the checks and balances they lecture the rest of the world about, but at the same time am slightly confused as to how they aren't checking and balancing unfettered executive power.
The constitution was designed by and for high-minded men of state, it has holes for a gangster-president to exploit.
Fiscal policy is an executive thing. Unless you can claim he is not respecting the Constitution somehow, what can the judicial do? The birthright thing got lolled by the courts immediately.
Doesn't fiscal policy require legislation to implement it at some point? Or does the stupidly bloated ledger of historic laws they maintain essentially allow anything by the aforementioned rogue gangster president?
I don't really know very well. I think he can set tax rates and tariffs and things like that, while the budget needs to be approved by the legislative.
Of course laws only apply while people respect them and enforce them. After that all bets are off.
Which nameless/faceless bureaucrat has the joy of picking this one up for the EU? Time to earn your money son.
True. But, it’s now getting on for two decades and Brexit definitely hasn’t helped that. As I said if we actually had non spastics in charge we could make it work. Problem is the Tories way of making it work is just letting loads of Asians in, which regardless of how you voted was definitely not what you wanted.
Scandinavian countries? They seem to be well run.
So he's doing the tariff stuff but are there any plans for the US to become more self-sufficient in manufacturing, agriculture, etc?
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