I am blogging from another hotel in another country, again, this morning. And I am reflecting on a question asked of me yesterday, by someone I know and respect . It was simple, but heavily laden. It was “Is it deliberate?” ‘It' referred to the confusion over Brexit. The suggestion is, in a sense, simple. It is that the apparent unholy mess that has developed might have been deliberately engineered to secure the ‘least worst' Brexit outcome for all parties, with everyone accepting a compromise that really suits no one next March, simply for the sake of making a deal rather than have none at all.
What will that deal be? Some degree of significant regulatory alignment to ensure that the Northern Ireland problem can be said to be solved. And sufficient too to make sure that nothing gets turned off on 30 March. So planes, trucks, food and (from the EU's perspective, money) will still move in and out of the UK. But no one, not least in the UK, will actually be happy.
The UK will have left the EU, but remain under its influence. But it will have lost influence, status, economic well being and and any vestige of competence on the way. The EU will have made it look like leaving is not worth the risk. The Union within the UK will, temporarily, be sustained. And across the whole political spectrum there will be the appearance of regret. Except, my questioner presumed, amongst those actually guiding the process. Somewhere, he suggested, there might be an agreement that taking the process through the machinations that we have witnessed was the pre-condition for securing this bad compromise which those with authority think a solution to a problem otherwise insoluble.
Is that plausible? Does the London / Brussels back channel (and such things, of course, exist) work that way? And with that degree of asuredness that it can pull what appear to be last minute solutions from what appears to be a mess created merely to make such solution look like better outcomes to those so wearied by the process that it is presumed almost anything might be acceptable? And is May, in this scenario, the chosen one to deliver a compromise that no one else might achieve?
I happen to think the Brexit outcome I have just suggested is possible. We might get an unholy, unacceptable, mess that parliament will approve. And I do think that will, broadly speaking, suit the EU. It might even suit May, at least in the short term. I strongly suspect she would leave office, claiming her job is done, shortly thereafter. And at a personal level I would not blame her, so long as she remembers never to notice the news for the rest of her life, for her legacy will always be sour. But do I really think this can be, or has been, engineered? No, I don't. I believe this is a cock up no one planned and no one intended.
And I still think we will live to regret it.
I have been criticised from the Lexit wing in the last day or two (and on other issues by plenty of others). I am apparently now a Blairite for still believing that the best way to secure a stable Europe - which I see as a fundamental left of centre objective - is by working in close harmony with Europe, and that the only mechanism we have to do that in is the EU, when that is what the others have chosen. Of course it is deeply imperfect. I also happen to believe that it is not beyond amendment to make it fit for purpose. And that it is the left's job to present a coherent vision of what the left might deliver to ensure that this can be achieved via the ballot box. I do not regret thinking that. Fundamentalists who will risk chaos and the well being of people for the sake of an ideal do not appeal to me. I cannot reconcile their opinion with any form of social concern I know. The world cannot be moved from an imperfect to a better state without considerable effort, and a transition period. The move to an ideal world will not happen at all. And I am unapologetic for saying so. Because I know there is no agreement on what an ideal world is - and because I respect the right of others to think that the ideal is not as I think it is - I have to say that. This, of course, means I am a pragmatist.
Pragmatists deal with cock ups, being guided by their principles when doing so.
My desire is a better world for most people. I see no way Brecit will deliver that. So I oppose it.
And at the same time I see no way that where we are is deliberate. Those who could have planned this show no signs of the intelligence or ability to guide the process through this apparent mayhem. That's the best evidence there is that this is not deliberate.
What has to be deliberate is the desire to build a better society for all. And I never believed that this was ever going to be built solely in England's green and pleasant land. I rejected this notion from the right. I do so when the left make the same claim. I am proud to be European. And I want to build European (and broader) solutions to the problems we face. Brexit is an affront to that. And it in no way compromises my ideals to say so.
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Well the obvious question is, if it is deliberate, who gains?
Follow the money.
Lets follow some of the money taxidermist.
How much do a billion facebook advert impressions cost?
I asked on another thread without any answer – so i just asked the web.
It says ‘professional services’ cost about $13/thousand impressions (CPM) – so a billion would be $13Million. Plus all the management, production and other related costs. Lets call it a conservative £10 million all in.
That is in addition to the Banks spend.
Like Richard Murphy, I normally go for the cock-up explanation above deliberate sabotage when plans go wrong. I have had many failures in my life
However, when the ‘polls’ upto the wire were saying 55/45 remain, a million+ unexpected voters pushed the result the other way. Where did they suddenly appear from?
You can blame the voters who may have said that given it is so nailed on remain they wouldn’t bother voting or vote leave just for a laugh, but that would not be a reason HOW and why the pollsters got it so wrong. Turnout was 72+%, hardly apathetic.
I believe the evidence exists that the the targeted facebook ads made the major difference; as did the targeted call centre calls.
So not a cock-up, of course if facebook handed over the details of how many ads, to how many people, costing how much, paid for by who, to disprove the facts then I would happily stand corrected.
Here’s me, two years ago, speculating that it would end in ‘Eurofudge’: https://twitter.com/hughbarnard/status/787916257324568576
However, my ‘Eurofudge’ followed two years of ‘sensible’ negotiation by competent people, not ‘mess’. It was probably ‘Norway with icing’, something that could have been sold to both sides, if done elegantly. I was a 6/10 remainer at that stage, but have moved to 8/10 in face of the incompetent displayed daily, weekly and monthly.
I could have lived with Norway with icing
“Norway with icing….”
A weekend ‘hut’ with an adjacent railway line ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=501&v=oUbMAFO6kA4
Extremism is destructive and creates nothing that lasts. It’s the unsung pragmatists of history who have created the period of stability and prosperity we have enjoyed ( maybe until now?). The EU for all its faults is one of the greatest examples of what can be achieved by pragmatic pursuit of the greatest good for the majority. The British used to be seen as great pragmatists who rejected the threats of extremists. As you say, it will likely be a great source of regret that we forgot what our tradition of pragmatism has given us and chose to listen to extreme views, rather than staying and contributing to reform of the EU. They too will probably regret it.
Godmorgen. I agree – probably not deliberate government policy. More a case of sheer incompetence. However, in addition to the individuals listed in Taxidermist’s linked Guardian article, there are those senior Tory 5th columnists for whom a No-deal scenario suits their trans-Atlantic agenda – https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/brexit/2018/10/liam-fox-s-american-friends. While ‘out of chaos comes order’ it might not be the kind of order that’s in the nation’s best interest.
Tak
Out of chaos there is always opportunity and opportunists. Its just a pity that the EU didn’t sort its issues in teh first place. Back then the EU EEC was restrained by the requirement to ask many countrys with different countrys to pay into its budget.
After creating their Euro currency the power was in the EC Central Banks hands and they have their own extreme privileges. As a fridge magnet I saw said ‘Give me a gun and I will rob a bank, give me a bank and I will rob the world.’
There is good reason the Prime Minister is the First Lord of the Treasury, its the ‘German Chancellor’ etc . . . he who has the gold makes the rules- is the golden rule.
Sadly the common ordinary simple voter understood and voted for the EEC and against the EU. Whilst against the people were the bureaucrats and politicians seduced by years of success, peace, the benefits of common standards lowering prices raising quality and let the ego trip get to their heads.
5,000 ish politicians voted for the Lisbon Treaty and the ability to chuck out €30Bn a month and control the lives of countrys via the application of MMT. Pity the Spanish, Greeks and Italians youth . . etc Millions who suffer.
Oddly enough the old different currencys had a fictional loss on the marginal exchange rate costs of doing business however the money was never lost but recycled as per MMT.
The German economys massive surplus is embedded in the Euro making Greek economy suffer as euros are sucked out and not replaced. In my view the peoples voting choice were right over the politicians.
I think your analysis is about right as it is for all EU negotiations at the end as happened with the Lisbon Treaty although I think given the imbalance in the number of skilled trade negotiators and in the fine detail we are highly likely to suffer despite the previous £400bn handed over to the EU and our intellectual property. Gratitude is a cultivated trait.
I confess I cannot follow your analysis at all
Firstly – a first rate piece of reflective writing. Thank you.
As to the fundamental question about deliberateness – well, looking back I think that there are elements of this in this debacle because looking at the background of the minority who have pushed BREXIT, creating chaos is actually a part of making money?
Added to this deliberateness (or intent) are the stupid mistakes or misjudgements the politicians have made (‘BREXIT means BREXIT’ even before you go to Parliament to discuss what the referendum meant apparently) as well as the referendum reifying a lack of robustness in the way in which our democracy is conducted.
And the political opportunism showed by both the Tories and Labour is not clever at all – in fact it can only worsen the reputation of politics and democracy which may mean that darker political forces get an opportunity.
I am at the stage where I am resigned to leaving Europe. I can only hope that we get a decent deal but something tells me that we will have to go through a trying time to learn that we need to go back in. But I also accept that there could be a no deal and well…..there you go. Either way, it is going to be rough.
But my main concern is for democracy. BREXIT has shown me just how vulnerable democracy really is. There is new learning here about the nature of democracy in people’s minds in the digital age that makes it worth it but to me we are walking on a razor blade edge at the moment too. It is scary.
To me our democracy is wounded and corruption/infection has set in and thus cannot be trusted anymore. I mean, get the international invigilators in please. As others have pointed out here recently, we know that rules were broken in the last GE and we have turned a referendum into a free for all worthy of any pariah state (but with that typically British streak of amateurism and buffoonery).
It could very well be that democracy in the UK is just too loose in practice, too implicit to survive in a digital era that runs alongside the super-liquidity of funny money. The possible break up of the Union also indicates to me that we have been running on assumptions and not rights or rules perhaps for far too long.
Our politicians need to catch up and rebuild democracy. And we must avoid looking to the American experiment for it has not worked. We need to rebuild British democracy from the ground up fit for the modern times that takes into account the connectedness we have in the digital world and invest in better checks and balances (especially regarding funding).
And to you neo-libs out there I say Democracy is not a fucking market in which to trade- OK?
And then perhaps having done all that THEN we can have a proper discussion about Europe.
In Cock-up versus Conspiracy, I always go with the default assumption of Cock-up
Michael Green says:
“In Cock-up versus Conspiracy, I always go with the default assumption of Cock-up”
In this case I’m definitely with you, Michael. Definitely badly cocked-up from start to finish. Richard’s remark about being unable to see indications of the intelligence that might have planned this chime with my own thoughts.
What the ‘dark forces’ do is manipulate the chaos. Pragmatic opportunism is the mechanism that the ‘conspirators’ use to ratchet the ways of the world to their personal (or rather elite collective) advantage.
Surely nobody could have planned this and confidently expected it to work, it relies on too many people being stupid and recalcitrant in too many ways.
One glimmer of light from all this ….it is indicative of how well the European project has worked so far that given the level of downright offensive comments that have been exchanged by Brexiteers and our ‘partners’ in Europe we are still talking and haven’t resorted to a war footing as would so easily have happened in the past.
At a political/diplomatic level we are having ‘a domestic’, what is more worrying is the extent to which acrimony is being expressed at ‘street level’. The play-acting of politicians’ public utterances (some of it no more than banter inside their ‘bubble’) is taken literally by the ‘common people’ who are not party to the game and take political posturing seriously.
The media response is to lick its collective metaphorical lips and stir the pot. That’s dangerous.
The EU has not been a left of centre project since the Maastricht Treaty.
A nation can be cosmopolitan and inclusive without shackling itself to a deeply undemocratic supranational organisation that is biased towards wage suppression, fiscal contraction, and cuts to public services.
It is easier to replace UK elites than it is to replace EU elites.
The left should be constructive in their response to Brexit, which truly is an opportunity to pursue a non-neoliberal economic order that makes social value and environmental sustainability the primary goals.
The UK’s goal should be to demonstrate that leaving the EU is a good move. The UK should set such a good example of exiting the EU that Spain and Italy will be encouraged to leave both the Eurozone and the EU.
That is the kind of regional leadership role that the UK should exercise. It would be a massive contribution to the wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people if the UK handles its exit from the EU with MMT-informed aplomb.
Labour is, I presume you realise, profoundly opposed to MMT?
Richard is profoundly right on this one Nicholas. Labour are really just as orthodox as the Tories when it comes to economics – but nicer with it – which is not enough I’m afraid.
Your most coherent statement is ‘It is easier to replace UK elites than it is to replace EU elites’.
As I never tire of pointing out, the EU is made up of states nearly all of whom (including the UK) are Neo-liberal market-first sympathisers. Sort this domestic problem out first in all member nations and the EU would change in a way that you, me and many others would find tolerable.
The only exception to this that I have is the European Central Bank (ECB). Now that is an organisation inside a treaty framework that has to go. As does the Euro.
But mark my words – reform of the EU begins at home for all the members.
I also have to say that given your understandable fervour for change, how could a left leaning government cope with labour shortages, commodity shortages, higher costs and inflation, less cross border co-operation concerning the law and immigration to name but a few?
I cannot think of a worse time to come to power for any political party – having to deal with all that. Think on.
Actually everyone on the planet ‘supports’ MMT, in the sense that as MMT is simply a description of the monetary system operated by all of us.
There is a prescriptive part of MMT that goes beyond the purely apolitical descriptive part, and I would accept there is no consensus here. There is an excellent discussion of this point in this thread from yesterday.
https://twitter.com/citizensmediatv/status/1059605974225424387
Thanks Charles
Try looking out Frances Coppola on this and you will see another view
Yet.
lewis says:
“There is no major political entity on the planet which supports MMT.”
I don’t think that’s right. It assumes MMT is a political philosophy and that isn’t what MMT is. MMT is simply descriptive of how the fiat currency system functions. The central bankers know how it works and have used the knowledge to create liquidity since 2008, indeed the ECB is still pumping e30 billion monthly into the economy. The FED is currently reversing the process and the results remain to be seen. I predict it will be very depressing on the US economy when the Trump tax cuts have worked through and there will be major corporate failures requiring FED intervention to rescue them again.
So MMT is fully functional and the politicians are taking advantage of that to promote their political agenda of neoliberal financialisation of ….well everything they can financialise.
Japan has been effectively been nationalising its entire industrial base for two decades. They just don’t call it that.
What you say does apply to politicians of a progressive intent failing to understand the mechanism and explain it to the voters in such a way that it presents a viable economic policy mechanism to deliver a socially inclusive political agenda.
As Richard points out below, Labour don’t ‘get’ it.
As regards conspiracy vs. cock-up, see Hanlon’s Razor: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hanlon%27s%20Razor
However, I do believe that the cock-up has been welcomed/used by ERG opportunists, hedgies and all those who would profit from no-deal, meanwhile safety standards, food standards etc. reduced and climate changed sidelined in favour of ‘US trade’. We’d probably be locked into that and any change in the UK ‘elite’ would not mean that the damage would cease. These agreements can’t be switched on and off, like a light switch.
Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine is the best analysis of what is going on behind the scenes.
If you accept as a first premise that the WTO has failed to effectively police global trading then it becomes axiomatic that the leadership of a country would seek some other means of policing. The obvious one (outside of continuously allowing your country’s currency to devalue) is to seek trading alliances with other countries particularly if your country is lacking in self-sufficiency. Another way, if you have the military power, is to seek to imperialistically impose the trading terms that suit you. The false pride many British people still cling to in regard to the country’s imperial past as well as that of being the country that first led the industrial revolution blinds them to the fact the country now badly needs to be a member of a powerful trading alliance. The second premise most British people don’t understand is free market market capitalism whilst essential is flawed. It is flawed when considered that it doesn’t adequately align with a fundamental force in Nature that of continuously balancing the caregiving of self and others (biologists have now uncovered that force with the discovery of the hologenome).
@ Nicholas
I’m empathetic to your views and in an ideal world an independent UK could be a global force for good – maybe even forming a new alliance of nations based on the progressive criteria you suggest, making a complete break from neo-liberal ideology that is currently throttling the planet.
At the outset of the Brexit campaign I was pretty much on the fence; then on the day went 55-45 towards remain. Since then I’ve been persuaded by Richard’s (and others’, incl. the Green Party of which I am a member) pragmatic approach, which I now see as the only realistic way forward to achieve progressive goals within Europe. I’d say I’m now 80-20 in favour of retaining as close a relationship with the EU as is now possible.
Yes, it’s going to be a long, hard slog. However, in view of the the way the political axis is currently shifting to the right coupled with Labour’s lack of courage, leadership & principle, I see no chance over the foreseeable future of the UK veering in the radical, progressive direction required for a sustainable, equitable and peaceful future. Hence I believe we can do more good from within than without. There is strength in numbers.
@ lewis.
All governments of sovereign nations with their own fiat currency function monetarily according to MMT principles. They just don’t know it or dare admit it publicly. However, rational facts eventually take precedence over ignorance and manipulative mythology. How long (and how many lives) did it take for major ‘institutions’ to acknowledge officially that the earth travelled around the sun, even though the facts were available in Europe 18 centuries before Copernicus’ explanation gathered some traction? Ultimately not even the power of the Catholic Church was able to prevent fact-based enlightenment. Similarly, not even the power of the neo-liberals can forever keep the public in the dark re macro-economics. It’s only a matter of time and, sadly, many lives too.
I mean no major political entity on the planet has a doctrine of print & spend until full employment / capacity is hit then tax to stop inflation. Can’t blame the Labour Party for not taking it on board. If there was evidence they could point to where a country has been successful then it might be different.
You mean we must never change even though the facts do?
No country yet acts as if it has a fiat currency
As someone who spent four years working in Norway and a lot of holidays, winter and summer, I would have gladly accepted Norway plus icing but wasn’t that what we had? As I recall Norway paid almost as much per capita as the UK but had little say as to procedures and outcomes. My only regret is that my UK pension is insufficient to provide me with a good lifestyle in Norway. Maybe I should have accepted the job offer in 1998.
With reference to Norway, I am presently engaged in learning about that wonderfully egalitarian country since my son has moved there. I’m a resident of Scotland and supporter of Scottish independence and I watched today the third of a series of films by Phantom Power and Lesley Riddoch This film contains some interesting comparisons with the way constitutional matters have been handled (and oil wealth) and like Rodney White I find myself also regretting that my pension provisions are insufficient. My best hope now is for an independent Scotland with a Norway-style relationship with the EU.
There is another potential version of the conspiracy theory proposed at the outset. This is that Mrs May remains a remainder and has intentionally made an almighty mess of Brexit so that everyone can see what a disaster it will be. In this version her aim is a second referendum to reverse the first to which she hopes to be forced to agree. As an optimist, I am attracted to this idea and have not yet abandoned hope that the disaster can be averted.
You can take my support for remain as read. Given we have 54% in favour and have to do more or less nothing to remain it is hard to understand why Parliament doesn’t take the line of least resistance. Intentionality is a philosophic minefield. A recent poll showed 80% of Republican voters can’t fathom global warming at all – it’s less than 10% of Democrats. How does stuff like this come about from the same exposure to media and education? The BBC keep putting people from quite vicious economics in front of us for “balance” when these views are about a tenth of economics and zero point one percent of social science. Was the long-term lying over Hillsborough not “intentional”?I can think of no area of public life actually under independent scrutiny and regulation and at the same time a hundred failed bodies that claim independence. I can’t remember a Brexiteer telling us the truth about leaving and received most of remain as nonsense. The intent to treat us an a dumb electorate by both sides was intentional. The evidence we need on intention is usually hidden in the individual or cabal. Allowed to investigate across jurisdictions I would be able to find links to brexiteers and the financial bets I suspect could reveal intention to profit through hollowing the country out rather than just another firm. I’ve used control theory in fraud investigations. We are not allowed to do this work Odd. given the nation is at stake, is the absence of SIS involvement. Nudge theory and targeting small groups to effect narrow victory is intentional. My conclusion is there are rubber-masked aliens with intent – though we need to identify the reality, not rely on daft metaphor. Whoever they are, they seem to eat money! At the back of this we all have some responsibility for the dirty-hands decision-making we allow to go on.
Craig Murray sees some connections with the current impasse regarding the Irish border and a paper Gove wrote in 2000 opposing the Good Friday Agreement: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/11/the-price-of-peace/
Gove’s actual paper contains some astonishing opinions.
Tweeted
Well worth reading
Good Lord.
Gove is a complete nut case. We sit here worrying about the rise of fascism yet I fear it is already here and embedded in the Tory party/ERG!! Scary stuff. You can compare Gove’s attitude to walking around a gunpowder factory flicking the ash off of a lit cigarette as you go without a care in the world. It’s just so irresponsible.
Those Tories – oh dear! They’ve got to go.
Thank you G Hewitt.
Thanks. Also put me onto a free pdf of craig’s ‘catholic orangemen in Toga’ book = well worth a scan. I was a commissioned grunt in NI and there was a weird and vicious ‘operation snowball’ (never implemented) detailing implementation of something similar to this later ‘plan Gove’ in about 1979 – even Thatcher baulked at the internment cubed thought necessary.
I admire Richard Murphy. He is a person of incisive intellect and high integrity. He is definitely not a Blairite.
I suppose that where you stand on the reformability of the EU is just a judgement call. In my view, it is impossible for UK voters to persuade German policymakers to relinquish their “fight inflation first” obsession. But by contrast it is eminently achievable for UK voters to elect an MMT-informed House of Commons majority that enacts policies of full employment, price stability, sustainable resource use, and drastically reduced inequality of income and wealth.
I am under no illusions about how difficult it is to win a House of Commons majority that would enact those policy changes.
But there is at least a possibility of that happening.
There is zero possibility of UK voters influencing German technocrats.
So I see the EU as a lost cause, like USA Gymnastics. It should be disbanded. Since the Maastricht Treaty the EU has been incorrigibly committed to pro-austerity, economically illiterate policies. The EU’s treatment of Greece demonstrates sociopathic tendencies in EU technocrats. I will never trust the EU to abandon neoliberalism and to promote the active use of fiscal policy to achieve societal and environmental wellbeing.
All the good elements of the EU – environmental regulations, quality control standards for goods and services – can be enacted by the UK Parliament by statute. It is not necessary to be part of the EU to benefit from those things.
Plenty of non-EU nations enjoy healthy diplomatic and trade relations with the EU.
I think that the Remainers overstate the difficulty of leaving the EU.
With appropriate use of fiscal policy to assist the transition, the UK will be fine.
I know that it is difficult to persuade the UK’s political class to embrace active fiscal policy, but the probability of achieving that goal is surely higher than the probability of persuading “fight inflation first” zealots in Germany to drop their obsessions and become economically literate and humane.
I acknowledge that as an Australian citizen who resides in Australia, I don’t have a direct stake in this issue. My opinion counts for little.
I just hope that progressives in the UK can embrace the opportunities afforded by leaving behind the silly, arbitrary debt to GDP and deficit to GDP ratios prescribed by the EU.
I hope that progressives in the UK take the constructive step of using national political processes to improve the wellbeing of the people and natural ecosystems of the UK.
EU membership is probably not as important as the Remainers believe.
The House of Commons existed centuries before the advent of the EU and I predict that the House of Commons will endure long after the EU has disbanded.
The people of the UK should be proud of their political institutions. It makes sense for them to use their own political institutions to advance their wellbeing and to set a good example for other nations to emulate. The EU has performed poorly and does not deserve the deference it so often receives from progressives.
UK voters have the power to hire and fire UK parliamentarians. They have no such power over German technocrats.
This is an argument that makes no sense to me
Of course how we behave influences other countries
And nothing we do is in isolation
The route to isolation is one of desperation and has never ended well
It made sense to me. Strange lot aren’t we?
Nicholas –
“So I see the EU as a lost cause, like USA Gymnastics. It should be disbanded.”
Fair enough… but if I sit in the UK and tell the US they should disband their gymnastics programme, I’ll be completely ignored. Who the hell am I to tell the US what to do?
On the other hand, if I’ve got a seat in Congress and I say the gymnastics programme should be disbanded, then they’ve at least got to listen and debate it.
The parallels to the EU are exactly why I believe we need to remain. In or out, there are things about the EU that need to change. You’ve got to be in it to win it, so to speak.
It is deliberate, it’s for money and control of this island, the money fears the break up of the U.K. and knows that scottish independence is not about to go away anytime soon, they rely on older Scots to vote for U.K. because younger Scots don’t .
It’s not just that oil and gas and whisky and fish are valuable to U.K. there’s more but especially important is keeping the world view of England being this whole island and not just two fifths of it.Little England truly would be little if the U.K. splits and there lies the reason for brexit mayhem, they hope to put the majority remainders in Scotland back in the tartan U.K. box ready for storage in some nuclear bunker neve to be seen for a thousand years .
Northern Ireland will do what it always does there is no agreeable solution possible as long as U.K. govt involved.
“Fundamentalists who will risk chaos and the well being of people for the sake of an ideal do not appeal to me.”
This reminds me of a play by Camus, Les Justes, set in 1905 in pre-Revolutionary Russia.
Other themes other circumstances, but the spirit of compromise and pragmatism is always threatened by fundamentalists prepared to sacrifice themselves (their choice), but more importantly the well-being and safety of ordinary citizens for their ideals, for what they deem is best for ‘the people’.
Ideology can be dangerously blinding.
Even a modern democracy like Britain can have citizens blinded by it, on both sides of the political spectrum.
It only ever causes chaos if taken literally, whether intentionally or not.
It’s only meant to evolve in the sphere of the mind, not be confronted to real life, when it invariably crashes, taking real people with it.
Like you, I don’t believe this chaos we face was intentional.
I’m used to studying body language, it used to be part of my job.
Johnson’s body language said it all on 24/6/16, even Farage looked befuddled.
Following that day, nothing I’ve read or seen since about the buffoons has made me think for a second that this was all a well-planned Machiavellian scheme.
The plan, if any, was to give everyone a good scare and move on, having made sure that as we’d scared ourselves silly, we’d swallow the rest of their austerity measures with relief, having avoided the abyss…
Europe is faulty, governments in Europe are faulty, democracy as a political system is.
But improving bit by bit, knowing none of us will ever reach a non-existent state of perfection, but can protect most people from chaos most of the time, is all we can strive for.
Sisyphus, another of Camus’ essays adapted from a Greek myth, could teach people to be satisfied with eternal strife and toil.
Thanks
The body language argument is telling
My concern is not whether we leave or stay, whether it was part of some master plan is moot. The potential for economic damage (leave or stay) is of course of concern. But my main worry is the damage already done to the social fabric of the country. The political players on both sides have lied continuously stirring up division and resentment in order to ‘win’ what will be a pyrrhic victory. The Union looks to be on thin ice, trust in political institutions is shot, friction between the regions and London is obvious. The parties are heading to internecine war. Brexit campaigning has taken up the entire political bandwidth causing neglect of all other issues. These were left to trundle on along their hard core ideological rails without oversight creating a host of negative sentiment in the population. It has been like watching children having a bonfire party in a fuel depot. There will be consequences. Perhaps we should mark our new status, whatever it turns out to be with an appropriate anthem. I suggest Humpty Dumpty.
And (as someone who spent a decade in Brussels and most of my life France) we’ve done enormous damage to our relationships in Europe, whatever happens now. The government have fielded successive waves of near-incompetents who have been posturing for the friends in the Conservative party. This could have been done with grace, statesmanship and goodwill but instead with just have bad temper and mess.
@Bill Lawrence
Yes, but apart from that…. ?
Yes Andy, indeed, apart from that… I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know. For the first time in 70 years I’m absolutely banjaxed. I counsel those prepared to listen that Governments can make terrible mistakes. Even when they are convinced of the justness of their cause. Even when guided by popular opinion. I would suggest the Treaty of Versailles 1919 as an example. I feel that as Hugh has said some grace, statesmanship and goodwill would be very welcome even at this late stage.