Twitter is not everyone's cup of tea. I use it less than I used to. But there are people worth reading there. One is Flip Chart Rick who wrote this yesterday:
I will never get behind Brexit. I will have to accept it if it happens but I will never be reconciled to it. It is a stupid idea. I will never forgive the people who took us down this road. I will do whatever I can to bring about their political extinction.
That seems like a fair summary to me.
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One of the few people who makes Twitter worth a read. And I could not agree wth him more
I was trying to think of another world leader who would be prepared to do so much damage to their country to save their own skins and party, allying with extremist factions to drive it through. So obviously devoid of any empathy. That letter, riddled with false claims that are disproven by the evidence even of her own government. Worryingly Assad comes to mind. That and Arendts Banality of Evil. Not good thoughts
When the only two significant world leaders who think that Brexit is a good idea are Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, that should tell you all you need to know. And the illicit activities of Brexit referendum campaign are linked through to both of them.
I feel past caring. I should have stayed in the lab working of post-apocalyptic medicines. Public argument cannot be detected in the noise.
I no longer tweet – I realised that I was never going to reach anyone not already walking the same road as I am following.
My husband no longer ‘does’ Facebook – too many followers of fanatical fantasists – and that was just his brother-in-law!
But – it’s among those ex-armed forces, disappointed, resentful and hoping for a Hitler to follow, that the main threat to our hopes of a more enlightened future lies.
And they know how to fight…
Splendid open letter from Mike Harding riffing on the same theme:
Dear Mrs May
I am in France having a break having come here on the train all the way from Settle. I just read your letter to me and the rest of Britain wanting us all to unite behind the damp squib you call a deal. Unite? I laughed so much the mouthful of frogs legs I was eating ended up dancing all over the bald head of the bloke on the opposite table.
Your party’s little civil war has divided this country irreparably. The last time this happened Cromwell discontinued the custom of kings wearing their heads on their shoulders
I had a mother who was of Irish descent, an English father who lies in a Dutch graveyard in the village where his Lancaster bomber fell in flames. I had a Polish stepfather who drove a tank for us in WW2 and I have two half Polish sisters and a half Polish brother who is married to a girl from Donegal.
My two uncles of Irish descent fought for Britain in N Africa and in Burma.
So far you have called us Citizens Of Nowhere and Queue Jumpers. You have now taken away our children and grandchildren’s freedom to travel, settle, live and work in mainland Europe.
You have made this country a vicious and much diminished place. You as Home Sec sent a van round telling foreigners to go home. You said “ illegal” but that was bollocks as the legally here people of the Windrush generation soon discovered.
Your party has sold off our railways, water, electricity, gas, telecoms, Royal Mail etc until all we have left is the NHS and that is lined up for the US to have as soon as Hannon and Hunt can arrange it
You have lied to the people of this country. You voted Remain yet changed your tune when the chance to grab the job of PM came. You should have sacked those lying bastards Gove and Bojo but daren’t because you haven’t the actual power.
You have no answer to the British border on the island of Ireland nor do you know how the Gib border with Spain will work once we are out
Mrs May you have helped to divide this country to such an extent that families and friends are now no longer talking to each other, you have managed to negotiate a deal far worse than the one we had and all to keep together a party of millionaires, Eton Bullingdon boys, spivs and WI harridans. Your party conserves nothing. It has sold everything off in the name of the free market.
You could have kept our industries going with investment and development – Germany managed it. But no – The Free Market won so Sunderland, Barnsley, Hamilton etc could all go to the devil
So Mrs May my answer to your plea for unity is firstly that it is ridiculous. 48% of us will never forgive you for Brexit and secondly, of the 52% that voted for it many will not forgive you for not giving them what your lying comrades like Rees Mogg and Fox promised them. There are no unicorns, there is no £350 million extra for the NHS. The economy will tank and there will be less taxes to help out the poor. We have 350,000 homeless (not rough sleepers – homeless) in one of the richest countries on Earth and you are about to increase that number with your damn fool Brexit.
The bald man has wiped the frogs legs of his head, I’ve bought him a glass of wine to say sorry; I’m typing this with one finger on my phone in France and I’m tired now and want to stop before my finger gets too tired to join the other one in a sailors salute to you and your squalid Brexit, your shabby xenophobia and Little Englander
mentality. Two fingers to you and your unity from this proud citizen of nowhere. I and roughly half the country will never forgive you or your party.
Spot on!!!
Wonderful – one tries to stay calm but having someone else have the rant on your behalf is a sort of relief!
For me Mays letter has made things worse, encapsulating everything that I have disliked about her and her government. Rightly or wrongly, it’s become personal like the latter days of Thatcher.
Bravo Ian!
Encore, encore!!
Magnifique! Merci!
There are at least 10 European countries that were never communist and have never been EU members, and every one is more prosperous than its nearest EU neighbour.
It’s fine to think that EU membership and the associated compulsory centralisation of competencies and influence over other smaller countries is right for the UK, that’s an opinion I can understand. But for Flip Chart Rick to not engage with non-membership, and to imply that the countries that don’t want to follow this path are under the influence of stupidity, well further words fail me.
Go on, list those ‘countries’
I think we’ll all laugh ourselves silly at your list of tax havens who live as parasites off their neighbouring states and are not really richer because GDP is not a useful indicator or their actual national income
But let’s have the laugh, at your expense
Andora, Monaco, Vatican City…. oh dear, where are the other 7 countries?
Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, San Marino, Iceland, Liechtenstein + another
Let’s leave Iceland out
Andvtge rest are parasites of some form – even the Vatican can be argued to be a tax haven
“…even the Vatican can be argued to be a tax haven…”
That would probably be the least of the objections to the Vatican.
Chris Johnson wrote: “It’s fine to think that EU membership and the associated compulsory centralisation of competencies and influence over other smaller countries is right for the UK, that’s an opinion I can understand.”
All is revealed: in his mind it’s perfectly justifiable for the UK to deny the people of Scotland, Wales and N Ireland the right for their views to be recognised by the Westminster Gov’t. The Scottish experience since 2014 has been one of solemn promises abandoned by WM, ongoing attempts by WM to reverse the powers devolved to Holyrood by statute, a total failure by WM to engage in meaningful dialogue about the impact of Brexit on Scotland, it’s economy and its political governance. It’s all much better described in considerable detail in yesterday’s essay by Wee Ginger Dug, but it boils down to an arrogant and contemptuous attitude that the people of UK’s other nations will just do as they’re told by a WM Gov’t which considers that only its views carry any weight. However, according to Chris Johnson that’s OK. Ho hum.
Ken Mathieson says:
“Chris Johnson wrote: …..”
The usual Brexit case that makes the case for independence of the countries of the UK.
The case for Scottish independence is the Brexit case, but with justification – the UK had most of the freedoms it wanted within the EU, had Westminster governments the wit and will to exercise them. Scotland within the UK does not.
Many Leaver voters are now switching to Remain after their 2016 protest against the Tories’ Austerity Cuts:-
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/manage/publications/394-2018_fetzer.pdf
The unscrupulous authoritarians May and Corbyn will of course do their level best to deny this is so for their own misjudged and misplaced Machiavellian reasons!
This appeared a couple of hours ago on Jo Maugham’s twitter.
Significant?
Appeared in the text of the Government’s failed application to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Published under pressure. The Govt formally recognises MPs can simply direct it to revoke the Article 50 notice.
(38) For the issue of revocability of the Notice to become live, Parliament must first have directed the Government, against the Government’s settled policy and against the popular answer provided by the Referendum, unilaterally to revoke the notice.
Second, either an EU Member state or the EU Parliament must then object to the United Kingdom’s attempt to unilaterally revoke.
Third, all attempts at finding a consensus for revocation must fail, so that the effects of revoking the Notice becomes a live issue.
If that stage were reached, any such live issue and dispute would be at the inter-state or EU institutional level.
At that time it would fall to be adjudicated by the CJEU in a direct action.
ZiggyM
Significant? I believe so… thank you very much…!
If by the people who took us down this road he means all those who told us that the Lisbon Treaty was just a technical matter and nothing much to worry our pretty little heads about, then I’m very much with him, but I don’t think he is, is he?
That was possibly the last time we could have done anything significant to avoid this path-dependent slow-motion car-crash. Nailing down the neoliberalism just as the ‘big-bang’ expansion essentially delayed forever any chance of significant reform was a master-stroke of ‘grouwn up’ politics. However, those that grinned and congratulated themselves as they flipped the points and sent us into the sidings are far from extinct – they’re back and whining at our ‘stupidity’.
I am not sure what you are arguing
I am arguing that I think Rick is likely targetting the wrong people for blame.
The fate of EU was sealed with Lisbon. It’s when the 3% deficits & 60% debt to GDP levels, excess financialisation, state procurement & tendering rules etc. were set in stone along with a significant diminution of the prospects of ever achieving the pan-European movement required to turn the ship around.
From then on disintegration was, if not inevitable, then very likely.
Tory austerity and a reckless and flippant PM meant that we were the first to jump ship, but we won’t be the last
It was the hubris and corruption of the third-wayers of the first decade of this century that have taken us ‘down this road’ (a road that, of course, necessitated a sharp right turn for most member states).
That May and the Tories are venal and incompetent does not distract from these facts.
Having said all that, I think perhaps the greatest blame should go to David Cameron & Nicholas Sarkosy for their pivotal roles in essentially instigating the refugee crisis by destroying Libya and fermenting conflict in Syria (although ‘we’ were doing this as early as 2009).
It is this crisis that has done most to embolden the far-right across Europe and has shown once and for all the vacuity of the EU’s ‘drown them at our borders’ internationalism. I think Rick may blame Cameron too, but I’m not sure it’s for this reason.
Your logic is clear, and strong, now
Just a question if I may please.
I was pretty neutral (not particularly well informed) on EU issues about 3 years ago.
I recall you quoting someone called Evans-Pritchard who said
“Brussels really has created a monster.”
You go on to say this in response:
“What might that monster be called? Given that this is about subjugating democracy to corporate interests the only word for it is fascism.”
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2015/10/24/how-much-longer-can-europe-pretend-to-be-democratic/
That tipped me to be very much anti-EU, given I don’t want to go anywhere near fascism, no matter the cost. So I voted Leave.
Now you’re saying you’re against Brexit.
What changed? Is it no longer fascist? I refuse to believe you would advocate any links to a fascist entity, so I am not casting that aspersion.
I was very angry about Greece
I still am with the ECB
But I reflected and running away was going to solve nothing
Not then
Not now
So I called that post wrong
Very interesting comment from Barry S. But might you and other change again?
What if Brexit happens and it turns out to be basically a big nothing? And if then Corbyn gets in and reinvigorates the good old fashioned welfare state? And that has the same effect that it did everywhere in Europe post WWII – making the UK and Europe richer.
The last is somewhat speculative, but I don’t think the first is. Imho, the Brexit associated problems are grossly exaggerated, in line with the traditional human, and particularly extreme European exaggeration of the economic importance of the foreign sector to society. Come Brexit, Britons will NOT have to resort to cannibalism to feed themselves.
But most important, comparing Britain to Greece, can’t people see how the Brexit/Grexit episodes show how much more fundamentally healthy British society is than Greece’s?
Would Remainers here really complain much if the Brexit vote had been 61%-39% as the Greek referendum was? But even on a close vote, the British government decided to heed the will of the people, showing that Britons really do, deep down, believe in those “naive” things and theories like democracy, law, self-respect.
On the other hand, in Greece, a well-meaning “leftist”, “socialist” arrogantly decided to spit in the face of an overwhelming majority vote of the people he led. And worst of all, the Greeks, instead of having mass demonstrations after Tsipras displayed utter contempt for their intelligence and Greek democracy (and common sense and economics), showed how imprisoned they are by their own cynicism, learned helplessness and mindless despair, by meekly obeying and re-electing him!
Can’t people see that the real problem, the real difference isn’t Brexit or no, not even a direly needed Grexit or no, but the comparative mental health, self-respect, logic and maturity that the British are all displaying on both sides, and that the Greeks so tragically did not? That the upshot is that the UK should be OK – will muddle through whatever happens in the traditional way – while Greece – well, there is a lot more to worry about Greece.
Let’s not doubt we will survive Brexit
But it will be a mess
And the people who will pay the price are those on lowest incomes
That is why I do not forgive Corbyn right now
And will he lead a real left wing government? I doubt it. And it will not be the one we need, because it will not be green. His team don’t get that.
I don’t think you did call it wrong. I was and still am angry about Greece. I’m angry about Italy. I want neoliberalism to be history. Now, I don’t for one moment think that leaving the EU will do that but I also don’t think remaining will help either. We are coming up to a crucial point in history. Climate Change is being totally ignored – I mean totally ignored. We have a financial crisis approaching. Things just don’t look good and being in or out of the EU is actually some way down the list. Climate Change is the big issue and we’re playing Nero.
I’d like to take the EU with us
That’s the only thing I differ with you about on that
Richard Murphy says:
“I’d like to take the EU with us”
But we’re not going the right way !! Certainly not on environmental issues. We’re dragging our heels with the ‘best’ of them.
Agreed
But that is something we could change from the U.K., not just in it
I agree with Richard about this.
The ECB is an institution within a trade treaty that has some how enabled itself above and beyond the treaty that created it. Those who lead the ECB read like a whos’-who from the private investment banking community and we know what they are a capable of – especially since 2008.
The ECB is tantamount to the privatisation of fiscal policy in the euro zone in my view and showed a distinct over enthusiasm for market rules rather than social rules in the way it works.
And I share Richard’s anger over Greece who used the private banking sector to enable them to join the EU. Even the IMF is questioning how it used to issue loans based coercing states to divest themselves of assets and power in order to get a loan. Yet the ECB offered Greece bail outs using the same dodgy methodology. Utterly disgraceful.
But we must also remember that all of 2008 was the result of a private sector banking failure that started in the United States of America as a result of deregulating its finance sector. The EU did not create the crash. Its response to it though was dire. So we must improve it. We will improve it only by the UK staying in Europe and seeking the winding up of the ECB and the withdrawal of the Euro.
Thanks
Hi Richard,
I agree with your point here – we can and should stay in the EU and fight for change.
If brexit happens then we will (in some versions of it) gain more control over the UK (for as long as it exists in its current form) but we lose our considerable influence over the whole of the EU.
What’s weird is that the ardent Euro-phobes on the right seem unable to deal with the compromises involved in being part of the EU but are entirely comfortable/confident with taking on the EU/US/China from a position of no power or influence whatsoever. It is a ridiculous fantasy.
Thanks for your honesty, but it did ‘light the match’ in terms of my thinking at the time – that we had to get out, no matter the cost. I voted to leave for this very reason. It was unfortunate I caught you at a time when you were angry.
So what changed your mind so dramatically? The EU made you angry, and will no doubt make you angry again, possibly on something worse than Greece.
Going from ‘fascism’ to ‘it’s mad to leave’ (ie extreme views in the opposite direction) is something I can’t personally relate to. I change my mind like anyone, but never so extremely, and don’t then see things black and white. I usually retain at least some understanding of my former view, and rarely take an extreme form of my new view.
But thanks again for taking the time to respond.
Distinguish the Euro and the EU
I shiuld have done in that blog
The euro is a disaster
I do not think the EU is
Another great piece from Polly Toynbee:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/26/theresa-may-brexit-plan-disaster-letter
I’m not for turning either. May’s current strategy is blatant managerialism – like Neroism without the circuses. I’m waiting for a Dome of Doom event at which she holds hands with the Queen. Where has the myth of her trying hard against all odds like a Spitfire pilot (probably Polish) in WW2 come from? And the notion the nation as one supports her dismal performance? This time is the same as several last times like Chequers, that is, serial bungling. The barkingly obvious elephant in the room is this deal is worse than staying in, reveals much said pre-referendum was impossible dross and that a stateswoman would go back to the people.
archytas says:
“…..May’s current strategy is blatant managerialism — like Neroism without the circuses……”
Hmmmm….firefighting to save the south east wing of a stately home which her ilk has been systematically pillaging and torching for four decades (?)
Listening to the debate in parliament yesterday was depressing. There was mention of:
Leaving without paying anything to the EU (so the UK doesn’t care about its obligations to other countries now?)
Exiting the backstop unilaterally (It’s not a backstop then is it)
Surrender to foreign powers (give me strength)
I would be happier (not happy, but happier) if I thought all of this was just posturing, but it seems that some of our MPs really are dim enough to believe this stuff!
I regret that they are that stupid
Channel 4 was in Wales tonight.
The highlight of an interview with a number of ‘real people’ was a mad as a hatter vicar extolling the virtues of the Prime Minister. But what really caught my attention was a young woman who said that she felt that the most disappointing thing she was seeing was a lack of confidence in Britain and that somehow we couldn’t make it alone.
I hear a lot of this. But we’ve never been alone. Even in WWII we had support. And there is no way we could have been on the winning side without that help.
What changed after two world wars though was that we lost the vestiges of our empire and became a truly very small country still trying to punch above its weight.
People who talk of taking us back to a time similar to the Empire are just deluded.
The future has been here for a long time already and it is going to be more salient. The truth is that in the future there will have to be more interdependence and perhaps less competition and more co-operation between nations as resources come under pressure. And you need to be part of a bigger trading block to be safe in such a world. You need to be a member of a gang.
But still, far too many of we Brits end up falling in love with the England in our history thinking that we can relive it. We can’t OK? Those days have gone. It’s over. Britain was Globalisation once. But not now.
For God’s sake I say, wake up and smell the coffee.
We need friends and even enemies we can safely disagree with.
That is what we need going forward.
That is the now, and the future.
Agreed
PSR – Watched the same programme with my wife and daughter. There was another nutter as well as the vicar (do they pick them especially?) but it was the young woman who baffled us all, especially my daughter. What kind of a bubble must she have grown up and live in? How do these kinds of isolationist views get formed and reinforced?
I can understand the nostalgia in an older generation though the ones I know who actually fought in the war were all Remain. They understood the significance of the EU for peace. I can empathise with the so called left behind whilst believing that they are shooting at entirely the wrong target (EU rather than Tories). I’ll still question why those in major cities such as Bristol or London who live with Poverty and housing as bad as anywhere did not choose to blame their problems on an ‘other’.
But to find those dreams of Empire and Britain rules the world coming from from younger folk… As others have said, maybe some lessons need to learned and from that a degree of humility. I fear the opposite as we are seeing already – ever more blame being helped on others, be they at home or abroad. Whilst the real causes continue to be ignored and avoided.
On a positive note, great to see Amelia Gentleman and Carole Cadwalladr being rewarded for their great work on Windrush and the corruption behind the referendum.