Rejoining Horizon. Rejoice, rejoice!
- Thread starter speckyget
- Start date
festa5
Well-known member
This is exactly the issue.
Plus theres still a big enough number to be a problem of Tory MPs who'll be happy to stab Sunak in the back over anything that looks remotely like rowing back on the hardcore brexit utopia/delusion they still have a raging hard on for.
Because of our farcical, not fit for purpose voting system, the country is effectively being held to ransom by a minority of jingoistic idiots.
Wiseman_Vaughn
Well-known member
Regarding my earlier remark about a Democratic solution to this mess - putting it back to the country via a referendum...There doesn't seem to be an appetite from enough politicians to do so. Sign of the times that they aren't willing to commit to something that they believe in
JonJon
Active member
I agree with this and other points made above. There is also the point that people generally are reluctant to talk or even think about Brexit because of the real divisions it opened up in our society. There was a lot of anger around and people simply don't want to go back there. I also think that we will end up in a position similar to having rejoined the EU, but it will be brought about by stealth, by politicians on both sides, in order not to cause the damage it did then.
LaPennaBianca
Well-known member
All these boomers telling young people to stop eating avocado toast in order to afford the million pound houses they bought for a tenner need to face some home truths.
They took everything from postwar economic boom, sold the entire welfare state their parents built having reaped its benefits and then were tricked by a bus.
(N.b. this is a particular type of boomer, the type that props up the Conservative Party, rather than all boomers)
They took everything from postwar economic boom, sold the entire welfare state their parents built having reaped its benefits and then were tricked by a bus.
(N.b. this is a particular type of boomer, the type that props up the Conservative Party, rather than all boomers)
Unravel_Morrison
Well-known member
I think the main problem with the politicians is that they very rarely have to do anything themselves of any significance; only a few have to actually do anything as Ministers. You have 650ish people with a small percentage of them having national responsibilities.
There was a session in parliament this week where Wilson from The DUP was complaining about the Windsor Framework and Steve 'Hard Man of Brexit' Baker was trying to explain to him that we are where we are and anything that happens now is reliant on decisions that have already been taken and acted upon. He's been put in a responsible position where reality has caught up with him, so he can't parrot the ERG lines any more.
I personally think we'll end up with the worst compromise possible with no one on the extremes of the argument happy and everybody else in the middle trapped by reality.
We won't get back in the EU (sorry Remainers) and we will end up following EU rules with little or no say in them (well done Brexiters).
Love how the Daily Express span us rejoining something that they wanted us to leave as a big Brexit win.
There was a session in parliament this week where Wilson from The DUP was complaining about the Windsor Framework and Steve 'Hard Man of Brexit' Baker was trying to explain to him that we are where we are and anything that happens now is reliant on decisions that have already been taken and acted upon. He's been put in a responsible position where reality has caught up with him, so he can't parrot the ERG lines any more.
I personally think we'll end up with the worst compromise possible with no one on the extremes of the argument happy and everybody else in the middle trapped by reality.
We won't get back in the EU (sorry Remainers) and we will end up following EU rules with little or no say in them (well done Brexiters).
Love how the Daily Express span us rejoining something that they wanted us to leave as a big Brexit win.
festa5
Well-known member
This has always been the issue. It was always impossible to square the circle once leave won.
You either did a "soft brexit" which would do minimal damage to the economy but meant you still had to follow all the rules. So essentially giving up any say over them for the same benefits. It didn't make sense. If you were going to do that you might as well just stay and keep your influence.
Or you do a hard brexit which the vast majority of experts knew would do immense damage to the economy. Brainless.
Any politician with an ounce of intelligence who gave a modicum of a **** about what happened to the country was going to find a solution that made sense almost impossible.
Of course the Tories eventually found the solution by finding a politician without any common sense and who simply didn't give a ****. Job done.
Now he and the Brexit cultists have finished taking a massive **** all over the country and reality bites we're back to square one: damage limitation.
speckyget
Well-known member
Exactly this. The run up to the vote was full of promises that - of course - Brexit meant cherry picking the good bits and boot the foreigners out at the same time. Plus blue passports. But the ballot paper didn't accommodate the myriad of options Brexit could have spawned, and once the binary decision was made the whole mess of how was hijacked by the ERG and the Tufton St disaster capitalists. Crashing our economy has been their agenda all along, together with a regulatory bonfire. But that wouldn't have sat so well on the side of a bus.
Wiseman_Vaughn
Well-known member
Yes - the simple yes or no was incredibly misleading. Also, David Cameron saying things like there would be no going back and this was "forever" was stupid with hindsight. The door should have always been left ajar.
LaPennaBianca
Well-known member
I don't think I agree with this.
I think that the only thing stopping the UK rejoining is the politics of it. There are no benefits from Brexit that we have capitalised on. There is no appetite to capitalise on potential benefits in the future (regulatory freedom, for example) as it's now clear we can't diverge from the EU without significant economic upheaval in the short to medium term, with no guarantee of success in the long term.
Every geopolitical and economic reality points to a closer relationship. Once that is established, every political factor points to rejoining as we'll then have a seat at the table and a say in issues that affect us.
This means that it just takes the electorate and a politician brave enough to begin to properly reverse it. How long this takes is the question, but people will look at their more successful Dutch, French, German and Polish neighbours and recognise that the EU was never the problem re: migration and think "why can't I have a piece of that?"
Unravel_Morrison
Well-known member
And that's it. That's why we won't rejoin.
LaPennaBianca
Well-known member
Politics isn't immutable, it's just presented as such as political journalists are like goldfish.
In 2019 Boris Johnson won an 80 seat majority and 44% of the vote. We're now 2 PMs on and he's near enough the most hated man in the country.
Scotland belonged to Labour until it didn't, then it belonged to the SNP, let's see how long that lasts.
Liverpool consistently elected Tory MPs until the 1960s.
speckyget
Well-known member
L
Sadly there are only two parties under FPTP who would have the potential Parliamentary wherewithal to even get us to another referendum. One is the Tory party, which is now owned and run by a cabal of extreme libertarians. The other is Labour, for the foreseeable future (next Parliament anyway) led by a coward who is like a general fighting the last war. Terrified of a repeat of 2019, Starmer will run a mile from anything that would upset the red wallers. Those two parties between them control 84% of seats. And whatever logic, reason or just plain managerial expediency demands a return to the EU, I can't see any part of that mass of vested interest, psychotic ideology and cowardice wanting to entertain the idea anytime soon.
Unravel_Morrison
Well-known member
It isn't a one-sided conversation.
I'm sure the EU would want to welcome us back but there would be conditions attached to make sure they don't have to go over it again when our ever-changing political climate, as you demonstrated, changes again.
There are enough obstacles domestically that the EU would think twice about letting us back in and that's before you add in any extra conditionality. As Specky says the parties containing the overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats don't seem to have any great appetite for it.
Frozen Horse
Well-known member
I think that was Cameron raising the stakes; the more absolute he portrayed the referendum, the more likely voters were to stick with what they know rather than think "let's give independence a try, we can go back if it doesn't work". Obviously, that backfired.
My problem with this type of referendum was that a win for leave was disproportionate to a win for remain: one outcome is absolute, and the other transient. I find it unimaginable that Farage and co would have accepted a remain vote for the rest of their lives, in the same way Scottish Nationalists will campaign for vote after vote until they get the result they want and then, what do you know, that would turn out to be the will of the people, for ever and ever, amen. Farage actually said as much on referendum night when it was thought remain had won.
The only solution I can think of to balance this inequality is that a leave/independence vote would need to be ratified by a second vote. Maybe the first triggers the negotiation of a deal, and the second vote is required for the nation to verify the details of what has been agreed?
Scrote
Well-known member
They knew it would be a backward step and an act of self harm when they voted to have the referendum in the first place. They're supposed to represent their constituents' interests but were happy to kow-tow to the worst elements of right wing libertarianism because that's where the money is.
Until politicians stand up and acknowledge their mistakes we won't go anywhere. The country needs to be told they (as in everyone) made a massive error and it needs fixing.
They promised that we wouldn't lose access to any of the things we wanted to be part of so they'll see this as a small victory.
