Well There We Have It, The Easy 'Oven Ready Deal' that Never Was...

One of the most depressing aspects of the whole debacle (and there's plenty to choose from) is that part of the Tory election campaign was based around the assumption that people were "bored" with Brexit. "Just get it done" was the mantra. Its a sad indictment of this country that it worked.

The attitude seemed to be "I can't be bothered listening to stuff about brexit anymore so I'll just vote to let Boris and co. do whatever the hell they like. Bored now." A large part of the national pysche reduced to thinking like a child.

It's F***ing embarrassing to be the same nationality and therefore tarred with the same brush as these people. "Well we've just got to get Brexit done now haven't we?" FFS.

The fact we're now led by a 50 something year old who still seems to be an adolescent is quite appropriate. Like many in this country he also gets bored easily and soon loses interest if things get too difficult.
 
This whole thing has been such a sad, depressing, miserable event for nigh on 5 years and it will continue to be so for another 10 at best, assuming we join EFTA under Starmer and begin a slow step to recovery - not that we will ever get back to where we were in terms of influence and reputation.

It's still just about possible to make a deal, albeit a very skinny deal. Let's hope there is something doable on airlines and radioactive isotopes. I know people who have cancer who might be in a terrible situation even without the Covid and other Brexit consequences impacting them.

It's a real shame for the generations about to enter the workforce that we have chosen to apparently allow them to dangle in the wind until they are almost in their 40's and their life direction is already largely set, so that the generation of current 6 year olds can possibly reap some long term benefits and leapfrog them. Poor sods.

All over something that wasn't even an important issue until certain parties stirred it up.

EU membership just wasn't an issue for most until 2015.

most important issues facing Britain

(side issue - isn't it notable that the importance of the NHS has grown as austerity started to bite?)

Immigration was an issue, but now people have become more educated about it in the last 4 years, following years of misinformation feeding on prejudice, as well as more understanding of it's importance/benefit it in itself seems now unimportant. That could be because Brexit took over from it for many, perhaps emphasising that Brexit was indeed primarily about immigration for most Leave voters.

Ipsos Mori 2015-19


My hope is that we all do some really deep dives in to the internal workings of ourselves as individuals to understand how we came to be in such an embarrassing state. Leave voters in particular, especially those who did not change their mind and actively attempt to reverse the mistake, owe that to the 16 million Remain voters, the 18+ million who could not vote, the circa (750k births x 15 years) 11 million yet to be born and even, to a lesser degree, the 12 million who did not vote. However, so should all of us, because had it been a different issue, we each might fall into the same traps of arrogance, hubris, laziness, misunderstanding, misplaced trust, ineptitude, prejudice, biases and cognitive dissonance that sees critical thinking fly out of the window in favour of base emotions and stupidity.

All we can do now is learn from this together. Leavers must confront and acknowledge their failings and Remainers must learn too, not to be vitriolic or smug. There is no point saying 'I told you so' for the sake of it. While it was still reversible and there was hope that reason and common sense might prevail to allow another vote, as it has elsewhere previously in Europe, there was some potential merit to the anger, campaigning and protests. This was even true, if less so, while the talks and the transition period continued. Not so now. It is too late for Remainers to make any impact. Only Leave voters, the angry, betrayed, embarrassed ones (which should be something like 65% of them) can possibly have any sway now, but expecting them to march on Westminster in their millions as Remainers did, demanding an extension request to the transition period and some genuine sincere negotiations from HMG keeping us in the Single Market more or less, as was promised in 2016, is a long shot and most likely wouldn't work anyway. Still, it would be nice of them to try. I'd chip in some support.

As a nation we must learn some uncomfortable truths about ourselves, just as the Germans had to do when they lost their collective minds 80+ years ago. We can then go on to address the failings in our system of government and it's checks and balances, which contributed and exacerbated or individual failings rather than acted as checks against them. If we can do that and rediscover the importance of logic, reason and critical thinking, the insights that humanity's greatest minds have built on over thousands of years, then, maybe, there will be a real Brexit dividend.
 
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It's a real shame for the generations about to enter the workforce that we have chosen to apparently allow them to dangle in the wind until they are almost in their 40's and their life direction is already largely set, so that the generation of current 6 year olds can possibly reap some long term benefits and leapfrog them. Poor sods.

Fingers crossed
 
People voted for the swill bucket instead of the race-horse.
We have what we have.
The Telegraph on Sunday was the best barometer of ruling class thinking: the Chair of the Tory 1922 Committee thinks Johnson is a used battery and the wing of the party which is vehmently zenophobic and ties its testicles to the Trump wagon are desperately trying to stitch together draconian anti - democratic laws and use the covid scenario to enhance mass - sureveilance techniques; and if necessary bring out the military baton behind the police to suppress "civil disorder ["unrest" - which they have created].
Its an interesting time.
Those who built the Brexit Battleship have been left shipwrecked whilst the anglofiles and their fellow travellers have stolen the lifeboats - off goes Jono towards Trumps America - taking his amoralism and autocratic decree - making with him.
Its a partially successful putsch - against democracy - but the ditherers have returned to the fold.
Johnson may stumble on, but his ideology and the political adventurers holding him up are deserting him.
 
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You know what the scariest part of Brexit is - it’s not that we’re losing our trade deals (although that’s scary enough) it’s the fact we are now at the mercy of an out of control far right government who are intent on gaining absolute power over everything. They want to erode workers rights, remove any power unions may have so said workers have no one to help them against unscrupulous employers. The spy cops bill - that’s a clear indication that they want the right to operate outside of the laws you and I have to abide by if it suits their agenda. That should be something that scares each and every one of us


🐔
 
That's quite an assumption.[/QUOTE
What utter pomposity from Lefty. Brexiteers marching on Whitehall/equating voting for Brexit to what happened in Germany 80 years ago and he also has the vision to foresee Starmer taking us into EFTA. The lengths some people will go to just because a referendum was lost. See Monsieur Barnier is now keen to discuss legal text what a surprise.
 
What utter pomposity from Lefty. Brexiteers marching on Whitehall/equating voting for Brexit to what happened in Germany 80 years ago and he also has the vision to foresee Starmer taking us into EFTA. The lengths some people will go to just because a referendum was lost. See Monsieur Barnier is now keen to discuss legal text what a surprise.

Oh yeah?

Well in that case, what utter pomposity to use a phrase like ‘what utter pomposity’. Now get out of that one, you massive 🛎 end. No offence like.
 
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Fingers crossed for what?
Fingers crossed that the blindfolded gamble he took will have paid off in 15 to 20 years. Not for him but for his daughter.

When he voted leave he wasn't actually thinking about his daughter he was more concerned with giving Cameron a bloody nose.

The 15 to 20 year thing was just an afterthought or more likely a delayed excuse to justify his leave vote.
 
Fingers crossed that the blindfolded gamble he took will have paid off in 15 to 20 years. Not for him but for his daughter.

When he voted leave he wasn't actually thinking about his daughter he was more concerned with giving Cameron a bloody nose.

The 15 to 20 year thing was just an afterthought or more likely a delayed excuse to justify his leave vote.

I'd forgotten about that. It's just poor reasoning.

It's been more than four years and we are still to have anyone who voted Leave show they were well informed at the time, or indeed since, on what the EU is, what leaving it would mean and what we would be likely to get instead. That is just fact, but it's not my biggest gripe. My gripe is more that staggeringly few have even been prepared to doubt themselves as all the people they listened to have been shown to have been incompetent, dishonest and lacking even the basic knowledge of the EU, WTO, International Trade and everything else they confidently pontificated on pre referendum. Intelligent people really don't do that. They only do that when they are failing to employ their intelligence.

Bertrand Russell said 'I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinion. I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century?'

Forget about now. Not a single Leave voter has been prepared to meet my challenge to test just their logic and reasoning at the time , not their values, or even their knowledge, merely their own process of logic and reasoning to see if that stood up to scrutiny either against my own or even just against their own usual good reasoning procedure. Plenty have been prepared to huff 'I had my reasons, how dare you question them!'. Well, you should question them. I know I repeatedly went back and questioned mine. As the vote neared and a substantial number of people appeared to me to be making a bizarre choice, I thought I must have missed something, perhaps blinded by my personal dislike of quite a number of leading brexiters, then again even more so after the vote and numerous times since.

As Russell also said, 'the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts'.
 
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Has anyone been following the negotiations closely? I ask, as beyond the widely available news footage, I haven't dug too deeply, but it seems one week it's deal on, next deal off.

Not surprisingly Gove keeps saying the EU are not willing to compromise, is that really the case or is this down to our stubbornness, or perhaps want of a no-deal. Can anyone point me in the direction of unbiased material to see for myself?
 
Has anyone been following the negotiations closely? I ask, as beyond the widely available news footage, I haven't dug too deeply, but it seems one week it's deal on, next deal off.

Not surprisingly Gove keeps saying the EU are not willing to compromise, is that really the case or is this down to our stubbornness, or perhaps want of a no-deal. Can anyone point me in the direction of unbiased material to see for myself?

I don't think there can be any unbiased material as only the people in the rooms know what is really going on and they are the ones briefing the journalists and commentators, so even the unbiased journalists are working through a prism. I don't think much store can be put in anything at all coming out of the UK side as from day one it has been unprepared and incompetent at the top in pretty much every respect other than spin for domestic consumption. The EU have been much better and more transparent, but they will still be presenting their position and conduct in as favourable a light as possible. The thing is, there really are some fundamental red lines for the EU, beyond that they were open to any range of options (the Barnier Steps) so had much less need to play a blame game while they were still waiting for us to decide what brexit meant.

Your best option is probably to follow the Trade wonks on twitter who understand how these things usually go, what is and isn't possible and can infer from the language used what progress is being made, what is a problem, what isn't, what is possible in the time remaining. Plus some of them will know some of those involved and speaking to them privately. Also, by this stage, only the real geeks can have an interest in minutiae of Trade agreements.

In terms of journalists I think Nick Gutteridge of The Sun and Katya Adler of the BBC have been reasonably even handed in his reporting, the FT also. As for Trade wonks, @SamuelMarcLowe, @DavidHenigUK, @hhesterm, @DmitryOpines, @AnnaJerzewska, @CoppetainPU and whoever they link to.

On other EU matters outside of Trade the Steve Peers and Michael Dougan are pretty much as knowledgeable as you get.

The problem is experts can sometimes seem to be biased against the UK Govt, but that is what happens when HMG decides spin and a casual relationship to the truth are more important to the reality that disinterested experts deal in.
 
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