# Brexit - general discussion thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 12, 2018, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424 "2018-11-12T20:29:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 29
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/562 "2018-12-15T09:46:01Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > The NY Times [notes](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/world/europe/may-brexit-brussels-.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront) that the EU won’t agree to change anything for fear that the hardliners will just want more. I don’t buy that argument. The EU wants the agreement to be accepted by Parliament, and the hardliners are going to vote against it regardless. It’s the majority they want to win over, not the hardliners. The version I’ve seen is much simpler. The EU leaders asked May, ‘What assurances would you like us to give, that will deliver a majority for you in Parliament?’ May couldn’t say. The EU’s entirely reasonable reaction was, ‘Well, if you don’t know exactly what you want, how are we supposed to know?’ Hence Jean-Claude Juncker using the expression “nebulous and imprecise”. One EU leader is said to have remarked, ‘Wouldn’t it have been better for May to build a majority for some version of the deal _before_ asking for our help?’ The problem all along has been that May has never really known what she wants. She just muddles along hoping that something will come up. She’s been focused on trying to propitiate the hardliners (who will never be satisfied with anything less than a hard Brexit), rather than trying to build a cross-party majority for a moderate deal. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/563 "2018-12-15T11:25:25Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > In related news, Vladimir Putin has been seen walking around the Kremlin with his right arm in a sling. Reports say he sprained his shoulder patting himself on the back, for the way he’s managed to convince the United States to elect an ignorant sociopath President, and the United Kingdom to destroy its economy. Yeah, because that’s the main reason why they voted, nothing to do with the legacy of 2008 financial crisis crisis at all… ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/564 "2018-12-15T11:56:28Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > Yeah, because that’s the main reason why they voted, nothing to do with the legacy of 2008 financial crisis crisis at all… It had a lot to do with the 2008 financial crisis, and even more to do with a system that is set up to favour the corporations and wealthy at the expense of ordinary people. But Russia most certainly tipped the balance. Without Russia’s influence, Trump wouldn’t have been elected, and Leave wouldn’t have won. Fear and racism and propaganda and lies and misdirected anger wouldn’t have won. Trump is not going to bring back good jobs or make America great again. Brexit is not going to make Britain great again either. The people at the bottom of the economic scale are going to suffer in both cases, and the people at the top are going to gain. So is Russia. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/565 "2018-12-15T12:30:55Z")
It is clear in the present situation that from the EU point of view giving any concession where the Ma government has no power will only lead to more of the hostage taking by the extremists Brexiters, so it is a negative to negotiate now. This is easy to understand. What is hard for me to understand is how the Labour party can tolerate its leadership that is in the essential handing power to the conservative extreme Brexiters… that is hard to understand. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/566 "2018-12-15T13:02:25Z")
Ivan Rogers, former UK representative to the EU, recently gave a speech at Liverpool University, which he titled [9 Lessons of Brexit](https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2018/12/13/full-speech-sir-ivan-rogers-on-brexit/). If you want to understand where we are, how we got here and what our options are, he is the guy to listen to. It’s a very fair speech, with criticism for Leavers, Remainers and the EU. It’s quite long, but highly recommended. Some highlights: > [@](#): > > First Lesson: It has of course to be that “Brexit means Brexit”. I do not mean this facetiously. Well, not primarily, anyway > [@](#): > > ….I mean that leaving the EU is genuinely a major regime change, with massive political, legal, economic and social consequences. > > …. once you leave the EU, you cannot, from just outside the fence, achieve all the benefits you got just inside it. > > First, there will, under NO circumstances, be frictionless trade when outside the Single Market and Customs Union. Frictionless trade comes with free movement. And with the European Court of Justice. > > Second, voluntary alignment from outside – even where that makes sense or is just inevitable – does NOT deliver all the benefits of membership. Because, unlike members you are not subject to the adjudication and enforcement machinery to which all members are. > > And that’s what Brexiteers wanted, right? British laws and British Courts. > > Fine. But then market access into what is now their market, governed by supranational laws and Courts of which you are no longer part – and not, as it used to be, yours – is worse and more limited than before. > > That is unavoidable. It is not, vindictive, voluntary, a punishment beating, or any of the other nonsense we hear daily. It is just ineluctable reality. On being a third country > [@](#): > > And finally, the solidarity of the club members will ALWAYS be with each other, not with you. We have seen that over the backstop issue over the last 18 months. The 26 supported Dublin, not London. They still do. Nothing the Prime Minister now bids for will change that. > > This may be the first Anglo-Irish negotiation in history where the greater leverage is not on London’s side of the table. And the vituperation aimed at Dublin politicians tells one just how well that has gone down with politicians and apparatchiks who had not bothered to work out that this was no longer a bilateral business, and are now appalled to find they are cornered. > > Well, just wait till the trade negotiations. The solidarity of the remaining Member States will be with the major fishing Member States, not with the U.K. The solidarity will be with Spain, not the U.K., when Madrid makes Gibraltar-related demands in the trade negotiation endgame. The solidarity will be with Cyprus when it says it wants to avoid precedents which might be applied to Turkey. > … > > We need, urgently, on all sides of the spectrum, to start understanding how being a “third country” is different. And the most naïve of all on this remain the Brexiteers who fantasise about a style of negotiation which is only open to members of the club. > > We are indeed, a soon-to-be third country and an opponent and rival, not just a partner, now. Again, that is what Brexit advocates argued for. It is time to accept the consequences. > [@](#): > > Second lesson: Other people have sovereignty too. And they too may choose to “take back control” of things you would rather they didn’t. > [@](#): > > The sovereigntist argument for Brexit, which was one powerful element of the referendum campaign – taking back control of laws, borders and money – is a perfectly legitimate case to make…But others who have chosen to pool their sovereignty in ways and to extents which make you feel uncomfortable with the whole direction of the project, have done so because they believe pooling ENHANCES their sovereignty – in the sense of adding to their “power of agency” in a world order in which modestly sized nation states have relatively little say, rather than diminishing it. > > They did not want that pooling to stop at the purely technical trade and regulatory domain. > > … > > Then leave the club. But you cannot, in the act of leaving it, expect the club fundamentally to redesign its founding principles to suit you and to share its sovereignty with you when it still suits you, and to dilute their agency in so doing. > > It simply is not going to. And both HMG and Brexit advocates outside it seem constantly to find this frustrating, vexatious and some kind of indication of EU ill will. > > We have seen this in both former Brexit Secretaries’ conceptions of how deep mutual recognition agreements should be offered to the U.K., alone of all “third countries” with which the EU deals, and in the initial propositions on both financial services, other services and data. > > We saw it with the bizarre – and total non-starter – Schroedinger’s Customs Union FCA proposal of the PM whereby we got all the benefits of staying in a CU whilst leaving it to have a fully sovereign trade policy. > > We see it in the constant have your cake and eat it demands which run through every document the European Research Group produce or endorse, and we even see it in the railing against the “subordination to inflexible pooled law of the EU” which Richard Dearlove and others view as intolerable on national security grounds in what the Prime Minister is prepared to sign up to in her proposed deal. > > …But if by sovereignty we must mean more than purely nominal decision-making power and we mean something about the genuine projection of the UK’s power in a world where autarky mercifully, is not an option, then, as we get into the deeper trade, economic and security negotiations ahead, we are going to need a far more serious national debate about trade-offs. > > And the trade-offs are real and difficult. No-one should pretend that all the answers will be great. > > To take just one technical example, though it rapidly develops a national security as well as an economic dimension, cross border data flows are completely central to free trade and prosperity – not that you would know it from listening to our current trade debate, which remains bizarrely obsessed with tariffs which, outside agriculture, have become a very modest element in the real barriers to cross border trade. > > The EU here is a global player – a global rule maker – able and willing effectively to impose its values, rules and standards extraterritorially. > > … > > What, really, are these “equivalence” and “adequacy” stories about? They are the EU projecting power – it does so quite as well as, probably more effectively than, Washington, in multiple critical regulatory areas – and using its pooling of internal sovereignty to impose its values and standards well beyond its borders. > > “Going global”, unless it’s purely an empty slogan, is precisely the ability to project both force and influence beyond one’s borders. > > Why does the current U.K. debate on sovereignty leave so many corporate players mystified and cold – and I am not, incidentally, for one minute saying such views outweigh others’? > > Because in “taking back control” over our laws and leaving the adjudication and enforcement machinery of what used to be our “home” market, we are privileging notional autonomy over law- making over real power to set the rules by which in practice we shall be governed, since departure from norms set by others when we are not in the room will in practice greatly constrain our room for manoeuvre. > > The massive costs of deviation will force large scale compliance with rules set when we are not part of setting them. > > The EU will decide, on sovereignty and fiscal stability grounds, that it is intolerable for certain kinds of activity to take place completely outside its jurisdiction. We may hate it, and in many instances, it may be unnecessary and unwise. > > What, from the outside, though, can we do about it? > [@](#): > > Third lesson: Brexit is a process not an event. And the EU, while strategically myopic, is formidably good at process against negotiating opponents. We have to be equally so, or we will get hammered. Repeatedly. > [@](#): > > One cannot seriously simultaneously advance the arguments that the EU has morphed away from the common market we joined, and got into virtually every nook and cranny of U.K. life, eroding sovereignty across whole tracts of the economy, internal and external security, AND that we can extricate ourselves from all that in a trice, recapture our sovereignty and rebuild the capability of the U.K. state to govern and regulate itself in vast areas where it had surrendered sovereignty over the previous 45 years. > > The people saying 3 years ago that you could were simply not serious. And they have proven it. They also had not the slightest fag packet plan on what they were going to try and do and in which order. > > Bold, confident assertions, during and in the many months after the referendum that we would have a fully fledged trade deal with the EU ready and in force by the day of exit, and, not only that, rafts of further free trade deals with other fast growing countries across the globe, were just risible when they were made, and have now proven empty bluster. > > Likewise, all the breezy assertions that “no deal” would pose no great problems for aviation, for road haulage, for medicines, for food, for financial services, for data and for any number of other areas – for most of which, “WTO terms” are simply not a safety harness. > > No number of repetitions of the grossly misleading term “WTO deal” makes it any more real or effective. Its proponents – or most of them – know this full well, incidentally. > > This is not because of Establishment remainer sabotage. > > It was because these were always fantasies, produced by people who at the point they said this stuff, would not have known a “trade Treaty” if they had found one in their soup. > [@](#): > > Eighth lesson: you cannot, and should not want to, conduct such a huge negotiation as untransparently as the U.K. has. And in the end, it does you no good to try. [/quote] At virtually every stage in this negotiation, the EU side has deployed transparency, whether on its position papers, its graphic presentations of its take on viable options and parameters, its “no deal” notices to the private sector to dictate the terms of the debate and shape the outcome. A secretive, opaque Government, hampered of course in fairness by being permanently divided against itself and therefore largely unable to articulate any agreed, coherent position, has floundered in its wake. It is a rather unusual experience for the EU – always portrayed as a bunch of wildly out of touch technocrats producing turgid jargon-ridden Eurocrat prose up against “genuine” politicians who speak “human” – to win propaganda battles. Let alone win them this easily. [/quote] > [@](#): > > Ninth lesson: real honesty with the public is the best – the only – policy if we are to get to the other side of Brexit with a healthy democracy, a reasonably unified country and a healthy economy. > [@](#): > > The debate of the last 30 months has suffered from opacity, delusion-mongering and mendacity on all sides. > > The Prime Minister’s call for opponents of her deal to “be honest” and not simply wish away intractable problems like the backstop, which was always, and will remain, a central question in any resolution of the issue, is reasonable enough. > > I have talked briefly already of the quite extraordinary “cakeism” in the various options in the table. > > And at the extremes we have the “no dealers” quite happy to jump off the cliff, lying openly about the extent to which WTO rules provide a safety net if we did, and producing fantasy “managed no deal” options which will not fly for the reasons I have set out. > > And the “people’s voters”. I confess I deplore the term itself: they want a second referendum with remain on the ballot – for which one can make a case, given the dismal place we have now ended up, and given possible Parliamentary paralysis, but must surely understand the huge further alienation that would engender amongst those who will think that, yet again, their views are being ignored until they conform. > > And even yesterday morning I listened to a Shadow Cabinet Member promising, with a straight face, that, even after a General Election, there would be time for Labour to negotiate a completely different deal – INCLUDING a full trade deal, which would replicate all the advantages of the Single Market and Customs Union. And all before March 30th. I assume they haven’t yet stopped laughing in Brussels. > > Too much of our political debate just insults people’s intelligence and just suggests that every facet of Brexit you don’t like is purely a feature of only the Prime Minister’s version of it, rather than intrinsic to leaving. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/567 "2018-12-15T13:03:27Z")
But for me the stand out line was: > [@](#): > > Markets continue to react, or have until this week, as if something must turn up and that “no deal” is a virtually unimaginable scenario for politicians professing to be serious, to contemplate. That risk has therefore been seriously underpriced for a year or more, because we are dealing with a political generation which has no serious experience of bad times and is frankly cavalier about precipitating events they could not then control, but feel they might exploit. > > Nothing is more redolent of the pre First World War era, when very few believed that a very long period of European peace and equilibrium could be shattered in months. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/568 "2018-12-15T13:18:00Z")
Is there any way to short Britain? I only have a few thousand but I reckon it’s probably pretty easy money. EDIT: or, at least, was easy money several years ago immediately after the brexit referendum. By now it’s probably the kind of “safe bet” thing that has very middling returns. Also I love how this guy is saying a lot of the same stuff the rest of us were telling **Quartz** and **Novelty Bobble** and they kept waving away. > [@](#): > > Then leave the club. But you cannot, in the act of leaving it, expect the club fundamentally to redesign its founding principles to suit you and to share its sovereignty with you when it still suits you, and to dilute their agency in so doing. > > It simply is not going to. And both HMG and Brexit advocates outside it seem constantly to find this frustrating, vexatious and some kind of indication of EU ill will. _Jeez, y’think?_ :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/569 "2018-12-15T13:32:16Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > It had a lot to do with the 2008 financial crisis, and even more to do with a system that is set up to favour the corporations and wealthy at the expense of ordinary people. > > But Russia most certainly tipped the balance. Without Russia’s influence, Trump wouldn’t have been elected, and Leave wouldn’t have won. Fear and racism and propaganda and lies and misdirected anger wouldn’t have won. > > Trump is not going to bring back good jobs or make America great again. Brexit is not going to make Britain great again either. The people at the bottom of the economic scale are going to suffer in both cases, and the people at the top are going to gain. So is Russia. I’m wary of any narrative that shifts blame from the economic legacy of Neo-Liberalism to Russia, who at best is a peripheral player in all of this. I mean all the anger was already there. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/570 "2018-12-15T14:02:43Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > I’m wary of any narrative that shifts blame from the economic legacy of Neo-Liberalism to Russia, who at best is a peripheral player in all of this. I mean all the anger was already there. The anger and grievances of the people who voted for Trump and for Brexit are real and genuine, and they are due to the economic system, as you say. But people have been lied to. They have been misled into believing that the causes of their grievances are ‘immigration’, or ‘EU regulations’, or ‘liberal values’, or whatever. These are not the causes. They have been told that the solution is leaving the EU, or electing Trump. These are not the solutions. On the contrary they are making the situation worse, and getting in the way of dealing with the real issues. Russia took advantage of this situation and poured a huge amount of disinformation and funding into both these campaigns. The results of both were very close. To imagine that Russia didn’t tip the balance is unrealistic. If Russia hadn’t done that, Clinton would be president, Cameron would be prime minister, and Brexit wouldn’t have happened. The underlying problems wouldn’t have been addressed - but they are not being addressed now either. And now a whole extra layer of new problems and distractions are being added. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/571 "2018-12-15T19:01:10Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > It’s obviously pining for Old Albion. Lovely plumage. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/572 "2018-12-15T19:01:37Z")
Because I’m a bored masochist with nothing much better to do today, I’ve been reading through some of the old (not _that_ old, but it seems like eons ago) Scottish indyref threads. Turns out that ideological nationalist rhetoric is all a bit samey. Fact-free, disconnected from reality guff. Who knew? ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/573 "2018-12-15T21:17:52Z")
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/E5S1EMmCWAE/maxresdefault.jpg "Brexit (2019) | Official Trailer | HBO") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5S1EMmCWAE) Looks good. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2018, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/574 "2018-12-15T21:25:29Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > I don’t buy that argument. The EU wants the agreement to be accepted by Parliament, and the hardliners are going to vote against it regardless. It’s the majority they want to win over, not the hardliners. But how many MPs are going to be happy with a minor concession and vote yes, versus figuring that if the EU caved in one way they could cave more? > [@](#): > > The version I’ve seen is much simpler. The EU leaders asked May, ‘What assurances would you like us to give, that will deliver a majority for you in Parliament?’ Yeah, that was in the article also. I suspect she couldn’t say because there is no reasonable answer to that question - one that would satisfy both the EU and the holdouts. > [@](#): > > The problem all along has been that May has never really known what she wants. She just muddles along hoping that something will come up. She’s been focused on trying to propitiate the hardliners (who will never be satisfied with anything less than a hard Brexit), rather than trying to build a cross-party majority for a moderate deal. I’m sure the hardliners would just love a Brexit with all the benefits and none of the costs, the kind of thing they sold to the public. I say that if a hard Brexit looks inevitable, make Boris PM and let him deal with it. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2018, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/575 "2018-12-16T04:29:20Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > Looks good. Wow, yes, it does! I didn’t recognize Benedict Cumberpatch until about halfway through. ---
**Author:** ![barath\_s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/90ced4/32.png) [@barath\_s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barath_s)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2018, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/576 "2018-12-16T09:23:20Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > You think they want more direct competition with Porsche? > [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Do RR and Porsche even market to the same demographic? The bit that got moved is large aero engines. Porsche doesn’t make that. Ge/safran does. The bits of RR that used to make the cars are now part of Bentley , owned by Volkswagen, (who own Porsche).So Bentley is a RR car competition, … ---
**Author:** ![nicky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f0a364/32.png) [@nicky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nicky)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2018, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/577 "2018-12-16T13:33:02Z")
> [@Ramira](#): > > What is hard for me to understand is how the Labour party can tolerate its leadership that is in the essential handing power to the conservative extreme Brexiters… that is hard to understand. Labour have to turn round to 1/3 of their support - but 61% of their constituencies - and tell them they voted stupidly-wrongly. And they don’t have the balls. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2018, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/578 "2018-12-16T18:36:23Z")
Live from 10 Downing Street it’s [Happy Christmas, Britain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mtet4-dJy8)! ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2018, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/579 "2018-12-16T19:01:52Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Live from 10 Downing Street it’s [Happy Christmas, Britain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mtet4-dJy8)! Anything with dancing bobbies can’t be all bad! ---
**Author:** ![filmstar-en](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/50afbb/32.png) [@filmstar-en](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmstar-en)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2018, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/580 "2018-12-16T19:04:46Z")
The EU has been a convenient scapegoat for UK politicians for decades and a target for the populist press who like nothing better than to blame the countries woes onto this foreign bureaucracy that thinks it has some authority over the UK decision making. An endless procession of stories about badly behaved immigrants, stupid rules on standards imposed by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels and outrage at the decisions in the European Court of Human Rights that affect the UK. The fact that the ECHR is quite separate from the EU does not seem to matter. It is all stuff coming from Europe that offends notions of sovereignty. Many working class voters lapped this up. Everything to do with Europe is bad news and ripe for a protest vote. And vote they did. They voted more MPs to the European Parliament that were UKIP than either Conservative or Labour in 2014. That they voted in large numbers to leave the EU in the Brexit Referendum did not come as a surprise to me. It was seen as a troublesome waste of money that would be better spent on the NHS. Most voters are utterly bemused and confused by all the arguments since the 2016 vote. They imagined it was like calling the bank to cancel a club subscription. They had no idea that is was a complicated trade treaty and the foundation of a huge proportion of UK international trade and the consequences would be felt for decades to come. The Brexit faction of the Conservative party present Brexit as ‘the democratic will of the people’. Introducing a confusing constitutional angle to the whole debate. They argue that the Brexit vote of 52/48 is a political mandate that is binding on the Government. Theresa May presents this as her prime political objective despite the fact that what it means has never been clearly defined and her solution is unacceptable by both Leave and Remain factions of her party. Labour are also divided. Its current leadership under Corbyn has maintained an ambiguous stance on the whole Brexit issue. They know that they have to keep their powder dry until there is either the opportunity to force a no confidence vote in the Government or else wait until the end of the 5 year term and there is a General Election in 2022. If May loses the vote she has delayed until January, a confidence vote might be possible. She is going to delay it as much as she can to force her MPs to back her or face dealing with leaving the EU with No Deal. No Government is looking forward to dealing with that. They know that it will require huge preparations and big war chest to meet the expenses. All those other things a Government should be doing will be on hold. Labour really have few options. Calling for a second Referendum is one of them. But that raises a lot of problems about that the question should be and what to do if the Government cannot deliver. A second referendum might not solve the problem unless its consequences are carefully thought out. Something that certainly did not happen last time. Brexit is not a Right v Left issue. Both the big parties are split on its interpretation and the solution. Labours deadlock is not quite so obvious as the Tories, but it is there nonetheless. I am sure there are some vigorous debates behind the scenes. Sadly no politician seems to have the guts to say that this was a mistake, we asked the people to vote on something that we are unable to deliver without dividing the country. Cameron should say something like that when May is ousted. He is keeping very quiet though he bears great responsibility for dividing both his party and the country. There seems no way to put this genie back in the bottle. However, looking on the bright side, we don’t have a populist reality TV egomaniac in charge of the country and we don’t have riots on the streets. It would be nice to get back to normal politics.:rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2018, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424/581 "2018-12-17T08:26:23Z")
I think these concerns about a second referendum deepening divides are scaremongering. Well, kind of. I see the point, but brexiting - with the deal or with no Deal - will divide the country even more and anger far, far more than if it were cancelled. At least with a second vote, people can only blame themselves. Or if we remain, we can seek to heal those divisions from a position of relative economic safety. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424.md?page=28) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brexit-general-discussion-thread/824424.md?page=30)