Just a reminder for Dopers with HBO access: *Brexit *starring Benedict Cumberpatch airs on Saturday.
Is Cumberpatch an update on Cumberbatch?
As I said on another thread, it’s worth watching. It’s similar in some ways to The Big Short. It shows how big data from social networks, targeted advertising, outright lies, and financing by shady billionaires resulted in Vote Leave winning the referendum.
In other words, it was a similar approach to that which won Trump the presidency.
One major omission is that it doesn’t examine the reasons why the backers of Brexit want it. It doesn’t mention the Russian involvement, the extreme libertarians, the profits to be made from deregulation, etc.
Folk need to forget about polls in NI suggesting a majority are against Brexit. The issue of the EU with Ulster Unionists will always play 2nd fiddle behind the issue of the Union with GB.
It is interesting that in the Brexit debate, the constitutional concerns of the DUP taken into account by the Conservative Party in the UK and Irish republican sentiment finds a voice in the Irish state which is the EU country that is going to be most affected by Brexit.
If there was not this balance, there would be trouble, for sure.
There seems no convincing solution to the border problem that satisfies both the EU and UK. So Brexit creates a constitutional problem and we know how difficult and how long they are to solve if the history of Ireland and the UK is our guide. That on top of the small matter of renegotiating forty years of trade treaties with the EU and the rest of the world.
The UK needs a good ten or more years to deal with the trade issue and it will not be helped if bombs start going off in NI. It will be a return to conflicts of the 1970s and 1980 and no-one wants that.
The British public who voted to Leave are most often bewildered that the whole process is so complicated. The refrain is ‘Just get on with it’. This, I am afraid, is a mark of the profound ignorance of the electorate with regard to how the UK is ruled and its trade relations with other nations. There is nothing simple about these issues, it is not like calling up your bank and cancelling a club subscription because you are unhappy with its rules. But that is how it was sold. Instead it is more akin to a long and difficult divorce whose proceedings and their effects last for many years.
May is not soliciting the views of ‘leading Parliamentarians’ to see if there is any consensus on any alternative solution that delivers Brexit to her satisfaction. Given that she already has her Withdrawal Agreement, I would suggest she is hardly likely to be impartial in her assessment. So what will she do? Modify it a bit as the only viable solution and take the issue to the wire?
A public survey of the opinions of all of the MPs would be a more convincing consultation rather then her private chats.
We’re witnessing the end of the state of ‘Britain’ and the eventual rise of the four nations that used to comprise of it.
What will happen in short order is the following;
No Brexit deal strikes, all trade deals we have become null and void, and we revert to WTO status, precipitating a 10% drop in the economy and shortages of hundreds of products, as well as massive tailbacks at the numerous ports in the UK due to a lack of preparation.
Northern Ireland reunifies with Southern Ireland, Unionists are given special status within Ireland.
Scotland declares another referendum, SNP wins, independence shortly follows with fast track back into the EU
Wales, the hardest hit of no deal Brexit, is emboldend by a resurgent Welsh nationalism, and Plyd Cymru becomes more credible and the case for Welsh independence becomes stronger.
England either becomes increasingly isolationist, and rightwing due to this humiliation, or somehow turns around and re applies for an association or membership with the EU.
Even worse, in that there are multiple interested parties, not just two.
Quite. It’s as if the divorce required a negotiation to extract oneself from the spouse’s family business, which is run by a partnership of 27 different relatives, each with their own family interests to consider. And it’s a family business that doesn’t just employ you, by design many different aspects of your life are tied up with it, and you need to find replacements for all of them
Does anyone have a good explanation of why the referendum has been treated as being so binding on the UK in general? I read up on it, and the UK has traditionally frowned on referendums and legally does not consider them binding as that would run counter to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. I get that the exact government that called for a referendum wouldn’t want to turn around and go against it, but why at no point did anyone say essentially “those guys were idiots and made a really flawed referendum, we’re not going to treat it as binding”? It seems really strange to me - normally the UK operates on really long-standing tradition with lots of limits on what can be done, but out of the blue this completely new piece of governmental machinery was whipped out for one issue and now is driving the fate of the whole UK, to the point that it may stop even being the UK once the fallout is done.
I suspect May’s Plan B is to force everyone to accept Plan A by threatening them with no-deal.
She’ll keep dithering and dragging out the time, refuse to extend Article 50, and then ask for another vote on Plan A shortly before March 29th. The only hope is that Parliament comes up with a majority for something else, and that’s unlikely.
Though the legal status of the Referendum was simply advisory it has been hyped and spun by the Brexit faction in the Conservative Party and sections of the Press. They loudly trumpet that it represents ‘the democratic will of the British people’ as if it was irrefutable political imperative with all the significance of fundamental change in the UK constitution.
The UK voter has only the vaguest idea of the constitution or the advisory status of the Referendum. Mainly because the UK does not really do many Referendums, there are no standards. It is up to the government of the day to organised one how it sees fit, for whatever reason they think appropriate.
In this case it was for Cameron to get the Conservative Euroscpetic faction off his back. The one before that was to get the SNP off his back over Scottish Independence. The one before that was a sop to Liberal Democrats, whose votes he needed and they demanded a referendum on voting reform.
He got away with two of them. But Brexit blew up in his face and he had to resign. This has allowed the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party to take over and direct the party and the country to this single objective.
In this way, what was a minor concern to voters before the referendum has become magnifed into a fundamental political issue that has consumed the whole national political conversations for the past two years.
We really need to do away with referendums and get back to representative parlimentary democracy. Or do the properly. There are many examples of other countries that do referendums in a well thought out manner.
It’s probably best not to overthink this. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Short-term political considerations made it convenient to give firm commitments that the result would be honoured. It only matters because the result was so close, which ironically makes it really hard to walk back that commitment.
Why did it play out this way? Because no-one that mattered thought Leave would win, or even come close to winning.
[ul]
[li]almost everyone with real influence moves in circles which are overwhelmingly in favour of the UK’s membership of the EU[/li][li]these people all live in a city which has a clear majority in favour of the EU[/li][li]if they did consider the views in the regions, the region with the loudest voice, completely disproportionately, by coincidence is the only other part of the country which also has a big remain majority[/li][li]when the opposition party specifically considers the national mood, it looks to its own activists, who are strongly in favour of the EU[/li][/ul]
The only really confusing thing is how the Conservative leadership was so blithely unaware of the sentiment of its own members, nor treated that as a signal that the mood in the country as a whole might differ.
That’s all true, but the crucial factor was the way the two campaigns were run.
The Remain campaign was run in an ordinary straightforward way, the same way that political campaigns have always been run in Britain.
The Leave campaign was financed and run by special interests with a very different approach:
[ul]
[li]Detailed and systematic analysis of large quantities of data.[/li][li]Sophisticated use of social media.[/li][li]Scientifically targeted messages - many different ads available, but specific ads delivered to each individual, based on their profile and interests. Response rates continually monitored and the campaign rapidly tailored and adjusted as necessary.[/li][li]People not on the voting register specifically targeted.[/li][li]A campaign based entirely on emotions and prejudices, rather than facts and rational arguments.[/li][li]Outright lies and blatantly false claims, with no concern at all for truth.[/ul][/li]
If the Leave campaign had been financed and run in the normal way by the usual suspects, Remain would have won comfortably.
In effect, it was a trial run for Donald Trump’s campaign, with much the same people behind both.
This is a very worrying trend for the future of all elections.
(Watch Brexit: The Uncivil War if you get a chance. It’s basically factual, and on HBO tonight in the US.)
Sorry, I have to vehemently disagree with this, at least the bit pertaining to Scotland. The odds of Scottish indepence largely rise and fall with the price of oil. Oil at anywhere near $40-60 per barrel and you can be as good as certain there will not be an independent Scotland; oil at $80-100 and odds of an independent Scotland rise markedly.
I also think people exaggerate Scotland’s warmth for the EU. Sure, we’d prefer to stay in it but it is not a priority for most people. Political scientists and eggheads gave many reasons as to why turnout in Scotland was lower for the Brexit referendum. In my opinion one major factor was we just don’t care that much.
Yeah, I can’t see the Oil price being the only mitigating factor in an independence drive when you have store shelves empty due to the incompetence of the Westminister government to adequately prepare for one of the biggest changes in its trading relationships since 1973.
Also, the rationale of Scotland staying in the UK in 2014 was largely due to the fact if it left, it would be out of the EU on it’s own, and that staying with England was advantageous, now, barely 4 years later, it’s looking at that prospect anyway.
I doubt the average man on the street really cares about oil prices. Nationalisms are largely emotional, identity-based concerns.
The average Scotsman cares about public spending, particularly increased public spending. A lot of a Scottish nationalism is predicated upon better public services. So much so that I think quite a bit of Scottish nationalist feeling is not nationalism but rather virtue signalling for socialism. When an independent Scotland cannot guarantee increased spending on public services(without unsustainable deficits) the support for nationalism in Scotland will fall imo.
I don’t think it coincidence that modern Scottish nationalism took off with the discovery and production of North Sea oil.
A video on Vimeo reveals how Theresa May feels right now.
Very amusing.
I can’t help but notice that the 3-day deadline for PM May to come up with a proposal on how to proceed has come and gone. Are we just not talking about that? Or is it being discussed in a different thread?