Don’t y’all think she looks tired?
We are all so very, very tired.
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I suggest we curse Sir Walter Raleigh.
Yes, Doctor.
Yes, that’s what I meant. But here, in order to get the populace to vote on an issue, there generally has to be an election occurring for other reasons. I think NH and VT can just hold a vote for an issue, but overall it couldn’t be done.
Thanks for this. I had no idea there were any really terrible Beatles songs. It’s humanizing; dear God that was awful!
So I’m confused, and I apologize if my ignorant questions are dragging down the conversation. But folks here keep saying that another referendum would be a plus for the populists. But I thought it was the populists who caused this mess in the first place? That they had been well and truly shown up as liars and fools? And that a second GE/Ref (which I thought go together) would therefore bring new candidates and government?
How could the populists turn an anti-Brexit vote to their advantage? Is my basic premise (the populists pushed for Brexit) incorrect?
Not that long. May is average at best.
England needs its next Churchill or Thatcher.
Would a world cup win put the voters in a good mood?
Why are you assuming Remain would win? We were discussing it at lunch yesterday and a number of people who said they voted Remain then would vote Leave in a new referendum. And this is in Scotland.
I suppose you could say that they were populists because they were more popular. There are many reasons for Brexit, but for me the prime reasons were firstly the contempt that the UK and EU elites held for the British voters and their concerns and secondly the greater opportunities outside Europe. David Cameron went to Brussels to try to address these concerns (well, he appeared to pretend to) and was sent away with a pat on the head like a lapdog. Thatcher at least managed to get a rebate but Cameron (and thus the British people) was more or less dismissed. And the British public did not like that.
That’s a demo.
I don’t think May’s successor will be in too much of a hurry for that. A new Tory PM will want to fight any new election with the updated constituency boundaries, and I’m not sure those have actually been approved.
Here’s the remastered white album version. It’s a good song.
I still can’t see how another vote would help the Brexiteers since they’ve already won the vote, and a new vote would only introduce uncertainty, except if the Leave outcome is so assured and overwhelming that it would put to rest any question of another vote later on.
I don’t think so. I don’t think anything that important can happen literally by default. It would mean Britain did not have a functioning government and that the Europeans didn’t put the process on hold until a government was formed. Not really likely, in my opinion.
What does seem likely is that whatever government we do have in March will feel obliged to sign a formal treaty agreeing the transitional period, before the long-term relationship is agreed even in principle. Both the sane and insane leavers would hate that.
It is too late for Britain to plan for no agreement for next April. The Europeans can therefore insist on the transitional terms being implemented as planned. The passage of time, for a leadership contest or otherwise, only strengthens the Europeans’ hand.
This is good because not paying our £39B tab would lead to hostile and catastrophic relations for generations. Only the insane leavers would want that, but even the sane ones seem to think it is a credible negotiating position. It’s not.
We then have the best part of two years to negotiate whatever we want, with the Europeans broadly content to do anything reasonable, since they will have their money. If Britain insists on tearing up the GFA then ultimately Europe can’t stop us. But they will make sure the British people know that it is our decision to abrogate the agreement which stood down the IRA.
Similarly with the 3m Europeans resident in the UK. If we want to load Poles onto cattle trucks and ship them East, then we can do so, if we are comfortable with those optics, and have learned nothing from this year’s Windrush debacle.
And then we get another two years of British ‘leaders’ learning that the Europeans will not grant us all of the advantages of European integration without bearing our share of the costs. If we crash out then (in 2021) without agreement or planning, then we’ll have to take the consequences.
TL;DR nothing is agreed until everything is agreed (unless we feel we have to capitulate to the Europeans’ requirements in order to enter the transition period, to avoid economic meltdown)
No. Individuals, businesses, and governments all need time to implement the agreement. This is what the transition period was designed for.
(my bolding)
Quartz, I’m curious about this - what are the greater opportunities for Britain outside the EU?
Right now, as a member of the EU, Britain has guaranteed market access to close to half a billion people.
If the UK leaves the EU, it has guaranteed market access to what? 66 million in the UK? Because right now, the UK, as a member of the EU, doesn’t have any separate treaties with any other country, so no guaranteed access to the markets in any other country, so Brexit means you lose market access.
So what are the greater opportunities that you see for Britain, once it loses guaranteed market access to close to half a billion people?
This was and is one of the big drivers for Canada in entering the first Free Trade Agreement with the US, and then expanding it to include Mexico. Prior to the FTA, Canada was the only G7 country that did not have guaranteed access to a market of at least 100 million people; we only had access to our own domestic market, at that time of less than 30 million. Every other G7 nation had guaranteed access to markets of at least 100 million: the UK, France, Germany and Italy through their membership in the EU, and the US and Japan through their own domestic markets, since both had more than 100 million in population.
So once the UK leaves, it will be the G7 member with no guaranteed access to a market of more than 66 million. How is that an opportunity? I’m really curious about that, no snark.
(Of course, we may be joining the UK in that state, if NAFTA negotiations don’t do well. 
)
Oh, and of course the British individually had guaranteed ability to move anywhere in Europe to work, which strikes me as a significant advantage. What do you see as being a greater advantage for Britain in that regard?
Again, no snark, just curious to understand your position. We in Canada don’t have anything like the deal you currently have with regard to international work mobility, and it would be very attractive.
If only those under 50 had been allowed to vote in the referendum, remain would have won easily. After all, whose future is it? Instead, the UK got one last “shut the fuck up, we know what’s best” from the baby boomer generation. The word for this isn’t populism. It’s something far, far worse: Nostalgia.
Looking ahead, Britain needs another Thatcher like it needs a Chernobyl-style nuclear meltdown combined with a devastating crop failure. Britain needs technocrats; clear-headed men and women, devoid of the destructive “pining for the empire” emotional baggage.
There are over 7 billion people outside the EU versus the 500 million or so in the EU. That’s a vastly larger market.
So what? You’re only thinking of the short term. We’re going to have to trust (ahem) our lords & masters to negotiate trade deals. And there’s always the WTO defaults. Britain is a trading nation: deals will be made. I’ve said it before, but it was a common refrain of the those in favour of Brexit that it would be difficult to start with but would be better in the longer term.
I’m not exactly happy about leaving the EU, but we will have to make it work. So we will make it work.
We already voted once to leave the EU. During the Brexit referendum(and indeed just about every political debate for the past two decades) one constant complaint by the populace is that elites don’t listen; if a referendum vote doesn’t go there way they simply have another; that they only take note of the populace only when it suits them. Imagine a second BrexitRef, the room for populists to challenge the moral & political agenda of the elites will be so much greater. Populists will take full advantage. These populists who exploit this perceived ‘lack of democracy’ in liberal elites may or may not ultimately be Brexiteers(though BrexitII will almost certainly result in Brexit winning again). It may be another populist variant that emerges, but it WILL almost certainly emerge. It may not be this year or next but anywhere in the next 1 to 10 years. A second Ref will not thwart populism it will only enflame it further.
Well yes, that would be nice. If by say January 2020 the British government has still failed to formulate a coherent proposal for trade with the EU, then smart people should plan for the worst (which will differ according to individual circumstances).
Note that the member states actually don’t need to do much planning. Diverting trade and people to the non-EU channels at points of entry is trivial. This is the strength of the European position.
They would have tricky issues with the Irish border - but for an organisation the size of the EU that’s manageable. Note all of the vandalism and intimidation will be to the infrastructure and staff on the UK side of the line.
European companies with supply chains in Britain will continue to wind them down. They won’t be waiting to hear the UK’s latest fantasy.
European companies which rely on financial services from UK companies are in a very painful position. Without a long transitional period this will be very expensive to unravel. They will already be doing so - there will not be free trade in financial services without free trade in other services and that requires freedom of movement. This crosses the one UK government red line I think they are committed to. The EU position here is quite weak. Fortunately for them the UK position is very much weaker - the UK regulators will agree to whatever the Europeans and the financial services companies need. Massive losses on financial contracts would destroy the City’s reputation at exactly the worst possible time.