You genuinely believe that Brexit will be the end of “western political civilization in its entirety"? Well that reinforces my low opinion of your intellectual contributions. To this thread, that is.
Perhaps I’m not among the intellectual heavyweights in the thread. But at least I can recognize the difference between a qualified and an absolute declaration.
Feel free to make your argument for why Mr. Tusk’s qualified declaration should be dismissed out of hand.
I DID include dastards as a possibility. You haven’t yet proved me wrong about that. 
I see you’ve moved on from “patently valid” to “qualified”. It’s still a ridiculous statement from Donald Tusk. An unprepared crash-out Brexit will likely be very bad for the UK, and moderately bad for the EU. For non-EU Europe, the US, Canada and the southern hemisphere western nations, the cascading effect might cause a recession. So the worst case scenario, which Parliament has already voted down twice, would have a worldwide effect that would be smaller than the 2008 financial crisis. Not fun, but hardly the end of Western civilisation.
The other issue is if Brexit is part of an increasingly global populist trend and will act as a “push” for that trend. There are upsides and downsides to increased nationalism, but as a historian, Donald Tusk should recognise that society tends to move upwards, and Brexit is very much less of a threat to the world order than past threats which western civilisation has moved beyond.
I think that if it’s proven that Russia had their hands in Brexit then that statement could be true because it would give them further confirmation that their disruptive tactics are succeeding in destroying the democratic nations. Russia has their hands in almost every disruptive candidate or exit movement in the past few years, so I assume without proof that they were secretly supporting Brexit as well.
Other than the Russia angle, while I think the statement is not necessarily false, I don’t think it’s worthwhile to consider it, since there are innumerable other statements that are just as likely to be true.
Inasmuch as “valid” implies nothing more than “not to be summarily dismissed,” istm that patently valid is itself a qualified description.
FWIW - my overall impression about Leave wanting to cherry-pick EU treaties was more along the line of "we'll choose only the parts of it that we want and drop the others", like accepting (on a reciprocal basis) free movement of goods, but rejecting free movement of people. I didn't get the feeling that Leave campaign specifically said that they expect to get non-reciprocal rights.
However, it seems to me that getting various non-reciprocal exceptions, opt-outs and rebates from EU was a built-in "feature" of mainstream UK politics for...well, since they joined EEC in the '70s. Actually, David Cameron pathetic contribution to the Remain campaign was to make a tour of European capitals trying to get some more opt-outs for UK, then came home crowning that now UK can stay in this "reformed EU". I don't know for sure whether Leave inherited this trait from the mainstream, but, given that a lot of their supporters came from the traditional political parties, I would assume they did.
Was it Remain’s responsibility to point out the holes in Leave’s plans? Yes, it was (as is the case in any election). But are you saying that this absolves Leave from having and presenting an actual action plan? And that they’d be free to spew as many lies as they wish, and, as long as Remain can’t debunk them all, they’d have no responsibility for the voters who were mislead? That’s…not how is supposed to work. I mean, if this would be the case, the whole campaign would become a shouting match, with the noisier side winning simply by lying as fast as possible and drowning any factual debate (á la Mr. Trump).
(bolding mine)
That’s not how I remember it. Leave made the case for sovereignty, yes, but I don’t remember any prominent Brexiteer saying anything about economic hardships. On the contrary. I mean, can you point out any summary, report, white paper, economic analysis from the Leave side? Like, anything? Say want you want about “project Fear”, but at least it was an attempt to quantify what Brexit would mean; yes, it was based on some assumptions that might turn out to be (partly or totally) flawed, but at least this was something you could debate. I’m not aware of any similar attempt from Leave’s side; as I said above, the fact that Remain did a crappy job doesn’t excuse Leave from doing absolutely nothing.
Had Leave argued for “sovereignty vs economy”, they would have gotten my respect. But that’s not what happened.
I dunno, let’s have a quick look at the main “predictions” from both sides (short list compiled from memory):
Leave:
[ul]
[li]EU countries won’t be able to keep a common negotiation position, UK will take advantage by negotiating with individual EU countries - didn’t happen[/li][li]Individual EU countries will value more their exports to UK that having a common negotiating position - didn’t happen either[/li][li]NHS will get an additional 350 million funding each week - yeah, no[/li][li]Turkey is about to join EU and UK cannot do anything about it - nope[/li][li]immigration will be brought under UK control - IIRC, the number of EU citizens moving to UK dropped significantly last year (even though legally they’re still allowed to come), but the number of immigrants from outside EU (that UK could and can control by itself) went up[/li][li]UK will have an easy time making commercials deals with other countries to compensate for lost EU business - didn’t work that well so far[/li][/ul]
Remain:
[ul]
[li]NHS will be affected negatively, since about 20% of their personnel is made of EU citizens - true, there are less applicants from EU and more EU-citizens currently employed by NHS are leaving NHS[/li][li]Bussines will leave UK - true[/li][li]Northern Ireland peace process at risk - seems to be the case[/li][li]Scotland will vote for independence - didn’t happen yet, though I would say chances are higher now[/li][li]Britain will be at the back of the queue for a US trade deal - I’m sure mr. Trump will negotiate in a reasonable and timely manner with UK 
. Not sure whether UK is at the back of the queue, but definitely is not anywhere close to the front[/li][li]Punishment budget - not true. However, before Brexit UK economy was growing faster than the eurozone, while now it’s growing slower. [/li][li]Brexit will destroy western civilization - not true. Brexit might be the symptom of something that will eventually destroy the western civilization, but I don’t think Brexit itself will do that [/li][/ul]
So, it looks to me that, at least so far, “project Fear” is closer to the mark. Will it be as bad as predicted? I don’t think so, it was a “worst case scenario” after all, but Brexit didn’t happen yet, so…who knows?
Anyway, I thought that the latest US presidential elections made it clear that the idea that the voting public makes decisions based on well-established facts, robust debate and well-argued political programs is kind of naive.
I haven’t had the chance to pay much attention to Brexit this week, but I gather things are more or less where they’ve been: unless, in the next six days, Parliament either chooses a particular option (May plan, no deal, or revoking the invocation of Rule 50) or votes to hold a new election or new referendum, Britain crashes into the wall of a no-deal Brexit at midnight GMT on April 12.
Is that more or less the case?
May has requested an extension to June 30th, Donald Tusk has mooted a flexible extension for a year, so it’s a bit unclear. There’s an EU Council meeting on the 10th so we’ll know for sure then. There’s a bit more detail and current events updates buried in the thread, if you can find it among the tedious rehashing of the 2016 referendum.
The Guardian has been running regular handy infographics of yes/no options for what might happen next, but sadly they don’t seem to be available in their phone app. However, here’s their analysis this morning:
There’s no possible way the EU is going to grant a further extension without the UK holding European Parliament elections.
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Yes, the phrase “You’re in, or you’re out” seems simple English to me, but for some reason a lot of Brits seem to be having trouble parsing it.
EU referendum: Economic scare stories are getting dangerous - CityAM [Caveat, Christian May was a Remainer, but he sought to keep his editorial stance neutral.]
Osborne’s Brexit Budget is blackmail based on fundamentally flawed economics - CityAM
From the last:
I’ve obviously identified my morning commute news source. I’ve tried to be an FT reader, and did pick up a few copies in the run-up to Brexit, but morning commutes aren’t cooperative with broadsheets, and the FT isn’t concise.
Regarding your overall post, my compliments as it’s well written, and I generally agree with you. My general source for an assessment of how Brexit happened is the Guardian’s after action report. How remain failed: the inside story of a doomed campaign | Brexit | The Guardian It doesn’t cover the sovereignty issue, but I find the Guardian is occasionally focused on its editorial stance. However, as I’ve posted earlier, advocacy of UK sovereignty was definitely a plank of the Leave campaign.
This was almost a universal refrain of those Brexiteers to whom I spoke: they expected short-term economic issues but a longer term gain.
Is that a Keynesian long run I wonder?
Look, I’m not saying that no individual Leave supporter ever thought about Brexit’s impact; I’m pretty sure some of them did and, as you say, argued that there will be short term pain but long term benefits. Heck, I’m pretty sure the reverse is also true and there are Remain supporters who think that “Brexit is not necessarily a bad thing, UK can be successful outside EU, but I think it can be even more successful inside EU, and that’s why I vote Remain”.
What I’m saying is that Leave campaign(s) didn’t bother to do their work; they dismissed “project Fear” based on what exactly? Was any of the 3 gentlemen you quoted above offering their advice to mr. Farage, Gove or Johnson? Did mr. Farage, Gove and Johnson ever asked for qualified advice? Did they actually ever addressed the issues raised by Remain? And by this I mean something like “I see you’re worried about losing access to one of the biggest markets in the world, and here are the steps we’ll take to address this loss of revenue: step 1, step 2,… step 273”. Then you can have a argument-based debate (or at least try to).
My question about whether the Leave campaigns ever produced anything resembling to an action plan was not meant to be snarky…I’m genuinely curious if they did.
I don’t live in the UK, and I never did, just visited 4 or 5 times for work and sightseeing. I can’t claim that I know what the “common” Brexiteers say or think.
My info comes mostly from BBC; by default my TV is on BBC 1 or 2 (mostly because of QI, Have I got news for you, A question of sports, and a couple more of their shows). But during the Brexit campaign I also got to see numerous editions of “Question time” (I hope I recall correctly the name…it was a late-nigh show, they had a different venue each evening, in different cities) and the Sunday morning political talk-shows.
As I said above, I don’t remember any of the prominent Leavers making the argument that “there will be hardships, but getting our sovereignty back is worth it”.
My feeling is that UK voters were mislead; however, the Leave campaign is only partially responsible for this. It looked to me that most UK voters had no idea about what EU is, how it works, how UK benefits from its membership and how much influence UK has(had) within EU. And for that the blame goes to the whole British political establishment, which kept presenting Brussels to its citizens as an opponent, if not as an outright enemy. So yeah, I’m not surprised that the same people, when they suddenly found themselves forced to argue for Remain, couldn’t figure out any positive things to say about EU.
Anyway, it looks like even hardcore brexiteers are about to figure out how much power UK can have over EU decisions 
:
The EU institutions are almost pathologically focused on maintaining the status quo at any cost. Yes, they will push for an even longer extension, but will happily settle for a couple of months. And concede as many extensions as the UK needs afterwards. That’s sort of their thing.
I’ve posted polling on numerous occasions that shows that the vast majority of leave voters expect no downturn and about half expect an upswing.
Either way this opinion is batty.
The Leave campaign did provide a framework plan for leaving the EU, mainly focused on legislation and future negotiations.
Also here:
Of the three people you listed, Michael Gove did do his homework, and frequently provided details of his vision for Leave, backed up by references and studies. Here’s his keynote speech from 19 April 2016 (PDF):
“If the EU is patient enough with us to grant us yet another accommodation that we’ve asked, we should be utter cocks about it in response !” :rolleyes:. Why there could possibly be any anti-UK sentiment among EU people is a mystery for the ages.