I read an article this weekend that that suggested the survivablity of the EU depends on Britain failing. So all these continental Europeans are hoping the Brits pay a price.

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

100% though i suspect a percentage of them would end up being unemployed at the next election

there are a few issues here. firstly Members of Parliment are elected to represent the people and to make decisions on behalf of them - we obviously do not have referendums on every issue

so we've made a determination that in this instance we would have a referendum. if the lawyers are correct and in order to notify the EU we have to have an act of parliment - the equivalent of a bill - that would need to be voted on

now pretty much everyone agree's on all sides that it is not in our interest to notify the EU we're pulling out, without having some idea of the deal we might get, primarily because we only have 2 years to sort the deal out, and in the event of not getting a deal (which needs to be accepted by all 27 members - thats going to be easy right?) we revert to be on WTO tarrifs with the EU and that means bad news for the EU economy

so the EU has said no discussions of deals without starting the clock running - so we have a stale mate. we start the clock we're at a huge disadvantage because all they need to do is run the clock down and our terms get shittier and shittier

secondly - lets assume that we can start negotiations without starting the clock and there is an offer on the table. It would be reasonably fair to say that any deal would need to be approved by the government - again we'd be mugs to agree to start the clock ticking without all also agreeing to understand what the terms of the deal are going to be

we are approaching a stale mate - MP's are not going to give carte blanche to the government to crack on a negotiate a deal

at the same time the EU is saying no talks without notification

we have a temporary impasse

so what I think happens is we simply don't set the process in motion - the instability is as much a problem for them as for us and it would be foolish for us to think that we are going to get all 27 members to approving a deal thats in our interests - so why do anything? the government can legitimately say to the people we are making every effort to pull out but we're not going to screw you the voter over

in the interim - which could last for years - it will be business as usual

on the specific point - if my MP was voted on a pro-EU platform and his constituency voted 51/49 to leave he would be entitled to vote as he saw fit but it may be terminal profesionally

I think it hinges more on the survivability of the banking system and the euro.

If a treaty member votes to leave it's all over.

The euro dissolves and by default so does the EU.

This is why draconian measures were taken to keep Greece in.

How that all went down is precisely why the people are giving the EU the big muddle finger.

The EU will not survive this.

They will keep this facade going for longer but time is not on their side.

The die has already been cast.

The super state plan will fail.

The UK leaving means game over.

The tortured politics of all this is pathetic.

Put this thing out of its misery.

It has already failed.

Everything from this point forward is merely show.

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"I really wish you would post more often. You always have some good stuff to say. I copied it below just in case someone missed it." BarryP to Chainpin on 10/21/06

I hope the English can see the bitter irony in that...

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

Sorry Forge.
Rather than some exciting new moment in history.

This is going to be a slow motion repeat of the Grexit. Lots of posturing, internal political conflict, and lost economic productivity.

The end outcome- a re-re-re-negotiated settlement- that is likely on worse terms and under worse conditions.

The problem is that there is no alternative to free trade and global finance.

You can say you don't like it. You can negotiate (and should) negotiate specific trade deals.

But unless you have an alternative strategy you are going to fall back in line.

And what alternatives are there?
Fascism, communism, feudalism!

Is there anything else?

"Liberals" argued against global capitalism for decades. What did it get them?
Why does the right think they will succeed where the left has failed?

You can't go back to the past.
Communism didn't work.
Neither did Fascism or Feudalism.

It is the failure of these economic systems that has created the world we live in.

The best way to influence the future is to be involved with it. You negotiate your interests at the table, not from the street.

Well put. One of the better posts on this subject.

Well if the us rides the momentum and elects trump at least we seized the moment.

If the will of the British people are thwarted and they do nothing about it, that is on them.

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

Say what?

Are you saying that you were in favor of colonization and are therefore against Brexit?

most of the pro-Brexit commenters in this thread left the LR long ago. Posting anyway, because here's where we are.

As a Brit whose family still live there (some of whom voted for Brexit), it still breaks my heart. By the end of the year the average Slovenian will have a higher income than the average Brit. By the end of the decade (acknowledging all the uncertainty in that timeline), the same is trending to be true for the average Pole. Some wag was suggesting we bring back freedom of movement so Bits can go serve coffee in Warsaw and send money home.

Sometimes, it's worth listening to what was dismissed in the second or third post as "the expert class". They're...experts.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

In other words, this.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

Amusing that just a few posts up was one of Chainpin's last posts......his streak of being wrong about basically everything continues on.

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"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." John Rogers

“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future!” Niels Bohr

That's particularly true of economic predictions. Nonetheless, the "expert" predictions of negative economic consequences of Brexit have proved to be pretty accurate, and there hasn't been the swift bounce-back "freedom dividend" that the Brexiteers promised. Indeed, the misery seems to be deepening.

A large part of that promised dividend was to be the UK's ability to strike new trade agreements independently from the EU. The "easiest" of those always looked to be with Australia, and indeed the first such FTA the UK signed was with Australia in December 2021. Australia is pretty happy with it, and it is also a net positive for the UK. However, even on the UK government's own rosy predictions, it will boost UK GDP by just 0.08% over the next 15 years. It will take a lot more than that to recover the approx 4.0 - 5.5% hit to GDP that Brexit caused.

In fact, the UK will likely never fully recover from its self-inflicted wound.

Well well. How has this one aged I wonder ?
Ahhh yes. 'Taking back control of our borders' has cost £100 billion a year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/...ource=uverify%20wall


And yet the border leak more than ever too.
https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/...ripled-in-four-years

Still, it's got ris of all those hard working Eatern Europeans that were wiping the arses of old people in care homes, mopping up the sick in hospitals, and picking the harvests. Instead the old folk are left in their own shiiite, hospitals massively short staffed, and the harvests rotted in the fields unpicked.

Fooking great. Turns out the expert class were right. Because it didn't need an expert at all. Just half a brain and a willingness to open up ones eyes.

When did Forge leave? Shame if he didn't stick around to gloat over Trump's election.

He would have been fun to have around for his eventual fall from grace, no doubt Forge could have set us all straight on why 1/6 was justifiable.

This thread is amazing.

Brexit, like so much of right-wing populism, has been proven to be an abject failure. I wonder if any of the fervent believers have started to question their leaders and information sources?

search user Ozymandias -- if those posts are still up they're incredible

Was that Forge come back under another name?

i could tell you, but then i'd have to . . .

It's amazing. I can not even begin to explain how angry this has made me.

I have family members, my father in law and an uncle and cousin that voted for it.

The stupidity and monumental act of self harm.

My kids will be fine. They're dual nationals. Bi-lingual and have spent most of their lives abroad and I am pondering another major relocation, the impact of brexit on my work and funding has been massive and not sure I can see a decade of good work in the UK.

We will be fine, but a generation of kids will lose.

I'm hopeful that the Tories are decimated resulting in a reset of British politics with a drive from all sides to proportional representation.

Who knows

Yes. He admitted that he was Forge and said that Forge was a bit of a role that he played.

IIRC, he indicated that he was actually trying to bring some semblance of sanity to the GOP in AZ and he didn't support trump. I could be wrong on part of that.

Playing devil's advocate here, but how does one know if Brexit was a good thing or a bad thing? Sure their are objective measurements around the impact to the UK economy which are very negative. But the otehr side is the increased autonomy which is much harder to create a value measurement of.

haha, yeah - remember that guy? i know we have some characters in the LR now, but forge . . . that kid was crazy as a shithouse rat.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/