Terrified of leavers and remainers, Labour offers a Brexit sticking plaster – and that won’t do
Neal Lawson
David Lammy promises to reconnect the EU to ‘tarnished’ Britain, but when will we fix the democratic flaws that led to the vote?
Folk actually being able to vote on the institutional arrangements? What a terrible betrayal of democracy that is.
I don’t think you get it. We will not be allowed to vote on anything, ever again. Brexit and Trump terrified them, and that’s all over now.
Look at our current government, pushing a green, homogenous, globalist agenda clearly aimed at destroying the integrity of our country – unless you think that the RNLI and the Royal Navy bringing in a thousand young blokes who mostly hate us every day or so will have no effect on that.
We gave those cunts an 80-seat majority under the banner of a Conservative government.
As you sometimes say of others, you are a general fighting the last war. You’re pulling on the control column and wondering why the aircraft isn’t climbing, when the control column has been wired to work in the opposite direction.
Remoaners would literally jump into a burning trolley cart and take a free trip down a disused mineshaft to Hell, as long as there was a little EU flag on the thing.
Interested has it – and indeed if you look at somewhere like North Korea they have voting – albeit you can only vote for a single party but in reality how much different are we? Though in the UK The parties may have different names all are committed to Net Zero and the dislocation that will cause. We are reaching the end of the democratic era. I fear for the future and would suggest 75% of the planet’s inhabitants (probably including myself) don’t actually have much of one.
How difficult would it have been to properly “fix” the 2016 vote?
Why did the collusion that had been going on between the wannabe reich and the vichyite quislings for the previous 50 odd years break down?
Would a bit of Kabuki theatre, given the totality of their agreement have been so difficult: a few burnings of midnight oil, a bit of desk thumping and “storming out” for a chastened wannabe reich to “concede” a “special relationship”
Mr potato head giving a triumphant Chamberlain style “piece of paper” speech and then a vote to stay, which would have chained this country to the rotting corpse until it – and we – were just bleached bones.
But they didn’t.
The vichy quislings were so full of raging hate for their own country and people that they would have happily bent over for satan himself.
The reich was so filled with hate for this country that it simply – showing the tactical sense of a collection of rabid lemmings – could not, would not, see how the appearance of a crumb of humble pie could have won them what nobody else for the best part of a thousand years had even come close to.
I’ve thought and thought about this, but it beats me!!
UK Referenda have always been rare as rocking horse poo and restricted to changes to the democratic system of government such as devolution arrangements (Wales, Scotland, EU and AV).
We should have had a national referendum on Irish Home Rule some time before 1918, but our leaders thought they knew better, which is why it is still a mess today.
We should have also had a national referendum in 1973 on entry into the EEC, not the stick plaster of the 1975 Hokey Cokey in-or-out referendum.
We should also have had a referendum at some point between Maastricht and the Treaty of Lisbon (EU Constitution switcheroo), when it was clear that the bait-and-switch of the EEC as purely a trade-and-customs union was changed to be a political union, but Tony Blair never dared, especially after the French and Dutch rejected the EU Constitution in their referenda on the subject.
After 2016 and the fallout of BRExit, no leader of either party wants to go through the humiliation and political stagnation of reintegration with the EU, especially not on the terms that would be offered (no opt-outs, acceptance of the Euro, Southern/Eastern European bailouts, etc.), both parties were split on the issue of in-or-out and arguably Labour more affected because while the leadership were mainly for it the working classes were mainly against it.
So we won’t see another referendum anytime soon not because of elite intransigence as much as the political costs being too high. Members of the Labour party like David Lammy MP and London Mayor Sadiq Khan might talk about rejoining, but neither party can afford the divisiveness of such a debate now or in the near future, given how divided their own membership are.
I’m sure the Tories would love Keir Starmer to put a commitment into the 2024 Manifesto about rejoining the EU, because it would guarantee that they would lose in 2024, despite the uselessness and toxicity of the current Tory party.
More likely both parties will continue to umm-and-ahh about the EU, but without a significant majority wanting to rejoin, it’s likely the EU will itself collapse before the idiots at Westminster can attempt to rejoin.
More likely that the next referenda will be another attempt at Scottish Independence some time in the 2040’s, which again will fail unless rump UK voters are also empowered to eject Scotland from the Union.
[Disclaimer] – I campaigned Out as part of Vote Leave in 2016 and would do the same again if the idiots tried to rejoin.
Yeah but Mark, they really didn’t think that they were going to lose.
It came as such a shock to them that they resorted to hijacking Parliament to get their way – and then lost again !
No mistakes this time – stage another coup and get Sunak and Hunt to run things then get that wet lettuce Keith in to finish the job.
Meant to add – similar situation in USA, the Establishment have worked out how to fiddle elections with impunity, because they have control over the investigative and justice arms of the state.
People will stop voting because they realise that the system is rigged and lo! You have perpetual government.
Something similar in Austria in 1999 when the FPOe nearly won the elections and was in coalition. The EU sent in some “wise” ( ie fat ) men to monitor the government, including that ex Belgian PM who was so bent, his own picture wouldn’t hang straight.
@Ottokring
Indeed, and Mr potato head – surprised as anybody that he actually got a majority – never actually expected to have to hold one.
I believe there were indications that public opinion was not as pliant/passive as they had assumed, and while there contempt for voters is absolute, there was always the possibility. And as imagined master machiavellian manipulators and attention whores both, I would have thought they would not have been able to resist.
But lose they did!
Over the pond, there was something similar which put a demented, animatronic colostomy bag in the big chairs with a demented harpie from hell in reserve.
Elections, votes of any kind are clearly poison to them anywhere in what is euphemistically referred to as the “free” world.
Why can’t they just manipulate as these types have managed for centuries.
Why has the – for want of a better word quality of despots so totally collapsed?
Is he whole world going to turn into lord of the flies?
In the old days you used to get Psycopaths playing a pretty good game of tyrannical demagogue.
That sort of stuff doesn’t go down very well nowadays and putative demagogues tend to be excluded by all sides in European coalitions, so makes it hard to get their hands on the reins of power.
Even Hungary, where they seem to succeed purely because the opposition (singularly and in union) are so awful they are unelectable, the local demagogue is a pretty weak and watery affair.
Put simply bureaucrats seldom make good tyrants. They’re too busy fiddling their own expenses or laundering that nice bribe from the pharmaceuticals to be any damn good at it. Angela Merkel being a case in point and Ursula von der Leyen being another.
Remainers don’t seem to have moved on at all. I think even death isn’t going to stop some of them wibbling on about the single market.
“Is there anybody here with a name that starts with J?”
“Yes, Me!”
“Your Ethel says she’s fine on the other side and wants to know if the second referendum has happened yet?”
I think John G is correct, unfortunately I’m not sure how much it matters given the British government is determined to make sure we realise exactly none of the benefits of Brexit.
If we’re not allowed to develop our own oil and gas reserves (not only is fracking banned, we’re now successfully chasing conventional oil and gas development out of the North Sea at a time when it should be booming), refuse to bonfire the quangos or red tape, refuse to allow ourselves a tax advantage over the Euros, and refuse to police our own borders (except where it causes maximum hassle to Northern Ireland), there’s no Brexit bonus to be had.
Like Interested, I don’t see where we go from here. If giving a political party a landslide majority isn’t enough to effect change, there’s no further point in voting. How can we make votes matter again? Beats me, call on Nigel again mibbe?
In the meantime, I guess South African style load shedding is going to become a feature of modern British life. Like grooming gangs, food banks, and hordes of young foreign thugs hanging around hotels in every part of the country. It didn’t have to come to this, but here we are anyway.
At least we’ll always have Kiev.
What really surprised me was the strength of Remainerism. I thought that, sure, the political class and the EU itself would put up some resistance to Britain asserting its independence, but that there surely couldn’t be any great passion for what Auberon Waugh called “a gang of Brussels tram inspectors” among the general public. And yet there they were, waving their meaningless blue flags and plastering their cars with “F**k Brexit” stickers. People are weird.
@ Steve, occasionally ignorance combined with incompetence will accidentally lead to some benefits. I’m thinking about free trade deals here, the Government’s determination to do them at any cost will benefit us eventually. (For cost read cheaper import prices)
Yes, but pro-EUism, like pro-Nazism is a very minority sport.
The vast majority who voted remain did so because they sat somewhere along the spectrum of “Fear of the consequences” thanks to Project Fear and at the other end that remaining in the EU was equivalent to voting status quo, which is at best a misreading of the purpose of the EU, since “towards ever closer union” provides no basis for the status quo.
The flag wavers of Remain/Rejoin aren’t huge in number and tend to be in political / state bureaucratic / managerial positions that are less subject to the consequences of rampant EU immigration. Since, they don’t bear the cost why wouldn’t they be pissed that their ability to own a home in Tuscany is being impinged.
Similarly, these phuqers being concentrated in the political capitals means they’re a lot closer to the microphones of the BBC, which gives them a disproportionate volume to the size of the voice. The same BBC which still goes to extremes to pain Leave as a minority.
So, don’t believe those who tell you that “Rejoin” is some kind of political inevitability that will be delivered by time and the death of the old fogies that were the bastions of Faragism.
The same was said of a united Ireland back in the day and that seems less likely than more likely. I’m pretty sure that the sceptical 40 year olds of 2016 will be no fewer than the sceptical 40 year olds of 2116, because it is age that makes the difference rather than viewpoint.
Oh, that’s true, JG. It’s fun to watch Remainers’ brains do a backflip when you remind them than the crumbly old septuagenarians who voted Leave in 2016 were precisely the bright young 30-somethings who voted Yes in 1975. More than age, it’s experience which makes the difference. They were promised the Earth back then (just as today), and over the next forty years gradually discovered the price.
Which, of course, is why the political class is determined to ruin Britain. It needs today’s 30-something Brits to suffer over the next forty years, in case they change their minds too. Prosperity would be disastrous.
The remainers are so strong in their convictions because they can plainly see or imagine what they, personally, have lost (freedom of movement and dreams of sunnier climes). The benefits of brexit on the other hand are, let’s say, less obvious.
Boris did say that post-brexit freedoms meant getting experimental vaccines into Brit’s arms faster, so you have that going for you!
You’re right. It is both age AND experience. Those who long to pull the puppet strings of totalitarianism will never understand those of us who chaff, strain or (Lenin forbid), cut them.
Same as the Oxford Council apparatchiks who will be shocked and appalled when their dreams of a 15-minute city surrounded and controlled by ANPR fine printing machinery are felled by the angle grinders of the refuseniks.
Then again, those who deign to call themselves our rulers have ever lacked awareness of the closeness and sharpness of the Guillotine. May it loom ever present in their fevered nightmares.
We won’t be rejoining anytime soon and those polls and rejoiners that point at polls claiming more people regret Brexit and want to rejoin are either stupid or deluded, probably both, and really don’t understand the EU.
The polls ask people if they’d rather be in the EU we left, but if for any reason one of the parties start to negogiate with the EU they’ll find that the EU we rejoin won’t be offering cashback on our payments nor opt outs of the Euro and Schengen Agreements or offer any other favours. They’ll also have to demonstrate how we will be good EU citizens and not rock the boat.
The EU is also on its way to QMV on foreign affairs and no doubt a few other areas will be on QMV by then.
We won’t be joining under those conditions.
they can plainly see or imagine what they, personally, have lost (freedom of movement and dreams of sunnier climes)
Freedom of movement & sunnier climes only ever worked for retirees. Anyone trying to live on the continent without language fluency and a job didn’t get very far. In practice, it was no easier to move to France than Australia.
@MC dreams are powerful things and like T.E. Lawrence wrote ‘all men dream; but not equally’.
Those brits determined to live in the EU will find a way, acquiring a useful skill set, Irish heritage, buying their way in etc. Many more will not make the effort because it was a pipe dream that gave them them a little vicarious pleasure. Those will be the most resentful.
I have never understood the fuss the modern English make about languages. The East India Co sent generations of young men to Hailey to learn Urdu, Marathi, Sanskrit etc. What changed?
Because most of us are too lazy to learn some foreign lingo and think the wogs should all speak English Bill????
Steve
Be careful – the accusations of ‘Moscow gold’ might appear once again….
Indeed you might be accused of being Kadyrov or Prigozhin themselves…
Another reason for Remainers is the fear of the pound falling against other currencies. My cousin worked in England for a while (we’re both Canadian). He was paid in pounds and was quite upset when his salary fell in terms of the dollar.
How much this affects you depends on how often you travel abroad and how much of your spending is on imports – likely both much higher for London political types.
It doesn’t matter whether we rejoin the EU. That’s just another distraction, another bit of divide and rule. To all intents and purposes we are very close to living under a (developed world) global government anyway.
I have never understood the fuss the modern English make about languages. The East India Co sent generations of young men to Hailey to learn Urdu, Marathi, Sanskrit etc. What changed?
We stopped teaching grammar.
One of our Austrian secretaries who taught English as a second language was quite adamant about that point when I sked her to help me with my German. I have to say having knuckled down to really learn German a couple years ago she was right. In the first 3 months I probably spent as much time learning grammar in English as I as I did learning German and it worked as I got passed the barrier and always hit when trying in the past.
I’m contemplating learning Italian next winter and I’m fairly confident the learning curve won’t be anywhere near as steep.
BiND
Completely agree. I’d gone through 13 years of school and 3 years doing an humanities degree and was horrified how little basic grammar I knew, when I was put through a German course by my firm. I felt quite ashamed at times. I had a French Olevel, but could barely remember how their grammar worked.
The concept of cases absolutely blew my mind.
We shoud of kept compulsororoly teeching Latin or learn the kids english grammer proper.
You travel in the EU for up to three months without a visa, how bloody much freedom of movement do they bloody want????
I’m 55 and was taught English grammar in my bog standard suburban northern England Labour-council *INFANT!* school.
“You travel in the EU for up to three months without a visa, how bloody much freedom of movement do they bloody want????”
Well, I’d quite like not to have my fingerprints taken, like a bloody criminal, which is what was planned for May (now deferred to the end of the year), but you know, wogs will be wogs – and no Dennis, in this case, your lot are just as woggy as the EU wogs.
jgh
Did you ever learn what a subjunctive clause was ?
I didn’t until I was 23 !
“What really surprised me was the strength of Remainerism. I thought that, sure, the political class and the EU itself would put up some resistance to Britain asserting its independence, but that there surely couldn’t be any great passion for what Auberon Waugh called “a gang of Brussels tram inspectors” among the general public. And yet there they were, waving their meaningless blue flags and plastering their cars with “F**k Brexit” stickers. People are weird.”
It didn’t surprise me. I lived in Scotland during the 2014 Indy Ref – as, I believe, did you – and it became apparent very quickly that there were legions of people who were passionately in favour of independence despite never having had an opinion on the issue until about a couple of months before the poll. They thus became ‘Yessers’. Some of them have even gone on to become SNP MSPs. The same thing then happened with the EU vote in 2016, in the sense that people became aware of which side they were on. Referendums that are organised on a ‘Yes’/’No’ binary do this – they polarise people and place them in camps, to the extent that they become aware that they are in camps.
I should point out, though, that much of the attachment to all things EU is skin deep. Many pro-EU champions don’t know much about the EU or Commission policy, and care even less. When asked about the ‘issues’, hardly any of them are enthused by what the EU offers – the British Social Attitudes Survey from 2019 shows that under a tenth of respondents advocate a federalised EU or ‘More Europe’; the majority of Remainers want to return to membership as it was but no further. It’s not even so much Brexit the Rejoiner activist hordes hate, but the Brexiteers themselves – ‘F*ck Brexit’ really means ‘F*ck Farage’.
I campaigned for Vote Leave in Perth, Scotland during 2016 and found that most bought the line about the EU being the “Status Quo” and the rest were of the opinion that the EU was necessary for an Independent Scotland within the EU (so not independent at all) to exist.
That was the general line, but a fair portion of even the SNP types, known as the “oot, ooters” (Out of the EU and the UK), where knocking about and despite the SNP party line voted to Leave the EU.
For such a pro-EU message coming from all parties and much of the populace, we thought that the Scottish Leave EU vote at 40% was still a pretty good result and couldn’t have won without it. We were actually expecting a much heavier defeat for Vote Leave in Scotland.
As you say though, Nigel Farrage was a hated figure on all sides, represented as the worst aspects of “Absent Toryism”, despite the fact that that’s not what he’s like at all.