PuB
Vital 1st Team Regular
Of course, but I didn’t trust them to rewrite the rules in the event of leave.
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Post Brexit (n/g)
- Thread starter PuB
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LSB2
Vital Football Hero
Be interesting to see where they have qualified signallers waiting to come in on strike days. They could ask people like me, but even after only a year away from the job, I'd still have to train again. So many lies this week. The government have been interfering in the dispute, and have done for a few months now. It's not about the money, and if Network Rail were left to deal with this dispute, it would have never have come to strikes. Even this week, it would have all been sorted at Tuesdays meeting.
Of course, they could ask me to work strike days, but my nickname was Mr Militant...
Jerryattrick
Vital Football Hero
the truth is not divisive enough for the media fed by the government of the day.
its only when you have been in an industrial dispute yourself do you see how the media machine works.
LSB2
Vital Football Hero
Yep, seen it many times, with different governments. All a bunch of lying feckers!
HullGills
Vital Reserves Team
I worked in the prison service, Jack Straw the then shadow home secretary stood up at the union conference and said there would be no more private prisons and the existing ones would be become public owned when there contracts ran out. Labour win the election and accelerate the programme of private prisons and issue longer contracts. No matter what party they all lie.
Vambogills
Vital Football Hero
Bit of an over simplification. Other parties wanted to remain in the single market or customs union for example. Tories were even split over the hardest (UKIP) to the softer versions. If all parties had promoted the same leave message the vote would not have been won by such a small margin.
shotshy
Vital Champions League
No major parties promoted the Leave message .
They were all for Remain.
Honestly.
Check it out.
It’s a fact.
The Tories had no choice but to enact the democratic result or they would have been toast.
Afterwards, May promoted a compromise which suited no factions and it cost her the job.
Most remainer MPs wouldn’t vote for her compromise because they were still hellbent on overturning the democratic decision.
jogills
Vital Football Hero
It's certainly true that all the main parties were for Remain, the leadership that is.
The tories naturally had to enact the result but any govermnment should goovern in the interests of all the people. It was a narrow majority and the nature of the Brexit settlement was little discussed and still less understood. There was no mandate for the hardest possible Brexit, which has turmned out to be divisive and so far unworkable.
May tried a compromise but was outflanked by the ultras, who were a minority within her own party. No agreement would have been without problems and teething difficulties but a compromise might have worked better initially and brought more people on board, as jokerman suggested. I think you overestimate the organisation and resolve of MPs, who voted Remain. I think a minority continued to believe in another vote but most were like rabbits in the headlights and just thought if they hung on something better might turn up. It didn't.
GillsBluenose
Vital Football Hero
I still do not understand this concept of the hardest possible Brexit.
Whether you use the word "leave" or the word "exit" from Brexit, I am sure that the understanding of the electorate was that they were voting to cut all ties with the EU.
The EU, in turn, warned us that we were in or out and could not "cherry pick" and retain the best aspects of our previous membership.
Do you dispute that staying in the single market would have meant that we would have had to accept freedom of movement and therefore no control over of our borders and immigration saturation? Do you doubt that was one of the main reasons that people voted to leave?
Maybe staying in the customs union was a more realistic wish, but would the EU have allowed it and, if so, what would have been the price to pay?
For me, what you called hardest possible Brexit just means the same level of independence as any other independent country, whether you call that control or not.
GillsBluenose
Vital Football Hero
Step forward, Dominic Grieve and Lord Adonis, followed by Jo Swinson, otherwise known as the "we know best" or sabotage brigade.
Worked out well for them, obviously.
jokerman
Vital Football Hero
Fair point, well made but most countries did not have to face the level of integration that EU members have to face if they consider leaving. Think separating Siamese twins with one dominant. May worked something out and all parties share responsibility for the fate of that. As a leaver, I’m still glad we’re out, but I’m not interested in Frost’s all or nothing approach as the only way to make it work.
Vambogills
Vital Football Hero
So you are saying all political parties promoted remaining in the EU but somehow we ended up leaving anyway? Where exactly were you in 2016?
jogills
Vital Football Hero
I'm not making any suggestions but I am saying the current situation is rubbish because those in charge of the process have and had no plan and repeatedly trim to the whims of a minority. Cuttting all ties with the EU is a fine sounding, absolutist position but it takes us nowhere. Much of what is now being objected to was never discussed in the campaign and represents routine administration and agreement with neighbours, it's nothing to do with the EU lording it over us.
The problem with allowing the ideologues to control the agenda is that they had a dream rather than a practical project. They are in so deep now that they will literally never agree to any settlement. There will always be some further withdrawal, or separation they demand and they will never be satisfied. At some point every one of them will declare the project at least partly betrayed. What the public expects and demands and expects of governments is that they make legislation and stuff work. That is what they will be judged on, not some purist pie in the sky.
GillsBluenose
Vital Football Hero
Is it really an ideology just to be independent and align yourself with other independent countries that have dealings with the EU?
Critics often talk about not having a plan but, beyond negotiating a mutually beneficial free trade deal, surely it is as simple as my paragraph above.
The Common Market was an excellent idea for stimulation of trade between European countries but as it morphed in to the EEC and then the EU it became more and more unnecessarily political, making laws and rules well beyong a purely trade remit. Maybe that is what many citizens of countries on the European mainland want. Our referendum showed that our citizens did not.
The likes of Richard Tice, Steve Baker and even Nigel Farage may want something further than just pure independence to make our of decisions, but I think they are in the minority and do not speak for the Leave voters among the general public.
Critics often talk about not having a plan but, beyond negotiating a mutually beneficial free trade deal, surely it is as simple as my paragraph above.
The Common Market was an excellent idea for stimulation of trade between European countries but as it morphed in to the EEC and then the EU it became more and more unnecessarily political, making laws and rules well beyong a purely trade remit. Maybe that is what many citizens of countries on the European mainland want. Our referendum showed that our citizens did not.
The likes of Richard Tice, Steve Baker and even Nigel Farage may want something further than just pure independence to make our of decisions, but I think they are in the minority and do not speak for the Leave voters among the general public.
PhilK66
Vital 1st Team Regular
A well argued post. I agree with a lot of what you say
jogills
Vital Football Hero
I certainly agree with your last paragraph and would that the government had governed in the interests of the Leave voters you talk of. Johnson made himself the hostage of variously a faction within his own party, the DUP and the editors of a few newspapers. That's not a plan and it has led us to this impasse. Another leader with more courage and ability will at some point lead us to a better arrangement.
jokerman
Vital Football Hero
US and Canada are two independent states in the sense that you talk about them. They are part of a three-way agreement with Mexico which is very lightly worn compared to the EU. Nevertheless, Canadian independence is hugely circumscribed by the fact that it is dependent on US markets for its exports. It has to meet US specs (usually lighter than Canadian ones) both on products and how they are produced if it wants to sell into that market. Its motor industry is functionally integrated into a North American motor industry to which it contributes bits which go back and forth across borders at various stages of manufacture. And while the Bank of Canada sets Canadian interest rates, it usually has to set them just above US rates or capital simply flows out of Canada to the US.
All this not only hugely circumscribes what Canada can do abroad. It also has a profound impact on life in Canada. All this is so, even though Canada is independent or, more properly, sovereign, in the way you want Britain to be. It matters that Canada is sovereign on a whole rack of issues from metric measures through abortion, guns, and health service, to going to war, but economic realities and the economic expectations of most of its people dictate that its freedom of action on a whole range of issues is hugely circumscribed. The Canadians tried to break this continental drift a couple of times -1950's trade diversion back to the UK and Commonwealth; 1980's trade diversion to Europe. The gravitational pull was just too strong, as were the upfront costs of trying.
The UK faces similar realities in its relations with the European Union. Sell into the EU market and you sell on EU terms being the most obvious example. One big difference though is that there is no big North American project. Ten, twenty, thirty years from now, it will look pretty much the same. This cannot be said of the EU, at least not in its aspirations. It wants to be more and is determined to succeed or die trying (my money is on the latter). Either way, however, it is not good news for us to be a part of it.
That's why
a) it's important to have left,
b) much more should have been done to make clear the limits of what leaving could possibly mean, and what remaining was going to entail,
and thus,
c) a complicated, fiddly, half-arsed exit has much to commend it -but, at the time, had no one except a few grown ups to speak for it
valenciagill
Vital Football Hero
Millions disagree with you.
PuB
Vital 1st Team Regular
Millions agree.
GillsBluenose
Vital Football Hero
Is it mere coincidence that Ukraine are choosing NOW to apply to join the EU?
Would that not be for political and security reasons, rather than trade, bearing in mind that they have had no problems exporting food and energy to the bloc in the past?
Would that not be for political and security reasons, rather than trade, bearing in mind that they have had no problems exporting food and energy to the bloc in the past?
