The Brexit conundrum | Vital Football

The Brexit conundrum

Wayne.Kerr

Vital Champions League
I've been listening to various broadcasts on R4 regarding Brexit and the point the Govt et al are at and two things that were said struck me as being relevant:

1. the debate we're having now, ie on this MB, in Westminster and across the country is something that should have taken place before the referendum and

2. why was something so unfathomable like leaving the EU be reduced to a 'yes' or 'no' answer?
 
Have you been listening to any questions and any answers?

Dimbleby needs to have a tighter leash on the gobshites on there!
 
That was one of a number of programmes I tuned into but why gobshites? People were expressing views; some you agree with and others you possibly disagree with. Dimbleby is not a football referee but a panel chairman and feelings run very high on such matters, although why they should give airtime to the effing royal wedding beats the shit out of me. Why gobshites - these were people with valid views for and against Brexit - it's allowed.
 
One guy was getting too much airtime this week and he was ignoring Dimbleby. His brother would have "smacked him down" metaphorically.
 
Basically it came down to a question of blame . Foreigners ( forget their tax a few of them use our NHS how dare they get ill or pregnant. ) Saving vast sums that we would be able to put into the NHS (that's a laugh .)Anyway it is good to get one over on Johnny foreigner .It was easier to get people to vote out than try to change the EU for the better .Trying to explain how imports and exports work inside and outside the EU was never easy .Frankly it would not sell papers if anyone bothered to do it .No I was easier just vote to come out .After all who cares if it cost money and we keep our pound sovereignty. Oh yes it is about the same value as a Euro anyway now .
 
Chris you old cynic. We are waltzing into the free and promised land. We will easily do loads of great trade deals (they will only take a few minutes once we don't have red tape to deal with) and the poor will fare brilliantly with cheap food and clothing. Rees Mogg says so.

It's a doddle.

Don't you trust or believe in him?


Why don't you believe him
 
it was easier than that, the Tories were getting spooked by the UKIP and there own right wing, and Cameron thought he could put it to bed with one easy question - In or Out. What a mess this mis- calculation has led to. Forget all the crap about getting the best deal etc we have just fu**ed about by trying to leave.
 
Rees Mogg, eh? As Private Eye put it - the rest of the world, Persia, Mesopotamia and Cathay are there to welcome us.
 
Why is it that prior to the referendum vote "we" were all clueless as to how the EU worked and how far it is enmeshed into our society; now it appears that every fucker is an "expert" on the EU and the Single Market, the Customs Union and how we should negotiate Brexit.
 
Skoolboy_error - 3/3/2018 22:55

Why is it that prior to the referendum vote "we" were all clueless as to how the EU worked and how far it is enmeshed into our society; now it appears that every fucker is an "expert" on the EU and the Single Market, the Customs Union and how we should negotiate Brexit.


It's called being wise after the event. Many voters couldn't even spell xenophobia before the referendum.
 
I do not pretend to be a expert .But I have been to Brussels and spoken to MEP's from both UK, Ireland and one from Denmark I think if I remember rightly. I count myself lucky to have had that chance .
I also have a Dad who was in import and export travelling around the world doing deals both inside the EU and outside both before and after our entry to the then common market. Having done the job for forty years he knows the difficulties and advantages of the EU far better than most .But the vote was always likely to be a close call at best as it is easy to blame someone who is different to ourselves .It is no coincidence that London voted to stay in a lot of the exit damage will happen in the capital .Which could well affect many living close to us .Many will not really notice a big difference to there lives prices perhaps .But those who do will feel it if they lose employment as a result from Brexit. Personally I work for a German company i have done for a few years now .We are likely to know soon if they intend to continue to run the business beyond the end of the year .
 
chris who - 3/3/2018 21:22

Basically it came down to a question of blame . Foreigners ( forget their tax a few of them use our NHS how dare they get ill or pregnant. ) Saving vast sums that we would be able to put into the NHS (that's a laugh .)Anyway it is good to get one over on Johnny foreigner .It was easier to get people to vote out than try to change the EU for the better

Change the EU for the better?

Maybe my memory is deceiving me but I thought Cameron went to Europe with a list of changes/concessions that the UK wanted and if he had made progress with ANY of them he could have come back and used it as a reason to cancel the referendum.

The EU were too inflexible to budge on ANY of those points so Call Me Dave came back empty handed.

And you don't think things would have carried on that way if we had voted to stay in?
 
GillsBluenose - 4/3/2018 07:12

chris who - 3/3/2018 21:22

Basically it came down to a question of blame . Foreigners ( forget their tax a few of them use our NHS how dare they get ill or pregnant. ) Saving vast sums that we would be able to put into the NHS (that's a laugh .)Anyway it is good to get one over on Johnny foreigner .It was easier to get people to vote out than try to change the EU for the better

Change the EU for the better?

Maybe my memory is deceiving me but I thought Cameron went to Europe with a list of changes/concessions that the UK wanted and if he had made progress with ANY of them he could have come back and used it as a reason to cancel the referendum.

The EU were too inflexible to budge on ANY of those points so Call Me Dave came back empty handed.

And you don't think things would have carried on that way if we had voted to stay in?
Part of the problem was we never worked on building bridges and making alliances with others .Always hostile having groups like Ukip there didn't help .The French hate the Germans but still work with them because they need too to get the stuff they want .Our group can't even work together for the good of the UK .So working with others nations parties was never going to be easy .Any committee works for you only by forging friendships .The way the Lib dems were treated in our Parliament when they forged a alliance with the Tories even though they were not natural bed fellows shows it can be done .But there has to be a willingness to do it .Our group were too busy fighting each other to agree with anyone else .
 
chris who - 4/3/2018 07:31

Part of the problem was we never worked on building bridges and making alliances with others .Always hostile having groups like Ukip there didn't help .The French hate the Germans but still work with them because they need too to get the stuff they want .Our group can't even work together for the good of the UK .So working with others nations parties was never going to be easy .Any committee works for you only by forging friendships .The way the Lib dems were treated in our Parliament when they forged a alliance with the Tories even though they were not natural bed fellows shows it can be done .But there has to be a willingness to do it .Our group were too busy fighting each other to agree with anyone else .

But UKIP type parties are not purely a UK issue.

Blame Farage all you want but what about the rise in the vote for LePen in France and for the far right AfD in Germany?

The point I was trying to make is that the EU sent Cameron back humiliated and I suspect his heart was never fully in the remain cause from then onwards.

We hear at this stage that "The EU will never agree to this" or "The EU will never agree to that" suggesting that their idea of negotiation is that the other side has to give in 100% to their demands. Does that sound like an attempt to "forge friendship" with a future trading partner that has the sixth largest economy in the world?

I agree that the Tory/LibDem coalition did work well but that was because BOTH parties agreed to relax and compromise their normal principles and policies for the good of the country.

What is needed is goodwill and flexibility on both sides, To be fair to May she did say in her speech that neither side will get everything they want. If the EU do not abide by that she will hopefully revert back to her mantra "no deal is better than a bad deal" and we will walk away from paying a divorce bill leaving the EU a richly deserved hole in their budget.
 
Gillsbluenose, when you say Cameron came back without a deal, what you really mean is that he came back without a deal to restrict freedom of movement. He got virtually everything else he wanted. What is daft is that free movement is straight out of the free enterprise text book. It's there so that you don't create false restrictions in the labour market. It's far more a conservative, capitalist concept than a democratic socialist one that believes interfering in the market to get the best outcome. You would have thought the libertarian right wing (Rees Mogg, Gove etc.) would have been all in favour of free movement. To be not so is like a Marxist not being in favour of state ownership.
 
Quite right Waldo - Daily Mail readers hate Govt intervention but laud the concept of laissez faire capitalism and then go on about restricting the factors of production such as free movement of labour.
 
I voted leave. I would again. Not to say I don't have major misgivings about the way the process is being managed (the recent "war cabinet" meeting to decide what the governments priorities in negotiations are should have been done long ago, ideally before the triggering of article 50, for example) but the reasons I had for voting leave have not changed. I'm an unskilled worker with very little prospect of that changing anytime soon, so supply and demand at the bottom of the labour market is important to me, and the current low wage, low productivity economic model (at the bottom of the labour market, at least) we've had for basically all of my working life is no good to me at all, I am lucky in that the more adverse trading conditions the UK (possibly) will face won't really have much of an effect either way. I wasn't "duped" by the 350 million NHS bus (because anyone who thought that Gove, Johnson et al. had suddenly undergone a Pauline conversion to champions of public services really can't be paying attention). I'm not, I think, racist, if I were, why would I want to reduce immigration from countries that have populations comprised almost entirely white people who regularly vote in governments that are racist (or at the very least nationalist?). The debate for if continued access to the single market is better/worse than trade deals the UK could do alone is so complex, with so many variables that I doubt anyone can make a definitive "open and shut" case either way, because it depends on what the UK can negotiate with who, as well as what the EU can negotiate and with who, as well as any future changes with tariffs, and the possible list of combinations of all of those variables is almost limitless. I could go on, but the basic point I'm trying to make is that I voted with an educated guess as to what outcome was going to serve my interests best, as did many leave voters, and many remain voters. It's not a matter of right and wrong, as so many people seem to think. It's a matter of where you stand being a reflection of your circumstances, but since the referendum all both sides seem to want to do, despite all the talk of talking to the "other side" and trying to unite the country, is talk past each other and preach to the converted. And that's sad.
 
A very erudite commentary on the semantics of leaving the EU, although you haven't said why you voted leave other than references to reducing immigration. I don't think reducing immigration will have any real effect at the lower end of the labour market in terms of low wages especially as farmers are pressing the Govt. to allow seasonal migrant workers, which is likely to happen. I can't comment on your particular situation but many who feel they are overlooked in favour of foreigners could, for example, go into teaching. During training generous tax-free bursaries are paid and there's almost certainly a job at the end of it.
 
SurreyBob, but you told me that Germany and France would be desperate to do a deal. You told me that over and over again but now you say, "our departure represents such an existential and financial threat to them". That's exactly what I've been telling you and why it would be so difficult to get a deal. They're desperate to maintain the integrity of the single market. Nice to see you're waking up to a bit of reality.