[Discussion] Brexit means Brexit

Discuss the political fallout and other issues around Britain's exit, Brexit for short, from the EU.

For the sake of clarity, I'm including the full text of Article 50.

Article 50 wrote:

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.

4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

First off I really appreciate the feedback and viewpoints from you.

May leaving the single markets is actually the perfect example of what I feel like is an unfair criticism of her. First of all on the "she makes these decisions unilaterally" point... I feel like that's exactly because she is the only one with the fortitude to actually do anything. There is a very strict clock on every piece of this, and it seems like every one is waffling running out the clock on everything in order to force May to make executive decisions again and again.

And when I look into the executive decisions, they don't look wrong... By which I mean "the citizens of the UK were wrong, but May is accurately classifying those wrong decisions." You're making it sound like May decided on leaving the Single Market out of nowhere, but she's right! the UK citizens wanted to leave the Single Market. Changing EU immigration laws requires leaving the Single Market, and immigration was the biggest thing people were thinking about when they voted to leave the EU.

May didn't pull that out of her ass, she thought "ok, apparently we're f*cking leaving, why does the country want to leave? Oh, they hate immigrants, well I guess we have to do it this way then."

That clip above, I'm pretty sure, is full of bald-faced lies. From what I remember of 2016 when the Leave crowd was lying through their teeth on every single appearance, I would bet that within 30 seconds of those leavers in the clips above saying "We don't need to leave the Single Market!" they then said "And we'll be able to limit immigration!" That whole campaign was based on Leave saying "we'll be able to do A and B and C" when EU (or UK, in the case of the Good Friday agreement) laws specifically say that if you do C you can't do A and B.

Let's go through the Leavers above saying the UK "would totally never ever leave the single market"

Farage: Immigration is the issue that will decide the referendum.

Paterson: “Most pressingly, if we remain, we will be further dragged into a migration crisis partly of Europe’s making,” Paterson will say. “This is a genuine and legitimate concern, for Germany’s migration policy is now so out of control that in February of this year, federal ministries were estimating that Angela Merkel’s asylum amnesty would have attracted 3.6 million people by 2020. Many of these will, after five years, be able to acquire EU passports and move across Europe and into the UK.”

Luke Johnson in the last 30 seconds of this video talks about how leaving the Single Market will benefit the UK.

Matthew Elliot: "The only way to take back control of our borders and have a fair immigration policy is to vote Leave on 23 June," its chief executive, Matthew Elliot said.

Arron Banks: According to this New Yorker piece Banks preferred and was pushing for a complete break, whatever stories he was trying to spin to make that more palatable.

'This outcome was Banks’s preferred result. “No deal means we leave,” he told me at the club.'

Of all of the Leavers in that video the only one that I feel has an ounce of credibility and integrity seems to be Dan Hannan. In this clip right after the referendum he talks about finding an agreement that works for the European Allies, and also pointed out that they had a really narrow victory that did not include many of the countries in the UK, and the final outcome should represent that.

However I feel like even the much more reasonable case for his immigration control he makes in this next video STILL violates the Single Market. He says that just like with non-EU nations Brexit immigration policy would never turn people away at the borders, that's not what UK immigration policy wants to do. Instead what they do is restrict worker permits for people. But the EU freedom of movement isn't just about restricting movement of tourists, or visitors, it's about restricting the movement of workers!

"Leavers never meant living the single market" is a load of sh*t. (And I should clarify that my cursing and disdain here is in now way pointed at any of you, this whole thing is aggravating as hell because of the malice and fraud of the entire Leave group... which is a lot of why it bugs me that the Leave group seems to be turned May into their scapegoat basically entirely successfully. Videos like the above are exactly how the narrative is now "man May really screwed up our whole Leave thing, boy we would have done that way better" instead of "wow we just sold you all a bunch of impossible lies that literally no one could ever not screw up". And I mean that more in general, I know that you just clarified that you have more than enough blame to go around.)

Actually, is this part of me not getting the local news? In the more local coverage (where I hear this is still the biggest story almost every day) are they doing a better job of making "and remember, this is all Leave's fault" a part of almost all the coverage?

Gremlin wrote:
Jeem wrote:

Always struck me as a cowardly conniving thing to do that, there's no real proper response to having something like that thrown at you, short of lamping them of course.

I mean, maybe it's not my place to say how UK politics should be done, but I think in general throwing milkshakes or shoes or rotten tomatoes is a much better form of public disagreement than a lot of the other options that are already in use, so I'm personally fine with it. It doesn't actually hurt anyone, and being a public figure comes with responsibility to be accountable to the public. It certainly is a superior way to show dissent compared to stabbing or shooting politicians.

Voting is the safety valve for democracies to legitimize rule and build consensus. When people feel disenfranchised, pressure starts to build and you get our current political situation.

At any rate, Farage was completely unsuccessful at avoiding milkshakes this time.

DanB wrote:

I'm totally happy for people to be temporarily covered in a small amount of food with no, otherwise, lasting damage in the name of political protest.

Read this today in the Times...

Milkshake mob have lost their moral compass

Do parents have the right to change a stinking nappy at a restaurant table? You might assume, as I did, the correct answer is, hell no. Yet reading a recent online debate I was startled by how many disagreed. That raising children is an arduous, stressful self-sacrifice, they reasoned, entitles parents to commit this disgusting, selfish act.

Believing that because you are a “good” person you have permission to do a bad thing is what psychologists call moral licence. It is epidemic in modern parenting: “That I am a noble nurturer of tiny infants entitles me to drive this 4x4.” When my elderly folks once parked in a supermarket parent-and-child space because all the disabled bays were full, they returned to find — despite the blue badge displayed in their car — a monstrous letter from an outraged mother.

Moral licence gives cyclists the right to scream in pedestrians’ faces if we complain about them riding on pavements: “Move aside for we eco-gods who risk our lives in combat with cars.” Recent Oxfam exposés highlighted a “saviour complex” among charity workers: “As a heroic rescuer of disaster victims I’m allowed to trade aid for sex with vulnerable women.”

One psychology experiment showed that men given the opportunity to disagree with blatantly sexist statements were later more likely to select a man for a stereotypically male job. Another at Stanford in 2010 revealed that white people who were given a chance to express support for President Obama felt granted “moral credentials” and were thus more likely to make racist choices.

I am a Good Person and therefore everything I do, even a self-evidently bad deed, is rendered good. Herein lies the thinking behind someone seeing an 81-year-old man wearing a Brexit Party rosette, going off to a shop to buy a strawberry milkshake and returning to ruin his suit. Normally, drenching an old person sitting harmlessly outside an Aldershot polling station would be grotesque. But not under moral licence.

I’ve spent the week wondering if the left has totally lost its mind. I heard the Guardian columnist Zoe Williams on Radio 4 describe the milkshaking of Nigel Farage as “ludic and playful”. (Williams has justified protestors spitting on journalists and Tory party delegates as a response to social exclusion.) Aditya Chakrabortty, of the same newspaper, described milkshaking as “political theatre” akin to mime artists hired in Colombia to shame dangerous drivers.

The intellectual contortions by supposedly serious people to justify physical assault are extraordinary. It’s funny and subversive, a custard pie in a dictator’s face, they say, a litre of banana and caramel doesn’t hurt. Anyone who disagrees is an aged centrist fun-sucker who doesn’t care about the rise of the far right.

But what is the remit of moral licence? The answer, if you self-identify as good, is limitless. Liberated from decency, impervious to the law, high on self-righteousness, you can freestyle your protest: a hot coffee, bleach, acid . . . And in that panicky public moment — to be replayed a million times on YouTube — who knows which liquid was thrown?

I find this blithe justification of assault horrifying, not least because I receive threats whenever I write about the tensions between gender identity and women’s rights. Already in this vicious, entrenched debate, anyone who asserts that biological sex exists is deemed to have committed “actual violence”. Thus trolls tell me to “die in a fire” or send me memes of guns, while left-wing, bearded, self-proclaimed feminist men enjoy venting their latent misogyny with insults and smears.

Report, block, ignore. It’s only social media. But this week someone who isn’t an anonymous idiot, but a named journalist on a well-known news website, suggested that I and several other women journalists should be milkshaked for the crime of attending a meeting set up to defend the 2010 Equality Act. Yes, for the offence of supporting existing legislation we were asking for assault. Fellow feminist writers say they’re only surprised it hasn’t happened already.

In our tinderbox times, threats are moving from online to the real world. Hear racist insults often enough on Twitter and you may feel entitled to scrawl a swastika on a synagogue or rip off a woman’s hijab on the bus. Yet how can we condemn such crimes and sanction others?

Increasingly activists of all hues believe they have moral licence. A man who threw an egg at Jeremy Corbyn declared “his civil rights were violated” because parliament had failed to deliver Brexit. No one suggested that egging the leader of the opposition was just playful fun, that his attacker’s 28-day prison sentence was too harsh or disagreed with the judge that — especially after Jo Cox’s murder — “this is an attack on our democratic process”.

Who is seen as a legitimate target for milkshakes has shifted within weeks from Tommy Robinson to an elderly Brexiteer. So why not every Tory MP for austerity, Lib Dems for collaboration, any old “gammons” who voted Leave . . . What are the rules and who is allowed to set them?

Our political maelstrom, like a centrifuge, is flinging moderates out to the extremes of left and right. Remain and Brexit supporters alike are speaking of opponents in dark, inflammatory terms. It takes tenacity to cling to the middle, with dull, old-fashioned beliefs that all political violence is wrong. How complacent we are about our peaceful country, stable democracy and largely safe streets. But if we reject the universal values that underpin them during this period of flux and uncertainty they are far from secure.

Moral licence creates a moral vacuum. As in that famous Mitchell and Webb sketch, the Nazis hate to think they’re the bad guys.

By Janice Turner.

Old quote always comes to mind about things like this...

"Beware the pious man for he can move mountains"

Let's put it this way, assuming your secret service didn't shoot them first what would be your reaction to the likes of Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden being "milked" ?.

Amusement or outrage ?.

Anyway, I simply didn't bother voting this week, for the first time, and from what I see on the British political landscape I don't know that I will vote again.

Jeem wrote:

Let's put it this way, assuming your secret service didn't shoot them first what would be your reaction to the likes of Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden being "milked" ?.

Amusement or outrage ?.

Amusement to both, some "outrage" mixed in for Bernie, but very mild because It's just a milkshake. I'm in favor of punching Nazi's in the face though.

Anyone changing a dirty diaper at a restaurant table deserves a good milkshaking.

I'll offer an alternative suggestion why people might be throwing milkshakes at fascists: they feel powerless. On a continuum from holding up a sternly worded sign to throwing a Molotov cocktail, I'd say a milkshake falls on the more acceptable end of the scale.

Dousing some random geezer wearing a pin isn't reasonable. Presumably the old fellow isn't surrounded by a security escort, so a public debate might be more effective at letting him know that his provocative gesture wasn't appreciated.

A comparable thing in the US might be starting a food fight with someone wearing a MAGA hat. For all I know that may have happened, but the only incidents I'm aware of involved large signs and shouting.

Hmm, you say powerlessness I see it more as self aggrandising righteousness.

"I'm in the right, so I can do what I want to you".

Or as Turner wrote : I am a Good Person and therefore everything I do, even a self-evidently bad deed, is rendered good.

This type of behaviour is no different be it a suicide bomber or milking an old man, this seems to be a permanent facet of the human psyche.

Sadly as long as we believe our preferred ideals make us better than those that don't share them we humans will continue our inexorable descent into irrelevance.

The furor over the milkshakes is just pearl-clutching both-sides-ism. “Enlightened Centrism” is part of the reason things have gotten so bad that people feel the need to resort to political violence in the first place. It ignores power dynamics and treats all aspects of political advocacy as morally equivalent, which works only to punish the weak for speaking out.

Jeem wrote:

This type of behaviour is no different be it a suicide bomber or milking an old man

Yes, it is. Full stop. There is only most surface level equivalence to be drawn here.

I don’t know if milkshaking will have the effect that the shaker wants, but I do recognize it as an expression of outrage that still takes into account the victim’s essential humanity. If Nigel Farage or Theresa May or Trump takes a milkshake bath, that’s because the person throwing the shake wanted to express their discontent without causing actual damage. Because you’re right that it could have been bleach or acid or anything else - but it wasn’t. And that’s really important.

“This type of behaviour” is someone working outside the norm while still trying to maintain decency. I don’t suspect any significant political
figure’s dry cleaning bills are going to break them financially, unlike the effect of some of their bills on less fortunate members of their populations.

Let’s not wring hands and clutch pearls and make hyperbolic associations. Throwing milkshakes is unlikely to be a gateway assault.

Jeem wrote:

This type of behaviour is no different be it a suicide bomber or milking an old man, this seems to be a permanent facet of the human psyche.

That’s a moronic statement.

"my milkshake drives proud boys from the yard..."

Milkshaking says you have forfeited some right to control over your own body. Not to the extent of acid or bleach, but it does say you should no longer feel confident when you step out in public that what happens to your body is 100% yours to decide. It sends the message that you and people like you should feel more vulnerable than you do.

Probably "that's a feature, not a bug" to many, but it is what it is.

I'm also not sure that if it *was* acid or bleach, it would be as strongly condemned as any offered defenses of milkshaking suggest it should be.

Jeem wrote:

what would be your reaction to the likes of Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden being "milked" ?.

Amusement or outrage ?.

Haha, if this is a 'do unto others' type question, if you're going to ask P&C, you're going to have to find examples more sympathetic to the demographic than those two!

well...i mean. I can certainly see how chucking a milkshake at someone is the same as blowing them up.

wait...no....actually....i can't see that. at all.

I am happy, ECSTATIC. To see each and every one of those racist, fascist pieces of filth reduced to bumbling clowns and defused before they become a significant threat to people like me, and before we have to start throwing f*cking molotov's instead.

And f*cking centrist "both siders" who equate throwing food with the actions of fascists - who just this week in the US have effectively wiped out EVERY SINGLE LAST protection for Trans people at the government level, essentially erasing them from society. People who just shrug their shoulders and go "welp, need to consider the right's feelings as well" and don't take an active stand against that make my f*cking. blood. boil.

I appreciate the more nuanced analysis of the results, but I'll be damned if I'm not here for the ass-kicking that UKIP took.

At least for now, the platform of "Vote for douchebag YouTube sh*theads and crypto-fascists" didn't work. No seats taken, a colossal loss in votes. I wish this would chasten Carl Benjamin, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon or any of his fellows, but they've come to prominence via utter shamelessness and a rejection of reality, so I expect them to do just fine in the future.

And for Mr. Benjamin/Yaxley-Lennon to make a follow-up appearance on "Classical Liberal" Dave Rubin's YT show where they will surely lay all the blame on the biased Cultural Marxist press and the violent Left for UKIP's abysmal showing, because, y'know, personal responsibility until it actually applies to them.

oh Lennon was already crying foul that he only failed because he was banned from social media.

Overall, an unsurprising result (Con voters switch to Brexit party en-mass, Labour vote split between Brexit and Lib Dem, SNP wins big in Scotland, wiping out Labour - again) Interestingly, a definite majority voted for pro-remain parties, overall - so the idea that this was a big win for Brexit is...overstated somewhat. It was more a colossal drubbing for the Tories and labour than anything else.

The Brexit Party vote is basically Farage’s UKIP vote + 4%. Gained a few more from the main parties but really not that impressive. It’s the hoovering up of pro-remain votes by the LDs and the greens that’s probably more telling in its own way.

Corbyn will have to get off the fence. It’ll be interesting to see which way he jumps, if at all. I still think he thinks he’s doing the right thing.

ruhk wrote:

The furor over the milkshakes is just pearl-clutching both-sides-ism. “Enlightened Centrism” is part of the reason things have gotten so bad that people feel the need to resort to political violence in the first place. It ignores power dynamics and treats all aspects of political advocacy as morally equivalent, which works only to punish the weak for speaking out.

I always loved this banned clip from Star Trek: TNG.

As an Irish man who faced real political violence in the shape of loaded AR-18/180s and not milkshakes, and I laugh at the comparison, Data's argument is not a fringe one by any means. Michael Collins is a hero in my country but he by any measure was a terrorist and a fact that the vast majority accepts. Same goes for the founders of the US, Isreal, France and many Western democracies.

Here's the thing, you're asking the wrong question. It's not should people resort to political violence, it's why. Well, in the case of successive UK governments and Northern Ireland they didn't really want to know why until the powerful were directly threatened themselves, then they seemed to care why. Up to that point they were perfect happy to see Irish men slaughter each other while they UK government pretended it had nothing to do with their "middle" policies. Violence worked, like it or not.

And to be clear, I don't. But you cannot trade in policies that harm people directly and expect them to be happy with it. The world never worked that way and, frankly, it shouldn't.

I'd love to ask Ms Turner which UK government she believes didn't use political violence for it's own ends. And I'm not talking financial or social policy. I'm talking straight up detention, torture and murder. I'd love to know what rosy past she sees.

Axon wrote:

Here's the thing, you're asking the wrong question. It's not should people resort to political violence, it's why.

Eh, I don't think people are just interested in political violence as simply a sociological or anthropological phenomenon or whatever the right terminology would be. People are looking to find the dividing line where some political violence is acceptable and some is not, with us on one side and them on the other. It's very much a question of 'should', not just 'why'.

It’s effective. Should has nothing to do with it. “Should” is the choice the powerful get to make.

The notion that Farage is open to an honest discussion where he is prepared to accept truths that effect his hardline position is laughable. He knows what he is doing and if people cannot see that it’s frankly not my problem He’s been certainly told several times what forces he is exciting and he doesn’t care.

There is no “should” about men like him.

Edit: Sorry, I'm getting emotional. I've relatives in the UK who today are weaping from the fear the likes of Farage has engendered. It's bringing up painful memories of London during the 70s watching my mother doing the same thing. This desire to be so concerned for pampered millionaires boils my sh*t. Going to try and avoid this thread for a while.

Well said, Axon. You have my milkshake.

Axon, that's not what I said, but if it's not the time, okay, it's not the time.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Axon, that's not what I said, but if it's not the time, okay, it's not the time.

No worries, cheese. Like I said, I’m not rational on this quite about now.

pyxistyx wrote:

oh Lennon was already crying foul that he only failed because he was banned from social media.

The conspiracy theory I've seen floating around is that UKIP's entire existence was to create more space and take the heat off the Brexit Party, by making Farage & Co. seem reasonable and decent in comparison.

Prederick wrote:

The conspiracy theory I've seen floating around is that UKIP's entire existence was to create more space and take the heat off the Brexit Party, by making Farage & Co. seem reasonable and decent in comparison.

That’s really just a conspiracy theory. UKIP now is just the BNP - they hijacked UKIP a long time ago to give themselves a veneer of respectability. When someone like Farage is leaving a party he created because it’s gone ‘too right wing’ that sort of tells you all you need to know.

The cult of Farage among the older, wealthy overwhelming white pensioners of the UK is quite something. He understands his core power base extremely well, but ‘The Brexit Party’ is really ‘The Nigel Farage’ Party. He appeals to the jingoistic, nostalgic for ‘better days’ (that have never existed) yearnings is that section of society in a way even the conservatives have forgotten how to. Without him, neither UKIP or The Brexit Party would ever had existed.

yeah, you saw that with Ukip. The second he lost interest in it and wandered off, it just collapsed in on itself like a fascist singularity.

To paraphrase an amusing facebook post i just saw, the Brexit Party is just the next unwitting host of Farage, the Tapeworm of British Politics.

That can’t be right... tapeworms are skinny.

Yeah, but they also live their entire lives engulfed in sh*t, so......

Well, dear old Jeremy still can't bring himself to back the idea of a second referendum where remain is still an option, despite that being the position of the party he leads.

This is becoming a major issue really - despite roughly equal numbers of people voting for explicitly remain parties as brexit parties in the European elections, national politics currently doesn't really represent them at the moment thanks to FPTP and the media obsession with Nigel Farage. I really have to laugh at anyone saying "we have to bring the country together" - that boat has sailed now. Problem is one side is going to be very disappointed. Dealing with that is going to take considerably more talent at politics than our current "leaders" have ever demonstrated they are capable of.

Can't they get rid of Corbyn.
This whole mess is really a perfect storm of terrible people in all positions.

Shadout wrote:

Can't they get rid of Corbyn.
This whole mess is really a perfect storm of terrible people in all positions.

Basically no. Momentum has a stranglehold
on the internal politics of the Labour Party at the moment, and Corbyn is their man. Short of losing a GE by a crushing margin I don’t think they’ll be getting rid of him in quite a while. Could be a Neil Kinnock Mark 2 situation. Mind you Corbyn isn’t up against Thatcher so there is that.

Quite a lot of chatter on the interwebs at the moment on a poll that puts voting intentions in a GE at:

24% Liberal Democrat (explicitly anti-Brexit & pro remain)
22% Brexit Party (hello Nigel)
19% Tory
19% Labour
1% change (although it’s looking like they might all join the LDs)
1% Green
6% ‘other’ (including the SNP)

This is from a YouGov poll over the last week: Source . YouGov is widely regarded as a reliable and creditable polling source.

It’s the first time since polls began in the 1940s that the Tories and Labour are not the front two. It finally looks like Corbyn’s fence sitting is driving remainers away from Labour, and the LDs are hoovering all the remain votes from both Labour and the Tories.

That could make for a really messy parliament with your election system. So maybe not a big change after all.
I guess it doesn't really tell much unless you see the geographical spread on those voters.

Shadout wrote:

That could make for a really messy parliament with your election system. So maybe not a big change after all.
I guess it doesn't really tell much unless you see the geographical spread on those voters.

Oh I completely agree. What it does mean is neither Labour nor the Tories will be commanding much of a majority. They will need some sort of coalition/supply & confidence arrangements. Those are like to include demands for revocation of Article 50 and PR if it’s Labour, no deal if it’s the Tories.

Of course what it really means in that the Tories absolutely will not call a GE unless forced to. Even the staunchest of remain Tory MPs might falter in a VoNC if they know the outcome will be the final death knell of their party.