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Mayday, May Day or D-Day for May: Brexit Update

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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:20 pm
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A referendum on the present orbit in which the earth is stuck has been suggested as a way out of the present difficulties. It would only be advisory, of course.
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stui magpie Gemini

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.


Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto

PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:58 pm
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Maybe they can hold a referendum on whether the magnetic north pole should have stayed in Canada or should it continue it's march toward the Geographic north pole.
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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 7:15 pm
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Anyone got any predictions on what happens next? Because I’m stumped.
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stui magpie Gemini

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.


Joined: 03 May 2005
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 7:21 pm
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The bits of this I understand seem to make sense.

https://www.theage.com.au/business/markets/the-markets-have-spoken-the-brexit-dream-is-over-20190117-p50ruu.html

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Culprit Cancer



Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne

PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 9:00 pm
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Let's do another referendum and if that doesn't work, best out of 3, 5 or 7?

Australia should be in there in what we can supply the UK as they are in the shit come March.
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Pies4shaw Leo

pies4shaw


Joined: 08 Oct 2007


PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 6:39 am
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/19/brexit-may-to-ask-eu-for-brexit-extension-as-uk-slides-into-political-crisis

This looks to be going well.
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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 9:33 am
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Really recommend this analysis:

https://meanjin.com.au/blog/the-brexit-paradox/

Quote:
The Brexit Paradox

[...]

The UK Parliament’s failed gamble with the referendum left it with an historic dilemma. Probably for the first time since Parliament wrestled control from the Crown, it was being forced to implement something it did not want to do. Three quarters of MPs had voted Remain. All the Westminster parties except for the small Democratic Unionist Party had campaigned for Remain. It had not helped that despite the referendum being technically advisory, the major party leaders had gone out of their way to declare that the referendum would be implemented and would be final—presumably to stop Leave turning into a protest vote, so confident were they on the rationality of the Remain case.

However, it was not just that Parliament was being forced to enact what it did not want, the issue itself that has proved profoundly destabilising. It stems from the central paradox of the Brexit vote—’Take back control’ meant handing power back to a Parliament that wanted no such thing. Parliament’s reluctance to implement Brexit and take back control has undermined it and the very point of what the British political system and democracy is supposed to be about. The call for sovereignty in the Brexit vote went to the heart of not only the weakness of the Remain case but, as it turned out, of the Leave case as well.

Why have UK MPs been so keen to pass over sovereignty to Brussels? The usual reason given is economic. Pooling sovereignty, it is argued, is a trade-off for the economic benefits of free trade with the UK’s largest trading partner. Britain, so the argument goes, would suffer severe economic damage if it was to try and survive outside the EU bloc.

Yet such an argument would seem bizarre to countries outside the bloc like Australia. Britain is the fifth largest economy in the world. What are Australia’s chances of survival in this big bad world being only the fourteenth? What Australian politician would dare argue for pooling sovereignty with its largest trading partners, say China, Japan and the US, as a reasonable trade-off for lower tariffs?


In reality, behind such prosaic economic justifications lie more shame-faced political ones for Britain’s membership of the EU. One argument often heard from Eurosceptic Conservatives is that when in 1973 Britain joined the Common Market, as it was then, it was just about trade, only later did it become ‘political’. This take is presumably to deal with the awkwardness for Conservatives of it being a Conservative Prime Minister, Ted Heath, who took Britain in, and his successor, Margaret Thatcher, who led the campaign to remain in when it came up for a vote in the first EU referendum in 1975.

But European union has always been political. The enthusiasm of Conservative leaders for it at the time came from viewing the European union open market as a way of by-passing the post-war political settlement with the unions—attempts by Conservatives to tackle it head on having resulted in the Heath government being brought down by the miners in 1974. It was also an approach adopted later in France by Mitterrand and Delors to bypass their own post-war political settlement. This was also why much of the Labour party at the time was deeply suspicious of European union, especially amongst its left wing, from which Jeremy Corbyn’s Euroscepticism stands today as a fossilised relic.

When Thatcher finally could take the unions on directly and marginalise them in the 1980s, the parties’ respective positions on Europe reversed. Labour began looking to the European union as a way of pursuing an agenda it could no longer pursue at home. For the Conservatives, having lost the enemy at home, defeating the unions, and abroad, with the decline of the Soviet Union, the erosion of sovereignty under the EU became a sensitive issue for a party that no longer knew what it was about. Looking to European union to cover domestic political weakness was a pattern elsewhere in Europe for political classes compromised by the Second World War, or the military and Communist dictatorships that followed.

All of this puts paid to another beloved myth by Conservative Eurosceptics, namely of Brussels imposing its will over national governments. The dynamic is really the other way. Rather than a group of bureaucrats in Brussels somehow managing to control some of the world’s most powerful nations, it has been national European governments, their political classes and civil services, taking shelter behind the EU bureaucracy. In southern Europe, where local politicians are often regarded as corrupt and/or incompetent, voters are only too happy they should do so.

It is obvious that such a debasing rationale for European union will cause problems. It is why despite being a minority in the parliamentary Conservative party, hard-line Eurosceptics can cause such headache for a leadership that can never answer the basic question, what is the point of a political party getting into power if it just wants to cede that power? [...]


This podcast discussion between US socialist Amber A'Lee Frost and Greek-British economist Costas Lapavitsas makes the point even more forcefully: leftists should have always backed the Leave vote, and see the referendum as an opportunity for progress, not a category error that must be overturned at all costs.

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/bonus-this-is-where-i-leave-eu

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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 9:15 am
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David wrote:
Really recommend this analysis:

https://meanjin.com.au/blog/the-brexit-paradox/

Quote:
The Brexit Paradox

[...]

The UK Parliament’s failed gamble with the referendum left it with an historic dilemma. Probably for the first time since Parliament wrestled control from the Crown, it was being forced to implement something it did not want to do. Three quarters of MPs had voted Remain. All the Westminster parties except for the small Democratic Unionist Party had campaigned for Remain. It had not helped that despite the referendum being technically advisory, the major party leaders had gone out of their way to declare that the referendum would be implemented and would be final—presumably to stop Leave turning into a protest vote, so confident were they on the rationality of the Remain case.

However, it was not just that Parliament was being forced to enact what it did not want, the issue itself that has proved profoundly destabilising. It stems from the central paradox of the Brexit vote—’Take back control’ meant handing power back to a Parliament that wanted no such thing. Parliament’s reluctance to implement Brexit and take back control has undermined it and the very point of what the British political system and democracy is supposed to be about. The call for sovereignty in the Brexit vote went to the heart of not only the weakness of the Remain case but, as it turned out, of the Leave case as well.

Why have UK MPs been so keen to pass over sovereignty to Brussels? The usual reason given is economic. Pooling sovereignty, it is argued, is a trade-off for the economic benefits of free trade with the UK’s largest trading partner. Britain, so the argument goes, would suffer severe economic damage if it was to try and survive outside the EU bloc.

Yet such an argument would seem bizarre to countries outside the bloc like Australia. Britain is the fifth largest economy in the world. What are Australia’s chances of survival in this big bad world being only the fourteenth? What Australian politician would dare argue for pooling sovereignty with its largest trading partners, say China, Japan and the US, as a reasonable trade-off for lower tariffs?


In reality, behind such prosaic economic justifications lie more shame-faced political ones for Britain’s membership of the EU. One argument often heard from Eurosceptic Conservatives is that when in 1973 Britain joined the Common Market, as it was then, it was just about trade, only later did it become ‘political’. This take is presumably to deal with the awkwardness for Conservatives of it being a Conservative Prime Minister, Ted Heath, who took Britain in, and his successor, Margaret Thatcher, who led the campaign to remain in when it came up for a vote in the first EU referendum in 1975.

But European union has always been political. The enthusiasm of Conservative leaders for it at the time came from viewing the European union open market as a way of by-passing the post-war political settlement with the unions—attempts by Conservatives to tackle it head on having resulted in the Heath government being brought down by the miners in 1974. It was also an approach adopted later in France by Mitterrand and Delors to bypass their own post-war political settlement. This was also why much of the Labour party at the time was deeply suspicious of European union, especially amongst its left wing, from which Jeremy Corbyn’s Euroscepticism stands today as a fossilised relic.

When Thatcher finally could take the unions on directly and marginalise them in the 1980s, the parties’ respective positions on Europe reversed. Labour began looking to the European union as a way of pursuing an agenda it could no longer pursue at home. For the Conservatives, having lost the enemy at home, defeating the unions, and abroad, with the decline of the Soviet Union, the erosion of sovereignty under the EU became a sensitive issue for a party that no longer knew what it was about. Looking to European union to cover domestic political weakness was a pattern elsewhere in Europe for political classes compromised by the Second World War, or the military and Communist dictatorships that followed.

All of this puts paid to another beloved myth by Conservative Eurosceptics, namely of Brussels imposing its will over national governments. The dynamic is really the other way. Rather than a group of bureaucrats in Brussels somehow managing to control some of the world’s most powerful nations, it has been national European governments, their political classes and civil services, taking shelter behind the EU bureaucracy. In southern Europe, where local politicians are often regarded as corrupt and/or incompetent, voters are only too happy they should do so.

It is obvious that such a debasing rationale for European union will cause problems. It is why despite being a minority in the parliamentary Conservative party, hard-line Eurosceptics can cause such headache for a leadership that can never answer the basic question, what is the point of a political party getting into power if it just wants to cede that power? [...]


This podcast discussion between US socialist Amber A'Lee Frost and Greek-British economist Costas Lapavitsas makes the point even more forcefully: leftists should have always backed the Leave vote, and see the referendum as an opportunity for progress, not a category error that must be overturned at all costs.

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/bonus-this-is-where-i-leave-eu

The far left would find Brexit exciting. Political chaos brings temporary relief to the moral contradictions of the left while making it feel useful at the same time. Ironically, this addiction to instability links those who hold such views arm-in-arm with the very 'disaster capitalists' and doomsdayers they oppose.

On the article, is the author really incapable of differentiating between a geographically remote resource-based economy nonetheless dragged forcefully into the orbit of the Asian supply chain, and a central player in one of the most integrated, high-speed product and service supply chains in human history?

Does the author actually believe that the UK has been degraded by close relationships with centuries-old enemies who are consistently among the most advanced nations on earth?

Is the author postulating that the presence of unions makes 'sick man' 60s and 70s UK a hitherto unrecognised Scandinavia?

Is the author aware of just what sovereignty has and has not been 'passed over' to the EU by the UK, and know something, anything, at all about EU law and its relationship with UK law? Can the author tell us why sovereignty at one scale is innately more righteous than sovereignty at another scale?

Is the author suggesting that angry nationalists, regional victims of austerity, receivers of decades of EU scapegoating at the hands of local politicians, and an ageing generation of late imperialists who account for an increasing percentage of the electorate were ever going to vote progressively in any context?

This has been a disgraceful exercise in deceit and gambling with the lives of others from beginning to end, and is the culmination of Blair's Iraq, Tory austerity on the back of the GFC, Tory hubris and intransigence, and Labour cowardice and opportunism. And to think, all that time and money could have been spent alleviating the effects of the slow recovery from the GFC on the languishing regions and boroughs.

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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 12:28 am
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Any Jonathan Pie fans here? This is some cathartic stuff:

https://youtu.be/-IL2XwSkFJQ

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Pies4shaw Leo

pies4shaw


Joined: 08 Oct 2007


PostPosted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 9:38 am
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https://www.theage.com.au/world/europe/one-million-protesters-jam-london-to-demand-that-the-people-decide-brexit-20190324-p516zg.html

"Ikea Has Better Cabinets," said one placard.

....

Attitudes on Britain's EU membership have shifted since 2016, when Britons voted 52 per cent to 48 per cent to leave the European Union.

For most of the past year, polls have shown a slight majority would now opt to remain in the bloc. Pollsters say that the small but persistent swing is partly down to changing demographics. Younger people are overwhelmingly pro-EU, and those teens who couldn't vote in 2016 are now of voting age. The majority of voters 65 and older voted to leave the bloc, and some of them have since died.
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Jezza Taurus

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Joined: 06 Sep 2010
Location: Ponsford End

PostPosted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 10:35 pm
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^ Most polls stated that "remain" was the majority position before the 2016 referendum.
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Wokko Pisces

Come and take it.


Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 8:46 am
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So a losing but vocal mob should be able to reverse referenda?
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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 9:01 am
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Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? How would they be able to reverse it if they were still only a minority?

If, on the other hand, a second referendum were called and Remain won, then that would surely be a valid representation of the popular will.

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Wokko Pisces

Come and take it.


Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 9:50 am
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So just keep having referendum votes until you get the result you want? They had a vote, it passed despite the political and media establishment being against it and ramping up constant propaganda. Now that the propaganda has had some time to simmer and take effect there should be another vote? Why bother with direct democracy in the first place?

The European referendum scam of just keep voting until the political establishment gets what it wants is pathetic but totally expected.
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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 10:46 am
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I agree that it seems dodgy, but on an objective level it’s not clear to me that it’s more democratic to only ever have one public vote on a given topic at a random place and time and then have the result stand as representation of the people’s will for eternity. If that were the principle, why have elections every three years and not just continue to honour the results from 50 years ago?

I think we just need to accept on some level that, for all our lofty ideas about democracy, the way it manifests here in Westminster countries (and, perhaps, anywhere else) is as a bit of a blunt instrument, with plenty of contradictions and undemocratic features. As a contrast, some countries like Switzerland have referenda seemingly constantly; I’m sure that, there, questions do crop up more than once, and there doesn’t seem to be anything fundamentally illegitimate to me about that possibility.

The one area where I think you might have a strong point here is that the government should at least be bound to honour the referendum’s results before organising any subsequent referenda – so, the honourable and democratic thing to do is to go through the process of leaving the EU now and then, if desired, hold a referendum on rejoining later. Of course, that’s an unimaginably costly and inefficient alternative to just holding a second referendum if the vote does end up being reversed. But you may be right that it’s the only fair and democratic option under the circumstances.

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