Europe --- In or Out

[Renton 21638]

1 minute ago, TheGingerQuiff said:

I mean I joined in on occasion, but it literally drove @Christmas Tree  to stop posting. Do you think that's healthy debate? 

 

 

Yes, now piss off please. 

[Renton 21638]

1 minute ago, TheGingerQuiff said:

Which section? The thread isn't split into sections, Mr IQ

This morning you moron  Out of the blue. WUM got WUM wanted. WUM complains about being seen as a WUM  

Edited June 20, 2021 by Renton

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

I believe my post was a reply to Rayvin when he said Brexit will be a contentious issue for generations. So I didn't "start it", sparky

[Isegrim 9798]

17 minutes ago, TheGingerQuiff said:

I mean I joined in on occasion, but it literally drove @Christmas Tree  to stop posting. Do you think that's healthy debate? 

That’s a rhetorical question.

[Dr Gloom 21954]

It’s very simple. If someone voted Brexit and still thinks it’s a good idea then they’re a fucking moron and need schooling. 

 

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

Just now, Dr Gloom said:

It’s very simple. If someone voted Brexit and still thinks it’s a good idea then they’re a fucking moron and need schooling. 

 

Anyone that thinks that this level of aggression is healthy for democracy needs schooling and is a moron

[Renton 21638]

21 minutes ago, TheGingerQuiff said:

I believe my post was a reply to Rayvin when he said Brexit will be a contentious issue for generations. So I didn't "start it", sparky

 

 Aye right. Look back to your moronic quote this morning.  Well done, as well, you're the only person I've felt the need to put on ignore. Goodbye, idiot. 

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

What you're doing is alienating the thickies that voted leave and entrenching them

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

Just now, Renton said:

 

 Aye right. Look back to your moronic quote this morning.  Well done, as well, you're the only person I've felt the need to put on ignore. Goodbye, idiot. 

Thank fuck for that. Lol laters

[RobinRobin 11288]

[Dr Gloom 21954]

7 hours ago, TheGingerQuiff said:

Anyone that thinks that this level of aggression is healthy for democracy needs schooling and is a moron

you're obviously not familiar with this board's history of mug-righting 

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

He got into a tizzy and blocked me, he was unable to get involved in debate without getting all wound up and started name calling. An obvious win for me.

[ewerk 30642]

9 hours ago, TheGingerQuiff said:

Anyone that thinks that this level of aggression is healthy for democracy needs schooling and is a moron

The Brexit vote literally split on grounds of education. Guess which side of the divide voted for it?

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

4 minutes ago, ewerk said:

The Brexit vote literally split on grounds of education. Guess which side of the divide voted for it?

We're not a two tier society based on education, what a thoroughly condescending thing to post.

 

[ewerk 30642]

Look I’m not saying that everyone who voted for Brexit did so just because they were thick. A lot of them were racist too.

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

Thickness, racists, whatever. Their votes count just as much as yours. 

[ewerk 30642]

Not when I take power it won’t.

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

That might lose the left a few of the Red Wall pit villages 

[Rayvin 5223]

I want to set out a bit of the 'how we got here' in terms of the disillusionment of Remainers - not with the intention necessarily of changing Quiff's view, but with the goal of demonstrating why I hold the view that I do.

 

1 - Farage and Johnson both claimed we would remain in the single market after Brexit. Johnson actually gave a speech the day after the vote claiming that nothing would change; he did this outside of his house as I recall, as the press swarmed him. He obviously had no idea what he was talking about (even at the time he looked shellshocked) but his vision of Brexit at that stage was within the SM. (Further point - 'hard left Corbyn' was actually the first person to call for us to leave after the vote, and wanted to leave immediately). Johnson continued to be telling his EU counterparts (while he was foreign secretary) that we would remain in the single market right up until the moment he left the post claiming that he couldn't support May's deal because it wasn't extreme enough.

 

2 - I recall making a post on here not complaining so much about leaving the EU, but about how pointless it was to leave the decision making setup and become a rule taker through a Norway style deal. I was frustrated with how ridiculous that was logically - but from what I remember, at that stage, no one was talking about ignoring the result. We were talking about what it would look like and how to find the least bad version of it. There was no serious expectation that we would be forced into a hard Brexit because it was even more ludicrous than a soft one, and because this was not a landslide referendum. It was a slight difference of a couple of percentage points.

 

3 - Theresa May had ample opportunity to reach cross party consensus on Brexit but refused to do so because she was more interested in avoiding schism within the Tory party than she was in the actual best interests of the country. Over the course of time, she was forced into a harder and harder Brexit because around 60-70 of her own MPs (enough to break her majority) on the hard right of the party, consistently voted down her deals. This was despite a sizeable contingent of the Remain wing voting with her, and the fact that Labour made clear they'd vote for her deal if she included protections for workers rights. These small compromises with Remain, had they been offered, would have seen her deal go through. I hated these compromises, but the fact remains that they were ignored by the only people who had the power to control what was happening. The Tories. We got the most right Brexit possible because of the Tories. No one else.

 

4 - Elections. The Brexit ultras went in hard on the idea that "80% of the country voted for a Brexit supporting party" in the 2017 elections and that this somehow proved that people wanted to get Brexit done. This was a fallacy because I knew many people who voted for Labour, none of whom wanted Brexit. However, it was very much believed that Labour's course on this could and would be changed because the membership was on the whole, opposed to the stance that Corbyn had at that point (i.e. that Brexit had to happen in whatever form as long as we could get protections for workers rights). This is of course what happened in the end, Labour was indeed compelled to take up a different position. Then we get to the 2019 election which you've indicated suggests that there was a landslide in favour of Johnson's Brexit deal. I mean yes, in terms of constituencies, there was. But in terms of actual voters, parties who were either offering a second referendum or a straight cancel of Brexit (i.e. Remain friendly parties) won an overall majority of voters. By 1.4m people (i.e. if you combined the votes between Greens, LD, SNP, SF and Labour it outdoes the total achieved by looking at the Tories, Brexit Party, DUP and UKIP). So we can see here that the MAJORITY of the electorate has been denied an outcome they voted for.

 

Tl;Dr - Remainers have been cut out of this process in absolute terms since day one because they were not Tory voters. That's the long and short of it. And while there was plenty of initial room for bridge building, none of these options were taken by May or Johnson, who preferred instead to railroad us into something we fundamentally didn't want, in its most extreme form, to consolidate their own personal power.

 

Why Quiff, seriously, should I ever, EVER get on board with that? It isn't leavers who have been hard done by in this, it's Remainers. It's them that need to 'win us over', not the other way around. I am so thoroughly disillusioned with this country and this system, that I don't have it in me to swallow all of the above and come out saying "ah well, let's try and find something to agree on for the good of the country". I just don't. I feel like all of us have been shafted by a bunch of rich, born to rule arseholes - and that some of us have our heads in the fucking sand about it.

 

I'd happily unify around "Johnson should be tried for treason" if that's of any interest?

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

As much as I agree with a lot of what you say, the status quo of vitriol aimed at leavers is achieving nothing. It's a bit undignified and achieving nothing. As the saying goes, don't argue with fools because they'll drag you down.to their level and beat you with experience. 

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

And Labour is a mess. No talent on the benches. I even include that lass that Gemmill stalks

[Rayvin 5223]

6 minutes ago, TheGingerQuiff said:

As much as I agree with a lot of what you say, the status quo of vitriol aimed at leavers is achieving nothing. It's a bit undignified and achieving nothing. As the saying goes, don't argue with fools because they'll drag you down.to their level and beat you with experience. 

 

I mean this is it though, yeah maybe it is undignified but I've essentially just given up now so it doesn't really bother me what anyone thinks. Brexit as a process has ended my politics, frankly.

 

Lemme ask - what is it that you want, politically speaking?

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

7 minutes ago, Rayvin said:

 

I mean this is it though, yeah maybe it is undignified but I've essentially just given up now so it doesn't really bother me what anyone thinks. Brexit as a process has ended my politics, frankly.

 

Lemme ask - what is it that you want, politically speaking?

A government that invests ambitiously in the region predominantly. There's been some signs that this government is showing more interest in the North East than previous governments and are resisting austerity so I'm cutting them a bit of slack at the moment. I'm so Brexit fatigued that I can't be arsed to factor it in. Access to the single market is about the only good thing about the EU imo. Over time I've started to question whether letting them have us by the balls is worth it.

[Rayvin 5223]

1 minute ago, TheGingerQuiff said:

A government that invests ambitiously in the region predominantly. There's been some signs that this government is showing more interest in the North East than previous governments and are resisting austerity so I'm cutting them a bit of slack at the moment. I'm so Brexit fatigued that I can't be arsed to factor it in. Access to the single market is about the only good thing about the EU imo. Over time I've started to question whether letting them have us by the balls is worth it.

 

I mean if Brexit isn't something you're bothered about then I don't think you even need to do any questioning. The issue is settled, you can just forget about it. I can't because it still actively fucks up my life  I would obviously question the extent to which they ever 'had us by the balls' though, since we had the best deal in Europe while we were in there, and we had a leadership role in the direction it was moving in - but it's just pointless to worry about it now.

 

In terms of investment, the Tories are spending considerably at the moment as they've observed that this is something that they needed to do to outmanoeuvre Labour, but aren't you worried about where the money is coming from? The country is more in debt than it ever has been under a Labour government. I believe in spending both to stimulate the economy and to offset inequalities, but it has to be part of a carefully executed plan or it becomes disastrous. I don't trust them to handle careful execution, and I think future more sensible governments will subject us to austerity to pay for it. Quite possibly for the rest of our lives. 

 

Having said that, if your view is short termist then yeah, the Tories make sense based on your priorities. I can't chastise you for not voting Labour because I won't vote for them either.

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

I can't tell you where I'll vote next. Possibly abstain, sick of it all