Brexit Becomes A Culture War

I started 2017 without any idea of how Brexit could be stopped, and assuming it was basically unstoppable.  The majority had voted for it in the referendum and the ruling party and the bulk of the media backed it.  There was little sign of any movement of opinion and so it looked pretty much like a lost cause.  The only slim hope was if opinion started moving markedly away from it.

The Day The Brexit Died

Well today has been the most interesting since the vote itself.  I picked up a story at lunchtime that the Irish border problem had been solved.  There would be ‘regulatory convergence’ or some other waffly phrase that would ensure that there was no need for a hard border between the UK and Ireland.  So in effect Ulster was going to stay in the single market.

How The Brexit Talks Might Have Looked With A Plan

I haven’t made any attempt to hide my opinion that Britain would have done a lot better to stay in the EU, and this is something that I have been feeling steadily more strongly as the story unfolds.  There have been quite a few things that have come up where I’ve realised I had no idea how important staying in the EU was.  In fact although I did vote the way I would vote if the issue came up again, I don’t really think I had given it enough thought last time. 

UKIP have stirred things up, and it isn't all bad

This is why I never get anything done on Sundays.  I have just been on Twitter and read a link to an article by Diane James about the EU’s latest initiative.  They are proposing a common curriculum, or at least that is what I assume.  She naturally interpreted it as an attempt to push pro-EU propaganda in the schools.  Equally naturally, I think she has totally missed the point.

Who Is To Blame For Making Brexit Divisive?

It is a remarkable coincidence that the Sun and the Moon are the same size in the sky.  As a result we have solar eclipses that are extremely dramatic.  There are enough stars around that the Earth is probably not unique, but it must nonetheless be pretty rare.   There is a similar remarkable symmetry around the current state of opinion on Brexit.   A study of public opinion in the UK suggests that at the moment around 35% of the population are firmly committed to the idea of leaving the EU.  And around 35% believe strongly that we should stay in.   Neither opinion is particularly surprising, but to have such even support for both is one heck of a coincidence. 

Brexit Is Like Giving Up Smartphones

We could do without smartphones.  Everything they do can be done by somthing else.  It makes sense to use the phone as the conduit for a lot of services that really fit being in the palm of your hand.  But if we chose as a society to do without them nothing much would really change.   Once everyone had got rid of their devices, all the software had been rewritten and all the jobs that are currently created by the smartphone infrastructure redirected to alternative platforms, nothing much would be different.  We’d just have a very slightly less convenient life than we have, but not so you’d particularly notice. 

Why We Should Drop Article 50 for Now And Play The Long Game

I don’t think that the exact future of the Brexit process has ever been less clear than it is now.  Back in the days after the vote it seemed pretty clear.  Leave had won.  The Conservatives accepted the result pretty wholeheartedly and they had a majority in parliament.  They had 4 years to do it in, and looked pretty well set to win the election afterwards.  Whatever else was happening, we were definitely leaving.  And speaking personally, my inner democrat was telling me that the result was clear enough and things had to run their course. 

Stray Brexit Thoughts - Brexit Camp Cracking

A Brexit campaigner on Twitter is very unhappy about the way Brexit is going.

https://twitter.com/PeteNorth303/status/917610248751452160

I don't agree with all his points, but the gist is that the negotiations are going not just badly but very badly indeed.  That is beyond dispute.  But looking at the bigger picture it is not surprising that some on the Brexit side are beginning to get somewhat vexed.  They have won their vote, and the goal they sought is being pursued. And yet things really aren't developing how they want them to.

Why I Think The EU Was Good For Britain And Will Continue To Be

I haven't really kept this blog up through the twists and turns of Brexit.  I have quite a few unposted ones, and even more that I have posted but which now seem not particularly interesting. But the process has at least been educational.  I feel I know a lot more about recent European history, the way the EU works and about myself and my country than I did before the issue came up.

Brexit Proving More Rubbish And More Popular Than I Thought

Nothing helps fishermen quite as much as withdrawing from non current agreements

A Survation poll out today suggests that finally opinion is moving against Brexit.  The pollsters estimate that a referendum held today would have a 9 point lead to remain.  This is a big leap from recent poll figures and might well be an outlier.  But opinion does seem to be rather volatile at the moment so maybe it is true - but if things can swing that quickly then they can presumably swing back again just as easily.  So I don't think we are in 'the people who walketh in darkness have seen a great light' territory yet.  It is safest to assume for now that opinion is still pretty much where it was when the vote was held.  After all the polls had been pretty up and down just before the referendum as well.

We Can't Have Our Cake And Eat It - But We Have Neither

The press were always going to frame the Brexit talks as a battle.  We all find struggle compelling. When you listen to a debate you want to know who is the winner.  When there is war on the victor is the one who claims the spoils.  In sport, the excitement comes from the tension over who is going to come out on top (except golf).  So a negotiation can be, and will be, seen as a battle of wills with one or other party winning and the other necessarily losing.

The Brexit Negotiations Might Change My Mind

Greece is not a good precedent for the Brexit Talks

Interesting to think that if there had been someone with a plan in place we could be well into the negotiation phase already.  There was no reason that Article 50 couldn’t have been invoked the day after the referendum.  In which case Britain could have arrived in Brussels with an agenda worked out and caught the Europeans by surprise.  That would have been the best way of getting the optimum from Brexit.   Like the German’s Von Schliefen plan in the first world war, they could have overcome the disadvantage of scale by planning and surprise.

Support for Brexit wanes - it might not happen

I have been surprised by the way opinion has stayed pretty much where it was on the day of the referendum so far.  If you look back on polling about the EU since we joined, opposition to it has generally been at just about the 50% of the population reasonably often, but it has been quite a bit lower for long periods of time.  My guess was that once the vote had been taken support for leaving would begin to fall back to its more normal level of around 40%.  I wasn’t sure though.  It was equally possible that it would become more popular as people found out more about it.   Basically, if there was a backlash against the ludicrous Project Fear projections it was possible that there would be post vote Brexit boost.  Neither of those eventualities seemed unlikely and both would have been easy to explain.

Did The Daily Express Cause The Grenfel Tower Fire?

I did wonder whether anybody would try to link the current big news story with the ongoing big news story.  Does the fire at Grenfel Tower have anything to do with the EU?  Well obviously it doesn’t.  Whatever were the immediate causes, and whatever the underlying reasons behind the tragedy, this is very much a British built tragedy.

Why Do We Still Not Know What We Want From Brexit?

Incredible as it will seem in the future, the week before the Brexit negotiations are about to start there still is no clear idea of exactly what Britain will be seeking to get out of them.  The debate is being polarised around the terms hard and soft brexit, but the reality is that there are a multitude of ways we could leave.  My personal opinion is that if common sense prevailed we’d go for the mildest option available.  We can always shift our stance to get further out later if we choose.

Should We Even Be Talking About Brexit

Everyone has an opinion on Brexit and it is inevitable that some of the people who hold those opinions must be wrong.  For example it is my opinion that leaving the European Union will leave Britain weaker and poorer.  But to be frank, I didn’t decide which way to vote on that basis.  My feeling was that I was a European and that I want to live in peaceful co-operation with other Europeans.  It might well be the case that we would be better off financially if Britain joined up as a state of the US.  It would definitely give us more influence in the world.  And yet I would definitely vote against any such proposal.  I don’t feel American in the way I feel European.

Brexit Now A Damp Squib

Well what a difference an election makes.  The last time I wrote a blog post it looked like the Tories were cruising for at least a comfortable victory and probably a big one.  This would have both given the hard Brexit  they were pursuing a mandate and given them the votes in the Commons to deliver it easily.  I was looking at descending into complete despair.

Eve of Poll Thoughts

My eve of poll reflections are that Labour has already won. I don’t mean in seats, which they are going to lose a lot of. But the campaign has unfolded in a way that leaves them much better off than when they started. The main thing is that the left in politics has united behind them. The biggest danger was that the ant-Tory vote and the anti-Brexit vote would split between the Lib Dems, the Greens and Labour. Two party politics is not much fun but it is certainly to Labour’s great advantage.

Why Don't People Put Political Posters In Their Window Any More?

Two days from the election I found myself driving along the south coast between Worthing and Hastings. I saw very few houses displaying political posters. If you are interested, I think on actual dwellings it was about even between the three main English parties. There were no Greens. The Conservatives as usual did very well on fields. But while I wasn’t too bothered by counting up the tally, it did make we wonder why the tradition of putting your political persuasion in your window is dying out.

Traditional Political Campaigning Still Packs A Punch

Retro stuff is very popular at the moment.  To my surprise long playing vinyl albums have appeared in my local supermarket.  The format is antique, and so are the acts that featured.  The Beatles, Miles Davis etc.   It was like stepping back into the seventies.  Being old enough to remember the seventies, that has a certain resonance.  But much as I like to remember a time when I had less stomach and more hair, it can’t be entirely down to nostalgia.  Some people must be buying these things who weren’t around when they came out.

May Will Get A Big Majority Which Will Legitimise Brexit

One of the things about general elections is that once they are over, suddenly everything that happened during the campaign seems a long time ago and it is almost impossible to think yourself back to how things seemed before. The biggest example was 1997.  The day before the poll it was far from obvious to anyone who wasn’t looking for it that anything was happening.  There were I think more canvassers out than usual, but not a huge number.  It wasn’t at all obvious despite the long lasting and clear Labour lead in the polls that Labour was even actually going to win.  The Tories had bashed Labour’s hopes down so often over the previous decades that it seemed hard to imagine it was really going to be a Labour politician that was heading towards the palace.

How I Have Changed My Mind About Corbyn Despite Brexit

Jeremy Corbyn has had plenty of problems. I have a feeling that people like me were one of them. I’d sort of supported him when he became Labour leader. But my grounds were simply that while he had a rubbish plan to win back power and appealed to a small minority of people, his opponents in his party had no plan and appealed to nobody at all. It was hardly a ringing endorsement. I was sort of hoping that something better would come along. But as we all know, it didn’t.

Brexit Finally Gets A Look In During The Brexit Election

Timmy NoVotes grilled by Andy NoQualms

Brexit finally got to the centre of the stage in the election campaign yesterday.  Theresa May gave a speech on it, which sort of confirmed the impression she has been giving that she is firmly in the hard brexit camp.  While short on detail it was long on the kind of rhetoric that I assume leavers like.  Given that she now heads a coalition that includes former voters that makes sense.  I don’t think it was interesting or surprising enough to have any big impact on the course of the election, but given that the Conservatives seem to be solidly in at the very least the low forties and probably in the mid forties in the opinion polls not rocking the boat is pretty much what she needs to do.

Election TV Debates

Well I didn’t think it would really be worth watching but somehow or other I let myself drift into watching the leaders’ debate on BBC1. The publicity around Jeremy Corbyn’s last minute decision to join in was what probably did it. But the main thing I was interested in, trying to work out what is happening with Brexit, barely came up. This was one of the consequences of Theresa May’s decision not to participate. This makes her a bad sport and created the opportunity for some humour at her expense. I particularly liked the one about ‘not so much the lady’s not for turning as the lady’s not for turning up’ from Angela Rayner. But without the big woman of Brexit being there it didn’t really allow for much debate on the issue. It was also the case that the questions from the studio audience didn’t really call up the subject much either. So it was left to Tim Farron to talk most about it.

Why I Am Angry With Jeremy Corbyn

The Conservatives have managed to annoy and frustrate me quite often throughout my life.  The list now includes having a Brexit election in the middle of the Brexit process that barely mentions Brexit, while I have set up a blog to talk about Brexit as it happens.   But today it isn’t the Conservatives but Labour that have annoyed me.  This morning Jeremy Corbyn managed to fluff his lines when talking about his party’s  Childcare proposals.

The Brexit Election Where Nobody Talked About Brexit

I have followed politics moderately closely for about 40 years now.  In that time I have absorbed a lot of information and spent a great deal of time.  I now discover that despite all that effort I don’t really have a clue about it.  None of my predictions of what was likely to happen politically have remotely come to pass.  I did manage to place a bet on the result of the last election and to lose it.   But I laid it off with another bet that recouped my stake.  So that is about how much I know - enough to be able to work out a backup plan.

Why Brexit Is Like A Dead Zebra And Will Lead To Socialism

Top predators like lions and tigers look impressive.  And indeed they often are impressive - hunting down their prey and killing it with clinical precision and controlled ferocity.  But the reality is that isn’t what they do most of the time.  They get most of their diet from scavenging carcasses.  Their large size and deadly teeth are mainly used to scare off smaller scavengers from the choicest parts of dead animals that they just chance upon.

Gibraltar - Small Place, Big Message

Anachronistic Imperial Outpost - Gibraltar

I like history and I like quirkiness.  So I really like the quirky historical status of Gibraltar.  In my ideal world it would stay just as it is.  It came under British control as a result of the Treaty of Utrecht  - a few years after the UK was formed from the union of England and Scotland - at which point in time it was a highly valuable military asset.  It must have been something of a coup for the negotiators.  Eighteenth century Britain was not the power it was to become in the nineteenth. so securing this plum was good work.

Great Repeal Balloney

People let you know when they don't like regulations - Boston Tea Party

One of the symbolic regulations that the American colonists objected to was a tax  on tea.  This was used to good effect in the Boston Tea Party.  Symbols like this are important and go a long way to frame the narrative of historical events.  And so now the plucky Brits have thrown off their EU yoke one of the first things they are going to do is to repeal the most hated regulation with which the Brussels bureaucrats have been oppressing them.  We all know what that is don't we?

Labour Beginning To Make Sense On Europe

Norway option is a very soft form of Brexit

The whole point of the EU referendum was to restore order to the Tory Party.  Cameron would get out on the stump and follow up his surprise general election win with a barnstorming campaign uniting the country behind Europe.  As a two time winner he'd be able to flatten opposition in his own party and see off UKIP in marginal seats.  The swivel eyed would be shut up and would have nothing better to do than to go back to moaning about the EU, reminiscing about the empire and wife swapping parties.

€60 Billion EU Divorce Bill - It's Not About The Money Though

In a perfect democracy citizens would calmly look at the proposals for the EU divorce settlement and assess it in the light of the costs and benefits to the country as a whole and to their own personal finances and make a considered judgement.  Unfortunately most of us have no clue about what any of these figures mean apart from they all sound like very big numbers.

How The UK Has Misplayed Its Best Card

Well the nine months that we have waited before starting the Brexit process proper is now nearly up so it looks like the starting gun will be fired shortly.  I am still not entirely sure what the purpose of the delay was.  The cynical part of me wonders if the government, and Mrs May in particular, were simply hoping something would turn up to allow them to get out of the whole thing somehow.

The Brexit Bill - as in the one we are going to pay

The Brexit Bill has just started its progress through parliament with both the big parties backing it.  This means there will be plenty of human interest stories to come of MPs having to vote against the country's interests and their own opinions - or to vote against their party's instructions and quite often the views expressed by the people who elected them.

How Brexit Has Made Me Feel

I have learnt a lot from the whole Brexit business.  Most of it is positive.  I have discovered that I really like the United Kingdom and the way it works.  The House of Commons is a very good forum, and although I don't like the actual policy it is interesting just how well it is accommodating itself to implementing the expressed will of the people.

Brexit Making UK Weaker Already - Some Details

Weak pound means UK supermarkets don't get the pick of the crop

Sunday morning is when I review the news stories to see if there is anything worth adding to this Brexit as it happens account.  There wasn't anything big in the media, but even so a couple of things combined with some personal experiences I think are illuminating.

The EU Is Undemocratic

You don't need a majority to get in here

One common refrain of the people  on Twitter who oppose UK membership of the EU was that it is undemocratic.  It was a frustrating one because in a sense it is true.  The EU is not a state but a federation and so it is not and can never be truly democratic.  To become so it would have to alter quite a bit.  You'd need the European Parliament to become the actual sovereign body for the whole organisation.  That would make it a state.  But I have a feeling that pointing that out wouldn't have made the democratic purists want to stay in the EU and push for greater integration.

Global Britain - Will The Spin Work?

Theresa May has an incomparable advantage over just about every other UK politician with the possible exception of Jeremy Corbyn.   Nobody knows what she really thinks about the EU and she is free to define how she handles it without too much in the way of prior baggage.  (I know Corbyn's case is quite different, but that's not what this post is about.)

The Single Market According To Daniel Hannan

I'd apologise if I was anyone of consequence,  but I might have slightly misrepresented Daniel Hannan in a tweet.  There is a video going round of leave campaigners saying during the campaign that leaving the EU didn't mean leaving the single market.   Daniel Hannan is one of the stars.  Now I don't doubt that the others were simply saying stuff to sound good at the time while not believing for a moment that they'd ever have to make good on what they are saying.  But you normally expect Hannan to have put a bit more thought into it than that.  And indeed he did.  Having just read something he wrote during the campaign I think it is just about possible to clear him of rank hypocrisy.  Naive stupidity is the worst I can pin on him for this one.

Brexiters Have Won - I Hope They Are Happy

Brexiters Should Have The Champagne Out

Well I am not exactly surprised in the sense that it was always going to be virtually impossible to stay in the single market if we left the EU.  I was a bit surprised to hear Theresa May say it so clearly at this stage though. I was expecting that it would be something that would be allowed to emerge during the negotiations so that it was at least plausible to blame the EU.  Instead she has chosen to own it completely.  Well at least that is courageous.  

Making Bre-entry As Easy As Possible

Well it will all be getting very real very quickly.  Article 50 is due to be invoked in March.  The chance of a rabbit appearing out of a hat and changing the scenery is now virtually zero,   There is still an outside chance of a run on the pound but if it didn't happen after the vote it probably won't happen now.  The other possibility was an internal crisis in the Tory party.  Unlike Labour, the Tories can hide their internal battles to some extent, so we won't know if this was ever a danger until long after the event.  But if a pro-EU coup was coming it would have come by now.  So it looks like it is game on.

At Last, An Interesting Brexit By Election

I quite like Tristram Hunt, even though it is easy to see why a lot of people don't.  He really really looks and sounds a Tory.  So when he got on the telly you had automatic cognitive dissonance before he even opened his mouth.  And parachuting media friendly posh boys into working class seats was really the worst side of New Labour.  Likeable enough guy, but unfortunately symbolic of stuff at lot of us really don't like.

Corbyn Comes Out For Brexit

The surprise for me was that it took so long.  Corbyn has now explicitly said that the UK can prosper outside the EU and that immigration controls are necessary.  This is basically where Labour was always going to end up.  The Labour left have never liked the EU.  In fact in many ways they were the only people who had really thought the issue through and could point to real things they didn't like about it and what they were going to do differently.  They were never able to really win the rest of the Labour Party over to their viewpoint though.  I remember when Corbyn finally came around to campaign to remain in, despite a long track record of opposition to it, thinking that it would be ironic if the vote went for out.  He would have compromised on one of his long held beliefs at just the point when it might have been expedient to stick to it.

People Don't Want To Talk About Brexit

I live in a part of the country that was about 50:50 during the vote.  I'd give leave a very slight edge if I was forced to choose, but it was pretty close.  In the years before the referendum was even talked about as a possibility there was some rather conspicuous Ukippery going on.   One house had information about the inequities of the EU posted on a board outside, and UKIP attracted a lot of votes in local council elections.  And you heard people moaning about the EU quite often.

European Medicines Agency Lost Due To Brexit

The EMA might well be heading for Stockholm

Plenty of people are still angry enough to argue about Brexit on Twitter.  I came across an exchange between a UKIPer from Worthing and a remainer from Scotland.  The kipper was demanding a concrete example of the harm Brexit was doing to the economy.  The remainer was floundering a bit -she didn't seem to be as on top of the facts as the Brexiter was.

Brexit Is All About Job Losses

There is a lot of coverage in the media at the moment over the resignation of the UK's ambassador to the EU and what it all means.  I have been expecting job losses to be a big part of the Brexit story, but this particular one is happening sooner than I was thinking.  I have to confess I had no idea we even had an ambassador to the EU and I remain confused as to what exactly he would do.