Having your cake and eating it

The real big news on Brexit at the moment is that Germany is blocking discussion of the status of EU citizens living in UK and soon to be former EU citizens living in the EU outside the UK. They are sticking to the line that nothing will be discussed until Article 50 is invoked and the leaving process starts officially. But although this iilustrates just how weak the UK's barganing position, this was something that was completely predictable.   More fun is the revelation of an official's notes from a secret UK government meeting about Brexit.

Paul Nuttall New Leader of UKIP

Paul Nuttall looks like a right wing reactionary, and may well be one

Another month, another UKIP leader.  We are all used to Nigel Farage resigning and coming back, so there is a sort of feeling that this isn't much of a story.  The BBC however are taking it very seriously giving it top of the bill on the news broadcast I am listening to.  The pitch he is taking is to take up the role of the patriotic working classes who have abandoned Labour and are now looking for a party that truly represents their views.

Five Tangible Benefits of the EU

Rhetorical tricks don't always work the way you want them to.  Early on in the referendum campaign, before I had started thinking about it much, Nigel Farage was on the television. At this point I still found him refreshingly different from other politicians so I listened to what he was saying.  He said to imagine we were outside the EU.  Would we want to join?  It was a clever way of putting it because it implied that we obviously wouldn't.  It was very effective because it meant you had to either accept his  assertion or come up with a positive reason to join the EU.  So it was harder work to disagree with him than to accept his premise.

What if we Brexit and nobody turns up?

Pro-Brexit Campaigners Failed to Fill Parliament Square

As I write there may still be some pro-Brexit supporters in London but it is already clear that a protest that I have seen promoted on leaver blogs and groups online for several weeks now has been a complete flop.  The Sun and the Express are talking it up but the more reliable media are suggesting that attendees only just got into three figures.  This is pretty pathetic.  I have always felt that the whole anti-EU thing was pretty shallow and was only kept going by increasing hysterical coverage in the media.  But even I thought they could muster more than a church hall's worth of activists.

The True Farage Revealed - A Quisling.

Quisling collaborating with Nazis

I suppose if you aren't very old and don't read WW2 history books you might not have come across the term quisling.  It comes from the major who fronted the puppet government of Norway during the German occupation.  His name for some reason became the generic term for anyone who collaborates with the enemy in this way, with the extra implication that the motivation is to exert some power over their fellow countrymen on the back of occupying forces.

Labour's 170 Questions

The Labour Party has quite enough problems of its own without Brexit to add to them.  But as it happens Brexit is a major challenge to the party.  Although it is exaggerated, there is no doubt that a lot of the working class people who Labour is supposed to represent voted for Brexit.  But the majority of Labour voters, and a large majority of Labour members voted against it.  It is a tricky situation.  Even though the popularity of Brexit is beginning to decline, it might still be an issue that could alienate people that Labour needs.  But it isn't going to be easy to come up with a message that might be acceptable to this group of people without offending the many people who are very strong supporters of continued membership.

Fatties Voted Brexit

Is Voting Brexit Like Eating Cake?

I have wondered from time to time what it is that makes some people left wing and some right wing.  I have a pretty well developed radar and can usually guess someone I met's politics before the subject comes up.  But I have taken a long time to put my finger on what it is that gives the game away.  I have never thought of being pro or anti the EU as being something that was particularly left wing or right wing, and there are plenty of very left wing leavers and and very right wing remainers.  But nonetheless there does seem to be some kind of affinity between leavers and a particular kind of conservatism.  And I think that Brexiters in general have the same general qualities that a lot of right wingers have.