In Liz We Truss

IdleRich

IdleRich
It's complete chaos, sounds like they were literally manhandling the MPs in the lobby to force them to vote No on the fracking debate.
 

version

Well-known member
Incredible how much damage indulging the Eurosceptics has done to both the party and the country. None of this happens without Brexit.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Incredible how much damage indulging the Eurosceptics has done to both the party and the country. None of this happens without Brexit.
Yep. All this and a whole load more has its roots in brexit... which of course had its roots in other stuff fair enough, but it brought all this ugliness to the front and caused all these divisions and confrontations and the damage that came from that. Oh and it fucked the country economically and took away our rights.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
There are 40 MPs who didn't vote with the government on the fracking bill which either was or wasn't a vote of confidence in the government. Those who didn't include.... Boris Johnson (who was on holiday believe it or not) and... Liz Truss? What the fuck is going on?
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Incredible how much damage indulging the Eurosceptics has done to both the party and the country. None of this happens without Brexit.

Yeah - or at least without the point where it became an article of faith that Brexit was all about some sort of absolute sovereignty and hence that any Brexit that wasn't hard as fuck wasn't worthy of the name or reflective of The Will Of The People. From then on we'd got a ruling party that essentially selected for people who were either completely disconnected from reality or didn't give a fuck about the consequences of their actions at every level from the leader to the membership, with predictable results.

Counterfactual exercise - can we imagine a world where someone had managed to build a post-referendum consensus in favour of some sort of softer Brexit? Where the whole thing had more-or-less worked with plausibly deniable downsides, the Tory party had mostly got over its internal differences and hadn't swerved to the right, and we we'd now be stuck with them in power pretty much forever? Or was the descent into madness part and parcel of any Brexit campaign that could get it over the line?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah - or at least without the point where it became an article of faith that Brexit was all about some sort of absolute sovereignty and hence that any Brexit that wasn't hard as fuck wasn't worthy of the name or reflective of The Will Of The People. From then on we'd got a ruling party that essentially selected for people who were either completely disconnected from reality or didn't give a fuck about the consequences of their actions at every level from the leader to the membership, with predictable results.

Counterfactual exercise - can we imagine a world where someone had managed to build a post-referendum consensus in favour of some sort of softer Brexit? Where the whole thing had more-or-less worked with plausibly deniable downsides, the Tory party had mostly got over its internal differences and hadn't swerved to the right, and we we'd now be stuck with them in power pretty much forever? Or was the descent into madness part and parcel of any Brexit campaign that could get it over the line?
You've missed a third type of pro-Brexit Tory: those who've actively and personally benefited from the economic chaos, tanking pound, deregulation, etc.

In answer to your question, I think a soft Brexit (namely, staying in the CU/SM, like Norway/Switzerland) would have avoided the economic and logistical problems, so you or I would have gone on living our lives without noticing shortages, big price hikes, massive passport queues etc.

But this solution was always going to be a fantasy, because your Bakers, Ress-Moggs etc. that I mentioned above wouldn't have got the result they wanted, while your rank-and-file Leave voters could claim - quite reasonably, actually - that the UK would have less sovereignty, not more, since we'd then have to abide by EU laws we have no say in.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Having said that, the idea that Brexit is all about 'sovereignty' (which is the answer you invariably get if you challenge a Leaver to name a Brexit benefit, since it's inarguably made anyone who isn't already a millionaire worse off) is pretty ahistorical, since the most common reason people gave for voting Leave when asked about it at the time was to reduce immigration. And the reduction in immigration from the EU since 2016 has been roughly cancelled out by an increase in immigration from outside the EU, which on balance is less beneficial to the country, since non-EU immigrants on average are less skilled and earn less than those from the EU.
 
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