E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

Screwed if they do, screwed if they don't...

But that is the bed they made with their promises.

 

True but it seems, to me at least, that they're trying to paint themselves as not being screwed and they're trying to postpone things so someone else gets the blame for the messy bed that we're all going to be lying in.

@ Nexxo, There was a time limit on the first round of negotiations but the government is now saying how it successfully negotiated and concluded them, it didn't but that's what it's saying, the transition phase is only going to serve as another way to kick the difficult decision into the long grass for either Mrs May herself or for her party.

The transition phase will take them up to 2020 at which point they can either, if Mrs May is still around, replace her with a new leader or call a GE and leave the mess for someone else to sort out.

I'm not trying to predicting how things will pan out as anything can happen in politics, I'm just saying what my observations are of how and what the government and Mrs are trying to do currently, that is refusing to commit to anything that would sink the ship, being ambiguous, and trying to spin what their doing as successful.

Basically doing whatever they can to retain their grasp on power for as long as possible while proclaiming how successful they were in the hope that someone else will come along to carry the can and receive all the blame.

 

I think you're right, but I also get the impression that the EU won't let them fudge it to the end of transition (including fudging its deadline). Barnier is clearly saying that the withdrawal negotiations are not concluded and must first be written in legal text, and also that the UK must say what it wants, before it can proceed with transition negotiations. It also insists on the transition end date, which is earlier than the UK asked for. I suspect that the EU is systematically cutting off any opportunity for the UK to keep fudging things, which is why I suspect the crisis will hit far sooner than 2020.

 

Yea, i think the EU caught onto what the UK was doing after the first round of negotiations and how the UK government spun that, however if the EU backs the government into a situation where it's forced to commit to something and that leads to an early election or Mrs May stepping down it doesn't really change the situation, only when it happens.

Someone else will still be left carrying the can, be that a labour government or Mrs May's replacement, and everyone involved up to that point can proclaim how successful they were and that its all gone wrong because of them, not us.

 

Unfortunately that'll be all of us.

 

I'm surprised we've not had a economic backup plan of getting all government owned pcs to start cryptomining...

 

Some more so than others though, the rich and powerful will be largely unaffected by the consequences, some will undoubtedly turn brexit into an advantage.

The "us" that will be effected the most are the sections of society that always suffer the most when there's dramatic political or economic upheavals, it will be the poor, the disaffected, the vulnerable, the minorities, and the same towns and cities that were largely ignored in the decades following the last upheaval.

 

The very ones who voted brexit because '**** it, it can't get any worse...'

 

True, but it's not like they weren't aware that it would make them poorer.

IIRC the general consensus among people who intended to vote leave was that they knew it would make them poorer in the short to mid term but that it was a price worth paying, that we'd eventually be better off in the long term (long term being some undefined time in the future).

 

Then let them eat cake. You know, the glorious Brexit quantum cake that you can have and eat at the same time.

I am at the moment visiting my brother in the Netherlands (a profound Eurosceptic, while his partner is pro-EU-- although even my brother thinks leaving the Single Market would be insanity). I forgot how nice The Hague is --it's a bit like Marylebone in London but without the crazy crowds or prices, and a lot more relaxed overall. If things go to pot in the UK, I could happily move back here.

 

It's all good though as Mrs May is going to put all our minds to rest next week when she gives her "road to Brexit" speech, we sure could do with it as apparently we've not got a clue about what we want to achieve from Brexit.

I guess deciding what we want to achieve almost two years after the vote is better than nothing.

 

It's funny. Here in the Netherlands, Dutch people treat my British wife with nothing but respect. One lady was telling me how lucky I was to have married her and live in the UK because she loves Britain. The Dutch are huge Anglophiles.

Brexit is absolutely nowhere in the papers or the news. It's a non-issue. No "Why did they do it?", no "How will this affect our economy?", no "We should/shouldn't follow suit". There is zero interest. Neither is there anything about the EU in general. There is one casual mention of Trump as a throwback to The Little House on the Prairie American nostalgia.

Conclusion: whatever Leavers may think: nobody here hates the UK. Quite the contrary. Neither is anybody worried about Brexit. It doesn't even seem to register on people’s consciousness. It certainly seems not to have prompted any re-examination of the Netherlands' relationship to the EU.

Neither does anybody seem to feel that the EU is some big monolithic presence on their lives or a threat to the national identity. No paper mentioned the EU even once. The country seems firmly occupied with its own affairs, over which it appears to feel full control.

 

My parents spent 13 years over there and always said the same thing.. Except around Hollands Spoor where they just plain hate everyone.

 

Schrodinger's Brexit! I'm all for letting theoretical physicists take over the negotiations

 

Some Brits in the Netherlands have been allowed to take their case to the EU court in relation to what constitutes being an EU citizen.

Don't blame them, take advantage of free movement but stay away too long and they weren't even allowed to vote.

 

So the leave narrative seems to have shifted from -

Ignore project fear, brexit means milk, honey and unicorns.

to

Remain told you it would happen. but you voted for it anyway. Suck it up snowflakes, we're doing this.

 

Laying the groundwork for what's ahead, you can't sell off the NHS, have businesses leaving and going bankrupt, wreck the economy, and return to the days of disaster capitalism if you're not in government so they need to sell the con to enough people to be able to carry it off.

 

So as Boris intends to say how Brexit should be a cause for hope and not fear, and that it's not good enough to say you lost get over it, it would be interesting to hear how leaver voters are going to assuage remainers fears

Us remainers sure could do with having some meat placed on the bones and being reassured that Brexit is not something to be feared as so far all we've had from leavers has been dogmatic assertions that they have a hunch everything's going to turn out OK.

 

Remember Boris has ulterior motives here people...

 

Probably but isn't he right when he says the earnest is on Brexiteers to assuage the fears of remainers, i mean if someone is anxious about something isn't it down to other people to show or explain that their anxiety is unfounded.