E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

I think were differing because you're considering the outcome of the election, when im thinking about the thought process pre-ballot?

 

You keep good company, Plato would agree with you.

It's the trouble with a referendum, have a referendum on paying income tax and I expect most people would think selfishly and choose not pay and the country would go to pot.

Voting for elected officials who implement income tax and we can generally see it's a good thing for the nation.

 

I'm talking about the thought process also but i don't think you can separate that from outcome, if someone thinks I'll vote for lower taxes then i suspect they also think darn that means more rubbish on the streets or higher crime rates, in essence they may vote for selfish reasons but because both the positive and negative effect of doing so effects the whole of society by extension it's not selfish.

To me acting selfishly is acting only out of self interest but in a democratic society that's impossible as the decision of who to vote for, and by extension who governs society, effects everyone to some extent.

Those treasury figures illustrate that perfectly IMO, the economic impact of something like Brexit isn't a binary it effects me or it doesn't, it's only going to effect London by 3% whereas the NE is something like 17% so it's a matter of degrees.

 

In a democracy everybody gets a say. The responsibility lies in its consequences.

 

Well, I can guess how that meeting went...

 

Britain to world: please pretend we are not leaving EU -- FT [Paywall]

'“To coin a phrase, they are going to tell the world that Brexit does not mean Brexit,” said one EU official.'

...yeah I can't see that working tbh.

 

Its come to something when companies and people keep having to point out the bleedin' obvious to our government, running a business at a loss isn't sustainable and if you leave an organisation you can't take the benefits of membership with you.

 

Northern Ireland will stay in single market after Brexit, EU says

Interesting.

 

You're right and I agree in that there are too many people claiming to know what is best for everyone, where "everyone" often ends up referring to just themselves and a few others, and at times like these looking out for #1 is the most honest and logical thing to do. There's a line that can be drawn where you vote in your own self interest but not if it means that it's going to cause outright harm to other groups of people, and that's where I would separate the reasonable from the selfish.

 

EU says transition period is 'not a given'.

Very interesting.

 

Wait up, we don't want no unelected UK bureaucrats running these negotiations.

The transition period not being a given is another statement of the bleedin' obvious IMO as despite what our government and media have said the first stage of negotiations have not been concluded, there's still some rather serious sticking points, the only reason things moved on from the first stage was because sufficient progress had been made.

 

HMG: There’ll be an invisible border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, agreed? Ohh, but UK is leaving the SM & CU.

EU27: Great! We’ll put the only possible way of doing that into the Treaty text.

*HMG loses its *****

 

Collective sh!t being lost as Barnier states what will happen leaving the SM and CU.

Not sure why when we're talking about leaving the consequences are a surprise. EU playing hardball by sticking to the rules the UK want to leave but are complaining we can't use.

We are being led by halfwits. Can we at least have a cross party group of halfwits to deal with this rather than suffer at the hands of party politics.

 

Brexiters: We want control of our borders!

EU: Customs controls at borders it is then...

Brexit: What? no! We don't want controls at our borders...

EU: So you want controls of the borders but no controls at the borders.... riiiiiight...

 

The funny thing is i guess brexiteers view the position the EU is taking as justification of why they voted to leave, how dare this bunch of inflexible bureaucrats dictate to us what we're allowed to do.

 

That's the thing with Brexit, it turns our relationship with the EU in to the very thing Brexiteres claimed it was before the referendum.

 

I called it long ago:

The only way to avoid a border in Ireland is to effectively keep NI in the Single Market, including all regulatory alignment that entails.
Which then of course forces the UK to choose one of the following three:

Option 1: Extend that regulatory alignment to the entire UK
Option 2: Put up an internal border against NI
Option 3: Give NI back
(Option 2 and 3 are absolute red lines for the DUP, choosing those would collapse the Tory / DUP alliance)

And to make it even more complicated:
Places like Scotland and Gibraltar will not allow England to do so without extreme scrutiny.

 

That's because you understand the situation better than the government does (which isn't hard, I admit, but still).

I don't see the government ever getting united around that. I think we have a cabinet in deadlock. This is why they keep having meetings that have no conclusive outcome. That's why it keeps trying to bounce the ball back to the EU to "make an offer" (which it has done since October 2016). I think that when the deadline rolls around in March, there will be no position, and

1. negotiations will fail and the UK will head for a crash into the WTO;
2. the government will fall and Doris will blow her top at another GE.

I also think that the EU knows all that and is happy to play hardball: either the UK change its mind about Brexit (unlikely, but win for EU), or it decides to stay in the EEA (win for EU) or it crashes into WTO and suffers the economic consequences (win for EU).

 

The government doesn't have to unite around anything, all it has to do is the same as its been doing since the election last year, fudge something together so they can remain in power until 2022 or for Mrs May personally until March 2019.

The recent dispute over the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland exposed that all to plainly IMO, their trying to keep everyone happy by kicking decisions that would lead to a vote of no confidence or a collapse in government into the long grass: We don't want a hard border and don't want to remain in the SM or CU.

If the government admits leaving the SM or CU would result in a hard border then they'd probably lose the support of the DUP and their majority in parliament, if they said their going to remain in the SM or CU so as to avoid a hard border and limit the economic damage then it would probably lead to the Brexiteers within Mrs May's own party rebelling and triggering a vote of no confidence in her.

Instead their kicking problems like these into the long grass by either saying they're a matter for negotiations or equivocating so they don't have to commit to a decision, if they can drag things out long enough they can make out like they were successful and whoever came after them screwed everything up

 

Problem is, the UK Brexits end March 2019 regardless, which is a long way away from 2022. That is three years for the country to experience the sunny uplands of the WTO under Tory rule before it gets to express its opinion of that in the GE. So there is a time limit on the fudge.

The EU knows that, which is why it is adamant about the time limit of the transition and is intent to make it as unfavourable as possible.

May may well step down when it all goes to pot in 2019 and hand the mess to Boris. He'll **** up spectacularly, and we're back at the GE in 2022.