L00b

Polling evidence suggest that this ‘group’ should actually be called the British public, and that the ‘dwindling group’ is those few still “believing” in the Brexit that they voted for indeed. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/03/brits-are-suffering-bregret-but-brexit-is-no-longer-a-priority-data.html?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=Main&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1677825570 😉

No doubt faith is great (for some) to heal the soul. But it doesn’t do owt to put food on the table and a roof over your head. EU membership never had anything to do with ‘faith’, but all to do with improving socio-economic performance and outlook, through levelling crossborder opportunities. So opposing EU membership, or seeking to vindicate its abandonment, on the basis of ‘faith’ is worse than being away with the fairies, quite frankly. I very much doubt m williamson or any other reader, including those with even a very limited grasp of economics, are looking for ‘faith’, as a word or otherwise, in the particular context of Brexit. Rather, we’re looking, still, for a scintilla of self-awareness from your political class, to finally start escaping the crassly stupid ‘emperor new clothes’ syndrome that it, and your national media, locked itself in over Brexit for the last 7 years 🙄

Brinksmanship with who, with what? Car manufacturers? “Keep production here or we’ll tax you more”? You’re not hearing Stellantis, then. The EU? “Give us a better deal for automotive, or we’ll stop exporting cars to the EU”? You checked automotive industry statistics for the UK and EU countries recently? Noticed the recent FTA between the EU and Japan and its sunset clauses about automotive tariffs? <sigh>…How many times…you-cannot-make-Brexit-work-economically. All the UK can hope to do, is to gradually row back towards Single Market membership-like trading arrangements. It will take many years and, short of full-fat membership like you had and left, there will always be an economic ball and chain getting dragged. It’s simple economics, politics doesn’t come into it. It never did, that’s what we’ve been trying to get Brexiters (of either left or right persuasion alike) to understand all along 🙄

Businesses cannot do that. That is your problem with the implementation of Brexit, right there. That is the message from Stellantis today, Nissan yesterday, and so many others in-between, who ended up voting with their investing feet into Ireland, France, Germany, The Netherlands <…>. Because they cannot afford to wait: both their foreign competition, and their domestic competition with Brexit-mitigating strategy already in effect, are not hampered like they are.

It was lost even even before the EEC without Single Market became the EU with Single Market. Because it got cheaper to get all that done elsewhere at the time (refer my point about ‘cheapest manpower going’). Until the day comes wherein people aren’t needed in any numbers anywhere to ‘make things’ (because robotics), it’s entirely pointless to aspire to go back to being a manufacturing (or even simply assembling) powerhouse: for a G7 country like the UK, it would be a race to the socio-economic bottom. Looking at short-term GDP predictions in the EU, it’s already happening, to an extent.

Pardon the late edit: do you understand the notion of ‘cheapest manpower going’ and how that notion, applied to the U.K., would affect the British population and economy? Is that what you really want for your kids, your grandkids, etc. relative to what opportunities they still had until some years ago? Think on it, please.

News for you: aside from high-tech goods like semiconductors (which both the US and the EU are massively busy reshoring right now), where consumer goods are made, has not mattered for a couple decades at least, and still does not. Where the companies that get those consumer goods made in the Far East and take in the profits, i.e. the Apple of this world, are based and, more importantly, where these companies pay taxes, matters much more. By and large, these companies are American, European (incl.UK), Japanese and Korean: the Chinese and Vietnamese and Malays and (…) just build the things for them because they’ve got the cheapest manpower going (well, ‘had’, for China).

You don’t need to be a pessimist, nor an optimist, to find faults with Brexit and the way successive governments have handled it. Plain common sense and a little bit of knowledge about economics and international trade, is plenty sufficient: you just compare the UK pre-2020 with itself today, and then compare it with G7 countries over the same interval as a benchmark. EU countries unaffected by non-tariff barriers (those which the UK decided to restore when it Brexited) are doing significantly better economically, and Ireland in particular is doing spectacularly well out of the Brexited UK. You can object to that state of affairs, get or stay in denial about it , rant and rave at whoever for it, but them’s the numbers. Hey-Ho. You break it, you bought it. Whilever it’s broken (and that Stellantis in the news today is a little bit of the visible part of that particular iceberg), the UK will lag economically. Meaning, less economic growth, less economic activity, less tax receipts, less services because less tax receipts, etc. You (Brexiters) were told a hundred and a thousand times that this would happen no matter which version of Brexit got ‘done’, years before it got ‘done’, but you did not care about that and still wanted it ‘done’, because NHS and sovereignty and immigration and (…) So now you get to own it, while opponents get to remind you that them’s the consequences of your (Brexiters) choice.

It’s not a question of trust, nor even a political question. Brexit cannot ever ‘work’, nor be made to ‘work’, in an economic context. The reasons were explained lengthways and sideways in multiple ‘consequences’ threads on here, over years. They were consistently batted away by Brexit supporters with dogma. Businesses don’t deal in dogma. Imagine that 😏

Saw this, thought of this thread… …couldn’t distinguish parody in that clip from posts of certain posters on here 🤪 “below the poverty line wokies”: I’m absolutely stealing that 🤣🤣🤣

Nope. In answer to my post commenting about the irony of people holding the UK to be such a fine democracy, being dead set against allowing more voters for still more democracy, you brought up the strawman of a new EU referendum if EU immigrants were given a vote in a GE, and lumped the notion of “fairness for UK citizens” on top, asking me about ‘my idea’ of a “fair balanced democracy”. I just reminded you of the historical fact, where voting in the 2016 EU referendum was concerned, that this “fair balanced democracy” that the UK allegedly is, disenfranchised just about all UK citizens living in the EU at the time. So, where was that “fairness for UK citizens” and how “fair balanced” was that democracy then, eh? No diversion whatsoever there. You just don’t know the meaning of the words you use.

Do you want to rewind and try that one again? First and last offer, cos I’m in a good mood today.

Do you want to go over how the UK disallowed Britons residing abroad (especially those living in the EU, directly and primarily affected by the eventual outcome) from voting in the 2016 referendum, again?

I just find it very ironic, that those self-proclaimed champions of democracy consistently will-of-the-people’ing about this, that and the other, have such a problem with enlarging the voting corpus and making the UK still more democratic indeed.

Something, something, stopped clock, something… 😉 The Single Market (you know, all that went ‘wrong’ with the EU, especially Freedom of Movement, etc.) was very much the project and doing of that well-know Labourite, Margaret Thatcher 😉 An inconvenient fact that current day-‘Conservatives’ don’t really like being reminded about 😏

I never disagreed with the fact that only British citizens (and Irish and Commonwealth citizens) can vote in a GE. You may wish to re-read this exchange from the start (#47), and consider the fact that this extension of voting rights to 16-17 year olds proposed by Labour, extends to immigrants (who can already vote in local elections): https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/14/labour-considers-plans-to-let-eu-nationals-and-16-year-olds-vote#:~:text=Labour is considering plans to,elections for the first time. Since you had an issue giving a GE vote to teenagers because they don’t work full-time, don’t run businesses, don’t pay tax, don’t have mortgages, I was testing whether your logic -so demonstrated- would accordingly support giving a GE vote to every 18+ voter who ticks these boxes indeed (full-time job, business-running, paying taxes, having mortgage), per Labour’s same proposal. Testing successful, as we have now demonstrated that your ideological bias trumps your logic in post #41.

British, Irish or qualifying Commonwealth citizens If you hold British, Irish or qualifying Commonwealth citizenship, you can vote in all elections that take place. EU citizens If you hold EU citizenship (other than the Republic of Ireland, Malta and Cyprus), you can vote in most elections that take place. You can’t vote in UK Parliamentary general elections. (https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter/which-elections-can-i-vote)

Of course you do. You just don’t like having your biases exposed, so deflect for all you can. You object to teenagers being allowed to vote, because they don’t have a full time job, don’t pay taxes, don’t run a business, don’t have a mortgage. You object to immigrants being allowed to vote, even though they have a full time job, pay taxes, run a business, have a mortgage, because they’re not British. Don’t know what you find confusing here: they’re your own opinions 🙄

But you are not an immigrant into the US, are you? I thought I’d give your double standards a chance to shine. You did not disappoint 😁

Many immigrants tick all these boxes, and more (volunteering with local organisations and whatnot). I take it from your reply, that you don’t have a problem having them vote in a GE…so long as they’re 18 and have ID… …Right? <I’m not completely against the notion, much as it might surprise some on here 😉>

They don’t on paper, that is true… …but then, you try and live there day-to-day without one - especially once you reach late teens 😈

Won’t be palatable to very many, again, I’m sure…that debate has been had innumerable times. And yet, it would be one of the easiest ways of contributing to solve very many societal problems. Including, but not only, irregular migration. variously: identity theft, absconding, outstanding warrants, all sorts of other frauds/fraudulent behaviours based on current difficulty for people and relevant authorities to establish identity positively at point of contact; even voter disenfranchisement (fixing the problems with the current version, that is) <…> Topically, 16 year olds must carry a national ID card by law in many European countries.

How many of these European countries have compulsory ID irrespective of of their voting system? See, that’s the thing that has been so little brought up and discussed in this whole voterID scheme, such as it was brought about in the U.K., complete with asymmetric documentation requirements (why was a bus pass of an OAP valid, but a buss pass of a 18-something not, pray tell?) There can be no disenfranchisement of voters, in any country that has it as a mandatory requirement to have (and often as not, carry at all times) official ID, especially those with such requirements from the earliest age: everyone -even those who have yet to be old enough to gain the right to vote- has ID, because they have to. And depending on the country, everyone has at least the same ID document (e.g. French national ID card, even if one never leaves France/the EU and never has a passport; and/or never learns to drive). But in a country that still has no such requirements, like the UK, well…😏

From an external perspective, it’s your successive governments since 2016 (and the closely-associated Tory infighting) that have been “doing your country down”. For the rest of it, there may well be the two types of people which m Williamson mentioned in his post…but whether he’s correct or not irrespective, the vast majority of people -outside the UK, understand- are neither type, and simply long past caring. As in, neither feeling sorry, nor laughing. The recent Coronation aside, the UK occasionally makes the news in Europe -in a positive way- for its strong support of Ukraine. And that’s the sum total of it, bar the odd Schadenfreude piece in the Spiegel. It is that indifference which some British media commentators continually mistake for (or misrepresent as) ‘EU hostility’, but which is simply Europeans’ standard approach to whatever latest piece of exceptionalist policy the UK government of the time happens to be pushing (such as the recently-related Horizon programme participation, some posts earlier): you got exactly the Brexit you(-r government) wanted, negotiated for, brought home and trumpeted as gotten ‘done’. Now, if it’s not that good (with the benefit of some hindsight by now) then sure, let’s talk about making it better… …for the both of us: so, what do you want, and what are you putting on the table for it? 😉😄

In the U.K., notwithstanding its longstanding absence of compulsory ID, voter fraud was not an issue, by any stretches of the imagination. “voter fraud” was the oh-so-thin-its-thinner-than-gossamer excuse to bring in the measure. It did not work. No more than the electoral boundary-fiddling will.