DXBtoDOH

Talking about yourself?

littlejimmy

I don't think Mogg and co are stupid or insane. I think they know exactly what they're doing. They're going to jump off the bike at the last possible moment into a Bentley and watch the carnage before picking up the pieces and selling them for scrap. Disaster capitalists to a man.

Bahtatboy

This was a comment to an article in HuffPost about Trump supporters, but if reflects how I feel about many who voted for Brexit:

"Getting all your continuing education from Faux News is part of of the problem along with an unwillingness to believe anything positive about anyone else. For a generation that should be better educated, there is a distinct lack of critical thinking and an enormous unwillingness to verify anything on an unbiased source. That's mental laziness at a criminal level, and apparently it's pandemic.

I'm 67, and too many of the people within 5 years either way of my age are a lost cause I'm afraid. I'm becoming more liberal by the minute, and they're driving 27 in a 40 pissing off all of us who actually have something to do."

scrubbedexpat141

I've started looking to find ways to make money out of the chaos.

DXBtoDOH

Oh, great. More of the usual sneers at people who dared vote differently from you. I find it intriguing one side keeps screaming about Faux News while refusing to acknowledge their own side is riddled with just as much "fake news" and beliefs and assumptions without merit.

The battle for Brexit was certainly ideological. There was no right or wrong. The failure of the Remain side was to attribute a moral virtue, or righteousness, to being in the EU and being unable to see why others may not share in the same set of neoliberal values the EU membership represented (and especially the high ideological and political price the EU extracted for being part of its cartel). So when Leave won, many Remainders felt like they'd been hit with a huge slap in their face as the foundations of their existence and beliefs, the so-called modern European liberalism (which was always more invented fiction than reality anyway), and which they'd once believed was the inevitable future because it was, after all, the "right" way, was rejected by the majority and that's why they took it so personally. Their identity was challenged. People never like that. And that's why we keep seeing and hearing the same tripe over fake news and screeches about the intelligence or gullibility of Brexiteers, along with the constant failures to acknowledge that the Remainders suffer from their own gullibility and narrow-mindedness and ignorance too (in a way the latter is worse because the Remainders are usually the ones who pride themselves for being better educated, more tolerant and open-minded - as a stereotype and in theory, of course).

I find it all very fascinating. I'll admit that probably the most honest people in this Brexit war are the people who only care about the economy and only care about the economic impacts and especially only how it affects them personally, and make their decision based in that. Everything else, from sovereignty to democratic deficit to other people's feelings of being left outside the EU project to EU integration to neoliberal "European" values to freedom of movement, is irrelevant to them.

nonthaburi

take all the funds you have out of GBP, and then send it back when the pound tanks after no deal.

just talking about no deal is sending it down, plenty of pounds to be made if it actually happens.

what they'll be worth though???

captainflack

I don't think they're all stupid (exception being Davis, who really is), I also think they are motivated by different things.

Fox is on the hard economic right. Google 'atlantic bridge'. His aim was always to cut the UK loose from the EU, and then basically become the 51st state. Or perhaps more accurately, Puerto Rico. A US protectorate but no real power. It's driven by an ideological belief in the US model - private healthcare, low regulation of labour, low environmental standards, etc. rather than the European model of state healthcare, highly regulated food and farming sectors, etc. You can argue which is best, but since the rest of Europe is convincingly behind the latter, there is a problem with the former. It essentially excludes you from open markets with your closest neighbours, and instead, you have to trade with the US. Which is several thousand miles away. Unfortunately that makes integration significantly harder. It also means that the arguments about being independent of the EU and not being bound by their rules "so we're free to make our own deals" are disingenuous, since the plan would be almost immediately to adopt US rules on pretty much everything, without having any power of those rules.

Davis is more of a patriotic simpleton. He clearly didn't understand how the EU worked.

Mogg isn't stupid, but I don't think he's doing it for enrichment either. I think primarily he's a throwback to the victorian age, and genuinely believes in returning the UK socially to that era. He's religious, anti-gay, and has a strong ideological belief that the upper classes should rule over the lower classes, and that foreigners are just simply not going to fit in with this. In fact, I think he'd happily be poorer financially in order to be ideologically purer. He's admitted the 'benefits' of brexit are probably 50 years away, largely because they see the benefits as being massive social change to a more conservative victorian society.

Johnson... he believes in nothing, but his own ambition. He famously spent a period deciding whether to come out for or against leaving the EU, and even wrote articles justifying either decision before eventually deciding 'leave'. Yet now he argues that the EU has no redeeming features, no economic benefits and only negatives, which begs the question exactly why he struggled to decide which way to go. Clearly what he was really wrestling with, wasn't the economics, but the arithmetic of the Tory party's ageing, brexit membership versus the remain majority among MPs. He looked shell-shocked and scared when 'leave' won, because as an intelligent person he understood only too well the economic consequences. His gamble was that 'remain' would win, but his support for 'leave' would ender him to the Tory membership, whose votes choose the leader, and that the damage to cameron would create a job vacancy he could walk into. Him bailing out of the government now is exactly the same opportunist calculation at work. His recent remarks on the burka are similarly aimed at firming up that ageing Tory membership support.

I don't actually think any of these people believe that the UK will do better outside the EU, at least not for a couple of decades, or believe that the pound won't collapse with 'no deal', or that the UK won't have chaos and a very heavy recession. What they do seem to all agree on is that the only chance they have of getting the EU to give concessions is to convince the EU that they do believe it.

The problem is, I very much doubt that the EU is going to change the rules of the single market for a country that is leaving. Cameron famously went over to renegotiate, and said if he didn't get a good deal, he'd recommend a vote to leave. He didn't get a good deal (though compared to what is now on offer, it looks amazing), certainly no concessions on freedom of movement, etc. but recommended remain anyway. Because in sensible land, there is no alternative.

Ultimately, is there anyone who *really* believes the UK won't suffer more than the rest of the EU? You don't see European banks threatening to leave the EU and move to the UK unless the EU makes a deal. You don't see factories and other businesses in the EU threatening to move operations to the UK. You don't get EU businesses worrying about losing access to UK components. You don't see EU politicians tearing themselves apart and public on the streets demand the EU make a deal with the UK to protect their economies (although Jenkin did recently suggest there would be riots in Europe as the public demand a trade deal with the UK).

Personally, I can't wait for brexit day and very much hope the brexitters are in charge, so there is nowhere to hide when the UK goes over the cliff.

Give it 3 months tops, the pound will be below parity with the EUR and the UK will be in an emergency process to gain entry to EFTA or some other way to access the single market and end what is essentially an economic blockade. And this whole nonsense will be dead and buried forever.

Bahtatboy

That's a rhetorical question, right? Outside of this forum I have face-to-face conversations (as I'm sure most on here do) with people from various (but not all) walks of life who very firmly believe that the UK will, if not instantly then at least very soon, be stronger and better off than before it leaves the EU. Some of those are driven by the shallow "We've got our country back" mantra, but others couch their beliefs in rational terms (although tinged with the foregoing mantra), but ultimately with The Big Red Bus Lie that we'll save £350m a week by leaving and won't be controlled by faceless, unelected, untouchable Eurocrats.

I've given up arguing with them.

littlejimmy

Completely agree. The populace at large are being thrown under the bus (a big ****ing red one) so a few rich people who hijacked this debacle can make a killing. I just hope they've got strong gates and high walls if and when the shit hits the fan. Problem the government has got (and May knows this) is if they pull out now, they'll enrage the Leave voters. They're screwed either way they go, but this is all their own doing. That said, they're probably wondering how they can pass the buck over to Corbyn and Labour...

I've also given up arguing. I'm trying to convince people close to me that they need to prepare for the worst case scenario but some are just oblivious and dismiss it all as scaremongering.

scot47

They are operating in what they perceive to be their own interest. I do not have the same interest as Rees-Mogg, The Mad Boris or Nigel Farage.

scrubbedexpat141

Good post CaptainFlack.

It's already tanked and continuing to struggle, but I am going to save some money here before transferring because even if it jumps a bit because something incredible happens (snigger), then it's still going to be a good rate.

Cape Blue

Probably as it should be.

Looking the FTSE, main board directors are typically 57 and studied engineering, law or accountancy.

This means the pool of qualified people - those who studied a degree in those subjects in the late 1970's and who subsequently spent 30-40 years gaining greater and greater international experience and contacts - are likely to be older white males.

It's not an indicator of any discrimination by the hiring companies if the pool of qualified candidates are of a particular age, sex or ethnicity - just like the junior doctors at my local hospital who sway female as that's the pool they are recruiting from. It might be an indicator of societal sexism in the choosing of study subject in the 70's and 80's, or may be an indicator of sex differences in desired careers.

Cape Blue

Well put, I've found it shocking to see the attitudes of remainers who I thought were normal decent democrats turn into the mirror image of the (pre-referendum) extreme brexiters who could not see one single thing that was good about the EU.

007Steve

And it's produced the division that the English nationalists wanted with the ongoing hatred that will never heal.
It doesn't end next March......

captainflack

It's interesting to see the recent polling suggesting a significant shift, especially in labour constituencies, against brexit. So that there is now a significant majority of constituencies with majorities against brexit.

Obviously this is polling, but it's fairly good polling based on data that proved very accurate at the last election. And considering many people voting leave were assured that losing access to the single market was a preposterous remain scaremongering, it's perhaps not surprising.

The suggestion is that people are starting to realize that many of the promises made about leaving were false. But I think the biggest reason is simply that brexit at the time of the vote was seen as a vote against *both* parties and the political establishment. Whereas now, brexit is seen very much as a Tory policy, so labour leaning voters find it harder to support going over the top with the likes of Rees Mogg and Johnson.

There is a certain irony in that the right of the Tory party who claim to be carrying the torch for Thatcher are essentially dancing on her grave by taking the UK out of the single market. Thatcher pushed hard for it, was instrumental in ensuring it was robust with full acceptance of the four freedoms, largely because she feared otherwise the French would just use any loopholes to block car or agricultural imports (and they probably would). Thatcher sold the japanese the concept to get them to invest and save the UK car industry, and deregulated the city to encourage banks to come to London as a pan-European base. The Eurosceptic wing holds up her Bruges speech, but it was clear from that what Thatcher opposed was the cultural and political unification of Europe, and that the single market was essentially what she thought was the best bit and really the only bit she wanted. You have the feeling these zealots probably would have got nowhere when Thatcher was alive, because she'd have been pro single market and customs union. But once jesus is dead, all manner of chancers can go round saying they talk for him, and the gullible believe it.

It will be very interesting to see what happens. I think most of the people saying 'don't worry' don't seem to be actively involved in the kinds of things that will be heavily affected, such as customs, airlines, manufacturing, farming and so on. And almost all of those who are, seem to be getting more and more desperate.

On the plus side, now brexit is largely seen as a Tory thing, this will undoubtedly destroy the Tory party, and see them out of office for a generation, or possibly, forever. Which might be a very good thing, if it wasn't for the fact that Labour look like a sh1t show too.