Hard Brexit via Clare
“The Single Market is not a matter of common tariffs but common law. It is our agreement to common standards of product safety, for the good of consumers, as well as common employment rights in the Social Chapter. Outside the Single Market our goods for export to the EU would be subject to “a blizzard of red tape”, as they would all need to be certified that they complied with EU law for the good of EU citizens. So trade negotiations now are a matter of harmonising not tariffs, but rules.
Britain outside the EU shrinks that trading bloc by more than 12%. It makes it less attractive to export to the Single Market, and less possible for the EU to enforce such rules. It is an attempt by the hard Right to destroy the rules, to increase profits for business at the expense of all of us. Mrs May will not publicise the British negotiating position and negotiating priorities only partly to avoid giving away too much to the other side- for her priorities would be unpalatable to any democratic politician without a great deal more lying and misinformation than there is now. So stories of straight bananas and hate-mongering against immigrants will get worse. TTIP may be foiled, but Brexit could make it unnecessary.
Leave voters from working class districts. You feel left behind, that politics is not for your benefit? You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Source: Hard Brexit | Clare Flourish
My Mazamet 
I heard a report on NPR earlier today discussing how the EU had to negotiate Britain’s exit as favorably as possible to the remaining members. There also was some talk about how some people were calling for another vote. I’m wondering if the EU will let Britain do that, or if they’ll insist that they leave.
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At this point things aren’t looking good. The Brexiteers promised things that are just impossible. No country can send goods into the EU that don’t adhere to EU regulations. How does the UK expect to get a free pass? The same is true for financial institutions. Otherwise every bank in the world would be headquartered in a tax haven and not answer to anyone…
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To me, it’s looking like those lies were material to a lot of decisions to vote leave. In a sense, it’s tantamount to fraud, especially when I saw clips of that one guy basically admitting he wrote a giant lie on a bus (regarding NHS). That in itself should have been enough to invalidate any vote.
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We have many guests visiting from the UK in the gite and we always chat about Brexit, it is interesting to hear the point of view of people living there, they all are adamant it will go ahead and they are all adamant that not too much will change. I wonder, I fear we may have only just had the fire before the storm, but only time will tell
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It’s appalling. If nothing changes it exposes the fact that the whole thing was just political opportunism. If things do change it means economic punishment for a whole generation.
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You make great economic argument in favor of the European Union.
Nevertheless, like here in the US, there is more at play in the public mind.
The elites who rule the Union are allowing the Jihad free and unrestricted access to Europe for the first time in history.
When the Charles Martel stopped the Jihad at the Battle of Tours in 732 Anno Domini, he saved all of Europe from the fate that had befallen the entire Middle East and North Africa.
That is, he saved Christian Europe from being conquered by the Islamic Jihad.
On the western end of Europe in the Iberian Peninsula, it took the Spaniards nearly 800 years of fighting and dying to finally take their land back from Jihad.
Also, people are seeing that the elite Ruling Class are really a bunch of self-destructive dummies.
So the Brexit is about the common man taking back control over the life and liberty he had once outsourced to an elite he has lost faith in.
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Brexit is about a delusion. No common man has taken back anything. No extra money is going into healthcare or education. The current prime minister wasn’t elected by the “common man”, she was appointed (by the party elite.)
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Mr. Merveilleux,
As a Ruling Class dummy it is no surprise that you just don’t get it.
Extra money for healthcare and education is lie that your inferiors, the plebes isn’t the issue.
The issue is what I explained to you in my last comment.
And you simply ignored or could not comprehend it.
Your (the Ruling Class) ignorance and lack of comprehension for what is important to the common man is THE problem…
…in Europe and here in the United States.
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so the important thing for the working class is believing promises that cannot and will not be kept?
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Pinky,
Your big DUH-zilla in response to my comment illustrates the point that I made:
You people just don’t get it.
You’ll never get it.
And that is why you are no longer fit to rule.
Keeping the Islamic Jihad out of Europe can be easily done.
But the EU Ruling Class won’t do it.
That’s why people want their countries and cultures back.
The Brits want to be Brits.
The French want to be French.
Americans want to be American.
The Islamic Jihad wants everyone (read that EVERYONE) to be Muslim, under sharia law.
Just like Spain was for 800 years.
And just like the Middle East and North Africa have been since the 7th century Anno Domini.
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So you think Brexit was about Muslims?
So you missed the *entire* campaign? And this:
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“It is an attempt by the hard Right to destroy the rules, to increase profits for business at the expense of all of us.” – One wonders why a lifelong Socialist such as Jeremy Corbyn might be so ambivalent about it? Perhaps because he sees the EU as providing a legislative homogeneity conducive to neoliberalist ideology? We don’t seem to have been protected from American corporate exploitation and tax evasion, after all.
I think there were complexities to the decision, and that it’s not a simple matter of Left vs. Right, politically savvy vs. politically naïve. That’s part of the story, only. Clare makes a valid point in the quote of hers I cite, yet the loudest voices for remain prior to the referendum came largely from business, or in support of business, spurred by Mark Carnage and Gidiot Osborne in cahoots with one another.
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Some on the left wanted Brexit for what I would call misguided idealism- or selfish socialism. Free trade may have created complexities in the developed world, but it’s raised hundreds of millions out of abject poverty.
The leader of the French communist party would like to abolish free trade all together, because he thinks that would improve the lives of French workers. But how viable or sustainable could that really be? Are people prepare to go back to a time where *things* are expensive?
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“Are people prepared to go back to a time where *things* are expensive?” – Well, with the relative wage stagnation (in real terms) that neoliberalism (Reaganomics and Thatcherism) has ushered in, then *things* are increasingly unaffordable at any price, for an increasing many. As to what may “improve the lives of French workers”, then it’s not going to be solely about how many *things* they can buy, of course; quality of life is a broader issue, as you well appreciate. In my view, the supply of *things* deemed as public goods – such as energy, transport, money creation, healthcare, and so on (even to some extent food and housing) – should be publicly owned and beyond the profit motive. I take your point, of course I do; I just don’t think it’s a clearly cut issue.
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*Things* includes food and clothing. It includes electronics. How long do you think a maid had to work in the early 20th century to have enough to buy a decent coat? How full would refrigerators be if we only bought from within our own countries?
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You misunderstand me if you think I’m arguing for isolationism, or protectionism as regards privately owned (corporate) economic forces. I’m arguing for a state-owned counterbalance to those same forces, which, so the recent history of the neoliberalist era has shown, acts as an inhibitor of growth and suppressor of workers wages.
“The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism, when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present.”
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/21/death-of-neoliberalism-crisis-in-western-politics
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Yes- but what sort of political support be required for something like that to actually be put into place? You can’t possibly be implying Corbyn can make it happen…?
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No, I think the membership have put Corbyn there to wrest the PLP away from the clutches of Mandelson et al and to create a genuine alternative to the Tories. I suspect that the majority of the membership accept that the price for that will be defeat at the next election, because to them, supporting a centrist party like New Labour is barely much different to supporting the Tories – really, what’s the point? It’s not as if not being in power would render a diminished Labour PLP of 100 or 200 members impotent. What’s always worth bearing in mind as regards Britain is that the younger generation (sub-35s) have effectively been disenfranchised from society – as the status quo would have it – by being priced out of home ownership (even rents are ludicrously high) and being lumbered with huge tuition fees. I’ve been wondering for years when they’d finally wake up to their plight, and they’re showing the first stirrings of doing so in their support for Corbyn. If the best that Mandelson and the Blairites can put up in opposition to him is the disingenuous Owen Smith then god help New Labour. Thankfully, there is no god.
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I’d love it if there was plausible success attached to your theory. What’s Putin’s approval rating?
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Your comment gave me a light bulb moment, Hariod. The under 35’s in Australia seem to be struggling with the same bleak outlook, especially with regard to housing. And the results from our latest election reflect the disenchantment that goes with that bleak outlook. We still have a viable middle class, but it is shrinking here too, and as it does the discontent grows.
I don’t have a head for economics, but I wonder whether it wouldn’t make more sense for government to support small businesses rather than large. Politicians talk a lot about employment, and corporations do employ big ‘chunks’ of people, but if you add up all the small businesses, they end up employing almost HALF of the total pool. Yet small business gets very little in terms of government subsidies, tax breaks and ‘sweeteners’.
http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1516/Employ
The link is to a 2014 report here in Australia but I suspect the UK would not be all that different.
The ‘trickle down’ effect hasn’t trickled so maybe it’s time to try something different.
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Pink, if you’re curious about why Corbyn’s so popular, and why he’ll win the leadership contest next week – for a second time in a year – then here’s an even-handed counterbalance to all the MSM claptrap that’s spouted about him, and surprisingly, given their massively biased support for the odious Owen, it’s just appeared in The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/17/jeremy-corbyn-should-be-tougher-not-my-style
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And why is Trump so popular? Or Putin? Rajoy? Marine Le Pen?
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Thanks Meeks. So, big businesses employ 31.7 per cent of the labour force in Australia as against 68.3% for SME’s, and yet you say the big corporates get the favouritism. If it’s anything like the US and UK, then that’ll be because they’ve got the pols in their pockets with highly paid consultancies, insider trading info (yes, I could tell you of some), directorships, future jobs for the boys, and so on.
We’re increasingly living in Corporatocracies – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy – or under what’s come to be known as an Inverted Totalitarianism – a phrase coined by Sheldon Wolin, Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Princeton University. Chris Hedges (Pulitzer winner) has written on this in Death of the Liberal Class. There’s a 50 minute video on Vimeo called ‘Obey’ which summarises the book, but in rather a heavily dramatic fashion: https://vimeo.com/59002146 The book is excellent, as is the author, in my opinion.
Thanks for reading and for taking my comments with the same seriousness in which they were offered. 🙂
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Pink: And your point is?
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That people are falling for grand ideas that simply will not be implemented. They can’t be unless a dictator leads a country- and we all know how those things turned out.
These all or nothing approaches do much for the ego, very little for social progress.
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I take your point about demagogues, Pink, but I’ve not been talking about Trump or Le Pen or Putin; I’ve been talking about neoliberalism’s demonstrated failings and the leader of the biggest political party in Europe. Speaking of who, then which of the following Corbyn policies are ‘grand ideas’ and which are out of step with public opinion?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news-14-5/the-jeremy-corbyn-policies-that-most-people-actually-agree-with-10407148.html
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Imagine that! Most people agree with him and yet…
You don’t need to convince me on government regulation, or re-nationalisation, or a reorganization of taxes. You (or rather, he) need to convince the people who are lining up to support UKIP propaganda.
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Why? UKIP supporters are leaving in droves and going back, from whence they came, to the two main parties – for obvious reasons. You’ve somehow managed to conflate Corbyn with Trump, Putin, Le Pen and Farage during this discussion. As to propaganda during the referendum, then it was rife on both sides. Don’t forget Cameron envisaged WW3, Osborne an immediate austerity budget (didn’t happen), Carney a rise in interest rates (the opposite happened), and all three a collapse in consumer and business confidence (neither happened). What has happened was that there was a big spike in hate crime, and for which (of the politicians) Farage is to blame, certainly not Corbyn, who’s been demonised in the MSM like no other UK politician I’ve known in my lifetime.
As I’ve said here on your site before and at the time of the vote, I’m not yet convinced that (in shorthand) Brexit does mean Brexit, and certainly the bulk of the political establishment wants to ensure that it doesn’t. The boss of Deutsche Bank weighed in yesterday suggesting that The City [i.e. UK financial sector] will begin migrating to Frankfurt in the event of a Hard Brexit (when the word does mean what it says.) We’ll see a steady drip-drip of propaganda attempting to sway the electorate into believing a 2nd. referendum is necessary. If that happens, then we’ll really see what social unrest looks like. And do remember that it’s Owen (Corbyn’s challenger) not Corbyn who wants a second referendum.
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The reason all the Brexit warnings haven’t come to be is because Brexit *has not happened*.
If Brexit does mean Brexit, what effect do you think it’ll have on the economy? Do you think the UK is going to be the only country on the planet that can export to the EU without complying with EU regulations? Or the only one in the world that gets an EU financial passport *also without complying with EU regulations*?
As for Corbyn, he merits being conflated with the likes of Farage the second he starts promising things he can’t deliver politically.
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That’s the bog standard Bremain get out, Pink. If it held any water then the markets would’ve reacted other than they did. Everyone and their grandmother would be shorting like crazy. They’re not.
Don’t worry too much about business getting done for want of the necessary red tape. As again I’ve said here before, Germany has far too much at stake. Not many tears will be shed if the bankers move to Frankfurt. We need to accelerate the productive, manufacturing economy in any case, and the UK’s over-reliance upon financial services has proven to be fatally flawed – too big to fail etc.
Yes, Corbyn and Farage are so similar! I trust your love for Theresa May will remain undiminished when it’s proven that Brexit doesn’t mean Brexit after all – her ‘promise’ being that it does?
I still love you Pink, and your Straw Men. 😉
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There’s no straw man in the obvious. A real Brexit is a financial catastrophe for a whole generation of people. It means harder lives for farmers, it means more expensive products.
What in the world do you think is the alternative?
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Here’s the complete guide to the direction of travel:
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By obliging Eu governments to borrow only from private lenders public debt has soared.
Ally this to companies whose aim is no longer to produce but to shuffle figures on the stock market and to political parties who are prepared to subsidise private employers by topping inadequate wages with benefits – back to Speenhamland – and you have a society which ha lost all sense of cohesion.
I would have voted to leave the EU – before the idiots involve us in conflict with Russia.
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Are disputes with Russia in the interest of the EU right wing?
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It reminds me of 1938/9…countries – or rather their governments – floundering aimlessly while a body with distinct aims ploughs ahead dragging all down with it.
I thought that the EU was right wing….
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Certainly was while Merkel had Cameron’s support on a huge range of things…
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