Brexit: A change of heart??

Davesax1965 wrote: Ah yes, forgot about Gordon Brown, ahemmmmm.  And true, fireworks aren't a good barometer. Neither are the opinions of people who aren't actually here. ;-)

Thanks, in part, to Covid-19 the crazy train called Brexit is now hurtling out of control.  I have come to this discussion rather late but I voted remain, for reasons too numerous to mention.  

Ah yes, forgot about Gordon Brown, ahemmmmm. 

And true, fireworks aren't a good barometer. Neither are the opinions of people who aren't actually here. ;-)

Davesax1965 wrote: Congratulations my ar$e. I live in one of the highest points of the UK. From my bedroom window, I can see over thirty miles.  There wasn't one firework to celebrate. Not one.

 

Scottish independence and them rejoining the EU is not going to happen. I've heard Nicola Sturgeon trying to explain how it would happen, but when pressed couldn't explain how she could achieve this with no sovereign currency, and many of Scotlands main trading assets (fishing/oil etc) were actually not Scottish, they're British.

Independence was only viable when the UK was part of the EU, and the Scots didn't want it then. The only reason the SNP wiped the floor with Labour in 2015, was not because of renewed interest in independence, but dissatisfaction with the way the Labour party were going. It was - I suspect - in many cases a protest vote.

TBH, ever since the advanced election and BoJo's victory, I've got no qualms anymore about the issue.

Congratulations !

Factoid.

Tony Blair is the only Labour PM to have been born in the last 100 years.

God help us. 

3½ years ago I opined on this forum that the 52% of British people who voted to leave the EU would not be able to make it work without the help, support and expertise of 48% of us who voted to remain. Since then we have been subjected to childish name-calling (Remoaners) and we have been ignored and kept out of the leave negotiations with the EU. We were then blamed for the May's "Deal" failing to get through Parliament when it was the DUP and members of the fascist ERG who blocked it on every occasion, even the shaved pedigree malamute puppy in a suit voted against May's "Deal" (because he will do anything to grasp power and that was a political move not an ideological one). The 48% played no part in any of this fiasco apart from signing pointless online petitions and having a nice day out or two in London fruitlessly waving Bollocks to Brexit placards.  

What we saw from Leavers post referendum was esprit de l'escalier without the charm or wit. Having won the vote they then scrabbled around looking for justification for that vote that wasn't based upon knee-jerk racism and alt-wrong nationalism because if they haven't had that Naked Lunch moment when it has dawned on them that they would have lost without the support of racist nationalists then, frankly, that can only be because they're either too pig-ignorant to care or are in truth, racist nationalists. I can never (and will never) accept that the end justifies the means. I've had Leavers tell me point-blank that Brexit was not about immigration when every single Leave campaign leaflet had immigration front and centre. I've had Leavers inform me that Brexit means we are taking back control of our borders when we've never not been in control of our borders because the UK never signed up to Schengen agreement. I've had Leavers tell me that a soft-border between NI and Eire is possible outside the EU when it was only ever made possible because both sides were members of the EU. The less brazen of them simply claim that despite all that, they voted to leave for completely different reasons, that for them at least, it wasn't about immigration. I'd imagine there are some who believe that the allies won WW2 because Churchill was a better painter than Hitler. Sometimes you have to look at who shares your views and make a choice about whether you want to stand alongside them or not. If I was a leaver (which I am not) I could no more share the same views as Rees Moog, Gove, Fartrage and Johnson than I would voluntarily listen to a whole Toto album for the first time (I would have written Kansas there but I have recently listen to Leftoverture [and hated it]).

So now Johnson has "a mandate from the people" to "get Brexit done". Fine. We lost. Now go and do it.

We will now hold every single person who wants the British Isles to leave the EU to account. We will hold you all to every single promise you have made or believed in. We want the golden unicorn that farts diamonds and emeralds out of its arse: We want beneficial trade deals with every major trading country in the World, and we want them without having to give away the Crown Jewels, the Elgin Marbles or the NHS; We want to see that extra £350million given to the NHS every week. We want you to recruit more Doctors and Nurses to replace those from foreign climes who are no longer welcome; We want you to keep the Union together just like you promised; We want to see you keep the border between NI and Eire exactly as it was; We want you to sort out the Scottish problem, and the Northern Irish problem, and the Welsh problem, and the Cornish problem, and every other parochial issue that will arise as a result of this; We want to see our wages increase, and we want to see them increase significantly to compensate for all this mess; We want so see the whole country prosper and grow, (and not just those who will profit from the ensuing chaos); And most of all, you've got to win us back because we're more than just a little pissed off with you at the moment, this rift is going to take a lot of healing and we're in no mood to hold out a friendly hand to help you. As the saying goes, you had your chance and you blew it.

What we don't want to see is a return to how it was before we joined the EEC in 1973, because I was there and it was crap, apart from Progressive Rock and girls in short skirts the 70s were dire. The world is a vastly different place now than it was back then, and Britain is not the same country either and never can be (nor would we ever want it to be). We were never a "once proud nation", we were a bunch of arrogant colonialists cheered on by a propaganda-fed rabble. [On last year's University Challenge xmas special Paxman introduced the University of Bristol as being founded on the fortunes made from chocolate and tobacco, conveniently omitting the slave trade]. Sure there are things to be proud of in our history, but there is much we'd rather forget. The rose-tinted vision of Merry England was a fantasy back then just as it is now (remember that the Psychedelic 60s were fuelled by nostalgia of pre-war Victorian/Georgian romanticism that never actually existed); by 1973 the Empire was spent (literally, figuratively and metaphorically), the Commonwealth were glad to see the back of us and the economy was in steep decline. Every generation wishes it had been born in an earlier time, every era has revivals and resurgences, each one a romantic pastiche of an idealised vision of the past that never existed. Life was as crap back then as it is now, it was just a different kind of crap, with less gadgets and only three channels on the telly.