EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

#rep #insightful

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/how-politicians-and-journalists-pushed-a-dubious-conspiracy?utm_term=.viEMmZyEN#.mpjKjNVEY

oh. good. lord.. (site ok, but article likely NSFW). Please pass the cuddly kitten mind bleach.

@Dammit
Nice work by James Ball - this is basically the work you do to see if a story has legs or not. In the old days, if you got to this stage, you'd kill the story - but because these things now take on a life of their own in the partisan blogosphere, there's now real news value in explaining why it's not news. If that kinda makes sense.

Do you mean that there's less to it than the letter suggests?

In this case I think it means there's fuck all to it, but Mr. Mullin is happy to fire cheap shots when he knows there's no comeback. IPGL Ltd is solvent, still operating, and has shareholders funds of over £52 million. It would be wholly remarkable if no other British company which made donations to a political party had at the same time borrowed money from a bank. It's a total non-story.

if this is a none story, as it seems to be, does anyone have an opinion if this letter was written in ignorance or as a cynical abuse of parliamentary privileged?

He's SNP, right? The cynic in me goes for the latter.

It's an MP exploiting parliamentary privilege to chuck mud in the hope that it might stick. It's perhaps a bit cynical but not uncommon.

Given the use of the word 'laundered' with bugger all to back it up, together with the breathlessly urgent tone of the letter, I'm going for the latter.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/04/merkel-sees-may-erdogan-downing-street-le-pen-no-10-brexit

Ukip won.

The real surprise about May’s Brexit strategy is that it represents a big departure from the unflinchingly reality-based political assessments that have been the hallmark of Britain’s international policies for centuries.

This brought up thoughts of Michael Oakeshott. I would very happily read his thoughts on this clusterfuck.

#nukip

from orbit.

This is a very insightful article by Yanis Varoufakis, a man who has first hand experience of negotiating with the EU.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/03/the-six-brexit-traps-that-will-defeat-theresa-may

tl;dr May is incapable of achieving anything other than disaster and division.

Also his wife inspired Pulp's Common People (she came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge). #neverforget

Time for another casebook

The person (people) behind that are absolutely killing it.

But it's quite easy to turn the raw material into gold, I guess.

Why? Is Canadia not fabutastic? Shit! That was my move after Spain.

Stick with plan a then.

Sour grapes, much?

But he's right there will be sooooooooooo much politics and hurdles, even when you try to be reasonable.

Other EU citizens in other EU countries can *perhaps*help, it's not that protests didn't derail TTIP for example, but the UK has made itself ... unpopular.

I don't see him as having sour grapes about the EU. I heard him speak last year before the referendum. He was clear. The EU is flawed and needs reform but we must work to reform it not destroy it. That is a more positive attitude than sour grapes.

OK some of the things in the article did sound a little like that, to me. Cos of how he wrote about how he got treated.

I agree the EU needs reform, currently there's too much power in some levels and it's not working as well for some countries. Some aspects of the free market can also lower wages for some, and workers get varying protection, in Poland clothes manufacturers are really underpaid for example.

It's not easy as whenever the EU speaks up about that/not taking immigrants it's the old "you are a dictatorship!!!" again :/

I am hoping the dream of lifting up all the EU countries will return again.

Good read. Also good to see an anti-EU view in the Guardian.

I thought the concluding para was very astute:

** So what can Theresa May do?**

The only way May could secure a good deal for the UK would be by diffusing the EU’s spoiling tactics, while still respecting the Burkean Brexiteers’ strongest argument, the imperative of restoring sovereignty to the House of Commons. And the only way of doing this would be to avoid all negotiations by requesting from Brussels a Norway-style, off-the-shelf arrangement for a period of, say, seven years.

The benefits from such a request would be twofold: first, Eurocrats and Europhiles would have no basis for denying Britain such an arrangement. (Moreover, Schäuble, Merkel and sundry would be relieved that the ball is thrown into their successors’ court seven years down the track.) Second, it would make the House of Commons sovereign again by empowering it to debate and decide upon in the fullness of time, and without the stress of a ticking clock, Britain’s long-tem relationship with Europe.

Ah, thanks for that. I didn't realise it was quite so ropey! I suppose I was misled by it coming from an MP (and I didn't even know that he was SNP). I find it counter-intuitive that they are able to use parliamentary privilege to spread something like this--then again, perhaps he was misled, too.

The EU as such is not too bad (and embodies the 'European ideal'), the problem is just that in the last few decades it's been used by people like Thatcher or Kohl to achieve certain problematic political objectives. As Varoufakis says, and Corbyn said, too, 'remain and reform'.

(I realise that's too crude, but uncharacteristically I'm not in the mood for a long post. :) )