Brexit has well and truly begun!

[G-Unit]

Another article from today’s Times that’s bang on the money IMO

We’re all paying the price for May’s little lie
Jenni RussellApril 3 2019, 5:00pm,
PM couldn’t have known that ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ would haunt her two years later


You may not know it, but Theresa May — the indecisive, secretive, blinkered, tribal prime minister taking us to the edge of disaster — is a hidden genius. Hold on to that thought.

Here we are, days from crashing out with no deal. Suddenly there’s a chance of averting destruction, as MPs try to block it, and the prime minister abandons hardline Brexiteers in the hope that Jeremy Corbyn will help get a deal through. It’s only a chance, though. Europe’s leaders are still deeply sceptical that we can agree among ourselves within a week, and if we fail, they may refuse us extra time to inflict confusion on them.

You might suppose that Britain, with the exception of a few extremists raging about betrayal, would be hugely relieved at he chance of avoiding no-deal at the thirteenth hour. How could we not be? This week the cabinet secretary’s private briefing to government on no-deal was leaked. It is shocking.

Sir Mark Sedwill predicts devastation for the economy and “significant disruption”. Food prices would rise 10 per cent, fresh produce by more. Our recession would be worse than in 2008.

We would be much more vulnerable to terrorism and crime; losing information-sharing with EU forces would “enormously increase” the pressure on our security services. No-deal in Northern Ireland, with all the tension over imposing border controls, would leave it so unstable that Whitehall would have to reintroduce direct rule from London, an arrangement with a bitter history.

This is an official record of the civil service’s bleak assessment of what threatens us within a fortnight, not hysterical shroud-waving. It reinforces all the warnings we already have, from the EU’s quietly factual briefings last summer to the increasingly agitated pleas from businesses, councils and hospitals for government to grasp how disastrous crashing out would be.

Yet warnings like these are shrugged off by much of the electorate as invented, exaggerated or short-term, because many now think no-deal is just fine. A YouGov poll shows that if there’s no agreement next week, no-deal is the most popular outcome. People would rather crash out than remain, at 44 to 42 per cent. Even if an extension is granted, 40 per cent want no-deal and only 36 per cent to stay in.

This is dumbfounding. This is a country sanguine about declaring sanctions on itself, putting itself out of work, making crime easier, forcing its own lives to become meaner and harder. Only a third of voters believe the warnings about disruption; 45 per cent think them mostly nonsense.

Why have we ended up here? No-deal was never on offer in the referendum. Brexiteers told us how simple, smooth and profitable Brexit would be, from Liam Fox asserting that an agreement with the EU would be the easiest in human history, to Boris Johnson and Michael Gove promising “no sudden changes that would disrupt the economy”. Nigel Farage suggested joining the EEA, while Vote Leave’s Daniel Hannan said no one was threatening our place in the single market and Owen Paterson that “only a madman” would leave it. Nobody proposed a chaotic, bitter Brexit and yet it is now the most popular option.

This remarkable and dangerous transformation of public opinion is principally Theresa May’s achievement. She unintentionally turned a slogan with some short-term usefulness into one of the most convincing, concise and memorable political messages of recent years. She turns out to be one of the most brilliant, if destructive, marketeers in politics. “No deal is better than a bad deal”, a centrepiece of her Lancaster House speech in January 2017, was only ever meant by her to be a convenient figleaf, simultaneously keeping her Brexiteers loyal and convincing the EU that Britain had other options than to agree to compromise.

It failed on both counts. Where it has spectacularly worked, in May’s endless repetition of it and its gleeful adoption by the right-wing press, is that it has sunk deeply into voters’ consciousness, convincing those confronted with Brexit’s unavoidable tradeoffs and difficulties that we needn’t deal with all these tiresome Europeans and their realities. Because no deal is better than a bad one, right?

The tragedy of this convenient strategic lie and its effective brainwashing is twofold. It threatens public backing for the compromise that May is frantically seeking now, bewildering all those voters who believed her. And it was never in any way true. No-deal, in the sense of freedom and independence, is a mirage. It does not exist.

If we left without a deal the very first thing we would have to do, even if ports were not being paralysed by checks, hospitals running out of radiation medicine and fresh food disappearing from shops, would be to open talks with the EU on new trade rules. Except now we would be supplicants, not members, pitching our 60-million market against one ten times the size. We’d be facing their understandable contempt and fury at our reneging on our existing agreements and obligations to them. And their first preconditions for talks would be as now: money, Ireland, citizens’ rights.

Theresa May never dared explain the reality; that no-deal would mean, in practice, the UK’s immediate surrender to the EU’s emergency terms. Now that she is desperately trying to avert the disaster she herself always understood, the prospects of getting MPs and the public to back it are threatened by the success of her own calculating lie.

She seems to think no deal is the electorate's most popular option. That must be why MP's are so desparate to put it out of reach. Gpd forbid that the people should get what they want.

[Venturi Swirl]

She seems to think no deal is the electorate's most popular option. That must be why MP's are so desparate to put it out of reach. Gpd forbid that the people should get what they want.

No Deal is certainly more popular than May’s deal with Leave voters, something I keep saying and you keep questioning for some strange reason.

[Venturi Swirl]

When I asked you to explain how you knew what 'most leavers' thought you mentioned people you had spoken to. They aren't the electorate.

I also posted several opinion polls which you dismissed as well.  Carry on in your fantasy land, you clearly aren’t interested in the reality of the situation.

[Brietta]

She seems to think no deal is the electorate's most popular option. That must be why MP's are so desparate to put it out of reach. Gpd forbid that the people should get what they want.

In my experience 'the people' want a stable economy, prosperity and job security.  Is that what Brexit will deliver?

[John]

In my experience 'the people' want a stable economy, prosperity and job security.  Is that what Brexit will deliver?

I for one believe it will.  I have seen with my own eyes the damage the EU has done to the ordinary folks in Spain, youth unemployment was almost 20% at one stage, young people have to go abroad to find gainful employment with most heading to London.  The artificially boosted construction industry has been on its knees for ten years, thousands of new unfinished homes and road projects lie abandoned.

Brexit will provide independence going forward but inevitably there will be teething problems. The UK will at last be able to deal properly and decisively with immigration, the UK and only the UK will decide who we let into our country and for how long.  Illegals can be repatriated and rightly so.

Trade deals can at last be done with the rest of the world when EU tariffs are cast aside.  There will be losers certainly, we hear them whinging constantly on the evening news channel but that again is inevitable with such change. Britain needs to take back control of everything, farming, fishing, industry, laws, immigration etc...

I believe the EU is ultimately doomed in any event, other countries are watching intently as the UK makes the break for independence, I believe others will follow. The EU project has always been about a European superstate, a one size fits all scenario but that isn't going to happen.

[Carana]

In my experience 'the people' want a stable economy, prosperity and job security.  Is that what Brexit will deliver?

How many even roll-over agreements have been agreed so far?

I can understand that short-term prosperity may be perceived as a necessary sacrifice for a longer-term goal, but - so far - I simply haven't seen anything to substantiate how the UK will ultimately benefit.

I have heard suspicions that there is a move towards making the UK another fiscal paradise, but I don't know enough about that aspect  to comment.

[Carana]

I for one believe it will.  I have seen with my own eyes the damage the EU has done to the ordinary folks in Spain, youth unemployment was almost 20% at one stage, young people have to go abroad to find gainful employment with most heading to London.  The artificially boosted construction industry has been on its knees for ten years, thousands of new unfinished homes and road projects lie abandoned.

Brexit will provide independence going forward but inevitably there will be teething problems. The UK will at last be able to deal properly and decisively with immigration, the UK and only the UK will decide who we let into our country and for how long.  Illegals can be repatriated and rightly so.

Trade deals can at last be done with the rest of the world when EU tariffs are cast aside.  There will be losers certainly, we hear them whinging constantly on the evening news channel but that again is inevitable with such change. Britain needs to take back control of everything, farming, fishing, industry, laws, immigration etc...

Could you explain what the EU has done to the ordinary folks in Spain that was detrimental to them?

[John]

Could you explain what the EU has done to the ordinary folks in Spain that was detrimental to them?

Reduced living standards and much unemployment for starters. The minute the Euro was introduced, goods and services shot up in price.

[G-Unit]

In my experience 'the people' want a stable economy, prosperity and job security.  Is that what Brexit will deliver?

The electorate seem to think the EU hasn't delivered what they want, so perhaps Brexit will.

[Venturi Swirl]

The electorate seem to think the EU hasn't delivered what they want, so perhaps Brexit will.

It won’t IMO.  They want fewer immigrants, they won’t get that.  They want to get rid of unelected bureaucrats, they will still have the unelected civil service pulling their strings.  They want the UK to be able to forge advantageous trade deals with the rest of the world without damaging our own industries, that’s highly unlikely, IMO.  They want the United Kingdom to rule the waves again, what United Kingdom?  It will be broken up within the next few years, we will be diminished as a world power.  IMO. 

[G-Unit]

It won’t IMO.  They want fewer immigrants, they won’t get that.  They want to get rid of unelected bureaucrats, they will still have the unelected civil service pulling their strings.  They want the UK to be able to forge advantageous trade deals with the rest of the world without damaging our own industries, that’s highly unlikely, IMO.  They want the United Kingdom to rule the waves again, what United Kingdom?  It will be broken up within the next few years, we will be diminished as a world power.  IMO.

Are those the correct answers I wonder, or just one opinion of the answers?

[Venturi Swirl]

Are those the correct answers I wonder, or just one opinion of the answers?

My post is littered with IMOs, I think that answers your somewhat superfluous question.

[Miss Taken Identity]

Reduced living standards and much unemployment for starters. The minute the Euro was introduced, goods and services shot up in price.

And look at Greece- almost Bankrupt!

The Eastern countries closed their boundaries as did Austria  much against the goodwill of  the  EU ELITE- hard working, above board, totally honest immigrants mostly male mostly African/Asian. arriving by the hunderds.

This will escalate. and civil unrest will prevale.  Does Spain really need thousands of hardworking illegal immigrants getting houses and jobs?   There are differences between an asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and  people who come to live and work here legally from other countries.

This country should also clamp down on Pakistani /Indian men being allowed into this country vis the marriage route. This is abused to the point of disgust. Mentally retarded females marrying and having children to cousins /neighbours to get them into this country. A blind eye has been turned on this for too long!

And Don't even get me started on the new phenomenon about' online love' very vulnerable women in the later years over 60/70 being 'romanced' by evil predators in Africa. It is so sickening.

[Carana]

Reduced living standards and much unemployment for starters. The minute the Euro was introduced, goods and services shot up in price.

How would you interpret this graph of GDP in Spain?

https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/gdp-growth

[Venturi Swirl]

And look at Greece- almost Bankrupt!

The Eastern countries closed their boundaries as did Austria  much against the goodwill of  the  EU ELITE- hard working, above board, totally honest immigrants mostly male mostly African/Asian. arriving by the hunderds.

This will escalate. and civil unrest will prevale.  Does Spain really need thousands of hardworking illegal immigrants getting houses and jobs?   There are differences between an asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and  people who come to live and work here legally from other countries.

This country should also clamp down on Pakistani /Indian men being allowed into this country vis the marriage route. This is abused to the point of disgust. Mentally retarded females marrying and having children to cousins /neighbours to get them into this country. A blind eye has been turned on this for too long!

And Don't even get me started on the new phenomenon about' online love' very vulnerable women in the later years over 60/70 being 'romanced' by evil predators in Africa. It is so sickening.

And absolutely nothing to do with the EU.