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The type of Brexit was one of the main reasons for both elections being called.
In 2017, Theresa May hoped to get a majority for her version of Brexit but failed.
We then spent the next two years arguing about the withdrawal agreement, and having failed to get this agreement through parliament, Theresa May had to resign.
Boris Johnson called the 2019 election in order to get a majority for his version of Brexit, and the result was decisive in this case.
At both elections, there was the opportunity to vote the Conservatives out of office and have a different version of Brexit, or no Brexit at all.
Well, the Government seems to be trying just that by planning to give visas to farm workers, people in healthcare, builders, plumbers, and maybe even hospitality. In other words, allowing EU citizens to return here to do the jobs they did before.
I'm pretty sure those visas aren't specifically for EU citizens.... They are for anyone in any part of the World who meets the requirements - so, unlike FOM there's no unfair discrimination in favour of some countries and against others.
Now I know you've always been against bringing in EU workers to do these types of job, so what do you think about this? Doesn't this rather undermine Brexit and make it worse for us, but not for the EU?
I'm not sure what makes you think I'm specifically against bringing in EU workers: I'm not: What I'm against is (a) the way FOM prevents countries from exerting reasonable controls on immigration - for example, to restrict migration numbers to sustainable levels consistent with what that country's infrastructure can support, or to ensure that immigrants take the trouble to learn local language and way of life etc., and (b) the way FOM unfairly discriminates against non-EU nationals. Regarding shortage/skilled worker visas, I also have some concerns about the ethics of poaching other countries' workers instead of training your own people, although I can see that skilled-worker visas might be the least bad pragmatic solution in some situations.
We have had two general elections since the 2016 referendum, which gave the people of the UK a chance to vote for the type of Brexit that they wanted, or whether they wanted to reverse Brexit completely.
Part of the problem was also Jeremy Corbyn, who was a Brexiteer at heart, but couldn't quite admit it.
Thus the 2019 Labour position was unclear for many voters, and those who understood it and preferred it to the alternative would have had to weigh up the need also to accept various aspects of a Corbyn-led government that they might have had strong objections to. Treating it as a referendum on Brexit also made it subject to the vagaries of our electoral system, where parties committed (at least nominally) to a second referendum won more votes but the party committed to going ahead with the "deal" won more seats.
Speak for yourself! I, and I suspect many others, feel that our cultural heritage and affinity is very much more with Europe (history, literature, music, etc — even political thought) than with any of those far away, whether they were of the Empire/Commonwealth into the C20 or whether they managed to make their escape and go their own way back in the C18.
Given that the referendum didn't ask about freedom of movement, I'd say leaving the EU but retaining freedom of movement could in fact be one realistic possiblity, and one, which as a Remainer, I could accept.
I think that Freedom of Movement (at least FoM into the UK), its implication of a lack of control of numbers, was an important undercurrent in the impetus of Brexit. Leaving the EU but retaining FoM was never in consideration.
Why have those who dislike freedom of movement got such special treatment in any case? There are plenty of other blocs within the UK voting public representing certain interests, who make their opinions known but which don't get listened to in the same way: those of us who want more money spent on public services, those of us who don't like the DfT/Treasury running down the railways, those who want to see US-style liberation of cannabis rules (I'm on the fence about that one, unlike the other two), and so on. Such other interest groups don't get listened to by the Government; why should the anti-FoM bloc get that special treatment which other pressure groups do not?
Controversially also, if a compromise deal could not have been reached, the government could always have adopted the "sorry guys, we did try for a sane Brexit but couldn't get one" and just kept the status quo.
A sufficient number of politicians presumably felt that ending FoM was an important view of the electorate - clearly they don't think that those which you suggest above are. As with any change in policy, there has to be sufficient numbers to drive that view. 'They' could have adopted the 'sorry guys....' , but the politicians in power didn't want that. They wanted out from the EU and in particular the SM / CU , in particular, to end the legal control that the EU had over UK affairs. And they had sufficient support from the electorate to do that. If the electorate didn't want that, they should have voted in other politicians, particularly in 2019. But they didn't do that, or even indicate that.
Is that the case? There's plenty of shared history for starters. Mainland Europe has a similar railway system to us, for one thing (opinions vary as to whether it's better or worse). The castles, the cathedrals and so on. The relatively liberal attitudes to countryside access present in much of Europe, in contrast to the rest of the world. The UK is part of the Old World, as is mainland Europe.
Sorry, I meant cultural affinity of the people. Yes, the infrastructure is similar - I don't think the similarities of the railway system counts for much though - but our way of thinking, our values, our systems are just sufficiently different, and our EU relationship seemed to be a fractious one gradually imposing their values on us, and to be fair, ours on them. However it is not a points game, neither should be imposing on the other.
I just find the vision that your post seems to be painting profoundly depressing. And certainly the vision of the UK as a conservative (socially and economically), isolationist nation is one which makes me feel very uncomfortable. The UK was a decent place in the 90s, 00s and 10s - but seems to have got very much worse lately
Sorry for that. I felt the control that the EU, as a whole , was taking over Britain (in terms of laws and rules),profoundly depressing in the 00s and 10s, the legacy of which we still have, but at least it is in our power to change now. (Whether we do or not is another matter).
Another take on "was hard Brexit necessary?" was that the whole misplaced decision by Cameron to hold the referendum in the first place was that he was running scared of Farage and thought he would split the vote. (and in my view it was unnecessary even in that respect, I still maintain that the loss of Lib Dem votes in the SW was the main thing that won it for Cameron in 2015, and this was a result of the tuition fees fiasco).
Thus, Cameron found himself in a hole having to implement the referendum, and in an even bigger hole when Leave got marginally more votes than Remain.
Arguably the government's approach should always have been : "how do we get themselves out of this hole, while maintaining the status quo as much as possible?"
They could have done this firstly by attempting a soft Brexit with FoM and the single market retained.
And then, as I said above, if they tried hard to do this and could not achieve it, they could have always taken the line "sorry, we tried for a moderate Brexit but have failed" and just maintained the EU status quo, marketing it as the "lesser of the two evils".
The mistake of the government, IMV, was treating the referendum, and Brexit, as something other than an awkward situation which we needed to extract ourselves from in the most painless way possible.
With Hard Brexit, we basically find ourselves in uncharted waters for a modern Western country in modern times. Has any other modern Western country performed such an internationally-awkward action (aside perhaps from the USA which is big enough not to care) in modern times?
So going forward, the real aim should be, how do we lessen the damage that has been caused?
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Agree wholeheartedly. But not go back to the situation that made many unhappy with EU membership in the first place. In any divorce there is going to be an initial hard time, and then hopefully a reconciliation with the relationship reset.
I'm pretty sure those visas aren't specifically for EU citizens.... They are for anyone in any part of the World who meets the requirements - so, unlike FOM there's no unfair discrimination in favour of some countries and against others.
I'm not sure what makes you think I'm specifically against bringing in EU workers: I'm not: What I'm against is (a) the way FOM prevents countries from exerting reasonable controls on immigration - for example, to restrict migration numbers to sustainable levels consistent with what that country's infrastructure can support, or to ensure that immigrants take the trouble to learn local language and way of life etc., and (b) the way FOM unfairly discriminates against non-EU nationals.
You could then say the better solution is to extend the same FoM rights to a wider range of countries. The way to deal with discrimination is not to remove rights for all countries (except Ireland), it's to extend rights.
I think that Freedom of Movement (at least FoM into the UK), its implication of a lack of control of numbers, was an important undercurrent in the impetus of Brexit. Leaving the EU but retaining FoM was never in consideration.
But in the circumstances, it would obviously be a vote (or at least acquiescence of) hard brexit. Everyone could have voted Liberal after all, if it was such a burning issue.....
But in the circumstances, it would obviously be a vote (or at least acquiescence of) hard brexit. Everyone could have voted Liberal after all, if it was such a burning issue.....
You could then say the better solution is to extend the same FoM rights to a wider range of countries. The way to deal with discrimination is not to remove rights for all countries (except Ireland), it's to extend rights.
But in the circumstances, it would obviously be a vote (or at least acquiescence of) hard brexit. Everyone could have voted Liberal after all, if it was such a burning issue.....
A Lib Dem vote would have course been a proxy vote for Corbyn, or at least against Boris, under our electoral system. So if people were worried about Corbyn, they would have probably also avoided voting Lib Dem.
How else do you explain the Tory votes in large areas of the liberal Home Counties? The (narrow) Tory win in a strongly-remain city such as Winchester?
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I guess it depends what countries and whether unrestricted immigration from that country would cause huge increases in the UK population.
I can't see, for example, that allowing free movement from citizens of countries with a similar economic profile, such as Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan or South Korea would cause any problems.
I do admit that completely unrestricted immigration from everywhere would cause problems - but I also believe that it should be allowed from a) countries which have had that right for a number of years - "grandfather rights" if you will; and b) countries from which immigration is unlikely to cause any problems.
Which is why General Elections are terrible analogues for referendums. In 2019 the Tories won an 80 seat majority, which I think we can call "thumping" quite accurately. So that means a ringing endorsement of their Brexit policies? Well, on the metric of seats sure. But on the popular vote (which is typically what referendums use as their metric) then Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP and Greens (who were all somewhere on the anti-Brexit side from Labour's renegotiate a softer stance then second referendum with remain vs the deal to the Lib Dems straight up revoke Article 50 without a referendum) had a slither over 50% of the votes and they take the opposite view to the Tories and Boris in that election. So that would suggest a small majority of voters were opposed to the Boris/Tory Brexit plan and yet that's exactly what they got? Where's the will of the people gone there? The Tories won the election and were therefore entitled to enact their manifesto commitments, can't dispute that. But I'm not sure it's a strong argument to say that the voters endorsed hard Brexit when a majority of them voted for parties that were opposed to that outcome!
Reality is that General Elections are complex beasts and just using them as a stand-in referendum is not a great idea.
At the end of the day I do wonder if things would have turned out very differently if only a certain Mr A. B. de Pfeffel Johnson, who I am sure is basically neutral on the matter, had gone for the other side early on. But I guess he saw the pro-Brexit side as an opportunity to displace Cameron as PM, which he did achieve (eventually).
I remember an article some years ago blamed Brexit on four men: Farage, Cameron, Johnson - and Corbyn, for his weak and ineffectual opposition. I think there is a good deal of truth in that.
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Sorry, I meant cultural affinity of the people. Yes, the infrastructure is similar - I don't think the similarities of the railway system counts for much though - but our way of thinking, our values, our systems are just sufficiently different, and our EU relationship seemed to be a fractious one gradually imposing their values on us, and to be fair, ours on them. However it is not a points game, neither should be imposing on the other.
But in what way is Britain culturally different from "the rest of Europe" en-masse?
Surely within continental Europe, which includes western Europe and former eastern-bloc countries, there are large differences?
France is culturally different to Germany, both are culturally different to Italy, and then we have Poland, Slovakia, Romania and many other nations all, presumably, with their own particular cultures.
Is the whole of the "EU plus other continental countries" from Portugal to Estonia, from Ireland to Bulgaria, and from Norway to Italy more similar to each other than any of it is to the UK?
I remember an article some years ago blamed Brexit on four men: Farage, Cameron, Johnson - and Corbyn, for his weak and ineffectual opposition. I think there is a good deal of truth in that.
I fail to see what else Corbyn could have done - he was well-known as being a hardline eurosceptic, just like his mentor Tony Benn, and had 30+ years of votes in Parliament to prove it. It wouldn't have been remotely convincing if he'd suddenly started proclaiming how wonderful the EU was.
I fail to see what else Corbyn could have done - he was well-known as being a hardline eurosceptic, just like his mentor Tony Benn, and had 30+ years of votes in Parliament to prove it. It wouldn't have been remotely convincing if he'd suddenly started proclaiming how wonderful the EU was.
I fail to see what else Corbyn could have done - he was well-known as being a hardline eurosceptic, just like his mentor Tony Benn, and had 30+ years of votes in Parliament to prove it. It wouldn't have been remotely convincing if he'd suddenly started proclaiming how wonderful the EU was.
Which would have looked like what? He inflicted more Parliamentary defeats on the Tories than had been seen in decades in the aim of getting them to go for a 'softer' Brexit (with workers rights protection, a customs union, etc.).
In my opinion, the main person responsible for the Brexit we got was, ironically, Dominic Grieve. If he hadn't put a 'meaningful vote' into the Withdrawal Bill then May's government would have fallen when the Second Reading of the Bill to implement the 'Deal' was defeated, as it inevitably would have been. Who knows what would have happened in an election at that point?
The 'meaningful vote' meant that it dragged on, and on, and on, and eventually led to Boris Johnson, by which time everyone was so fed up that his promise of an 'oven-ready' deal, while a total lie as it didn't solve the issues of Northern Ireland at all, persuaded enough people to give him a majority, especially when compared to the Labour Party's policy by that point (architected by Keir Starmer) of a second referendum, which would have prolonged the agony.
There was a far left argument for Brexit too, I know a few people who are as lefty as they come but they voted leave as they thought everything would be rosy under Corbyn . I consider myself to be on the left and voted for remain and always thought that argument was rather silly.
Which would have looked like what? He inflicted more Parliamentary defeats on the Tories than had been seen in decades in the aim of getting them to go for a 'softer' Brexit (with workers rights protection, a customs union, etc.).
I see your point, but what really bothered me about Corbyn was his instructions to his fellow MPs to vote for Article 50, thus denying those of us who disagreed with the whole thing a significant voice in parliament at all.
That was the point my opinion of Corbyn plummeted and it never properly recovered.
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There was a far left argument for Brexit too, I know a few people who are as lefty as they come but they voted leave as they thought everything would be rosy under Corbyn . I consider myself to be on the left and voted for remain and always thought that argument was rather silly.
I think one of the issues with Brexit is that both the Labour and Conservative parties are divided on the issue.
At least in Scotland all of the major parties have a clear position on independence, and people can vote accordingly if that is the issue that is most important to them.
It is somewhat ironic that it was a Labour government who organised the referendum in 1975 over whether we should stay in the EEC, and leading figures in the Labour party at the time had differing opinions on the matter.
If you consider Galloway left-wing. Personally I'm not at all convinced, I'd personally consider him firmly on the right, perhaps even hard-right or worse on some issues. This, for example:
If you consider Galloway left-wing. Personally I'm not at all convinced, I'd personally consider him firmly on the right, perhaps even bordering on far-right on some issues. This, for example:
I don't think antisemitic views are reserved to the right. There's a pretty well worn path of left wing politicians opposing the 'imperialist West' which leads to supporting pretty much any cause which is on the other side to the UK and US. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall that would have been the Soviet Union, the collapse of which George Galloway described as "the biggest catastrophe of my life". The other major cause tends to be Palestine, which means opposing Israel. Although it's possible to oppose Israel without being antisemitic, there does seem to be a worrying tendency for some to drift over the line.
I remember an article some years ago blamed Brexit on four men: Farage, Cameron, Johnson - and Corbyn, for his weak and ineffectual opposition. I think there is a good deal of truth in that.
But those in power are ultimately responsible for causing it to happen.
Farage for constantly banging on about it and convincing people it was more of an issue than it was. At one point, nobody bar a few on the Tory right really cared. The pub bores only started manifesting themselves in the early-mid 2010s.
Cameron for making the politically silly decision to hold the referendum (and it was politically silly for him personally, as he'd have been PM until at least 2020 had he not. He need not have worried about Farage; as I said above, the Lib Dem collapse in the SW following the tuition fees fiasco all but assured a Cameron victory).
Johnson for selling the Leave side to people.
And Corbyn for failing to provide effective opposition.
If you consider Galloway left-wing. Personally I'm not at all convinced, I'd personally consider him firmly on the right, perhaps even hard-right or worse on some issues. This, for example:
Galloway is an example of someone I'd consider so left-wing he's gone beyond 180° and found himself on the right. Increasingly common in contemporary politics.
Brexit is not quite an extension of left vs right though you're less likely to find far right-leaning Remainers than left-leaning Leavers. I only hope a Labour government can bring the country back to a friendlier arrangement with the EU. Doesn't have to be a customs union, doesn't have to be FoM but it does need to be something that re-establishes a degree of credibility and rationality from the UK side. Our negotiation tactics with the EU demonstrated both bad faith and complete cake-ism which we need to get past.
I still believe Brexit was an utterly stupid decision but it's done. This ongoing national post-mortem seven years after the vote is exhausting. Quite frankly I need a pint.
I think you have to "blame" the lazy pro-EU politicians who could have spoken about the benefits but instead kept going on with nagativity. The leave side included a lot of positivity in their messages. People tend to like positive messages more.
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. I consider myself to be on the left and voted for remain and always thought that argument was rather silly.
