Everything the critics predicted seems to have taken place. Wasn’t it obvious from the beginning that abandoning a trade alliance would hurt your economy?
From the EU, the drama of the Brexit negotiations was watched with mixed feelings. Initial regret shifted to a desire to limit the damage. Some economic opportunities to fill the gaps left by the UK opened up. Brexit was clearly going to be a loss for everyone, but far greater for the UK than for any continental European economy.
The negative impact on trade, so far, is substantial for the UK. The Centre for European Reform recently estimated that there has been an 11.2% negative impact on trade as a result of Brexit. The UK share of world trade has fallen by a further 15% compared to pre-referendum projections.
Assessing the impact of Brexit on the EU presents a challenge, as macro-economic data is contaminated by the pandemic shock. However, digging into the details of trade flows, there has been a noticeable negative effect on some countries, sectors and firms. This has been especially sizeable for small producers who used to have unbounded single market access to the UK. Now, the extra paperwork puts off firms that lack the critical mass to absorb the extra fixed costs of handling non-EU trade procedures. Over time, the situation may well improve, but some companies have already given up. British consumers have paid the price, EU consumers far less.
And yet, even now, the Tories and that idiot, Boris Johnson, are in charge of the country. The rest of Europe is sitting back and watching in amazement as the Brits punch themselves in the face, over and over again. Here in America, we’re also impressed at how much self-harm is going on, but we’re less surprised since we’re experiencing our own ongoing madness.
You got to hand it to Putin, Farage and that Russian chap they just made a Lord there in the UK. They played it well. Now Brits are pissed off because they need a visa to stay at their holiday house in France. You could not make it up.
If you ask a britshitter why they voted to leave,they will said sovrentee,taking back control,they don’t like being
ruled from Europe.
What they really mean is they don’t like all the brown faces on the streets.
Then tell them that because we are no longer in the EU,we can no longer return all the poor cold scared people
trying to get into this fecked up country (England) .
Then,you had better stand well back before you tell them that any trade deal with India contains the clause
that Indians will have the right to come and work in the UK.
Then their heads will explode.
“The rest of Europe is sitting back and watching in amazement as the Brits punch themselves in the face, over and over again.”
Kind of like that “Stop hitting yourself” game when we were kids.
Yes, just look at our own NAFTA and what that did for “the economy.” The economy is what rich people do with their money. Trade agreements are great!
But most of us and our well-being is not measured by health of the economy. In fact, given that the wealthy prey on us, our well-being is often tied to the inverse of economic health.
With any luck, Brits will realize that the ridiculous inequality they suffer is not just the fact that only royals have been protected from pederasty trials in the past. Pederasty trials for everyone today, strip the royals of their wealth tomorrow, then maybe turn on the bankers . . .
@2 Most of the brown faces initially came from the commonwealth as they were entitled do do -many misinformed “Brexiteers” bizarrely thought leaving the EU was the answer.
It’s the result of the UK’s Comprehensive education system. Three generations of people who leave school knowing only how to safety inject heroin and fill oit child support paperwork have taken their toll.
The place has been a dump since the Romans left and the barbarians took back over. Monarchies of thugs, really. Take one look at BoZo and it’s obvious that the EU was running the place better.
Wait till they lose Scotland and Ireland. Hey, sovereignty, ya know its important.
@7 I don’t think the EU is supposed to “run” it’s member countries, nor do I think Scotland or Northern Ireland would meet the fiscal tests for individual membership.
I thought they mostly worried about Eastern Europeans, who were able to work in the UK thanks to the EU agreements.
@7 We’d better stick public schools and grammar schools then
@7. Just like when the British Raj left India, amirite? Nothing there but barbarians…
@5 Yeah I know that. Whenever it gets too much I watch Laughing Spanish Guy.
Huh. It’s like this The Spiffing Brit video but real instead of Civ6.
https://youtu.be/gsDChRcH9JI
@7 I don’t think the EU is supposed to “run” it’s member countries
I know that but the brexiteers appear to have mistaken that impression.
This is a good one as well.But part of me is outraged at these Johnny Furriner types laughing at us English,even though it is true.
@6 Where did you read that,the daily wail? The people fecking up the UK didn’t go to comprehensive schools.
And the main reason why the British Education System is turning out a lot of dimwits is because it has been starved
for money for years,and that nice Mr blairs Academy bollox doesn’t help.
I thought you amuricans would care to see a britshitter in his natural habitat.
https://fb.watch/aXdi7BMM-B/
Ireland is still in the EU and doing reasonably well. You must mean “Northern Ireland” that enclave of English hegemony and last vestige of the killer thug, William of Orange. I appreciate it’s a subtle distinction. The exit has not panned out very well there, from what I have read, because it’s complicated business which depends on trade with Ireland. This is despite promises that everything would be peachy keen. I’m not sure where that trade arrangement stands, but then Bozo is too busy partying and fighting with the back bench. Scotland bolting the UK to get back in the EU has been raised as a possibility. There’s a lot of history in that union so probably only a distant chance.
Oops. That was Humankind, not Civ6. I watched them dona Civ6 video after that one last night.
Wait till they lose Scotland and [Northern] Ireland. Hey, sovereignty, ya know its important
In the most recent vote to allow for Scottish self-governance (2014) 45% voted to leave the UK- this was pre-brexit, and the independent Scottish faction has gained seats in the Scottish parliament since. I believe that the powers that be (in England) would put a LOT of effort in to keeping Scotland part of the UK- the potential of losing the offshore oil fields, fishing territory rights, shipping lanes etc. would have a giant economic (negative) impact on the rest of the UK. Northern Ireland? not as much but the existing government would lose a lot of prestige if what the Unionists call Ulster and Ireland reunited or joined the EU. I agree- I’m not so sure the EU would admit an independent Northern Ireland – Scotland would be more likely as their contributions to EU economy would be significant (aforementioned oilfields, fishing grounds etc.)
Some interesting idiocy in Northern Ireland. After months of threatening NI’s first minister has quit in protest about the NI protocol (checks done on goods between NI and GB). A bizarre choice given his party, the DUP, pushed for the hardest Brexit possible, where did he think customs checks would be? An election was due to happen in May anyway so I don’t know what this is supposed to achieve. Also, given recent opinion polls an election is be the last thing the DUP should want.
The DUP also tried to illegally stop customs checks at NI’s ports but civil servants have refused.
As a UK remain voter, I have watched as the pro-Brexiters switched from blaming Europe for all our woes because we were in the EU, to blaming Europe for all our woes because we left. I never realised that they would just keep right on blaming the EU for everything, and it’s just as wrong now as it ever was.
@20 notaandomposter
An independent Northern Ireland is impossible. It’s an economic basketcase with an intermittently semi functional government. Not to mention there’s zero support for it.
Also NI and Ulster aren’t the same thing. Ulster is an Irish province with 9 counties, NI was carved out of 6 counties of it. The British couldn’t have controlled all of Ulster because Donegal has many remote, Irish speaking towns that would have been very unhappy in the protestant statelet and difficult to police. They took the largest amount of land they could where they believed they could maintain a protestant majority and police effectively.
On the border with the Republic of Ireland, of course! The DUP wanted to sabotage the Good Friday Agreement, that’s why they campaigned for Brexit, and insisted that the UK should leave the Customs Union and Single Market (which the main Leave campaigns denied would happen, before the referendum).
@24 KG
Set up border checks on 200 little country roads with a history of unfriendliness to the British state. Breaking an international agreement and pissing off the US. Or checks at Belfast, Larne and Derry ports, pissing off the DUP.
Hard choice.
@16 no, they didn’t. But millions upon millions of Britons did. And they’re now very useful idiots.
@26.Well English idiots did,Scotland voted to remain.
If you want to read a well-sourced history of all this, go take a look through the archives of Chris Grey’s Brexit Blog, which not only spans the whole thing with then-current events but warns you when a link goes to something behind a paywall (with a £). For the last year, a lot of it has been “just as predicted [link to blog entry predicting it], X”. (Updates once a week on Fridays.)
Or there’s always this, for grins.
Anyway…
@#3, christoph:
No, because that implies that the EU is controlling the UK, which wasn’t even true when the UK was in the EU. The people doing the “stop hitting yourself” game are the English to Scotland — including the Scottish branches of the two major political parties, which remain pro-union and are increasingly blatant bootlickers for the English. Which is why the SNP has an overwhelming majority in Scottish Parliament and of Scottish seats in UK Parliament (for what little the latter is worth). It’s a too slow to be a drinking game, but you can reliably watch for English media headlines criticizing the SNP, and then check to see how often they’re criticizing something which either (a) the SNP has been fighting against since it got control, but is being overruled by the English majority in UK Parliament (which can override Scottish Parliament more or less at will, and does not devolve control of a lot important things, including a lot of budgetary control), (b) cannot do because the money for it can only happen if the UK Parliament chooses to fund it, and Scottish Parliament have already asked and they won’t, or (c) were actually the work of Labour the last time they controlled Scottish Parliament. It’s not quite 100%, but it’s a very high proportion.
@#8, ajbjasus:
A couple of years ago, the UK government quietly admitted that it has been cooking the books to make Scotland look like it’s constantly running a deficit when in fact it’s one of the few parts of the UK to consistently have a budget surplus. (Among other things: the official government records have been deliberately massively undervaluing — by something like a factor of 10 — the amount of money coming from the oilfields in the North Sea which are part of Scottish territory.) Scotland can afford to leave. Arguably so could Wales, although most of their infrastructure is (deliberately) designed to drain their economic output into England and prevent the country from unifying. (Try to figure out the travel time from the north part to the south part both with and without traveling into England along the way. It’s literally easier for the Welsh to spend money in London than it is to do so in locations in their own country which are often a fraction of the distance away.) Northern Ireland would have a hard time on its own — but if they gave the idiot unionists the boot and sent them to the England they claim to love so much, and which claims to support them so much, then Northern Ireland would rejoin Ireland itself, solving the problem.
@#20, notaandomposter:
In the runup to that vote, the UK explicitly said they would block entry of Scotland into the EU if Scotland left the UK. They could do that — new members in the EU have to have consensus approval of existing members, and by just registering a hard “no” they would automatically block that. Guess what they can no longer do now that they have left the EU? (And guess what all the other countries have already said they would accept?)
(It would be absolutely hilarious if, once the English get tired of shooting themselves in the foot, they tried to rejoin the EU and found that Scotland was blocking them. Although I suspect that now that DeGaulle’s warning — that the English were so greedy and short-sighted that they would leave the CM as soon as they thought it didn’t benefit them, and so should not be permitted to enter it in the first place — has been shown to be absolutely correct, it will be the currently-existing EU membership who block England’s inevitable eventual attempt at reentry. Like Ireland with Northern Ireland, Scotland will probably want England/the UK to be readmitted just for the sake of convenience.)
Polling currently shows that support for leaving the UK in Scotland has risen to around 55%, ±2. But, in another example of the dice being loaded against autonomy, guess who gets to determine when a binding referendum will be held? (Hint: it’s not Scottish Parliament.) (Second Hint: it’s a body currently led by somebody with messy hair who likes to party and whose name rhymes with “Morris Ronson”.) Scotland could potentially hold a unilateral independence referendum and claim that the results justify themselves, but there are members of the EU which really, really do not want to set a precedent that a UIR is acceptable — Spain, in particular, because of Catalonia.
Actually just short of a majority – 64 seats out of 129. But the pro-independence Scottish Greens (my own party) have 7, and have reached a “cooperation agreement”, just short of a formal coalition, with the SNP. The two most recent polls on independence show a tie. But there’s a strong age-gradient, with young people heavily favouring independence. It seems quite likely the next UK general election will result in it being impossible to form a government without SNP support (or at least, toleration), because ironically, the FPTP system greatly favours the SNP – in the last three elections, they have won most of the Scottish seats on just under half the vote. The price of such toleration would be another binding referendum.
@KG #24:
It wasn’t just the DUP which wanted to make sure the UK had no Single Market agreement after Brexit. Regardless of how much both Leave campaigns lied about keeping all options open, it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that the Four Freedoms would have to be abandoned wholesale. The UKIP-based Leave group wanted to reject Freedom of Movement because they primarily consist of racist cunts, while the Tory-based Leave group had to reject Freedom of Movement because otherwise they’d be eclipsed by the UKIP-based LRCs. The entire Brexit issue only ever reached the dominant political position it had because David Cameron’s Tories were terrified of losing seats to UKIP as more of their right-wingers moved further right. Most of the rest of us were only ever observers to this unfolding disaster, though just enough became dupes scared by rhetorical EU monsters under the bed that the Leaver Racist Cunts effectively got their way. And then scum like Boris popped up to help them, advancing his own career at the cost of shoving the country down the shitter for decades.
Me, bitter? Nah.
@#29, KG:
Keir Starmer says he will not under any circumstances permit Labour to form a coalition government with the SNP. (I recall reading that he also ruled out the Greens, but I can’t find that right now.) He’s a slimy and treacherous liar is only marginally better than Boris Johnson and uses many of the same tactics, and who should absolutely not be trusted in any way, but he’s been both consistent and clear about this for months so he probably won’t reverse on it. (He’s open, he hints, to forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats… the party which, for the last few decades, has consistently promised to be left-leaning, and then immediately sided with the Tories on everything important every time their MPs could have changed the outcome of a significant vote in Parliament. It’s hard to say whether Labour, which sabotages itself to prevent the left from controlling anything, or the LibDems, who lie outright to fool left-leaning voters into supporting their right-wing candidates, is more like the American Democratic Party, but either way: Starmer wants to discuss a coalition with people who are historically right-leaning, which means he probably won’t want a coalition which includes the Greens if he can possibly avoid it.)
(He has also publicly committed to “making Brexit work”, though, which means that even if he manages to oust Johnson and become PM, he is doomed. It’s an impossible task, which means that he will inevitably disappoint and become hated by an ever-increasing percentage of the public, becoming the scapegoat for all failures until he is, himself, ousted, either by backbenchers who get tired of pretending you can square the circle or by voters concluding that Labour is as useless as the Conservatives and destroying his government in the next election. The Bank of England said Brexit was costing £800 million per week, and although not every estimate has been that steep, all the real ones by bodies not ludicrously politically motivated have agreed that it has been an utter disaster for the economy to an extent that really can’t be compensated for. Every PM who claims they can fix things without actively trying to unpick Brexit for the next 20 years or so is going to inevitably faceplant; the only way to avoid it will be to explicitly say: Brexit is a disaster and we need to reverse it as much as possible. Anybody who does otherwise is setting themselves up for failure — they don’t even need to actually try to undo it, which is impossible anyway, just to not pretend that it can somehow be turned to advantage.)
Ah, yes. The Vicar has but one playbook.
A different bias has been following this quite nicely:
@#29, KG
Forgot to address this: sorry, I meant out of the constituency seats. They won 62 out of 73 of the “vote for a candidate from the following list” contests, which is a very strong majority. I do like the way Scottish Parliament’s seating system pushes hard against majorities, but under practically any other system in active use around the world they would have held an overwhelming majority of the seats overall.
(For those not familiar with it: Scottish Parliament has — checks Wikipedia because I can’t remember how many regional seats there are — 129 seats total. Of these, 73 are elected directly the way the US does with the House of Representatives in Congress: candidates run for a single geographic area in direct competition with each other, and the person with the most votes takes the corresponding seat. But there are additional seats which are awarded specifically to make the composition of Parliament proportional to the vote by party, on a regional basis. This is good for small parties, but it does essentially guarantee that there are almost never any truly independent, non-party-affiliated candidates. It also means that the more constituencies a party wins in the constituency votes, the fewer it will get regionally. The SNP won the entire Glasgow region in 2021 — so it got no regional seats.)
@#31, John Morales
Well, at least I’m just one person. Think how terrible it is that Johnson and Starmer have to share theirs.
(Seriously: Starmer has consistently refused to actively oppose the Tories on most significant issues since taking power, he refuses to say what Labour stands for under his leadership, he thinks Tony Blair — the disgraced former Labour PM who famously knew Bush was lying about Iraq but backed the invasion anyway and whose fiscal policy was relentlessly right-of-center in the usual Centrist “well of course we have to make concessions to the right wing so we can work with them” way — is a good guy who should be rehabilitated and brought back, he has actively backed further privatization of the NHS towards the US private health insurance model, his faction got caught doing Cambridge Analytica-style manipulative ad campaigns on Facebook, he had his allies in the party simultaneously refuse to deal with accusations of antisemitism while complaining to the press that Corbyn wasn’t forcing the party to deal with accusations of antisemitism… he’s just a lying, slimy, awful person. Whether you think Labour is a good party or not, he is a terrible choice to lead it.)
kingoftown@23–
Calling NI an economic basketcase is an understatement! Even with the assistance of being part of the UK and getting all sorts of sweeteners to create a Tory majority in parliament under Theresa May, it has achieved a GDP per capita of $23K, less than half the UK average. Meanwhile the Republic of Ireland, despite having crawled out from centuries of parasitic British oppression and being a willing participant in the EU (a terrible negative according to Brexiteers), has a GDP per capita of $111K.
Look, Vicar (the): you long since burned up any credibility and goodwill you might have had, provisionally or otherwise.
As I noted, you are a one-trick pony. Whatever is the worst party around, you will malign its opposition in general and its leader(s) specifically. You do it for the USA, and you are now doing it for the UK.
Most predictable, you are.
—
To be fair, outside of political considerations, your comments are often cogent and even sensible.
@#35, John Morales
All my comments are cogent and sensible. You have just decided, like so many people, that you, personally, could not possibly be duped into supporting something bad, so therefore any criticism of your choice, no matter how valid, must be motivated by malignity, insanity, or ignorance. That said, I guess we’re lucky you people have finally gotten past the “anybody who disagrees with me is a Russian bot” stage from 2017-2019, but you’re still as blinkered and ridiculous as you ever were. Get bent.
heh.
That’s why, on the topic of Brexit, you choose to impugn and complain about the Labour party and its leader. As if they had somehow been (or are) the government in power during genesis and implementation of Brexit.
(So sensible!)
What do you imagine I support? I’m Australian, so I certainly don’t support UK Labour or USA Democrats.
More to the point, do you care to specify whether you are a hypocrite (you concede that you yourself also have made the decision you impute to me) or a sap (you concede that you may be a dupe)? :)
Heh. All these years, and you still think I am one of “you people”?
Nah. I shall remain being straight.
But you have my blessing go on being crooked.
There is a trend, in liberal democracies, where people consistently vote against their own interest and for the benefit of their betters.
The US and UK may be the ones with most visibility, but it’s happening everywhere, even in Sweden.
We aren’t doing this democracy thing right.
The idiots who believe there’s any way to solve the Northern Ireland problem must also believe that the Irish Sea is a Riemann surface, with Northern Ireland being simultaneously in the EU on one branch and not in the EU on the other.
(if you don’t understand, ask a mathematician)
@41:
But there is a solution: England carries on being so bloody stupid that eventually even the hardcore unionists realise that we’ve never had and will never have any interest in their welfare, and that they actually would be better off under a united Ireland.
If there’s any good to come of the brexit/tory ill winds, it’s the significantly improved odds on the re-unification of Ireland and Scottish independence. @davidc1, @The Vicar, @KG et al are correct in their assessment of the situation wrt Scotland (and on Starmer, as his own recent actions have shown very clearly).
I moved to Ireland before Brexit really hit, but I ended up having to change my dog to a worse arthritis medication because goods to this island tend to come through Great Britain.
And so the benefits of Irish EU membership have been lessened by the spiteful foolishness of English conservatives.
xohjoh2n: not bloody likely. The unionists have decades of hatred to unlearn first. Much more likely is they age out of existence and their kids decide the UK is as stupid as the church.
John Morales: and in particular, blaming Starmer for the travesty of Brexit is rich. It was Corbyn who ran the joint at the time, and he famously campaigned on promising to ignore the question entirely.
numerobis @46: Funny, I remember Corbyn saying repeatedly, in the run-up to the referendum, that he was firmly for staying in. He also had criticisms of the EU. Some people seem to see some sort of contradiction there, for reasons I cannot fathom.
So is smart money on the Irish Sea turning out to be a Riemann surface or on the eventual reunification of Ireland?
(I admit to personal curiosity but no actual insight into which is more likely.)
@47 I was in London for the entire month leading up to the Brexit vote and I distinctly remember him advocating to stay. I see no contradiction in criticizing Europe and opposing Brexit. It is refreshing to see a politician taking a nuanced approach to an argument. It makes his decision to oppose Brexit seem more genuine and considered.
@47 @49 Obviously there is no contradiction. E.g., I’m not a huge fan of Texas, but it doesn’t contradict the fact that I believe things would be worse (for a whole variety of reasons, both economic and political) if Texas were to secede from the US.
I don’t think the reason is that complicated. Some people are viscerally opposed to any kind of international agreement. So they don’t want the EU to exist at all. But it’s better to have a pretext for breaking. The “contradiction” is that you found a pretext but still won’t run with it.
@48 PaulBC
Irish reunification is fairly unlikely in the near term but not impossible. To get a referendum the secretary of state for Northern Ireland (a Tory with no connection to the place) needs to consider it likely that reunification will win. Sinn Fein is likely to win the next assembly election but it could be a couple more until nationalists outnumber unionists.
There’s also the issue of actually winning. Ireland has a couple of issues that could be decisive, in particular they have to pay for a lot of their healthcare (not nearly as bad as US). Sinn Fein winning in both jurisdictions though could lead to better integration and smooth the road to reunification in the medium term.
@28 Them Scots and French have always had it in for us English,don’t know why?
@44 I thought all trade from Europe and Ireland have been bypassing England?
Ferries using new routes and all that stuff.The port of Holyhead is suffering a
drastic loss of trade because of britshit..
@52 – Apparently not well enough. We certainly haven’t been having anything like what the UK has been going through, but I guess some goods either couldn’t be shipped that way, or someone didn’t think to do it.
The Vicar@31, 34,
You really don’t know as much about UK politics as you evidently think you do.
#31:
As I’ve pointed out to you before, unless he’s specifically ruled out any agreement with them, that still leaves him room to come to an arrangement short of a coalition. For example, such an arrangement as the Tories had with the DUP after the 2017 election (in return for extra cash for their province, the DUP agreed to support May’s Tories in key votes, but did not enter government, or agree to support them on matters not covered by their agreement (there’s a link to the full agreement from my link). Back in the 1970s, the Labour government of Jim Callaghan had a similar agreement with the SNP. Currently at Holyrood, the SNP and Scottish Greens have a closer arrangement, with two Green MSPs actually in government, but they don’t call it a coalition, and it leaves the Greens more leeway than a coalition would.
#34:
If you meant the constituency seats, why didn’t you say so? I think you realised you’d made an error, and are now pretending you didn’t. But in any case, it’s not at all clear the SNP would have got an “overwhelming” majority under other electoral systems. They received 47.7% of the constituency vote, and 40.3% on the regional lists. There’s no reason to take either one as the exact percentage they’d have got under some other system. Some people will have voted for them in the constituency section although they’d have preferred a Green, for example, but Greens only stood in a few constituencies, and even where they did, had no realistic chance of winning; and conversely, some people may have voted Green on the regional list because they thought the SNP stood no chance of winning regional seats, even though the SNP always ask for “both votes SNP”. But even assuming they got the former percentage, most “proportional” systems would probably have given them an overall majority but certainly not an “overwhelming” one.
@28
Vicar, I’d be interested in a reference to the cooking the books revalation – I’m based in the UK and hadnt seen that.
As for depending in part on oil revenue – Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t seem as keen.
“ The remarks contrast with those made by the first minister in Holyrood earlier this week.
She said on Tuesday that the shift away from oil and gas should happen “as quickly as possible”.
Ms Sturgeon also told MSPs she did not now think “we can continue to give the go-ahead to new oilfields”, such as the controversial Cambo development, west of Shetland.
@47 Rob @49 anna, yes I saw him speak twice during the period running up to the referendum and he was very strongly in favour of remaining. Famously “gave” the EU 7/10, taking a considered and critical view just as you point out, and very much against what a RW government would do with brexit (exactly as they have done and are doing).
It’s remarkable how thoroughly and how successfully the then-and-still ongoing hatchet job has convinced people that he was pro-leave … (õ_õ)
I was desperate for Corbyn to put his weight behind remain, and help stop Brexit, but his performance and history on the subject was extremely unconvincing. It came across as paying lip service only to many
Jeremy Corbyn voted for Britain to leave the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1975 European referendum.
Jeremy Corbyn opposed the creation of the European Union (EU) under the Maastricht Treaty – speaking and voting against it in Parliament in 1993. During the 2016 referendum campaign, Left Leave highlighted repeated speeches he made in Parliament opposing Europe during 1993.
Jeremy Corbyn voted against the Lisbon Treaty on more than one occasion in Parliament in 2008.
In 2010, Jeremy Corbyn voted against the creation of the European Union’s diplomatic service.
Jeremy Corbyn voted for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in 2011 (breaking the Labour whip to do so).
In 2011 Jeremy Corbyn also opposed the creation of the EU’s European Stability Mechanism, which helps members of the Euro in financial difficulties. (This vote is a good example of how Corbyn votes with hardcore Euro-sceptics. Only 26 other MPs joined him in voting against, and in their number are the likes of right-wing Euro-sceptics such as Peter Bone, Douglas Carswell, Bill Cash, Ian Paisley Junior and John Redwood.)
Jeremy Corbyn opposed Britain’s participation in the EU’s Banking Authority in 2012.
In 2016 his long-time left-wing ally Tariq Ali said that he was sure that if Corbyn was not Labour leader he would be campaigning for Britain to leave the EU, whilst his brother Piers Corbyn also said that Jeremy Corbyn was privately opposed to Britain’s membership of the European Union.
Jeremy Corbyn went on holiday during the 2016 referendum campaign and his office staff consistently undermined the Remain campaign. He refused to attend a key Remain campaign launch and also attacked government ministers for publicising the Remain case, saying they should also have promoted arguments in favour of Leave vote. The Director of the Remain campaign, himself a Labour member and candidate, said, “Rather than making a clear and passionate Labour case for EU membership, Corbyn took a week’s holiday in the middle of the campaign and removed pro-EU lines from his speeches”. During the referendum campaign, Leave.EU highlighted Corbyn’s attacks on Europe made in 1996.
The day after the European referendum in 2016, Jeremy Corbyn called for the immediate invocation of Article 50 – the two-year notice to leave the EU – much quicker than even Theresa May wanted.
In December 2016, Jeremy Corbyn voted in Parliament in favour of the UK leaving the EU and for the process to start no later than 31 March 2017.
Jeremy Corbyn three times voted in February 2017 in favour of the Prime Minister starting the process of leaving the European Union.
During the 2017 general election, the independent Channel 4 Factcheck service found very little difference between Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May over Europe.
In the summer of 2017, Jeremy Corbyn opposed Britain remaining in the Single Market. He even sacked from his team Labour MPs who voted in favour of membership of the Single Market.
In 2018, Jeremy Corbyn said he would try to make Brexit go ahead even if Labour won a general election before it happened.
In February 2019, Jeremy Corbyn set out how he was ready to back Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
In March 2019, writing in the Daily Mirror, Jeremy Corbyn repeated his support for Brexit, saying, “I will continue to reach out to get a decent Brexit deal”.
ajbjasus@57 I don’t have the background or time right now to fact-check, but if so, it does seem a compelling case. At best Corbyn may just not have cared very much.
Somewhat off topic: For all the grief that “neoliberals” get in the US, I personally agree with the overall trend of globalization. I think a world that is interdependent on trade will have greater overall prosperity as well as incentives to avoid war (and yes, I know that hasn’t panned out in the past). But globalization gets it from both sides. The left accurately sees it as a way to sidestep gains in labor rights by offshoring to nations with low wages and few rights (though this seems less of an issue with the EU). The right just hates “foreigners.” But I think becoming insular is no solution at all. The goal should be to promote human rights everywhere so that while trade is widespread, it happens for reasons other than doing an end run against your own nation’s laws.
@57 ajbjasus
In the 2019 election Corbyn’s Labour campaigned to renogotiate a Brexit deal and then hold a referendum between what they had negotiated and remain. This seems like the most reasonable thing they could have feasibly won with. We saw what would have happened if they had campaigned to totally stop Brexit with the Lib Dems.
The EU has its problems, not least the Common Agricultural Policy which pays farmers based on how much land they use, a perverse incentive that benefits the wealthiest and discourages setting land aside for wildlife or leaving it fallow. France’s powerful farming lobby prevents reform of it. I’d be curious what Corbyn would have negotiated. I’d never vote for Brexit myself though even if we stayed in the customs union, single market and common travel area (not a chance the EU would let that happen) because future Tory governments would use it to diverge from Europe in awful ways and it would make Irish reunification harder.
My perception is that Corbyn is a man of principle, and given his well evidenced long standing antipathy to Europe, couldn’t campaign convincingly.
The Brexit tide grew in Labour’s heartland Northern consituencies – that where the effort needed to go.
ajbjasus @57:
You’re quoting Will Straw. From redpepper;
It is impossible to get a yes/no answer to “is the brexit transition period over” from Google.
The video in 33 says the brexit transition is still in progress. Therefore the video is old. If he wasn’t dull and talky I might have had the patience to see if it was still relevant and what he will …eventually…get around to saying is relevant.
But I don’t.
#34 @The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs)
(about the Scottish Parliament)
Interesting – that sounds a lot like the German two-vote system.