This answer at Quora a few days ago makes a point, in the third paragraph, I hadn't fully grasped. There was no facility to comment on the answer, so I am unable to ask permission from the writer to use it here; I'm confident he would not object. I especially like the imagery in the last paragraph.
Question
Was Brexit ever going to be easy and uncomplicated?
Answer by
Brian Coughlan, QRAFT Solution Expert at Volvo Trucks (2011-present)
Yes, in a funny kind of way.
You see, although the current deal is the result of 2 years of agony, and it disappoints almost everyone, it could have been completed in the first month after the referendum.
Because, it was always going to be this way: be part of the EU or be it’s vassal - this much the Brexiteers have gotten right. That even if the EU disappears, the UK - if it doesn’t fall to pieces due to the economic havoc brexit will wreak - will be the vassal of whatever nearby federation absorbs the fragments of the EU. That in the 21st Century this is the fate staring every country with less than 100 million citizens in the face: join voluntarily with someone or have a nearby economic colossus numbering their citizens in the hundreds of millions - the EU, China, the US, India - tell you what to do.
How you leave doesn't matter — other than the amount of damage it does — crash out, EFTA or Canada Cubed, it's all the same. You'll still be a vassal of the EU. This is a fundamentally pointless exercise. The economic gravity the EU exerts is Hotel California strength: you can checkout, but you can never leave. A fact - that even I, as pro EU as they come - had not fully grasped.
The worst thing of all? It’s not even a plot. That there is no conspiracy. It’s just fucking arithmetic. The implacable numerical reality for a country of 65 million in a world of 7,500 million+ and single states now numbering their increasingly well fed, educated and ambitious citizens in the billions.
In a wierd way BREXIT has strengthened the EU, as we watch the UK’s miserable, desperate and weakening struggles to square the circle that BREXIT was always doomed to be. This process has inadvertently highlighted the substantial value of the EU and the terrible loss that leaving represents. Comic-Tragic.
And yet, if someone had had the guts to tell the UK voters this, and convinced them, this could have all been over in a weekend by strangling this misbegotten, hideous child at birth.
Now, I fear, it’s too late. The bastard monster is up on its mishapen little hooves and trotting about the place. The UK will just have to go through the crucible and see what survives to the other side.
Agree, I've never understood even the referendum for this. Madness. Let's hope it all ends without undue suffering. I know there's egg on everyone's faces. My interest lies in a United Ireland at last and that is edging closer :)
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I was surprised in the first place, but still didn't understand why they just had to go through with it. Let this be a lesson to everyone else.
ReplyDeleteWisewebwoman ~ Yes, uniting Ireland could, possibly, be the single beginnings of 'something good' emerging from the abomination that Brexit has turned into. We can hope.
ReplyDeleteJono ~ Me too, especially as the referendum was "advisory" only, not binding - but Mrs May never mentions that! Agreed!
ReplyDeleteLiam Fox, Michael Gove, and Co can tell you why Brexit happened, but of course they won't. It all dates back to the 1990's and 'Atlantic Bridge'. Google those two words and you may be surprised at what turns up. Wikipedia has information on it, or you can read one of my posts on it at Sparrow Chat:
ReplyDeletehttps://sparrowchat.com/atlantic-bridge-dead-or-merely-undercover/
The UK Tory Party is no longer comprised of old brandy-swilling gentry, over the last decades it's been infiltrated by a bunch of far-right pseudo-anarchists, bank-rolled by billionaires and affiliated to the Republican Tea Party in the US, and UKIP in the UK. Their aim is to complete what began with 'Atlantic Bridge' - a coalescing of US/UK commerce, health services, and defence industries with the sole advantage of making a few very wealthy people much, much, richer and more powerful. If it happens it will make many, many, ordinary people much, much, poorer.
BREXIT is the key to its success. The UK has to be jemmied away from the EU for the ideals of 'Atlantic Bridge' to come to pass.
There's a lot of skulduggery been going on beneath the radar of UK politics for quite some time. David Cameron was under pressure from the far right of the Tory Party to go for the referendum. The machinery was in place to hijack it using digital technology - Cambridge Analytica (and others) supplied the know how. Cameron expected to win the referendum. Members of his own party betrayed him and left no alternative but for him to resign. The right expected to get their own man into the top job, Boris Johnson was to be the stooge, but Gove stabbed him in the back at the last minute and went for it himself. He lost to Theresa May, who was not 'one of them'. For the last two years the Tory right has been trying to guide May to do their bidding, but she's done it her way. Now comes the showdown. This week Parliament will vote on the BREXIT she has negotiated and they'll likely kick it out. If so, all hell will break out and we could have a second referendum. If we do, I just hope the British people have learned enough sense over the last two years to sink BREXIT once and for all. As they say - watch this space!
RJ Adams ~ Thank you for this, and for the link, RJ! It does throw yet another searchlight beam on the skulduggery involved in the Brexit Monster. What a great pity that the British people, in sufficient number, didn't realise they were being played. Mind manipulation is a dangerous weapon! If 'austerity' hadn't hit so many of them so hard, I suspect they'd have been more clear-headed about Brexit at the time of the referendum.
ReplyDeleteI guess, at the bottom of it all, ye olde class stuggle continues. The ordinary people do not have any leaders strong enough to get into power and look after 'em. Sigh.