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EU Referendum (Read 279387 times)

TobyD

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#1025 Re: EU Referendum
May 28, 2019, 11:11:39 pm
Interesting that if you are  a Holocaust denier the Labour Party will mutter about ‘education’ and prevaricate for years but if you’re a Blairite who votes for an unequivocally remain party you can be expelled in a single weekend:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/28/labour-expels-alastair-campbell-from-party

It’s all about values, innit.

Indeed it is.  The values of Milne, Murray, Abbott etc al are that none must say a word against the glorious leader for he is incapable of being wrong. Corbyns values are that he likes manhole covers and his allotment . The expulsion of Alistair Campbell is a symptom of an insecure paranoid party  trying to freeload it's way into government without really having a position on by far and away the most important issue in British politics at the moment. 

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#1026 Re: EU Referendum
May 29, 2019, 07:43:33 am
Interesting article by Daniel Finkelstein in the Times  today,  saying more or less that we're heading for another referendum of some sort whatever happens. 

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#1027 Re: EU Referendum
May 29, 2019, 02:31:15 pm
It's all about the timing..

Big Red Bus-ted 😉:



.. well not quite yet. If this one has any prospect of sticking, then surely it will bring a tidal wave of similar action.

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#1028 Re: EU Referendum
June 01, 2019, 11:27:28 am
Some general thoughts.

Farage is not a fascist or a nazi. He is many unpleasant things but not them. I think it's an important distinction to make. Those terms are becoming devalued by being applied to anybody to the right of the Conservatives. As we all know, fascists and the nazis were so much worse than that.

To people saying Farage hasn't reached his opinions through reason or logic. Well, he has. Again, he just holds different values to you and me. The point is is that he has chosen to argue the case using the most powerful tools at his disposal - people's emotions, gut feelings, and fears. Like it or not, would you expect anything else?

Appealing to a sense of reason among people at this stage is nonsensical. It's an identity issue and people likely made up their minds about it years ago. How many people on this thread can honestly say that, when they heard there was going to be a referendum, they stopped and thought about it and came to the best decision on the balance of evidence? I instinctively knew that I was for Remain and then was smugly pleased when the evidence fell in my favour. It's exactly the same for Leavers, but they choose to look at different sets of evidence (i.e greater sovereignty, better accountability of government, greater immigration control etc etc).

Apologies for going back to this, but I think it’s important.
Not trying to attack you Will, your point is valid, but...

One of my German friends shared this. They have very definite attitudes to this question, over there:


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#1031 Re: EU Referendum
June 07, 2019, 07:09:03 pm
That newstatesman survey accurately reflects my views. I'm most in favour of May's deal (or something similar); would prefer no deal over 'soft brexit' (i.e. customs union); I'd also prefer remain over 'soft brexit'. If we never leave I won't lose any sleep. If we end up out of the EU but in the customs union I'd be majorly pissed off.

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#1032 Re: EU Referendum
June 07, 2019, 08:04:21 pm
The evident success of Project Fear is proof positive that money speaks loudly. There is still much water to flow under the Brexit bridge. Time will tell.

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#1033 Re: EU Referendum
June 07, 2019, 09:01:43 pm
The evident success of Project Fear is proof positive that money speaks loudly. There is still much water to flow under the Brexit bridge. Time will tell.

Dan Cheetham, is that you? Is this another UFCK thing!

TobyD

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#1034 Re: EU Referendum
June 08, 2019, 09:39:49 am
The evident success of Project Fear is proof positive that money speaks loudly. There is still much water to flow under the Brexit bridge. Time will tell.
Dan Cheetham, is that you? Is this another UFCK thing!

No, I think its Donald Trump.  It makes no sense whatsoever,  and contains mostly words of one syllable. 

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#1036 Re: EU Referendum
June 08, 2019, 10:16:19 am
That newstatesman survey accurately reflects my views. I'm most in favour of May's deal (or something similar); would prefer no deal over 'soft brexit' (i.e. customs union); I'd also prefer remain over 'soft brexit'. If we never leave I won't lose any sleep. If we end up out of the EU but in the customs union I'd be majorly pissed off.

Then I’m not sure you’ve fully realised the implications of May’s deal.

The Irish border is the key. May’s deal commits to keeping that open. I think almost everyone agrees there is no magical technical solution and finding one would take many years. To keep the border open therefore *requires* a customs union and a single market arrangement between NI and the EU.

In other words, the backstop is more of a “minimum degree of alignment” than an insurance policy.

So May’s deal implies either the UK stays in something like the CU and SM, or a regulatory split between the NI and the mainland. The latter is politically impossible for the conservative and unionist party.

In fact, if you want to stay out of the CU and SM, then I think you can either delay leaving until a technical solution is found, or throw the Good Friday Agreement under the bus.

I reckon I agree with your position that leaving the EU to remain in the CU and SM is a really stupid idea. The trouble is that the Irish border is the thorn in the side of those who wish to leave these institutions.

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#1037 Re: EU Referendum
June 08, 2019, 10:23:06 am
That newstatesman survey accurately reflects my views. I'm most in favour of May's deal (or something similar); would prefer no deal over 'soft brexit' (i.e. customs union); I'd also prefer remain over 'soft brexit'. If we never leave I won't lose any sleep. If we end up out of the EU but in the customs union I'd be majorly pissed off.

Then I’m not sure you’ve fully realised the implications of May’s deal.

The Irish border is the key. May’s deal commits to keeping that open. I think almost everyone agrees there is no magical technical solution and finding one would take many years. To keep the border open therefore *requires* a customs union and a single market arrangement between NI and the EU.

In other words, the backstop is more of a “minimum degree of alignment” than an insurance policy.

So May’s deal implies either the UK stays in something like the CU and SM, or a regulatory split between the NI and the mainland. The latter is politically impossible for the conservative and unionist party.

In fact, if you want to stay out of the CU and SM you either accept the above, or throw the Good Friday Agreement under the bus.

I reckon I agree with your position that leaving the EU to remain in the CU and SM is a really stupid idea. The trouble is that the Irish border is the thorn in the side of those who wish to leave these institutions.

I agree Stu. Except that I'd qualify this by saying the trouble is that those who are adamant that we must leave the EU haven't aligned themselves with the inescapable fact that it's either a stupid economically harmful gesture with little or no benefits,  or that it will weaken or possibly break up the UK.  Its somewhat ironic that what has become a Conservative obsession is about the least conservative thing a government could do. 

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#1038 Re: EU Referendum
June 08, 2019, 11:27:16 am
That newstatesman survey accurately reflects my views. I'm most in favour of May's deal (or something similar); would prefer no deal over 'soft brexit' (i.e. customs union); I'd also prefer remain over 'soft brexit'. If we never leave I won't lose any sleep. If we end up out of the EU but in the customs union I'd be majorly pissed off.

Then I’m not sure you’ve fully realised the implications of May’s deal.

The Irish border is the key. May’s deal commits to keeping that open. I think almost everyone agrees there is no magical technical solution and finding one would take many years. To keep the border open therefore *requires* a customs union and a single market arrangement between NI and the EU.

In other words, the backstop is more of a “minimum degree of alignment” than an insurance policy.

So May’s deal implies either the UK stays in something like the CU and SM, or a regulatory split between the NI and the mainland. The latter is politically impossible for the conservative and unionist party.

In fact, if you want to stay out of the CU and SM, then I think you can either delay leaving until a technical solution is found, or throw the Good Friday Agreement under the bus.

I reckon I agree with your position that leaving the EU to remain in the CU and SM is a really stupid idea. The trouble is that the Irish border is the thorn in the side of those who wish to leave these institutions.


I broadly agree with all of that and you're wrong I do recognise the implications of May's deal. If a solution to an open Irish border takes many years then it takes many years. I don't think anyone sensible who voted leave believes the border issue won't take time, effort and ingenuity. I think it's worth it, you don't. Happy to differ. I did btw patrol that border for 10 years in my late teens and twenties, twice being attacked for being there. I have more than an inkling of what's involved.


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#1039 Re: EU Referendum
June 08, 2019, 11:39:39 am
Sorry Pete,

I didn’t mean to imply you don’t understand the border issues. I was just surprised to see you describe a CU as your worst option but May’s deal as your preferred one. Given the border issues I see May’s deal as inevitably leading to a CU/SM relationship in the future.


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#1040 Re: EU Referendum
June 08, 2019, 11:59:27 am
Sorry Pete,

I didn’t mean to imply you don’t understand the border issues. I was just surprised to see you describe a CU as your worst option but May’s deal as your preferred one. Given the border issues I see May’s deal as inevitably leading to a CU/SM relationship in the future.

It is the only solution, hence every (very senior and expert) Civil servant  tasked with finding a solution (or the future possibility of one) has resigned.

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#1041 Re: EU Referendum
June 08, 2019, 12:50:19 pm
Sorry Pete,

I didn’t mean to imply you don’t understand the border issues. I was just surprised to see you describe a CU as your worst option but May’s deal as your preferred one. Given the border issues I see May’s deal as inevitably leading to a CU/SM relationship in the future.

I'm hopeful that a CU/SM would be transitory. Others believe the CU/SM would be permanent. If it turned out to be permanent then I don't believe that would be a situation the population or government would accept - through general elections either we'd end up back in the EU as full members, or an agreement to the border would eventually be worked out through necessity. Until a withdrawal agreement is voted through and the next steps begin it's all speculation.
Also, while I'm not in favour of a permanent CU I do think the possibility exists for a bit more flexibility to be had within a CU than is 'advertised'. We'll see. 

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#1042 Re: EU Referendum
June 14, 2019, 11:20:13 pm
An interesting perspective: Brexit Britain is wallowing in dangerous talk of national humiliation

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/14/brexit-britain-national-humiliation-uk-eu?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

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#1043 Re: EU Referendum
June 20, 2019, 11:00:29 pm
Went to a talk by Ivan Rogers tonight. Excellent, really illuminating to hear him talk about his years in the civil service working for Major through to May and what he understood of the Brexit process.

I’d recommend catching him if you can, doing a tour around UK. He has a book out -9 lessons from Brexit. All in all, fascinating albeit not encouraging, though the ‘policy based evidence making’ did amuse me.

TobyD

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#1044 Re: EU Referendum
July 15, 2019, 11:20:02 pm
An article by Alistair Campbell, nothing totally novel but concisely put:

From Trump to Boris Johnson, we’re moving from post-truth to post-shame

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/15/populism-boris-johnson-brexit-trump?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

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#1045 Re: EU Referendum
July 17, 2019, 08:15:55 pm
Really? An article on 'post-truth and post-shame'. By Alistair Campbell. 
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Are we also post-satire then? Certainly must be post-hypocrisy.

Alistair Campbell - political spin-meister; chief twister of facts to suits his boss's agenda, master of airbrushing nefarious behaviour.
Who played a central role in one of the most destructive political lies in recent memory - the 'sexing up' of a UK intelligence dossier on Iraq which was central to manipulating public and parliament sentiment to go into a poorly planned and unnecessary war which had disastrous consequences.
Even the term 'sexing up' is classic Campbell airbrushing of nasty behaviour - in reality sexing up meant twisting truths into falsehoods to make a case for an unjustified war.

The public have short memories, as cunts like Campbell well know. I think it's a sick joke to see that lying bastard opining on 'post truth and post shame' in politics. I suppose he's one of the best qualified to comment. If anyone could be said to be a figurehead for the birth of modern post-truth politics it's Campbell.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/10/alastair-campbell-iraq-dossier-inquiry
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/britain-loves-war-criminal/


Introduction from open democracy:

'Is there any better demonstration of our ability to normalise the unthinkable than the continued omnipresence of Alastair Campbell in British public life? Ten years and one day ago, on 24 September 2002, the British Government released its propagandistic dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. A year later, Campbell was obliged to resign, in effect over the role he played in its composition - the publicist had become 'the story'. But this was not seen as a moral issue relating to the substance of the assault on British democracy he masterminded, but as a technical slip that could happen to 'any' public relations operative.

Since then, the public have had to endure his presence on Top Gear; on Richard & Judy; on Newsnight; Question Time; Comic Relief’s edition of The Apprentice; Sky News; the BBC News; “This Week”; the Channel 4 News; in Esquire; hosting Have I Got News for You; mentoring aspiring orators on BBC 2’s “The Speaker”; teaching politics in Channel 4’s “Jamie’s Dream School”; presenting Panorama; as a columnist for the Times; and so merrily on. So frequently has the BBC put Campbell on air that in January last year it was forced to address the issue publicly, in response to a rising tide of public complaint. If you knew nothing else about him, you’d assume he was some kind of national treasure.

Yet this man was intimately involved in one of the most abominable crimes of the twenty-first century. The illegal invasion of Iraq – which Campbell played a key role in facilitating – may have left a million people dead in four years. Millions more were forced to flee their homes and pushed into destitution. It led to the routine torture of prisoners and killing of innocent people by occupying forces. It led to the unleashing of US-sponsored death squads – a key component of its “Salvador option” for pacifying the country – across Iraq. It led to torture on a scale worse than under its former dictator. It led to an indiscriminate attack on a major city that included – in one of the cruelest ironies of the conflict – the use of banned chemical weapons. In the wake of the latter, Fallujah, a city the size of Leeds, is now experiencing a level of birth defects worse than post-war Hiroshima. In the words of US marine Ross Caputi, who took part in the attack on Fallujah, the Iraq war was “one long atrocity”.

If Campbell had propagandised for a Milosevic or a Hussein, it is unlikely he would now be exchanging chummy quips with Jeremy Clarkson. At best he would perhaps, like Iraq’s Information Minister “comical Ali”, be the object of derision; at worst he would be regarded with utter disgust. Instead, because the British mainstream media taken as a whole can't face up to the realities of a war in which it was largely complicit a remarkable transformation takes place in which the perpetrator becomes the injured party. A perfect example can be found in this month's Guardian of 8 September. It's splash called the pre-war propaganda simply “The dossier that killed trust” – as though Britain’s self-regarding political elite were the Iraq war’s primary victims, rather than its perpetrators. One interviewee was Charles Falconer, himself complicit in the crime as a supportive member of Blair’s cabinet. The record of the other, Menzies Campbell, is distinguished by his opposition to his party’s presence at the 2003 anti-war march – alongside people of all political stripes – lest they be tainted with “anti-Americanism”.

Perhaps “criminal” seems a strong label for a Labour Party spin doctor. Yet, under international law, a criminal is what he is. As George Monbiot documented in some detail earlier this month, not only was there no legal justification for the Iraq war, but in private Blair’s Government freely acknowledged as much. Campbell’s involvement was not – as far as we know – military or managerial in nature; but legally this in no way excuses him. The Principles applied at Nuremberg in 1945-6 make clear that “complicity in the commission of a crime against peace … is a crime under international law”. A “crime against peace”, these Principles state, means one of two things:

“(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances”; or

“(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).”

That Campbell was actively complicit in such a “common plan or conspiracy” has now been established beyond reasonable doubt. Presented below is just one sample of the evidence: a brief run-down of the established role of Campbell and colleagues in the months before the September 2002 dossier’s publication.'
« Last Edit: July 17, 2019, 08:22:40 pm by petejh »

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#1046 Re: EU Referendum
July 17, 2019, 11:27:38 pm
16 years to the very day since the death of  Dr David Kelly.


14 May 1944 - 17 July 2003

"Moving from post-truth to post-shame" indeed. Some got there a long time ago.


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#1047 Re: EU Referendum
July 17, 2019, 11:42:40 pm
Pete, I'm not exactly a Campbell cheerleader, but that piece of writing is full of holes, massive exaggerations and plain inaccuracies. Iraq would have happened with of without Campbell. Inappropriate reference to Nazis pretty much marks it out as a valueless rant to me. It is no more relevant than when people compare Trump or most other people to the Nazis, and I really dislike him but he is not Hitler.

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#1048 Re: EU Referendum
July 18, 2019, 08:14:08 am
.... when people compare Trump or most other people to the Nazis, and I really dislike him but he is not Hitler.

Though the ‘send her home’ chants at his rally yesterday were chilling.

He’s clearly not ideologically driven as hitler may have been, but there are an increasing number of similarities in tactics and rhetoric.

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#1049 Re: EU Referendum
July 18, 2019, 09:05:41 am
Iraq would have happened with of without Campbell. Inappropriate reference to Nazis pretty much marks it out as a valueless rant to me. It is no more relevant than when people compare Trump or most other people to the Nazis, and I really dislike him but he is not Hitler.

Well done for arguing against what nobody said, ever.

It's beyond debate that Campbell altered facts contained in intelligence reports - that's putting it gently. Iraq may have happened anyway because the US were going in come what may, but the UK may not have joined the shit-show if parliament and the public weren't fed a load of untruths. 



 

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