Brexit Political Discussion Thread

[BING_XI_LAO]

While Brexit is relevant, this is happening at a really weird and unusual moment for the global economy. It's not just Britain running short on fuel, the Chinese even managed to run short on coal (I lost a lot of respect for the CPC because of it, after thinking they were doing better than the US with its California and Texas blackout incidents). You have lots of printed money, inflation, and labor shortages all over the shop. This is more like a "20 months into the lockdowns/easing of lockdowns" thing.

Also in the fairly rural corner of Britain I'm in, we at the local petrol station were scoffing at the shortage as media-induced for days until it finally hit our area, at which point we just brought in a £30 fuel transaction limit and still haven't run out. So without denying it outright, there are both global and media hysteria causes, alongside the HGV labour supply issue.

[Krill]

This is what leave voters voted for though. Higher wages due to less pressure due to competition for the jobs.

Which could have been accomplished without leaving the EU. Measures could have been taken within the framework of the EU and unilaterally by the UK to reduce the reliance on imported cheap foreign labour. Of course, that cheap labour kept prices suppressed. Now wages are going up, but so too is inflation. Real-term income isn't actually increasing.

Maybe eventually things will balance out, but it wasn't done cleanly, or with any kind of long-term plan on the part of the government, and the short-term damage is already happening.

And it's more likely that business pressure will force the government to further expand and extend visa schemes for workers across every sector.

Really important point here: even if this was possible (there are aspects that I disagree with), this was not within the power of the voters themselves to enact, only politicians.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

It's pretty rich to whine about the lying media driving panic buying hysteria when that same media was so helpful in juicing up you hogs to vote "leave".

[MJW (ya that one)]

Biggest Union, Unite, backs PR. Labour gives up and will stop stealing siphoning votes from the Lib Dems (they cannot beat the tories because UK is a right-wing country but Lib Dems can). Not backing PR costed them Brexit and probably Scotland. Blair should have put PR ahead of the good friday agreement because with PR you would be able to get good friday agreement at a later date easily. And don't say people dying matters. The troubles only costed 3.5k deaths while tories killed 130k in a single goverment, from the left's perspective: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/201...ppr-report

[BING_XI_LAO]

Biggest Union, Unite, backs PR. Labour gives up and will stop stealing siphoning votes from the Lib Dems (they cannot beat the tories because UK is a right-wing country but Lib Dems can). Not backing PR costed them Brexit and probably Scotland. Blair should have put PR ahead of the good friday agreement because with PR you would be able to get good friday agreement at a later date easily. And don't say people dying matters. The troubles only costed 3.5k deaths while tories killed 130k in a single goverment, from the left's perspective: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/201...ppr-report

What's Unite's thinking in backing PR? Proportional representation right? Wouldn't they be stronger by sticking to the two-party paradigm because they control Labour?

[MJW (ya that one)]

Biggest Union, Unite, backs PR. Labour gives up and will stop stealing siphoning votes from the Lib Dems (they cannot beat the tories because UK is a right-wing country but Lib Dems can). Not backing PR costed them Brexit and probably Scotland. Blair should have put PR ahead of the good friday agreement because with PR you would be able to get good friday agreement at a later date easily. And don't say people dying matters. The troubles only costed 3.5k deaths while tories killed 130k in a single goverment, from the left's perspective: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/201...ppr-report

What's Unite's thinking in backing PR? Proportional representation right? Wouldn't they be stronger by sticking to the two-party paradigm because they control Labour?

Labour has no chance of getting an absolute majority anyway. So they still have to work with lib dems and not having PR just makes it easier for Tories to win. I think getting curb stomped by SNP made Unite give up.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Interesting, you'd think the worm would turn and Labour would *eventually* win an election again. I guess the Corbyn vs Blairite struggle and the loss of Scotland's seats are quite long-term disadvantages though.

[Gustaran]

This f*cking Brexit is so annoying... In recent years around Christmas I had bought a lot of nice items from UK sellers on Etsy.
Turns out that since the beginning of this year, all these purchases are now subject to custom duties. I just had to pay an additional 11 Euros customs and fees for a 33 Euro item from the UK.

[Charriu]

The lettuce has won!

[Krill]

Sunak will be elected unopposed by MPs. And the UK is fucked. And if he declined, then with Gove dropping out, we're fucked.

We just need a GE now but the Tory party is hellbent on destroying everything.