I have already mentioned this morning a number of issues that I have been involved in where it turned out that what I was arguing long before the case was proven turned out to be right. I think it is safe to add another topic to that list since I did nit mention it there. That is Brexit.
in 2016 it was not certain that Brexit would fail. But, alongside others of sound mind and reason, it appeared glaringly obvious to me that it would. So, I said so, and then stuck to that idea.
I now note that in just the last few days further admissions of failure on this issue have come from our government.
What we have now learned is that the European CE safety mark is to remain in use in the UK. The idea that we might create an alternative has been dropped as expensive, divisive and irrelevant as any product that was to be exported to Europe would still need a CE mark.
Today we also learn that import controls on food from the EU, due to be introduced in October, are to be delayed again because the cost that they would impose would impact on inflation. So, firstly, they don't work. And secondly, they are inefficient because they impose costs, like just about everything else to do with Brexit.
With respect to all those who thought Brexit was a good idea, “we told you it wasn't” seems to be the right response. It is, in fact, an outright disaster that has just two remaining enthusiastic supporters. Unfortunately, they are Keir Starmer and the Conservative Party.
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It is very good news that CE is to be be retained. I hate seeing the UKCA mark on things, as it constanly reminds me of Brexit. Hopefully it will disappear completely in the future, and just have CE markings like before.
I think trading standards officers will be delighted as well. Having worked with CE marks all their working lives they do know what to look out for.
BREXIT is much more than about BREXIT itself.
It is a symptom of something extremely disturbing about the modern Tory party, its addiction to money, its neoliberal ideological streak and the weakness of our political structures in the UK.
And the real kicker is that NOTHING has changed – there has been no healing, no admission of guilt – no real look to see if anyone is guilty bar a few brave souls outside of the politics that created it !!
My belief is that the establishment does not want to tackle it because the amount of mud on their faces would be considerable. There are so many failings to be revealed and pored over – dirty stuff. I think we will be denied this opportunity.
It’s all been left as it is. And until we’ve had a thorough look at it and ascribed some accountability, BREXIT will not be tackled.
Hang on PSR, which ‘establishment’ is that? The one that the likes of Farage moan about, getting in the way of Brexit and making Coutts de-bank him?!
Academia and the civil service?!!
More seriously, I think that the terms elite and establishment have become good examples of Lakoff’s ‘framing’. Language more traditionally used by the Left has been co-opted by the Right and turned against it. At the very least it causes confusion which is so often a goal of propagandists from the Right.
I think we have to be more targeted and specific about who we mean. Large sections of the City, their enablers in the law and accountancy, and the fossil fuel interests. The very wealthy and perhaps the complacent.
Robin
What do we call what we cannot see?
We can see and feel the results, but we are not privy to the clandestine meetings and emails are we?
What’s your point? Sod language or labels – look at the outputs and then work backwards.
What I know is this: BREXIT has taken huge amounts of money to bring to reality. Only such huge amounts of money could bring what was a minority view to such power and influence (with also a dose of opportunism – aka Boris).
Those doing this are amongst the wealthy/establishment – whatever you want to call them.
I wager that this group themselves are divided about it too. And now they want to conveniently close the door on it and deny it ever happened because it would reveal the snakes in the grass within their own group and means that EVERYONE in that group (remain or leave) will be open to scrutiny – and that is why a knight of the realm like Sir Kid Starver is going along with it. The rich/establishment/whatever are going to close ranks instead. Because that is where it all started.
We’ve had lots of clues about how BREXIT came into being, but no full exposition yet, and no recourse for the damage and caused nor criminality involved.
Frankly, the level of criminality and the damage is far in excess of any debate about what labels to use to describe those who got us to this point.
For they are beneath contempt.
And they owe all of us who have been harmed and lied to big time.
Yes, it’s indeed bizarre, how successful the framing of the word “elite” has been. Such that Farage can now complain about the “elite” stopping him getting a bank account for multi-millionaires, and he somehow doesn’t count as being part of that same group. I guess he’s just a bog standard millionaire then, rather than the more elite types of millionaire. I always thought when he said he used to be a “metals trader” that he was hoping his working class followers heard “scrap dealer.”
I’m liking the idea of Farage as a scrap merchant – Rodney in a posh suit and a car with 4 wheels!
If there was a negative version of a Peerage, he would be top of my list of nominations for the damage he has done in so many ways.
I share every bit of your anger PSR, and resentment at those who have done so much damage to the country. However language really does matter and the way in which Labour insist on playing in Tory territory is a good example of what Lakoff talks about.
I think we can be quite specific about where the problems and causes lie and hence should be targeting them. Generic terms like elites and establishment that are thrown around by both sides don’t help. Focus our energies on large sections of the City, the ultra rich, fossil fuel companies, their mouthpieces in the media and their stooges that make up today’s Tory party. Saves energy (in all senses) and that’s where most change needs to happen.
Keep up the contributions- I always appreciate them!
Starmer’s problems are a result of seeking to win power without doing the persuasion necessary to convince the electorate.
A focus group around the referendum-time decided **for** Brexit. He nailed his colours to that mast most particularly and precisely, and exceedingly publicly. He now can’t back down – as he can do, and is doing, on his “pledges” that were woolly enough to bear reshaping. I feel as if he isn’t even putting “The Question” to the test any more.
But he only got the job from the outcome of a focus group (Dan Jarvis, as an ex-Army officer, was the first choice), so he is always going to be in thrall to them – and to the apparatchiks who assemble them.
Hell in a handcart.
I really think Kier Starmer, should do the right thing for the benefit of our country and its democracy and fall on his sword to make way for another who is more suitable.
It will hardly be democratic, and considering that a healthy majority consider Brexit to be a mistake, by having the two main parties supporting Brexit at the next general election, thereby preventing the views of the majority from being taken into consideration.
I am, and always have been, a pacifist. Aged 7 I pointed out that if all the soldiers had refused to fight there would not have been a war. I am also 100% against capital punishment. If it is wrong to kill (which I believe it is) how can the state kill?
I am, therefore a little worried that I have seriously considered holding the sword onto which I think Sir Kid Starver should fall. Literally. I won’t discuss what I think should happen to the past and present leadership of the Conservative party, murderers all of them.
Since when did Keir Starmer do democracy? He doesn’t understand it. It’s my shit or I’ll do a McCarthy number on you. This is the elite fascist way that’s turned Great Britain into the Greatly Brain-Washed by the Greatly Greedy! Look at a Starmer supporter no idea what he has to offer by way of serious policies that will get the country out of the mess it’s in. Very much the Greatly Gormless in some sort of groupie trance!
Why can’t he back down/backtrack on Brexit? He seems to be able to do just that on a myriad of other policy areas!
The Dirty Digger, Murdoch, won’t let him.
Either that, or he’s just too inept. There’s no political intellect behind much of what he’s done since he became leader.
It does seem that whichever party is in power we are edging closer to the EU… CE and food controls being the latest moves. Clearly, the Tories need to do this “under cover” but why can’t Labour be more open about it? Party members, MPs, even the voters at large want at least closer relations, probably Single Market membership and possibly full re-entry. What’s stopping them?
Well, imagine if the Labour manifest promised re-entry on original terms (although we know that might be possible). Polls on the subject suggest a majority would be in favour…. but it would probably lose the election.
The Brexit vote is highly motivated (ie they WILL turn out). It is awkwardly (for a re-joiner perspective) distributed – ie. re-joiners votes are piled high in urban safe Labour seats. Re-joiners are younger and (at the risk of generalisation) less likely to turn out.
So, there is a dilemma for Starmer… but he could at least say “we need a better relationship with the EU; clearly the Tories can’t deliver that – we can”.
PS I am very conscious that all my political posts come across as a Labour apologist. I want more from them, too – but recalling years of 1992 to 1997 makes me shudder. Hoping they change tack once in power may be wishful thinking…. but it better then a Tory win.
Clive Parry, I’m on the “wishful” thinking side of the fence too, although it’s a wish based lon belief. We’re in the minority on here, but minorities have an equal say in democracy.
I don’t tend to associate Keir Starmer with definate policies these days, he’s certainly more clear about what he won’t do. So why, then, decide to go pro-brexit when the numbers of supporters are dwindling?
One argument is that it is government’s role to do what is best for us rather than what we want, interest rates fall into that catergory (i do not agree with the rises). If that argument is true then why persist with Brexit when it is quite clearly not the best thing for the country?
If I am allowed two bites of the cherry…
If you want to see Labour’s economic plan in detail, don’t look at the Party’s website. Go instead to the Labour Together site.
https://labourtogether.uk/
Labour Together is a curious beast, Companies House shows it is classified as ‘not political’, and it has this year shed its Labour directors. But the website tells a different story – it is claiming to be writing Labour’s policies after framing the take-away from the 2019 GE result, calling themselves centre-Left, and determined to eradicate what it calls the Hard Left from Labour.
It is very much under the radar of most ordinary Labour members, I would suggest. It was the instigator of the Redditch focus group that gave us Starmer, incidentally. It scares the bejabus out of me. But that’s by the bye.
Reeves has published the 33 pages of her economic manifesto on Labour Together, not on the Party’s site. On the European Union (page 30) she says that, **avoiding the Single Market and Free Movement**, Labour will:
“Use the 2025 UK-EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement (re)negotiations to reduce trading frictions on food, agricultural, medical and vetinarial (sp?) goods, and strengthen mutual recognition of standards and qualifications.”
No Single Market? No Free Movement? Good luck with that!
Any group that has Wes Streeting in it is a disaster anyway. And who on earth is Josh Simons? Our Labour party being organised by a Harvard research fellow who was one of the first to sound the alarm about Corbyn’s antisemitism?
https://www.joshsimons.org/
I think we’d all be happier with Corbyn rather than Kid Starver. That appears to have been forgotten about now, by the way.
Their website starts with four quotes. The first is Lucy Powell who Richard , quite rightly, criticised for her ‘there is no money left’ speech.
Labour Together started life as an anti-Corbyn front organisation after they realised that Progress was toxic because of it’s Blairite connotations. Dig a little deaper and I’m sure you will also find Luke Akehurt’s fingerprints all over it, as if the association with Streeting and Powell was not bad enough
Stewart
I did a paper on Labour Together, examining its origins, in 2020.
2015:
8 May: Miliband resigned.
3 June: Corbyn declared interest in a nomination.
9 June: Common Good Labour Ltd (aka Labour for the Common Good) registered by Tristram Hunt and Chuka Umunna.
1 September: name changed to Labour Together Ltd.
12 September: Corbyn elected.
2016:
31 March: Cruddas, Nandy, Reed (MPs – resigned from LT in 2023) and Sir Trevor Chinn appointed as directors of Labour Together.
https://labourlist.org/2019/12/labour-together-launches-commission-to-learn-from-ge-2019/
What I sadly failed to find was any visible pawprint of Akehurst, although he was working for BICOM with Chinn. (Maurice Glasman took Common Good Labour into Blue Labour.)
Brexit: a s***storm encased in economic disaster implemented by a clusterf***-worshipping Zombie elite.
I think Starmer is scared of being crucified by the populist press (possibly a rational position!). Murdoch & co absolutely do not want the UK in the EU, and will print anything to manipulate their readership away from voting for anyone with a pro-Europe position.
They are extremely skilled at that kind of political marketing.
But there is a market *for* it. Unfortunately many of the people I know are still staunchly anti EU (more even than they are for Brexit). This obviously has to do with the demographic I live in (elderly, lower middle and working class) but they are people who vote.
I understand why the demographic of those who wished to leave the EU is often referred to, but you can’t ignore the large number of those under 50 who voted to leave. I well remember a young man in South Wales, the son of a farmer and with young children of his own, confidently saying that “we can just walk away“. In fact, the Welsh vote is usually completely ignored in these discussions. Research that’s been done on that suggests that, despite the large number of EU flags flying, people did not believe that they had received any benefit. I suppose if you don’t live in Wales, you’re not interested in Wales and it’s just easier to gloss over all that. Another man I vividly recall was in his 40s and voted leave because he wanted to give Cameron a kicking and didn’t think it would happen – a lot of people I have come across voted leave thinking it wouldn’t actually happen. I could go on with more examples. It’s lazy simply to describe those of a certain age or class as voting leave/remain. There is a much difference between cities and rural areas.
I also told two of my Brexiter friends that they were wrong, during a walkers’ lunch at our local a day or so before the vote in 2016.
Like, you, I continue to feel ever more strongly as the evidence piles up (and you provide two good examples among the many), that we were so right to vote against our leaving the EU.
However, I do not believe that Starmer is a Brexit friend. He has already stated that he wants a better deal: who wouldn’t?! But I believe, as I often do with Starmer’s Labour Party, that reopening negotiations on a deal would result in a closer association with the EU and probably lead to a reversal of the Brexit effects, even friendship! I think the EU is anticipating such an approach from a Labour government and from such an acorn a stronger oak tree may emerge.
What is very likely to also emerge, is a realisation that the UK optouts, as a third country, would never be agreed again.
For that loss, only the Tory governments since 2010, from weak Cameron leadership and almost-as-weak May, onward to Johnsonian lip-smacking all supported by many unthinking voters, are to blame.
Only Labour, in my view, can change the aftermath for the better, if I’m to retain my membership. And I’m a patient man, even though impatience may creep in as I progress through my four score years and ten.
I admire your optimism. I wish I could share it.
At least we’re both stubbornly consistent, Richard.
Lou Reed thought you had to have a busload of faith to get by. Mine is more akin to a minibus driver’s cab, but it’s going nowhere (my political faith, not the minibus!).
Always worth reading your blog.
Thanks
I don’t understand how intelligent people can put their faith in a party leader who consistently says that he will do something that they do not want him to do, on the basis that the man must be a liar and will do something different. Desperation?
On the safety mark this now means that we will be a rule taker but not a rule maker.
Quite a significant loss of sovereignty!
Therin lies the issue – either a rule taker and best practice safety = CE. Or the crap UKCA mark = ‘we love lead in children’s toys etc’ designed for the ‘deregulate and rip up the red tape’ Thatcherite nutters.
CE is mutually recognised in the USA and Australia (both countries that don’t have deals with the EU).
(However, it is nice to see the right wing trolls out.)
But we helped make the EU rules about CE. I don’t think the EU wants to get rid of our part in it; it’s the other way round.
The government wanted Trading Standards to do more checks but without giving them any more money to do them. Does that make sense to you?
It makes sense to me, Jen. The Tories see any form of standards in terms of cost, including HASAW health and safety standards, which they seem to define as “woke”.
The Home Secretary is a perfect example of this attitude, but it applies to all ministers in one way or another. Some are no longer in post but Hancock was one of the clearest examples and certainly Hunt is another. In his case using inflation as an excuse for cutting costs!
If only Starmer could be made to see that spending to need is the socialist way. But I live in hope on that one.
It’s all about making their personal money and misspending ours.
But that’s not making sense. Just because that’s how the tories see it doesn’t mean it’s sense.
Nothing the tories do makes sense to me.
There is certainly a strong argument that the EU is at heart a technocratic neoliberal project, with all that has entailed: stagnant wages, privatisation, degraded public services, anaemic growth and so on. None of that to the level of impoverishment we see in UK … yet.
Is it possible Brexit may have worked (and may yet work) if the UK slipped the neoliberal noose and the government spent on public services and social and scientific investment and the green transition?
All those pesky travel inconveniences would remain of course, along with escape to the sunshine retirement dreams.
The EU is morphing. Like everyone it will leave neoliberalism behind, eventually, and probably before us.
Spain is in the EU, isn’t it?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/03/spain-inflation-lower-bank-england-interest-rates
From the article. Sounds much more sensible than the UK government.
“The reason is more forceful management of the economy – the Spanish government took quicker, more concerted action than ours did. Spain capped energy prices by more than the UK, lowered the cost of public transport, taxed excess profits and put in place limits on how much landlords can raise rents. While also coming with costs, this kept inflation from spreading more widely and more persistently than elsewhere.”
That’s what governments should do – to protect people.
Ours does not think protecting people to be within its brief.
Nor does Labour.
David Byrne says:
The mentality of the ruling elite has not changed in centuries. Once Great Britain was a nation to be feared, now we are weak and largely ignored with no real influence in the world.
The truth is, we, the people of the UK need Europe more than Europe needs us.
We comply with EU regulations or we will not be allowed to trade with Europe and we will progressively lose many existing European freedoms.
Sadly, we are heading back down that ‘road to serfdom’.
I think where food is concerned. The thing that has been delayed is the inspection at point of entry to the UK. The people sending the goods will still have to do export paperwork (which is extra time and money). At any point the receiver could have an HMRC import/export inspection. At that point, the paperwork would need to be examined.
This is why I believe it was better for the growers to send their tomatoes to other EU countries when we recently had empty shelves. The media blamed the weather, which was the cause but other countries within the EU had them as it was easier to send what had been produced to those countries than it was to send them to the UK. As a country within Europe, we will now always be the backstop. If a grower in Spain has too much, they will send it here.
I woke up this morning with a thought – when are the brexit true believers going to apologise?
They have manipulated, dragged and bullied the rest of the country along with their nutty scheme. They insisted on leaving anything that had Europe or “E” in the name. They’ve made us all poorer and have vilified anyone who disagreed with anything they were trying to do. It’s now clear that they have utterly failed, despite getting everything they wanted. So an apology is in order.
I wonder if you, and others in the media might suggest that, Richard? It would be good to start some sort of narrative on when this apology will be forthcoming, and when the government and others so involved in the Brexit project will be coming out and saying sorry. Not that I really expect Farage to apologise, but the idea that he ought to do is effective in itself. They ought to be asking the electorate for forgiveness, and putting that idea across is a powerful one.
They will never apologise.
They remain true believers.
Evidence was never an issue for them. Prejudice always was.
Maybe we could expect that apology around the same time we’ll get one for 2008
This is a very recent quote from a business forum of which I am a member:
“What we did not take into account back in 2016 was whether we had a govt and civil service that were up to the task of governing without the EU. In large parts it would appear not.”
https://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/threads/some-post-brexit-sense.423334/#post-3201278
Please don’t hold your breath expecting even an admissionn of failure, let alone an apology.
Indeed, I wasn’t really expecting anyone to apologise, but pushing a narrative that they ought to, is a way of making them defend their position.
To Robin Stafford
I like your posts too but I do wonder what we have to do these days to ‘look up’ at who is doing what to us.
Whether you favour Chomsky or Lakoff – the debate about semantics is a debate about semantics in a specialist field with established paradigms being challenged by new emerging ones. Fair enough.
This does not alter the fact that back in the real world all of us here right now are witnessing the latest iteration of one of the oldest conflicts in human society – capital versus society; the assertion of raw money power over democracy; the rule of the few over the many.
I’d argue is that all we have seen since 2010 is capital stealing the language of the left. It is typical fascist political science. And don’t underestimate that wealth that is involved – look at the delivery of that language appropriation. It takes money Robin and that is the biggest clue isn’t it – always follow the money?
The key factors – Neo-liberalism and fascism – are related Robin because both depend on/draw their power – from someone else having to lose or gaining off someone else’s back.
Neo-liberalism is simply a legal theory or basis of theft/appropriation of other people’s wealth based on the liberty being reserved for capital and therefore those who own such capital; Fascism is about the demonisation of members of society in order to disaggregate and achieve power and deny and exclude more legitimate popular sentiment creating new political forces.
The consequences of this are fatal for democracy and the planet. There is no need for semantics to describe that.
Perhaps your final sentence “….Keir Starmer and the Conservative Party….” should have read “….Kier Starmer OF the C-Party…”……yeah I’m just in a grumpy, sarky mood & praying that Starmer & Reeves are pulling a fast one to get into power which seems to be the line that quite a few folks believe…
Alan Peyton:
It won’t be possible for Starmer to do a 180. The Tories have packed the Lords with – er, Tory Lords.
The Salisbury-Addison Agreement (or Salisbury Convention) means the Lords will be able to stymie every attempt by Starmer to get passed legislation that wasn’t in the manifesto. Only manifesto promises are safe-guarded.
Anyone hoping otherwise is dreaming.
I left Labour when the circular from David Evans ruled that any discussion of Corbyn was ‘not competent business’. Since then the list of such business has grown exponentially, and ignoring it has led to suspensions and effective expulsion.
If it walks like a duck, etc.
Starmer isn’t going to change leftwards, Reeves is an incompetent shill for banks, Streeting and Akehurst vile little toads.
Blair without the charisma or the supposedly redeeming social liberalism; democratic centralisation on CCPR lines.