Rayvin

I'm honestly starting to think that your average leaver wanted a Brexit wherein we could go over to Europe as if we were in the single market, but Europeans couldn't do the same with us. The EU said clearly that it wouldn't compromise its political integrity for anyone. What does he expect the government to do about this situation? Our government is utterly powerless in the face of the EU presently - both because we're run by the most stupid collection of politicians I've ever seen, and because we need them so much more than they need us.

Might need more detail on this one but at face value yes, I can't begin to imagine why it would have any relevance..

In the end it wasn't the devastation to the economy from poorly executed lockdowns, nor the tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Not even the blatant corruption while he was in office. It was a sex scandal exposed by the Sun. And who do we get now? Which incompetent (but loyal to Johnson) minister will replace the weak fuck that is and was Hancock. I'm half expecting it to be Carrie Johnson tbh.

How is he surviving this. Just how. He's a national laughing stock.

Perfect excuse for Johnson to sack him while avoiding the uncomfortable revelations from Cummings..

Have pulled this back in here because the CV thread isn't the place for it really. See, I can understand that position to a point - but you do seem to be taking a lot of this personally. There's no endgame coming as far as I can tell, this is going to run on for quite some time yet (in my view, generations). And its worth noting that for leavers, this was a 40 year struggle. It's going to be the same the other way around now, I'm almost certain of it. So buckle in for the long term, especially if you're going to be this animated about it. As for false positions, I do feel like there's a big misunderstanding of motive that leavers have when viewing remainers. I want, as I assume the rest of the people here do, what is best for this country. I'm not a farmer or a fisherman, but I still want those industries in this country to succeed. I am proud (or at least was) of the country I was born and raised in, and for me a lot of that came down to our international clout and success - especially when considering how small a country we are. While I wasn't proud of our imperial past, we were transitioning into something positive on the whole. What I see from Brexit is that we are hugely diminished and weakened. I see it as an act of traitors, and I really mean that. None of us have to be farmers to be annoyed that a British industry is going to be hurt by this. Maybe you're right and the cheaper meat will allow impoverished children to afford it. However there's an inevitable standards issue there of course, so we need to look at why the Australians are cheaper. We also need to consider that this will likely cause a race to the bottom within the UK market as our own farmers struggle to compete - meaning a drop in standards for everyone and maybe our farms going out of business, thus impacting our sustainability in any future food crisis. Alternatively we could have more equally distributed resources so that children living in poverty could afford British meat, stayed in the EU, and avoided the drop in standards. I don't personally think Brexit was the answer to that issue, I think a Labour government would have been.

He didn't call anyone a think cunt tbf. He said this was a dumb fucking country - a view I fully share with him. And I'd say it to Gemmill's Mam's face, too. I know some sound Brexiteers myself. Unfortunately, all the ones I know are also politically ignorant. Doesn't make them bad people, but does mean that at least for the ones I know they've flung us into something that they didn't comprehend. Why is this getting to you so much anyway, what have you been reading/viewing lately that's got you so worked up about remainers. Who cares what we think, we lost, remember? What difference does any of our schadenfraude make to you? I mean from memory, you voted remain - so it's not even like you're the one being attacked here. I don't quite get why this has become such a personal thing, I mean who are you defending, and why?

I also doubt you'll find anyone here who thinks this place is anything other than an echo chamber tbh. And honestly I would prefer a bit more diversity of opinion myself, but I understand that the aggressive nature of the debate on here tends to put people off. So I mean honestly, not really going to disagree with what you've said But you have to understand that we've had these debates to death (I mean you know this, you've been in them) and I think the stage we're all at now is that we know our positions on this. You've come in with a stance wherein you've spent a few weeks trying to encourage us to listen to the other side of this, which I think tbf, all of us have done. You'd get more traction if you came in with actual information from the other side, rather than just protesting us calling them stupid. I will gladly discuss, in a charitable way, any detail on most areas of politics. I've watched fucking hundreds of hours of right wing commentators and podcasts, I've been around the block with their views many times. Some of them are reasonable, many of them are disingenuous. But seriously, I'm more than happy to be educated on an alternative viewpoint if it's more logical than my own. I'll even pivot to it if it makes sense. I mean ffs, I spent about two solid days arguing in defence of the Tories over a nursing policy a couple of years back, because I felt that everyone was misinterpreting what they had said. I remember it fondly tbh For my part, sorry if anything I've said has bothered you.

This is never a good basis for the forming of an opinion. It's the same as when people claim they're note going to vote Labour because people keep calling them stupid. Like, I understand that no one likes to be called stupid, but that's a really idk... insecure way of coming to a political position. Also I mostly just wanted to share that image tbh, apologies if it offended

This is about where Quiff is atm, politically speaking

I mean, IMO on this you're wrong. Renton is exercising free speech to voice an opinion on a political event. The Capitol Hill insurrectionists forced their way into a government building to (ridiculously) attempt to force a coup d'etat. You'll be right once Renton storms Parliament How is it the same?

The problem with that statement though is it gives cover to the side that are worst by implying that both sides are the same. Yes, there is spin and dishonesty on all sides of most political arguments, but we're talking 90% on one side here. There's a reason all the professors, scientists and experts lined up on one side of the argument around Brexit - not because they all had vested interests in the outcomes, but because they spend their lives analysing data dispassionately and using it to form evidence based conclusions. Quite how we got to the point where these people's opinions on their specialist subjects should be weighed the same as people who can only be described as dangerously uninformed... I mean I'm not completely certain, but I think it's at least partially from statements like the one you've just made. So the problem then becomes that you have one side that is mostly truthful being compared to a side that is almost always lying. And because people who support the liars aren't idiots, and can see that their side is lying, they feel like they have to assume that "everyone in politics is lying" in order to continue to justify their positions. Not everyone was lying about Brexit - a lot of what Remain said wasn't fake news and we can see that now because it's actually happening. Hardly anyone on 'our side' is lying about the pandemic. Or vaccines. I read plenty of right wing news sources and I can see the areas where the left is disingenuous, but this isn't a left right issue as has been said before. It's a common sense versus wilful ignorance issue.

Well that sounds like something we can find agreement on at least. I've started focusing more on personal philosophy anyway in recent months.

I mean if Brexit isn't something you're bothered about then I don't think you even need to do any questioning. The issue is settled, you can just forget about it. I can't because it still actively fucks up my life I would obviously question the extent to which they ever 'had us by the balls' though, since we had the best deal in Europe while we were in there, and we had a leadership role in the direction it was moving in - but it's just pointless to worry about it now. In terms of investment, the Tories are spending considerably at the moment as they've observed that this is something that they needed to do to outmanoeuvre Labour, but aren't you worried about where the money is coming from? The country is more in debt than it ever has been under a Labour government. I believe in spending both to stimulate the economy and to offset inequalities, but it has to be part of a carefully executed plan or it becomes disastrous. I don't trust them to handle careful execution, and I think future more sensible governments will subject us to austerity to pay for it. Quite possibly for the rest of our lives. Having said that, if your view is short termist then yeah, the Tories make sense based on your priorities. I can't chastise you for not voting Labour because I won't vote for them either.

I mean this is it though, yeah maybe it is undignified but I've essentially just given up now so it doesn't really bother me what anyone thinks. Brexit as a process has ended my politics, frankly. Lemme ask - what is it that you want, politically speaking?

I want to set out a bit of the 'how we got here' in terms of the disillusionment of Remainers - not with the intention necessarily of changing Quiff's view, but with the goal of demonstrating why I hold the view that I do. 1 - Farage and Johnson both claimed we would remain in the single market after Brexit. Johnson actually gave a speech the day after the vote claiming that nothing would change; he did this outside of his house as I recall, as the press swarmed him. He obviously had no idea what he was talking about (even at the time he looked shellshocked) but his vision of Brexit at that stage was within the SM. (Further point - 'hard left Corbyn' was actually the first person to call for us to leave after the vote, and wanted to leave immediately). Johnson continued to be telling his EU counterparts (while he was foreign secretary) that we would remain in the single market right up until the moment he left the post claiming that he couldn't support May's deal because it wasn't extreme enough. 2 - I recall making a post on here not complaining so much about leaving the EU, but about how pointless it was to leave the decision making setup and become a rule taker through a Norway style deal. I was frustrated with how ridiculous that was logically - but from what I remember, at that stage, no one was talking about ignoring the result. We were talking about what it would look like and how to find the least bad version of it. There was no serious expectation that we would be forced into a hard Brexit because it was even more ludicrous than a soft one, and because this was not a landslide referendum. It was a slight difference of a couple of percentage points. 3 - Theresa May had ample opportunity to reach cross party consensus on Brexit but refused to do so because she was more interested in avoiding schism within the Tory party than she was in the actual best interests of the country. Over the course of time, she was forced into a harder and harder Brexit because around 60-70 of her own MPs (enough to break her majority) on the hard right of the party, consistently voted down her deals. This was despite a sizeable contingent of the Remain wing voting with her, and the fact that Labour made clear they'd vote for her deal if she included protections for workers rights. These small compromises with Remain, had they been offered, would have seen her deal go through. I hated these compromises, but the fact remains that they were ignored by the only people who had the power to control what was happening. The Tories. We got the most right Brexit possible because of the Tories. No one else. 4 - Elections. The Brexit ultras went in hard on the idea that "80% of the country voted for a Brexit supporting party" in the 2017 elections and that this somehow proved that people wanted to get Brexit done. This was a fallacy because I knew many people who voted for Labour, none of whom wanted Brexit. However, it was very much believed that Labour's course on this could and would be changed because the membership was on the whole, opposed to the stance that Corbyn had at that point (i.e. that Brexit had to happen in whatever form as long as we could get protections for workers rights). This is of course what happened in the end, Labour was indeed compelled to take up a different position. Then we get to the 2019 election which you've indicated suggests that there was a landslide in favour of Johnson's Brexit deal. I mean yes, in terms of constituencies, there was. But in terms of actual voters, parties who were either offering a second referendum or a straight cancel of Brexit (i.e. Remain friendly parties) won an overall majority of voters. By 1.4m people (i.e. if you combined the votes between Greens, LD, SNP, SF and Labour it outdoes the total achieved by looking at the Tories, Brexit Party, DUP and UKIP). So we can see here that the MAJORITY of the electorate has been denied an outcome they voted for. Tl;Dr - Remainers have been cut out of this process in absolute terms since day one because they were not Tory voters. That's the long and short of it. And while there was plenty of initial room for bridge building, none of these options were taken by May or Johnson, who preferred instead to railroad us into something we fundamentally didn't want, in its most extreme form, to consolidate their own personal power. Why Quiff, seriously, should I ever, EVER get on board with that? It isn't leavers who have been hard done by in this, it's Remainers. It's them that need to 'win us over', not the other way around. I am so thoroughly disillusioned with this country and this system, that I don't have it in me to swallow all of the above and come out saying "ah well, let's try and find something to agree on for the good of the country". I just don't. I feel like all of us have been shafted by a bunch of rich, born to rule arseholes - and that some of us have our heads in the fucking sand about it. I'd happily unify around "Johnson should be tried for treason" if that's of any interest?

I never understand that tolerance point mind. Have raised this before - who on the left ever said we were tolerant in an ideological sense? It's a deliberate misunderstanding of tolerance for cultural and sexual orientations, and is a necessary descriptive addition because the right are -intolerant- of those things. In terms of ideology though, If your view is stupid, it's getting called out with zero tolerance. What kind of snowflake would want anything other than that? All of this said, I don't think Quiff is a right winger; I think he's been redpilled somewhere down the line, but a call for unity from someone who isn't as invested in the EU project isn't that far away from what everyone was saying in here when I was bitching on about Starmer some months back. And while I'm sticking to my high horse over the EU, along with Renton clearly, that's not to say everyone else is as motivated on this. Plenty of people will hear a message on unity out of pragmatism. I reckon some deep seeds of division have been planted even in those people, but who can say for sure. I'm not one of them though, because the people who delivered us here, in my eyes, have not completed the vital step for forgiveness - they've not accepted that this is a clusterfuck of their own ignorant making. So I can't let it go. Others can, maybe better people than me, but I can't. Only human after all..!

Well yeah but I think to some extent that's what has/is happening. People in here sharing stories about Brexit being a fuck up is just for consumption within an echo chamber. It's nice to have validation that there are other people out there as frustrated by it as I am. I don't go out of my way to argue with Brexit voters, it's really a non-issue for me day to day other than that I still think it's fucking stupid. I mean I take the point though, I have tried to step back from a lot of it.

I'm trying to talk about politics less It's still not great really but lockdown ending and the return to socialising is helping me somewhat, as I'm sure it is everyone else. Is Pregablin over the counter? I'm considering medicating for it in truth.

I think respectfully disagreeing is only possible when everyone is arguing honestly. If someone is taking disingenuous or obviously poorly informed viewpoints, and treats facts that counter these views as personal attacks, then there's really no room for respectful disagreement. I would still, to this day, have a respectful conversation with a leave voter if they were prepared to engage on it properly. I would also contend that your average leave voter has more of an emotional attachment to leaving, rather than a rational one. Whereas you average remain voter is the other way around. Hard to join that really.

I have to say mate, I'm further than I've ever been from caring about political unity or finding common ground with people on the other side of the debate in this country. I'm still fucking pissed about it. I don't see why I should be quiet about that just to make some leave voters feel like we're all unified. I have never felt less British than I do right now, and I'm struggling to see what in their 'vision of the country' I would even want to unify on. Live and let burn is pretty much where I am at the minute

So the moderate left and the centre right. All I'm saying is that if you're going through the exploration into this stuff through the online stuff - having been there myself - it's a gateway to some pretty fucking wild shit. And I think a lot of the people espousing it are dishonest actors. I can understand the desire for unity, but why should that come from our side?

But who cares about that? You're talking as if we all want to reconcile with these people and make them see the light or something. That ship fucking sailed mate, I don't care what they think anymore - I'm just going to slate them as a form of catharsis. This is what they won. It's about the only thing they won in fact - one continuous, merciless bout of ridicule that is regenerated every time something new and terrible about Brexit is revealed. Given the age of many of them, they won't hear the end of it until they're six feet under. As for this: You're being pulled to the right on healthcare, economics, social issues and climate change because some people are still very upset about something that has negatively impacted many of these areas? Logically that makes no sense at all, so I'm going to assume it's more of an emotional, feeling based thing - i.e. you identify more with the right wingers defending the 'great British people' from the claims that they're a pack of fucking muppets. You're more than free to do that and I'll guess that there's a fair amount of online red pilling going on in that one as well given your recent talking points. But to be clear, you're going to throw in with people who bitch and moan constantly about Muslims, women, Marxists ffs, 'white genocide', the end of Western civilisation, how things were better in the 50s, how the Empire was a good thing, and how an elite cabal of supposedly left wing billionaires (give me a fucking break man, seriously) is secretly infecting everyone with 5G receptive nanobots through a vaccine which will act as a form of mindcontrol. On the Remain front, although Renton has said it, the issue isn't so much that we voted out and left. It's that we voted out based on LIES, and the entire exercise was hijacked by the actual hard right of the Tory party, who traitorously sold out the country and its best interests in pursuit of their own gain. Up your T levels a bit and think for yourself man, stop throwing in with people who are just trying to make you feel better about a shit situation they've created.

I've started to think that the battle over Brexit - leaving, the consequences of leaving, and the eventual rejoining - will be the politically defining issue for quite possibly multiple generations. All to prevent schism within the Tory party. A complete and utter waste of everyone's time.

Supports the notion of the progressive alliance, as the article notes. Seems like Labour voters played that very well indeed. So they are beatable, we just need to behave like fucking adults.