Rayvin

Merry Christmas all, I hope you're all safe and well, that the holidays are relaxed and enjoyable, and furthermore (completely selflessly), I hope your team wins on boxing day. You're all fantastic people and I wish you every happiness!

This is exactly how I see it. People think this is nihilism but actually I think in the end once you make peace with it, life becomes a bit easier. Nothing matters in any grand sense. Individual moments matter to individual people and as much as society tries to spin a narrative to hold it all together, that's all it really is. It is indeed liberating.

I mean... that guy will have an account.

Who cares anyway, Newcastle will win something eventually and none of this will even be a blip on the radar in comparison. England tried their best but IMO Southgate doesn't really have a system or style of play so if the players can't just 'make stuff happen' then we don't go anywhere. We also just don't know/understand/have it ingrained into us how to win when we need to dig deep. No shame going out to France, and even if we had somehow won, we don't have the stones to actually win the thing even if we were up against San Marino in the final.

All relative though isn't it - this is the pinnacle for a lot of them even these days, and I guess they get caught up in it. Also no shame in grown men crying, healthier than keeping it locked up and better for your bone structure than wall punching

https://www.readytogo.net/smb/threads/are-the-moralists-still-not-watching.1595417/ Thread in which Sunderland fans argue with each other about the morality of watching the world cup and generally push the view that when it comes to football, morality should be left out of it. Yes, those Sunderland fans. "In the end it's three lines on the shirt marra" Actual quote.

Ah it's OK, a mixed race mackem has just gone in and said it doesn't offend them and that anyone who thinks the term is racist doesn't understand racism. That's all right then, the universally accepted authority on the matter has spoken. It was all "whatabourery" (/keith) after all.

This Keith guy needs to learn the meaning of whataboutery because he's making himself look an absolute spanner here. It's actually making me cringe. Yes, "camel humper" is racist. Yes, it's appropriate to call that out. No it isn't whataboutery to do so because no one is holding it up as an equivalence that makes KSA atrocities acceptable, you utter fuckwit.

Tbh I thought the debate around this on here was largely theatrics for the sake of a bit of grandstanding in a group that otherwise agrees with itself all the time. Not sure anyone was genuinely wound up by it

If he doesn't put PR on the manifesto, I'm not voting for them. I've even cross my EU line here, but I'm not crossing that one. PR is the bare minimum for me to vote Labour.

What the hell is he even talking about? What prompted this latest delusional wittering?

Encouraging graph - the young and people in work are turning against it. Still we have the older Tories, determined to ride this shambles directly into the ground, but there's no hope for them anyway.

Cooper has to replace Starmer when he's finished in 2-6 years.

I agree on the boiling frog, that's the main concern with my view - if it takes too long people simply forget. But perhaps if Europe really kicks on and the difference becomes stark across the channel, it becomes easier to keep the 'what if' relevant. I'm ignoring the EU side because I agree with your suggested EU conditions for us returning. Super majority and a closing of this issue in any and all perceptible senses. So what I'm saying is more about my hopes for us to reach that point, not that the EU will stoop for our benefit.

Ultimately with a new generation of politicians, anything is possible. The only thing we need to achieve right now is making it very visible and unavoidable that Brexit was and is a catastrophe. I feel like we're starting to do that. On that basis, I am more optimistic than I was when everyone in the establishment was going around pretending it was all sunshine and rainbows. I know Starmer hasn't caught up on that yet, but if the Tories are at least talking about a Swiss deal, herring or not, then there's been a shift in the perception of reality. If things get so bad that the right wing press can't win the next GE for the Tories, then I don't know why we'd think they would be able to thwart an EU bid when we've lived a few years of this hell.

This is a joke right?

Would the Swiss style arrangement discussed recently not keep us fairly aligned? If that's already in conversation now, I think it's a bit too soon to write off the whole thing.

Right but that's not quite what we had pre-Brexit is it? And as I've also said, even if it was exactly the same levels, the demographics are changing and it's an increasingly harder sell. There's a reason the Telegraph has come out and said Brexit is a shambles - because it needs to tally to the reality its audience is seeing or it becomes irrelevant. Reality eventually conquers everything. I know this is true because it's the same reasoning I'm being given on here about why the Tories won't win the next GE.

It's a harder sell for me - several generations who will have experienced life inside and outside of the EU, who were broadly pro-EU before leaving that they have to convince. They had it easy with Brexit because they were selling bullshit which stuck because of the fact that much of what the new reality would look like was 'unknown'. Now it's known on both sides, I struggle to imagine where they get the same leverage from for their argument.

The UK isn't going to exist all that much longer though, not in current form. I mean ok, let's take your scenario through to conclusion - the basic premise is we're too proud and stupid to do anything about this no matter how bad it gets, and we continue on into ever more assured oblivion with no one at any point doing anything about it. That's bleaker than anything I've ever put down on this forum. That's bleaker than the idea that the Tories could win the next GE ffs. Ideally we'd join a more federalised version of Europe so that we can become part of a United States style entity which locks us in for good, but the EU itself isn't there yet. I guess the thing I struggle with is who within the UK won't be wanting us to return once the children of the empire generation have died off? Is it really going to be that hard a sell? Why would anyone in this country want to live in the hell of post-Brexit UK once the elderly aren't chaining us to it anymore? You've posted yourself how much opinion polls are swinging on this now. We've also seen how unlikely we are to get a US trade deal, and given our stance on China, increasingly there too. The wheels have come off Brexit already, it's being shown up for what it is. The path has to lead somewhere and we have literally no other option - at least for now - than walking back to the EU. And the longer this goes on, the faster the pace of that process becomes IMO. Irrespective of what Starmer warbles on about to his friends in the tabloids. EDIT - with respect of the EU, I think we will eventually be able to demonstrate enough enthusiasm for them to agree. I don't see how significant amounts of anti-EU sentiment are generated now that we've walked off the cliff.

Threaten in the sense of other countries observing that it is possible to be functional outside of the EU, not directly threatening their economic clout. So what I'm effectively saying is that if we are able to appear as a semi successful nation again outside of the EU, then we cease to be something they can point to as a 'danger of leaving' and start becoming something that the right wingers throughout Europe can hold up as a success story. This is what I mean by threat. As for the French military, size isn't everything. The EU was very reliant on the UK for leadership on this side of things and the French don't seem hugely willing to step into that gap. There was a reason Putin took us out of Europe instead of France.

On the decade component sure, it took us 5 years to leave and I can't see any quick way of reversing that. What I disagree with is the idea that the EU wouldn't want us back. The Ukraine war and the fact that they've asked us to be part of a joint security committee underscores how important the UK was as a leader in security and defence, something they do not have a ready replacement for. On top of that I still feel that a taking back in member that left is a bigger win than having one on the outside. We won't suffer forever from Brexit, eventually the country will get its act together and start growing again - the longer that goes on, the bigger threat we become to the European project. Far better to have us back inside. Important note here, I'm not saying we wouldn't grow faster inside the EU - we obviously would - but the economy will eventually pivot to whatever will work for a post EU version of the UK. It'll be shit for workers but we will find a way to attract business.

It's an opinion piece that shares nothing that isn't readily apparent but ignores the positives of rejoining for both sides. He's not a decision maker in this, he's just one man with a view. And honestly that view isn't new. Literally none of it. We'll see what happens as the country becomes evermore enraged at living standards. Moreover we'll see what happens in the EU as the UK does eventually start to get its act together.

This is absolutely pathetic from the Tories - I mean there's not been a single thing they've done well so it's not surprising, but they can't even deliver what their core vote wants. This is because running a country is based on analysis of evidence and facts, and not populist nonsense. We've been a rare case IMO in that the past few years have really given the right enough rope to fully hang themselves. Full on market liberalism? Fucked. Close the borders to foreigners? Fucked. Economic Competence? Fucked. All the Tories are and ever were is right wing media spin and preying on people's insecurity over their rationality.

Think it's more centrist/internationalist than 'left'. Both sides are ultimately anti-globalist.