Brexit Dividend

[Branton Red]

You are being deliberately obtuse if you think Farage saying "Wouldn't it be awful if we were like Norway and Switzerland? Really?!?" over and over and over again in the months and years before the campaign had no effect. The "campaign" didn't start when The Campaign started. It was going on for years.

Similarly when a prominent ex-Minister said "You'd have to be insane to think we'd leave The Market" on TV, you'd have to be very obtuse to think some people didn't think he was referring to our membership of the SM. Or when Gove said "There is a free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey that all European nations have access to, regardless of whether they are in or out of the euro or EU. After we vote to leave we will remain in this zone" it takes a particular form of bias to think that some people didn't read that as an indication that we could have a relationship with the EU like Iceland's.

Your thesis is predicated on every voter processing every (deliberate or accidental) comment that muddied the waters and seeing a clear conclusion.

I remember a BBC radio “Gotcha” interview of Corbyn ahead of the '17 GE. He was queried on his prior support for abolishing the monarchy and unilateral nuclear disarmament. His response was simple, succinct and superb: “These are not policies Labour are campaigning on.”

When the referendum campaign began Leave and, just as importantly, Remain both coalesced around the fact that leaving the EU also would mean leaving the Single Market. This is borne out by the explicit and implicit evidence from the plethora of speeches, interviews, debates, leaflets etc. the public were bombarded with during a long, hugely publicised campaign.

Your abject failure to provide a single example from during the campaign of anyone claiming leaving the EU would entail staying in the SM says everything about the bankruptcy of your argument.

To dismiss this huge weight of evidence or suggest it is irrelevant or to put greater store on individual's personal opinions expressed months in advance of the campaign is crass, pathetic and frankly Trumpian.

It would take a particular form of either idealogical blinkeredness or dishonesty for someone to express the opinion that the electorate did not vote to leave the SM.

[Branton Red]

Or when Gove said "There is a free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey that all European nations have access to, regardless of whether they are in or out of the euro or EU. After we vote to leave we will remain in this zone" it takes a particular form of bias to think that some people didn't read that as an indication that we could have a relationship with the EU like Iceland's.

Funny int it?

Not only are people who voted for Brexit stupid but their specific ignorances coincide exactly with your deliberate misinterpretations. So stupid they can't differentiate between the Single Market and a free trade zone, yet not so stupid to recognize Iceland is in the SM but strangely too stupid to realise Turkey is not.

Gove of course was talking up the UK's chances of obtaining a post-Brext free trade deal – thereby his speech was wholly consistent with us leaving the SM after Brexit – just like virtually every other campaign speech, debate, interview etc. etc. during the referendum.

Here's another quote from Gove on The Andrew Marr show 8/5/16 having been asked whether Brexit would involve leaving the Single Market: “We would be outside the Single Market.” Even the stupidest of Leave voting retards couldn't misinterpret that.

[SydneyRover]

and davis has put truth to the lie of there being any benefits to brexit priod

[Glyn_Wigley]

Branton Red ignores Leave.EU printed manifesto shocker.

[SydneyRover]

So much to chose from today, NHS continues to be undermined, tick, food standards eroded as predicted, tick ...................

[BillyStubbsTears]

Branton.

You just, twice, done exactly what I said you were doing. You've totally ignored my point about how the Leave side gave plenty of mixed messages about what the situation would be after Brexit. You assume every voter is a political analyst, able to cut through the smoke and see with precision what the politicians are saying implicitly and explicitly.

Your point on Give perfectly sums this up.

YOU know that Give was alluding to a free trade agreement. I know that. But where we differ is that you miss the blindingly obvious point - that Gove was giving examples of countries who ALL have better integration into the EU market than we could have (and that we have ended up with) outside both the SM and CU.

The clear inference was, "You can have your Brexit but there'll be no economic penalty." Which could only happen had we stayed in both the SM and CU.

You base your argument on the assumption that everyone who heard that from Gove, or the line from Farage for years about Norway or the outburst from the Brexit supporting  ex Minister that it would be madness to leave "the market"...you assume that in all cases, every Leave Voter scratched their chin sagaciously and said, "yes I understand the nuances of this language. I appreciate that they are clearly and unambiguously saying we will leave the SM and CU."

In a vote where 1.7% of the electorate voting the other way would have given a different result, I admire your certainty that you are 100% right on this.

[BillyStubbsTears]

PS Branton. I've got the put-it-to-bed stinger to come on this issue. Bit busy right now but be patient.

[SydneyRover]

How can there possibly be more than what's happened already, lies, lies, and yet more lies, really?

[drfchound]

Gareth Keenan is alive and well and living down under.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Branton
If I understand you correctly, your argument is that the Leave side in the 2016 campaign made it clear that a vote for Leave clearly and unambiguously meant that we would leave the SM and CU. Therefore the concept of leaving the EU but staying in the SM and CU was clearly ruled out after the referendum. I disagree because I think there was considerable ambiguity, but let's accept your argument as a starting point.

(By the way, what the Remain side said on that topic is irrelevant. Most of what the Remain side warned could come to pass was vociferously rejected by Leave as Project Fear, so there is absolutely no justification in assuming the Leave voters accepted Remain's warnings.)

You'll recall I'm sure that the Leave side consistently and strenuously argued in 2016 that there was no possibility of us leaving the EU without a deal.

Leave made it clear that we would get a great trade deal.


"The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want" said Michael Gove. He also insisted "The In campaign often argues is that we would find it impossible to reach a trading agreement with the EU nations after we vote leave. There are, of course, some questions up for negotiation which will occupy our highly skilled foreign office civil servants, resolving them full and properly won't be any more complicated or onerous than the day-to-day work that they undertake now."

"Our trade (with the EU) is not at risk" said the intellectual giant John Redwood.

"I think we could very easily get a better trade deal than we have at the moment." said Douglas Carswell, the UKIP MP.

The official Vote Leave manifesto said "We will have a new UK-EU trading relationship. There is a European free trade zone from Iceland to the Russian border and we will be part of it. The heart of what we all want is the continuation of tariff-free trade with minimal bureaucracy. Countries as far away as Australia have Mutual Recognition agreements with the EU that deal with complex customs (and other ‘non-tariff barrier’) issues. We will do the same."

Leave.EU's campaign leaflet said "You don't have to be a member of the EU to trade with it. Switzerland is not in the EU and it exports more per person to the EU than we do." Switzerland of course is a member of the SM, so giving them as an example was clearly not proposing a No Deal.

No Deal simply wasn't on the table. No one could seriously claim that the vote in 2016 was a mandate for No Deal.

And yet...soon afterwards, May was saying "No Deal is better than a bad deal."

By 2018, No Deal was being pushed hard by many leave supporters.

By Autumn 2019, the Govt had published a No Deal readiness strategy.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/no-deal-readiness-report

That comprehensively puts to bed the argument that what was said in 2016 tied our hands in subsequent years.

The vote in 2016 evidently did not in any way tie the UK Govt's hands in choosing what the outcome of Brexit would be. Our Govt chose to interpret the vote as meaning that membership of the SM and CU were out of the question, but they were happy to leave No Deal on the table.

That decision was made as a means of dealing with the ongoing civil war in the Tory party. If you are going to insist that the SM/CU decision was an inevitability after the vote, you must square that with the Govt's position on No Deal.

[SydneyRover]

''UK food sceptical as government insists 'no dilution of standards' for post-Brexit trade deals''

''The UK government’s food and farming minister has insisted that environmental, animal welfare and safety standards will not be put on the line in trade deals struck after Brexit. But calls for a food standards commission to scrutinise future agreements suggest the sector remains unconvinced''

https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2020/01/10/UK-food-sceptical-as-government-insists-no-dilution-of-standards-for-post-Brexit-trade-deals

You just can't convince some people aye?

[SydneyRover]

Who said this .......................

............ ''because we are going to restore trust in our democracy

and we are going to fulfil the repeated promises of parliament to the people and come out of the EU on October 31

no ifs or buts

and we will do a new deal, a better deal that will maximise the opportunities of Brexit while allowing us to develop a new and exciting partnership with the rest of Europe

based on free trade and mutual support''

A/ toad of toad hall

B/ paul the octopus

C/ you can't catch me out like that

[SydneyRover]

Or this ......................

 ............... ''and for the values we stand for around the world

Everyone knows the values that flag represents

It stands for freedom and free speech and habeas corpus and the rule of law

and above all it stands for democracy

and that is why we will come out of the EU on October 31

because in the end Brexit was a fundamental decision by the British people that they wanted their laws made by people that they can elect

and they can remove from office

and we must now respect that decision

and create a new partnership with our European friends – as warm and as close and as affectionate as possible''

A/ kermit

B/ dot cotton

C/ peter foster

D/ I can't remember

[scawsby steve]

I saw there were a lot of recent replies to this thread and was sure you would be discussing the reasons that UK GDP has fallen for the second consecutive month.

But no, seems, Starmer forgetting to declare he had gone to watch Arsenal is more relevant to Brexit.

Funny old world.

So Keith's an Arsenal fan. Bloody hell, I hope he's not there when they play my fave PL team, Liverpool.

If the Pool win, he'll want a replay because he doesn't agree with the result.

[wilts rover]

I saw there were a lot of recent replies to this thread and was sure you would be discussing the reasons that UK GDP has fallen for the second consecutive month.

But no, seems, Starmer forgetting to declare he had gone to watch Arsenal is more relevant to Brexit.

Funny old world.

So Keith's an Arsenal fan. Bloody hell, I hope he's not there when they play my fave PL team, Liverpool.

If the Pool win, he'll want a replay because he doesn't agree with the result.

Yes, long term Arsenal fan and season ticket holder. Even goes to away matches, the tickets he didn't declare in time were for two away games.

[scawsby steve]

I saw there were a lot of recent replies to this thread and was sure you would be discussing the reasons that UK GDP has fallen for the second consecutive month.

But no, seems, Starmer forgetting to declare he had gone to watch Arsenal is more relevant to Brexit.

Funny old world.

So Keith's an Arsenal fan. Bloody hell, I hope he's not there when they play my fave PL team, Liverpool.

If the Pool win, he'll want a replay because he doesn't agree with the result.

Yes, long term Arsenal fan and season ticket holder. Even goes to away matches, the tickets he didn't declare in time were for two away games.

I bet he doesn't sit with the lads. He doesn't like socialists.

[SydneyRover]

Fintan O'Toole exposes the political gymnastics with the protocol to a bit of sunlight.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/15/britain-ni-protocol-brexit-ministers-deal

[Branton Red]

Billy

If that's your stinger you've placed it on the wrong road at the wrong time of day.

Firstly deal or no trade deal we'd still be out of the SM so your point is irrelevant.

Secondly though Leave campaigners expressed preference for a deal your assertion that they ruled out the possibility of no deal (particularly those, Farage et al, pushing for such in 2018) is simply false. Farage on ITV prime time Cameron v Farage 6/6/16 “no deal is better than the rotten deal that we’ve got at the moment.”

Thirdly you're claiming a false comparative. There could be no mandate for either deal or no deal from a leave vote as it wasn't solely in UK hands – the EU would need to sign up as well and to something acceptable. (Or were Leave voters too stupid to recognise this too?!)

Hence there was a genuine debate on whether there would be a trade deal with Leavers bullish and (some) Remainers sceptical.

Voters had to weigh up from said debate the likelihood of a trade deal being struck plus the scale of the damage of any potential no deal.

There was no such debate on whether we would still be in the SM after a leave vote as both campaigns expressly stated we would not be so as I've already clearly established. (And as you have proven to be correct by your abject failure to provide any evidence from the campaign to the contrary).

The real “put-it-to-bed stinger” on this topic was on post 425 on this thread where I gave direct quotes from the de facto leaders of both the Remain and Leave, on BBC1 TV, stating categorically that a vote to leave entailed leaving the SM. What more proof is needed?!

If there was a kernel of truth in your claims you'd be able to direct me to a campaign quote stating leaving the EU did not entail leaving the SM. You failed to do this. Your juggernaut of untruth has been stopped dead in its' tracks.

[Glyn_Wigley]

"Branton Red still ignores Leave.EU printed campaign manifesto double shocker!"

[BillyStubbsTears]

Branton.

Forgive me for pointing this out. Perhaps I thought it so obvious that I didn't make it clear before.

My point was that no single person on the Leave side said that OUR policy choice would be to embrace No Deal.

Your Farage quote is entirely out of context. He was saying (admittedly in a hectoring stream of consciousness rant) that if the EU imposed a No Deal on us, it would be better than the existing situation where we stayed in the EU. He said "If the French and Germans decide to cut their noses off and put tariffs on us, those tariffs will be significantly lower than our net financial contribution, so No Deal is significantly better than the rotten deal we have at the moment."

The logic of that is utter crap of course, but that's not the point.

No one was saying OUR policy should be to leave the EU and then actively embrace, as a matter of our own choice, a No Deal.

No-one went into the ballot box on 23 June 2016 thinking they were mandating our country to embrace a No Deal outcome. Yet within a few months, our national position was that No Deal was perfectly acceptable.

THAT is my point. That the vote left it up to a small group of right wing politicians to ignore what they had promised in the campaign, and to actively promote No Deal as a UK policy choice. To the extent that Johnson illegally prorogued Parliament to give himself the freedom to conclude the negotiations with a No Deal outcome if he chose to do so.

That establishes my point. Nothing said in the campaign tied the hands of the right wing of the Tory party to take whatever path they wanted in the negotiations. That small group chose the interpretation that leaving the SM and CU was demanded by the vote, but avoiding No Deal as a policy choice wasn't. That, despite the overwhelming polling evidence that No Deal was always roundly rejected by the overwhelming majority of the population.

You are choosing to sanctify their choice as a matter of democratic sanctity. It wasn't. It was a political choice.

Of course, we didn't end up with No Deal. We could well have done though. Not because it was imposed on us as a decision by the EU. Because we could have chosen it as being mandated by the 2016 vote. Farage himself was demanding that as his price for an electoral pact with the Tories by August 2019. Would that have been a democratic outcome?

But if you don't like hypotheticals, look at what actually happened.  We ended up with a deal, the detail of which was systematically lied about by the Tories throughout the 2019 General Election campaign. Do you not find that an egregious abuse of the democratic process?

[BillyStubbsTears]

PS.
Farage of course went on to lie about what he'd said during the campaign

In May 2019 he told Andrew Marr "No deal is better than a bad deal – I was using (that exact phrase) every day for the last two weeks of that campaign."

He didn't. Not once.

[Branton Red]

"Branton Red still ignores Leave.EU printed campaign manifesto double shocker!"

Published in Jan 2016; dumped in Feb 2016 when Grassroots Out manifesto superceded on it; never campaigned on by any leading figure - certainly not during the official campaign period.

Think it deserves ignoring.

Still not found any evidence for anyone saying a leave vote didn't necessarily involve leaving the SM during the Brexit campaign?

Your argument is dead in the water

[Branton Red]

Billy to sum up your position on this: -

1) You ignore that both Leave and Remain campaigned on the basis that a leave vote meant leaving the SM – despite the evidence from 1000's of speeches, debates, leaflets etc.

2) You ignore that this instructed a huge portion of the debate from Leave's benefits of ending freedom of movement to Remain's economic warnings based explicitly by Osbourne at the time as impacts of leaving the SM – which all Remain campaigners endorsed.

3) You fail to find a single piece of evidence from the campaign of the electorate being told leaving the EU did not mean leaving the SM yet fail to acknowledge the significance of this.

4) You summarily dismiss quotes from the most senior figures on our most watched TV station stating categorically a leave vote meant leaving the SM

5) Instead you focus on a small number of obscure quotes (in a long campaign there was bound to be some such) where leaving the SM was not explicitly stated and claim 'ambiguity' throughout the whole campaign.

6) Typically of an ideologue who pays democracy lip service you use these quotes to claim the opposition were deliberately misleading the electorate – in spite your side saying the same thing and points 1, 2 and esp 4 above

7) Typically of an ideologue who pays democracy lip service you claim no mandate for leaving the SM (despite points 1-4 above) because people were too stupid to understand on the assumption they only saw your 'ambiguous' points and not the more prominent/numerous explicit ones (point 4)

8) You claim the Remain campaigning vociferously against leaving the EU and SM together is irrelevant because Leave voters can't have been listening – otherwise they'd have surely voted differently. Again typical of a defeated idealogue.

9) You ignore the fact that there was no debate during the campaign on whether or not leaving the EU meant leaving the SM – as this had already been settled (points 1&2)

10) You then draw false equivalence with an issue which was hotly debated – whether we would get a free trade deal post-Brexit. (Ironically a debate framed by the fact both sides accepted leaving the EU meant leaving the SM).

You're ignoring and/or dismissing the basic truth in order to maintain a lie seeking to subvert our democracy simply because it suits you're idealogical viewpoint.

You are a UK Europhile version of a Donald Trump acolyte.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Of course as has been said how many political parties are putting rejoining the single market on the table?  How do we think that would play out in an election campaign?

[wilts rover]

BFYP - I believe the Lib Dems, Green Party & SNP all have re-join the EU (in one form or another) as part of their manifesto or future programme. They all gained in the last local elections.

The Lib Dems of course overturned a large Tory majority in North Shropshire (a Leave area). Tiverton (another big Tory majority in a Leave area) should be interesting this week.

As I have mentioned a couple of times, the way the polls are going at the moment, the next government will be Labour in coalition with (at least one) pro re-join party.

People should be very careful what they wish for.

[Glyn_Wigley]

"Branton Red still ignores Leave.EU printed campaign manifesto double shocker!"

Published in Jan 2016; dumped in Feb 2016 when Grassroots Out manifesto superceded on it; never campaigned on by any leading figure - certainly not during the official campaign period.

Think it deserves ignoring.

Still not found any evidence for anyone saying a leave vote didn't necessarily involve leaving the SM during the Brexit campaign?

Your argument is dead in the water

Greenshoots Out was a completely separate organisation: anything they published could not supercede anything published by another organisation.

Leave.EU's manifesto was not withdrawn, it was still extant during the whole campaign.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Branton
You make a long list again that misses my point.

My point being that literally no-one said before the vote that leaving with no deal should be our chosen policy. When the Remain side said that was a possibility, they were shouted down as Project Fear.

Yet within days of the vote, a prominent Leave campaigner, Richard Rice, said we should aim for that. Within months Govt policy was to throw that in the table as something we could accept that as a position. By 2019, we had Parliament closed down specifically so the Govt could embrace it, despite a deal being clearly available.

My point is that this demolishes the argument that what was said in the campaign in any way tied the hands of anyone after the vote. Either legally or morally. What we did after the vote was a matter of political choice. You accept that because it was the outcome you wanted. Don't try to claim it was inevitable.

[SydneyRover]

Wet-leasing aircraft? can anybody explain .......... tyke?

[drfchound]

Anyway. You lot who've been so happy the we Got Brexit Done. Watch the news on Monday evening.

Well bst, I took your advice and watched the news.
What were you saying we should have looked out for ?

…..

Does anyone know what bst was telling us all to look out for on last Mondays news.
He posted about it three or four times so I made a point of watching but there didn’t seem to be anything remarkable.

[albie]

New work from the Resolution Foundation on the economic consequences of brexit;
https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/press-releases/brexit-has-damaged-britains-competitiveness-and-will-make-us-poorer-in-the-decade-ahead/

If only we had known!