- Oct 17, 2008
- 14,487
Can he play left back?
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[Politics] Brexit
- Thread starter KingstonSeagull
- Start date
nevergoagain
Well-known member
I'm not trawling back through 6k pages to see if it's been asked before but IF the decision was taken to negotiate a return to the EU (Not even going to discuss whether that requires another referendum here) would you say yes if it meant that we had to accept one or both of joining the schengen agreement or the single currency ?.
- Oct 20, 2022
- 6,905
I still can’t quite believe the UK did it.
I was brought up in a pro EEC home, it was a largely old school Tory thing, the left opposed the EU hence the legacy of Corbyn, Crow and Lynch being dead against the project. Originally for us on the basis of European unity being good for peace.
Simply assuming our membership would last forever.
You suggest a rather simple breakdown on party lines over Europe - I think it was a lot more nuanced than that. Corbyn was just one eurosceptic influence in UK politics and one that came long after the original europsceptics in the late 70s/80s. In fact Harold Wilson was probably an early natural Eurosceptic in the 60s and 70s but Europsceptism was closely associated with the Conservative Party and Thatcherism in particular then gained strength in the Labour Party - Thatcher built her reputation on dragging her heels against further integration in Europe and fighting for UK independence throughout (ie she was against the principle of supranationalism) and her support for the project was primarily economic - she envisioned her economic libertarianism as a Europe-wide endeavour but underestimated the institutional integration that would be required to achieve it.
Post-Thatcher, after she left office, these concerns solidified into a policy position and Euro-scepticism became entrenched as a movement within the Tory party.
As far back as 2012, the Tory Eurosceptics led by John Redford were arguing for a Brexit referendum. It was UKIP that provided the momentum for a right wing push for Brexit in the 2014 Euro-elections and controlling immigration became established as a major objective. In 2015 in the run up to the Labour leadership election, Corbyn was still dithering over Europe and finally said he would vote to keep Britain in the EU. It was the Tories ripping themselves apart in the 80s/90s over Euroscepticism and Blair’s Labour who reconciled to Europe. It wasn’t until after Corbyn was elected leader in 2015 that Eurosceptism really re-emerged across both main Parties and the rest is history.
How do you know that? Corbyn had his own little echo chamber, but we will never know what individual members of the shadow cabinet might have said to the comrade leader in private. And Starmer is hardly the sort to go gobbing off to the press like the silly arse MP who was rebuked recently.
And, in fact. Starmer did kick off, in the honourable way:
"Keir Starmer felt so strongly about the Brexit referendum result in June 2016 that he quit as a junior shadow minister under Jeremy Corbyn.
A few months later he returned to the Labour frontbench as shadow Brexit secretary and spent the next four years campaigning to mitigate the result, which he described as “catastrophic”, while at the same time retaining voters in “red wall” constituencies.
He campaigned against a no-deal Brexit and for a second referendum to give the people a “confirmatory vote” on any deal with Brussels."
There is no lasting shame there.
Why do people keep getting Starmer wrong?
‘Is it a U-turn?’: what Keir Starmer has said about Brexit redress
Labour leader’s latest words on Brexit close door on former ambition to soften or overturn itwww.theguardian.com
He did indeed kick off after the referendum which achieved absolutely nothing. If he had 'kicked off' during the campaign then he might have achieved something. But he didn't.
He showed political expediency (ie changed his 'principles' to develop his career) under Corbyn and after Corbyn, expediency that helped him become PM. That doesn't make him any better or worse than most MPs (though he is undoubtably better than some of the obvious, odious ones).
But I am intrigued by your final question. What are people getting wrong about Starmer or what view should they have of him that they don't?
- Jul 10, 2003
- 27,750
I'm confident that we could negotiate entry without the single currency, but we wouldn't get close to the deal that had been negotiated by politicians of all political hues over the 50 years previous.
And to be honest, I'm not too bothered about Schengen as we never bothered putting the border processes in place that were needed to take advantage of not being in Schengen and controlling movement before
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
Agreement to join the single currency but no time limit to do so, as per Denmark.
nicko31
Well-known member
The only way I can see a closer relationship is if the LDs went hard on it and ended up in a coalition arrangement with Labour. Maybe customs union late 2020s. The other thing that could change things is if freedom of movement rules changed a bit without the EU, this could happen when you look at the direction of travel.
Still staggering we ended up with such an extreme Brexit with a 52/48 split.
The irony is Labour yesterday dropped their pants for big business and started talking about deregulation to get things done. Even Nick Robinson waded in and asked why they were addressing the elephant in the room
nicko31
Well-known member
I actually don’t think Schengen would be a condition to rejoin, the ROI are quite happy being outside and we need to be aligned with them.
Politics is the art of the possible.
Thing about Brexit was it was the worst of all possible worlds - any majority would do, and there was absolutely no plan if the result was to leave. That's why I rate Cameron as the UK's worst ever PM.
Weststander
Well-known member
I disagree. You’ve conflated several decades of British history into one moment.
Putting to one side your comments about Maggie, you’ve mentioned her many times in the past, you once described the rise of punk from 1976 as an anti Tory government movement and the resident punk expert here corrected you. All roads don’t lead along strictly party politics. In the 70’s all the pro EEC people we knew were Tories, more accurately all the anti EEC people we knew were working class Labour voters including trade union members.
Maggie was a pro European and pro EEC. Her thing was addressing the contributions we made and at the very end she was against the further integration proposed in terms of taking away sovereign power.
The first moment I can recall an anti European feeling in parts of the Tories would be the Westland affair, but even by the mid 90’s people like John Redwood and Bill Cash were still very much a minority. That’s why an angry Farage seized the moment.
- Jul 10, 2003
- 27,750
I think they were still very much a minority in 2016, but following the referendum and Cameron's resignation, that minority took over the Conservative party and show absolutely no signs whatsoever of giving it back
Weststander
Well-known member
I think they were still very much a minority in 2016, but following the referendum and Cameron's resignation, that minority took over the Conservative party and show absolutely no signs whatsoever of giving it back
I think of it as a coup d’etat by the back door.
Almost overnight MP’s such as Amber Rudd, one way or another, eased out.
Not sure who the resident punk expert is, but you are quite right. Punk rose and fell during the Callaghan government. It had absolutely no resonance with anything related to party politics. Even things like RAR were (initially) irrelevant since we were instinctively AR, and some of us were black, and some of us were gay, and most of us were strange. I cannot remember a single conversation about party politics from 76 to 79. Albeit things soon changed when Thatcher appeared.
And indeed the Tories were pro EU till Westland. Even Thatcher. The unions, however, occasionally sniped about the common market lot interfering with UK industrial relations (which was claptrap).
I agree, he should be in the towers with nothing better than Boris Latrine duties
Weststander
Well-known member
It was you, but you said it in a gentle way.
GrizzlingGammon
Well-known member
- Dec 15, 2018
- 1,995
I think we should have joined Schengen anyway. The weirdness of trains at Brussels station calling freely going to France / the Netherlands / Germany / Denmark / Switzerland like it’s nothing while the London trains had their own little caged off area to the side was always ridiculous. Never saw a problem with joining it.
nevergoagain
Well-known member
nicko31
Well-known member
All these 3 could be the worse for different reasons...
Cameron for gambling the nations future on the back of his own Etonian hubris (give the boy a peerage)
Johnson for serial dishonesty, degrading our institutions and the rule of law
Truss for the speed to which she brought the country to its knees
Their party should be out of power for a generation and tainted the way Labour were after the winter of discontent. But a look at the press propaganda being thrown at Labour before they're out of 1st gear is a reminder that won't happen