Open Britain - Hard Brexit

The Remainers have been reading experts' commentary on the likely effect of Brexit on the economy

Really? All of them? Not all Remainers hang off every word written by the likes of Richard North, who I notice you say is 'not at all confident' rather than 'predicts Brexit will be an nmitigated disaster'!

unmitigated

I was putting it mildly Ana

Why?

"Trump has failed on healthcare. Don’t rule out that he will fail on tax as well: when the chasm of the deficit that his cuts will create faces the House will they really be able to bring themselves to vote for that? And will those cuts ever be big enough for the right? Might the same divide appear again?

Is there, in addition, a similarity with the U.K.? Here populist politics is riding high in the form of Brexit, but the reality that this might simply be impossible to deliver has yet to be embraced even though it is an obvious possibility. At some point the realisation might dawn on a great many people, in Westminster and onwards, that Brexit represents the most almighty pot into which vast resources of effort and political capital will be poured and all for not only no net gain, but in fact to make things at almost every level worse than they were. "

From taxresearch.

Thought that for a long time

David Lammy as well.

"Tottenham MP David Lammy is another speaker at the protest in Parliament Square.

He tells the crowd that there is a way back ino the EU for Britain. “In the end this is about the people. We’re hearing a lot of stuff about the will of the people and it’s complete spin,” he says.

“There are a lot of people against Brexit in this country, and people are changing their mind. We’re even seeing Labour wobbling and wondering why we’re here. We’re here because of a lot of anti-immigration rhetoric.

“We’re living in a dictatorship. In democracies people are always allowed to change their minds. Over the coming months and years we will fight. Nigel Farage wouldn’t give up. Labour needs to rediscover its mojo, and quickly,” Lammy adds. "

It's true. May is trying to be a dictator, not a democratically elected leader.

Perhaps someone should point onto David Lammy that if we were living in a dictatorship he wouldn't be allowed to have the march. Bit of an own goal there.

People do have marches in dictatorships. They may end up in prison, but it's the price they pay.

I think the thing to do is start pointing out all the things that Brexit will not do.

A bill is going to be passed enshrining most EU legislation into British Law, so if those in charge of the remoan campaign were to start to run adverts saying, for example, 'An EU directive banned coal-fired power stations, unless they met very high emission standards. It will be UK law after Brexit.'

That is a very bad example, but one I know about and I am sure the experts can think of others that include a lot of the ludicrous things those voting Brexit expect to change as a result of their win and won't.

As a Remainer, I think these continued demonstration are silly and pointless and work against democracy. We had a referendum, the majority (just) voted for Brexit. To use some crude modern phrases. Suck it up and get over it.

One doesn't shut up if you consider that what we are doing is an complete car crash for the economy and the environment. To my mind it would be an abrogation of responsibility.

No, I won't suck it up and get over it. Democracy involves more than putting a cross in a box.

We're about to see what we'll be losing. I agree that Remainers should be fighting any opportunistic change and I will continue to do so.

People made so many assumptions before the referendum and I fear we're about to see that they were lies. Nobody can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear - and that's what Brexit is.

I expect announcements will be dismissed by the usual suspects as an extension of Project Fear, but hopefully enough people will see that it's actually about Project Reality.

Keir Starmer most certainly showed this morning that he is not going to let the leavers get away with anything.

Demonstrations have always been our way of supporting democracy. Just because you think they are silly, Jalima, does not mean the rest of us should. That is anti-democratic, in my opinion.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/26/observer-editorial-triggering-of-article-50-jeopardises-60-years-of-unparalleled-peace

I agree with this.

It only the demonstrations against Brexit I think are pointless. Too many people prefer to think with their feet and the great high it gives them,rather than actively thinking about working sensibly and coherently to making their point.

This was why the Remain campaign was such a disaster in the first place. Instead of showing people what Brexit meant - and didn't mean - and demonstrating clearly the lies the Brexiteers were publicising, the Remain campaign just brought themselves down to the gutter level of the Brexiteers and traded insults.

So far all the Remain and Remoan campaigners have done is demonstrate their incompetence - which is not much of an argument for their case.

. Oh come on MO - your posts are usually more intelligent than this one - going on a march doesn't mean that you only think with your feet - that's cheap. Many many marchers gave up their time to do this, enjoyed meeting with and yes probably did feel,uplifted by being with like minded people but are doing much more than that. You know very very well how the political,process works - there is much to be decided about exactly how we Brexit and lobbying and debating about this can and will make a difference. And what's a sensible intelligent woman like you doing using that shindigs have word 'remoan'?

Shindigs =childish

And the Brexit camp are demonstrating their competence how exactly?

I absolutely agree. Many marches on other issues have a strong point to make and can move mountains. I am certainly not saying marches in general are pointless, thinking with their feet etc. I am specifically talking about the Remoaner marches, which I think are more about virtue signalling than anything else.

We have had a referendum, we know how many people support remaining in the EU, but Brexit won, they got more votes, so what is the point of a very small sample of those who support Remain marching through London? it will achieve absolutely nothing except to make those who take part feel good.

there is much to be decided about exactly how we Brexit and lobbying and debating about this can and will make a difference. I absolutely agree, but how this march can contribute to it defeats me.

On the lunchtime news on R4, Jeremy Corbyn indicated the right road today (now I never thought I would ever say that) when he said that he would oppose the government just accepting, across the board all EU legislation and enshrining it in British law, without it being examined in detail by Parliament. He has also said the Labour Party, while accepting Brexit in principle, will vote against it if the Labour Party consider the exit package negotiated by the government to be disadvantageous to Britain.

I have never suggested those that ran the Brexit campaign had any competence at all and the the government approach to the up-coming negotiations has not been such as to make one feel any confidence in their capacity to negotiate a good deal either. The whole procedure has been notable only for the total incompetence of everyone directly involved in it, regardles of which side they support.

Well, I was there MOnica and I wasn't virtue signalling.I was there because I care about the EU and truly believe that leaving is a disaster for this country - now and for the future.

There's very little I can actually do, so I did what I could and I'm glad I did.

I do not believe for one moment that the kind of agreement the UK is going to get is why people voted Leave.

I disagree with you. The people who ran the Brexit campaign (Dominic Cummings with the help of Cambridge Analytica, etc) were extremely competent. They ran it like an advertising/marketing campaign - and there was no Advertising Standards Authority to pull them up on their lies and overspending. It's the people who are now in charge who are incompetent.

The last eight months have been extremely badly handled. Rather than uniting the country, Theresa May has divided it even more and I am not going to accept the direction in which she's heading without a fight. This is a democracy after all and I have a right to express my opinion.

If people have a strong case for leaving the EU, maybe they should articulate it. I'm listening!

I was on the march not to make myself feel virtuous but to stand up and be counted that we dislike the way this country is heading and to show the people of Europe that a sizeable number in the U.K. are not against them. As one poster said " the 48% are people too". If remain had won by a couple of % and then took the country into a "hard remain" to join Shengan and the Euro , people would rightly protest against that as it wasn't what was voted for. That's how we feel about hard Brexit, and people have every right to oppose it.

daphnedill I care about the EU and also think Brexit, if not a disaster, it is likely to slow the economic development of the country and is a real cul-de-sac, but I cannot for the life of me see what good this march will have done other than make the participants feel better.

We already know that 48% of the population voted stay. I really cannot see what difference a small number of people parading around with posters saying it will achieve, especially on a Sunday when the majority of MPs and Ministers are in their constituencies or grabbing the chance for some family life well away from Westminster.

Brexit by definition will be 'hard'. there is no such thing as a 'soft' Brexit, that is called 'Remain'

MOnica it was Saturday and there were (though estimates vary) about 80,000 people there. They were marching to show solidarity with celebrations of the EU in other countries, to protest against hard Brexit, to allow Brits from Spain, France and other countries to protest about what is going to happen to them, to allow EU citizens in Britain to have a voice.
I am at a loss to understand what you would object to in that.

And no soft Bexit is not called "remain". It is called EEA, EFTA, the Customs Union, amongst other things.

The march on Saturday did NOT start at all as a protest against Brexit!!!!! The people who first came up with the idea were EU citizens in UK who had cause to be worried about their position in the UK - equally UK citizens in the EU were worried as what their position would be. They started several months ago writing to MPs and MEPs about the position they find themselves in and gradually the idea of the March was born. They had a bit of a count up to see if there were likely to have sufficient people attending the March. The numbers who did manage to go were way beyond their wildest dreams initially.
It gradually became a bit of a protest but did not start off like that - although many of us feel it would be better if the UK remained the general feeling is that we are all going to need to make the best of a bad situation.