Where did Brexit come from and where is it going to take the UK?

FYI: www.facebook.com/PeoplesVoteUK/videos/707094089684829/

You are right Maizie Sir Ivan Rogers should be listened to, but do you think the leavers will ever listen to anyone who knows what he is talking about when it comes to our membership of the EU?

Someone else who knows what he is talking about and has issued a dire warning about brexit is Airbus chief Tom Enders who said "Don’t listen to the Brexiteers’ madness there are ‘plenty of countries’ who would welcome the company."

U.K. Brexiteers have reacted angrily to a suggestion from aerospace giant Airbus that the company "will have to make potentially very harmful decisions for the U.K." if the country leaves the EU without a deal.

In a video uploaded to the company's website Thursday, the company's CEO Tom Enders condemned Brexiteers' "madness" and warned that, "Brexit is threatening to destroy a century of development based on education, research and human capital."

Airbus is one of Britain’s largest manufacturers with more than 14,000 people employed at 25 sites across the country. Enders warned that a no-deal Brexit would mean he had to shift operations to the EU27. "Of course, it is not possible to pick up and move our large U.K. factories to other parts of the world immediately," he stressed. “However, aerospace is a long-term business and we could be forced to redirect future investments in the event of a no-deal Brexit."

"Please don't listen to the Brexiteers' madness which asserts that because we have huge plants here, we will not move and we will always be here. They are wrong," he said, adding, "There are plenty of countries out there who would love to make the wings for Airbus aircraft,” Enders added.

www.politico.eu/article/airbus-brexit-position-dont-listen-to-madness/

More of Ivan Rogers' lecture.
I have missed out a section on his analysis of May's negotiating stance and how the EU probably regards, particularly in respect of threatening 'no deal'

This section deals with the current entrenchment of differing views of 'Brexit'

REVOLUTIONARY POLARISATION

Of course, it is in the interests of the Prime Minister, but also of both the Right who advocate “no deal”, managed or not, and of the People’s Vote lobby, to demonstrate that all “middle way” options don’t work. And to hope that time plays in their favour.

There is therefore nothing more vicious in British politics right now - and that is really quite a high bar, sadly - than the attacks by the People’s Vote supporters on the proposed Norway + option.

Or the assaults by the European Research Group Right on anyone in their Party who might countenance supporting a permanent Customs Union.

We have this reached the point in what I have previously described as the Brexit Revolution when it is essential for both the revolutionaries and the counterrevolutionaries to extirpate any “compromiser”.

That is a pretty common feature of revolutionary politics. It is just that the UK is not very used to revolutionary politics, in which polarisation progressively narrows the space for compromise, and indeed compromise, always a fairly dirty word in UK politics, becomes a term of abuse.

The revolutionaries declare that every version of Brexit bar their own is not truly Brexit.

The People’s Voters declare every soft Brexit version playing on variants of either a Customs Union or a Common Market without the political integration, is an unacceptable compromise, and that only reversal of the referendum result will do.

THE ONE TRUE BREXIT

We are left with the bizarre spectacle of Brexiteers, many of whom used to argue that exiting to Norwegian or Swiss style destinations would be a vast improvement on remaining in the EU, because these were vibrant Parliamentary democracies whose peoples had bravely spurned European political integration in favour of free trading relationships from outside, arguing that if the U.K. now “escaped” only to such a destination, it would be a terrible betrayal. It would be “Brexit in Name Only”, as bad as or worse than, the Prime Minister’s lousy deal, and a triumph for the “deep state” that has been wanting to sabotage Brexit from the outset.

Whatever one thinks of the Norwegian or Swiss models, to characterise Norway and Switzerland as countries which, despite their sovereign votes not to join the EU, in some way failed to make good a genuine “escape” from European political integration, is patently absurd.

One can, by all means, argue that neither model is appropriate to the UK, and that we can do better. Then set out what you think is better in what you propose, and demonstrate why you have reason to think it is negotiable. With a bloc that, understandably, will think we are a much larger partner, but also a much more sizeable future competitor, than either of those, and will therefore prosecute its own interests very carefully. But one cannot argue that Norwegian/ Swiss type models are “not Brexit at all”.

Unless one is also arguing that the integrationist ratchet which Eurosceptics believed was pulling us in to where we did not want to go – a perfectly arguable case, incidentally – applies equally to Norway and Switzerland. But this view is absurd.

And this bombardment of propaganda from those saying that anything other than a so called “clean break no deal” Brexit is “not really Brexit” comes from the very people who, before and immediately after the referendum, promised the voting public that a preferential trade deal with the EU was “in the bag”. And would be the work of weeks, if we were unlucky, as the EU would be so desperate to conclude such a deal with us to take effect the day after exit.

This was always piffle, to use no more impolite a term.

www.ucl.ac.uk/european-institute/sites/european-institute/files/sir_ivan_rogers_lecture_ucl_22012019.pdf

No I thing the businessmen should take over. They would soon get this mess sorted out.

Brilliant article, just proves that Politcians shouldn’t be running the country !