Brexit is fast becoming a disaster

Alegrias1

I took it as a paraphrase The whole article is very enlightening.

Asked if the British government had “underestimated what sort of impact” the protocol would have on the movement of goods, Frost hinted this was the case.

I don’t see what is wrong with learning from experience. This is a very unusual agreement and we’ve learned a lot about how economic actors behave …

Any number of posters on this forum could have told them that.

Well a paraphrase isn't an actual quote. So we shouldn't say that it's the quote of the year. Pedantic is my name.

I agree the article is enlightening. But the norm for The Guardian. I agree with the last paragraph though. We will muddle through this.

Hi, Pedantic I agree regarding the viewpoint of the Guardian. However the second bit in italics in my post from 13:24 is an actual quote from Frost. And he's meant to be the bright one.

Whether we muddle through this or not remains to be seen, but a very large section of the population of Britain would rather we didn't have to muddle through anything, and if they're like me, will never forgive those who put us in this position with their lies, deceit and self interest.

I didn't want to be muddling through this either but I'm pragmatic as well as pedantic I suppose. Fifty years from now most of us will be toast and this will just be something that happened and the passion of today will have long gone.

I didn't want to be muddling through this either but I'm pragmatic as well as pedantic

Obviously we have to live with this as best we can (muddling through) because it's unavoidable, but I feel much the same as Alegrias; I will never forgive those who put us in this position.

Chris Grey's always excellent blog, by way of 5 year anniversary thoughts, discusses the treatment of Remain voters over the past 5 years.

This was an interesting point:

From the very start, these people’s concerns were ignored or dismissed. They were told to ‘suck it up’, insulted as cry-babies, stereotyped as only interested in their Tuscan holiday homes and cheap Bulgarian nannies, demonised as ‘enemies of the people’ and ‘saboteurs’, and traduced as traitors. Yet, also from the start, there was a huge irony. Precisely because of the educational and social demographic of the vote (e.g. 57% of social classes AB voted remain), it was statistically likely that those who actually had to take responsibility for enacting Brexit were in many cases part of this demonised group. In any case, few Brexiters actually had the technical knowledge to do it: in general, people who understood what Brexit actually involved didn’t support it. (my emphasis)

So although some Brexiters like to think of themselves as having initiated a revolution, it was an unusual one in requiring those who did not want it to do the hard work of enacting it. Some amongst the civil service no doubt accepted that as part of their professional duty – whilst all the time being belaboured for supposedly not doing so – or even actively embraced it despite their previous views, as seems to have happened with Frost himself. Others, including those in business and civil society organizations, have had no choice but to make what adjustments were necessary to deal with it.

chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2021/06/when-country-cancelled-half-its-citizens.html

We have been scoffed at and demonised as the "metropolitan liberal elite". Many of us are liberal (with a small "l" if not Liberal), if that means being socially responsible and internationalist in our outlook. Some might be metropolitan, (but many are not) and we can only be described as elite if those with a better than average level of education are somehow elite.

If elite means priviledged I suspect most of us are nowhere near as elite as the likes of Johnson, Farage, Gove, Cummings etc, to say nothing of their billionaire funders who made this disaster happen. .

The ‘metropolitan liberal elite’ sound cool and rich and fashionable, like the cast of a Fitzgerald novel. The drum bangers really need to come up with a better insult for us.

Alegrias1

Talullah

www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/24/brexit-campaigners-surprised-by-sour-relations-with-eu-says-lord-frost

Quote: Frost admitted that campaigners for Vote Leave did not anticipate the impact Brexit would have on relations with the countries Boris Johnson consistently refers to as “our friends and neighbours”.

In other news, man who instigated acrimonious divorce from long-time wife surprised at exclusion from weekly Sunday lunch

muffinthemoo

Alegrias1

Talullah

www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/24/brexit-campaigners-surprised-by-sour-relations-with-eu-says-lord-frost

Quote: Frost admitted that campaigners for Vote Leave did not anticipate the impact Brexit would have on relations with the countries Boris Johnson consistently refers to as “our friends and neighbours”.

In other news, man who instigated acrimonious divorce from long-time wife surprised at exclusion from weekly Sunday lunch

Well, he did think that the legal papers he'd signed to finalise the divorce were only temporary... Couldn't believe that his ex wife would actually insist that he complied with them...

muffinthemoo

The ‘metropolitan liberal elite’ sound cool and rich and fashionable, like the cast of a Fitzgerald novel. The drum bangers really need to come up with a better insult for us.

There isn’t a better one ?

Talullah

I didn't want to be muddling through this either but I'm pragmatic as well as pedantic I suppose. Fifty years from now most of us will be toast and this will just be something that happened and the passion of today will have long gone.

Yes, exactly ??

Who are Frost, Johnson, Gove et al if not part of the metropolitan elite?

Another Brexit Benefit - roaming charges to be introduced by EE, and no doubt to be followed by other phone providers.

It’s at such an early stage that it’s pointless to discuss how well Brexit is going.It was to be expected that unravelling 40 years worth of rules and regulations and making new trade deals ( as well as maintaining trade with the EU countries) would be a slow process.

vegansrock

Who are Frost, Johnson, Gove et al if not part of the metropolitan elite?

Oh, vegansrock, you're so naive.. Don't you know you're only 'metropolitan elite' if you voted Remain

Those you mention are men of The People...

lemongrove

It’s at such an early stage that it’s pointless to discuss how well Brexit is going.It was to be expected that unravelling 40 years worth of rules and regulations and making new trade deals ( as well as maintaining trade with the EU countries) would be a slow process.

In which case why did they tell us that it would all be really easy and settled over a friendly cup of tea?

Because it was never portrayed by Leave campaigners as being a long and difficult process. It was Remainers who said that, only to be shouted down as 'Project Fear'.

lemongrove

It’s at such an early stage that it’s pointless to discuss how well Brexit is going.It was to be expected that unravelling 40 years worth of rules and regulations and making new trade deals ( as well as maintaining trade with the EU countries) would be a slow process.

"We're going to replicate the 40 EU free trade agreements that exist before we leave the European Union so we've got no disruption of trade," Liam Fox told a Conservative party fringe event in Manchester.

Antonia

*Most of us who have lived in Europe have no recollection of ever seeing poppies for sale there.*
I used to live in France, and poppies were always sold at Carcassonne airport.

Well I've lived in Central France for a very long time and have
never ever seen a poppy for sale.

The Australian deal is going to do for the U.K. sugar beet industry according to the Farmers Union

lemongrove

It’s at such an early stage that it’s pointless to discuss how well Brexit is going.It was to be expected that unravelling 40 years worth of rules and regulations and making new trade deals ( as well as maintaining trade with the EU countries) would be a slow process.

Jacob Rees Mogg told us it would be fifty years before we could see any benefit from brexit.

I don't know how old you are lemon but as most GNetters are over 50 I'm guessing that you might be unlikely to see whether you were right or wrong. The evidence so far points to you being wrong to have voted for brexit. Very very wrong.

Correction varian...you think that I was wrong, but I don’t.
When did you or anyone else think that what Rees Mogg says is Gospel?
It will take time though, of course it will, but being out of the EU will be very good for the UK in my view and it doesn’t matter if I am still alive and kicking by then or not.

lemongrove

Correction varian...you think that I was wrong, but I don’t.
When did you or anyone else think that what Rees Mogg says is Gospel?
It will take time though, of course it will, but being out of the EU will be very good for the UK in my view and it doesn’t matter if I am still alive and kicking by then or not.

I would believe you if you knew how it will be better.

But you haven’t a clue.

How dare you just shrug your shoulders and just say that we won't live to see the end results of your vote lemongrove. How dare you impose this on my children. You and others on here believed the nonsense you read and then told the rest of us that we needed to suck it up, get over it, stop being anti British, accused us of being traitors, told us that we hated our country, and now you inform us that we need not worry about the mess you have made of our future because we will all be dead? Good grief.

It was always going to be a disaster- all the things that we were told were ‘scaremongering’ have happened.
People like lemongrove ought to have been thinking of their children and grandchildren and then they wouldn’t have voted to take away all the rights they themselves had enjoyed.
I am not getting behind Brexit. I didn’t vote for it - I did my utmost to prevent it and no one has told me a single advantage gained.

lemongrove

Correction varian...you think that I was wrong, but I don’t.
When did you or anyone else think that what Rees Mogg says is Gospel?
It will take time though, of course it will, but being out of the EU will be very good for the UK in my view and it doesn’t matter if I am still alive and kicking by then or not.

You say that being out of the EU will be very good for the UK. In what tangible way will we benefit, do you think? This is a genuine question - Leave voters appear to have as much passion about leaving as Remainers had about remaining, so I am assuming there must be some substantial or concrete advantage in being outside of the EU.
I understand the issue of 'sovereignty' and we have had to give up some of it as one of the former member states, and adhere to the lowest denominator of meeting the basic tenets of justice and democracy within the EU. But the EU has never tried to change the constitutional structure of its member states. And, if I remember rightly, David Cameron reached an agreement with Brussels that gave us 'special' status in that we would never become part of a European super-state.
So looking at this realistically, we are now entirely free to make our own UK laws, but what is the reality of this for the average man in the street, so to speak? What will he/she be able to do on a practical level that he or she couldn't do before? How will this impact your everyday life? How will you feel this advantage in real terms?
I am trying to understand Brexit from the average Leave voter's perspective - rather than from its elite backers and the politicians who may well have both personal and political axes to grind.

I would actually like to see some of the benefits we were promised. Is that too much to ask? After all, Boris Johnson told us we will ”prosper mightily”. I can't imagine he meant in 40-50 years' time. I certainly want my children and grandchildren to be part of this prosperity so it mustn't take too long to materialize.