31 January 2020 - UK's Day of Shame

Today at 11pm the UK leaves the European Union something that I’m still shocked is actually happening. It flies in the face of the way the world works but there you go. All I wanted to do today in this post is re-iterate what I said back in 2016 during the referendum which is that, while by no means perfect, the EU as an organisation is far more interested in people and need than our own government – whichever party is in power – has ever been. They understand better the social and economic disparities that exist and they are prepared- and able- to do something about it. As I said back in 2016 the EU basically saved Liverpool from the Tories idea of “managed decline” which is political shorthand for abandoning a place. No government should ever chose to write off swathes of the country and even though the actual policy was never officially taken up it was essentially followed simply by lack of investment or initiatives.

Don’t call us Remoaners! We’re Realists.

There’s nothing worse than winners taking every opportunity to take a pot shot at the losing side but the levels of abuse handed out to anyone who publicly now expresses views supporting anything less than the hardest possible Brexit says more about the abusers than their target. The number of times over the past 16 months I’ve seen the term `Remoaner` tiredly dragged out yet again makes me feel these people don’t understand at all what happened. Yes we had a referendum in which the side wanting to leave the EU won though not by a massive margin. That’s all it was. There was nothing in that referendum question about the nature or speed of our exit. In fact it was only because David Cameron was foolish enough to state he would abide by the outcome that we were more or less forced to trigger our departure so soon.  Now we have triggered it there is a process in motion which doesn’t seem to be quite exciting enough for some Leavers. Did they think we’d be leaving the week after the referendum or something?

Be Careful What You Wish For

The UK’s EU referendum result is a reckless leap in the dark

In the early stages of the European Union referendum when everyone knew a lot less about the respective cases for staying or leaving, it was suggested that the choice essentially boiled down to a simple one. If you are risk averse vote to Remain. If you like taking risks vote to Leave.  There was also a feeling- and nothing more tangible than a feeling- that when it came down to the wire more people would end up voting Remain and not taking that risk. These sorts of things were dismissed by hard core campaigners (from both sides) who said we should and would vote on the real long term serious political and economic issues.  Trouble is nowadays with social media spreading ideas like wildfire most people don’t do that. Most people vote based either on one particular issue that it niggling them or else on little more than gut feelings. In that respect the result is no more than a reckless leap in the dark, an expression of an optimistic `grass is greener on the other side` view. I’m sure there were just as many Leave voters who had nervous stomachs on hearing the results this morning as those who voted Remain. As is already becoming apparent nobody actually knows what will happen now. The mechanism is clear enough- the soon to be ubiquitous Article 50- but the economic and social repercussions of operating that mechanism are not.