This is Bound to End in Tears

[Anastasius]

I understand that for some people - particularly close to the border with Eire - that the backstop is important. .....

That has to be the understatement of the year ! Any talk of a hard border and you can kiss the GFA goodbye...along with peace on the streets (well, more or less).

[Lat-Literal]

French Frank,

Thank you for your further comments.

You are very good at doing those bubble things - perhaps you have more patience than me.

Well, there is a hard border between Switzerland and France/EU. I have passed through it on the bus over 200 times just outside Ferney-Voltaire on my work journey to the UN in Geneva. The bus was held up on a third of those occasions so that uniformed officials carrying guns could search every passenger's bag. "It's for butter" I was told. But it was a mere trifle. The bus always arrived at its destination promptly because a certain amount of time for it had been built in. Perhaps if the Swiss had to pay a contribution for an EU Navy and whatever else, it would all go down the pan, London transport style. I will sidestep other detail on Switzerland and Norway as I am guessing that both of us have limited information.

However, it is worth pointing out here that my suggestion for a new non political EEC based in London involved those two countries being among its members. It has fallen largely on deaf ears. This is because it is unique. Lord Owen, bless him, did at least say that it may or may not be sensible. On the sensible side of it, I was proposing the inclusion of the Republic of Ireland first. He also added that it wasn't achievable. That is because any political discourse only takes place in a context where often opposing parties agree the parameters. It is all based on reality as they choose to see it. To my mind, my bold initiative is no less achievable than Britain undertaking nearly 200 separate trade agreements. Those in my world would also occur although not so frantically that all our futures depended on it. And what is clear is that if Jean Monnet had suggested an EEC in 2019, it would have been a non starter.

With respect, I do feel that your position would be different if you were not so keen on the larger regime. I will give you a sort of parallel here in the form of a question. How would you feel if President Trump said to Mexico that they should agree to a long list of US economic requirements combined with a legally enforceable clause that they would not put up a big wall? Notwithstanding it would be totally absurd, your sympathies would be with Mexico. The only difference here is that Trump is known to be the one who feels a wall is necessary.

[Lat-Literal]

Incidentally, my next initiative is to break the mould of British politics. It is based on my own unique notion that why it hasn't happened before is that only one new party at any time has ever attempted it and actually it needs two. So I shall be launching 21C Red and 21C Blue simultaneously with a view that they should form a coalition Government. Both will be pro Brexit and occupy what we used to know as the centre ground. Social Democracy on the one hand and One Nation Conservatism on the other. Apt candidates for apt constituencies.

[Serial_Apologist]

Incidentally, my next initiative is to break the mould of British politics. It is based on my own unique notion that why it hasn't happened before is that only one new party at any time has ever attempted it and actually it needs two. So I shall be launching 21C Red and 21C Blue simultaneously with a view that they should form a coalition Government. Both will be pro Brexit and occupy what we used to know as the centre ground. Social Democracy on the one hand and One Nation Conservatism on the other. Apt candidates for apt constituencies.

That would one thinks be easy given virtual indistinguishability betwen the left of the Conservatives and the Blairite right of New Labour. So, (non-rhetorical question) why hasn't it happened?

[vinteuil]

That would one thinks be easy given virtual indistinguishability betwen the left of the Conservatives and the Blairite right of New Labour. So, (non-rhetorical question) why hasn't it happened?

... Matthew Parris addressed this very question the other day, and pointed out that 'the centre' contains two different 'tribes' - "A liberal Conservative is anchored in a preference for individual freedom. The expression “the state” does not land comfortably in our ear. “The free market”, “choice”, “competition” do. We’re wary of — not always hostile to but wary of — government spending more, interfering more, taxing more. The condition of the poorer in society concerns us always and greatly, but we do not think human failure can or should be abolished. For social democrats the free market and competition are things to be used because (and when) they “work”; but not friends. Individual freedom, personal choice — if they “work”. The state, government? Yes, friends, even if they may stray. Abolishing failure? A goal, even if unattainable. These two great tribes in political philosophy will often settle for similar solutions. They can co-operate. But they come from different places in the head and heart."

.

[french frank]

I will sidestep other detail on Switzerland and Norway as I am guessing that both of us have limited information.

But my point about Switzerland was not to do with the border in the first place : it was a response to your claim (in the bubble quote!) 'the virtual impossibility of EU accepting no deal which means the May deal would be improved '. Ask the Swiss who voted against a deal offered by the EU in 1992 on the grounds that the EU would come begging for a deal because "we [the Swiss] buy more from them than they buy from us". Years later, after what was the longest recorded recession in any country in Europe, the Swiss voted to accept the deal along with what they disliked: FMoP, contribution to EU (but with no say in any EU matters) … All for access to the Single Market. Then, as happened in Austria, Sweden, Finland too, then EFTA countries, when they joined the Single Market, the economies began recover. Tell the Swiss that that had nothing to do with their EU treaty. And as they point out, their base economy was much stronger than the UK's is now, with its public and private debt levels: they were/are the most efficiently run, competitive economy.

However, it is worth pointing out here that my suggestion for a new non political EEC based in London …

A sort of 'big fish in a small pond' idea, ruling the roost, to mix metaphors? And no rules or regulations, or bureaucrats? I'm not sure that anyone would have enough to offer, or at least, not more than they would have in the EU.

With respect, I do feel that your position would be different if you were not so keen on the larger regime.

And with equal respect , that is to misidentify the reason why I, or anyone else, could be 'keen on the regime'. A sort of logical 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc' with the logic reversed. No can do.

[Serial_Apologist]

... Matthew Parris addressed this very question the other day, and pointed out that 'the centre' contains two different 'tribes' - "A liberal Conservative is anchored in a preference for individual freedom. The expression “the state” does not land comfortably in our ear. “The free market”, “choice”, “competition” do. We’re wary of — not always hostile to but wary of — government spending more, interfering more, taxing more. The condition of the poorer in society concerns us always and greatly, but we do not think human failure can or should be abolished. For social democrats the free market and competition are things to be used because (and when) they “work”; but not friends. Individual freedom, personal choice — if they “work”. The state, government? Yes, friends, even if they may stray. Abolishing failure? A goal, even if unattainable. These two great tribes in political philosophy will often settle for similar solutions. They can co-operate. But they come from different places in the head and heart."

.

A statement as good as any why I always find the ramblings of Mr Parris so infuriating!

[Lat-Literal]

... Matthew Parris addressed this very question the other day, and pointed out that 'the centre' contains two different 'tribes' - "A liberal Conservative is anchored in a preference for individual freedom. The expression “the state” does not land comfortably in our ear. “The free market”, “choice”, “competition” do. We’re wary of — not always hostile to but wary of — government spending more, interfering more, taxing more. The condition of the poorer in society concerns us always and greatly, but we do not think human failure can or should be abolished. For social democrats the free market and competition are things to be used because (and when) they “work”; but not friends. Individual freedom, personal choice — if they “work”. The state, government? Yes, friends, even if they may stray. Abolishing failure? A goal, even if unattainable. These two great tribes in political philosophy will often settle for similar solutions. They can co-operate. But they come from different places in the head and heart."

.

I am not understanding this post or Serial's comment/question so please help me. I am proposing two separate parties to be not dissimilarly branded (other than colour), launched on the same day, and with policies that are distinct from each other to respect their particular traditions. Economically, they would be "coalitionable", much as the CDU and the SPD in West Germany were to good effect unlike the sort of tensions one sees in Germany now. Also, they would be pro Brexit, given EU is the biggest dividing line in most parties historically.

Here you have two parties each united and able to agree on Europe. I do not have in my mind the word "liberal" written in huge letters but neither would be socially illiberal. I do not anticipate that they would be economically liberal in the way that this has operated in all main parties since at least the early 1990s. Consequently, what this is definitely not in both economic and European terms is a re-running of Blair/Cameron. Quite the opposite. Among other things, what the initiative achieves is a decoupling of the undiluted economic right from Brexit in the public's perceptions. That is helpful as actually it is more representative of the range of Brexit views among the electorate. It also provides a voting home for many who have accepted Brexit when the LDs, the Nationalists, the Greens and large sections of the two main parties battle to get us back into the EU, thereby rendering them dysfunctional.

In the early to mid 1970s, Keith Joseph came, after extensive reading on the new economics, to the sudden conclusion that he hadn't been a Conservative until that point. He was somewhat stunned by that revelation for a while as he had always believed that he was a Conservative. After his conversion, the Conservatives followed and then, irrespective of whatever banners they were parading, so did Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP, albeit with familiar looking tweaks. Much the same occurred in the US and the whole world round. With hindsight, I think Keith Joseph was wrong. He had always been a Conservative. What happened in that moment was that he became an economic liberal. In governance terms, economic liberalism is now 40 years old. This is six years older than the post war consensus in 1979 when it was considered by many to be very old hat. It has now had its day. As for Social Democracy, I have heard claims to that of Mr Blair and of Mr Corbyn. Again, I think you have to go back very much further to find it and not necessarily to Britain. Think Scandinavia.

[Lat-Literal]

But my point about Switzerland was not to do with the border in the first place : it was a response to your claim (in the bubble quote!) 'the virtual impossibility of EU accepting no deal which means the May deal would be improved '. Ask the Swiss who voted against a deal offered by the EU in 1992 on the grounds that the EU would come begging for a deal because "we [the Swiss] buy more from them than they buy from us". Years later, after what was the longest recorded recession in any country in Europe, the Swiss voted to accept the deal along with what they disliked: FMoP, contribution to EU (but with no say in any EU matters) … All for access to the Single Market. Then, as happened in Austria, Sweden, Finland too, then EFTA countries, when they joined the Single Market, the economies began recover. Tell the Swiss that that had nothing to do with their EU treaty. And as they point out, their base economy was much stronger than the UK's is now, with its public and private debt levels: they were/are the most efficiently run, competitive economy.

You have explained your position well. I didn't fully appreciate it at first. However....there is always a however....my arguments for the EU coming round are precisely not the ones about money that are usually trotted out. That business of "they need us more than we need them". I have never bought into it. My arguments are absolutely to do with the border on the island of Ireland. The EU will come round as they know they will feel obliged to erect a border in the event of it going to no deal. And there is no way on earth they can face doing it.

On whether we would be better off in the single market, a la the countries you mention, I am totally blasé and am far from unique here. There is a wide range of reasons - I have disdain for money emphases; it seems to me proven by history that it isn't how much you have as how you distribute it and use it that matters; no one is ever happy ultimately with what is done financially by any politicians; my take on the sustainability of services is that it is linked to being able to manage population numbers; I prioritise green spaces; there is a perspective on what is most helpful for national security; and I sit with the argument for democracy that the referendum result must stand, irrespective of who misled, how and when.

A sort of 'big fish in a small pond' idea, ruling the roost, to mix metaphors? And no rules or regulations, or bureaucrats? I'm not sure that anyone would have enough to offer, or at least, not more than they would have in the EU.

And with equal respect , that is to misidentify the reason why I, or anyone else, could be 'keen on the regime'. A sort of logical 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc' with the logic reversed. No can do.

My EEC would not really have had the UK as a big fish in a small pond. Norway is rich in resources, Switzerland has financial clout, the Republic of Ireland is rightly respected as an equal neighbour. Add in Sweden fleeing from an arrangement which has given it its own far right, the labour and goodwill of our war ally, Poland and a couple of others and one has a good balance. For those who believe in economic competition, two European blocs rather than one are best for everyone to raise their game. Only one would be overtly political.

[french frank]

My EEC would not really have had the UK as a big fish in a small pond. Norway is rich in resources, Switzerland has financial clout, the Republic of Ireland is rightly respected as an equal neighbour. Add in Sweden fleeing from an arrangement which has given it its own far right, the labour and goodwill of our war ally, Poland and a couple of others and one has a good balance. For those who believe in economic competition, two European blocs rather than one are best for everyone to raise their game. Only one would be overtly political.

Not really sure how you would persuade the UK, RoI, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Poland to join with an EU competitor (I have a hunch the UK would see itself as the big fish in that company, not necessarily with justification). You need some very strong competitiveness; and, of course, even the economic issues aren't limited to trade, as Poland realises:

http://thenews.pl/1/12/Artykul/40304...link-to-Poland [Today's news]

I'm not sure what 'overtly political' would mean: that your EEC would not be concerned about human rights, worker rights, environmental protection, basic rules on democracy …?

[MrGongGong]

I can tell you as a cast iron fact that there is vehicle plate recognition within an eight minute walk from me, not that most people are aware of it in the slightest. I am a quarter of a mile inside the Greater London boundary. Greater London needs to be protected from any incoming international terrorism. So it isn't just between countries. As I said, it is all across the EU.

One of the interesting parallels is that there is no great sign here saying "you are entering London" - some local people are aware of where the GL border is; most haven't got a clue.

You will find a sign in the trees denoting Croydon but it looks like nonsense when Croydon is known to be urban and six miles away. And there are grey areas, possibly deliberate. My TFL Oyster Card takes me someway into the "Republic of Surrey". My GP here is retiring and I have already been moved to one "over there" while my health authority is now "Surrey"

London is full of it, I know.
But that isn't true for the rest of Europe or even the UK
Not sure how ANPR "protects" London from international terrorism either ?
For most people in the UK Croydon IS London as is everywhere else inside the M25. It's where public transport that works is unlike the rest of the UK

[Lat-Literal]

Not really sure how you would persuade the UK, RoI, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Poland to join with an EU competitor (I have a hunch the UK would see itself as the big fish in that company, not necessarily with justification). You need some very strong competitiveness; and, of course, even the economic issues aren't limited to trade, as Poland realises:

http://thenews.pl/1/12/Artykul/40304...link-to-Poland [Today's news]

I'm not sure what 'overtly political' would mean: that your EEC would not be concerned about human rights, worker rights, environmental protection, basic rules on democracy …?

I knew you would come back to me on regulation because I hadn't answered it. Yes - there would be an element of regulation and an element of freedom of movement in my EEC.

Quite a way back in this thread now, I posted lists of (a) what this country did prior to 1973 and (b) what by 2019 the EU had not prevented where many might think further regulation would have been highly appropriate. You would not expect me to have an ERG line. They are very entitled to their views. Mostly, I am not concerned by what many would consider proportionate regulation. Much of it I would welcome. Still, it is difficult to be specific when the detail is opaque; I tend to think that there are a lot of rules but they don't necessarily do as much as the volume could suggest; and I know from personal experience at the UN that EU frequently duplicates what is already in place elsewhere and then tends to try to usurp it.

Similarly in those UN forums I know that (a) regulation often works more efficiently when it is not addressing things that companies would do naturally and (b) there is a place for non-regulatory recommendations and guidance; and I think we underestimate ourselves if we think that our Governments would not have acted in many areas unilaterally. The latter, incidentally, in a world where everything has swung to the right and one might expect that there would have been greater deregulation even at supra-state level. To underpin that point, I genuinely believe the bulk of it will be transferred into UK law with the aim of it staying there. If a Government is elected to get rid of some of it, another can later bring it back.

There are some additional provisos. To be against "human rights" is a bit like being against motherhood and apple pie but I am uneasy with the way it all tends to elide with the American style litigation racket. I feel workers' rights is another thing that sounds great but my assessment is that workplace conditions have steadily worsened. As for Poland and the pipe, I would need more detail. It could be a genuinely useful thing with no viable alternative or just another transatlantic neoliberal ploy to support a warlike paranoia about Russia.

I hope this is helpful but, you know, I will provide the basic structure and others can take it all forward.

[Serial_Apologist]

I am not understanding this post or Serial's comment/question so please help me. I am proposing two separate parties to be not dissimilarly branded (other than colour), launched on the same day, and with policies that are distinct from each other to respect their particular traditions. Economically, they would be "coalitionable", much as the CDU and the SPD in West Germany were to good effect unlike the sort of tensions one sees in Germany now. Also, they would be pro Brexit, given EU is the biggest dividing line in most parties historically.

Here you have two parties each united and able to agree on Europe. I do not have in my mind the word "liberal" written in huge letters but neither would be socially illiberal. I do not anticipate that they would be economically liberal in the way that this has operated in all main parties since at least the early 1990s. Consequently, what this is definitely not in both economic and European terms is a re-running of Blair/Cameron. Quite the opposite. Among other things, what the initiative achieves is a decoupling of the undiluted economic right from Brexit in the public's perceptions. That is helpful as actually it is more representative of the range of Brexit views among the electorate. It also provides a voting home for many who have accepted Brexit when the LDs, the Nationalists, the Greens and large sections of the two main parties battle to get us back into the EU, thereby rendering them dysfunctional.

In the early to mid 1970s, Keith Joseph came, after extensive reading on the new economics, to the sudden conclusion that he hadn't been a Conservative until that point. He was somewhat stunned by that revelation for a while as he had always believed that he was a Conservative. After his conversion, the Conservatives followed and then, irrespective of whatever banners they were parading, so did Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP, albeit with familiar looking tweaks. Much the same occurred in the US and the whole world round. With hindsight, I think Keith Joseph was wrong. He had always been a Conservative. What happened in that moment was that he became an economic liberal. In governance terms, economic liberalism is now 40 years old. This is six years older than the post war consensus in 1979 when it was considered by many to be very old hat. It has now had its day. As for Social Democracy, I have heard claims to that of Mr Blair and of Mr Corbyn. Again, I think you have to go back very much further to find it and not necessarily to Britain. Think Scandinavia.

I'll tell you why economic neoliberalism and the preceding Keynsian demand management were both "wrong": it was because neither would work with capitalism in the long run. Short term, maybe, but hasn't short term always been the problem? What is the underlying mechanism that dectates short termism over sustainability? It's as simple as this. The way capitalism works is that the less it is interfered with, eg by being taxed to allow for the socially commonsensual mollifying effects of its workings to pay for a welfare state, the less "efficient" it is on its own terms - which aren't as flexible as we've all been made to believe. By virtue of its inbuilt requirements for survival, capitalism is socioeconimic Darwinism in tooth and claw: whenever it and those who benefit the most by in by virtue of their power over all decision-making have restrictions of any kind clamped on them, they threaten to move their operations to countries where they can operate more freely, or, as is so often the case, with sweeteners from the governments of those countries. Its dog eat dog at the highest levels and the devil take the hindmost is not just a cliché. You are not naive enough to need me to tell you what those sweeteners are or the result of their impoverishment of the masses in places like Bangladesh and Thailand who have few rights or benefits of any kind, and deny how the latter is used alongside other forms of arm twisting as a pretext for divide-and-rule.

Pre-consumer capiitalism the working classes had been built out of the pre-existing rural peasantry as the wealth-creating source of capital's advances, courtesy new steam-driven, coal-powered technology. All that was required was the minimal required distribution down the income tree to keep the worker and his or her family fit enough to "man" the machinery plus a few basics, and a middle upward aspiring class to see to the policing and the accountancy, literally and metaphorically in broad terms. Everything from church denominatuions to books were recruited to artificially create the Georgian and Victorian middle class. The power for reform rested on (a) the philanthropic element whose, in that malign expression, do-gooding would remind those at the top that the working class far outnumbered themselves and could become a problem one day, so you'd better do something to improve their lot; and (b) that same working class if organised had potential to force pressure to the same ends.

That division encapsulated the shape and direction reform and reformism took - helped to no inconsiderable degree by the pre-eminent position Britain had by dint of geographical good fortune established in the formation of industrial capitalism, helped by the same slavery it was thereby and thereafter enabled to dispense with early on in the race for progress; other countries without the said benefits underwent violent revolutions to overthrow outmoded and outbidden social classes, which were not necessary here.

Two world wars had the effect of bringing the ruling classes into close proximity with the proletariat for the first time. By which time the prequels of Keysian state interventionism which had been found to work in bringing the US out of the '20s and '30 slump constituted the next stage in securing capitalism's legitimacy in the minds of those whose only solace apart from drink and the incremental forward steps rewarded by solidarity had rested in the mythologies of Church and State. To the refomist-minded welfarism coalesced both the interests of capital - a healthier workforce - and the obvious need to avoid revolution at all costs. Consumerism - at first regarded as a sap on profits taking, since value depended on the worker being the one cost above all overheads that could be controlled - by mass redundancies as well when the innate tendency of the system to go into overproduction periodically (recession) due to its overall unplanned character - demanded that well-known euphemism "rationalisation". Consumerism would appeal to the mentality inculcated in the Western mindset by its religion's stress on "results" and its asociation of need with greed. The latter charge could always be called up so as to simultaneously justify and encourage the protocols of belonging - keeping up with the Joneses, "tolerating" incomers etc - which, by the way, were not shared by other cultures prior to colonialism.

It is odd that Sir Keith Joseph should have suddenly had the scales from his eyes removed at the time he alleged this phenomenon to have happened: plenty of petty bourgeois people, not just the ruling classes, had always been vituperatively opposed to state interventionism, given that they could be liberated of their shares were potential forces leaving them sandwiched in the middle unleashed by it, with working people engaged in it as employees made aware through trade unionism's intermediary role of its workings. Such people did not appreciate the advantages of a working class advancing, not as a class with its own objectively defined interests and possibilities, but as individuals wedded to individual self-betterment through the status accorded in possessions encouraged by the fashion indistry and belief in the ultimate security of having capital, the prospect of home ownership. Once sold, the product could be held as a sword of Damoclese over the heads of anyone stepping out of line - the self-fulfilling processes of boom followed (ever more frequently) by bust ensuring enough insecurity to be "the policeman inside out heads", or at the perpetual back of our minds.

Never has the system, and its apologists and representatives, including Blairite reformers or liberal Tories, been so obviously revealed in its bankruptcy - ideological, economic, environmental. The battle for minds has returned, as it always has when capitalism has been in ostensibly terminal crisis. It never is, of course, because "ordinary people" can always be called on to make the sacrifices and pay for it in imopoverishment and the wars sired by property and scarcity. So, now with the global vision of monetary cohesion as panacea in tatters, they, those with the money, power, influence and control, are turning back once more to patrioticm, and then to nationalism, the last refuge of the scoundrel, as someone once said. The one hope remaining is that this time the voracious machine of capitalism and its insatiable appetite for exhaustible resources, and its now scientifically verified impact on the biosphere, will come home to the thick mindsets of those in charge - who are more likely than ever they have been in past situations to be at the common mercy of the consequences to their own lives, not just livelihoods - to wake up and use their self-vaunted superiority in intelligence and leadership skills to join in with whatever the solutions have to be, which this forum can play its part in discussing since we're all so open-minded. Other than that, we all descend into some kind of Third World chaos, in which sewers overflow, rats plague, bacteria uncontrolled kill, and street roaming gangs replace whatever established order was once won by the brave taking on of power.

[Dave2002]

OK - before I try to get a definitive answer (from where?) -

I want to know:

Are all UK laws currently subservient to EU laws?

Are some UK laws completely outside EU control?

I assume that some - possibly very many EU laws and UK laws are pretty much compatible, if not identical.

If there are differences between the EU and UK in terms of laws/rules/regulations, what are the scopes of those laws/rules/regulations?

For simplicity, I have used the word laws, where in some cases rules or regulations might be the appropriate words to use.

Basically I think the B'rs have been selling the line that everything comes under the control of the EU, but I suspect this is to a large extent untrue,
and that there are scoping rules for where EU rules apply, and where UK rules apply. Also, my understanding is that where there are EU rules which do apply to the UK, they have been agreed by what at least might be considered a democratic process.

Without such clarification, either from knowledgeable members here, or from people who really know, rather than politicians and others who have specific axes to grind, I find I am unable to judge whether I should continue to support the EU or not.

By scoping rules I mean things like:

** Applying to specific areas of trade.

** Applying to employment

** Applying to environment

** Applying to crime and public safety

etc. etc. etc.

I do not find the media, such as newspapers, the BBC, other broadcasters etc. helpful, as they don't present honest information, but keep reiterating the same old stuff, and relying more on opinion than established facts, IMO, as do politicians and others who behave in a tribal way - whatever "truth" there is has been totally hidden from sight.

[Serial_Apologist]

London is full of it, I know.
But that isn't true for the rest of Europe or even the UK
Not sure how ANPR "protects" London from international terrorism either ?
For most people in the UK Croydon IS London as is everywhere else inside the M25. It's where public transport that works is unlike the rest of the UK

A year ago, when I was doing some tin rattling for the Dystonia Society in the Whitgift centre in Crodon, a woman came up asking where the nearest bus stop was. "Do you mean for getting into London?" I asked. "What do you mean? This IS London!" she replied. Funny really: when I were a lad, we all knew Croydon as being in Surrey.