#26

The change is at edge of the margin of error (roughly 3% points) so it could easily be no real shift in actual opinion.

There’s also the chance of this or the previous one being one of the statistically expected “rogue polls” - around one in twenty would be expected to be wrong.

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#27

Barnier has come out hard as fuck just now.

This is gonna get nasty

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#30

It wasn’t actually a timed backstop anyway was it, only an aspiration that it would be over by end 2021.

Agree though, he’s basically just reiterated “no cherrypicking”.

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#31

No 10 doubling down as well.

Hurray! We’re going to waste more time! :slight_smile:

#32

Reminds me of someone

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#33

Yup that second slide is exactly what happened and in itself should be enough to put it in the bin.

#34

WILL OF THE PEOPLE!!!111!!!11!!!1eleven!!!

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#35

Voted ‘Brexit in name only’

Have always thought from the very start that the UK has been negotiating from an impossible position - “We can have our cake and eat it, god dammit!” - and the result will be that the UK will remain an EU member state in all but name - a rule taker as opposed to a rule maker - and both sides of the leave/remain debate will inevitably be left feeling pissed off with it all.

#36

Yep. It’s increasingly looking as if all the other options are too difficult/dreadful. Reckon May’s main concern now is to find some way of spinning it as a “true Brexit” to keep her voters on side despite it in effect not really being that.

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#37

If the alternative is a Corbyn-led government, the papers will do that for her, even without Dacre at the helm of the Mail.

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#38

Yeah, that’s true unfortunately. The only thing that will keep the Tories and their backers in line ultimately is the prospect of Corbyn getting in. And they’ll happily screw over the country if necessary to prevent that.

#39

It will be spun as, ‘Well, we kept the financial advantages through remaining in the customs union and the single market yet ditched EU political union’.

Still, I’m not sure how they are going to square the circle of adhering to free movement of people.

#40

I agree with this sentiment:

And this second bit might upset a few people. I think that many (most?) of the # fbpe types are so angry because it’s the first time in 25 years or so that government policy will directly harm them. It also explains why they see Brexit as an isolated thing, rather than an almost inevitable result of third-way politics. They’ve been able to compartmentalise it as they’ve (willfully?) isolated themselves from the reality of policy decisions over the past two decades or so.

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#41

Don’t think that’s a controversial take at all. It’s the whole centrist dad thing. Masses of people including many people we all know thought that everything was going great by being wilfully ignorant of what austerity was doing to people outside their bubble. Definitely has correlations with democrats who don’t see racism as a problem in America.
It’s all very I’m alright jack

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#43

While this is undoubtedly true the ‘compartmentalisation’ is as a result of policy/law changes occurring in particular policy/legal areas whereas Brexit will precipitate top to bottom structural change in every area of the economy and society

sure, a lot of the middle classes in all quadrants of the political axes swallowed wholesale the ‘need’ for austerity and thus helped usher in the class politics that have brought us to this point - demonisation of welfare state recipients as ‘scroungers’, scapegoating of immigrants, racialising of Britishness & British values, stoking hatred of islam etc. - all of which were in the fringes of British life (to varying degrees) well before 2010 but have really thrust into the mainstream discourse since - and become concretised policy since May became Home Secretary and put the whole Hostile Environment in place.

There is a risk though in painting this divide that some political scientists group into ‘cosmopolitan’ & ‘communitarian’ elements as communitarians being default & cosmopolitans being privileged that you play into the hands of those who would limit everyone’s rights, freedom of movement, opportunities etc. It’s essentially putting your stamp of approval on a race to the bottom - of nationalism and groupthink.

There are of course a lot of ‘cosmopolitians’ that are selfish individualists and are crowing about their own personal losses (or fears of them) but I doubt they’re any larger a percentage of that group than the communitarians who think the ‘poles’/‘darkies’/‘scroungers’ are coming for their jobs/nhs. Don’t forget though that there are huge numbers of cosmopolitans fighting for universal rights, the rule of law, inclusive democracy, better climate stewardship, better pay & conditions for workers, more public ownership, better education opportunities & standards, dismantling of discriminatory structural politics, fighting to end the ‘them & us’ political narrative and so on

It’s a dangerous game sneering at those who want to fight the Government’s Flag-waving, Go Home, Hostile Environment, DUP-courting, racism-stoking, mass-deportation enacting, EU shut-off plan…even if it looks like a lot of them are weasels who only got on board the good ship to fight once they realised the personal implications

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#44

tl:dr

It’s really not useful setting up another ‘them & us’ narrative between your own more enlightened & self-righteous original anti-Brexit narrative and their johnny-cum-lately ‘shit, this comes back on me too’ panic anti-brexit narrative

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#45

I have a problem with this type of analysis. More the style than the actual content.

It’s transitive, where wanting Labour to oppose #brexit is suggested to mean a person is ‘doing alright’, and ultimately an accusation of selfishness and callousness.

Do we really have space in our interested minds for only one priority, and therefore need to make a straight choice between a proposal of greater economic equality wanting to remain in an economic and political with neighbouring countries?

That’s a rhetorical question; please don’t answer it. My focus here is the style of the point. Maybe its purpose was to force people to make a binary choice between pressing the ‘like’ button or replying with ‘twat’—something MZC admitted he was pleased with.

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#47

Patronising of people’s ability to understand and care about wider politics and how they intersect with their situation compared to their own immediate lives, too IMO. A sort of paternalistic view of working class people that isn’t good.

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#48

Yeah that whole take that people who want to stop Brexit don’t care about other issues is nonsense. One, that people who might not have been particularly engaged with politics before is surely a good thing and was part of the argument for not stopping Brexit cos leave voters who don’t normally vote would be disillusioned with voting next time. You can’t have it both ways.

Two the concept that it’s a binary choice between anti Brexit and anti austerity is bizarre. Someone on here said something like if you’re anti Brexit your pro austerity (I can’t remember the actual phrase bit that was the jist) which disregards that Brexit will be austerity plus plus plus and a disaster to every single part of society/this country. There hasn’t been something this massive for many many years so if course people care. The whole sneering from some areas of the internet about ‘centrist dads’ and that FB hashtag and seems just to distract from the far right coup and rise of fascism that is happening as we speak.

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#49

A lot of that them & us narrative has come from caricature #fbpe folk (on Twitter/in the media, not on this forum) who accuse anyone who talks about any other issues of not caring, of being ignorant of the one important issue facing this country, or being a racist by proxy.

And while it’s not big and it’s not clever, as someone who has seen my family struggle in poverty and become more and more disenfranchised, more and more bitter, more and more tired, it’s really difficult not to feel defensive when accused of that. The idea that I’ve contributed to armageddon because I wasn’t able to convince family that leaving the EU would make life even more difficult than it already was, AND cause unimaginable problems for others.

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