Brexit 2019 and Poland

From a logistics point of view, a hard border with England is actually possible. There's only 25ish road border crossings, and only 5-6 of them carry any significant traffic. The others are tiny, and there's only two rail routes that cross the border.

Again, Hadrian's Wall separating present-day Northumberland from Scotland, sure worked to keep out the once-feared Picts, but why would either country nowadays want to separate one people from each other? Sounds almost as nightmarish as North vs. South Korea or the former East and West Germany.

As far as I'm concerned, faced as we still are here in the States with a US/Mexico border wall, the above would merely be a quick-fix masquerading as a long-term panacea which would eventually be doomed to resounding failure!

If an independent Scotland joins Schengen then many thousands with no right to live in England would go to Scotland and cross illegally (as would all the migrants in France trying to get to the UK)

Many millions more people would like to live in the UK (or england) than England can let in. Five million more Africans and Ten million more Indians and Ten million more Chinese and it's not remotely British anymore (and an environmental disaster as well).

The western US is actually vastly overpopulated given the regions meager water resources but people think it's mean to not let 50 million more Central Americans in (the reason for Trump's wall...)

Fair enough, but wouldn't some general referendum be required, and I DON'T mean necessarily a BREXIT-style plebiscite, almost a joke, whereby cessation from the EU was more or less foisted upon Great Britain?

Make no mistake though, Trump's wall is simply an excuse to exclude truly legal Mexicans who have working papers from sharing in the American Dream, punishing all because of the rest who are indeed not legal.

While I'm not a fan either of being forever underbid or undercut by Third-World migrant labor, if the problem has spun out of control, we have no one to blame but ourselves!

That's why I think it wouldn't happen. Schengen expansion is dead in the water at the minute anyway, and it's clear that Croatia won't get to join anytime soon. The murmurings I've heard from border geeks and people involved professionally with border issues is that the mood among the larger members is that Schengen can only expand when it includes Serbia and Montenegro, as to 'close' the Balkans corridor.

I think that if Scotland does go it alone and joins the EU, the CTA will stay in place. It's unthinkable that English people would need visas to work in Scotland and vice versa, and I don't see the EU demanding any changes there.

Honor the referendum and leave the EU first, and then after a year have another referendum and rejoin. Conditions for the U.K. won't be so favorable anymore, though.

Agreed with that.
The rest of your post is just bull and will not happen.

Honest question: why do you think it won't happen? At the moment it looks as if remainers are in the majority. If a less eurosceptic party ever comes into power, what would prevent them from having another referendum?

But the one thing that is definit l happening is Brexit on 31 October LOL - what time does the party start ?

It is on now.... wanna come?
But it is a wake now....... we will bury the Union Jack later...... :-)

Honest answer, you are wrong when you say that remainers are in the majority, because many remainers are just as fed up with Brexit as everyone else is and also, they believe in honouring a democratic referendum.

Secondly, a less eurosceptic party will not come into power, for the reasons I have outlined above.
The British public is so against a second referendum that it just can't happen.
They need to honour the first one to get people to believe that it is worth voting in a second one.
And if, as I believe, we still vote leave.... what then?
Ignore the result a second time?
Even if the vote was to remain, people would demand a "Best of Three"!!
No, a second referendum is a non starter.
A General Election was the best idea, let's just hope it works.

Of course Johnson will win a majority. What is he up against?
It is idiotic to rail against Ashley and zero hours contracts - it's exactly the same as Sunday closing in Poland - which denies students the opportunity to earn some money.

Low paid jobs are better than nothing, til something better comes along, for a lot of people.
Corbyn is being a twat.

I think it's too early to call. Corbyn knows how to fight elections, and with the Tories essentially needing a majority or nothing (now that even the DUP are angry), it might be much harder for the Tories to win.

My personal feeling? The Tories win big in England and lose badly elsewhere. The anti-Brexit vote is split two ways in England, whereas Farage is unlikely to do any real damage to the Tories.

It is likely that the Brexit party will win zilch, if remainers vote tactically.
That's the only good news.
I am afraid that little Britain has gone to the dogs, and the average Joe is glad to "have his victory" and "have our country back". My fellow British are stupid enough to fall for such jingoistic nonsense, and it's going to be a Tory shitt show. People dont care that they are going to be poorer, because they respect their peers.

Laughable, if it weren't so tragic.

Brexit wasn't about migration (except as a secondary system) it was about neoliberalism.

Remainers: Like neoliberalism (Thatcherism on steroids), not bothered by austerity, either benefit from the system (or identify with those who do)

Leavers: Neoliberalism isn't working for them and they're tired of austerity (which Corbyn will not address at all anymore than the socialist PM of Spain has).

Some leavers aren't doing bad but have other priorities beyond the purely materialistic.

Are you serious? I always thought that was one of the biggest issues.

Nigel Farage: 'Only by leaving the EU can we control our borders' ...
Boris Johnson: 'The only way to take back control of immigration is to Vote Leave on 23 June'...

It's a secondary system (that is more visible to people than some of the others so it's something they can talk about more easily than the subersion of social solidarity to financial interests and the elites' desire to collapse the welfare state).

Neoliberalism requires constant never ending large flows of migration that are unsustainable for a geographically small place like the UK.

No other political paradigm requires a constant inflow of fresh meat like neoliberalism does.

Remainers are mostly able to shield themselves from the negative effects of mass migration. Migration is traumatic in the best of circumstances and what goes on in western Europe is very far from the best of circumstances.

Leavers are more likely to have direct and negative experiences resulting from the neoliberal need for a dazed and overwhelmed underclass fresh off the boat.

The cosmic joke of the last few years is supposedly progressive people signing up for the neoliberal agenda under the guise of anti-racism.

Your theory does not work and you probably have not met many people from either side

Labour voters (who are opposed to austerity and aware of the downsides of neoliberalism) voted 65% for Remain. The other 35% probably swung the vote but the issue with them is low levels of education and resistance to migration.

On the other hand there are plenty of English tory voters who are quite well off, certainly not challenged by migrants but who are opposed to immigration and again often have low levels of education - they also voted leave.

Read (or listen to) Philip Mirowski he talks a lot about how neoliberal think thanks function to 'flood the zone' of public ideas so that those who are aware of the downsides end up adopting neoliberal opinions.


Why would that be? Everybody knows that flooding the labor market with people willing to do minimally skilled labor for far less helps...... who precisely?

I'm sure he does. The facts are, that if you sit in any pub or cafe, and listen to the average Joe shouting his mouth off about "those pesky foreigners taking our jobs" then you could be forgiven for thinking that opinion is the norm and that you are ashamed to be British.

But you wouldn't be inclined to feel that way - since you are not (British). No offence intended - but you are championing an academic view as is your wont - but there is nothing reasoned or intelligent in the way such people think - so academic voice is mute in this instance.

Immigration is the prime mover here - dress it up anyway you want, and deny it. But such avoidance of the reality is pointless. What the average leaver has is "victory" and his "victory" is Brexit - and he wants to hold onto whatever that means - because he never "won anything" before.

When in actuality hundreds of thousands (or millions?) of Central and Eastern Europeans have increased education among those without university education?


Considering the way that some sneer at your fellow countrymen without your advantages.... no, I'm not.


Maybe that should be put to a referendum....

Do you want

A To limit immigration to 10 % of current levels (including EU citizens)

B To keep immigration at current levels

C Keep freedom of movement for EU citizens and drastically increase non-EU immigration

Which would you vote for and way? Which would win at the ballot and why?

C. EU freedom of movement.
Keep non EU immigration at current levels.
As with Dilbert, do nothing. Change nothing. It's working. UK GDP was up, year on year. What do they want? Honey on it?

Then why are so many people upset? That's probably a cue that it's not working for them....

That is really simple. It's called Blame Culture.

youtu.be/5ZSf3GCu9mU

Brexit party will contest every UK seat if no pact with Tories, says Farage

twitter.com/Conservatives/status/1189301971867656198

#BackBoris to get Brexit done.

Action, meet consequence

theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/23/northern-ireland-unionist-mps-attack-brexit-betrayal

With immigration, it's largely the same problem you see in suburban Poland - large influx of outsiders without any investment in infrastructure.

I can perfectly understand why someone would be upset if their child's school was spending money on additional support for Polish kids rather than on the general school population, especially those schools in poorer areas.

Me too.
And it seems counter productive to me to label these people as bigots and racists, which people do.
Especialy when many of these people come from "ethnic minorities".
There is a problem here and it is no use people hiding away from it because of PC sensibilities.
The problem needs to be addressed.

It's true, I don't blame individuals here - you have your "little Englanders" in places like Boston who see public services straining with longer waits for doctors, schools struggling financially and in other respects, social services struggling or turning a blind eye to problems, etc etc. They were easily led with the Leave arguments, because they're the ones who took the brunt of numerous failings. Remainers in middle England didn't have to deal with those things, because immigrants weren't drawn to their areas for various reasons.

I don't think leaving the EU is going to change anything for them, but it's pretty obvious what happened there. The EU was a convenient scapegoat more than anything else, IMO.

I mentioned him before, but my Muslim friend is always confused when people try and treat him as anything other than an ordinary Englishman. I remember him telling me how his daughter's school keeps sending letters reassuring him (and other Muslim parents) that they could withdraw their kids from the Christmas parties - and no amount of "JESUS IS A BLOODY PROPHET IN ISLAM" could get them to understand otherwise.

He's forever ranting about "white middle class English women taking offence on behalf of minorities who aren't actually offended at all", and he's sick and tired of people assuming that he's somehow going to be offended by a Christmas tree or some lights. He's also the first to point out that social issues in Muslim communities need to be dealt with equally and normally, and that he (and his peers) just want to live normally without everyone obsessing over the fact that they've got a different religion.

That is part of the problem though. The government failed to invest in the wave of immigration. They enjoyed the rise in GDP that Eastern European immigration brought with it, but instead of investing in the services to manage this influx, they, the Tories, began a stringent wave of austerity, nd then had the temerity to blame immigration when the dam inevitatably burst.

Hopeless resource mismanagement at best, and a clear exploitative agenda in actual fact.

That's not a one time failure, that's the current model of neoliberalism (using Mirowski's definition - it's a system where the purpose of government is not to serve the citizenry but rather to serve the business and finance sectors). It's not a viable model in the long term and populations are turning against it in W Europe and the Americas but in different ways. The drive to de-emphasize elections (elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy) is the system trying to hang on at all costs.

Thinking in terms of tories and labour is just counterproductive at this point. The relevant distinction is neoliberalism vs whatever comes afterward (there are right and left wing version of this but they all depend on government going back more to an agenda of providing services for people).

Usually when a paradigm is installed on one wing it has to be replaced by the other wing.

The US and UK installed neoliberalism on the right and so the replacement has to come from the left (Sanders or Gabbard in the US or Corbyn, or someone with less weird baggage, in the UK)

In France and Southern Europe the replacement needs to come from the right (Salvini is the best example so far which is why the neoliberal establishment is trying so hard to keep the most popular politician in the country from any kind of power)