Brexit

[orathaic]

“British” and “Britain” come from the name of the British Isles as a collective

Brittany is a place in France, also known as Lesser Britain, to your Greater Britain.

But geography and logic have no place in a discussion of ethnicity, identity and historical narrative. Emotion will always trump logic on these issues.

[Octavious]

That's an interesting use of words. "About 3 in 8 people died or emigrated". The difference between dying and emigrating is massive, and lumping them together seems a tad odd.

What is more true of the English than of the other nations of the British Archipelago ( ) is that we are more of mix of ancestry. You look at my family history and you find Irish who left because of the famine, you find Scots forced out in the clearings, and you find those who did the clearing. I'm confident that I have ancestors on both sides of every struggle on these islands. It makes identifying with any particular side rather tricky. Still, as I'm descended from the Irish forced out and you from those who stayed I'm claiming the moral high ground :).

Fun as this is, we're deviating from the topic a tad.

[TrPrado]

I’d say it’s much more like referring to Mexico as American.

[orathaic]

Octavious, if only 1 million died, does that make it better. The narrative told to irish kids remains, misleading or not. That population lose was one which put this island's economy into a downward spiral, the population continued to drop to less than 4 million (in the 1960s). [EDIT: I'm not sure what all island population was in the 60s, I know the republics started to recover then, 120 years after the famine]

That is the main thrust of my argument. Not that the British are guilty of genocide (though there are arguments for that, particularly in India, in similar famine policies) but that economic policies devestated this island. Poverty lead to emigration, emigration lead to a reduction in demand, lower demand leads to less work, which leads to poverty... The spiral continued for over 100 years.

I claim no moral stake in this. Merely why certain emotions are brought when talking about Irish vs British identity. I have deviated from my point about the DUP's Irishness. The narrative I've spelt out is one which makes an identity.

Canadians identify as different from Americans because of the identity forged in the war of 1812, when they fought off the US. Americans are not British and celebrate that every year in their independence day. The Irish.

And you are entirely right, dna analysis shows how much mining has gone on over the past 2000 year one these islands. But your dna heritage is much harder to use to form a cohesive identity from which to unify a group (especially when religion has been used as a political tool to divide our common genetics... Don't get me started on the pope).

[orathaic]

I’d say it’s much more like referring to Mexico as American.

Doesn't matter who it is more like, emotion will determine people's attitude over logic. My argument about Americans could be the most logically thought out in the world. And it will still be ignored by the vast majority of USAians.

[orathaic]

*mixing, of dna, not mining. [and why can't I edit that post again to fix the typos...]

[orathaic]

OK, so things have moved on. May wins the no confidence vote.

What next? Corbyn fights for a second referendum? May asks the EU for an extention to article 50? The EU refuses to re-open negotiations?

Any predictions?

[Octavious]

If the EU have any sense they'll make extending article 50 conditional on there either being an election or referendum or something of that magnitude. Extending it just so that Parliament can faff for a few more months doesn't seem likely.

If May tries to push through the no deal option then enough Tories will jump ship that a no confidence vote will succeed, so that option is closed.

If she throws a bone to Labour in the form of an ultra-soft Brexit she may get Labour to support it, but it will mean betraying what she believes the will of the people to be, and could very well destroy the Conservatives in the process, so I can't see it happening.

An extension to article 50 followed by a 2nd referendum is the only way forward I can see that is workable.

[orathaic]

Really? Clearly they are British, but I never knew that whether or not they were Irish was part of the debate. You do do things strangely on your side of the sea.

FYI
https://scontent-dub4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/ ... e=5CB704FC

This is the level of denial that you get. No, this Island doesn't exist...

But anyhow. My point remains, calling them Irish is probably offensive to many.

[Octavious]

My point remains, calling them Irish is probably offensive to many.

Maybe so, but the sort of person who'd find it offensive is likely the same sort of person I don't give a damn about offending, and a fair few who I may well actually enjoy offending, so all is good

[ksako8]

And more votes in the HoC, more defeats for May and the clock is ticking. The UK still doesn’t know what it wants.
They don’t want to remain, they don’t want no deal and they don’t want the deal May agreed with the EU. But what do they want?

[Octavious]

The UK knows exactly what it wants. It wants the EU to cease to exist. Sadly that's not likely to happen in the immediate future, so the debate is about the least worse option.

The tradition in UK politics is to seek compromise, which is why we're having so many problems. In this case the compromise option is considerably worse than the two extremes, and faced with a problem that traditional methods are failing to solve, the great British Parliament is falling upon its tried and tested plan B. Blind panic. If you faff about for long enough the problem will eventually solve itself.

[ksako8]

What is the least worse option?

[Octavious]

I think it's a referendum on which of the possible options the public would prefer out of May's deal, Remain, and a no deal Brexit. But for that to happen they have to go through the motions of failing to agree an alternative in Parliament. The worst possible result would be Labour's super light Brexit idea, which is a compromise that combines none of the benefits of Brexit with many of the drawbacks, and will unite the British people in their contempt.

[orathaic]

You also need an alternative voting system for that referendum.

First past the post results (like in Belfast) where a candidate with 24% of the vote is deemed elected. People should be able to rank their vote by preference.

If the split is fairly uneven, like 20% for May's deal, and 40% for no brexit and for no deal, then you go back and look at all the May's deal vote (no longer an option) and bump them over to those votes 2nd preference. So if the May's deal votes split 15% for no deal, and 5% for no brexit, you end up with 45% no brexit and 55% no deal. But more importantly you don't have a split vote.

You don't end up with a situation where the 39.9% of the country say, "its not fair they won, they only got 40.1% of the vote..."

Also this is the system they use in Ireland ever since the British left it to us... (itis also easy to explain to the public, you just vote #1 for your favourite option, and #2 for your second... Etc, simple for people to actually do)

Unfortunately, that may not be politically feasible. There is very little history of having referenda in the UK, and very little confidence in alternative voting systems...

[Octavious]

That's not really true, Ora. Such voting system are common place in universities, in Parliament itself, for electing police commissioners, and various aspects of wider society. There are plenty of people who would prefer it to be a binary choice, but assuming that there are 3 options on the ballot there's little doubt that that's the system that would be used.

[orathaic]

Fair enough Octavious, I suspect there are many who aren't familiar with these kinds of systems. I know I wasn't in the University of Bristol for that long, but I never came across it there. Likewise, I suspect many don't elect their police commissioners etc...

I think there is an alternative, the options could be Labour's softer brexit, May's deal or no deal (though I would frame labour's plan as 'economic union not political union'... That is stay in the customs Union and single market but leave the political institutions of the EU*).

That way, the government can climb down and say they are NOT running a second vote on EU membership (because no brexit isn't an option), they are throwing it back to the electorate in order to clarify what kind of brexit the public prefer.

*And I say this because for many years I have heard people saying when the UK decided to join it was a economic union not a political union... Of course there are downsides to following the common market rules without having a say in making those rules; it would be a less democratic and less sovereign position to be in (subject to EU courts on matters relating to market fair practices etc.) than full membership... But that is what Labour seems to be pushing for.

[Octavious]

That is an alternative, but I don't understand the logic of ruling out a popular option in Remain in favour of the Labour soft Brexit. I don't know anyone who supports the Labour Brexit idea aside from enthusiastic Labour Party members. There's an argument that Brexit voters weren't entirely clear about what they were voting for, but every single one of them I know is certain that it isn't that.

That's what I was saying before. The compromise tradition doesn't work here. It's like you really wanting a skiing holiday in the Alps, and your partner wanting a beach holiday on the Spanish coast, and compromising with a city break in Marseilles. It leaves everyone angry and dissatisfied, because Marseilles is a really shit place to be.

My own order of preference would be this:
Remain
Hard Brexit
May's deal
The Corbyn light Brexit

[orathaic]

Look, I would be perfectly happy to see the UK remain (though obviously, I'd also be happy with the UK peacefully breaking up, and a Federal Republic* of Scotland Ireland, and Northern Ireland succeeding Éire as an EU member state - see international norms for country succession...) but one of the biggest political issue with any second referendum is that the powers that be have spent so much time arguing with against it, telling people it would be anti-democratic, screaming about how Brexit means Brexit.

I'm not saying it think a second referendum is a bad thing, I think it would be healthy to have more referenda, and make them binding rsther than advisory. How and Ever, there is a difference between what I would like to see, and what I think is politically realisable.

*Like this: https://medium.com/@orathaic/why-form-s ... 12a45eb738
A great example of something which is not politically feasible... Even if it does facilitate the democratic will of the people of Scotland and Northern Ireland to remain in the EU.

[orathaic]

As an aside, just reading today's news. If there is a 3 month delay, and a decision not to be involved in the next round of EU Parliament elections (saving British tax payers money) and then there is another delay, you could end up with the UK still in the EU but unrepresented...