Brexshit
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@Tago-Mago said in Brexshit:
the cavalier attitude with which Brexit was approached
In fairness, I don't think it could have been approached in any other way, for both political and legal reasons. The Leave campaign was not the Government of the day, so if they'd drawn up official plans then the Remain campaign would have been able to say "you're not in Government, none of that can be said to be a policy".
I think the problem here was that the Government had been foolish enough to take a position on the referendum. Once they did that, they couldn't allow the civil service to prepare contingency plans for a Leave result, as that would allow the Leave campaign to say "see, the Government has a plan, it'll look like this" when, for political reasons, the Government wanted to be able to present a vote to Leave as a jump into the unknown. In fact, the Government forbade the civil service from drawing up any plans for this very reason, as they would more-likely-than-not end up leaking to the press.
There is also the wrinkle that EU law as drafted actively forbids pre-Article 50 notice discussions with a Member State that is contemplating activating Article 50. (I can't recall if there was an ECJ decision on this point, I think there was, but it was certainly the Commission's position.) So any Government plans would have to be caveated with "we'd like to try and do [x], but the EU's position is unknown and they won't talk to us unless we actually do this".
If we could go back in time, and with the benefit of hindsight, I think the Government should have stayed above the vote, saying "this is a choice you've got to make". This would allow the Gov to draw up plans - as far as they could given the EU's position and with the necessary caveats - which could have been published in advance. Meanwhile individual politicians would have been free to campaign for their preferred side.
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advisory not mandatory. 51:49 or whatever it was, Dave should have said that it was too close to be overwhelming
Technically true, the referendum was only advisory, but that's for arcane legal reasons to do with the UK's constitutional framework.
You'd have to weigh the political risks of invoking Article 50 and leaving the EU with the risks of going against the result of a referendum which, on a political level at least, you've promised people would be binding.
I'm not sure whether I'd like to see what would happen if Dave had decided to go back on that promise and refuse to Brexit after making such a promise.
*Edit: you've reminded me of fascinating legal-political arguments which were going on over at the UK Constitutional Law Association's blogs back in 2016-2019. The nerd in me now wants to go back and re-read them.
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Never take anything that I say as something I wholeheartedly believe in. I like taking a position and pushing it a little bit...It's like my recollections of events are always more humorous and interesting than actuality. Real life can always be improved upon
"OK face up to it - you're useless but generally pretty honest and straightforward . . . it's a rare combination of qualities that I have come to admire in you" - Geo 2011
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Never take anything that I say as something I wholeheartedly believe in. I like taking a position and pushing it a little bit...
Don't worry. One side-effect of my first degree being PPE (with most of it being philosophy options) and being surrounded by much smarter people than me is that I have a tendency to think that way myself and assume that everyone is testing their points by making them publicly.
I have consequently developed a bad habit of prefacing most of my statements with "I think" when I talk. (My boss thinks I'm trying to be some combination of too-lawyerly, non-committal, and/or evasive all the time. I have to keep explaining that I'm always half-expecting a counter argument to every utterance I make, even if it's as obvious as "water is wet".)
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To immediately counter myself... a single molecule of H2O is still water, but wetness is an emergent property of there being a sufficient number of H2O molecules in one place to reduce friction between two other objects.
See what I mean! I can't help thinking this way, it's awful.
Take the dive...
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To immediately counter myself... a single molecule of H2O is still water,
Is it though? In my mind “water” refers to the liquid state of H2O. You can’t have a liquid with a single molecule.
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@Tago-Mago agreed, except for the bit about water which has gone right over my head
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@IrishHeart it’s not good for water to go right over your head, at least not for a prolonged period
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@ARNC haha! Good observation, although at 6’4 it has to be pretty deep!
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AND, the result of the vote was advisory not mandatory.
this very point. it also would've career suicide for anyone to go "nah, we're not going to follow the referendum" and DC didn't want to be the person to invoke article 50 so he resigned and said some one else can deal with this..
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Overnight, we did not just ship a package to The EU, we had to export it. So although there is a free trade agreement between The EU and Japan and a similar one between The UK and Japan, all non-UK-produced goods attract 12% duty, so upon entry into The EU, our shipments were subject to duty and also VAT on the sum of the declared price plus the duty. So we either shipped to EU and let the customer deal with that shit (something they had not had to do before) or ship and pay the duty and the tax ourselves, in both cases with the high probability that the shipping company would also charge us, or the customer additional "handling" fees. We elected to do the latter and shield the customer from the grief. Then if a customer needs to return the goods, there is no sensible way that we can claim a refund for the tax, the duty or additional fees. The single worst example being a customer who ordered 2 pairs of Wesco boots and returned both pairs - revenue zero, cost of sale €500.
No positives at all.
