Nigel Farrage - this pains me more than I can possible explain but.....

this from last night makes more sense than ... nearly anything I have seen or heard for weeks

I hurt... I'm in pain.... but this is utterly....reasonable.

It will take you under 4 minutes.... you need sound on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR2snMKWbUM

Can't fault his logic, oratory, or (and what a breath of fresh air) saying it as he sees it.

my soul hurts.....but he's right on every point.

May has messed up, partly because they're dragged her over the coals for years, and finally at 4am she signed up to a backstop... bad choie ...but the general public's opinion of the EU has dropped lower than low, and we won't be able to buy that much prosecco or so many Audi and VWs unless they sort their stuff out. We, the UK public, now know all their names and we know they've been disprespecting our PM ( no need for us to love her.. but she IS the PM and she's British- not French or German, Italian or Spanish)

I hate agreeing with him.

The last minute or so is quite interesting, I'll have to look up what article 24 is.

The prior 3 minutes is a very long winded and backhanded way of acknowledging the EU (sadly for us,) did a far better job of negotiating than the UK government did.

On the flip side, I am having an increasingly difficult time feeling sorry for Theresa May. Yes she's in a position like that buggy in Austin Powers, but....

She triggered article 50 without having any kind of plan in place.
She called an unneeded general election which wiped out her small majority.
Having made a deal with Brussels with compromises on both sides, she singularly failed to get it through parliament, and is now saying, "Oh yeah, those compromises on your side, can you waive them?"

It's hardly surprising that the bureaucrats in the EU are trying to make her life difficult as they don't want a break up of an increasingly federalised Europe, but she's not done herself any favours in Europe either. Of course if he had any credible opposition to hold her to account we'd also be unlikely to be in this situation.

The thing is with the backstop is that it's Mrs May's backstop, the EU started out by saying there should be a border down the Irish sea but Mrs May ruled that out with one of her red-lines and so spent six months trying to convince the EU that a UK wide customs union was the way to go, and now, unsurprisingly as plenty of people questioned how you could honer the legal requirements in the GFA while leaving the EU before the referendum, we're told it can be sorted with technology.

As David Davis said in 2008 "you could tell ministers had run out of ideas... because they were reduced to waffling emptily about supposed 'technological solutions'".

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Originally Posted by b0redom

She called an unneeded general election which wiped out her small majority.

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She did it because otherwise we would be in the middle of a General Election in 2020 when we SHOULD be in the middle of moving our stuff out of Europe.

I reckon she did the thing that made most long term sense.

Who says? The referendum was advisory in any case, but even if it wasn't there was no date by which article 50 should have been triggered.

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Originally Posted by Zak33

She did it because otherwise we would be in the middle of a General Election in 2020 when we SHOULD be in the middle of moving our stuff out of Europe.

I reckon she did the thing that made most long term sense.

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We should have finished moving our stuff out of Europe by 29th March this year. She didn't want her gang on the end of a massive humping in a GE if things didn't go well in the first year.

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Originally Posted by spacein_vader

The prior 3 minutes is a very long winded and backhanded way of acknowledging the EU (sadly for us,) did a far better job of negotiating than the UK government did.

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Sorry but no. It takes two to Tango. Hammering out a deal the other side can not accept or honour is a failed negotiation.

The UK leaving the EU should be considered as the greatest political failure on both sides of the channel since WW II. Unsurprising when you listen to the language used by Junkers and his cronies - They appear more interested in dueling with personalities than upholding the interests of the majority of the EU peoples. Trump negotiates in a similar way!

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Originally Posted by matts-uk

Sorry but no. It takes two to Tango. Hammering out a deal the other side can not accept or honour is a failed negotiation.

The UK leaving the EU should be considered as the greatest political failure on both sides of the channel since WW II. Unsurprising when you listen to the language used by Junkers and his cronies - They appear more interested in dueling with personalities than upholding the interests of the majority of the EU peoples. Trump negotiates in a similar way!

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You do know it is the UK who chose to leave, right? I mean saying it take two to tango, that it's a failure on both sides, and implying that the EU is in anyway responsible would be like telling your partner that they're to blame for you sleeping around or that the reason you're filling for divorce is because of both your failures.

Need i remind you that we've had two ministers in charge of negotiating with the EU resign because they didn't like the deal they were responsible for negotiating, one of them was so useless that he didn't bother turning up to the majority of negotiations and those that he did turn up to he didn't bother with things like paperwork, and the other wasn't even aware how important Dover was in terms of freight and didn't even bother reading the 35 pages of the Belfast agreement, one of the major stumbling blocks in the negotiations.

And that's not even touching on how incompetent and duplicitous Mrs May and the bearded holly than thou 'wonder' is on the other side of the benches.

He has a point on some of that - and the intrasigence of the EU/EC is definitely not helping public opinion here of the EU. It's still going to suck though when we leave. Have to be honest, a no deal in some ways might be a better option. At least we'd be shot of them. Not that I in any way want to be severed from the EU, nor to have the recession that will follow. I do however start to see Saracen et al's point that they don't seem to keen to listen to us and negotiate rather than dictate to us. But that has to be balanced against the number of items voted on in the EC that went the way the UK MEPs voted for, which I'm told is staggeringly high (circa 90%). So what were the items we were actually being dictated to on?

He's just soo full of crap and turning it around on them. He campaigned for brexit for years and hours after winning he distanced himself from the promises he made. Everything the public has been told about the eu has been lies and misrepresentations. I mean it's pathetic for a prominent leaver like him to act like a wounded dog when it was him who wounded himself and is now whining about it. Brexit pisses me off soo much because it makes britain look like complete morons.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/ne...reading/14/11/

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Originally Posted by outwar6010

Brexit pisses me off soo much because it makes britain look like complete morons.

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If we look like morons it's because those representing us are behaving in ways that portray such a view. And if they act like morons, speak like morons, and reason like morons...

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Originally Posted by outwar6010

He's just soo full of crap and turning it around on them. He campaigned for brexit for years and hours after winning he distanced himself from the promises he made. Everything the public has been told about the eu has been lies and misrepresentations. I mean it's pathetic for a prominent leaver like him to act like a wounded dog when it was him who wounded himself and is now whining about it. Brexit pisses me off soo much because it makes britain look like complete morons.

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i know.. I agree.

BUT.....now... now we are where we are, and frankly it's such a cluster flow that we need to get something straight with them. And that's the fact that we, the great unwashed, seriously dislike our entire country being treated like a diseased canker. So.. while I was a staunch remainer... I agreed with everything the bloke said. They're disrespecting us, they're abusing their assumed power... and they need to grow up and budge up a bit.

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Originally Posted by ik9000

He has a point on some of that - and the intrasigence of the EU/EC is definitely not helping public opinion here of the EU. It's still going to suck though when we leave. Have to be honest, a no deal in some ways might be a better option. At least we'd be shot of them. Not that I in any way want to be severed from the EU, nor to have the recession that will follow. I do however start to see Saracen et al's point that they don't seem to keen to listen to us and negotiate rather than dictate to us. But that has to be balanced against the number of items voted on in the EC that went the way the UK MEPs voted for, which I'm told is staggeringly high (circa 90%). So what were the items we were actually being dictated to on?

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My response to the point about votes wentc"our way" would be two-fold.

First, it's not that everyhody else did what we want - it's that we agreed with what they wanted. And rightly, IMHO.

Which leads directly to the second point.

It's easy to characterise the Leaver position as "the EU is the evil empire and we want rebel", but it's facile. It's no secret I'm firmly "Leave" but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot the EU does that I agree with. One (of many) such examples would be consumer protection laws. It took what we had already and enhanced it, but more importantly, brought many of the other 27 up to where we were, or at least, closer to it. Another example is privacy and data protection (GDPR).

So .... in such cases, which no doubt is a lot of the time. Why wouldn't we vote for such measures?

So it isn't a case of disagreeing with everything because it's the EU doing it.

Another argument many Remainers have used, even in this forum, is that we'd be better off staying in, and arguing for reform? If nothing else, the last couple of years show why that doesn't work, and it's not like successive PMs since at least Thatcher haven't tried, and that "Inside Europe" documentary Zak posted about showed clearly what happened when Csmeron tried, even with his back to the wall back home.

Chancellor Merkel commented a couple of days ago that UK support for the European project had always been, then she hesitated as is searching for the word, then said ".... patchy."

Exactly.

There are two aspects to the EU. First is day-to-day business, like the GDPR and shedloads of others. The other is the fundamental, long-term political project. The reason for leaving is that while we might agree with, and even initiate or design many of the day-to-day matters, and accordingly would vote with them, this country, as a nation, does not see our future as part of the aims of that political project. We've tried redirecting focus, we've tried reforming from within, and we get nowhere.

Now, other member states (if their peoples support it) are entirely within their rights to actually want those lonf-term aims. Who are we to block that?

BUT ..... that leaves the UK with, ultimately, a binary choice :-

a) Get with the program, fully, OR
b) Get out, let the others get on with it without us moaning and dragging our heels.


So the position of the EU is that they want the UK in, because we're still a significant economic player, with a decent (and nuclear) military, and a VERY strong security operation, because we're advanced in many high-tech areas, and so on, Oh, and because we are a substantial contributor to paying for it.

But they don't want us in "at any price".

They won't compromise on fundamental principles, like (all aspects of) the single market, for instance, because doing so threatens the political project, and that comes above everything else.

That, essentially, is why I voted leave.

It's a bit like a family, deciding on family choices. When it comes to buying butter or spread, or jam versus marmalade, or whether to have oizza or Chinese takeaway, I have my preferences, but if the rest of the family wants to emigrate to Mars, and I'm absolutely not going to, well, time for them to go their way and me to go mine. I wish them well on Mars, but I'm staying put.

And before anyone comments on that analogy, you can only push an analogy just so far.


The EU wants, fundamentally, one thing. I want no part of it, but that doesn't mean I want to prevent them going to Mars.

Which is why, fundamentally, it's not just about trade, or GDP and certainly not about immigration. It's about democracy, sovereignty, etc.

If there was any chance of the EU bring what we joined, and diverting ftom that political project, I'd have voted to remain. But there isn't. The way Cameron was treated, such as iver the "emergency brake" (another popular remainer argument for us having control) shows that there isn't. And we were never likely to get another chance to get out.