Brexit and logistics

Thanks, I'll take a look .

You are normally very balanced in your contributions, registerme, so you'll appreciate that honesty has to work both ways round. 

I would have to question the honesty of those Remainer politicians and others who used every underhand trick in the book to thwart the democratic will of the people at every turn.  

• Blair briefing France on how best to negotiate against the UK and exploit our weaknesses.  Underhand, dishonest, two sides of the same coin.
   
• The 'required-to-be-impartial' Speaker -  you know, the one riding around with "Bo****ks to Brexit" stickers emblazoned on his vehicles (of great mirth, I'm sure, to those more highly educated Remainers we keep hearing about) - using every means at his disposal to thwart the democratically expressed mandate.  The man was a disgrace and made a mockery of this critical appointment requiring impartiality as its prime attribute.
   
• Pre-referendum, Nick Clegg lecturing Nigel Farage that plans for an EU army were fantasy.  Three months post-referendum, Juncker proposing exactly that. 
  
  
• The mere act of voting to leave, we were assured, would have an immediate impact on the UK economy.... following the vote, GDP rose 3%. 
  
  
• Cameron, Major, Ashdown, Clegg and others stating the vote is a once-in-a-generation event and we stand by it whatever the outcome... then campaigning shamelessly for a re-run when it went against them.  
  
  
• Companies would leave the UK in their droves... Nissan would leave Sunderland....  yet UK car manufacturing went on to increase, prior to Covid.
  
  
• All those MPs who stood for re-election on a ticket of completing Brexit... and then did everything in their power to prevent it.  
  

If the defining characteristic here is honesty, I'm not sure either side emerges with a clean bill of health.  Overall I agree with your sentiment, but how many politicians are honest these days, be they Leavers or Remainers?  
 

Hi bernythedolt ,

Absolutely, honesty has to work both ways. One thing I should clarify though is that by saying "That honesty is utterly absent from the Leaver side of the public debate" is that by using the present tense I meant now, and by "Leaver side" I meant politicians and those in the public eye, not the general public, or forumites in general or specifically.

That out of the way:-

* If Blair did that then yes, he should be robustly criticised for it.
* Re Bercow. I don't remember the details but I seem to think that what he was trying to do was to maintain parliament's constitutional role in events (compare and contrast with Johnson proroguing parliament). I do accept that Bercow is a red rag to a leaver bull though. Certainly some of my leaver friends are extremely angry about him and his behaviour.  And I've never really understood it .
* As I suspect you know talking of an "EU army" is a gross over-simplification, though I accept that it handed ammunition (sorry) to the Leaver side of the argument at the time.
* I agree that the economic doom-mongering was overdone. It would have been far more accurate to talk about the long term drag leaving the EU would have.

Where did you get your 3% figure? From data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2020&locations=GB&start=2010&view=chart it looks like GDP growth stayed on a slight downward trend, following the referendum, up until COVID.

Anyway, we'll have to see how things play out over the next few years as things like import checks are applied, the changing nature of immigration works out, and any regulatory divergence starts affecting things.

* I didn't, and don't, agree with those campaigning for a re-run (though as I implied in my post that wouldn't have stopped Farage et al campaigning to leave had the vote gone against them). I think there are some grounds for complaint about how the referendum was run, but you agree the rules ahead of the game, not after you've lost it.  fwiw I don't expect the UK to attempt to rejoin the EU in my lifetime, and if it did try to do so and one of the conditions was that we adopt the Euro I would have to think long and hard about it.
* Re companies leaving the UK in droves. Yes, that was overstated, but yes, it is happening. As with the economy bullet above it will take years to play out.
* MPs standing for re-election on a ticket of completing Brexit (which hasn't been done yet) and then trying to prevent it - yes, that would anger and frustrate me.  Vote them out then!


I agree with you, neither side emerges with a clean bill of health, though I am clear in my mind as to which side is currently (I wanted to say "remains" but...) more diseased.

And yes, I hold most of our political body, of all sides, in contempt.

Sorry registerme, I didn't have the time or inclination to check every point in depth, it was more to demonstrate in more general terms that both sides lied and used underhand tactics.  I took the 3% figure from here.  Without checking the ONS source, and taking your chart as gospel, it looks like GDP growth remained at around 2% for 2016.  Nevertheless, the bullet point essentially still stands.  The vote itself didn't affect GDP as it was predicted to.

adrianc ... I see a Frenchman at that table.

Except for the minor detail that he didn't, and he was.

Read the next two sentences from the one you quoted.

Is NATO's SHAPE a single NATO army? No.


That doesn't mean he was negotiating on behalf of France...

What I see is some prepared professionals with a pile of documents... and some smug unprepared amateurs with nothing in front of them. His explanation (a year and a bit later) was just... "But you ask yourself, who’s the person better briefed, the person who’s got it in their head or the person who’s got a foot of papers in front of them. Eh?"

Your usual copy and paste, this time from Wikipedia adrianc