With the Conservative Party government in the United Kingdom unwilling – or unable – to reach a reasonable withdrawal agreement with the European Union, the country’s ministers and politicians have once again resorted to claims of anti-UK plotting by the EU to explain away Brussels’ rejection of London’s half-baked Brexit plans. Here is The Sun newspaper offering up some Pyongyang-style hysteria for Britain’s tabloid readers, blaming German conspirators in the European Commission for the worsening cross-Channel impasse:
BREXIT Secretary Dominic Raab has accused EU chiefs of twisting the Irish dilemma and plotting to break up the UK as punishment for leaving.
Brussels proposals for a customs border between Britain and Northern Ireland were rejected by Theresa May — sparking the current impasse.
He told The Sun: “If you walk around the corridors in Brussels, you hear all sorts of mutterings about how the UK must be penalised for leaving the EU, and the politicisation of Northern Ireland is part of that…”
Cabinet members are pointing the finger at Commission Secretary-General Martin Selmayr.
Top Tories think the German secretly wants the reunification of Ireland…
Meanwhile, fellow Tory MP David Davis, the previous Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, has put forward a similar paranoid explanation for the political indecisiveness gripping the UK in the right-wing Evening Standard:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is leading moves in the European Union to stop Britain being “seen to succeed” from Brexit, David Davis claimed today.
In an exclusive interview with the Evening Standard, the former Brexit Secretary said only French president Emmanuel Macron is taking a harder line against the UK. “Other than Macron, Merkel is the most emphatic in Europe about us not being seen to succeed,” he said.
The xenophobic Express newspaper features much more of this paranoid thinking by other equally ignorant Conservative Party politicians, including the claim that “...issues over the Northern Irish border are being used by the EU to “punish” the UK for leaving the bloc” and the insistence that “the Irish border issue should stop being “weaponised” by MPs to aggravate the ongoing Brexit negotiations“. A somewhat ironic statement given that the British government will be literally militarising the border around Britain’s colonial outpost in the north-east of Ireland in the event of a hard Brexit.
If knowingly deceitful conspiracy theories and fake news are all that the UK can come up with by way of treaty negotiations with Europe then it is heading for an era of self-imposed isolation from its former partners and allies.
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
the Brits seem terrified of Herr Selmayr, the man who’s in charge of the EU response to the No Deal fiasco and to the Deal (whatever it may turn out to be).
He has a well earned reputation of being intelligent, thorough on the job and extremely efficient.
They don’t like coming up against a professional that they can’t bully and arrogantly walk all over
Not that they could do that with M.Barnier, another 100% professsional.
And they don’t like him either.
Hence the UK attempts to divide and conquer and go behind his back
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‘The EU is not responsible for your blundering lack of foresight’ – Patrick Kielty slams Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan….Sums it all up Brilliantly
https://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/the-eu-is-not-responsible-for-your-blundering-lack-of-foresight-patrick-kielty-slams-boris-johnsons-brexit-plan-37366776.html
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From what I’ve heard it seems like the UK had the Brexit vote, without a lot of media discussion about all the potential consequences of the results.
I get the sense a lot of Britons supported this measure without much in the way of “realistic expectations” in terms of everything leaving the EU would entail…..and even then the “Leave” vote won by a razor thin margin.
Now if Scotland decides to leave the UK to stay with the EU this time, that could have even further consequences-which is not to take a stance against such a move if the Scottish population decides to do so, but just to flesh out a scenario. If Scotland leaves the UK would lose one of its most liberal voting blocs-it would be the equivalent of the US losing Washington, Oregon, and a few small deep blue New England states!! I would not want to be in the position of a fairly to very liberal English person today!!!
But anyway it seems like a lot of people who voted for Brexit didn’t realize that they could lose a lot of the benefits of EU membership.
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There was a lot of discussion about the brexit consequences before the referendum. A lot of it was pure speculation and bullsxxx. However what is happening now is that the side that lost the vote are endeavouring to reverse the result. They simply can’t get it into their heads that folk don’t want their ideologies foisted upon them for eg globalism. What we are witnessing now is the losing side attempting to browbeat, blackmail and downright lie to the public so as to accept a new referendum.
Just like the self proclaimed ‘educated’ don’t and refuse to acknowledge how US citizens voted for Trump the same ‘educated’ refuse to acknowledge why folk voted for brexit. They prefer to lie and label them all as racist bigots ignoring the fact that their side is rife with bigots and charlatans although they hide it well.
The ironic thing is that the likes of SNP are up in arms about having to leave the EU and thus are siding with EU politicians allthewhile ignoring the fact that the EU sided with the Brit govt and threatened the Scot independents that they would not be permitted to join the EU if they voted for independence. How do you like that for democracy?
Meanwhile in Ireland, the Irish are giddy now that the EU is ‘on their side’ allthewhile ignoring the fact that if brexit didn’t happen or was reversed the same EU cabal would support the UK in stopping Irish unification. Btw the same cabal demanded the citizens of Ireland to pick up the slack of the financial crisis sham and put their country in extreme debt. With friends like these……..
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You know if I was a liberal British person (assuming having been raised there wouldn’t have me coming up with a different political orientation), there’d be little I wouldn’t do to prevent Brexit from going through.
It’s obvious that the EU seriously needs reform of various kinds, and that British Democracy is a bit anemic (unelected House of Lords, unwritten Constitution, no direct or indirect vote for PM or any President or anything, seriously strange system for local or regional elected officials). But the whole Brexit affair is likely to sent that country down the tubes regardless of what happens with Scotland and/or Northern Ireland.
As for the Trump vote, I think a lot of people both in and outside the US have a lot of misconceptions about what actually happened. For one thing the main difference between election 2016 and 2012 or 2008, was that high probability Democratic voters of almost every Demographic (particular in many Democratic Strongholds in the Upper Midwest) suffered a major slump in voter turnout. Of the of the relatively few voters who actually voted for Trump and Obama looking at the data shows, that for one thing there numbers were unusually small given that there are always people who flip parties, and that the overwhelming to Obama-To-Trump voters were also Bush-To-Obama voters (if old enough to have the chance to vote for Bush). The reason for the voter turnout slump is complex, long-in-the-making, and doesn’t really have any clear places to point fingers.
As for people who voted for Trump other than just because they have always gone for the GOP. There are some seriously sinister elements. And no it’s not all down to racism. But what is going on other than racism isn’t really more wholesome. There are serious strains of dangerous nihilism and authoritarianism involved. To some degree the influences of Critical Race Theory have made it hard for some to accept or even see that human being can have very, very ugly motives that aren’t all about racism or greed-sometimes not about those things at all.
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It also seems likely to me that Britain will find itself in a very isolated and vulnerable position, especially if Scotland and/or NI leave the UK. And by that I don’t mean somebody will likely invade them or anything.
I mean that they may end up embroiled in decades of bitterness over the Brexit decision and that it could take on a very destructive/insular quality. Meanwhile Europe does whatever it does with the current problems in the EU, and Britain would have a hard time re-entering the fold later on.
Basically Brexit seems to have closed the door on more options for Britain than it would open. Because now, even if they do rejoin the EU their credibility in pushing for any sort of reform in that system would be undermined, no?
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Yes, there is very much a Trumpian sense to the Brexit vote. Michael Moore’s hand grenade analogy springs to mind.
The UK without Scotland would usher in an era of centre-right/right politics for generations in England & Wales. The Conservative Party would dominate the House of Commons for years to come.
I wonder though, would a new vote in the UK yield a different result? Another analogy, of a person determined to self-harm, may apropos here. The British, a majority anyway, are so wedded to a belief in British exceptionalism that I suspect that many will stubbornly continue to vote for Brexit, while whining about foreign intrigue and treason.
In some ways I’m reminded of the fevered culture in Europe before WWI.
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It’s my view that the comparisons between Brexit and Trump, have been overplayed.
For one thing the Trump vote wasn’t so much a “surge” or “backlash”, or “whitelash”, or any great rising so much as a “Great Slump”, namely in voter turnout. The reality, 2016 had 8 million voters fewer than 2008, and 4.4 million fewer than 2012. Roughly a third of that was accounted for by African Americans. In the Midwest figures that went mostly by “race” tended to under-count the degree (unless you look by county) where the vote from historic Labor Union strongholds utterly fell off a cliff-to a degree that made the drop in the black vote pale in comparison-because it was partly made up for by an increase in voters from places known as “Copperhead Country”. Now “Copperhead” (aside from the snake!!) originally meant a Confederate sympathizers in Union Territory. But generally the reputation for having everything from a lot of extreme fundamentalists (eg Dutch Orthodox) way predated that, and more recently you see a lot of American Nazi (think Blues Brothers!) in the same regions.
As for what I’m doing about it, besides involvement with the NPVIC movement, I see a more complicated problem with voting infrastructure and believe that a “soft” form of compulsory voting deserves a serious look.
To me Michael Moore is somewhat responsible for watering down and dumbing down American documentary. I don’t think he’s the brilliant “finger on the pulse” guy he makes himself out to be, and a lot of his claims are misleading or straight up yellow journalism. To name some examples of documentaries before Moore somewhat ruined the genre, I’d say Harlan County, USA, Atomic Cafe, Hearts and MInds.
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The paranoia that Germany is using Ireland to hurt poor Britain is not really new.
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Nope, it’s just reaching hysterical levels now.
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