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Brexit Vote: 51.9% leave, 48.1% stay

It's been a couple of months since other events have pushed Brexit from the immediate consciousness of most, but I came across this (along with a few other articles from the past couple of days) that are starting to comment on the intersection of Brexit and Covid-19.

How Brexit Infected Britain's Coronavirus Response
Boris Johnson's government keeps promising to "Get Brexit Done," even as the deadly pandemic ravages the country.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/brexit-infected-britain-coronavirus/
By Natasha Hakimi Zapata YESTERDAY(20 April 2020) 1:20 PM

On March 23, in an abrupt about-face, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that he would be tightening social distancing measures across the UK. In a move characteristic of the British exceptionalism that has pervaded Brexit, the newly elected Tory government had clung to the notion of "herd immunity" for weeks, believing the British population could build up a collective resistance to the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Britain's schools, restaurants, pubs, and most workplaces had remained open, with Johnson telling the nation that "many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time." Even as outbreaks in Spain and Italy began to take horrific shape, Johnson stuck to his proverbial guns, only deciding to reverse course after Imperial College estimated that his chosen strategy could lead to a quarter of a million deaths.

Taken in total, the British government's measures have fallen somewhere between the strict lockdowns imposed by France and Spain and the business-as-usual stance adopted by the Netherlands and Sweden. While much of the continent asked their citizens to stay home, the two Northern European countries trusted their citizens to take appropriate distancing measures, largely allowing social and economic activities to continue unabated. Unlike Johnson, however, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte moved quickly to put in place guidelines and reassure citizens that the government would support them as the nation "buil[t] up population immunity in a controlled manner". Meanwhile, in the UK, according to University of Amsterdam professor Claes de Vreese, British officials "left people dangling and feeling like they were part of a bizarre social experiment."

Unlike Britain, which spends less on health care than the average country in the EU, the Netherlands and Sweden likely decided that they could afford to put their robust health systems to the test. But as their infection rates have climbed, both nations' governments have come under steep criticism, particularly that of Sweden, where the Covid-19 death toll is now greater than that of all other Nordic nations combined.

Britain's coronavirus response, unlike its European neighbors', is also playing out before the backdrop of another influential factor: Brexit. The United Kingdom's acrimonious divorce from the European Union has already plagued Britain for nearly half a decade, coloring all issues foreign and domestic. During December's snap election, Johnson repackaged the rhetoric on the superiority of British life he'd leveraged during the Leave campaign and promised to "Get Brexit Done", ultimately stocking his cabinet with hard-line Brexiteers

Yet, as several other nations tackle the pandemic in more effective ways, British exceptionalism has collided with reality. It was the government's decision to listen to a small handful of British scientists, after all, that may have prevented the UK from ramping up its testing at a critical juncture in the pandemic. Fewer than half a million people here have been tested to date, and roughly a tenth of Britain's National Health Service workers have had to self-isolate - many without being able to confirm that they have Covid-19. Germany, by contrast, has tested nearly 2 million residents, a factor that, in tandem with an early lockdown, has been credited with helping keep its death toll dramatically below that of neighboring nations, including the UK. Other countries such as South Korea, China, Taiwan, and even the United States have also outperformed the UK on this front.

Perhaps the clearest evidence that Brexit has warped Johnson's coronavirus response has been a scandal dubbed "Brexit over breathing." In late March, news emerged that the UK had opted out of various EU schemes that would have allowed it to purchase ventilators and personal protective equipment in bulk - efforts that it was still allowed to participate in during the Brexit transition period. Downing Street officials declared that they were not participating because the UK was "no longer a member" of the EU and that they would "make their own efforts." While they later attempted to backtrack by citing "missed emails," the Tory government reportedly participated in multiple discussions regarding joint EU procurement and continually failed to correct course.

The UK has indeed made its "own efforts" to source 30,000 ventilators, but the fine print that comes with these devices is illuminating in light of Brexit. For starters, one of the main beneficiaries of the UK"s internal push is Leave champion James Dyson, whose company has received a plum contract for 10,000 new "CoVent" ventilators. Additionally, US President Donald Trump claimed that Johnson called him requesting thousands of the devices - a plea firmly in line with the Tory promise that a close relationship with the United States would offset some of the worst economic consequences of leaving the EU. Unfortunately for the British prime minister, this alleged request only gave Trump an opportunity to distract from his own disastrous pandemic response as he publicly ridiculed Johnson after rejecting his appeal.

Ultimately, however, the implications of these incidents pale in comparison to how the pandemic might impact EU trade negotiations, which were already on an impossibly tight schedule. During what was meant to be a critical negotiation period, both the EU and the UK chief Brexit negotiators had to self-isolate, while the British prime minister himself was hospitalized for a week, spending three days in intensive care. Technology has also decidedly not been on anyone's side, with talks reportedly breaking down because of several botched video conferences. Johnson has insisted he'll still get Brexit done by December, and yet that's becoming increasingly unlikely, especially since the EU itself is dealing with fissures that the pandemic has exposed.

It should be noted that the NHS, despite being largely underfunded since Margaret Thatcher's reign, has responded valiantly to the public health crisis; the lightning-fast construction of the NHS Nightingale, with its capacity for 5,000 hospital beds, has been one of the state's true bright spots. But as fatality rates began to double every two to three days, Britons started to question their government's coronavirus competence. A recent poll shows more than half the British public believes the delay in imposing a lockdown was a mistake, and Britain's leading scientific advisers are now warning that the United Kingdom will likely be the hardest-hit nation in Europe. Meanwhile, Johnson's own brush with Covid-19 seems to have driven home the true threat the pernicious virus poses to the entire country.

It is possible that just as Brexit has contaminated the UK's handling of the pandemic, so too will the coronavirus affect Brexit in unexpected ways. On Easter Sunday, as Johnson emerged from several days in intensive care, the prime minister thanked the medical professionals who treated him, naming two nurses from New Zealand and Portugal whom he credits with helping him turn a deadly corner. The statement, coming from a man who rose to power in part by fueling xenophobia, marked a surprising shift in rhetoric. It also served to highlight that more than a tenth of NHS staff are not British - 5.5 percent are in fact EU nationals. Even as the prime minister was hospitalized, a New York Times report on how all the UK doctors who had died of the coronavirus were immigrants noted that Brexit's anti-immigrant rhetoric had targeted the very people currently on the pandemic's front lines.

Brexit negotiations resumed this Monday, as the UK continued to climb toward the predicted peak of its coronavirus curve. With immigration once more front-and-center in deliberations, will Johnson remember who saved his life - at substantial risk to their own? Will Britons, who have begun to heal the considerable fractures inflicted by Brexit by relying on neighbors of all nationalities, see the value of pan-European cooperation? As with everything the coronavirus touches, only time will tell.
 
Who knew?

Another returning at Malaga airport today was Shaun Cromber who despite voting for Britain to leave the EU, didn’t believe it would end his Spanish lifestyle, he said: ” Yes I voted out, but I didn’t realise it would come to this, my application has been rejected and we are on our way home – the wife is in tears, she’s distraught if I’m honest and I’m not too happy at the prospect of returning back to the UK.

“I’ve loved living on the Costa del Sol and after 5 years can’t believe it has come to this, we applied but got rejected and so have no choice, although long term I think the Spanish will regret chucking us out of Spain”

 
Residents should be paying local taxes, and workers should be paying income taxes.

But, Spain is one of the letters in PIIGS. Spain needs Britons spending money in Spain more than Britons need Spain in order to spend abroad.
 
Great article from Brendan O'Neill - and a magnificent introduction to John Liliburne

This revolt against both Brussels and Westminster, this peaceful uprising against the political, cultural and business elites who all warned us not to break away from technocracy, is up there with the Leveller struggle for the right of men to vote, and the Chartist fight for a working-class voice in politics, and the St Peter’s Field march for the enfranchisement of working people, and the Suffragette battle for women’s right to vote. In common with those people-won leaps forward for the democratic imagination, the Brexit revolt was an assertion of the rights of citizens to play a greater role in determining the fate of the nation and the fate of their own lives.


It was entirely of a piece with the cry of John Lilburne, the great Leveller of the English Civil War: ‘Unnatural, irrational, sinful, wicked, unjust, devilish and tyrannical it is, for any man whatsoever – spiritual or temporal, clergyman or layman – to appropriate and assume unto himself a power, authority and jurisdiction to rule, govern or reign over any sort of men in the world without their free consent.’ (The freeman's freedom vindicated [John Lilburne, 16 June 1646])



 
A Brexit Bump

Why Britain is not a good fit for the EU. And what Canadians, especially new Canadians, don't understand about their system of government.

Too many foreigners hear the word King and think Louis XIV or Ivan the Terrible.

Our ancient constitution still lives – and thrives​

Britain is unlike much of Europe because monarchy and Parliament broadly evolved in partnership
DAVID FROST16 September 2022 • 6:00am
David Frost


King Charles III

CREDIT: EMILIO MORENATTI/AFP
In “Little Gidding”, the last of his Four Quartets, his great reflection on Englishness and history, T S Eliot wrote of:
“... people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them”
Eliot certainly had the Civil War in mind when he wrote those words. I couldn’t help but think of it, too, sitting in Westminster Hall on Monday, as I watched Parliament’s presentation of addresses to the King and Queen Consort.
Maybe I am unusual, but to me the sight of the King on the grand staircase, surrounded by his Yeomen bodyguard, irresistibly recalled the dramatic events of January 4 1642. That day, Charles I and his bodyguard strode through Westminster Hall, up the same staircase and into the Commons, to arrest the Five Members who had led opposition to his rule. Tipped off, they slipped away just in time. Seated in the Speaker’s Chair, the King commented, “I see the birds are flown,” and asked Speaker Lenthall for their whereabouts. His reply, “I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me”, has become the most famous expression of Parliamentary independence.
Seven years later, King Charles was tried on that very spot. But the subsequent unhappy republican experiment didn’t last. It’s still worth asking why.
It’s partly because the monarchy has an obvious and vital role in our polity – to stand above the strife that divides in day-to-day politics, symbolise our country, and provide a focus for national loyalty. Our late Queen played that role to perfection and we must hope that King Charles will do the same.
But that’s not the whole story. Yes, that’s how things work today. But it wasn’t predestined that we would get to this point. We might, after all, have abolished the monarchy permanently in 1649 or 1688, and it had wobbly moments in the 1790s and even at times under Queen Victoria. Abolition didn’t happen for a very good reason, and it is something particular in this country’s historical development: monarchy and Parliament evolved, not in opposition, but in partnership. Conflict between the two was an aberration, not the norm, and the story of our monarchy is also a story about Parliament.
Parliament originally grew and prospered because it was useful to the medieval monarchy in raising money for the wars in France. It didn’t get sidelined, as under continental absolutism, precisely because it was the King’s partner in running the country. Its aristocratic and knightly members represented their interests to the King, but also helped make the government’s writ run in the shires.
The Stuarts tried to change things – unsuccessfully and traumatically, one reason why we remember Speaker Lenthall and the Civil Wars so vividly. When James II was sent packing in 1688, Parliament did not abolish the king’s powers, the Royal Prerogative, but instead took some of them for itself.
The group of the monarch’s advisers who could sustain a majority in Parliament, the Cabinet, became the government, and Parliament became the arena for the great debates of the day: court and country, Tory and Liberal, Labour and Conservative.
That gradual shift of power happened sooner in Britain than almost anywhere else. The existence of the monarchy, symbolising historical continuity, both enabled it and disguised it. The old and new could co-exist, and major constitutional change could happen without further civil strife – again, in contrast to almost everywhere else in Europe.
That process is now largely complete, but its terms are not entirely settled. Gina Miller’s first case against the government during the Brexit trauma was, after all, partly about the scope of the Royal Prerogative and whether the government could act without legislation passed by Parliament.
That evolutionary character of our constitution, the ability to manage deep differences within an agreed political arena over time, is the British genius, perhaps part of the genius to which Eliot referred. Certainly, for most of the past 300 years, governance was thought to be our specific contribution to Western civilisation. Only in recent decades has the technocratic rule of experts, the people who know best, like Cromwell’s Puritans, come to be seen as a desirable alternative model – by some.
Not by me. I noticed this week many people quoting Eliot, perhaps unconsciously, in describing our late Queen as their “still point of the turning world”, a phrase from another of the Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton”.
Four Quartets is a work of profound reflection on many themes, but the poems are at least in part about finding words to capture that hushed moment when the tumult and the shouting dies: stillness out of movement, the evanescent present out of the deep historical past. As Eliot put it:
“The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. … History is
now and England.”
This week is one such moment. It has shown that the old constitution still lives – and still thrives.

 
A Brexit Bump

Why Britain is not a good fit for the EU. And what Canadians, especially new Canadians, don't understand about their system of government.

Too many foreigners hear the word King and think Louis XIV or Ivan the Terrible.

Our ancient constitution still lives – and thrives​

Britain is unlike much of Europe because monarchy and Parliament broadly evolved in partnership
DAVID FROST16 September 2022 • 6:00am
David Frost


King Charles III

CREDIT: EMILIO MORENATTI/AFP
In “Little Gidding”, the last of his Four Quartets, his great reflection on Englishness and history, T S Eliot wrote of:
“... people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them”
Eliot certainly had the Civil War in mind when he wrote those words. I couldn’t help but think of it, too, sitting in Westminster Hall on Monday, as I watched Parliament’s presentation of addresses to the King and Queen Consort.
Maybe I am unusual, but to me the sight of the King on the grand staircase, surrounded by his Yeomen bodyguard, irresistibly recalled the dramatic events of January 4 1642. That day, Charles I and his bodyguard strode through Westminster Hall, up the same staircase and into the Commons, to arrest the Five Members who had led opposition to his rule. Tipped off, they slipped away just in time. Seated in the Speaker’s Chair, the King commented, “I see the birds are flown,” and asked Speaker Lenthall for their whereabouts. His reply, “I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me”, has become the most famous expression of Parliamentary independence.
Seven years later, King Charles was tried on that very spot. But the subsequent unhappy republican experiment didn’t last. It’s still worth asking why.
It’s partly because the monarchy has an obvious and vital role in our polity – to stand above the strife that divides in day-to-day politics, symbolise our country, and provide a focus for national loyalty. Our late Queen played that role to perfection and we must hope that King Charles will do the same.
But that’s not the whole story. Yes, that’s how things work today. But it wasn’t predestined that we would get to this point. We might, after all, have abolished the monarchy permanently in 1649 or 1688, and it had wobbly moments in the 1790s and even at times under Queen Victoria. Abolition didn’t happen for a very good reason, and it is something particular in this country’s historical development: monarchy and Parliament evolved, not in opposition, but in partnership. Conflict between the two was an aberration, not the norm, and the story of our monarchy is also a story about Parliament.
Parliament originally grew and prospered because it was useful to the medieval monarchy in raising money for the wars in France. It didn’t get sidelined, as under continental absolutism, precisely because it was the King’s partner in running the country. Its aristocratic and knightly members represented their interests to the King, but also helped make the government’s writ run in the shires.
The Stuarts tried to change things – unsuccessfully and traumatically, one reason why we remember Speaker Lenthall and the Civil Wars so vividly. When James II was sent packing in 1688, Parliament did not abolish the king’s powers, the Royal Prerogative, but instead took some of them for itself.
The group of the monarch’s advisers who could sustain a majority in Parliament, the Cabinet, became the government, and Parliament became the arena for the great debates of the day: court and country, Tory and Liberal, Labour and Conservative.
That gradual shift of power happened sooner in Britain than almost anywhere else. The existence of the monarchy, symbolising historical continuity, both enabled it and disguised it. The old and new could co-exist, and major constitutional change could happen without further civil strife – again, in contrast to almost everywhere else in Europe.
That process is now largely complete, but its terms are not entirely settled. Gina Miller’s first case against the government during the Brexit trauma was, after all, partly about the scope of the Royal Prerogative and whether the government could act without legislation passed by Parliament.
That evolutionary character of our constitution, the ability to manage deep differences within an agreed political arena over time, is the British genius, perhaps part of the genius to which Eliot referred. Certainly, for most of the past 300 years, governance was thought to be our specific contribution to Western civilisation. Only in recent decades has the technocratic rule of experts, the people who know best, like Cromwell’s Puritans, come to be seen as a desirable alternative model – by some.
Not by me. I noticed this week many people quoting Eliot, perhaps unconsciously, in describing our late Queen as their “still point of the turning world”, a phrase from another of the Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton”.
Four Quartets is a work of profound reflection on many themes, but the poems are at least in part about finding words to capture that hushed moment when the tumult and the shouting dies: stillness out of movement, the evanescent present out of the deep historical past. As Eliot put it:
“The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. … History is
now and England.”
This week is one such moment. It has shown that the old constitution still lives – and still thrives.


Regardless of how they're governed their productivity sucked before COVID, and Brexit didn't help, which is the most important thing:

Britain’s productivity problem is long-standing and getting worse​

Many culprits and few easy answers​


And then there was Brexit. On one estimate, uncertainty caused by Britain’s departure from the eu depressed business investment by as much as 11% in 2019, relative to what it would have otherwise been. Erecting trade barriers with Britain’s biggest trading partner has eaten up managers’ time, made supply chains less efficient and added costs. None of that has helped.


 
Rishi registered his “readyforrishi.com” domain name in preparation for his leadership campaign website on December 23rd 2021, more than six months before Boris’ totally unnecessary defenestration.

ultimate aim is to neutralise the idea of democracy.

Democracy in their mind is the fundamental problem because it is, when properly conceived, a constant negotiation between a multiplicity of views, each of which is as valid as the next.

That, in short, is what legitimate government is based on. Legitimacy comes through consent. And that can only be achieved via the ballot box, in which every eligible person’s view is worth as much as that of his neighbour.
For a stable society to function, the ballot box must remain sacrosanct and visibly affect public policy. That though is a deeply frustrating element for powerful interest groups. They consider that they know better; we know that they do not.
In fact, much of their theories when applied to the real world turn into actual catastrophes. The simple reason for this is that their core assumptions are limited and wrong.

At the root is their belief in the supremacy of international law over domestic considerations. The upshot of that view is that international rules must be enforced on our people regardless of the deep damage that these might cause on our Islands.
If you, as an individual, dare to complain you are the problem – never their theories.



The upshot:

This trial of strength will keep going, perhaps for decades.

The Jacobite clashes lasted from 1638, plus or minus a decade, to 1746. The Tory - Whig clashes formally originated in 1648 and continue to this day. Same people. Same debate.
 
I will argue that Brexit and the EU had little to do with trade. The EU had moved beyond trade and to a Central Government with national governments subservient to it. They used funding/loans and trade as clubs to keep the nations in line. I think there is a desire within europe to finally bring the UK to heel and punish it for it's successes in the 19th and 20th century, which made Europe look like a failure.
If this was purely about trade, then trade deals could be struck and the UK is still to big of a market to ignore. But the EU leadership knows they must punish and attempt to create chaos for the UK otherwise other nations may question their leadership.
 
And The Special Relationship in earnest again

Joe Kennedy III as ambassador to Britain. At the time of Joe Kennedy I's embassade to Britain there was a good chunk of the US hierarchy that were as motivated to destroy the British Empire as it was to see the end of Hitler.


 
https://www.quora.com/profile/William-Stewart-569
William Stewart

Former Lived in North America, Europe, and AsiaAuthor has 655 answers and 661.1K answer views2y

As a Brit, I have often wondered about how we emerged from WW2 broke. We were told that we won the war but it certainly did not feel like it. The American writer Benn Steil wrote an excellent book which provided many of the answers. One of the main US war aims was to dismantle the British Empire and the book reveals that the architect of Britain’s demise, Harry Dexter White, was actually a Soviet spy. Benn Steil’s book is called “The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order.”
According to Steil, many people in the US government considered Britain to be America's natural geopolitical rival in the world. They wanted to remake the global balance of power after the war so that the US came out on top. The main objective of the US delegation at Bretton Woods was to eliminate Britain as a political and economic rival. The US was actually more generous to China and Russia because Britain was seen as a threat. The Russians were viewed as potential friends and allies. In Lynne Olson's “Those Angry Days” she reveals that the US military in the pre-war years and at the start of the war was also Anglophobic and had been pro-German. There was a lot of anti-British feeling in Washington in the 1930s and 1940s. A lot of this was airbrushed from history after the war and George Marshall later apologised.
Churchill praised the generosity of the American lend-lease program. What he did not explain was that it came with geopolitical strings attached that would result in Britain's bankruptcy after the war. Britain had to agree to three conditions. Firstly, the end of Imperial trade preference which gave Britain privileged access to the markets of its colonies. Secondly, Britain agreed that by 1947 the pound would become fully convertible into dollars at a fixed exchange rate. Thirdly, Britain would accept the US dollar as the basic unit of account for global trade. Britain agreed to the terms because it needed the cash and it had no choice.
In order to trade in this new world, you needed either dollars or gold. The US-controlled two-thirds of the world's gold. Which gave it an enormous advantage in a dollar-starved world. The US chose to exploit this advantage at Bretton Woods. Britain did not have enough dollars, so making the pound fully convertible quickly brought about the end of the empire. Britain scrambled to get out of countries like India, Palestine, and Burma. Steil states that the collapse of British imperial power was scripted by the US Treasury. The main aim was for the US to become the dominant global player. When Britain, Israel, and France invaded Egypt in 1956 without telling the US, Eisenhower was able to use financial sanctions to bring the UK back into line. In particular, he used the IMF and the threatened sale of America's Sterling holdings to force a British withdrawal. The US has been left holding the bag in the Middle East ever since.
Harry Dexter White was the brains at the US Treasury. His parents were immigrants from Lithuania, his real family name was Weit. Lithuania had been part of the Russian Empire. According to Steil, he had long been obsessed with crushing Britain. White died in 1948 days after telling the House of Un-American Activities that he was not a communist. However, the FBI had already told Truman that White was a Soviet agent. White's boss, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, was a close friend of FDR and shared White's anti-British prejudices.
The book also raises the issue of Churchill. Most of his actions before and during the war, whether by accident or design resulted in the US getting what it wanted. Churchill had this naïve faith that the US could be trusted to do the right thing on Britain's behalf. Bretton Woods was another great Churchillian blunder.


Did the Republic of Ireland's stance of neutrality during World War 2 help or hinder their relationships with both the UK and US?

The US ambassador to Dublin during World War II was David Gray. Gray was a cousin of the US president. He believed the Irish government was secretly pro-Nazi. Gray consistently tried to get Ireland to join the war against the Nazis, though Ireland refused. De Valera went so far as to ask the United States government and Franklin Roosevelt to remove Gray from his post because of opposition to Irish neutrality, though the U.S. government never did.
On 13 May 1945, Winston Churchill broadcast to the world in the wake of Nazi Germany’s surrender. Recounting proudly the heroic tale of Britain’s triumph after near defeat, he then turned to Ireland, which had remained neutral. Here he saw fit to stigmatise the conduct of the de Valera government. Churchill recalled how in 1941 Britain, dependent for food and materiel on convoys from America, was threatened with strangulation. Referencing the refusal de Valera’s to make available Irish ports as bases to protect the convoys from attack by hostile aircraft and U-boats he intoned:
“This was indeed a deadly moment in our life, and if it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr. de Valera or perish for ever from the earth. However with a restraint and poise with which history will find few parallels His Majesty’s government never laid a violent hand upon them though at times it would have been quite easy and quite natural, and we left the de Valera government to frolic with the Germans and later with the Japanese representatives to their heart’s content.”
“I can only pray”, Churchill concluded, “that in years I shall not see, the shame will be forgotten and the glories will endure and the people of the British Isles and of the British Commonwealth will walk together in mutual comprehension and forgiveness.”
 
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