That sinking feeling
antipope.org
That sinking feeling
1–10 of 178 posts
Re: That sinking feeling
#2Well, at least well have Tim Shipman to document whatever happens - his previous two books on the Brexit campaigns and May's troubled time as PM are outstanding:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/All-Out-War-Britains-Political/dp/0...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fall-Out-Year-Political-Mayhem/dp/0...
Re: That sinking feeling
#3Political aspects of Brexit aside, I had no idea Britain's food and fuel situation was so dire in the event of a Hard Brexit. I would have assumed they were more self-sufficient - the near-doomsday predictions coming from civil service is really sobering. It sucks that the US is contributing to this problem right now (in many ways, really).
Can they disentangle themselves from this even if they manage to get the government to move in this direction? Is starting the process of exiting the EU something that can be taken back, given that it seems to not be a realistic option? I've seen differing opinions on this.
Re: That sinking feeling
#4Entertaining, but realistically the UK will just get a "bad deal". Life will go on, political parties are blamed, then we get to repeat it all again because the next party to be elected does it on a platform of "renegotiating".
Re: That sinking feeling
#5I applaud the concrete predictions, but like all the sky-is-falling things I've read about Trump and the tariffs which haven't (yet?) come to pass, I think Stross's are over the top and business will continue as usual. We'll see, it's good he's stockpiling food and medicine since that's consistent with his worldview, but I wonder if we'll learn anything from the outcome since one of us will be very, very incorrect.
The Northern Ireland bit was interesting to me. Maybe I misunderstood the tone but it seemed to me that Stross wanted a customs border between Northern Ireland and Britain, and no such border between it and Ireland? That seems bizarre to me if you think of the UK as one country, and Ireland as a different one. Or am I misreading it? If it's untenable for the borders to work that way, it seems to me Northern Ireland isn't (not "shouldn't be" but specifically "isn't") a part of the British people's nation already, and borders should be re-drawn to reflect that.
Re: That sinking feeling
#6Entertaining, but realistically the UK will just get a "bad deal". Life will go on, political parties are blamed, then we get to repeat it all again because the next party to be elected does it on a platform of "renegotiating".
The article lays out a great many potential outcomes from a bad deal, though. Even if it's not as bad as 'no deal' there are a lot of issues enumerated that would (almost) all need to be mitigated to avoid significant negative impact on the populace and the economy - and tanking the economy and harming the populace is a good way to destabilize a government.
Re: That sinking feeling
#7As someone who emigrated from the UK to the EU, I just hope I receive my Irish passport in time...
Re: That sinking feeling
#8Political aspects of Brexit aside, I had no idea Britain's food and fuel situation was so dire in the event of a Hard Brexit. I would have assumed they were more self-sufficient - the near-doomsday predictions coming from civil service is really sobering. It sucks that the US is contributing to this problem right now (in many ways, really). Can they disentangle themselves from this even if they manage to get the gove…
Britain is a new food importer but that’s not entirely unusual in Europe. Sweden and Finland are both somewhere around the British level of food self-sufficiency, and even big European countries like Germany are net importers (though not to the same extent as the UK). Some graphs here (a little dated): http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/0...
Re: That sinking feeling
#9I applaud the concrete predictions, but like all the sky-is-falling things I've read about Trump and the tariffs which haven't (yet?) come to pass, I think Stross's are over the top and business will continue as usual. We'll see, it's good he's stockpiling food and medicine since that's consistent with his worldview, but I wonder if we'll learn anything from the outcome since one of us will be very, very incorrect. T…
Brexit is an entire different category from Trump. I say this as a left-leaning US resident: We're not in nearly the trouble that Britain would be in in the event of the kind of nasty outcome they could get from a bad Brexit agreement. Just northern Ireland alone is a huge risk given how nasty the Troubles were and how fragile that peace is. If you combine shattered peace (and resulting conflict/terrorism spikes) along with difficulty importing food/essentials and the natural spike in xenophobia that tends to come in times of suffering, there's a lot at risk.
I think Stross's goal here is to enumerate all of the things that COULD go wrong, and provide a basic explanation of why each one could happen. It does a decent job of that even if it comes off as aggressively alarmist - the reality is that even in the event of a bad deal, not all of them would come to pass. On the other hand, more than a few of them coming to pass at once would be devastating.
Just food or medicine shortages would be potentially crippling, the economy is going to suffer no matter what (which will lead to jobs losses), etc.
Re: That sinking feeling
#10I applaud the concrete predictions, but like all the sky-is-falling things I've read about Trump and the tariffs which haven't (yet?) come to pass, I think Stross's are over the top and business will continue as usual. We'll see, it's good he's stockpiling food and medicine since that's consistent with his worldview, but I wonder if we'll learn anything from the outcome since one of us will be very, very incorrect. T…
I don't think Charlie is saying he wants a customs border between NI and the rest of the UK - just that its an option that the DUP would never agree to. While NI is an integral part of the UK it does have an unusual status because of the Good Friday Agreement: