Quote of the day 28th January 2022

"Brexit is, in fact, done. There is no meaningful prospect of ‘Rejoin’ becoming the party platform of Labour or the Liberal Democrats in the short to medium term, and more importantly there is no meaningful prospect of a British application to rejoin not being met by a veto by someone somewhere in the EU27."

(Stephen Bush, writing in the New Statesman "morning call" email this week)

Comments

Paul Holdsworth said…
This is nonsense. Ask Northern Ireland if Brexit is 'done'.
7:29 am
Chris Whiteside said…
His point was not that all the ramifications and effects of leaving the US have been completed and worked through.

If you are pointing out that they're not, you are right. Jim King regularly used to post here that Brexit is a process not just an event, and in that sense it certainly is not complete - and might well not be complete in my lifetime.

However, in the context of his New Statesman email, Stephen Bush was writing of Brexit in the other sense, as an event - Britain leaving the European Union.

He was saying that this has happened and is most unlikely to be reversed in the immediately foreseeable future.

And he was right about that, too.
12:35 am
Paul Holdsworth said…
Absolutely right - we've left, and we're not returning any time soon. But the slogan 'Get Brexit Done' fundamentally misrepresented Brexit as an event rather than a process that will continue for years, probably decades. Saying 'Brexit is, in fact, done' continues that misrepresentation. Unhelpful, at the very least.
7:43 am
Chris Whiteside said…
I thought I had posted enough of what Stephen had posted to make the meaning in context clear. If I didn't, I apologise.

He only meant exactly what you yourself have written - "We've left, and we're not returning any time soon."

11:34 pm
Paul Holdsworth said…
No need to apologise, I understood the original intent precisely. My beef is with the slogan itself, which continues with the fiction that Brexit is done (and, by implication, dusted) when in truth our Brexit-related woes are only just beginning.
10:51 am
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