A piece from me arguing that there are signs that the UK-EU summit may be a rare example of politicians under-promising and over-delivering, and examining why the UK suddenly seems more enthusiastic about improving EU trade. - ThreadSky

jreland.bsky.social • 11 days ago

A piece from me arguing that there are signs that the UK-EU summit may be a rare example of politicians under-promising and over-delivering, and examining why the UK suddenly seems more enthusiastic about improving EU trade.

Reposted from Paul Adamson

encompass-europe.com/comment/the-... @jreland.bsky.social @ukandeu.bsky.social

Comments

davebentley58.bsky.social•7 days ago

Problem is if you treat links to Europe like a dirty secret Farage and his mates will go berserk and claim you are betraying people behind their back. The EU is not just transactional, it has a strategic and even moral purpose that needs to be explained.

gallovidian.bsky.social•7 days ago

Farage is going to go berserk anyway, as is Badenoch, although her relevance is declining with her party's.

In the longer term, if the reset is a success, it could be used to attack Farage, by providing proof that engaging with Europe is better than isolation. Right now, that is much riskier.

gallovidian.bsky.social•7 days ago

Labour's bitter, painful lesson from the Scottish independence debate 10 years ago is that divisive referendums, which force voters to choose a sense of identity, can destroy previous party voting coalitions.

Labour went from dominance to irrelevance in Scotland in 2015 after the huge chunk of

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gallovidian.bsky.social•7 days ago

their previous core vote, who'd voted Yes to Scottish independence in 2014, no longer saw themselves as Labour voters, or even British citizens as a result. They then flocked to the SNP, causing Labour seats to fall to the SNP all over Scotland.

This experience must be haunting Labour deeply.

gallovidian.bsky.social•7 days ago

If they try to attack Brexit as a concept just now, they risk their core vote permanently fracturing along Remain/Leave identity lines. They need concrete proof that working with the EU will significantly improve people's lives. Only then can you firmly expose Brexit as a failure, and deny

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gallovidian.bsky.social•7 days ago

Farage the opportunity to indulge in a chest-thumping, openly nationalist campaign designed to tug at people's emotions about their sense of national identity. This is what the SNP did after 2014 and it was brutally effective.
Farage will have learnt from them, it would be naïve to think he hasn't.

rsoxford.bsky.social•11 days ago

I do hope you’re right.

peterg83.bsky.social•7 days ago

God i hope so

tilmane.bsky.social•7 days ago

Maybe everyone realized that #Brexit was just an enormous waste of time and ressources.

christy21.bsky.social•7 days ago

🤞🇪🇺🇬🇧

paulbrowne55.bsky.social•7 days ago

Have to hope you're right.

It will be hard to square this with the Faragist language, and policies, the UK Government is adopting on immigration.

Perhaps they're hoping to "balance" one against the other, but that seems a strategy bound to fail.

ehijacked.bsky.social•7 days ago

You took the words out of my mouth. Starmer’s crawling to Trump has made it harder to reach out to Europe.

jamsamcam.bsky.social•6 days ago

On other hand a lot about the deal agreed is not too dissimilar to the one agreed by the EU and U.K. would have been part of had it not left

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