This is a very good point. There was isolationist [low immigration, protectionist, interventionist] Brexit and there was buccaneering free trade, deregulation Brexit. Both could not be agreed on and sold at the same time. - ThreadSky

t0nyyates.bsky.social • 48 days ago

This is a very good point. There was isolationist [low immigration, protectionist, interventionist] Brexit and there was buccaneering free trade, deregulation Brexit. Both could not be agreed on and sold at the same time.

Reposted from Sam Freedman

Badenoch saying it was a mistake not to have a growth plan for Brexit highlights that she doesn't understand what happened.

There was no growth plan that all parts of the Leave coalition could have agreed on.

Winning required implying different outcomes to different people.

Comments

trevor-greetham.bsky.social•48 days ago

Polling at the time showed leaving the Single Market didn’t even command the majority of Leave voters!

junglegerbil.bsky.social•48 days ago

The Leave campaign were still saying we wouldn't be leaving the Single Market!

trevor-greetham.bsky.social•48 days ago

Quite.

cathiew.bsky.social•47 days ago

& no-one was allowed to raise that concern at the time without being shouted down as an unpatriotic remoaner. The BBC especially was briefed to shut down any questioning or criticism of Brexit.

chrisdillow.bsky.social•48 days ago

Bang right. Vote Leave was a blank screen onto which people could project their own fantasies, which is one reason why it won.

ididsaythat.bsky.social•48 days ago

Yup, 💯 this. Of the many hundreds of Brexit rows I've had with people online and in the 'real' world, the leavers all seem to cling to one specific thing, usually immigration/bloody foreigners and the NHS. I'm casually ignoring the bring back the empire people as too niche.

tadaaa.bsky.social•48 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/tadaaa.bsky.social/post/3lfuxrng63c2j

johnspringford.bsky.social•48 days ago

Neither of those Brexits would have produced growth, but I suppose that is a side point.

t0nyyates.bsky.social•48 days ago

Well quite, the issue at hand is whether there was a growth plan, not a plan that actually delivered growth!

johnspringford.bsky.social•48 days ago

Having a plan is what matters.

alarcos.bsky.social•48 days ago

Concepts of a plan would have been enough😬

grantlewis.bsky.social•48 days ago

But those brexits were only ever afterthoughts. All the brexiteers originally believed in the “exact same benefits” Brexit until reality bit them on the arse.

tobyn.bsky.social•48 days ago

I don't think this is right Grant. Recall pre-EURef 'Leave' being a tiny Venn intersection holding together a vast coalition of ideologically incompatible groups with very different visions and different projected benefits.

grantlewis.bsky.social•48 days ago

But at the heart of it was a belief that “they needed us more than we needed them” so that the costs would be zero or minimal. They thought that they could have Singapore on Thames as well as existing EU trade benefits

tobyn.bsky.social•48 days ago

There were cadres of Leaver jurists who blogged manically about their motivations for Leaving. Don’t recall them even discussing economic costs or benefits.

grantlewis.bsky.social•48 days ago

But that’s my point in a way. There was little discussion because they fundamentally didn’t understand that anything economic would change if we withdrew from the political/legal framework of the EU. So they didn’t think they needed a plan until it was too late.

pompoustakes.bsky.social•48 days ago

Rainbow coalition of anything and everything. Hannan for eg on not leaving the single market. Remain was a pathetic campaign but even a competent one wld have struggled to pin them down to even a vague outline. You couldn't even try to limit them to plausible options - they just denied the limits.

tomrailton.bsky.social•48 days ago

I mean there were literally two leave campaigns.

trevor-greetham.bsky.social•48 days ago

And don’t forget polling at the time showed leaving the Single Market didn’t even command a majority among Leave voters!

ledredman.bsky.social•48 days ago

Much the same as isolationist white supremacist tariff boosting Trump and deregulating, immigrant exploiting free trader Musk.

stevepeers.bsky.social•48 days ago

There was literally one group of people who said 'vote Leave to stop the horrific prospect of an EU free trade deal with the USA', and another group saying 'vote Leave so that the EU can no longer hold the UK back from negotiating a glorious free trade deal with the USA'

simonbm.bsky.social•48 days ago

I tend to view all those things as interchangeable pretexts for people who are so nationalistic that they wanted to leave in any case despite all disadvantages. British anti-Europeanism never came across as anything more than fanatical jingoistic hysteria.

kenfogg1971.bsky.social•48 days ago

... which is why Cameron was so very stupid to let Leave campaign without producing a detailed plan. Remain did - the renegotiation with the EU. Had Leave been forced to admit to tradeoffs & choices before the vote, the whole Leave coalition would have falled apart (acrimoniously, hilariously)

clivingsbkk.bsky.social•48 days ago

BREXIT was by far the worst own-goal by a country in recent political memory, but then the US elected Trump a second time and took the crown.

paulstenton.bsky.social•48 days ago

And there was growth possible with any plan for Bexit. You can't stack up barriers and expect things to become easier and more profitable.

Bollox the Brexit.

chrisgrey.bsky.social•48 days ago

That was perhaps *the* fatal flaw in Brexit: not only because they could not both be delivered but because that meant that neither of them could be.

tomrailton.bsky.social•48 days ago

And this was obvious at the time, not just in hindsight.

Remember working with @allymcgovern.bsky.social on making exactly this point in the final debate before the referendum vote https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2016-06-15/debates/16061542000001/EUMembershipEconomicBenefits#contribution-919E4FC6-301C-4FCD-94C9-78C0C536D2D1

callicramed.bsky.social•48 days ago

Illustrating the fact that #brexit was all about saying « NO » (to the status quo) and not about saying « YES » to anything else. And now we see the disastrous outcome. And a lot of the « NO » politicians are now in the House of Lords, knighted or in very lucrative jobs. Bastards.

jtatlife.bsky.social•48 days ago

Even more specifically the 'buccaneer' one was basically the only one that a) made any coherent sense and b) required leaving the EU. And it was by far the least popular.

jtatlife.bsky.social•48 days ago

When Truss started in that direction the resulting crisis of legitimacy wiped her out within weeks

ilmarinen7.bsky.social•48 days ago

Not sure about that framing. Rather, the financial markets took one look at her unusustainable fiscal plans and went "nope", so UK gilts and the pound started collapsing until the BoE stepped in and course was reversed.

That blew her credibility with the public to the degree her party ditched her.

jtatlife.bsky.social•47 days ago

The fiscal plas were unsustainable because, in line with the 'buccaneer' paradigm the tax cuts were going to be financed by absolutely massive benefit & spending cuts, for which whete there was insufficient support even in the Tory parliamentary Party. That last was the real problem

ilmarinen7.bsky.social•47 days ago

Not quite the case. The mini-budget did not specify cuts to benefits etc..

The "thinking" was that the cuts to tax on the wealthy would spur such a flood of investment and growth that spending cuts wouldn't be necessary.

A fantasy the markets disabused the Tories of.

ilmarinen7.bsky.social•47 days ago

Because without cuts in spending, the cuts in tax implied massive extra borrowing, with the implication that the UK would set itself on a course of ever-greater borrowing ("unsustainable").

That's what led to no-one wanting to hold UK debt, fall in £, etc.

jtatlife.bsky.social•47 days ago

If Truss had actually been elected on a platform of massive tax & benefit cuts it would have added up and gilt markets wouldn't have crashed

grahampotts.bsky.social•48 days ago

Not forgetting those people who voted leave because their neighbours smoke in the garden! Well … I heard one person say that. All adds up!

simonwhiteley6.bsky.social•48 days ago

Also the “the EU is going to fail”. No sign yet.

grahampotts.bsky.social•48 days ago

And we could live and work anywhere we wanted before we joined… in fact a friend who I met while working in France told me that we both moved to France before FOM and it would be just as easy if we left the EU. That was 1986.

simonwhiteley6.bsky.social•48 days ago

I don't get Badenoch’s strategy here. It makes no sense to me.

agaland2dogs.bsky.social•48 days ago

Cos she hasn't got one.

grahampotts.bsky.social•48 days ago

Little in UK politics has made much sense to me for a decade! :-)

suewilkesauthor.bsky.social•48 days ago

She has a strategy?

jhawn.bsky.social•48 days ago

Sure say the right ideological things then make a boatload in the think tank lecture circuit. Look at how much BoJo and Lettuce are pulling in on such things

simonwhiteley6.bsky.social•48 days ago

Well, she must have a plan, at least? Having made such a big point about the importance of such things.

t0nyyates.bsky.social•48 days ago

I suppose you could hypothesize a world in which each faction secretly worked up a highly detailed plan and agreed to duke it out after the Referendum. But that's not how things work.

jimob1.bsky.social•48 days ago

Ditto Labour with Starmer's Ming vase. Its growth out of one side of the mouth and balanced budgets out of the other. The cost for the Faustian bargain of broad coalitions is inertia. Great short term tactics but lousy long term strategy with everyone suffering. C'est la vie.

gpollara.bsky.social•48 days ago

I think they just worked out strategies to win votes, and then stopped there 😔

tadaaa.bsky.social•48 days ago

& that strategy was essentially "nothing will change - not your FOM or your continued frictionless trade we will just get rid of [insert what you didn't like about your life / the world]

damfray.bsky.social•48 days ago

people forgot that there's no such thing as a free lunch..

jglowe.bsky.social•48 days ago

Or the "everyone can naff off" Brexit, which was the one they went with, because that was the calibre of rocket scientists who negotiated it 👽

stephaniemac.bsky.social•48 days ago

The SNP reproduced a detailed blueprint for independence ahead of 2014, it didn’t hold up and got picked apart. Cummins noted accordingly.

keepof4worlds.bsky.social•48 days ago

No complaints about my own personal growth plan during Brexit, for example. Very good for me and my CV. I helped move billions in fund investments to Ireland and Luxembourg… Not sure great outcome for the UK

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