True I used the words “if the EU just wants to punish the UK” but I guess I meant if hypothetically the EU wanted to punish the UK. The post I responded to said: “Fuck no. Full EU or stay out.”, and I suppose if the EU adopted words like that, maybe it seems a bit hostile. I definitely get the point about fairness among EU countries of course. If other EU countries had to sign up to certain terms (Schengen Area, adopting the euro) then yes it makes sense to present the same terms to the UK.

But I guess there has already been flexibility in the EU. They’re not compelling Poland and Sweden to adopt the euro, right? Even if those countries are technically supposed to adopt the euro. Also maybe it’s a matter of opinion whether Denmark’s permanent opt-out from the euro is fair. You could say “it’s fair because those are the terms Denmark agreed to”. Or you could say “it’s not fair because more recent EU joiners weren’t offered those same terms”.

If all EU members and potential members have the same joining terms then yes that seems fair. Anyway, the UK is surely not going to rejoin the EU anytime soon. It could happen one day, and maybe that would involve the UK adopting the euro, but before then I think gradually closer relations are probably likely.

I’m not in any way after “preferential treatment”. I pointed out that there are several EU countries already who, as far as I’m aware, have no plans to adopt the euro. It seems Denmark has a permanent opt-out, while Sweden and Poland are deliberately delaying euro adoption forever, until their people support euro adoption in referendums.

If we go out of our ways to let you in at any costs

I don’t believe you should.

Anyway, I think the EU has made sensible comments on relations with the UK recently. So I don’t think the EU currently wants to punish the UK, which is good. But I get the sense from some people (not from the EU itself) that they want to punish the UK. An attitude of “yeah fuck them, Europe-hating backstabbers”. It’s of course true that some Brits don’t like the EU, and they still support Brexit, but it’s also true that there are Brits who want closer relations with the EU, in a way that is agreeable to both sides, rather than one side dominating or punishing the other.

If you’re implying that Brits are all a bunch of Europe-hating backstabbers then I don’t think that’s true. I’m British and yes, some Brits don’t like the EU. Mainly older Brits. But a lot of Brits do like the EU.

According to YouGov, a British polling company, a majority of Brits have wanted to rejoin the EU for at least the last two and a half years, perhaps longer. Of course that level of support could change depending on the terms of rejoining the EU, but still.

Personally I think it would be good if the UK and EU forge closer relations in the coming years, but I don’t think rejoining the EU will be a realistic possibility for at least a few years, because eurosceptics in the UK continue to wield political power.

Why? Ireland isn’t in Schengen, and multiple EU countries aren’t using the euro, with no plans to adopt it (Poland, Sweden, Hungary, Czechia).

I’m British and I hope the UK and EU can have closer relations. But if the EU just wants to punish the UK for Brexit then that is going to go down badly with many Brits, so closer relations will become less likely.

I know Burnham recently said he wouldn’t hold an election in the next 12 months, but maybe the polling will persuade him otherwise. If the polling is good for Labour then surely it’s a good time to have an election. He could secure a more ambitious manifesto and keep Reform out of number 10 for at least five years.

But of course it would be a risk. In 2017, Theresa May called an election because the polling didn’t look too bad for the Tories, and then during the election campaign, the Tory vote declined while the Labour vote rose.

There’s always Ireland, they speak English and they’re still in the EU.

Not to be pedantic but I think that would be “Breenter”, just like how “reentry” has two Es

An alternative would be “Brejoin”

I agree with you. Successful people often don’t want to recognise how much good luck they’ve had. Childhood privileges that others don’t have, job opportunities that others haven’t had, etc.

If we applied their thinking to every situation, we’d say something like “if a child in Gaza dies from an Israeli bomb, it’s the child’s fault, because they didn’t try hard enough to avoid the bomb”.

Even if a right-winger admits that children can have different circumstances, they might have an attitude of “once you hit 18, we’re all equal, and your effort is what determines your success in adult life”. But that’s not true. Some adults have a lot of privilege behind them, while others don’t. Some adults have health conditions which can be very difficult to manage in some cases, taking up time and money and effort, while other adults don’t have to worry as much about their health.

Google tells me that David Lammy said that in early 2019. Anyway, I think he was right about this bit:

Leaving the EU will not free us from the injustices of global capitalism, it will make us subordinate to Trump’s US.

their Welsh leader is still in prison for taking money from the Russians. Somehow though, their popularity has not diminished as much as it should have

Reform supporters believe that the idea of Russia being a threat has been made up by the liberal media to distract everybody from immigration. I wish I was kidding.

You could argue it’s a deal that some Brits voted for, but definitely not all Brits of course.

Only 51.89% of those who voted in the Brexit referendum in 2016 voted for Brexit.

In 2019 there was a general election, and during that election campaign, Boris Johnson promised to “get Brexit done”, but only 43.6% of voters in that election voted for Johnson’s party, the Conservatives. So a majority of voters in that election voted against the Conservatives.

It would have been possible to leave the EU while staying in the single market and/or customs union, but the Conservatives chose a particularly hard version of Brexit, cutting more ties than necessary with the EU.

Some Brexiteers suggested that Brexit would be a softer affair, in the lead up to the referendum.

Tory peer Daniel Hannan (formerly an MEP) said in 2015: “absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market”. And yet we did leave the single market, as part of the hard Brexit pursued by the Tories.

But yes I suppose other leading Brexiteers didn’t make details explicit. Perhaps, after the Brexit referendum, we should have had a second referendum to determine what shape Brexit should take. We could have remained in the single market for many industries (similar to Norway/Switzerland/Iceland) or the customs union (similar to Turkey), or both.

Brexiteers are famously supportive of “democracy” so they shouldn’t have had any objections to a second referendum.

I’m just going to leave this here.

Maybe the economy does indeed need fixing. I wonder how many Brits agree with the Lib Dems’ suggested fix, which is to rejoin the EU single market and customs union:

We need to fix our trading relationship with Europe to tackle the cost of living crisis and grow our economy.

Liberal Democrats are calling for the UK to join the single market and customs union, to fix the damage done by Brexit and get our country back on track.

I can respect the fact that they’re more certain about what they want to do. I think Burnham is alright, but his position on Europe seems to be “I don’t know yet; we’ll try to get closer to Europe, but we don’t know what that looks like yet”.

I wonder if it will cost them more trying to defeat the tax, than if they just paid the tax.

They’d probably be okay with that anyway. They probably enjoy paying more just to watch poor people squirm.

I definitely think Europe should have strong relationships with good allies, like Canada and Japan. Hopefully they would both be reliable.

Mexico, potentially yes, they could be a reliable ally. As for India I’m not so sure, because India seems to want to be quite friendly with Russia (I think India buys a lot of military equipment from Russia), and Russia has been waging war against Europe for the last 12 years.

I think more Europeans need to realise that the only countries which care about the security of European countries are European countries.

Michel Barnier, formerly the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said earlier this year that the UK wouldn’t need to adopt the euro to rejoin the EU (source):

“I am speaking about Schengen, I am speaking about the single currency: there are other member states who are not in them. It is perfectly possible to have opt-outs in these fields.”

Coming and going over and over again would probably not be sensible. But the UK could definitely rejoin the EU if it wanted to. It just depends on whether there’s enough political will to make it happen. Currently there probably isn’t, but I think the UK could rejoin the EU during my lifetime, or at least the UK could certainly forge a much closer relationship with the EU even without membership. Similar to Norway or Switzerland, for example.

Voters chose leaving the EU by a slim margin, but the UK could have still taken part in the EU single market without being an EU member, like Norway does.

So you could say that blame for the way in which Brexit turned out lies with politicians, specifically Tory politicians who pushed through a hard Brexit without consulting the public on it. So much for “democracy”.