1. Some thoughts about picking over the bones of the referendum loss.

TLDR - get over it, move on, and most importantly, find a better strategy.

2. From an analytical perspective, I don’t think there’s much point in constantly assessing the referendum.
3. The answer is either so simple as to be banal (bad campaign etc) or too complicated (deep rooted societal roots etc) as not to provide any simple lessons. In any case, the result was very close.
4. Rather than dwell on the past, live in the future. Influencing what happens next is much more important than focusing on historic defeat.
5. You don’t see current Brexiteers lamenting the woeful state of their plans do you?
6. For a start, you aren’t remainers any more (and leavers aren’t leavers), you are people who passionately support ongoing close relations with Europe.

You are the Sensibles.
7. Considering the challenge ahead, you might think about it like this.
8. The competition between the intellectual arguments for remain and leave has (so far) been soundly won by the former.

In terms of process and economics it’s no competition.

And in terms of sovereignty, well, you can’t eat sovereignty.
9. But clearly note that Remainers lost every single important domestic political election. You can blame who you want (Jeremy Corbyn, FPTP etc) but the stone cold reality is Remainers got beat at the referendum and trounced in the December 2019 election.
10. On each occasion, Leavers devised and prosecuted a strategy that won.

It is true that those victories were founded on a series of gross untruths
11. But that doesn’t seem to matter in the very narrow but critical sense of who is in power and makes the decisions.
12. Leavers have demonstrated that a political philosophy of by any democratic means necessary is how you win the day.
13. The Sensibles might take a leaf from their book. Be as focused and as calculating, be as determined and be as ruthless.
14. And if you are, as the disaster unfolds, in slow motion or otherwise, you might be surprised by what you achieve.

Brexit isn’t going away and neither are you.

/ends

More from Objective Columnist

I tend to agree with this - of course many things can still go wrong...but (certainly on the UK side) as the list of outstanding issues decreases and as the cost of no deal becomes more apparent deal momentum will increase.


I find it most amusing that people invest so much value in public statements, briefings, tabloid headlines, the tweets of obscure backbenchers etc. Cherchez les fundamentals!

There is a deep vein of analytical pessimism in one particular direction, which, whether correct or not, is noteworthy. On the one hand, a firm belief in the fundamentals - gravity exists - but on the other hand those fundamentals are not meaningful to the final decision.

But gravity does exist! Whether one likes it or not. We do not have wings. Or feathers. And the realisation of the fundamentals will impact the political calculation (though timing differences may apply).

You don’t have to invest any particular optimism or see any virtue in the principal players to make this point.
Typically excellent piece from @dsquareddigest The exponential insight is especially neat. Think of it a little like fishing...today you can’t export oysters to the EU (because you simply aren’t allowed to), tomorrow you don’t have a fish exporting business (to the EU).


The extremely small minority of people who known anything about this who think that Brexit will be good for the City make a number of arguments which I shall address in turn...

1. They need us more than we need them. This is a variant of the German carmakers argument. And we know how that went...Business will follow the profit opportunity and if that has moved then so will the business...

And what do we mean by us / we. We’re not talking about massed ranks of Euro investing / trading etc blue blooded British institutions.

Au contraire. We’re talking about the London based subs of US, Asian and indeed European capital markets players...As soon as they think the profit opportunity has moved then so will they...it’s a market innit...

More from Health

Now you know I love to sh-t in Harvard. But I also like accuracy. So I decided to go look at Harvard’s catalog to see its lack of military history that this article describes (they only teach history of pets it claims) and what I found shocked me! Shocked me! A thread: 1/


First off, Harvard students literally have multiple sections of military history that they can take listed. (It appears these ones are taught at MIT, so they might have to walk down the street for these) but... 2/


Say they want to stay on campus...they can only take numerous classes on war and diplomacy...3/


They have an entire class on Yalta. That’s right. An entire class on Yalta. 4/


But wait! There is more! They can take the British Empire, The Fall of the Roman Empire for those wanting traditional topics... 5/

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