QUOTE (newres @ Aug 5 2018, 08:14 PM)
So if the great nationalist project fails it’ll be because our managers weren’t up to it? Utter nonsense. We are jumping blindfolded off a cliff.
On your other point, I think a lot of the population have become more entrenched but there’s millions in the middle that have seen the mess we’re making of it all.
I don't mean supervisors, more managements / directors. The issue isn't specifically EU either. It's more our rather the damage to trade and commerce our financial system creates. That is, a focus on short term returns and personal reward. For instance, most of our 'manufactured' foodstuffs are imported from the Continent these days, as is much confectionery etc. Our own plants simply become distribution points or just closed down. Ironically, the Governments hand would be strengthened if we started suggesting to the French and Dutch in particular that these plants will return. OK, this is arguably globalisation, but British managements never put up much of a fight and seem incapable of lobbying HMG for the protections from hostile take over that exist everywhere else. Cadbury, GKN, De La Rue being good examples. So, as we can't unload coal anymore, having no productive base means the only thing we have to offer is UK financial services - which as we all know aren't really widely respected.
Our negotiating stance with EU has been lacklustre and pedestrian, no great surprises. However, the stance of the EU has been that of the playground bully. As above, with the amount they presently import to us, they have rather more to lose. The fact we haven't been giving the French press scare stories about ramping down our need for Dannone etc, it quite a worry. The fact that the rest of the World manages with World Trade rules, which were only railed against by Vince Cable and the EU itself demonstrates the EU is actually not the free trade idealist it thinks it is.
The issue we have today, is that a good many of our peers simply don't accept anything either the EU or our own government is saying. Mainstream media, all of it, is increasingly seen as aligned and biased - so, for the first time for ages, people are assessing what they see against their own knowledge and experience.
Sure, there are still lots of pseudo intellectual types; still coming out with the same old bilge, even when it's demonstrably inaccurate and wrong. It's the likes of these, often in what were middle management roles generally in non productive organisations or finance only directorships that will bring us down.