5 years after Britain left the EU, the full impact of Brexit is still emerging

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Schengen would be fucking great. It also gets rid of the small boats "crisis" as well. The Euro is a small price to pay

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I would also happily accept both to go back into the EU personally.

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Trade with the EU has become more expensive and complex, with mid-sized businesses struggling the most.

That’s the thing about the tarriffs and the bureaucratic red tape. It actually benefits big buisnesses who can hire lawyers to use loopholes or pay bribes to circumvent the system, while local small and medium sized businesses suffer.

Capitalism is inherently contradictory. If there is no “red tape” then the system lets anyone do anything and everything gets fucked up because the motivator is money and not wellbeing. The more you add red tape, the more power and influence get concentrated into the few companies that have the resources to navigate it, and you end up with a semi-oligarchic system where the power and wealth resides in a few.

No country has been able to properly walk the line. Which leads me to believe capitalism is inherently unsustainable.

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I didn't really mean it was ever an explicit position, beyond possibly your Carville strategist types in smoke-filled rooms, but the fact remains that Roe v. Wade was always being chipped away at, in courts and statehouses and law schools, and at several points in the 50 years that it was in effect the Democrats had the power necessary to put up a legislative firewall (see, e.g. Obamacare), but they took no action while reminding voters every election who supported choice. They didn't even have to lie, but there was always a "better" use of political capital, and nothing was done until it was too late.

Labour is in a somewhat analogous situation, in that they have taken power, and they can blame the hardships of Brexit on Tories, and they know the UK is better off in the EU, but they have other priorities. I am fully aware that they need to be prudent, and maybe repairing relationships is meaningful progress, but this could also be tickmark #1 on a ledger called "Times that Labour could have fixed Brexit but didn't."

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It surprised me that the royals kept their mouths shut through the whole thing. For once they could have taken a stand about something. If the Queen had gone in tv and said “we’re not doing this” it probably would have made an impact and prevented this mess. Fucking useless.

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I always think, capitalism is like fire.

Left unchecked, it will burn everything down.

But properly harnessed, it can feed, heat and transport people.

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in the 50 years that it was in effect the Democrats had the power necessary to put up a legislative firewall (see, e.g. Obamacare)

I don't think the Democrats had the uncontested power to put up an amendment or any other pro-women's-health legislation very often in those 50 years. The one time I can think of is the one you mentioned, and they decided to use that power to pass the ACA instead. They had lost the supermajority by the time that was done.

All that "chipping away" wouldn't have made much of a difference if the SCOTUS hadn't been obscenely hijacked and thrown to the Federalist nazis. And all of that was because the republiQans never wavered, never changed their commitment to depriving women of their rights.

In the case of Starmer vis-a-vis EU, I obviously don't know the details very well, but I would think they're not going to be able to have any kind of public discussion about rejoining anytime in the next 5-10 years at the earliest. I would expect there to be some backchannel discussion, but I can't see any real headway being made. Certainly if I was the EU, I wouldn't be interested in talking about it at all. I would think Labour would have enough on their plate just beginning to stem some of the damage that's already been caused.

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How would you design a system where capitalism actually works.

Because all major capitalist system are currently leaving a lot of people behind, in their feeding, transporting, and warming…

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Wdym 5 years....

God im old

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It depends on what you consider capitalism.

Suppose you would take the system we have today, put all the stock of every company in a big fund and give everyone equal voting rights in, and profits from, the fund.

That would be a very anarcho-communist world. All economic power would be with the people, not the state, evenly divided, so no one would be richer than anyone else.

But others would call it capitalism because it would be the exact same system we have today.

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That would not be capitalism at all though.

Your big fund is basically the equivalent of making every company government owned and turning thr government into a direct democracy.

Then there wouldn’t really be a concept of ownership of companies at all… Like there currently is in capitalism, because if everyone owns it, no one owns it, we don’t own the government…

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No it would not be even close to being equivalent to gov+dd, because the government and fund would be totally separate power structures.

You could modify the scheme so that dividends and profits only go to retirees, which would make it a giant retirement fund.

Some people argue China is capitalist and others argue it is socialist or communist.

Truth is, these are all 19th century debates on archaic terms. Every developed country today has a mixed-mode economy with some form of capitalism combined with some form of communism.

It's more fruitful to discuss how we harness the power of each system in a way that benefited humanity.

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Royal don't have much power in the UK.

But the Queen has been known to take great care at her outfit choice, often encompassing a (not always) subtle message, like this one she wore at a time when the Parliament voted (some parts) of Brexit.

https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/12/590x/queen-elizabeth-819612.jpg?r=1686998680160

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But Reform UK needs that "small boats crisis"! It's its only raison d'être.

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One small step for Europe, one giant leap backwards for Great Britain.

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Would suck for us to lose the pound, but it'd be worth it.

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Yea, schengen is not a deterrence but rather something I'd actually like.

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Going back to the EU with our tail between our legs isn’t going to go down well with anyone so won’t be happening anytime soon.

"we would rather the people of the UK continue to suffer economically than be embarrassed on the international stage for a few years."

That's is strong leadership /s

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Yes. That's another reason to rejoin!

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I don’t think that it’s only a leadership thing.

I think that there’d be enough voters who would be too proud to lose the pound that any referendum to rejoin would lose even if opinion poles showed that most people thought that it was a mistake (I don’t actually know what opinion poles say about this topic).

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5 years after Britain left the EU, the full impact of Brexit is still emerging