Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "Independence Day Livestream: 23rd June 8pm UK time!" video.

@jimmy8445 four times, at least, arguably five. And that's just England. The Celts (even if they were the first humans there, it's still colonisation), Romans, Anglosaxons, Danes/Norse, and the Normans (sort of, if your definition of colonization doesn't exclude them and you count the various mercenaries from all over the show as 'Normans').
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@gorillaguerillaDK I followed what was going on in the UK's parliament regarding Brexit... the reality is it wasn't just the opposition opposing for the heck of it, it was multiple parties (and factions within parties) being staggeringly incompentent and perfectly willing to through the country under a bus with a 'no deal' exit if the alternative was anything other than their own deal. The whole brexit referendum was Supposed to basically just be a bit of propaganda that killed the idea so certain individuals couldn't keep using it to be a pain in the butt for the government at the time. They could Claim to be in favour of it and so keep certain subsets of their supporters satisfied, and, they Thought, be confident that it was such an obviously and staggeringly stupid idea that it would never actually pass the referendum. (and, really, even if it did, if the margin was narrow enough, the referendum wasn't binding anyway, there were plenty of ways to spin just not doing it), and the fact that they bothered asking would be a nice boost in the upcoming election. ... They underestimated the propagandists who saw benefit in a successful Brexit campaign. They underestimated the ignorance, gullibility, and (to a lesser extent) stupidity of the British public (... honestly, the general public in most countries, but only the British public is relevant here). The referendum came back in favour of Brexit. And then public sentiment and media attention shifted such that just ignoring the results or otherwise fiddling the system to avoid going through with it was simply Not Viable. So they had to go through with it. This was followed by attempting to stall and dick around such that the EU would end up basically forcing the UK to stay by way of negotiations breaking down and no 'leave' agreement being made. Then the failure to go through could be blamed on the EU (boosting the popularity and election chances of the politicians who Claimed to be against such things) rather than the government, and Brexit wouldn't happen (no predictable consequences)... Except the EU was having none of it and told the UK to either make a deal or leave without one. What followed was an utter farce, with first the government (or at least PM) constantly going with a 'make proposals that will clearly be unaceptable to the EU but make it look like it's the EU's fault that things aren't working until we can just blame the EU for Brexit not happening' strategy, despite it being increasingly obvious both that that was happening And that the EU wasn't following the script, and then once parliament as a whole (and the general public) got so fed up with that nonsense that changes were made regarding who was actually conducting the negotiations (and running the country, if I recall correctly) the situation I described in my first paragraph became the status quo (with each faction being more interested in their constituents being happy with them for trying to push their pet obsession than in getting a nondisasterous result that could be blamed on specific individuals who weren't even in power anymore and the EU when it came to calming said constituents if need be) continuing right up until the deadline ran out. Oh, and as an added bonus the PM and a few other officials decided that it would be a great idea to promise solutions to certain problems that this whole issue caused that were A: Directly contradictory to what they had told the EU they were going to do to resolve those issues and B: Flat out illegal anyway. The simple fact is there was never a good plan for Brexit because, to those who would be making such plans, it was Never Supposed To Happen! The need for election reform in the UK is almost as dire as it is in the USA, because that was a staggeringly incompitent showing.
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@Ninjaeule97 Oddly enough, government spending (Wisely and Effectively, mind, which is a bit of a sticking point) kind of IS a large part of how a country mitigates and recovers from a recession. (likewise, governments should be saving money and repaying debts so as to be in a better situation to deal with the next round of problems, not cutting taxes, when the economy is doing well)
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@graveperil2169 There is a solid argument that the UK should never have joined the EU in the first place. There is no such argument for leaving. Only delusional idiocy, at best. (reasons for the general public voting in favour mostly amount to ignorance and gullability.) When you look at what the UK has done that the EU was previously preventing them from doing, the length of the list of 'things that are actively detrimental to the average citizen that EU law would have prevented' is a hell of a lot longer than the list of 'things that are in any way beneficial to the average citizen that EU law would have prevented'. ... now, the list of things that are beneficial to large (often multinational) corporations that EU law would have prevented and British law doesn't is somewhat longer.
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Well, not really. He wasn't particularly involved in most of the bits that were horribly mismanaged. If anything, he was Too Effective. (after all, the point in the referendum was supposed to be that it would fail and discredit him and those like him, while passifying certain elements of the constuency that the government at the time had Tried, but not enough people wanted it! ... The public didn't follow the script.)
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Honestly, Joining the EU (or the entire chain of events to get to that point, it wasn't a single one off decision) was arguably a poor choice for the UK (certainly the way they went about it was Very bad for quite a few members of the Commonwealth)... but Leaving was a substantially worse one.... Even that might have been salvagable (or at least quite a bit less bad) though, if not for the utterly Staggering incompitence of the British political class as a whole when it came to the handling of the whole matter.
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@DrWhosmate You do run into a fair number of pretty major Brexit related problems predating the pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine... but those things having happened, yeah, there are plenty of problems that have nothing to do with Brexit too.
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@zaarkeru3391 Frankly, most communists barely know what the hell socialism is (or was) beyond the word they use to seem legitimate rather than like a bunch of bomb throwing psychopaths*. Much like right wing lunatics insist they are 'conservative' for similar reasons. *Early socialists were quite popular with governments and bankers. They played by the rules and were quite helpfil in mitigating and managing the down sides of capitalism... then the radical political faction that would come to be 'communists' became a thing... they publicly called themselves socialists, claimed to represent socialism... and acted almost indistinguishably from the Anarchists of the day, who were most famous for boming police stations and assasinating government officials and generally just making life difficult and dangerous for everyone, and particularly those with power and authority. One can imagine the consequences of that, no? Meanwhile, Workers Co-ops, and early socialism was basically workers co-ops and various related tools, systems, and ways of thinking about things in practice (and had little or nothing to do with systems of governance), are actually moderately common in... the USA (though one can find them in other places, easily enough). Where they act as what they were pretty much always intended to be: A patch on capitalism to account and compensate for the way industrialisation and automation distorted the labour market (that distortion being detrimental to the workers).
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Most of the problem was that the entire referendum was expected to fail on its own merits, due to being a very dumb idea. (The ignorance, gulliblity, and idiocy of the general public were underestimated). In the aftermath, a non-terrible brexit was Possible... but the incompitence of the political class as a whole in that regard was... impressive.
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He's not entirely wrong, such political debates can Easily get derailed by the most irrelivant aspect of the plan which could be changed on a whim (or if new data is being presented) being latched onto, drowing out all well reasoned debate about other, more significant aspects, and it's frequently in the best interest of an opponent to Do that, which is Highly undesireable if you actually think your position has merit. ... Which isn't to say he's right or justified regarding anything else, at all, nor that the problems with the argument are invalid, just that this point is slightly less nonsensicle than it initially appears.
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Well, that and an awful lot of people who are upset about it weren't actually old enough to vote in the referendum, but absolutely Were old enough to vote in subsequent elections.
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@jimmy8445 Libertarianism, when you actually look into the specifics and then consider how humans Actually Behave... yeah, it's not facism (well, not inherently). It's a Very fast route to feudalism though. Libertarianism has the same problem as Communism and quite a few other ideologies: Humans Fundamentally Do Not Work How The Ideology Claims They Do!
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So far as I could tell, the politicians expected the EU to make it Impossible, allowing them to reap all the benefits of the process in subsequent elections without having to deal with the consequences. The EU didn't follow the script.
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Frankly, that's giving the UK poltiicians far too much credit.
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