[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[hyzmarca]

Please tell me you are showing the Xanatos Gambit to be as stupid as it is and are not actually suggesting "let widespread war and genocide happen so we get a pushback against that" as a solution.

Otherwise I will laugh at you for hundreds of years. When the heat death of the universe occurs, my laughter at you will be all that remains.

While I would be happy happy to have an enemy that we can feel good about fighting again, which Nazis certainly are (I mean, really right now we can't even feel good about fighting genocidal slavers), I don't think World War III would be best for Europe, no.

Nor do I think that starting revolutionary organization and making fiery speeches espousing the sheeple to wake up and take up arms against their Conservative oppressors will meet with much enthusiasm or success. Probably some jail, though.

[DSMatticus]

Let me say this for the bajillionth time: the actual plan is not to tear down the EU and replace it with nothing. Absolutely zero political factions of significance - including UKIP - have suggested that. Allowing UKIP to negotiate a Brexit would be a terrible catastrophe not because they would tear up the treaty and then take the phone off the hook, but because the treaty they'd write to supersede it would be deeply inadequate on every level. Meanwhile, the treaty labour would write without a mandate for greater European unity would look a lot like the treaty European politicians wrote before they had a mandate for greater European unity. That was called the Treaty of Rome, and it carried much of Europe from 1957 to 1992. If you had the option of rolling back the modern EU to something more like the EC and you refused, you'd be a fucking idiot. That's not even up for debate. The EC was by far the superior of the two institutions. Rolling back the powers of the EU is improving things. Full stop. The EU is - partially by design and partially by accident - more responsive to the conservative agenda than the fucking U.S. senate, and conservativism, if you hadn't noticed, is a hellish philosophy whose only offerings are misery and oppression. It is not actually an institution which can safely wield the powers it has been invested with.

It would be very nice if the current political climate made it possible for the member states to hold a conference on revising it and admit that it cannot continue to accumulate powers without greater democratic checks and balances. There may have even been an opportunity in the late 00's, early 10's for a political movement to stand up and make that argument on behalf of the people the EU had fucked. Unfortunately, no one did. You know, except for the fascists, and that has turned out to be a winning move for them because holy shit have you seen how they're doing? Their solution is to make everything worse, because they are stupid and evil, but the problem they are rallying against is completely real and promising to do something about it has made them horrifyingly popular (that and racism). The EU is not a recipe for progress. It is imploding. It is putting eurosceptic fascists in power and no matter how much misplaced faith you have in the union's ability to grow past its faults it is difficult to imagine the EU surviving long enough for you to get your way. 2062? Are you fucking kidding me? Hitler was head of the German government by 1933. That's a measly fifteen years of coerced payments to foreign powers before it was springtime for Hitler.

The EU is a ticking time bomb. If history is any lesson, the fuse isn't even particularly long. The question isn't whether or not a messy piecemeal renegotiation of the treaties which make Europe work is better than the status quo - the question is whether or not it's better than the fourth reich, because the status quo isn't stable and that's where we're actually headed. You are severely underestimating both the danger of the far-right and the explosive pace of their growth. I am going to remind you again that you thought the EU would blink in their negotiations with Greece, and instead the EU ran Greece the fuck over and then threw it in reverse so they could do it again. The whole "progress is slow and painful and it's a fight that never ends" spiel made sense when you were arguing against Dean, who felt uncomfortable wearing the feminist label because some feminists are idiots. It made sense when you were arguing against Lago, who was suggesting handing over the Supreme Court to conservatives. Sort of. I'm pretty sure the actual moral of that story is that a conservative Supreme Court would be 20-30 years of unprogress with no payoff so it's just fucking stupid to begin with. But it makes zero fucking sense when you are driving off a mtephorical cliff. That is the exact wrong time to lecture people on the wisdom of staying the course and inching forward. Turn the fucking wheel, you idiot.

For fuck's sake, in 2014 you predicted that this clusterfuck would continue until people brought back the guillotine. Let me quote you, again:

That being said: Blade is basically right that the EU is basically designed to be unshakeable and to ignore democratic mandates altogether. So the fact that the parliament and the commission are essentially locked, just means that the technocrats who got us into this mess in the first place will continue ramming their failed policies down everyone's throats until violent revolutionaries have them guillotined.

"The EU cannot be stopped. The leaders are going to keep doing this until the people get fed up and have them guillotined."

"The EU will stop. Eventually. A little bit at a time. Guillotine not required."

See how radically different your previous and current predictions are? What the fuck happened in the past two years to increase your confidence in the EU? Are you sure you're not the one with the Xanatos Gambit? Is the plan secretly "stick with the EU until the guillotine comes out, and hope the people dropping the blade are the left-wingers?" Also, neither of the things we have now called Xanatos Gambits are Xanatos Gambits. They're the regular kind of gambit, at best.

[maglag]

I personally like the bit where Sweden is in a comfortable situation, benefiting from the whole "militarily we're one place and actual war against any one country in the EU means actual war with everyone" thing and the "for the purpose of trade, we're one big country with open borders so go ahead and allocate stuff around without taxing the balls off people who don't happen to have easy port access to the US and Asia" so they can just spend their time focusing on being the best country in the world. As someone looking to emigrate there, I think it's very important that Sweden continue to be the best country in the world, and the EU staying together is at least partially necessary for that.

Except that no part of the EU is actually necessary for Trade Pacts and Military Pacts. Since there were both of those things before the EU. Sweden wasn't a member of them, but there's nothing stopping them from just doing that if the EU explodes tomorrow.

Living in Sweeden is a lot more lovely when you can take a quick trip to Greece or Spain and enjoy the sun, beaches and local cuisine without tripping in starved children corpses nor worrying about the local military junta deciding you would make great target practice. Which were both things before those countries joined the EU.

[DSMatticus]

Maglag, I am honestly starting to feel bad for you. You have not managed to make a single post that didn't turn out to be the intellectual equivalent of stepping on a rake and getting smacked in the face. I almost can't bring myself to tell you that Greece has a 25% child hunger rate, no subsidized school lunches, and that stories of children fainting in their classrooms are common. But then I remember that you're the asshole declaring victory while those children collapse onto their desks from hunger, and suddenly I stop giving a shit about how humiliating it must be for you to be batting zero.

[Kaelik]

Living in Sweeden is a lot more lovely when you can take a quick trip to Greece or Spain and enjoy the sun, beaches and local cuisine without tripping in starved children corpses nor worrying about the local military junta deciding you would make great target practice. Which were both things before those countries joined the EU.

I hear that before the EU, Rome ruled everything from Britannia to Babylonia.

But on the other hand, I notice that in 1986 when the EU didn't exist, both Greece and Spain had no fascists, and they totally had all those cool trade and military pacts. Almost like the EU is not in any fucking way related to Greece and Spain not being fascist.

[Username17]

Let me say this for the bajillionth time: the actual plan is not to tear down the EU and replace it with nothing.

That is what the Republicans say about repealing and replacing Obamacare. Show me the replacement or you're just talking shit.

But more importantly, if you have the votes and the will to replace the EU with something better after you've repealed the EU, you have the votes and the will to improve the EU without repealing it in the first place. It is, as you keep saying, just a bunch of treaties. Anything you could renegotiate under the gun of expiring the old treaties is something you could renegotiate with the old treaties still in place. If you want a new European currency that has the mandate to create inflation when necessary to restore full employment, you can just do that by changing the ECB's rules on how the Euro works. In fact, you can do that even easier because all you need is a super majority of governments of countries on the Euro to agree to the change rather than going through continent wide chaos of canceling the second most widely used currency on the planet and then trying to get people to all agree to launch a new one with rules you like better.

The EU has good stuff in it. There's no reason to cancel the good as well as the bad before launching your reform agenda. While there are specific parts of how the Euro-area handles monetary policy that hamstring growth in depressed economies, remember that that has absolutely fuck all to do with the economic problems in Britain, Poland, and Hungary, which are not on the Euro in the first place. Those countries didn't accept the Ordoliberalist poison pill to get on the Euro train, they had economic problems for other reasons. And their conservative governments are behaving badly because that is what conservative governments do - not because of anything the European Union is specifically doing to them.

Canceling the EU in Hungary pretty much just makes things worse. To the extent that the EU has interfered with Hungary at all it has been to threaten sanctions against the country if they went through some of their "reforms." And Hungary has blinked a few times, which means they still have elections and Fidesz could potentially eventually lose one. And they aren't literally shooting Syrian refugees that try to pass through their lands.

Canceling the EU in Britain pretty much just makes things worse. The EU takes some money from the UK and spends some money in the UK. Not a lot in either direction, but dropping out of the EU would simply let the government tax and spend less - precisely the opposite of what they need to do with their persistently depressed economy.Really large numbers of workers in Britain are European migrant workers and similarly there are millions of British people working in other European countries - no surprise since English is the closest thing to a continental language that there is. Any change or confusion in the status of literally millions of workers can only lead to economic disruption. How could it do anything else?

The only argument to canceling the EU is that the Toika is badly behaved in Southern Europe. But it's actually much easier to change the institutional mandates of the Troika than it is to renegotiate the entirety of the EU. And much of the Troika would continue to exist even if the EU vanished tomorrow. Germany and the IMF won't actually disappear if the European Parliament stops meeting.

Repeal and Replace is a stupid slogan for stupid people. And if you believe it, you're one of them.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

That being said: Blade is basically right that the EU is basically designed to be unshakeable and to ignore democratic mandates altogether. So the fact that the parliament and the commission are essentially locked, just means that the technocrats who got us into this mess in the first place will continue ramming their failed policies down everyone's throats until violent revolutionaries have them guillotined.

"The EU cannot be stopped. The leaders are going to keep doing this until the people get fed up and have them guillotined."

"The EU will stop. Eventually. A little bit at a time. Guillotine not required."

See how radically different your previous and current predictions are? What the fuck happened in the past two years to increase your confidence in the EU?

[Mask_De_H]

Layman's guess is not so much an increased confidence in the EU, but a fear/realization that when the revolution happens, it's not going to be carried by preening leftist Internet Warriors, but legitimate jackbooted fascist thugs. You know, since Frank lives in a country nominally in the EU and all, so if shit blows up there's a decent chance he's caught in the crossfire. And because shit changes in two years.

One of the things about fascism is fascists don't jack off to fiery rhetoric. They jack off to fiery action. And they've been circlejerking furiously in Europe for a very long time.

[DSMatticus]

Here is the fucking problem with your "repeal and replace" bullshit. The mainstream left had the chance to start a genuine dialogue on what needed done to improve the EU framework, and instead they stuck their head in the sand and waited for the EU to finish beating the ever-loving shit out of southern Europe. If there had ever been a chance for a genuine continent-wide movement to push for the EU 2.0, they pissed it away with inaction, complacency, and a willingness to tolerate the suffering of others. That bridge is burned. It's gone. We're not going to get a clean chance to replace the EU all at once. Europe is far too divided and far too full of radical eurosceptics to get that movement off the ground. It may not have been possible to begin with (why would Germany have let such a thing happen? You basically would have had to threaten to kick them the fuck out and then they still might have said no), but now it's completely in the land of feel-good fairytales. And worse, because so many people on the left aren't willing to admit that they're starving Greek children in the name of European unity and saying shit like "a vote against the EU is a vote for the fascists!" and whatever other stupid bullshit, the left isn't even any closer to starting that dialogue now than they were at the beginning. You are demanding the perfect solution or no solution at all. You are not Obama defending the ACA. You are Sanders telling us single-payer or bust.

Going forward, any attempt to replace the EU is going to be done piecemeal. Individual member states are going to get fed up with it and walk out one by one. There is no other option. The only question left is how many fascist states does Europe have at the end of this process, and it should be apparent by now that the EU is making that number larger, not smaller.

EDIT: Also, you keep saying "we can change the institution from within," and that is why I keep quoting you saying the exact opposite about how the institution can't be changed from within. There seemed to be a point in time when you understood how fundamentally bullshit easy it was for individual members of the EU to simply veto progress (very easy), but now you are convinced that progress is not only possible we're on track to solve these crises before they put radical right governments in power throughout Europe. Which the fuck is it?

[Username17]

See how radically different your previous and current predictions are? What the fuck happened in the past two years to increase your confidence in the EU?

There is a difference between being pessimistic about the current situation (which I am) and advocating for bad outcomes (which is what DSM is doing). There is no catharsis when and if the EU falls apart. All that happens is that countries like Hungary stop getting pushback against their fascist leadership and the basic framework of human rights and free movement of peoples gets dumpstered with the vague promise of maybe making a new one later.

There's lots wrong with the EU. It's a ponderous and corrupt institution. But cutting it out of all the countries in Europe is still just taking a big sector of the economy and setting it on fire. There's no mechanism for the jobs and rights lost in that process to be replaced. Not "soon after a V shaped recovery," not "eventually in Keynes' tongue-in-cheek longterm," not ever. If we lose the EU, the European Convention of Human Rights goes away (or becomes unenforceable, which is the same thing) and that will make things measurably worse even in non-EU countries like Russia.

Yeah, things are looking bad in Europe. Brexit might seriously happen, and if it does the rest of Europe would be fucking idiots not to levy huge penalties on England (since a country unilaterally leaving the EU and not suffering huge consequences would make the argument for staying in the EU more difficult). The remaining EU would have pretty much all the power in the resultant negotiations, and it would be in their interest to make things as difficult for Great Britain as possible. There is literally nothing that is off the table there, from confiscating all British owned property on the mainland to canceling the visas of millions of British people to blockading the imports of food and medicine. From a simple game theory standpoint, having Brexit be a humanitarian catastrophe is clearly in the interests of the people who have the choice of whether it is or not. Similarly, the economic crisis in Southern Europe continues and it is awful and no one seems to even have a plan to fix the economy of Greece that could actually work (the German plan of "keep flogging the peasants" does not count).

But while the Euro was a mistake and the plans for making it were based on junk economics that made no sense, what's the fucking replacement plan? Even now the Euro is broadly popular in Greece, because GDP per capita in Greece is about double what it was in the year 2000. That's after eight fucking years of crisis. 8 years of boom and 8 years of bust and they are still better off than they were at the beginning. Electoral memories are short, but they aren't that short. No plan for moving forward can ever get traction by starting "first we set back the clock twenty years..." If you want to make progress you have to improve what you have, not play fantasy football of improving an imaginary golden age of the past.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Yeah, things are looking bad in Europe. Brexit might seriously happen, and if it does the rest of Europe would be fucking idiots not to levy huge penalties on England (since a country unilaterally leaving the EU and not suffering huge consequences would make the argument for staying in the EU more difficult). The remaining EU would have pretty much all the power in the resultant negotiations, and it would be in their interest to make things as difficult for Great Britain as possible. There is literally nothing that is off the table there, from confiscating all British owned property on the mainland to canceling the visas of millions of British people to blockading the imports of food and medicine. From a simple game theory standpoint, having Brexit be a humanitarian catastrophe is clearly in the interests of the people who have the choice of whether it is or not. Similarly, the economic crisis in Southern Europe continues and it is awful and no one seems to even have a plan to fix the economy of Greece that could actually work (the German plan of "keep flogging the peasants" does not count).

Holy fucking shit.

Raise your hand if you agree with Frank that attempting to blockade the UK in order to starve and kill its citizens is a great idea and totally wouldn't end in WW3. I'm not even going to discuss the ethical ramifications of treating a nation worse than the EU has treated Greece for wanting to leave a "ponderous and corrupt institution" which "will continue ramming their failed policies down everyone's throat until violent revolutionaries have them guillotined" (his words). I just want to know if anyone here still trusts Frank's utilitarian analysis of political strategies after telling us that the EU should attempt to blockade a first-world nuclear power.

[Username17]

I just want to know if anyone here still trusts Frank's utilitarian analysis of political strategies after telling us that the EU should attempt to blockade a first-world nuclear power.

Utilitarianism has nothing to do with it. We're talking Realpolitik. If the UK spits in the EU's face and breaks their treaties unilaterally, then the EU's interests are served by having that end badly for Britain. That's it. What they choose to do to ensure that it ends badly for Britain is simply their choice. There is literally nothing off the table. Whatever they think is necessary to do to have the judgement of history be immediately clear that Brexit was a bad move is what they should do. If they think they can accomplish that merely by canceling all of the favorable trade deals that the UK has with the rest of Europe, that is what they should do. If they think that they need to put a fucking Iron Curtain on the chunnel, then that is what they should do.

Absolutely all of the pro-EU parties (which is nearly every party in charge of every country in mainland Europe plus Ireland) would lose a lot of support at the polls if the UK left the EU and didn't suffer horrible consequences. And the amount of horrible consequences that the UK suffers is simply at the whim of the remaining EU countries. The UK doesn't even get a seat at the table when they decide how badly to punish the UK for their transgression. They simply have a closed door discussion where they decide how badly it goes for the UK in order to make their point.

Remember, this is the same EU that bombed cities and armed rape gangs in Libya to make sure the oil kept flowing to France. Once the UK leaves the EU, they aren't owed a fucking thing. The only consideration is how badly it has to go in Britain to make sure all the Portuguese language newspapers report the experiment negatively. There is no cap on the human cost here, only a floor.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Yeah. OK. Here is the thing.

The Grexit, which was potentially Eurozone, not EU exit. Would have been better for everyone involved and THAT would have resulted in the Eurozone wreaking terrible vengeance in an attempt to insure that Greece couldn't possibly thrive for fear of the results.

But you know what will NOT fucking happen. Retribution for Brexit. The EU is ready to bully Greece, maybe even Spain or Italy.

They are NOT ready to lean ANY amount of retributive weight on Britain, France, or Germany. Brexit results in claims of "humble introspection " and "hope for reconciliation".

Now there are a number of reasons for this. But the big ones are, Britain is too big, and Grexit earns retribution because the neoliberal economic orthodoxy is not permitted to be challenged, and Brexit doesn't because it isn't actually about challenging the neoliberal economic orthodoxy.

You want to talk "Realpolitik" and you IMAGINE the EU will level TERRIBLE REVENGE against Brexit? YOU ARE CRAZY.

The people who WOULD attempt vengeance against Britain are too closely allied with those in power in Britain and their policies. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN.

[DSMatticus]

We're talking Realpolitik.

I agree that a German word is the best kind of word to use to describe a policy that likely ends in bombers flying for London from mainland Europe.

I really do appreciate all the irony sprinkles on your apocalyptic shitcake, though.

"Countries can't be allowed to leave the EU. It would destroy Europe."

"What should be done to stop them?"

"Destroy Europe harder."

[Username17]

DSM, stop being a dumbass.

Obviously if Eurocrats want to hold the EU together, it would be better for them to provide more growth now. They provided a lot of growth ten years ago, but they haven't done much lately.

But if Brexit goes through, that is not on the table. That's not even under discussion. The only question is how big an economic and human cost is to be paid by the people living in Britain now. That is it. There is no upside. The British government can punish itself by cracking down on immigrants and/or making trade more difficult with its neighbors, and the remaining European Union can punish the UK by any of a number of means. And that is fucking it. There is just a question of how high the punishment dial goes. The UK government can turn it up, and the European Commission can turn it up. And that's it. Once the Brexit goes through, the only question is how much worse tomorrow will be than today.

There is no ceiling to the human cost here. There is only a floor.

There is no mechanism for things getting better after Brexit. There are only mechanisms for things getting worse.

-Username17

[Grek]

Frank you have gone deeply insane if you think the EU can successfully blockade the UK. The best case scenario is that the Eurocrats bluster about it, but then back the fuck down once they remember that Britain has the single largest navy in the EU and is allied with the country with the largest navy in the world. The worst case scenario is that they don't back down and the Royal Navy gets into a shooting war with the French and German fleets, kicking off World War 3. Even seizing the assets of British citizens is risky enough that nobody would want to be the first to learn what the UK's response to that would be.

[PhoneLobster]

Protip.

The "Eurocrats" do not actually care about holding Europe together.

They care about other things.

Their actions in general should have indicated that to any reasonable observer by now.

That is pretty much the whole problem.

[DSMatticus]

There are actually lots of mechanisms for things not getting worse. They are the same mechanisms that gave us the original treaties, which... mostly did not make things worse. As already noted, the Treaty of Maastricht itself has turned out to be a catastrophe, but pretty much everything else Europe has gotten together to sign has worked out fairly well. The ability for world leaders to sit down and sign papers has not been lost to the ages of time. There are already a great deal of such treaties written between the EU, individual EU states, and non-EU states in the spirit of mutual cooperation, and there's always room for more.

If the EU decides that its sole motivation is to crush dissent with an iron fist, then obviously there won't be any spirit of mutual cooperation, and we could conceivably end up with a death toll in the hundreds of millions. Thankfully, I don't think even Europe's worst leaders are as fucking stupid as you're being right now. Even the "moderate" ideas in your proposal are things Europe did to Germany in order to coerce them into making their reparation payments. My history is a little rough, but my understanding is that that ultimately ended poorly.

[Username17]

There are actually lots of mechanisms for things not getting worse. They are the same mechanisms that gave us the original treaties, which... mostly did not make things worse. As already noted, the Treaty of Maastricht itself has turned out to be a catastrophe, but pretty much everything else Europe has gotten together to sign has worked out fairly well. The ability for world leaders to sit down and sign papers has not been lost to the ages of time. There are already a great deal of such treaties written between the EU, individual EU states, and non-EU states in the spirit of mutual cooperation, and there's always room for more.

Those are all just mechanisms that could be used to improve the situation we are in right now. Yes, the UK could make a new set of treaties that gave every benefit of membership they have now plus a pony, and the only thing that would be lost is the literally hundreds of thousands of man hours spent negotiating it. But... if there was the will and the political capital to do that they could just negotiate for the pony and not have to relitigate all the things they already have.

There is no fucking mechanism for making things better by scrapping the EU and starting over. Any improvements you wanted to make by declaring EU 2.0 could be made with EU revision 1.3. If you could get blackjack or hookers with your EU replacement treaties, you could get an EU amendment treaty that gave blackjack or hookers.

There is not one fucking thing that scrapping the EU gives you except risk. Even if your replacement for the EU is 100% identical to the EU we have now, that's still handing a giant symbolic victory to UKIP and the National Front. You still haven't named one real thing that scrapping the EU would do to benefit us in any way. You're just raging against the machine. Fuck you, and fuck your rage. Productive suggestions or GTFO.

Frank you have gone deeply insane if you think the EU can successfully blockade the UK.

The EU isn't going to sail boats around British harbors and shoot shit, no. But the Channel Tunnel transmits over twenty million tonnes of freight every year and if the mainland decides to double the processing fees or halt traffic altogether they can just do that. The United Kingdom imports about $30 billion dollars worth of goods from the rest of the EU every month. That is 13% of the combined GDP of the country. If the EU just slow walks the replacement trade pacts, Albion starves.

And I mean literally starves. The UK produces less than half of its own food.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Sad that despite everything wrong with it, the EU is still the smaller problem to deal with.

[Grek]

Except not. If it actually comes down to the UK having enough food or not having enough food, the only two possibilities are (in order of likelihood):

1. The UK receives food subsidies from the US, China and/or Russia escorted by the navies of these powers. The motivation for the US to do so is obvious, and it does not seem impossible to me that China or Russia might agree to chip in as a big Fuck You to the EU for being this destabilizing.

2. British Nationalists seize power and the UK fucking invades France in order to secure access to the mainland. Because if the UK can't get food via ship, they're going to get it the other way, and if that means World War III, then at least they'll be well fed when London and Paris vanish in nuclear blasts.

[Username17]

Uh... no. If the UK suddenly had to pay way more or simply could not get European food shipments, the costs of food stuffs would rise tremendously and the Tescos of the UK would start putting C grade potatoes on shelves. They might even pass rules allowing the sale of expired food like Greece did in a similar situation.

We're not talking about mass deaths in the street, we're talking about a massive drop in the standard of living of British people and a noticeable uptick in the number of grannies who die in the cold next winter. Like the Tory government's policies for the last 6 years only more dramatic.

China is not going to bail Britain out. War is not going to solve the issue.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

So, to be clear, Frank is descending into increasingly insane spirals of imaginary threats that will never happen. Like his actual batshit claim that the EU will attempt to literally starve (his own words) the UK in retribution for leaving the EU... as justification for how totally progressive it is to stay in the EU.

Now I'm not entirely on board with the tear it down and build anew crowd. But basically everything Frank seems to have to say on this is batshit fucking insane fantasy and paranoia.

Because that isn't going to happen.

And even if it did it might as well spell instant suicide for whatever was left of the EU. THAT is "Realpolitik".

[maglag]

Having access to a wide variety of cheap quality food is actually one of the main draws of the EU.

If the UK leaves the EU, then the EU countries have zero reason to keep selling quality food to the UK at cheap prices, and the UK citizens will have to eat considerably shittier and more limited food. It's just that. No war, just business.

My mother still remembers the time when eating a banana was a rare luxury.

[Kaelik]

But... if there was the will and the political capital to do that they could just negotiate for the pony and not have to relitigate all the things they already have.

So what you are saying is, if Britain could convince France to sign a trade treaty, then it logically follows that Britain alone could completely rewrite the EU with no opposition... Oh wait, that... is not at all true.

Last I checked, Canada did not rewrite the entire EU, but did sign a trade treaty with the EU. Almost like one of those things is easier than the other.