Craig GrannellJul 6, 2023
New rule: anyone in the UK arguing non-ironically that access to #Threads is a #Brexit benefit is henceforth to be catapulted into the North Sea.
Show threadAndreas KJul 6, 2023

@craiggrannell Well, it's a benefit that your absolute sovereignty is feared so much, that the UK's GDPR clone is considered irrelevant?

Yeah, if you would rather not have any say, #brexit was a full success. Big international business simply doesn't care what the “sovereign” UK says.

Show threadAndreas KJul 6, 2023

@craiggrannell It's the small country dilemma, and that applies to the UK despite being almost a magnitude bigger than Austria. (Note that the UK is on a per capita base, about 1/6th poorer than AT)

Point is, and I experienced it as a teenager and student brutally, a small country, either has its own standards ⇾ which results in laughable little choice for consumers, or simply “follows” the norms of bigger fish.

And don't think you can enforce what that standard means on the global players.

Show threadCraig GrannellJul 6, 2023
@yacc143 It’s pretty clear the UK has fucked it. It had an enviable and smart position as a ‘bridge to Europe’. Now it’s adrift, with nothing. Well, nothing but theoretical sovereignty. Fun times.
Show threadAndreas K

@craiggrannell Yes, but the sad part is it was so predictable, but on G+ and dodo, the BrExiters tended always to point out how rich and big, and super important the UK is. And I just shook my head, and figured out that the EU represents about 7% of the Earth population, a rich part, but still.

Sadly, the saying “There are small countries in Europe and countries that have not yet realized that they are small” is very true.

Jul 6, 2023 at 4:25pmWeb
Show threadCraig GrannellJul 6, 2023

@yacc143 They kept banging on about the fifth biggest economy (although that’s now sixth or seventh, which Brexiters don’t seem to note), as though that meant anything. USA/EU/China are so much bigger. Japan is, IIRC, 2x UK as well.

So it’s a bit like boasting about being the fifth-best men’s tennis player during the Federer era. I mean, that’s not nothing. But you’re way off the big three. (Which makes Andy Murray Japan in this terrible analogy. Oddly, that kinda works.)

Show threadCraig GrannellJul 6, 2023
@yacc143 What’s depressing is there’s no way out of this. My country fucked itself and it cannot recover. It will sit there for years – decades – moaning about the decision it made but glumly saying it has to make the best of it, when we could – with enough political will – be back in the EU by 2030. I suspect the UK will never be a member again – although some of its current component parts might.
Show threadCraig GrannellJul 6, 2023

@yacc143 We also have a delusion issue on both sides of the debate. Leave ones are obvious. But ‘rejoiners’ don’t seem to understand that the EU of 2016 no longer exists, that the UK will need to be a normal EU country and not try to carve out deals, and that none of this is in the UK’s gift anyway.

It’s all so frustrating.

Show threadAndreas KJul 6, 2023
@craiggrannell Although some BrExiter generals realized the critical red line: when A50 was finished. As long A50 was open, the primary renter in no10 just needed to send a letter to Brussels. No matter what Parliament wanted or not, might have censured HMG, the UK exploded in civil war, but the EC speaks with the member state governments, primevally. 1 minute after midnight, it's suddenly 27 MS that night to okay anything.