Brexit Has Brought Britain to a Standstill

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Is this a temporary grief?

Brexit may have been a demonstration of the wider country’s frustration at not having its voice heard, but the result is even more centralization of power in London. “Almost all the work of Parliament is built around Brexit,” says Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader who served as business secretary in Cameron’s five-year coalition government. “Big decisions that should be grappled with are all being put on hold because they are difficult and are going to involve some friction between ministers.”

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Jess Shankleman, Alex Morales & Suzi Ring — Bloomberg Businessweek

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Brexit: A managed surrender

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Britain is the weaker party in this divorce.

London had to accept that EU nationals who settle in Britain during the interim period will have the same right to remain indefinitely as current residents. It has also swallowed, at least provisionally, the Commission’s fallback position for keeping Northern Ireland inside the EU’s single market if Britain cannot come up with a credible alternative to avoid a hard customs border with the Republic of Ireland.

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Paul Taylor — Politico

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History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump

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Today’s needull was written in July of this year. Reading it again made more sense. Although, it paints a gloomy picture of the near future, the writer does believe that humanity moves on.

So zooming out, we humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another. This handy list shows all the wars over time. Wars are actually the norm for humans, but every now and then something big comes along. I am interested in the Black Death, which devastated Europe. The opening of Boccaccio’s Decameron describes Florence in the grips of the Plague. It is as beyond imagination as the Somme, Hiroshima, or the Holocaust. I mean, you quite literally can’t put yourself there and imagine what it was like. For those in the midst of the Plague it must have felt like the end of the world.

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Tobias Stone — Medium

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A Year of Crises, Shocks and Fears of Terror

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A Chinese curse goes something like this — May you live in interesting times. This year 2016 so far has lived up to the promise. Is there some profound change that is happening, which we are unable to appreciate? Today’s needull discusses the year of crises, shocks and fears of terror.

Many of us simply don’t understand the world anymore. It will probably be up to the historians of future generations to accurately categorize what exactly it is that we’re experiencing in these times of transition. This is, however, not the time to give in to panic — it is time to have confidence in one’s own values and keep fighting for the society one believes in. Geopolitical turmoil is best overcome when one is grounded in clear convictions, which holds true for both citizens and countries as a whole.

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Spiegel — Mathieu von Rohr

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On Brexit

With so much noise about Brexit and the stocks markets falling, there is little clarity on what does Brexit imply for people in the UK and outside. Most people are wondering on why is the market reaction so huge? Today’s needull looks at why Brexit happened from a sociological perspective.

Thatcher and Reagan rode to power by promising a brighter future, which never quite materialized other than for a minority with access to elite education and capital assets. The contemporary populist promise to make Britain or American ‘great again’ is not made in the same way. It is not a pledge or a policy platform; it’s not to be measured in terms of results. When made by the likes of Boris Johnson, it’s not even clear if it’s meant seriously or not. It’s more an offer of a collective real-time hallucination, that can be indulged in like a video game.

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Political Economy Research Centre