From Brexit To Withdrawal Agreement: The Shape Of Water

The UK Withdrawal From The EU is the longest part even before ANY/ALL Brexit plans. FLEXCIT is the only realistic Brexit plan beyond this first stage. The representation of Brexit has been bogus in almost 100% of all publications by politicians and news-media I've seen. Likewise the representation of the EU as not defined by it's supranational nature has been bogus and misrepresented as well. This supranational border defines the shape of events to come.

In the past I've argued that that the quintessential definition of Brexit is the SAME definition to which any WORD in the English Oxford Dictionary is put under: That is the minimum representation under other definitions. If we apply this rule, then:

Brexit = "UK Leaving the (major) Political Institutions of the EU ONLY" as required to be members of, under the membership rules as written into the EU Treaty itself. In short order these are as per Wiki:

The institutions of the European Union are the seven principal decision making bodies of the European Union (EU). They are, as listed in Article 13 of the Treaty on European Union:

• the European Parliament,
• the European Council,
• the Council of the European Union,
• the European Commission,
• the Court of Justice of the European Union,
• the European Central Bank and
• the Court of Auditors.

I've always said that Brexit CAN include anything else under the sun outside of the EU, but DOES NOT HAVE TO, as a place to begin.

Although I think this is true. It is not acceptable for some reason, to many people, perhaps because of trust issues or any number of other reasons, notable amongst many the "forceful personality" root to so many peoples' method of making decisions.

As such the above is very much and EXCLUSIVE argument: It defines everything else as secondary to it's proposition. Instead I've come up with the opposite: An INCLUSIVE argument and this blog sets it out, using pictures, analogies, substitute measures not to PROVE but to CONCEPTUALIZE what our Final Brexit deal or even Withdrawal Agreement will look like:-

The Shape Of Water: Is defined by it's borders, by the shape of the CONTAINER it is in: It's still ALL water however

Fundamentally what Brexit comes down to is as per 2 stand-out quotes from Sir Ivan Rogers:

"The more he looked at the issues on how, from outside the EU, the UK would be able to secure its vital interests, the more obvious the conclusion that being even “just outside” was radically different from being “just inside” the fence."

"The problem is that, in dealing with the EU, the states of being just inside the perimeter fence and supposedly just outside it, are very radically different. On leaving, we become, in EU parlance, a “third country”. "

I've even given these 2 quotes the "colour of water" to drive the point home! This point cannot be A PRIORI enough now that the UK has indeed triggered Article 50.

There's no going back: The EU Referendum result determines WHICH SIDE OF THE FENCE the UK now operates under for the future. Even arguing for social reasons that the decision was a mistake is now a void argument: Those politics are now encapsulated BACK into Westminster as per Representative Democracy and UK political process as per how the UK operates it's national decision-making. I don't care that that process has many problems for now given the precise nature of the argument made in this blog. I don't care what the "Fantasy Horse-Trading Manager" scenarios that politicians and people and news-media are all indulging each other in.

We are on the "other side of the fence" now, already.

What becomes very interesting however, is that all the arguments about what Brexit should contain are actually not contained by what the SUBSTANCE or features that are captured immediately, but by this "fence or border". Brexit is very defined not by what is in it, but by it's borders and the most significant border that defines it's "shape" is the first one: Outside the EU Treaties and political institutions of membership. Every other arguments that fails to address this is bogus.

In the above diagram I've mocked up an analogy with respect to distance.

Leaving the EU is a larger distance than all the rest of the other "Brexit Plans" put together, ie the distance between each of them from one end to the other even though that total distance is still large - except the Non-Plan "No Deal aka WTO False Representation which is off the chart. Think of it this way, leaving the EU is Brexit Number 1. Trying to do any of the non-Single Market Brexits as well is Brexit Number 2. We only voted for 1 successful Brexit not x100 Brexits.

The social-emotional responses to Brexit, disproportionate actual lack of contribution: A drop in the ocean

Thus in fact, all Brexit plans will not and do not describe the "reality of leaving the EU". The simple Linear scale of move 1 place away from the EU for each type of Brexit model is total and utter nonsense. Again it may look nice for campaign and emotional-social support reasons and give our MPs the semblance of debating usefully or even encapsulating the nations' Leave emotions but it does not do anything USEFUL. Likewise the Remainers as per Ivan Rogers are actually "Reversers". Totally useless and ignoring this side of the fence change that has already happened.

There's only one plan I've seen that comes CLOSEST and is worth mentioning: FLEXCIT. It seems to me that FLEXCIT is about as EXTREME a Brexit Plan that is possible and will still require much additional work to make up the difference from being outside the EU as much as it contains solutions that also work. In fact Dr. RAE North of EUReferendum.com has argued precisely this, consistently for years, if anybody has been paying attention!

In the above picture I've tried to demonstrate this "non-linear degrees of separation" from leaving the EU.

And here's the conclusion, or the "shape of water": The Withdrawal Agreement IS Brexit in the beginning. The closer it is to the "fence" of the EU the more it's within the "habitable zone of departure". Bear in mind in the analogy above, given the EU Referendum result, the EU is "too hot" and the No Deal No Plan Disaster is "too cold". The rest of the Brexit Plans are not in the "habitable zone" by a long long way. Even FLEXCIT is just within the so-called "habitable zone" of Brexit immediately after leaving the EU.

I've represented this with symbolic numbers:

10,000 miles from the EU to outside the EU whatever relationship.

1,000 miles plus to the above, from copying the EU and building upon the flexible EEA framework which is the 1st stage of FLEXCIT.

100,000,000 plus all the above for the No Deal No Plan Brexit Disaster.

The fact of the matter is, the only reasonable Brexit plan, FLEXCIT has enormous extra work on top of it within the 1st "10,000 miles" as it were to make up, which should be the prime duty of the Withdrawal Agreement.

It's a very simple representation, not very sophisticated and bearing only tiny resemblance to reality of Brexit in all it's enormous complexity. But I think in essence the picture is more accurate than anything published officially about Brexit (which is a terrible indictment of our enormous and expensive national decision-making machinery that the tax-payer spends so much money every year paying into): Brexit first has to transfer successfully across the fence via the Withdrawal Agreement, which means it's defined by this container and thus all Brexit discussion should concentrate on this "ZONE" for a successful "Withdrawal Agreement". Some of which in the upcoming years should start to resemble a similarity to FLEXCIT.

Remainers and Leavers = Withdrawers.

I suggest reading FLEXCIT for insights into what this will shape up to be like.

Brexit-Day = "The Day Of The Ivan Rogers"

Sir Ivan Rogers: "Who's been Paying Attention?" Probably the not the petitioners or marchers or many others for that matter...

There's much song and dance about what B-Day will eventually look like. It could be very bad. But if it is to be good, which is the real argument that affects so many people, then it is not so hard to consider what it SHOULD look like, if we FOCUS on the arguments as opposed to the people making them. The above riff on "The Day Of The Jackal" is precisely that:

LIVE: Sir Ivan Rogers appears at European Union Select Committee ~ Just shy of ~5,000 views

In conversation with Sir Ivan Rogers ~ 12,500 Views

Sir Ivan Rogers: Where did Brexit come from and where is it going to take the UK? ~ Just shy of 80,000 Views (a bit better!)

Text Version:

UCL Brexit Ivan Rogers Text Speech

Back in 2018:

Sir Ivan Rogers delivered a lecture on ‘The real post-Brexit options’ at the University of Glasgow on 23 May 2018

March 1st 2019: Der Spiegel: "What Surprises Me Is the Extent of the Mess"

EUReferendum.com :

Brexit: the Rogers speech 2018

Brexit: a bucket of cold water Jan 2019

Babel-17: "Whither should these creatures go, unless it were to the moon?"

"Whither should these creatures go, unless it were to the moon?"

As per Dr. RAE North's blog of today, Brexit: hope dies last, sometimes the "Noise" level is so high, that there is almost ZERO "signal" or meaning or sense to be found. In fact, it's world-wearying,  to focus on the consequences of how politics operates as a large system in the UK, thus in such a situation the best resort is to enjoy some laughter and look to other more worthwhile things.

More interesting, the time is drawing nearer when Swallows arrive back to the UK, once more and for me very joyously. A few years ago I recorded my first swallow on the 9th April and then a year later 14th April. I believe last year they arrived later due to the colder weather. I look forward to seeing them this year and even have a pre-formed nest ready to aid and encourage them in their nesting activities. However, it reminded me of this story of yore concerning birds and Swallows, and hence relevance to Brexit as believed by so many people 'chanting away':

Fantastically Wrong: The Scientist Who Thought That Birds Migrate to the Moon

"English minister and scientist Charles Morton, who in the 17th century wrote a surprisingly well-reasoned, though obviously totally inaccurate, treatise claiming birds migrate to the moon and back every year

Aristotle, who reckoned that some birds hibernate while others simply transform into different species when winter comes around. Redstarts, for instance, morph into robins in winter—a fantastical claim that’s easier to understand when you consider that redstarts indeed migrate to Africa as robins make their way to Greece.

Later, the great Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote of the pygmies, a race of tiny humans in Africa that do eternal battle with cranes (the birds, not the construction equipment). He notes “that in springtime their entire band, mounted on the backs of rams and she-goats and armed with arrows, goes in a body down to the sea and eats the cranes’ eggs and chickens, and that this outing occupies three months.” It’s an echo of Homer’s mention of cranes in the Iliad, birds that do indeed migrate from Europe to Africa

Medieval bestiaries, sorts of zoological encyclopedias that every once in a while contained actual facts, often featured the barnacle goose, which supposedly grows on trees over water. It was a convenient explanation for geese simply turning up, seemingly out of nowhere, after their migration. Also convenient: Catholics aren’t supposed to eat meat other than fish on Fridays, but because the barnacle goose isn’t born from an egg, wrote Gerald of Wales in 1187, “in some parts of Ireland, bishops and men of religion make no scruple of eating these birds on fasting days, as not being flesh, because they are not born of flesh.” (The same logic has variously been applied to beavers, whose tails apparently taste like fish, as well as the giant rodent capybara of South America, which spends so much time in marshes that some argued to the church that it should be classified as a fish.)

In the 16th century, the great cartographer and writer Olaus Magnus championed the theory that swallows disappear in the winter not because they travel to tropical climes to pick up coconuts, but because they bury themselves in the clay at the bottom of rivers. They come together in the fall in huge swarms, then sink down into the mud en masse, only to reemerge in the spring."

Fantastically Wrong! But why should 99% of EVERYONE speaking about Brexit be less wrong given the relative comparison between State of knowledge VS reliance on current PEOPLE of knowledge and the theories they write about today?

Why is the tendency seemingly 9/10 that people focus on the PERSON, not the ARGUMENT?

Only the other day I was enjoying "improving the conditions for some tadpoles in puddles of water". Watching them turn from tiny black dots, into thin black lines then rotund bodies with larger tails and with enough supplementary water added regularly enough, hopefully "make the TRANSFORMATION" into small amphibious adult frogs and a better chance for next years' frog-spawning (they need more small pools of permanent water to effect this improvement as the adult habitat is more than adequate for a larger population if this bottle-neck at the spawning and developing stage can be corrected). How much more rewarding than having to deal with the hurricane of nonsense uttered by so many people now about Brexit?

As said in a previous blog, the idea is that people can use words, put them together to form apparently logical representations of their stances, but be either "Fantastically Wrong!" or worse as per Babel-17:

"During an interstellar war one side develops a language, Babel-17, that can be used as a weapon. Learning it turns one into an unwilling traitor as it alters perception and thought."

Most people don't even realize they're tools for strains of thought that merely reinforce The Establishment's "Version of Events": The so-called people of knowledge who are all Propagandists fighting THEIR "wars". Worse people will argue without pause in defence of 'their' version of events, "as unwilling traitors" or "unaware traitors" to be more accurate with all the bottled-up passion and bad faith in discussion that that entails: Thus producing the self-fulfilling prophesy "Swallows Flying To The Moon Every Winter."

But back in the real world, there's so much happiness to be found in welcoming our Swallows back once again from Africa.

The Great Mistake: "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale!"

The defence of politicians by it's own members of the Establishment and thence the profusion of confusion that they have created can be summarized by the shift of focus required and the tone of both pessimism and whinging pom'ing of:

1. The government COULD never do it! ~ This argument focuses on the divisions in the inner circle of British Politics.
2. The people WOULD never allow it! ~ This argument focuses on the divisions in the outer circle of British Politics.

The Great Mistake with both of these positions and the focus on them, is this, in effect: A shift to "Superior People talking FOR other people." In effect REPLACING their inclusion, REPLACING working through their views, ensuring all these views are viewed as NEGATIVE. Of course the received wisdom is to "take all the above and reach compromise"...

Dr. RAE North summarised this succinctly: Brexit: a failure to communicate
Brexit: a failure to communicate

"Worst of all, despite the EU Member States, individually and collectively demanding that we tell them what we want from Brexit, we are unable to deliver a collective or consensus view. Now, more than ever, it thus appears that the failure to come up with a positive agenda is acting to our disadvantage, something to which I drew attention back in 2011."

"Then I referred to a parliamentary debate on 15 October 1940 when, as the wreckage of London lay around them, MPs gathered to find out whether the government was prepared to make a definitive statement on war aims. But Churchill refused, point blank. He was guardian of the status quo, suppressing any debate on the issue. "

"Churchill's Information Minister Duff Cooper, very much supported the idea, and had been speaking secretly for it in Cabinet. On this day, he expressed his support as far as he could, but had been brought up sharply by Richard Stokes. He was the Labour MP for Ipswich, a Military Cross winner (and bar) in the First World War, a stern critic of British tank design and soon to become an arch critic of the area bombing policy. "

"Cooper, said Stokes, had enunciated what we were fighting against, but not what we were fighting for. "[It] is no use fighting for a negative object. You must have a positive one, and the sooner that [is] stated the better"."

"And that's exactly what we were lacking during the referendum campaign and what we lack now. It is all very well wanting to get out of the EU – the "negative object". But what are we to do with our new-found freedom? Where is our "positive object"? Until we have one, we are going nowhere. We have emerged from our own private war without one, and we are on our way to losing the "peace"."

"The idea of needing a "positive object", I called the Stokes precept. And for want of that, we are frozen in time, unable to decide where we want to go and unable to communicate our needs. At the time, in 2011, I wrote that we will continue to lose our battle until we are able to deal with the issues put by Richard Stokes, back on that awful day of 15 October 1940. "

"We are still losing."


Instead of the above "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale!" escaping into defeatism, how about actually engaging with reality instead:

3. The argument says we SHOULD do this.

This is a positive object: FLEXCIT: Continuous & Flexible Exit Plan

The negative arguments dominate so many comments and contributions made by people who allowed superior people to talk FOR them instead of people being positive for themselves and forming their own arguments to contribute positively.

The results:

After Years Of Brexit make-believe, reality is finally closing in on our politicians

Summarized from behind the pay-wall here by Dr. RAE North:

"With the millions of words so far written, it is probably fair to say that no-one has approached the task of managing the Brexit process with the same degree of coherence that found its way into the Flexcit plan, or evolved their thinking to such effect as has emerged on this blog, with the help of its readers.

The proof, as they say, is in the eating. At no time have we ever been lost for ideas of where to take Brexit, or ever been uncertain as to what needed to be done. While the Johnny-come-latelies pad out the ether and newspaper columns with ever-more unworkable schemes, there resides in those who contributed to the Flexcit plan a body of knowledge which the political (and media) classes have never been able to match.

As it stands, using the EEA template remains the best bet, although it is unlikely that we can rely on Efta embracing our membership. That creates complex but not insurmountable problems on how to replicate the institutional structures necessary to administer the agreement. And then there will still be dozens of supplementary agreements that will have to be negotiated, not least on customs cooperation and VAT.

By comparison with the clarity we are able to offer, such has been the inadequacy of the official UK negotiating team that we are left with the wholly unsatisfactory Withdrawal Agreement as the best (and only) option in town, and nothing on the table to follow."

The Greatest Mistake the British Public ever made was conceding SO MUCH POWER to a detached political class, who neither can speak for people or act for people: For a flourishing democracy and thus prosperous number of nations: That is up to everyone.

3rd Referendum vs. No Deal: "Ave imperator, Rationes morituri!"

"The Gladiators: Priscus and Verus": Arguments Must Die Or We Will Pay The Price!

It should be obvious which arguments are weak, weaker and weakest. The survival and strength of the other arguments slaying these first and thinning their numbers depends upon it.

It should be obvious, but if you look at both Westminster and The News-Media a.k.a.:

"The Politico News-Media Nexus"

It clear the reverse is true.

Pete North Politics Blog

has exemplified this in 2 brilliant blogs recently and it is very very necessary corrective before SOLUTIONS REVEAL THEMSELVES more clearly:

The death of centrism is long overdue

UK Politics has decayed into a mixture of STUPID "tv soap-opera + with game show": Personalities and emotion now compete instead of Arguments and reason.

"The first question you have to ask here is that is politicians are indulging in virtue signalling trivia, who is actually running the show? If this is the trivia that similarly occupies our media, then there's a lot of important conversations we are not having.""But this is also indicative of a politics in a state of intellectual decline. These are far from isolated incidents. A while back I happened to tune in to a long debate about what should and shouldn't be allowed in children's packed lunches. It tells us a lot about what politicians thinks they are there for. They seem to think that it's their job to ban things, tax things or subsidise them. It tells us that they feel entitled to boss us around."

The rush for censorship is the swansong of the establishment 

The legacy news-media distributes REAL FAKE NEWS and at the same time complains about the cheaper imitation called: "Fake News" that they helped create and sustain.

"But that is exactly what they will do. They will attack from all angles. There will be larger regulatory initiatives to "take back control" of the debate, compelling social media platforms to strangle the life out of debate. There will then be a raft of criminal measures they can liberally enforce whenever an MP feels insulted. This, as ever, is coupled with demands for "civility" in politics."

"Civility, though, is just code for uncritical. Any criticism at all will be deemed as crossing the line. Ordinary people can expect to have the plod hammering on their door at 6am on account of a tweet. A few exemplary cases will make the plebs think twice before mouthing off. This is also why we will see more abuse of the libel system by rich political figures."

Both of the above arguments:

1. 3rd Referendum
2. No Deal Brexit

Should have died the day the Referendum Result was achieved. What has Parliament, Government and the Journalists been doing all this time?

The Politico News-Media has failed the people and the people will pay the price for this failure with the deal to be achieved on a new relationship with the EU, post-Brexit.

"Will Of The People" = Invasion Of The Body-Snatchers

BBC's Moral Maze: The Morality of Leadership

Q: "Is there a moral failure in leadership?" *(transcribed with minor paraphrasing alterations, not verbatim word for word)

Dr. RAE North: "Completely, the interesting thing about it, an almost total failure, not of any individual, an almost collective failure to step up to the plate and deliver.

Dr. RAE North: "The EU is a very complex subject, a very complex biological organization. And if you are going to make intelligent decisions about your relationship with this organization, about how it works and how your own government works, and what we see MP's doing again and again, the MP's may speak the words, but they don't have the knowledge to support those words, and again and again and again we find them making elementary mistakes, in the very basics of the nature of the animal they are talking about. And we stand here asking ,,agog, how are they so ignorant to such a level, it's not outright ignorance but stupidity we are dealing with. And there does not seem to be an answer to it."

Dr. RAE North: "Well the road to hell and all that is paved with good intentions. MP's have a world class resource, the Commons Library, they are provided with research funding by the tax-payer, and they have enormous ability to go anywhere they like to ask questions. And they have not, in my view, demonstrated any clear leadership in the context of going out and researching the issue; all too often they are rehearsing memes and received wisdom that does not take us forward technically in what is a very technical subject, to the point they are asking for things which are actually impossible."

Dr. RAE North: "These people are not there for sympathy, they are not there for cuddly hugs, they are there to do job. They are paid a lot of money, they have a lot of prestige and they have a lot of resources devoted to them and it's about time they stepped up to the plate."

Dr. RAE North: "The damage was done before they even got there (DUP), the damage was done even before the Referendum. There should have bene a clear concept of where this would take us. There should have been some effort to assess these options and then look at these options before the Referendum. The Referendum was an example of how information and debate were suppressed."

Epilogue to Article 50: The Longest Darkest Day

"...the encompassing horseshoe arrangement of the five central trilithons, the heel stone, and the embanked avenue, are aligned to the sunset of the winter solstice and the opposing sunrise of the summer solstice." ~ wikipedia

It's been 3 years. What are the results, from when politics was handed over to the British people (in very decrepit form) during the EU Referendum campaign, to the result and subsequent retreat into Westminster politics again?

With respect to the past, Westminster is still "washing it's hands", little of The Great Deception has been since aired and digested for reflection on how the UK arrived at this juncture in time.. The Wikipedia link to this work, portrays this with perfection, a smaller echo of a greater earthquake's uneasy rumblings.

With respect to the present, what can be made of the last 3yrs?

From Spark Notes: What Does The Ending Mean? (Lord Of The Flies, William Golding)

… Restore Order!

The Moral Maze: The Morality Of Leadership

Meanwhile, the rest of the solar system simply carries on:

Much like FLEXCIT: It's still there, still "carrying on":

http://www.eureferendum.com/documents/flexcit.pdf