What is in Kelvin's Head?

I’d like a Featherlight Brexit and no-one is offering it

17/01/2017

The trouble is, I agree with Mrs May.

Oh, don’t get breathless and excited. I only agree with her about one thing. I don’t agree with her about the kind of country she wants us to live in. I don’t agree with her about the kind of Europe we are going to create. I don’t agree with her about the kind of economy that she wants, which I think will harm the poorest most.

No, I simply agree with that most pathetic and seemingly banal political slogan – brexit means brexit. I wish I didn’t but I do.

If the people of the UK voted for brexit then the UK has to come out of the EU. I don’t see any way of that being avoided with the possible exception of the government falling and a new election being fought entirely on the European question. However, that isn’t going to happen and so brexit really does mean brexit.

There really is no having a referendum vote and ignoring it.

I don’t know what was ever meant by a red, white and blue brexit but what I want is a featherlight brexit.

I want a brexit that retains all the best of the relationship we have with the EU and which leaves the door open to rejoining after a period outside.

However, that doesn’t seem available.

I find it difficult to understand why there isn’t anything like that available politically.

The Lib Dems seem in denial that the referendum on brexit actually means we are leaving.

The Tory party seems mostly hell bent on the worst kind of brexit.

The Labour party seems mostly hell bent on removing itself as a political force.

The SNP seem to think that all that matters is whether or not it brings Scottish independence any further forward.

Our First Minister seemed ruffled and unsure of herself today as though she had not had a script prepared for Theresa May’s well trailed speech. It seems to me that now is the time when we will see what kind of politician Nicola Sturgeon is. She’s been dealt a very rough hand and we’ve no idea whether she will play it well. You can’t really judge a politician by how well they play a good hand and she’s more or less had that up until now. Massive poll ratings and huge electoral success have been very impressive but I simply don’t believe she can win a better brexit deal for Scotland than the rest of the UK gets. To some extent the SNP have been living in a fantasy since the brexit vote.

Ms Sturgeon’s hand might get very much worse this year. If there’s electoral success for the far right in either Holland or France then it is plain that the question will not be whether Scotland should be independent in Europe but whether there’s a Europe left which we want to be in.

I want a brexit that means that people living in the UK from the EU can remain in the UK and vice versa.

I want a brexit that retains interdependent trading with the UK and the EU.

I want a brexit that leaves the door open to a reformed European project which seems inevitable and which Britain would be better engaged with than disengaged with.

However, I don’t feel as though anyone is offering anything like what I want.

Who will form the Featherlight Party with me?

7 responses to “Reclaiming the web”

Paul Hutchinson

14/10/2015

Thank you for making me think in a different direction just before pausing for lunch. I have never had a blog, so came quite late to Internet social discourse, and have engaged more since joining one major network in 2010 and another in early 2014 – normally using those networks rather than a comment box such as this. Not all of us are natural creators of substantial original content, but like to be thoughtful in brief exchange, and so both those major networks, though cursed with many difficulties, serve those brief exchanges quite well. I do agree that the endless recycling of links (on both of them) can be wearying, and I do wish that some old friends would be a little more self-critical. But the price of any kind of social discourse is that one is vulnerable to the otherness of the other.
I feel I ought to be writing a more substantial comment here, but hope that this is enough. The time is not always there to offer deeper reflection: but sometimes a blogger needs to hear at least a small splash from the stone thrown down the well!

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1. Kelvin
  
  14/10/2015
  
  Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m aware that not everyone is a content creator, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of discovering different communities online and keeping the comments more or less in one place helps with that.
  
  The glory days of 50 or more comments on a post are probably over. I suspect I mourn the sense of community being created even more than I miss the interesting reflections of others. Retweets and shares are always welcome – but they are the means of amplification. Becoming loud isn’t the same as becoming wise, nor the same as becoming connected.
  
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Seph

14/10/2015

It’s a damnable shame—and mostly the fault of Facebook. Twitter at least has an etiquette of sorts, wherein it is considered impolite not to respond to the original tweet, which is usually made by the blogger in question.

Facebook, in short, is the scourge of the Internet. I have often been in groups which have decided to do all of their organizing on Facebook, despite my protests that I’m not on Facebook and don’t want to be, and really an e-mail list would be just as easy, and would they like me to set one up. This inevitably leads to my marginalization within the group, as no-one bothers to keep me abreast of the discussions to which I am not party.

Can you tell I’m upset about this?

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Daniel Lamont

14/10/2015

I am only an occasional user of Facebook but I know what you mean, Kelvin. And indeed, I never read the comments ‘below the line’ on newspapers like ‘The Guardian’. You offer some useful advice. I read yours and one or two other blogs on a regular basis but don’t always comment. However, I can see that the author of a blog would like some feedback. I would be sad not to have the blogs that I do read because they do give me a sense of what people are thinking and an odd sense of community.

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Father Ron Smith

14/10/2015

My own contribution to the blogopshere is, I’m afraid, Father Kelvin, limited to comments I make on other people’s blogs (such as ‘Thinking Anglicans’ and ‘Anglican Down Under’ – a local NZ forum; plus my own blog ‘kiwianglo’, where i pluck articles that interest me personally from the web and provide my own commentary. This still interests me, personally, and provides my few readers with information they might not otherwise be bothered to glean for themselves. Like you, I am no longer an avid Facebook fan.

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David Campbell

16/10/2015

Hi Kelvin – thoughtful as ever – and yours is invariably the first blog I turn to each day. That you bring pressing issues to a wider audience and to people who know, or used to know, the church you serve is a great thing. I’m still blogging relatively strongly, but it’s certainly a different blogging experience when work is set in a very different context and especially community from previously, writing these days mainly for myself about things that interest me, although not quite at the address you have in your Blog Roll. http://www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.com is where it’s “all” happening.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  16/10/2015
  
  Thanks David – nice to hear from you. I’ve amended the link.
  
  I don’t think many people use blogrolls to find blogs these days but whenever I remove it my mother complains…
  
  Reply