How the Brexit dream of Singapore-on-Thames was lost | Hacker News Reader

How the Brexit dream of Singapore-on-Thames was lost

telegraph.co.uk

13 pointsdukeyukey18 comments

It is astonishing to see something so reasonable and objective in the Telegraph which has a very strong pro-brexit stance.

I think I heard about this article on The Rest is Politics podcast this week, where they summarised it pretty well.

it's an opinion piece

HACKER: Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. And The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

HUMPHREY: Prime Minister, what about people who read The Sun?

BERNARD: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits.

– Yes, Prime Minister, “A Conflict of Interest” (TX: 23/12/87)

Singapore on Thames, meaning London on Thames was always and always is an option. Biggest obstacle is the United Kingdom attached to London. What to do with the rest? :-)

Yes apart from the USA and some countries in the middle east, most countries have this depressing vibe to them these days. They know the future is going to be worse but nobody has any ideas to fix it.

> nobody has any ideas to fix it.

Oh, there is no shortage of ideas. They are just terrible.

Sure, but this was probably the first time in recorded history that a country has imposed trade sanctions on itself.

You could argue things like the Russian invasion of Ukraine was one. Pointless war that will only hurt Russia long term. Same goes for authoritarian takeovers in general which often lead to trade sanctions.

It is probably the first time a country has democratically chosen to trade sanction itself for no benefit.

I'm surprised you don't think the USA has a depressing vibe about it. I am very positive about the USA (and live here), but I feel like I only hear people predicting its imminent collapse and talking about how terrible life is here.

I hear those predictions too but then I visit new York, Miami, Vegas and the vibe is of rock and roll.

I don't think the tourist experience of a major city is necessarily all that related to what it's like to live there.

You can go to Toronto and the vibe will make you vomit.

At the risk of another downvote-avalanche in this uncritical echo chamber of anti-brexitism, I'll say that I still think it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was against the whole thing in the beginning, but there's no reason that it couldn't have worked out well for the UK, and where they're at now was in no way inevitable.

No, I don't think there's some deep state conspiracy to make it fail. That wouldn't make sense, since nobody gains. I do think that the self-defeating pessimism of the British has a big part to play though.

I'll agree with you. I'm solidly anti-Brexit but of all the EU members I think we had the best shot at it. "Only" about half our trade is with the EU, which is a lot, but less than pretty much every other member. I thought, maybe if we had a competent government with an idea of what post-EU Britain could be it would work out basically ok.

That did not happen.

I agree. It's somewhat the ineptitude of the Tories. For example, they could have sorted out the border; not the small boats but the red tape that it now takes to import and export.

"There may be some element of truth in what she says about Whitehall obstinacy and the shortcomings of non elected technocrats, but her take on events is essentially just a lot of paranoid nonsense straight out of the populist playbook, where an imaginary “enemy within” is created as a hate plank to channel the discontents of voters."

I had to stop reading here, it's clearly sensationalist.

It’s worth reading further if you have a broader context of what and who is being discussed, and what newspaper is publishing this.

At a time when the Tory party has basically imploded and the brexit right appears to be trying to position itself for opposition rather than winning the next election, with Liz Truss making headlines again, … and then this, in the Telegraph?? Is there a bigger political game going on? Will the Telegraph start promoting Gove as the next leader?

it's explicitly not the view of the newspaper

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