Or should I say, I’m so sorry, England and Wales? Because it looks like you’re going to have to drop that “United” stuff soon. You might also want to reconsider that “Great” prefixing “Britain”. Brexit won their referendum. The UK is going to begin the process of breaking from the EU. Stock markets are reacting with shock. The people who despise Nigel Farage are also shocked. Other countries in Europe are dismayed.
I’m afraid I see it in terms of what’s going on in the US today, and that worries me. Gary Younge’s take on the vote is informative. He talks about the incompetence of the Remain campaign, and how it was oblivious to the concerns of the people and set itself aside as the smart people who know better than you do, and never made a good case for remaining in the EU. And then he tears into the Leave campaigners.
It is a banal axiom to insist that “it’s not racist to talk about immigration”. It’s not racist to talk about black people, Jews or Muslims either. The issue is not whether you talk about them but how you talk about them and whether they ever get a chance to talk for themselves. When you dehumanise immigrants, using vile imagery and language, scapegoating them for a nation’s ills and targeting them as job-stealing interlopers, you stoke prejudice and foment hatred.
The chutzpah with which the Tory right – the very people who had pioneered austerity, damaging jobs, services and communities – blamed immigrants for the lack of resources was breathtaking. The mendacity with which a section of the press fanned those flames was nauseating. The pusillanimity of the remain campaign’s failure to counter these claims was indefensible.
Not everyone, or even most, of the people who voted leave were driven by racism. But the leave campaign imbued racists with a confidence they have not enjoyed for many decades and poured arsenic into the water supply of our national conversation.
In this atmosphere of racial animus and class contempt, political dislocation and electoral opportunism, the space for the arguments we need to have about immigration, democracy, and austerity simply did not exist. Our politics failed us. And since it is our politics only we can fix it.
I see this same dynamic playing out here in the US. The almost-successful Sanders campaign tells us there’s a huge part of the electorate that wants change from politics as usual, and yet the Democrats have anointed a moderate conservative, status quo candidate. Will Clinton actually respond to that productively? Will she make changes in party policy that will appeal to that broad swathe of the country that wants a more progressive government? She could end up the David Cameron of America.
Younge’s description above also fits the Trump campaign. The know-nothings are always a force to be reckoned with in this country, and if Brexit could win, could Trump rally the same forces to win here? That’s possible (but unlikely, we say, although everyone was saying Brexit was unlikely, too), but one way it could happen is if the Democrats try to take an uninspiring middle course.
What do I mean, “if”? The Democrats always take the path of trying to avoid offending anyone, and thereby end up pissing everyone off.
The world’s a somewhat scarier place this morning. I hope my country doesn’t end up contributing even more to the fear.
Nah, they just thought that since the blatant racism doesn’t affect them it wasn’t important enough to care about.
Just like most Germans didn’t care about the blatant Anti-Semitism of the NSDAP.
There, I did it. Probably Goodwin at comment #1
Who got more votes, both popular and electoral. They also gave Sanders the opportunity to nominate 5 people to write the Democratic platform. And if you look at Clinton’s actual positions, some of them, notably on immigration, are considerably left of Obama. The Democratic party chair who Sanders supporters felt was unfair has resigned. In short, I don’t see how Sanders’ success was ignored. Sanders doesn’t seem to think it was. Short of giving the nomination to the lesser vote getter because he’s…um, why exactly?…I don’t see what they could have done to make the people who voted for Sanders feel that they were heard. If they still don’t, that has more to do with the “post-factual” nature of politics than Clinton at this point.
@Giliell: There’s a famous quote from the NYT in the 1920s which says something like, “Well placed sources are convinced that Hitler’s anti-semitism is more rhetorical than actual.” Probably some of the 30% or so of voters that supported the NSDAP did, in fact, do so for the supposed jobs program and to Make Germany Great Again.
This is what the Swedish Trade Minister had to say today:
The [Swedish] government is prepared [for Brexit] and the Swedish economy is strong. I’m going to work hard, together with other Swedish economic partners in the coming times, as the outside world reacts to Brexit and possibilities arise to attract companies and business from Great Britain to Sweden.
This is what countries all over the EU will be doing too.
As for me … well, it’s Midsummer’s Eve today, the biggest holiday of the year in Sweden. It’s when people do this:
https://youtu.be/u8ZLpGOOA1Q
It seemed like the perfect day to apply for Swedish citizenship … so I did. I won’t renounce my British citizenship (yet), so it’ll mean I’ll have two passports, if all goes well.
On the contrary, I think the world just became a little bit more open and democratic. Sure the markets are going to go nuts for a while but investors fear change, and actually I think the UK’s economy will be better off in the long run.
The entire EU project was destined to fail because politicians and bureaucrats tried to create a comprehensive European central government solely through a single currency and trade agreements, without first garnering the support of the people. The people don’t elect their representatives to Brussels (or anywhere else in the EU, there are seven different institutions in four different cities). Once the UK untangles itself from the EU (assuming Parliament follows through on the popular vote) it will be free from that un-elected and un-democratic bureaucracy. The EU now has a choice – reform or perish. It will be interesting to see which they choose.
The “know-nothings”, as you characterize them, in the UK at least, appear to know quite a bit.
I have great difficulty accepting that percentage is anything less than 100% but here we are.
Speaking of Nigel Farage, almost immediately after the Leave campaign won he admitted that he lied about a leave vote meaning 350 million pounds would go to the NHS. I mean, okay, so probably relatively few people believed him anyway, but announcing just after it was too late for anyone who did to change their minds that he was lying is just rubbing his own supporters’ noses in it. Is he going for his PhD in Evil Overlord or what?
mmark
Really? How so? There are currently 502 million people living in the EU. Brexit affects all of us, obviously negatively. 17,410,742 people decided on that. How is that democratic?
Any evidence for this except wishful thinking?
PZ:
Have you seen the SC’s decision on immigration this morning? That ought to get you good and depressed.
mmark @ 5:
I think you’re either Penny Lane or a twin of said person.
mmark:
You think whose economy? You’re more than a bit dim.
At least spiritually related…
The “Great” in “Great Britain” is, was, and shall forever remain a purely geographical expression. “Great Britain” is actually the main island of the “British Isles”, and it’s “Great” to distinguish it from “Lesser Britain” or “Little Britain”, which is Ireland. The terms originated, it seems, with Claudius Ptolemy (Greek, so it’s μεγάλης Βρεττανίας – Mega Britain!), though his terms fell out of favour and were replaced with the Roman versions – Albion and Hibernia. It’s the same usage as you find with the Greater and Lesser Antilles, and various other island groups around the world.
That doesn’t, of course, prevent a certain class of preening smuglington from pretending that “Great” is a commentary on our national character and achievements. Sadly such people are far more common than I had imagined, if today’s travesty of a result is anything to go by.
It seems terribly silly, really, to decide such a major issue with the result of a plebiscite that has revealed a mere 2% majority.
Also, the UK is probably falling apart right now. Scotland will demand a new referendum with quite a chance of succeeding (72% remain), NI is talking about joining the RoI and Gibraltar is talking about joining Spain (98% Remain)
London is trying to weasel out as well….
Seriously? That would be…interesting. The UKIP succeeds where the IRA failed!
It is a indeed a great shame that this campaign veered from what it was actually about to a left/right divide. Almost all the people I like were in the ‘remain’ camp and almost all the people I dislike were in the ‘leave’ camp. Yet I think both sides are nearly equally guilty of fear-mongering and muddying the waters.
Neither outcome would have meant disaster, and the UK will probably do just fine once the dust settles. As a citizen of another EU country (and an inhabitant of a third) there is however one thing I like about this outcome; it may be the kick up the backside the EU needs to start reforming their structure so that it benefits and listens to *all* EU citizens and stop the austerity/trade-deal happy train that is not doing anyone any long-term favours. I would have liked the EU bureaucracy to do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing, but I’ll settle for a survival tactic.
Yes, we do.
Dianne
From the BBC:
The most depressing part is that if Scotland and Northern Ireland do leave the UK then we in England will end up with nothing but Tory governments for perhaps another fifty years, or until the majority wakes up and realises that they’re a bunch of self-serving cronies of the moneyed classes. It’s only thanks to the left-leaning weight of Scotland that we manage anything else, so strong is the toxic grip of the Tories on the South East and the Home Counties. And a substantial portion of my beloved Westcountry too, sadly, though much less so than the East.
I will not be moving, however. Somerset is my home. It’s where I grew up. It’s the only place I feel comfortable and safe. Besides, the last thing England needs, now of all times, is an exodus of right-thinking, left-leaning, compassionate people. We need to educate and support our fellow English, and prevent them from falling victim to the bigotry and regressive reactionism that so many of them have.
davidrutten
Yeah, you’re totally right. Both sides.
1. There may no longer be a UK
2. People’s pensions are currently going up in smoke
3. Tell that to the British PoC who already got to feel the racism of the Leave campaign.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- (#1) –
As with German labour unions of the 1930s, those who voted to leave the EU are going to learn the hard way how they handed power to those they should have seen as the enemy.
Don’t be surprised to see a mass exodus of English people moving to Scotland before a second separation vote happens. I have been and will continue to apply for UK citizenship and a passport, but only so I can get into the EU through Scotland (or Wales if it also separates).
As seen on twitter:
https://twitter.com/skullmandible/status/744931707288092677
left0ver1under
Thing is, a lot of other people paid for that mistake the last time and will pay for it this time.
Seriously, every single “leave” voter can go and eat baked beans for the rest of their lives and they’d deserve it, but a lot of already marginalised people will suffer.
It’s a surprisingly common misconception that we do not elect Euro officials. In fact we elect MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) every five years.
I am not happy with my country this morning.
@15: The pound has already hit a new low, lower against the dollar than it’s been since the 1980s (and the dip in the 1980s is the only time it was ever lower). Britain’s credit rating has been downgraded. An MP was murdered by a man shouting “Britain first!” Britain just lost hundreds of millions of euros of scientific funding. Which one of these facts is fine, no real indication of a problem?
As a resident of Scotland, I have a lot to say about this, but I have to head off to work right now. I’ll probably duck back in to comment later. For now, just a couple points:
@13 Giliell: It was actually about 62% remain in Scotland, not 72%. Still, this is much higher than the percent who voted to leave the UK in that referendum (47%), and the difference here is easily enough that many people will likely be willing to rethink their thoughts on independence so that they can remain part of the EU. By contrast, Northern Ireland was 55% remain, so it’s a bit harder to sell that there’s a mandate for them to leave the UK. Sinn Fein will definitely try though.
It’s going to take at least two years for the UK to leave, so that’s a lot of time to get things organized. I don’t expect it to be easy though – The EU is going to be strongly motivated to make this as painful for the UK as possible, to discourage other campaigns from rising in other member countries. I do wonder what might happen if people start to rethink this once some of the implications come to light – 52% is a pretty slim majority, so it could easily tilt the other way once people get more information about what’s actually going to happen. Will there be a push to stop it in a year or so?
Finally: Fuck xenophobia. Donald Trump things this outcome is a great thing, and that should tell you all you need to know about it.
I would like to see the source for this statement. Because where I live (in CZ) almost everybody who talks about how we should leave EU is also racist and/or xenophobe and/or fascist and/or idiot or combination thereoff, but racism and xenofobia in my unrepresentative personal experience are the driving factors.
_____________
@mmark #5
You seem somewhat confused about how (representative) democracy works. Bureaucrats are not elected anywhere in the world, bureaucrats are employees. Bureaucrats within EU overall as well as in UK separated.
Representatives of countries in EU parliament are democraticaly voted. I distinctly remember voting for them.
Indeed they do know quite a bit, just like you evidently do. They know that those dirty Poles, Czechs and the biggest scare of all, Turks and Arabs, are going to steal their jobs and the eeeevil bureaucrats in Brussels will force the good Englishmen, FORCE I SAY, to accept that.
/spits
_______________
When CZ entered Shenghen, there was a big scare at the german side of the border that we will come en masse and rob them of their posessions and their jobs (both literally and figuratively). No increase of unemployment, no loss of jobs, no influx of “criminal masses” ensued, despite a lot of Czechs really going to work to Germany. On the contrary, as the available labour force increased, so did increase demand trying to use that force.
Infophile
You are, of course, correct. My mistake
Charlie Stross’s take on events: “Tomorrow belongs to me”
@mmark
The EU Parliament is voted on by all citizens of the EU. The Council of the EU is made up of the Chiefs of State or the Heads of Government, all selected by the citizens of individual nations. The European Commission and Council are made by majority agreement of the previous bodies. Sounds a lot like the British Parliament actually, because it is based on that. The positions in the EU are just as democratically elected as any Parliamentary system.
Drumpfh supports this morning are saying “What’s a ‘EU’?”
A few days ago Drumpfh hisssefff was saying the same thing about Brexit.
We’ll find out soon enough. People are already “shocked and worried” – apparently they didn’t realise their votes actually counted.
I’m hoping there are enough of them to make that miniscule lead questionable and force a re-referendum – this time with people actually taking it seriously. No idea if that will or can happen, though. An utter mockery of democracy either way, though.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- (#21) –
There’s a more recent event from Germany which I suspect is equally likely to happen given the overt racism and xenophobia in England.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostock-Lichtenhagen_riots
Donald Trump was mentioned up-thread. Yes, we can depend on him to say, “They are taking their country back.” He said that today when questioned in Scotland. He’s a fool.
Dunc – if you’re in the UK, you don’t elect your representative. Not that it matters anymore.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27051071
Wrong. No one yet knows for certain whether the medium to long term effects will be positive or negative. The markets right now are reacting (probably over-reacting) to the shock that came from the vote turning out to be different than expected. That uncertainty will decline over time and the UK will, in my opinion, be better off. What the rest of the EU does is up to them. Democracy doesn’t imply that you have a non-negotiable hold over some people, they can, and have, voted with their feet.
Why? Is she an evil Islamophobe too?
I’m disgusted with my country: if your decision is applauded by the likes of Putin, Trump & Farage it’s clearly the wrong decision.
As an old geezer (55 today – what a fucking awful birthday present!), I feel like I want to apologise to young people. According to a YouGov poll, people in my age range voted 44% to remain, compared to 75% for people 18-24. Many young people in the UK already felt that their future looked bleak, but it’s looking worse today.
It irks me when people say things like “in my opinion, we’ll be better off”, flying directly in the face of practically all expert opinion, with absolutely no evidence to support their case, just a gut-feeling hunch.
Oh, how foolish all those economists and analysts and political scientists are! How silly of them to get al those degrees and do all those studies when all they needed to do was make confident proclamations based on whatever fleeting bigotry the demagogues of the day were peddling…
Blockquote fail – the second indentation is my comment.
mmark, #33
England for the English
Lynna:
Perhaps Scotland should take back those parts of their country which Trump bought.
Very sure of yourself. I wouldn’t be. The UK just gave themselves the shaft, and they can’t complain about it later.
Steve Benen’s take on Trump’s comments in Scotland is instructive
mmark @ #33: “The markets right now are reacting (probably over-reacting) to the shock that came from the vote turning out to be different than expected. That uncertainty will decline over time and the UK will, in my opinion, be better off.”
.
And there is absolutely no consideration of the very real possibility that the reality may be worse than anticipated, once the shock wears off. Those are some truly sterling* analytical skills you’ve demonstrated.
.
*Pun intended
left0ver1under
Don’t remind me.
mmark
Sure, it’S a dictatorship!
Are you fuckin’ thick? The people on the party’s list are still your representatives (which also grants a certain safety against “superstar candidates”) as in they represent the population.
Well, the short term effects seem pretty devastating. First companies are relocating. We have pretty clear data for “negative” right now and you have only empty words for “maybe positive in the future”.
Hopefully give the motherfuckers the roughest deal possible.
BTW, by invoking the leaving possibilities from the Lisboa contracts the UK actually lose their right to participate in any decisions in the EU while still being bound by the rules for 2 years. Sounds like sweet sovereignity to me.
Funny thing, that’s just what the UK did.
By trampling all over others.
UK Members of the European Parliament.
List of members.
One search, answers one and two.
Yes, you have representatives. Don’t like how they are elected, complain to your own government.
Nerd
Dunno what nationality mmark is. Sometimes I’m not even sure about the “planet earth” thing.
Isn’t it interesting that you cite a huge multinational bank as your evidence for this. Morgan Stanley, and the rest of the big banks, were all on board for the “Remain” camp. They pumped a lot of money into the debate (and big money into political campaigns = bad, right?). They and many economists predicted all sorts of calamity were Brexit to succeed, so it doesn’t surprise me that they’d increase their fear-mongering and threaten to leave people unemployed too. Doesn’t that give you pause?
But if the purpose of the Eurozone is to free up markets and movement between the countries of Europe, then the UK doesn’t need another layer of bureaucracy in Brussels in order to accomplish that. And they can do so in a way that benefits them, not other countries in Europe.
Here’s a couple data points – under the EU, the UK didn’t have a free trade agreement with either Australia (!) or India. Why? In both cases there was resistance from small but vocal minorities in the rest of the Eurozone (in the case of Australia it was Italian tomato farmers, if I’m not mistaken). The UK should be able to ink deals with them, as well as the US, fairly quickly, and 1.5ish billion new people as trading partners is nothing to sneeze at.
Let out the inner authoritarian! I find it so telling that you wish to bind the population of the UK to an agreement for which they, as the result of a democratic vote, have decided that they want no part of. They’re not trampling over anyone! You have to be a little screwy in order to even argue that point. They didn’t get what they considered to be a good deal, and they’re going to dissolve the partnership. They’re not a free people if they can’t do that.
I find it telling that you’re lacking reading comprehension.
Taking a look at the possible benefits for Russia:
International Business Times link
I hope the world will not forget that 16.1 million voters tried to stop this madness (including myself).
mmark:
Don’t blame us if you didn’t elect in the 2014 EP elections. I did, and I got my hoped-for representative.
FYI, the UK had a 35% voter turn-out in the last EP elections. If the EP was such a bad thing, why didn’t 65% of the UK use their chance to vote to make a change then?
That’s not something you can blame on the EU. that’s your own country that made such a law. If you absolutely wanted to be albe to have the direct representation that most other EU countries have, you should have campaigned for that.
——–
On a more general note, I see that Mr. Bleach is already having a field-day with this in the Netherlands (I bet he creamed his pants when he found out the vote was swinging to “leave”). So I’ll have to steel myself against even more trash talk and fear-mongering from that Mussert wanna-be.
No, sorry, the fact that a vote was held does not mean that I have decided I want no part of the EU. What it means is that very slightly more than a half of us – a number of whom are already regretting it, because they thought it would be a fun lark to tweak the politicians, and it’ll never happen anyway, right? – are now forcing those of us with the slightest bit of sense to suffer because of their ignorance. It isn’t surprising to me that a nation where a minority vote can elect a majority government will allow the slightest majority to fuck the entire nation, but it certainly isn’t anything I chose, nor anything I support.
Actually it’s more like a third of us who are for leaving, not half. Voter turn-out was about 70% – the other third are probably best described as apathetic, rather than split evenly along the lines those who did vote were.
So it’s a third for in, a third for out and a third who don’t care. And because of that we’re making perhaps the most disastrous economic decision in living memory…
I don’t really mind too much. The UK always had special privileges, was a reluctant EU-member and blocked important financial regulations. Maybe the EU can actually do more good now. Also, we’ll gladly welcome Scotland back, I’m sure. :-)
I am not a resident of Europe, and US history classes often don’t go into much that doesn’t directly involve the World Wars, but from what I can tell, it seems like Europe has never been as democratic as they are under the EU.
I also used to think the US and Britain had fundamentally different attitudes. Having heard a lot of British politicians however, it’s the same hypocritical combination of wanting to tell everyone else what to do while angrily rejecting anyone’s input into their own affairs. It strikes me that many on the right there are still incredibly bitter about losing the empire.
The main issue I perceive in the EU (again, from across the ocean) is that the Western member nations don’t seem to have much regard for smaller Southeastern members. Many of the issues from the refugee crisis seem to be that Western Europe doesn’t want to take the people in, despite having adequate space and infrastructure, so they get crowded into smaller Eastern nations where they land. Now you’ve got small nations that were previously willing to allow refugees to pass through, but they can’t fit any more people. (And yes, I know that some of these Eastern nations are just outright run by xenophobes.)
Attitudes to race in the UK may have a way to go yet, but I think it’s a bit rich to endure lectures on racism from a country where, if a policeman stops you for a minor infringement, whether you get a slap on the wrists or a .45 between the shoulder blades depends on your colour.
pointinline, #56
You must be new here.
Those above who feel that a 2% (sic) majority is poor, might I point out that 52-48=4
This equates to 1,269,501 votes
Saad, I’ve been reading this blog for 5 yrs though I don’t often comment.
pointinline,
On second thought, I may have misread your post. I assumed you were criticizing PZ for denouncing Brexit. Sorry about that.
It’s still only 2% higher than the 50% needed to win under this ridiculous system. And compared to a total population of sixty million or so, yes, a mere million and a bit is tiny.
I just found out that my dear aunt is another on the pile of people who voted to leave thinking it wouldn’t matter and not overly pleased that it actually happened. Might have to avoid speaking to her for the next few months if I’m to avoid swearing. I’m seriously starting to wonder what % of the leave voters actually wanted to leave.
Yes. That is a big number. Doesn’t make it a significant majority.
Here’s what I would want to see happen as a result of this thing…
1) Scotland bails on the UK and remains in the EU (and if possible Ireland reunited)
2) The EU denies England/Wales access to the common market unless they unequivocally accept the free movement of people from/within the Eurozone.
3) USA?New Zealand/Austria denies free trade with England/Wales if they get isolated by the EU.
UKIP wants to prevent integration of peoples and economies. And are for “national sovereignty.” I say we give it to them.
#63
And that helps the two thirds of English and Welsh people who didn’t vote for this how exactly?
Mike Smith,
I don’t want to punish all the Brits beause they spawned UKIP…
Yeah, sure, just give the rest of us Brits a chance to get to the lifeboats and abandon SS Sunk Britain, though, right? I applied for a shiny new job yesterday for a company based in Geneva – proper lab work… in agriculture, so not my field (ho ho) but low enough that transferable skills should be more important than academic gribbles. Right now I’m hoping, assuming the job doesn’t turn to vapour now we’re pissing our future up the wall, that it’s my ticket out before we quarantine ourselves.
Cartomancer, it’s called democracy. If in your presidential election the vote is 52 to 48, what will happen?
Saad. Not criticising, though I think, with respect, that he’s wrong about motivation. Yes of course we have some racists in Britain, what country doesn’t? We have mysogynists, ageists and all sorts of other unsavory views too. But to say that racism was a factor for all but of a small proportion of the 52% of voters who voted out is frankly insulting. My own reason for voting to leave is that I have long viewed the EU as an undemocratic and corrupt behemoth that rides roughshod over it’s member states, and does not actually improve their security. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-italy-s-economy-is-about-to-collapse-a7091221.html It’s widely regarded as an imminent train crash and many of us simply want to get off before it hits the buffers.
Athywren. “one” is a significant majority
So, the bigots and short sighted, nationalist idiots have succeeded in doing great and possibly irreparable damage to the UK, and a parade of other prats both domestic and international (I am sure Farage and Trump would get on like a house on fire. How about we lock them both in a burning building and find out?) are lining up to crow about it. And so yet another day dawns when I am embarrassed to be British.
Leaving aside the posturing, triumphalist rhetoric of the ‘brexitiers’ (Farage actually had the temerity to drone on about this being the UK’s ‘independence day’ and suggested that the date should become a national holiday), the entire out campaign has been revealed to be predicated upon lies and the political mobilisation of racism and xenophobia. They talked about ‘project fear’ and it turned out to be creationist-level projection (which is surprising to no one who clocked these bigots for the racists they are), since their entire shtick was claiming that scary foreign (and brown, definitely brown) hordes were coming to take ‘good, hardworking’ (read – knee-jerk racist) Brit’s jobs and rape their daughters. It was repellent, it was cynical and… it worked. The most ludicrously stupid and disastrous economic, political and sociological decision in recent history was forced through by a simple appeal to base xenophobia. While almost half of us who bothered to vote tried to stop it, just over half bought into it, and the rest didn’t care enough to even get off their apathetic backsides. It is a shameful display, and we will likely be paying for it for the foreseeable future, and the young most of all. As noted by others up thread, it seems incredibly irresponsible to make such a momentous political change based upon such a narrow majority. It hardly amounts to a meaningful political mandate.
Even better, we have a strong likelihood that, after Cameron steps down by October this year, we will see the true reason for this farce fulfilled – this whole mess was in no small part really about an internal leadership struggle within the Tory party and, having used every dirty trick in the book to get the result that advantaged him politically, Boris Johnson (basically the only marginally more eloquent British version of Trump) will probably become the new party leader and, since there may well not be a further general election, could easily then become the nightmare of Prime Minister Boris by default. Remind me how ‘brexit’ was all about protecting democracy again? It sounds an awful lot like it was about protecting democracy the same way gamergate was about ‘ethics in gaming journalism’…
Here’s hoping that the American demos shows more collective wisdom than we have. Pairing Prime Minister Boris with President Trump would start looking more and more like the set up for the plot of an apocalyptic disaster movie.
dianne @ # 2: The Democratic party chair who Sanders supporters felt was unfair has resigned.
Uh whut? A search for “Wasserman Schultz resign” finds countless calls for DWS to go, but nothing saying she has done so.
Oops – bad on me for closetag fail @ # 70!
pointinline. May have a way to go? The only difference in some ways is that our police aren’t routinely armed, otherwise who knows for some sure do make up for the lack with a fair degree of physical violence instead. Additionally, institutionalised racism and racism on the personal level is alive and well and kicking in the UK, for all that some like to think or try to claim that we are a post racial society. We have a very very long way to go before we can even hope to claim that as any kind of actual reality.
#67 – and this is exactly the problem with systems where vast amounts of power hang on the whims of tiny numbers of people. A presidential election decided thus would in no way be any fairer than the fiasco we are currently enduring.
That’s not democracy. Democracy is power on behalf of the demos – the entire citizen body. When a fraction of the citizen body – be it a small fraction or a shadow’s breadth over third as here – has the power to dictate policies that will seriously harm everybody, it is not fair or just. Even two thirds of the people voting for something that will seriously harm a fraction of a percentage of the rest is unjust and undemocratic.
For those complaining or pointing out that my plan will hurt those who didn’t vote for this, you have 2 years to either get the hell out or get those that voted for this to switch and back off the disintegration and remain. The EU needs to make it known that this sort of cancerous nationalism, tinged with racism and xenophobia is completely unacceptable and isolate it like the tumor that it is.
The world can not got through another 1940’s.
John Phillips. Agree with you on every point John. Re armed police, remember Jean Charles de Menezes? Agree too that we have a way to go, but I like to think that we are moving in the right direction.
It is stupid that such a big thing is decided on simple majority of those who turn up voting. If this were to even remotely seem fair to the populace at large, it should be decided by absolute majority of vote – i. e. 50% or more of eligible voters. It should actually be a duty to vote on such issue.
I am not very much versed in politics, but where I live this is how some extremely important decisions (like changes to the constitution) are made in our parliament.
Exiting EU seems like pretty important decision, so I do not understand why it was decided like it was, where one third of the population essentially drags everyone else with them.
Further all “democratic” systems where winner takes all are essentially undemocratic. Truly democratic systems would take care to make policies that suit as much of the population as possible and discomforting as little as possible. I.e. least harmful and most usefull compromises – but compromises nevertheless.
Mike Smith @ 74;
So, you are firing downrange and if innocent people can’t get out of the way in time it is their fault for obstructing your bullets? Charming.
Also, part of the reason why the Nazi party rose to power so totally and so quickly was because it traded upon the myth of the ‘stab in the back’ and the feeling in Germany that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and the subsequent actions of the interim government of the Weimar Republic, were the unjust result of the agencies of foreign bodies conspiring to destroy Germany – it was the legacies of these actions undertaken outside Germany, often for cynical reasons of domestic political posturing, that provided the opening for the fascists to seize power. If your rather florid parallel between the UK and Germany circa 1925-1933 is to hold, then taking punitive action against the UK calculated to harm all Brits, whether they voted to go out or stay in, is not only utterly counter productive but may indeed prove dangerous.
What you propose would serve to make another 1940’s style scenario more likely, not less so.
Don’t strengthen the hand of the Far Right by doing their work for them. Anything that lends credence, however false, to their toxic narrative that Europe is an evil empire hell bent on the destruction of the UK is to be avoided.
The Godwins are strong on this thread!
#74
Yes, because overweening isolationist nationalism is a specifically British problem, and it’s solely up to those of us in this country who don’t buy into it to to sort things out as an example to everyone else in Europe. As if we haven’t been trying to do just that all our lives.
We are, apparently, expendable. Acceptable collateral damage in your grand plan to warn other people off doing what we didn’t want to do but were dragged along with anyway. I mean, it’s not like any of us are actual real people, rather than dramatic props to add pathos to the grand guignol of the poignant Warning From History.
cartomancer. Have you ever thought of engaging with reality?
“rather than dramatic props to add pathos to the grand guignol of the poignant Warning From History” Brilliant. I’m sending that to “Private Eye” for their “Pseuds Corner”
Hillary Clinton is not a “moderate conservative.” Her record, legislative and otherwise, is one of the most liberal out of any politician in recent memory:
http://www.ontheissues.org/Hillary_Clinton.htm
For comparison, this is Elizabeth Wareen, who I don’t hear you call “a moderate conservative”:
http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/Elizabeth_Warren.htm
It is also extremely insulting, if not blatantly racist, when you say that
“[t]he almost-successful Sanders campaign tells us there’s a huge part of the electorate that wants change from politics as usual, and yet the Democrats have anointed a moderate conservative, status quo candidate.” Hillary wasn’t “anointed.” She won by 4 million votes because of her overwhelming margins of victory with African Americans and Hispanic people. Sanders won the white vote. She won everybody else. Don’t undermine the enfranchisement of people of color because they didn’t pick the candidate that you liked.
And Sanders didn’t “almost win.” He was mathematically out of the running after Super Tuesday (when he lost big in south because he didn’t bother to appeal his campaign to black communities). Any self-respecting campaign would have dropped out at that point, and historically they have done so. Sanders’ narcissism compelled him otherwise.
And think what you are asking Clinton to do. She won, and she won in a landslide. Why does it behoove her to adopt the platform of the loser? A fun thought experiment: if Clinton lost by the margin that Sanders did, would you urge him to adopt her platform? The very notion sounds ridiculous, which strikes me as a perfect and blatant example of Sanders’ male privilege, one that you blithely fuel and perpetuate.
Very disgusting words from someone so proudly “progressive.”
Giliell@13, dianne@14, leftoverunder@20, infophile@24,
Some comments on prospects of Scotland, northern Ireland, Wales, andor Gibralter leaving the UK (actually Gibralter’s a “British Overseas Territory”, but got to vote because it’s part of the EU, unlike the other BOTs). This is only a significant likelihood in the case of Scotland. Wales voted Leave – by 51.7 to 48.3 – somewhat less than England, almost exactly the same as the UK as a whole. Gibralter is most unlikely to want to join Spain, unless things have changed radically since 2002, when the proposal to join Spain was rejected by 98.48% of those voting. There’s been some Spanish wishful thinking about joint sovereignty since the vote, that’s all AFAIK.
Somewhat similarly, there’s almost certainly still a clear majority in northern Ireland to stay in the UK. That’s why Sinn Fein is proposing a vote on reunification in the whole island of Ireland which, even if it passed – by no means certain – would mean forcing the majority in northern Ireland into a united Ireland against their will. Not going to happen in any but the most unlikely circumstances, and would be very likely to meet armed resistance from Protestant Unionists. (“Unionists” in this context: those who want to remain in the UK; the overlap of Protestants – or at least those of Protestant background – and Unionists is very large, but not complete.) I have been worried that a Brexit vote could reignite the troubles, as it forms a new barrier to reunification, which the Republicans (similar large overlap with actual or cultural Catholics as for Protestants/Unionists) have not given up on, although people who know the situation better than me seem to consider a return to IRA violence almost unthinkable. But then, a revivial of the IRA probably looked unthinkable in the early 1960s. In yesterday’s referendum, Republican areas voted overwhelmingly Remain, Unionist areas definitely but less overwhelmingly Leave – hence the 55.7% Remain vote overall.
Even in Scotland (full disclosure: I’m an English-born Scot, supporter of both independence and EU membership, member of the Scottish Green Party which has the same views) the situation is not nearly as favourable for a second independence vote as many think. Polls suggested that SNP voters were more-or-less evenly split (I don’t know about SGP voters – probably too few for any poll to get a good sample), so it’s voters for the unionist parties (all of whose leaders were strongly pro-Remain) who produced the clear (62%) majority for Remain. It’s by no means clear that enough would come over to independence to outweigh those who voted “Yes” last time, but would prefer to be out of the EU andor would shun a second level of uncertainty and disruption, and so would vote “No” in a renewed independence vote. The First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has said the Scottish Parliament should now have the right to call a second referendum – the UK Parliament has to pass a law to allow this, or at least to make it legally binding – and will presumably press for this, but has carefully not committed herself to calling one. She has said that it would make sense to have any such referendum before the UK formally leaves the EU (which will probably be at least 2 years, maybe considerably more). She has implied that the Scottish government will seek direct talks with EU authorities – presumably the Council of Ministers, i.e. the heads of government of the remaining 27 members – with a view to retaining Scotland’s EU ties after the UK leaves. Almost certainly, that would turn out to be impossible if Scotland remains in the UK, so she’ll likely try to use that, and any perceived UK failure to defend Scottish interests in the divorce negotiations* to increase support for independence. She won’t want to call a second referendum without being very confident of winning – a second failure really would end all prospects for a very long time.
Anecdotal note: I’ve just talked to my 21-year-old son (under 25’s apparently voted around 75% Remain across the UK as a whole), who says a number of friends he’s talked to who voted “No” in the indyref now say they’d at least consider a “Yes” vote in a second vote. He doesn’t know anyone his age who voted Leave.
*Cameron, in his resignation speech, said the negotiating team should include representatives of all three devolved administrations, but his successor may take a different view, or at least ensure the Scottish representatives don’t have any real influence.
Have I considered engaging with reality? More than you have, it would appear, given that I can see where some fundamental and damaging injustices in our political system lie and you are quite happy to coast along blindly with whatever status quo you are presented with.
There is a long and complicated history to this term “democracy” that you throw around unthinkingly. It is neither a simple case of majority rule, nor some magical panacea universalis for all the world’s ills. The realities of that seem to escape you entirely.
pointonlinme, if you think that then I have a bridge to sell you. There are some improvements in some areas but Britain is still a racist society, it’s just that the racists are a bit cleverer with their dog whistles. Though this referendum opened that gate a fair bit.
@pointinline, 68
…yeah, so I’m not entirely convinced that you understand what significant means.
Anyway, in brighter news this petition had already passed it’s required number of signitures before I signed it, so there’s a sliver of hope.
Charly @76:
My thoughts, almost exactly. I would add that it should be over 50% in a majority (if not all) of the nine regions of England plus Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Not ideal, but much better than this mess.
It seems that Farage is not satisfied with screwing over the UK, and that his animus seems to be directed at the European project itself, whether the UK is a part of it or not. Has been droning on about the EU failing and dying , and saying that he hopes that ‘brexit’ has knocked the first brick out of the wall, and that more countries will follow in a ‘nexit’ or ‘frexit’ (thus directly aligning himself with openly far right and race-baiting politicians like Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen).
He claims his goal is of a Europe of sovereign states all getting along and trading harmoniously together with no supranational component, since apapparently in addition to being a nauseating racist he is also either staggeringly historically ignorant or simply lying again, given the fact that the history of the European continent as a group of sovereign states before the advent of the European political project was hardly a picture of unity and progress so much as an infamously volatile cauldron of religious, dynastic and political violence. The whole point of the European Union he so despises was to change that, and in that goal it has succeeded spectacularly. If Farage’s vision of such a Europe were possible at all, it would only be so thanks to the European political project of the last several decades, not that he would ever be honest enough to admit as much.
Contribute to the fear? Hell, we’re already the world’s biggest exporter of it.
Expanding on that, it is my contention that we should not have referenda like this. Certainly not on major and massively important issues. Why? Because we are not used to them. Because there are well-documented pitfalls to the medium of direct democracy that we have not developed mechanisms and protocols to counter.
Even societies that have engaged in a serious and sustained way with direct democracy suffer badly from it. Look back to classical Athens for the best example. The Athenians knew full well that using popular majority votes to decide important issues of policy opened them up to terrible decisions, but it didn’t stop them making some absolute stinkers in their time. Look up the Mitylenian fiasco of 427BC. Then the people of Athens voted to massacre the adult male inhabitants of the island of Mitylene and sell the women and children into slavery – for the “crime” of revolting from Athenian imperial rule and fomenting anti-Athenian sentiment during wartime. They sent out a fast ship on the same day to give the order to the Athenian garrison to begin the atrocities, such was the bloodlust of the mob. The next day they felt remorse at the decision, convened a fresh assembly as the consequences sank in, and voted to rescind their decision. The fastest ship in the fleet had to be sent out immediately, to overtake the original ship and prevent the massacre.
Athenian analysis of this issue among historians (Thucydides), satirical playwrights (Aristophanes) and philosophers (Aristotle) focused on how the emotions of the mob could be swayed by the rhetoric of unscrupulous populist demagogues. In this case one Cleon of Cydathenaeum. Aristotle, in fact, embarked on the first scientific study of the art of rhetoric and persuasive speaking in order to understand how this happened and educate people in the ways their votes were up for grabs. See, the Athenians took this issue really seriously. They got it wrong more times than they got it right, and they were the experts in this. We have no such tradition of analysis to help us cope with the pitfalls.
Moreover, we don’t get to reconsider in the cold light of morning and send the fastest ship in the fleet to prevent the order being carried out.
Cartomancer. I don’t claim for a moment that our system of democracy is perfect. I don’t think you’d ever find a system that is. The fact is that everyone knows and agrees the rules. The remain camp accepted the referendum process as it was and would have been perfectly happy to accept the result had the result gone their way. Finding fault after the event because the result went against you is just pathetic. Similarly demanding another referendum because you lost is like a kid suggesting “best of three”
@ #82
Excellent point, too often ignored.
Athywren. In a British general election a candidate who wins by just one vote, wins. One vote is therefore significant by definition. How would you define “significant” Let me guess, a figure large enough to be unlikely to be attained so you can whinge about it if the vote doesn’t go your way
Rob A duty to vote? If people refuse what are going to do? Send them to prison?
It’s interesting how The Left was so keen on Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain getting out from under the tyranny of Angela Merkel and the Triad and Brussels diplomats and the austerity iron fist of the IMF and lenders from Mitteleuropa. But when it comes to rich British WASPs, we think the EU is the best thing since peanut butter. Don’t get me wrong, I see the obvious racism, nationalism, and ethnocentrism in the British “Leave” propaganda. And it’s awful, and bodes ill for non-Rich-WASPs in England.
But there’s a fair bit of hypocrisy — or at the very least, flip-floppiness — on the Left, when it comes to whether the EU are a bunch of heartless bankers, hellbent on taking out a mortgage on Southern Europe’s culture and resources. Or whether they’re the noble last line of defence between the National Front and race riots. You can’t really have it both ways, and cheer for Spain to leave the robber-baron-empire, while begging Great Britain to stay on and continue robber-baroning.
@ #94
Some countries do have compulsory voting, (Australia comes to mind), with fines for those who do not vote.
pointinline @94: Fine ’em ten quid.
#91
I cannot speak for everyone in the Remain camp, but I most certainly did not accept that the referendum process was a sensible, valid and legitimate one. You can see my reasoning above. It is entirely possible that many others did accept it. I don’t know. If so then I consider them short-sighted to have done so.
It was, however, the process that was foisted upon us. So what were people opposed to the secession to do – hold our hands up and pretend that we were above such silly things or actually try to win the vote in spite of the fact we disagreed with the process? We did not get to choose the battlefield, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t still a battle to fight.
We still need to be far more aware of the pitfalls of direct democracy though. If we are not allowed to use the demonstrable negative results of that to make the point while the iron is still hot, I don’t see how we can be.
tomh. I am aware of that. I think it’s oppressive and overbearing. Although most non voters abstain out of apathy some do so to make a statement. I don’t agree with forced voting. In Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” a society is described in which universal suffrage does not exist. Full citizenship and the right to vote have to be earned. Not desirable either, but you’d be more likely to use your vote if it were a privilege instead of a right.
Cartomancer. The process was agreed by leaders on both sides of the divide. The retrospective view of the losers that the process was not legitimate butters no parsnips. You’d have been perfectly happy to accept and crow about it if the result went your way. You lost. Get over it
OK Rob. What if they refuse to pay? Brits can be stubborn awkward defiant bastards. They’d cause more hassle than it’s worth. That’s why in Britain we only have a volunteer armed forces. You could never make conscription work. The US had a small number of conscripts refuse… “hell no! we won’t go!” Over here it would be just about everybody.
#100
Not true. I don’t recall any consultation or voting on the necessity of the referendum. We did not have a debate over the electoral procedures or the validity of the process. Nobody was offered the option of turning down the whole shebang because they did not agree it was fair. It was foisted upon us from above.
It was my view that the process was dangerous and invalid beforehand, and the result has only confirmed my belief in this. I simply do not believe that the British public (or any other public for that matter) has the experience of direct democracy and the sophisticated understanding of the pitfalls of demagogic rhetoric needed to make it work.
And it’s not just me – we all lost. What that we could “get over it”, as if it were just a decision on the colour of the leather wallets for the passports. I fear it will take decades, perhaps a century, to recover from this. We may never do so.
Yeah, complaining about procedure won’t get anyone anywhere, I think. Democratic procedures are means to an end, not a good in themselves. We can complain when they produce bad results without having to label them “undemocratic”.
Thanks Zeppelin. Any democratic process is always going to be an imperfect compromise. A simple head count is as good as it gets and if a majority of a million plus is not good enough for you cartomancer then too bad.
cartomancer: We had conscription until quite recently here in Germany, a relic of our position at the frontlines of the cold war (with the option to do “civil service”, driving ambulances or working in old folks’ holmes or whatever if you refused to carry arms).
No-one enjoyed it much, and no-one here has much respect for our useless military…but it was only nine months after all and it’s not like there was going to be a war…
I think you just have to keep conscription around long enough and it becomes mundane. The sticky end of the stick goes to those who happen to be conscribed when that war does happen.
@ #99
You didn’t sound like you were aware of it when you said, “If people refuse what are going to do? Send them to prison?”
A silly argument. What good is “making a statement” if no one knows you are making it? Laziness is likely the biggest factor in non-voting.
#103
Not on this specific issue, perhaps (although there is always a chance), but if we don’t complain loudly and fulsomely now then it will be a damn sight harder to make our complaints heard the next time a popular referendum comes around. Given that fearmongering, popular outrage and demagoguery are at an all-time high right now (as PZ points out in the original post, above), it would be very dangerous indeed to use this flawed procedure more regularly. I foresee the demagogues taking note and trying their hardest to do so. A world of popular referenda and widespread public fear and anger is a world in which the Trumps and Farrages do very well for themselves.
But in order to realise this, we need to take a step back and examine what “democracy” really means. We need an understanding of it that makes it clear why it is valuable and what it encompasses. More importantly, we need to understand what its limits are and when it can devolve into dangerous ochlocracy – mob rule. This is a debate that has been going on for two and a half thousand years, but it really isn’t going on now. These days “democracy” is reduced to the cheap pablum of a buzzword, and used to cover for all manner of ills. I think we need to be better than that.
Now, I didn’t have time to reply in depth to that whole lot of nonsense, so I’ll do it now
mmark
I harbour no illusions about the interest of those institutions. They want to make profit. But since Brexit wasn’t about an anti-capitalist vote, about a perspective in which the big banks and companies are kept in check again, this is besides the point. Both big money and I am interested in NOT totally tanking the economy.
I got mine, fuck you! But of course the UK wants that sweet free access to others’ markets, don’t they?
Well, I wish them good luck. Didn’t you just argue that the EU is all about that free market stuff?
You’re really an idiot. I didn’t say anything about not letting them leave, but there’s a binding agreement and you cannot just say “I don’t want anymore” and expect things to magically turn into, what exactly?
It’S like getting a divorce: Just because you said you want one doesn’t mean you’re no longer married and have to fulfill your duties. It’s actually a lot like a divorce, a nasty one at that.
Besides, just letting them cease to be part of the EU tomorrow would be the worst thing that could happen to them because it would mean the UK would have about the same conditions when it comes to trade etc. as South Sudan.
Really? They’re not trampling over the people who formed a Union with them and trusted them? They’re not completely indifferent to the negative consequences this has for others?
Sure they can. They just shouldn’t expect to get a better deal now.
gmacs
A lot of right, a lot of wrong.
The countries actually suffering under too many refugees are Greece and Italy, where they land. The other small South Eastern nations are hardly accommodating any refugees and refuse to let them pass through so they can reach Germany, Austria, Denmark, etc.
And no, the EU didn’t deal right with the financial crisis.
cartomancer
Well, half of them didn’t bother to vote, so they can hardly complain, right?
It isn’t, it’s just that your country just officially made it your national motto.
I think can hardly blame the rest of the world for the things your own population just did to you. If you’re angry, be angry at every single idiot who voted Leave.
Athywren
I do have a spare bedcouch…
pointinline
See comment #1: The rest simply didn’t care about the racism enough, which makes them hardly any better.
And as we all know, the Eton Club UK government would never ever be corrupt or anything.
Nick Gotts
Polls confirm that trend with 60+ yo strongly voting “Leave”. In the end those no longer actively participating in the workforce forced their opinion on those who actually do run the economy and who will have to foot the bill.
#105
I don’t think I ever mentioned conscription. Perhaps you have me confused with someone else in this thread?
If you look again at that post cartomancer you’ll see it starts “OK Rob”
pointinline @101:
I don’t really care. Actually, scratch the fine. If leaving requires over 50% of eligible voters (so around 24,000,000) to vote for it, the onus is on them to turn out in sufficient numbers, in sufficient regions (as per my #87).
That would be virtually impossible to ever attain. On that basis we wouldn’t be in the EU in the first place. The 1976 referendum that took the UK in had a majority for in of 67% on a 65% turnout. Just 43.55% of eligible voters. The whole point about democracy is that it has to have the potential to facilitate change.
#108
I agree that the apathetic third of our populace do bear some responsibility, but it seems somewhat harsh to wish economic catastrophe on them simply for their apathy. While it fulfils a certain deep-rooted human need for vengeance to resort to the “you’ve only got yourselves to blame” card, I wouldn’t wish the full consequences even on the deluded leave campaigners. I do not know how many of the apathetic were genuinely turned off both sides by the poisonous rhetoric. I would not wish to speak for them. They’re still human beings who will suffer – particularly those who belong to marginal or vulnerable groups in society.
While the international community has indeed seen the worst we have to offer rising to the surface today, I still think it is unfair to wish all of us economic woe and turmoil because of those elements, just so that we can stand as an example to others. One could just as legitimately say that they hope American gun violence gets worse, and that all the NRA arseholes get shot along with the innocent bystanders, so it shows other countries how not to do gun control laws and toxic culture. “Guns are more important than people” could just as legitimately be seen as America’s motto this week. I don’t think that is fair either, and would be very insensitive towards the victims. Obviously economic chaos is not horrific to the same degree, but the principle is the same. It is not at all pleasant being told that someone hopes you suffer because you live in a country full of idiots with odious views. Especially when you have spent a good portion of the last months trying your hardest to argue against those views and get young people interested in and aware of what is at stake.
I do not blame the rest of the world for what the leave gang did to my country. I am very angry at that gang indeed. But I do object when insensitive people look in from outside and make frivolous comments about wanting the whole country to suffer badly, as if it’s a punishment we all deserve for sharing an island with such horrible people.
#110
No, it really doesn’t. Post #101 begins “OK Rob”, but post #105 starts as if addressing me…
One can get a very good idea of the likely consequences of the Brexit vote by looking at the prominent political figures most pleased about it: Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen… from the whiffy Tory right to the stench of barely-disguised fascist. By contrast, the most prominent left-leaning figures who supported the Leave side are third-rank has-beens or never-really-weres: Dennis Skinner, Gisella Stewart, Jim Sillars…
@pointinline #81:
And you will not win £10 for your submission, because Private Eye understands the difference between empty-headed pseudo-intellectual bollocks and clever use of language.
@pointinline, 93
…yeah, so I’m not entirely convinced that you understand the difference between a general election, and voting to surrender all influence over and support from a major political bloc and attempting to renegotiate trade deals with them in the absurd hope that you’ll end up seeing the same or greater benefit from it, all in the name as such vacuous and pettily nationalistic slogans as “taking our country back.”
Damn it, typoes.
cartomancer
Wishing has nothing to do with it. Us, the rest of the EU, will suffer the consequences alongside without having had a chance to do anything about it, so I don’t think we owe those who had the vote but didn’t bother to show up our sympathies and help.
Most people are not very inclined to bandage your knee after you kicked them in the shin.
@pointinline #101:
Thankfully conscription came to an end the year before I was born, but before that point in time it had existed for 24 years. If you paid attention at school, you might also recall that it existed for an interval before that.
If you think that circumstances could never arise in which conscription was implemented once more, you are … hell, I can’t think of a polite way to phrase it. Let’s just say that it falls in line with most of the comments you have made here so far.
Nick. Dennis Skinner, the “beast of Bolsover”, is one of the finest MPs in the house. He never got higher than a back bencher because he’s a man of huge integrity who doesn’t always toe the party line but goes with his conscience or in the interests of his constituents. He was recently in the news for refusing to apologise for calling the PM “Dodgy Dave” The man is a one of, more’s the pity.
Cartomancer. Re 105. I didn’t write that one
Zeppelin did
Cartomancer: Whoops, sorry! That was also supposed to be for pointinline, @101. I don’t buy that the British “national character” would be that opposed to conscription, seeing as it worked reasonably well in Germany, where we pretty much despise our military. And considering it worked fine in both world wars, too.
116 Rich. You have quite a high opinion of yourself don’t you?
117 Athywren. I don’t really understand what point you’re trying to make. In particular you avoided my question as to what you think constitutes “significant” which I think is rather crucial to your argument.
120 Rich. Another reason conscription would no longer work is that modern military equipment is highly sophisticated, very expensive and requires some intelligence and a great deal of training to learn to use. The last thing the military wants is to put this stuff in the hands of conscripts.
@#47, mmark
The UK has, for the last half-century, been one of the countries with the largest FIRE (Financial, Insurance, and Real Estate) economies* (by percentage of the total) in the world. Which is to say: banks make up a much larger chunk of the British economy than they do of other countries like France or Canada or Mexico.
*The relative size of the FIRE economy is an interesting measure of how healthy an economy is, apparently. I’m told — you can probably find the reference with Google — that the ideal is around 5%. Britain, IIRC, has recently varied between 12% and 20%, depending on when the measurement was made. In most countries, a value over 5% indicates a dangerous bubble in the making.
In large part, this is because the UK has been an exception to many EU rules, and thus has been the preferred place for Swiss banks (which are evil, evil things) to establish themselves to get access to the EU market. Why go to France, where controls are tighter, to do business in Brussels when you can go to London and save money?
Those banks are now faced with a choice: pull up stakes completely and reincorporate somewhere else in the EU (there’s no other country with the same level of exemption from the regulations that Britain had, but I don’t know which country comes closest so I won’t guess where), or leave a branch in Britain but incorporate somewhere else in the EU, which will mean the British branch loses most of its business (and most of its employees) anyway. They won’t be leaving the whole business in Britain, because the EU as a whole has ten times as many people in it as Britain does, which means most transactions would be across borders, and that costs money.
And, what’s more, those special exemptions are now lost, permanently. Britain has been holding up all sorts of stuff in the EU for a long time, now. As soon as the Brexit passed, the president of the EU council said that “out is out” — even if the UK held another referendum tomorrow and decided to stay after all, the rest of the EU would now require them to consider it a new application for admission, and there would be no leverage to get those deals back again. After they continually screwed over other countries for so long, none of the other members of the EU actually like the British very much, and readmission will, if it happens, involve a lot of concessions the other way: “okay, Britain, you’re going to accept this, and this, and this, and now sit down and shut up while we tell you about the stuff we passed after you left”.
And much the same argument goes for other businesses: if you can only incorporate in either the UK or in the EU, and have import duty-free access to one of those markets, well, the EU is ten times the size of the UK. Over a hundred companies announced intention to leave Britain for Ireland in the event of the Brexit passing, and who knows how many more will follow now that it has actually passed.
In short: the British economy was effectively blown to smithereens by this referendum for the foreseeable future, and nobody has any reason to help Britain out of the hole they just dug for themselves.
The Vicar
There’s the first financial analysts saying “good riddance”, now we can finally get stuff done, especially about the financial markets.
Yep.
I think a lot of Europe, not just officials, are fucking annoyed with the special snowflake UK and have been for a long time. This referendum IS the end of it. No matter what will happen, Britain will no longer be able to threaten with exit.
I don’t think they can do that.
The Vicar, actually, until we invoke Clause 50 we haven’t left the EU or asked to leave the EU so we can theoretically change our minds any time up to then and say we are staying and the EU would just have to accept it. However, once we invoke Clause 50 then we are on the way out and would have to beg to be let back in and it would then be on the EU’s terms.
Re: Giliell (#13):
And UKIP and company would of course be happy to bow to the democratic will of the people who yearn for independence from
the EUthe United Kingdom. Hang on, what?! No, backpedal! Throw on some more Strength in Unity rhetoric NOW!Re: Athywren (#30):
I doubt it and that’s not how it should work anyway. “We won, now let’s have the Second Thoughts vote!” – because politics aren’t slow and cumbersome enough as it is. If there are valid concerns about the vote, yes, please, please do it again and do it better, otherwise leave it be.
Something similar happened in the Austrian elections recently, where the right wing candidate narrowly lost. The last thing I read was that courts were considering concerns about the vote but in that case I hope the results stick.
Frankly, that is so bitter I feel like I should force myself to laugh. But I just can’t do it.
Re: Mike Smith (#63):
I certainly feel sorry for Scotland. Having been convinced by ‘unity rhetoric’ and promises to be listened to, the UK are now dragging them to down to hell. Hopefully they will get another vote and also get a chance to stay / get back into the EU if they so choose.
But the rest? No, that would be awful. For you, and all the others here who seem happy to throw the UK under the bus, let’s be absolutely clear about one thing:
You cannot make an example of a nation!
In case it isn’t obvious: nations are filled with people who often have little or no control over their circumstances or their government’s actions. Maybe Remain voters will stay because they like Somerset too much (see above), or maybe they simply can’t leave for any number of practical and unavoidable reasons.* You can’t expect people to flee a country, hoping that only the ‘guilty’ will be left behind when you bring to bear whatever forces you will to crush that country for their perceived misdeeds.
The parallel drawn to the Treaty of Versailles (#77) is apt. Beating down the UK for making the ‘wrong decision’ is crass, cruel and likely to backfire. It would also play right into the hands of the same right wing elements who have created this mess in the first place.
*For the record: ‘I don’t want to leave my home’ is a good reason to stay and the only one anyone should ever need to give.
P.S. Though it is possible that the extra concessions Cameron got at the beginning of the year might now be null and void.
P.P.S. Clause 50 should read Article 50. Need more coffee.
Komarov, in some ways I doubt if Farage or the Tory right would care that much if Scotland left as that would practically guarantee a right wing government of one kind or another for possibly decades.
@#127, John Phillips, FCD
I admit that, as an American, I don’t have a grasp of the British… uh… well, zeitgeist, for lack of a more accurate term, but: your right wing currently runs your government, and to deny the results of the referendum would be to flat-out deny their own voters. It would also amount to an admission that any semblance of democracy in the UK is a sham and the government will do as it likes — which would probably spark some riots. Since the Brexit has now galvanized the opposition I doubt the right wing wants to annoy their own supporters. And the minority is just that: a minority. Maybe Parliament will reject the results of the referendum — they would at least have historical precedent for ignoring a demonstrably popular demand — but I’m expecting them to secede in fairly short order, a week or two at the outside, possibly but not necessarily preceding the vote by a debate with lots of handwringing.
(Also: if there were any serious blocks in the way of a formal move to secede, then why would Cameron resign? Surely if he was willing to risk his career on a referendum he would at least be willing, after the fact, to take a chance on some sort of parliamentary shenanigans.)
The Vicar I’m not arguing that we are likely to ignore the referendum just on the technicalities and until we actually invoke Article 50 we are still in the EU and after invoking it we have two years to leave and make whatever arrangements we can with the EU and once invoked we would have to beg on bended knee to be let back in and accept to the full whatever EU regulations are then in force. Also, while I don’t think they will, hence Cameron resigning, a significant majority of MPs actually wanted to remain so they could reject the result if they really wanted to by a parliamentary vote and it would be perfectly legal, though of course not democratic.
@pointinline, 93
I am not stunned.
I’m calling you ignorant. It’s not an argument. You don’t understand what significant means. That’s not my fucking problem. My fucking problem is that an almost even vote has fucked all of us because of the ignorance, gullibility and/or xenophobia of not even half of us.
Why do i get the queasy feeling that in November there with be a very similar thread here bemoaning and complaining about Trumps victory?
@notsont
Because it turns out the Christians were right all along! We are in the end times!
I expected myself to laugh when I wrote that, but I didn’t, and now I’m just staring at the screen sadly.
a couple of thoughts that the current state of things bring up for me.
as a result of the growth of international across border trade and connection in Europe stimulated by NATO and the realization that they are stronger and more prosperous together rather than always in opposition and competition they decided to form a european free market which has grown into the European Union we see to day. They are in a similar place the united states were in after the success of the revolution under the Articles of Confederation. While they are having economic problems they are being exacerbated by political problems within and between the members.
To go further they may have to make some major reforms or the internal conflicts will continue to threaten the successes they have had so far.
the other thought also has meaning for the United States. The impetus for this happening now is directly related to income inequality and wealth distribution.
It is not the comfortable and secure that are voting for Brexit, UKIP, Donald Trump or Bernie Sannders.
why would anyone support the established order who has benefited so little from it.
uncle frogy
@notsont #135
Because one of the biggest mistakes in politics is to underestimate your opponents. PM Cameron did it with this referendum, and the US could do it with November’s election.
Who would have thought a barely literate jackass who imagined himself an everyman cowboy like Bush II could pull off two presidential elections? Arguably his greatest political skill was getting people to “misunderestimate” him in the first place.
The same thing could happen with Trump in November, much like what happened throughout the primaries. Granted, his Republican rivals were a fairly detestable peanut gallery all on their own, but Trump has made a lucrative career getting much of what he wants in spite of the toxic effect, financially and emotionally, on almost everyone and everything he comes in contact with.
@#135, notsont
How about this one:
By the end of June, the many scandals coming to light about Donald Trump sink his poll numbers to a point where even Trump himself, with his massive ego, ignorance, and disconnect from reality, can’t pretend he is a viable candidate any more. In exchange for a bribe of some sort — influence within the party, investment opportunities, a fund from the Kochs, whatever — he retires from the race, putting the blame in his final speech on the “liberal media” and urging his supporters to support the Republican candidate, whoever that shall be. The GOP gladly welcomes Trump supporters to the convention, knowing that the threat of Trump himself is no longer operative. A new candidate is chosen, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, or Paul Ryan. The Clinton camp can no longer scare people into voting for her by using the threat of Trump and her campaign stalls. Meanwhile, the Republicans, energized by the thought of having a Republican candidate who isn’t visibly embarrassing, and by the terror of Hillary Clinton who they have all been taught to fear irrationally for decades, surges ahead. With full turnout for the Republican side, and no enthusiasm on the Democratic side, Clinton is routed as thoroughly as her supporters expected her to rout Trump as of the middle of June.
Think that’s unrealistic? Those same polls which were showing Hillary Clinton neck-and-neck with Trump were showing that she was well behind Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich. Trump is Clinton’s best campaign tool right now
134 Athywren. I know perfectly well what “significant” means. What I want to know is what level of majority you would consider significant, something you seem unwilling to address. Simply calling me ignorant doesn’t constitute much of a response. Now you & I know full well that you’d have considered a majority of a million plus as perfectly significant if it had gone your way, but essentially you’re a spoiled child who isn’t able to cope with not getting your way. You fucking lost. Deal with it without your toddler temper tantrum, or go sit on the naughty step.
@140
One that is reasonably distinguishable from a 50/50 split. Simple enough?
Easy. In research & statistics a margin of 5% or more is generally considered significant. For a figure of 16 million that means that any majority of 800,000 or more would be considered significant. So statistically, a majority of 1.3 million is well over what is significant. Yes?
Am I supposed to be confused into thinking the population of the UK is 16 million? No, a majority of less than 4% of those who voted is not well over what is significant.
No, the vote for out was 16million plus. The vote in was more than 800,000 less. The margin is therefore significant. You’re simply trying to apply your own emotive definition of what constitutes significant. You don’t get to do that.
can I ask what you do for a living?
Thank you point inline for outing yourself as one of the brexit morons. I am really going to enjoy watching you lot moan after a couple more decades of Tory rule (if we’re lucky) fucking blackshirts otherwise. You stupid floaters have been dragging this country into the trash can with your xenophobia wogs start at Calais attitude. Well you’re going to fucking suffer. Soon. Good
I’m fucking sick of my fellow English. In fact I hate their fucking guts and am already putting in plans to exploit their dumb stupidity to my personal advantage without any care for the consequences. Whether they’re old Etonians or thick as pig shit working class racist myopic little englanders I will exploit them mercilessly and without a care for any suffering I may cause. They voted in this shitty government, we seem to have endless Tory governments and the only time we don’t is when when we get Tory lite aka Labour.
A great many of the Brexit votes from Labour strongholds were mere protest votes at Cameron. The fucking fools treated it like a bye election. The political right is quite happy to exploit the economic disaster they brought about globally.
Do you think we’re going to get better income distribution in permanently Tory England? Oh maybe you don’t give a shit about such things. Athywren is entitled to be mad at this craziness. The EU is a scapegoat as are the refugees and the Asians. Basically Britain is beginning to behave like Uganda under Amin. Hence you find yourself on the same side as Trump and other right wing demagogues.
Anyway I’ve decided out of personal survival that they can not be beaten. Me and mines only chance of a decent life now is to get rich enough to get out and bugger the consequences to anyone when I do what I’m forced to do because I’m damned if I’m going to roll over and let shit’s like you ruin my life.
You win. You voted for this selfish I’ve got mine Jack little England society we’ve got foisted upon us. Today my commitment to fairness and working towards a better world has ended. The political right has it’s dystopian anti social victory. I’m going to join them. Not because I want to but because they and assholes like you leave me with NO FUCKING ALTERNATIVE.
Was that loud enough. Want to tell me to sit in the corner. Well you seem keen on democracy so how about as it’s so momentous we have another referendum but this time allow everyone over 15 years of age a vote. It’s their future you voted to wreck. You bastard.
Like many I’ve been quite astounded by the vitriol and abuse that’s resulted from the referendum result. I personally have had one post that read “It wasn’t your future you selfish old pricks” That attitude, that older people have ruined their lives by having the temerity to vote, seems to be quite common among young voters. I couldn’t understand it at first but, I’m a father of 7 and I’ve seen it before and I know what it is. What we have is a generation, many of whom, though not all, have been spoiled. They’re simply not accustomed to not getting their way and they respond with a toddler type temper tantrum. Their behaviour is basically a grown up version of stamping their foot, of holding their breath till they turn blue. Of screaming and screaming till they’re sick. Well boys & girls, pack it in. Or you’ll have to go & sit on the naughty step.
Oh, where you are now?
There is no doubt that there was a demographic split in last night’s vote. That the younger generation should favour remaining in is no surprise. They have lived their entire lives in a UK which was part of the EU and it is natural that they should be apprehensive about the unknown. The older generation remember the independent pre 1993 UK and made their judgement on the basis of their experience of both situations.
One of the more unpleasant aspects of the campaign was the suggestion that the older generation should be denied the vote as the young would have to live with the consequences. I even saw used the phrase “Tomorrow belongs to us”, by someone who obviously didn’t know where that phrase comes from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN7r0Rr1Qyc This is a vile suggestion. It’s not simply ageist. The older generation have spent their lives contributing to the nation by hard work, paying taxes, service and even sacrifice. They have earned their right to vote. The young had it given to them.
There is another aspect of the attitude of younger voters that disappoints me. It is clear that many of them have no confidence in their own nation. They regard the UK as too small, too weak, too insignificant, too irrelevant to thrive and prosper as an idependent, autonomous nation. They forget, or ignore that Britain stood on it’s own two feet for hundreds of years prior to 1993, and did rather well.
There is no doubt that brexit constitutes a leap in the dark for Britain, and it’s people, but it is the despair and doom mongering among the young over this leap that really disappoints me. 70 years ago young men, including but not exclusively British took a literal leap into the dark from aircraft over northern France. They leaped into a situation terrifying, challenging and, for many, fatal. But they did it full of confidence and purpose rising to the challenge with determination and resolve.
You youngsters have an opportunity that we older envy enormously. You have the chance that we would relish to rise to a new challenge and make a success of a new situation. You can choose to languish in despair and let Britain fail. And in 40 years time you can sit around and whinge about how, yesterday, we older people ruined your life. Or you can take advantage of the new opportunity and surprise yourselves with what you can achieve. And 40 years from now look back at what you have achieved for yourselves and Britain with a degree of satisfaction. You might even acknowledge that yesterdays result was the best thing that ever happened to you.
After I retired I returned to work through agencies. I often had work some distance from home and had to be on the road as early as 04.30. I initially anticipated that, at that time of day, I’d have the roads pretty much to myself. I could not have been more wrong. I found myself surprised that the roads were actually very busy. Tens of thousands of other people on the road going to work at that time of day. It made me realise how strong the work ethic is in British people. Ultimately Britain will thrive, not because we are in or out of the EU, but because of the hard working and dedicated attitude of the people who live here
nerd 148. You don’t want to know believe me. :)
pointinline @142:
The margin was 3.8%. That’s less than 5%.
Funny how optimists miss what happened to my birthplace. One grandfather worked for a company making lawn sprinklers, another made valves for cars/trucks, my father worked for a company making fork lifts, and my mother and grandmother worked making cereal, and I worked for a couple of years making registers for HVAC systems. All those places are gone, razed to the ground.
If somebody is looking to place a factory, which is the more desirable location?
Somewhere in the EEC, with 500+ million sales without tariffs, and only pay tariffs to import to the UK , or in the UK with 60 million (or likely less after Scotland and Ireland leave), where you will have to pay import duties to sell to the 500+ million?
This isn’t rocket science.
Darkly amusing: The British are frantically Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
Well, that was a rousing speech. I suppose.
Let’s see, jump into the unknown. It’s called ‘future’ and applies no matter what. Except here a lot of people, those terrible experts, strongly suggested this jump to be a bad idea. Their doubts seemed reasonable and well-founded, and still are.
Denying older people the vote is ludicrous, of course. However, the younger people you complain about do have some valid concerns about their future. For example, as a European I can scour the job market in dozens of countries, safe in the knowledge that I won’t have to worry about permits, visas or any additional paperwork at all if I do get a job outside my home country. Otherwise those things might even discourage employers from choosing me, because it’s more work and uncertainty for them as well. Given how bloody difficult it is to get any job at all, that’s a huge advantage. And for all those young people in the UK that opportunity may very well vanish. So don’t expect cheers or gratitude from them.
Yes, and Britain was standing on a lot of people(s) to do so.
Lastly, drawing a parallel between Leave and the invasion of Nazi-occupied France at a time of war while Britain was literally under attack is simply baffling. How is that situation comparable to being part of the EU? If it’s just about the ‘unknown’ and ‘risk’, the same is true about getting out of bed in the dark. Who knows what’s out there?
I’d also like to point out that at that point in the war, Britain was not so much standing ‘on it’s own two feet’ as being propped up by the US.
No, Rob you don’t get it. The 5% refers to the proportion of the yes vote. So if the yes vote is 16 million then significance is conferred by 5% of the 16 million, that’s 800,000 or more. In any event that’s a purely statistical construct. And 5% is actually no more than an arbitrarily agreed figure. Lets get real On a 75ish% turnout how can you possibly say that a 52/48 split doesn’t confer a majority. You only call it “insignificant” cos you don’t like the result. Out won by 1,3 million votes. End of! if either side had won by just one vote the vote would have been legally valid and whether Athyrwen thinks that is significant or not would be entirely irrelevant. Just one person’s opinion, disagreed with by at least 16 million people. Why should anybody give a shit whether he thinks it’s significant or not. Though I expect there’d have been a recount
Komarov. It’s about attitude to the unknown. I’m trying to highlight the pessimism of people, based on pure speculation. Predictions of Floods pestilence & famine, financial collapse, tariffs & barriers doom and despair. None of it with any basis in fact. In fact Marcus Kerber of the BDI has already stated that Germany will not be placing any trade restrictions with the UK. And why would they, they want to sell us their stuff. It will be business as usual.
John Morales #153, not in the least surprised and while disappointed not that surprised at the vote. For the amount of tosh about the EU I have had spouted at me and tried to correct up to the referendum, you wouldn’t believe, or you probably would, and all of it coming from leavers. Some I actually did bring round from the dark side on showing them proof that I wasn’t BS’ing them, but some just didn’t want to know. Sadly, I am in one of the few English cities that voted to remain and by 24 points but it’s irrelevant now.
@komarov #128
You cannot make an example of a nation!
-sigh- blockquote fail. Will teach me not to Preview before I post.
@The Vicar #139
A very, very interesting prediction.
Looking forward to see what happens.
@komarov #128
Greece.
As far as “standing on people” is concerned I think the UK historically behaved no differently than most European nations with colonial and imperial aspirations. Even the US too wasn’t squeaky clean. You abolished slavery in 1865. In Britain we did it 32 years earlier.
@160
yes and how does that dispute the implication or the fact that The Great British Empire was not standing on it’s own feet but being supported by it’s exploited colonies?
I have a real problem with the basic premises of nationalism especially when you stop and think that all nations are accidents of history and in no way signify superiority of any kind we are only one species on one fucking rock and water world. We either learn to live that way or resign ourselves to endless conflict
uncle frogy
I say we. In fact in the 19th century my ancestors were many many miles east of the UK. My parents were immigrants, not coming to Britain till 1950, so I don’t think I can take credit or blame for any actions of the UK 200 years ago.
pointinline @155:
Oh, I get it. You said “margin” but didn’t mean “margin”. You’re playing word and arithmetic games to render the result “significant” by your lights. In other words
pointinline
Do you accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change?
pointinline the fact that your parents came here in the 50s doesn’t alter the fact that the Great in Britain (and yes I know why the great in the name is actually there but tell that to those who think it refers to the country’s greatness) was built on the backs of others. As for abolishing slavery in the 1830s, on one level yes but on another no. Just look at how British companies with government charters treated many of its African and Indian subjects, which was slavery in all but name.
“The future belongs to me.”
Ooops, misquoted. Point stands.
@162
well that sure is what it sounded like you were doing back there.
while you personally and your personal history have been standing on your own feet alone no one does even Robinson Crusoe had Friday we all depend on each other directly or indirectly
this go it alone crap is just that crap without everyone else doing their share it wont work.
It wont work if you do not contribute either.
How can the UK think it can keep the good parts of being in a union of European states trade wise and not contribute creatively to make it work?
The British problem is the same kind of problem the U.S has with being in the U.N. if we can’t be the boss we think everyone is out to get us.
uncle frogy
@ unclefrogy #168, never thought of it like that but your US/UN analogy is pretty close to the mark IMO.
cityofdis wrote:
Yes, actually. Yes, I would suggest that Sanders adopt some of Clinton’s policy planks in that case, because there is nothing to gain and everything to lose by telling two-fifths of your own party to pound sand because they lost. Do you think Clinton can win with only up to 59% of her own party voting for her? If not, then offering a fig leaf to those who lost rather than actively trying to drive them from the party might be a good idea. And why do I see this supposed “thought experiment” everywhere these days?
Also, a landslide? Even at best, she won 59% to 41% (all delegates), and at 55% to 45% at worst (non-superdelegates) with the popular vote falling between those two points. While that’s certainly a clear win either way, but it’s hardly a landslide.
I’ll agree that Clinton isn’t a conservative by American standards (she’s a moderate by nature), but it’s rather disingenuous to suggest that she’s interchangeable with Warren from a policy standpoint.
notsont wrote:
I fear you may be right. Plenty of Democrats are happy patting themselves on the back and saying that there is no way that Trump could win the presidency, apparently oblivious to the fact the Republicans said the exact same thing about him winning the primaries. Worse still, many seem to want to get Clinton to run as the “Not Trump” and sensible candidate rather than on any of her actual strengths, and that worked so well when it was Kerry vs Bush a few years back.
Most polls have Clinton leading by only 3 to 8 points, which is far too close for comfort. The fact that up to 40% of Americans look at the guy and think, “Now that’s Presidential material!” is terrifying.
pointinline @162:
Mine got there a couple of years earlier. So what? Even someone with ancestry going back to the ancient Britons could say they aren’t personally to blame for history. But they, you and I benefited from being born/raised in Britain, so that comes with a burden of responsibility for that history.
One shows a double digit lead.
Keep in mind, that some polls saw the 2012 election being a toss-up, and Obama won handily.
Re: F.O. (#159)
Fair point.
You should not make an example of a nation. Please?
Pointinline, you think this generation is spoilt.
Unlike today’s youngsters, when I left school in the 60s I could, if I had wanted it having the necessary qualifications, have got free university education or, as I did, walked into a job paying pretty well. I could also change jobs any time I wanted knowing that I could find decent paying work easily. As it was, after a couple of years in engineering I got bored so I joined up and had a great time until I was invalided out, but the services aren’t for everybody. Even then, with my disability which restricted me physically somewhat I still had my choice of free training with decent wages while training and plenty of good jobs on offer after. Then with the additional skill sets and experience I managed to acquire I was in a position that if I was still in the job market even now, I could pretty much pick and choose my jobs throughout the UK and much of the EU, as I did for many years.
Tell me that level of freedom is so easily available for the youngsters of today, with or without qualifications. So yes, I can well understand why the young wouldn’t be too happy today with the world we are leaving them. As to them not knowing anything but being in the EU, that is true, but largely irrelevant. As the ones I know want to stay in the EU because they consider being European and British as a largely positive thing, for all the faults of the EU, and unlike so many older people, aren’t so frightened of the other. So which generation was spoilt and had the opportunities again?
John C Phillips
This is true. What is also true is that the days of special British snowflakism are over. That’s why high EU officials are calling for the UK to put their money where their mouth is and hand in their papers. They’re either calling you on a bluff or they’re making sure you don’t get to make that divorce more painful for the rest of us than necessary. If the UK miraculously decides to stay they’ll have to do so without the exceptions that have always been made for them.
pointinline
Lolsob
The generation 60+ didn’t have to fight for their right to vote either, they had it given to them. They also had a lot of other things given to them, things they have constantly worked to abolish for the young generation, like the education system, public housing and work in the public sector. They have created many of the actual problems the UK is suffering from right now and now they blame Brussels, immigrants and the generation that is actually currently in the workforce. Bit rich, don’t you think?
Wait, I thought that you were the generation that did everything and even invented the future?
Oh, so they should be grateful that you gave them the chance to build up an economy that was doing kind of ok until you decided to ruin it? You think you did them a favour? You so much as called them spoiled children for making their own economic decisions and now claim they should thank you?
Young people, get off your bought with ample public support lawn!
Yep, and “significant” just means “not likely to be a result of chance”. I don’t think anybody claims the results were due to chance, so the argument is irrelevant. Also, ever heard of Cohen’s d?
BDI = Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie. They have exactly 0 direct means of doing so. They would like to decide what Germany does, but they cannot. They can neither agree on free trade nor on sanctions. That decision is made, hahaha, in Brussels.
That’s damning with faint praise. Of course, this means “others were genocidal maniacs who robbed the world blind as well”, which is hardly an excuse. It misses of course the fact that no other nation managed to do it on quite such a scale as the British, which also gives the whole thing a new quality. It was also the only country (apart from France for a short while) that had actual settler colonies where the native population was ruthlessly wiped out…
komarov
Quoted for fucking truth.
In what world is “occupation of India” standing alone?
F.O.
You cannot make an example of a nation!
Greece.
Well, what people mean when they say this is “you shouldn’t make an example of my nation the way my nation happily treated others”. Couple with the “Treaty of Versailles” invocation to make people afraid because unlike Greece, the UK could physically hurt others.
What happened to my blockquotes?
Probably incoherent, probably stupid rant incoming:
Nogbert #146
Your outrage and frustration are familiar to me. Further, I myself teeter on the edge of no-fucks-given, might be time to wash my hands of it all, you-want-fuck-you-I’ve-got-mine?, ok I’ll give it to you. Except here in the U.S.
Here I sit between the clown show, blisteringly obvious strong-man con-man on one hand, and the progressive side one the other, which-
look, I’ll just put anything else aside I might find problematic when it comes to Clinton and just use one example. We have these banks and super-wealthy right? And, like, everybody to the left agrees that they’ve been engaging in basically whole-sale theft and pilfering from society. Raking and rigging and taking from the middle-class and the poor. Just about everyone on the left agrees on this. Many are astonished that a number of these con-men haven’t been arrested. Like, we’re talking massive theft and fraud and cheating and rigging and conniving and bribing.
And, everything else aside, these banks have all of this money grifted from society, and what do they do with some of these ill-gotten gains? Well, literally millions of those dollars, dollars that many on the left see as stolen, gained via exploitative means from society – literally millions of those dollars have been put into the pocket of – not just the campaign of, not just in support of, not just in the lobbying of – but literally into the fucking pockets of the progressive nominee.
Stand on this stage and talk for a couple of hours. Do it again. Again. Here’s millions of dollar bills for you.
They reach into the stash of money they’ve preyed upon the populace to acquire, grab millions of it, and handed it to the nominee the progressives have elevated. To me there is not some esoteric fucking mental loophole that makes this anything other than the progressive nominee reaching into the pockets of the middle class and poor, taking millions of dollars from them, and depositing it directly into her bank account. But (not here, necessarily) merely mentioning this makes me a “purist”, or something. Or I’m letting “perfection being the enemy of the good”, or something.
I’ve seen it so many times around the web and in life during this cycle, people being vilified, cast aside, othered, insulted, belittled, patronized, by vast swaths of the so-called liberal half of this country, for finding this egregiously unethical. I’m not talking about people simply arguing for the “lesser of two evils”. I’m talking about an inability to see major ethical shortcomings in a chosen leader, and tribalistic othering of those who would take such shortcomings to task. And some just don’t give a shit. Get that money!
So – this is what the better half of this country wants. We’ve got the staggeringly xenophobic, depressing, frightening, ignorant, openly racist, hyper-religious, gun-nutter, selfish, erode-all-social-gains, openly homophobic, openly sexist segment of the populace on the right, lurching ever rightward, which is obviously distressing – ok. But, even the opposition to this is putting forth someone who, explicitly, enriches themselves with blood money.
Ok. Ok. Fuck it. This is what so many fucking people want?
Ok.
I’ve never cynically taken advantage of the ignorant. I’ve never enriched myself through manipulation, charisma, and bluster. But it would be so fucking easy to do so.
I’m real, real close to saying fuck it, and simply making a lot of money through legal, but shitty, exploitative means.
Real close.
Or not, I don’t know. Apathetic and exhausted as I am, as little as I have, as little I want to grind out life in this country, I still probably wouldn’t be able to bring myself to shit on people – even assholes pining for it, even lauding such behavior – for tons of money.
/catharsis complete
@pointinline #124:
Since conscripts would come from the general population, they would include a pool of people with a higher level of intelligence, education and skills than the average professional soldier, more than capable of learning to use sophisticated military equipment in less time than it would normally take. The rest of us just get a rifle shoved in our hands, or are told to peel potatoes.
#142:
No. I think you’re confusing p-values with error bars, or possibly something else altogether. But since a ballot isn’t a sample none of that applies, and the only margin of significance is a single vote (though that would trigger calls for a recount).
@Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-, that may be true of what Cameron managed to wangle out of the EU earlier this year with regard immigrants etc. I’m not sure as I can’t remember whether they actually signed anything or whether it has even gone in front of parliament for a vote as yet. To be honest I can’t be bothered to check as it is not relevant anyway for I can’t see parliament voting to reject the referendum, even though they technically could if they really wanted to as a majority of MPs actually wanted to remain in the EU all along. This after all is all down to never ending Tory squabbling over the EU and an attempt to keep party unity and not lose members to UKIP.
But the other exceptions we have at the moment, things like the ones Maggie wangled with regard to the rebate for instance, stay in force until we actually invoke Article 50 at which point we have two years to get the leave preparations done and scarper unless the EU grants an extension. Yeah right, as if that is ever likely to happen and I can’t blame them in the least. Of course, like any country wanting to join in the first place, if we ever decided we wanted to rejoin and the EU agreed, we would have to accept the EU rules and regulations then in force. That is extremely unlikely to happen with the likelihood of a Tory government for the foreseeable.
As opposed to a generation, many of whom, though not all, are racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic and harbour delusions that the days of empire could come back. They’re simply not accustomed to the notion that their ideas are seen as harmful and outdated, and respond with patronising, infantilising condescension. Etc, etc.
@pointinline, I missed your comment about the skill set needed of today’s average soldier due to the sophisticated equipment. You do realise you are talking about a generation that has grown up with technology such that using it is automatic and second nature and if you can drive and handle a computer or a gameboy and have played any of the combat sims multi player type games then you are already pretty well versed in what to do and transferring that to actually handling modern military systems would be relatively easy. In fact, I don’t know if they still have it, but the US army used to have a very realistic computer game designed as partly a recruiting tool and partly a training aid for people who were thinking of joining up and that was end of the 90s start of the 2000s.
As for the sophistication of modern armaments, many will practically tell you how to use them as long as you can read and know how to switch it on. That was even true of the SS11 wire-guided anti-tank missile I was controlling with a joystick back in the early 70s and the most difficult job was taking it out of its carry case, assembling it, which only took minutes at most, a lot less when practised, placing it on the launcher the only way it could go, connecting the guide wire and you were good to go. Forget what to do and the order to do it in? Simple, just read the inside of the lid of the carry case come launcher and also look for further instructions on the other bits of kit making up the whole assembly. Even better, the modern equivalent is often fire and forget, i.e. aim, get a lock on the target and fire and get on to the next task/target.
The only reason since conscription ended in the UK that the top brass haven’t wanted conscripts is to do with state of mind. That is, they only want soldiers who actually want to be there and so need little extra motivation. But if the shit hit the fan big time and our existing enlisted weren’t enough, they would soon change their mind.
@anym #181, spot on.
John Philips
I’m not sure, but are the well-trained educated soldiers needed to operate sophisticated machinery while still risking their actual asses the same people as the young spoiled generation who doesn’t know what’s good for them so they should say thank you to the baby boomers who, again*, ruined everything?
*The 2008 crisis was hardly the fault of the 25- generation, not even the 40- generation…
@pointinline
you could say the same thing about the U.S.
do you seriously think that the on-going hostilities would still be going on in the same way they are now if it were draftees coming home dead and maimed from this “war on terrorists”.
out of sight out of mind. it ain’t your kids that are doing all killing and the dying it is the troops, Hell send some more to the pointless field of battle in some place you mispronounce. and can’t find on the map. It’s not your neighbor’s children who come home with their mind so scrambled they can’t function any more either.
uncle frogy
@pointinline
I work for a company based in Europe, whose future in the UK is currently in some doubt. But that’s ok – it’s not like we already have an under-performing jobs market and massive numbers of un-and-underemployed or anything like that. Fortunately, I do have a backup plan – I have a mostly-finished book that I want to get published. It has time travel, and transhumanist stuff, and such, but its main underlying theme is crushing disillusionment and finding new and better ways to deal the world in the face of that, so I guess its appeal will be greater in the coming years than it otherwise might have been. So… yay?
deal with the world.
This is why editors exist.
@unclefrogy #184, very true, it was the body bags coming home from Vietnam allied with the press coverage, much like the body bags coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan that turned people fully against them in the end. Much the same for Britain with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan. The public would be even more against it if it was conscripts, for at least in a volunteer army, unlike conscripts they want to be there. Not that that is meant diminish their suffering just because they are volunteers but they did make a choice, like I did when I signed up a long time ago and was fully aware of the risks I was taking. Though of course you rarely think it will happen to you with the confidence of youth, even after you see what can happen to others.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- @183, yep, strange isn’t it that, irrespective of country of origin, the soldiers that fought and are still fighting in different areas of the middle east are those very same spoilt brats of pointinline’s. Who would have thought. Must be a mistake as he couldn’t be that wrong about our youth, or could he?
UK…
Non Euro
Non Schengen
Non Rights Charter…. Etc. and Etc.
It was presented first and last as “The Wogs begin at Calais” Old (55 and up) “Little England” rural population voting for some mythic past that was cricket then tea and then a pint down the local. It wasn’t racism in every vote but enough to make the difference.
“Will she make changes in party policy that will appeal to that broad swathe of the country that wants a more progressive government? She could end up the David Cameron of America.”
That part makes little sense to me, PZ. Hillary, with the vast majority of votes over Berne, actually does have a progressive agenda that appeals to a truly broad swathe of the country since her supporters are represented by the majority of people of color as well as many other groups! Her agenda is vastly more progressive on guns and she has not tacked right on her economic agenda at all. It is still very close to Berne’s own. In fact, it was from the get go. There is no way anyone could reasonably claim Hillary risks being similar to Cameron! Her base of support is no where near the same and her agenda is much more representative of the people needing her help–women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ community. It is the Berne base that is not a broad swathe of the progressive community. I am so tired of having Hillary’s support and agenda invisibalized.
Re: Giliell (#176):
Just to be sure, I don’t want any nation to be hit with these kinds of sanctions. Not the UK, not Greece, nor anybody else. I don’t see the point in making examples like this; it doesn’t help anyone and screws over a lot of people whom you might consider ‘innocent bystanders’. They just happened to live in the wrong country at the wrong time.
The reason I brought it up was that I’m seeing a lot of people saying the British people have it coming, that they deserve everything they get and deserve to be beaten down for daring to vote Leave. This sentiment has been cropping up all over the place. It is toxic and shouldn’t be ignored.
@ Komarov, ironically, many of those living in the more industrial areas working at skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled jobs who voted leave could well be the ones to suffer the most for a whole host if reason. From losing many workers protections due to being members of the EU and for now are enshrined into UK law which this government wants to abolish. Coming out of the ECHR we were instrumental in creating and replacing it with a watered down so called bill of rights for the wealthy. I could go on but I don’t want to depress any Brits reading this any more than I might have already. But I’m OK as I have options, I just rather not have to take them as I like living where I do, after all it was one of the few English cities with a sizeable remain vote. But of course, it all depends on how things turn out over the next couple of years or three
komarov
Yeah, but see, I don’t remember that wide-spread solidarity with Greece, or Portugal. Sure, there were people against it, but a wide solidairty campaign?
Well, the EU can’t afford to make this easy on the UK for reasons of self-preservation. But don’t you think it funny that the majority of blame and anger is already laid at the feet of the EU and not of those who voted leave? If the UK gets exactly what they voted for and it turns out to be hard and painful, whose fault is it?
Also, since it will take resources to recover from this, why should the rest EU use any of them to help the UK?
Honestly, I’m much more worried about the “let’s beat everyone who isn’t lily white British out of this country” sentiment that is cropping up everywhere
Honestly, can you ever stop blaming the EU for the things your country fucked up all by itself?
Point in case
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- #193, we can’t blame ourselves, why that would mean taking responsibility for our actions. Not something that many are capable of doing, having been able to find plenty of scapegoats along the way helped by the many xenophobes. If people couldn’t be bothered to do the most basic of research about the actual EU and not the one scum like Farage and his ilk and the anti-EU press hand them, then if things go pear shape, then they have only themselves to blame. Though I will feel a degree of sympathy for those who voted to remain, especially the young.
Wot, no critical self awareness?
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- @ 77;
Quick point of order Giliell – when I mentioned the Treaty of Versailles @ 77 I wrote;
(Emphasis added)
In response to Mike Smith’s post @ 74 where they wrote;
(Emphasis added)
Referencing their earlier post @ 63 where they said;
I was responding to an argument in favour of a deliberately punitive settlement between the EU and the UK calculated to do harm to as many Brits as possible whether they voted to stay in or get out, and justified by a rather excessive at this juncture invocation of the specter of some revivification of Nazism as it was in WW2 in the contemporary United Kingdom.
Far from issuing some nationalistic threat to the other EU member states or the world at large, I was pointing out that it is one thing to reasonably despise bigoted idiots like Farage from afar, but progressives in the UK have to try to win the public debate with him and those like him here, in the face of a febrile atmosphere of racist immigration panic in one segment of society, paired with infuriating political apathy in others, and punitive measures from Europe to ‘make an example’ of the entirety of the UK populous as a form of collective punishment, along with other forms of political posturing more likely aimed for domestic political consumption than any actual action needing to be taken in defence of the European Political Project, plays directly into the hands of Farage and the other proto-fascists (not to mention our disturbing local crop of out-and-out fascists), taking the job of the British progressives from extremely difficult to downright impossible. It may feel good now, but in the long term it is counter-productive and a strategic blunder that would act to the detriment of both the UK and the broader EU.
As should be clear from my post, I don’t consider the likelihood of the UK acting militarily against the rest of the world in the way the Nazi party did to be high, and indeed strikes me as very unlikely, but if such an extreme scenario did somehow come to pass, then punitive measures that could be spun as willfully and spitefully anti-British (by those motivated to read the situation that way) taken now by the EU would not work to head such a scenario off, but could instead foster it. That isn’t a threat, but merely an assessment of the credibility of the scenario Mike Smith put forward and the odds that their suggested course of action would have the outcome they desired.
Is the current mess the fault of Britain? Certainly, in so far as it is the fault of a loud and obnoxiously bigoted segment of the UK populous, and the fault of the chunk of the broader electorate they gulled and stampeded through irrational fears into voting for the Leave Campaign. It is also the fault of a lackluster Remain Campaign (the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbin is currently getting a roasting for his lukewarm at best support for the Remain Campaign), and could even be argued as being the fault of UK progressives for failing to make the argument effectively enough in a more general sense, though reason is often less than effective in the face of the politics of fear and petty tribalism as we have seen so often the world over. All that is true, but none of it justifies twisting the knife in those Brits who will already be disadvantaged by the Out Vote, especially the young, and many of whom actually voted to stay in. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and double victimization hardly improves the lot of those who are in this situation through no fault of their own.
As a final point, I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that trying to take punitive action against the UK populous as a group will have the desired effect of making other groups in other EU member States reconsider an attempt to get an out vote referendum of their own. Just think about what that looks like, and how it could be presented politically to the electorates of those countries? One of the principle charges leveled at the EU is that its democratic deficit means that it is not a fully democratic body, a charge I personally reject and consider to be vastly overblown, but one that is a core article of faith of eurosceptics across the continent. Here you have the UK making a democratic decision by plebiscite. A stupid decision I grant you, and by a sliver-thin majority that hardly amounts to a meaningful political mandate, but a democratic decision all the same. And then the EU, already unfairly tarred with the brush of being the anti-democratic evil empire reacts by… seeking to punish the UK electorate for daring to vote against the desired outcome of the EU, and doing so in a way that not only doesn’t concern itself with the harm that it causes to the entire UK populous whether they voted in or out, but can easily be depicted as glorying in it.
Far Right, anti-EU populists Like Geert Wildurs Marine Le Pen could hardly ask for a finer political gift – it would fit neatly into their preferred narrative for depicting the EU as a remote, out of touch, high-handed bureaucratic tyranny. Far from preventing a ‘Nexit’ or a ‘Frexit’ (I fear we are never going to get away from that misbegotten terminology) it would provide ample ammunition to push forward the project for them, since the Eurosceptics could easily argue that the EU is eating away at democratic freedoms (false, but frightening in the ears of the politically uninformed) and is maneuvering to make it impossible for any voice of the ‘ordinary, hardworking Dutch/French/German/Belgian/*Insert preferred member state*’ to be heard (you and I know that is a racist, xenophobic dog whistle, but as we Brits have just demonstrated to our cost, much of the electorate either doesn’t realize that or doesn’t care).
Forget about the well being of the UK and every British citizen for a moment – from the point of view of the continued stability and prosperity of the EU project itself, now is not the time to compound the disaster of a British leave vote with offering free points to the other short sighted nationalistic idiots that want to tear the remainder of the EU apart.
Well… it seems like the gods have found out about the result and are not pleased. There are some fine crack-a-booms going on out there. Am seriously contemplating Ark hire right about now.
Like I wrote – before my comment apparently was removed – 16.1 million British voters tried to stop the madness.
ashley #199
Do you mean your comment #50?
Gregory Greenwood
What settlement except for giving the UK everything they ask for and a pony on top would prevent the cries of “they’re fucking us over” by the right?
Yes, your scenario is deliberately threatening the rest of Europe to roll over and fuck ourselves over for your benefit.
Oh, and since we’re making 1930’s comparisons: the rest of the world acting as if Germany wasn’t the bad guy and giving them what they asked for didn’t work out either.
Chigau
Yes – sorry. I mistakenly searched for it based on UK time zones. Also this website seems screwed up for me (it keeps ‘freezing’).
@Athywren #198, we had a short but very heavy downpour about an hour ago but no sound effects. Then again we’re obviously one of the good guys so they left us alone as we voted strongly to remain. It seems as if we even managed to protect the countryside around us as I heard no bangs at all in the distance, even though they largely voted leave. I hope they all appreciate the protection we bestowed on them :)
If Europe signs agreements that make the UK have exactly all the deals they have now, then Brexit can congratulate themselves on having achieved nothing except for a reduction in sovereignty (because the UK will no longer have a say in those famous EU regulations, but will still have to abide by them).
Otherwise, Brexit will have on their conscience the loss of a bunch of agreements that were quite good for the UK.
I wonder what will happen of the millions of UK and EU citizens who are now on the wrong side of a border. This could lead to some pretty large population movements.
Athywren@198: seems Dog has shit aim and hit West Virginia instead with the flooding. 10″ of rain in a day — that’s ridiculous.
Enoch Powell, Birmingham (England), 1968:
Should be in the dictionary under “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Me, I emigrated in 1975, not because of but despite the immigrant communities of Brixton and Notting Hill and indeed Bradford and Manchester, which were my favorite parts of the auld sod. It was the ruling class and their deluded Alf-Garnett acolytes that drove me out. I am really sad for the young people of Britain, who voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, and as far as I can tell for the right reasons — not selfishness but international integration. Good luck, kids.
numerobis, not only that but we won’t have all the exceptions to certain EU rules and regulations we have wangled over the years but, as you said, if we want to have an open market with the EU we will have to accept their rules but have no say in their creation. Thus we lose twice over.
Shit, looking at a lot of the points being made, this has really screwed over anyone (in our out of the UK) who isn’t a right-wing nationalist.
Not only have they been handed a major moral victory, but the situation is so frought that they have their claws sunk deeply into all future discussions on relations with one of the more powerful countries.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- @ 201;
Oh, I agree that the Far Right will make that claim almost whatever happens, the problems start when they can point to an action by the EU that could be interpreted as giving any weight to their paranoid claims. That is when Right wing paranoid blather metastasizes into the legitimately dangerous popular Right wing paranoid blather, of the ‘you aren’t a racist, ultra-nationalist twit when the EU is really out to get you!’ variety, and that is the scenario I am worried about here.
Er, how is that, exactly? I have stated my case – that an overreaction from the EU could damage the UK, specifically by further fostering the rise of the UK Far Right by lending credence in the eyes of the public to their xenophobic twaddle, and could also harm the EU, by giving ammunition to the various other nationalist nitwits in other EU countries who fantasize about their own out referendums. How is that a threat of anything? It is merely an observation of a likely outcome of precipitant action taken without thought at a time where feelings are running rather high, as this thread itself helps demonstrate. If I have said anything to the contrary, would you do me the courtesy of quoting the offending passage so I can at least work out what I have said that can be read as so recklessly inflammatory?
That wasn’t actually originally my comparison as I demonstrated in my last post (and it was a shame it was ever brought up, since it hardly seems to be helping communication on this topic), but again I don’t remember ever suggesting that the UK should be treated with kid gloves or should expect to be held as blameless in all this, or that doing so would fix all the ills unleashed by the Brexit idiots (again, if I have said or intimated otherwise, please quote the passage where you believe I did so).
I completely agree that the blame falls more on the UK than anyone else, as I stated in my last post. My point is that further compounding a bad situation with actions likely to exacerbate the very attitudes that all pro-Europeans should be trying to oppose seems to be counter-productive. Is indiscriminately sticking it to British public at large in pursuit of some vague, collective punishment based notion of vengeance really worth it? Why would anyone assume that such action would serve to strengthen the bonds between the remaining EU member states, rather than undermine them?
Gregory Greenwood
52% of those who bothered to show up voted Leave based on a campaign that was racism, xenophobia and lies. What makes you think that in future the British public will look fairly on those matters. They didn’t have any truth behind their paranoid claims and unrealistic promises right now and they still won.
Besides, this whole referendum, Leave or Remain, was based on the idea that the Brits get to decide and the rest of us can go fuck ourselves and have to live with the consequences*. The whole of the UK didn’t care one bit about the remaining 450 million of us. Now you demand that we keep your best interest at heart? Won’t somebody think of the Brits?
*I haven’t yet calculated how much of our old age savings we’ve just lost. Some of that is going to be permanent. And we’re lucky. It isn’t our jobs that have gone up in smoke.
So far over 2,000,000 people have signed a petition on the government’s petition site for another referendum which means that it should be debated in parliament as you only need a 100,000 to trigger a debate and at one point with up to 200,000 an hour signing at one point, the site crashed. Not that it will make any difference, though interestingly there are now Tory MPs calling to vote down the referendum result when parliament sits next week as they see the mess that is developing financially and otherwise, especially as it becomes obvious that the Leave campaign haven’t a clue what to do next. Many leave voters aren’t going to be happy either as the leave campaign has already reneged on their claims to curb immigration and extra money for the NHS. Of course, I doubt it will make any difference in the long run, but it could be another interesting few weeks.
@ Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-, oh come on, I know your upset, as are many of us over here, believe me, but you know better than to think that all the UK didn’t care about the other 450 million in the EU. The vast majority of remain voters I talked to wanted to stay in because they believe in the EU and the unity of being European, the young even more so in spite of the problems the EU has to sort out for all its citizens or it will fall apart. After all, there are plenty of Farages and Boris in many of the EU countries just chomping at the bit to have their own chance at a leave referendum.
And while the majority of those under 45 voted to remain and the majority of those over 45 voted to leave, even among the 65+ age group, 40% voted to Remain and the actual vote was only 51.9 leave to 48.1 stay, with the actual numerical difference being 1,269,501. So yes, a majority to leave, but nowhere near the type of result if many of us really didn’t care about Europe.
John Philips
Tell me exactly how you cared about the rest of us when you were happy to gamble our future on this referendum? Sure, many of you are in favour of remaining but the same way people claim it was only 17 million who were in favour of leaving it can be argued that only 16 million gave a fuck.
Giliell: From what you’re writing, it sounds like you are angry at every individual Brit because their political leaders did something stupid for stupid reasons, and their political and media leaders managed to convince a slight majority of voters to go along with it; the result is going to hurt a lot of people — many of them in other countries — and now you want to exact revenge.
This is not the usual Giliell who has compassion for those who are fucked over by the oligarchs.
So in other words not all of us didn’t care about the EU. However, I like the vast majority of the UK people had no say in whether there would be a referendum or not, it was just one plank of the Tory manifesto. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a decent opposition to put up a fight against the Tories and with Labour losing most of its seats in Scotland, would be unlikely to again be in a position to have the majority of seats. The best those on the left could hope for in the foreseeable future was if it was a hung parliament and the Tories, who would usually have the largest number of seats, would get first choice of forming the government even if it didn’t have an actual majority but would fail to form a government.
As happened in 2010 when you had the libcon coalition. Unfortunately, with the libs losing most of their seats in the 2015 election due to their unpopularity after some of the policies they helped the Tories to push through after joining the Tories in 2010, the only possibility was again a hung parliament, and the hope that nobody would form a coalition with the Tories this time, as they were guaranteed in all but unusual circumstances to have the largest number of seats so would get first chance at forming a working government. Of course, with the largest number of seats they don’t have to form a coalition but such governments tens to fall pretty quickly at the first opportunity for a vote of no confidence. Unfortunately, while a hung parliament looked on the cards early on election night, the optimism didn’t last and the in 2015 the Tories not only got the largest number of seats, they actually managed to get a working majority, albeit a relatively small. Once that happened, with the odd exception, the only real brakes on them in government were their own MPs or the House Of Lords and so they could basically do what they wanted. So, as the referendum was part of the manifesto, for all that Cameron tried to put it off as long as possible, as it was really a last ditch effort to keep both wings of the Tory parety united, in the end his hand was forced by the Euro-sceptics and the potential for them to cause real problems for Cameron and the rest of the Tory party.
So, like many previous politicians, Cameron put party first over country and called the referendum. However, he miscalculated badly thinking that the Remain would win but got caught out mainly due to the refugee crisis in the EU and fears over immigrants in the UK. Thus people like Farage had the perfect opportunity, supported by the xenophobes and their long time anti-EU support in the right wing media to do his mischief. Boris was supposedly anti-EU all along but most think the main reason he jumped on the Leave bandwagon was knowing that if Leave won Cameron would eventually have to leave as leader and PM and that would give him his opportunity.
Admittedly, Remain didn’t run the cleverest of campaigns and didn’t really get going until late in the day so a lot of the blame goes to them in my opinion. Additionally, it seems that Cameron assumed that the result would be like the Scottish one, i.e. tight until the end and then Remain would pull clear. However, it now appears that, immigration issue aside, many took the referendum as an opportunity, rather than actually wanting to leave the EU as many thought Remain would win, to give the government a hard kicking for things like the austerity measures and the like that had been in place for years, and which weren’t getting better for the average Jack or Jill but while the moneyed elite were doing well.
Now I have probably missed some significant points along the way, but that is the gist of it and why we are where we are now. So basically, between the refugee and immigrant issue, which was heavily played by Leave, coupled with the long period of austerity and the poor showing of the Remain campaign until it was too late you had a ‘perfect storm’, so to speak, developing and everyone can see where we are now. By the way, ignoring the more xenophobic wing of the leave campaign, it now appears that there is already a groundswell of buyers remorse among some of the leave supporters.
numerobis
Exactly. In other countries.
I don’t want revenge. I just don’t want the remaining us to bend over backwards again to make everything nice for the people who caused that whole disaster. I want the remaining EU to work hard to make this as painlessly as possible for the remaining citizens.
I have compassion for those who get fucked over by the oligarchs, not for those who hold their coats while they’re doing it.
BTW, Spain is voting today and would you believe it, they have a new party who wants to challenge the EU on the left. Looks like that is entirely possible.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- when you have a minute or two have read of this. It gives a good idea how the leave campaign worked and while there is a fair degree of bile towards the perpetrators for what they wrought, what he writes is pretty much spot on.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/25/boris-johnson-michael-gove-eu-liars
Giliell: by your words above, you blame *all* Brits and you want to tighten the screws and give them a raw deal. Quite a lot of Brits wanted to stay in — and it’s not clear how many people who voted out actually wanted out rather than just wanting to stick it to Cameron, who’s a right honorable asshole.
Now with Brexit, give the UK basically what it has now minus a seat at the table, and you’ll minimize disruption to both the UK and the EU. Say “fuck you” and take your ball home with you and you maximize disruption on both sides.
Kinda late since that’s effectively what the UK just did.
Btw, to advocate for Giliell here, how is the rest of Europe supposed to move forward without either harming the UK or giving concessions that they definitely don’t deserve? That many of you voted to stay does not change the fact that the majority voted to leave. That will have consequences, and the responsibility for those lies in Britain. Not Brussels. Not Germany.
#220, gmacs:
numerobis
You know, I’ve been wondering how apparently nobody is to blame in this whole thing except maybe Johnson.
Everybody who voted “Remain” apparently did so for noble reasons. The fact that the whole remain campaign seems to have been a medium sized disaster, failing to show an alternative, is apparently not of importance. About a third of the voting population didn’t turn up at all. No blame at their feet, right? They didn’t do anything. And then there’s the people who voted “Leave”, who are apparently also not to blame because they just didn’t like Cameron, or believed the lies*, or simply didn’t believe their vote counts.
*Apparently you can have your cake and eat it: The general population is both capable of making such important decisions via a referendum but they’Re also not to blame when fucking things up because they didn’t know better.
Wrong. The fascists all over Europe are already cheering. Give the UK everything they have now, minimise the effects for the UK and you get a domino effect. Yours is a false dichotomy. The EU now needs to demonstrate that you’re better in than out.
Also, the EU, the EU, the EU. The EU has to, the EU must, the EU mustn’t…
As I said, you keep blaming the EU for everything.
Oh blockquote. Why must you always punish my impatience.
#222, Gillell
For reasons I don’t really understand, a huge number of leave-voters managed to transmute their traditional hatred of the tories/the english/londoners/the governments of the 70s and 80s/everyone else, etc, into hating the EU, who somehow retroactively managed to wreck british industry, conspire to keep it down and ultimately disenfranchise the locals.
All those improverished outlying regions who received massive EU funding because the UK government had neglected them for decades blame the EU for misspent, wasted and stolen funds, despite the fact that it was local organisations who did the spending.
I can understand the desire to blame everyone else, but when there are actual guilty parties right there in front of you who you’ve been poiting fingers at since forever, why suddenly look overseas for scapegoats?
I don’t know. Apathetic bloody country, I’ve no sympathy at all.
To elaborate further, how’s that supposed to work? The EU isn’t only trade and free movement.
Cornwall just realised that they’re fucked without EU, asking the government to grant them the money. Of course they voted Leave. Some UK universities receive more than 90% of their funding from the EU, not to mention Socrates and Erasmus. The UK gets out of the EU but is supposed to not untangle those structures and keep funding?
I also have to ask you: Were you passionately protesting the sanctions against Russia, which hurt ordinary people and those opposed to Putin as well, not to mention EU companies?
What did you do to protest the extortion of Greece?
What are you doing now to stand up to the fascist roaming your streets, threatening PoC, many of them Brits, and EU citizens alike?
Or are you way too busy complaining how unfair it is that this will have consequences for the UK?
Personally, I think there is a risk of the EU harming the UK (and possibly itself) by overreacting – but it will be an understandable overreaction caused by the referendum result. As Scotland voted to remain by a 62%-38% split, there is now a very real risk that the UK will find itself beginning to split up via a second Scottish independence referendum, with Scotland then remaining in the EU as an independent nation-state, and there is also a push by Sinn Féin to have a referendum in Northern Ireland (who also voted to remain) about the possibility of coming out of the UK and reuniting with the Republic of Ireland, which is an EU member. As such, in the end, if you look at a map of how the people in various counting areas voted (blue being majority voting remain, and red being majority voting leave):
https://cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk/a29460cc-9e6a-45d6-ae89-fad284321413.html
It could end up being that those who are left to face any negative consequences are, for the most part, those who actually voted to leave.
There are a lot of Texans who have been pushing to secede from the US. I wonder how long it will be before they use this event to call for a Texit?
I have mixed feelings about such a move. An independent Texas would be quite a magnet for all the right-wingnuts out there. Might be healthier for the country to put them all in one place.
I cannot imagine how anyone could look at the results of the “Brexit” referendum and think, “Yeah! I got to get me some of that!” The pound has lost considerable value, there’s a good chance that Scotland will exit the UK (and probably rejoin the EU), they’ve lost significant funding for everything from scientific research to road construction, London is likely to lose its standing as a financial center (can’t be EU banking HQ if you’re not in the EU), they’re not even going to get the stricter control of immigration that the, um, conservatives were hoping for, the economy has dropped from 5th to 6th largest in the world in a single day, and the full consequences haven’t even been realized yet. I’d like to think that no one could possibly be that dumb, but…A high school friend in Texas is busy posting on FB that it’s clear the UK doesn’t need the EU. After all, they won two world wars all by themselves. So, yeah, I can see a Texit movement developing. (Dream on, guys.)
There are also a number of Hawaiian Independence movements.
I wonder how that would work out.
By now Ian fucking Paisley jr. is advising folks to get an Irish passport. If you don’t know what that means look up the Paisley clan.
@dianne
I thought it was America who one those two world wars for us, all by themselves? (And not, you know, an alliance of many nations (or at least the fighting forces thereof, like the Polish WW2 fighter pilots whose pictures are so often used to fuel anti-immigrant sentiment by and among the ignorant in the UK) in both cases.)
^won, not one… probably obvious
I don’t think theres any actual legal course for a state to leave the US, unlike the UK/EU situation. Texas can vote on it all they want, and the US could still go “No, you’re still a state.”
ignorance and irrationality or more commonly called pigheadedness seems to be one of humanities dominant traits,and it is compounded with emotional response all to often.
while it is a very big negative event it is possible to find a positive path forward. There are opportunities here to find but it will take accurate knowledge, reason, calm consideration and a willingness to change. Those are a rare things for humans to master all at the same time. (speaking personally)
uncle frogy
Yep. The positive path I’m currently looking at is to refuse to waste my youth trying to shore up a nation that has chosen to fail, and go elsewhere, somewhere that wants to be in the 21st century.
Looks like the UK is currently imploding with no working government and no working opposition. Boris Johnson is playing cricket.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/racist-incidents-feared-to-be-linked-to-brexit-result-reported-in-england-and-wales
As I said, racism against Eastern Europeans is a surrogate for racism against brownish- looking people. I’ve a feeling that we’re lancing the boil, but what comes out won’t be nice.
Texan separatists have in fact been inspired by the Brexit vote.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-usa-secession-idUSKCN0ZA3F4
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/secessionist-supporters-in-texas-cry-texit-as-they-derive-hope-from-britains-breach-from-europe-a7104566.html
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- If the government does implode then Article 50 can’t be invoked until there is a working government with a leader. As to wishing to punish Britain for leaving, seeing that it has already done a massive amount of damage to itself, both financially and politically it might think some more is no big deal. As many on the Leave side said that any short term cost was worth leaving the EU for, though I think, Farage and others like him aside, it has been a big shock to many on the leave side much damage has already been done. But, if it did think like that and it thought the EU was going to play nasty, it could still do an awful lot more damage to the EU by simply doing nothing for now and just letting the confusion and uncertainty remain and the additional damage that would do to the EU, financially and politically to its future unity, would be unimaginable.
So if I was the government and worrying that the EU was going to try and punish me I could do one of two things. First, just don’t invoke Article 50 for the foreseeable. BTW, Boris has already said that there is no need to hurry to invoke it so if he became the leader of the Tory Party and hence the PM, he wouldn’t rush into it. Then the uncertainty continues and so likely the damage Or secondly, demand we start the future trade negotiation before we even think about invoking Article 50. This would at least do away with the uncertainty in the markets, or at least reduce it to the point it was only worrying about the actual deal the UK got, and that uncertainty is more likely to affect the UK more.than the EU. Unless it was obvious fairly quickly that the negotiations looked to be fair to both parties, in which case the uncertainty would largely vanish.
Of course there is an option, Article 7 I think, called the nuclear option, were the EU could try to force Britain out of the EU even though it hadn’t invoked Article 50. However, that could be very damaging to the EU itself, especially as the UK hasn’t actually done anything that would allow Article 7 to be invoked. Additionally, using it without the due causes outlined in Article 7 could hurry up the very process it worries that the UK leaving will provoke, i.e. all the other countries with large minorities wanting a referendum of their own. For all those parties could turn round to their citizens and say, see, this is what the EU does when it doesn’t like the way you are acting even though you haven’t broken any rules yet. Seeing a lot have elections in the not too distant future that could be very worrying for the EU’s future unity. So to be honest I can’t really see them going for that, even though the odd EU country’s PM has hinted at it in a roundabout way. Like some other PMs have suggested they should just assume after the referendum that the UK has invoked Article 50 based on the result of the referendum. Unfortunately, the wording of Article 50 is quite clear and it has to be specifically invoked by the government of the relevant country and not assumed by others.
Personally I don’t particularly want to see any of the above happen, in fact my preferred option would have parliament just shelve the referendum for good, as it doesn’t have to follow the result if it doesn’t want to. However, for that to happen, the Tory MPs who don’t want to leave would have to risk their party unity and vote with those other MPs who want to stay to give a majority for staying. However, that is very unlikely to happen, for Tory Party unity and keeping its Euro-sceptic MPs in the fold is the reason we are in this mess in the first place. For if they did join the other pro-EU MPs in voting to reject it, it is likely that the more right wing Euro-sceptics would leave and join UKIP and I can’t see any Tory principled enough to risk that.
Dianne #228
Many on the leave side in the UK when warned about the cost and how large it might be, replied that any short term loss was worth regaining our sovereignty. But while many on the leave side didn’t believe even the lower possible losses and are now shocked at how big it actually is already, xenophobic scum like Farage don’t care. Similarly, whether in Texas or the rest of the EU, for those at the heart of the argument for wanting a referendum, cost doesn’t matter, it;s all about freedumb.
vivec #223. No there. Even though it had joined the Confederate side, when it took a case about Texas bonds to the supreme court in 1869 which relied on it not being part of the union for the matter in hand, it was told that it had always been a part of the US even during the civil war so its case had no merit. So if you can’t get out of the union by joining the other side in a civil war, you have no chance of a legal secession. Look up Texas v White for more details where U.S. Supreme Court held that the United States is “an indestructible union” from which no state can secede once joined.
@ #241
The decision did make exceptions for secession “through revolution or through consent of the States.”
tomh #242, a straight majority or some kind of super majority?
@ #243
Who knows, it’s never been tried. Might have to be unanimous.
tomh #244, that session should get CSPAN some viewers :)
John Philips
Yeah, which is exactly what it looks like right now: Cameron stepping down, but only in October and Article 50 only after that. So somehow the UK is allowed to trash the whole EU building, but it’s still somehow everybody else’s fault.
Aka keep all of the EU hostage
Aka keep all of the EU hostage
Not kissing your ass is not the same as punishment. Not putting your interests first when you just gave a shit about everybody else is not punishment.
Looks to me like the UK has just done a massive amount of damage to itself AND everybody else and then wants to bully everybody else into repairing that damage.
There’s a reason why most EU officials insist on getting this done quickly.
Of course, what you’re burning here any faster than the value of the pound is trust. Those Commonwealth nations that are supposed to be your magical solution, you must think them stupid. No country in the world will be looking at what the UK is doing right now and say “wow, that’s a reliable trading partner who’ll stick to agreements and won’t just change the rules as they go along no matter what this means to me.” Especially not countries where you have a colonial past.
Well done, UK, well done.
Probably the EU’s fault.
Apparently, the EU is very eager to get article 50 invoked. There was a statement made that they expect Cameron to invoke article 50 in his speech on Tuesday and oh, by the way, the notice does not have to be in writing. I speculate that that means that they’ll have lawyers watching his speech and if he says anything that could remotely be interpreted as invoking article 50 then, boom, it’s invoked and the negotiations have begun.
Incidentally, the pound has lost further value compared to its value at close on Friday.
One final random thought: Real estate prices in London may finally be about to go down. I mean, if I (FSM forbid!) were the CEO or local operator of a bank with its EU HQ based in London I’d be looking at moving right now. And I’d be discussing the lowered value of my bank’s London presence with whoever owned the building I was leasing and how, even if the Brexit somehow failed and we could stay, this fuss and bother meant that I was eyeing Frankfurt (such a nice, modern city!) with intent…unless, maybe, they wanted to give me such a good deal that I wouldn’t leave. And since I expect all the other banks would be doing the same and some realtors won’t play and therefore the banks will leave, there will be more vacant office space in London. And X thousand jobs will be moving overseas, so a lot of housing will be vacant as well. If I were the religious type I’d say that someone prayed for lower rents in London and Loki answered their prayers.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-Did you actually read, and understand come to that, all my comment or just react automatically to what you think I am saying. Where did I ask you to kiss anybody’s ass. You are at the point where it is not worth responding to as you are just looking for any excuse to lash out irrespective of what the post is actually saying. Bye.
@240: I was maliciously pleased at the announcement that leaving the EU was unlikely to change immigration policy, meaning that the xenophobes didn’t even get what they wanted.
dianne ‘245, it looks as if Paris and Frankfurt will be fighting over who becomes the European Financial Centre as London can’t if it is no longer in the EU. Some large financial institutions have already stopped expansion plans to existing London offices and others are either moving out or cutting down their London offices to open offices.in Germany and moving some staff. There will be a lot of that going on over the coming months and not just the financial sector and that will continue irrespective of if or when Article 50 is invoked.
@250: France has its own right wingers calling for a separation from the EU. Too dangerous. Frankfurt is much better.
It occurs to me that pharma is likely to want to move their offices and research too. I don’t know the mechanics of how drugs are approved in the EU, but I expect that there is at least some reduced paperwork for approvals within EU countries versus outside of EU countries. If I’m right, then I would expect that pharma firms would want to prioritize getting their drugs to the EU market over getting them to the smaller and less profitable (thank you Tory cuts to the NHS!) UK market. Especially since the UK won’t have EU funding to help fund clinical trials and so on.
Also, if the rest of Europe is annoyed and wants to punish the UK, as opposed to just letting them deal with the consequences of their decision, how about kicking them out of the EM and Eurovision? Yeah, there’s no justification given that Eurovision includes Australia (also Austria, but, yes, I did mean Australia), but in terms of punitive actions, well, it’s probably the nastiest acts that wouldn’t cause any real damage. At least, not much real damage.
dianne #249, yep, just about everything of significance the leave campaign promised is next to impossible if they want to have a serious trade deal with Europe. For all the types of trade deals worth anything means that they still have to follow EU rules when it comes to the products being traded. Take Norway for instance, with its trade deal with the EU it still has to follow a third of the EU regulations. With the UK likely having a bigger range of products to trade with the EU there will be a commensurate increase in the number of regulations it have to follow. The other thing is all the freedoms, e.g. freedom of movement, that Boris claims the UK can negotiate away is just not possible if the UK wants to trade seriously with the EU.
Dianne ’51, true about Paris and freedumb seeking right wingers but I read somewhere that parts of Germany have their own share of freedumb nutters, though I don’t know how serious or large they are. Then there’s Italy, The Netherlands, Spain and a few others I can’t think of off the top of my head with groups wanting their share of freedumb.
As to the Eurovision, can’t be kicked out of that as that is a pan European broadcasters thingy. Though it probably won’t be worth competing for the foreseeable future as we are unlikely to get many votes from EU countries.
What’s EM.
pointinline@121,
Dennis Skinner’s integrity does not alter the fact that he’s somewhere between a has-been, a never-really-was, and a kind of House of Commons mascot: “Dear old Dennis, always riding his Old Labour hobby horses! The place would be poorer without him!”
The Vicar@132
On the contrary, the Brexit vote has precipitated what currently looks like a possibly terminal collapse of Labour, the main opposition party. See my analysis below.
pointinline@149,
Thanks for making it abundantly clear just what sort of purblind, puffed-up, get-off-my-lawn nationalist idiot you are.
John Phillips, FCD@174
As I’ve been known to say to today’s young people (in a fake Yorkshire accent): “Ee, we ‘ad it easy when I were a lad!”
John Phillips, FCD@216,
I pretty much agree with all of this, shades of emphasis aside. I would add that it was damnably difficult to develop and present a progressive case for Remain, because of the hideous damage done by the “austerity” policies enforced within the Eurozone, and the vile treatment of refugees (and yes, Giliell, I among others on the left have been protesting the treatment of Greece, Portugal, and refugees, listening to their representatives, giving money to help refugees, as well as campaigning for Remain as much because of the likely effects of a Leave victory on the EU and the wider world as for the UK’s benefit).
Vivec@233,
And of course that difference – resulting in the very fact that the UK could hold this referendum without asking permission from the EU, and know the result would be accepted – demonstrates that claims of “loss of sovereignty” were outright lies.
Some points on the UK’s internal situation, cross-posted from “Moments of Political Madness”:
Further to * and ** above: there’s been discussion on BBC Radio 4 about the crisis within Labour, with Corbyn’s opponents saying he can’t lead them into the election that may come in a few months without disaster. Neither they nor the interviewers have so much as mentioned the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, which means Labour could block any such election unless the Tories carry out a cynical and constitutionally dubious political manoeuvre clearly designed to circumvent the very legislation they passed while in coalition with the LibDems. I wonder why. (Well, not really: the anti-Corbyn rebels obviously won’t raise the point, and the BBC has scarcely troubled to conceal its anti-Corbyn animus.)
3 million is about 5% of the population of the UK, isn’t it? Surely if that many people in the UK want a new referendum that in itself is a justification. Especially with the politicians seeming extremely reluctant to actually go through with invoking article 50.
Dianne
Both not EU things.
I think the other teams are doing this for the UK anyway ;)
Nick Gotts
I know you have, and I know many others have. But you can hardly claim that the majority of those who are now saying “oh but the EU must be nice to the UK (or else)” were those compassionately advocating for Greece and refugees yesterday. This newfound appeal to being very kind to one another one happens now, suddenly, when the UK could find itself on the receiving end. There are voices in Labour claiming that Corbyn lost the Referendum because he wasn’t racist enough.
There is so much talk here about what the EU should or shouldn’t do and what the UK could do to hurt the EU further and so little talk about what the UK should do to clean up this mess. What I see, not just here, is a complete lack of accountability on the side of the UK. I don’t see it from the Leave campaign, I don’t see it from the government, I don’t see it from the opposition, I don’t see it from the media.
One question I should know the answer to but don’t: Was the UK a net contributor to funds in the EU or a net recipient? If it was a net recipient then Greece, for example, might have a very strong motive for wanting them out as soon as possible to free up funds to bail out Greece and end the austerity nonsense which is pretty clearly not helping anyone.
@253:
Too damn large and too damn serious. Fortunately, their party seems to be gathering itself into a circle and pointing its weapons inward. Plus, the refugees have been stopped elsewhere and aren’t coming into Germany so much any more, so that issue NIMBY’d itself away for now, taking the voters’ interest in the AfD with it.
Europameisterschaft. (Did I spell that right? Probably not.) You know, the thing the football hooligans get all excited about. (No, it’s not an EU thing either. I was just being evil.)
NIck Gotts ~254
LOL at your response to my 174. We never had it so good, didn’t realise I was paraphrasing Harold Macmillian :)
As to the main body of your comment, I pretty much agree with you.
As to when we invoke Article 50, unfortunately for the EU, unless Cameron is somehow pushed into it himself instead of leaving it for the next leader as he has said he is doing, then it could be a long time before it is invoked. In fact, even though the result of the referendum was to leave, nobody can force the PM to invoke Article 50 and, while unlikely, whoever is PM could if they wish leave it to the next election to whoever wins to decide. Perhaps on the Tory side even make it part of their manifesto. Another unlikely scenario, which I’ve already mentioned, is parliament voting to ditch it. However that would likely be the end of the Tory party as it now stands and the main reason it is very unlikely. As to what is actually going to happen, who knows. My one hope is that the anybody but Boris faction forming is successful. The only likely winners I can see from this fiasco is likely UKIP.
And of course, trust the Labour Party’s Blairites to take the spotlight off the Tories at such a crucial time. It seems almost as if they can’t get their way they would rather ruin the party. For if they do manage to get rid of Corbyn through shenanigans, like leaving him off the ballot, I know a hell of a lot of people who voted for him who will just leave Labour.
But if/when Article 50 is invoked I’ll be starting my plans for joining you north of the border.
Dianne #257, net contributors, about 170 million a week depending on how you calculate it.
And LOL EM.
Could be interesting;
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/fightback-against-brexit-on-cards-remain-eu-referendum-heseltine
@260: So their leaving the EU means the EU has less money. Actually, given what the pound is doing, their staying means the EU has less money too, at this point. Has India passed the UK as the world’s 6th largest economy yet?
Yeah. It’s all about us – apparently we think the EU will be so distraught to see us go that they’ll put up with almost anything. I’m getting a strong MGTOW vibe from many of the Brexiteers: “We’re going, and then you’ll be sorry! I said we’re going! Why aren’t you begging us to stay?”, while the rest of the EU wearily rolls their eyes and mutters “just fucking go already”…
I suspect a lot of people are now wishing they’d snuck a mechanism into the Treaty of Lisbon to allow them to eject a member if they insist on playing silly buggers.
A net contributor. However, our most significant contributions were endless obstructionism and political support of the far right…
Dianne #262, having dropped one place already and the pound dropping some more it might not take that long. Though without looking up the relevant figures I would only be speculating how close it might be to happening.
Dunc #263, well there is Article 7, the so called nuclear option, that allows suspending or kicking out a member. Unfortunately for the EU nothing the UK has done so far comes close to being able to invoke it. The last time it was talked about was I think when it looked like Austria might give a neo-nazi party a majority.
If India passes the UK as the world’s 6th largest economy, I wonder if they’ll be able to keep a straight face while condoling the British on their financial difficulties. I mean, France passing them was symbolic enough, but India? Maybe India can take their place in the EU*. Europe, Asia, whatever, right?
*Not a serious suggestion.
dunc
Currently the UK is like that ex of yours who left you “cause you are holding them back” but who doesn’t move out of the apartment and complains about how they still have to pay for utilities.
As I said above: The UK is currently burning trust, a currency that cannot be bought on the stock market. All that hiding, and not doing is further destroying relationships.
Dianne
That’s always a question that I think cannot be answered easily. The big countries that pay more than the receive are also those that benefit the most from the economic boons. It’s a bit like looking on your taxes, saying that you pay more than you get in direct benefits and therefore lose money.
+++
On the plus side it looks like Brexit also killed TTIP
Then spends all the rent money on booze, runs over your dog, gets into a fight with the neighbours, sets fire to the kitchen, shits the bed, and expects you to clean it up…
Dianne #266, LOL
Way back at comment #5:
It always makes me laugh how ‘markets going nuts’ never seem to have any real-world consequences down the line. 2008 was a good time for markets to go nuts, and honestly, it wasn’t all that much fun (nor are some parts of the world reasonably recovered from then), so more markets going nuts just isn’t going to look pretty. Hello, more economic migrants!
Also funny how this whole Brexit thing makes me a lot more nervous about sharing a border with Russia.
Yeah, sure – losing 5% of my pension fund in the last month is no big deal. /sarc
(And that’s before we figure in the devaluation of Sterling…)
No, it’s not. Unless it can be shown that the referendum was procedurally faulty, the result has to stand.
I wouldn’t disagree with that. The EU’s first priority should be avoiding disintegration – which means finalising the divorce as quickly as possible, without doing the UK any favours, to avoid encouraging others to leave.
Yeah, you’re right. However, the referendum was non-binding and if the government wants to, it can simply ignore it. But if it’s going to do that, it had best say so, the sooner the better because, despite Johnson’s statements to the contrary, the markets are going crazy, the pound’s at its lowest in at least decades, maybe ever, and things are only going to get worse until something is finalized. At this point, practically any actual decision would be better than the continued uncertainty.
That would be a big plus! Do you have a link?
dianne@273,
Legally it could, politically it can’t. The most it could do is temporise – which as you point out, prolongs the uncertainty.
@275: Maybe the Scots will come to the rescue and find a way to legally block the breakup. Or Cameron will say something that sounds like he’s invoking article 50 tomorrow and everyone can get on with it.
Ick. It’s all very funny to think of the irony of India passing Britain as the world’s 6th largest economy and so on…until you remember the real human cost. I’m sorry.
I think that would be an even worse idea than leaving the EU. It would deal a catastrophic blow to what remains of the democratic legitimacy of our political institutions and empower the hard right. I’d expect a huge number of otherwise reasonable Leave voters to decamp to UKIP immediately.
Nick Gotts
AFP Twitter
Yahoo News
It doesn’t seem to be widely reported, but those sources are usually credible.
Yeah, which is why I think that Osborne’s “only the UK can invoke Article 50 and we’ll only do that once we got the trade agreements we want” is a form of keeping the EU hostage: Nobody can move forward, everybody is suspended in a Limbo of uncertainty. That’s zero concern for the people affected by this. In or outside the UK.
@Giliell 279: I agree, but I remember hearing a report that an official in the EU (sorry about my terrible sourcing) said that article 50 can be invoked verbally, that there is no need of written notification. I strongly suspect the EU will have people listening to Cameron and the next PM carefully until they say something that can be construed as invoking article 50 then they’ll say, “okay, invoked” and go with it.
I don’t see why the EU should negotiate with Britain in any way until article 50 is invoked. If the UK is still part of the EU, a trade agreement with a member state is a non-concept. If they’re leaving and want to make a trade agreement, they’ll have to say so.
dianne, the only negotiations that invoking Article 50 brings about is the details of the UK leaving which can take up to 2 years unless the EU agrees to longer, which is extremely unlikely. But if the negotiations aren’t finalised by the two years deadline, unless the EU was to agree to a extremely unlikely extension, it won’t matter on the state of the negotiations as the UK will automatically be out of the EU. Negotiating for trade deals won’t happen until the UK is actually out of the EU whether it takes the full two years or less. Negotiations after that can take however long the EU wants them to take and you couldn’t really blame them.
dianne,
Except I don’t think it’s that simple.
All the day to day EU administration, laws and regulations that in any way concern UK could be uncertain now. Give them the same allowances as before the vote? Deny them? If so, on which basis? Will that fuck up other EU countries?
There is just too much uncertainty until article 50 is invoked. As Giliell says, EU is being held hostage.
I would only add that the citizens of UK are being held hostage by their own government as well.
Should a student from UK even bother to apply to ERASMUS? What should UK citizens in the process of looking for a job or already relocating to other parts of EU do?
Dianne
Exactly. The only pressure the UK has right now is to postpone invoking Article 50 indefinitely and I don’t think that is as good as they think it is, especially when thinking about the goodwill they need for further negotiations.
dunc
I assume that rq was totally sarcastic. I know what you mean. If only 5% of the current losses stick, we’re down 5k. I know we’re lucky in having savings, and we’re double lucky because we just finalised all contracts for our mortgage and sold what we needed to sell some weeks ago, but since we’re hardly rich fuckers who deserve to be put down a few notches (notice how rich fuckers always come out richer of such crisis) this still sucks.
Giliell – yeah, I assumed that rq was being sarcastic too, I was just joining in. Sarcasm is the best response I can muster right now. Fortunately I’m still a long way from retirement, and as you say, lucky to have savings at all. I’m sure there are many people out there who are going to be much more badly affected.
Dunc
I was being sarcastic, sorry if that was unclear. I was trying to comment about how flippantly that phrase about markets was originally expressed.
I live in a rather small country that was pretty hard hit a few years ago, still claims not to have recovered, and where any excuse of a possible economic downturn will be used for even more infrastructural cuts (which we can’t afford, from a survival point of view). 5% for me is a pretty huge amount, too, pretty much any way I look at it.
Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought #282, but that is what the two years is for, to give time to sort out national laws, were the government wants them different from the mandated EU laws that are part of theirs and what to do about nationals of the UK living in the EU and vice versa. Though the latter can be left as is for now unless one side wants to be awkward about it, but I can see little point in that as both sides citizens working/living abroad would suffer. Obviously it’s not quite that simple, but the biggest burden will be on the UK getting its laws in shape in time for those EU laws that were mandated when they were members but now want to remove. Many of these are laws that give UK workers greater protection than the Tory government wants them to have and as the Tories still have a majority can’t be stopped setting back the clock.
But even things like that can be put on the back burner by the UK, though I can see the Tories wanting to do away with such laws ASAP. But those issue aside, the main thing the EU has to do is simply remove mentions of Britain from its legislation, and while not an overnight job, there is no necessity of rushing it except where the UK being on the legislation could cause problems of some kind. And I bet the EU started on that as soon as it looked as if Leave was winning, with some work done before that just in case.
However, if they don’t get it done in time then it is all over there and then and things are as they stand at that point and we are out of the EU. Of course, the EU could extend it if there were details still to work out on things still relevant to both sides but it doesn’t have to and is extremely unlikely unless something important crops up. But it would have to be big for the EU to consider giving the UK extra time and I wouldn’t blame them.
It is then that any trade negotiations can start, though again that will be up to the EU and not Britain and after it starts it is not going to be a quick affair, even if both sides want it so. The only advantage Britain has is that it already knows the procedures so it isn’t starting from a blank sheet. Plus other countries already have non-member trade agreements with the EU, like Norway and Iceland, to use as a model. However, any half decent trade agreement is not going to be happy making for those who voted for brexit and rid of all EU workers, whatever the cost. But to be honest, screw them as they have done enough damage.
rq, @285: Yeah, that’s exactly how I took it. No need to apologise.
Dunc
Okay, good. *fewf*
(At least you used your sarcasm tags; one can never be sure with the internet.)
John Phillips, FCD,
I understand that’s what the two years are for, I was referring to the uncertainty of the time in between the referendum and the moment the two-year countdown starts.
I appreciate the thorough explanation. It’s clearer now that the highest levels of EU bureaucracy probably aren’t going to be a problem, but I’m still worried about the everyday issues people face. You know, like an UK citizen facing a French bureaucrat who isn’t sure whether to issue them with some kind or permit or not (hopefully some kind of EU-wide instruction that UK citizens are to be treated as before, until official notice will be issued), or “foreigners” in the UK facing obstructions from people in official capacities who are pretending UK is already out.
British tourists are already reported to having problems on Croatian coast, because no one wants to exchange pounds after its sudden drop. This should resolve itself quickly, but it is a sign of people’s confusion.
Giliell@279,
The links don’t seem to directly link Brexit and Valls’ comments about TTIP. Also worth noting that CETA (the equivalent of TTIP between the EU and Canada) just awaits ratification, and in practice will give a lot of US-based corporations as much or possibly more than TTIP would (they only need a subsidiary in Canada, as I understand it).
So here’s a question. Just read that we’re due to hold the presidency of the EU from June to December 2017 – some 6 to 9 months before the earliest possible date of any exit, but at a point when we’re presumably locked out of any negotiations taking place! Anyone got any idea how that’s going to work? Are we going to have to have a go-between relaying messages like a separating couple who aren’t on speaking terms but in a really passive aggressive way?
Nick Gotts
No, there’s no direct link, but I don’t think the timing is a coincidence, especially with the UK Tories being all in favour. Yeah, CETA is still a problem.
katybe
I assume that until they invoke Article 50, things would proceed as usually. Should they invoke it the presidency will probably go to the next country, because you don’t get certain rights if you invoke it.
Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought. Sorry my confusion. I agree with you on the confusion and uncertainty in the period between now and invoking Article 50. As to problems individuals from either side may face, I think the main problem is some jumped up little jobs worth making things difficult for people not from their side just because they can. Unfortunately that is too common as it is so that type will probably love the extra kick this enables for them. However, from the two governments point of view, this will likely be a keep things as they are for now for people working or living abroad as during the lead up to the referendum I saw senior politicians on both sides saying that nothing would change in the short term for people in a possible no man’s land, so to speak.
The biggest annoyance for the EU politicians at the moment, reading what they have said to the media is our politicians and not knowing what is going on. I think the EU, while wanting a quick invocation of Article 50, would be happy, at least in the short, as long as the UK said what the were planning to do and whether that was leaving or staying. For at least then that would eliminate much of the uncertainty in the markets etc. Unfortunately, as it seems the UK doesn’t know what it wants to do, or is too frightened to act and is too frightened of saying the wrong thing in case it is construed as invoking Article 50 when they don’t necessarily want to, or not yet anyway, this uncertainty will continue. The only thing that might stop the uncertainty, but I can’t see the EU accepting it on trust and I wouldn’t blame them, is if the UK gave them the nod that we would or would not invoke Article 50 but not just yet. The EU could then report that and things would then cool down, how much would depend on which choice the UK was giving the nod to. Leave would still cause jitters in the market as traders vie for the best position while stay would likely, IMO, lead to a steadier course for the markets, though maybe not immediately. But I can’t see either side willing to risk or trust the other over such a strategy.
Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought I should have mentioned that after two years or any other period if all member states agree on an extension, we are gone whether the negotiations are finished or not. At that point there would not be an automatic, ‘oh right, that’s done, lets start negotiating a trade deal now’. Nope, for we would then have to start from scratch by first applying like any other country wanting a trade deal with the EU. What the reply would be, who knows.
Thus when Boris told his followers that we would be able to negotiate a trade deal were we could pick and choose what bits we wanted, he was either lying or completely ignorant of how the EU does things. I’m not sure which damns him the most. For a lie you could put down to just politics as usual and not much different to the rest of what was said by leave. But being ignorant of it, IMO, totally disqualifies him from any role in government or as one of the negotiators. For if it was ignorance, in negotiations he would be crucified and dog knows what kind of deal he would come away with, probably waving a piece of blank paper and proudly proclaiming, trade in our times, with apologies to Neville Chamberlain, having just sold us down the river without realising it.
Here’s a “reality check” piece from the BBC, about contrasts between what the Brexiters said during the campaign, and what they are saying now – or to be blunter, their campaign lies.
Giliell @256: You called it. Iceland! LOL
I have it on good authority that Sterling took a dive last night.
That was supposed to be funny….
And I’m pissed off by the political news yet again. As if the prospect of Prime Minister Bloody Stupid Johnson weren’t bad enough, I didn’t think it was possible to find a worse person to be chancellor than Osbourne. Only to discover that Michael Gove is tipped for Boris’ chancellor if he gets the job. Michael Gove, who recently proclaimed how much he dislikes listening to experts generally, and with specific reference to economics experts being like Nazis. Because who else would you appoint to run the economy once Brexit has crashed it into the ground?
??
Every single part of their campaign was a lie, and there’s a chance* they’ll get the top jobs in the country? I’m already worried that “without a single shot fired” is, aside from just insensitive and wrong, going to be famous last words. I don’t think that would help, somehow. We don’t need a ventriloquist’s dummy in no. 11 at the best of times, but after he’s been a big figure in fucking over the entire country, and as the news (that should shock precisely zero people if there was any curiosity in this country, but will shock many) that everything they promised was a lie is trickling out? Shiiiiit.
* Somehow, I don’t think even the conservatives are foolish enough to give them it, but… I’ve been earth-shatteringly mistaken and disappointed before. Last time was about 4 days ago.
We’re at the point where numpties like Boris, Gove, and IDS are literally the best the Tories can come up with. Who else could they put up?
Trouble is, there’s an insistence that whoever gets the jobs must have been on the leave side of the campaign, and that hardly attracted the brightest and best. The prospect of any of them trying to negotiate a sensible deal for the future is just depressing. At this point, the best outcome I’m hoping for is that a few people manage to get out and leave the rest of us to sink. And I hate the thought that that’s the best.
It all seems to have escalated so quickly.
Or devolved, however you want to look at it.
Well at least that’s Boris gone after his mate Gove stabbed him in the back. I suppose one must be thankful for small mercies.