General / Off-Topic UK Only - POLL - How would you now vote if casting your vote again for the referendum?

[Becks]

As you've no doubt noticed, there is a certain lack of political and economic awareness on the part of many of the Brexiters. The benefits of downgrading are that we'd still keep the EU and the economic advantages it brings, yet they'd still be able to tell the brexiters we've left, and giving a knowing wink at the remainers.

Seriously. This is likely.

Yeah, and the EU would profit from an associated status far more than from the other possibilities, since they get basically they get now from the UK + probably more money + the UK out of the decisionmaking.
I agree that this is the most likely option of a Brexit scenario.

I don't think that's an option. Everything the UK does at the moment can also be done in the EU, and that's really bad for us. Any one of the nation states can veto any agreement made on account of their own interests (such is their "lack of sovereignty" ).

Not only that, but the various Parliaments around the UK have demanded a power of veto over any deal done, as well as others demanding a referendum on accepting any deal.

So in other words, we leave, spend 3 years negotiating a deal, then the Daily Mail doesn't like it and convinces the public to vote it down again... then what?

Then nothing. I honestly doubt that we'll see another referendum in the near future in the UK. Important decisions will now be made over the heads of the electorate to minimize the damage.

France is actually pretty hostile to the UK right now, and it isn't just because we stirred up a hornets nest with the National Front. Let me break this one down.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics...g-briefing-free-trade-free-movement-france-uk

Hollande is not only saying "Start article 50 now!" he is also telling us, in no uncertain terms, that he will not let us remain in the free market without free movement of people - and he is well aware of the focus on that in the UK.

He is basically daring us to jump. But why?

1. We aren't the only nation with a neo-fascist party like UKIP gaining traction. Hollande has La Pen and the far-right to worry about.

2. We leave, and France courts the big financial institutions in London, which gives their economy quite a serious boost that, up until now, the UK has enjoyed. Hollande will benefit greatly from that.

3. The UK falters, the economy shrinks, unemployment rises and a recession takes hold - a powerful lesson for the French people and a weakening the position of Hollande's domestic enemies.

and of course

4. Islamic immigration is a huge hotbutton issue in France right now. But if the UK leaves the EU. The French border authorities suddenly have a very easy way to limit the immigration of Muslims into France. Rather than stopping them at the ports and detaining them, as they currently do, if they find Muslim refugees/illegals on cargo ships bound for England the French may well simply leave them there to travel across the border. It's also possible they might actually "encourage" Muslims stowing away on such ships to move onto UK bound vessels. In addition, the Asylum "jungle" in Calais will have to be moved to UK soil, which will further give Hollande a boost domestically.

Germany is not as hostile, but Merkel is known for charming her opponent in the first step and stomping him/her in the second step.

The right wing populist party in Germany also is on the verge of collapsing after the migrant crisis calmed down and Brexits obvious downturns became visible to the common population in the EU.

Financial industry is another good point. In the current associated countries the financial industries don't get the passport they need to conduct their business in the EU without having a subsidiary there. The stock markets in Paris, Frankfurt and Rome will compete over the investors from London.

I agree with point three and four. The UK becomes an example of what happens if populists get their will.

 

[Sunleader]

One thing about Merkel.
Whatever she Announces to an Opposing Party. You should Expect that she will do the exact Opposite in the Backround while still talking about how she is doing what the Opposing Party wanted.


Happened in Germany itself.
Happened in Greece
and will Happen with UK. You would do good to not Trust Merkel Further than you can Throw her. Because while she is going all Goody Good Shoes and Negotiating. You can assume she will Put Pressure on it like Hell and not Give a Single Quarter behind the Curtain.

 

[Talarin]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...ng-after-brexit-vote/articleshow/53336777.cms

http://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/brexit-dents-global-economic-outlook/article8882241.ece

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/...pact-of-brexit?utm_term=.prXYG6Z4V#.iwwWEK5gV

http://www.southwalesguardian.co.uk...ate_since_financial_crisis__post_Brexit_vote/

Those aren't opinion pieces. Those are factual reports. They are all things that are happened that can't be denied no matter how much you want to put your fingers in your ears and go "lalalala doom and gloom lalalala". They're facts.

And those are just from the past 24 hours.

Denying facts doesn't make you look credible, intelligent, or even competent or mature. A mature person sees a fact and tries to deal with it. A competent person sees a fact and tries to understand and then deal with it.

It's good to know that I immediately called how the news was going to be reported. I forgot to explicitly say "wailing and gnashing of teeth" though. The actual report, which I linked to earlier in the thread, makes it clear that this is potentially only an initial shock response to the vote. Where did that factor into your thinking?

Are we getting to a place where every negative economic report is going to be ascribed to Brexit? Did you notice the downward trend in confidence in the UK since 2013? Do you realise that's nothing to do with Brexit? We very well may have been heading towards recession anyway...

Did you read and understand the articles you linked to? The Hindu article points to weakening economic performance globally. Brexit is the icing on the cake of an already fragile global economy and the EU isn't a force for strength in this equation, if anything the Eurozone makes it worse because it's really hard for the ECB to apply fiscal policy to such widely disparate economies.

Compare and contrast with Morgan Stanley admitting that they don't have a clue what Brexit will do to the economy, or the Bank of England showing "As yet, there was no clear evidence of a sharp general slowing in activity." on Wednesday.

As has been repeatedly said: it's far, far too early for people to be saying "I told you so".

I saw a piece on the Telegraph today, some of which I agree with:

The lesson for the new government? After too many disappointments voters no longer put faith only in eloquent words. Results are now needed and for good reason numerous voters have lost patience with an EU project which is now working well only in the heads of its apologists. In practice it is failing in every way: democratically, economically and as a source of European stability.

So what then of the moral panic now surrounding Brexit? The ranks of cosmopolitan liberals who are screaming that this is the end of everything? Is this panic not evidence that "good people" need to strive to stay as close as possible to the EU? Not at all. A major power centre has been challenged and almost by definition power centres have some control over the public narrative. For decades EU apologists have wielded their immense budget and nomination powers to promote people with the "right" attitude and projects with the "right" purpose. Simultaneously a highly skewed PR narrative has been dished out so incessantly (complimentary of unaware taxpayers) that numerous voters now confuse this narrative with the truth. This is why so many EU apologists genuinely seem to perceive the EU as a force for everything worthwhile, and every EU-critic as either dumb, a xenophobic throwback or misled by the PR-narrative of the other side.

Add to this the greatly underestimated element of narcissism among those making themselves heard. Few voters have time to penetrate the ins and outs of the political issues of the day, meaning much of the debate will come across as fuzzy. However, few want to jump into the same bed as the "baddies". The latter explains why so many metropolitan trendsetters compete to signal righteousness by simply backing the political norms in vogue (in the capital); louder than others when attempting to dress up a lack of independent thought as an act of bravery. This is perfectly illustrated by the attitude of some Bremainers: those who clearly relish moral posturing but cannot be bothered to really find out why more than 17 million Brits voted to leave the EU.

The UK has 17m reasons to seriously look at changing the status quo. I genuinely don't know if they've got the nuts to do it. I rather worry that much of the commentary in this thread about "quasi-EU-leave" is going to prove to be correct. Then I worry about UKIP getting stronger...

 

[FuzzySpider]

One thing about Merkel.
Whatever she Announces to an Opposing Party. You should Expect that she will do the exact Opposite in the Backround while still talking about how she is doing what the Opposing Party wanted.


Happened in Germany itself.
Happened in Greece
and will Happen with UK. You would do good to not Trust Merkel Further than you can Throw her. Because while she is going all Goody Good Shoes and Negotiating. You can assume she will Put Pressure on it like Hell and not Give a Single Quarter behind the Curtain.

I agree. She's intelligent, cunning, and it's difficult to know what she is up to - she is patient and plays the long game. But for all that, she seems to genuinely care. And she seemingly cares not only about Germany and the German people but about all the people of Europe.

Contrast her leadership with that of David Cameron, who gambled the entire nation on this referendum and lost - and for what? So he could rise to the top of his own party, only to throw it all away when he didn't want to clean up the mess he made.

 

[beelbeebub]

This is perfectly illustrated by the attitude of some Bremainers: those who clearly relish moral posturing but cannot be bothered to really find out why more than 17 million Brits voted to leave the EU.

Which is why I made an effort to try and understand people like Verminstar's point of view. I think I understand his thinking (on the vote) and critically, how he got there. I think he's wrong (as he thinks I'm wrong, fair enough) but it's not as simple as "uneducated, racist idiot votes Leave because he hates foreigners", there's a more complex back story of disenchantment and (no offense to verminstar) misinformation about the EU, that's been going on for decades. It's not vermnstar's fault (forgive me if this sounds patronising) but we were all exposed to the same drip drip anti EU messages and it's not easy to find the truth.

When this started I was neutral/undecided. Part of me leant towards Remain as the status quo, but part towards Leave as there were all these stories about bananas, and crazy laws and vast expenses and unaudited accounts swirling around in the back of my mind.

My work situation means I sometimes have long periods of spare time and one of these tomes coincided with the run up to the referendum so rather than do what I normally do and ignore everything until a day or two before, I started to do some digging, starting with the £350million a week figure. 'what a load of crap" I thought after a few hours digging. The contribution was miniscule compared to other government spends.

So i carried on digging, and the more I dug, the less the EU seemed to be the bogey man. Each time someone challenged me about an aspect of the debate I hadn't thought of, I went away and researched.

The tricky one was the sovereignty/democracy issue. Some went away and dug in to how the EU actually works, something that had never been properly explained before. I was really surprised by what I found. Far from being undemocratic it actually seems more democratic than then UK. not only that, but the UK seemed to have a huge amount of potential power.

Sadly, many people voted to Leave an undemocratic, unaccountable, bloated, german controlled EU super state that only exists in the pages of the daily express and the minds of UKIP voters.

even now I hear people talk about how undemocratic the EU is when it's clear they don't have a clue how it works or what decisions have been made. How can you decide something is democratic if you don't know how it works? It's like pronouncing something is broken, when you don't even know how to turn it on.

 

[verminstar]

Which is why I made an effort to try and understand people like Verminstar's point of view. I think I understand his thinking (on the vote) and critically, how he got there. I think he's wrong (as he thinks I'm wrong, fair enough) but it's not as simple as "uneducated, racist idiot votes Leave because he hates foreigners", there's a more complex back story of disenchantment and (no offense to verminstar) misinformation about the EU, that's been going on for decades. It's not vermnstar's fault (forgive me if this sounds patronising) but we were all exposed to the same drip drip anti EU messages and it's not easy to find the truth.

None taken...that's why I actually read yer comments whereas others get sorta skimmed through with something approaching indifference. I'm also not gonna argue against yer reasoning and in some respects, agree...grudgingly so but yer right about a few things so far. There are other details to the backstory that I simply can't openly share...not even in a private conversation I'm afraid. Some of those details would be the final pieces in the puzzle as it were, but yer doin ok so far.

As for how others think I raise my daughter? Ye just got blocked fer that one.

Have a nice day ^^

Edit...this thread is sorta pointless...2 of ye blocked now cos I honestly can't be bothered listening to how I raise my daughter so this is my last post. Don't link me into this thread again.

 

[Talarin]

Which is why I made an effort to try and understand people like Verminstar's point of view. I think I understand his thinking (on the vote) and critically, how he got there. I think he's wrong (as he thinks I'm wrong, fair enough) but it's not as simple as "uneducated, racist idiot votes Leave because he hates foreigners", there's a more complex back story of disenchantment and (no offense to verminstar) misinformation about the EU, that's been going on for decades. It's not vermnstar's fault (forgive me if this sounds patronising) but we were all exposed to the same drip drip anti EU messages and it's not easy to find the truth.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to blanket paint everyone with an opposing view with the same brush. I can see that quite a lot of effort has gone into understanding both my and Verminstar's point of view. At the same time, I see exactly that attitude displayed by other users in this thread, in the media and in the public domain generally and it scares the crap out of me.

The complete lack of empathy as to why people have voted for a radical change, no matter how misinformed you feel they may be, is exactly the reason that we'll eventually end up with a really extreme government at some point. People need to wise up to the idea that occasionally opposing points of view need to be considered.

 

[FuzzySpider]

The tricky one was the sovereignty/democracy issue.

I am just curious on this, if you would indulge me.

When you did your research did you consider the issue of national sovereignty outside of the EU? I'm talking about globalization and market forces here. Did you consider whether it was actually possible to have national sovereignty without being part of a FTA, or did that not cross your mind?

I'm asking because it's something I keep seeing coming up time and again on social media debates about this - people, intelligent people at that, don't appear to see the economic effects in the wider world having any impact on their governments ability to govern, which I'm finding extremely perplexing.

 

[beelbeebub]

None taken...that's why I actually read yer comments whereas others get sorta skimmed through with something approaching indifference. I'm also not gonna argue against yer reasoning and in some respects, agree...grudgingly so but yer right about a few things so far. There are other details to the backstory that I simply can't openly share...not even in a private conversation I'm afraid. Some of those details would be the final pieces in the puzzle as it were, but yer doin ok so far.

As for how others think I raise my daughter? Ye just got blocked fer that one.

Have a nice day ^^

Edit...this thread is sorta pointless...2 of ye blocked now cos I honestly can't be bothered listening to how I raise my daughter so this is my last post. Don't link me into this thread again.

Not sure what I did to rate a block, pretty sure I've not mentioned your daughter at all. Unless you mistook my 4 questions about parenting style? They were actually from an academic paper on identifying authoritarian tendencies. Interestingly enough you scored low on the scale even though your answers on capital punishment did correlate withyour anti EU stance. Either way there was no implied criticism of your parenting.

Apologies for any offence caused anyway.

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I am just curious on this, if you would indulge me.

When you did your research did you consider the issue of national sovereignty outside of the EU? I'm talking about globalization and market forces here. Did you consider whether it was actually possible to have national sovereignty without being part of a FTA, or did that not cross your mind?

I'm asking because it's something I keep seeing coming up time and again on social media debates about this - people, intelligent people at that, don't appear to see the economic effects in the wider world having any impact on their governments ability to govern, which I'm finding extremely perplexing.

I'm not quite sure what you are getting at with "national sovereignty outside the EU". Do you mean our sovereignty when we've left the EU or our sovereignty with respect to issues and parties outside the EU, I.e. The requirement in some cases fir the EU to act as a block?

 

[FuzzySpider]

Not sure what I did to rate a block, pretty sure I've not mentioned your daughter at all. Unless you mistook my 4 questions about parenting style? They were actually from an academic paper on identifying authoritarian tendencies. Interestingly enough you scored low on the scale even though your answers on capital punishment did correlate withyour anti EU stance. Either way there was no implied criticism of your parenting.

Apologies for any offence caused anyway.

I'm pretty sure he's talking about me.

I'm not quite sure what you are getting at with "national sovereignty outside the EU". Do you mean our sovereignty when we've left the EU or our sovereignty with respect to issues and parties outside the EU, I.e. The requirement in some cases fir the EU to act as a block?

The laymans version of sovereignty - so basically the UKs ability to govern itself, set its own laws, and forge the sort of society, economy, and legal structure it wants to have.

When you researched this did you only think about the effect that the EU currently had on our national sovereignty? Or did you consider international trade and market forces on national sovereignty?

And if you didn't consider it before researching did your research alert you to it?

 

[FuzzySpider]

Which is why I made an effort to try and understand people like Verminstar's point of view. I think I understand his thinking (on the vote) and critically, how he got there. I think he's wrong (as he thinks I'm wrong, fair enough) but it's not as simple as "uneducated, racist idiot votes Leave because he hates foreigners", there's a more complex back story of disenchantment and (no offense to verminstar) misinformation about the EU, that's been going on for decades. It's not vermnstar's fault (forgive me if this sounds patronising) but we were all exposed to the same drip drip anti EU messages and it's not easy to find the truth.

On that point, you'll find this to be extremely enlightening.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n15/john-lanchester/brexit-blues

It's also pretty clear at this point that "brexit", at least the kind that most people think they were going to get, isn't going to happen.

 

[jabokai]

On that point, you'll find this to be extremely enlightening.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n15/john-lanchester/brexit-blues

It's also pretty clear at this point that "brexit", at least the kind that most people think they were going to get, isn't going to happen.

Interesting article, cheers.