E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

Democracy: everybody is equally screwed.

And it's particularly tricky because Vote Leave has throughout its campaign repeatedly stated that the UK can have both immigration control and an end to EU membership fees, and continued free trade and passporting of services with the single market: that it can have the cake and eat it.

Brexit: I don't think it means what people think it means.

 

Everyone tends to be equally screwed under most systems. Democracy just gives you a bit more choice on the matter

 

Anyone watching bbcqt tonight? It's from Boston, who had the highest proportion of brexit voters (75% iirc) in the recent referendum.

Warning: contains Rod Liddle.

 

I started watching it but gave up when the second question got asked as most of the audience and the majority of the panel seemed hell bent on blaming immigrants for all Boston's (and the Uk's) problems, it was the normal blame game IMO.

EDIT: Anyone know what happens when an elected government breaks a manifesto pledge?

The only reason i ask is I've only just found out the 2015 Conservative manifesto says "We say: 'Yes to the Single Market. Yes to turbo-charging free-trade." So if as Dr Fox and others seems to be suggesting we leave the single market doesn't that mean they've willfully, and demonstrably, broken a pledge they were elected on?

Does it mean they must strive to stay in the single market while at the same time delivering on Brexit?

 

I think that was the intention. After all it is what Vote Leave promised as well: that the UK is such an important market to the EU that pragmatic sense would prevail and the UK would continue to have the same access to the single market while not being an EU member anymore.*

The significance is that if the UK does not keep access to the single market, that is yet another Vote Leave promise broken: already there will be no extra money for the NHS, nor will there be the promised reduction in immigration or point-based system; now there will be no continued access to the single market. Just wait until they find out there will be no WTO option either.

And as polls repeatedly show, the majority of people will only accept Brexit if there is no personal financial penalty. Most people voted leave because of financial deprivation and hardship; on the very strong expectation that they would be better off outside of the EU with all them immigrants nicking their jobs, depressing wages and pushing up house prices etc.; most certainly not in the expectation that things would get financially worse for them. But now the Pound's drop in value is just starting to filter through to supermarket prices, OPEC has decided to limit oil output so fuel prices are going up, and Nissan, Toyota, Honda and Landrover are asking pointed questions from government while delaying further investment in their UK plants.

The government is stuck. It has to deliver on Brexit, but it cannot do so without at least temporary hardship, and it just doesn't know what to do. That's why it hasn't triggered Article 50 yet.

* The irony being, of course, that the UK made a decision to leave based on political principle, while it expects the EU to act in economic interest. The idea that the EU might be prepared to take an economic hit for its political principles was obviously never considered.

 

Nothing. Literally nothing.

 

Usually so. But these are, as they say, exceptional circumstances. There is 48% of the voting population waiting for this Brexit government to put their money where their mouth is, and a significant share of the 52% population who expect their unicorns to be delivered now. The government has 3 years until the next General Election to deliver...

 

Seeing as their words count for nothing, and they play purely on the emotions of the people, they might as well just warble a tune.

The followers will still applaud. The opposition will still boo.

 

Or three years to drag their feet and trigger article 50 at the last moment and then have the next government attempt to sort out the mess while they f*** off to retirement in their spanish holiday homes

 

Just make them do X-factor for a job in office.

 

No guillotines, no locking up in stocks and pelting with rotten vegetables, no smacked bums?

That's so depressing.

 

Well, there are smacked bums, but that is more about what they get up to in their leisure time...

 

Brexit: May to introduce EU repeal act in Queen's Speech

 

I've just been reading that article before I came here. Good on May and it sounds like a sensible approach to me. Let's get this ball rolling!

 

More importantly you'd think someone whose served as home secretary for years would know you can't just transpose one legal system to another, if a law, regulation, or rule references an EU institution, body, person, or anything specific to the EU those things aren't going to exist in the UK system.

 

Yeah, but Theresa May has to feed the baying Brexiteers something. This is a good way of giving the impression of "getting on with it" without actually doing anything significant (the clue is in the name).

She has just revealed that she intends to trigger Article 50 before the end of March 2017. I'm waiting for them to find out that it's all not as simple as they think it is. Just like "trading under WTO rules".

 

You know I am getting concerned about your absolute refusal to just let this go.
Do you sit with a voodoo doll of brexit every night stabbing it and hoping the world will end?

Just get on with life like everybody does, It'll be fine and nobody is going anywhere.
There is a much greater chance the EU will implode before march or godzilla will attack London.

 

You mean like people stabbing voodoo dolls of EU immigrants and hoping that we will go away as has been happening over the last year? Or stabbing voodoo dolls of the EU since 1997 and hoping for the EU to collapse (any time now... aaaany time...)?

I'm concerned with people's wishful thinking overriding their critical faculties, but there you go. It certainly doesn't inspire confidence when politicians keep voicing intentions about actions that can't be done --and I don't mean, I don't want to happen, but simply are not possible. Team Brexit is about to run into a wall of "Oh, ****, I didn't realise that...".

 

In the grand scheme of things, Nexxo has quite a few years of 'not letting go' before he's in the same league as the Brexiters, let alone catching them.