Best Of

My guess is that 75% of the movement in public opinion on Brexit is nostalgia for the time before Trump, Covid and Ukraine.

Nostalgia for an imaginary period before Brexit.

The 2006-2016 period wasn't the best in the UK - bank crashes, high unemployment, uncontrolled immigration and then public spending restrictions.

You'd have to go back to between 1995 and 2005 for a period when things seemed good and the future rosy.

1989 to 2001 was the really rosy time imo.

Not sure about your date range, although the 1992 to 1997 Tory Government produced some comedy gold.

Oh to have been in a position to buy a house in 1995...

Sadly I was twelve.

When it happens re-join day will be designated a national holiday. All across the land bonfires and fireworks will be seen - the culmination of weeks of preparation during which the citizenry will be continually accosted by groups of urchins asking a euro for the Nigel.

You've just reminded me - weren't we supposed to get some sort of Brexit themepark? And/or 'Brexit Day'? I have a vague memory of Mogg being involved. We're just three months or so away from the vote anniversary - we better get something.

Your brexit 50p will have to do.

A collectors item, now worth 50p.

At the very least I'd have hoped it was 52p or 48p. Then it would all seem worthwhile. In some way.

If they'd minted two coins, 52p and 48p, which could be locked together to make a pound coin...

More realistic to have two coins that looked like they ought to combine, but it's impossible to make them do so.

The referendum could only promise that HMG would apply to join the EU. It couldn’t promise it actually happening.

So the UK govt wins a referendum. Negotiates. What then ? Put the deal to the public ? What if the EU tell us to go swivel.

One step at a time.

A government would have to win a referendum first. 54% is not much of a lead to be going into a referendum campaign with.

Any government seriously considering a rejoin referendum would surely have to speak to the EU first, to have any sort of idea about what a rejoin referendum would actually mean.

Get elected on the promise of exploring it, then if the EU are interested, deliver the referendum, but don't for the love of god start from the referendum first.

Sadiq Khan is proposing putting seeking to rejoin the EU in the next Labour manifesto.
Then Labour have a mandate to seek to rejoin without a referendum.
Sounds good to me.
If LibDems do the same, then even a minority Labour government with LD support will have a mandate.

Whether you have a technical mandate or not such a strategy would be toxic to the British political system

As far as re-joining the EU is concerned, my view is encapsulated by a line from the classic The Boys of Summer - "those days are gone forever, I should just let them go".

We can't go back to the half-hearted, mean spirited, rebate-focussed, banana-obsessed membership we endured from 1973 to 2016. It does us no good and the EU wouldn't want that.

There were only two coherent policy positions and the Hokey Cokey expressed them beautifully - "you put your whole self in, your whole self out". That's still the case - we can quite happily stay out and make whatever kind of economic and political relationship we want with the EU or we can seek to re-join on the basis of being full and enthusiastic members. I imagine there remains no constituency for the Euro or even Schengen so I'm not sure what kind of membership we could have or would be acceptable and the big stumbling block remains Freedom of Movement within the Single Market.

I can't see any possibility of any British Government anytime soon being able to sell Freedom of Movement - without that, we can't join the Single Market as I understand it.

If we are going to rejoin, then we need to go in balls-deep. Get the full-fat, no opt-outs, wrap ourselves in that rag of a flag version of EU membership, with Schengen, Euro, the works.

If we are going to be subservient to the unelected capitalist hegemony in Brussels let's do it in style.

The referendum could only promise that HMG would apply to join the EU. It couldn’t promise it actually happening.

So the UK govt wins a referendum. Negotiates. What then ? Put the deal to the public ? What if the EU tell us to go swivel.

One step at a time.

A government would have to win a referendum first. 54% is not much of a lead to be going into a referendum campaign with.

Any government seriously considering a rejoin referendum would surely have to speak to the EU first, to have any sort of idea about what a rejoin referendum would actually mean.

Get elected on the promise of exploring it, then if the EU are interested, deliver the referendum, but don't for the love of god start from the referendum first.

Sadiq Khan is proposing putting seeking to rejoin the EU in the next Labour manifesto.
Then Labour have a mandate to seek to rejoin without a referendum.
Sounds good to me.
If LibDems do the same, then even a minority Labour government with LD support will have a mandate.

They will CLAIM a mandate. Doesn't mean they will HAVE one.

Parliament can do what it likes with legislation, but democratic legitimacy is a matter of opinion and persuasion. And reversing a decision taken by referendum won't have it unless a future referendum overturns it, just as leaving the EU required a referendum, in practice if not in theory.