A generation to undo the damage caused by the selfish few.
52%
Hardly “the few”
53%, actually. Versus the 33% who still think it a good idea.
I'll put you down as one of the don't knows.
I agree. These numbers are starkly in favour of Shit, Brexit is crap, let’s go back.
I personally know several Brexit voters who regret their vote
I suspect a lot of if it just because Brexit unfortunately collided with a plague and then a massive war so it’s all turned out worse, and felt worse, than it might have done otherwise, nonetheless the numbers are the numbers and there SHOULD be a serious party campaigning for a new referendum and Rejoin, in the next GE, as it is clearly the wish of millions of people
I can’t for the life of me understand why the Lib Dems aren’t seizing this position and making it their territory. What is the point of them otherwise?
I get why Starmer can’t quite be so courageous but if Labour at some point take up this stance then good luck to them
We Brexited, democratically, and if the British people decide to reverse that in another vote, so be it. Fair enough. That’s what makes us different from the EU (and to my mind democratically superior) - WE DO NOT IGNORE OR OVERRULE REFERENDUMS
It doesn't matter now. It's not in the gift of any British government to reverse Brexit. Why would Starmer, or any other PM, wish to spend years negotiating terms of accession with the EU, when a referendum on rejoining might well be lost, and when the EU wouldn't want a lukewarm member anyway?
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
The absolute madness of the Euroref 2nd voters can be revealed if you simply game out what would have happened if, say, the Scots had voted YES in 2014 then a bunch of YOON politicians had said Nah, that’s a stupid decision, we’re gonna make Scotland vote again, without even enacting independence in the first place
A small but significant number of Nats would have realised that British/Scottish democracy was a sham, and could never deliver Indy, and they would have turned to violence. Scotland would have become Ireland in 1916-1920
Would the Brits have done the same if the Brexit vote had been overruled and a 2nd vote ordered, without us Brexiting? Probably, possibly, who knows - remember there was violence before the first Brexit vote: an MP was killed
Even if civil strife had been averted, millions of Leave voters would have boycotted the 2nd vote, correctly assuming that the whole thing was a fix, and their will would never be honoured, and democracy was a lie, and what’s the fucking point. Turnout in future elections would have plunged. Basically it would have shattered British democracy for a generation, maybe forever. Utter utter madness
That’s what I mean when I say hardcore Remainers weren’t just stupid, like Leavers, they were dangerously stupid because they thought their ludicrous shenanigans were “clever”
The madness was attempting to have a second vote before the first was implemented.
A second vote is entirely possible now to my mind, precisely because we've left.
The hardcore remainer scenario was the equivalent of say Corbyn winning the GE and then proceeding to have a 'confirmatory vote' before he ever stepped into office. The equivalent now would be to have a vote after say 4 or 5 years of him having been in office (Say he'd won GE19) which of course is completely democratic.
The key for me is that Brexit has happened as an event. Which makes a vote to rejoin now perfectly democratic. A vote prior to leaving properly (Which was 31st January 2020) would have been unconscionable.
Political reality is it's not going to happen for a while now, but democratically anything after 31st Jan 2020 to rejoin is/was fine.
Yes, of course
We have now brexited. The vote is honoured. British democracy works. It sticks to promises made by the prime minister, no less. Your Vote Will Count. This Is It. So it is still worth voting in future elections and referendums because it makes a difference. it matters. YOU, the voter, YOU MATTER
Now we’ve done that, Remainers/Rejoiners are free to start campaigning for an immediate 2nd referendum to go straight back in. Heck, if they are persuasive enough, I might even vote for them
But we HAD to honour the first vote. Anything else was insane self harm and would have sent us to a terrible place
We've had this discussion so many times, however. It's much less simple than this because many people would argue the first vote was not honoured. A large number of leavers believed they were voting for a reasonably close economic and trading relationship.
No, we voted on what we were offered. Leave or Remain, with no details. Neither side wanted details because Remain would have had to spell out exactly how we avoided further integration and Leave would have split between Hard Brexiteers and EFTA types
The whole referendum was a shoddy mess for which Cameron must take much of the blame, He did his shitty non-renegotiation, he decided to call the referendum in the slapdash way he did, he decided there would be no 2nd referendum of what kind of Brecit we wanted if it was Leave, and so on and so forth. The essay crisis prime minister produced a D grade essay. That will be Cameron’s terrible epitaph, he totally fucked up the one big job he had
But we could only vote on what the government offered us. Leave or Remain. And thus we voted
Any future government is now free to finesse the deal, of course, and I imagine that will be possible. The EU has it seems finally moved on from its Brexit Britain Must Be Punished attitude (which was understandable from an EU point of view, albeit spiteful and vindictive)
As you know, I don't agree with this. Before Grieve and others intervened on behalf of parliament, so often villified by leavers, we were quite possibly heading from something generally not advertised by Vote Leave ( leaving the single market ) , to something completely unrecognisable ( leaving with no deal ) , all to hold the Tory party together.
The country was offered a cake-and-eat it exit with close economic ties still remaining, and we got what suited the Tory Party to stay together, just short of no deal, even after expelling all its moderates.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
No - the conditions would need to be said too - otherwise when we lose the pound, are forced into the Euro, lose our central bank, pay lots more into the EU budget, have no rebate etc, then the whole shitshow starts again.
Make an honest case of the pros (trade, jobs for those who wish to work in Europe, boost to GDP etc) vs cost (being a net contributer to the budget, no check on Europeans moving to the UK). Otherwise it sets up the next 20 years of arguments.
A generation to undo the damage caused by the selfish few.
52%
Hardly “the few”
The shitshow doesn't lie in the fact that most voters voted to leave the EU.
It lies in the fact that a minuscule proportion of Brexit advocates (essentially the ERG and Farage's inner circle of deranged alcoholics) insisted on a version of Brexit that was the precise opposite of the assurances pre-referendum Brexit supporters gave to voters. At their 2019 peak, those lunatics amounted to not much more than 100 people: their number's now getting ever closer to single figures.
Most voters did not vote to leave the EU. Not voting is not the same as voting to leave the EU. The majority of voters did not vote to leave the EU, just a majority of the ones who did vote.
But that's just sophistry. If the referendum had also had a rider on turnout, then fair enough, but it didn't.
Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, has warned that a TV blackout of this summer’s Women’s World Cup is on the cards in Europe unless broadcasters there improve on their “unacceptable” offers for the rights.
Speaking at a World Trade Organization meeting in Geneva, Infantino said the bids from the big five countries – Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and France – were so low compared with the men’s tournament that they amounted to a “slap in the face” of the players and “all women worldwide”.
Interesting approach from FIFA. Not sure it will work.
Blatter would have tried driving up the TV bids by mandating skimpy shorts....
Looks like most of the games kick off breakfast time in Europe which limits TV interest, but offering 1% of what they pay for the men's tournament when they are getting 50% of the audience figure is certainly taking the piss.
What's that 50% based on? I can imagine the women's Euros final rated very well relative to the men's with both featuring England in prime time. The issue is, other than the England games, the women's games will rate very badly outside of primetime.
Guessing kick off time will outweigh growth of womens game since 2019 so Europe's audience likely to drop back a bit.
Kickoff time is an absolute killer here. There is a definite groundswell behind women's football but it's still 99% casual fans who will tune in in a kinda-similar way to the Olympics (I know nowt about e.g. Modern Pentathlon, but I'll tune in especially if there's a Brit who could well).
How many people will be getting up at 5:30 in the morning to watch non-home teams, I'm not sure - but it's nowhere near the number who would do so for the men's WC. Fifa crying sexism about it is pretty funny though.
For some bizarre reason, maybe I’ve just become excessively cynical, I find I can’t believe FIFA are angry that the low broadcast bids are offensive to women more that they are offensive to FIFA’s love of filling their bank account.
Supply ands demand and the free market.
I am heartened by the large crowds that the Women's Premier League, European games and the internationals are getting. Its great. But I also suspect that the ticket prices are still markedly cheaper than for the men's game.
That may change. But at the moment their isn't much of a competition to show the WC from Australia at rubbish times, so realistically FIFA need to take what they can get.
The worst thing would be no footage at all - as happened to cricket after Sky - lack of terrestrial is damaging for getting new players into the sport.
(Just checked - Womens Man Utd 6 pounds a ticket).
If we get those, it is worth the change. What we do after that is likely too difficult to achieve without some kind of national crisis where we all have a "where do we go from here" conversation. Covid could have been that, but we had Boris in government.
Did *any* country have a serious change of national direction post covid? My impression has been a lot of return to status quo (at varying paces) but I certainly haven't done a wideranging survey of this...
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
But Remainers also told terrible lies: Turkey’s accession was always out of the question, etc etc, and of course the europhiles had to overcome three decades of CONSTANT lies (there is no loss of sovereignty, it’s all a tidying up exercise, we will give you a vote on the Constitution etc)
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
There is something wild about the fact that Russia has mobilised 300,000 men since Sep, conducted 700+ air & drone strikes since Oct & hurled itself at Donbas since Jan, with as many as 20,000 killed in action ... and actually managed a net *loss* of territory in April https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1653391402179362817
It's a fair point. Largesse for students is just one more policy that can be added to the lengthy list of things that supposedly cannot be afforded because of the state of the public finances, those "difficult choices" that "have to be made" whilst rich old farts' triple locked pensions are maintained and their vast property wealth goes almost entirely untaxed.
All decisions like this do is confirm that you couldn't put a cigarette paper between the Tories and Labour. They're both bunches of third rate office seeking troughers who are only very distantly acquainted with the truth, and the main aims of both are to sit in ministerial offices and collect fat salaries for doing nothing of any value, whilst defending existing privilege.
The Shadow Cabinet is going to have to do better than endlessly shitting all over its own supporters if it wants to construct a stable electoral coalition. If I were a student who had been flirting with supporting that shower, I'd be sorely tempted to extend the middle finger in the general direction of Keir Starmer and either abstain or lodge a protest with the Greens.
There are some *massive* structural problems in this country. And if you propose a policy platform to (from your perspective) fix them, you either get laughed off stage (Corbyn) or booted out (Truss).
Our political system no longer allows for divergence from our managed national decline. So of course there is an ever-narrowing gap between the parties. My minimal expectations for the incoming Labour government is to treat people with basic human dignity and not be a cesspool of incompetent corruption.
If we get those, it is worth the change. What we do after that is likely too difficult to achieve without some kind of national crisis where we all have a "where do we go from here" conversation. Covid could have been that, but we had Boris in government.
They ain't going to treat people with dignity because they'll claim they can't afford to, and the levels of corruption will be the same because, lacking the will to do anything with their offices, they'll have nothing to do with their time but work out which of their mates are going to be installed as heads of which quangos.
I'm sorry, but if the only purpose of change is for its own sake then the democratic process is of no value. None whatsoever. We might as well not bother.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
Bet accordingly
It really makes you want to be there.
Like the tax office in Hartlepool
He's just waiting for his Cod & Chips plus mushy peas to arrive and the evening will be complete.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
The absolute madness of the Euroref 2nd voters can be revealed if you simply game out what would have happened if, say, the Scots had voted YES in 2014 then a bunch of YOON politicians had said Nah, that’s a stupid decision, we’re gonna make Scotland vote again, without even enacting independence in the first place
A small but significant number of Nats would have realised that British/Scottish democracy was a sham, and could never deliver Indy, and they would have turned to violence. Scotland would have become Ireland in 1916-1920
Would the Brits have done the same if the Brexit vote had been overruled and a 2nd vote ordered, without us Brexiting? Probably, possibly, who knows - remember there was violence before the first Brexit vote: an MP was killed
Even if civil strife had been averted, millions of Leave voters would have boycotted the 2nd vote, correctly assuming that the whole thing was a fix, and their will would never be honoured, and democracy was a lie, and what’s the fucking point. Turnout in future elections would have plunged. Basically it would have shattered British democracy for a generation, maybe forever. Utter utter madness
That’s what I mean when I say hardcore Remainers weren’t just stupid, like Leavers, they were dangerously stupid because they thought their ludicrous shenanigans were “clever”
The madness was attempting to have a second vote before the first was implemented.
A second vote is entirely possible now to my mind, precisely because we've left.
The hardcore remainer scenario was the equivalent of say Corbyn winning the GE and then proceeding to have a 'confirmatory vote' before he ever stepped into office. The equivalent now would be to have a vote after say 4 or 5 years of him having been in office (Say he'd won GE19) which of course is completely democratic.
The key for me is that Brexit has happened as an event. Which makes a vote to rejoin now perfectly democratic. A vote prior to leaving properly (Which was 31st January 2020) would have been unconscionable.
Political reality is it's not going to happen for a while now, but democratically anything after 31st Jan 2020 to rejoin is/was fine.
Yes, of course
We have now brexited. The vote is honoured. British democracy works. It sticks to promises made by the prime minister, no less. Your Vote Will Count. This Is It. So it is still worth voting in future elections and referendums because it makes a difference. it matters. YOU, the voter, YOU MATTER
Now we’ve done that, Remainers/Rejoiners are free to start campaigning for an immediate 2nd referendum to go straight back in. Heck, if they are persuasive enough, I might even vote for them
But we HAD to honour the first vote. Anything else was insane self harm and would have sent us to a terrible place
Rejoin (as in a full rejoin of the EU) is going to become like the Death Penalty. Even if there are consistent polling majorities in favour, no mainstream political party, knowing what a shit show it would cause, is going to be dumb enough to suggest it.
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
But Remainers also told terrible lies: Turkey’s accession was always out of the question, etc etc, and of course the europhiles had to overcome three decades of CONSTANT lies (there is no loss of sovereignty, it’s all a tidying up exercise, we will give you a vote on the Constitution etc)
Although, of course, we could have vetoed Turkish membership as a member of the EU, while we could not as a member of EFTA/EEA.
A generation to undo the damage caused by the selfish few.
52%
Hardly “the few”
53%, actually. Versus the 33% who still think it a good idea.
I'll put you down as one of the don't knows.
I agree. These numbers are starkly in favour of Shit, Brexit is crap, let’s go back.
I personally know several Brexit voters who regret their vote
I suspect a lot of if it just because Brexit unfortunately collided with a plague and then a massive war so it’s all turned out worse, and felt worse, than it might have done otherwise, nonetheless the numbers are the numbers and there SHOULD be a serious party campaigning for a new referendum and Rejoin, in the next GE, as it is clearly the wish of millions of people
I can’t for the life of me understand why the Lib Dems aren’t seizing this position and making it their territory. What is the point of them otherwise?
I get why Starmer can’t quite be so courageous but if Labour at some point take up this stance then good luck to them
We Brexited, democratically, and if the British people decide to reverse that in another vote, so be it. Fair enough. That’s what makes us different from the EU (and to my mind democratically superior) - WE DO NOT IGNORE OR OVERRULE REFERENDUMS
It doesn't matter now. It's not in the gift of any British government to reverse Brexit. Why would Starmer, or any other PM, wish to spend years negotiating terms of accession with the EU, when a referendum on rejoining might well be lost, and when the EU wouldn't want a lukewarm member anyway?
The moving hand hath writ.
Yes, it’s done now. I can’t see us formally Rejoining ever. There will be some fiddling and finessing on Single Market stuff as it benefits both sides. See Switzerland - which has been constantly renegotiating its relationship with the EU for decades. That’s us. But it will be less and less emotional and consequential for most people. Just boring politics for politicians to sort
Besides, as I have said more than once, AI is about to transform economies and politics in a ways which will utterly dwarf our particular relationship with the European Union so it all becomes moot and trivial
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
As discussed many times on PB, over the years, the unofficial kick-off of the referendum campaign was in Summer 2015, and for the first few months Hannan himself, central planning figure and architect of Vote Leave, was explicitly talking about leaving and staying in the single-market, being like Norway, etc.
Fantasy Cakeism was built-in from the start, from people who had convinced themselves that Britain had a stronger negotiating position than in fact was the case, and it was just the "liberal elite" obscuring this reality and running Britain down, rather than the modern world.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
Given the toxicity of 'leave' that question formation could backfire spectacularly from a remainleave er... go back in point of view
Ah but no - it's clever because it leverages the grey cell deficit of 2016 Leave voters. Lots of them will just pile in and tick the same box again.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
It is compellingly obvious that the route for moderate remainers and sensible leavers is EFTA/EEA. We can only hope that Sir Keir thinks so too.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
Creatively ambiguous would be generous.
Time to show my ignorance (yet again). Do we not have free trade with the EU now? I understood that the issues are associated with ease of trade (paperwork etc) not tariffs? Please laugh at me if I have this wrong.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
But Remainers also told terrible lies: Turkey’s accession was always out of the question, etc etc, and of course the europhiles had to overcome three decades of CONSTANT lies (there is no loss of sovereignty, it’s all a tidying up exercise, we will give you a vote on the Constitution etc)
Although, of course, we could have vetoed Turkish membership as a member of the EU, while we could not as a member of EFTA/EEA.
In theory we could still cause some trouble, if we felt like it: Turkey only gets in when the situation in Cyprus is resolved. Cyprus is only resolved when the UNSC says it is. We have a veto at the UNSC. Not that we would do this, of course.
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
Bet accordingly
It really makes you want to be there.
Like the tax office in Hartlepool
Soi 8 Sukhumvit is fucking brilliant. Superb restaurants and bars, full of all nationalities, and cuisines, with that intense vivacity of nightlife that only Bangkok delivers
I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
Creatively ambiguous would be generous.
Time to show my ignorance (yet again). Do we not have free trade with the EU now? I understood that the issues are associated with ease of trade (paperwork etc) not tariffs? Please laugh at me if I have this wrong.
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
No, they didn't.
They did the opposite in fact
To believe this, you have to believe that the referendum had nothing to do with ending free movment of people, which I know you don't believe.
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
Bet accordingly
It really makes you want to be there.
Like the tax office in Hartlepool
Just as there ain't no ferry to Glastonbury, there ain't no tax office in Hartlepool. Cue for a song, and a lament for Adge Cutler, d. 5th May 1974. O the years, the years....
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
The absolute madness of the Euroref 2nd voters can be revealed if you simply game out what would have happened if, say, the Scots had voted YES in 2014 then a bunch of YOON politicians had said Nah, that’s a stupid decision, we’re gonna make Scotland vote again, without even enacting independence in the first place
A small but significant number of Nats would have realised that British/Scottish democracy was a sham, and could never deliver Indy, and they would have turned to violence. Scotland would have become Ireland in 1916-1920
Would the Brits have done the same if the Brexit vote had been overruled and a 2nd vote ordered, without us Brexiting? Probably, possibly, who knows - remember there was violence before the first Brexit vote: an MP was killed
Even if civil strife had been averted, millions of Leave voters would have boycotted the 2nd vote, correctly assuming that the whole thing was a fix, and their will would never be honoured, and democracy was a lie, and what’s the fucking point. Turnout in future elections would have plunged. Basically it would have shattered British democracy for a generation, maybe forever. Utter utter madness
That’s what I mean when I say hardcore Remainers weren’t just stupid, like Leavers, they were dangerously stupid because they thought their ludicrous shenanigans were “clever”
The madness was attempting to have a second vote before the first was implemented.
A second vote is entirely possible now to my mind, precisely because we've left.
The hardcore remainer scenario was the equivalent of say Corbyn winning the GE and then proceeding to have a 'confirmatory vote' before he ever stepped into office. The equivalent now would be to have a vote after say 4 or 5 years of him having been in office (Say he'd won GE19) which of course is completely democratic.
The key for me is that Brexit has happened as an event. Which makes a vote to rejoin now perfectly democratic. A vote prior to leaving properly (Which was 31st January 2020) would have been unconscionable.
Political reality is it's not going to happen for a while now, but democratically anything after 31st Jan 2020 to rejoin is/was fine.
Yes, of course
We have now brexited. The vote is honoured. British democracy works. It sticks to promises made by the prime minister, no less. Your Vote Will Count. This Is It. So it is still worth voting in future elections and referendums because it makes a difference. it matters. YOU, the voter, YOU MATTER
Now we’ve done that, Remainers/Rejoiners are free to start campaigning for an immediate 2nd referendum to go straight back in. Heck, if they are persuasive enough, I might even vote for them
But we HAD to honour the first vote. Anything else was insane self harm and would have sent us to a terrible place
Rejoin (as in a full rejoin of the EU) is going to become like the Death Penalty. Even if there are consistent polling majorities in favour, no mainstream political party, knowing what a shit show it would cause, is going to be dumb enough to suggest it.
I suspect that's right. As you know I was and am a very committed Europhile but even I don't really relish the idea of getting into the same old dialogue of the deaf over membership that a new referendum would entail. The rage has ebbed away. Polls showing a majority for rejoin are more poignant than stirring these days.
That's perhaps the biggest achievement of the 2019 election victory: it ended the fight in all but the most ardent FBPEs. It killed off hope, and of course it's the hope that kills you. The total defeat in 2019 was almost a blessed release.
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
Bet accordingly
It really makes you want to be there.
Like the tax office in Hartlepool
Soi 8 Sukhumvit is fucking brilliant. Superb restaurants and bars, full of all nationalities, and cuisines, with that intense vivacity of nightlife that only Bangkok delivers
I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No
It takes a long-time to know Los Angeles, and much of it is pretty soulless.
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
Bet accordingly
Good luck finding anywhere you could vote Plaid Cymru. I call bullshit.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
Creatively ambiguous would be generous.
Those were not the exact words. The statement talked about being "part of" a free trade zone, not a member of it.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
Creatively ambiguous would be generous.
Time to show my ignorance (yet again). Do we not have free trade with the EU now? I understood that the issues are associated with ease of trade (paperwork etc) not tariffs? Please laugh at me if I have this wrong.
Depends on how you define "free trade". It's a term of art at best. We don't have completely free trade because it is restricted by regulations, quotas, visa requirements and the various bits of admin that all combine to make up non-tariff barriers. For most products and services these are most important anyway - customs duties are only material in a limited number of industries.
Anyway I've just been invited to talk on a panel at an event, the topic of which is "Brexit opportunities: what will really make a difference for business", so I'd better starting polishing my Brexit boosterism.
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
Bet accordingly
It really makes you want to be there.
Like the tax office in Hartlepool
Soi 8 Sukhumvit is fucking brilliant. Superb restaurants and bars, full of all nationalities, and cuisines, with that intense vivacity of nightlife that only Bangkok delivers
I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No
That may be but it looks gopping full of old white blokes drinking Tetleys.
"sipping a martini in a wine bar" sounds très élégant. My arse.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
But Remainers also told terrible lies: Turkey’s accession was always out of the question, etc etc, and of course the europhiles had to overcome three decades of CONSTANT lies (there is no loss of sovereignty, it’s all a tidying up exercise, we will give you a vote on the Constitution etc)
Below is a great twitter thread from 2019 documenting how the debate moved from membership or not of the SM if we chose to leave the EU being an active issue before the referendum and immediately afterwards to becoming "Both sides said" by January 2017.
The video showing David Davies position developing from "its a negotiation" to "both sides said" is probably enough , but there is loads more contemporary evidence besides.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.
The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.
Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.
The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
Creatively ambiguous would be generous.
Those were not the exact words. The statement talked about being "part of" a free trade zone, not a member of it.
Apologies.
If someone says, you'll be "a part" of something, it suggests that there is a whole, of which you are a part.
Very different to being a member.
But you will concede, I hope, that some people might have read the line as suggesting that the UK would be a member of the free trade area that went from the Baltic to the Atlantic?
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
But Remainers also told terrible lies: Turkey’s accession was always out of the question, etc etc, and of course the europhiles had to overcome three decades of CONSTANT lies (there is no loss of sovereignty, it’s all a tidying up exercise, we will give you a vote on the Constitution etc)
Although, of course, we could have vetoed Turkish membership as a member of the EU, while we could not as a member of EFTA/EEA.
In theory we could still cause some trouble, if we felt like it: Turkey only gets in when the situation in Cyprus is resolved. Cyprus is only resolved when the UNSC says it is. We have a veto at the UNSC. Not that we would do this, of course.
I suspect the French would veto anyway.
And given the overt racism and xenophobia on show there, Austria as well.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
But Remainers also told terrible lies: Turkey’s accession was always out of the question, etc etc, and of course the europhiles had to overcome three decades of CONSTANT lies (there is no loss of sovereignty, it’s all a tidying up exercise, we will give you a vote on the Constitution etc)
Below is a great twitter thread from 2019 documenting how the debate moved from membership or not of the SM if we chose to leave the EU being an active issue before the referendum and immediately afterwards to becoming "Both sides said" by January 2017.
The video showing David Davies position developing from "its a negotiation" to "both sides said" is probably enough , but there is loads more contemporary evidence besides.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
The absolute madness of the Euroref 2nd voters can be revealed if you simply game out what would have happened if, say, the Scots had voted YES in 2014 then a bunch of YOON politicians had said Nah, that’s a stupid decision, we’re gonna make Scotland vote again, without even enacting independence in the first place
A small but significant number of Nats would have realised that British/Scottish democracy was a sham, and could never deliver Indy, and they would have turned to violence. Scotland would have become Ireland in 1916-1920
Would the Brits have done the same if the Brexit vote had been overruled and a 2nd vote ordered, without us Brexiting? Probably, possibly, who knows - remember there was violence before the first Brexit vote: an MP was killed
Even if civil strife had been averted, millions of Leave voters would have boycotted the 2nd vote, correctly assuming that the whole thing was a fix, and their will would never be honoured, and democracy was a lie, and what’s the fucking point. Turnout in future elections would have plunged. Basically it would have shattered British democracy for a generation, maybe forever. Utter utter madness
That’s what I mean when I say hardcore Remainers weren’t just stupid, like Leavers, they were dangerously stupid because they thought their ludicrous shenanigans were “clever”
The madness was attempting to have a second vote before the first was implemented.
A second vote is entirely possible now to my mind, precisely because we've left.
The hardcore remainer scenario was the equivalent of say Corbyn winning the GE and then proceeding to have a 'confirmatory vote' before he ever stepped into office. The equivalent now would be to have a vote after say 4 or 5 years of him having been in office (Say he'd won GE19) which of course is completely democratic.
The key for me is that Brexit has happened as an event. Which makes a vote to rejoin now perfectly democratic. A vote prior to leaving properly (Which was 31st January 2020) would have been unconscionable.
Political reality is it's not going to happen for a while now, but democratically anything after 31st Jan 2020 to rejoin is/was fine.
To add leavers denying we can never have one ever again because of "democracy" are just as bad as the remainers who wanted a second vote before we left.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
But Remainers also told terrible lies: Turkey’s accession was always out of the question, etc etc, and of course the europhiles had to overcome three decades of CONSTANT lies (there is no loss of sovereignty, it’s all a tidying up exercise, we will give you a vote on the Constitution etc)
Below is a great twitter thread from 2019 documenting how the debate moved from membership or not of the SM if we chose to leave the EU being an active issue before the referendum and immediately afterwards to becoming "Both sides said" by January 2017.
The video showing David Davies position developing from "its a negotiation" to "both sides said" is probably enough , but there is loads more contemporary evidence besides.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.
The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.
Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.
The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.
That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.
And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
Creatively ambiguous would be generous.
Those were not the exact words. The statement talked about being "part of" a free trade zone, not a member of it.
Apologies.
If someone says, you'll be "a part" of something, it suggests that there is a whole, of which you are a part.
Very different to being a member.
But you will concede, I hope, that some people might have read the line as suggesting that the UK would be a member of the free trade area that went from the Baltic to the Atlantic?
I might add that it's an odd choice of geography. "From the Baltic to the Atlantic" makes me think: Norway and Sweden. A better pan-European descriptor might be 'from the Arctic to the Mediterranean'.
A generation to undo the damage caused by the selfish few.
52%
Hardly “the few”
53%, actually. Versus the 33% who still think it a good idea.
I'll put you down as one of the don't knows.
I agree. These numbers are starkly in favour of Shit, Brexit is crap, let’s go back.
I personally know several Brexit voters who regret their vote
I suspect a lot of if it just because Brexit unfortunately collided with a plague and then a massive war so it’s all turned out worse, and felt worse, than it might have done otherwise, nonetheless the numbers are the numbers and there SHOULD be a serious party campaigning for a new referendum and Rejoin, in the next GE, as it is clearly the wish of millions of people
I can’t for the life of me understand why the Lib Dems aren’t seizing this position and making it their territory. What is the point of them otherwise?
I get why Starmer can’t quite be so courageous but if Labour at some point take up this stance then good luck to them
We Brexited, democratically, and if the British people decide to reverse that in another vote, so be it. Fair enough. That’s what makes us different from the EU (and to my mind democratically superior) - WE DO NOT IGNORE OR OVERRULE REFERENDUMS
It doesn't matter now. It's not in the gift of any British government to reverse Brexit. Why would Starmer, or any other PM, wish to spend years negotiating terms of accession with the EU, when a referendum on rejoining might well be lost, and when the EU wouldn't want a lukewarm member anyway?
The moving hand hath writ.
I don't want it but I think it depends on the EU.
If they really wanted Britain back the smart thing for them to do would be to offer previous terms, with Cameron's deal, plus the end of the rebate, and hugely accelerate the reaccession process. I.e. also with an ever closer union cop out clause and the Maastricht exemption on the Euro back in but you pay more because fuck up and we need it - sorry. Otherwise we'd vote it down.
But, they've never shown themselves to be that flexible. So I expect them to say standard terms, take it or leave it sister.
The alternative pro EU approach is lots and lots of side deals that progressively approach an asymptote of where our previous membership roughly was anyway, with payments, freer movement, and lots of "informal" consultation in future that reflects the real-politik. EPU++++
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
Given the toxicity of 'leave' that question formation could backfire spectacularly from a remainleave er... go back in point of view
Ah but no - it's clever because it leverages the grey cell deficit of 2016 Leave voters. Lots of them will just pile in and tick the same box again.
"Bastards making us vote again. We'll show em!"
Ah, but us erstwhile remainers are smart enough to see the obvious trick and smart enough to realise it must be a double bluff, therefore we will vote Remain
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
But Remainers also told terrible lies: Turkey’s accession was always out of the question, etc etc, and of course the europhiles had to overcome three decades of CONSTANT lies (there is no loss of sovereignty, it’s all a tidying up exercise, we will give you a vote on the Constitution etc)
Below is a great twitter thread from 2019 documenting how the debate moved from membership or not of the SM if we chose to leave the EU being an active issue before the referendum and immediately afterwards to becoming "Both sides said" by January 2017.
The video showing David Davies position developing from "its a negotiation" to "both sides said" is probably enough , but there is loads more contemporary evidence besides.
Sorry to impose cognitive dissonance on anyone who has "remembered" differently!
The person behind that account is another example of someone who has radicalised themselves beyond recognition. He started out as a Eurosceptic Tory.
Are you saying that people can move from being fanatically pro- or anti-Brexit to the completely opposite position and acquire the zeal of the convert in so doing?
On the single market, there is a (very famous? I'm not going to try to find it) clip of all sides saying categorically that Brexit would mean the UK leaving the single market.
As @kinabalu has pointed out, relying on your constituency to be TAPS is evidently a winning strategy.
At least our leaders score better on good physical and mental health than their US counterparts would.
Not a bad score for Starmer given how much older than Sunak he is.
Yes, but imagine a cage match between Trump and Sunak.
There’s a whole genre of Bollywood films where the small, nimble hero beats X huge, lumbering thugs sent by The Big Bad.
OK so this allows us to segue into:
Who would win in a fight between the Westminster party leaders?
Under time honoured British tradition, it would turn out that the head of the Natural law party is actually ex Captain of Boats, Hereford Boat club. Or something like that
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
Bet accordingly
It really makes you want to be there.
Like the tax office in Hartlepool
Soi 8 Sukhumvit is fucking brilliant. Superb restaurants and bars, full of all nationalities, and cuisines, with that intense vivacity of nightlife that only Bangkok delivers
I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No
That may be but it looks gopping full of old white blokes drinking Tetleys.
"sipping a martini in a wine bar" sounds très élégant. My arse.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
Creatively ambiguous would be generous.
Time to show my ignorance (yet again). Do we not have free trade with the EU now? I understood that the issues are associated with ease of trade (paperwork etc) not tariffs? Please laugh at me if I have this wrong.
Depends on how you define "free trade". It's a term of art at best. We don't have completely free trade because it is restricted by regulations, quotas, visa requirements and the various bits of admin that all combine to make up non-tariff barriers. For most products and services these are most important anyway - customs duties are only material in a limited number of industries.
Anyway I've just been invited to talk on a panel at an event, the topic of which is "Brexit opportunities: what will really make a difference for business", so I'd better starting polishing my Brexit boosterism.
Lawyers, accountants, VAT consultants should all be doing bonanza trade from the extra red tape.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
No - the conditions would need to be said too - otherwise when we lose the pound, are forced into the Euro, lose our central bank, pay lots more into the EU budget, have no rebate etc, then the whole shitshow starts again.
Make an honest case of the pros (trade, jobs for those who wish to work in Europe, boost to GDP etc) vs cost (being a net contributer to the budget, no check on Europeans moving to the UK). Otherwise it sets up the next 20 years of arguments.
We're talking practical politics not an exam question. For the Change proposition to win it should stay vague and simplistic and aspirational. It should also avoid engaging with difficult questions. Look at 2016. Would Leave have won if it'd been defined. Nope. And would Leave have won if there'd been a rigorous, informed and intelligent debate? Not a chance. Everybody knows this. THAT is the lesson of the EU referendum, none of this "next time we should be all elevated and thoughtful" wishcasting. That's naive or it's virtue-signalling or (when it comes from unreformed Leavers) it's pure and simple trolling.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
Given the toxicity of 'leave' that question formation could backfire spectacularly from a remainleave er... go back in point of view
Ah but no - it's clever because it leverages the grey cell deficit of 2016 Leave voters. Lots of them will just pile in and tick the same box again.
"Bastards making us vote again. We'll show em!"
Ah, but us erstwhile remainers are smart enough to see the obvious trick and smart enough to realise it must be a double bluff, therefore we will vote Remain
Oh god I see what you mean. Too clever by half and thus lose again. I'll work on it.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
Creatively ambiguous would be generous.
Those were not the exact words. The statement talked about being "part of" a free trade zone, not a member of it.
Apologies.
If someone says, you'll be "a part" of something, it suggests that there is a whole, of which you are a part.
Very different to being a member.
But you will concede, I hope, that some people might have read the line as suggesting that the UK would be a member of the free trade area that went from the Baltic to the Atlantic?
I might add that it's an odd choice of geography. "From the Baltic to the Atlantic" makes me think: Norway and Sweden. A better pan-European descriptor might be 'from the Arctic to the Mediterranean'.
Also, I was thinking of EFTA rather than the EU. I wonder if that was a deliberately misleading wording originally.
I’d argue the problem is too much attempted determinism from Westminster.
A little while ago, a friend put the idea of subsidy-on-delivery for Green tech investment to their local MP. As in, say pay X per actual battery cell delivered to a customer, with X a function of U.K. content/work.
The response (from an opposition MP) was that would be a ghastly abdication of the responsibility of government to direct spending in detail.
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
Bet accordingly
It really makes you want to be there.
Like the tax office in Hartlepool
Soi 8 Sukhumvit is fucking brilliant. Superb restaurants and bars, full of all nationalities, and cuisines, with that intense vivacity of nightlife that only Bangkok delivers
I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No
That may be but it looks gopping full of old white blokes drinking Tetleys.
"sipping a martini in a wine bar" sounds très élégant. My arse.
I know you’ve not traveled much so I’ll give you a little tour
Soi 8 is magical because you get such a mix. This is Det 5, a garden bar which dates back to when these were dirt roads in the 1960s and this bar was full of American GIs on RnR. They have the photos in the bogs
Ten yards away is a chic Italian which does great food and is seriously pricey
Yet just across the road locals are cooking up their own food on a brazier
And all of this is surrounded by soaring skyscrapers with rooftop bars full hi-so Chinese Thai billionaire girls
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
Creatively ambiguous would be generous.
Those were not the exact words. The statement talked about being "part of" a free trade zone, not a member of it.
Apologies.
If someone says, you'll be "a part" of something, it suggests that there is a whole, of which you are a part.
Very different to being a member.
But you will concede, I hope, that some people might have read the line as suggesting that the UK would be a member of the free trade area that went from the Baltic to the Atlantic?
I might add that it's an odd choice of geography. "From the Baltic to the Atlantic" makes me think: Norway and Sweden. A better pan-European descriptor might be 'from the Arctic to the Mediterranean'.
Just as State of Georgia never quite makes it to the Gulf of Mexico, the Kingdom of Norway never quite makes it to the Gulf of Bothnia, let alone the Baltic proper . . . or improper . . .
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
Bet accordingly
It really makes you want to be there.
Like the tax office in Hartlepool
Soi 8 Sukhumvit is fucking brilliant. Superb restaurants and bars, full of all nationalities, and cuisines, with that intense vivacity of nightlife that only Bangkok delivers
I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No
That may be but it looks gopping full of old white blokes drinking Tetleys.
"sipping a martini in a wine bar" sounds très élégant. My arse.
I know you’ve not traveled much so I’ll give you a little tour
Soi 8 is magical because you get such a mix. This is Det 5, a garden bar which dates back to when these were dirt roads in the 1960s and this bar was full of American GIs on RnR. They have the photos in the bogs
Ten yards away is a chic Italian which does great food and is seriously pricey
Yet just across the road locals are cooking up their own food on a brazier
And all of this is surrounded by soaring skyscrapers with rooftop bars full hi-so Chinese Thai billionaire girls
Yes I've been to Bangkok and of all of it you've found the Troppo bar which serves Tetleys on tap.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
No - the conditions would need to be said too - otherwise when we lose the pound, are forced into the Euro, lose our central bank, pay lots more into the EU budget, have no rebate etc, then the whole shitshow starts again.
Make an honest case of the pros (trade, jobs for those who wish to work in Europe, boost to GDP etc) vs cost (being a net contributer to the budget, no check on Europeans moving to the UK). Otherwise it sets up the next 20 years of arguments.
We're talking practical politics not an exam question. For the Change proposition to win it should stay vague and simplistic and aspirational. It should also avoid engaging with difficult questions. Look at 2016. Would Leave have won if it'd been defined. Nope. And would Leave have won if there'd been a rigorous, informed and intelligent debate? Not a chance. Everybody knows this. THAT is the lesson of the EU referendum, none of this "next time we should be all elevated and thoughtful" wishcasting. That's naive or it's virtue-signalling or (when it comes from unreformed Leavers) it's pure and simple trolling.
But can't you see the issue with the BiB? Do that and you set the future argument up right there.
has been mythologised as *nobody* saying that we would leave the single market, even though both Leave and Remain campaigns were clear before the referendum that this is what would happen.
Cameron knew he would have to resign, immediately, if he lost the Brexit vote (tho he denied it for obvious reasons) so I don’t think his stupid opinion counts for much, as to what he would have done “after Brexit”
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
I agree that they tried to be constructively ambiguous about what Leave would mean, but when forced to take a position, they did commit to leaving the single market.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
"There is a free trade area from the Baltic to the Atlantic, and the UK will be a member of it."
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
Creatively ambiguous would be generous.
Time to show my ignorance (yet again). Do we not have free trade with the EU now? I understood that the issues are associated with ease of trade (paperwork etc) not tariffs? Please laugh at me if I have this wrong.
Depends on how you define "free trade". It's a term of art at best. We don't have completely free trade because it is restricted by regulations, quotas, visa requirements and the various bits of admin that all combine to make up non-tariff barriers. For most products and services these are most important anyway - customs duties are only material in a limited number of industries.
Anyway I've just been invited to talk on a panel at an event, the topic of which is "Brexit opportunities: what will really make a difference for business", so I'd better starting polishing my Brexit boosterism.
Lawyers, accountants, VAT consultants should all be doing bonanza trade from the extra red tape.
We're not though. At least most of us aren't. My customs duty colleagues are certainly kept busy but otherwise it's mainly quite low level pen pushing stuff which takes time, costs money, but doesn't really engage the grey matter. So it's the freight forwarders and 3PLs as well as the employment bureaus that make most of the money.
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
Bet accordingly
It really makes you want to be there.
Like the tax office in Hartlepool
Soi 8 Sukhumvit is fucking brilliant. Superb restaurants and bars, full of all nationalities, and cuisines, with that intense vivacity of nightlife that only Bangkok delivers
I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No
That may be but it looks gopping full of old white blokes drinking Tetleys.
"sipping a martini in a wine bar" sounds très élégant. My arse.
I know you’ve not traveled much so I’ll give you a little tour
Soi 8 is magical because you get such a mix. This is Det 5, a garden bar which dates back to when these were dirt roads in the 1960s and this bar was full of American GIs on RnR. They have the photos in the bogs
Ten yards away is a chic Italian which does great food and is seriously pricey
Yet just across the road locals are cooking up their own food on a brazier
And all of this is surrounded by soaring skyscrapers with rooftop bars full hi-so Chinese Thai billionaire girls
Personally speaking, would prefer to hang with the folks at the card table, provided they'd let me.
So far SKS has mainly lied to his party membership, whereas Boris lied to everyone including the country. I can see that for a Labour member that's one and the same thing, but for non members like me there's a difference.
Now it's quite possible he will go on to lie to us all and not deliver on his winning manifesto, but we're not there yet.
Still, as a Lib Dem I'm very pleased to see him changing his mind on tuition fees. It means nobody can ever point the finger at us again.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.
The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.
Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.
The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.
That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.
And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.
Nobody's saying it'll be a cakewalk. The fundamentals will be like last time but in reverse. Remain failed to pin Leave down on what Leave meant? Yep. Ok so maybe the same happens again on the details of our refreshed membership. Will the EU want us back if we clearly want back ourselves? I think so. I don't know for sure but neither do you or anybody else know they won't. Much will depend on the circumstances at the time and the UK/EU political leaderships in place. All of this is unknown.
At least our leaders score better on good physical and mental health than their US counterparts would.
Not a bad score for Starmer given how much older than Sunak he is.
Yes, but imagine a cage match between Trump and Sunak.
There’s a whole genre of Bollywood films where the small, nimble hero beats X huge, lumbering thugs sent by The Big Bad.
OK so this allows us to segue into:
Who would win in a fight between the Westminster party leaders?
Under time honoured British tradition, it would turn out that the head of the Natural law party is actually ex Captain of Boats, Hereford Boat club. Or something like that
Doug Beattie of the UUP was a soldier, but not a Westminster leader. Tale of the tape probably gives it to Ed Davey.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
No - the conditions would need to be said too - otherwise when we lose the pound, are forced into the Euro, lose our central bank, pay lots more into the EU budget, have no rebate etc, then the whole shitshow starts again.
Make an honest case of the pros (trade, jobs for those who wish to work in Europe, boost to GDP etc) vs cost (being a net contributer to the budget, no check on Europeans moving to the UK). Otherwise it sets up the next 20 years of arguments.
We're talking practical politics not an exam question. For the Change proposition to win it should stay vague and simplistic and aspirational. It should also avoid engaging with difficult questions. Look at 2016. Would Leave have won if it'd been defined. Nope. And would Leave have won if there'd been a rigorous, informed and intelligent debate? Not a chance. Everybody knows this. THAT is the lesson of the EU referendum, none of this "next time we should be all elevated and thoughtful" wishcasting. That's naive or it's virtue-signalling or (when it comes from unreformed Leavers) it's pure and simple trolling.
But can't you see the issue with the BiB? Do that and you set the future argument up right there.
Not an SKS fan. Not voting for his party. But: 1 Boris was lying to the public. Over and over. As people had their lives upended and saw their relatives died. A big deal 2 Starmer was lying to an electorate of trot entryists knowing that once he secured the leadership most would leave and thus could be discarded.
Starmer lying to you isn't the same as Boris lying to the nation.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
No - the conditions would need to be said too - otherwise when we lose the pound, are forced into the Euro, lose our central bank, pay lots more into the EU budget, have no rebate etc, then the whole shitshow starts again.
Make an honest case of the pros (trade, jobs for those who wish to work in Europe, boost to GDP etc) vs cost (being a net contributer to the budget, no check on Europeans moving to the UK). Otherwise it sets up the next 20 years of arguments.
We're talking practical politics not an exam question.. It should also avoid engaging with difficult questions. Look at 2016. Would Leave have won if it'd been defined. Nope. And would Leave have won if there'd been a rigorous, informed and intelligent debate? Not a chance. Everybody knows this. THAT is the lesson of the EU referendum, none of this "next time we should be all elevated and thoughtful" wishcasting. That's naive or it's virtue-signalling or (when it comes from unreformed Leavers) it's pure and simple trolling.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
No - the conditions would need to be said too - otherwise when we lose the pound, are forced into the Euro, lose our central bank, pay lots more into the EU budget, have no rebate etc, then the whole shitshow starts again.
Make an honest case of the pros (trade, jobs for those who wish to work in Europe, boost to GDP etc) vs cost (being a net contributer to the budget, no check on Europeans moving to the UK). Otherwise it sets up the next 20 years of arguments.
We're talking practical politics not an exam question. For the Change proposition to win it should stay vague and simplistic and aspirational. It should also avoid engaging with difficult questions. Look at 2016. Would Leave have won if it'd been defined. Nope. And would Leave have won if there'd been a rigorous, informed and intelligent debate? Not a chance. Everybody knows this. THAT is the lesson of the EU referendum, none of this "next time we should be all elevated and thoughtful" wishcasting. That's naive or it's virtue-signalling or (when it comes from unreformed Leavers) it's pure and simple trolling.
But can't you see the issue with the BiB? Do that and you set the future argument up right there.
You also risk the EU saying "non".
They won't say 'non', but they may say 'sorry, the price has increased on last time'
So far SKS has mainly lied to his party membership, whereas Boris lied to everyone including the country. I can see that for a Labour member that's one and the same thing, but for non members like me there's a difference.
Now it's quite possible he will go on to lie to us all and not deliver on his winning manifesto, but we're not there yet.
Still, as a Lib Dem I'm very pleased to see him changing his mind on tuition fees. It means nobody can ever point the finger at us again.
That assumes there will be anything in his manifesto...
Not an SKS fan. Not voting for his party. But: 1 Boris was lying to the public. Over and over. As people had their lives upended and saw their relatives died. A big deal 2 Starmer was lying to an electorate of trot entryists knowing that once he secured the leadership most would leave and thus could be discarded.
Starmer lying to you isn't the same as Boris lying to the nation.
But there's an interesting parallel with the Tory right, for whom the will of the paid up membership constitutes a "mandate". Remember Truss and her mandate to govern?
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
No - the conditions would need to be said too - otherwise when we lose the pound, are forced into the Euro, lose our central bank, pay lots more into the EU budget, have no rebate etc, then the whole shitshow starts again.
Make an honest case of the pros (trade, jobs for those who wish to work in Europe, boost to GDP etc) vs cost (being a net contributer to the budget, no check on Europeans moving to the UK). Otherwise it sets up the next 20 years of arguments.
We're talking practical politics not an exam question.. It should also avoid engaging with difficult questions. Look at 2016. Would Leave have won if it'd been defined. Nope. And would Leave have won if there'd been a rigorous, informed and intelligent debate? Not a chance. Everybody knows this. THAT is the lesson of the EU referendum, none of this "next time we should be all elevated and thoughtful" wishcasting. That's naive or it's virtue-signalling or (when it comes from unreformed Leavers) it's pure and simple trolling.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
No - the conditions would need to be said too - otherwise when we lose the pound, are forced into the Euro, lose our central bank, pay lots more into the EU budget, have no rebate etc, then the whole shitshow starts again.
Make an honest case of the pros (trade, jobs for those who wish to work in Europe, boost to GDP etc) vs cost (being a net contributer to the budget, no check on Europeans moving to the UK). Otherwise it sets up the next 20 years of arguments.
We're talking practical politics not an exam question. For the Change proposition to win it should stay vague and simplistic and aspirational. It should also avoid engaging with difficult questions. Look at 2016. Would Leave have won if it'd been defined. Nope. And would Leave have won if there'd been a rigorous, informed and intelligent debate? Not a chance. Everybody knows this. THAT is the lesson of the EU referendum, none of this "next time we should be all elevated and thoughtful" wishcasting. That's naive or it's virtue-signalling or (when it comes from unreformed Leavers) it's pure and simple trolling.
But can't you see the issue with the BiB? Do that and you set the future argument up right there.
You also risk the EU saying "non".
They won't say 'non', but they may say 'sorry, the price has increased on last time'
So far SKS has mainly lied to his party membership, whereas Boris lied to everyone including the country. I can see that for a Labour member that's one and the same thing, but for non members like me there's a difference.
Now it's quite possible he will go on to lie to us all and not deliver on his winning manifesto, but we're not there yet.
Still, as a Lib Dem I'm very pleased to see him changing his mind on tuition fees. It means nobody can ever point the finger at us again.
That assumes there will be anything in his manifesto...
The "they have no policies" trope is one of the more puzzling ones about Starmer's Labour, over a year out from an election. They've been relatively speaking pretty policy-heavy so far compared with most mid term oppositions. Indeed we're all talking about an actual policy change today.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.
The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.
Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.
The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.
That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.
And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.
Nobody's saying it'll be a cakewalk. The fundamentals will be like last time but in reverse. Remain failed to pin Leave down on what Leave meant? Yep. Ok so maybe the same happens again on the details of our refreshed membership. Will the EU want us back if we clearly want back ourselves? I think so. I don't know for sure but neither do you or anybody else know they won't. Much will depend on the circumstances at the time and the UK/EU political leaderships in place. All of this is unknown.
And utterly fanciful. No matter how much you might want it, it isn't happening. No serious politician wants to reopen that can of worms.
And of course time is against you. The same dynamics that made Brexit necessary at the point it happened will only make it all the more difficult to rejoin.
Cut your loses and campaign for something sensible like EFTA membership. That at least has a reasonable chance of happening.
I suppose these results with change once Starmer experiences the terrible backlash over hiring Sue Gray.
There's little else that people are talking about. In drivetime phone-ins in Lothian, bowling clubs in surrey, and all-night kebab shops in Islington, my first-hand experience is that people are furious.
It's going to change everything, for Sunak.
I've had exactly the same personal experience recently in the youth clubs of Builth Wells, the sushi bars of West Byfleet, and the veterinary surgeons' waiting rooms of Largs. Something is in the air.
The taverns of north London, the houseboats on the banks of the Lea, even the wilds of Epping Forest, are thick with murmur.
Graygate hangs over Starmer like a shroud. If Currygate was the squall, Graygate is the storm.
I’m sipping a martini in a wine bar on soi 8, Sukhumvit and there’s a table of Brits next to me who’ve stopped watching the Liverpool game so - no joke - they can discuss “Greygate”
One guy just said he’s flying home two weeks early to vote Tory when he’s normally Plaid Cymru, just because of Greygate. Another guy said Yeah Starmer’s Ok but Sunak looks so HEALTHY
Bet accordingly
It really makes you want to be there.
Like the tax office in Hartlepool
Soi 8 Sukhumvit is fucking brilliant. Superb restaurants and bars, full of all nationalities, and cuisines, with that intense vivacity of nightlife that only Bangkok delivers
I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No
That may be but it looks gopping full of old white blokes drinking Tetleys.
"sipping a martini in a wine bar" sounds très élégant. My arse.
I know you’ve not traveled much so I’ll give you a little tour
Soi 8 is magical because you get such a mix. This is Det 5, a garden bar which dates back to when these were dirt roads in the 1960s and this bar was full of American GIs on RnR. They have the photos in the bogs
Ten yards away is a chic Italian which does great food and is seriously pricey
Yet just across the road locals are cooking up their own food on a brazier
And all of this is surrounded by soaring skyscrapers with rooftop bars full hi-so Chinese Thai billionaire girls
Personally speaking, would prefer to hang with the folks at the card table, provided they'd let me.
100%. That Italian has gone all in on the mid-range suburban look; the sort of place your mother in law posts about on the local FB group. The folk over the way look like good craic.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
The absolute madness of the Euroref 2nd voters can be revealed if you simply game out what would have happened if, say, the Scots had voted YES in 2014 then a bunch of YOON politicians had said Nah, that’s a stupid decision, we’re gonna make Scotland vote again, without even enacting independence in the first place
A small but significant number of Nats would have realised that British/Scottish democracy was a sham, and could never deliver Indy, and they would have turned to violence. Scotland would have become Ireland in 1916-1920
Would the Brits have done the same if the Brexit vote had been overruled and a 2nd vote ordered, without us Brexiting? Probably, possibly, who knows - remember there was violence before the first Brexit vote: an MP was killed
Even if civil strife had been averted, millions of Leave voters would have boycotted the 2nd vote, correctly assuming that the whole thing was a fix, and their will would never be honoured, and democracy was a lie, and what’s the fucking point. Turnout in future elections would have plunged. Basically it would have shattered British democracy for a generation, maybe forever. Utter utter madness
That’s what I mean when I say hardcore Remainers weren’t just stupid, like Leavers, they were dangerously stupid because they thought their ludicrous shenanigans were “clever”
The madness was attempting to have a second vote before the first was implemented.
A second vote is entirely possible now to my mind, precisely because we've left.
The hardcore remainer scenario was the equivalent of say Corbyn winning the GE and then proceeding to have a 'confirmatory vote' before he ever stepped into office. The equivalent now would be to have a vote after say 4 or 5 years of him having been in office (Say he'd won GE19) which of course is completely democratic.
The key for me is that Brexit has happened as an event. Which makes a vote to rejoin now perfectly democratic. A vote prior to leaving properly (Which was 31st January 2020) would have been unconscionable.
Political reality is it's not going to happen for a while now, but democratically anything after 31st Jan 2020 to rejoin is/was fine.
Yes, of course
We have now brexited. The vote is honoured. British democracy works. It sticks to promises made by the prime minister, no less. Your Vote Will Count. This Is It. So it is still worth voting in future elections and referendums because it makes a difference. it matters. YOU, the voter, YOU MATTER
Now we’ve done that, Remainers/Rejoiners are free to start campaigning for an immediate 2nd referendum to go straight back in. Heck, if they are persuasive enough, I might even vote for them
But we HAD to honour the first vote. Anything else was insane self harm and would have sent us to a terrible place
Rejoin (as in a full rejoin of the EU) is going to become like the Death Penalty. Even if there are consistent polling majorities in favour, no mainstream political party, knowing what a shit show it would cause, is going to be dumb enough to suggest it.
I think you're right but there will be other long term consequences. The most obvious is the slow death of the Conservative Party. The damage they've caused will become ever more apparent-God Knows it's bad enough already-and the public led by the young will over time vent their spleen in the only direction available.
So far SKS has mainly lied to his party membership, whereas Boris lied to everyone including the country. I can see that for a Labour member that's one and the same thing, but for non members like me there's a difference.
Now it's quite possible he will go on to lie to us all and not deliver on his winning manifesto, but we're not there yet.
Still, as a Lib Dem I'm very pleased to see him changing his mind on tuition fees. It means nobody can ever point the finger at us again.
That assumes there will be anything in his manifesto...
The "they have no policies" trope is one of the more puzzling ones about Starmer's Labour, over a year out from an election. They've been relatively speaking pretty policy-heavy so far compared with most mid term oppositions. Indeed we're all talking about an actual policy change today.
A change from having a policy (to scrap tuition fees) to not having such a policy!
Not an SKS fan. Not voting for his party. But: 1 Boris was lying to the public. Over and over. As people had their lives upended and saw their relatives died. A big deal 2 Starmer was lying to an electorate of trot entryists knowing that once he secured the leadership most would leave and thus could be discarded.
Starmer lying to you isn't the same as Boris lying to the nation.
But there's an interesting parallel with the Tory right, for whom the will of the paid up membership constitutes a "mandate". Remember Truss and her mandate to govern?
Truss had a mandate to govern as she could command a majority in the Commons. She could not secure a majority for whatever batshit policies the Tory members wanted and she had to go.
What the hard left don't get is that when they screech about "Starmer is a liar" most voters think "only to you" if they even think about it at all.
Look at the tuition fees thing. They haven't committed to maintain the current system, only that they won't just abolish fees. And yet only 28% *of students* supported the abolition of fees. So its not even that he will lose the student vote.
Comments
The moving hand hath writ.
The country was offered a cake-and-eat it exit with close economic ties still remaining, and we got what suited the Tory Party to stay together, just short of no deal, even after expelling all its moderates.
Leavers lied.
Good point.
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
Make an honest case of the pros (trade, jobs for those who wish to work in Europe, boost to GDP etc) vs cost (being a net contributer to the budget, no check on Europeans moving to the UK). Otherwise it sets up the next 20 years of arguments.
Step forward.
Florida lawmakers are also poised to pass a bill that would shield DeSantis’ travel records associated with taxpayer paid travel from scrutiny
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/02/don-desantis-overseas-trip-00094833
I am heartened by the large crowds that the Women's Premier League, European games and the internationals are getting. Its great. But I also suspect that the ticket prices are still markedly cheaper than for the men's game.
That may change. But at the moment their isn't much of a competition to show the WC from Australia at rubbish times, so realistically FIFA need to take what they can get.
The worst thing would be no footage at all - as happened to cricket after Sky - lack of terrestrial is damaging for getting new players into the sport.
(Just checked - Womens Man Utd 6 pounds a ticket).
Senior Brexiteers like Hannah DID say we would stay in the Single Market. I can’t remember Boris’s position, I imagine it was constructively ambiguous
On this point we disagree. Leavers knew that the vaguer they were, the more votes they would get
But Remainers also told terrible lies: Turkey’s accession was always out of the question, etc etc, and of course the europhiles had to overcome three decades of CONSTANT lies (there is no loss of sovereignty, it’s all a tidying up exercise, we will give you a vote on the Constitution etc)
Like the tax office in Hartlepool
https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1653391402179362817
I'm sorry, but if the only purpose of change is for its own sake then the democratic process is of no value. None whatsoever. We might as well not bother.
My point is more about the subsequent rewriting of history by people who seem to think the question was never addressed before the referendum at all, and see it as the result of some kind of 'coup' after the fact.
They did the opposite in fact
Besides, as I have said more than once, AI is about to transform economies and politics in a ways which will utterly dwarf our particular relationship with the European Union so it all becomes moot and trivial
Fantasy Cakeism was built-in from the start, from people who had convinced themselves that Britain had a stronger negotiating position than in fact was the case, and it was just the "liberal elite" obscuring this reality and running Britain down, rather than the modern world.
I believe those were the exact words in the Brexit leaflet.
Creatively ambiguous would be generous.
"Bastards making us vote again. We'll show em!"
I suspect the French would veto anyway.
Ummmm, no...
I agree with Janan Ganesh of the FT on the greatest cities in the world - London and Bangkok - I just demur on his third choice: Los Angeles. No
(It's Rules of Origin, innit.)
That's perhaps the biggest achievement of the 2019 election victory: it ended the fight in all but the most ardent FBPEs. It killed off hope, and of course it's the hope that kills you. The total defeat in 2019 was almost a blessed release.
But it's my second favourite city on the planet.
Anyway I've just been invited to talk on a panel at an event, the topic of which is "Brexit opportunities: what will really make a difference for business", so I'd better starting polishing my Brexit boosterism.
Remainers also lied about the consequences of Remain, and gullible people also voted for them. So what? That's the nature of a democratic election.
"sipping a martini in a wine bar" sounds très élégant. My arse.
https://twitter.com/EmporersNewC/status/1143227136985260039
The video showing David Davies position developing from "its a negotiation" to "both sides said" is probably enough , but there is loads more contemporary evidence besides.
https://twitter.com/EmporersNewC/status/1143227211375362048
Sorry to impose cognitive dissonance on anyone who has "remembered" differently!
The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.
Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.
The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.
If someone says, you'll be "a part" of something, it suggests that there is a whole, of which you are a part.
Very different to being a member.
But you will concede, I hope, that some people might have read the line as suggesting that the UK would be a member of the free trade area that went from the Baltic to the Atlantic?
And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.
A better pan-European descriptor might be 'from the Arctic to the Mediterranean'.
If they really wanted Britain back the smart thing for them to do would be to offer previous terms, with Cameron's deal, plus the end of the rebate, and hugely accelerate the reaccession process. I.e. also with an ever closer union cop out clause and the Maastricht exemption on the Euro back in but you pay more because fuck up and we need it - sorry. Otherwise we'd vote it down.
But, they've never shown themselves to be that flexible. So I expect them to say standard terms, take it or leave it sister.
The alternative pro EU approach is lots and lots of side deals that progressively approach an asymptote of where our previous membership roughly was anyway, with payments, freer movement, and lots of "informal" consultation in future that reflects the real-politik. EPU++++
If they had, we wouldn't be here.
Poppycock.
As @kinabalu has pointed out, relying on your constituency to be TAPS is evidently a winning strategy.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=John+Smiths+advert+arkwrite#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:6d8995e7,vid:2XEENl92Enk
https://twitter.com/Agitate4Change/status/1653338593417482243
A little while ago, a friend put the idea of subsidy-on-delivery for Green tech investment to their local MP. As in, say pay X per actual battery cell delivered to a customer, with X a function of U.K. content/work.
The response (from an opposition MP) was that would be a ghastly abdication of the responsibility of government to direct spending in detail.
Soi 8 is magical because you get such a mix. This is Det 5, a garden bar which dates back to when these were dirt roads in the 1960s and this bar was full of American GIs on RnR. They have the photos in the bogs
Ten yards away is a chic Italian which does great food and is seriously pricey
Yet just across the road locals are cooking up their own food on a brazier
And all of this is surrounded by soaring skyscrapers with rooftop bars full hi-so Chinese Thai billionaire girls
"AI 'godfather' quits Google over dangers of Artificial Intelligence"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsBGaHywRhs
Now it's quite possible he will go on to lie to us all and not deliver on his winning manifesto, but we're not there yet.
Still, as a Lib Dem I'm very pleased to see him changing his mind on tuition fees. It means nobody can ever point the finger at us again.
1 Boris was lying to the public. Over and over. As people had their lives upended and saw their relatives died. A big deal
2 Starmer was lying to an electorate of trot entryists knowing that once he secured the leadership most would leave and thus could be discarded.
Starmer lying to you isn't the same as Boris lying to the nation.
And of course time is against you. The same dynamics that made Brexit necessary at the point it happened will only make it all the more difficult to rejoin.
Cut your loses and campaign for something sensible like EFTA membership. That at least has a reasonable chance of happening.
What the hard left don't get is that when they screech about "Starmer is a liar" most voters think "only to you" if they even think about it at all.
Look at the tuition fees thing. They haven't committed to maintain the current system, only that they won't just abolish fees. And yet only 28% *of students* supported the abolition of fees. So its not even that he will lose the student vote.