for hundreds of years, we as a sovereign nation have been pretty damned good at this business malarkey..
...but we never did it by walking away from our largest market.
There you go with your apocalyptic bollocks again. "Walking away from our largest market"? Here's a prediction from a non-economist: two years after a Brexit vote, 99.9% of current trade will still be possible at or close to current prices - with only the weakness of a dying Euro buggering up Britain's ability to sell into those markets.
Poor old Scott, didn't get the memo du jour - that Leave will actually push UP immigration!
Sometimes, you just have to feel sorry for pb's resident Dervish.
I've just heard the claim again - it's Will Straw. He's spouting some really strange things. How stupid does he think we all are? My instant reaction was Don't Be Silly.
One especially pleasing outcome of Leave would be seeing Daddy's boys such as Straw and Kinnock exposed as what they are.
This is why hereditary peerages aren't a bad thing.
Liz Kershaw on Sky paper review really articulating the emotional reaction/outrage at illegal immigrants. She lives in Dymchurch and has had gangs of young Albanian men climbing over her garden wall en route from the beach.
Now, she's just mentioned Chipping Cameron and how it's not a problem for him and his friends.
If I were in Number 10, I'd be holding my head in my heads.
How will Brexit prevent illegal Albanian immigrants entering the country?
Christ on a bike. It doesnt matter if it will or it wont.
Truth is perception.
No, truth is truth. Perception may win you a campaign - which is why I have always thought that Leave would win on the back of fears over immigration - but victory is only a means to an end. You then have to deliver.
Will Straw: "Australia, who have a points-based immigration system, have twice as many migrants per head as the UK."
Are you a muppet or what? They could just as easily have half the level - they have control.
They could. But a points based system would be a really bad way of controlling it. In the words of the anti-immigration Migration Watch, "totally unsuitable for the UK":
Honestly! I am surprised Scott manages to keep this level of output up with one hand seeming permanently otherwise engaged. Quite a lot of foreigners are voting for leave as well... my foreign wife is, and most of her foreign friends are. In short, he's talking bollocks.
Speaking as somewhat of a foreigner myself (now away for four years, but maybe back soon?), I do feel a bit guilty having a right to vote even though I am not living in the UK. Saying that, I'm actually going to be back for the big day, so I'll cast my ballot in person. Still undecided, but leaning Leave (slightly).
I have been away for 6 years and sadly won't be voting. I looked at setting up a proxy vote with my wife who is in the UK, but when I looked at the website as soon as it became available for the EU Ref it said they needed to send me a form to sign to authorise it... and it takes two months or more for the post to reach me where I am at the moment, so pointless.
Two months?! Does it come by bottle?
Well it seems to get to Manila in about a week after that things are a bit more dicey. Business here basically doesn't use mail because it can take a fortnight to get a letter to a different address in the same city, so I suspect the volumes are low enough that they cannot justify the delivery staff and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. To be fair I am currently living way out in the sticks as well.
We are now at the stage where we just have to hope that the Leave side is right about the economic consequences of Brexit. As I noted last night, the parallels with the Scottish independence referendum are really uncanny in so many ways.
Throughout that campaign the Yes side rubbished every No warning and talked about Project rests.
Turns out, though, that the establishment was right. That the experts did know what they utterly wrong.
Let us hope that Leave aren't wrong. Because if they are, it is going to get very, very unpleasant for a great many of this country's people very quickly.
You didn't have to be in with a shot at the Nobel Prize for Economics to know that the YES campaign was irresponsibly optimistic.
Equally, the Remainer Establishment's assessment of a "There be dragons!" post-Brexit apocalyptic landscape is irresponsibly pessimistic. They chuck a whole bucket of "if it might go wrong, it will go wrong" over there assessments, without any possible provision for the inescapable truth - that for hundreds of years, we as a sovereign nation have been pretty damned good at this business malarkey..
Yes, as I say we had better hope that Leave is right about this and that all the economists and the global institutions that are warning against pulling out of the EU are wrong. If they are not, if it turns out that they are right, as they were right about the dangers that an independent Scotland might face, then a lot of people are going to face a lot of hardship for a sustained period of time.
Many of us on PB are fortunate enough to be in a position where we are protected against the possible economic downsides of Brexit; we are well paid with good jobs, or we no longer work, or we do not live in the UK. Some of us, most notably the lawyers, will actually do extremely well from it. Most of our fellow citizens, on the other hand, are in more exposed positions. Leave just has to be right if they are not going to face a very challenging future.
There is nothing in your answer that reassures me on that front. I would, for example, dispute that for the last one hundred years or so we have been "pretty damned good at this business malarkey". From where I sit, we have been pretty damned bad at it - poor productivity, low investment in R&D, relatively poor exports, and so on. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to join the EEC, as was, in the first place.
So bad at this business malarkey, you have to wonder how we blundered into being the world's fifth largest economy, whilst the largest Empire the World has ever seen was being handed back...
for hundreds of years, we as a sovereign nation have been pretty damned good at this business malarkey..
...but we never did it by walking away from our largest market.
There you go with your apocalyptic bollocks again. "Walking away from our largest market"? Here's a prediction from a non-economist: two years after a Brexit vote, 99.9% of current trade will still be possible at or close to current prices - with only the weakness of a dying Euro buggering up Britain's ability to sell into those markets.
Two years after a Brexit vote we will still be an EU member state.
Liz Kershaw on Sky paper review really articulating the emotional reaction/outrage at illegal immigrants. She lives in Dymchurch and has had gangs of young Albanian men climbing over her garden wall en route from the beach.
Now, she's just mentioned Chipping Cameron and how it's not a problem for him and his friends.
If I were in Number 10, I'd be holding my head in my heads.
How will Brexit prevent illegal Albanian immigrants entering the country?
Christ on a bike. It doesnt matter if it will or it wont.
Truth is perception.
No, truth is truth. Perception may win you a campaign - which is why I have always thought that Leave would win on the back of fears over immigration - but victory is only a means to an end. You then have to deliver.
Even then Truth is Perception. You don't have to deliver, people just have to believe you have, or in many cases people will except for an unreasonably long time that you are trying to - see George Osborne.
Will Straw: "Australia, who have a points-based immigration system, have twice as many migrants per head as the UK."
Are you a muppet or what? They could just as easily have half the level - they have control.
Immigration really is causing the Remainer's to lose all coherency. They don't have any treatment programme to limit the cancer, which is at risk of metastasizing throughout the whole body of their campaign.
The risk of this Referendum for Remain has always been that it would boil down to the voters deciding a slightly different question: Who do you want to control our borders, Britain or Brussels?
Could not agree more. This is why I have always backed Leave to won.
Or more accurately, who you believe most? The economists or Mr "no ifs, no buts" Cameron. The former have a record of struggling to predict that tomorrow is Thursday and the latter has been proved to be not only wrong but stating an impossible thing as fact before breakfast.
High immigration is a mixed blessing. It increases GDP, very nice for the poshos. It causes problems for the plebs.
Establishment vs the proles.
Or it's a matter of being able to set your own laws (but we don't want those proles setting the agenda).
I certainly can't get close to Tyson's claim a couple of days ago that he would find it difficult/impossible to have a Tory as a friend ..... remarkable! In fact I have a number of Labour-supporting friends, but not as many as Her Indoors, who, from her earlier days knows a number of people living in Red in Tooth and Claw Blackburn. Although clearly not nearly a large enough sample to be in any way representative, she reports that virtually every one, ranging in age from being in their late twenties through to their seventies, intends to vote LEAVE. It was on receiving this intelligence a few days ago, that I really started to believe that the betting markets had it all wrong.
My brother's a Labour member, and along with several of my friends - they're almost all voting Leave. Incidentally, they're also mainly Liz supporters/detest Corbyn. There's some really weird stuff going on. I've no feel for it.
for hundreds of years, we as a sovereign nation have been pretty damned good at this business malarkey..
...but we never did it by walking away from our largest market.
There you go with your apocalyptic bollocks again. "Walking away from our largest market"? Here's a prediction from a non-economist: two years after a Brexit vote, 99.9% of current trade will still be possible at or close to current prices - with only the weakness of a dying Euro buggering up Britain's ability to sell into those markets.
Two years after a Brexit vote we will still be an EU member state.
And between June 23rd and then a lot of hammering out of new compromises on both sides of the Straits of Dover will have been underway. Except the terms of trade so to speak of what amounts to a second renegotiation will have been radically altered by events.
Yes, as I say we had better hope that Leave is right about this and that all the economists and the global institutions that are warning against pulling out of the EU are wrong. If they are not, if it turns out that they are right, as they were right about the dangers that an independent Scotland might face, then a lot of people are going to face a lot of hardship for a sustained period of time.
Many of us on PB are fortunate enough to be in a position where we are protected against the possible economic downsides of Brexit; we are well paid with good jobs, or we no longer work, or we do not live in the UK. Some of us, most notably the lawyers, will actually do extremely well from it. Most of our fellow citizens, on the other hand, are in more exposed positions. Leave just has to be right if they are not going to face a very challenging future.
There is nothing in your answer that reassures me on that front. I would, for example, dispute that for the last one hundred years or so we have been "pretty damned good at this business malarkey". From where I sit, we have been pretty damned bad at it - poor productivity, low investment in R&D, relatively poor exports, and so on. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to join the EEC, as was, in the first place.
If we leave this will be a position that will have been chosen by the British public, not by "Leave" or "Remain", not by us sitting here on PB with our well paid jobs etc, but by 15+ million people ticking a box saying "Leave the European Union"
Liz Kershaw on Sky paper review really articulating the emotional reaction/outrage at illegal immigrants. She lives in Dymchurch and has had gangs of young Albanian men climbing over her garden wall en route from the beach.
Now, she's just mentioned Chipping Cameron and how it's not a problem for him and his friends.
If I were in Number 10, I'd be holding my head in my heads.
How will Brexit prevent illegal Albanian immigrants entering the country?
Christ on a bike. It doesnt matter if it will or it wont.
Truth is perception.
No, truth is truth. Perception may win you a campaign - which is why I have always thought that Leave would win on the back of fears over immigration - but victory is only a means to an end. You then have to deliver.
Even then Truth is Perception. You don't have to deliver, people just have to believe you have, or in many cases people will except for an unreasonably long time that you are trying to - see George Osborne.
Politically that may be correct. But Leave is different, isn't it? Leave is not about pulling the wool over voters' eyes, it is about delivering better than what we have now.
Osborne can always run against the opposition. When we leave the EU there will be no opposition. Leave will have secured total and unchangeable victory. If we do pull out, we are not going back in for many a long year. So if Leave is wrong, there is very little we can do to put things right - there is not going to be another vote in five years.
That is why we all have to hope that Leave is not wrong.
1. The pound has dropped already based on a poll showing Brexit ahead. To say that nothing will happen if the country really does vote for Brexit must be wrong: "The pound dropped after a new poll showed a jump in support for the campaign to take Britain out of the European Union, spooking some investors who had thought that the result was a foregone conclusion. Sterling fell against all of its 16 major peers as ICM opinion polls released Tuesday by the Guardian showed a lead for the ‘Leave’ camp. "
People forgetting that correlation does not equal causality. The pound dropped, but by no more than a typical amount that happens several times a week in one direction or the other. The poll results were announced as better for leave (in keeping with several recent polls). The two might be related at some level between 0 and 100%.
2. As someone who worked at the time on preventing Y2K problems, I can tell you that the reason nothing happened is that many companies prepared for it and worked on it for eighteen months or so before the end of 1999.
Damn right! I worked on several systems, one of which with national although not critical significance, that would have definitely failed had we not made the required changes.
I worked for a large telecoms firm back then and it's whole billing system was non-compliant [it was based on 01/01/01]. The proprietary software was crap, but there was no time or money to replace the whole thing. So we paid through the nose to add two more digits.
I think I might have been the happy recipient of some of your company's largess
Oh, that was another one now defunct!
By 1999, I'd moved and a colleague spent New Year's Eve in the Bunker with other bigwigs just in case the world did end. Thankfully largely non-event, but the tee-total trepidation in the run up was something.
Most of my UK IT career was telecoms, I have variously consulted for BT, Lucent, Cellnet (as was), Vodafone, Three, Mercury, Orange etc.. they all had lots of nice Y2K work
Ha! I bet you did. When my husband worked for a defence contractor, one freelancer made a complete fortune. He built a massive extension/with a huge garage filled with classic sports cars. He called it the XYZ wing.
Yes, as I say we had better hope that Leave is right about this and that all the economists and the global institutions that are warning against pulling out of the EU are wrong. If they are not, if it turns out that they are right, as they were right about the dangers that an independent Scotland might face, then a lot of people are going to face a lot of hardship for a sustained period of time.
Many of us on PB are fortunate enough to be in a position where we are protected against the possible economic downsides of Brexit; we are well paid with good jobs, or we no longer work, or we do not live in the UK. Some of us, most notably the lawyers, will actually do extremely well from it. Most of our fellow citizens, on the other hand, are in more exposed positions. Leave just has to be right if they are not going to face a very challenging future.
There is nothing in your answer that reassures me on that front. I would, for example, dispute that for the last one hundred years or so we have been "pretty damned good at this business malarkey". From where I sit, we have been pretty damned bad at it - poor productivity, low investment in R&D, relatively poor exports, and so on. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to join the EEC, as was, in the first place.
If we leave this will be a position that will have been chosen by the British public, not by "Leave" or "Remain", not by us sitting here on PB with our well paid jobs etc, but by 15+ million people ticking a box saying "Leave the European Union"
Yep - and the Leave side will own all the consequences of that. So, let us hope that they are right.
I certainly can't get close to Tyson's claim a couple of days ago that he would find it difficult/impossible to have a Tory as a friend ..... remarkable! In fact I have a number of Labour-supporting friends, but not as many as Her Indoors, who, from her earlier days knows a number of people living in Red in Tooth and Claw Blackburn. Although clearly not nearly a large enough sample to be in any way representative, she reports that virtually every one, ranging in age from being in their late twenties through to their seventies, intends to vote LEAVE. It was on receiving this intelligence a few days ago, that I really started to believe that the betting markets had it all wrong.
I have lots of Labour-voting chums. Some still intend to vote Remain, but even they are deeply pessimistic of Remain's chances.
What I find interesting about the story behind this thread is the shift in big business, from standing shoulder-to-shoulder to laugh at the funny Little Englanders and their crazy notion of Leave, to now going "Holy fuck - these guys might actually WIN THIS THING!" - and looking for ways to make some money out of it. The true British entrepreneurial spirit shining through adversity....as it will post-Brexit.
The latest story about Leave "revealing" their "policies" to control immigration hold as much substance as the ridiculous claims yesterday that they were making "unfunded" promises.
People have rightly drawn attention to the many similarities with the Indyref and this vote but there is one key difference. If Scotland had voted yes the Scottish government led by the SNP would have been the government responsible for implementing their proposals, god help them. That is not the case here. The Vote Leave campaign ends on 24th June regardless of the result and will not be implementing anything.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
(i) The Australian model works for Australia but might not be suitable for the UK (ii) That when we tried to introduce a points based system we buggered it up (iii) If we introduce restrictions on EU visitors the EU will introduce reciprocal restrictions
All probably true (point 3 is an assumption but unreasonable). But not a fact check
We are now at the stage where we just have to hope that the Leave side is right about the economic consequences of Brexit. As I noted last night, the parallels with the Scottish independence referendum are really uncanny in so many ways.
Throughout that campaign the Yes side rubbished every No warning and talked about Project rests.
Turns out, though, that the establishment was right. That the experts did know what they utterly wrong.
Let us hope that Leave aren't wrong. Because if they are, it is going to get very, very unpleasant for a great many of this country's people very quickly.
You didn't have to be in with a shot at the Nobel Prize for Economics to know that the YES campaign was irresponsibly optimistic.
Equally, the Remainer Establishment's assessment of a "There be dragons!" post-Brexit nation have been pretty damned good at this business malarkey..
Yes, as I say we had better hope that Leave is right about this and that all the economists and the global institutions that are warning against pulling out of the EU are wrong. If they are not, if it turns out that they are right, as they were right about the dangers that an independent Scotland might face, then a lot of people are going to face a lot of hardship for a sustained period of time.
Many of us on PB are fortunate enough to be in a position where we are protected against the possible economic downsides of Brexit; we are well paid with good jobs, or we no longer work, or we do not live in the UK. Some of us, most notably the lawyers, will actually do extremely well from it. Most of our fellow citizens, on the other hand, are in more exposed positions. Leave just has to be right if they are not going to face a very challenging future.
There is nothing in your answer that reassures me on that front. I would, for example, dispute that for the last one hundred years or so we have been "pretty damned good at this business malarkey". From where I sit, we have been pretty damned bad at it - poor productivity, low investment in R&D, relatively poor exports, and so on. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to join the EEC, as was, in the first place.
So bad at this business malarkey, you have to wonder how we blundered into being the world's fifth largest economy, whilst the largest Empire the World has ever seen was being handed back...
I do wonder how much of being the world's fifth largest economy is down to our EU membership. I guess we'll soon find out.
We lost the Empire a long time ago. We built it on the back of being the world's first industrial power. We frittered away the huge advantages that delivered. Others learned from our mistakes and overtook us.
"The U-3 unemployment statistic is not really a very realistic measure of unemployment. The broader U-6 measure that includes discouraged workers and those working part-time because they cannot find full time employment is double the U-3 rate. If you calculate the unemployment rate the way it used to be tracked before the Clinton administration removed long-term discouraged workers from the calculation the unemployment rate is 22.9%. You can learn about the way inflation and unemployment statistics have been manipulated at http://www.shadowstats.com Most of the site is on a subscription basis but there is a fair amount of information available free of charge."
Do we think the official unemployment figures here reflect the actual numbers of people whose prospects are adversely affected by immigration?
Yes, as I say we had better hope that Leave is right about this and that all the economists and the global institutions that are warning against pulling out of the EU are wrong. If they are not, if it turns out that they are right, as they were right about the dangers that an independent Scotland might face, then a lot of people are going to face a lot of hardship for a sustained period of time.
Many of us on PB are fortunate enough to be in a position where we are protected against the possible economic downsides of Brexit; we are well paid with good jobs, or we no longer work, or we do not live in the UK. Some of us, most notably the lawyers, will actually do extremely well from it. Most of our fellow citizens, on the other hand, are in more exposed positions. Leave just has to be right if they are not going to face a very challenging future.
There is nothing in your answer that reassures me on that front. I would, for example, dispute that for the last one hundred years or so we have been "pretty damned good at this business malarkey". From where I sit, we have been pretty damned bad at it - poor productivity, low investment in R&D, relatively poor exports, and so on. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to join the EEC, as was, in the first place.
If we leave this will be a position that will have been chosen by the British public, not by "Leave" or "Remain", not by us sitting here on PB with our well paid jobs etc, but by 15+ million people ticking a box saying "Leave the European Union"
Yep - and the Leave side will own all the consequences of that. So, let us hope that they are right.
They won't though. The Leave campaign will disappear once it wins. Perhaps Boris or Farage might own the consequences - may be Gove of IDS, although I doubt most people recognise them
1. The pound has dropped already based on a poll showing Brexit ahead. To say that nothing will happen if the country really does vote for Brexit must be wrong: "The pound dropped after a new poll showed a jump in support for the campaign to take Britain out of the European Union, spooking some investors who had thought that the result was a foregone conclusion. Sterling fell against all of its 16 major peers as ICM opinion polls released Tuesday by the Guardian showed a lead for the ‘Leave’ camp. "
People forgetting that correlation does not equal causality. The pound dropped, but by no more than a typical amount that happens several times a week in one direction or the other. The poll results were announced as better for leave (in keeping with several recent polls). The two might be related at some level between 0 and 100%.
2. As someone who worked at the time on preventing Y2K problems, I can tell you that the reason nothing happened is that many companies prepared for it and worked on it for eighteen months or so before the end of 1999.
Damn right! I worked on several systems, one of which with national although not critical significance, that would have definitely failed had we not made the required changes.
I worked for a large telecoms firm back then and it's whole billing system was non-compliant [it was based on 01/01/01]. The proprietary software was crap, but there was no time or money to replace the whole thing. So we paid through the nose to add two more digits.
I think I might have been the happy recipient of some of your company's largess
Oh, that was another one now defunct!
By 1999, I'd moved and a colleague spent New Year's Eve in the Bunker with other bigwigs just in case the world did end. Thankfully largely non-event, but the tee-total trepidation in the run up was something.
Most of my UK IT career was telecoms, I have variously consulted for BT, Lucent, Cellnet (as was), Vodafone, Three, Mercury, Orange etc.. they all had lots of nice Y2K work
Ha! I bet you did. When my husband worked for a defence contractor, one freelancer made a complete fortune. He built a massive extension/with a huge garage filled with classic sports cars. He called it the XYZ wing.
Ha ha, fair play to him. Wish I had been a senior rather than a fresh faced junior in 1999.
Morning campers. Back from a simply wonderful walking holiday in Cornwall (I simply love Cornwall, and the Cornish) and, now, a rather red colour from all the sun and clear blue skies.
Will Straw: "Australia, who have a points-based immigration system, have twice as many migrants per head as the UK."
Are you a muppet or what? They could just as easily have half the level - they have control.
Immigration really is causing the Remainer's to lose all coherency. They don't have any treatment programme to limit the cancer, which is at risk of metastasizing throughout the whole body of their campaign.
The risk of this Referendum for Remain has always been that it would boil down to the voters deciding a slightly different question: Who do you want to control our borders, Britain or Brussels?
The latest story about Leave "revealing" their "policies" to control immigration hold as much substance as the ridiculous claims yesterday that they were making "unfunded" promises.
People have rightly drawn attention to the many similarities with the Indyref and this vote but there is one key difference. If Scotland had voted yes the Scottish government led by the SNP would have been the government responsible for implementing their proposals, god help them. That is not the case here. The Vote Leave campaign ends on 24th June regardless of the result and will not be implementing anything.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
Surely the real question is whether leaving the EU will deliver a better outcome for the UK than remaining a part of the EU. That is exactly the same proposition that faced the Scots when they voted on independence.
When we leave, Leave will own what happens next. It may not be a party but it is firmly identified with the Tory right and UKIP. If what they have been saying turns out to be correct - and let us hope that it is - then they will reap the electoral rewards. If they are wrong, not only will they be hammered in the polls, but the British people will pay a very heavy price.
for hundreds of years, we as a sovereign nation have been pretty damned good at this business malarkey..
...but we never did it by walking away from our largest market.
There you go with your apocalyptic bollocks again. "Walking away from our largest market"? Here's a prediction from a non-economist: two years after a Brexit vote, 99.9% of current trade will still be possible at or close to current prices - with only the weakness of a dying Euro buggering up Britain's ability to sell into those markets.
Two years after a Brexit vote we will still be an EU member state.
Maybe. Another prediction: Our imminent departure is going to put the skids under some fast-moving changes in the EU as we currently know it. I really hope that our departure would drive a stake through the heart of the ever-greater union Project beloved of a clique for whom democracy is an irritant to be overridden wherever possible. (And in the process, permanently end Europe as being an issue that causes division within the Tory party...)
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
I do wonder how much of being the world's fifth largest economy is down to our EU membership. I guess we'll soon find out.
We lost the Empire a long time ago. We built it on the back of being the world's first industrial power. We frittered away the huge advantages that delivered. Others learned from our mistakes and overtook us.
If being in the EU was what mattered, 27 other countries would be the world's fifth largest economy as well
Yes, as I say we had better hope that Leave is right about this and that all the economists and the global institutions that are warning against pulling out of the EU are wrong. If they are not, if it turns out that they are right, as they were right about the dangers that an independent Scotland might face, then a lot of people are going to face a lot of hardship for a sustained period of time.
Many of us on PB are fortunate enough to be in a position where we are protected against the possible economic downsides of Brexit; we are well paid with good jobs, or we no longer work, or we do not live in the UK. Some of us, most notably the lawyers, will actually do extremely well from it. Most of our fellow citizens, on the other hand, are in more exposed positions. Leave just has to be right if they are not going to face a very challenging future.
There is nothing in your answer that reassures me on that front. I would, for example, dispute that for the last one hundred years or so we have been "pretty damned good at this business malarkey". From where I sit, we have been pretty damned bad at it - poor productivity, low investment in R&D, relatively poor exports, and so on. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to join the EEC, as was, in the first place.
If we leave this will be a position that will have been chosen by the British public, not by "Leave" or "Remain", not by us sitting here on PB with our well paid jobs etc, but by 15+ million people ticking a box saying "Leave the European Union"
Yep - and the Leave side will own all the consequences of that. So, let us hope that they are right.
They won't though. The Leave campaign will disappear once it wins. Perhaps Boris or Farage might own the consequences - may be Gove of IDS, although I doubt most people recognise them
The Leave campaign is essentially the Tory right and UKIP. Everyone knows this. They will own the result and they will be judged on what it delivers. If their predictions are correct they will reap significant electoral rewards. If they are not, the right in this country is buggered. Normally, that would delight me. But the price is way too high. So I hope to God that they are correct.
The referendum has finally reached it's inevitable equation, economy v immigrants.
So far on this thread 2 people have expressed outrage when I point this out
Neither of them live here.
If that's the equation, Remain are buggered, because the immigrants are real and here and now, and the claimed economic effect is potential and "could" and in the future.
Will Straw: "Australia, who have a points-based immigration system, have twice as many migrants per head as the UK."
Are you a muppet or what? They could just as easily have half the level - they have control.
It's a slightly misleading statistic, all round. Only a minority of migrants come to Australia through the points system. Like with the UK, there are various other categories (came here on a working holiday visa, got a good job, etc.)
No country in the world wholly - or even largely - manages internal migration through a points system.
The problem with all systems is that people game them, and you therefore require an ever expanding bureaucracy to handle them. Take points systems: "has a bachelors degree, five points" sounds unobjectionable, right? But is a Bachelors from Yale worth the same as one from Northwestern Polytechnic University? Do we rate all countries as having the same quality of tertiary education?
It's no coincidence that countries with the most complex systems, have the largest number of immigration lawyers - both working for the government and for would be immigrants. (There are rather more immigration lawyers in the US than there are QCs in the UK, for example.) All these people could be doing real work.
As always, a market based system works best. A simple tariff on immigrants - as suggested in one form by the Adam Smith Institute, and me in another - has all the benefits of a points based system. But with none of the costs. You don't speculatively emigrate to see if there's a job, if you need to hand over 5,000 for your first year's health insurance., for example.
The latest story about Leave "revealing" their "policies" to control immigration hold as much substance as the ridiculous claims yesterday that they were making "unfunded" promises.
People have rightly drawn attention to the many similarities with the Indyref and this vote but there is one key difference. If Scotland had voted yes the Scottish government led by the SNP would have been the government responsible for implementing their proposals, god help them. That is not the case here. The Vote Leave campaign ends on 24th June regardless of the result and will not be implementing anything.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
Surely the real question is whether leaving the EU will deliver a better outcome for the UK than remaining a part of the EU. That is exactly the same proposition that faced the Scots when they voted on independence.
When we leave, Leave will own what happens next. It may not be a party but it is firmly identified with the Tory right and UKIP. If what they have been saying turns out to be correct - and let us hope that it is - then they will reap the electoral rewards. If they are wrong, not only will they be hammered in the polls, but the British people will pay a very heavy price.
I completely agree about the real question but arguing about the deficiencies or otherwise of the Australian points system is completely irrelevant to that and to everything else. Like so much of this campaign we are being diverted from the complicated and difficult decision we actually face.
I do not agree that Leave will "own" anything. They will not form or control the government. Nigel Farage will still not be in the House of Commons. The challenges for the government of the day will be considerable, not least because the Conservative majority (which will still exist) will be so fractured that effective government may prove impossible. But frankly that is now looking the outcome whoever wins.
The referendum has finally reached it's inevitable equation, economy v immigrants.
So far on this thread 2 people have expressed outrage when I point this out
Neither of them live here.
If that's the equation, Remain are buggered, because the immigrants are real and here and now, and the claimed economic effect is potential and "could" and in the future.
When we leave, Leave will own what happens next. It may not be a party but it is firmly identified with the Tory right and UKIP. If what they have been saying turns out to be correct - and let us hope that it is - then they will reap the electoral rewards. If they are wrong, not only will they be hammered in the polls, but the British people will pay a very heavy price.
That cuts both ways.
If we remain and Italy implodes and the EU finds some way to hand us a bill for several billion quid to help patch things up, remain will get it in the neck. Similarly if there is another round of EU law idiocy that annoys the public, and absolutely if there is an economic down turn anyway despite remaining.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
They cannot ignore the decision to leave. That is all we are being asked to express an opinion on. Everything else is up for grabs.
Will Straw: "Australia, who have a points-based immigration system, have twice as many migrants per head as the UK."
Are you a muppet or what? They could just as easily have half the level - they have control.
It's a slightly misleading statistic, all round. Only a minority of migrants come to Australia through the points system. Like with the UK, there are various other categories (came here on a working holiday visa, got a good job, etc.)
No country in the world wholly - or even largely - manages internal migration through a points system.
The problem with all systems is that people game them, and you therefore require an ever expanding bureaucracy to handle them. Take points systems: "has a bachelors degree, five points" sounds unobjectionable, right? But is a Bachelors from Yale worth the same as one from Northwestern Polytechnic University? Do we rate all countries as having the same quality of tertiary education?
It's no coincidence that countries with the most complex systems, have the largest number of immigration lawyers - both working for the government and for would be immigrants. (There are rather more immigration lawyers in the US than there are QCs in the UK, for example.) All these people could be doing real work.
As always, a market based system works best. A simple tariff on immigrants - as suggested in one form by the Adam Smith Institute, and me in another - has all the benefits of a points based system. But with none of the costs. You don't speculatively emigrate to see if there's a job, if you need to hand over 5,000 for your first year's health insurance., for example.
The latest story about Leave "revealing" their "policies" to control immigration hold as much substance as the ridiculous claims yesterday that they were making "unfunded" promises.
People have rightly drawn attention to the many similarities with the Indyref and this vote but there is one key difference. If Scotland had voted yes the Scottish government led by the SNP would have been the government responsible for implementing their proposals, god help them. That is not the case here. The Vote Leave campaign ends on 24th June regardless of the result and will not be implementing anything.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
Surely the real question is whether leaving the EU will deliver a better outcome for the UK than remaining a part of the EU. That is exactly the same proposition that faced the Scots when they voted on independence.
When we leave, Leave will own what happens next. It may not be a party but it is firmly identified with the Tory right and UKIP. If what they have been saying turns out to be correct - and let us hope that it is - then they will reap the electoral rewards. If they are wrong, not only will they be hammered in the polls, but the British people will pay a very heavy price.
I completely agree about the real question but arguing about the deficiencies or otherwise of the Australian points system is completely irrelevant to that and to everything else. Like so much of this campaign we are being diverted from the complicated and difficult decision we actually face.
I do not agree that Leave will "own" anything. They will not form or control the government. Nigel Farage will still not be in the House of Commons. The challenges for the government of the day will be considerable, not least because the Conservative majority (which will still exist) will be so fractured that effective government may prove impossible. But frankly that is now looking the outcome whoever wins.
Completely agree about point system etc. But I am afraid I disagree about the rest. Leave will own the result and will be responsible for what happens next - de facto if not de jure. Everyone knows who is on the Leave side and who has been making the Leave case. If it turns out that Remain's warnings were largely right, then it will be UKIP and the Tory right (read the Tories) who will pay the electoral price and the British people who will pay the economic price.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
They cannot ignore the decision to leave. That is all we are being asked to express an opinion on. Everything else is up for grabs.
A general election in 2016 is 12/1 with Ladbrokes. 2017 is 16/1. How else would a government get a mandate to negotiate after a Leave vote?
I do wonder how much of being the world's fifth largest economy is down to our EU membership. I guess we'll soon find out.
We lost the Empire a long time ago. We built it on the back of being the world's first industrial power. We frittered away the huge advantages that delivered. Others learned from our mistakes and overtook us.
We will soon find out if being in the EU held us back from being the world's fourth largest economy too....
You were the one talking about "the last one hundred years or so". We have given back our Empire in that time (and given it back to constituent countries rather than lost it due to wars, which as I'm sure Mr Dancer will inform us, is the way most previous Empires have broken up). The Empire was certainly there for us in two World Wars in the past century. Not "a long time ago".
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
They cannot ignore the decision to leave. That is all we are being asked to express an opinion on. Everything else is up for grabs.
A general election in 2016 is 12/1 with Ladbrokes. 2017 is 16/1. How else would a government get a mandate to negotiate after a Leave vote?
Even that is dubious.
Labour and Tories stands on a platform of Leave by EEA/EFTA UKIP stand on a platform of all the way out.
The public almost certainly want all the way out, but don't want Farage in No 10.
All the politicians will claim it is a mandate for EEA/EFTA when it is no such thing, its just not wanting an idiot for PM.
When we leave, Leave will own what happens next. It may not be a party but it is firmly identified with the Tory right and UKIP. If what they have been saying turns out to be correct - and let us hope that it is - then they will reap the electoral rewards. If they are wrong, not only will they be hammered in the polls, but the British people will pay a very heavy price.
That cuts both ways.
If we remain and Italy implodes and the EU finds some way to hand us a bill for several billion quid to help patch things up, remain will get it in the neck. Similarly if there is another round of EU law idiocy that annoys the public, and absolutely if there is an economic down turn anyway despite remaining.
Yep, I agree. However, I'd say that whether in or out if Italy implodes we are going to feel the consequences severely. If Leave leads to what Remain predicts then it will be an entirely self-inflicted wound.
Politically, if Leave wins and things go tits up then Labour - even under Corbyn - will benefit hugely. If Remain wins and things go tits up, then it will be UKIP that benefits. Either way, the Tories look to be in real trouble.
I certainly can't get close to Tyson's claim a couple of days ago that he would find it difficult/impossible to have a Tory as a friend ..... remarkable! In fact I have a number of Labour-supporting friends, but not as many as Her Indoors, who, from her earlier days knows a number of people living in Red in Tooth and Claw Blackburn. Although clearly not nearly a large enough sample to be in any way representative, she reports that virtually every one, ranging in age from being in their late twenties through to their seventies, intends to vote LEAVE. It was on receiving this intelligence a few days ago, that I really started to believe that the betting markets had it all wrong.
I have lots of Labour-voting chums. Some still intend to vote Remain, but even they are deeply pessimistic of Remain's chances.
What I find interesting about the story behind this thread is the shift in big business, from standing shoulder-to-shoulder to laugh at the funny Little Englanders and their crazy notion of Leave, to now going "Holy fuck - these guys might actually WIN THIS THING!" - and looking for ways to make some money out of it. The true British entrepreneurial spirit shining through adversity....as it will post-Brexit.
The change in tone of Remainers is quite marked too. Barely a hint of the previous sneering and patronising superiority. It's become very noticeable elsewhere, that those who do so get short shrift or the piss taken out of them/ignored.
It's a remarkable change in attitudes - it was de rigueur only a matter of weeks ago to dismiss us. Not any more.
The problem with betting based on an early-in-the-day exit poll is that early voters may not be typical of all voters.
Yes, I was thinking that. Was there not some information from a polling company recently which had leave well ahead in the early voters with remain growing stronger as the night went on? My guess, FWIW, is that many older, retired voters will vote early and give Leave an early lead but the position will become more complex as the rest of us get home from work. I think putting a lot of money on an early day poll would be very brave.
But as I said a while ago that is not the point of this story. The point of this story is to rack up project fear.
Will Straw: "Australia, who have a points-based immigration system, have twice as many migrants per head as the UK."
Are you a muppet or what? They could just as easily have half the level - they have control.
They could. But a points based system would be a really bad way of controlling it. In the words of the anti-immigration Migration Watch, "totally unsuitable for the UK":
Meeks, do you ever foresee a time when immigration needs controlling, and if so why and when?
I can imagine it. But we are nowhere near that level.
And I certainly wouldn't be advocating measures for doing so that even anti-immigration organisations describe as "totally unsuitable for the UK".
I was sceptical of the quotation without any context so I visited the link. That makes clear that the points-based system is deemed unsuitable if we don't have effective control of our borders .
Yes, as I say we had better hope that Leave is right about this and that all the economists and the global institutions that are warning against pulling out of the EU are wrong. If they are not, if it turns out that they are right, as they were right about the dangers that an independent Scotland might face, then a lot of people are going to face a lot of hardship for a sustained period of time.
Many of us on PB are fortunate enough to be in a position where we are protected against the possible economic downsides of Brexit; we are well paid with good jobs, or we no longer work, or we do not live in the UK. Some of us, most notably the lawyers, will actually do extremely well from it. Most of our fellow citizens, on the other hand, are in more exposed positions. Leave just has to be right if they are not going to face a very challenging future.
There is nothing in your answer that reassures me on that front. I would, for example, dispute that for the last one hundred years or so we have been "pretty damned good at this business malarkey". From where I sit, we have been pretty damned bad at it - poor productivity, low investment in R&D, relatively poor exports, and so on. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to join the EEC, as was, in the first place.
If we leave this will be a position that will have been chosen by the British public, not by "Leave" or "Remain", not by us sitting here on PB with our well paid jobs etc, but by 15+ million people ticking a box saying "Leave the European Union"
Yep - and the Leave side will own all the consequences of that. So, let us hope that they are right.
They won't though. The Leave campaign will disappear once it wins. Perhaps Boris or Farage might own the consequences - may be Gove of IDS, although I doubt most people recognise them
The Leave campaign is essentially the Tory right and UKIP. Everyone knows this.
Everyone who thinks Remain are going to win knows this. But there are also a hell of a lot of Labour (or now ex-Labour --> UKIP) who will not cast a vote for Remain. They will be the folks who get Leave over the line.
Will Straw: "Australia, who have a points-based immigration system, have twice as many migrants per head as the UK."
Are you a muppet or what? They could just as easily have half the level - they have control.
They could. But a points based system would be a really bad way of controlling it. In the words of the anti-immigration Migration Watch, "totally unsuitable for the UK":
Meeks, do you ever foresee a time when immigration needs controlling, and if so why and when?
I can imagine it. But we are nowhere near that level.
And I certainly wouldn't be advocating measures for doing so that even anti-immigration organisations describe as "totally unsuitable for the UK".
I was sceptical of the quotation without any context so I visited the link. That makes clear that the points-based system is deemed unsuitable if we don't have effective control of our borders .
I've little doubt that leaving the EU will be the wost decision this country has made in my lifetime. This is not voting on who should leave the big brother household. This will adversely affect everyone but particularly those under 40 who will miss out on so much that we've all taken for granted for decades.
It's time for everyone who has thought this through to go out and sell.
I do wonder how much of being the world's fifth largest economy is down to our EU membership. I guess we'll soon find out.
We lost the Empire a long time ago. We built it on the back of being the world's first industrial power. We frittered away the huge advantages that delivered. Others learned from our mistakes and overtook us.
We will soon find out if being in the EU held us back from being the world's fourth largest economy too....
You were the one talking about "the last one hundred years or so". We have given back our Empire in that time (and given it back to constituent countries rather than lost it due to wars, which as I'm sure Mr Dancer will inform us, is the way most previous Empires have broken up). The Empire was certainly there for us in two World Wars in the past century. Not "a long time ago".
Of course. We will soon find out exactly how important the EU has been to our economy.
And we did handle the demise of Empire very well - much better than most other imperial powers have. My argument is with the notion that the Empire proves we have been very good at business for hundreds of years. I think that the last century largely indicates the opposite.
Remain have always had the sword of Damocles suspended above their heads. It was inscribed with 'uncontrolled immigration', but it hasn't fallen yet. The threat of doing so is enough.
The dream of a political union of Europe remains a distant threat, but immigration is here and now.
The problem for those wanting open borders and a federation of Europe is that they dare not speak it openly for fear of those pesky voters. So apocalyptic predictions have all they have.
I still feel they will win a narrow majority, though. Fear of the unknown is still powerful.
There was a run on the pound towards the back end of Labour's last time in office (remember almost hitting parity with the euro after it being something like 1.4 to the pound?).
I still watched This Week at the time, and remember Portillo saying he couldn't work out why it hadn't destroyed the government.
The media will be limited in what they can say because if they attribute it to the direction the vote might be going that must be breaking laws on electoral reporting.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
They cannot ignore the decision to leave. That is all we are being asked to express an opinion on. Everything else is up for grabs.
A general election in 2016 is 12/1 with Ladbrokes. 2017 is 16/1. How else would a government get a mandate to negotiate after a Leave vote?
The mandate to negotiate would be the Leave vote.
I agree you can argue a GE or 2nd referendum may be needed to ratify any new deal, but not to negotiate it.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
They cannot ignore the decision to leave. That is all we are being asked to express an opinion on. Everything else is up for grabs.
A general election in 2016 is 12/1 with Ladbrokes. 2017 is 16/1. How else would a government get a mandate to negotiate after a Leave vote?
More to the point how can the Conservative party govern with these divides within it? On either result we may no longer have a functioning government. Cameron has sought to lay waste to his opponents, as he always has. But those opponents are his majority and then some.
I think that these odds are a good spot. A new leader will want and need a new mandate with a clear direction forward. No part of the Conservative government will be able to do this without an election. And then there is the Corbyn factor. The temptation to have an election before Labour replace him would be almost irresistible.
The latest story about Leave "revealing" their "policies" to control immigration hold as much substance as the ridiculous claims yesterday that they were making "unfunded" promises.
People have rightly drawn attention to the many similarities with the Indyref and this vote but there is one key difference. If Scotland had voted yes the Scottish government led by the SNP would have been the government responsible for implementing their proposals, god help them. That is not the case here. The Vote Leave campaign ends on 24th June regardless of the result and will not be implementing anything.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
It's certainly coming across as an alternative manifesto in the making post Brexit. I'm expecting more of the same from VoteLeave. It's something the electorate sees as familiar/tangible/doable.
Whilst there's clear parallels with SIndy, I'd argue that the Yessers were reliant on a single commodity - oil - to buoy them up, or not as the case may be. The fundamental issues such as currency/BoE aren't in play re Brexit.
Will Straw: "Australia, who have a points-based immigration system, have twice as many migrants per head as the UK."
Are you a muppet or what? They could just as easily have half the level - they have control.
They could. But a points based system would be a really bad way of controlling it. In the words of the anti-immigration Migration Watch, "totally unsuitable for the UK":
Meeks, do you ever foresee a time when immigration needs controlling, and if so why and when?
I can imagine it. But we are nowhere near that level.
And I certainly wouldn't be advocating measures for doing so that even anti-immigration organisations describe as "totally unsuitable for the UK".
I was sceptical of the quotation without any context so I visited the link. That makes clear that the points-based system is deemed unsuitable if we don't have effective control of our borders .
It uses slightly different language - "thoroughly unsuitable for the UK". It elaborates further: " A mechanical, points-based test that reduces, even eliminates, human discretion cannot cope with the complexities of immigration to the UK and has already failed once."
I've little doubt that leaving the EU will be the wost decision this country has made in my lifetime. This is not voting on who should leave the big brother household. This will adversely affect everyone but particularly those under 40 who will miss out on so much that we've all taken for granted for decades.
It's time for everyone who has thought this through to go out and sell.
And fast.
The lunatics are taking over the asylum
The people who will be least affected by leaving the EU are the wealthy, the retired (if they are in the UK and not southern Europe) and other people who do not need to work, and expats living outside the EU. Everyone else has a big bone in the game.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
They cannot ignore the decision to leave. That is all we are being asked to express an opinion on. Everything else is up for grabs.
A general election in 2016 is 12/1 with Ladbrokes. 2017 is 16/1. How else would a government get a mandate to negotiate after a Leave vote?
The mandate to negotiate would be the Leave vote.
I agree you can argue a GE or 2nd referendum may be needed to ratify any new deal, but not to negotiate it.
Leave on what terms? The moonbeams and pixie dust idea that the Leave camp have put forward that the EU would give Britain everything the Leave campaigners want might suit them well during the campaign but any government that came up short in negotiations, as it inevitably would, would be stitching itself up.
I've little doubt that leaving the EU will be the wost decision this country has made in my lifetime. This is not voting on who should leave the big brother household. This will adversely affect everyone but particularly those under 40 who will miss out on so much that we've all taken for granted for decades.
It's time for everyone who has thought this through to go out and sell.
And fast.
The lunatics are taking over the asylum
In order for us to leave there needs to be about 15 million Lunatics, nice that you have such a high opinion of your fellow citizens, most of whom to be fair would not have dreamed of voting for leave if Blairite idiots had not opened the floodgates in the first place.
We are largely a tolerant live-and-let-live sort of people, had there been a steady flow of immigrants into the country of 100-150k per year, and more than proforma attempts to help them integrate, along with adequate increases in health and school provisions to support that increase I doubt we would be where we are now.
The latest story about Leave "revealing" their "policies" to control immigration hold as much substance as the ridiculous claims yesterday that they were making "unfunded" promises.
People have rightly drawn attention to the many similarities with the Indyref and this vote but there is one key difference. If Scotland had voted yes the Scottish government led by the SNP would have been the government responsible for implementing their proposals, god help them. That is not the case here. The Vote Leave campaign ends on 24th June regardless of the result and will not be implementing anything.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
It's certainly coming across as an alternative manifesto in the making post Brexit. I'm expecting more of the same from VoteLeave. It's something the electorate sees as familiar/tangible/doable.
Whilst there's clear parallels with SIndy, I'd argue that the Yessers were reliant on a single commodity - oil - to buoy them up, or not as the case may be. The fundamental issues such as currency/BoE aren't in play re Brexit.
For oil read the Single Market. It is now completely clear that two years following the Leave vote we will no longer be a part of that. We have to hope that the Leave camp is correct and that removing ourselves from the Single Market will have no adverse consequences - either directly or indirectly.
Yes, as I say we had better hope that Leave is right about this and that all the economists and the global institutions that are warning against pulling out of the EU are wrong. If they are not, if it turns out that they are right, as they were right about the dangers that an independent Scotland might face, then a lot of people are going to face a lot of hardship for a sustained period of time.
Many of us on PB are fortunate enough to be in a position where we are protected against the possible economic downsides of Brexit; we are well paid with good jobs, or we no longer work, or we do not live in the UK. Some of us, most notably the lawyers, will actually do extremely well from it. Most of our fellow citizens, on the other hand, are in more exposed positions. Leave just has to be right if they are not going to face a very challenging future.
There is nothing in your answer that reassures me on that front. I would, for example, dispute that for the last one hundred years or so we have been "pretty damned good at this business malarkey". From where I sit, we have been pretty damned bad at it - poor productivity, low investment in R&D, relatively poor exports, and so on. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to join the EEC, as was, in the first place.
If we leave this will be a position that will have been chosen by the British public, not by "Leave" or "Remain", not by us sitting here on PB with our well paid jobs etc, but by 15+ million people ticking a box saying "Leave the European Union"
Yep - and the Leave side will own all the consequences of that. So, let us hope that they are right.
They won't though. The Leave campaign will disappear once it wins. Perhaps Boris or Farage might own the consequences - may be Gove of IDS, although I doubt most people recognise them
The Leave campaign is essentially the Tory right and UKIP. Everyone knows this.
Everyone who thinks Remain are going to win knows this. But there are also a hell of a lot of Labour (or now ex-Labour --> UKIP) who will not cast a vote for Remain. They will be the folks who get Leave over the line.
Only 25% of current Labour voters back Leave, if Remain win 40%+ of Tory voters they should scrape home, if Leave get 60%+ of Tory voters they will win
People will always be able to get into the UK without difficulty. In the US, the vast majority of illegal immigration from Mexico comes from people coming as tourists, and forgetting to Leave. Unless the proposal is for the abolition of the Common Travel Area, and for all visitors from the EU and the US and the like to have visas before visiting (which would do more to destroy the UK's services economy than anything else), then we need to accept that illegal immigrants from Europe will find it trivial to get into the UK, even post Brexit.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
They cannot ignore the decision to leave. That is all we are being asked to express an opinion on. Everything else is up for grabs.
A general election in 2016 is 12/1 with Ladbrokes. 2017 is 16/1. How else would a government get a mandate to negotiate after a Leave vote?
The mandate to negotiate would be the Leave vote.
I agree you can argue a GE or 2nd referendum may be needed to ratify any new deal, but not to negotiate it.
Leave on what terms? The moonbeams and pixie dust idea that the Leave camp have put forward that the EU would give Britain everything the Leave campaigners want might suit them well during the campaign but any government that came up short in negotiations, as it inevitably would, would be stitching itself up.
Westminster was going to give Scotland everything it wanted in the independence negotiations.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
They cannot ignore the decision to leave. That is all we are being asked to express an opinion on. Everything else is up for grabs.
A general election in 2016 is 12/1 with Ladbrokes. 2017 is 16/1. How else would a government get a mandate to negotiate after a Leave vote?
The mandate to negotiate would be the Leave vote.
I agree you can argue a GE or 2nd referendum may be needed to ratify any new deal, but not to negotiate it.
Leave on what terms? The moonbeams and pixie dust idea that the Leave camp have put forward that the EU would give Britain everything the Leave campaigners want might suit them well during the campaign but any government that came up short in negotiations, as it inevitably would, would be stitching itself up.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
They cannot ignore the decision to leave. That is all we are being asked to express an opinion on. Everything else is up for grabs.
A general election in 2016 is 12/1 with Ladbrokes. 2017 is 16/1. How else would a government get a mandate to negotiate after a Leave vote?
The mandate to negotiate would be the Leave vote.
I agree you can argue a GE or 2nd referendum may be needed to ratify any new deal, but not to negotiate it.
Leave on what terms? The moonbeams and pixie dust idea that the Leave camp have put forward that the EU would give Britain everything the Leave campaigners want might suit them well during the campaign but any government that came up short in negotiations, as it inevitably would, would be stitching itself up.
Westminster was going to give Scotland everything it wanted in the independence negotiations.
With the big difference that the SNP didn't mind losing popularity after a vote for independence.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
They cannot ignore the decision to leave. That is all we are being asked to express an opinion on. Everything else is up for grabs.
A general election in 2016 is 12/1 with Ladbrokes. 2017 is 16/1. How else would a government get a mandate to negotiate after a Leave vote?
The mandate to negotiate would be the Leave vote.
I agree you can argue a GE or 2nd referendum may be needed to ratify any new deal, but not to negotiate it.
Leave on what terms? The moonbeams and pixie dust idea that the Leave camp have put forward that the EU would give Britain everything the Leave campaigners want might suit them well during the campaign but any government that came up short in negotiations, as it inevitably would, would be stitching itself up.
Sorry, but those who pushed forward with the Great European Project long ago cornered the market in moonbeams and pixie dust....
The latest story about Leave "revealing" their "policies" to control immigration hold as much substance as the ridiculous claims yesterday that they were making "unfunded" promises.
People have rightly drawn attention to the many similarities with the Indyref and this vote but there is one key difference. If Scotland had voted yes the Scottish government led by the SNP would have been the government responsible for implementing their proposals, god help them. That is not the case here. The Vote Leave campaign ends on 24th June regardless of the result and will not be implementing anything.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
It's certainly coming across as an alternative manifesto in the making post Brexit. I'm expecting more of the same from VoteLeave. It's something the electorate sees as familiar/tangible/doable.
Whilst there's clear parallels with SIndy, I'd argue that the Yessers were reliant on a single commodity - oil - to buoy them up, or not as the case may be. The fundamental issues such as currency/BoE aren't in play re Brexit.
For oil read the Single Market. It is now completely clear that two years following the Leave vote we will no longer be a part of that. We have to hope that the Leave camp is correct and that removing ourselves from the Single Market will have no adverse consequences - either directly or indirectly.
I suspect that two years might become four or five quite easily. That two year limit is subject to extension by mutual agreement. It would seem entirely possible that a Boris Government (which would be soft Leave at best) and the EU would both consider it in their interest to extent that period several times as they attempt to thresh out the minutiae of the agreement. The public will probably give this the benefit of the doubt for far longer than is reasonable.
The latest story about Leave "revealing" their "policies" to control immigration hold as much substance as the ridiculous claims yesterday that they were making "unfunded" promises.
People have rightly drawn attention to the many similarities with the Indyref and this vote but there is one key difference. If Scotland had voted yes the Scottish government led by the SNP would have been the government responsible for implementing their proposals, god help them. That is not the case here. The Vote Leave campaign ends on 24th June regardless of the result and will not be implementing anything.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
It's certainly coming across as an alternative manifesto in the making post Brexit. I'm expecting more of the same from VoteLeave. It's something the electorate sees as familiar/tangible/doable.
Whilst there's clear parallels with SIndy, I'd argue that the Yessers were reliant on a single commodity - oil - to buoy them up, or not as the case may be. The fundamental issues such as currency/BoE aren't in play re Brexit.
For oil read the Single Market. It is now completely clear that two years following the Leave vote we will no longer be a part of that. We have to hope that the Leave camp is correct and that removing ourselves from the Single Market will have no adverse consequences - either directly or indirectly.
I suspect that two years might become four or five quite easily. That two year limit is subject to extension by mutual agreement. It would seem entirely possible that a Boris Government (which would be soft Leave at best) and the EU would both consider it in their interest to extent that period several times as they attempt to thresh out the minutiae of the agreement. The public will probably give this the benefit of the doubt for far longer than is reasonable.
When I pointed out that 8 years for renegotiations was par for the course earlier in the year, I was assailed by indignant Leavers telling me that it was all going to be plain sailing and I didn't know what I was talking about.
Perhaps I should publish my thread headers with a six month time lag to get universal acclaim from the slower thinking Leavers.
Hmm... One of my mother's carers, a Roumanian, tells me she is leaving the care agency because of the wage cut to minimum wage I mentioned before, and the loss of some other benefit. So mass immigration of unskilled people is working out for her too.
The agency was previously owned by Circle, and I remember that Circle offered a £100/ year company contribution for people taking up the new work place pension the Government had put in place. I don't think any of the workers took them up on it. So I don't think it is the loss of benefit there.
Only 25% of current Labour voters back Leave, if Remain win 40%+ of Tory voters they should scrape home, if Leave get 60%+ of Tory voters they will win
If there is one statistic in the whole of the polling that will prove to be significantly wrong, it will be that only 25% of current Labour voters back Leave. That will not translate into 75% backing Remain - nowhere near that. I expect that Leave number to be not 25%, but 35%+. Many others will tacitly support Leave by sitting on their hands and not voting fat all.
The draw of knocking the smirk off the faces of Osborne and Cameron as they lose power will prove strong with many.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
The real question surely is how much of what Leave propose would it politically tenable for the government of the day to ignore should Leave win the referendum, especially if by more than a few percent.
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
They cannot ignore the decision to leave. That is all we are being asked to express an opinion on. Everything else is up for grabs.
A general election in 2016 is 12/1 with Ladbrokes. 2017 is 16/1. How else would a government get a mandate to negotiate after a Leave vote?
The mandate to negotiate would be the Leave vote.
I agree you can argue a GE or 2nd referendum may be needed to ratify any new deal, but not to negotiate it.
Leave on what terms? The moonbeams and pixie dust idea that the Leave camp have put forward that the EU would give Britain everything the Leave campaigners want might suit them well during the campaign but any government that came up short in negotiations, as it inevitably would, would be stitching itself up.
Westminster was going to give Scotland everything it wanted in the independence negotiations.
With the big difference that the SNP didn't mind losing popularity after a vote for independence.
I am not sure that Farage and UKIP would be that bothered either.
People will always be able to get into the UK without difficulty. In the US, the vast majority of illegal immigration from Mexico comes from people coming as tourists, and forgetting to Leave. Unless the proposal is for the abolition of the Common Travel Area, and for all visitors from the EU and the US and the like to have visas before visiting (which would do more to destroy the UK's services economy than anything else), then we need to accept that illegal immigrants from Europe will find it trivial to get into the UK, even post Brexit.
Indeed. No-one is really suggesting that if we leave the EU will will put up barriers to visitors or require EU citizens to apply for visit visas. The change will be that people from the EU will not be able to claim benefits as they do now, including tax credits, unemployment and housing benefit. They will also not have the automatic right to work, and we will be able to deport them if their behaviour is undesirable.
Was this while we were within the EU? If so, that is hardly relevant, is it?
Happy to be corrected (assuming Dr Jekyll is there).
I'm curious as to the horror that Leave produces in some. I'm voting leave because I was lied to in 1975 - it's as simple as that. Tony Blair lied about Iraq. It happens on a regular basis with politicians. If we vote Remain ... que sera, sera.
The latest story about Leave "revealing" their "policies" to control immigration hold as much substance as the ridiculous claims yesterday that they were making "unfunded" promises.
People have rightly drawn attention to the many similarities with the Indyref and this vote but there is one key difference. If Scotland had voted yes the Scottish government led by the SNP would have been the government responsible for implementing their proposals, god help them. That is not the case here. The Vote Leave campaign ends on 24th June regardless of the result and will not be implementing anything.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
It's certainly coming across as an alternative manifesto in the making post Brexit. I'm expecting more of the same from VoteLeave. It's something the electorate sees as familiar/tangible/doable.
Whilst there's clear parallels with SIndy, I'd argue that the Yessers were reliant on a single commodity - oil - to buoy them up, or not as the case may be. The fundamental issues such as currency/BoE aren't in play re Brexit.
For oil read the Single Market. It is now completely clear that two years following the Leave vote we will no longer be a part of that. We have to hope that the Leave camp is correct and that removing ourselves from the Single Market will have no adverse consequences - either directly or indirectly.
I suspect that two years might become four or five quite easily. That two year limit is subject to extension by mutual agreement. It would seem entirely possible that a Boris Government (which would be soft Leave at best) and the EU would both consider it in their interest to extent that period several times as they attempt to thresh out the minutiae of the agreement. The public will probably give this the benefit of the doubt for far longer than is reasonable.
That is very possible, I agree. But that does also make it more likely that there will be a renegotiation that ends up keeping the UK inside the EU.
The latest story about Leave "revealing" their "policies" to control immigration hold as much substance as the ridiculous claims yesterday that they were making "unfunded" promises.
People have rightly drawn attention to the many similarities with the Indyref and this vote but there is one key difference. If Scotland had voted yes the Scottish government led by the SNP would have been the government responsible for implementing their proposals, god help them. That is not the case here. The Vote Leave campaign ends on 24th June regardless of the result and will not be implementing anything.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
It's certainly coming across as an alternative manifesto in the making post Brexit. I'm expecting more of the same from VoteLeave. It's something the electorate sees as familiar/tangible/doable.
Whilst there's clear parallels with SIndy, I'd argue that the Yessers were reliant on a single commodity - oil - to buoy them up, or not as the case may be. The fundamental issues such as currency/BoE aren't in play re Brexit.
For oil read the Single Market. It is now completely clear that two years following the Leave vote we will no longer be a part of that. We have to hope that the Leave camp is correct and that removing ourselves from the Single Market will have no adverse consequences - either directly or indirectly.
It's quite simple; if we're outside the single market, we abide by its rules when we sell into it, just the same as following US rules when we export there and Chinese rules for China. The equivalency rules would give our financial services decent protection even if no deal was agreed, which is highly unlikely.
People will always be able to get into the UK without difficulty. In the US, the vast majority of illegal immigration from Mexico comes from people coming as tourists, and forgetting to Leave. Unless the proposal is for the abolition of the Common Travel Area, and for all visitors from the EU and the US and the like to have visas before visiting (which would do more to destroy the UK's services economy than anything else), then we need to accept that illegal immigrants from Europe will find it trivial to get into the UK, even post Brexit.
Which is why I have maintained the key issue isn't who we let in, but who we can throw out. The biggest thorn in our side is ECFR via the ECJ, and ECHR which is defacto enforced by the ECJ. We have well over a hundred thousand illegal immigrants in the UK that have failed all possible appeals, and we expel something like 3% of them, because the rest make claims under Article 8.
I've little doubt that leaving the EU will be the wost decision this country has made in my lifetime. This is not voting on who should leave the big brother household. This will adversely affect everyone but particularly those under 40 who will miss out on so much that we've all taken for granted for decades.
It's time for everyone who has thought this through to go out and sell.
And fast.
The lunatics are taking over the asylum
Don't be daft Roger the lunatics already control the asylum, this is just the shift change.
Was this while we were within the EU? If so, that is hardly relevant, is it?
Happy to be corrected (assuming Dr Jekyll is there).
I'm curious as to the horror that Leave produces in some. I'm voting leave because I was lied to in 1975 - it's as simple as that. Tony Blair lied about Iraq. It happens on a regular basis with politicians. If we vote Remain ... que sera, sera.
In a week where Leave has definitively decided that it is going to spend the last three weeks campaigning on immigration, pandering to the deepest atavistic fears of the populace (NB have the useful idiots yet worked out they've been duped?), that question answers itself.
Only 25% of current Labour voters back Leave, if Remain win 40%+ of Tory voters they should scrape home, if Leave get 60%+ of Tory voters they will win
If there is one statistic in the whole of the polling that will prove to be significantly wrong, it will be that only 25% of current Labour voters back Leave. That will not translate into 75% backing Remain - nowhere near that. I expect that Leave number to be not 25%, but 35%+. Many others will tacitly support Leave by sitting on their hands and not voting fat all.
The draw of knocking the smirk off the faces of Osborne and Cameron as they lose power will prove strong with many.
ICM now do have Labour voters on 30%+ so if Leave win then that would probably be right, if Remain narrowly win 25% is more likely. The replacement of Cameron by a rightwinger in the event of Leave may lead some to pause
I don't think the premise of this story is quite right. The idea for traders to commission an early idea of which way a close vote is going is far from new - it's been done many times before. You don't really get anything that would inspire any confidence until very late in the day (sometimes not even then). You would most likely only start to see market impact about half an hour before the polls close.
(Currency trader since prehistoric times.. even pre-EMU..)
Comments
And I certainly wouldn't be advocating measures for doing so that even anti-immigration organisations describe as "totally unsuitable for the UK".
Economy vs racism?
Or more accurately, who you believe most? The economists or Mr "no ifs, no buts" Cameron.
The former have a record of struggling to predict that tomorrow is Thursday and the latter has been proved to be not only wrong but stating an impossible thing as fact before breakfast.
High immigration is a mixed blessing. It increases GDP, very nice for the poshos. It causes problems for the plebs.
Establishment vs the proles.
Or it's a matter of being able to set your own laws (but we don't want those proles setting the agenda).
Plato - would you care to re-phrase that line?
Apologies. 'The referendum has developed not necessarily to Remain's advantage' so my reply was less thoughtful than your article deserved
Osborne can always run against the opposition. When we leave the EU there will be no opposition. Leave will have secured total and unchangeable victory. If we do pull out, we are not going back in for many a long year. So if Leave is wrong, there is very little we can do to put things right - there is not going to be another vote in five years.
That is why we all have to hope that Leave is not wrong.
What I find interesting about the story behind this thread is the shift in big business, from standing shoulder-to-shoulder to laugh at the funny Little Englanders and their crazy notion of Leave, to now going "Holy fuck - these guys might actually WIN THIS THING!" - and looking for ways to make some money out of it. The true British entrepreneurial spirit shining through adversity....as it will post-Brexit.
People have rightly drawn attention to the many similarities with the Indyref and this vote but there is one key difference. If Scotland had voted yes the Scottish government led by the SNP would have been the government responsible for implementing their proposals, god help them. That is not the case here. The Vote Leave campaign ends on 24th June regardless of the result and will not be implementing anything.
So the real question is not whether they have come up with the best solution to the complex and messy question of immigration, that is not their responsibility. The real question is whether it would be possible for the government of the day to choose to take steps to restrict immigration from the EU or even parts of the EU if it thought that was advisable. And the answer is self-evident.
It basically says:
(i) The Australian model works for Australia but might not be suitable for the UK
(ii) That when we tried to introduce a points based system we buggered it up
(iii) If we introduce restrictions on EU visitors the EU will introduce reciprocal restrictions
All probably true (point 3 is an assumption but unreasonable). But not a fact check
We lost the Empire a long time ago. We built it on the back of being the world's first industrial power. We frittered away the huge advantages that delivered. Others learned from our mistakes and overtook us.
"The U-3 unemployment statistic is not really a very realistic measure of unemployment. The broader U-6 measure that includes discouraged workers and those working part-time because they cannot find full time employment is double the U-3 rate.
If you calculate the unemployment rate the way it used to be tracked before the Clinton administration removed long-term discouraged workers from the calculation the unemployment rate is 22.9%.
You can learn about the way inflation and unemployment statistics have been manipulated at http://www.shadowstats.com
Most of the site is on a subscription basis but there is a fair amount of information available free of charge."
Do we think the official unemployment figures here reflect the actual numbers of people whose prospects are adversely affected by immigration?
Did I miss much?
When we leave, Leave will own what happens next. It may not be a party but it is firmly identified with the Tory right and UKIP. If what they have been saying turns out to be correct - and let us hope that it is - then they will reap the electoral rewards. If they are wrong, not only will they be hammered in the polls, but the British people will pay a very heavy price.
Maybe. Another prediction: Our imminent departure is going to put the skids under some fast-moving changes in the EU as we currently know it. I really hope that our departure would drive a stake through the heart of the ever-greater union Project beloved of a clique for whom democracy is an irritant to be overridden wherever possible. (And in the process, permanently end Europe as being an issue that causes division within the Tory party...)
The question isn't will the next PM be Boris, or Gove, or May or Uncle Tom Cobley, the question is to what extent that PM feels their hands are tied, in electoral survivability terms, by the Leave Platform, in the event of a leave vote.
No country in the world wholly - or even largely - manages internal migration through a points system.
The problem with all systems is that people game them, and you therefore require an ever expanding bureaucracy to handle them. Take points systems: "has a bachelors degree, five points" sounds unobjectionable, right? But is a Bachelors from Yale worth the same as one from Northwestern Polytechnic University? Do we rate all countries as having the same quality of tertiary education?
It's no coincidence that countries with the most complex systems, have the largest number of immigration lawyers - both working for the government and for would be immigrants. (There are rather more immigration lawyers in the US than there are QCs in the UK, for example.) All these people could be doing real work.
As always, a market based system works best. A simple tariff on immigrants - as suggested in one form by the Adam Smith Institute, and me in another - has all the benefits of a points based system. But with none of the costs. You don't speculatively emigrate to see if there's a job, if you need to hand over 5,000 for your first year's health insurance., for example.
I do not agree that Leave will "own" anything. They will not form or control the government. Nigel Farage will still not be in the House of Commons. The challenges for the government of the day will be considerable, not least because the Conservative majority (which will still exist) will be so fractured that effective government may prove impossible. But frankly that is now looking the outcome whoever wins.
If we remain and Italy implodes and the EU finds some way to hand us a bill for several billion quid to help patch things up, remain will get it in the neck. Similarly if there is another round of EU law idiocy that annoys the public, and absolutely if there is an economic down turn anyway despite remaining.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/people/marilyn-monroes-best-style-moments/
You were the one talking about "the last one hundred years or so". We have given back our Empire in that time (and given it back to constituent countries rather than lost it due to wars, which as I'm sure Mr Dancer will inform us, is the way most previous Empires have broken up). The Empire was certainly there for us in two World Wars in the past century. Not "a long time ago".
Labour and Tories stands on a platform of Leave by EEA/EFTA
UKIP stand on a platform of all the way out.
The public almost certainly want all the way out, but don't want Farage in No 10.
All the politicians will claim it is a mandate for EEA/EFTA when it is no such thing, its just not wanting an idiot for PM.
Politically, if Leave wins and things go tits up then Labour - even under Corbyn - will benefit hugely. If Remain wins and things go tits up, then it will be UKIP that benefits. Either way, the Tories look to be in real trouble.
It's a remarkable change in attitudes - it was de rigueur only a matter of weeks ago to dismiss us. Not any more.
But as I said a while ago that is not the point of this story. The point of this story is to rack up project fear.
When it comes to immigration in this referendum they have at best been dismissive of any concerns; at worst, outright contemptuous.
It's time for everyone who has thought this through to go out and sell.
And fast.
The lunatics are taking over the asylum
And we did handle the demise of Empire very well - much better than most other imperial powers have. My argument is with the notion that the Empire proves we have been very good at business for hundreds of years. I think that the last century largely indicates the opposite.
The dream of a political union of Europe remains a distant threat, but immigration is here and now.
The problem for those wanting open borders and a federation of Europe is that they dare not speak it openly for fear of those pesky voters. So apocalyptic predictions have all they have.
I still feel they will win a narrow majority, though. Fear of the unknown is still powerful.
There was a run on the pound towards the back end of Labour's last time in office (remember almost hitting parity with the euro after it being something like 1.4 to the pound?).
I still watched This Week at the time, and remember Portillo saying he couldn't work out why it hadn't destroyed the government.
The media will be limited in what they can say because if they attribute it to the direction the vote might be going that must be breaking laws on electoral reporting.
I agree you can argue a GE or 2nd referendum may be needed to ratify any new deal, but not to negotiate it.
I think that these odds are a good spot. A new leader will want and need a new mandate with a clear direction forward. No part of the Conservative government will be able to do this without an election. And then there is the Corbyn factor. The temptation to have an election before Labour replace him would be almost irresistible.
Whilst there's clear parallels with SIndy, I'd argue that the Yessers were reliant on a single commodity - oil - to buoy them up, or not as the case may be. The fundamental issues such as currency/BoE aren't in play re Brexit.
http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/11.33
It uses slightly different language - "thoroughly unsuitable for the UK". It elaborates further: " A mechanical, points-based test that reduces, even eliminates, human discretion cannot cope with the complexities of immigration to the UK and has already failed once."
He demonstrated that when he edited Left Foot Forward, and he does not seemed to have changed his spots.
We are largely a tolerant live-and-let-live sort of people, had there been a steady flow of immigrants into the country of 100-150k per year, and more than proforma attempts to help them integrate, along with adequate increases in health and school provisions to support that increase I doubt we would be where we are now.
"Selective quoting from Meeks ? Surely not."
So Mr Hyde has re-merged?
We'll either vote Remain or Leave. Neither will be the end of the world, and we can live with it.
People will always be able to get into the UK without difficulty. In the US, the vast majority of illegal immigration from Mexico comes from people coming as tourists, and forgetting to Leave. Unless the proposal is for the abolition of the Common Travel Area, and for all visitors from the EU and the US and the like to have visas before visiting (which would do more to destroy the UK's services economy than anything else), then we need to accept that illegal immigrants from Europe will find it trivial to get into the UK, even post Brexit.
Perhaps I should publish my thread headers with a six month time lag to get universal acclaim from the slower thinking Leavers.
The agency was previously owned by Circle, and I remember that Circle offered a £100/ year company contribution for people taking up the new work place pension the Government had put in place. I don't think any of the workers took them up on it. So I don't think it is the loss of benefit there.
The draw of knocking the smirk off the faces of Osborne and Cameron as they lose power will prove strong with many.
"and has already failed once."
Was this while we were within the EU? If so, that is hardly relevant, is it?
Happy to be corrected (assuming Dr Jekyll is there).
I'm curious as to the horror that Leave produces in some. I'm voting leave because I was lied to in 1975 - it's as simple as that. Tony Blair lied about Iraq. It happens on a regular basis with politicians. If we vote Remain ... que sera, sera.
My advice: Buy Eros short term. Buy $ long term. But above all put away a bit of Gold.
(Currency trader since prehistoric times.. even pre-EMU..)