Lammy ranting on Sky: "Referendum needs 2/3rds majority. We can't have rule by the mob! I'll never vote for Brexit in the HoC"
I voted Leave and my conscience is also clear.
Sean is being a knob. You make your choices and you live with them. You don't go to pieces at the first sign of trouble.
Quite. I couldn't give a toss about the financial markets.
I'm not going to pieces, but it would take a halfwit not to be worried by the potential for economic calamity - and the dissolution of the Union.
Do you ever go back and look at what you have written on here in the past?
The vitriol you poured on people who declared for remain was quite something. 2 working days in and your flapping like a big girl
lol. I happily admit it's not been my finest hour. I am unnerved. Im my defence, I am unnerved by the numbers of people I like, admire, and even love, who are absolutely shattered by this result - in tears, distraught, looking at horrible changes to their lives.
It's very hard to be relentlessly stoical and convinced of one's virtue when this is happening to immediate friends and family.
Oh man up.
I am mystified by this belated outpouring of love for the EU. Most people I know were in the end Remainers, but almost to a man and woman they were pretty reluctant, taking a "better the devil you know" or "yeah the EU is a bit shit, but it;s too risky to leave" view. Fair enough I guess.
But this woe and handwringing is just bizarre, like we'd elected to all relocate to the Pitcairns and live without electricity. The short term uncertainty and even turmoil is totally expected. We will be just fine, and in a couple of years we will not regret it IMHO.
It's not love for the EU, it's love for friends and family who genuinely fear for their future, who wonder if they will have to move countries, who are in tears at potential bankruptcy.
This is really happening to people, out there, who are extrapolating the future and seeing very dark days ahead. Even if they are wrong (and who knows) it would be inhuman not to feel very sorry for them. If they are right, then my vote was potentially a grave moral mistake, however trivial in the grand scheme.
How can anyone be 100% blithe and certain in this situation? I don't get it.
Well perhaps instead of adding to their concerns by bleating like a silly girl, you could tell reassure them and play the adult?
The current situation does appear very volatile, and I can't pretend not to be concerned.
However.
I don't believe the EU can go on as it is. Nor do I believe it is a stable prospect for the long term. The degree of integration will be unravelled by centuries of national sentiment, variation of culture, and democratic deficit.
Consider how difficult things seem now. And then consider how much worse it would be if we were in the euro. Add ten years of integration, or twenty, and disentangling nation-states will not be impossible, but it may be bloody.
The most alarming aspect appears to be the minimal planning from politicians, which amounts to a dereliction of duty. Damned fools have led us to this point (Cameron with a referendum he never wanted and thought he'd walk, and Boris, campaigning for something he never believed in and never wanted) but we must make the best of it.
However, it is not an either or. Yes we have huge structural problems that no one seems to want to address and there is a bigger issue with democracy and accountability, which we are now starting to address.
So far we're addressing it by accelerating Scottish independence and an absence of functioning democracy and accountability at Westminster. We've blown up the system. It's anyone's guess what happens next.
It's not love for the EU, it's love for friends and family who genuinely fear for their future, who wonder if they will have to move countries, who are in tears at potential bankruptcy.
This is really happening to people, out there, who are extrapolating the future and seeing very dark days ahead. Even if they are wrong (and who knows) it would be inhuman not to feel very sorry for them. If they are right, then my vote was potentially a grave moral mistake, however trivial in the grand scheme.
How can anyone be 100% blithe and certain in this situation? I don't get it.
Oh dear God grow a pair ffs!
Nothing has HAPPENED. INHUMAN not to feel sorry for people kept awake at night over their property prices? I'll worry about actual suffering if I may.
In the name of sanity will you all calm down. The FTSE was 500 points lower than this last summer when China had a wobble and the pound is only a cent or two lower than it was against the dollar in February.
Frankly the way our politicians are running round like headless chickens in a student union meltdown it is a testament to our healthy state that a far worse dip hasnt occured.
But it's the GLOBAL contagion which is so unnerving. A bigger global stockmarket drop than Lehmans?? Italian banks teetering near default? There's a reasonable chance that Britain will pull through OK - but other countries will go over the edge.
I know zerohedge is prone to hysteria, but his site is quite mind-bending at the mo.
Surely Italian Banks teetering near default makes you damned glad we are out...? Being well out of the way of the shit hitting the fan when the Eurozone goes t1ts up was high on my list of pros and cons of brexit when deciding on my own vote.
(Unless you think they were in perfectly robust financial health last Wednesday? They really weren't you know...)
However, it is not an either or. Yes we have huge structural problems that no one seems to want to address and there is a bigger issue with democracy and accountability, which we are now starting to address.
So far we're addressing it by accelerating Scottish independence and an absence of functioning democracy and accountability at Westminster. We've blown up the system. It's anyone's guess what happens next.
George Osborne has aged 10 years. No sympathy for him, as he brought it on himself having no brexit plan and that absolutely ridiculous punishment budget.
There was always going to be buyer’s remorse whichever way the result went. If it had been a close Remain vote a lot of floating voters who voted Remain would have been giving interviews now saying how they wish they’d voted Leave.
I bet they wouldn't be saying "I never expected my vote to Remain in the EU would lead to us Remaining in the EU"
It's not love for the EU, it's love for friends and family who genuinely fear for their future, who wonder if they will have to move countries, who are in tears at potential bankruptcy.
This is really happening to people, out there, who are extrapolating the future and seeing very dark days ahead. Even if they are wrong (and who knows) it would be inhuman not to feel very sorry for them. If they are right, then my vote was potentially a grave moral mistake, however trivial in the grand scheme.
How can anyone be 100% blithe and certain in this situation? I don't get it.
Oh dear God grow a pair ffs!
Nothing has HAPPENED. INHUMAN not to feel sorry for people kept awake at night over their property prices? I'll worry about actual suffering if I may.
Utter ridiculousness.
agreed, bizarre reaction. The EU was not reformable, we're safer off out. To think your vote was wrong because the FTSE 250 loses value a couple of days later is ridiculous. You should have conviction in your previous arguments.
In the name of sanity will you all calm down. The FTSE was 500 points lower than this last summer when China had a wobble and the pound is only a cent or two lower than it was against the dollar in February.
Frankly the way our politicians are running round like headless chickens in a student union meltdown it is a testament to our healthy state that a far worse dip hasnt occured.
But it's the GLOBAL contagion which is so unnerving. A bigger global stockmarket drop than Lehmans?? Italian banks teetering near default? There's a reasonable chance that Britain will pull through OK - but other countries will go over the edge.
I know zerohedge is prone to hysteria, but his site is quite mind-bending at the mo.
Surely Italian Banks teetering near default makes you damned glad we are out...? Being well out of the way of the shit hitting the fan when the Eurozone goes t1ts up was high on my list of pros and cons of brexit when deciding on my own vote.
(Unless you think they were in perfectly robust financial health last Wednesday? They really weren't you know...)
I don't see how we are any more or any less affected by the Eurozone collapsing if we're out the EU.
However, it is not an either or. Yes we have huge structural problems that no one seems to want to address and there is a bigger issue with democracy and accountability, which we are now starting to address.
So far we're addressing it by accelerating Scottish independence and an absence of functioning democracy and accountability at Westminster. We've blown up the system. It's anyone's guess what happens next.
There was no system.
An interesting comment from someone who accused me of a lack of patriotism for previous criticism of our dysfunctional system.
It's not love for the EU, it's love for friends and family who genuinely fear for their future, who wonder if they will have to move countries, who are in tears at potential bankruptcy.
This is really happening to people, out there, who are extrapolating the future and seeing very dark days ahead. Even if they are wrong (and who knows) it would be inhuman not to feel very sorry for them. If they are right, then my vote was potentially a grave moral mistake, however trivial in the grand scheme.
How can anyone be 100% blithe and certain in this situation? I don't get it.
Oh dear God grow a pair ffs!
Nothing has HAPPENED. INHUMAN not to feel sorry for people kept awake at night over their property prices? I'll worry about actual suffering if I may.
Utter ridiculousness.
This was a good piece from a Remainer in the New Statesman:
One way to think about the vote is that it has forced a slightly more equitable distribution of anxiety and alienation upon the country. After Thursday, I feel more insecure about my future, and that of my family. I also feel like a foreigner in my own country — that there’s this whole massive swathe of people out there who don’t think like me at all and probably don’t like me. I feel like a big decision about my life has been imposed on me by nameless people out there. But of course, this is exactly how many of those very people have been feeling for years, and at a much higher level of intensity. Democracy forces us to try on each other’s clothes. I could have carried on quite happily ignoring the unhappiness of much of the country but I can’t ignore this.
So when Boris is PM and does not fancy facing the music in the Commons - and it will be a regular occurrence given the lies he's told - who will he send instead? The bloke is a gold-plated, mendacious coward. How utterly pathetic he is.
Mr. D, many thought the eurozone would either fall or shrink. It might very well be better if it had done so.
It's hard to foresee when an empire or confederacy will end, but we can look at fundamental structures. I think the EU's in a very bad place. It lacks legitimacy, it empire-builds by stealth and bureaucracy, it's based on ideology not reality or pragmatism and it's insufferably arrogant.
When there's no pressure valve (such as a referendum on Lisbon for us), explosion may occur.
It's not love for the EU, it's love for friends and family who genuinely fear for their future, who wonder if they will have to move countries, who are in tears at potential bankruptcy.
This is really happening to people, out there, who are extrapolating the future and seeing very dark days ahead. Even if they are wrong (and who knows) it would be inhuman not to feel very sorry for them. If they are right, then my vote was potentially a grave moral mistake, however trivial in the grand scheme.
How can anyone be 100% blithe and certain in this situation? I don't get it.
Oh dear God grow a pair ffs!
Nothing has HAPPENED. INHUMAN not to feel sorry for people kept awake at night over their property prices? I'll worry about actual suffering if I may.
Today is one of the finest demonstration of Statesmanship by David Cameron and the pity is that neither Boris or Gove had the courtesy to attend. In my opinion he will be sadly missed
As I have said so many times on here Cameron is an abolute first rate PM, the best the tories have to offer by a country mile. Still we have taken back control now so it doesn't matter who the next PM is.
It's not love for the EU, it's love for friends and family who genuinely fear for their future, who wonder if they will have to move countries, who are in tears at potential bankruptcy.
This is really happening to people, out there, who are extrapolating the future and seeing very dark days ahead. Even if they are wrong (and who knows) it would be inhuman not to feel very sorry for them. If they are right, then my vote was potentially a grave moral mistake, however trivial in the grand scheme.
How can anyone be 100% blithe and certain in this situation? I don't get it.
Well some of us are not quite so bi-polar and some of us have been through worse ( I remember the forerunner of the FTSE at 150 at the bottom of one bear market). Extrapolating the real economy's future through short term movements in the City is plain daft.
The fact that there would be adverse consequences in the short term was well advertised and accepted (see Charles' posts on here). I see no reason to run around panicking in best Corporal Jones fashion.
Lammy ranting on Sky: "Referendum needs 2/3rds majority. We can't have rule by the mob! I'll never vote for Brexit in the HoC"
But if the economic meltdown continues then there will be a lot of people, an awful lot, who would quite like parliament to overrule the people.
I presume we have all seen Kelvin MacKenzie's public expression of Bremorse in the Sun?
As I said yesterday, the markets will decide this, and right now the markets are going mental. A bigger loss than Lehmans. We have destabilised not only ourselves, but other countries, some of which were perilously close to chaos already.
I also suggested that we were entering a dynamic, chaotic state yesterday - that we had set off an entirely unpredictable chain reaction. And I was pooh-poohed by some.
Maybe the fiend Osborne was right and we have put a bomb under everything. Eeeesh.
How do we unclusterfuck this?
You voted Out!
This uncertainty and turmoil, wholly predictable and indeed predicted, was the principal reason I backed Remain in the end, to the bemusement of some on here.
My conscience is at least clear.
I voted Leave and my conscience is also clear.
Sean is being a knob. You make your choices and you live with them. You don't go to pieces at the first sign of trouble.
Quite. I couldn't give a toss about the financial markets.
An insight into the europhobe mentality. It doesn't matter how much value is wiped off the economy, how many pensions are wrecked, how many of people's hard earned assets are crushed in value or how many jobs are lost. As long as we leave the EU, that's a price worth paying.
Markets overreact and panic. Then they settle down.
31 years ago the pound almost reached parity with the dollar. Two years later, it was back at 1.50. Life went on.
One feature of this site is the obsession that so many people have with short term financial movements. They shouldn't drive long term political decisions.
Is that because most of the people on here are millionaire's with lots of stocks and shares?
I think it would be a spiffing idea to have a PB drinks evening very soon! I'd love to meet some names for the first time. Liverpool Street station isn't it?
Whats most worrying about all the panic here is the fear at the back of my mind that some of this lot might actually behind their pseudonyms be some of the captains of industry and politics with their hands on the tiller
Given that none of the politicians seem to be up to the job, can we have a special time limited PB.com benign dictatorship to sort out this Brexit thing and then hand the toys back to the kids?
Hopefully by then some of them might have grown up enough to know how to play with it without breaking it.
It's not love for the EU, it's love for friends and family who genuinely fear for their future, who wonder if they will have to move countries, who are in tears at potential bankruptcy.
This is really happening to people, out there, who are extrapolating the future and seeing very dark days ahead. Even if they are wrong (and who knows) it would be inhuman not to feel very sorry for them. If they are right, then my vote was potentially a grave moral mistake, however trivial in the grand scheme.
How can anyone be 100% blithe and certain in this situation? I don't get it.
Oh dear God grow a pair ffs!
Nothing has HAPPENED. INHUMAN not to feel sorry for people kept awake at night over their property prices? I'll worry about actual suffering if I may.
Utter ridiculousness.
This was a good piece from a Remainer in the New Statesman:
One way to think about the vote is that it has forced a slightly more equitable distribution of anxiety and alienation upon the country. After Thursday, I feel more insecure about my future, and that of my family. I also feel like a foreigner in my own country — that there’s this whole massive swathe of people out there who don’t think like me at all and probably don’t like me. I feel like a big decision about my life has been imposed on me by nameless people out there. But of course, this is exactly how many of those very people have been feeling for years, and at a much higher level of intensity. Democracy forces us to try on each other’s clothes. I could have carried on quite happily ignoring the unhappiness of much of the country but I can’t ignore this.
Flicked on a shopping channel yesterday. The delightful blowsy 50 year old lady selling scarves was all over Brexit with utter delight - 'Made in Britain and now that really MEANS something!' London, Scotland, and the commuter belt appears dismayed; I have no sense of slightest regret anywhere else.
The fact that there would be adverse consequences in the short term was well advertised and accepted (see Charles' posts on here). I see no reason to run around panicking in best Corporal Jones fashion.
Adverse economic consequences are one thing, but I have a feeling that most Leavers didn't really consider the adverse political consequences.
George Osborne has aged 10 years. No sympathy for him, as he brought it on himself having no brexit plan and that absolutely ridiculous punishment budget.
Yes not as if he warned us things would go tits up is it......
Whats most worrying about all the panic here is the fear at the back of my mind that some of this lot might actually behind their pseudonyms be some of the captains of industry and politics with their hands on the tiller
Given the amount of time the leading panickers spend posting on here, I very much doubt it, Mr. Bedfordshire.
I'm afraid we're justt going to have to differ on the issue of the relevance of proportions.
I accept that there's an issue about financial services that's particularly relevant to (EU-friendly) London, given how imbalanced the UK economy has become. However, there's an issue about our declining manufacturing base, that's particularly relevant to us here in the West Midlands. That base has declined at a precipitate rate over the past 40 years, far more steeply than in other industrialised countries, and that coincides with our membership of the EU. Some rebalancing of our economy is necessary and desirable.
I'm a Leaver, and let's be realistic, that has nothing to do with the EU.
Look at the last 25 years. In 1991, the Germans got East Germany. It was a mess. There was nothing competitive about East German workers, and their formerly communist businesses were low quality and almost universally loss making.
Now, East Germany is a manufacturing powerhouse. Wages are well above the levels of Sunderland. Unemployment - while higher than in the West - is now well under 10%, There is new equipment and the region exports to China, India, and the US. There are real jobs for people - and these aren't all in marketing or finance (the two British specialities).
Rather than blaming external agencies (the EU), we need to ask what is it about the British system that allowed Walsall and Sunderland and Rotherham to be such disasters, while Germany (inside the EU) has made such a success of former East Germany.
There are many aspects of the German system that I admire. The much more formal role that trade unions are allowed to play is one of them. The way that their regional states invest directly through state owned banks is another. We could discuss at length but I'm not going to.
However, while obviously there are many reasons for the weakness of UK manufacturing industry and its precipitate decline in every decade since we joined the EU, I can't accept that the exposure of our market in goods to competition from the EU did not hasten that decline and made restructuring harder rather than easier to achieve. The EU prohibition on state aid in all but the most extreme and very limited circumstances I think also matters much more to economies whose industry is in a parlous state, compared to one (such as Germany) where they are in fairly rude health.
Mr. D, many thought the eurozone would either fall or shrink. It might very well be better if it had done so.
It's hard to foresee when an empire or confederacy will end, but we can look at fundamental structures. I think the EU's in a very bad place. It lacks legitimacy, it empire-builds by stealth and bureaucracy, it's based on ideology not reality or pragmatism and it's insufferably arrogant.
When there's no pressure valve (such as a referendum on Lisbon for us), explosion may occur.
The Germans tried to shrink it, but the Greeks wouldn't play ball.
So when Boris is PM and does not fancy facing the music in the Commons - and it will be a regular occurrence given the lies he's told - who will he send instead? The bloke is a gold-plated, mendacious coward. How utterly pathetic he is.
At the moment Boris is incurring the enmity of 450+ of the 650 MPs in the house and has no ostentatious support. If he had entered the house all the speeches would probably been personal attacks on him, and nothing done.
If (I repeat if) he gets the PM position then he'll have the ostensible backing of the Troy party MPs (who will hold their noses if necessary) in the house and be able to go in in a much stronger position.
If he doesn't get the PM position then it is very likely he would have to resign. I'm sure there'll be an interesting article in the Telegraph.
No rational person could blame Jeremy Corbyn for Brexit. So why are the Blairites moving against Corbyn now, with such precipitate haste?
The answer is the Chilcot Report. It is only a fortnight away, and though its form will be concealed by thick layers of establishment whitewash, the basic contours of Blair’s lies will still be visible beneath. Corbyn had deferred to Blairite pressure not to apologise on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq War until Chilcot is published.
For the Labour Right, the moment when Corbyn as Labour leader stands up in parliament and condemns Blair over Iraq, is going to be as traumatic as it was for the hardliners of the Soviet Communist Party when Khruschev denounced the crimes of Stalin. It would also destroy Blair’s carefully planned post-Chilcot PR strategy. It is essential to the Blairites that when Chilcot is debated in parliament in two weeks time, Jeremy Corbyn is not in place as Labour leader to speak in the debate. The Blairite plan is therefore for the parliamentary party to depose him as parliamentary leader and get speaker John Bercow to acknowledge someone else in that fictional position in time for the Chilcot debate, with Corbyn remaining leader in the country but with no parliamentary status.
It's not love for the EU, it's love for friends and family who genuinely fear for their future, who wonder if they will have to move countries, who are in tears at potential bankruptcy.
This is really happening to people, out there, who are extrapolating the future and seeing very dark days ahead. Even if they are wrong (and who knows) it would be inhuman not to feel very sorry for them. If they are right, then my vote was potentially a grave moral mistake, however trivial in the grand scheme.
How can anyone be 100% blithe and certain in this situation? I don't get it.
Oh dear God grow a pair ffs!
Nothing has HAPPENED. INHUMAN not to feel sorry for people kept awake at night over their property prices? I'll worry about actual suffering if I may.
Utter ridiculousness.
This was a good piece from a Remainer in the New Statesman:
One way to think about the vote is that it has forced a slightly more equitable distribution of anxiety and alienation upon the country. After Thursday, I feel more insecure about my future, and that of my family. I also feel like a foreigner in my own country — that there’s this whole massive swathe of people out there who don’t think like me at all and probably don’t like me. I feel like a big decision about my life has been imposed on me by nameless people out there. But of course, this is exactly how many of those very people have been feeling for years, and at a much higher level of intensity. Democracy forces us to try on each other’s clothes. I could have carried on quite happily ignoring the unhappiness of much of the country but I can’t ignore this.
Flicked on a shopping channel yesterday. The delightful blowsy 50 year old lady selling scarves was all over Brexit with utter delight - 'Made in Britain and now that really MEANS something!' London, Scotland, and the commuter belt appears dismayed; I have no sense of slightest regret anywhere else.
Lammy ranting on Sky: "Referendum needs 2/3rds majority. We can't have rule by the mob! I'll never vote for Brexit in the HoC"
I voted Leave and my conscience is also clear.
Sean is being a knob. You make your choices and you live with them. You don't go to pieces at the first sign of trouble.
Quite. I couldn't give a toss about the financial markets.
I'm not going to pieces, but it would take a halfwit not to be worried by the potential for economic calamity - and the dissolution of the Union.
Do you ever go back and look at what you have written on here in the past?
The vitriol you poured on people who declared for remain was quite something. 2 working days in and your flapping like a big girl
lol. I happily admit it's not been my finest hour. I am unnerved. Im my defence, I am unnerved by the numbers of people I like, admire, and even love, who are absolutely shattered by this result - in tears, distraught, looking at horrible changes to their lives.
It's very hard to be relentlessly stoical and convinced of one's virtue when this is happening to immediate friends and family.
Oh man up.
I am mystified by this belated outpouring of love for the EU. Most people I know were in the end Remainers, but almost to a man and woman they were pretty reluctant, taking a "better the devil you know" or "yeah the EU is a bit shit, but it;s too risky to leave" view. Fair enough I guess.
But this woe and handwringing is just bizarre, like we'd elected to all relocate to the Pitcairns and live without electricity. The short term uncertainty and even turmoil is totally expected. We will be just fine, and in a couple of years we will not regret it IMHO.
It's not love for the EU, it's love for friends and family who genuinely fear for their future, who wonder if they will have to move countries, who are in tears at potential bankruptcy.
This is really happening to people, out there, who are extrapolating the future and seeing very dark days ahead. Even if they are wrong (and who knows) it would be inhuman not to feel very sorry for them. If they are right, then my vote was potentially a grave moral mistake, however trivial in the grand scheme.
How can anyone be 100% blithe and certain in this situation? I don't get it.
Oh, this is pathetic! I can see that the class of 2016 would have surrendered in 1940. What wallies. I am truly ashamed of some of the moaning on PB today.
He deserves it. This weekend has shown he doesn't have what it takes to be a leading statesman.
Not a word the whole weekend and the first time we hear from him is in his article for the Telegraph FFS.
That's a good point. You'd have thought Boris would have presented his views on the way forward on the floor of the Commons in this debate, rather than in a newspaper article. I'm sure Tory MPs will have noticed.
Q. How many Remainers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. None, they're frightened of change.
Talking of lightbulbs, does being out mean we can go back to traditional bulbs that don't take ten minutes to actually light up?
I had forgotten about that. It would be great if we could. Like a lot of people I suffer very bad headaches with some of the energy efficient versions. Not all of them but just some. I have to spend a lot of time working out which ones to use.
He deserves it. This weekend has shown he doesn't have what it takes to be a leading statesman.
Not a word the whole weekend and the first time we hear from him is in his article for the Telegraph FFS.
That's a good point. You'd have thought Boris would have presented his views on the way forward on the floor of the Commons in this debate, rather than in a newspaper article. I'm sure Tory MPs will have noticed.
I would hope everyone would have noticed. I know I should be grateful and all that but I really don't believe Boris did this for anyone but Boris (unlike Gove and Grayling who really had little to gain and a lot to lose).
No rational person could blame Jeremy Corbyn for Brexit. So why are the Blairites moving against Corbyn now, with such precipitate haste?
The answer is the Chilcot Report. It is only a fortnight away, and though its form will be concealed by thick layers of establishment whitewash, the basic contours of Blair’s lies will still be visible beneath. Corbyn had deferred to Blairite pressure not to apologise on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq War until Chilcot is published.
For the Labour Right, the moment when Corbyn as Labour leader stands up in parliament and condemns Blair over Iraq, is going to be as traumatic as it was for the hardliners of the Soviet Communist Party when Khruschev denounced the crimes of Stalin. It would also destroy Blair’s carefully planned post-Chilcot PR strategy. It is essential to the Blairites that when Chilcot is debated in parliament in two weeks time, Jeremy Corbyn is not in place as Labour leader to speak in the debate. The Blairite plan is therefore for the parliamentary party to depose him as parliamentary leader and get speaker John Bercow to acknowledge someone else in that fictional position in time for the Chilcot debate, with Corbyn remaining leader in the country but with no parliamentary status.
So how does that explain all the resignations from the centre and left of the party?
The fact that there would be adverse consequences in the short term was well advertised and accepted (see Charles' posts on here). I see no reason to run around panicking in best Corporal Jones fashion.
Adverse economic consequences are one thing, but I have a feeling that most Leavers didn't really consider the adverse political consequences.
I haven't seen any adverse political consequences and I'm a politics geek. WTF are you referring to? A rancid series of cesspits is getting hosed. Great! I want the Labour Party to die. I want the Tories to align around a deep concern for the common man and his wishes (esp to Leave). I want the EU to die as it currently exists and to return to nation states trading with each other. The last few days have been the first glimmer of light after a long darkness.
If we have a recession after Brexit, it will be because it is a self-fulling prophecy. Stop being no negative and worried about it.
Osborne has form on this. There was quite a rapid recovery under way in mid 2010 before he did his utmost to talk the economy down and changed economic sentiment for the worse.
Mervyn King was particularly scathing about his recent actions on the WaO earlier.
I'm afraid we're justt going to have to differ on the issue of the relevance of proportions.
I accept that there's an issue about financial services that's particularly relevant to (EU-friendly) London, given how imbalanced the UK economy has become. However, there's an issue about our declining manufacturing base, that's particularly relevant to us here in the West Midlands. That base has declined at a precipitate rate over the past 40 years, far more steeply than in other industrialised countries, and that coincides with our membership of the EU. Some rebalancing of our economy is necessary and desirable.
I'm a Leaver, and let's be realistic, that has nothing to do with the EU.
Look at the last 25 years. In 1991, the Germans got East Germany. It was a mess. There was nothing competitive about East German workers, and their formerly communist businesses were low quality and almost universally loss making.
Now, East Germany is a manufacturing powerhouse. Wages are well above the levels of Sunderland. Unemployment - while higher than in the West - is now well under 10%, There is new equipment and the region exports to China, India, and the US. There are real jobs for people - and these aren't all in marketing or finance (the two British specialities).
Rather than blaming external agencies (the EU), we need to ask what is it about the British system that allowed Walsall and Sunderland and Rotherham to be such disasters, while Germany (inside the EU) has made such a success of former East Germany.
There are many aspects of the German system that I admire. The much more formal role that trade unions are allowed to play is one of them. The way that their regional states invest directly through state owned banks is another. We could discuss at length but I'm not going to.
However, while obviously there are many reasons for the weakness of UK manufacturing industry and its precipitate decline in every decade since we joined the EU, I can't accept that the exposure of our market in goods to competition from the EU did not hasten that decline and made restructuring harder rather than easier to achieve. The EU prohibition on state aid in all but the most extreme and very limited circumstances I think also matters much more to economies whose industry is in a parlous state, compared to one (such as Germany) where they are in fairly rude health.
Correlation != causation.
The US is not part of the EU and has seen a similar decline in its manufacturing base.
No rational person could blame Jeremy Corbyn for Brexit. So why are the Blairites moving against Corbyn now, with such precipitate haste?
The answer is the Chilcot Report. It is only a fortnight away, and though its form will be concealed by thick layers of establishment whitewash, the basic contours of Blair’s lies will still be visible beneath. Corbyn had deferred to Blairite pressure not to apologise on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq War until Chilcot is published.
For the Labour Right, the moment when Corbyn as Labour leader stands up in parliament and condemns Blair over Iraq, is going to be as traumatic as it was for the hardliners of the Soviet Communist Party when Khruschev denounced the crimes of Stalin. It would also destroy Blair’s carefully planned post-Chilcot PR strategy. It is essential to the Blairites that when Chilcot is debated in parliament in two weeks time, Jeremy Corbyn is not in place as Labour leader to speak in the debate. The Blairite plan is therefore for the parliamentary party to depose him as parliamentary leader and get speaker John Bercow to acknowledge someone else in that fictional position in time for the Chilcot debate, with Corbyn remaining leader in the country but with no parliamentary status.
No rational people could blame Corbyn for the fact that a third of Labour voters (like you) wantonly triggered instability and chaos and voted out? He lost me at the first sentence. We seem to have created a nasty sub-party that thinks it's wise to royally screw "that London" and "the bankers" and "the immigrants" when really they are screwed each and every one of us.
Corbyn is disgrace for the way he equivocated and refused to properly campaign.
Just imagine our politicians if it emerged that something really serious had happened like a hostile naval armada heading this way from China or a Carrington level solar storm destroying half of the national grid.
Sooner or later kicking the can down the road after 2008 by printing money to blow an even bigger bubble was going to end in tears.
Im proud to have played a role in bursting this insane artificial bubble before it got any worse.
Meanwhile the train is zipping to Bedford at 125mph, through glorious sunny countryside and london was as bustling as normal
A big thanks to Mike, TSE, Robert and all others involved in keeping this site together. It is my go to place on the internet for intelligent debate (and intelligent criticism, too, vapid bilge aside) - and an absolutely fabulous place to spend an election night.
I've just donated to keep the infrastructure going - and encourage everyone who enjoys this place to do the same.
He deserves it. This weekend has shown he doesn't have what it takes to be a leading statesman.
Not a word the whole weekend and the first time we hear from him is in his article for the Telegraph FFS.
That's a good point. You'd have thought Boris would have presented his views on the way forward on the floor of the Commons in this debate, rather than in a newspaper article. I'm sure Tory MPs will have noticed.
Contractual obligation and cash flow reasons, I'd assume.
Unless he has a credible reason for not being there (like he's going to unveil his Brexit plan in the next few hours, which he's been working on or a family member is ill) I suspect Boris Johnson has blown his chance of becoming Conservative leader this afternoon.
It's not love for the EU, it's love for friends and family who genuinely fear for their future, who wonder if they will have to move countries, who are in tears at potential bankruptcy.
This is really happening to people, out there, who are extrapolating the future and seeing very dark days ahead. Even if they are wrong (and who knows) it would be inhuman not to feel very sorry for them. If they are right, then my vote was potentially a grave moral mistake, however trivial in the grand scheme.
How can anyone be 100% blithe and certain in this situation? I don't get it.
Oh dear God grow a pair ffs!
Nothing has HAPPENED. INHUMAN not to feel sorry for people kept awake at night over their property prices? I'll worry about actual suffering if I may.
Observation DC....the best Tory politician of his generation.....
FWIW....I think the better Cameron comes across now, the more likely Boris will not succeed him.
Through incompetence, arrogance and laziness he just got us OUT of the EU. How can he be the best Tory pol of a generation, in your europhile eyes????
Think you'll find that was the imbeciles voting Leave without the first idea of what their actions would lead to. And who believed promises of untold riches reigning down on the NHS and threats of swarthy migrants molesting our wives and daughters. So no. Not Cameron or Osborne to blame.
So when Boris is PM and does not fancy facing the music in the Commons - and it will be a regular occurrence given the lies he's told - who will he send instead? The bloke is a gold-plated, mendacious coward. How utterly pathetic he is.
At the moment Boris is incurring the enmity of 450+ of the 650 MPs in the house and has no ostentatious support. If he had entered the house all the speeches would probably been personal attacks on him, and nothing done.
If (I repeat if) he gets the PM position then he'll have the ostensible backing of the Troy party MPs (who will hold their noses if necessary) in the house and be able to go in in a much stronger position.
If he doesn't get the PM position then it is very likely he would have to resign. I'm sure there'll be an interesting article in the Telegraph.
Agree.
Markets are falling everywhere, but I suspect that the market falling the fastest is shares in Boris Johnson!
No rational person could blame Jeremy Corbyn for Brexit. So why are the Blairites moving against Corbyn now, with such precipitate haste?
The answer is the Chilcot Report. It is only a fortnight away, and though its form will be concealed by thick layers of establishment whitewash, the basic contours of Blair’s lies will still be visible beneath. Corbyn had deferred to Blairite pressure not to apologise on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq War until Chilcot is published.
For the Labour Right, the moment when Corbyn as Labour leader stands up in parliament and condemns Blair over Iraq, is going to be as traumatic as it was for the hardliners of the Soviet Communist Party when Khruschev denounced the crimes of Stalin. It would also destroy Blair’s carefully planned post-Chilcot PR strategy. It is essential to the Blairites that when Chilcot is debated in parliament in two weeks time, Jeremy Corbyn is not in place as Labour leader to speak in the debate. The Blairite plan is therefore for the parliamentary party to depose him as parliamentary leader and get speaker John Bercow to acknowledge someone else in that fictional position in time for the Chilcot debate, with Corbyn remaining leader in the country but with no parliamentary status.
So how does that explain all the resignations from the centre and left of the party?
How do you explain that they are not prepared to mount a leadership challenge and let democracy decide.
However, it is not an either or. Yes we have huge structural problems that no one seems to want to address and there is a bigger issue with democracy and accountability, which we are now starting to address.
So far we're addressing it by accelerating Scottish independence and an absence of functioning democracy and accountability at Westminster. We've blown up the system. It's anyone's guess what happens next.
Yes, I agree, things are changing - they had to. Change is both necessary and will take time to complete. In the interim there will be confusion. That confusion will not be permanent and panic just makes it worse in the interim.
Earlier today, I was chatting to an American friend who had noted my absence from my regular haunts over the past couple of weeks. During that conversation it dawned on me that what has actually happened is a genuine revolution. The peasant's revolt of the 21st century. I need to think it through some more, but I do think I might be right.
Announcing the new Con leader on 2nd Sept makes a 2016 GE much more plausible - given that an Oct election is much more realistic than Nov or Dec.
But how do we reconcile the idea of a snap GE with the odds for the next GE?
Con majority is significantly odds against and even Con most seats is now as long as 1.62. Does this suggest the market is not expecting an early GE (even one in early 2017) and is therefore pricing primarily with a view to 2020.
A 2016 GE is just over 2-1 but that doesn't include the option of early 2017.
Surely no new PM is going to call a GE unless they are at least 80%+ sure of a majority - given they are guaranteed nearly another 4 years in office without going for a GE.
Brown suffered due to giving the expectation of an early GE and then backtracking. A new PM obviously mustn't make the same mistake - but if the new PM just says on Day 1 no GE until 2020 then I would have thought the issue would pass fairly quickly.
He deserves it. This weekend has shown he doesn't have what it takes to be a leading statesman.
Not a word the whole weekend and the first time we hear from him is in his article for the Telegraph FFS.
That's a good point. You'd have thought Boris would have presented his views on the way forward on the floor of the Commons in this debate, rather than in a newspaper article. I'm sure Tory MPs will have noticed.
Contractual obligation and cash flow reasons, I'd assume.
The fact he would consider those more important than the country says all you need to know about the nature of the man.
Surely Cameron doesn't dare invoke Article 50 without a vote in the House of Commons? He has no mandate.
The PM has a mandate from the people in a referendum.
Even MPs listen when the voters speak.
There is a mandate, but the government also has an overriding duty to act in our best interests. If my government goes through with the farce of Brexit, despite all the evidence available that it would be a mistake, and despite their misgivings, it would be an act of unforgivable irresponsibility. MPs must not ignore their principles in the face of a public vote.
Reminds me of that docu-drama the BBC did about Chernobyl a few years ago. The head engineer just stares at the exploded reactor saying 'It can't be. It can't be. It can't be. It can't be...'
Announcing the new Con leader on 2nd Sept makes a 2016 GE much more plausible - given that an Oct election is much more realistic than Nov or Dec.
But how do we reconcile the idea of a snap GE with the odds for the next GE?
Con majority is significantly odds against and even Con most seats is now as long as 1.62. Does this suggest the market is not expecting an early GE (even one in early 2017) and is therefore pricing primarily with a view to 2020.
A 2016 GE is just over 2-1 but that doesn't include the option of early 2017.
Surely no new PM is going to call a GE unless they are at least 80%+ sure of a majority - given they are guaranteed nearly another 4 years in office without going for a GE.
Brown suffered due to giving the expectation of an early GE and then backtracking. A new PM obviously mustn't make the same mistake - but if the new PM just says on Day 1 no GE until 2020 then I would have thought the issue would pass fairly quickly.
I would hope they'll hold off on a GE until the UK-EU deal has been implemented, and we're fully out.
Q. How many Remainers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. None, they're frightened of change.
Talking of lightbulbs, does being out mean we can go back to traditional bulbs that don't take ten minutes to actually light up?
I had forgotten about that. It would be great if we could. Like a lot of people I suffer very bad headaches with some of the energy efficient versions. Not all of them but just some. I have to spend a lot of time working out which ones to use.
I assume we will be able to go back to tungsten bulbs and carry on with effective high power vacuum cleaners etc. We won't be able to sell them in the rest of Europe though, so it will be a higher cost, higher price niche industry.
Just looking at some of the interesting results from the ref:Luton voted out, which I did not expect. How much is that dow to the Ford factory moving to Turkey with E.U money?
Comments
(afternoon, everyone)
'The single market is just a phrase'
Nothing has HAPPENED. INHUMAN not to feel sorry for people kept awake at night over their property prices? I'll worry about actual suffering if I may.
Utter ridiculousness.
(Unless you think they were in perfectly robust financial health last Wednesday? They really weren't you know...)
http://www.zdnet.com/article/brexit-spells-turbulence-for-cloud-computing-6-stormy-scenarios/?ftag=TRE17cfd61&bhid=5789242
Opportunity to get Boris out of Parliament... ;-)
A: We never said there was a lightbulb.
One way to think about the vote is that it has forced a slightly more equitable distribution of anxiety and alienation upon the country. After Thursday, I feel more insecure about my future, and that of my family. I also feel like a foreigner in my own country — that there’s this whole massive swathe of people out there who don’t think like me at all and probably don’t like me. I feel like a big decision about my life has been imposed on me by nameless people out there. But of course, this is exactly how many of those very people have been feeling for years, and at a much higher level of intensity. Democracy forces us to try on each other’s clothes. I could have carried on quite happily ignoring the unhappiness of much of the country but I can’t ignore this.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/how-think-about-eu-result-if-you-voted-remain
If we have a recession after Brexit, it will be because it is a self-fulling prophecy. Stop being no negative and worried about it.
Not a word the whole weekend and the first time we hear from him is in his article for the Telegraph FFS.
It's hard to foresee when an empire or confederacy will end, but we can look at fundamental structures. I think the EU's in a very bad place. It lacks legitimacy, it empire-builds by stealth and bureaucracy, it's based on ideology not reality or pragmatism and it's insufferably arrogant.
When there's no pressure valve (such as a referendum on Lisbon for us), explosion may occur.
If Boris gets the nod he will need all his guile and luck to succeed. Imagine him swearing to Merkel in Low German.
The fact that there would be adverse consequences in the short term was well advertised and accepted (see Charles' posts on here). I see no reason to run around panicking in best Corporal Jones fashion.
A. None. It's Remain's job to change it.
That's significant, he could cause significant problems for his successor
Q. How many Remainers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. None, they're frightened of change.
Hopefully by then some of them might have grown up enough to know how to play with it without breaking it.
Boris couldn't match him, as he doesn't do detail and doesn't have an ounce of his discipline.
Theresa May is the best bet, as she won't stand any nonsense, especially with those in Brussels.
A. None, they're frightened of change.
Talking of lightbulbs, does being out mean we can go back to traditional bulbs that don't take ten minutes to actually light up?
However, while obviously there are many reasons for the weakness of UK manufacturing industry and its precipitate decline in every decade since we joined the EU, I can't accept that the exposure of our market in goods to competition from the EU did not hasten that decline and made restructuring harder rather than easier to achieve. The EU prohibition on state aid in all but the most extreme and very limited circumstances I think also matters much more to economies whose industry is in a parlous state, compared to one (such as Germany) where they are in fairly rude health.
If (I repeat if) he gets the PM position then he'll have the ostensible backing of the Troy party MPs (who will hold their noses if necessary) in the house and be able to go in in a much stronger position.
If he doesn't get the PM position then it is very likely he would have to resign. I'm sure there'll be an interesting article in the Telegraph.
That was something that made me genuinely proud to be British.
No rational person could blame Jeremy Corbyn for Brexit. So why are the Blairites moving against Corbyn now, with such precipitate haste?
The answer is the Chilcot Report. It is only a fortnight away, and though its form will be concealed by thick layers of establishment whitewash, the basic contours of Blair’s lies will still be visible beneath. Corbyn had deferred to Blairite pressure not to apologise on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq War until Chilcot is published.
For the Labour Right, the moment when Corbyn as Labour leader stands up in parliament and condemns Blair over Iraq, is going to be as traumatic as it was for the hardliners of the Soviet Communist Party when Khruschev denounced the crimes of Stalin. It would also destroy Blair’s carefully planned post-Chilcot PR strategy. It is essential to the Blairites that when Chilcot is debated in parliament in two weeks time, Jeremy Corbyn is not in place as Labour leader to speak in the debate. The Blairite plan is therefore for the parliamentary party to depose him as parliamentary leader and get speaker John Bercow to acknowledge someone else in that fictional position in time for the Chilcot debate, with Corbyn remaining leader in the country but with no parliamentary status.
https://twitter.com/neiledwardlovat/status/747455011991470080
The PM has a mandate from the people in a referendum.
Even MPs listen when the voters speak.
https://twitter.com/marcusaroberts/status/747459733762740224
Mervyn King was particularly scathing about his recent actions on the WaO earlier.
The US is not part of the EU and has seen a similar decline in its manufacturing base.
Corbyn is disgrace for the way he equivocated and refused to properly campaign.
Sooner or later kicking the can down the road after 2008 by printing money to blow an even bigger bubble was going to end in tears.
Im proud to have played a role in bursting this insane artificial bubble before it got any worse.
Meanwhile the train is zipping to Bedford at 125mph, through glorious sunny countryside and london was as bustling as normal
I've just donated to keep the infrastructure going - and encourage everyone who enjoys this place to do the same.
Contractual obligation and cash flow reasons, I'd assume.
So no. Not Cameron or Osborne to blame.
Markets are falling everywhere, but I suspect that the market falling the fastest is shares in Boris Johnson!
Earlier today, I was chatting to an American friend who had noted my absence from my regular haunts over the past couple of weeks. During that conversation it dawned on me that what has actually happened is a genuine revolution. The peasant's revolt of the 21st century. I need to think it through some more, but I do think I might be right.
But how do we reconcile the idea of a snap GE with the odds for the next GE?
Con majority is significantly odds against and even Con most seats is now as long as 1.62. Does this suggest the market is not expecting an early GE (even one in early 2017) and is therefore pricing primarily with a view to 2020.
A 2016 GE is just over 2-1 but that doesn't include the option of early 2017.
Surely no new PM is going to call a GE unless they are at least 80%+ sure of a majority - given they are guaranteed nearly another 4 years in office without going for a GE.
Brown suffered due to giving the expectation of an early GE and then backtracking. A new PM obviously mustn't make the same mistake - but if the new PM just says on Day 1 no GE until 2020 then I would have thought the issue would pass fairly quickly.
Then again, we haven't seen Theresa May for weeks. Complete referendum no-show.
Was she doing that for the country, or for Theresa May?
I wonder if London could try to join them?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36639770
http://www.lutontoday.co.uk/news/politics/eu-referendum-luton-votes-for-brexit-1-7447607