UK Politics: The Morning After

[Rorshach]

14 minutes ago, Notone said:

The trade deal will indeed be an interesting show. Well not the deal itself, but how the British goverment (whoever might be the poor bastards in charge) will try to sell it. 

The three big points were: the payments to the EU will stop, and freedom of movement, and overregulation.

If you look at the deal Norway has, they have to accept all that for access to the single market, just that they really don't have any say in the EU concerning laws and regulations. It is really inconceivable how the UK can hope for anything better, than Norway. 

Happy independence day, Boris. 

This is basically what bugs me most about our relationship with the EU. We accept just about every EU rule there is, we just don't get any say in the drafting and the voting part.

[protar]

10 minutes ago, Tijgy said:

Everyone has to lose with a bad agreement. If they force upon UK strict terms, this would also be bad for several other countries. Today I already read an article by one of our biggest weaving companies they do want UK to have a similar agreement as with Norway because UK is their biggest export country. 

If the EU is being strict, then a lot of other countries would also wanting to leave the EU because they might then get better agreements with the UK. Because thanks to the EU, we cannot have trade anymore with Russia. Luckily for us Flemish, Indians also like pears pretty much because we had a lot of unsold pears. 

And for apparently they already decided the guy who will lead the task force during the negotiations. He is Belgian and the former chief of staff of Van Rompuy (First President of the European Council)

http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20160624_02355737

It seems to me we're screwed either way. If we get a good deal it opens the way for other countries to leave which obviously wouldn't be good. And if we get a bad deal well...there's our economy down the drain, which in turn has implications for the global economy. It's morton's fork, there's no good outcome here.

[Werthead]

 

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I have nothing but anecdotal evidence, but I think a massive amount of people thought this. Put the 'great' back in Great Britain, end the EU holding us back, etc etc. Playing pretty loose with "powerful/significant", you could argue that they all thought this really.

Yup. There were people being interviewed who blamed the EU for the collapse of Britain's shipbuilding industry and fully expect that Britain will now return to being an industrial power within a few years. The notion that that British industry collapsed due to lack of competitiveness with the Far East, or Thatcher's ideological crusades, seemed genuinely incomprehensible to them. It's all the fault of the EU and immigrants and now that we are out of the EU (and, based on the various people interviewed having "their first breakfast in a free England", we are now out of the EU and the notion we will actually still be in it for 2+ years is likewise incomprehensible) all of that will come to an end and we'll start building ships and mines and Spitfires again *wipes away patriotic tears*

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If there is a lot of 'we were lied to' and 'I didn't really mean what I voted', I wonder if an election of Cameron's successor who campaigns on ignoring the referendum might not be considered a new mandate. Grasping at straws, I know...but this is all uncharted territory. 

Nope. That won't fly. There was lots of talk before the referendum of having a minimum turnout (although it'd have likely been 70%, which we hit anyway) and a minimum majority, but they were all shot down. Lots of people might think that a less than 2% margin is insufficient grounds on which to run our economy into the ground, but Cameron should have thought of that beforehand. We made our bed and now we have to lie in it.

The only way this could be reversed is if there is a general election and Labour or a Labour-LibDem-SNP coalition wins basically on a mandate not to leave the EU. And that'd be very hard to achieve: Corbyn must be aligning the dispossessed working-class Labour votes who came out in droves with the people who voted him into office and realise that he could have a shot of victory if he channels and works with that anger and sentiment, not going against it. Of course, I may be charging Corby with more political acumen than is warranted.

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I don't know how many of those non-white non-voters were eligible to vote, but I have to imagine at least some of them were and that they would've probably mostly voted Remain.

Anecdotal, but my work colleague of Pakistani descent (3rd-generation British born) said he voted Leave and his entire family voted Leave as well and he had 0 interest in party politics and had never voted in a British election before, despite being in his thirties. Whether that's an exception or not is unknown, of course, but the notion that non-white British (or white non-British-born but now-naturalised citizens) would be for Remain doesn't seem to have been quite borne out.

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b.) It was not a landslide victory. Half the country doesn't want this and it could easily have gone a different way merely due to random fluctuations of voter turnout. Given how close it was I think not having a possibility to reconsider is incredibly rash.

If that had been laid out in the rules for the referendum, that'd have been fine. It wasn't, so it's not and it's not going to happen now.

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c.) A lot of people voted to leave under the assumption that it would be good for the economy. Well the pound is at a thirty year low and the right wingers are already rescinding the promises they made (i.e giving more money to the NHS). So I'd wager a lot of brexiters are regretting their decision. And if they aren't, well they voted on assumptions that have now been proven demonstrably false. Screwing ourselves over for decades to come because of the ignorance of the slight majority is not democracy, it's idiocy.

Absolutely. Large numbers of people on social media, in newspaper interviews and anecdotally are saying they wouldn't have voted for Brexit if they'd known it was actually going to happen. Quite a few people seemed confused about the rules and believed it was the same as a general election (i.e. your vote doesn't really count if it it goes against the grain of your local area) and didn't turn out to vote, on both sides. Cornwall is demanding it keeps its EU funding despite voting to leave the EU (clearly not quite understanding the basic principles involved). Lots of people voted to Leave to avoid TTIP and now seem genuinely confused that TTIP is now a near-certainty in the UK whilst it's on indefinite hold in the EU whilst it's renegotiated to the USA's detriment. Lots of people voted "to protect the NHS" (in the hands of those well-known champions of the public sector, Gove, Duncan-Smith and Johnson) and now seem mystified that the ongoing stealth-privitisation of the NHS is now likely to be doubled down on.

Despite all of that, it was the basic underlying rule of the referendum: a simple majority won it. And yes, it was a very small majority, but a majority nevertheless. We either respect that or we throw democracy out the window and risk triggering major social unrest.

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D.) If a candidate announces an intention to overturn the result, and we vote them in because of that claim...that is democracy in action. That's Britain saying "actually, we've reconsidered. We don't want to leave, so we're voting in this guy who will fix the problem."

Yes, that would actually be a fair way around it.

The chances of it happening are so mind-bogglingly remote that it can be safely disregarded, however.

The only possibility that I can see flying, and it'd still cause a shitstorm of epic proportions and would cause Europe-wide problems, would be if the EU, during the negotiations, told us we could have border controls in return for something else (maybe still allowing free movement with the original founding members of the EU and not the latecomers). Which will never happen.

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The real question, I think, is about the terms of the UK's exit, and whether this will involve a trade deal that preserves freedom of movement.

I'm not even sure why this keeps coming up. The referendum was fought on the core battleground of immigration. Remain won the economic argument, even the hardline Brexiters admitted that (that debated ended when Farage said a weakened British economy was "a price worth paying" for exiting the EU months before the campaign even started), so it came down to immigration and that played in all of the working class Labour areas where they turned out in droves. There is no circumstance under which unregulated immigration remains a possibility. I'd rank it alongside a second referendum or ignoring the results of this one in terms of credibility.

Free movement is out. So free access to the trade bloc will require something pretty hefty from the UK to make up for it. Close cooperation in the formation of an EU army (since without the Brits, the EU's military forces will pretty much consist of a French aircraft carrier and a few decent German brigades)? I can't see that being particularly popular either.

[protar]

And to continue on the topic of "ignoring the referendum would be un-democratic" look - I've argued for why I think overturning the result would still be democratic. But I'd also like to point out that there is something more important than democracy at stake here: straight up survival and quality of life. I'm a young adult fresh out of uni, looking to get into the world of work. I don't want a great depression esque recession while I'm trying to pay rent, pay off my student loans. I don't want the NHS to dissolve when my family has a history of cancer and chronic illness. And as a member of the LGBTQIA community I don't want bigotry and discrimination on the rise. And that's just concerning me. There are hundreds and thousands of people far worse off than me who will be put out on the streets by recession. And yes it sounds extreme to say but deaths will result from this decision. If there's a way to avert decades of misery I will take it, even if it isn't entirely squeaky clean.

[Chaircat Meow]

9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 

 

I'm not even sure why this keeps coming up. The referendum was fought on the core battleground of immigration. Remain won the economic argument, even the hardline Brexiters admitted that (that debated ended when Farage said a weakened British economy was "a price worth paying" for exiting the EU months before the campaign even started), so it came down to immigration and that played in all of the working class Labour areas where they turned out in droves. There is no circumstance under which unregulated immigration remains a possibility. I'd rank it alongside a second referendum or ignoring the results of this one in terms of credibility.

Free movement is out. So free access to the trade bloc will require something pretty hefty from the UK to make up for it. Close cooperation in the formation of an EU army (since without the Brits, the EU's military forces will pretty much consist of a French aircraft carrier and a few decent German brigades)? I can't see that being particularly popular either.

I agree with you, but you could claim that this wasn't actually on the ballot paper. I'm just saying that if there is going to be an attempt by Parliament to dispute the result they'd do it this way. There have at least been some noises about this, from Kinnock and I think (unless I have this wrong) the SNP. It would be against the spirit of the vote though.

[Arataniello]

I salute the combined board for managing almost two complete threads without anyone saying "I blame [insert three-letter board member's name]".

 

[Werthead]

An article from The Times (shortly to disappear back behind its paywall). It argues that the Brexit Conservatives have aligned themselves - more formally via UKIP and informally (and at arm's length and repulsed) via every anti-immigration and racist right-wing force in Britain - with forces in British life which they they really perhaps shouldn't have stirred into activity. And what happens when a right-wing, authoritarian government rides into power having basically promised the working-class votes they have rallied greater investment in public services, only to turn right around and not deliver that, at all, and in fact move radically further towards kowtowing to corporate interests and privitisation of public services?

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It is one of those phrases which goes straight into the memory as soon as you read it. The landslide for the Liberal government in 1906 was, wrote George Dangerfield, “a victory from which the Liberal party would never recover”. Boris Johnson, foolishly, has set himself a task in which he does not believe. He will assuredly become prime minister in due course and has ensured that his time in office will be dominated by an issue that he has pretended to care about in order to appeal to the fixated ideological obsessives in his party.

For all the pious invocation of “democracy” by the campaign to leave the European Union it is worth noting that, not much more than a year ago, this country had a general election. It entered a clear verdict. The Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, won an overall majority of 12 seats. The question of Europe was not a big issue. Yet, an unlucky 13 months later, the Conservative Party has decided, collectively, that its own internal squabbling is important enough to override that decision. The arrogance of these people.

If we are all permitted some pious preaching about democracy then I, as someone who did not vote for Mr Cameron’s government, regard that as a democratic outrage. No, Mr and Ms Exit-fantasist the country did not vote for an excessively ambitious clown in Downing Street. No, it did not vote for Nigel Farage to be anywhere near power. Before you lecture the rest of us on taking back control and getting our country back you might like to regard the democratic settlement of May 2015 as something more than an inconvenience to be swept away.

My, but politics is brutal. Mr Cameron has been destroyed by his friends. His career is over and, with his usual dignity and his voice cracking, he resigned in Downing Street. He has been humiliated by a party which, astonishingly, has never regarded him as a proper Conservative. The irony of it. A collection of utopian dreamers, blathering on about romantic nationalism and freeing Britain from the bonds of servitude, have humiliated and slaughtered their prime minister, and his chancellor, for not being real conservatives.

I thought from the beginning that the referendum was a colossal error on the prime minister’s part and so it has proved. I always believed that it was avoidable and that, with every concession to Eurosceptics who cannot take yes for an answer, he simply encouraged the march of madness in his party. Mr Cameron was never as adept a politician as his friends believed. He was lucky to get away with his Scottish gamble. He rolled the dice again and this time was handed the pearl revolver. He deserved better than this. Mr Cameron led a party I could not vote for but he was a good prime minister at a difficult time for Britain and he should be given thanks for being a good ambassador for the country.

Not that his enemies on his own side really care about that. They knew the referendum was a plebiscite on his leadership and they wanted him out. The view of the rest of the nation on the identity of the prime minister they regard as a decision to be made in their own closed rooms. It is not just the sheer arrogance of it. It is the absence of coherence. It will not be long before we discover that power migrated to a band who are even more divided than the fledgling, fractious government that has just been deposed. Even in the jubilant scenes of the Leave victory two competing ideas of the immediate future could be glimpsed, neither of them especially appealing.

The first is the Daniel Hannan world in which Britain, a serf-nation under the European yoke, gains control of its economy and sweeps away the burdens of regulation and tax. The second is the vision, if that is the right word for so murky a prospect, of Nigel Farage, who wants to turn off the clocks. Mr Farage has only one issue, which is immigration. He wants fewer foreigners and nothing more. It is not coincidental that Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front in France, welcomed the result.

I have bad news for the Hannans and Goves and Johnsons of this world. This is not your victory. You are free riders on the back of Mr Farage. You have smuggled through your sixth-form reading list politics on the back of Mr Farage’s stoking up of immigration fears. I hope you are proud of yourself and I hope, though I do not expect, that you are ready for what is coming. You have made a promise, whether you realise it or not, to bring down immigration. Even if you find, as you will, that employers rebel because they need the labour, you have promised. You have condemned yourself to leading a government for whom the number of foreigners in the country is the primary issue.

You will then find, of course, that when the white working class says “immigration” it means something more than the presence of Polish plumbers and Romanian fruit pickers. It means that life is hard, that employment prospects are bleak and that work is either unavailable or of really low quality. It is beyond laughable that the exit fantasists have the first idea what to do about this. Frankly most of them have never shown the slightest concern about that before. Well, it’s their problem now.

They are going to find that everything is their problem now. So then exit fantasist, it is time to make good on your histrionic promise of liberty. Everything that happens is on your watch. All the tribulations and vicissitudes of the economy are yours. The pound fell to its lowest point since 1985 and the Bank of England is poised to intervene. Standard and Poor’s have said that the UK will lose its fine credit rating. The stock market was down 8.5 per cent in early trading. This is not just a downgrade in the value of assets. It is a leading indicator of the financial turmoil to come. If there is a recession, it is your recession. If inflation goes up and interest rates follow with an attendant spate of repossessions, it’s all yours. Well done.

And for what, exit fantasist? For what? The notion that Britain was not free until the early hours of this morning is the single most childish claim I have ever heard in British politics. I have heard grown people, who ought to know better, talk of serfdom and calling June 23rd “independence day”. This is thinking that is profoundly unconservative, placing an abstract idea above the concrete facts of life. When the sun came up this morning — a new dawn was it not? — it meant nothing to pretend that we have passed from servitude into liberty. It is the emptiest campaign slogan, the self-satisfied bluster of a fluent intellectual dwarf. It is a victory but a victory from which it is going to take an age to recover.

 

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

General observation/interpretation.

Is it possible that Cameron pulled a Tsipras with this referendum?

What I mean by that: Did he pull off that referendum to strengthen his position at home, and at the negotiation table with the EU, and it backfired big times. 

He returned from the negotiation table with significantly less than he hoped for (mainly because in the EU there was very little political will in the other countries to give Britain any more special treatment, than they already have/had). And now the British voters decided to call him out, and the whole thing blew up in his face.

[Chaircat Meow]

@Werthead The author?

[Lordsteve666]

11 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 

Absolutely. Large numbers of people on social media, in newspaper interviews and anecdotally are saying they wouldn't have voted for Brexit if they'd known it was actually going to happen. 

See this sort of thing has actually left me seething inside. How utterly stupid does our population have to be to think that not every vote in a 2 answer referendum doesn't mater?
I mean it makes me question whether some people actually fathom what an election or a referendum like this is actually for, they clearly cannot grasp to severity of what their vote means.

Sure in a local/general election your vote might be against the grain but this was a simple yes/no question to the whole country. It's not like if their area voted remain it would stay in whilst everyone else leaves, Jesus, are people so utterly stupid.

There's been lots of people saying they just picked leave and didn't think it would happen, what the fuck did they think would happen then?

[Chaircat Meow]

2 minutes ago, Lordsteve666 said:

See this sort of thing has actually left me seething inside. How utterly stupid does our population have to be to think that not every vote in a 2 answer referendum doesn't mater?
I mean it makes me question whether some people actually fathom what an election or a referendum like this is actually for, they clearly cannot grasp to severity of what their vote means.

Sure in a local/general election your vote might be against the grain but this was a simple yes/no question to the whole country. It's not like if their area voted remain it would stay in whilst everyone else leaves, Jesus, are people so utterly stupid.

There's been lots of people saying they just picked leave and didn't think it would happen, what the fuck did they think would happen then?

Some people will have voted Leave for daft reasons. But the same holds true for Remain voters as well.

[red snow]

3 hours ago, Zoë Sumra said:

 

Re. the first point, no, migrants will continue to be blamed.  Already there are people out in force throwing verbal dung at people with brown skin, no matter that most were born here and are of Commonwealth rather than EU origin.  I appreciate that there are Leave campaigners - including some on this board - who have more nuanced reasons for voting their way, but there is a distinct undercurrent of pure racism against *any* perceived outsider, not just EU nationals.

I'm really not surprised that a university would feel like a disaster area given the amount of EU funding that goes into universities.  Tuition fees of £20,000 per year in fifteen years' time?

That's what I fear. Why change the narrative for anything that goes wrong over the next few years

University emailed everyone telling them contracts etc will be honoured. The problem is contracts are 3 years 5 if you're lucky. What are the chances for getting another one of those in the UK next time?

A portuguese guy at work gave a phone interview for a portuguese newspaper and the things he told them were pretty heartbreaking. Things like "I came to this country for it's progressive and liberal attitudes but this no longer feels like the place I chose to make my home" and "walking into work I couldn't help but wonder which of the 1 in 3 people I passed didn't want me here". And he's not having abuse thrown at him - the reports today of verbal abuse are abhorrent.

[Werthead]

5 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

@Werthead The author?

Phil Collins.

Not that one.

[Prince of the North]

13 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Absolutely. Large numbers of people on social media, in newspaper interviews and anecdotally are saying they wouldn't have voted for Brexit if they'd known it was actually going to happen. Quite a few people seemed confused about the rules and believed it was the same as a general election (i.e. your vote doesn't really count if it it goes against the grain of your local area) and didn't turn out to vote, on both sides. Cornwall is demanding it keeps its EU funding despite voting to leave the EU (clearly not quite understanding the basic principles involved). Lots of people voted to Leave to avoid TTIP and now seem genuinely confused that TTIP is now a near-certainty in the UK whilst it's on indefinite hold in the EU whilst it's renegotiated to the USA's detriment. Lots of people voted "to protect the NHS" (in the hands of those well-known champions of the public sector, Gove, Duncan-Smith and Johnson) and now seem mystified that the ongoing stealth-privitisation of the NHS is now likely to be doubled down on.

I basically linked this above and asked how many other counties could be in this same sort of predicament?  It's not really that Cornwall is demanding to keep EU subsidies.  It's that Cornwall is demanding the UK government give it equal subsidies.  From your linked article:

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“We will be insisting that Cornwall receives investment equal to that provided by the EU programme which has averaged £60m per year over the last ten years.”

Is that at all realistic?  Can/will the prevailing powers in the UK make up these losses in subsidies to Cornwall and quite possibly other counties as well?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

28 minutes ago, Prince of the North said:

How many other counties are in a similar situation?

 

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/erdf-programmes-progress-and-achievements

If you are interested/bothered enough, that might be a start.

[Werthead]

Summing up why we voted Leave, the hard-right of the Conservative Party just formed an alliance with the disenfranchised elder generation of Britain's working class on the promise of delivering substantially more money to public services and the NHS in particular.

I suspect this is why people didn't see it coming, because it makes absolutely no sense.

[Chaircat Meow]

12 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Phil Collins.

Not that one.

Damn. Thought it was Matthew Parris.

Anyway, a long liberal whinge. But, I do agree about it being Farage's victory really. Liberals like Hannan, Carswell and Boris would have had no hope of winning without him and his focus on immigration.

And yes, Boris is the guy who wanted to admit Turkey to the EU to reunite the two halves of the Roman Empire. He's not exactly in tune with the movement he now leads. Same goes for Gove, or did, anyway. He was a big fan of Blair at one point.

[Werthead]

3 minutes ago, Prince of the North said:

I basically linked this above and asked how many other counties could be in this same sort of predicament?  It's not really that Cornwall is demanding to keep EU subsidies.  It's that Cornwall is demanding the UK government give it equal subsidies.  From your linked article:

Is that at all realistic?  Can/will the prevailing powers in the UK make up these losses in subsidies to Cornwall and quite possibly other counties as well?

No. Not even remotely. The British government will not be able to subsidise the regions, subsidise Northern Irish development, subsidise the British farming industry and pour a shitton more money in to the NHS on £196 million a week. This was a farcical claim that never should have been made, as Farage sensibly pointed out. Less sensibly, after the election, but still.

To fund all of that, they'd have to reverse a lot of austerity and cuts, which is what caused Osborne to start freaking out and tripping balls about his emergency budget last week, and is also highly unlikely to happen.

 

 

 

[red snow]

8 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

Some people will have voted Leave for daft reasons. But the same holds true for Remain voters as well.

Well the ones who voted remain but actually wanted to leave will be happy in terms of daft reasons at least.

12 minutes ago, Lordsteve666 said:

See this sort of thing has actually left me seething inside. How utterly stupid does our population have to be to think that not every vote in a 2 answer referendum doesn't mater?
I mean it makes me question whether some people actually fathom what an election or a referendum like this is actually for, they clearly cannot grasp to severity of what their vote means.

Sure in a local/general election your vote might be against the grain but this was a simple yes/no question to the whole country. It's not like if their area voted remain it would stay in whilst everyone else leaves, Jesus, are people so utterly stupid.

There's been lots of people saying they just picked leave and didn't think it would happen, what the fuck did they think would happen then?

They double down on stupid when they actually admit in public that they are confused by this outcome. I'd hope they'd at least be embarassed and keep it to themselves. It's one thing voting to leave because you want to, not voting is dubious if you think there's a lesser evil either way (which should be possible on a yes/no question) - it's on another level (one I thought couldn't exist) when you wanted to remain but voted leave anyhow.

[Prince of the North]

1 minute ago, Notone said:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/erdf-programmes-progress-and-achievements

If you are interested/bothered enough, that might be a start.

Are you being snarky?  I don't really see what you're snarkily and nonsensically trying to point out here.  Yes, these are the EU subsidies in question and these are the subsidies which are going to be lost.  I get that.  I'll ask my question again: can/will the UK government make up these losses in subsidies for these counties?  I suspect not...but that's why I'm asking.