In Brussels, there are only three correct responses to Brexit: denial (“they’ll come to their senses”); fury (“they were lied to, the vote was stolen”); and contempt (“the arrogant fools deserve what’s coming to them”). The thing no one is allowed to do is to ask why Britain voted Leave, or whether Eurocrats might have behaved differently to make the EU more popular.I think we've seen just about every spurious, fallacious, fatuous, illogical, mendacious and downright silly variation of those responses. That we hadn't included the votes of babies and infants, that a simple majority was too low a bar, that some voters in 2016 are now dead and others enfranchised, invalidating the poll, that Russians / dark financiers / Martians rigged the vote, the voters were too stupid to understand the issues, that every word of the Leave campaigns was a lie whilst the Remain campaign was a model of veracity and virtue, that opinion polls (which have somehow miraculously become more accurate since the manifold polls prior to the vote) prove people have changed their minds.
It's all away-with-the-fairies fantasy. As both John Curtice and Diane Abbot have advised, don't bank on a Remain result if the poll is run again. Which it won't be.
The truth is that a Goliath patrician establishment with all the resources of the State, the nation's elites, broadcasters, global industrialists, international supergovernmental actors, the then US President, and with a vastly greater campaign pot, twice that of Leave, was defeated by a David with the greatest democratic mandate ever seen in this country. 17.4m electors.
Come to terms with it. It won't go away.
38 comments:
defeated by a David
Interesting analogy; so Leavers are murderous adulterers, genocidal war criminals, bisexuals, exhibitionists and bad parents who hear God talking to them? Or did you mean Leavers have a great propaganda ministry and write some catchy tunes?
Raed, you miss out the eleven-billion-pounds-a-year industry, that has been churning out the most preposterous anti-EU distortions ever since it existed.
The Murdoch-Dacre-Express-Telegraph empires, that is. The BBC sits on its hands and lets them get on with it. In the name of "balance", for every true thing that it allows to be said, it searches high and low for someone to come on and tell a massive, whopping lie.
You're having a laugh as usual.
"You're having a laugh as usual"
Yes Jack, anon. At you!
The EU and our own Establishment have spent 60 years carefully and stealthily creating a SHAMOCRACY. They will never accept a case where real democracy prevails.
They won't hold another Referendum for the very good reason that they think they'll lose it again.
Instead, our Un-Representative Parliament will attempt to overturn the Referendum and then the Remoaners will decide not to stand in the next General Election so the electorate cannot even punish them. And a short while afterwards they will get their highly lucrative rewards for their treachery - in the EU; Multi-nationals or Quangocracy.
And any residual faith the British people have in Parliament will be shattered beyond repair.
Let's use words in their traditional, generally-understood sense, shall we?
As I have said, the term British Establishment became popular in the 1960s. It means the Royals and the Landed. It includes the military, security, diplomatic and intelligence top brass, and it also takes in the established Church, along with the judiciary, the Governors of the BBC, and media owners such as Murdoch. It includes the Tory Government and the Executive, along with senior civil servants and bankers, and many other ex-Eton, and other such schools bigwigs. It absolutely does not include trade unions, the Greens, Labour, the LDs, mutual societies, co-operatives, the general scientific community, and the like. Yes, Theresa May, Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson are all in it, as is Nigel Farage. Jeremy Corbyn is definitely not, however, and it is why you will read endless distortions about him in silly rags such as the Daily Mail.
You can use it as would Alice In Wonderland, to mean whatever you want it to mean if you like though.
If Dismay wants her beloved tory party to win the next election, regardless of whether she stands herself...
All she has to do is to sit on her hands for a few more weeks, after March 30th it will all be over and she will have delivered the "brexit" that was promised.
I really don't see the problem.
Of course, that won't be the end, as we get to the first week in April, there will be a free trade deal in place between the EU and Britain, and May will be able to claim ever greater glory, because it will be minus the £39 billion.
See, I told you brexit would be easy.
Yes Jack, anon. At you!-Mark
You can be assured it is mutual, some of the comments here are comedy gold and even our resident black muslim troll can have me in stitches (although not the kind he'd hope for me).
"You can be assured it is mutual". I should hope so!
But he who laughs last, laughs longest. In a few years we'll know who that is.
"You can use it as would Alice In Wonderland, to mean whatever you want it to mean if you like though". Anon, isn't that what you've just done?
Radders it is looking more and more like a GE. It is essential that before that happens, the rabid remainers like Grieve, Boles, rudd and the verminous rest of them are deselected and constituencies choose their own candidates.
An election in which these same constitutional gangsters stand as tories would be a waste of time and will resolve nothing.
I remember that Mr Farage was seen on television just before thte result of the referendum saying words to the effect that if the result was "Remain" and close he would want a second referendum.
What has changed?
I also remember that Mrs May used to say that "No Deal was better than a Bad Deal" and nobody disagreed.
What has changed?
In the first referendum remain won handsomely. The overwhelming majority of the people who voted remain then had changed their minds by the recent referendum. I see no reason why that trend shouldn't continue.
Hence I have no doubt, regardless of Parliamentary shenanigans that Britain will leave the EU. It is an open question whether that will be achieved relatively painlessly on March 29, or whether the process will take years of pain. It is even possible that the EU will dissolve before Parliament reaches a resolution - we are not the only people having issues with it.
But eventually we will be out.
Anonymous is conveniently... misremembering, like so much else.
He was referring specifically to the tory party, and he didn't mention referendums. He was saying that if remain won, it would not be the end of the internecine war in that party that has been raging since the early 1960's...
The remainers had and won a referendum through cheating, a majority that they held on to for forty years. They lied and lied and prevaricated and fibbed about how wonderful the EEC was, despite the fact that NOBODY from any side of the argument could find a single benefit to be derived from handing power and territory to a foreign power.
The one of them who was so full of himself, put it to the nation and the nation spoke...
EFF off Cameron, they said.
So he effed off.
I wish the rest of them would, then maybe we could get on with being the trade based liberal democracy that we should be.
The pooling of sovereignty in the EU, within clear, Treaty-defined limits is two-way, involving acquiring, as well as ceding.
The UK has the maximum twenty-nine, population-weighted votes in the Council of Ministers, along with only France, Germany, and Italy.
Through these, and its seventy-three MEPs, it wields enormous influence in the EU, gaining a major share of that sovereignty over twenty-seven other nations.
In its madness it is throwing all that away.
Daniel "no one is thinking of leaving the single market" Hannan is the son of cotton farmers, who got rich on near-slavery in Latin America.
Read up on this revolting, lying individual.
Re newspapers, those supporting Leave declared their hand VERY late in the day (total audience of around 4.8 million vs. Remain just over 3 million) BUT most of the big Regional Newspapers backed Remain. Also the BBC news (TV and Radio) reach is MASSIVE and dwarfs all newspaper coverage; also nearly 50% of the population get their main news from the BBC (used to be about 70% so it's heading in the right direction)
Re "Establishment" the bulk of everybody pre-referendum backed Remain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorsements_in_the_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum,_2016
Re right-writes response to my reference to Mr Farage's statement, I have not "conveniently ... mis-remembered":
Daily Telegraph 7 May 2016
Eurosceptics have raised the prospect of a second referendum on Britain’s EU membership as polls suggested the Leave campaign is on course to lose the vote next month.
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, said there would be “unfinished business” if the result is tight while Boris Johnson, the eurosceptic former London mayor, said a Remain vote may not settle the issue.
Huffpost 07/11/2016
Nigel Farage Said A 52-48 Win For Remain Would Be 'Unfinished Business'
Also: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36306681
I had forgotten that Boris had uttered similar statements ...
They always say that Government never allow referendums unless they know what the outcome is going to be.
Either they have/had ways of influencing the voting (the execrable £9m leaflet) or 'knew' that foreign-born voters would flock to Remain etc I can't really say but what apparent is that the Leave vote caught them entirely unaware. Even with the Governments ability to pressure a result they STILL lost. Is speaks volumes for what the 'real' count must have been and explains quite fully why they won't countenance another vote.
The result wasn't as a result of ANY 'influence' by leave or remain - it was a result entirely of the EU's own making. They clearly don't offer anything that the public see as 'advantageous' and the con's outweigh the pro's by a larger margin. Simple.
Supporters of Leave/Remain can bleat as much as they like about the result and how it was achieved but the people weren't 'fooled' by anyone or any campaign - they KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED.
There are obvious issues with the EU that not only affected people at the time of the vote but continue to do so to this day - immigration being but one example that is, perhaps, going to tear the whole edifice down - yet the rulers of the EU still won't see this as a concern for voters and still refuse to stop it. It's not just immigration though....
No-one agrees with the CAP, no-one agrees that the political structure of the EU Parliament is by any way ideal, no-one agrees that the Euro is 'good for Europe', no-one agrees that the expense of the structure is worth it, no-one agrees that moving the Parliament on a monthly basis is sound practise etc etc etc.
Everyone agrees that the EU isn't value-for-money, that it isn't democratic, that it is wasteful, corrupt, self-serving, arrogant, bloated etc etc etc. This isn't difficult to see and even harder to argue against.
So, far from arguing the merits or not of EU membership and the resultant, understandable, vote to leave, perhaps start discussing why the EU are so fixated, why they won't accept change that people desire, why they are so corrupt etc.
They wouldn't offer Cameron even a crumb of opportunity to influence the British people (and this in itself may have swayed some voters towards leave) nor will they entertain May's efforts.
If the EU couldn't give a shit about a country as relevant as the UK, imagine their attitude towards smaller country members??? It doesn't bode well for the future existence of the EU anyway you look at it.
We hear nothing about reasons to remain, nothing about the effect of leaving on the EU itself, nothing about their reasons for intransigence, nothing about their ultimate aim......
It's what we DON'T KNOW about the EU (or its plans for the future) that are worse than what we DO KNOW. And what we DO know is enough to want to leave.
For all the 'debate' in those who consider themselves to be movers and shakers I can't see another referendum or immediate GE resolving the Brexit issues.
Assuming we could wait long enough for another referendum... what is the point? If the question is a repeated Remain/Leave binary choice then no extra 'authenticity' has been generated, despite the long delay. If the questions are more complex then I can't see the referendum actually taking place at all.
And if we are tipped into an early GE... what will the party manifestos say? Nobody trusts Corbyn or May, and the Remain/Leave issue splits both parties. Either the manifestos will be full of weasel words or the parties must 'plump' for a particular position (which they could do now if they so chose).
Best way forward? Clean Brexit now and a cross party committee to sort out any loose details later. It would at least burst the boil splitting each party and encourage later healing...
Yes Dave, they knew what they wanted.
Unfortunately, a time machine, to transport the UK back to 1973, where there was no such thing as the mighty, united, single market of the EU on our doorstep, and with which we have a staggeringly complex web of economic and other ties, does not exist.
They might have to revise their ambitions, therefore.
Sorry.
There is no more such a thing as a "clean" brexit than there is a "clean" beheading or disembowelment.
The best solution would be to leave the EU and apply to join the EEA/EFTA. If people wanted to distance themselves further, then they could become manifesto issues, on which parties could fight elections, and we could do things properly according to the UK Constitution.
No-one agrees with the CAP, no-one agrees that the political structure of the EU Parliament is by any way ideal, no-one agrees that the Euro is 'good for Europe', no-one agrees that the expense of the structure is worth it, no-one agrees that moving the Parliament on a monthly basis is sound practise etc etc etc. Dave G
PRECISELY! So it rather begs the question, why the EU at all? Perhaps because pretty much everyone in Europe, besides the British, knows what the alternative is. Unlike the British they haven't forgotten their history lessons. Raed bangs on about it quite abit, about keeping Germany and France locked in a 'petit mort' embrace. The Alternative is separate "Sovereign, independant,democratic nations" (to quote the Brexiteers).
Unless things have changed, most German TV ads on the public service broadcaster ZDF are for OTC "Medications" and after each and every such ad there is intoned in a serious voice and written on the screen "for risks and side effects consult your doctor or apothecary".
There should be such a warning on LEAVE (be it brexit, Dexit, Frexit etc) propaganda anywhere in the EU: "for risks and side effects consult a history book or ask your grandparents".
Anon, the EU is neither mighty nor united.... their economy is failing, their policies are divisive. As a trading collective no one had an issue with it.
The politics of the EU are destroying it. Not the people, not the trade - the politics, in exactly the same way as the issue of Brexit is destroying Britain (or at least our faith in democracy) as the leadership refuses to acknowledge or act on the desire/will of the people. Immigration is a perfect illustration. The EU simply will not listen hence their permanent reluctance to ever offer anyone any vote on such issues.
The alternative to the EU was always the EEC. People have a vested interest in trade and their own well-being that could have been encouraged with greater trade WITHOUT the red tape. Let people decide using their wallets on what they consider 'safe' or desirable products and let BUSINESS make the trading arrangements. Government taps off the wealth that such trade creates and should, in principle, distribute that wealth back to the people via social improvements and protections.
But where does the wealth go? It's either spent on vanity/political projects (self serving naturally), wasted on price fixing (CAP, tariffs etc) or embezelled by vested interests.
I purchase goods direct from China. If they're crap/unsafe I don't use that seller again. I don't adopt Chinese politics as a condition of purchase nor do I suffer under their yoke of rules.
We could all be like that. None of us need the nannying of State to make purchases and I certainly don't need anyone telling me - FORCING me - to accept unwanted and unemployable immigrants. All that achieves is to create increased animosity between residents and immigrants by way of the workers supporting the feckless (and that applies to our own benefit scroungers too - I'm not racist).
The alternative (Jack)? Self determination based on mutally agreeable trade terms. What is so damned difficult about that?
The alternative (Jack)? Self determination based on mutually agreeable trade terms. What is so damned difficult about that?
Humanity itself? Mutually agreeable trade terms always come down to political agreement about that trade and its terms.
Yes jack, if the UK leaves the EU, Germany is going to go on the warpath, Merkal wants nothing more than to sack Prague and rape her way through Warsaw and it's only the UKs open borders that stops her
"Their" economy? There are twenty-seven nations and countless regions within that.
The only part of the UK which is in surplus is the SE.
The picture is similar in the US, and the overall debt there is staggering.
The EU has problems like everywhere else, but so far, its record in solving them isn't bad at all.
PS. Dave. The EU has NO immigration policy, because it is none of the EU's business under the Lisbon Treaty.
That, and external border security is entirely a matter for the sovereign nations of the EU.
The fact that people, fleeing the chaos caused by the US and the UK chaos in their own countries, entered the EU unlawfully is absolutely nothing to do with the EU either.
It was very generous for Germany, Sweden etc. to take so many, however, otherwise they'd still be hanging round your holiday resorts in Italy and in Greece, wouldn't they?
The EU is really a set of political projects that have become entangled. There is the single market. This is a simple barrier-to-entry, a get-inside-the-tent-and-piss-out conspiracy against poor people. The poor people being those producers - signally of food in Africa and near-Asia - outside the EU and consumers inside it for whom high prices are maintained by anti-competion. (That should be enough BTW for a sensible person to want to burn it down.)
Then we add to this the curious and utterly stupid notion of the Euro. One market, one currency - OK I get that. Or at least I would have back in the days when money came as bits of paper and you had to have the right ones down the boulangerie. As we have seen in Greece, a nation's currency offers a means to flex its economy as events occur. Take that away and a nation's economy can break. And it did. (The Euro was the mis-step BTW. If they had had the patience to wait and built the Euro after political union was more established, they might have got away with it.)
And now we have the issue of borders and nationaility. Weaponising the Ireland-NI "border" issue was wicked, stupid and a mistake. It is rare to see all three boxes ticked. And an EU army? Tell me, which of you will go and die in a ditch on the say-so of Jean-Claude Juncker? I thought not.
Slap on top of all this the difference between the legal attitudes of several of the major nations and you have a recipe for a buggers' muddle which must be held together by power and deceit rather than consent and mutual affection.
Anyway, sorry to drone on. Fear not, the project will die before I do. There is a bottle of the good stuff set by for the day.
Mongy: "The euro will be dead and buried by Christmas 2012" - Nigel Farage.
The EU murder tally is only about one-sixth that of the US, despite having more people. That, I would say, is a measure of the relative sanity of the peoples within the two systems.
Anonymong: I am not responsible for what other people say. There is a good argument that says that the Euro is dead. It's a zombie currency which has been gutted by QE. It awaits the next recession to put it out of its misery perhaps.
The relevance of your other point escapes me. The Yanks' obsession with firearms does confuse me too though.
The markets say not, Mongy.
In 2004 a euro cost 52p. It will cost a wholesaler 88p now.
It is Sterling, rather, which is on the sticky wicket.
It is Sterling, rather, which is on the sticky wicket.
A softer £ isn't necessarily a bad thing, infact for a Car Crash BrexSShite to be a success the pound will need to soften quite a bit...just not so soft it needs a labrador puppy to carry it around in its mouth. I don't think there's much disagreement among even the more spittle-spraying Brexiteers about that...just as long as it is a pre-decimal type pound with the Queen's head on.
@anon 10:18...
"Mr Farage said he believed the Leave campaign were on course for victory.
But he said there would be resentment, particularly in the Conservative Party, if not, with claims the referendum will not have been a fair contest.
Number 10 said Mr Farage's comments showed he was losing the argument and was no longer confident of winning.
And Prime Minister David Cameron said it was a "once in a generation, once in a lifetime" decision, saying the UK had "referendums not Neverendums"."
You are offering this, which is precisely what I said you had conveniently misremembered, as proof that Nigel Farage had said that he would continue the campaign?
Of course the bit at the end has no meaning at all...
"...the UK had "referendums not Neverendums"."
Hmmm... So that means we leave the EU on 29th March on Word Trade Rules, unless May can persuade remainers, leavers, and the DUP to accept her remain deal?
I used to enjoy this blog but since Anonymous took over, forget it!
Er, we're not all the same person, m.
If there is another referendum, "Leave" will not be one of the options available.
It will be Remain, or Remain under the May surrender document.
You can paste that in your hat, as Bertie Wooster might have said.
EEA/EFTA membership, May's deal, all meet the advisory referendum result.
There was not question on the ballot paper, as to what the UK's post-exit relationship with the EU should be.
Farbage loses his job under all three, doesn't he?
right-writes@17.14
Your assertiion that I misremembered (OED "misrember - verb - Remember imperfectly or incorrectly") is incorrect.
Although they were not verbatim quotes, the statements I made at 0905 were correct:
"I remember that Mr Farage was seen on television just before thte result of the referendum saying words to the effect that if the result was "Remain" and close he would want a second referendum.
What has changed?
I also remember that Mrs May used to say that "No Deal was better than a Bad Deal" and nobody disagreed.
What has changed?"
The statements you refer to are yours, not mine, and as such they do not "offer proof" of my statements of any sort.
Rather than raising other memories would it not be more helpful to the discussion for someone to answer / discuss the two "What changed?" questions?
For Leavers there are absolutely no advantages to a second referendum unless and until a Parliament is elected that represents the electorate's views on the EU.
And the difficulty faced by the electorate is that many MPs deliberately lie to them during election time about their pro-EU views in order to get elected in Leave constituencies.
The reasons being :
If Leave wins, why should Parliament respect the result the second time if it has not implemented the wishes of the electorate the first time ?
Secondly, if Remain wins, that will be the end of the discussion and furthermore the Establishment will take it as a mandate for further EU integration, EU wide taxation, joining the Euro, Schengen and the EU military, further EU expansion to the East and implementing Mrs. Merkel's immigration policy as outlined at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin 21/11/2018 :
“Sovereign nation states must not listen to the will of their citizens when it comes to questions of immigration, borders, or even sovereignty.”
There will be no “listening” to the views of the Leavers and it would be the last meaningful vote the country ever had.
@Anonymous 17.14
I just followed your link and "copied and pasted", not my words... The words you directed me to look at.
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