The EU referendum

[Horus]

And let us guess who those 1.5 milion voters are, maybe part of the 1 million that have also signed up to a petition for London to become independant and I am not joking either.

[Who2]

Don't knock London's history or the London Mob, when roused they can cause total mayhem.
Many times an independent state has tried to assert itself..
My missis had a flat in Pimlico...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041737/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

[Horus]

Very good Dr, but I reckon that's as far as they would get with the idea.

[newcastle]

And let's not forget the Tooting Popular Front

[newcastle]

People voted OUT for many reasons......

phpBB [video]

[Horus]

Hilarious, but I have seen just as much stupidity displayed by some remain voters too, perhaps that is why we have a minimum voting age.

[LovelyLadyLux]

Good one Newcastle - I thought her reasons pretty good!

[newcastle]

But Horus is right. Our Jen isn't the sharpest knife in the draw ;

phpBB [video]

[Horus]

This Timeline is taken from the Telegraph newspaper and I think puts the events into some sort of perspective:

1951
Treaty of Paris
Treaty of Paris creates the European Coal and Steel Community. Britain stays out.

1973
Britain enters the European Community
Britain, facing economic decline, enters the European Community.

1975
Membership reaffirmed in national referendum
The margin is 67.2 per cent. It comes after Harold Wilson promises a fundamental renegotiation of terms that, he insists, does not jeopardise national sovereignty.

1984
Rebate on EU contributions by Mrs. Thatcher at the end of the European Economic Summit
Margaret Thatcher wields the handbag, and secures a rebate on Britain’s EU budget contributions.

1992
Maastricht Treaty widens EU
The treaty lays the framework for the Euro and shared foreign, social and justice policies. Its passage tears the Tory Party apart.

1997
New Labour era begins
Tony Blair opts into the social chapter, bringing the working time directive into force in Britain. Gordon Brown torpedoes membership of the Euro, which launches on January 1 2002.

2004
Eight Eastern European countries join EU
Citizens of eight Eastern European countries including Poland and Hungary get movement rights to Britain immediately.

2005
Cameron wins Tory leadership
David Cameron at the Annual Party Conference in 2005
David Cameron later tells his party to stop “banging on about Europe”.

2009
The Lisbon Treaty
The treaty sees the creation of an EU president and Foreign Service, and removes Britain’s veto over 40 areas of policy.

2011
Cameron vetoes treaty to strengthen control over Eurozone
He says it would jeopardise Britain’s access to the single market.

2013
The Bloomberg speech
David Cameron sets out a sweeping vision for reform to save Europe, highlighting the working time directive and Brussels’ bloated bureaucracy, followed by an in-out referendum in 2017.

January 2014
Greater freedoms for Bulgarians and Romanians
Bulgarians and Romanians given unrestricted right to travel and work in the EU after joining in 2007. Government responds with new laws to deport beggars and powers to end dole payments after six months.


May 2014
Ukip come first in European elections
Over the summer, Tory MPs Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless defect to Ukip.

June 2014
Jean-Claude Juncker becomes president of European Commission
Most other member states backed Juncker, David Cameron is defeated in a bid to stop Jean-Claude Juncker becoming president of the European Commission by 26 to 2.

November 2014
Cameron sets out plan to reform EU migration
It includes: denying migrants in-work benefits for four years and deporting unemployed EU migrants after six months.

December 2014
£1.7bn bill for EU membership
Cameron is furious after Britain is hit with a £1.7bn bill for EU membership, calculated due to the economy’s success compared to the Eurozone.

May 2015
David Cameron wins General Election
His manifesto is based on reform and referendum. The renegotiation process is launched, and Cameron launches a whirlwind tour of Europe to visit all 27 counterparts.

June 2015
Threat to use British budget contributions in emergency Greece loans
In the first unpleasant shock of the renegotiation, the European Commission threatens to use British budget contributions in emergency loans to Greece –
tearing up a promise won by David Cameron four years previously.

September 2015
Refugee crisis engulfs the continent
Cameron is warned he will get nothing from his renegotiation unless he does more to tackle the crisis. Negotiations with European leaders intensify.

18-19 February 2016
Renegotiation deal deadline
The target date for Mr Cameron to seal a deal.

5 February 2016
Deal done
Just before 10pm UK time, David Cameron announces a deal to give the UK “special status” in the EU, after three days of hard bargaining.

20 January 2016
Cameron gives ministers free vote
David Cameron announces that once negotiations with European leaders are complete, he will lift collective responsibility and allow ministers to decide their own positions on the issue.

23 June 2016
UK EU referendum
The UK public votes on the country's future within the Union - and shocks the world by choosing to leave the EU. David Cameron announces his resignation the next day.

I think when reading the above timeline and how some events transpired it is not hard to see how many Britons became a bit suspicious and disenchanted with the EU

[HEPZIBAH]

People voted OUT for many reasons......

phpBB [video]

I saw that clip this morning and didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Clearly a lass who can only absorb facts when placed in front of her in pie, or in her case pizza, chart format. I wonder if the type of pizza would have any influence on how many slices. ;-)

[Winged Isis]

Just for a larf or two:



http://brokennews.com.au/2016/06/24/aus ... u-stralia/

[jewel]

Interesting...
"From the Guardian's comments section:
If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.
Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.
With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.
How?
Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.
And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legistlation to be torn up and rewritten ... the list grew and grew.
The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.
The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?
Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?
Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-maneouvered and check-mated.
If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over - Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession ... broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.
The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.
When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was "never". When Michael Gove went on and on about "informal negotiations" ... why? why not the formal ones straight away? ... he also meant not triggering the formal departure. They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.
All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne. And David Cameron has put the onus of making that statement on the heads of the people who led the Brexit campaign."



Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

[HEPZIBAH]

Thanks jewel, that made interesting reading.

[Horus]

Certainly some interesting facts being laid bare in that article, just goes to show how poorly run were both campaigns when neither the leave or remain camp mentioned very few of these possibilities.
Anyway Jewel thanks for posting and for quoting my favourite singer song writer Bob Dylan.

[newcastle]

I won't mention that I raised the issue of the non-mandatory nature of a referendum a while back.....I don't want to sound like A-Four.
Ooops....too late

I did wonder....I still wonder.....whether our lily-livered MP's would have the nerve to exercise their right to defy the referendum result even though it hardly constituted a ringing endorsement of the OUT arguments.

What the Guardian comment indicates is that "self- preservation" by MPs may give the same result .....and "inaction" seems an entirely plausible course (unlike a vote of defiance).

Maybe the whole idea will just wither on the vine

Or maybe something will come of that petition...now showing 2.5 million plus signatories.

I've seen any number of nervous (and angry) OUTers shrieking "foul" on social media this evening.

[Horus]

Good point, but 2 million protests do not out bid 17 million votes either way you dress it up

[Bombay]

Good point, but 2 million protests do not out bid 17 million votes either way you dress it up

And when it passes 17 million?

[Bombay]

Interesting...
"From the Guardian's comments section:
If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.
Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.
With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.
How?
Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.
And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legistlation to be torn up and rewritten ... the list grew and grew.
The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.
The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?
Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?
Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-maneouvered and check-mated.
If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over - Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession ... broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.
The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.
When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was "never". When Michael Gove went on and on about "informal negotiations" ... why? why not the formal ones straight away? ... he also meant not triggering the formal departure. They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.
All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne. And David Cameron has put the onus of making that statement on the heads of the people who led the Brexit campaign."



Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... SApp_Other

Where was the champagne at the Vote Leave headquarters? The happy tears and whoops of joy? If you believed Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the Brexit vote was a moment of national liberation, a day that Nigel Farage said our grateful children would celebrate with an annual bank holiday.

Johnson and Gove had every reason to celebrate. The referendum campaign showed the only arguments that matter now in England are on the right. With the Labour leadership absent without leave and the Liberal Democrats and Greens struggling to be heard, the debate was between David Cameron and George Osborne, defending the status quo, and the radical right, demanding its destruction. Johnson and Gove won a dizzying victory with the potential to change every aspect of national life, from workers’ rights to environmental protection.

Yet they gazed at the press with coffin-lid faces and wept over the prime minister they had destroyed. David Cameron was “brave and principled”, intoned Johnson. “A great prime minister”, muttered Gove. Like Goneril and Regan competing to offer false compliments to Lear, they covered the leader they had doomed with hypocritical praise. No one whoops at a funeral, especially not mourners who are glad to see the back of the deceased. But I saw something beyond hypocrisy in those frozen faces: the fear of journalists who have been found out.

The media do not damn themselves, so I am speaking out of turn when I say that if you think rule by professional politicians is bad wait until journalist politicians take over. Johnson and Gove are the worst journalist politicians you can imagine: pundits who have prospered by treating public life as a game. Here is how they play it. They grab media attention by blaring out a big, dramatic thought. An institution is failing? Close it. A public figure blunders? Sack him. They move from journalism to politics, but carry on as before. When presented with a bureaucratic EU that sends us too many immigrants, they say the answer is simple, as media answers must be. Leave. Now. Then all will be well.

Boris Johnson. Liar, conman – and prime minister?
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen Read more
Johnson and Gove carried with them a second feature of unscrupulous journalism: the contempt for practical questions. Never has a revolution in Britain’s position in the world been advocated with such carelessness. The Leave campaign has no plan. And that is not just because there was a shamefully under-explored division between the bulk of Brexit voters who wanted the strong welfare state and solid communities of their youth and the leaders of the campaign who wanted Britain to become an offshore tax haven. Vote Leave did not know how to resolve difficulties with Scotland, Ireland, the refugee camp at Calais, and a thousand other problems, and did not want to know either.

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It responded to all who predicted the chaos now engulfing us like an unscrupulous pundit who knows that his living depends on shutting up the experts who gainsay him. For why put the pundit on air, why pay him a penny, if experts can show that everything he says is windy nonsense? The worst journalists, editors and broadcasters know their audiences want entertainment, not expertise. If you doubt me, ask when you last saw panellists on Question Time who knew what they were talking about.

Naturally, Michael Gove, former Times columnist, responded to the thousands of economists who warned he was taking an extraordinary risk with the sneer that will follow him to his grave: “People in this country have had enough of experts.” He’s being saying the same for years.

If sneers won’t work, the worst journalists lie. The Times fired Johnson for lying to its readers. Michael Howard fired Johnson for lying to him. When he’s cornered, Johnson accuses others of his own vices, as unscrupulous journalists always do. Those who question him are the true liars, he blusters, whose testimony cannot be trusted because, as he falsely said of the impeccably honest chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, they are “stooges”.

The Vote Leave campaign followed the tactics of the sleazy columnist to the letter. First, it came out with the big, bold solution: leave. Then it dismissed all who raised well-founded worries with “the country is sick of experts”. Then, like Johnson the journalist, it lied.

On Friday, Johnson and Dan Hannan said that in all probability the number of foreigners coming here won’t fall
I am not going to be over-dainty about mendacity. Politicians, including Remain politicians lie, as do the rest of us. But not since Suez has the nation’s fate been decided by politicians who knowingly made a straight, shameless, incontrovertible lie the first plank of their campaign. Vote Leave assured the electorate it would reclaim a supposed £350m Brussels takes from us each week. They knew it was a lie. Between them, they promised to spend £111bn on the NHS, cuts to VAT and council tax, higher pensions, a better transport system and replacements for the EU subsidies to the arts, science, farmers and deprived regions. When boring experts said that, far from being rich, we would face a £40bn hole in our public finances, Vote Leave knew how to fight back. In Johnsonian fashion, it said that the truth tellers were corrupt liars in Brussels’ pocket.


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Now they have won and what Kipling said of the demagogues of his age applies to Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

The real division in Britain is not between London and the north, Scotland and Wales or the old and young, but between Johnson, Gove and Farage and the voters they defrauded. What tale will serve them now? On Thursday, they won by promising cuts in immigration. On Friday, Johnson and the Eurosceptic ideologue Dan Hannan said that in all probability the number of foreigners coming here won’t fall. On Thursday, they promised the economy would boom. By Friday, the pound was at a 30-year low and Daily Mail readers holidaying abroad were learning not to believe what they read in the papers. On Thursday, they promised £350m extra a week for the NHS. On Friday, it turns out there are “no guarantees”.

If we could only find a halfway competent opposition, the very populist forces they have exploited and misled so grievously would turn on them. The fear in their eyes shows that they know it.

[Horus]

If we could only find a halfway competent opposition, the very populist forces they have exploited and misled so grievously would turn on them. The fear in their eyes shows that they know it

So very true

[newcastle]

No-one knows for sure whether UK would have been better in , or out, of the EU over the last 40 years.

No-one knows for sure whether UK will be better out of the EU in the future rather than remaining in.

But what you can be sure about is that exiting now will create, maybe temporarily, an almighty mess....both externally and internally. economically and politically.

If you are going to take this plunge, against the considered advice of those who arguably have a better grasp of the consequences than the general public, then I think it should be taken with more of a "mandate" than 52-48 on a 75% turnout.