Brexit reflections so far

Originally posted by moonbus
I believe there are three main reasons why many Britons voted to leave.

1. British politicians decided to go into the 'EU thing' decades ago without polling the British public, and the British public have felt growing disenfranchisment about it ever since. That is an issue which has little to do with the EU per se (the issue could have been almost anythin ...[text shortened]... ect the Scots will be the first to jump ship and hold a new referendum on Scottish independence.

Your post although thought through contains many errors and incorrect assumptions.

You say there has never been a poll. There was a referendum on the EU in 1975 and the same generation who were vilified last week for destroying the future, overwhelmingly voted to go into the then common market.

Thatcher lost power because of her stance on Europe and her leadership style with a largely pro-Europe cabinet, not because of the poll tax, although it may have played a part.

Yes you are correct about UK voters not wanting European laws enforced on them by unelected beurocrats, many who were actually rejected by the voters through the democratic process of general election. Neil Kinnock for example. Rejected through democracy appointed to the EU through beurocracy. Disgraceful.

You are wrong and incredibly ignorant about this being an "Rural (country side) England" issue ~ what about Wales? Have you forgotten about an entire country? Wales voted leave. The "country-side" as you euphemistically call it, contains all of the major cities outside of London many of which are home to huge ethnic populations. This is not about being "Britisn" this is about the UK of great Britian and Northern Ireland.

All this rhetoric about the UK being better placed within the EU to influence is complete twaddle - the whole issue is about the UK NOT being best placed to influence and this has been going on for nearly 50 years. The U.K. is or will be, well placed to set up trading agreements with whoever it wishes to trade with. Including Europe.

Tony Travers of the London School of Economics comments on Thatcher's policy (poll tax) debacle:

"What remains to be explained is why a politician who had hitherto shown such brilliant populist sensitivity should destroy herself with a tax reform which inflicted terrible damage on millions of people who had been in the front line of the Thatcher Revolution ... Either the government failed to understand what most research and many commentators were saying, or they did understand it and believed that they could, as the saying went, "tough it out". A third possibility is that ministers came to understand the electoral damage ahead, but were afraid to put the case strongly enough to a Prime Minister at the helm of her "flagship".

Constitutional commentators concluded from the tax fiasco that 'the British state has become dangerously centralized, to an extent that important policy developments can now no longer be properly debated.' The unpopularity of the poll tax came to be seen as an important factor in Thatcher's downfall, by convincing many Conservative backbenchers to vote against her when she was later challenged for the leadership by Michael Heseltine.

After the prime minister's resignation, former chancellor Nigel Lawson labelled the poll tax as 'the one great blunder of the Thatcher years', and the succeeding Major government replaced it in 1993 with a council tax, a banded property tax.[132] Former Trade and Industry Secretary Nicholas Ridley agreed that Thatcher had suffered a massive defeat over the poll tax, but he argued that Major's repeal "vindicated the rioters and those who had refused to pay. Lawlessness seemed to have paid off.'"

Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premiership_of_Margaret_Thatcher

No doubt Thatcher would have fallen anyhow eventually. The poll tax, though not the single factor which triggered her downfall, was a sigificant blunder which made it both imminent and inevitable.

I take your point that there was a previous referendum held during the tenure of Ed. Heath. Then, as recently, high-level politicians were divided on the issue, both as to EEC membership (on special terms) and on whether the matter should be put to a referendum. See:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Communities_membership_referendum,_1975

This tends to confirm my point in the previous post, that the United Kingdom is anything but united. There are deep divides in the country, whether one draws lines on the map and separates London from non-London, or some other way. Moreover, some of the battle lines have drifted since 1975: for example, Wales voted to leave this time, but voted to stay in 1975.

I stand by my point that there is a deeply entrenched fear in Britain of 'control from abroad'. This goes a long ways toward explaining why Britain always sought special terms for participation in the EU project. Cameron tried (again, as did Heath's govt) to secure special concessions for continued participation, and he evidently failed--failed both to get all the concessions he wanted from the EU and failed to convince the British public that what he got was sufficient to merit continued participation. This is not an EU issue--Britain is alone in trying, again and again, to wrest special conditions. You don't hear the Belgians or the Luxembourgers crying out about special terms for their chocolate factories or their banks.

Originally posted by moonbus
This tends to confirm my point in the previous post, that the United Kingdom is anything but united.

deeply entrenched fear in Britain of 'control from abroad'.

1. Of course, the country has never evolved beyond the carcass of its
feudal system. In Britain one dies where born. Respect, status, and
wealth are inherited and the sole fact of having distinctions among
human beings through a born-based privilege system is a reflection
of the deep class divide.

2. It is called 'experience'. Britain has massacred entire populations and
pillaged clean entire regions. Henceforth, it lives with the 'guilt of the
conqueror', whose nights are sleepless knowing what could come either
in retaliation or by the hands of someone more ruthless.

A people who gave us the Goons and Monty Python can't be as bad as all that.

Originally posted by Seitse
1. Of course, the country has never evolved beyond the carcass of its
feudal system. In Britain one dies where born. Respect, status, and
wealth are inherited and the sole fact of having distinctions among
human beings through a born-based privilege system is a reflection
of the deep class divide.

2. It is called 'experience'. Britain has massacred ent ...[text shortened]... eepless knowing what could come either
in retaliation or by the hands of someone more ruthless.

Explain why those in Britain should be made to follow the lead of the EU if they do not wish to do so.

Originally posted by whodey
made to follow

Nobody should be made to follow anyone, and that goes for your
beloved corporate masters, and empires like the UK and the US, known for
bullying and plundering weaker countries and force them to march at the
tune of the IMF, the World Bank, and their multinationals.

If you take it further, nobody should be made to follow not even one's
own tribe, but that's a political philosophical debate which neither you
are capable of following intelligently nor it belongs to the general forum.

Europe is a federation in the making and, as such, all of us riding this boat
have opinions on what is most beneficial for all members of the group.
You better worry about your secessionist Texans instead. I also heard
there are gallons of ranch dressing and cartloads of Doritos waiting to
be gobbled up.

Brexiters done it again...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1353819/fan-violence-breaks-out-in-paris-fan-zone-after-englands-euro-2016-exit/

Originally posted by Seitse
Brexiters done it again...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1353819/fan-violence-breaks-out-in-paris-fan-zone-after-englands-euro-2016-exit/

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1353819/fan-violence-breaks-out-in-paris-fan-zone-after-englands-euro-2016-exit

fixt...

Originally posted by Rank outsider
Sorry, but though I dislike him, Farage now clearly is the most successful/important UK politician of recent decades.

It was Alex Salmond, but Farage took a party and agenda that was widely dismissed as a lunatic fringe, won a national election and forced a referendum which was won.

Out of interest to those that thumbed this down (or who didn't), who are the other candidates in, say, the last 20 years and what did they achieve that comes close to the impact that Farage has had? Or has been as successful in achieving such profound political change?

(Alex Salmond aside, who I admit is close, and may take back the top spot if Scotland leaves the UK.)

Originally posted by moonbus
A people who gave us the Goons and Monty Python can't be as bad as all that.

🙂

Originally posted by Rank outsider
Out of interest to those that thumbed this down (or who didn't), who are the other candidates in, say, the last 20 years and what did they achieve that comes close to the impact that Farage has had? Or has been as successful in achieving such profound political change?

(Alex Salmond aside, who I admit is close, and may take back the top spot if Scotland leaves the UK.)

I don't accept your original premise that Farague is to be credited with the brexit referendum. I'm sure he he played a part and a big part in the minds of some small-minded people. The man is an ignorant insulting oaf who leads a one point party of right-wing extremists and who certainly does not speak for me

Originally posted by Seitse
Nobody should be [b]made to follow anyone, and that goes for your
beloved corporate masters, and empires like the UK and the US, known for
bullying and plundering weaker countries and force them to march at the
tune of the IMF, the World Bank, and their multinationals.

If you take it further, nobody should be made to follow not even one's
own tr ...[text shortened]... o heard
there are gallons of ranch dressing and cartloads of Doritos waiting to
be gobbled up.[/b]

Your comments on this thread are boring, tiresome, angry and lack maturity, old son.
Take your rants somewhere else.

Originally posted by Larkie
Your comments on this thread are boring, tiresome, angry and lack maturity, old son.
Take your rants somewhere else.

Sorry, I don't speak chav.

Can someone translate for me this good man's rudimentary language, please?

Originally posted by divegeester
On the negative side:

I voted to leave. Because I did this I got called a racist by people are glibly proclaiming tolerance and acceptance. People who have known me closely for years and years. Also attacked were millions of other people who hold sincere concerns about the economic and democratic future of the U.K under the current direction and cons ...[text shortened]... ll, get involved.

Long live democracy and the power of it to change our world for the better.

Democracy can shake things up but you have to live with the consequences. And those will not be mild.

I think the UK just shot themselves in the foot. They will also lose Scotland and maybe even Northern Ireland. So the UK won't be so U anymore. Did anyone think THAT one through before this bombshell dropped?

Would you care if there was no EU in 30 years, everyone going their own way and back to city states like 400 years ago?

Originally posted by divegeester
I don't accept your original premise that Farague is to be credited with the brexit referendum. I'm sure he he played a part and a big part in the minds of some small-minded people. The man is an ignorant insulting oaf who leads a one point party of right-wing extremists and who certainly does not speak for me

I don't think most of this is relevant to whether or not he was successful/important. And I certainly never suggested that he speaks for you, as he does not speak for me.

But I don't think we can simply dismiss as coincidence (or a minor influencing factor) that Cameron's decision to offer a referendum in the manifesto coincided with a period when UKIP became a serious national political force that threatened the Conservative vote, having resisted it previously.

Do you think he did it for any other reason?