The E.U. has ( an economic ) preference for a deal. They are sick and tired of the whole thing, like everybody else, but the E.U. is an economic construction first & foremost, so I’d think they’d prefer to let the brits try to hash something out for a bit longer. Also ireland.
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And before all the important issues that others have raised, those other countries don’t share a border with an EU country that by law (treaty) can not be closed.
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The “peasants” weren’t given an adequate opportunity to understand what Brexit would actually mean.
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One of the thing country music is famous for is a history of self-pity; “My dog done left me 'cause my truck won’t run” type of thing. And a large proportion of songs of this type seem to strongly signal that the bad things happening are the singer’s fault. I think that’s what @anon48584343 was referencing.
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Spot on.
And this is a reason why Remainers felt entirely justified in saying to the Leavers - “this is your mess; why should we have to come up with a plan to save your bacon?”
I’m one of those who wasn’t able to vote for their preferred option in the Referendum - for me, the options were a choice between “Leave” and “Might As Well Leave” which is why I’m so startled that Leave got any real traction at all.
In another universe, somewhere, Prime Minister Miliband is looking at serious and interesting proposals to replace tax breaks with a sort of UBI, and locking swords with Opposition Leader Osborne at PMQs over NHS funding. And Europe isn’t an issue for any of us because it never has been and never should be. (Really. It’s never been on any list of “things people are worried about”, which is evident by the fact that Leave had to concentrate on the NHS and immigration and not on the EU at all.)
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“Clusterbruck?”
And didn’t the original referendum exclude UK citizens living outside the country?
Which is a really good way to exclude a sizable chunk of people most supportive of and reliant on EU membership. And would tend to exclude a larger proportion of young people, and especially people from non England places where working abroad is more common thanks to prevailing ecconomic concerns locally. Especially in NI where a large proportion of the population spends at least some time working and living elsewhere in the EU and worldwide because there’s little work at home. Even if it’s just across the border in the Republic, cause that borders open for a reason?
Certainly sounds like the will of the people was accurately captured.
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Not quite. If you were a British citizen who had once lived in the UK but had, at the time of the referendum, been living abroad for no more than 15 years, you could vote in the referendum.
Having said that, the referendum did exclude non-UK EU nationals living in the UK unless they were citizens of Ireland, Malta, or Cyprus.
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It did include Gibraltar, where 96% voted remain.
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But it was a fly back to vote sort of thing right? Rather than an absentee ballot sort of thing?
No, AFAIR you would have been able to vote by post or by proxy.
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It does make you wonder what the fuck that 4% thought they were voting on.
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The 2016 referendum was less about the EU than it was about a whole lot of home-grown issues, most of all the years of austerity enforced by successive UK goverments. Some of the most pro-Brexit areas were also the ones most dependent on money from the EU.
Brexit is certainly not about “taking back sovereignty” because there can be no question of the UK chafing under unwanted legislation forced upon it by the EU in the first place. Out of nearly 2500 EU directives and regulations having been decided in the EU Council of Ministers since the late 1990s, the UK voted in favour of 95% and abstained on another 3%, so only 2% were introduced against the express wishes of the UK. In fact, the UK was among the main driving forces for many of these directives and regulations to begin with.
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You’re absolutely right, but for many people, Brexit is about “taking back sovereignty” because the UK is chafing under unwanted legislation forced upon it by the EU.
And it’s just too compelling a narrative; we don’t seem to be able to communicate with that alternative reality.
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Absolutely. I keep asking Leaver friends (I still have one or two, although I parted ways with the real extremists two-and-a-bit years ago) exactly what control we were taking back and no-one has been able to answer but they still insist that our clearly dysfunctional Parliament with its overmighty Executive and unelected Cabinet (yes, the members are elected MPs but no-one gets a say over who is in the Cabinet except the Prime Minister) is a much better bet than any alternative.
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I was interesting in that it was an attempt to wrestle control of the agenda of the house from the Government. The big upset in Dec was that the meaningful vote was delayed, because the Govt changed the agenda. If I had passed then we might have seen the start of a constitutional change.
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We’ll just have to wait and see how these people like it when the EU is no longer there to rein in the worst excesses of the UK government …
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