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I seem to recall that Norway had 2 referenda on membership of the EU.Is it not a co incidence that the only times referenda are repeated are when the initial vote goes against the EU?
The treaties were amended based on the reasons for the initial rejection.
message 3854:
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Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo)
(last edited Jul 04, 2016 04:09AM)
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Will wrote: "You could say exactly the same thing about the Leave camp."I think you have missed the point, Will, we are not in grief, we are celebrating.
The stock market crash isn't so bad really,, and it's bounced back, including your vaunted FTSE250.
It's okay that the Bank of England has pumped more than £3 billion into the economy and stands by to inject up to £250 billion to try to stave off a recession. Yes, we were ready for it.
We're going to get a great deal from the EU. Juncker has been excluded from the negotiating process, so things are looking better already.
We will still find a way to reduce immigration. The word you're looking for is 'control' immigration. It was said that we could adopt an Australian style points system. That's what is called control.
Get a tariff free trade deal with Europe. Why wouldn't we? Germany exports 20% of its entire car output to the UK, just for starters. Why would they want to set up trade barriers that would be reciprocated? The EU overall, exports more goods to the UK than we do to them. It is in their interest to ensure that trade is not interrupted.
You post, whilst deliberately being posted as being ironic, has hit on the essential truth - that we are past this discussion. The outstanding problems that are causing disturbance in the market are a lack of leadership in both the Conservative and Labour parties.
Had we not had the referendum, the Labour Party would still have imploded, just with a different trigger. The Conservative Party also had problems and Cameron used a referendum as a way of playing for time. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for us, he mistimed the date of the referendum. What he did not realise was that the result would have been the same whenever he called it.
Indeed I wonder if the remain campaign thank us for getting them out of the EU when the euro implodes, or will they just blame the leave campaign for that as well :-)
Jim wrote: "Just saw the figuresthe FTSE 100 is higher than it was before the referendum
the FTSE 250 is now higher than it was in mid June
the pound is stable and comfortingly low, good for our exporters and..."
it is simply too early to say either way. Nothing is happening re Brexit and won't be until Article 50 is invoked. Then we'll see what happens to the nation's confidence in the markets
The stock market hasn't bounced back. The FTSE 250 stood at 17,333.51 as at 23 June. It's now 16,138.01 as at 12:16 GMT on Monday 4 July. That's a loss of more than 1,000 points. What part of a fall of 1,000 counts as "bouncing back" in your world?The FTSE 100 consists of very large companies, most of which trade overseas and will be helped by the weak pound. But although the index as whole has bounced back, individual companies within it have had very mixed fortunes. RBS is down 17.34%. Easyjet is down 16.79%. Some companies thrive in a period of a weak pound. Others suffer.
The Bank of England has pumped in more than £3 billion to stave off a recession. So far. There is much more to come. The much vaunted savings from not paying the EU will be more than wiped out by the losses elsewhere.
A few days ago Mark Carney said: “In my view, and I am not pre-judging the views of the other independent MPC members, the economic outlook has deteriorated and some monetary policy easing will likely be required over the summer."
If you think the EU will give us a special deal while other countries are muttering about leaving too, then you are putting blind optimism above reason. We don't yet know what deal we will get. It will almost certainly be worse than we have at the moment and will include free movement of people.
This is a fundamental part of what the EU stands for. It has nothing to do with Juncker's position.
Right now the economic impacts of Brexit are not so easy to see. The markets don't know if it will really happen or if there will some form of fudge deal, like the Norway deal. People will start to understand it when the job losses start.
Spin it all you want. You didn't win on the 23rd. The whole country lost. We will be paying for it for a generation.
Talk about glass half empty, Will, I think you've lost the glass.Just hope, hope very hard, that the lawyers trying to force the prime minister to defer to parliament don't get their way. Pray you never get what you ask for. If they do, and the Commons doesn't agree to trigger Article 50 when asked, then you'll have something to get very worried about.
If that happens UKIP will contest every seat and win the next election, taking large numbers of both Tory and Labour seats. God help us then.
assuming the above doesn't happen, and that Article 50 is tripped, it will be interesting to see what happens to UKIP now that its leader has stood down, implicitly because it has no further purpose
Will wrote: "The stock market hasn't bounced back. The FTSE 250 stood at 17,333.51 as at 23 June. It's now 16,138.01 as at 12:16 GMT on Monday 4 July. That's a loss of more than 1,000 points. What part of a fal..."and on June 16th it was 16,032.04, on the 11th of February is was 15,178
It jumps about like a cat on a hot tin roof so what
As for the £3 billion, the bank of England created at least 375 billion with quantitative easing, so it's bare a ripple
I'm not expecting a special deal from the EU, I'm expecting the member states of the EU to behave like reasonable people
Looks like the Germans have seen sense
http://www.spiegel.de/international/e...
Marc wrote: "assuming the above doesn't happen, and that Article 50 is tripped, it will be interesting to see what happens to UKIP now that its leader has stood down, implicitly because it has no further purpose"it hasn't, unless Article 50 is not tripped.
If that happens you have the risk of UKIP coming back in style. After all they were second in 120 seats at the last election. If Parliament ignores 52% of the electorate, they could win a lot of them
Will wrote: "There are no real world figures for who voted for what. All we can know is how many votes for leave and remain were submitted at each polling station.When you vote, the poll clerks will make a no..."
Thank you very much for that, Will. I'm reassured that the security is that tight. Even so, I think journalists should be referring to the poll(s) when using that data.
Marc wrote: "assuming the above doesn't happen, and that Article 50 is tripped, it will be interesting to see what happens to UKIP now that its leader has stood down, implicitly because it has no further purpose"Farage will be back - we've not seen the last of him.
It is the third time that he has resigned. He could be just teasing us.
Liam Fox is out of the leadership race.May, who would be my personal preference for whoever ends up being the big cheese, is way out in front
I think May was always going to be the top choice for the MPs. But the real prize is the number two slot, because the actual choice will be made by the party members. That means that May could be way ahead in first place and still lose out to a hardliner if the rank and file party members so decide.Be afraid. Be very afraid.
My prediction - May or Leadsom
T4bsF (Call me Flo) wrote: "My prediction - May or Leadsom"that would be my guess as well
The gossip is that May could be "lending" some of her voters to Gove because she would rather face him than Leadsom.And Lord Lawson says that Brexit is a wonderful chance to complete what Margaret Thatcher started. That will go down well with some (!).
It should be remembered that historically the favourite fares very badly when it gets to a vote of the members outside the Westminster bubble.
My local MP seems as popular in London as he is here and has withdrawn. I suppose he's negotiated for a post in May's government.
Will wrote: "And Lord Lawson says that Brexit is a wonderful chance to complete what Margaret Thatcher started. That will go down well with some (!)...."It could indeed, remember the electorate that comment is aimed at is party members which as electorates go is somewhat specialised
Looking forward to 2.6 million words being condensed into 140 angry characters many times today
Jim wrote: "It could indeed, remember the electorate that comment is aimed at is party members which as electorates go is somewhat specialised."The comment was made in the House of Lords and reported on the BBC News website. That means it's out there in the wide world and not simply confined to Westminster or the Tory members voting for kitten heels. I suspect it's one of many comments which will come back to haunt the Tory party as this story unfolds.
Ken Clarke is a wily old dog. I'd find it hard to believe that he would be caught out in a TV studio in an unguarded moment.
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "Ken Clarke is a wily old dog. I'd find it hard to believe that he would be caught out in a TV studio in an unguarded moment."especially as he has been a professional broadcaster and if you listen, he is really clear and the other guy is muffled so it's Ken's mike that is switched on
Will wrote: "The comment was made in the House of Lords and reported on the BBC News website. That means it's out there in the wide world and not simply confined to Westminster or the Tory members voting for kitten heels. I suspect it's one of many comments which will come back to haunt the Tory party as this story unfolds. ..."
Personally I doubt it. Amongst those actually likely to vote Maggie is probably more popular than Corbyn :-)
I see the newspapers and the Tory MPs are paving the way for May's coronation. Here is a government minister who failed on immigration targets, kept her head down during the referendum, and locked up a guy for years...without him being charged with any crime...And this could be our new PM? God help us.
I've said it before, I'll say it again - the Tory party has been nothing but a milestone around this nation's neck.
It's pretty clear to me that May being the establishment candidate is a Trojan horse for a watered down BREXIT deal.
On the subject of the Tories. House of Cards on steroids, anyone?http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/...
Rosemary what's that coming over the hill wrote: "Looking forward to 2.6 million words being condensed into 140 angry characters many times today"Ha ha, love that Rosemary, pity there isn't a like button on here.
R.M.F wrote: "I see the newspapers and the Tory MPs are paving the way for May's coronation. Here is a government minister who failed on immigration targets, kept her head down during the referendum, and locked ...I've said it before, I'll say it again - the Tory party has been nothing but a milestone around this nation's neck. "
That'll be millstone rather than milestone.
All our parties are millstones around our necks. But then you open up the vote to a referendum and see that we the people are a millstone around our own necks too.
Marc wrote: "That'll be millstone rather than milestone.All our parties are millstones around our necks. But then you open up the vote to a referendum and see that we the people are a millstone around our own necks too...."
I suppose the classic response would be
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers' Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
But actually, given the gap that has opened up between those who feel it is their right to govern or at least to have the governing class take their opinions into account, and the rest who have long ago given up feeling their opinions are regarded as meaningful, how do we bridge it?
A very good question and one I don't have the solution to
I see that Hunt has just announced the junior doctors contract will be imposed. Obviously hoping that his personal little news nugget will be buried and lost today within the Chilcot frenzy.
Jim - it's worse than that. Politicians used to be able to put their case by reasoned argument, bolstered by the advice of independent experts. Now the soundbite is king and we've somehow persuaded a big slice of the population not to believe any experts. Frankly, after the £350 million a week fiasco and the dodgy dossier, who can blame them?The problem is that this spirals into lowest common denominator politics where nobody believes anything except the boogie-man scandal stories spread by the likes of Nigel Farage and the Daily Mail. And that allows snake-oil salesmen politicians like Trump and Johnson/ Gove to thrive.
Help me out here please.In 2003, Parliament makes a decision to take military action against Iraq. We now know that Parliament was misinformed, the UK was not prepared for war, alternative options were not considered and the advice of experts was suppressed.
In 2016, the UK people narrowly vote to leave the EU. We know that they were misinformed, the UK is not prepared for Brexit, alternative options were not considered and the advice of experts was suppressed.
When it comes to Iraq, the consensus seems to be that we made a bad decision and if we could turn the clock back we would do things differently.
But when it comes to the EU, the Government and a section of the population are saying that the decision has been made and we cannot possibly reconsider. Ever. There cannot be a second referendum, no matter how much new information comes to light which shows that the evidential basis for the decision was flawed.
Isn't the whole purpose of history that we are supposed to learn from it?
Interesting opinion piece in the Telegraph that will help you out. It points out that the Iraq war as an example of the political class twisting a spinning to get hoi polloi on side. This process has continued with increasing professionalism which has led to a lack of trust in experts, politicians and also an increasing gap between those who have no hope and those who have.
When we have a proportion of the population who have the guaranteed index linked pensions and the guaranteed retirement age and a proportion of the population who can be sanctioned two weeks income for being late for a meeting, we're not in a good place.
So people have learned from history. If you want the political class to listen to you, you've got to hold their feet to the fire. Now we have politicians taking the electorate seriously as rarely before. One reason brexit will probably go through is because they know that any playing silly beggars could be severely punished at the ballot box. With UKIP second in 120 seats too many MPs feel the hot breath on the back of their necks
That's the Telegraph spinning to justify its own pro-Leave stance.No amount of wriggling will change the truth - the referendum was pretty evenly split. 48% of the populace voted to remain and those people are going to need someone to vote for in a general election. We can't pick one side or another and pretend that it is the view of the majority. Some people wanted to hold the politicians' feet to the fire. Some other people didn't.
All the signs are that the number of people supporting remain is growing while the number of people voting Leave is falling. One estimate is that as many as 1.7 million people who voted Leave would switch their vote to Remain if we had the poll now. That doesn't include the people who didn't vote and now wish they had, which will also favour Remain.
But you're dodging the question. The Iraq war was a bad decision because the people taking the decision were misinformed. Why is the EU referendum magically a good decision, given that we know the people were just as misinformed as Parliament was about Iraq?
There were no weapons of mass destruction. There is no £350 million a week saving from leaving the EU.
Saddam Hussein wasn't a credible threat to the UK. The EU won't allow tariff-free trade without free movement of people.
The UK was unprepared for an expensive war and even more expensive "peace" afterwards. The UK is unprepared for an expensive recession post Brexit.
We should have listened to experts like the Attorney General saying that regime change was illegal. Right now we should be listening to experts like Mark Carney instead of trying to prevent him from speaking or discrediting him (and many others) as project fear.
Why do we never learn even when the lessons from history are right there in front of us?
'We' the people did not have a vote in going to war with Iraq though did we? I think it might well have gone against the political spin. As for experts, I for one don't trust them just because someone else holds them up as experts. Mark Carney being the example you cite I thought should not have been commenting after the vote as he did, it should have been another expert - the chancellor of the exchequer. Nuff said.
We can't have a referendum on every subject. It would be prohibitively expensive, time consuming and would throw up some odd results, particularly when public opinion doesn't take account of the facts. We have a parliamentary democracy where we elect our MPs and they take the majority of decisions. The Government takes some of the decisions. Some are down to the Prime Minister. Our part in all of that is to elect the people we want to be making those decisions on our behalf.Mark Carney is turning out to be the most consistent, trustworthy and authoritative leader we have at the moment. Without his interventions we would be in much more of a mess than we are at the moment.
We need more like him and Sir John Chilcot to cut through the lies that politicians of all parties are spinning to try to get what they want.
I don't think we should be governed by referenda either. I would like strong decisive honest government that actually knows what they are doing, run by honest, balanced, qualified people.
Heck, where are we going to find those?
as a trained historian can I suggest that learning from History is a particularly tricky thing to do. The starting conditions are never quite the same no matter how apparently two sets of historical circumstances look similar (particularly with regard to technology, information flow & propaganda techniques). A la "Butterfly Effect" from science (Chaos Theory actually), even the smallest change in initial conditions can by a chain of events lead to a massively different outcome; the butterfly effect being the metaphor of a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world can lead to an earthquake in another part of the globe.
Will wrote: "But you're dodging the question..."No, with respect, but I'm not. I'm actually looking at the big picture of which the war in Iraq and the referendum are merely symptoms.
What is interesting is 50.3% was perfectly adequate for the Welsh devolution referendum, mainly because that was a cause popular with the political elite at the time. The plan seems to have been to split England up at the same time, dividing it into manageable fiefdoms which would have built in safe majorities. This got kicked firmly on the head when the North East voted 77.93% against. They never allowed the other regions to vote, I suspect the humiliation would have been too much
But the overall problem is that we have a political class which got out of touch. Indeed London is a different world, almost a city state in its own right.
Our out of touch political class didn't know how a majority of the people felt, and never saw it as their job to get out there and try and convince them by showing them the advantages, but more importantly by letting them experience the advantages.
Another example is the boundary changes. For the last couple of elections all the neutral commentators have pointed out that the Tories have a built in disadvantage. Given that most people in this country don't actually support a party but have a pretty strongly held view of what is fair and what is not fair, the way that this hasn't been tackled is another example of people feeling their views are irrelevant. They're just to be corralled into safe seats to ensure the 'right' party gets in.
Before anybody mentions PR, with our system a party has a manifesto and when they get in they can be expected to fulfill it. (Hence the referendum, Cameron put it in his manifesto.)
But with a PR system with guaranteed coalitions the manifesto is meaningless, it's dumped the minute the parties go into the smoke filled room and then they come out and tell you what you've voted for, (Hence the referendum promise, Cameron assumed he'd be in coalition again and could dump it as a sop to the Libdems)
But slowly and steadily the inevitable has happened, our glorious leaders have gone further down one path that a majority of the population wanted. So the electorate has a chance to stop this. it's taken the chance.
Now people are whinging that it's only 52% It's not a big enough majority to take a decision. Well since the last UK government to be elected with a majority of the electorate was in 1931, the vote represents the will of the people better than any election since then.
The problem you have, Will, is that we are now post referendum. The people have spoken and we should respect that, despite your bleating. Had the vote been the other way round, would we be hearing you banging on about the leave vote being lied to (which they were: Carney said the pound would fall, and yet his actions post referendum have been deliberately aimed at achieving that.) by all and sundry, manipulating forecasts to their advantage, without any real substance to support that, just conjecture. Would you be asking for another vote? No, you wouldn't, no matter how great the deceit. If another referendum was forced through now, the next election would see a destruction of Labour and Tory MP re-election hopes as UKIP sweeps into power and triggers Article 50 on the mandate. You would then know what true fear is.
Just hope you don't get what you want. The sense of betrayal felt by those of us who voted leave would be enormous. The effects would shake this country's stability to the core.
We can argue this one endlessly. It's human nature to choose whichever argument fits our preferred outcome. If we get the result we want, we'll say that any majority is good enough. First past the post, yada yada yada. If it was good enough for Wales ...If we don't get the result we want, we will point to the huge number of people who didn't vote for it. The travesty of Wales ... And we go round and round in a big circle.
If we held the referendum again tomorrow there is a strong chance that we would get the opposite result. 52% for remain and 48% for leave. But let's be honest - that wouldn't be a satisfactory outcome either, because it would lead to half of the country not getting what they want.
And until we have an honest campaign there will always be some people who said that the outcome was as crooked and wrong as the Iraq war.
But this is not a topic which really lends itself to a yes/ no binary choice. There are fifty ways to leave your lover and at least that many to leave the EU. None of the people who voted Leave know what kind of a leaving they are going to get. A Norway style deal? Switzerland? Canada? Turkey? All have pros and cons.
That's why we desperately need a second referendum. Not a re-run of the first referendum. That's ancient history. We need a referendum which is going to get a clear majority for one course or another, which is based on honest information and which sets our a clear choice.
Until and unless we have that we will all feel cheated.
Do you really think there would be unanimity to even get a non-binary vote accepted. As soon as you introduce a multi-choice vote a large number of voters get confused and then you get the inevitable discussion and analysis of what it all means. It would probably take years to agree what the choices would be.Take into consideration that the EU expects us to trigger Article 50 to begin Brexit, what would happen to both the UK's and EU's economy if it was decided to wait until another vote took place? One thing the markets dread most of all is uncertainty. You cannot begin to guess how the markets would interpret such an announcement. No government would survive such a perfect storm. Again, arrive UKIP; they would trigger Article 50 to restore stability.
message 3899:
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Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo)
(last edited Jul 07, 2016 03:30AM)
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So, the Labour rebellion is over. Everyone is scared that any challenge to the leadership will result in Corbyn being re-elected by the members and the unions.This makes Corbyn more emboldened and stronger. If we got another vote on Europe, you'd probably see him recommend Brexit.
Will wrote: "We need a referendum which is going to get a clear majority for one course or another, which is based on honest information and which sets our a clear choice. ..."The problem with that is that the referendum would have to be taken AFTER we'd negotiated.
The EU will only negotiate after we've triggered article 50.
So by the time we had a second referendum, we'd no longer be members of the EU, and even if we voted to say we don't like the deal, the rest of the EU could say 'tough, there's nothing else on the table.'
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There are no easy precedents. We need to think about this one carefully.