Yay or nay - should Britain vote to leave the EU?

[stui magpie]

As long as it doesn't impact my superannuation because of the clowns playing the market, I really don't give a rotund rodents rectum for what the poms do.

I would like to see Scotland be separate and a united Ireland do the same, but that's just idealogical with no basis in economics or anything logical.

[Morrigu]

^ Yeah me too - want to retire big time and Morrison has told me the age of " entitlement" is over - no pension for you!!

[Wokko]

So much for the UK becoming some kind of international trade pariah.

http://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/683117/US-and-Canada-lead-promises-to-maintain-trade-relations-with-Britain-outside-the-EU

It'll be business as usual. Here's the inside scoop on the whole Brexit thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE

[Pies4shaw]

Business as usual for international capital, just with increased cross-border compliance costs for transactions (thanks folks, we poor lawyers do need the work). The really interesting thing is going to be to see whether the Brexit proponents can politically survive having their wish granted once it becomes evident that all of the UK's social problems haven't instantly vanished.

[Tannin]

I've just been informed that the second most asked question on Google in the UK the night after the polls closed was "What is the European Union".

Not sure that I believe it, but it's almost stupid enough to be true.

[Tannin]

[Morrigu]

What if they don't invoke 51?

[Mugwump]

[Morrigu]

^ hmm Mug we can have opinions from afar ( and some of them flippant- me included ) but it is the folk who live there, the businesses that operate there and need to attract investment so that there will be jobs and services - education,health etc who need this to be well thought out and planned so that it works - I hope - I sincerely hope - that this what will happen!

[Mugwump]

^ That's true, Morrigu - but the time for planning and thinking was before the referendum. In its place, we saw the grandstanding and abstractions and point-scoring that characterise modern politics.

Now, the UK - which I love as much as I love Australia, and that is saying a lot - is in mortal danger of disintegration and subsidence. I greatly dislike the EU, which expressly wants to turn every European nation into a state within a grand, remote superstate, for the aggrandisement of its politicians and for the unworkable ideal of unifying people with completely different histories and cultures. So I can understand some of the sentiments that drove "leave" voters, though I voted "remain". None of that negates the fact that this is a decision with dramatic economic risks and consequences.

If your view is that the economic price is worth paying for the right to make all your own laws on your own territory and to chart your own future, then that is an intellectually robust position ; but what we saw on Thursday was a protest vote - indeed, a kind of revolution - by people who do not understand clearly what they are protesting against. These people do not know how else to influence what is shaping their lives, and so they have ignited a fire in their own neighbourhood that will probably consume their livelihoods. Why they did this is something for historians to argue over. When they do, the vacuum of leadership on a British Left which has lost touch with the interests of working people will surely figure large.

[sixpoints]

^
Who was doing the "grandstanding and point scoring"?
Seems to me a lot of the public discourse was fought between the Right & Centre of the Conservative Party.
I agree Labour voters are disaffected and most likely have shot themselves in the foot over this, as the result of leaving will given them nothing but pain. But it was Cameron trying to quell his own Eurosceptics who promised & then delivered this referendum. Now a Tory P.M. resigns, the Tory Party are split and perhaps a new General Election is needed. Don't ascribe all this mess to a lack of leadership from the Left.
A monumental balls up from Cameron that leaves the Right of the Tories and UKIP fellow travellers calling the shots.
History may well tell the tale of a failed attempt to shore up the leadership of the Conservative Party that backfired so much that quite possibly the U.K itself ceases to be.

[Mugwump]

[sixpoints]

^
So the Conservative Party concocted and driven referendum was lost.
The map from the 2015 General Election that showed swathes of Tory seats across the South-West, Home Counties, East Anglia, East Midlands, Lincolnshire etc etc were all lost by Cameron in this referendum.
It's clear Cameron lost the referendum as his own Tory followers deserted him in droves.
What was his plan, to lose heaps of his own followers and somehow try to garner support from trad. Labour voters?
The fact Labour didn't embrace Cameron's campaign and push hard for a Remain vote is not surprising. They are political protagonists. I agree that abysmal Labour leadership was a huge factor, but would a strong Labour leadership have done any more to stand beside a Tory P.M who is only taking this action to shore up his standing in his own party?
Cameron needed Labour to stave off his own deserters. He needed voters who never vote Tory to back him. Fat chance.
His only redeeming feature is that he gave the Scots yet another opportunity to clearly show they are on a different political trajectory to England by running this referendum.
Resigns as PM a year out from winning an election, splits his party, splits the country...well done.

[Mugwump]

^ That Cameron will now be remembered as having engineered one of the historic failures of British politics is so obvious that I didn't think it worth saying. This to him what Iraq was to Blair : a disaster that has outweighed his substantial achievements and will negatively define his prime ministership in history. If it will appease your anti-Tory soul to hear that, consider it appeased.

No-one comes out of this with much credit. I'm just trying to give some larger context about what has happened here, which may not be obvious from Australia. If you want to tell us how much it makes you ideologically happy because all that matters to you is SNP politics, then so be it. You might, however, beware of the possibility of your own Cameron moment. The consequences of another independence referendum for the SNP, if it happens, are far from clear. Europe is far from the largest issue for most Scots, and if the SNP lost again, it would be finished. I think the Scots deserve another referendum, as this constitutional change is so profound. But I'd hold the crowing til the results are in, if I were you.

To answer your question : "would a strong Labour leadership have done more to stand behind a Tory PM who is only taking this action to shore up his own party?" The answer is as absolutely "yes". That is why a vote of no confidence is being prepared within the Labour Party now. This was not a tactical gambit by Labour, as you seem to think - it was a political loss. Most of its MPs and members are appalled.

This is a moment when the party system and alignment we have known for years might split, to be replaced by something that actually reflects the position in the country. The chief ideological divide of our times - in the UK especially, but also I think in Australia and increasingly in the US as well - - seems to be between conservative nationalists and corporatist internationalists, not between capital and labour.

Anyway, that's how I see it having lived here for 25 years. I had always expected to retire from work and live in the UK while making much more frequent visits to Australia. The reverse might now be the case.

[Morrigu]

^ I see that there is now petition calling for a second vote ( or how I wish I had shares in change.org or the like) - although it seems that a great number that have signed are not UK citizens so they don't count and it is not well constructed either calling for retrospective conditions to be applied - that won't work either!

Do you think there is any possibility of the Commons voting against it and not invoking Article 51 Mug?

I think the young may have learnt a tough lesson - they wanted to remain but the turnout for 18-24 yr olds was poor - around 40% seems to be the most quoted - for your vote to be counted first you must vote!