I suspect that the majority of voters never wanted to leave in the first place. Results-wise, there was like 1.2% in it. And the leave voters were more likely to actually turn up. The problem is that too many “remainers” didn’t actually vote.
The original Brexit vote should have been at 2/3 majority vote. The fact that it was a simple majority was absolutely bonkers and I’m sure the ones who put it in the ballot knew exactly what they were doing. They all made massive sums of money on Brexit while the morons who voted for it are losing their shirt.
Nowhere is this more evidenced than in this statement from the article.
But once the 18% who say they don’t know are taken out, 52% back EU membership with 48% opposing it - a complete reversal of the 2016 Brexit referendum result.
A full 18% of those polled couldn’t even make up their damned mind about it. And the people who wrote this chose to clip those idiots out of the picture in order to create the narrative they wanted for this clickbait as fuck article. And I will bet you anything the the Brexit framers would make serious bank on any effort to rejoin. [/removes tin hat]
Oh it’s worse than that. It was never even legally binding, it was just a finger-in-the air - only after the fact was it treated like the cast iron democratic will of the people while over in the real world the Electoral Commission would’ve actually declared the whole thing void if it was a legally binding referendum because of illegal overspend by the grifters pushing it in the first place.
The whole thing is maddening to think about, honestly
People need to remember the vote happened immediately after the EU migration crisis. Anti-EU sentiment was at a high all across the union.
I don’t know why people act like being anti-EU was a UK thing, not a shared issue across several members. People should remember that before they shit on the UK too much.
Shit, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, and perhaps others had a similar or higher level of anti-EU sentiment at the time compared to the UK. It’s just that David Cameron was the only one stupid enough to gamble on having a referendum.
David Cameron may have gambled on the referendum but he still only had one vote in it. The citizens of the UK as a whole own the results. Also, as I recall, there were two elections after the referendum in which UK citizens doubled-down on Brexit by returning the Conservatives to government with landslide victories.
Also, anti-EU sentiment is one thing and may be common in various EU countries from time to time. However, voting for separation is quite another.
In any case, with such sustained support for the Tories post-referendum, it’s hard to lay the blame for Brexit at anyone’s feet except the UK citizenry itself.
Brenter
Breturn!
The conservatives still have power in the UK and will continue to have influence for the foreseeable future. As long as conservatism has any place in UK politics, the UK should not be permitted to re-join. Conservatives will eventually just re-Brexit.
There is simply no place in a healthy, modern society for a conservative government. Let the UK rid themselves of their plague of conservatism first before being allowed to further harm the UE with this dangerous illness.
The conservatives still have power in the UK and will continue to have influence for the foreseeable future. As long as conservatism has any place in UK politics, the UK should not be permitted to re-join. Conservatives will eventually just re-Brexit.
I see what you are saying, but I don’t think you are completly right. Re-join can takes years and it will be under the EU rules, not UK, so no more special treatment like before. That alone is difficult to sell to UK, but I am not sure that if UK re-join people will vote again to exit, given that Brexit was sold with lies that was already exposed.
There is simply no place in a healthy, modern society for a conservative government. Let the UK rid themselves of their plague of conservatism first before being allowed to further harm the UE with this dangerous illness.
Disagree. A good government is a balance of progressivism and conservatism. Real life it is not black or white but a shade of grey (for the most part).
While balance can be good some times, the idea that a group of business interests and oligarchs coming together for the sole purpose of lowering their tax bills and buying the nations assets for peanuts, maskerading as a political party, could provide said balance is a strange one.
Conserving the established power and wealth as well as keeping everyone else down is the only thing they look to conservatives look to conserve. The rest is the lies they tell, in order to get in to do it.
While balance can be good some times, the idea that a group of business interests and oligarchs coming together for the sole purpose of lowering their tax bills and buying the nations assets for peanuts, maskerading as a political party, could provide said balance is a strange one.
On the other hand even trying to level everyone to the lowest level is wrong.
Conserving the established power and wealth as well as keeping everyone else down is the only thing they look to conservatives look to conserve. The rest is the lies they tell, in order to get in to do it.
True, the correct balance would be conserve the power and let everyone else to rise, but I undestand it is an utopian vision (the established power would never allow it).
But in the end I think that the main problem is that both parts lost the contact with the normal people but the conservatives are now starting to talk to them again while the progressives are still talking only to themself in an ivory tower.
On the other hand even trying to level everyone to the lowest level is wrong.
If only there was a third option. Somewhere between “a doctor and a kitchen hand earning the same money” and human greed, expressed in economic form. Oh well, never mind I guess.
True, the correct balance would be conserve the power and let everyone else to rise, but I undestand it is an utopian vision (the established power would never allow it).
Its not so much that. Its that their power is power over other people. Its the power to charge a levy (exactly like a tax) on the money people earn for using their things etc. The idea that one can be lifted while the other is retained is a contraction in terms.
but the conservatives are now starting to talk to them again while the progressives are still talking only to themself in an ivory tower.
Considering the conservatives are about to be whiped out at the next election, I hope that was meant to be ironic.
but the conservatives are now starting to talk to them again while the progressives are still talking only to themself in an ivory tower.
Considering the conservatives are about to be whiped out at the next election, I hope that was meant to be ironic
Not sure about that, honestly, at leasto from what I see in Italy.
This thread is about the UK, not Italy.
However, if we are to talk about Italy, its always had a problem with fascism, being its birthplace and all. A millenniam long hangover from Romes slave economies and Christianity is to blame for what makes it very much the outlier and not the norm here.
This thread is about the UK, not Italy.
I know. What I mean is that I would not be so sure that what people say they will vote will be what they actually vote.
In Italy many people told they would never vote for Berlusconi but somehow he won the elections. Same with Trump, the poll gave him losing yet he won.The point is: don’t trust the polls, especially if there is a social stigma associated with one of the options.
However, if we are to talk about Italy, its always had a problem with fascism, being its birthplace and all. A millenniam long hangover from Romes slave economies and Christianity is to blame for what makes it very much the outlier and not the norm here.
You sentence is the exact reason why people are going to vote for the right wings.
The only people talking about fascism in Italy is the left wing. At the last EU election the points of the left were that the fascism must not win and that their secretary is a multigender woman. Not a word about the actual problems we have (for example, that people have seen their purchasing power drop by a considerable amount, a couple that want to build a family must relay on their parents to be able to buy an house and even more if they decide to have a child, lines at soup kitchens get longer and longer and so on).But yes, we are going off-topic. My bad.
Can we just first have Scotland back in? Just to fuck with England.
This kind of cycle back and forth between full-throated conservative idiocy and then demanding to be saved from the consequences of their own actions is what really makes me so depressed about the majority of voters.
I could excuse a young person maybe for being naive and inexperienced enough to think conservativism might have some kind of merit, but grown-ass adults have literally no excuse to ever believe the right-wing ever about anything.
Not just in the UK, but everywhere.
Sure, no problem. But this time without all the unfair special rules and exceptions that the UK had.
I fear the EU will take them right back and set a precedent for leaving and rejoining without so much problems as figuring out new contracts and agreements.
I’d demand worse terms for every time they leave and then try to rejoin (aka the cut was 50% but now the contribution has to be at least 55%)I dont think so. Its in the EU interest for them to come back in. It will show others that leaving is not a good idea. However, they wkbt want it to be easy as it might encourage others to leave. They will join in the same terms as new entrants.
They will have to join the euro and they wont get their previous favourabke rebate for agriculture.
Its still a good deal for both sides but Britain make a mistake, as most are aware.
All it takes is for one member country, no matter how tiny, to say “No” and it’s no, and in some countries like Belgium even a single region (say, “mighty” Walonia) can block it.
For example, I expect that Spain will want Gibraltar back as a condition for a Yes on a UK Membership vote.
A single region within a member country can veto an entire block’s will, even if the rest of the country assents? That seems very broken as a voting system, to me.
Belgium has an unusual constitution that lets its regions have veto power over some of its decisions in the international stage and adding a member to the EU is actually a change to a major Treaty that Belgium is part of.
For most EU member countries, there is no such thing, though I believe some (Luxemburg, Malta?) are actually smaller than Walonia in terms of population.
They can come back with zero special privileges, as one among equals.
This is exactly why I don’t think they’re coming back just yet. If there’s one thing leavers and remainers agreed on it’s british exceptionalism. Remainers didn’t want to leave because EU in general was beneficial, remainers didn’t want to leave because UK had a good thing going in the EU and giving it up was stupid. Remainers want to join only if they get at least some of their special privileges back.
Maybe in another 10 years they’ll be more receptive towards joining without special privileges.
I’m ready now. Fuck sterling, fuck the vetos, fuck the opt-outs, etc. Yeah, the special arrangement we had was amazing and put us in a privileged position and we’ll be diminished if we rejoin without them, but that’s still a far better situation than we find ourselves in now. So yeah, warts and all; I’m in.
Whores don’t get second chances… At least they don’t get taken back the first wife lol
We should have gone full metric and adopted the Euro years ago. Then all this bollocks about pints and good old sterling would have been done with.
As usual with UK we do everything half arsed and settle for second best.
My hope is that Labour are playing this smart. They’ll bang on about how Brexit won’t change, but that “we’ll look to increase economic and social strengths via our relationship with the EU”. We’ll reintroduce entry to the single market, ensure freedom of movement, and basically rejoin in everything but name - and then eventually say “well, if we want to rejoin it’s basically a tick in a box”.
The EU will likely be happy for the UK to rejoin, even without punishment. The most reliable ally in the battle against Euroscepticism is a former Eurosceptic that can say how shit things were after leaving, and how much better they are since rejoining.
With the fight over the pound in the 80s and 90s when they first formed the EU, I would be very surprised if the EU didn’t force the UK to adopt the Euro to rejoin
Why would they. Like the above comments says they have much more to gain by UK having to slink back so why would they put barriers to that.
It’s also not as if the pound is a particularly weak currency like the French Frank or the German Deutsche Mark was.
They don’t want to make it easy to get back in, so that other countries aren’t tempted to leave in the first place. They shouldn’t reward temper tantrums.
I would have thought the inverse would have been true that they would want to reward coming back It seems like a petulant philosophical view to suggest that the EU would not let the UK back in.
After all doing so would demonstrate that leaving is non-practical
If a kid throws their ice cream on the floor, giving them another one soon afterwards doesn’t in any way teach the other kids not to throw their ice cream on the floor. This is very firmly a “no ice cream for you then” situation. I think labour realise they if they tried to rejoin, they would get a very rough ride indeed from the EU with massive amounts of playing hardball and that the best they can hope for in the next five years really is some softening and smoothing of the deal for being cooperative. We agree to fund EU science a bit, they let us back into erasmus, that kind of thing (although specifically not that).
But joining the EU takes a decade or more sometimes, and the “but it’s really very simple, we follow most of the EU rules already because we’re a former member” is as stupid as the “oven ready deal” and “German car manufacturers will insist we get a great deal” nonsense.
I’ve been patiently waiting for all these Brexit benefits we were promised. But they haven’t been forthcoming. In fact, it’s just been a shambles from day one. We’ve just given ourselves more problems to (not) deal with.
Hey that’s exactly how it is with American conservatives. Just constantly causing more issues without solving anything whatsoever.
The main Brexit benefit appears to be the disintegration of the conservative party. Pretty good benefit really.
That’s how politics work. Conservatives do a few awful things then it swings over to the liberal side… then the liberals go a bit too fast and it swings back.
I just can’t believe the US wasted it’s political clout on fucking Biden. Another Obama would have been killer, but instead we have the guy nobody really wants and is only chosen because his opponent is hitler 2.0
Of course we do, but it ain’t gonna happen. Best you can hope for is the custom union in seven to ten years’ time.
[…] 43% in favour of rejoining the bloc, compared with 40% who want to stay out. But once the 18% who say they don’t know are taken out, 52% back EU membership with 48% opposing it […]
That’s not a “majority of voters”, that’s a “majority of people who report to know what they want”. These are not the same populations.
How I imagine that would go:
Bregret is a Britch
I’m pretty anti-brexit, but I’m not sure whether I’m pro-rejoining. Taking the clusterfuck we’ve landed in and turning it in to somehow an even bigger clusterfuck may not necessarily yield good results and definitely won’t be some silver bullet. The massive middle finger we’d justifiably get from the EU should probably give us pause.
This. It’s not just a switch to be flipped.
What’s done is done. From day 1 after the referendum it was obvious to everyone that the UK would spend the next 50 years trying to mitigate the impact of that ridiculous decision. Hotting the “rejoin” button is not necessarily a short cut to the end.
somehow an even bigger clusterfuck
I agree that rejoining won’t magically solve all problems but I don’t see how it would make things worse.
Even if that’s true (and it probably is, because it was a pretty thin majority to exit in the first place) it would be absolute political suicide to go into this election on the promise of getting us back in.
The anti EU brigade are lunatics and people who voted leave are easily lead. The last thing we need is “Look, they’re ignoring your will!” followed by Emperor Farage…
I assume the UK would be obligated to adopt the Euro as a currency, and i have no doubt some people would absolutely rage stroke.
I don’t think that is essential for trade. A Norwegian/ Icelandic/ Swiss etc. approach could be adopted.
EEA does allow free movement of people though, which is most of what made us leave to start with. Mostly because of this prick pretending that hordes of dirty brown refugees were somehow the fault of that.
Yeah. If free movement of people is excluded you are down to a European Union–Turkey Customs Union type agreement.
Would be kind of funny if the reverse of Brexit happened. Have some pro Europe lunatics take over the fight and make a brexiteer accept the worst deal to re-enter the union.
It’s a completely moot point for another reason. The EU isn’t just going to let them back in with the same sweetheart deal they got as founding members. That alone means this won’t happen for decades if at all .
I mean, they could just join on the same conditions as everyone else
That will never fly with the public , especially since one of the “normal” conditions is giving up the pound, joining the Euro, and giving up direct control of their monetary policy. There is no way a majority would support that in the UK . None of these polls will even bother asking something like that. The polls are about whether they want to turn back time to before Brexit, which is somewhat interesting but isn’t possible.
