Europe, Referendum & Brexit (formerly Europe..IN or OUT??)

For me the referendum was a complete waste of time. We are a Parliamentary Democracy, Referenda are not how we conduct things. This was evident in the Article 50 case, the reason why the Government lost, twice, was because the law does not recognise the will of the people other than an act of Parliament. Part of being a democratic nation is that we have and respect the rule of law, people are always going on that we as remainers do not respect the will of the people in not respecting the vote and try to undermine it's legitimacy. The fact of the matter is, the vote had no legitimacy, it was a non-legally binding advisory referendum, Parliamentary Sovereignty eh

Obviously I am a die hard remainer, I honestly can not think of a scenario where I would want to be out of The EU right now, despite its ills. That being said there are definite ways in which this, in my opinion, could have been handled better.

1. We should of never of held the referendum without having the issue of the Irish Border settled first. The idea that we would leave something as crucial as The Good Friday Agreement up in the air with no clear resolution but up against a ticking clock is perhaps one of the worst things I have seen in domestic politics. I mean this is life and death for those people

2. When other countries carry out referenda they hold public consultations, in which they go to town halls and give the public a chance to have their input on how the referendum will be shaped, what will it ask/offer. There has been a lot of discussion about economic impact assessment post referendum, these should have been carried out before the referendum and included in the consultations. A clear choice for the British people: here is our assessment of the economic impact of: Remaining in the EU vs Leaving but staying in SM & CU vs Norwegian Model vs Canadian FTA vs Hard Brexit. Having seen the economic outcome of all options, the public can chose which one they prefer, that outcome will be added to the referendum question and the Government would have a clear target of what it wants from the negotiations

3. Article 50 is a trap, it is designed that way, you have 2 yrs to negotiate 10 years worth of agreements and treaties. There are over 700 treaties & agreements with the EU, each will have taken months at least to negotiate and we now have to negotiate one per day. You can have a transitional agreement if you like which extends the process to 4 yrs but that is till less that half the time actually required. The transitional agreement should of been secured before we triggered A50 and it should definitely not of been triggered before the French and German General Elections and super duper so blindingly obvious you would have to be a moron of biblical proportions not to see it definitely not before our own General Election

4. Ban Buses as election tools

(25-04-2018 10:40 )southsidestu Wrote:  For me the referendum was a complete waste of time. We are a Parliamentary Democracy, Referenda are not how we conduct things. This was evident in the Article 50 case, the reason why the Government lost, twice, was because the law does not recognise the will of the people other than an act of Parliament. Part of being a democratic nation is that we have and respect the rule of law, people are always going on that we as remainers do not respect the will of the people in not respecting the vote and try to undermine it's legitimacy. The fact of the matter is, the vote had no legitimacy, it was a non-legally binding advisory referendum, Parliamentary Sovereignty eh

Obviously I am a die hard remainer, I honestly can not think of a scenario where I would want to be out of The EU right now, despite its ills. That being said there are definite ways in which this, in my opinion, could have been handled better.

1. We should of never of held the referendum without having the issue of the Irish Border settled first.

You champion democracy in your opening comment but contradicted yourself by calling the EU Referendum & Referenda a waste of time & end the paragraph by calling the EU Ref of no legitimacy (as it's non-legally binding) so therefore our parliamentary representatives should just ignore the result in your eyes?.Does democracy only work for you when you get the result you want or render it meaningless/irrelevent when you don't?.Referendums like General Elections is a time (& opportunity) where all votes are equal no matter on gender,race or religion or wealth & much like GE's there is a winning & a losing side (which is how democracy often works).

I voted leave in the referendum knowing full well what I was voting for which was a clean break (having control of our laws,borders & our own trade policies)from the EU not staying in the Single Market & Customs Union in an EU Hokey-Cokey.Heck I even remember David Cameron,George Osborne & any other MP that got involved in the debates all clearly stated that we would be leaving the SM & CU if we voted to leave the EU (plus the Government literature that was delivered to each household mentioned it).I do get quite pissed when many of the Remain camp park the blame at the elderly for ruining the lives of the young (I'm in the 40-45 age category) with Nick Clegg even calling for a 2nd EU Vote as in his eyes many of the elderly who voted leave have died by now or blame leavers for being as thick as mince.

Democracy sure as hell isn't to keep re-running a Democratic vote (with the EU Ref by far the largest) because 'our Parliamentary Electorate' doesn't respect the outcome & want us to continuously vote the way they want us to vote until they get the right outcome (by beating us into submission & admitting we've been stupid & wrong).

The biggest mistake the Government (& the House of Commons) made (apart from not preparing for the possibility of a leave vote)on the EU Referendum wasn't the vote but was to get involved & lecture us on how we should vote.If the Government had remained neutral & merely presented the pro's & con's of leaving & remaining the result may have been different/remained the same (it certainly wouldn't have changed my mind).

No I do not believe that Parliament should ignore it because I do not agree with the result. I look for Parliament to vote against it because we are a Parliamentary democracy and we do not do things by Referenda. They are completely against the very fabric of our country, The rule of law which is fundamental to any democratic nation does not recognise them. If we go against our own laws just because of a decision made by a slender majority in a snapshot in time, what does that say about us as a country?

I am sure you did vote leave knowing what it was you wanted out of the decision but Leavers are not a homogeneous group. Roughly a third of Labour and SNP voters , 30% of Lib Dem voters and a quarter of Green voters voted to leave the European Union. Without their votes Leave would of lost, are you seriously saying that with their ideological differences that they will have the same vision for Brexit as Conservative and UKIP voters? I would be surprised as well if all those who voted Leave and were Tories want to leave the SM and CU as the Conservatives like most right wing parties are champions of free market and free trade. The Single Market it the biggest international free trade project in the world it is a betrayal of Conservative values to leave it.

"Democracy sure as hell isn't to keep re-running a democratic vote" That is exactly what democracy is, that is why every democracy in the world has election cycles. That is why we have General, devolved and local elections at regular intervals because that is fundamental to democracy. It acknowledges the changing demographics and the changing opinions of the public. Like in the case of what Nick Clegg is saying by the time we get to 2020 the demographics will have changed that if the vote was held again remain would win 52%-48%. Those who have to live with Brexit, did not vote for it. To quote the Brexit Secretary David Davis himself "A democracy that cannot change it's mind, is not a democracy"

Furthermore it is not the job of our MPs to directly carry out the wishes of the voters. MPs are elected to act on our behalf, they hold committees, hearings, they have briefings, issues reports etc to find out the facts and then make the decision that they believe is in the best interests of the people. When it comes to a General Election, the voters do not write the manifestos and give it to the politicians, the politicians write them and give them to the public and say vote for us and this is what we will do. I do not know enough about Economics or trade or our legal system or defence policy etc that I should be telling our legislators what to do on them. Neither do most citizens and the ones that know enough about one subject don't know enough about the other. I'm not familiar with many Economist lawyers come trade envoys. This relates to Brexit in that it is the job of Parliamentarians under the rules of our democracy that they make the decision that is best for the country. Donald Tusk has said that based on the Governments red lines the option for The UK would be a free trade agreement. The Governments own figures show that that would lead to a lose in growth of 5%. The 2008/9 financial crisis saw a lose in growth of 4.7%, so it is looking like Brexit will hit us even harder than the worst recession since the Great Depression. That is if we have a deal, if we opt for no deal at all, the so called hard Brexit it will be even worse than that. Put that on the side of a bus and see how many people vote for it. So it is the duty of MPs to vote against it

As far as championing democracy is concerned, the idea that The referendum was an act of democracy is laughable. First and foremost as I have mentioned it has no legal legitimacy and the rule of law is fundamental to democracy. Then you look at how the referendum was posed, it gave the choice of a binary yes or no answer to one of the most complex non binary questions every asked of The British public. It was Gerrymandered so that 16 & 17 year olds, who would have to live with the decision did not get a say and that Brits living abroad who would be left in the lurch about their residency after the vote did not get a say. If democracy means not getting a say as to whether or not you get to stay in your home then democracy is bullshit. The debate period was incredibly short about 4 months or so. The independence referendum in Scotland got 2 yrs.

There is all the shit that was put out about it. How we cannot control our own borders when we have passport control. How they contorted freedom of movement into an issue about borders when it has nothing to do with borders it is to do with right of residency, Schengen is what give countries open borders and we are not a part of it and EU law sates that we can deport anyone who has not got a job in 3 months but our own government never did (Nigel Farage admitted to that one on his LBC show). How they EU is an undemocratic institution and we have to obey its laws yet we can opt out of Schengen and the Euro, two of the fundamental pillars of The EU project. How they claimed that The EU took away our parliamentary sovereignty then wrote in the Brexit white paper "whilst throughout our membership of the EU parliament has remained sovereign, it did not always feel like that." Every power they EU has is granted to it by the member nations because it is the member nations that are sovereign, a lot is made about fishing quotas destroying our industry, not much was made that the reason the EU had the power to make those laws is because we granted it to them and if we did not want them to have that power we could of vetoed it because it has to be by unanimous consent. You can say to some one do this then cry foul when they do what you siad the could. This is just the tip of the iceberg

And now we see what is happening with Cambridge Analytica it is clear what Brexit is. Lies funded by fraud. Brexit was the greatest miscarriage of democracy our nation has ever seen

I wish that cunt Lord Adonis would shut his fucking piehole. Sick of hearing him bleating on, the unelected, undemocratic bald cunt.

Needs a good Benny Hill high speed head slapping every time he opens his mouth.

Most things he gets about the referendum are correct but the way he attacks the BBC Brexit bias is detremental to our discourse as he is validated the techniques used by the fascist alt-right a al Trump, Farage etc

(26-04-2018 23:06 )southsidestu Wrote:  No I do not believe that Parliament should ignore it because I do not agree with the result. I look for Parliament to vote against it because we are a Parliamentary democracy and we do not do things by Referenda.

Furthermore it is not the job of our MPs to directly carry out the wishes of the voters. MPs are elected to act on our behalf, they hold committees, hearings, they have briefings, issues reports etc to find out the facts and then make the decision that they believe is in the best interests of the people

Whilst as you say many Leavers in the EU Ref voted for different reasons (I've yet to meet or hear any who voted Leave but want to stay in the Single Market which means staying in the EU by the back door) it is also true Remain voters don't all sing from the same hymn sheet also.From Remainer's who respect the vote & just want things to get going at one end the scale to the opposite end of the spectrum of Die-Hard Remainer's who don't accept the vote & want to throw any obstacle in the way
to reject the Referendum.And out of interest it was been confirmed a while back that the old Cambridge Analytica & Russian hacking chestnut had 'No Influence' in influencing the voting intention of the electorate (I have no interest of joining or following twitter so it would never have affected me anyway).

And whilst you may expect/want/demand MP's to reject the final vote because as you say MP's shouldn't have to respect the wishes of their voters (who voted them in on their manifesto commitments/promises) in reality it isn't that simple for them as 74% of Tory constituencies voted Leave with 64% of Labour constituencies voting likewise it would be like turkeys voting for Xmas.There were even a few Remain voting MP's who when their constituencies voted leave opted to stand down as MP rather than serve them.
You cannot honestly claim that a Remain voting MP (no matter the party)in a high Leave voting constituency is respecting their voters wishes by voting against leaving the EU.Take Anna Soubry (or Sour-bry) for example where Broxtowe voted Leave and yet she has attended Anti-Brexit marches,votes down her government & dis-regards Brexit on every tv appearance which clearly suggests she doesn't respect her constituencies views or wishes & is feathering her own nest.You just seem to have that wholesome & honest integrity ideology of MP's whom know better than the electorate (there are some decent ones out there) but there are some who squirrel money in offshore accounts/investment,some who buy properties to avoid paying tax & some that hold shares in private companies who work in the public sector.

The other sticky-wicket that MP's also have to contend with is the small fact that 82% of the electorate on 2017 General Election voted for parties that clearly stated on their manifesto that they would be leaving the Single Market & Customs Union.And how did parties that campaigned to remain in the EU fare? their vote share fell.Hence why the Lib-Dems & co have come up with a new idea called 'The People's Vote' which is a second referendum in a different name to try & fool the gullible basically.
In my opinion the Manifesto's of every political party should be enshrined in law where if the governing party/parties doesn't honour their pledges within a set period then an automatic General Election will be triggered.This will in turn ensure more honesty in politics & hold their feet to fire so-to-speak & a lot less pie-in-the-sky politics.

Oh & regarding that slippery toad Adonis much like Mandelson has a big fat EU-pension to protect which is why they are such staunch hardcore remainers.The funny thing about those 2 jokers are that neither of them have ever had the gumption (or balls) to stand for election (who would vote for them).And Adonis has the brass neck to criticize the BBC of pro-brexit bias the same BBC that receives EU funding & on political shows like Question Time,Andrew Marr & The Politics Show features more remain MP'S/commentators than leave by a ratio of over 3;1.

It doesn't matter whether or not The exploits of Cambridge Analytica had any influence, it is fraud. Fraud does not exist only where it is successful, it's fraud either way

I never said that MPs shouldn't respect the votes of the electorate, MPs should vote with the expertise that they have and the electorate do not. Also in regards to The Referendum I again highlight that it is not recognised as The Will of the People, MPs do not need to respect an illegitimate vote in order to respect their constituents just the ones that are legitimate i.e General and By - elections.

In regards to the 82% of voters opting for parties that said that they would be leaving the SM & CU, whether or not they put that on their manifesto is irrelevant because research into those that voted for Labour shows that they did so in order to stop Brexit or to push them for a soft Brexit that would see us staying in the SM & CU. Now you may consider that as ridiculous but that is why they did it and it's why May went from a supposed Majority of 80+ to a minority and why Labour got their largest popular vote in over 70 yrs. Consider your sticky wicket clean

As for Anna Soubry, personally I would rather have my representative tell it to me straight than patronise me whilst we headed for an outcome that could hit us harder than the worst recession in nearly 100 years and threatened The Good Friday Agreement and it seems that her constituents agree with me because after all the things you said she has said and done, they re-elected her in 2017

As for Adonis and Mandelson, if they opted to stand they would be put into safe seats and if an incompetent buffoon on an industrial scale like Boris Johnson, who has had numerous affairs making him a known liar and a cheat, can get elected not only to House of Commons but somehow the fucking Mayor of London then anyone can

As for their pensions that probably isn't much of an issue, I don't know the ins and outs of their deals but I know Nigel Farage is still getting his so I imagine the will still get theirs. Which is perhaps the saddest and most infuriating thing about this, the Brexiteers are nothing more that filthy conmen. Nigel Farage has bragged at how he has pocketed over £2m in salary and expenses being an MEP, not to mention his pension at over £70k a year from The EU, which is paid for by the British taxpayer and he has done fuck all for it. He was on The EU select committee for Fisheries and turned up to 1 meeting in over 40, just as well the whole British fishing thing isn't that much of an issue. UKIP MEPS and Tory ones as well regularly decided to not to turn up to votes saying that it was in protest of The EU, some of these votes included the placing on tariffs on cheap steel dumped in Europe by The Chinese, something that was a contributing factor to the near closing of Port Talbort before it was saved in Eleventh Hour. Or the vote on data roaming when using your phone abroad in The EU, something that can save millions of ordinary Brits money when they go on holiday. Time and time again these MEPs have failed to turn up to represent the British people that voted them in (legitimately) but they have still lined their pockets with hundreds of thousands of taxpayers money.

We are seeing how leavers such as Christopher Chandler, founder of the Leave think tank Legatum, have bought passports from other EU countries, in his case Malta, so they can travel, work and enjoy the benefits of The EU and freedom of movement in particular. Then there is John Redwood who has been telling his financial clients to invest outside of The UK because you know if he told them to invest in The UK they wont do so well, which would wreck his reputation and he couldn't make as much money

The EU also has in the pipeline a plan that would of linked up the 28 countries, now will the 27 countries, approach to taxation in order to fight against people avoiding paying tax in their countries by way of tax havens such as Luxembourg. It's no wonder then that Leave was funded by tax avoiders.

All this adds up to one great big con. The Brexiteers spend years lining their pockets with the people's money, then when it appears on the horizon that they might need to pay some of that money back in order to fund public services like health and education they convince the public to vote out. Unfortunately for the public this will mean the largest hit to the economy since The Great Depression. Not to mention the divorce bill to the tune of nearly £40 bn. In order to pay for all this there will be more austerity, that will have to be more severe than it was last time. Not to mention the loss in staff to the NHS putting it under even more pressure but not to worry because the Brexiteers will be able to go private, after all they've got your money.

They talk about take back control but control for who? The public? With a First past the post voting system? And the great repeal bill which will see most of Brexit go through Whitehall instead of Parliament? Please

Brexit is the most expensive batch of snake oil the world has ever seen, to the tune of tens of billions (I would bet over 100bn) and those who voted leave handed over their money willingly. Brexiteers think that Remainers think they are all stupid and for some that may be true but not half as stupid as those who got you to vote for Brexit do. Right now, their fucking laughing their asses off at you.

(28-04-2018 23:52 )Jack the Nipper Wrote:  Whilst as you say many Leavers in the EU Ref voted for different reasons (I've yet to meet or hear any who voted Leave but want to stay in the Single Market which means staying in the EU by the back door)

It's not unreasonable to assume you've never met the great Eurosceptic Daniel Hanna MEP, he was very clear that leaving the EU does not involve leaving the Single Market.

Have to admit its funny seeing trying labour trying to spin victory this morning