Brexit or not - the time for a decision has come

I have so many questions. What is the possibility of a second vote on this or of Scotland blocking it, as has been suggested (by Nicola Sturgeon)? Are either of those viable options - and, if so, should they be?

In my attempt to get a sense of how people really feel, after-the-fact, all I'm getting is spin about how rampant buyer's remorse is over this. Is there truth to that in any substantial way?

In the UK we had a sitcom called Yes Minister.
The situation we are in could be mistaken for an episode from it.

The latest news that I read was the PM said no to a second referendum. Another minister said a referendum was a referendum (meaning the country should just accept the results) and it should not be a neverendum. I like British humour :-)

Current PM has a 3 month life span and so do his comments.

[QUOTE] [b]magicalfreddiemercury wrote:[/b]

I have so many questions. What is the possibility of a second vote on this or of Scotland blocking it, as has been suggested (by Nicola Sturgeon)? Are either of those viable options - and, if so, should they be?

In my attempt to get a sense of how people really feel, after-the-fact, all I'm getting is spin about how rampant buyer's remorse is over this. Is there truth to that in any substantial way? [/QUOTE]

From what we hear there is a lot of regret - mostly from the younger generation who simply did not get the importance of the referendum and did not bother to vote. Now they are online petitioning for another referendum by the millions (!!) but democracy takes place in real life and not in the social media.

A second vote would probably deepen the rift in the country even more. I cannot imagine that the parliament would dare to ignore the public vote - no matter how close the outcome was, majority is majority.

Scotland voted "remain" with about 62% . Before the refeferendum took place the first minister had announced that she would prepare another go at Scottish independence if the majority would vote "remain", now she is honouring her word. I do not know if it is actually legally possible but there will be another long and straining process and Scotland wants to negotiate with the EU in order to keep the Scottish membership.

After two days it seems like the leave campaign does not have a plan how to handle the exit which is bad for the UK and bad for the EU - we really need clarity soon. One thing is sure: in my country the popularity of the EU miraculously sky rocketed after watching the "brexit". The worst part is the unexpected rise of open racism in the UK, we never expected that, it's simply horrible. We have our own problems with xenophobia and we are just learning that it is a can of worms nobody should open for political gain.

The PM gave us a referendum.
He and his party should have prepared for either outcome.
Clearly they planned for only one outcome and he now takes the easy option and resigns.

Barb
they do have a plan. but before Wednesday's meeting with the Euro council, it's impossible to take it forward.

worryingly - for Germany (and France?) is that lobbyists in Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Sweden and France! now want similar referendums.
the Eurozone could disappear up it's own Schengen Zone

Two out of three Swedes want to stay in the EU, luckily. I was considering to study my master in England in one or two years. After Brexit I'm not sure what'll happen with the fees etc. Sigh.

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

Two out of three Swedes want to stay in the EU, luckily. I was considering to study my master in England in one or two years. After Brexit I'm not sure what'll happen with the fees etc. Sigh. [/QUOTE]

6 months ago, two out of three Brit's wanted to stay in the EU. Luckily we changed our mind.

Brenski, I am not too worried about more referendums. First of all I do hope for reforms, the EU is really very shocked about the brexit. Secondly, in most countries, the parliament must decide about a referendum and we can only hope that the discussion will be more honest and more facts- based than the brexit referendum.

I think the leave campaign only won because Cameron has blamed all shortcomings in the UK on "Brussels" in recent years. He created this prejudice that English governments are totally helpless and only Brussels is in the wrong. Of course, there is always a grain of truth in such statements - there is a lack of democratic structures in the EU and the benefits that come from the union are not distributed in a fair way, the hard working people are not the biggest winners. But the huge dishonesty and phoneyness of Cameron lies in the fact that the Tories always were the driving force behind radical market rules and lack of social security. Of course Merkel is now sorry to lose her partner in crime having to face the socialists from France and Spain all by herself :-)

Anyway, I think that a referendum in other countries would have a more determined "remain" campaign with people spelling out the good things that come from the EU and not leaving a country in the same state of division that the UK are now facing.

YV mentioned the rise in racism. There have been numerous reports of racism towards Polish people, some of whom have been here for three or four generations. Cards saying "Leave the EU No more Polish Vermin" where posted through their letterboxes. The Polish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith had graffiti sprayed on its walls. This Centre has been there for 60 years. (I've read some theories by idiotic conspiracy nuts that these attacks were perpetrated by Remainers to try to make the Leavers look bad. This is rubbish.) There have also been many reports of people who don't look English (for instance, Italians) being told "now you have to leave". I am certian that these things will continue to happen with increasing frequency now. As YV writes, a big can of worms has been opened, and this is a tragedy.

Is this what it has come to? Racism against fellow Europeans with the same culture? I'm not Polish, but all the Poles I know here in the UK are decent, hard-working people, who have all integrated completely with English society - and this is because there is very little integration needed - Polish culture is fundamentally compatible with English culture, as is Spanish, Italian, French, etc., culture.

The majority of young people voted to remain. What the Leave camp have succeeded in doing, in essence, is destroy the future of the young. This is not doom and gloom, this is reality. It is absolute madness to abandon the EU, and, effectively, abandon Europe. The magnitude of what this is going to mean is now starting to sink in, and many are regretting their Leave vote. But of course you will still have those who are happy they "have their country back" and are free of Brussels and Berlin who dictated what Great Little Britain can and can't do. Hurray for you.

The leave campaign was based on vicious lies, pure and simple. The UK is going to suffer tremendously, and London is going to bear the brunt of it. And England without London is nothing. It's worthless. So yes, the British now have the ship completely in their command, but it's essentially a ship which is going to sink. London is going to go from the world's most important financial centre to nothing more than a fading has-been. And this is going to bring with it very. very big problems for the rest of England and Wales.

Scotland will very soon leave the UK and re-apply for EU membership (they have to re-apply - they won't remain members automatically). Northern Ireland will likely join the Republic of Ireland. So all you are going to have left is England and Wales - the most important city of which, London, voted in its majority to remain in the Union. London will be weakened in the long-term, and the full repercussions of this will be felt not now, but in the next five, ten and fifteen years.

The NHS which featured so prominently in the campaign, will be weakened. It will not receive £350 million a week which "would have gone to the EU", as Farage lied. I work in a medical department of the most well-known British university. Do you have any idea how many doctors and nurses working for the NHS are Spanish, Polish, Italian? Do you have any idea the billions the UK will now stop receiving from the EU which went towards scientific research?

Boris Johnson and that idiot Nigel Farage, both of whom didn't even expect to win and are completely unprepared for what to do next, have destroyed a great country. Britain didn't have to be made 'great again' - it was great already. And David Cameron gambled everything, including his career, on this referendum, the main reason behind him promising it in the first place was to win the 2015 election. He never thought the leavers would win either. But they did, and now he will leave and let the people who wanted a leave vote to manage the mess themselves. Suddendly Farage and his dumb smile and pints of beer is starting to look tremendously incompetent.

Farage is a low-intelligence, racist and bigoted individual who made it the mission of his pathetic life to make Britain leave Europe. He's succeeded, and for now the idiots amongst us see him as a hero. But you mark my goddamn words, in ten years time he is going to be one of the most hated individuals in British history. He has destroyed the UK.

Johnson is a serial philanderer and a lying cheat who epitomises all the lies and deceit brought forward by the Leave campaign. Look at what he has written for yesterday's Sunday Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/i-cannot-stress-too-much-that-britain-is-part-of-europe--and-alw/. He is telling the UK that they will still be able to enjoy freedom of movement: "British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down."

This is an outright lie. Does this man really think he can get rid of all the EU laws he doesn't like, but keep the one he thinks are useful, like free movement of labour? He also says the UK will still get EU funding. Right, of course it will - I'm sure the Germans and the French will be more than willing to still send their funds while the UK is free to not abide by any of the other EU laws.

He writes: "The only change – and it will not come in any great rush – is that the UK will extricate itself from the EU’s extraordinary and opaque system of legislation: the vast and growing corpus of law enacted by a European Court of Justice from which there can be no appeal."

Can you believe this prick? The nerve of this lying bastard. Does he really believe that the EU is going to let the UK have the cake and eat it? What a fucking disaster. This is the future of the UK - Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. God help it.

Article 50 may never be triggered.
DC had no intention of pushing the button (he lied)
..... would any future PM push it, even if it were Boris?

^It's a very precarious state of affairs. Johnson, having realised that he now has a hell of a lot more on his plate than he can handle, is saying that there's "no rush" to trigger Article 50. Cameron, very intelligently, has said he'll back down in three months time, and that his successor can trigger Article 50 instead. It's obvious that Cameron doesn't want to be the man directly responsible for completly ruining Britain for this and for subsequent generations.

Now, legally speaking, the EU can do nothing to force Britain to trigger Article 50. But the EP President has already started putting pressure on the UK to start the process of leaving. Politically, therefore, pressure is going to be put on whoever succeeds Cameron to start the process. In theory, however, the UK could persist with this state of affairs for years without ever triggering Article 50. But this will create even more uncertainty.

As more and more of the truth about the repercussions of joining is emerging (and it is the fault of the Remain camp that so many things were not made sufficiently clear), the desire to go ahead and trigger Article 50 is going to start looking more and more like a burden for the new Tory leader to carry.

We now know, for instance, that Wales has received £4 billion in EU funds since 2004 to help improve its poorer regions. Wales voted out, and will no longer receive funds. Cornwall has been largely dependant on EU funds and subsidies. Cornwall voted out. The vast majority of young people and those in their late 20s/early 30s voted in. Their futures have now been irrevocably changed for the worse. Studying in Europe's universities will now cost three times as much. EU funds to help new graduates start small enterprises will no longer be unavailable.

Amongst those who voted Leave, it's those in the "dumb hick" category who are the worst. The American equivalent would be the red neck. People in their 50s or older, who can barely string a sentence in decent English, who are incapable of assimilating information and making a coherent argument, and who want an "England for the English". One person in a coffee shop full of Little Englanders said in a Sky News interview "We’re British. We just want us. We don’t want all the other people". The isolationist traits never really went away, and now they're back in full force. And England may very likely be left alone, as even Scotland and Northern Ireland don't want to be part of this now sinking ship.

The Brexit vote has wiped $2 trillion off world markets. And yet the Leavers tell us that it's all negativity, all gloom and doom, and Britain can make it out of this - fear not, brave Englanders, don't believe the economists, the experts, those who know what they are saying. It's going to be all ok, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are here, and England will once again be great.

But it doesn't matter what the Leavers think. Those with half a brain are now regretting their decision, and those who don't regret it are hopeless and will never emerge from their cesspit of ignorance. I don't blame them - their opinions are the products of the malicious and prolonged garbage which was fed to them by journalists throughout the years - journalists like a certain Boris Johnson. In face, he was the worst amongst them - the one who poisoned the chalice with his journalism. Every malady, every household financial woe, every job lost, every crime committed, every incidence of red tape, was the fault of the EU.

Britain has been destroyed, and the Union flag holds no pride anymore. Brand Britain, constructed lovingly and carefully since after WWII, starting with the glory days of the Beatles and swinging London, on to the Sex Pistols, on to Queen and Freddie, with the flag held upon him as he strutted magestically on those stages, and on to the 1990s and early 2000s with Cool Brittania, has been damaged beyond repair. No young, intelligent person living in Britain can now truly say that they feel good about being British and about their future. There is nothing nice about the once wonderful Union flag anymore. Brand Britain, overnight, has started to symbolise bigotry, isolationism, narrow-mindedness, intolerance and stupidity

The comments of the Little Englanders in the coffee shop were in stark contrast to those of a man in his early 20s working at a livestock market, also interviewed by Sky News, who remarked that it was more important for him to be in the EU than in the UK. And the views of that young man are similar to those of other young British people - they are Europeans and think the European way. They are so different from the older British generations, thinking they want their little island all for themselves, because only they know what is best for them. What a pity that when the old hicks are all dead, it's today's young people who would have really suffered the consequences of this disastrous decision.