Fool Britannia: the future of the UK has never looked so grim
theglobeandmail.com
theglobeandmail.com
"And there is clear support for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal. One in two say there should be a second vote when all the talking is done, against 34 per cent who are opposed."
I mean if we can see what is actually on the table and the majority of voters still want it then I guess fair enough. It seems iffy though to ram Brexit through regardless of how bad it is on the basis of an ill informed vote a while back.
The author's forgetting that there was a referendum. You know, that thing where the populace actually gets to decide democratically on something, for once.
If you're cherry picking daft predictions there were plenty on each side.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-to-cr...
No "immediate crash of financial markets and recession", but it doesn't appear that they predicted that.
And after some more research I can confirm the Treasury actually did predict an immediate crash. You are exactly 100% wrong.
I'm not arguing against you. I'm pointing out that you haven't made an argument.
A claim with no documented basis is not an informed one, doesn't add anything to the debate and is useless to everyone involved.
> And after some more research I can confirm the Treasury actually did predict an immediate crash. You are exactly 100% wrong.
Again, you've failed to provide any citation for your claim. Until you provide a citation, readers should disregard your comments as if you haven't said anything.
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/13/imf-warns-s...
'How bad could it get? Morgan Stanley warns British stocks could lose nearly 20 percent in a Brexit win scenario. Bank of America Merrill Lynch believes U.S. stocks could lose upwards of 7 percent. Citigroup sees European stocks down 20 percent. Deutsche Bank sees 10 percent downside risk.'
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/could-brexit-vote-cause-a-s...
'Unemployment would rocket. Tumbleweed would billow through deserted high streets. Share prices would crash. The government would struggle to find buyers for UK bonds. Financial markets would be in meltdown. Britain would be plunged instantly into another deep recession.
Remember all that? ..It hasn’t worked out that way. ..it is obvious that the sky has not fallen in as a result of the referendum, and those who said it would look a bit silly.'
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/20/brexit...
'To the shock of many — not least business titans who bankrolled the Remain campaign — the instant collapse doesn’t seem to be happening.'
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/that-brexit-apocalypse-i...
Somehow I doubt you would be so scrupulous in asking for sources for generally known facts if they were not so inconvenient for your position. I'm also interested to know in what world you think 'immediate and profound economic shock' does not correspond with a stock market crash.
But your links seem to be the opinions of others and not the Treasury.
Where in your "more research" have you found that the Treasury predicted a stock market crash? Or do you still not have any evidence for your claim?
I assume you meant "remain" there. But in any case: from whom?
So far you've cited an American news network, financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup, and some UK journalists referencing hearsay. In what way did these commentators represent "leave" or "remain"?
On the other side you've got Leave.EU, an actual group campaigning to leave, misleading people with the NHS funding claim on their campaign bus.
You are conflating groups who actually actively campaigned for one side of the referendum with some random general groups who stated an opinion - some of whom are not even associated with the UK!
Of course you're going to be able to find some people who thought that bad things would happen; just as it is possible to find some people who thought that good things would happen. But the ability to find people who had some opinion is meaningless in any debate.
There's a long way to go from there to then claim that people who predicted bad things were "massive concerted lies and deceit" as if that's somehow equivalent to a campaign group misleading voters that at one point aimed to be the officially recognised electoral campaigners for the leave vote.
So no, your general point doesn't stand. You have not demonstrated FUD from the remain side.
> Do you honestly believe there was no FUD from the remain side?
Do you really not understand the distinction between these two statements?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/05/chief-econo...
Remain was the default option, equivalent in outcome to not having had a referendum at all.
And if we are on the topic of lies and deceit let's consider the ongoing campaign to undermine the democratic decision of the British people, quisling puppet Gina Miller, war mongerer Blair et al. Lovely bunch of people. It wouldn't surprise me if the £350m was deliberately planted to give remoaners a weapon to undermine the result.
> quisling puppet Gina Miller
Please explain your reasoning behind this one, it just sounds like a nonsensical accusation to me. She did everyone a favour by helping to ensure that Parliamentary authority was not compromised.
> remoaners
Not moaning, just very concerned about the huge self-inflicted wound of Brexit and how it's going to damage the UK. I'm just hoping it will go so badly in the negotiations that they're forced to abandon it.
Holding a non-binding referendum on a major and complex issue, asking citizens without truly educating them on the issues and consequences, packing campaigns with deceit to swing uninformed votes, all of this only to end up with a near-tie.
What about this is "the will of the people", exactly?
"The people" vote for less crime and less taxes. If you've been spoon-fed that taxes is "because of europe" and that crime is "all them immigrants, because of europe", yeah you're going to vote leave. Of course, when those things don't fucking change, your vote has done diddly-squat for you and, when politicians start spoon-feeding you a different boogeyman to help their personal causes, you'll once more vote for less crime, less taxes, but this time they're because of "those mean liberals", "evil net neutrality", "the mainstream fake news media that attacks me", "taxes on private jets... for reasons, just trust me on this" or whatever else is convenient.
Democracy.
Most people know what they voted for, more control and less United States of Europe.
There are many institutions wanting to pass the wrong brexiteer opinion/motivation so they can at same time talk how bad it is.
In a general way I guess but most of us still don't know what we're getting - Norway model, Canada model, will there be a trade deal, how much we have to pay etc. It's like you voted to go on holiday but should be able to say if it's ok or not when you find out what the hotel's like, where it is and how much it costs.
In California voters banned cable TV (prop 15) and gay marriages (prop 8) until it was ruled unconstitutional, and passed damaging tax props like proposition 13 which is still controversial.
Switzerland meanwhile rejected woman's suffrage until 1971 on the federal level and 1991 in some cantons, only after being forced by the courts.
The politicians decided to follow the advice.
I'd argue that literally no one voting "leave" wants to leave in this form. Not with the 50bn bill to pay, not with increasing living costs, not with the impact to the education and healthcare in this country. It's the equivalent of finding out your leg will have to be amputated, but you weren't informed of that when you first made the decision so I'd say the decision was misinformed.
If you actually followed what happened, there was a vote on accepting the immigration numbers and every member state of EU accepted them. I don't know what you're reading, but Germany didn't "unilateraly" accept anything here.
>>interference in sovereignty of Hungary, Poland
You mean, pointing out to Poland that it's slipping into far-right fascist state and that maybe this is not acceptable for a EU member state?
As regards Poland I think perhaps you are believing what you see in the MSM rather than taking things with the pinch of salt they deserve. Putting the MSM to one side there are plenty of commentators that consider recent EU actions towards Poland as an unprecedented interference with sovereignty. Also you are verging on Godwin's law with this assertion: 'slipping into far-right fascist state'. Have you actually looked at photos of the recent march? Protestors had anti-communist AND anti-nazi flags.
As for Poland - And why do you think protesters had those flags? Maybe because current government is enacting policies that are reminiscent of the fascist ones? You can see it in education, in foreign policy, in how the local governments are managed - the ruling party wants to keep everything in hand and labels anyone who is against them as unpatriotic and "not a true Pole". Macierewicz is telling young people to "fight the external, and internal enemy that is already here" - that's not what I want to see in my country. If EU stops that from happening - more power to them.
Personally I'm on the side of Poland in resisting the globalism-at-all-costs push. One could just as easily describe the 'accept mass immigration and fuck your population's feelings' attitude of the EU as a form of fascism.