Brexit

Well, I suppose I'd agree with them.  Seems to me that nearly any referendum is a choice between doing something new, and not, so:

Should we:

a) increase taxes/change our electoral model/sign the agreement/leave

b) same taxes/same model/not sign the agreement/stay

I can't see how it could work to impose a supermajority on BOTH sides when there's a possibility of neither side ever meeting that supermajority.  How is any goverenment supposed to solve the problem of not being mandated to change things (because that side didn't hit 60%) but also not being permitted to not change things (because that side also didn't reach 60%)?

That isn't to say that a supermajority for the "change" side is or isn't appropriate.  Personally, speaking for just me, I'm inclined to agree that for huge decisions it kind of makes sense, but others may disagree.  The UK went with 50%+1 (totally ignoring the wishes of those 22 petition signatories!) -- I think that's the same threshold that the Sherbrooke Declaration specifies, for pretty much the same sort of choice.  As a non-Quebecois, non-Briton I'll stay agnostic on both.

I'm not sure that everyone would love to need two referendums, but other than that... geez, that's actually a pretty good idea.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

I read an interesting factoid about the now-famous online petition demanding a higher standard of consensus for the EU referendum. 

It's now got over 4 million signatures.

Prior to the referendum, it had 22 signatures.

Evidently a higher standard of consensus is very important to voters... who just lost.

Utter hypocritical stupidity, IMO.

CBC Radio had an interesting interview with one of the very few pollsters who correctly called a win for Exit.  The pollster said that after the murder of Jo Cox there was a rash of judgemental comments being directed toward the Exit side from the Remain side.  So, those with sympathies to Exit became silent and resentful of being tarred and feathered due (according to the pollster) to the tragedy, and thus became silently determined.  This led pollsters to wrongly believe that Remain was polling ahead.  Others on the fence who had doubts about the EU but were leery of leaving due to potential financial repercussions became resentful that their doubts were being mocked so vociferously by the Remain side after the tragedy (according to the pollster).  Thus Exit won.

The EU has a history of ignoring referenda and/or electoral outcomes they don't like. It's worth mentioning ...

1. Greek Referendum on financial bailout, etc. - ignored;

2. French vote on the EU constitution - ditto;

3. Irish vote on the Treaty of Nice - ditto;

4. Netherlands vote on Ukraine ascension to EU - same.

Anyone else notice a pattern here? [details may not be exact]

Secondly,

I've seen a few posts drawing attention to the expansion of EU and that of NATO as linked; these organizations are really in lock step and, in cases like Ukraine, etc., the EU is really being used as a instrument to militarize and entangle countries into the predatory NATO US-run Empire.

Post-Brexit, Britain may need "Hotel California" model

After the self-inflicted wound of voting to quit the European Union, Britain's best option to limit the mutual economic and political damage could be called the "Hotel California" model.

As in the 1977 Eagles hit, "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave".

Once the dust settles, Britain could "check out" of the EU by handing in its notice, but effectively stay half-way in the world's biggest trading bloc by joining the European Economic Area along with Norway. It could negotiate enhanced political cooperation in foreign policy and security, and might even get a voice, though not a vote, in some EU deliberations.

Yet that next-best solution seems unlikely to prevail.

http://news.trust.org/item/20160703080058-mbhli

Blaming Brexit on Putin and Voters (the People) (Stephen F Cohen)

http://eastwestaccord.com/podcast-blaming-brexit-putin-voters-people-ste...

It's a wee bit late, doncha think!

Brexit research suggests 1.2 million Leave voters regret their choice in reversal that could change result

The research suggests that if a second referendum were held, the vote would be much closer

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-news-second-eu-refe...

From what I have seen Juncker certainly has not helped matters.

Angela Merkel 'to oust Jean-Claude Juncker' as Europe splits deepen over Brexit response

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/03/angela-merkel-to-oust-jean-cl...

Harry Smith: This Is Not the Britain I Fought For

Once united in purpose against terrible threats, my nation dissolved into selfish factions.

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/06/29/Harry-Smith-Not-Britain-I-Fought-For/

brookmere wrote:

ikosmos wrote:

The EU has a history of ignoring referenda and/or electoral outcomes they don't like. It's worth mentioning ...

The EU has no mandate to recognize any referendum by a member state. Relations between the EU and member states are conducted as specified by treaty. It's up to the member state to decide how to act on the results of any referendum.

As for ignoring electoral outcomes... are you suggesting the EU does not recognize the results of elections in member states as conducted under their own laws? That's news to me.

 

Now this is what is significant to Canadians about Brexit. Sure beats going to the USA and getting hosed on the massive exchange rate ripoff there.

Brexit vote sees Canadians eye U.K. vacations amid weakened pound

Cheapflights.ca says it experienced a 50% spike in searches for flights from Canada to the U.K.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/brexit-travel-uk-cheaper-for-canadians-1...

U.K. Tory leadership candidate Theresa May won't invoke Brexit legal process this year

Front-runner says Britain needs clear negotiating stance before triggering Article 50

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/theresa-may-brexit-1.3662647

The Guardian is probably too busy with their Corbyn bashing so they missed this.

As I have suspected all along, Brexit will not impact on these wealthy right-wingers one iota, except perhaps to make themselves richer with all these golden new business opportunities, so they just used the poor Brits once again.

Andrea Leadsom under pressure to 'come clean' amid offshore tax havens claims

The Tory leadership contender has been urged to publish her tax returns

Quote:

Andrea Leadsom, a contender for the Tory leadership, is facing demands to give a complete account of her tax affairs, including her family’s use of trusts and of bank loans raised via a tax haven.

As a former banker with 25 years’ experience, Mrs Leadsom understand finance better than almost any other MP – but her family's past use of legal methods of minimising her family’s tax liabilities could prove an embarrassment in hard fought leadership contest.

She was visibly caught off guard when questioned on BBC 1’s Andrew Marr programme whether , if elected, she would follow David Cameron’s example and publish her tax returns.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-leadership-election-a...

Quote:

Apparently, the EU is going to change its name after the UK leaves. From then on, it will be known as "Germany".

This is new?  During the Greek meltdown, I don't recall hearing anything of any substance coming from (or being addressed to)  Slovenia, or Malta, or Luxembourg.  It was all Germany, Germany, Germany.

If that means they avoid T-TIP, the next generation of corporate rights agreement, then maybe Brexit will be good for them.

Brexit has exposed how ignorant the educated and cosmopolitan have become about modern Britain

The gravitational pull of aspiration, central to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s brand of conservatism, has faded as trickle-down economics betrayed so many people

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-eu-referendum-ignorant-educat...

You Voted For A Revolution...You Got A Blair Robot  -  by Peter Hitchens

https://t.co/Y7XVmg9nPg

"So 17 million people voted for a revolutionary change in the way we are governed, and the result is going to be Theresa May. Those ignored multitudes were not, I think, hoping for yet another Blairite robot, a living symbol of everything that is wrong with our political system. But this is what they are going to get..."

Chunky Mark: Cruel Britannia - Theresa May: 'The Future of EU Citizens is Not Guaranteed'

https://youtu.be/rVza_qju9OM

For someone that has, in most of what I read about him, been described in unflattering denunciations, Farage showed a remarkable integrity in his recent decision to step down. He achieved what he set out to do and (so he claims) wants his life back now. Interesting.

ikosmos wrote:

For someone that has, in most of what I read about him, been described in unflattering denunciations, Farage showed a remarkable integrity in his recent decision to step down. He achieved what he set out to do and (so he claims) wants his life back now. Interesting.

Except he hasn't achieved it. The UK is still in the EU, and isn't showing any signs of leaving, despite the vote. One would think that Farage would be, along with the EU leaders, pressing to get the divorce under way.

There's no integrity in what Farage or Johnson have done. They tried to make a campaign against the EU a vehicle for personal self-gratification and their lust for power and/or attention. I don't beleive it occurred to either of them that they;'d win. They planned to lose narrowly and ride the wave of resentment. The vote in their favour dashed their hopes, and they were left to try to do somethign with the consequences of their actions, and they fled the scene. 

The Brexiters will turn on their 'leaders' next (Farage admitted the health care money was a lie; Johnson says Britain could ahve the common market without the EU, etc.), and deservedly so (just as Cameron deserved his fate). Neither Johnson nor Farage had the courage to stick around and try to make their promises into reality. 

In an omnibus reflection on what the Brexit vote means for the different parties, John Gray argues in The New Stateman (a moderatly left-wing journal) that for their own different reasons, neither Corbyn, Labour moderates or Blairites, both as MPs or general membership, seem capable of addressing the core issue that is actually costing them the electoral base of the Labour Party: immigration. 

The strange death of liberal politics: The world is changing in ways the British left cannot comprehend.

... Clearly Jeremy Corbyn must accept responsibility for Labour’s referendum debacle. Following Hilary Benn’s departure there was a mass resignation of shadow cabinet members and, at the time of writing, the party’s MPs have backed a vote of no confidence by an overwhelming margin. As Tom Watson – in some ways the pivotal figure in Labour – is reported to have told him, Corbyn has lost his authority among MPs. Yet it remains unclear how any coup mounted by MPs could succeed if, as he has repeatedly said he will, Corbyn turns for support to party activists, now the ultimate arbiters of Labour’s fate. The new rules for party membership and leadership elections framed by Ed Miliband (which were supported by the party’s Blairites at the time) may have created an insoluble problem for Labour.

It may not have been Corbyn’s much-criticised detachment from the Remain campaign that led to the haemorrhage of Labour voters to the Leave camp. On the contrary: what sealed Labour’s fate was more likely his only meaningful intervention, when he pointed out that there could be no cap on immigration as long as Britain remained in the EU. Leading Labour figures have denied adamantly that the party’s stance on immigration is central to the collapse of its working-class base. It was a complex of issues to do with de-industrialisation, they repeat, that led to mass desertion by Labour voters. There is some force in this, but it is essentially a way of evading an inconvenient truth.

Free movement of labour between countries with vastly different wage levels, working conditions and welfare benefits is a systemic threat to the job opportunities and living standards of Labour’s core supporters. Labour cannot admit this, because that would mean the EU is structured to make social democracy impossible. This used to be understood, not only on Labour’s Bennite left but also by Keynesian centrists such as Peter Shore and, more recently, Austin Mitchell. Today the fact goes almost unnoticed, except by those who have to suffer the consequences. Figures such as Gisela Stuart, Frank Field and Kate Hoey, who recognise the clash between EU structures and social-democratic values, are a small minority in the party.

Corbyn is not alone in passing over this conflict. So do his opponents, and this is one reason why it will be extremely difficult to reverse Labour’s slide. If Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham or David Miliband had been leader, the referendum would still have ended badly for Labour. No doubt the campaign would have been handled better. But the message would have been the same – promises of European reform that European institutions have shown to be worthless. Labour’s heartlands were already melting away. A rerun in the north and Midlands of Labour’s collapse in Scotland is now a distinct possibility. Fear of this disaster is one reason Labour is unlikely to split. With over 40 per cent of the party’s voters opting for Leave, anyone who joined a new “modernising” party would be on a fast lane to oblivion. Only a radical shift from progressive orthodoxies on immigration and the EU can save Labour from swift and terminal decline. It is doubtful whether any future leader could enforce such a shift, as it would be opposed by most Labour MPs and by activists. Yet it is plainly what millions of Labour voters want.

Whatever.

You will note that this is not posted in the Corbyn thread. The article is actually about how the Labour Party as a whole (Corbyn, mods, and Blairites) has not yet been able to compellingly and convncingly address the issue of immigration which (the author argues) is the main reason the traditional Labour heartland is in threat of disappearing. So it speaks to a much more existential crisis for Labour/The Left than the latest leadership squabble.   

from the posted John Gray article:

Quote:

...Free movement of labour between countries with vastly different wage levels, working conditions and welfare benefits is a systemic threat to the job opportunities and living standards of Labour’s core supporters. Labour cannot admit this, because that would mean the EU is structured to make social democracy impossible.

This is just outright twaddle. Number one, no leftist would agree, nor should agree with the first part of the statement. The systemic threat to the wages and working conditions of labour is, and always has been, capital. In a world where goods are transported across borders as easily as birds fly, it doesn't matter whether the workers are here or there. And in fact, it is the restrictions on movement of labour that create the possiblity of pitting one countries work force aganst anothers.

The second part of the statement seems to be a throw-away line that somehow adds to the first part. Given the first part is nonsense, the second part can't be any less nonsense.

Congratulations Brexiters, you have unleased the racists. 

Three race hate crimes every hour since EU referendum, say Met Police

599 incidents of race hate crime were reported to Scotland Yard between 24 June - the day the Brexit result was announced - and 2 July

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/brexit-race-hate-crime-eu-ref...