Is Britain about to leave the EU?

[Mechanicalsalvation]

As someone put it: Jo Cox would disagree.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Is Britain about to leave the EU?

According to a poll in today’s Mail on Sunday, there is a 53-47 lead for those wanting to leave the EU.





Britain is due to have a referendum on whether we should remain in the EU or not. It must be held by 2017, but the latest estimate is that we could have it as early as this June. I suspect if polls continue this way Cameron will delay the poll as long as possible.

He has been negotiating some special terms for Britain regarding control of the movement of some migrants, an opt-out from the ‘ever closer union’ clause, various guarantees to protect non-Euro members, and not allowing welfare for immigrants for the first few years.

It appears some sort of agreement might be reached at an EU meeting in February. I wonder how this poll will affect the negotiations – will they give us all we want (which let’s face it is very small cheese) or will they say, there’s no point, just let Britain go?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...sacre-Cologne-sex-attacks-migrant-crisis.html

Huge kudos to the OP of this thread 6 months ago.
The referendum indeed happened in June, and 53-47 for Leave was pretty much on the mark.

 

[Lillefix]

I have always thought the EU was just a Swedish game with the latest version being the most sophisticated and interesting. I must have got it wrong somewhere.

Most people I know think it has something to do with Star Wars.

 

[Kyriakos]

Originally posted by Choxorn:

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

http://twitter.com/nickpwing/status/746465282642739200/photo/1
UK silly-walks off a cliff in New Yorker’s Monty Python-inspired Brexit cover

 

[Kyriakos]

Funny pics/videos aside, i think that despite Brexit being hard on Britain for (at least) a while, for other nations in Europe it needed to happen. I wish we could have done the analogous last year, but we were in a very different situation (banks closed for a week and an economy ruined by 5 years of austerity), but ultimately if we did leave it would have been far easier for some gov goons in Germany (to make it distinct from regular germans) to make an example out of us, or try to.
It won't be easy to do against Britain, or even just England (a nation of tens of millions of people), let alone that other countries -- including Greece -- would not condone any revenge-voting against Britain by the Eu. (BY THE WAY, notice how the Eu now uses new cool meeting groups, like 'the six original EU founding nations', one of which is Luxemburg the powerful, to discuss among its clique what happens with Britain...).

So, to be brief, i hope the future gets better for Britain. The Eu is not set to last, though, so this is not the end-state of things. But i do understand that currently it is hard for Britain (despite our own crisis being far worse than theirs, and lasting many years already).

 

[JohannaK]

I personally hope this is the shake-up that will allow true progress towards integration to begin, possibly in a two-speed model where countries who want to go through with it can move faster than more reticent ones. I am a hopeless Europhile.

Still I will admit I dont think this is very likely. The inertia that has led to the hald dozen crises the EU is going through simultaneously will be hard to kill, and I can easily imagine that enough people will be reticent to change as to prevent it.

 

[sherbz]

Well all told, I lost £4,000 in shares from yesterday. Thank you to the bigoted Englishman.

 

[EnglishEdward]

The bookie odds were always a bit strange on the Brexit question. UK polls are fairly bad relative to US ones and usually bias left when they are wrong - for instance, they were off by a lot in 1992 and 2015. The polls coming up to the referendum showed a narrow edge for Leave before the Cox assassination, but the oddsmakers never had Leave above the low 40s, IIRC. After Cox was killed, the polls shifted to a very slight Remain lead of 2-3 points, and the odds were dropped to ~15%, far below the odds a 2-3 point lead would usually imply. I have no idea why the bookies were so confident in Remain despite the very close polls and Britain's spotty polling history.

I understand that bookies want to make a profit whatever the result.

Therefore the odds change to reflect the respective level of bets placed for
Remain and Leave.

Bookies odds are generally not based on probability.

 

[Lohrenswald]

So I don't really know how the conversation in this thread has been, but:

While I'm sad the leave-campaign had such a right-wing face to it, I'm glad it won.
I'm also dissapointed in the youth for supporting the EU. They're getting way too right-wing these days.

Anyway I hope this somehow will lead to more countries leaving EU

 

[Mouthwash]

I'm also dissapointed in the youth for supporting the EU. They're getting way too right-wing these days.

Huurrr?

 

[Lohrenswald]

American youth might be moving politically to the left, but in Europe they're moving to the right

 

[red_elk]

Anyway I hope this somehow will lead to more countries leaving EU

It will strongly depend on how British economy will do, after (and if) they leave.

Generally, I think it's a sign that EU needs to reform itself to become more consolidated and stable. May be to let go the countries who want to leave, or even retain only core members who generally can agree about common policies. EU can and probably should be strong independent player, one of power centers in multipolar world.

 

[aelf]

Cornwall votes for Brexit and then pleads to keep EU funding

Hahahaha. Sorry, but I think Cornwall can suck it. I'm sure there's a British version of Farm Boy somewhere now talking about how the liberal elite is screwing the rural voters over again, but this time they really didn't seem to have thought it through. Maybe making a more informed decision, at least grasping the immediate consequences of your decision, would have required too much dangerous intellect.

 

[Akka]

I personally hope this is the shake-up that will allow true progress towards integration to begin, possibly in a two-speed model where countries who want to go through with it can move faster than more reticent ones. I am a hopeless Europhile.

It all depends on how (if ?) the other crisises will be resolved. The UK was the main blocker of EU progression, now that's it's out and there is an impetum for change, we might see either progression or regression.
Every leader basically says "well we got a wake-up call, now we've to change things !", but that's basically what you hear every single elections so it's hard to take them on their words.

A double-speed EU is what was needed in 2003, and what they stupidly chose to ignore. It may be too late, but it'd be sad to not even try.

Huurrr?

There is this weird disconnect from anti-EU, which tend to think that the EU is all for big finance, bank and globalization, while their own governments are for worker's rights. They tend to forget that it's the UK which vetoed the Tobin Tax while the EU wanted it (ironic isn't it ?).

 

[Arakhor]

Hahahaha. Sorry, but I think Cornwall can suck it. I'm sure there's a British version of Farm Boy somewhere now talking about how the liberal elite is screwing the rural voters over again, but this time they really didn't seem to have thought it through. Maybe making a more informed decision, at least grasping the immediate consequences of your decision, would have required too much dangerous intellect.

That just shows the sheer amounts of deliberate misinformation floating around in the campaign. Despite MegaTsunami's comments about he knew the £350m claim was a lie and couldn't see why I was annoyed by it, two main planks secured Brexit - immigration and that claim, which a staggering 40-something percent believed to be true.

In fact, that claim could never have been true, even if all the regional funding was retracted and given to the NHS, because that included the rebate, which of course is now part of all the special arrangements that have just gone up in smoke.

 

[Lohrenswald]

There is this weird disconnect from anti-EU, which tend to think that the EU is all for big finance, bank and globalization, while their own governments are for worker's rights. They tend to forget that it's the UK which vetoed the Tobin Tax while the EU wanted it (ironic isn't it ?).

I do not believe that
but the thing is that the only way to make it reality is to get rid of EU

 

[Arakhor]

That likely won't soon be happening in the UK then. Our government generously fought against all working-hours legislation and secured a waiver on the 48 hrs a week clause, so any unscrupulous company simply requires you to use your waiver to work for them. Either that or they employ zero-hour contracts, which despite some exposure recently, nothing yet has happened about them.

 

[Tahuti]

American youth might be moving politically to the left, but in Europe they're moving to the right

The definition of the right is moving as well. Things you might consider securely left are now considered right-wing nowadays.

It's actually increasingly more a flavour, if anything.

There is this weird disconnect from anti-EU, which tend to think that the EU is all for big finance, bank and globalization, while their own governments are for worker's rights. They tend to forget that it's the UK which vetoed the Tobin Tax while the EU wanted it (ironic isn't it ?).

The EU has a different geographic composition than its individual member states so of course these are going to have diverging interests.

 

[Akka]

I do not believe that
but the thing is that the only way to make it reality is to get rid of EU

Yeah, because a bunch of separate countries are going to have much better worker's rights when they all race to the bottom between each other to attract companies, than a big block which can at least impose some basic rights.

That likely won't soon be happening in the UK then. Our government generously fought against all working-hours legislation and secured a waiver on the 48 hrs a week clause

But remember, it's the evil non-democratic EU which is against people's rights !