This has been so depressing. From the pride of democracy, we’re descending to ‘that’s why democracy doesn’t work’. What an opportunity we are wasting.
I love a new paradigm. Etonians blown out the water, bogus financial framework crushed, two-bob political rats not knowing which liferaft to jump for …
Merkel’s been on the smelling salts; a e50 billion trade surplus is at risk for German industry.
Fuck Berlin. Fuck this neoliberal, austerity bullshit. Fuck the German imperial eu political project.
c’mon doubting Europe - the water’s fine! 
Polaks? What do they have against Polaks?
Posted from an area with nearly as many Poles as Poland.
Another Leave politician wants nothing to do with it: Farage has resigned as UKIP leader.
So these people worked as hard as they could to get the UK out of the EU, and they won, and now that there is hard work to do to accomplish their goals, they are like rats abandoning ship.
Well, I do agree with the Leavers on that point and that there is no way, for the people, to oust that commission clique.
Farage has stated previously that his goal was to get Britain out of the EU then retire from politics. You see it as rats abandoning a sinking ship, I see it as a politician refreshingly giving up his own power.
Farage was never going to be part of the leave process anyway. He was ostracised by the official Leave campaign, and is neither a member of parliament nor a member of the governing party. He has no ministerial experience. In short, he’s a one-issue rabble rouser, and his work is done.
Yes, I’ve got to give Farage respect for that, though I think he should have waited until the UK invoked Article 50 at least. I wonder what’s next for him?
It’s funny, because in the US being Polish is a pride thing, like being Italian or Irish and almost makes you more American because of it. At least it is now. But it wasn’t that way during the great waves of immigration from Eastern Europe. In the UK, Poles represent the largest number of EU immigrants by far, and they are doing pretty well. Thus, they are perceived as “newcomers taking away our jobs”-- more like it was in the US 100 years ago. Because their numbers are so large, they become a visible symbol of whatever folks want to project onto immigrants. If some other country was supplying the same number of immigrants instead, those folks would probably been seen the same way. So, it’s not being Polish, per se, but just the numbers themselves.
Britain is still in the EU, and will be for at least the next couple of years. Nobody knows when leave negotiations will even start and there’s no consensus on what the UK should even be aiming for in said negotiations.
Lots of people - usually people with papers to sell - seem to be declaring that it’s a crisis. Personally, I see healthy democratic processes in action.
So what happens if a General Election s called and a party wanting to Remain wins … as both main parties do. That’s a new mandate, right? Well, if you want it to be.
Yet with Boris Johnson’s unexpected departure, it’s hard not to see it as the main leaders of Leave all abandoning the mess they created and leaving it to cooler and wiser heads – namely, the Remain supporters – to somehow settle it all in a manner that doesn’t hurt the UK yet respects the referendum results. When the task at hand seems impossible, one is suspicious of the motives of those who suddenly disappear.
That was my original premise but I don’t see how it can happen. For Labour, a position on Remain so firm that they promise to override the referendum would probably run against the wishes of much of their constituency; for the Conservative Party, Theresa May as most likely new leader has already said the party must respect the referendum. So this could only happen if there were some major upheaval, like an obvious and overwhelming change in popular opinion.
9/11 for all its tragic consequences was not an economic event. Brexit is, almost entirely. For another example of economic events look to the deregulation and Wall Street machinations in the years leading up to 2008. And of course my original example of the events leading to the Great Depression, during which the markets had a sustained recovery after the initial crash before turning down once again and giving up.
According to Buzzfeed that could be easier said then done.
Yes. There would need to be a sustained and major shift towards Remain before a pro-Remain party could get in. Because they would be wide open the accusation that they want to undo a democratic vote (well, yeah) and so there would have to be a strong sentiment not just that, perhaps, on balance, Remain was the better option after all, but that Leave was so wrong that it should be reversed. That’s a lot of people swallowing their pride, which would imply something pretty catastrophic had happened.
Certainly, a party that won an election and then said, “You know, actually, most of our MPs are pro-Remain and you kind of knew that, so we’ve got a mandate to cancel Brexit” would be crucified. And rightly so.
The UK will be out of the EU before the next election anyway, so the question is moot. Leadsom or May will be elected by October, she will then invoke Article 50 and start the negotiations, so we will be out by 2019 and the General Election will take place in 2020.
Possibly. However, while Leadsom has said she’ll invoke A50 straight away, May has said she will invoke Article 50 once the negotiating strategy is clear. Which is at least 2017, apparently, but doesn’t have an upper limit.
It was going to be the day after the referendum. Then it was going to be September. Now it’s “next year”. Come January, who knows when it will be? The French and German elections are coming up - foolish to start the process before they’re done, surely? We need to know who we’re negotiating with before we can develop a negotiating stance, right?
And so on…
I’m getting the sense from civil servants this will take longer than 2-3 years to detach, esp. if the CS wants it to. Few have a clue of the scale of integration.
Interesting development today. The European Commission announced that the Canada-EU free trade proposal must be independently approved by every EU member nation before it can be ratified, a decision that casts doubt on whether it will ever happen despite the EU president’s endorsement of it. Seems like a convincing refutation of the belief that the EU is a monolithic entity whose member nations lose all autonomy!
[The European Council] makes its decisions on a consensus basis: every country needs to sign on. CETA proceeds as long as no country explicitly votes against it.