Labour shadow Minister has resigned rather than support Brexit.
And lest we forget the added complication for MPs the lurking hulk of potential deselection:
As far as I know there is no reliable data on current sentiment in various constituencies. All we have is a rough breakdown of how constituencies voted on the day of Brexit.
Sure, people may be regretting how they voted, but as far as we can tell the polls are generally at the same Leave/ Remain split they were on the day of the referendum(if anything they lean marginally more towards Leave). However, midland & northern voters generally feel the political parties are too London-centric; that* they* are forgotten by the elites. Sound familiar? I can assure you as night follows day that a UK Parliament perceived as going back on Brexit will feel the wrath(cheered on by the tories and Ukip) of northern and midland voters. London Labour MP’s will be relatively safe at the next General Election if they vote in Parliament to Remain in Europe, those outside London will be scrapping for their political survival, and it’s a survival few imo would bet on. Real Labour strongholds such as Liverpool and Newcastle may be safe but more marginal seats such as Coventry, Stoke, Halifax and many others will be bloodbaths.
I think the only possibility of the public turning against Brexit is if Brexit turns into a total economic disaster(and at the same time the EU stabilizes). However, even here it’s complicated. An EU that is seen as playing excessive hardball will just as likely put UK voters backs up.
Why on earth do you think “people” regret their vote - it’s not like it wasn’t the most discussed, dissected, earnest debate imaginable.
If anything it’s the reverse; voters who were intimidated into remaining by Operation Fear and/or the metropolitan liberal characterising the extraordinary broad issue as one of compassion for immigrants vs. nasty people.
One side of the Brexit debate last year has been revealed as at least partially bogus, and it isn’t the argument for leaving the EU.
That is confirmed by what is characterised by pollsters as ‘acceptance’ by Remainers, which can be seen as code for ‘it’s not as bad as we were led to believe’.
Before Brexit:
After Brexit:
Not that the economy was one of the top three reasons for voting Leave anyway, but it was important to Project Fear.
Earnest? Are you kidding me? It was full of tons of heat and very little light. I object to referendums on principle and that’s just one reason why.
And characterising it as metropolitan liberals versus the rest (I dunno, salt-of-the-earth ‘real’ people or something, I guess) is entirely okay.
It was operation fear-of-quite-likely-bad-outcomes, really. As opposed to Project Fantasy.
Yes, there isn’t a single aspect of the Leave campaign’s ambitions which hasn’t been busted as no longer achievable or otherwise completely bogus. £350m for the NHS a week? Turkey? Cutting immigration? The utterly fake news claims about the apparent lack of democracy in the EU?
Alternatively, it’s because Remain’s predictions were based on the not-unreasonable assumption that Article 50 would be triggered very shortly after the election result. As Leave had (and still don’t have) no plan, we’d be walking in blind.
That didn’t happen, so the Government has resisted calls for early triggering in order to figure out what, precisely, they want to ditch or retain from Britain’s EU membership, and how to handle the economic dislocation that would arise from the biggest realignment of Britain’s trade connections in generations.
Seeing as we’re still in the EU, and the Single Market, and those trade connections haven’t been disrupted, colour me unsurprised that the turbulence hasn’t really happened yet.
But the pound’s taken a strong of huge hits to its strength - conveniently, Leavers suddenly make faux-sage comments that it was too high after all, and this is a good thing (without commenting on how low is too low), ignoring that this makes imports more expensive, as we’re now seeing with gradually rising inflation and prices.
I mocked it, but I’m glad the Government resisted demands to immediately trigger Article 50 and will seek to salvage what they can. Plenty of material has been published identifying what will change and what opportunities and challenges there are in leaving the EU, but of course many Leavers take any suggestion that there could be any kind of bad news for any sector of the UK economy as a conspiracy to scupper Brexit.
And I really think called 51.9% of the electorate anything remotely like ‘the people’. Nor does it mean that we suddenly stop analysing and critiquing, like ‘the people’ is some kind of absolute monarch that has spoken their will.
So I’m not surprised that opinion polls show that public opinion is largely still where it was on June 23rd. Things are still good for now (thanks to Single Market membership and an accidental pound devaluation), plus the incessant propaganda by the Mail and the Express, and a mistaken assumption that a mere referendum ought to trump the national interest.
But yeah, somehow we’ve ‘taken back control’. I don’t think Theresa May will find she has much control as Britain becomes more and more under the shadow of President Trump.
I’d agree that taking the assertions of a disparate group of campaigners - as opposed to a campaign led by the PM and all Gov dpartments, as if policy was a failure, but of media scrutiny.
I’m sure the Leave campaign were as surprised as anyone they weren’t asked to explain that assertion.
But at the same time - guess what - we haven’t left so it’s rather difficult to point to where the UKs contribution to the EU budget has gone - if you raise the issue again in 3 years it might be a fairer point
This is pure fantasy and projection. “Operation Fear” was the term the Leave campaign came up with to distract from the fearmongering on their own side. Nigel Farage actually claimed that if the UK remained there would be foreign rape gangs in our neighbourhoods and millions of Turks would be flooding our hospitals. And remember that lovely poster he was photographed in front of? Tell me again how that wasn’t stoking fear of immigrants.
It kind of is. Let’s look at some of the Leave campaigns claims:
£350million a week for the NHS? Insisted upon throughout the campaign despite facts to the contrary and painted on the side of a bus…until the day after the vote, when Nigel suddenly seemed surprised that anyone had promised such a ridiculous thingand certainly not him. In fact, if you add up all the promises the Leave campaign made about how the money no longer going to the EU would be spent, it would be eleven times greater than the actual amount of money.
Favorable trade deals with the EU? Not happening, and not going to happen, for some very obvious reasons.
Use of the free market? Well, maybe…unless Norway decides to veto it.
More jobs for Brits? Nope - businesses and jobs leaving the UK.
Preferential treatment by the US? Maybe…depending on what sort of mood Donald (who will be negotiating all trade deals, according to him) is in at the time.
More control of our borders? Probably not a good time to mention that the agreement that was keeping all those migrants bottled up in France is an EU one. Once the UK leaves France has every incentive to move them on. Guess where they’ll go.
Lower immigration? Another one they started backing away from almost immediately, changing it to “We’ll be able to control who comes, but obviously we’ll still have immigration.”
More democracy? We have democratically elected representatives in the European Parliament. Which we will lose, giving us less power as voters. (The fact that the MEPs we’ve been electing have been corrupt assholes is not the EU’s fault.)
More sovereignty? What does that even mean? Leaving the EU will give more power and money to those in the UK who already have it. The rest of us will have less of both, particularly as a large chunk of the rights UK workers currently enjoy are EU ones.
Seriously - what are the real benefits of leaving? Because nothing the Leave campaign claimed would happen is going to.
Um… you may not have noticed that the UK hasn’t left yet. A lot of the financial markets are waiting to see if Article 50 gets triggered. Then you’ll be able to see the effects.
I’m pretty sure it was 1) Immigrants! 2) Sovereignty (whatever that means), and 3) Immigrants! But seriously - I’m curious what you think the top three reasons are if they’re not economic or immigration.
It doesn’t surprise me that you’re keen to dismiss economic effects, since unlike all the fearmongering of the Leave campaign the concerns of the Remain campaign are actually likely to come to pass (or have already - how’s the pound doing these days?). But every sign thus far shows that Britain will take a significant economic hit and loss of political influence in leaving the EU, with very little benefit of any kind to the vast majority of us.
Of course, immigration - it was all about the darkies and terrorists. Don’t you remember the Poles in the RAF!?
/liberal moral high ground judgemental wank.
How did that work out.
Right, like George Osborn’s immediate £30 billion emergency budget - how’s he doing these days, and the Christine Legarde/IMF’s dire warnings of recession which become last week “the remarkable resilience of the UK economy”.
Just so much wind and piss.
Wow, an emergency budget didn’t take place because the Government took a strategic decision not to spook the markets any further. Therefore Brexit will be an unparalleled success.
Autumn Statement wasn’t exactly full of optimism and light.
Still no evidence that Brexit will succeed - just supposition and deflection/complaining about being called a racist.
So you’re admitting that there was plenty of racism by Leave but that’s okay because your side won?
…is an accurate description of your response to my substantive post, complete with links.
LOL. Trying to limit the Brexit debate to be a binary choice between heart-on-the-sleeve compassion vs. nasty racists - didn’t work out too well, did it. Except in the heads of judgemental liberals.
A minute ago it was the most discussed, dissected earnest debate imaginable.
So now it’s a binary choice between judgemental liberals and poor, innocent, maligned Brexiters who didn’t vote for economic reasons (they have none) but because…?
Indeed; thankfully the metropolitan, liberal desire to limit the terms of debate to hand-wringing were largely ignored.
Except, of course, by those so invested in the immigration dimension they saw the referendum as a single issue only.
Any number of reasons and combinations thereof. Prior to leading the party Corbyn had been anti-EU his entire political career. Ditto Tony Benn and almost all of the old Left. Ditto me.
People in Sunderland and in every major city and town in England might have different reasons.
Let’s assume Parliament passes Brexit because they feel that they are obligated to under the referendum. QE2 withholds Royal Assent (on the advice of May or not) feeling that on second thought Britishers don’t want Brexit. Is that even remotely probable?
My extremely limited American understanding is that the Queen has maybe one shot at not assenting to a bill presented to her, before Parliament strips even that vestige of power from her.
So the question would be is this the hill she would want to die on? Seems unlikely to me.
She was also in favour of Brexit. Unofficially. Allegedly.
The substantive bit is this
‘I don’t see why we can’t just get out. What’s the problem?’ seems to me to be a question about procedure rather than any statement of desire to leave.
Well, it didn’t to Laura Kuenssberg or, we assume, her source Michael Gove.