Ooops! It seems you have to check your facts here.
Well past three million now, and growing by the tens of thousands every hour:
And now it’s up 15,000 more. About 1000 new signatures per minute.
Welcome to post-rational right-wing populism. Britain is not the only English-speaking country affected by such politics.
I actually thought I made up that factoid out of my own imagination, but apparently not…
BTW, one can come up with a WAG why somebody might want to enact legislation for the bendiness of produce. The rule might be aimed at sale of cucumbers and other produce to food processors rather than end consumers. Pickle companies, for instance, might like to ensure that the cucumbers they buy aren’t too bendy because automated processing and packaging equipment will have trouble with them if they are. Whether that would better left to individual companies and trade organizations to negotiate with their suppliers directly rather than having a government regulation is another question, of course.
{insert old joke about about pickle slicers here, if you must}
This isn’t even close to a good analogy to what is happening. It’s more like quitting your job, burning down your house, announcing that you don’t intend to honor your financial obligations, and telling most of your closest initimates that you don’t want to be good friends any more.
“Moral support” isn’t going to help Britain through this. They can certainly “stand on their own two feet,” Britain is the 5th largest economy in the world. But leaving the EU will still have damaging consequences.
6th.
the administration is free to ignore the referendum at their peril, or by calculated political cunning. More likely, there will be a call for a general election, with the one party (or both major ones) saying “elect us and we will cancel Brexit.” If so, and if they win, they have a mandate to ignore the referendum. (If they win…)
Keep in mind, this is the usual “referendum” in parliamentary democracies. Vote for our party and should we win, we will implement X policy.
= = =
When Quebec almost decided to leave Canada, way back when, the general consensus outside of the separatists was: A referendum vote to significantly disrupt the status quo should have a solid majority, not 50%+1. (60% was kicked around). Similarly (Scotland?) if some distinct areas vote overwhelmingly to remain, they should have the option. This was of course, an attempt to break away from a country not a treaty union, but the principle is the same. The natives, majority occupants of the vast northern territories, wanted Canada not Quebec. If polls can vary by several percent one way or another, then a referendum cannot be relied upon as the sober and permanent and well-considered decision of the electorate; it could come down to a popularity contest of the competing sides’ leaders rather than the deeper issues. We see this currently - some people thoroughly misunderstood what they were voting for and what the alternative could bring.
Also, the Quebec referendum was a statement of principle. “Do you want us to negotiate an exit?” It was understood (perhaps not correctly) that the final deal would be subject to a second referendum before anything permanent happened.
Disagree. While the UK looms large within European economies, it’s not in the EU’s interest to give us a special better-than-any-country-currently-has deal, which would only encourage others to leave.
And I don’t see why the US or China, say, would be in any hurry to cut some special deal. Of course they will want good relations with the UK and continuing access to UK markets, but the superpowers will have all the bargaining power in any negotiations.
Well, yes, you can make a case for qualified majority requirements (or other barriers) that have to be surmounted before a significant status quo is changed. The thing is, though, I think for that case to have any legitimacy you have to set it out, and have it accepted or at least understood, before you have your vote. Arguing for it afterwards just looks too much like a desperate attempt to escape from a political reality that you have created, but you don’t like.
You could, though, say that there is a hurdle built into the UK system, by virtue of how the UK constitution works. As frequently noted, the referendum is neither self-executing nor legally binding. Legally and constitutionally, Parliament must take note of it (or not) and then decide how to act. And you could at least mount an argument that the job of Parliament is now to require the executive to negotiate exit terms with the EU, and then decide if it’s in the best interests of the UK to exit on the terms that are available, and whether the referendum amounts to a sufficient mandate either to permit, or to require, the UK to exit on those terms. So the hurdle is not just a majority vote in a referendum on the question of principle, but a considered decision by Parliament on the actual exit, when the terms are known.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view, the British political establishment pretty well gave away that argument in advance, too, since both major parties committed to respect and implement the outcome of the referendum, whatever it might be. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the referendum creates a mandate to leave the EU on the best terms available, regardless of how good they actually are.
The other problem, of course, is that the EU won’t play ball. They won’t negotiate exit terms until Britain serves notice of intention to exit, this being the exit mechanism which the EU treaties provide. But once Britain serves notice of intention to exit, then exit (on terms that may be agreed but, failing agreement, on default terms) will inevitably follow, unless all 28 members states agree that the UK can change its mind and remain after all. In other words, once this particular ball starts rolling, it’s no longer within the power of the UK parliament not to exit, so they can’t promote a second referendum which offers “let’s not exit after all!” as an option.
And the third factor which puts the kibosh on such an approach is the incandescent rage of the pro-Brexit crowd, should the prize be snatched away from them by Parliament after the people have voted for exit in a referendum which the establishment promoted, and which the establishment promised to respect. Why is this rage a problem? Because it means that, even if the UK did remain in the EU, it would continue to be an unstable, reluctant, carping, cynical, will-we-or-won’t-we, shall-we-have-another-referendum? kind of member. And I can’t see the EU-27 wanting to prolong UK membership on those terms.
5th. If you say that the EU-xUK is a “country” with GDP larger than UK’s, then to be consistent you have to ignore EU-member Germany.
Scaled by local “purchasing power,” UK’s GDP is tied for ninth with France. Now India, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia all score ahead of UK. (And China edges out U.S.A. for the #1 slot.)
Wrong. The fundamental reason you do a trade deal is to do more exports and buy your imports cheaper and other economic reasons. These are they types of criteria you use to determine if a deal is in your own best interest–not whether it encourages or discourages countries to leave.
The EU would be better off being a smaller group of countries all committed to closer integration rather than a larger group of countries with several only in it for trade issues and who block the EU from doing other things–the current situation. Thus I think the best solution is a contraction of the EU and an expansion of the EFTA (with EFTA adding trade in services and other single market issues and dropping people movement).
This Norwegian would never agree to that. No trade deal without people movement. I think the vast majority of us agrees.
The right to live and work in all of the EU has been one of the tangible benefits of the EFTA, to the regular guy. Without it, I don’t think a new free trade agreement is politically possible.
I agree that economic grounds are the fundamental reason for trade, however that doesn’t preclude other criteria / factors. Otherwise, why wouldn’t the EU simply offer everyone free access to the market without any obligations?
Regardless, the simple fact of the matter is that the EU does typically impose restrictions and obligations on access to their market and I see no reason why they would bend over backwards to make an exception for the UK.
Trade barriers between the UK and EU would hurt the EU a lot, but it would hurt the UK more; we’re in no position to dictate terms.
And, like I say, wanting to keep stability is also a factor.
Yes, I get the feeling that much of the Brexit vote was based on the idea that the rest of the EU will quickly realize their mistake and either implode completely or switch to a different model.
Personally I doubt it, but even if true, we could be talking decades of economic turmoil.
The result is in, and changing it by effectively hijacking or ignoring this vote would be the very worst option of all.
This is saying that we can set aside any decision just because we don’t think it fits in with a notional ‘correct’ view. How far would that extend, though to a general election?
Maybe we could look at a change to the voting system, the ‘first past the post’ has been very obviously unrepresentative, however, it also must be appreciated that our current voting system has kept single issue politics at bay and this includes Brexit.
Here is the reality, whilst some folks are having second thought, the campaign to stay in the EU had every possible advantage to influence the electorate. It had the full financial campaign resources that the UK could put behind it, it had all the media coverage it could possibly need, it had the support of all of the big players in British politics from both sides of the house, it had 100% access and use of of the full state resources of public sector workers to produce material and data, plus it also had comments from other EU ministers.
Give all the massive advantages that the ‘REMAIN’ campaign had, this was very much an asymmetric referendum.
Despite all this, the REMAIN campaign could not convince enough Britons to vote for it.
This surely shows just how strong the anti-EU feeling was, before the campaign was started.
We are still living in a climate of fear and regret, when actually we need to get over it, and get on with working on our future.
I have noted a number of things that EU ministers have stated that actually support the view of the anti Euros who did not want further integration.
Really? I don’t have the insight to know the motivations of over 17m people.
Thanks.