Brexit - The UK leaves the EU

[Johnnypenso]

These are my irrelevant opinions on a subject I don’t understand, let’s debate!

If GTP had a kissing emoji I’d be using it now, just for you.

If your opinions are irrelevant and you don't understand the subject, why are you debating?

 

[TheCracker]

If Remain had won, this contention would be the subject of much mockery and ridicule, of that I have no doubt.

Had the shoe been on the other foot and Remain had won, if evidence had arisen to say that the Remain campaign had broken the rules in the same way you can bet your bottom dollar that those who supported Leave (and lost) would be calling foul play and asking for it to be looked into. Of that i have no doubt.

 

[Tired Tyres]

I always had trouble to understand why at least half of the UK's people would want to leave the EU, but after two years of reading the DT's readers' comments I think I understand now.

IMHO, simple explanations are usually wrong but, by cutting through the complexities of any given person's motivations, they at least give you an hint of a common denominator, and that one tends to be, in the end, the deepest and strongest tie between all the personal decisions. So, according to my "feel" on this, in the end, it is nostalgia of a former, but lost, superiority that makes the UK's people so angry at EU bureacrats, EU red tapes, and ultimately, fearful of becoming the lesser brother, or not the greatest of them, in a brotherhood. Such a status is not acceptable in the collective, maybe not entirely conscious, mind of the british people. And therefore if or when other are in charge, or "call the shots", it becomes a dictatorship.

I know for a fact how portuguese still are still nostalgicly proud over the fact that we were the first navigators to sail and find new worlds, all the way from the western shores of Europe to Japan, how our own overseas empire (first and last, we only gave up the big African territories in 1975), even if smaller than the British, emcompassed all continents bar Antartica. It is deeply engraved in our collective memory and in the way we see ourselves, quietly proud about it all.

So it isn't hard to understand how a country that only recently lost superpower status is having it hard to be just one (even if one of the gretatest) in a collective group, having to share political decisions and not having the final say in many of them.

I can understand all that. But …

I can't understand the total chaos that is now happening. Seen from the outsiders perspective, the current state of affairs appears to be the one of a country that faces a HUGE challenge, is bitterly divided about it, can't decide how to tackle it, and didn't prepare for any of the inevitable scenarios that whatever option is chosen will present.

And I'm not even talking about the funny scenes from the last few days at the UK's Parliament. I'm talking about serious stuff, like the UK preparing for having proper customs, adequately sized to cope with the loss of "frictionless trade".

If you compare that with the preparations taking place by the EU countries, the contrast is boggling. The UK is the one getting out, and it is the other countries that prepare for it. Here one of the many recent reports about it:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...hard-brexit-uk-hire-staff-dutch-a8452386.html

A significant part of the Conservative types in this country sometimes have to be reminded that we don't have the empire anymore. That is part of what drives the hard exit idiots (far and away the most likely outcome by the way) The Conservative party is part "I like the EU", part "I hate the EU" The Labour party is part centre group pro EU and part left wing customs union full access but no membership idiots.

The PM is trying to sell second class status where we have to do as our EU masters say. Your confused by this? Try living here. We don't understand it either.

 

[Touring Mars]

It's obviously my opinion so I don't need evidence. It's a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money to even consider it and just a blatant attempt to nullify perfectly legal results.

While I do agree that the effect of a campaign overspend is difficult (if not impossible) to determine, and I respect your opinion that the overspend in this case didn't have a meaningful influence on the result, I take issue with the bolded phrase.

The fact that the winning side has broken electoral law by overspending by £500,000 (or 7.15% more than the legal limit) calls into question what would otherwise have been a 'perfectly legitimate' result. The fact that the law has been broken in the process of achieving said result means that calling it 'perfectly legal' is completely wrong, even if it remains to be seen whether or not the result is still legitimate regardless of the fact that the law has been broken.

I would agree that a 'perfectly legitimate' result should not be contested and that it would constitute a 'waste' of taxpayers' money to re-run a vote if that were the case - but it isn't. Conversely, the previous vote can be considered a waste of taxpayers' money because the result may well have been rendered illegitimate because one side chose to break electoral law; thus the re-run would not be a waste of taxpayers' money. But even if it were to be considered so, it is small beer in the grand scheme of things - Brexit is going to cost the Great British taxpayer far, far more, thus a re-run that might stave off a very costly and damaging mistake might just end up saving the average UK taxpayer a small fortune.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Yes the legal limit was breached but I don't believe for a second that $0.01 per voter had any measureable effect on the result. I don' t think a court would either.

That's a worthless interpretation IMHO...

It might cost roughly £20,000 to put a 30 second ad on prime time TV here in the UK. There are 27,000,000 households with a TV in the UK and an average of 2.3 people per household...so that's a reach of 62,100,000 PEOPLE per advert, and you can hit those people 25 times for that £500,000 overspend.... so that's potentially 1,552,500,000 impressions you will make on voters.

edit: ... just to be clear, this is also an example of rubbish, fag packet stats.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Had the shoe been on the other foot and Remain had won, if evidence had arisen to say that the Remain campaign had broken the rules in the same way you can bet your bottom dollar that those who supported Leave (and lost) would be calling foul play and asking for it to be looked into. Of that i have no doubt.

Of course, inevitably there would be attempts by either side to delegitimize the results of such a close vote based on any little misstep no matter how significant it may be. But 1.3 million votes swayed by $600k in advertising? $0.01 per voter? C'mon..

And of course it needs to be brought to light and discussed and debated no matter who is involved. The question is, for me anyway, did it actually have any measurable influence on the vote? If it had no measurable influence on the vote the results should stand. If you are going to simply make it a point of principle and use no judgement or relative measurement whatsoever, then the next vote could also be overturned on a point of principle no matter how small. "Oh look, there's a Remain voter stuffing a ballot box, let's do this again!! ..and on and on and on and on it would go.

 

[Touring Mars]

I always had trouble to understand why at least half of the UK's people would want to leave the EU, but after two years of reading the DT's readers' comments I think I understand now.

IMHO, simple explanations are usually wrong but, by cutting through the complexities of any given person's motivations, they at least give you an hint of a common denominator, and that one tends to be, in the end, the deepest and strongest tie between all the personal decisions. So, according to my "feel" on this, in the end, it is nostalgia of a former, but lost, superiority that makes the UK's people so angry at EU bureacrats, EU red tapes, and ultimately, fearful of becoming the lesser brother, or not the greatest of them, in a brotherhood. Such a status is not acceptable in the collective, maybe not entirely conscious, mind of the british people. And therefore if or when other are in charge, or "call the shots", it becomes a dictatorship.

I know for a fact how portuguese still are still nostalgicly proud over the fact that we were the first navigators to sail and find new worlds, all the way from the western shores of Europe to Japan, how our own overseas empire (first and last, we only gave up the big African territories in 1975), even if smaller than the British, emcompassed all continents bar Antartica. It is deeply engraved in our collective memory and in the way we see ourselves, quietly proud about it all.

So it isn't hard to understand how a country that only recently lost superpower status is having it hard to be just one (even if one of the gretatest) in a collective group, having to share political decisions and not having the final say in many of them.

This is definitely one side of the coin - the flip side is that EU membership isn't what it used to be either.

The Euro has in effect sealed the UK's EU fate... in principle it ought not to have made much of a difference - the UK is, after all, not in the Eurozone. But in practice, the Euro has forced the EU down a path of ever-closer integration i.e. the polar opposite direction to where the UK sees itself.

I suspect that the UK will not be the only country in the EU that turns out to have a limit to ever-closer integration, but the UK may turn out to be the only one that was able to leave...

$0.01 per voter? C'mon..

Are you reading any of the posts that have explained why this is a meaningless figure??

-

Meanwhile, the first rumblings from Brussels regarding Theresa May's white paper on Brexit are emerging, and (shock, horror) they are not sounding too good...

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ys-white-paper-heightens-no-deal-brexit-fears

“The white paper is not going to form the basis of the negotiations,” one senior EU diplomat told the Guardian

 

[Hun200kmh]

The question is, for me anyway, did it actually have any measurable influence on the vote?

How much did the "Let's fund the NHS Instead" Bus cost? If it was 500.000 £ or less, you have your answer there. That bus alone won the referendum.

 

[baldgye]

Had the shoe been on the other foot and Remain had won, if evidence had arisen to say that the Remain campaign had broken the rules in the same way you can bet your bottom dollar that those who supported Leave (and lost) would be calling foul play and asking for it to be looked into. Of that i have no doubt.

Also, as I linked too in my reply to Jonny that he ignored. Farage, the champion of Leave said that regardless of whether Remain had broken the law, if it was a close win for Remain, they would have challenged the vote.

So even the idea that just because Remain lost, this is being pushed as a big deal is idiotic at best and ignorant at worse.


I also like Jonny’s assertion that half a million dollars of advertising is the same as zero dollars of advertising

 

[Touring Mars]

Also, as I linked too in my reply to Jonny that he ignored. Farage, the champion of Leave said that regardless of whether Remain had broken the law, if it was a close win for Remain, they would have challenged the vote.

Not only that, but he even specifically cited 52 - 48 as being close enough to merit another referendum...

 

[TheCracker]

How much did the "Let's fund the NHS Instead" Bus cost? If it was 500.000 £ or less, you have your answer there. That bus alone won the referendum.

Which is ironic given that the whole concept was complete BS.

 

[TRGTspecialist]

I always had trouble to understand why at least half of the UK's people...

...but after two years of reading the DT's readers' comments

That seems like a bit of a silly way to judge public opinion.........why not just look to opinion polls?

https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/
https://whatukthinks.org/eu/opinion-polls/uk-poll-results/

The fact that the winning side has broken electoral law by overspending by £500,000

I'm being pedantic here but to be precise I'd say it's the designated lead campaign group on the winning side that has broken electoral law. Doesn't change the fact that electoral law was broken obviously, but it's an important enough distinction if what effect "spending more" during a referendum may have is being discussed. The Remain side actually outspent the Leave side by a few million, mainly due to support from parties like Labour and the Lib Dems which have their own spending limit rules. The other side of the coin of course is that the Leave side's overspend was able to be done by (arguably) the single most prominent and public-facing campaign group.

 

[baldgye]

Looks like BOJO is going all in on a run for Tory leader.
If he can rally the Brexiters behind him, he could very well split the party. All he needs to do is fight anything she proposes or anything the party Remainers would try to support.

The Tories it seem, have setup the playing field up, now it’s up Labour to see how they want to play.

 

[Liquid]

The Tories it seem, have setup the playing field up, now it’s up Labour to see how they want to play.

 

[factchecker]

The UK should have left it already, but their greedy and self-entitled politicians are delaying the process on purpose.

 

[TenEightyOne]

The UK should have left it already, but their greedy and self-entitled politicians are delaying the process on purpose.

Your facts need more thorough checking - even if every single point had been agreed the UK couldn't possibly leave before the Article 50 timer is complete.

 

[Touring Mars]

It's deeply frustrating how the FT lock their content behind a very high paywall, but there content is usually of very high quality.

I just discovered that I have full access to FT through my work I wish someone had told me that 5 years ago Apparently we also get free access to The Guardian and The Telegraph which I already subscribe to, albeit for very different reasons... The Guardian has full, free access anyway but I pay for it because I think it is worth it - I subscribed to the Telegraph for 1 year to follow their EU/Brexit coverage - and I got a free FitBit that was worth the same price as the subscription Ironically, my old FitBit finally broke yesterday and today is my first day wearing my Torygraph FitBit!

The FT is frustratingly expensive though - something like £250 a year for basic access, compared to £11 a month for the Guardian and £99 for 1 year of full access to the Telegraph.

 

[baldgye]

I just discovered that I have full access to FT through my work I wish someone had told me that 5 years ago Apparently we also get free access to The Guardian and The Telegraph which I already subscribe to, albeit for very different reasons... The Guardian has full, free access anyway but I pay for it because I think it is worth it - I subscribed to the Telegraph for 1 year to follow their EU/Brexit coverage - and I got a free FitBit that was worth the same price as the subscription Ironically, my old FitBit finally broke yesterday and today is my first day wearing my Torygraph FitBit!

The FT is frustratingly expensive though - something like £250 a year for basic access, compared to £11 a month for the Guardian and £99 for 1 year of full access to the Telegraph.

Y’see... all this time I liked and respected you... and now all that’s gone, replaced by anger and resentment! Hahaha

Yeah... I want a digital subscription for the FT, but it’s way too expensive for me... and I don’t read it enough to justify that expense, so I just pony up for monthly access when it’s on offer and then cancel the renewal

 

[TRGTspecialist]

today is my first day wearing my Torygraph FitBit!

Think I need one of those myself - before exercise I'm usually fairly strong and stable, but after I'm all weak and wobbly.....

 

[Touring Mars]

So far today I have taken 3000 steps forward - and 6000 steps back.

 

[Famine]

The Remain side actually outspent the Leave side by a few million, mainly due to support from parties like Labour and the Lib Dems which have their own spending limit rules. The other side of the coin of course is that the Leave side's overspend was able to be done by (arguably) the single most prominent and public-facing campaign group.

Remain outspent Leave by around £5m... but only if you limit it to the official campaigns and forget one quite important thing...


... which was that the then-Cameron government spent £9.3m on a leaflet titled "Why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK".

I'm not sure that, to the average voter, who was the official Remain/Leave campaign and who wasn't is all that relevant - it was just a bunch of politicians and Eddie Izzard - so I do find it quite interesting that "Leave" is the one legally found to have broken spending rules* when "Remain" spent literally twice as much money.




*The particular ruling here is that the official "Vote Leave" campaign, which spent £6.79m, exceeded the maximum £7m spend, by working officially with BeLeave, which spent £675k with a data intelligence service, taking the "Vote Leave" spend to £7.45m. The official "In Campaign" spent £6.77m; seems tiny next to the £9.3m leaflet campaign for remain, doesn't it?

 

[Liquid]

Campaign spending is always going to be tricky. And neither "side" is immune to it, nor is it something new; it was brought to my attention by Michael Crick that, for example, when Labour contested the Wirral South by-election in 1997 they allegedly overspent by a magnitude of 2,000%.



He went on to say that he covered this on a Newsnight dated February 1997.

 

[Touring Mars]

This really belongs in the Funny News Stories thread (albeit only because it is so laughable that it is actually quite funny) but apparently the EU are unhappy because UK officials have apparently botched the translation of the government's White Paper on Brexit - thus far, the full 100-page document has only been translated into one other language - Welsh. They also failed to translate the executive summary (the key points of document) into Irish, which considering one of the main sticking points relates to the Irish border, is a bit of an oversight.

 

[DK]

Meh, it's not like we're stuck with our civil service of fadó, when one needed Irish to work there.

 

[baldgye]

This is kind of a weird and great thing if the worst does come to pass, assuming this happens of course .

And a letter of no confidence has been written to May by a Tory MP backbencher

 

[Hun200kmh]

Be prepared …

https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/inf...-preparing-withdrawal-brexit-preparedness.pdf

 

[TenEightyOne]

Remain outspent Leave by around £5m... but only if you limit it to the official campaigns and forget one quite important thing...


... which was that the then-Cameron government spent £9.3m on a leaflet titled "Why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK".

I'm not sure that, to the average voter, who was the official Remain/Leave campaign and who wasn't is all that relevant - it was just a bunch of politicians and Eddie Izzard - so I do find it quite interesting that "Leave" is the one legally found to have broken spending rules* when "Remain" spent literally twice as much money.




*The particular ruling here is that the official "Vote Leave" campaign, which spent £6.79m, exceeded the maximum £7m spend, by working officially with BeLeave, which spent £675k with a data intelligence service, taking the "Vote Leave" spend to £7.45m. The official "In Campaign" spent £6.77m; seems tiny next to the £9.3m leaflet campaign for remain, doesn't it?

As I understand it anybody supporting the Leave campaign was free to do the same thing at the same time, the legal question was to do with spending during the purdah - or so I thought?

 

[baldgye]

As I understand it anybody supporting the Leave campaign was free to do the same thing at the same time, the legal question was to do with spending during the purdah - or so I thought?

I don't understand the electoral law, but one has to imagine, given the funding and backing Leave had, it has the resources to push for an investigation into Remain too... though if both sides where found to have broken the law, wouldn't that only serve to further invalidate the result?

 

[Liquid]

if both sides where found to have broken the law, wouldn't that only serve to further invalidate the result?

Or validate it because both sides tried to cheat. It's 'fair' if both did.

 

[baldgye]

Or validate it because both sides tried to cheat. It's 'fair' if both did.

Yeah maybe, but then you'd have thought they would have pushed that?
Like I understand that Remain spent more, but it seems odd to me that if Remain had possibly broken the law, why was only Leave investigated. And when Leave was investigated, instead of trying to lodge complaints against Remain, they simply tried to hinder the investigation and mislead the investigators.

Meanwhile, May is due to make a speech in Northern Ireland regarding the boarder and;

German Europe minister Michael Roth has said it is difficult to be positive about sorting out Brexit, amid the current political turmoil in Britain.
When asked if the UK's proposals for its future relationship with the EU were workable, he said: "That is the one million euro question."
Mr Roth was also asked if the British political situation made him more or less optimistic about the prospect of a deal.

"I will remain an optimist, but it's hard to be an optimist in these challenging times," he said.
Mr Roth added: "We are extremely aware of the current situation.
"Nobody wants to punish the British government or the British people, not at all.
"We are negotiating on the basis of the guidelines.
"But guidelines are no red lines, but we are committed to these guidelines for the next negotiations.
"Time is running out, the clock is ticking and that's why I am a little bit nervous."

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