Brexit Vote: 51.9% leave, 48.1% stay

[jmt18325]

Or JT.

It's not a protest vote when people actually get what they wanted.

 

[PuckChaser]

It's not a protest vote when people actually get what they wanted.

Yep, everyone that voted Liberal actually voted Liberal, and not just "Whoever was going to beat Stephen Harper".

 

[jollyjacktar]

Yep, everyone that voted Liberal actually voted Liberal, and not just "Whoever was going to beat Stephen Harper".

Although I'd wager there's more than one ABC Veteran who's suffering buyer's regret seeing as they were gulled by false promise.

 

[jmt18325]

Yep, everyone that voted Liberal actually voted Liberal, and not just "Whoever was going to beat Stephen Harper".

The Liberals are the party that Canadians have historically picked to govern them.  I voted for Trudeau rather than against Harper.

 

[YZT580]

I question your sanity then.  Why is everyone so sure that the British screwed up?  They are better off getting out of the EU.  It is called independence and is exactly the same logic that we used when we became a nation in 1867 and why we are not the 51st state.  It is the reason Estonia, Latvia, Finland etc. are glad that they are not part of Russia.  So why are we ridiculing their desire not to be ruled from Brussels.

 

[jmt18325]

I question your sanity then.  Why is everyone so sure that the British screwed up?

Leaving the first comment aside (you'd have to question the sanity of a plurality of Canadians), for the short to medium term, it's definitely difficult to see how this is a plus for the UK.  Economic growth is predicted to go down worldwide because of it.  Companies like Airbus are going to have to examine their operations because of it.  New trade agreements will have to be forged.

Long term, there are also some real negatives.  The move to leave the EU could spark other moves to leave the EU.  The relative peace and security that has taken hold over Europe for the last decade could very well be in danger.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I question your sanity then.  Why is everyone so sure that the British screwed up?  They are better off getting out of the EU.  It is called independence and is exactly the same logic that we used when we became a nation in 1867 and why we are not the 51st state.  It is the reason Estonia, Latvia, Finland etc. are glad that they are not part of Russia.  So why are we ridiculing their desire not to be ruled from Brussels.

"(I)t is highly questionable whether when 'Europe speaks with one voice', as we are so often told it is doing, anyone is really listening. Europe's reputation as a serious player in international affairs is unenviable. It is a feeble giant who desperate attempts to be taken seriously are largely risible. It has a weak currency and a sluggish inflexible economy, still much reliant on hidden protectionism. It has a shrinking, ageing, population and, with the exception of Britain, rather unimpressive armed forces and, not excepting Britain, muddled diplomacy." -- Margaret Thatcher

 

[jollyjacktar]

Leaving the first comment aside (you'd have to question the sanity of a plurality of Canadians), for the short to medium term, it's definitely difficult to see how this is a plus for the UK.  Economic growth is predicted to go down worldwide because of it.  Companies like Airbus are going to have to examine their operations because of it.  New trade agreements will have to be forged.

Long term, there are also some real negatives.  The move to leave the EU could spark other moves to leave the EU.  The relative peace and security that has taken hold over Europe for the last decade could very well be in danger.

Stop sounding like Mark Carney.  The Sky isn't falling, things will get back to normal faster than not.  Britain existed and thrived for centuries before the EU and will do so after the divorce.  They just lost a ton of dead weight like any divorcee and will be healthier for it

 

[jmt18325]

Stop sounding like Mark Carney.  The Sky isn't falling, things will get back to normal faster than not.  Britain existed and thrived for centuries before the EU and will do so after the divorce.  They just lost a ton of dead weight like any divorcee and will be healthier for it

I think I trust Mark Carney a bit more on this issue.

 

[tomahawk6]

I think I trust Mark Carney a bit more on this issue.

Britain gave the EU a chance to see if being governed by Brussels as opposed to London.The majority decided that there was no longer a benefit to remain.If the EU fails it will morph into the Common Market from whence it came.

 

[Kirkhill]

I question your sanity then.  Why is everyone so sure that the British screwed up?  They are better off getting out of the EU.  It is called independence and is exactly the same logic that we used when we became a nation in 1867 and why we are not the 51st state.  It is the reason Estonia, Latvia, Finland etc. are glad that they are not part of Russia.  So why are we ridiculing their desire not to be ruled from Brussels.

YZT

I am coming to believe that the problem lies in forgetting the names of Farel, Zwingli, Calvin and Knox.  Three hundred years of struggle against the Papacy, Gallicans, Lutherans, Anglicans, all of whom accept that authority and manna come from above and need an enlightened, occasionally benevolent, class of priests to interpret the laities needs to them as they are unable to do it for themselves. 

Farel et al, the good citizens of Zurich and Geneva, the Sea Beggars, the Dutch, the Palatines, the Huguenots and the Covenanters,  all of them, have always presented the exisentential threat to the "interpreters".

After the French revolution the priests became socialists only they developed a new catechism, a new set of rigidly held beliefs.  Fabians met socialists and the socialists met the Quiet Revolution.  And the great and the good stayed in place with new titles and slightly less ostentation.  Lesser clergy became bureaucrats and journalists.

Britain was built on the backs of Farel et al as was the US.  And they are the mob, the populists, that the great and the good have been struggling against ever since.

In my view, the reason for the anger at the upstart Brits is that they thought they had the fire contained, if not suppressed,  And now it seems to have broken out all over again.  And threatens to engulf their projects.

Farel et al promoted universal education - to permit every individual to come to their own conclusions for themselves.

The competition actively suppressed information, reduced education to catechism and controlled access to the priesthood.  It depends on certainties and fears chaos.

I saw an article in the National Post about a French Canadian professor visiting at Oxford in Political Science.  He was shocked at the Brexit vote.  His comment summarizes the problem.  This professor of Political Science said, despairingly, "I don't understand the majority of the electorate".

Britain's first Labour Prime Minister:

MacDonald was born at Gregory Place, Lossiemouth, Morayshire, Scotland, the illegitimate son of John MacDonald, a farm labourer, and Anne Ramsay, a housemaid.[4

Ramsay MacDonald received an elementary education at the Free Church of Scotland school in Lossiemouth from 1872 to 1875, and then at Drainie parish school. He left school at the end of the summer term in 1881, at the age of 15, and began work on a nearby farm.[7] He was not to be destined for a working life in agriculture. In December 1881 he was appointed as a pupil teacher at Drainie parish school (the entry in the school register of staff recording him as 'J. MacDonald')

Ramsay MacDonald was a product of the society created by Farel, Zwingli, Calvin and Knox.  A society where the world's first lending library was opened to allow lead miners to educate themselves in the hills of Ayrshire.  A society that promoted egalitarianism through the Women's Institute, the Co-Op, the Masons and the Labour Party - all of them subscribed by articulate working men and women - like Ramsay Macdonald, Keir Hardie, my great grandfather, secretary treasurer of the South Ayrshire Labour Party and my grandfather, mason and elder of the kirk.

And no an elitist amang them all.

 

[Kirkhill]

Stop sounding like Mark Carney.  The Sky isn't falling, things will get back to normal faster than not.  Britain existed and thrived for centuries before the EU and will do so after the divorce.  They just lost a ton of dead weight like any divorcee and will be healthier for it

:goodpost:

 

[jollyjacktar]

I think I trust Mark Carney a bit more on this issue.

Feel free to listen to that broken record to your heart's content.  The Sun will still continue to rise in the morning.

 

[jmt18325]

Feel free to listen to that broken record to your heart's content.  The Sun will still continue to rise in the morning.

It's not a question of that, but of it's relative brightness.

 

[jollyjacktar]

I am a pessimist by nature, but Carney only seems to have one song in his repertoire and he makes me look like the worlds biggest optimist.  So far, his doom and gloom have not materialized with what he was crowing for Canada etc.  I stand by my beliefs that his over the top performance being, just that, over the top.

 

[Kirkhill]

I continue to be surprised at the vehemence with which the Brits are being anathematized by the establishment voices.  I thought we were long past that in our liberal, secular, enlightened world.

If the United Kingdom does leave the EU, some wonder, who might be next? And if others do abandon Brussels, how long can the union itself survive?

Those aren’t specious fears. Euro-skepticism is on the rise in many parts of the continent. According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, support for the EU fell by 17 percentage points in France last year, 16 percentage points in Spain and eight percentage points in Germany. Among residents of 10 EU countries surveyed by Pew, only 51 per cent viewed the union favourably. An overwhelming majority of those surveyed, meanwhile, disapproved of the EU’s handling of the refugee crisis. And a majority or plurality in nine of the 10 countries told Pew they wanted some powers returned from Brussels to their national governments.

The factors driving that discontent are economic, political and sometimes inchoate. The refugee crisis and the lingering hangover from the 2008 financial collapse have both played significant roles. But so too has the EU’s own unshakeable image as a faceless, meddling bureaucracy, said Jeffrey Kopstein, a professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine. “Somehow it’s been sold as a project that’s distant and non-democratic,” he said.

Kopstein thinks that image is mostly myth. But it has been a remarkably intractable one. The Brussels suit, imposing regulation from on high, has been the key straw man for populists and nationalists across the continent for years.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/0625-fo-eu

It occurs to me that the first argument against the Brits is the group version of the ad hominem attack designed to discredit "the other".

In this case we are talking about:

Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson - "court jesters"
Old folks - "out of touch and irrelevant"
Leavers - "racists"
Brits in General - "Brits" - roast beef, garlic and frogs have been the basis of political discourse for centuries.
Foreign supporters - "Racists", "anglo-saxons", "neo-liberals", "fascists" and worst of all "populists"

Alinski Rules

RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

Maybe there should be less time on the ridicule and more time spent trying to understand their point of view and their take on "The Brussels Suit", the mythical straw man that Kopstein refers to above.


Backing it up in time again.


1560.

This was a bad year for the good and the great.

After 43 years of dealing with individual cities in Switzerland rising up and deciding they were going to ignore the authority of Rome and its self-declared ability to make and break princes they lost a whole country.

Marie de Guise died.  Scotland was lost to John Knox and the Scots Confession that implemented Calvin's democratic government (since derided by the great and the good as a theocracy).  The Valois heir was briefly taken from the Guise faction by the Huguenot reformers at Amboise and the senior Guise family members arrested by the Coligny faction.  The iconoclast reformers of La Rochelle joined the Scots in tearing down statues of saints.

The great houses of Edinburgh, Paris and Rome were not happy: the Stewarts, the Valois, the Guise, the Medici, the Strossis.

1562

Two years later they picked up on a practice that had been useful earlier.  They set out to exterminate the dissenters.  The Guise faction undertook to massacre the dissenters at Wassy in France.

The open wars between the authorities and the dissenters started and would continue for a few centuries. The date of termination is debatable.

1565

Sweden, which had been one of the first countries to reject the authority of Rome when the Vasas accepted Lutheranism, was also one of the first countries to reject Calvinism as heresy - Calvinism, which preached that authority came from below and that everyman was his own priest.

1566

The Dutch broke out and also rejected Rome and started breaking statues as they too adopted Calvinism.

This is what the great and the good fear.

Having struggled for 500 years against Calvin (forget his peculiar notions on bread and wine and witches etc) they found themselves slowly being able to put themselves back into a position of dispensing, indulging, patronizing and authorizing.

Rome had relocated to Brussels.


Most Brits don't remember this history, although some of us older ones were taught it.  I suppose the same could be said in the Netherlands and Switzerland.  But the cultural memory, the impulses that rejected that centralizing authority are still very much in evidence.  And that, again, is what the great and the good fear.

They, as Orwell suggested, have purloined the word "democrat" and relegate democrats to being mere "populists".

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

You know, it seems to me the UK managed to stump yet one more attempt at European dominion by the French or German.

In the last few centuries, the French first tried to dominate Europe by conquest - but Napoleon was ultimately defeated by the Russian and the Anglo-saxon nations, with some assistance from the German. Then, the German thought "Hey! that's a great idea, but we should be the dominator", and the Kaiser's forces were defeated by the Russians and Anglo-saxon nations, with the assistance of the French this time. And the german tried again under Hitler and again were defeated by the Russians and the Anglo-saxon nations, with the French pretty much staying on the sideline this time but still vying to reap the spoils of victory.

Anyhow, the French and the German got together after this and they basically decided "we should stop fighting between the two of us and just work together to dominate Europe. We don't have to worry about Russia this time - they have their block and the USA are keeping them in check, so we only have to watch for the Anglo-saxons, so we have to be sly".

And so they started with a very innocuous sounding little ploy called the European Coal and Steel Community.

Well, we know how that developed! And now, they have been foiled again by the Anglo-saxons 

[

 

[Eaglelord17]

The Liberals are the party that Canadians have historically picked to govern them.

I completely disagree with this statement. Yes the Liberals have historically governed for slightly longer, that being said it is only slightly longer. Roughly 20 years more of governing out of 149 years isn't that much. The other part that is interesting is that the early Liberal party has more in common with the current Conservative party than it does with its more modern descendant. The whole natural governing party argument I really don't place much stock in.

 

[cavalryman]

Aaaannnnd, now they want a do over.

More than 2.5M sign Brexit do-over petition

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/06/25/nearly-25m-sign-brexit-do-over-petition/86385466/

Come on people, you should have thought about this before we left! :facepalm:

Perhaps not
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/06/hah-liberal-media-pranked-4chan-poll-second-eu-referendum-totally/

 

[Kirkhill]

A point on Brexit negotiations - the Schedule.

The Euromats are pushing hard to have the Brits start negotiations immediately and start a two year clock.  If the button were pushed now the clock would run out in June 2018.  It will likely be the end of the year before the Brits can get a negotiating team in place.  That pushes the resolution date out to Dec 2018.

Meanwhile the following things happen:

Elections in Lithuania this October
Elections in Romania in December
Elections in Netherlands in Mar 2017
Elections in France in Apr 2017
Elections in Iceland in Apr 2017
Elections in Germany in Oct 2017
Elections in Luxembourg in Oct 2017
Elections in Czechia in Oct 2017
Elections in Italy in Feb 2018
Elections in Cyprus in Feb 2018
Elections in Hungary in Apr 2018
Elections in Malta in Jun 2018
Elections in Sweden in Sep 2018
Elections in Latvia in Oct 2018
Elections in Bulgaria in Oct 2018

17 out of 27 countries are in positions of possibly changing their instructions to the Euromats of the EU negotiating team.

Some are at risk of pulling out of the association completely.

Some are keen to have Britain continue to show leadership on the Eastern Flank of NATO.

Some would appreciate retaining access to Britain regardless.

It is being argued that Britain is short of negotiators. No.  Whitehall is short of negotiators.  Britain has some of the most successful negotiators on the planet.  They just all happen to be in the private sector.  I am sure that there is at least one City of London banker, or a Richard Bransom entrepreneur, willing to take on the challenge.

And other cards the Brits may have to play?  Free trade with India?  With China? Hong Kong? Singapore? Australia? Switzerland? Norway?.....How about Turkey and Ukraine?

I don't think Canada is in the cards with our current government.  The previous government under PM Harper would have moved to support Britain.  Our current PM is ideologically more in tune with the Euromats of Brussels.  He won't be signing any bilateral treaties with Britain anytime soon.

And our next election will happen in 2019, after the Article 50 negotiations terminate - and about the same time that the Euromats have to face their electors directly.