I wonder why every single article is just about what a clusterf*ck Brexit is, and not about who might be behind it and who are the actual benefiters of it.
I'd be interested in that. Obviously a lot of ordinary people voted for it but there was a lot of prodding from the Express, Daily Mail and Murdoch's papers, plus Russia. Russia's easy to figure - they wanted to disunite the EU so it's less able to oppose them. Not sure about the newspaper owners.
The EU is doing a pretty good job of disuniting itself without help from outside what with eurozone woes and consequent blight of mass youth unemployment in many countries, unilateral adoption of mass immigration by Germany, interference in sovereignty of Hungary, Poland, etc.
>>unilateral adoption of mass immigration by Germany
If you actually followed what happened, there was a vote on accepting the immigration numbers and every member state of EU accepted them. I don't know what you're reading, but Germany didn't "unilateraly" accept anything here.
>>interference in sovereignty of Hungary, Poland
You mean, pointing out to Poland that it's slipping into far-right fascist state and that maybe this is not acceptable for a EU member state?
You are seriously claiming that Merkel did not play THE key role in setting immigration policy across the EU? That seems to go against what most reasonable sources conclude.
As regards Poland I think perhaps you are believing what you see in the MSM rather than taking things with the pinch of salt they deserve. Putting the MSM to one side there are plenty of commentators that consider recent EU actions towards Poland as an unprecedented interference with sovereignty. Also you are verging on Godwin's law with this assertion: 'slipping into far-right fascist state'. Have you actually looked at photos of the recent march? Protestors had anti-communist AND anti-nazi flags.
You are playing with words now. First you say "unilateral adoption of mass migration by Germany" and then you say that Merkel had a key role in setting the policy. These two are not the same.
As for Poland - And why do you think protesters had those flags? Maybe because current government is enacting policies that are reminiscent of the fascist ones? You can see it in education, in foreign policy, in how the local governments are managed - the ruling party wants to keep everything in hand and labels anyone who is against them as unpatriotic and "not a true Pole". Macierewicz is telling young people to "fight the external, and internal enemy that is already here" - that's not what I want to see in my country. If EU stops that from happening - more power to them.
No, you are the one playing semantics. The consensus is that Merkel forced mass immigration on the rest of the EU. Look how well that went down in recent elections in Germany - she barely escaped and only after an unprecedented intervention by the president.
Personally I'm on the side of Poland in resisting the globalism-at-all-costs push. One could just as easily describe the 'accept mass immigration and fuck your population's feelings' attitude of the EU as a form of fascism.
Carole Cadwalladr has been doing very good work on this in the Observer (the Guardian's Sunday sister paper, but with a substantially independent staff even though its content appears online at theguardian.com).
Slightly on the positive there was a poll published last weekend in the Mail of all places saying
"And there is clear support for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal. One in two say there should be a second vote when all the talking is done, against 34 per cent who are opposed."
I mean if we can see what is actually on the table and the majority of voters still want it then I guess fair enough. It seems iffy though to ram Brexit through regardless of how bad it is on the basis of an ill informed vote a while back.
Please don't make threads degenerate even further by posting like this.
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political battle. That's not what this site is for, indeed it outright damages what the site is for, so we ban accounts that do it regardless of their politics. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them when posting here. We've had to warn you multiple time; that sequence is finite.
I find it hard to conjure up a realistic scenario where there is enough time to hold a second referendum before March 2019. Just getting a majority to agree on holding it, and on the exact question to be asked, seems hard enough. And getting the EU to agree on how to handle a reversal would be a giant can of worms on top of Brexit negotiations.
The EU would probably be up for extending the deadline and cancelling the whole thing. The main argument against a vote at the end has been the EU would give us a crappy deal to make us stay.
Complete hatchet-job of an article that I couldn't even bother completing reading.
Corbyn impressive? The man who has never met a terrorist he didn't approve of and who has never missed a chance at running the UK down.
The author is just another metropolitan liberal having a temper tantrum that working class people voted to leave a corrupt (and declining) bureaucracy in which they pay the costs but get none of the benefits.
Why the hostility? Why the conspiracy-theory-worthy hyperbolic statements?
Think about where you are in life and if this sort of attitude is one you want to espouse. Think of what you're projecting there to people who read your comments.
If this is your reaction to reading a viewpoint you challenge, I can't imagine what it must be like to support a different sports team than yours.
Please don't post partisan rants here. Political flamewar is destructive of what this site is supposed to be for. I realize too many other people are already doing it, but that doesn't make it ok to make it worse.
The author's forgetting that there was a referendum. You know, that thing where the populace actually gets to decide democratically on something, for once.
A referendum where the Leave campaign was based on a pack of lies, unfortunately. So many people blamed the EU for their woes, when really they should be looking at the damage the Tories have done to the UK.
Remain too. We were told that on the day after a vote to leave there would be an immediate crash of financial markets and recession. That didn't happen.
The Treasury's document today says: "A vote to leave would cause an immediate and profound economic shock creating instability and uncertainty which would be compounded by the complex and interdependent negotiations that would follow".
Why don't you try to refute my general point? There was FUD on both sides. I'm just seeking to point this out to those with selective memories that bleat on about the £350m claim as if the remain side were whiter than white. They were not! Just accept it.
And after some more research I can confirm the Treasury actually did predict an immediate crash. You are exactly 100% wrong.
I'm not arguing against you. I'm pointing out that you haven't made an argument.
A claim with no documented basis is not an informed one, doesn't add anything to the debate and is useless to everyone involved.
> And after some more research I can confirm the Treasury actually did predict an immediate crash. You are exactly 100% wrong.
Again, you've failed to provide any citation for your claim. Until you provide a citation, readers should disregard your comments as if you haven't said anything.
'How bad could it get? Morgan Stanley warns British stocks could lose nearly 20 percent in a Brexit win scenario. Bank of America Merrill Lynch believes U.S. stocks could lose upwards of 7 percent. Citigroup sees European stocks down 20 percent. Deutsche Bank sees 10 percent downside risk.'
'Unemployment would rocket. Tumbleweed would billow through deserted high streets. Share prices would crash. The government would struggle to find buyers for UK bonds. Financial markets would be in meltdown. Britain would be plunged instantly into another deep recession.
Remember all that? ..It hasn’t worked out that way. ..it is obvious that the sky has not fallen in as a result of the referendum, and those who said it would look a bit silly.'
Somehow I doubt you would be so scrupulous in asking for sources for generally known facts if they were not so inconvenient for your position. I'm also interested to know in what world you think 'immediate and profound economic shock' does not correspond with a stock market crash.
OK so disregard the Treasury then if it makes you happy - my general point stands, despite your effort to split hairs - there was massive concerted lies and deceit from leave, and subsequent 'despite Brexit' stories from the BBC etc in their attempt to distract from the egg on their faces. Care to address the leave FUD directly? I suspect you've exhausted your rhetorical armoury by now.
> ...there was massive concerted lies and deceit from leave...
I assume you meant "remain" there. But in any case: from whom?
So far you've cited an American news network, financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup, and some UK journalists referencing hearsay. In what way did these commentators represent "leave" or "remain"?
On the other side you've got Leave.EU, an actual group campaigning to leave, misleading people with the NHS funding claim on their campaign bus.
You are conflating groups who actually actively campaigned for one side of the referendum with some random general groups who stated an opinion - some of whom are not even associated with the UK!
Of course you're going to be able to find some people who thought that bad things would happen; just as it is possible to find some people who thought that good things would happen. But the ability to find people who had some opinion is meaningless in any debate.
There's a long way to go from there to then claim that people who predicted bad things were "massive concerted lies and deceit" as if that's somehow equivalent to a campaign group misleading voters that at one point aimed to be the officially recognised electoral campaigners for the leave vote.
So no, your general point doesn't stand. You have not demonstrated FUD from the remain side.
Do you honestly believe there was no FUD from the remain side? If so you are obviously a troll or out of touch with reality. There literally hundreds of hits if you google brexit scaremongering or similar that reference scare tactics both within and outside of the UK, but no doubt you will refuse to accept that that proves anything either, so I wish you well with getting back in touch with the real world.
Stop avoiding the question: do you honestly believe there was not FUD from the remain side? I suggested you google brexit scaremongering to enlighten yourself. Did you do that? You are obviously a troll :)
Majority of what? The FUD? In another post I've given a series of links showing some of the crap that was flung around by the remain campaign, of which there was plenty. Bob Geldof on the Thames hurling abuse at Nigel Garage? That was a pretty sight. Eddie Izzard slagging off leave on Question Time didn't look too good either.
And if we are on the topic of lies and deceit let's consider the ongoing campaign to undermine the democratic decision of the British people, quisling puppet Gina Miller, war mongerer Blair et al. Lovely bunch of people. It wouldn't surprise me if the £350m was deliberately planted to give remoaners a weapon to undermine the result.
Please explain your reasoning behind this one, it just sounds like a nonsensical accusation to me. She did everyone a favour by helping to ensure that Parliamentary authority was not compromised.
> remoaners
Not moaning, just very concerned about the huge self-inflicted wound of Brexit and how it's going to damage the UK. I'm just hoping it will go so badly in the negotiations that they're forced to abandon it.
HN is not a place for political battle, nor single-purpose accounts, nor especially single-purpose political battle accounts. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.
"The populace" has shown strong (majority) support for a second referendum, as seen elsewhere in the comments.
Holding a non-binding referendum on a major and complex issue, asking citizens without truly educating them on the issues and consequences, packing campaigns with deceit to swing uninformed votes, all of this only to end up with a near-tie.
What about this is "the will of the people", exactly?
"The people" vote for less crime and less taxes. If you've been spoon-fed that taxes is "because of europe" and that crime is "all them immigrants, because of europe", yeah you're going to vote leave. Of course, when those things don't fucking change, your vote has done diddly-squat for you and, when politicians start spoon-feeding you a different boogeyman to help their personal causes, you'll once more vote for less crime, less taxes, but this time they're because of "those mean liberals", "evil net neutrality", "the mainstream fake news media that attacks me", "taxes on private jets... for reasons, just trust me on this" or whatever else is convenient.
17 million voted out. Some protest with at most 50k ppl, some social network comments, and mainstream media opinion article, asking for a second referendum do not make a majority of the people.
Most people know what they voted for, more control and less United States of Europe.
There are many institutions wanting to pass the wrong brexiteer opinion/motivation so they can at same time talk how bad it is.
In a general way I guess but most of us still don't know what we're getting - Norway model, Canada model, will there be a trade deal, how much we have to pay etc. It's like you voted to go on holiday but should be able to say if it's ok or not when you find out what the hotel's like, where it is and how much it costs.
Direct democracy has a lot of conditions that have to be met in order for it to work. Even in Switzerland, which is considered a good example of direct democracy, it produces undemocratic results and practices.
In California voters banned cable TV (prop 15) and gay marriages (prop 8) until it was ruled unconstitutional, and passed damaging tax props like proposition 13 which is still controversial.
Switzerland meanwhile rejected woman's suffrage until 1971 on the federal level and 1991 in some cantons, only after being forced by the courts.
There was the referendum. Then the elected representatives voted on it, and passed it. Then there was a general election, after which Leave was again voted for in Parliament (and both the main parties back leaving the EU). How many votes are needed??
If you were asked "do you want to have your toes treated?" and answered "yes", only to later discover that the treatment actually involves amputation of the entire leg, would you accept if the doctor said "well, you agreed for the treatment, what's the problem?".
I'd argue that literally no one voting "leave" wants to leave in this form. Not with the 50bn bill to pay, not with increasing living costs, not with the impact to the education and healthcare in this country. It's the equivalent of finding out your leg will have to be amputated, but you weren't informed of that when you first made the decision so I'd say the decision was misinformed.
54 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] threadIf you actually followed what happened, there was a vote on accepting the immigration numbers and every member state of EU accepted them. I don't know what you're reading, but Germany didn't "unilateraly" accept anything here.
>>interference in sovereignty of Hungary, Poland
You mean, pointing out to Poland that it's slipping into far-right fascist state and that maybe this is not acceptable for a EU member state?
As regards Poland I think perhaps you are believing what you see in the MSM rather than taking things with the pinch of salt they deserve. Putting the MSM to one side there are plenty of commentators that consider recent EU actions towards Poland as an unprecedented interference with sovereignty. Also you are verging on Godwin's law with this assertion: 'slipping into far-right fascist state'. Have you actually looked at photos of the recent march? Protestors had anti-communist AND anti-nazi flags.
As for Poland - And why do you think protesters had those flags? Maybe because current government is enacting policies that are reminiscent of the fascist ones? You can see it in education, in foreign policy, in how the local governments are managed - the ruling party wants to keep everything in hand and labels anyone who is against them as unpatriotic and "not a true Pole". Macierewicz is telling young people to "fight the external, and internal enemy that is already here" - that's not what I want to see in my country. If EU stops that from happening - more power to them.
Personally I'm on the side of Poland in resisting the globalism-at-all-costs push. One could just as easily describe the 'accept mass immigration and fuck your population's feelings' attitude of the EU as a form of fascism.
"And there is clear support for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal. One in two say there should be a second vote when all the talking is done, against 34 per cent who are opposed."
I mean if we can see what is actually on the table and the majority of voters still want it then I guess fair enough. It seems iffy though to ram Brexit through regardless of how bad it is on the basis of an ill informed vote a while back.
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political battle. That's not what this site is for, indeed it outright damages what the site is for, so we ban accounts that do it regardless of their politics. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them when posting here. We've had to warn you multiple time; that sequence is finite.
Corbyn impressive? The man who has never met a terrorist he didn't approve of and who has never missed a chance at running the UK down.
The author is just another metropolitan liberal having a temper tantrum that working class people voted to leave a corrupt (and declining) bureaucracy in which they pay the costs but get none of the benefits.
What nonsense is this? Sounds like you're just regurgitating weak right-wing attack points.
> The author is just another metropolitan liberal
That's hardly a substantive criticism, or even relevant.
> having a temper tantrum
I think what you're trying to say is that you have an ideological disagreement with the article, but cannot competently argue against it?
Think about where you are in life and if this sort of attitude is one you want to espouse. Think of what you're projecting there to people who read your comments.
If this is your reaction to reading a viewpoint you challenge, I can't imagine what it must be like to support a different sports team than yours.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The author's forgetting that there was a referendum. You know, that thing where the populace actually gets to decide democratically on something, for once.
If you're cherry picking daft predictions there were plenty on each side.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-to-cr...
No "immediate crash of financial markets and recession", but it doesn't appear that they predicted that.
And after some more research I can confirm the Treasury actually did predict an immediate crash. You are exactly 100% wrong.
I'm not arguing against you. I'm pointing out that you haven't made an argument.
A claim with no documented basis is not an informed one, doesn't add anything to the debate and is useless to everyone involved.
> And after some more research I can confirm the Treasury actually did predict an immediate crash. You are exactly 100% wrong.
Again, you've failed to provide any citation for your claim. Until you provide a citation, readers should disregard your comments as if you haven't said anything.
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/13/imf-warns-s...
'How bad could it get? Morgan Stanley warns British stocks could lose nearly 20 percent in a Brexit win scenario. Bank of America Merrill Lynch believes U.S. stocks could lose upwards of 7 percent. Citigroup sees European stocks down 20 percent. Deutsche Bank sees 10 percent downside risk.'
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/could-brexit-vote-cause-a-s...
'Unemployment would rocket. Tumbleweed would billow through deserted high streets. Share prices would crash. The government would struggle to find buyers for UK bonds. Financial markets would be in meltdown. Britain would be plunged instantly into another deep recession.
Remember all that? ..It hasn’t worked out that way. ..it is obvious that the sky has not fallen in as a result of the referendum, and those who said it would look a bit silly.'
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/20/brexit...
'To the shock of many — not least business titans who bankrolled the Remain campaign — the instant collapse doesn’t seem to be happening.'
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/that-brexit-apocalypse-i...
Somehow I doubt you would be so scrupulous in asking for sources for generally known facts if they were not so inconvenient for your position. I'm also interested to know in what world you think 'immediate and profound economic shock' does not correspond with a stock market crash.
But your links seem to be the opinions of others and not the Treasury.
Where in your "more research" have you found that the Treasury predicted a stock market crash? Or do you still not have any evidence for your claim?
I assume you meant "remain" there. But in any case: from whom?
So far you've cited an American news network, financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup, and some UK journalists referencing hearsay. In what way did these commentators represent "leave" or "remain"?
On the other side you've got Leave.EU, an actual group campaigning to leave, misleading people with the NHS funding claim on their campaign bus.
You are conflating groups who actually actively campaigned for one side of the referendum with some random general groups who stated an opinion - some of whom are not even associated with the UK!
Of course you're going to be able to find some people who thought that bad things would happen; just as it is possible to find some people who thought that good things would happen. But the ability to find people who had some opinion is meaningless in any debate.
There's a long way to go from there to then claim that people who predicted bad things were "massive concerted lies and deceit" as if that's somehow equivalent to a campaign group misleading voters that at one point aimed to be the officially recognised electoral campaigners for the leave vote.
So no, your general point doesn't stand. You have not demonstrated FUD from the remain side.
> Do you honestly believe there was no FUD from the remain side?
Do you really not understand the distinction between these two statements?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/05/chief-econo...
Remain was the default option, equivalent in outcome to not having had a referendum at all.
And if we are on the topic of lies and deceit let's consider the ongoing campaign to undermine the democratic decision of the British people, quisling puppet Gina Miller, war mongerer Blair et al. Lovely bunch of people. It wouldn't surprise me if the £350m was deliberately planted to give remoaners a weapon to undermine the result.
> quisling puppet Gina Miller
Please explain your reasoning behind this one, it just sounds like a nonsensical accusation to me. She did everyone a favour by helping to ensure that Parliamentary authority was not compromised.
> remoaners
Not moaning, just very concerned about the huge self-inflicted wound of Brexit and how it's going to damage the UK. I'm just hoping it will go so badly in the negotiations that they're forced to abandon it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Holding a non-binding referendum on a major and complex issue, asking citizens without truly educating them on the issues and consequences, packing campaigns with deceit to swing uninformed votes, all of this only to end up with a near-tie.
What about this is "the will of the people", exactly?
"The people" vote for less crime and less taxes. If you've been spoon-fed that taxes is "because of europe" and that crime is "all them immigrants, because of europe", yeah you're going to vote leave. Of course, when those things don't fucking change, your vote has done diddly-squat for you and, when politicians start spoon-feeding you a different boogeyman to help their personal causes, you'll once more vote for less crime, less taxes, but this time they're because of "those mean liberals", "evil net neutrality", "the mainstream fake news media that attacks me", "taxes on private jets... for reasons, just trust me on this" or whatever else is convenient.
Democracy.
Most people know what they voted for, more control and less United States of Europe.
There are many institutions wanting to pass the wrong brexiteer opinion/motivation so they can at same time talk how bad it is.
In a general way I guess but most of us still don't know what we're getting - Norway model, Canada model, will there be a trade deal, how much we have to pay etc. It's like you voted to go on holiday but should be able to say if it's ok or not when you find out what the hotel's like, where it is and how much it costs.
In California voters banned cable TV (prop 15) and gay marriages (prop 8) until it was ruled unconstitutional, and passed damaging tax props like proposition 13 which is still controversial.
Switzerland meanwhile rejected woman's suffrage until 1971 on the federal level and 1991 in some cantons, only after being forced by the courts.
The politicians decided to follow the advice.
I'd argue that literally no one voting "leave" wants to leave in this form. Not with the 50bn bill to pay, not with increasing living costs, not with the impact to the education and healthcare in this country. It's the equivalent of finding out your leg will have to be amputated, but you weren't informed of that when you first made the decision so I'd say the decision was misinformed.