One certainly imagines. The next PM is being chosen by a pro-Brexit Conservative Party electorate. Hard to see how that ends up with a person who wants to ignore the will of the British people.

It's not a problem to ignore the will of the not too bright British people. Referendums are stupid. Many of them Googled EU after the vote. They were clueless.

I really don't like direct democracy. But when those are the rules you tread in dangerous territory to ignore them. And of course the new Conservative PM is going to carry out the will of the people when they're the ones electing him/her.

There were two different things the media seemed to grab onto to show people who voted Brexit immediately regretted their decision. Saw a couple friends share videos of these people being interviewed and people here/on FB posting a Washington Post story about people googling in the UK to find out what the EU was. All of which meant to highlight the idea that people who voted Leave were big dumb dumbs who didn't know what they were doing.

Re people regretting: Vote split // On the #EUref result (Remain / Leave): Happy: 4% / 92% Unhappy: 88% / 1% Indifferent: 7% / 5% (via ComRes)

Re people googling What is the EU: the way 'trends' work is it's measured in percentage change over previous queries of the same, not the most searched items. Stop using Google Trends

The people who voted Leave are evidently quite happy that it won. More Remain are happy about Leave winning than Leave are unhappy about Remain losing. The people who voted leave are very unhappy about immigration and very much want the UK to make its own laws in a democratically accountable manner and know the decision might not be economically beneficial in the short term. They might be idiots (most people are) but they aren't shell shocked by what happened.

Hilary Benn, shadow foreign secretary, sacked from the Labour front bench by Corbyn with stories about Benn helping to plot a leadership overthrow.

I would be legitimately upset if this robs me a chance of watching Corbyn get slaughtered at a general election, although I've seen stories in this that freaking McDonnell might stand to be his replacement and get his backing which would be utterly hilarious.

They will regret it. Maybe not today or tomorrow but soon and for the rest of their lives.

-- Rick

As far as Britexit: tl,dr

Just tell me what the UK is getting out of this deal

Is this for real?:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016 ... /86385466/

It is.

It's quite possible that the EU is a failure, one that the ordinary people of Britain have recognized before the elites have. I'm not sure of other European nations had a similar referendum the results wouldn't be similar. I think the recent Dutch rejection of closer links between the EU and Ukraine was understood to reflect deep skepticism with the EU. Same with the Polish election of the Law and Justice party.

Of course the nation state is neither "natural" nor inevitable. It is entirely a human creation. But it's one that has proven surprising durable and effective. Moreover, unlike the EU, it's evolved and adapted over time. It's not really the product of some human mind--it's not like Cardinal Mazarin and Louis XIV had some brilliant idea for consolidating political power that everyone else soon copied it. However, as it evolved, it turned out to work rather well. It was especially well suited for liberal representative democracy, and that certainly wasn't what Louid XIV or James I had in mind. At the same time, the nation state also turns out to be an idea way to express ethnic nationalism. A nation state that draws on ethnic identity can command the loyalties of people quite effectively. These two ideas--liberal democracy and ethnic nationalism--are sometimes quite compatible--a nation of Poles being governed by Poles chosen by Poles. On the other hand, they can be contradictory as well as when an ethnic minority finds itself consistently on the losing end of political battles. Woodrow Wilson's attempt to resolve this issue by attempting to carve Europe up into ethnically homogeneous democracies turned out to be a spectacular failure. The European Union can be seen as another attempt to resolve this tension--I think this is one reason why Scotland voting overwhelmingly for remain--Scottish national identity is easier to preserve in a European Union than in an independent Great Britain.

TL;DR--political history is an evolutionary process. Perhaps the EU is simply a species that is ill equipped to thrive in our world.

The other possibility is than an EU without Britain is a more cohesive and maybe even more democratic institution.

smitty wrote:Is this for real?:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016 ... /86385466/

just a guess, but I'd expect about 3.5 million of the 3 million petition signers were "remain" voters

UK wakes up with a BRexit hang over wondering what they have done. Scotland, where the UK nukes live, is looking for the door. Shortly Britain will find itself a very small country with very little influence in any matter, perhaps a situation not familiar since the 16th century.

The vote was for economic independence and immigration. I think they nailed both. They immediately shit their economy, and who will want to immigrate to Britain?

Leave - 68% who did not finish highschool
Stay - 70% college educated
Leave - Older people
Stay - Youth

<head slap>

For whatever reason I had Jake Trapper/Cnn on. He has Martian O'Mally and Janet Brewer as two if his guests. O'Mally tripped Brewer about Trump and his racism. She did her freezing act wen required to think, where O'Mally swatted her by chiding that he 'Cannot really believe she is voting for Trump'.

O'Malley would have been a strong presidential candidate if he didn't seriously miscalculate the direction of the Democratic Party. To be fair though, I'm not sure how many people predicted that the Clinton style politics would have died such a complete death on the left at this point in history.

thephan wrote:UK wakes up with a BRexit hang over wondering what they have done. Scotland, where the UK nukes live, is looking for the door. Shortly Britain will find itself a very small country with very little influence in any matter, perhaps a situation not familiar since the 16th century.

The vote was for economic independence and immigration. I think they nailed both. They immediately shit their economy, and who will want to immigrate to Britain?

Leave - 68% who did not finish highschool
Stay - 70% college educated
Leave - Older people
Stay - Youth

<head slap>

The UK is the 5th largest economy in the world with a seat on the UN Security Council. I think they'll be OK.

jerseyhoya wrote:<head slap>

The UK is the 5th largest economy in the world with a seat on the UN Security Council. I think they'll be OK.[/quote]

The UK of Thursday was the 5th biggest economy. 2 - 5 years from now with a wall built around their part of the island, Scotland exited for the EU proper, they become a little country. It will be an interesting ride to see what happens, but the past is not an indicator of the future. Their move is unprecedented. The damage it does to itself migh be so as well. They can keep the seat @ the UN... who cares.

The UK has 64.1M people today, and they only lose 5.4M Scots if they go, but the Scot have the British Nuclear arsenal. Scotland is the 43'd largest economy contributing $233B.

The Pink Pages are controversially calling for a 4% economic growth by 2030, due to relief from trade taxes and tariffs they are beholden to in the 'common market'. That is hard to see, but it is one commentators opinion. Oxford exonomics see an up to 3.9% loss in the same period.

Here is the scary prediction about real wages and household consumption. FT predicts that these will all fall markedly after leaving the EU resulting in a loss to GDP of 1.9-7.8 per cent by 2030.

The Centre of Economic Performance thinks that a hit to trade in all likely scenarios will bring GDP 6.3-9.5 per cent lower by 2030 than if the UK had stayed in.

In a different FT article, it is reported that banks have already begun moving people out of the UK.[url]http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a3a92744-3a52-11e6-9a05-82a9b15a8ee7.html#ixzz4CiVuEeG4
[/url]

Banks have already begun to take action to shift operations out of the UK, but most of their staff will have to wait several months to find out how many thousands of them will be asked to move to fledgling financial hotspots like Paris, Dublin and Frankfurt.

That seems reactionary as it is so soon, but it is also completely understandable.

So 2 years from now when this actually takes effect, Britain might be a tad crippled. With some idea that Britian will not change it modus operandi until the transition kicks in completely discounts what businesses will do to assure their relevance in Europe, which means leave. The EU said that it would like to fast track the divorce, but to what end. The EU gains more clout and grows with businesses that are displaced from Britain, into places that can take advantage of positioning within the union.

5 years from now, Scotland could be gone, maybe Ireland too, leaving a smaller, less everything place. What will the pound trade at comparatively? It will not be good. Incomes expected to fall, might just free fall as wage deflation takes hold with an oversupply of well compensated workers, and given that the pound would devalue, that is a dangerous situation.

That turns the situation over to the British Central Bank. It will be busy times at Threadneedle Street for a good while. Job growth for economists, financial analysts, and policy wonks will be hiring into the good old BoE (side note, the BoE is what most Central Banks are modeled after). BoE will have to work this problem to manage to hold on.

The bankers will not be alone, there is plenty of policy work that will need to happen. I am not sure that is the type of job creation that anyone was thinking about, if they were thinking at all. Ironically, POTUS was soundly scolded for warning that this could be a problem for Brexit as there are other important, emerging and large markets that countries are paying attention to with agreements and treaties while Britain is not in that line.

So, my assessment is that fine is a very relative state. Not dead yet?!? Merely a flesh wound? Keep that UN bench warm, and chin up lad, chin up.

Britain has been punching above its weight since WWII. That is likely coming to an end. To be sure what's not likely to come to an end is various Russian/Chinese/Indian oligarchs shifting their assets and their children to London. But they have given up the ability to influence developments on the European continent.

We've come a long way since the late 80s and early 90s when we talked about a "United States of Europe" though.

thephan wrote:It took the British shitting the bed to bring out Wiz. The world has gone mad! Welcome old friend, welcome.

nah, man, I came back just before, because I could finally start reading about the Phils without puking blood. I've posted in a game thread and everything.

pacino wrote:Wiz - will Brexit actually happen? I mean they can just kinda ignore the vote and negotiate with the EU like Thatcher did.

From a legal point of view, it doesn't have to. David Allen Green, a good UK lawyer, breaks it down here.

http://jackofkent.com/2016/06/where-we- ... on-issues/

There's a stalemate right now, and by all accounts, Boris Johnson (aka BoJo) and the some of the leave folk are running round in a tizz, following Cameron quitting and dumping the Article 50 notification of exit onto his successor. BoJo did a newspaper column today saying basically that we're just pulling ourselves out of the legislation imposed by the EU (he specifically cited the European Court of Justice - not to be confused with the European Court of Human Rights, which is a European Council body), and imposing a points system on immigration, but that everything else would be as before.

But the difference between Thatcher pulling this in 1985 and the UK doing it now is the 30 years of shit that the UK has put the EU through since. It's hard to say how the EU will weigh up Britain moaning and groaning and asking for even more concessions vs the threat it poses to EU stability. The referendum was bad enough in political terms, with the knock-on demands elsewhere. The European Central Bank has had to spend a lot supporting banks last friday:

The fiasco that happened to the Spanish and Italian banks was so enormous that it sent stock markets into their largest one-day plunges on record, of over 12% [ Brexit Blowback Hits Italian and Spanish Banks].

The Stoxx 600 banking index, which covers the largest European banks, plunged 14.5% on Friday. It’s down 29.3% year-to-date, 42% from its 52-week high, and 76% from its all-time high in May 2007 before the Financial Crisis and the euro debt crisis knocked the hot air out of the banks

Worse, both tories and labour are running round screaming (well, labour more than tories, I think), so there's no certainty coming from the UK govt, and trading starts up tomorrow with no evidence of political progress over the weekend. One twitter account I follow, @duncanweldon, notes that any direct investment in the UK will be put on hold until shit setles down, on account of the uncertainty.

All this leads me to believe that an agreement is going to be made but that the UK is going out, and at best will get a Norway-style access to the EU single market. For the record, I saw it noted that one of the problems that the UK faces if it does go is that it has *no* trained trade negotiators, and it's going to have to start from scratch with, well, the world. So however large the economy might be, it's going to be rocky for a while. I've anecdotally heard a lot of university researchers crapping themselves as the EU money goes into a lot of research. Which isn't great for innovation and the like.

But honestly? who fucking knows. This is an all-time massive clusterfuck. There's no other word for it. UKIP are waiting to fuck up a tory govt who backs down on the referendum, which might lead the tories to go for a general election - except they need 2/3 parliament to do that because of the fixed term parliament act. A general election would ill-suit labour right now - they're kidding themselves that a new leader will sort their problems, which is exactly what Scottish Labour did after the independence referendum. Now labour only has one scottish mp. So a general election is yet another risky gamble to take. Plus the more the uncertainty continues, I suspect the more support for scottish independence grows.

Sorry, Pac. I've a lot of information, but no answers.

smitty wrote:Is this for real?:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016 ... /86385466/

sort of. the legislation is there in EU terms (it's how they got ireland to retake the referendum on the Lisbon treaty), but there are butt-load of fake signatures on it. Jerz is pretty solid on the changes of a re-run going their way. Think it's politically poisonous for any party to try it right now.