Vocal Voices

This time it is "Business for a People's Vote" according to a letter to The Sunday Times signed by more than 50 senior business people.

What is the point? A50 is up and running and the only way to definitely stop it now is if the ECJ rules that the UK can unilaterally revoke it. If it decides not we can have 1001 referendums all with 90% turnouts and 90% to Remain and they will not make a blind bit of difference.

I suppose that we could petition the 27 to let us stay - pretty please, but why should they? We have been sulky boys and girls sniping from the sidelines for the past forty-odd years and the real referendum showed that we are unlikely to stop any time soon.

Having caused so much havoc and expense over the past few years they could well be understood in wanting to let us go.

It has been the most tremendous mess; maybe on purpose. The people voted to leave.
However, the Conservative, Labour, Lib Dems, civil service and big business all want us to remain.
So one way or another, that's what I'm expecting to happen.

I've voted all my life but come the next GE I don't know if I will bother.

You and many others, Crommers.

All this proves to me is that there is no such thing as Democracy. It's just a façade for government by the rich, for the rich.

I voted Remain, but I cannot see how that could now happen. It is late in the day and we do not have time to undo the many Gordian knots by which we are bound.

Even if A50 could be revoked no politician or party is going to commit to the political suicide that would follow. The result might actually be worse for the country than any sort of Brexit.

I just hope we will eventually get away from the clutches of EU. I am fed up with the obstacles which seem to prevent an orderly exit. Yet another opinion poll suggesting 54% of leavers would now vote remain. I doubt it.

We have already had a second referendum. Before A50 was triggered we had a General Election. All the Remainers had to do was vote for the Lib Dems in sufficient numbers to allow a Lib Dem/Labour government to emerge.

The voters didn't. In fact they voted for Brexit MP's (DUP were Brexit), in sufficient numbers to ensure that A50 was triggered. This was never more prominent than in Scotland with the direct change from 1 Tory MP to 13 Tory MP's. This change was enacted by Brexit leaning Scottish voters who were totally determined to separate themselves from the EU and is the ONLY reason May won a mandate to trigger A50 and leave the EU. And they say your vote does not count. The Scots Brexiteers know otherwise.

If May had not held the election, prior to triggering A50, she would have almost no moral authority to do what she is doing. But, in fact, she had the courage to hold the election and live with the consequences.

Just to also be clear, I went back and had a look at the poll of polls immediately before the referendum. All but one, the economist, showed a Remain win. Even the Economist was a dead heat. So let's hear no more about the polls. The voters had every single opportunity to remain in the EU. A referendum, an election, multiple court cases.

We're leaving, the EU is going to screw it up, just through sheer awkwardness and a belief that they are more important than anyone else and we need to man up and get on with getting out. A deal would be nice, sure, but deal or no deal we just need to get on with it and stop backbiting about referendums and "deals" and, whatever!

If, at a later date, we decide to join again, at least we can have a more honest debate where everyone is aware that it comes with open borders, Schengen, the Euro and a significant loss of sovereignty leading, eventually, to the same status as, for instance, California in the US.

Eventually the people will wake up to the fact that, referendum or not, parliament voting for a deal or not, we are leaving the EU on March 29th next year and that whatever happens then is up to the people of the UK. Yes we will have to negotiate with the EU.. But then we have always had to negotiate with the EU. The UK was never invited to the Franko-German summits prior to the EU summits, where it would be decided what everyone else was going to do. On that front not much will change.

I ignore all "the people would vote to reman" articles as much as I ignore the 2nd referendum articles. The EU is currently facing the fact that what it wants will never be granted by the UK. Therefore the EU is, by inches, changing its stance. The UK is also moving with them, but much less than the EU.

This dance will continue till the 11th hour. Remember the EU was adamant that it needed 9 months to ratify any deal through the national parliaments.... Interesting that nobody talks about that now.

It would be highly amusing if Italy refuses to ratify the "deal" until their budget is accepted wouldn't it! True EU politics, shafting the people who most want to be aligned with the EU. What an irony....

Suff wrote:We have already had a second referendum. Before A50 was triggered we had a General Election. All the Remainers had to do was vote for the Lib Dems in sufficient numbers to allow a Lib Dem/Labour government to emerge.

Are there no limits to Brexiters' warping of reality for a few cheap shots?

Yes, I have read their figures. 80% of those who voted in the general election voted for parties that supported Brexit, so by extension 80% of us supported Brexit. Total crap.

It was a general election, and in general elections the majority of voters do a couple of things. 1. Vote tribally, as they have always done. 2. Look at the issues affecting them: policing; education; NHS; public services, roads; transport etc. and then vote for a party hopefully offering the best solutions to their problems.

Only May made Brexit an issue with her demand / hope to get a bigger majority to strengthen her hand in negotiations once she invoked A50. In that she failed miserably and had to go cap-in-hand to the DUP with a £1bn bribe to get them to support her; yet she still triggered A50 even though, by her own admission, she was weakened by the election result. Mandate? She didn't get one! Her failure is part of the reason we are now in the mess we are in.

Strong and stable; courageous, my fundament!

Workingman wrote:Strong and stable; courageous, my fundament!

Strong and stable? Not my words. With a mandate, yes my words.

Let's be clear here.
ferendum. Opportunity to crush Brexit.
Not taken.
Election. Opportunity to crush Brexit.
Not taken.

I don't care whether the voters wanted to vote tribally or stupidly or just didn't vote. That election was a key defining moment before A50 was triggered. Everyone who had a vote and was not actually blind, deaf and dumb, or living in a hole in the ground, knew that it was an opportunity to stop Brexit.

I see no reason to give them all a vote, all over again, because they failed to use the vote correctly; twice!

I've said this before but it bears repeating. Voting is an act of social responsibility. If you choose to use your vote irresponsibly, you need to actually experience the consequences of your actions. Exactly as you would teach a child.

Otherwise this will go on forever.

Comparing apples and parsnips.

There is a difference between a referendum and a general election - they cannot be compared.

The referendum was an opportunity to sell Brexit through lies, myths and illegal electoral practices.

The general election was about the governance of the country - oh, and getting May a bigger majority. Some would say it was an epic fail.

The referendum was binary - Remain or Leave - easy street.

The general election was a choice between two or more candidates and parties, candidates the electorate had no choice in selecting. If they wanted to vote they had to choose one and that choice was not influenced by whether they were deaf, dumb or blind kids nor their level of stupidity.

The electorate cannot win. If they look at the candidates and decide that none are worth a vote they are told their abstention gets them no say. However, if they make the 'wrong' choice they are told that they get the MPs they deserve.

I would love to know what the answer to the above problem is so that we can avoid being accused of voting irresponsibly and without social responsibility.

I wonder why people voted Leave in the referendum. Was it that they were taken in by lies claiming £350 million (or was it billion) extra would be going to the NHS, that Turkey was about to join the EU, or that there would be limitless immigration that the UK would be unable to control. Maybe a mixture of them all, but how many leavers, perhaps like myself, just wanted to be free of the EU and voted with a gut instinct that here was an opportunity of a lifetime of regaining our Sovereignty and re-gaining control of our borders, making our own decisions rather than having the collective decisions of the 27 other member States filtered down to the UK. In my opinion everything else pales in comparison.