EU Referendum: The result and aftermath...

[AlterEgo]

A border controls both.

Actually the Irish border pre-EU didn't.

The UK and Ireland have a Common Travel Area. The customs posts were not tinstalled to prevent people from coming into the Republic, or the UK, without proper documentation.

They were only there to enforce customs rules. A person walking up the border with no bag or anything in tow would likely have been waved through.

However, that's a moot point as nearly all customs posts are in very rural areas and the overwhelming majority of traffic is in vehicles, which, as you point out, were routinely stopped.

A more interesting sub-plot is that the border actually bisects a vast amount of rural land. Some border farms are owned by paramilitaries or former paramilitaries.

 

[furnessvale]

You'd have been better wording it as "largest single importer of British goods" - trade is a two way thing, and Germany beats the US in the totals by £11bn. Using the Wikipedia data:

Germany
Imports: £60,859,846,783
Exports: £30,381,714,408
Total: £91,241,561,191 (-£30,478,132,375)

USA
Imports: £35,290,616,559
Exports: £45,277,510,216
Total: £80,568,126,775 (£9,986,893,657)

Thanks for pointing out how much better off we would be trading with countries outside the EU rather than our EU "partners".

 

[Bromley boy]

Again remember that if you don't get the type of Brexit you want and complain, then you'll be the one frustrating democracy. No trading deal with the EU is Brexit as is a Norway style deal, you obviously don't want a say as to what type of arrangement we have.

Which is why I’m glad the government is pursuing the only logical interpretation of a leave vote which is leaving the EU and it’s major institutions, I would suggest continuing to allow free movement would not be within the spirit of the vote.

You’re right, I do not want another vote, I want the government to get on with negotiating an exit that follows both the letter and the spirit of the leave vote, which thankfully seems to be the line they are taking.

Don’t forget the remain campaign insisted that a vote to leave the EU would equal a vote to leave the common market....

It’s funny how the only people who ever suggest leave voters want to remain in the common market voted remain themselves.

So George Osborne said house prices would go down if we voted leave, we voted leave and you're saying your house price has gone down but you refuse to accept George Osborne was correct on that matter. George Osborne said what he would do but he was removed from his position before he could do anything. Philip Hammond has put aside a large amount of money as a post-Brexit emergency fund we know Hammond, in general, is less likely to implement emergency measures when things go wrong than Osborne was.

It might be due to Brexit uncertainty, it might be due to the fact that the London property market is over heated, or to the fact sky high rents and tight mortgage lending mean that people cannot raise deposits. My point is that we are all in this together.

The punishment budget and all the other scaremongering circulated by the remain campaign - even promising a major stock market crash and recession immediately following a leave vote - was far more extreme than what has actually happened.

How hard is it for you to understand that the spreading of false and misleading information will likely have affected the way some people voted but not the way everyone voted?

And how hard it is for you to understand that the “people were duped argument” cuts both ways. It’s nonsensical to criticise the leave vote as being based on misinformation when the same can be said of many remain voters.

Given you implied you voted in the 1970s referendum where a massive majority voted to remain, perhaps you'd like to give a comprehensive list of all the misinformation that was spread ahead of that referendum for the benefit of those of us who weren't around then? If you can come up with 50+ points then maybe there's some comparisons which can be made between the two referendums, if not I'll presume you can't justify your own arguments.

Huh? I think you’ll find I implied no such thing. I would have found voting in the 1970s difficult when I wasn’t born until the mid 1980s.

In any case you are again missing the point I was making when comparing the two referenda, which is that neither was legally required to be implemented.

You still seem to be unable to articulate why the government you think the government should be free not to implement the 2016 leave vote, when the 1970s remain vote (also non binding) was implemented.

I’d suggest the reason people voted to remain in such large numbers in the 1970s was because they were voting for the continued membership of a trading block in nothing like the EU’s current form.

 

[EM2]

Actually the Irish border pre-EU didn't.

The UK and Ireland have a Common Travel Area. The customs posts were not tinstalled to prevent people from coming into the Republic, or the UK, without proper documentation.

They were only there to enforce customs rules. A person walking up the border with no bag or anything in tow would likely have been waved through.

Which is therefore not an open border, as mmh insists it is.

 

[EM2]

You still seem to be unable to articulate why the government should be free not to implement the 2016 leave vote, when the 1970s remain vote (also non binding) was implemented.

Just because it was implemented doesn't mean that the Government were not free to not implement it. They decided that they would.
That also doesn't mean that they have to implement this one either, although they seem to have decided that they will.
Each decision has to be made on its own merits.

 

[AlterEgo]

Which is therefore not an open border, as mmh insists it is.

I agree, although the principal concern of Leavers isn't customs checks but making sure people don't come and stay in our country illegally.

 

[pemma]

And how hard it is for you to understand that the “people were duped argument” cuts both ways. It’s nonsensical to criticise the leave vote as being based on misinformation when the same can be said of many remain voters.

I didn't say it was exclusively from the leave camp, I said "the spreading of false and misleading information will likely have affected the way some people voted but not the way everyone voted." That's a neutral comment and could just as much mean misinformation caused leave's win to be narrower than it would otherwise mean, as meaning it caused leave to win instead of remain. That's in no way nonsensical. You earlier suggested the campaigning didn't affect the way anyone voted - now that is one of the most nonsensical arguments which has ever been made on this forum!

 

[EM2]

Brexiteer Dan Hannan has said he thinks Brexit isn’t going as well as he’d hoped. He is hardly alone among Leave voters: 50% said they expected Brexit to go well but don’t think it is, compared to only 18% whose positive expectations are being met.

https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/996062849108725760

 

[Bromley boy]

That's in no way nonsensical. You earlier suggested the campaigning didn't affect the way anyone voted - now that is one of the most nonsensical arguments which has ever been made on this forum!

Rubbish.

You had said the leave campaign made you more likely to vote remain, I said the remain campaign made me more likely to vote leave. My overall point being, as I made above, most voters voted as hey did for their own reasons. Misinformation, such as there was, affected both camps equally and likely made little difference to either.

You’ve also made the bizarre assumption that the fact there was a large majority in the 1970s means that campaign was somehow “better” than the 2016 leave vote, yet seem unable to acknowledge that what people were voting to remain part of in the 1970s was nothing like the EU today.

How about actually dealing with the substantive points being made instead of misquoting and splitting irrelevant hairs?!

 

[pemma]

Thanks for pointing out how much better off we would be trading with countries outside the EU rather than our EU "partners".

Must cheaper to import cars from Germany than from the United States and I'm not sure an American brand can compete with the likes of Mercedes and BMW. Don't forget the latter own Mini, who build the cars in the UK and export them to Europe.

 

[Bromley boy]

Brexiteer Dan Hannan has said he thinks Brexit isn’t going as well as he’d hoped. He is hardly alone among Leave voters: 50% said they expected Brexit to go well but don’t think it is, compared to only 18% whose positive expectations are being met.

https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/996062849108725760

Most of them are probably fed up of all the remoaning.

 

[Bromley boy]

Just because it was implemented doesn't mean that the Government were not free to not implement it. They decided that they would.
That also doesn't mean that they have to implement this one either, although they seem to have decided that they will.
Each decision has to be made on its own merits.

But the referendum was promised to the public on the basis that the result of the vote would be implemented.

It’s nonsensical for people to suggest the government should ignore majority votes they don’t personally like when they are happy for the votes they do agree with to be implemented.

That’s not how democracy works.

 

[pemma]

Rubbish.

You had said the leave campaign made you more likely to vote remain, I said the remain campaign made me more likely to vote leave. My overall point being, as I made above, most voters voted as hey did for their own reasons. Misinformation, such as there was, affected both camps equally and likely made little difference to either.

You think because you know how you voted and how I voted you can speak for 33.5m people and know for a fact that over 32.3m people (99.4% of those who voted) weren't influenced by the campaigning? If you can't you can't say campaigning (including the spreading of false information) didn't influence the result. Anyone would think leave lost by the way you keep making these desperate claims.

You’ve also made the bizarre assumption that the fact there was a large majority in the 1970s means that campaign was somehow “better” than the 2016 leave vote, yet seem unable to acknowledge that what people were voting to remain part of in the 1970s was nothing like the EU today.

In 2016 0.6% of those who voted being misled would have affected the overall result, in 1972 32% of those who voted would have need to have been misled to affect the result and you've not been able to suggest even one reason why people might have been mislead in 1972. There's no comparison between the two referendums. It's not bizarre, it's just you want to ignore logical arguments when they don't suit your agenda, while at the same time you come up with ludicrous arguments to suit your agenda and pretend they are logical. Either you can't think straight or you've been brainwashed, despite saying you aren't influenced by campaigning.

 

[EM2]

But the referendum was promised to the public on the basis that the result of the vote would be implemented.

It’s nonsensical for people to suggest the government should ignore majority votes they don’t personally like when they are happy for the votes they do agree with to be implemented.

That’s not how democracy works.

I'm not suggested that the result should be ignored, simply pointing out that it could be. And the fact that a similar vote wasn't ignored doesn't mean that this one can't.

 

[Bromley boy]

You think because you know how you voted and how I voted you can speak for 33.5m people and know for a fact that over 32.3m people (99.4% of those who voted) weren't influenced by the campaigning? If you can't you can't say campaigning (including the spreading of false information) didn't influence the result. Anyone would think leave lost by the way you keep making these desperate claims.

But I have never said campaigning didn’t influence the result at all - just that we don’t know how much it did and both sides were guilty of misinformation, therefore it’s irrelevant (and incredibly boring that people are still going on about the campaigns two years later).

In 2016 0.6% of those who voted being misled would have affected the overall result, in 1972 32% of those who voted would have need to have been misled to affect the result and you've not been able to suggest even one reason why people might have been mislead in 1972. There's no comparison between the two referendums. It's not bizarre, it's just you want to ignore logical arguments when they don't suit your agenda, while at the same time you come up with ludicrous arguments to suit your agenda and pretend they are logical. Either you can't think straight or you've been brainwashed, despite saying you aren't influenced by campaigning.

You have still failed to grasp the reason I was comparing the two votes. I haven’t said anything about people being mislead in 1972.

It’s become apparent you either can’t answer or don’t understand the question I was asking you by comparing the two referenda, which I have now asked you several times.

You appear now to once again be descending into bitterness and childish insults, which is usually a sign that someone has lost the argument.

 

[pemma]

@Bromley boy it was you who compared the outcomes of the 1972 and 2016 referendums and said you can't accept one and reject the other. So I wanted to check if the two were actually comparable - you've admitted there was a lot of false information spread ahead of the 2016 referendum so I was asking you what false information was spread ahead of the 1972 one. Like I said I wasn't born so I need more information and you've been unable to provide any - that's why I've not answered your question properly. It would actually have been hypocritical for me to have tried to answer it when I have previously said people voted in the EU referendum without understanding the implications of remaining or leaving.

 

[Bromley boy]

I'm not suggested that the result should be ignored, simply pointing out that it could be. And the fact that a similar vote wasn't ignored doesn't mean that this one can't.

But it would be quite unthinkable for a government to promise a referendum, commit itself to implementing the result and then ignore it when the result produced was politically inconvenient to them.

As someone who (I assume) voted remain, how would you have felt if remain had won but the government decided to pull Britain out of the EU anyway?!

 

[Bromley boy]

@Bromley boy it was you who compared the outcomes of the 1972 and 2016 referendums and said you can't accept one and reject the other. So I wanted to check if the two were actually comparable - you've admitted there was a lot of false information spread ahead of the 2016 referendum so I was asking you what false information was spread ahead of the 1972 one. Like I said I wasn't born so I need more information and you've been unable to provide any - that's why I've not answered your question properly. It would actually have been hypocritical for me to have tried to answer it when I have previously said people voted in the EU referendum without understanding the implications of remaining or leaving.

Then with respect you have indeed missed the point of the question I asked you.

I wasn’t comparing the outcomes (which are irrelevant), I was making the point that neither referenda was legally binding and that it is inconsistent to suggest (as you did upthread) that the outcome of the 2016 referendum should not be implemented when the 1970s vote was.

The issue we are discussing is the relevance of the fact that neither vote A (1970s), nor vote B (2016), were legally binding referenda has to their implementation. We can agree that both votes were determined by simple majorities. As such, both were a binary yes/no vote, the size of the majorities being completely irrelevant.

We can also surely agree that, in both cases, the expectation of both government and voters was that the result would be implemented?

Therefore, my issue with your position is simply this: you’re apparently happy that the result of referendum A was implemented by the then government, despite not being legally binding. So why have you repeatedly suggested that, since referendum B also wasn’t legally binding, the government should be free to simply disregard it?

Please can you answer it now?

 

[EM2]

As someone who (I assume) voted remain, how would you have felt if remain had won but the government decided to pull Britain out of the EU anyway?!

I'd be disappointed, but in law there wouldn't really be anything that I could do, except protest.

 

[Bromley boy]

I'd be disappointed, but in law there wouldn't really be anything that I could do, except protest.

You could protest but you could also vote accordingly.

I’d suggest it would be morally and constitutionally untenable (not to mention political suicide) for the government to renage on implementing the result.

At the moment of course we have the bizarre situation where the PM spearheading brexit was a remainer and the bearded wonder leading the opposition is so Eurosceptic (albeit for the wrong reasons) that he voted leave in the 1970s vote!

Thankfully (for leave voters, at least) I can’t see a scenario where the result isn’t implemented.

 

[dosxuk]

As someone who (I assume) voted remain, how would you have felt if remain had won but the government decided to pull Britain out of the EU anyway?!

If, two years after the vote, it became clear that remaining was going to cause significant political, social and economic damage, then I would agree with leaving despite the result of the referendum.

How much damage to the country is leaving worth? How bad do things have to get before you would say "actually, maybe we should reverse the decision"?

 

[Jonny]

How much damage to the country is leaving worth? How bad do things have to get before you would say "actually, maybe we should reverse the decision"?

It's worth every single penny.

 

[EM2]

You could protest but you could also vote accordingly.

Seeing as I can't see any eventuality where I would have voted for a party that promised a referendum on EU membership, the point is moot.

 

[Bromley boy]

If, two years after the vote, it became clear that remaining was going to cause significant political, social and economic damage, then I would agree with leaving despite the result of the referendum.

How much damage to the country is leaving worth? How bad do things have to get before you would say "actually, maybe we should reverse the decision"?

I don’t think it’s become clear that leave is going to cause any of those things.

We need to respect the result of the vote, get on with implementing it, and then take a view on it once we know the outcome (which probably won’t be for many years to come).

 

[EM2]

At the moment of course we have the bizarre situation where the PM spearheading brexit was a remainer

Exactly. We all know that ideologically, she doesn't believe in what she's doing.

 

[Bromley boy]

Exactly. We all know that ideologically, she doesn't believe in what she's doing.

One thing I will say for TM is that she is principled enough to accept the result of the vote, even if she doesn’t personally agree with it, and crack on with implementing it.

That’s a position certain posters on this forum (not necessarily you personally), who refuse to accept the result and attack it by any means available to them, should reflect on.

 

[Bromley boy]

Actually the Irish border pre-EU didn't.

The UK and Ireland have a Common Travel Area. The customs posts were not tinstalled to prevent people from coming into the Republic, or the UK, without proper documentation.

They were only there to enforce customs rules. A person walking up the border with no bag or anything in tow would likely have been waved through.

However, that's a moot point as nearly all customs posts are in very rural areas and the overwhelming majority of traffic is in vehicles, which, as you point out, were routinely stopped.

A more interesting sub-plot is that the border actually bisects a vast amount of rural land. Some border farms are owned by paramilitaries or former paramilitaries.

Surely there must be a sensible way of dealing with this (I’m not pretending I know enough about the NI border situation to suggest what it is!).

The Eire/NI border has been a special case for many, many years and Eire (as I understand it) has no plans to join Shengen.

It isn’t immediately obvious to me why we can’t simply continue with a tweaked version of the current common travel area post Brexit.

 

[cactustwirly]

It isn’t immediately obvious to me why we can’t simply continue with a tweaked version of the current common travel area post Brexit.

Because post Brexit, Ireland will have different customs rules to the UK.
Therefore if the customs union is left, there would have to be customs checks on every border with Ireland.
Ireland will also have FoM with the EU, whereas the UK won't, so there will be different immigration laws.

 

[dosxuk]

It's worth every single penny.

How many pennies is it worth? How many people have to lose their jobs, livelihoods and homes before you say "enough-is-enough"? (I'm not suggesting that's going to happen, but there has to be a point where it's not worth it to anyone?)

I don’t think it’s become clear that leave is going to cause any of those things.

We need to respect the result of the vote, get on with implementing it, and then take a view on it once we know the outcome (which probably won’t be for many years to come).

I didn't suggest they were going to be caused by leaving. They were just things that would make me think the vote to remain was wrong and should be reversed if they became true had the vote gone the other way.

Here's another question - how far does the process need to go before you accept the vote has been respected? March 29th next year? Dec 31st 2020 when the implementation period ends? 30 years time when there are people getting doctorates in Brexit Science?

Surely there must be a sensible way of dealing with this (I’m not pretending I know enough about the NI border situation to suggest what it is!).

The Eire/NI border has been a special case for many, many years and Eire (as I understand it) has no plans to join Shengen.

It isn’t immediately obvious to me why we can’t simply continue with a tweaked version of the current common travel area post Brexit.

If we accept free movement of people to/from the EU post brexit, nothing need change with the border. If we don't then how do we stop people from Spain / Germany / Poland, who have legitimate free access to Eire, coming north into Northern Ireland, and subsequently the rest of the UK? Eire not being part of Schengen doesn't mean there are any extra restrictions on EU residents travelling there.

Goods are a whole other kettle of fish. How anyone in the government thinks there's any way of having a completely different tariff and regulatory regime to the EU, but not have any border to police those differences, is going to work I just don't understand. The fact that the two ideas they have come up with have been ridiculed by everybody, including those wanting the changes, must suggest to someone that it's not going to work? That they're blindly carrying on trying to firm up these ideas - ideas that the EU have already clearly stated that they won't sign off on, partly as they don't think parts of them are legal under the WTO obligations - is just madness.

 

[furnessvale]

Must cheaper to import cars from Germany than from the United States and I'm not sure an American brand can compete with the likes of Mercedes and BMW. Don't forget the latter own Mini, who build the cars in the UK and export them to Europe.

I presume the MUST is a spullchuck for MUCH?

Assuming that is the case it is not necessarily true. Shipping costs using the latest huge containerships have now fallen to a level where transport costs around the world using them are routinely ignored by economists working in that area.

Contrast that with 1000km road trips in the EU and, counterintuitively, it can be cheaper importing/exporting to and from locations like China and the USA than crossing the Channel with HGVs and moving any reasonable distance further by road.