Brexit

[DzM]

Frankly I'm astounded there hasn't been fistfights about this already.

None-the-less - I hope all of you will go participate in the referendum tomorrow. I know how I would vote but I'll keep that to myself. The important part is that you BR citizens participate.

Good luck, and do the right thing.

[firehazard]

I've voted already. The campaign's been frankly appalling, with increasingly ridiculous untruths spouted by both sides.

It's become - in truth it always was - a bloody spat between factions in the Tory party, pandering to those on the far right. I wouldn't want to vote for any of the politicians who are the perceived leaders of the two sides in this particular debate.

Strangely, the city where I live appears - against the national trend - to be leaning pretty solidly to the left these days, having elected a Labour MP and a Labour council in the last year. And seems to lean strongly to the "in" side in this referendum too.

But nationally it may well be a very close result, which will not solve anything. And if the British electorate do end up voting "leave", I shall despair of this country. Even more than I did when they voted the Tories into power at the last election.

[Vote]

http://www.levellers.co.uk/img/news/ima ... _n-151.jpg

[DzM]

So I guess I'm more inclined to advocate for a position than I thought. With that:

There's a SciFi writer, John Scalzi, whose work I am 100% unfamiliar with. I read his blog though because he often provides thoughtful editorializing on various current events. His views often overlap with my own, and he's quite good at putting those shared views into eloquent prose.

In the case of the BRexit Mr. Scalzi wrote:

Bear in mind that the United Kingdom is not my state, and there may be some subtleties to the arguments for and against the UK leaving the European Union that I don’t get. Nevertheless I’ve been following the back and forth for a few months, not only out of my own interest, but because a great number of my friends are British and it’s of interest to them as well — not to mention the UK moving out of the EU would have repercussions that would would likely reach to the US, primarily economically. So, just as UK folks might have an opinion on the US presidential race, so too do I have an opinion on Brexit.

And it is: Were I voting in tomorrow’s referendum, I would vote for the UK to remain in the EU.

Much of that vote, I would note, is based on negatives out of the leave camp, more than a great affinity for the EU. One, the leave camp seems to be playing rather fast and loose with facts, regarding the benefits of leaving, and it’s the sort of obvious lying and exaggerating that doesn’t even allow one to admire the craftsmanship of the effort. I dislike this both as someone who likes his facts truthful, or at least with effort put into their spin.

Two, while not everyone who might vote “Leave” is an appalling racist and/or low-information nationalist, it’s pretty clear that nearly every appalling racist/low-info nationalist is voting “Leave,” and that the people engineering the Leave vote are perfectly happy to leverage those folks to get what they want. If you find yourself on the same side as appalling racists/ignorant “patriots”, you might ask yourself why, and additionally whether you might be more appalling and/or ignorant than you’d like to admit.

Three, it seems to me that near the heart of the Leave vote is an internecine struggle for the soul of the UK’s Conservative party, which, while probably important to David Cameron and a few other folks, is also almost certainly not important enough to have created this particular referendum. The Brexit vote solidifies my opinion that Cameron is not especially canny as a politician; he’s likely to have to resign as Prime Minister if the “leave” vote succeeds, and it’s not entirely out of the question he could be made to resign even if “remain” wins, but only by a small margin.

Fourth, and most significantly, it does seem that even if the UK wants to extricate itself from the EU, it will still have to deal with the EU and conform to EU standards and practices if it wants to trade with the EU, which it will, because the EU is one of the largest single markets on the planet. So essentially the UK gains nothing with respect to the EU, and the EU still gets to dictate to the UK, with the only difference being the UK no longer gets a hand in making the EU policy.

There are other things to think about as well (the possibility of the UK breaking up as Scotland decides to stay in the EU, the Brexit encouraging other EU defections, possibly destabilizing Europe, what happens to the millions of UK citizens living in Spain, France, etc), but the sum up is: Leave seems dishonest, courts bigotry, and doesn’t actually appear to have any real benefit to anyone whose name is not Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson or Michael Gove. The fact that the latest polls show the UK population evenly split on it is a little frightening.

That said, Donald Trump is the presumed nominee for president for the Republican Party, so far be it from me to cast any stones.

And of course, both Trump and the “Leave” initiative seem to be two strains of the same virus, i.e., a few massively entitled folks harnessing for their own benefit the furious yawp of a group of people for whom things are not currently going well, who want to find someone to blame, and who just want things to go back to a time when they are certain things were better — if not in general, then at least for them. In both cases this larger group is very unlikely to get what they want, even if they get their way at the ballot box.

In any event: Remain would be my vote, if I got a vote, which I do not. Hopefully enough folks in the UK will vote that direction anyway.

[Mike from Boston]

Just curious, I understand what Brexit is, but how did this come about. Was there a petition to put an Exit question on the ballot? Was there language when the UK joined that set a referendum about this in the future (which is today). Or something else?

[DzM]

Just curious, I understand what Brexit is, but how did this come about. Was there a petition to put an Exit question on the ballot? Was there language when the UK joined that set a referendum about this in the future (which is today). Or something else?

I'm sure our friends that actually live there can provide a better history than I can, but...

As I understand things it's a power struggle within the Tory (the conservative party of the UK) party. Back in '13 Cameron was facing a lot more inter-party flack about EU membership, etc. As a short-term political move he appeased this part of his party with a "Well if I still get to be the PM then in 2016 we'll totally have a referendum about remaining in the EU!" Much to his horror his party actually held him to this promise and, even worse, somewhere around half the country hates the EU enough to say "yeah, OK. We're out."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/world ... .html?_r=0

[Mike from Boston]

Thanks DzM!

[Low D]

Just curious, I understand what Brexit is, but how did this come about

And couldn't they have come up with a better name, rather than changing one letter from "Grexit"? This is Boaty McBoatface all over again.

[DzM]

Just curious, I understand what Brexit is, but how did this come about

And couldn't they have come up with a better name, rather than changing one letter from "Grexit"? This is Boaty McBoatface all over again.

When the voters are asked to vote for Brexit or Bremain ... It's just chaos. CHAOS.

The kids these days.

[Low D]

Just curious, I understand what Brexit is, but how did this come about

And couldn't they have come up with a better name, rather than changing one letter from "Grexit"? This is Boaty McBoatface all over again.

When the voters are asked to vote for Brexit or Bremain ... It's just chaos. CHAOS.

The kids these days.

And the Brits get all down on Americans' bastardization of the mother tongue...

[Guest]

Looks like an upset win for Brexit 52-48

[DzM]

"It's a national act of self harm."

So what are the odds the Queen steps in as the actual head of state and says "Just kidding. We are not amused."

On the plus side - at least Cameron's career is over.

[firehazard]

Just curious, I understand what Brexit is, but how did this come about. Was there a petition to put an Exit question on the ballot? Was there language when the UK joined that set a referendum about this in the future (which is today). Or something else?

I'm sure our friends that actually live there can provide a better history than I can, but...

As I understand things it's a power struggle within the Tory (the conservative party of the UK) party. Back in '13 Cameron was facing a lot more inter-party flack about EU membership, etc. As a short-term political move he appeased this part of his party with a "Well if I still get to be the PM then in 2016 we'll totally have a referendum about remaining in the EU!" Much to his horror his party actually held him to this promise ...

That's a reasonable summary, DzM. Basically, yes, before the last general election Cameron promised a referendum to appease the Europhobic elements within his Tory party, which has been riven by divisions over Europe for decades, and also to lessen the electoral prospects of the xenophobic right-wing nutjobs of the anti-European party UKIP, which was threatening to split the Tory vote at the election. He made the promise never expecting to have to put it into effect, because he didn't expect to actually win the 2015 election with a majority - he thought he was more likely to end up either in coalition again, or running a minority administration, which meant he could blame "the others" when the promised referendum didn't take place.

After the election put him back into power with a tiny majority, he then needed to have the referendum to keep the parliamentary votes of the Europhobe MPs within his party. He decided that the referendum would be set in the context of a new deal for the UK that he would negotiate with the leaders of the other European countries, but he overestimated his negotiating skills and they basically told him to sod off.

So he ended up calling the referendum on the basis of a new deal that was not really any kind of deal at all. And found himself opposed in the referendum campaign not only by the UKIP nutjobs but also by the Europhobic elements within his own party, led by his old rival Boris Johnson, who is in essence a multimillionaire media personality and part-time politician with a stupid hairstyle and a carefully contrived buffoon and "man of the people" personality, which hides his extreme right-wing views (sound familiar?).

And it appears that large sections of the British electorate, battered by years of Tory austerity and, encouraged by the right-wing media, blaming the consequences of this austerity on immigrants, have taken the opportunity to give Cameron a kicking. So Cameron has made an appalling political miscalculation.

And the population of the UK has voted for stupidity, and we're basically fecked.

I apologise to the rest of the world. If anyone has any ideas of a decent country that we could emigrate to, I'd be grateful.

[Hennybhoy]

So is this the beginning of the end of Great Britain?

Scotland and Nothern Ireland wanted to stay in the EU....

[firehazard]

So is this the beginning of the end of Great Britain?

Scotland and Nothern Ireland wanted to stay in the EU....

Early days, but my guess is that the SNP will push for another independence referendum for Scotland, which they would probably win this time.

Sinn Fein are already talking about the call for a referendum on Irish unity. Though I guess that if it came to a vote on that, the north would once more just vote along sectarian lines.

Meanwhile Wales voted "leave". Presumably having forgotten that their economy is heavily subsidised by the EU. Not sure where they think that money will come from now.