United Kingdom Referendum on European Union Membership

[rob in cal]

   Derpist, I wonder if its the case that basically anything that smacks of nationalism, even if driven by a huge working class vote and against the clear wishes of most of the wealthy, will now spark this strident opposition.

[Derpist]

   Derpist, I wonder if its the case that basically anything that smacks of nationalism, even if driven by a huge working class vote and against the clear wishes of most of the wealthy, will now spark this strident opposition.

I think this has always been my problem with left-wing movements. You can't beat something with nothing. They may have a great deal many flaws, but things like traditional civic society (whether it be local community, religion, or inclusive nationalism) are some of the strongest constraints against powerful economist interests. So you have leftists who want to tear down those things because of their flaws...and they inevitably find common cause with corporate interests that want to tear down the last barrier to their unlimited control of society - and the two groups just meld together after a while because of tribalism and political polarization and stuff.

The only person who I thought made a good argument for Remain was Jeremy Corbyn, but his voice just got drowned out by the media narrative that everyone who didn't like the undemocratic, austerity status quo was some sort of racist and that you had to bend the knee or be punished by Ramsay Banker.

[The Last Northerner]

In light of the post-referendum explosion of internet ageism (along with other types of prejudice) by the Remain side, it looks like a lot of young people didn't even bother to vote.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

it looks like a lot of young people didn't even bother to vote.

isn't that what happens in every election ever in the UK?

[The Last Northerner]

it looks like a lot of young people didn't even bother to vote.

isn't that what happens in every election ever in the UK?

I hoped an an extremely important election like this would be the exception.

And it is funny to blame one group of people for outvoting yours.... when yours didn't turn-out.

[Antonio the Sixth]

it looks like a lot of young people didn't even bother to vote.

isn't that what happens in every election ever in the UK?

FTFY

[politicallefty]

I know it's a different issue, but it's stats like those that make me glad this isn't a Sanders/Trump race in the US.

I didn't post here Thursday night, but I did follow the results closely. To be honest, I really didn't follow the campaign too closely. I was one of those people that just basically assumed Remain would win. (Personally, I basically would have been a reluctant Remain voter. In other words, I'm not really a fan of the EU as it is, but I think leaving would be worse and deny Britons of many rights and opportunities.)

I do want to say, from an American perspective, that I absolutely love the way elections are run in the UK. I personally love following UK elections, even when they don't go my way (like this year and last year). To those that bring President Obama into this equation, do you really think he would have spoken about an issue like this in public without first talking to Prime Minister David Cameron? I have no doubt in my mind that Cameron wanted Obama to lend an additional voice to the Remain campaign. President Obama does maintain that the "Special Relationship" has not changed. If there's one bright side I'm hopeful for, it's that we could perhaps negotiate a bilateral FTA between the US and the UK. I'm normally skeptical when it comes to free trade agreements, but there are very few better than one between the US and the UK. I personally believe very strongly in the "Special Relationship" and I only want to make it as strong as possible.

[Zinneke]

  Derpist, I wonder if its the case that basically anything that smacks of nationalism, even if driven by a huge working class vote and against the clear wishes of most of the wealthy, will now spark this strident opposition.

I think this has always been my problem with left-wing movements. You can't beat something with nothing. They may have a great deal many flaws, but things like traditional civic society (whether it be local community, religion, or inclusive nationalism) are some of the strongest constraints against powerful economist interests. So you have leftists who want to tear down those things because of their flaws...and they inevitably find common cause with corporate interests that want to tear down the last barrier to their unlimited control of society - and the two groups just meld together after a while because of tribalism and political polarization and stuff.

The only person who I thought made a good argument for Remain was Jeremy Corbyn, but his voice just got drowned out by the media narrative that everyone who didn't like the undemocratic, austerity status quo was some sort of racist and that you had to bend the knee or be punished by Ramsay Banker.

The problem with understanding centre-left parties in Europe is that they are tribal rather than rational actors. The result is you have strands of left-wing people who broadly speaking are polar opposites in terms of politics, but would never defect to the traditional far left or, more saliently, any party that is considered right-wing.

Take Manuel Valls for example. His politics are right-wing. He's an ordo-liberal and therefore fiercely pro-EU in economic policy, and authoritarian quasi-Gaullism in social policy and foreign affairs. He should be in Les Republicains. He's not though, because his family escaped a brutal dictator that right-wing parties tolerated and even acclaimed for shooting up Catalan leftists like his family. Part of this tribal  is the toxic image of being right-wing if you come from certain communities that right-wing parties have excluded for years. This is why Valls get really angry if you call him right-wing.

The same is evident in Britain. You have a tribal Northern Labour vote that is eurosceptic, somewhat bigoted, anti-free trade (even though they have had absolute gains). Then you have a tribal Southern (London) Labour vote who is cosmopolitan, liberal, etc and probably wouldn't be associated with 'working class'.  

What annoys me is the idea that somehow one or the other has a monopoly over progress politics, while the other is regressive. The idea that being pro-free trade automitically makes you a class traitor is the kind of mentality the far left, not the centre left, is famous for. I deserted the centre-left party in Belgium partly for this (mainly for their corruption).

[afleitch]

There might be a hidden 'veto' in the devolved assemblies.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201516/ldselect/ldeucom/138/138.pdf

[ChrisDR68]

Interesting interview just now on the Sunday Politics with Liam Fox.

He's saying there needs to be a government department set up to handle the negotiations with the European Union with politicians, business leaders, trade experts and lawyers involved.

Once a new prime minister is in place he or she then needs to create a trade department that we currently don't have and start informal discussions with the EU about the framework for negotiations.

Then at the end of this year invoke Article 50 of the Libson Treaty on the assumption that we'll formally leave the EU on January 1st 2019.

All this seems to make a lot of sense to me

[Filuwaúrdjan]

    Anyone have any feelings on what areas had the most surprising results?  Either in terms of turnout or outcome?

Heavily Asian areas - from what limited information we have - appear to have voted not dissimilarly from the national average. Actually there was always a decent chance this might happen but it was absolutely not part of the pre-vote narrative in which it was assumed that minorities would be overwhelmingly for Remain.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Regarding the age thing, it is quite normal for there to be a large gap between very young voters and the rest in terms of turnout no matter the election (always thus: people often need to feel that they have a stake before they start voting), but I don't see any reason to trust any surveys done about this as if they are fact.

[parochial boy]

I wonder if the unexpected large vote for Brexit in Wales despite to low number of immigrants in Wales has to do with the fairly large number English immigration into Wales over the last couple of decades.  The Brexit vote in Wales might more be a vote for lower number of immigrants into England which in turn will drive down the number of English immigrants into Wales.

Unlikely, across the country, lower levels of immigration correlated mildly to a higher "leave" vote. Wales is no different.

It's been a phenomena that has been pointed out, that areas with fewer immigrants tend to be more anti-immigration; but this fits neatly into the fact that these are the poorest areas that have suffered the most from de-industrialisation, and whose inhabitants have the most to be angry about.

This has been directed at immigrants, which is sad, but not surprising given that we have had decades of them being blamed for every ill in society.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The leave vote wasn't just about immigration even if that was a big factor for some. In South Wales there are a lot of older people who have always regarded the EU as part of a capitalist conspiracy (the area saw the lowest by far pro EEC vote in England-and-Wales back in 1975). And the face of the In campaign was David Cameron; for a lot of voters that will have been invitation enough to vote against.

But note that many non-EU migrants (perhaps most? After all I suspect that there was an age split in terms of minorities just as much as white people...) voted Out. I suspect the suggestion that a post-Brexit EU might relax rules on immigration from the old Empire (lol) may have been a factor.

[Iosif]

The fallout from this has been amazing. The Leave campaign really thought (hoped?) they wouldn't win and it shows. They're furiously backpedaling on their promises and Boris and Gove have completely disappeared.

The Labour sh!tshow is also hilarious.

[ChrisDR68]

Good comment from Rekaert in the comments section under this article in the Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/eu-rhetoric-has-been-counter-productive-a7103011.html

The problem with the EU is they never had legitimacy to begin with, so this was a problem planted many years ago that is only now coming to fruition.

It was mis-sold to the British back in the seventies that there would be zero impact on our sovereignty, which was clearly a lie.

The rejected constitution was repacked into the abomination that is the Lisbon treaty to avoid nations even having the chance to reject it.

It's only over the past decade and half that they've been more honest about their intentions to push for Federalisation and absolute union, effectively making a new nation.

They kept very quiet about it till they thought it was too far along to stop. Since then it's been power-grab after power-grab, and usually by stealth, small bit at a time so we wouldn't become alarmed.

Hardly surprising then that a huge chunk of people are not on-board with this.

Forcing a national identity on people just doesn't work.

Agree 100% with all of that

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

It's from 1990, but fits well to the quality of pre-referendum "debate"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp6SwvJak2Y

[Tetro Kornbluth]

People still relying on abstract arguments about 'sovereignty'? Amazing

And the idea that the 1975 vote was illegitimate because what later happened was not was not what was said at the time does not understand a) the concept of legitimacy and b) what was said at the time. Also pretty rich given the outright lies the Leave campaign promoted this year.

At least though you will have that yummy delicious sovereignty when close to a million Brits return home from Spain having been declared illegal by the Spanish Government. But, hey, the taste of that sovereignty... yum yum.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

It's from 1990, but fits well to the quality of pre-referendum "debate"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp6SwvJak2Y

The EU is a desperately boring topic for most people, and for good reason. Thus the 'debate' we had.

[rob in cal]

   I wonder about all those expat Brits in Spain.  I would think the Spanish government would work on finding a way to let them stay without too many problems.  Don't most of them spend money which comes from the UK into  the Spanish economy and not work?

[ag]

  I wonder about all those expat Brits in Spain.  I would think the Spanish government would work on finding a way to let them stay without too many problems.  Don't most of them spend money which comes from the UK into  the Spanish economy and not work?

Those who have been there for a while have likely obtained some sort of permanent residency and might be able to keep it. The new arrivals - those who have just bought their house, planning to retire, for instance, or have been only using it for vacations - there will be a problem there, unless a general agreement on population mobility is reached.

The default option would, probably, be the same it is for other "no comunitarios": having to renew a residence permit every two years, which implies, say, some 30 hours in lines snaking around the local "brigada provincial de estrangería", waiving a pile of documents nobody is going to bother reading (but without which they would not let you into the process), obtaining which would take another couple weeks of full-time effort, etc., etc. I mean, lots of Russians have settled there as well: they have been doing this all: gratefully. So, Brits will be exactly like the Russians, etc.

I do not know how is the Alicante estrangería, but, I guess, once Brits get into the system it will become overcrowded like hell. Madrid estrangería back in 2006-7 (in the old Carabanchel prison) was no fun, but I survived. No desire to repeat it, though.

In any case, if I were a Brit about to retire, I would be looking into Bournemouth right now. Until the agreements are reached, nobody can tell you what will happen.

[Zinneke]

Good comment from Rekaert in the comments section under this article in the Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/eu-rhetoric-has-been-counter-productive-a7103011.html

The problem with the EU is they never had legitimacy to begin with, so this was a problem planted many years ago that is only now coming to fruition.

It was mis-sold to the British back in the seventies that there would be zero impact on our sovereignty, which was clearly a lie.

The rejected constitution was repacked into the abomination that is the Lisbon treaty to avoid nations even having the chance to reject it.

It's only over the past decade and half that they've been more honest about their intentions to push for Federalisation and absolute union, effectively making a new nation.

They kept very quiet about it till they thought it was too far along to stop. Since then it's been power-grab after power-grab, and usually by stealth, small bit at a time so we wouldn't become alarmed.

Hardly surprising then that a huge chunk of people are not on-board with this.

Forcing a national identity on people just doesn't work.

Agree 100% with all of that

You realise the areas where sovereignty is infringed are related almost solely to the single market the UK decided to join?

[swl]

I think not much will change for British expats in the EU and EU expats in the UK. Boris clearly hinted that the UK will negotiate for a EEA style agreement, which means no restriction on free movement on both sides. It also means no restriction on free movement of goods, capital and services, so the consequences on the economy will be limited.
The most extreme brexiters who hoped to get rid of Poles or Bulgarians expats will be disappointed, but I think a good compromise will be found.

[afleitch]

If it opts for an EEA agreement, why should Britain be excluded from having to sign up to Schengen? It'll effectively walk away from an 'immigration' based referendum having less control over it.

[ag]

If it opts for an EEA agreement, why should Britain be excluded from having to sign up to Schengen? It'll effectively walk away from an 'immigration' based referendum having less control over it.

Oh, it will join Schengen, that is almost a given.