ks.234
Half way to Infinity
Absolutely. Like it or not, the referendum result has democratic legitimacy, a second referendum must likewise come from a wider democratic base, not a narrow ‘leadership’ position.
why Corbyn may well win the next election.
- Thread starter Rockmeister
- Start date
Tony L
Administrator
It was only ever ‘advisory’ and was very deliberately and cynically mis-sold in a way that would certainly have had any real business in breach of Trading Standards and very possibly in jail for corruption. If, as has seemed obvious to many of us from the start, this fundamentally dishonest act risks many millions of people facing real economic hardship and poverty then it should be stopped before that damage occurs. If the result of that is some violent fascist extremists take to the streets as a result then that is what we have a police force, army and a functioning legal system for. Better a little civil unrest than a long-term recession or depression caused by an act of entirely unnecessary nationalism/isolationism tesulting from a political election stunt that backfired.
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Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
I do understand the argument here, honestly I do, but while I accept your second point about the second referendum I disagree with the implication that the 'democratic legitimacy' in your first point makes the result immutable.
The risk in overturning a referendum (or any other) vote 'by decree' as it were, is that you undermine the principle of democracy. However, there are electoral rules about spending, and legal precedent, which have the power to annul an election if the rules have been broken. If that can happen with an election, why not a referendum? Especially as this particular referendum is for keeps, whereas an election is relatively transient, so all the more reason why it has to be unimpeachable in the way it was conducted.
FWIW, I'm not hung up on the overspending, though it is reprehensible in and of itself by its deliberate and calculating nature, not to mention the attempt at concealment, but it does provide a valid mechanism whereby the result can be impugned. I am rather more exercised about the lies, misrepresentation and general level of blatant deceit which won the day, and to my mind a more important principle at stake here is that those who won unfairly shall not prosper from it.
I do still think the reluctance to annul the referendum result is more about the optics than about the wisdom or legitimacy of that action.
eternumviti
Insufficient privileges to reply.
Whatever the rights or wrongs in the conduct of this referendum, or the lies and half-truths, it is repeatedly forgotten here that we were taken in on the basis of a series of lies, falsehoods and presentational spin that very deliberately fogged the ultimate goal of Monnet's a 'United States of Europe' of full political and economic union. This fog was perpetuated by Monnet, Schuman, Macmillan, in Heath's claim that there would 'be no essential loss of sovereignty", through the Single European Act, Maastricht, and the forcing of the Lisbon constitution. The entire EU project has been premised on lies and soft deception, all of it immaculately encapsulated in the loose-tongued utterances of J-C Juncker such as 'When it becomes serious, you have to lie'', “Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?”, “If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue" etc, etc.
Now there will be the usual series of ripostes along the lines of 'Union was always explicit from The Treaty of Rome onwards', but that fact conceals the truth that the politicians knew from the outset that they would need to presentationally obfuscate that intention, and that is what they have consistently done.
To that I would add that the debate in this forum consistently fails to touch upon the deceptions that came from the pro-EU side in the pre-referendum campaigns. 'Project fear' was to a greater or lesser extent built on a series of bent forecasts generated by the BoE and the Treasury regarding the immediate economic impact of a vote to leave the EU, of which only one has turned out to be remotely correct. This campaign, conducted by the PM and George Osborne and supported by an international host from the banks to high-profile actors to Barack Obama, without any doubt at all will have succeeded in turning large numbers of would-be leavers into cautious remainers. The same campaign, conducted by Tony Blair and the likes of George Soros, and featuring a finely-tuned orchestra of banks, economists, academics, financial houses, international corporations, politicos, the EU, Whitehall, the Government and the Treasury and so on, continues towards the objective of a second referendum, to be carried out according to the EU mantra of 'if they don't give the right answer the first time, keep asking the question until they do'.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
I’ll tell you what I think it’s all about- the Conservative Party surviving by retaining and capturing the ethnic nationalist vote.
Tony L
Administrator
Indeed. Pandering to even the ugliest xenophobic extremes of the far right does not in any way seem to be beneath the modern Conservative party.
Stunsworth
pfm Member
That's the dilemma for the Tories, the more disgusting Johnson gets the more popular he becomes with a section of their voters. In the end the only thing that may prevent him becoming leader is his unpopularity with his fellow MPs.
I'm beginning to wonder if the Tories actually _want_ to lose the next election, so that Labour gets the blame for all the crap that's going to hit the fan after we leave, setting them up for a run of election wins.
HairyHaggis
<((((º>`•.¸¸.•´¯`•.¸.•´¯`•...¸><((((º>¸.
a United States of Europe is the only possible future we have. otherwise, our regressive flag-waving will inevitably result in more european wars. and further, a united states of the world is desirable and inevitable. anything else is myopic and neurotic nostalgia.
..we are all human beings
..we are all human beings
Mullardman
Moderately extreme...
Part of your problem Tony, is that people don't necessarily shift their political allegiances based on experience or common sense. I've quoted before about the lad I was at uni with in the 1980s (On a Politics degree!) who, despite knowing full well and admitting that Thatch was taking the country to the cleaners, declared his intention to vote Tory because his Dad was in the military and would do better under them. Multiply that buy a few million (probably less well informed) young people..
Also, the whole circus is now turned into effectively 'The Rest of the World' v 'Nasty Anti-Semitic-Racist-Marxist -Terrorist Supporting Corbyn'., with far too little analysis of any facts, or policy, either current, or proposed.
This on top of a concerted media effort to position 'The Centre' somewhere marginally to the right of Attilla The Hun and anything even remotely left of that to 'Considerably to the Left of Leon Trotsky'.
On the more hopeful side, most of what I'm seeing on Facebook daily is concereted condemnation of Boris, his gang and the Tories in general, whilst many come to the defence of Corbyn and Labour against the establishment smear campaign. That said I don't really know how much my Facebook 'habits', are causing me to be fed this stuff.
Finally, as an aside. I emailed BBC 'North West Tonight' yesterday evening and queried why they don't just stick a sodding great Blue Rosette on the forehead of their new 'Political Editor' Kevin Fitzpatrick. His style of delivery, his framing of issues and questioning of politicians makes Kuenssberg and Norman Smith appear positively benign.
Still
he said his naim was ralph
The tories put maintaining power/keeping snouts in troughs ahead of everything else, so were always going to take us with them.
Far better for them to implode asap, rather then continue to feck the country with their internal issues and omnishambolic governance imo.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
The key phrase in your quote above is 'pretty much everyone I know'. People tend to mix with those who, broadly speaking, share their own values/beliefs. Would you willingly associate yourself with self-declared right-wingers (by which I mean Thatcher fans rather than anything more extreme)?
You're about ten years younger than me, so I guess the first General Election you would have been eligible to vote in would have been the 1983 election, which saw a Tory landslide against a left-wing Labour opposition. The Tories won again in 1987 and 1992 against a centre-left Labour party, which suggests that your generation, on balance, was never all that left-wing, or even centre-left, to start with.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
Given that it is often said that young people vote rather less than older people, I’m not sure you can infer that it is Tony’s ( and my) generation which isn’t left wing, so much as the generation a decade or two older (ie, yours) because those same demographics suggest that fewer of our peers actively voted for Thatcher than did the older generations.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
It is of course ridiculous to state that one generation is more or less left-wing than another, though when I first became eligible to vote in the '70s, elections were more closely balanced than in the following decades. I was simply pointing out that 'pretty much everyone [TonyL] knows is centre to left' is no indicator of how the majority of any demographic would have voted in any given election. Plus, of course, if younger centre-to-left people failed to vote, they were indirectly responsible for those Tory victories.
Tony L
Administrator
Agreed, plus the fact I ‘dropped out’ and spent many years in the art/music counterculture is likely very significant. Most of my friends are very much from that demographic and many still work in arts, music, architecture, design, education etc, all of which professions tend to be somewhat left-leaning. I don’t recall IT (my only “proper” career) being right-wing either, the IT department usually being a little oasis of sanity in a world of corporate madness.
The thing I haven’t seen is any real shift from left to right. Almost everyone I know is still where they have always been on the political map. Maybe far better informed now we are older, but we are still in the same general location.
PS 1983 was my first election. I was a trainee psych nurse at the time and, for the only time in my life, a member of a Trade Union. I think you can maybe guess how I voted!
Enfield boy
pfm Member
Interesting, I work in a unionised environment which has been undeniably beneficial to the workforce. You’d think, therefore that my colleagues would be broadly sympathetic to the Union’s political aspirations. Nothing could be further from the truth, I am Facebook “friends” with many and a sizeable number post Britain First type filth and are happy to pronounce publicly things they’d never say at work. I’m truly amazed at the level of angry fascist ignorance on social media.
eternumviti
Insufficient privileges to reply.
An unreformed 1950s utopian. World government was the ultimate vision of Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and the other founding fathers of the EU, and the dream of Macmillan and Heath, all of whom had watched Europe tear itself to shreds twice in the first half of the century. The EU, the child of their dreams, makes me think of that other example of post-war utopianism, the New Towns.
"While many New Towns have been economically successful, most now are experiencing major problems. Their design is inappropriate to the 21st Century. Their infrastructure is ageing at the same rate and many have social and economic problems."
(2002 the Select Committee on Transport, Local Government and the Regions "The New Towns, their problems and future.")
We are indeed all human beings, and as such we are inherently tribal. Many or most western Europeans look to the nation, its narrative and customs as an anchor to our sense of needing to belong, whilst others anchor their sense of belonging in religion. It is basic human nature to do so. You might believe that a USE and ultimately a world government is the only possible future, but I would suggest that you are in a very small minority. To most of us it is a dystopian nightmare.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
Are you a religious man EV?
eternumviti
Insufficient privileges to reply.
Not yet. Why?
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
I get whiffs of the evangelical.
jackbarron
Chelsea, London
Everybody in the solar system knows Brexiteers won't be allowed into Heaven. When Saint Peter asks if they have been racist, it will be impossible for them to lie.
The downfallen will then languish in Purgatory forever. This is the equivalent of being a member of the Tory Party in the afterlife.
Satan will however roast Farage, his fascist friends and Bojo, on a pitchfork.
Jack
The downfallen will then languish in Purgatory forever. This is the equivalent of being a member of the Tory Party in the afterlife.
Satan will however roast Farage, his fascist friends and Bojo, on a pitchfork.
Jack
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