Farage's call for second Brexit vote greeted with glee by remainers

I have only read the top half dozen responses, apologies if anyone has already said this. I voted to remain. But I believe we cannot have a second referendum just because the first did not go the way I wanted. If we vote to remain on the second, shall we then make it the best of three, and then of five… No, we should have not have had a referendum in the first place. Mr Cameron has a lot to answer for. I believe that the brexit will be so soft we will hardly notice any difference.

The more that I think about it the more complex it appears to me. I voted remain, to an extent because I believe that we should be a member of the EU, to an extent because it was obvious that the Brexit supporters and Leave campaign were being somewhat economical with the truth, if not outright mendacious and also because I thought and still think that it leaving will be very damaging to the economy in the short term.

Medium to long term is a harder call - the Euro still hasn’t truly proven itself resilient to the fundamental tensions caused within the Eurozone because of the differences in the southern “slow” economies compared with Germany, France and (when we were “in”) the UK. The problems which almost lead Greece to exit the Union were merely papered over, much to the cost of the Greek people. The tensions almost certainly require closer union politically as well as financially. But the UK was unlikely to want to go for closer union, certainly we would not want to adopt the Euro and I’m not sure Cameron’s two speed approach would actually have worked, at least in part because we would probably have been the sole member of the “outer” member states. Though the concession that we did not have to follow the “ever closer union” path was an important one that I don’t think he got enough credit for.

One sticking point is free movement of labour - the EU is so wedded to the idea that it seems blind to the fact that it is causing real problems - not only for the wealthier countries which have had to cope with large influxes of people but also in the the source countries which have seen significant exodus of workforce and talent. Unfortunately this meant Cameron was not able to make any significant headway with this problem.

So had we voted to remain, or not had the referendum I think that there would still have been questions over where our membership of the EU was to take us. I think Cameron was naïve in thinking that intelligent debate could be had on this point but I can now see why he thought it had to be put to the people.

What we got was a Leave campaign which fed on people’s xenophobia and which blamed the EU for all sorts of ills which need to be laid squarely at the feet of the UK government such as lack of investment in housing, education and the NHS together with promising everyone that pulling out would be a breeze, everyone would have cupboards copiously full of cake at the same time as having eaten their fill and the world would beat a (trade) path to our door because we are British, don’tchya know.

Unfortunately the reality is that we have existing obligations that are hard to untangle from our EU membership - Ireland in particular- and the modern world runs on a web of trade agreements so tangled and so immured with mutual obligations that it is complex in the extreme to set up new ones. So the UK shaking off everything that it inherits by virtue of its EU membership and putting itself in a position of having to embark on fresh sets of negotiation with pretty much everyone seems to me to be a step which is more foolhardy than brave.

It is also not surprising that the EU is calling the shots in the negotiations, we wanted to leave and we have no real bargaining chips with which to secure a deal on our terms rather than theirs.

I don’t think we can, or should, hold a second referendum but I am slightly less critical of Cameron these days than I was just after the vote.

A second referendum which resulted in a vote to remain would see the UK humiliated by the EU, the concessions gained over the last 2/3 decades could be lost and for many years to come the UK would be treated with suspicion. Brexit has to happen but I fear that the deal the UK ends up with will cause yet more in-fighting and the current divisions between the Leavers and Remainers will rumble on and on.

If such a referendum happened after March 2019 I agree. If we changed our minds before we actually left it might be less damaging.

I can’t see how Brexit could be cancelled now, only a snap election would allow that to happen and even the hardline Brexit loving Tories realise that would lead to defeat.

Any rationale referendum would have made sure that a minimum 60/40 majority had to be achieved before it became valid. Even now I doubt if such a proviso on a second one would diminish the vitriole and divisions created by the first one.

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