Evening Paul, great post full of level headed examples and ideas to think about. Maybe if someone from remain would of stood on my doorstep and people i know and had a conversation about things you mention i think the vote might have had a different outcome. Or the government focused on the positives of remain rather than the negatives of leave the result might of been different. The general population are tired of politics, since the crash of 08 its just been a blame game and we are bored of it all, I have voted my whole life but i now wish there was a box for none of the above. Maybe the leave vote in many ways was a protest vote against the establishment, probably not wanting to win but certainly send a message to our leaders.
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Way too late for ‘level headed’ discussions, we either leave the EU (with or without a deal) or don’t, it’s that simple. The Labour Party had a great chance to do something brave this week but predictably chickened out.
I don’t see that.
What could they have done that would have been ‘more brave’?
Back a people’s vote which the vast majority of Labour member’s support and officially state that if a GE is called their manifesto would include a new referendum.
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Way too late for ‘level headed’ discussions, we either leave the EU (with or without a deal) or don’t, it’s that simple.
In a practical sense you are probably right - but if there was the political will I think that Brexit could be suspended or stopped entirely.
Errr,… I’m with Graham.
They could have demanded a referendum but that is fraught with difficulty and might not actually get us anywhere.
They could have admitted that Starmer’s “6 tests” amount to EEA membership or even staying in but Corbyn is too Euro-sceptic for that to happen.
Yes, the members support a 2nd referendum, maybe even the Party does but what about the voters. Labour is scared s***less that the people who actually voted for its MPs also voted Leave.
And supporting a referendum is only a small part of the picture - the real issue is what question do you put on there (I posted some thoughts on that previously).
This is where Corbyn falls down, he bangs on about democracy with promises to act on whatever the membership decide then makes sure any motion he doesn’t like is either withdrawn (think second deputy leader) or watered down ie Brexit.
Why not be really brave and suggest the whole thing is called off?
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The bungalow, siesta, veranda and rhododendron was just adding to Peter’s list of foreign things that have become everyday occurrences in Britain, in this case words in the English vocabulary.
Your too clever for me David.
I still feel you are getting at me for putting myself in the place of leavers and standing up for the way so many remainers treat them for their views. They may not be right, I don’t know but I get angry at the way they are sometimes mocked and made the butt of rude comments, assumed to unintelligent, on benefits or stupid. If I had to say what annoyed me about the EU it would be the waste of money that goes on, not immigration or immigrants, after all, I am one myself. Personally I couldn’t care which way Brexit goes as I can do nothing about it unless I go back to the UK and get a vote again. I will join in any petition to get the vote for ex pats after 15 years away from the UK as it is not a fair action, most other nations have life time voting rights and we were promised that a few years ago.
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You say you will join in any petition to reinstate the vote for those who have left the UK for more than fifteen years.
There has been action in this direction for a long time.
Manny Shindler, a nonogenarian living in Italy, has ben pro-active in this field for many years.
ECREU is an organisation which is active in fighting this battle.
It is free to join.
I am surprised that if you are interested in regaining your vote you have not discovered this for yourself.
You also say that you are not concerned which way Brexit goes because you cannot vote.
I find that an amazingly selfish point of view when you must know how many of your fellow citizens here in France are being badly affected by Brexit.In fact we have already been affected because of the drop in the exchange rate due totally to the result of the Referendum.
Elizabeth,
You are to be commended on your post. It is rather sad that no sensible discussions can be had on the subject without it resorting to insults or ‘logic’ according to which camp is giving its view.
No one knows what is going to happen post Brexit but obviously your logic isn’t particularly welcome!! I would have, given the opportunity, voted for Brexit, as from your post, you may have done. My reasons for wanting Brexit are based on the more historical rather than the future.
Remainer or Brexiteer it’s a shame that insults and aggressive views fly around. Whatever happened to respecting someone’s opinion though disagreeing with it.
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As someone who’s voted Leave, and made no secret of it, I’ve been on the receiving end of plenty of insults, questioning my intelligence and sneeringly telling me I’m selfish. Mostly from people who then complain about their own circumstances being affected, which I should have thought was a selfish viewpoint!
Not just on this forum where there’s been a few … but various other fora into which I venture and state my point of view.
As I’ve posted here many times - (and no I shan’t go into the argument again) - I’m all in favour of a trading community within Europe. But not to a centralised government which is where the EU is heading. When the EU was seven or nine fairly prosperous countries then there was a balance … now 27 rather higgledy piggledy assortments of prosperities.
I felt that a Remain vote would have given carte blanche to a future government deciding to join the Euro, and given the go-ahead to ‘more Europe’.
My Leave vote was to halt this - to me, certainty - that the UK would be subsumed into Europe and lose its identity, its laws and its government and its own control.
Whilst my own circumstances are immediately affected with the falling £, I’m convinced that this will benefit future generations as a European coalition and the Euro crumbles. Maybe not in my lifetime …
So my vote wasn’t ‘selfish’. I’m affected too. Also I’m not intellectually inferior to anyone, I’m not racist although I dislike aspects of certain cultures where women are seen as inferior. I checked my facts, although more facts have emerged.
It’s a different point of view. Equal to yours, but different.
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Thank you for your post, it’s the first that I’ve read from a Leave voter where they’ve posted valid reasons that can be talked about sensibly even if we have to disagree at the end. Only time will tell how Brexit will affect the UK and the full picture will not be seen within my lifetime.
Which is fair enough.
To be honest I didn’t interpret things that way - I felt a Remain vote was principally for the status quo.
That said the Leave vote has been totally hijacked and we now face the abyss of a no-deal Brexit - which suggests voting Leave was a dangerous thing to have done.
I hope we will pull back from the edge and do a sensible deal but with May having ruled out not only EEA/EFTA but now a Canada style FTA she has precious little room left for manoeuvre - in fact I am not sure she has any left at all. Add to that the game of chicken that she is playing with the EU, even given that deals tend to be done at the 59th minute of the 11th hour, I am not terribly confident about the future at present.
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Would any SFN member who voted Leave agree that leaving the EU is a big gamble with the UK’s economic future?
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I shouldn’t be speaking on behalf of others but surely Sandy has written that it’s a gamble she expects to win.
What does she expect to “win” though.
While I can agree with the notion that the UK was unlikely to want to enter still closer union than we have at present it was obvious that “taking control of our borders” and “reasserting sovereignty” and “doing trade deals” was not compatible with EEA membership, possibly not even with EFTA membership - despite prominent leavers also promising that we would have just the same level of access to the single market - it was very, very, clear that it would be impossible to deliver all the promises that the Leave campaign made (as they were, in many instances, self-contradictory).
That, alone, made me disinclined to vote Leave - the very obvious lack of clarity and the very obvious dubiousness of the claims. Plus it was pretty obvious that they were making these promises largely from a position of not having to make good on them.
Long term I think our relationship with the EU would have changed, it might well have made sense to opt for a looser association such as via the EFTA but we have now backed ourselves into a situation from which there do not appear to be any good outcomes.
Is this really what anyone voted for?
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CIt seems to be based on the presumption that the Eurozone will implode and at that point Britain will be better off than the countries who have benefitted from being members over the years. I’m sure some Californians have similar fears for the dollar. It’s a bit like reading a book written on a binary format where at the reader can make decisions at key points. Personally I thought that when Britain had reached the are you going to join the Euro? point they had answered, no and taken the appropriate direction. Apparently this is a recurring question turning my digital story into a flow diagram. Personally I have never understood the watering down of national identities; I lived a fair time in the UK, longer in Germany on the Dutch border, a 20 minute drive from Belgium then moved to France. The five countries that I know intimately all have their national identities and crossing from one to another, even in a built up area you always know which country you are in. Yes, certain historical actions have left some national architecture on the wrong side of a border or two but even those don’t cause confusion. I shopped regularly in Germany, Holland and Belgium knowing that the produce in the supermarkets would be quite different. Strangely I used to drive over into Belgium to do some food shopping about once a month as the supermarket there sold French goods but that had little to do with the EU, it was because that particular chain is big in both countries and sells many of its products in both places. Strangely the Tesco store I once visited in Calais was nothing like those I knew in the U.K.
I will need a lot of convincing. I studied economics and have yet to see one economic advantage of being an independent sovereign nation; my basic beliefs are socialist and I dislike the, low tax, less social care attitude shown by many and after more than half my life living in Europe I like how it works.
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The argument (which I don’t buy) is that the short term pain is worth the long term gain.
The reason I don’t buy it is that the economic pain is extreme, might not be short term (JRM famously gaffed "it will take 50 years to see the effect of Brexit1) and the “gains” ephemeral and in some cases pyrrhic.
1] I suspect that he was trying to make the point that the effect of Brexit would be long lasting rather than any gain would take 50 years to materialise but it was a great gaff because that’s pretty much what he wound up saying.
I’m not sure I even buy the argument that if the EU is inevitably going to implode it is better to get out now - we can’t insulate ourselves for anything that cataclysmic so leaving now, especially in the manner in which we are currently doing, takes two hits - one for leaving and one when the EU goes tits-up.
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Jane, Thank you for the information on ECREU, I will look at it but whether I do anything now or not remains to be seen. I had seen something in the past but had forgotten what it was exactly as it did not apply at the time. I am not a selfish person at all but at the moment my voice does not count for anything but I do have family and I was thinking of them not the people that have a vested interest in remaining in the EU. So many only think of their own personal situation and not of the long term, they are the selfish ones.
My concern regarding the superior attitude of those that voted remain to those that voted leave has shown up even on this polite forum so I have taken the opportunity to see it from a leave point of view.
I do have concerns on the future of the EU and if I had had the opportunity to vote, I would have done a bit more research from reliable sources (if there are any) and would probably have voted leave. Perhaps my sympathies were there all the time and it has been writing on this forum for the first time that has made it clearer.
I too have lost a lot of money with the low exchange rate, you are not alone and when you don’t have a lot to start with, it is not very good but we just cut down a bit more and enjoy what we have here, growing all our fruit and veg, keeping chickens and bees so we are pretty self sufficient. This requires a lot of effort but we don’t mind that as we are in control of what we spend outside of statutory bills.
I repeat, I am not a selfish person and I resent the fact that you have called me that.
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