It's just worth remembering in these febrile days when a lot of claims are being made just what the 2016 referendum ballot paper asked:
Can you spot anything on WTO rules?
Or migration?
Or freedom of movement more broadly?
Or customs unions?
Norway?
Canada?
Or authorisation to break other agreements?
No. Neither can I.
And anyone who claims that anything was said on any such issue at the time is simply lying.
And I think we do have a right to point that out.
The vote was to leave the EU.
No one said what that meant.
Or when it would happen.
And what would happen next.
No wonder we're in a mess.
And my point is a simple Ione. The so-called ‘red lines' are not based on the referendum result. And they do not respect the ‘will of the people'.
May is sinoply not telling the truth when she says that they do.
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Basically, British voters resident in the UK at the time of the referendum were asked to give Cameron a blank check so he could fob off the extreme right-wing of the Tory party and UKIP once and for all.
What many voters decided to do instead was to give him and his austerity policies a bloody nose, without much thought about what our relationship with the EU would be afterwards. Most had no idea what the EU did, meant, and didn’t even care as most polls have shown it was 10th on the list of concerns in 2015, before the whole farce kicked off.
Gutter press propaganda, Facebook ads, TV interviews imbalance, biased interviewers and panelists, buses in the streets, name it, the whole heavy artillery was deployed to bully and lie and cheat.
As you rightly show on the ballot paper, the most ill informed and simplistic tick in the box exercise I have ever seen in a massively important life-time was offered.
This absolute farce of a fraudulent and non-democratic vote (yes, nothing democratic about robbing 5 million EU citizens-British or not- out of their right to have a say on their future) has not been called out properly by the weakest opposition I seen in a long time.
So now for a proper call for a proper vote.
I’m so angry. So furious. Walk dog.
You are right
Make it a long walk
Take my Hector too….he’s sitting right behind me
May has positioned herself (with the red lines) as part of the problem. Putting this in a more colourful way:
There she is – a political fat-berg stuck in the sewers with no prospect of being shifted.
May has a series of character defects which make her the very worst sort of person to be PM at this time (or indeed anytime).
As for May “telling the truth” – she never has and come to that – the tories never have and never will – the party, its members & MPs just don’t do “unvarnished reality”/seeing things as they are.
[…] I have already pointed out this morning, when we voted to leave the EU that is what we did. No conditions or red lines were attached to the […]
“May is simply not telling the truth when she says that they do.”… well, that wouldn’t be the first time she lied.
I watched her statement at No10 last night and straight away she said she would do what was best for the country – that is leave the EU – when all reports (bar one from Minford I believe) confirm that leaving would **not** be in the best interests of the country!
Why does nobody call this out?
Because Corbyn won’t as he also thinks it’s true
I agree Marie, but what is worse is that May herself sought to ignore Parliamentary sovereignty and appeal above it’s head to the BREXITers in her party and beyond in the follow on general election until the judiciary intervened and reminded her of how things actually work.
What is even worse is that private individuals like Gina Miller have had to initially do what Parliament should have done itself. At least the Speaker seems to have woken up.
May unforgiveable.
As for Labour – well, I for one would not like to be in Opposition at one of the most toxic times in our politics ever. Labour’s infighting has rendered it ineffective and May knows it.
BREXIT is rather like a political version of the Ebola virus – its virulent and deadly. And Cameron is like Typhoid Mary – still at large after infecting the nation with his arrogance and stupidity.
Previously I’ve felt quite strongly that Theresa May was deliberately creating a situation that would lead to Brexit being cancelled. In that view she’s chosen her redlines and taken her time to ensure that the deal is unacceptable to all sides and there’s insufficient time to renegotiate.
While I still think there’s a strong possibility that’s true I now also think she may just be doing her best to achieve a deal that is actually acceptable to as broad an audience as possible and the fact that she’s failing is due to the machinations of various uncompromising actors both in the UK and in the EU.
In this latter view TM is simply doing her best to deliver on the 2016 referendum result while holding the country and her party together.
I’m no Tory but even I am finding the constant claims across the media that TM is entirely bungling and incompetent rather unbelievable. Clearly the EU, hard-line Brexiteers and hard-line remainers are not yet at a point they’re willing to compromise. TM is caught in the middle of 3 immovable objects and nothing she does can ever please one without pissing off at least one other group. Try it out yourselves – imagine a bunch of different things TM could do now from cancelling Brexit to committing to no-deal and everything in between those two extremes. I can’t think of a single thing that wouldn’t cause outrage and immediate accusations of duplicity or incompetence from one side or another.
Those wedded to one outcome or another can’t seem to see this blindingly obvious fact. I guess that’s because all that matters to a dedicated remainer or dedicated leaver is that they get their preferred outcome. Furthermore they’re utterly convinced the other side are deluded at best and evil at worst. I think it’s impossible to see the wood for the trees in that kind of hot psychological state.
Exactly.
I am still shaking my head in bemusement at how one question suddenly ‘clearly’ meant a whole lot more, and we are bombarded with the news that it is true (I believe it might come under the heading ‘propaganda’ or ‘misinformation’ – and if you have seen any of the leaked documents of the Integrity Initiative you see how easily it’s done, and how well politicised our secret services are too).
If you take Norway as an example – I watched a Lords committee meeting way back in 2016 looking at options for Brexit and they had a Norwegian foreign affairs man as witness to comment on their agreement with the EU – they have a huge ton of beaurocracy to manage their agreements with the EU because they are not a member – so they have to pick and choose which EU institutions they want to be part of, buy into that part and adhere to all the regulations of that part – and there are lots of separate parts to EU membership (which is the easy way to buy into all of them and also have a say on forming that regulation). They have regular referendums on EU membership, and the decision is always close, and it is always no, but they seem to manage that divide and run the country fine. So, I keep asking myself, WHY is the UK having such difficulty?
I will say that the result of the referendum was close enough to merit investigation into any illegal electoral behaviour (from spending, lies, to dodgy postal votes – there is some indication that fixing the postal vote has been used in the independence referendum, though I doubt that affected to outcome to a great extent, and the EU referendum – you cannot have a 99% turnout, and it may be worth looking into in this case) – but as it stands the result was to leave the EU and I believe in democracy so it should be carried out.
The red lines, invented as a thing claimed to be the ‘will of the people’ – except people were not asked about any of the red lines. Why wasn’t a consultation held on each? How does the government know to adhere to these? And even if they were all really what everyone wanted, it should be the government’s job to make sense of it and realise they are incompatible with each other, not to be instransigent and blind to the economic chaos.
The UK government and the opposition are playing the two-party game and obscuring the actual fairly simple routes that could be taken to resolving the issues. None of the parties have been ‘clear’.
Options could include:
1) leave the EU (only) for now, and promise to hold referenda on customs union etc over the next few years, the agreement with the EU could be remain in all the institutions for the next two years minimum. Irish backstop is not an issue for now.
2) actually, there is not enough time left for most of the sort-it-out options so I’ll leave it there. It was meant to be a gradual operation, not a crash-out, there are many ways to do things gradually – if you are capable of being clear and negotiating.
That’s the biggest problem eh, the government has wasted so much time, talking rubbish and not actually doing anything, that we are at the deadline. There is an option to revoke Art.50, but they would have to promise another vote or a new deadline for resolving things – and I don’t think Westminster is capable of it.
That Labour just keep saying ‘take no-deal off the table’ – um, no deal is the default if nothing else is done, it is the result of doing zero, how do you take it off anything let alone a table? The quality of political discourse is now so poor.
I read just a bit, after T Mays hypocritical comments on how you have to respect the results of a referendum (she didn’t, on any of the devolution decisions), and after a conversation with someone, I realised that in all other cases, where a large portion of the population didn’t vote for the thing that passed (e.g. Welsh assembly, NI assembly, Scottish Parliament, even the Scottish independence ref 2014) there are conciliatory policies – compromises were made. That is why the Welsh assembly has far fewer devolved powers than Scotland – concessions were made to the people that didn’t want it at all. The Smith Commission was meant to give concession to all the Yes voters in Scotland (they actually wriggled out of most of the promises, but the gesture was there). So, why has the EU referendum been so different? Such a large number of people did not vote for a thing, let’s just make it more extreme away from what they wanted,,, who thinks like that? The remain politicians are just as much to blame for allowing this to happen.
The only option for Scotland is independence, but I thought that anyway before Brexit, so can only say that with the lack of pretence of competence or honesty shown by Westminster that I hope more people’s eyes have been opened.
Sorry, I’ve rambled on, quite a few of these thoughts have been rattling around my head for a while. I could have stopped at ‘exactly’ 😀
Writing helps us sort out ideas
The “red lines” represent nothing more than the terms of a truce within the Tory party, or part of a truce. To pretend that they have any relevance beyond that is an embarrassment and you right to point that out.