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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36090188
Eligible to Vote - Will Vote 'IN' ('Remain')
Eligible to Vote - Will Vote 'OUT'
Eligible to Vote - Undecided
Ineligible to Vote - Would Vote 'IN' ('Remain') If I could
Ineligible to Vote - Would Vote 'OUT' if I could.
Ineligible to Vote - Would be undecided right now.
Worth a look
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36090188
Galant (21-04-2016)
It worries me since the Leave campaign dismisses any sort negativity in a economic or cultural sense from the split. We had the same with the Scottish Referendum and it was lucky it didn't happen otherwise Scotland would be screwed. If that happened if we split would the Leave EU people accept they screwed up or blame somebody else?? Remember the Leave EU people are using the EU as a blame for problems. The EU is "holding us back" - we can do better.Originally Posted by peterb
If the converse were true,ie,staying in the EU screwed up the UK,who are stay people going to blame?? They would have to accept they were wrong.
There is another thing the "leave people" hide away - the UK is the third largest country in the EU by population and the second largest by economy. If the EU superstate they fear is formed we will one of the most important and powerful players in the whole of the EU,and we would have some of the highest influence outside Germany.
They are trying to make the EU as US vs THEM. When it is basically THEM+US vs US.
It also does if you have experience some of the far right lot who have an insepid hatred for anybody who is not a certain way and they have been about the strongest Euroskeptics I(or family and friends have experienced),and having seen how people I know were treated in the 70s when "we don't need others we are better alone and local",yeah I will be a bit be pessimistic about humanity in general.
Heck,I even know(well met) some people who voted UKIP/far right and all massively anti-Europe,and one of the politicians deeply engrained in all of this is Farage,saviour of the Euroskeptics.
One were the family of one of my mates(!) and it nearly come to blows(not him BTW) since he is pro-Europe and they were not only severely against it(quoting some of the common anti-Europe views) but they were ranting against immigrants,descendants of immigrants,foreigners,etc. His partner is Nordic.
In fact it might annoy some here,but virtually everybody I know is "more" pro-Europe,so maybe I just move in different circles to the people here,and have probably not met many "nice anti-EU" people in real life.
Not a single person here has still seemed to have explained,that even after this supposed independent local "we knows best control",that we still have massive debt,a wrecked economy ,corruption,undercover mass surveillance,an increase in terrorism,etc.
Yet,supposedly the EU is the route of all this evil,yet people are getting less worked up about the last 50 years of poor government which has contributed to the mess we are in now.
We don't even have a referendum for stuff like Trident,or people clammering for inquiries into MRA4,or a multitude of many other things.
They are yet to prove how the EU and NOT our local politicians have caused the greatest problems we face here. I am not sure how leaving the EU will force them to do a better job??
Everybody seems more worried about taking the EU to task and not our own politicians. This is what irritates me the most - if people put even half the effort into taking our own politicans to task,as they feel about the EU,we could do more to help our country. People are more knowledgeable about what the EU might or might do,than what our own government is doing.
Our politicians must be laughing their heads off,that nobody is talking about the more important jobs they need to be doing!
Quite a distraction. Politicians through history and throughout the world use emotive issues to deflect more from the real issues facing a country. Everybody thinks "our country is different",it will never happen here.
Rubbish,so lets see what you have to say next them.
Don't try that nonsense with me.
What you meant to say:
Firstly,I didn't say Englanders. I am born in this country,so don't trying to insinuate nonsense about trying to make me some outsider against "The English".
Secondly,you are assuming just because I have different views to you,that it is "against Englanders". So,you speak for all of England?? So what does that make me?? Mr Johnny Non-Englander then?? Who gave you the right to determine who is an "ENGLANDER" or non-"ENGLANDER".
Plus,why "ENGLANDER" and not BRITISH??
So,what about the Welsh,Scots or Northern Irish?? I thought this was Great Britain??
Emm,right??
Plus,I have as much right to talk about my experiences and those of my mates,many who lived,worked or travelled abroad and if you do not like it, that is your problem.
So,that make's your views the massiah of men? You sound like those UKIPers who were throwing exactly the same type of comments about my mate when he made a joke about Farage and The Pub Landlord on G+ and a fairly minor one at that.
Regarding whether I am actually an idiot or not - you can ask DR! He might be able to tell you some of my background.
I am not here to play internet "who is more qualified". Like YOU have an OPINION so DO I.
And one must ask the reason why we would be open and free minded then?? Or are you saying European countries,which are some of the most open minded and liberal of countries in the world,are more closed minded than us??If not why not be closer with them.
Who else should we be close with?? The US? China? India? Russia?? If we fear and want to be apart from people who are like a WHOLE 33.1KM away,good luck with the rest of them.
You also identify yourself as an ENGLANDER not BRITISH,so apparently we even have problems trying to work with the Welsh,Scots and Northern Irish. Oh well,we might as well be alone then!
The rest of the world are all forming their own blocs too. Do you honestly think they are doing for giggles?? There are countries like Russia and China which are trying to make unified credit systems and so on and they are culturally very different .
Do you honestly think if we joined something like BRICs we would be the top gun??
The commonwealth?? What then??
Are the Leave campaign suggesting the UK(well ENGLAND it appears which is even smaller) just stays alone in a world of more and more countries doing the opposite?? Yes,us with all those abundant natural resources.
But since you are OFC ,an open minded modern individual it makes me wonder why you are quick to accuse people of being:
Last time I checked,I have not accused anybody of being an idiot,only the way I feel about all of it and why.Now your previous posts have never struck me as those being made by a blithering idiot, so I'll just put it down to a misperception.
If you think that is insulting people,well....
Right, Maybe instead of going blah! blah! Read what I said regarding that,but OFC bomb first,let other countries take the fallout and ignore any questions later. But I bet you won't bother.
I also find it is dissapointing that certain posters,also shout as loud as they can that they are a victim. Welcome to the real world - don't ever think for once people have to agree with you or even people will agree with you.
I make a conscious choice to answer posts or not answer them. Nobody is forcing me and it is the same with everybody else I assume. If your viewpoints are so fragile that if you feel people can "bully" you into changing them,then maybe you should be examining why that is the case.
Imagine if someone challenges you in a heated discussion in real life - this is only a forum where you can choose to read the posts or not read them,and be easily ignorant of diametrically opposite views. Heck,there is even a handy ignore function,if you want to only read posts from people you want to agree with!!
We are all equally stubborn otherwise this thread would be one page long.
Just sayin'!
People need to working in science or something with very competitive stubborn people for a few years,and see how much people stake their careers on ideas which contradict each other! If you really think the disagreements in this thread are a big deal,you honestly have not seen what proper disagreements look like!
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 22-04-2016 at 03:02 AM.
Worth a look:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politic...endum-36087583
Now even the US is wading into it. Funny that.
This is sounding more and more like the Scottish referendum(waits for mouldy Haggis to be flung in general direction now).
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 22-04-2016 at 01:30 AM.
Ignoring the rest of that, what you're not getting away with is exactly what I quoted ... claiming "that the fact we have a referendum is enough to show people want to blame the EU for our issues."
There are good reasons for having a referendum, not least of which is that to date, we the people have never been asked if we want to be part of it. It's not about wanting to blame anybody for anything. It's about a democratic mandate for a huge change in the way we're governed, and THAT getting a yea or nea from the people. Finally. Oh, and along the way, it'd be nice if we had a full, honest debate about both the advantages (because there are some) and the disadvantages (because, again, there are some) of membership.
Sadly, so far, both campaigns seem determined to paint the other side as morons for even considering that the opposing case might have merit. I had hoped that the official campaign starting might present a more mature attitude than the tedious months of unofficial limbering up had, but so far, there's not a lot of sign of it.
So no, the fact that we have a referendum isn't "enough" to show anything of the sort.
The only reason we got a referendum is down to parties like UKIP and their whole election platform which was one of blaming the EU and everybody else. If UKIP had not got the votes it had,there would no referendum would there?
What do you think UKIP is?? The BNP?? All those kinds of parties?? What do you think the far right deals in?? You should know very well how the far right have tarted up their image,but the core has not really changed.
There are plenty who feel they need to blame somebody during one of the worst recessions in history and its much easier to blame some body which is elsewhere isn't it?? Virtually every UKIP or out voter I have met has said they want out of EU as they feel it is causing the problems in this country.
Then you get responses like this,which are quite typical:
They seem to not get into their head that diametrically different viewpoints happen and then try the Nationalism card,its England vs them. Them being anybody who is disagrees with them.
Quite typical responses I have seen online in comments sections and even social media. Like I said mate made a joke about Nigel Farage and the Pub Landlord about the elections in Thanet,and got similar if not worse worded responses in raw filth. I lived not too far from Thanet,either!
Its the same responses in real life.
Not met a single "nice" pro-leave campaigner,or neither have mates in real life. They all seem obssessed about blaming immigrants and everbody else for the problems here,and leaving the EU is the "only" way.
You might have a different face for the "Leave" campaign where you live. Don't ever think the rest of England is the same.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 22-04-2016 at 03:44 AM.
Even if Nigel Farage's star has faded,the sentiment stays the same.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...perverse-trust
The campaign to take Britain out of the European Union has become just another excuse to shout about race. It might have been a constitutional argument about democratic rights and self-determination. It might have been a worthwhile debate about our economic future. As it is, we have months of nativism and English nationalism ahead of us; six months of accusations of elite conspiracy, and cries of: “I don’t recognise my country any more.”
I admit that I’ve been enjoying it so far. More than enjoying it, in fact. I have been hugging myself with delight at the backstabbing between Vote Leave, Grassroots Out, Leave.EU, and the other gangs of angry-eyed zealots.
What a bloody shower. What an embarrassment to the England they claim to love. Liam Fox, David Davis, Nigel Farage, John Redwood, Dan Hannan, Bill Cash, Douglas Carswell, Dominic Cummings, Matthew Elliott, the rightwing press, the Taxpayers’ Alliance and the Institute for Economic Affairs have been demanding a referendum since the 1990s. They have had two decades to prepare their arguments.
Now, like children pestering their parents by the supermarket sweet display, their wish has been granted. They are the centre of everyone’s attention at last. The curtain rises. The audience falls silent. But the show won’t begin. The actors are too busy fighting each other to learn their lines.
The result of the feuding, however, is not remotely funny. Farage has won the battle on the right. For all their faults, the Tories around Vote Leave grasped a political truth and a moral argument. The case for leaving Europe could not be racist. If Farage gave us a referendum about immigration, he would turn it into a culture war. Voting to leave would mean voting against racial equality and gay marriage and in favour of confining women to the kitchen and bedroom.
We got a taste of the Trumpish politics that are about to hit us during last year’s general election campaign. Farage announced on a TV debate that he would stop people coming “into Britain from anywhere in the world and get diagnosed with HIV and get the retro-viral drugs that cost up to £25,000 per year per patient”.
In one sentence he managed to “signal” to his “core” that he was against gays, foreigners and scroungers. It wasn’t so much dog-whistle as wolf-whistle politics. Farage was leering at prejudiced voters and telling them how much he fancied them.
Rationally, the triumph of the Farage faction in the battle for control of the Eurosceptic movement is perplexing. For although he whistled in 2015, victory did not come. Only one Ukip candidate won a seat at the last election, and it wasn’t him. Farage now ranks alongside Jeremy Corbyn as the least respected politician in Britain. Many like me who have little respect for the EU, and many more who don’t care about it at all, will vote to stay if they think a vote to leave is a vote for Ukip.
The sleep of reason does not end there. After the migration of hundred of thousands, it is understandable that immigration leads the list of voters’ concerns. But it is highly unlikely that leaving the EU will reduce immigration.
For all their posing as plain-speaking English yeomen, the supporters of Out dodge questions like the sleekest media-trained politico. On the rare occasions when you can get a straight answer, some of them say they want Britain to be like Norway and Switzerland, which are outside the EU but can trade freely with one of the world’s richest markets without paying customs. But Norway and Switzerland not only have to implement European regulations, and have no say in drawing them up, they must also accept the freedom of EU citizens to move in and take up residence. To such an extent that Norway has higher per capita immigration than Britain .
If you hate the EU, but are looking out for Britain’s interests, you would have, however reluctantly, to vote ‘yes’.
Sir Stephen Wall
The perplexity deepens when you look at the perverse, almost utopian, faith the Eurosceptics place in the European Union itself. Of course, the EU will agree to give us everything we want, they say. Brussels will allow Britain to have all the advantages of being a member of the EU with none of the burdens. Presumably, no Eurosceptic has ever been through a nasty divorce. Obviously, it has never occurred to them that the EU will want to discourage other members from leaving by making Britain pay a price.
To confine ourselves merely to our nearest neighbour, do they imagine that the French government would want to give Marine le Pen the pleasure of saying that the soft deal the EU gave Britain showed that the French far right’s dream of removing France was easy to obtain?
Sir Stephen Wall, one of Britain’s senior diplomats, once wrote: “If you hate the European Union, but are looking out for Britain’s interests, you would have, however reluctantly, to vote ‘yes’.” His seeming paradox makes perfect sense. If you don’t trust the continentals, if you see Europe as the dark continent from where Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler and Stalin menaced us, then you must believe Britain should get involved with Europe, spend money, form alliances to confound our enemies and stop a new coalition ever uniting against us again.
Today’s Eurosceptics have no scepticism , however. They believe – or rather they want you to believe – that the remaining 27 countries will grant us an easy life if we leave. No one is more naively trusting of the European Union than the people who have spent their lives opposing it.
In its choice of leaders, its hopes of controlling immigration and its negotiating tactics, the Out campaign makes no sense. But Farage understands what Trump knows too. His supporters don’t want logic and rational strategies.
Our unfair electoral system may have denied Farage a seat. But nearly 4 million people voted for Ukip. They were the “left-behinds” – the losers, who have been hit by conservative economics and liberal multiculturalism. Their secure jobs have gone and so has their sense of national identity. They didn’t retch when Farage conjured the bogey of HIV-infected foreign scroungers. They cheered, and said: “Here’s a man who isn’t afraid of political correctness… Here’s a man who tells it like it is.”
They want their prejudices verified. They want a stage-army of villains to boo and jeer. Whether the Eurosceptics dog whistle or wolf whistle, they will come, and they won’t care that their behaviour wrecks their own cause, and disgraces their country.
It is for this reason, above all others, that they must be comprehensively defeated.
Oh, it's certainly true (in my opinion, of course) that Cameron was bounced into the referendum by the UKIP threat, and Tory eurosceptics. And the fact UKIP did so well in the European elections. The thing is, that isn't about "blame" for all our woes.
Can you deny that there is considerable scepticism about the EU? If so, why did UKIP come first, beating both Tory and Labour? Also, bear in mind there are quite a few Europhile politicians, of all major parties, that have been pro-referendum in order to validate our membership, precisely to undercut the "we haven't voted for it" I used just now. Because, after all, we haven't voted for it. Yet. Maybe by June's end, we will have.
There certainly are a long list of things we can say, categorically, happened because we are in the EU. One would be being unable to negotiate free trade deals for ourselves, and another would be the current state of Consumer Protection legislation, what we all used to know as the DSR.
Personally, I regard the latter as a wholly good thing, and the former as a questionable issue as to whether it's good for us or not. It's not blame. Or not against the EU anyway. The argument us about whether our rest-of-world trade benefits from being covered by EU trade deals, or whether we can do better by ourselves. Personally, I go for the latter.
But, trade with the EU no doubt benefits from being in.
So, on trade, there's an advantage and, IMHO, a disadvantage. We need to decide what's in our best interests. And by "we", I mean us, the citizens, the taxpayers, the people that elected the political elites to govern our country, not to give the right to govern to someone else.
If I blame anyone in this, it's primarily two Tory PMs and one Labour one, them being Heath, Major and Brown respectively. Why? Because Heath took us in to the EEC without asking, and lied about why. In fact, you can add Wilson to the list for lying about the Leave referendum and his "deal". Then, Major for signing Maastricht without a referendum, and Brown for signing Lisbon without a referendum. I suppose we could add Amsterdam snd Nice, but the above are the highlights.
Had arch-liar Heath been honest and sought a mandate, we either wouldn't be in at all, or we'd be in with the explicit agreement of and mandate from the people. Either way, we wouldn't have had 40 years of squabbles at home, and sitting on the fence at EU meetings like a disgraced uncle at a family party, not sure he really wants to be there, and everybody else knowing he's not sure. Nor are they.
What we have is the worst of both worlds, neither fully in, nor out.
We really need to poop or get off the pot. And if the last 40 years have taught us anything at all about the issue of the EU, it's that the problem is not going away, despite the best efforts of 40 years of political leader's efforts, unless they flipping well ask us.
That's what the existence of the referendum proves, if anything. Not blaming the EU for our woes, but blaming our own political leaders for not having the honesty, decency and integrity to flaming ask. The UKIP victory is the result of the resentment over that, and the straw that broke the camel's back.
If this referendum ends up with a leave vote, then we can blame them for political cowardice too, because had they actually made the case years ago and asked, they'd have had a referendum without that backdrop of 40 years of resentment.
Sauce for the goose ....
As I mentioned somewhere on this discussion before (either this thread or another), I think it's overly simplistic to colour the value of an argument with our personal opinions of the speaker. Perhaps if an argument is opaque, or is the sole province of that speaker it adds something, but where an argument is put forward by several individuals then there's probably more value in focusing on the contents of the argument, not the person saying it.
I don't know what faces there are for the remain or leave campaign near me, in an official sense. Among my friends and colleagues however there are people on both sides of the fence, so I can't draw any conclusion about whether one type of person is more inclined one way or another. I see the same thing on Hexus with a range of people whose views I have more or less respect for on both sides.
This debate highlights so many of the problems inherent within democracy, most significantly, the laziness of people. To use the comic-book cliche, "With great power comes great responsibility". That is, if you want democracy to work properly, if you want to have and/or retain influence and for it to be used well, then the general population needs to be educated, well-informed, and conscientious about getting that way and staying that way. It's a conveyor belt that you need to keep walking against, otherwise it'll take you wherever it wants to.
The true issue at the heart of the EU referendum is a MASSIVE issue that is hugely significant. As Saracen has said above and elsewhere, "It's about a democratic mandate for a huge change in the way we're governed, and THAT getting a yea or nea from the people."
That is the central issue in this referendum, but most people don't seem to see that, or understand it. There's a lot of noise about a lot of other issues but all those other issues, although important, are actually in a whole different category.
The economy, security etc. etc. - whatever the issue - are all problems or situations that are constant, they don't go away. Every generation, every nation, every government will wrestle with how to improve those situations, or fix any related problems. The economy will never go away, it's a part of society, the question will always be how healthy or successful it is. Security will never go away, the question will always be 'how' secure we are and how can we remain so, particularly against changing threats. And so on and so forth - these are all constant issues to be evaluated and worked with.
The question of how we want to be governed is in a parent category above those issues because although it doesn't deal with any of them directly, it does affect how we deal with all of them, who deals with them, in what way, etc. It's a question on the same level as deciding what sort of government we want, democracy, autocracy, communist, monarchy, republic, etc. - because it significantly alters the way the government of our nation will work.
This is the central question of the referendum. Even if people don't understand that. It's the central motivation for the referendum, even if most people don't see it or understand it.
Any reasoning that takes the line of - will leaving or staying in the EU fix/improve {name the issue} - is actually a faulty way of looking at things. That's because even though the In/Out decision will have an effect on those things, those things, as mentioned above, are constants in a continual state of change. Entering or leaving the EU will not fix or break those issues. What it will do is change the way we work with those issues, the tools available to us, and also they will change the nature of those issues somewhat - for example, changing the nature of the economy within Europe.
I'm not saying those effects shouldn't be considered. Far from it. We should consider everything possible. However, in considering the situation it's important we get as clear a view as possible, and that means we must understand that this question is not one of fixing or breaking any given aspect of society, but rather changing the nature of wider society and government, and how we, as sovereign individuals, choose to exist as individuals within society and as a nation.
Technically speaking, as an example, it's a decision along the same lines as being able to dissolve one's own nation as an individual state and become something different in relationship with other changing nations. That's the sort of question we're facing. And whatever the answer, what shape the government/nation/society takes, the question of whether individuals understand and/or take responsibility for themselves and that society, their own society, will still remain. People will be able to choose to blame others. People will be able to choose to remain inactive commentators. People will be able to get engaged and seek to be responsible and active within society, fostering a culture of responsibility and freedom and choice with all the hard work, challenges, and benefits that entails. Nothing will remove that choice. Nothing will change the fact that a lot of people will choose differently in this matter. What will change is the environment in which that choice will be made, and the tools and options and extent available to people how they engage.
And a referendum is giving people a chance to make a choice concerning all this - if they can see to make that choice (but choose they will, one way or another).
No trees were harmed in the creation of this message. However, many electrons were displaced and terribly inconvenienced.
Dreda Say Mitchell: 'I'm black and voting for Leave. That shocks people'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politic...endum-36104077
I agree with her, it's about democracy at the end of the day.
Galant (22-04-2016)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ity-rally.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/poli...ying-Ukip.html
None,of the leave campaigners seem to acknowledge the influence of the far right in all of this. There are Asian people in UKIP FFS. So does that make UKIP not a racist party?
Have you noticed that a lot of leave campaigners have quietly gone silent about UKIP and so on??
The funny is I predicted some of you would try and find something like that - there is actually another one you missed and I surprised you have not found it yet!!
Want me to post it for you?
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 22-04-2016 at 11:10 AM.
See, that's the sort of thing that I think betrays the scale of this decision. The EU referendum has been 50 years (more?) in the making. The nature of any one political party, their tractics, even their policies, is essentially a non-factor in this question. A vote to leave is not, at all, a vote for UKIP, nor can is, in any way whatsoever, be tied, or tie the future to, any one party or any given policy. This sort of thing is just a red-herring in terms of decision making. Sure, it'll affect how people vote. But it shouldn't.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ity-rally.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/poli...ying-Ukip.html
None,of the leave campaigners seem to acknowledge the influence of the far right in all of this. There are Asian people in UKIP FFS. So does that make UKIP not a racist party?
The funny is I predicted some of you would try and find something like that - there is actually another one you missed and I surprised you have not found it yet!!
No trees were harmed in the creation of this message. However, many electrons were displaced and terribly inconvenienced.
The problem is the leave campaign only got where it is due to Far Right Parties like UKIP and the National Front and so on. Now,there is a referendum,have you noticed everybody has gone quiet about them.
Do you HONESTLY think the people who voted for UKIP in their millions,are suddenly going to just change their stripes??
There vote for out is going to come with some major concessions to the far right,which the leave campaigners are quietly brushing under the carpet.
The leave campaign keeps pushing the in campaign as some Euro conspiracy with terms like this:
This is THE SAME kind of attitude I have seen with UKIPers in Thanet and Rochester,areas which are not too far away from me. This is why I said I have not met any decent anti-EU people in real life or even read about any locally,since Euroskeptic lot are dominated by them lot. The only way the conservatives won in the area is by being more like them lot.
This countries politics are moving and more to the right - it is scary.
None,of the leave people here want to appreciate this.
They expect the Far Right who supported their campaign in their millions to just quietly ditch their views.
It is very different for some of you if UKIP is something you only hear in the news,or there might be the odd person who you met who might be that way. Try being closer to where the action is!
http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...perverse-trust
You think some of that sentiment is hyperbole from the in campaign,right?
The campaign to take Britain out of the European Union has become just another excuse to shout about race. It might have been a constitutional argument about democratic rights and self-determination. It might have been a worthwhile debate about our economic future. As it is, we have months of nativism and English nationalism ahead of us; six months of accusations of elite conspiracy, and cries of: “I don’t recognise my country any more.”
I admit that I’ve been enjoying it so far. More than enjoying it, in fact. I have been hugging myself with delight at the backstabbing between Vote Leave, Grassroots Out, Leave.EU, and the other gangs of angry-eyed zealots.
What a bloody shower. What an embarrassment to the England they claim to love. Liam Fox, David Davis, Nigel Farage, John Redwood, Dan Hannan, Bill Cash, Douglas Carswell, Dominic Cummings, Matthew Elliott, the rightwing press, the Taxpayers’ Alliance and the Institute for Economic Affairs have been demanding a referendum since the 1990s. They have had two decades to prepare their arguments.
Now, like children pestering their parents by the supermarket sweet display, their wish has been granted. They are the centre of everyone’s attention at last. The curtain rises. The audience falls silent. But the show won’t begin. The actors are too busy fighting each other to learn their lines.
The result of the feuding, however, is not remotely funny. Farage has won the battle on the right. For all their faults, the Tories around Vote Leave grasped a political truth and a moral argument. The case for leaving Europe could not be racist. If Farage gave us a referendum about immigration, he would turn it into a culture war. Voting to leave would mean voting against racial equality and gay marriage and in favour of confining women to the kitchen and bedroom.
We got a taste of the Trumpish politics that are about to hit us during last year’s general election campaign. Farage announced on a TV debate that he would stop people coming “into Britain from anywhere in the world and get diagnosed with HIV and get the retro-viral drugs that cost up to £25,000 per year per patient”.
In one sentence he managed to “signal” to his “core” that he was against gays, foreigners and scroungers. It wasn’t so much dog-whistle as wolf-whistle politics. Farage was leering at prejudiced voters and telling them how much he fancied them.
Rationally, the triumph of the Farage faction in the battle for control of the Eurosceptic movement is perplexing. For although he whistled in 2015, victory did not come. Only one Ukip candidate won a seat at the last election, and it wasn’t him. Farage now ranks alongside Jeremy Corbyn as the least respected politician in Britain. Many like me who have little respect for the EU, and many more who don’t care about it at all, will vote to stay if they think a vote to leave is a vote for Ukip.
The sleep of reason does not end there. After the migration of hundred of thousands, it is understandable that immigration leads the list of voters’ concerns. But it is highly unlikely that leaving the EU will reduce immigration.
For all their posing as plain-speaking English yeomen, the supporters of Out dodge questions like the sleekest media-trained politico. On the rare occasions when you can get a straight answer, some of them say they want Britain to be like Norway and Switzerland, which are outside the EU but can trade freely with one of the world’s richest markets without paying customs. But Norway and Switzerland not only have to implement European regulations, and have no say in drawing them up, they must also accept the freedom of EU citizens to move in and take up residence. To such an extent that Norway has higher per capita immigration than Britain .
If you hate the EU, but are looking out for Britain’s interests, you would have, however reluctantly, to vote ‘yes’.
Sir Stephen Wall
The perplexity deepens when you look at the perverse, almost utopian, faith the Eurosceptics place in the European Union itself. Of course, the EU will agree to give us everything we want, they say. Brussels will allow Britain to have all the advantages of being a member of the EU with none of the burdens. Presumably, no Eurosceptic has ever been through a nasty divorce. Obviously, it has never occurred to them that the EU will want to discourage other members from leaving by making Britain pay a price.
To confine ourselves merely to our nearest neighbour, do they imagine that the French government would want to give Marine le Pen the pleasure of saying that the soft deal the EU gave Britain showed that the French far right’s dream of removing France was easy to obtain?
Sir Stephen Wall, one of Britain’s senior diplomats, once wrote: “If you hate the European Union, but are looking out for Britain’s interests, you would have, however reluctantly, to vote ‘yes’.” His seeming paradox makes perfect sense. If you don’t trust the continentals, if you see Europe as the dark continent from where Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler and Stalin menaced us, then you must believe Britain should get involved with Europe, spend money, form alliances to confound our enemies and stop a new coalition ever uniting against us again.
Today’s Eurosceptics have no scepticism , however. They believe – or rather they want you to believe – that the remaining 27 countries will grant us an easy life if we leave. No one is more naively trusting of the European Union than the people who have spent their lives opposing it.
In its choice of leaders, its hopes of controlling immigration and its negotiating tactics, the Out campaign makes no sense. But Farage understands what Trump knows too. His supporters don’t want logic and rational strategies.
Our unfair electoral system may have denied Farage a seat. But nearly 4 million people voted for Ukip. They were the “left-behinds” – the losers, who have been hit by conservative economics and liberal multiculturalism. Their secure jobs have gone and so has their sense of national identity. They didn’t retch when Farage conjured the bogey of HIV-infected foreign scroungers. They cheered, and said: “Here’s a man who isn’t afraid of political correctness… Here’s a man who tells it like it is.”
They want their prejudices verified. They want a stage-army of villains to boo and jeer. Whether the Eurosceptics dog whistle or wolf whistle, they will come, and they won’t care that their behaviour wrecks their own cause, and disgraces their country.
It is for this reason, above all others, that they must be comprehensively defeated.
It isn't. I wish it was. It isn't.
You should read it.
I doubt any will and maybe the leavers need to realise,they have to take on the far right in their ranks.
Just brushing them under the carpet is not good enough. Like Hydra they will re-emerge.
Plus even then,people need to think how the world is heading - people like to ignore my repeated talk about countries forming blocs. Yes,as that poster said,I was apparently showing off I was living abroad. Obviously.
The leavers might want to define what a Britain,standing on its on,is going to do in terms of alliances and trade.
How are we going to fight for our future by ourself against all these countries in the future??
Because I am not seeing any real arguments currently - just poo-pooing any figures the in campaign are talking about.
Its also worrying that even the US is wading into this now from both an economic and security angle too. They are not even part of the EU.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 22-04-2016 at 11:37 AM.
I personally wouldn't consider UKIP or other parties on the far right to be racist, they're xenophobic IMO.None,of the leave campaigners seem to acknowledge the influence of the far right in all of this. There are Asian people in UKIP FFS. So does that make UKIP not a racist party?
Wasn't that down to the fact that those who wanted independent were relying on Oil prices being steady and not to drop as much as it did?We had the same with the Scottish Referendum and it was lucky it didn't happen otherwise Scotland would be screwed.
Secondly, I don't think Obama had the right to say that Britain should remain in the EU considering USA would never answer to anybody else. Brussels would implement a process and America would simply say "No."
I am still on the fence atm...
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