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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Only 41% want to brexit now, time to vote again asap

611 replies

Idreamofalandrover · 16/12/2017 22:25

www.google.co.uk/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1EA0Q6

Biggest swing towards remain now people are smelling the coffee

OP posts:
VladmirsPoutine · 17/12/2017 11:13

You did indeed state an opinion but the second clause of your opinion attempts to qualify it as fact c.f:
on the strength of which we joined the Common Market.

That is factually incorrect.

LoveInTokyo · 17/12/2017 11:14

For what it's worth I think more than a simple majority should be required for such major constitutional change. Either some kind of super majority, or a majority of all eligible voters (rather than votes cast).

Yes it's annoying when people don't vote, but I think you have to read into that a certain level of acceptance of the status quo.

For change of this magnitude you need to be certain that a majority of voting age adults actually want the change (which isn't the case here), and you also need to know what change you are voting for (which we didn't last year).

Saying "we voted to leave the EU so we are leaving the EU" isn't enough. OK, so we are leaving the EU. But where are we going? Are we going to be like Norway or Switzerland or Canada or North Korea? What if we end up being more like North Korea when some leave voters wanted to be more like Norway and if they'd known it was going to be North Korea they'd have voted remain?

Referendums are fraught with difficulties at the best of times and we were hugely let down by how this one was handled.

makeourfuture · 17/12/2017 11:16

Look to the Constitution. It was a straw poll. Nothing more.

makeourfuture · 17/12/2017 11:17

And no, that silly leaflet is not mentioned in the Constitution.

LoveInTokyo · 17/12/2017 11:18

What constitution would that be, makeourfuture?

InfiniteSheldon · 17/12/2017 11:18

That's does raise an interesting point ami. If the Remain campaign had tried focussing on the benefits of EU membership do you think the outcome would have been different? Project Fear had the effect of making swaying voters vote Leave (in my opinion), who wants to stay in an ever changing union getting a closer grip and control over your life unless there are tangible benefits. Huge swathes of the UK population see or think they see, very few tangible benefits. If the Remain campaign had clearly and believably set those benefits out the outcome may have been different.

specialsubject · 17/12/2017 11:19

The question was far too complex for yes or no. Which could be why many didn't vote - I nearly didn't as neither option was good.

Looking forward to a link to the UK constitution!!

Lime19 · 17/12/2017 11:28

Why would you want to stay though?

I still don't get it. What is the benefit for staying?

I voted leave and will be pissed off if there is another vote. I would vote the same.

Koala2018 · 17/12/2017 11:30

Lets just put all our energy and discussions into getting the best deal. When we openly mock the decision and constantly talk about a hypothetical re-vote we look silly and weak in front of other countries who witness it on social media.

Lets get the best deal instead.

Ellie56 · 17/12/2017 11:34

59% of 1400 so 826 people Hmm Think you need to ask a few more than that.

WhollyFather · 17/12/2017 11:47

One poll is meaningless.

From the BMG website: '...this shift has come predominantly from those who did not actually vote in the 2016 Referendum. Around nine in ten Leave and Remain voters say they are still unchanged in their view on whether to leave or remain.'

BMG aren't even proper pollsters, of course the referendum was binding which is why Parliament has treated it as such, there will be no second referendum and Parliament is sovereign - or will be when we get out of the EU - but the people are supreme and have told Parliament what to do.

I wish you remainers would just get with the program. We're leaving. It's a good thing. If our leaving upsets the EU or foreigners... so what.

safariboot · 17/12/2017 11:47

As a Remainer who thinks leaving the EU is a stupid idea that our government will surely screw up further: Hell no to another referendum.

Because the one we had gave a platform to right-wing xenophobes, and the Leave victory gave them the biggest boost in decades. 'Hate crime' and racial abuse in the streets shot up.

MexicanBob · 17/12/2017 11:54

So what? The poll that mattered was the one on referendum day. This is meaningless hogwash.

LoveInTokyo · 17/12/2017 11:56

Lime19, the leavers are the ones who wanted to completely disrupt the status quo so I would really like them to explain what benefit there is in leaving. Just the process of leaving is going to cost us billions which could be spent on far more important things like the NHS (ironically) and take up all the government, parliament and the civil service's time and resources when they could be addressing problems which urgently need to be addressed - none of which will see the light of day for years now. If we are doing this, I would like to understand what benefits we are actually going to get, and so far no leavers have been able to come up with any convincing answers.

Koala18, you do understand that we are not under any circumstances, even with the best will in the world, going to get a deal which is more beneficial than staying, right?

WhollyFather, it is not a good thing and we do not have to "get with the program". I have now left the UK and pulled nearly all my money out. I just wish everyone else who feels the way I do had the same ability and freedom to leave. Then everyone else would have to get on with it and show the world why this isn't a completely shit idea. (This would be difficult since the majority of people of working age don't support it.)

JacquesHammer · 17/12/2017 12:03

The best possible outcome would be to add the option of "remain in the EU if the deal isn't appropriate".

MPs vote and we remain.

How can Leavers object; that's sovereignty in action Grin

VladmirsPoutine · 17/12/2017 12:22

I still don't get it. What is the benefit for staying?

Just off the top of my head; food standards - tightly regulated, if you want chlorine chicken then you're in for a treat. Euratom; medicine, cancer research. Single sky; planes will literally not be able to take off come 30 March 2019 without any EU-approved contingency.

Trade: Currently a car made in France can be sold in the UK without any fanfare as there are standards across the board that each EU member must adhere to. If the UK went it alone and created its own regulatory framework - should this framework differ from the EU's then manufacturers will be faced with increased costs which guess what... will be pushed on to the British consumer.

You want less red tape and less regulation? Guess what leaving ironically creates more red tape because exporters now must prove that their goods adhere to EU standards. This in turn creates chaos and bottlenecks at potential border points. Even the technology to do this is yet to be developed.

The UK gov have 'promised' that there won't be a border between NI and Ireland. This in practice means that NI cannot have divergent rules; this means that the rest of the UK can't either. Because no-one wants to use NI as a backdoor therefore the UK must comply; or what they're calling 'alignment'. This means that we will still have to follow the rules but without a say on them.

Nothing and no-one was stopping the UK developing bilateral trade deals. In fact the EU has just concluded an extensive trade deal with Japan. If you want to go down the WTO route then we're not going to be any better off than we are now. WTO rules won't allow for UK exceptionalism. If the EU gives preferential treatment to the UK, there's nothing stopping other WTO countries from taking the EU to court to demand similar treatment under WTO (MFN) rules.

There's a massive sense of vestigial imperialism which hinders many brexiters from seeing the reality of the situation. The UK is just too small to boss anyone about.

BoneyBackJefferson · 17/12/2017 12:24

LoveInTokyo Sun 17-Dec-17 10:45:37

I find it interesting that in the above post you don't put a description in the campaign of lies and drivel that was the remain stance. Its almost as if you believe that it was only the leave campaign that was flawed.

VladmirsPoutine · 17/12/2017 12:29

The whole Brexit means Brexit schtick was meaningless bullshit because what we're doing now is working out what form Brexit must take which is something no-one actually considered during the referendum.
Whichever form of EU-UK relationship you take; Canada, Swiss, Norway, all fall short of the advantages of full membership.

mothertruck3r · 17/12/2017 12:36

How about a referendum on another referendum or coin throw, best of 5 with Jean Claude Juncker arbitrating? Perhaps we should keep having referendums until remain wins "democracy is served"?

makeourfuture · 17/12/2017 12:42

Looking forward to a link to the UK constitution!!

Britain makes you work for it, but it is there. And you will learn a lot on the journey!

Start with Magna Carta and move forward through history.

OhThisbloodyComputer · 17/12/2017 12:51

@VladmirsPoutine

You were doing OK, until you absolutely blew it with this statement.

There's a massive sense of vestigial imperialism which hinders many brexiters from seeing the reality of the situation. The UK is just too small to boss anyone about.

Where is your evidence that Brexit voters still believe in 'The Empire'?

it's not just a casual belief either mind. It's a 'massive' sense of vestigial imperialism. All 17 million of them. How do you know this?

I'm sure you're not one of those people who prejudges people they don't know and makes snap appraisals of the people who are alien to you, since that would mean that, by definition, you are prejudiced and xenophobic.

So come on, please share your evidence for this contentious statement.

Remember, you've made a judgement on 17 million people, so anecdotal evidence about some people at work, or your in-laws, or a friend of yours who has experienced undocumented hostility, will probably not suffice in this case.

LoveInTokyo · 17/12/2017 12:56

BoneyBackJefferson on the contrary. I think the remain campaign was deeply flawed, particularly because it focused on the likely negative consequences of leaving and failed to make a positive case for staying.

However, in terms of "lies and drivel", there is absolutely no equivalence between the two campaigns whatsoever.

Let's look at the facts.

The leave campaign focused heavily on three main issues: immigration, sovereignty and our financial contribution.

Dealing with the financial contribution first, they lied about how much it actually is. I mean, it was a bare-faced lie. "We send £350m a week to the EU" was not even slightly true, and yet they made it a main focal point on their campaign literature. The remain campaign pointed out time and time again that that figure was false because it didn't take into account the rebate (which doesn't go anywhere near the EU), or any funding that comes back to support our farms or our universities or our science programmes. It also didn't take into account any negative impact of leaving the EU on our nation's finances or even the colossal sum of money that would (and will) need to be spent just leaving the EU and setting up a whole new level of bureaucracy to deal with things which are currently dealt with at EU level. So first of all there was no £350m in the first place, and second of all, even if there is any extra money left over after we've stopped contributing to the EU budget (which is highly unlikely), we have already been told that it is not going to the NHS.

What about sovereignty? Well, this is a tricky one because it depends on what agreement we reach going forward. If we went for the nuclear, North Korea option then yes, we could be totally sovereign. We would also be totally isolated and impoverished, but we would be sovereign. But the leavers didn't tell us we were going to be like North Korea. They were banging on about the benefits of being like Norway or Switzerland. The remain campaign repeatedly pointed out that Norway and Switzerland are both legally bound to follow the vast majority of EU rules without actually having any say in making them. In other words, they are less sovereign than we are, not more. The leavers said this was "project fear" and that we could "have our cake and eat it". I don't see any cake, do you? Instead I see "regulatory equivalence", which means following the rules which are made in Brussels with no further say in what those rules are. Because "regulatory equivalence" is the price of not putting a wall through the middle of Ireland and causing a civil war. In the meantime, you and I no longer get to elect MEPs to the European Parliament. Oh, and in this country, sovereignty means parliament is sovereign. It does not mean, and has never meant, that the people are sovereign. But what we have now is the government trying to bypass parliament by triggering Article 50 without a proper debate, our Supreme Court judges being branded "enemies of the people" by the Daily Fail for upholding our constitutional law, MPs being whipped to follow the leader or face the consequences, and witch hunts being instigated against MPs who vote with their consciences instead. In short, parliamentary sovereignty (the cornerstone of our constitutional law) has been completely undermined.

No win for sovereignty then.

What about immigration? Well we don't have a deal yet so we don't know what happens about free movement yet. The Irish border issue could still prove an insurmountable obstacle to stopping free movement from the EU, in which case the leavers will have delivered precisely none of the things they promised. But let's just say they succeed on that one issue. What the fuck is the point? All the available data proves that EU workers put more into the economy than they take out of it. Unemployment is low and wages are comparatively high (although the cost of living in the UK is a problem, but one of our own making). The NHS is suffering major staffing shortages and the number of EU doctors and nurses registering to work in the NHS has sharply declined since last year. (Funny, that.) Meanwhile, British farmers are struggling to get seasonal workers to come and pick their crops, and I don't see British people lining up to do it. And let's not even talk about the ever growing need for geriatric care (both live-in staff and staff for care homes). Where are they going to find the people? Brits just don't want to do it. So I just don't buy the "British jobs for British workers" schtick. The likely consequence is that even if we stop free movement from the EU we will still need people to come and do these jobs, but we'll need to pay them more to compensate for the weak pound. (Sucks for you if you have elderly parents who need care.) On the other hand, if you're a British worker who works at Nissan in Sunderland or Airbus in Bristol or in financial services in the city...well, your job may be at risk.

So there's the three big promises the leave campaign made completely debunked. I could go on and talk about the people who claimed that if we stayed we would be forced to join the euro and Schengen and have an EU army imposed on us against our will (legally, factually and politically impossible) or that Turkey was about to join the EU (just lol).

So that's the leave side.

What did the remain side say that was dishonest enough to match all that? That each household would be £4,300 a year worse off? I'd be surprised if it turns out to be that little, tbh.

Oh and as for the "punishment budget" and the recession we were promised, Osborne was sacked straight after the referendum but Hammond's budget makes for pretty grim reading if you actually look at the details (oh sorry I forgot, leavers don't do details), and if you take house price inflation out of the equation, our economy is in fact shrinking.

And WWIII? Well first of all, the remain campaign didn't actually say there would be a war. But look around you. Brexit almost certainly helped Trump to the White House and now he and Kim Jong Fatty are threatening to lob missiles at each other, and closer to home we practically have a civil war between leavers and remainers, and we will actually have one over Northern Ireland if the government don't abide by the Good Friday Agreement.

Great job, guys.

slow hand clap

Eltonjohnssyrup · 17/12/2017 12:59

Saying "we voted to leave the EU so we are leaving the EU" isn't enough. OK, so we are leaving the EU. But where are we going? Are we going to be like Norway or Switzerland or Canada or North Korea? What if we end up being more like North Korea when some leave voters wanted to be more like Norway and if they'd known it was going to be North Korea they'd have voted remain?

We can only vote on what we can control. We could decide whether to be in or out. There would be no voting on a deal as much of that is in the hands of the EU. We knew we were voting to go into the unknown when voting and people still voted to leave.

VladmirsPoutine · 17/12/2017 13:01

@OhThisbloodyComputer That's a reference to the ilk of Gove, Boris and Davis' rhetoric regarding UK exceptionalism. E.g. Davis' remarks on a potential Canada +++ deal and pretty much everything Boris has ever said.
It's not meant as an accusatory statement that 17+ million Brits are pining for ye olden days of colonialism.

mothertruck3r · 17/12/2017 13:12

the leavers are the ones who wanted to completely disrupt the status quo so I would really like them to explain what benefit there is in leaving.

Perhaps the leavers who wanted to "completely disrupt the status quo" didn't feel like they benefited from the status quo. If a lot of leavers were supposedly older people, then presumably they experienced life before the UK joined the EU and felt that their lives hadn't improved during that time? Perhaps their experience of being in the EU hasn't been all rosy? Maybe they just have a different life experience to you rather than being ignorant or a bigot or whatever you want to call them.