AIBU to think that other than some people being upset or angry, there are no downsides for the UK if Brexit doesn't happen ?

[frumpety]

I can't think of any downsides to the UK not brexiting other than some of the population being upset for a bit. Can anyone else ?

I would on Vote any extreme way regardless of my brexit vote if it didn’t go though on principle.

The public where told there would be a ref and it would be followed regardless that technically it was only advisory. To then drag it out this long and go actually nah fuck anyone who voted leave we was just doing it for the lolz doesn’t sit right with me.

The Lib Dem’s can’t be trusted, labour has Corbyn for Christ sake and we currently have Tory so can’t do any worse by picking one not in the top three.

how are they all linked? Its about furriners innit?

how are they all linked? Its about furriners innit?

Is it? But brexiters keep telling us that they are definitely not racist no not at all not even a tiny bit.

chillpizza What do you think one of these other parties fiscal policies are ? How are they going to deal with the unmitigated disaster that is Universal credit do you think ? Or will they leave it all up to the unelected bureaucrats that are the civil service ?

Now let's not jump to conclusions. I'm sure @redandyellowandpinkandgreen99 is about to pop back on the thread and tell us how asylum is linked to Brexit.

I am also sure she did lots of research and has well founded arguments let's just hope she is willing to share them.

Javid is already playing to the gallery and trying to look tough over 20 people in a leaky dingy in the expectation that when the Brexshit hits the fan he’ll have Mays job. Can’t believe people are falling for his obviousness. I mean running back from South Africa early to look hard FFS?!

Back to OPs question. If we cancelled Brexit, we’d all be forced to endure the BBCs promotion of multi-millionaire, private school educated, former stock broker, professional politician ‘man of the people’ (because he’s a functional alcoholic smoker) Farage. They’d ensure he’d be on everything including his own CBeebies show!

Maybe one additional advantage of cancelling Brexit would be that all the oafish racist morons would be so, so angry they might just give themselves strokes and all die, which would be a wonderful improvement.

I think redandyellow believes that economic migrants and asylum seekers get here as a result of FOM, although why they would pay £5,000 to cross the channel on a teeny boat when they could fly from CDG with Easyjet (other low cost airlines are available) for a fraction of the price, is beyond me.

O frumpety. Do you really think redandyellow has thought that through to come to a conclusion? Clearly not. A thought process more like " furriner? Go home." Seems far more likely. No middle bit. Not a racist though, naturally.

At best your looking at them abstaining, at worst you could see UKIP take power with the largest majority since Blair won.

One of the few advantages of the FPTP system is that the chances of UKIP taking power with a majority that large are infintessimally small. I’m not sure it’s possible even if every leave voter voted for ukip as a protest vote.

To the OP and any others:

In this country we have a democracy. We expect the results of elections and referendums to be implemented; and we do indeed expect the results of referendums to be implemented, not hide behind a clever-clever defence “It was non-binding!”. We have had referendums, prior to 2016, on Scottish independence, devolution for Yorkshire, city mayors; all of those were implemented according to the result.

If we had a General Election tomorrow and Labour won, we wouldn’t expect Theresa May to come out of Number 10 and say “You didn’t really mean it; I shall sit here in Number 10 for two years and then you’ll get a second chance to re-elect me; only then will I leave”.

Good God, I campaigned for Remain; but, we had a referendum and 17.4m people – more than have ever voted for anything in British history – voted to Leave. They therefore have the right to see that implemented; not reversed before its implementation because the Great and Good disagree. Nor, in a democracy, do those in the minority have the right to ask those in the majority “Well then, why did you vote for this?” and have the right to overrule the result if the answers aren’t up to scratch in the minority’s eyes. Leave voters don’t have to “justify” themselves to Remain voters as to why they voted.

It’s probably because I’m a Tory Remainer that I can see the distinction between my own view and the vote of the people at large; left-wing Remainers, who support the vile anti-semite Corbyn, think they have a monopoly on wisdom.

So it is quite right that the Prime Minister of the country, though she herself voted Remain, implements the will of the nation as a whole expressed by the largest popular vote ever made in Britain; and doubly right that those who seek to thwart that vote be rejected.

And none of you have anything to give good reason why that shouldn't be so, except a) flawed opinion polls or b) "I voted Remain and I don't know anyone who voted Leave, so it should all be thrown over"

Maybe we'll have the die hard protestors and riots we saw in the 70's/ 80's.
I know plenty young people who got involved, they weren't miners or necessarily unemployed, they were poor and had had enough, just like society now.
It won't just be violence concerning Brexit, it will be a social uprising from those that don't have.
I think the South and Londoners live in a bubble and have no idea how the other half live.

Good God, I campaigned for Remain; but, we had a referendum and 17.4m people – more than have ever voted for anything in British history – voted to Leave. They therefore have the right to see that implemented

See what implemented though? No deal Brexit? May’s withdrawal agreement, Norway style leave, Canada ???

No one knows what exactly what the 17 million people voted for.

We have had referendums, prior to 2016, on Scottish independence, devolution for Yorkshire, city mayors; all of those were implemented according to the result

And they were all non binding...as thats how referendums work in our democracy

Im more than happy to agree that it was promised that dave would implement the result but that doesn't change the fact that it was non binding

ADropofReality as I keep on saying democracy is not one thing.

You say if we had a GE and Labour won you would expect that decision to be implemented. But what if labour won the constituencies and lost the popular vote? More constituencies but less votes - would that be democratic?

You can argue the democratic legitimacy but FPTP is the system we have.

(This has happened btw)

In the system we have referenda are advisory because parliament is sovereign. Parliament can not be bound by referenda or even a previous parliament.

And yes in a democracy it is vital minorities are given a voice and a role. Rule by simple majority is a very draconian form of democracy not many countries use.

To make major constitutional changes most countries require a higher margin than a simple majority.

As a Tory I would have thought you would have been committed to upholding the constitution of the U.K.

As Theresa probably won’t stand for election again I am hoping she will pull the plug on it. Seriously- who cares about saving face. Save the flipping country and say enough is enough. Pride, arrogance and ego got us into this mess - don’t let it be a double tragedy of pride, arrogance and ego keep us stuck when we don’t have to. Europe have ruled - we don’t have to leave.

Also I want to know how David Cameron has escaped prison over all this. He completely abdicated his mandate to lead when he made something as complicated as Europe into a yes/no vote.

ADropofReality We are still having debates now about the withdrawal agreement. Not an ongoing deal: the withdrawal agreement. Quite obviously no one had the faintest idea what was involved in Brexit, because we STILL DON'T KNOW NOW with 3 months to go.

Cameron should be hung drawn and quartered for allowing this to go ahead with no serious plan or even a map of a plan for the alternative. At this point if Brexit was a serious proposition we should be putting the last few practical preparations in place for having a border and taking over all legal and practical checks, not still squabbling over what it means.

But since we are still squabbling, it's perfectly acceptable to have a pause for a thought. The closeness of the original vote and the amount of propaganda that was involved in it is an extra point worthy of consideration. The one big point that really needs to be hammered home is that Britain's internal economic mess has been caused by Britain's internal politics, not the EU's, and the EU question is primarily one of foreign policy not home issues.

Universal credit is a case in point. Who's forcing that on us? Clue: it isn't Juncker, much as I despise him, or Brussels.

If the last referendum had been legally binding it would probably have been nullified due to all the broken rules. Prosecutions haven't taken place because it was only advisory.

Only complete loss of face in the EU politics world.

That ship sailed a loooooong time ago.

Brexit will hit London hard.

If you mean the wider city of 9-10 million people, you are probably correct.

If you're referring to The City (AKA the Square Mile), do you realise just how much of the world's finances are controlled directly FROM and BY (i.e. not just through) there? All looking out for themselves, of course - not for the ordinary folk.

It's a bit like an elephant being terrified of a mouse armed with a bag of peanuts.

The main problem is really that, following the vote and all the work that has been done to see what Brexit might actually mean for the UK and all of the people of the UK, the government has continued to lie about what might actually happen (while at the same time issuing advisory documents that are very clear about how difficult it's likely to be). So on the one hand we have Theresa May saying 'Brexit means Brexit and we will deliver and Britain will be great' while the civil service issues preparation documents which make it very clear that it won't be great and we are going to face significant difficulties on a number of levels which will place major barriers in the way of doing business with the rest of the world.

If they'd actually been a bit clearer about what it would really mean, while obviously trying to negotiate something that is acceptable to the majority of the population, I think perhaps we would be in a good place for an informed vote on the realities and the result of that should absolutely be implemented. Voting on real information seems like a very democratic thing to me! But the only vote was carried out with no information as to what would actually be the results for the country and no information as to what Brexit would actually look like. And here we are, nearly about to leave and we still have no idea of what the actual leave arrangements will be because we have a withdrawal agreement that isn't acceptable to either side. It's mismanagement on a grand scale and it's dreadful that we as an electorate haven't been communicated with effectively. Theresa May has spent far too much energy on trying to placate the madder elements of her own party and not enough on communicating with the electorate.

What a giant mess. I don't really think there is any good outcome at this stage. However, we really need a pause on this in order for people to be able to accurately assess the real facts now that we know at least some of them, so for me a second referendum is the only way we can do this. I think the rest of the EU would be OK with that. If we vote to leave again, so be it but at least that vote would be on the actual facts of the matter and not on things that have subsequently been shown to be completely untrue.

Good God, I campaigned for Remain; but, we had a referendum and 17.4m people – more than have ever voted for anything in British history – voted to Leave.

But 63% of the electorate didn't vote to leave, and the normal assumption for non-voters is that they want the status quo. Plus since the referendum a sizeable proportion of people who previously weren't eligible to vote now are, and all the evidence is that the vast majority of those would vote to remain. Given that the youngest voters will have to live with the consequences for longer, shouldn't they have some say before we commit ourself to either a no deal Brexit or a Theresa May deal Brexit, neither of which anyone voted for?

To everybody asking what we would lose if we don't leave the EU:

It might surprise you to realise, but many, many people did NOT vote for Brexit because they're Muslim-hating racists, but because of concerns about sovereignty. That's the ability of the UK to run the UK in the best interests of all of the people, of whatever colour/religion/origin, who have chosen to stay or come here to live.

You can love your neighbour and be great friends, yet still not want them to decide how you run your own household (and vice versa).

What was originally sold as purely a trading agreement has shifted massively over four decades and is progressing swiftly towards its openly-stated goal of becoming an all-out superstate.

Theoretically, the EU is accountable to member states' (now increasingly puppet) governments, but in practice, nobody challenges it. Its accounts have not been able to be audited for well over a decade and nobody even seems to really be concerned about this.

Any individual national leaders who DO make a big enough fuss either seem to get neutralised by being 'promoted' to a phenomenally well-paid but faceless central bureaucratic role in Brussels or are otherwise mysteriously silenced and/or discredited before very long (Marta Andreasen, anybody?)

Without wanting to be flippant, if you genuinely feel yourself to be the victim of an abusive, controlling, overbearing and much, much bigger partner, why is it seen as so ridiculous that you might be determined to want to leave if you possibly can find a way to do so?

Of course, you know that money and other important matters will be much more difficult than if you just rolled over and stayed to dance to their tune - at least for a season - but just sometimes, people consider it a price worth paying in order to regain their own dignity, pride, independence, self-respect and self-worth.

But 63% of the electorate didn't vote to leave, and the normal assumption for non-voters is that they want the status quo.

It isn't the assumption that they want to keep things exactly as they are - it's the plain acknowledgement that, when given an extremely well-publicised explicit opportunity (more an officially-sanctioned request, in fact) to make their views clear, they categorically communicated that they didn't care enough either way to bother doing so.

Surely every adult with mental capacity must realise that, in order to gain or retain what you hold so dear when a significant change is a very real possibility, there's no point in just mumbling into your hand?

It's not even like anybody was forced to orchestrate a radical mass-protest or put their head above a dangerous parapet; it was the equivalent of simply being invited to anonymously add your tick to a petition - the only difference being that, unlike just about every other petition ever organised, this one DID actually make a real difference.