Brexit- still gutted by result

[TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince]

Now on holiday in France. Handing over our EU passports was bad😰

Driving through France. Lots of the French Tricolour flag being flown alongside EU flag. That made me feel gutted too.

I just don't seem to be able to rally about it😟. I feel very keenly that we have lost that sense of unity and support.

Snivelling in a French gite atm☹️

DH did campaign hard for Remain, but we were in a strong Remain area anyway, so I am not sure how much difference it made. He was in two minds about voting Remain, wanting to send a message to Cameron, but was persuaded that this wasn't a good idea.

I didn't do much myself apart from have a few discussions about it. There were so many different reasons for Leave from 'wanting to take back Sovereignty' and "price increases are all the fault of this Common Market", to "putting the Great back into Britain again" - which it hasn't and can't lose, because it's a geographical term. So it was hard to know where to start to try to persuade Leavers what the Remain case had going for it.

It's daft to say that people who voted leave can't afford a holiday. The people I know who voted leave have had plenty-many of them to places I couldn't afford in a million years.

So it was hard to know where to start to try to persuade Leavers what the Remain case had going for it.

Exactly. We had a weak case and assumed that a "now listen here, poor people! we know what is good for you!" campaign would work.

In this city, which was for practical purposes 50/50, the patterns of voting exactly track income, education and age: an older, whiter, less educated constituency like mine (which is "Labour heartlands" other than in its location) went heavily leave, the adjacent constituency which has an RG university in it went heavily remain.

Pointing this out was not, and is not, effective electoral politics.

The idea that people can't afford a holiday is a daft one. Most working people can. A friend of mine has a foreign holiday every year in Spain or similar and she is a part time cleaner and her husband is a bus driver.

I actually can't afford a holiday as I have a long term chronic illness and can only work part time.

But I'm not bitching at people who can. And I'm well aware that a Leave disadvantages the whole country particularly those on lowest incomes, who will be most impacted by benefits and public service cuts that will follow.

What has Benefits and Public services got to do with the EU Gloria?

I'd imagine that as a recession will be the outcome that tax take will fall, resulting in cuts to public services/benefits. We do have a Tory government after all.

What has Benefits and Public services got to do with the EU Gloria?

I've just spilled some coffee as I was pouring it. Bloody Brexit.

The thing I find most annoying about the outer limits of the Remain campaign, and which makes me have some slight sympathy until they turn into frothing loons with the "take back control" nutters, is the idea that the UK government would turn into snarling despotism were it not for the moderating influence of the EU. This was a popular position I think in the 1990s, when Labour couldn't get arrested elected, and therefore shook off their historic scepticism about the EU to switch to a position of bigging the EU up as a guardian against whatever it was that John Major hadn't done. In order to paint him as a bogeyman, the claim was that he was only not eating babies for breakfast because the EU wouldn't let him.

The reality is that, for example, our equal pay legislation and our anti-racism legislation pre-dates our membership of the EEC, and in any event is pretty much outside the competence of the EU to either make law or certainly enforce law. The idea that somehow the EU can act as a bastion protecting the NHS or our benefit system from the depredations of the Tories is just fanciful: for a start off, both systems are almost unique in Europe anyway (if we had contributory benefit and healthcare systems a lot of the problems with unfounded allegations of benefit tourism wouldn't arise) so if they were somehow mandated, how come none of the other 27 countries got the memo? Ditto on a range of other topics including abortion rights (if the EU guarantees them, has anyone told Dublin?), same sex marriage (paging Italy), etc, etc, etc.

The EU has become a sort of paper cuddly toy (cf. paper tiger), imbued with all sorts of cuddly powers it doesn't actually have. If we want to have decent governments in this country, we need to fight for them and elect them. The idea that it's safe to have Tories in office so long as they are declawed by EU oversight is crazy. If the Tories wanted to dismantle the NHS (this might not be a Labour member orthodoxy, but I see no evidence for that – they have been in office for most of the last sixty years and have shown little enthusiasm for doing so) then they could do so and there's nothing the EU could or would do to stop them, ditto most benefits, tax credits, etc. The idea that we only have paid holidays thanks to the munificence of the EU is similarly dubious: people had holidays before 1993, you know.

well said cuboid - there is so much mis-information going round on both sides

Would that be the current Tory government whose austerity policy has been judged by the UN to be in breech of human rights?

There were a lot of regulations prior to being EU members its true, but there have been beneficial ammendments to these, and further ones that benefit us as well. Be under no illusion, when the leavers talk about red tape they mean employment laws ( as over a quarter of the costs that they discuss are due to international agreements like Basel II and such), regulations will be cut.

Also, it must be remembered that although the Tories have been in power for the majority over the last 60 years, its only been marginally (36 to 24) and that the Eden, Macmillan, Home and Heath administrations that make up 13 years of those 36 were as keen to up hold the post war consensus as Labour, therefore wouldn't have done anything to the welfare state or NHS.

Things certainly did change rapidly under Thatcher and Major in terms of privatisation and the lowering of workers rights, therefore it is no wonder that during this time the EU became more important.

Oh and neither the NHS or the benefit system are "unique" in anyway, something very similar exists in most other EU countries, it might not be exactly the same, but broadly they do.

Your revisionist way of looking at history doesn't stand scrutiny, much like most leavers policies.

Your revisionist way of looking at history doesn't stand scrutiny, much like most leavers policies.

Oh fuck off. I was out campaigning on the doorstep for Remain. I've made my views perfectly clear. Calling me a "leaver" is just ludicrous.

I campaigned that way too!

Like I said, its revisionist to say that the tories not wanting tories not wanting to dismantle the NHS point is revisionist as the current batch are not in the same political arena as previous "wet tory" governments.

On top of this, the EU has benefited people tremendously through employment laws, yes many of ours were in place prior, but they have been revised to be more in favour of the worker than they were, new laws brought in such as those covering agency workers have also been beneficial.

During the 1980s many older regulations protecting workers and their rights were washed away by the Thatcher government, it doesn't take much of a leap of faith to see that the current mod would be taking apart those that still exist if they could, which they can't because we are currently members of the EU.

Oh and the NHS is on the way to privatisation anyway, the 2012 Health and Social care act paves the way for that, as does the new junior doctor contracts.

Cuboidal

Have a look at Sean jones' blog. He says it better than me.

medium.com/@seanjones11kbw/i-logged-into-twitter-and-someone-had-posted-this-image-into-my-timeline-5596de6f6311#.6fwieisu7

Equal pay, holidays etc are indeed thanks to the EU (so too is pregnancy discrimination protection, age, sexual orientation discrimination protection and lots more eg uncapped discrimination awards, protective awards for failure to consult during redundancy etc etc etc.)

That's really comprehensive, thanks.

Excellent link. I have shared it with family. What a pity I didn't know about it until now. Who knows? It might have changed one or two opinions of those who are in line to lose EU funding pretty smartish, but want to 'take back control'.

Do we really want to take control to do workers down? Don't answer, because the answer for too many is Yes.

...that the UK government would turn into snarling despotism were it not for the moderating influence of the EU.

Moving away from the hyperbole ('snarling despotism' FFS) it's worth remembering the huge impact that EU membership has had on our physical environment if nothing else. We have cleaner waterways, cleaner air (and where problems do exist, UK citizens can rely on their rights under EU law), better conservation, better protection for wildlife, etc.

I'm old enough to remember the UK being called 'the dirty man of Europe', to remember the River Thames being dangerously filthy. Most of the UK's wildlife and environmental legislation is based on EU directives and there is currently no certainty as to how these will be replaced.

One of Theresa May's first acts was to close the Climate Change department. I see no reason to think that our government will NOT ride roughshod over the environment once they have free rein.

So great. With such compelling facts it's obvious why our successful campaign saw us confirming our place in Europe.

Because a campaign to stay that went on for 3/4 months can't beat the media and right wing of the Tory party Europe bashing for 20 years!

This vote was not won by logical campaigns or reasoned argument, it was won stoking xenophobia and nationalism, and for a long time.

"Speaking as an active, knocking on doors Remain campaigner......"

thank you x

You have to admit though that the Remain Camp didn't sell the positives - Clean beaches, the Thames clean enough for salmon, Workers rights (a Tory Government would struggle with this one because they like 'flexibility'), world class scientific research and more. Then they needed a snappy slogan - Clean beaches - thanks to EU, or something like that.

If we are talking about the long term problems of the EU in British Politics, remind me: which mainstream political party campaigned on immediate withdrawal from Europe? Which political party has a leader who has, for most of the last thirty years, campaigned to leave Europe? Oh yes: Labour. Or, more precisely, the unelectable trot end of Labour. Corbyn and Benn have had their way now. So I find it a bit bloody sad when the tories, vile vermin that they are, are blamed for an outcome that Labour's left wanted. Cameron has consistently campaigned for remain. Corbyn not so much.

EU: free trade, individual rights and no wars. EU: stronger together.

There's a straightforwardly internationalist, progressive case one can make.

Unfortunately, fuckwitted asshattery like the nonsense over olive oil containers is the worst sort of technocrat meddling, and the French (who would have ignored it had it gone to pass) don't realise how bad that stuff looks.

There is/was a blog run by the EU listing euromyths. . The intent was good, but the execution was appalling: the constant sound of Oxford JCR sneering at people who went to polytechnics, and anyone who read it would have come away thinking that the EU were just a bunch of public school boys with an unwarranted sense of superiority. The endless parade of nonentities like Cathy Ashton and the obvious use of the commission as a dumping ground for washed up second raters didn't help either: it just looked technocratic, and not even competent technocrats.

Who called the referendum? A Tory
Who lost the referendum? A Tory
Who resigned the morning after the referendum? A Tory
Which party has been trying to control its eurosceptics for 30 years? The Tories
Which section of the press has been running anti EU stories for decades? The Tory press

HTH

I thought it was the thicko English what lost the referendum, innit?

Which party split into two parties, losing the 83, 87, and 92 general elections, over Europe?

The idea get the tories were split over Europe and Labour weren't is farcical. Read the 1983 manifesto.