Custom Union

[user1486062886]

If as it looks likely the U.K. will be in some form of custom Union, what should us leave voters do?

Would it be better to stay as we are ?
Go on a protest march ( hasn’t helped remain )
Make the conservatives suffer at the next GE,
Or has anyone else got any suggestions ( no not you remainers, with just get on with it was a waste of time anyway etc etc)

C- Why would they have it on the menu if they couldn't supply it ?

And that's precisely what they did. A menu of two dishes, in or out. As a vegetarian restaurant, they could naturally supply the Ploughmans (in), but the vote was for the steak (out), which they couldn't and still can't supply.

I am sorry to all you remain voters, but i was asked a question in the ref, the remain party didn't set out a good reason apart from dome to remain and from my own personal experience, i decided to vote leave. I Fully expect the existing government to take the result and make it happen in the best way possible, After all that is why they are there is it not ?

Hasenstein i can not understand why they would put it on the menu if they know full well they can not supply it, it just doesn't make sense, what do they get out of it apart from upset customers and no repeat business.

I would dispute the fact that people who voted leave did so meaning that they wanted to leave the customs union too as I am certain that before the referendum, 99% of the population had never heard of a customs union. I did a module in international trade as part of my degree and had only a hazy notion of the details. It's just part of the post-vote revisionism that has taken place to pretend that people knew all about it. In fact, all the talk during the campaign was of Norway and Switzerland models who are EEA or EFTA members.

I see one of the Brexiter-in-chiefs, Daniel Hannan, has had an article published today in favour of remaining in EFTA and acknowledging the closeness of the referendum result. It must be cold in Hell today because I actually kind of agreed with what he suggested.

C- Why would they have it on the menu if they couldn't supply it ?

Option C is still on the menu though, it’s just not made it to the table yet (the chef needs a bit more time!)

Is this for real?

If Brexit had resulted in immediate free sunbeams and unicorns for all, somehow I doubt any Leave voter would be saying "Ooo, nothing to do with my vote that I didn't think through, don't thank little old modest me for my wise vote, just thank the government or Remoaners, or judges, or the Lords, or the unelected EU for delivering"

make it happen in the best way possible

Well, what is the best was possible?

DS is a leaver & says he wants out of the CU. He doesn't KNOW what the CU is, but he's got the impression from alt-right websites to avoid it.
(sigh)
Am looking forward to replies by leavers.

Would bring in some form of Custom Union go some way to keep the remainers happier ?

personally, yes. CU will bring benefits I don't want to lose. I would accept Norway model or similar with minimal fuss.

In answer to the question, option C was only added on to the menu after it had been printed. Most people on the leave campaign were talking about Norway, which would have been the most sensible option given the closeness of the result. We only got the hard Brexit addition to the menu when TM became Prime Minister and we were force-fed the Nick Timothy Brexit special.

Although, just the Norway model would never be sufficient for the UK as we are in the unique position in Europe of having to have customs alignment as we cannot have a hard border between part of our territory (NI) and the EU (ROI). Another thing people didn't know enough about before the vote and the remain campaign should have been more stringent about.

i can not understand why they would put it on the menu if they know full well they can not supply it, it just doesn't make sense, what do they get out of it apart from upset customers and no repeat business.

Depends who you mean by "they". If you mean the various Brexit supporting movements in the Referendum, none of them were concerned with upset customers and certainly no repeat business. They just got their vote and legged it. Including Cameron, Johnson and Gove, who all recognised a poison chalice when they saw it and passed it to the hapless May.

personally, yes. CU will bring benefits I don't want to lose. I would accept Norway model or similar with minimal fuss.

There seems to be a lot of confusion here (caused by terrible press coverage of politicians who don't seem to understand the issues themselves).

Norway is not in the customs union. It is in the single market, and in Schengen. There is no "people border" (because Schengen) but it has a customs border with the EU at which there is significant infrastructure and where physical customs checks take place. For the UK to have no border infrastructure with Ireland requires single market membership, plus some sort of customs agreement i.e. "Norway plus", at least in the short term.

There was a window of opportunity to make Brexit work - via a gradual withdrawal over many years, with an initial period inside the EEA/EFTA. That opportunity was destroyed by May and her "special" advisors who laid down red lines which made this impossible. My own view is that the only way from here is to revoke A50 and start again. Extending the transition leads to semi-permanent vassal status (inside the EU for all intents and purposes but with no say and with the loss of participation in major EU agencies).

User, the rational part of me doesn't think it was reasonable to expect leavers to understand the issues when the vast majority be of politicians didn't. However from a personal point of view as someone directly affected by this catastrophe (which in the worst case scenario could result in people like me no longer having the right to live in the same country as my children) I do blame them. They either voted for something knowing there was a good chance of it being a shit show, or they voted in ignorance - so they are either culpable or stupid, and I can't help myself actively wishing harm on them and their families, as they have wished harm on mine. It's not a noble sentiment but there you go.

I agree that this whole sorry mess is the fault of the government - more specifically, David Cameron who idiotically called a referrendum confident that remain would win, purely as a way to maintain enough unity in the tory party to keep him in power for a bit more.

Of course it all blew up in his face but now he gets to withdraw from public life to spend more time with his money.

The referrendum was badly worded and badly conceived.

(a) It should have been made clear from the outset that any result more evenly balanced than eg 65:35 in either direction would not be binding but there would be regularly follow-up referenda every couple of years until such a clear majority emerged one way or the other. When parliament originally voted to agree that there should be a referendum it was specifically stated that the result would be advisory and non binding. At some point that detail got edited.

(b) the question should have been either much clearer - ie "do you want the UK to leave the EU, including both the customs union and the single market and including creating a hard border for Northern Ireland, with no guarantees on what trade deals we might get afterwards" or much looser ie "do you want us to extricate ourselves from as much of the EU as is practically possible without seriously damaging the socioeconomic stability of the country, including leaving the EU altogether if a path to do so turns out to be possible"

What should Leave voters do? What exactly did they vote for?

If it was for more money for the NHS then go on every march that supports the NHS, keep badgering your MP for more money for the NHS and do what you can to support it.

If your vote was anti-immigration - well the hostile environment has seen a diminution in numbers coming, so you don't need to do too much, unless maybe you retrain in health care to make up for those EU citizens not coming.

If you voted for 'sovereignty' - you need do nothing because you never lost it according to Theresa May.

If you don't want a Customs Union, by all means march and demonstrate and write to your MP, but take the consequences of not being in one. Food held up at the border so there are shortages - don't complain, it's what you voted for.

I think we can all agree that David Cameron was a fool, and that he ran away as soon as the result came in, but that doesn't help us now, does it?

I think you will find that leave voters, voted to leave the EU, As the vote paper said leave or remain that was the two options nothing else,
Please don’t keep saying you don’t know what you vote for, we did, to leave the EU.
There wasn’t
Leave option A
option B, etc etc
There wasn’t an option to put leave and how you would like it achieved
If the government were not aware of the implications of a leave vote, that is a sad indictment of our political system

If the government were not aware of the implications of a leave vote, that is a sad indictment of our political system

Maybe you should have considered what the leave campaigns were selling you in the first place.

Its not just a case of leaving the EU, this needs to be implemented and there are implications to this. In the same way as you don't just sell a house. There is money involved, other parties, where are you moving to etc?

Leavers don't like being called stupid but now are acting naive - "wasn't my fault guv, I just voted to leave"

If the government were not aware of the implications of a leave vote, that is a sad indictment of our political system

Well yes - but don't forget the prime minister campaigned to Remain - that should tell you something.www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-brexit-latest-live-david-cameron-full-speech-remain-leave-a7093426.html

To be fair bear, we were offered the chance to have a meal in the restaurant we were sitting in or another restaurant, with no mention at all of what the menus were, how long it would take to get to the other restaurant, where the other restaurant was, what the prices were, what the hygiene ratings were etc. The restaurant we were sitting in had major problems, eg not enough seats, doesnt take Amex, strange menu, moved location every 6 months, expensive, which were publicised relentlessly at every turn by staff from the other restaurant, who talked endlessly about foid being dumped on tables in front of us, who all failed to point out that the restaurant was generally reliable at providing meals and had done so according to our orders for forty years, making some of us rather comfortably fat.

Yet again that is not my fault, sorry if you don’t like it, I was offered to leave or remain, I just think you can’t get at the government so you are blaming me,I had absolutely nothing to do with offering the referendum or trying to put the case for one of the choices, ( remain was very poor, perhaps you should be upset with the case they put forward for staying in the EU) Then working out how to leave the EU, then negotiate with the EU, that has or had nothing to do with me.

I think you will find that leave voters, voted to leave the EU, As the vote paper said leave or remain that was the two options nothing else,
Please don’t keep saying you don’t know what you vote for, we did, to leave the EU.
So, having been given a binary choice, you did not hesitate for one moment to consider how your favoured option might be achieved in practice? At the next election, if a party says 'We're going to give everyone in the country £1000000 and a three-day working week,' wouldn't you pause and think, 'How could that be achieved? Where will that money come from?' Or would you just blindly say, 'I'm voting to get a million quid and a 3-day week because it wouldn't be on the menu if it wasn't possible.'
And you wonder why remainers are furious?

So, having been given a binary choice, you did not hesitate for one moment to consider how your favoured option might be achieved in practice? At the next election, if a party says 'We're going to give everyone in the country £1000000 and a three-day working week,' wouldn't you pause and think, 'How could that be achieved? Where will that money come from?' Or would you just blindly say, 'I'm voting to get a million quid and a 3-day week because it wouldn't be on the menu if it wasn't possible.'

Worked quite well for the Labour Party at the last GE!!

Being in the Customs Union is not incompatible with being outside the EU, so I don't see why any Leaver has a problem. (Unless they were the ones who voted for more money for the NHS - then I would be really angry if that had been me.)

Yet again that is not my fault,

But you did choose to believe someone - you believed the Leave campaign. The Remain campaign was saying that it was not possible. Surely you must have realised they can't both be right?

user it's quite telling that your fellow Leavers aren't even supporting your comments.

If you really thought it was just a binary choice and you had no responsibility to have thought about the consequences then that's up to you.

It does demonstrate exactly why this should never have been put to the public vote though.

If great swathes of the public are not responsible enough to at least consider the implications of their choice then we should not be given that choice.

I think for some leavers it was a case of comforting lies or inconvenient truths