Brexit mega thread part 12: David Cameron: Return of the King

[SerendipityJane]

(previous thread)

That's "king" as a suffix not a prefix. Also part of a phrase.

@Peregrina Let's explain this simply - the Tory Party Manifesto supported the Single Market so it's reasonable to assume that as a whole this was what the Tory party thought best for the party.

I referred to the Leaflet sent to each UK household, not manifestos for general elections. The PM at the time was David Cameron , not Boris Johnson

This is also simple. They wouldn't need to. They would have called out the blatant lies. So there would have been no bus stating that we spent £350 million a week on the EU, let's spend it on the NHS, because we didn't

Boris Johnson was taken to court over the bus, but the case was dismissed. Hence, he had not done anything illegal.

You seem to forget that there were two campaigns in the run up to the 2016 referendum. Leave and remain.

My question was, how would the Electoral Commission have verified the remain forecasts:

500,000 to 800,000 job losses would occur by a Vote to Leave (Treasury Report),
and
UK would enter recession (Also the Treasury Report),
and
GDP would have declined 4% by Q3 2018,
and
Property values would plummet,

Were certain to happen before they allowed such statements to be published?

Is there evidence to prove that the 16.1 million who voted remain in 2016 did so solely as they were certain that leave would damage the UK? Or, where they afraid they would be one of the 500,000 to 800,000 people that would lose their jobs by a vote to leave? ie there were lied to?

If Brexit was a success and it had been the EU holding us back, we should begin to see the evidence now.

As per the ONS,

Unemployment has decreased since 2015
NHS has received more funding is real terms
Wages have increased for those at the lower end of the scale.
UK has grown faster that Germany since 2016.

Link is:
UK grew faster than Germany in last 10 years, in years since Referendum, and last quarter (facts4eu.org)

@SerendipityJane A lot of things were different in 1975. Rape in marriage was legal, for a start. So do bore off with your faux comparisons.

The question asked in 2016 was the same as that in 1975:

Shall the UK remain in the EU?

So, the conditions had to be the same.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Well, we got that wrong, didn't we? By your reasoning, we should have reopened the pits, restored British manufacturing including bringing back British Leyland, shutting down the Internet, bringing back the cane in schools... After all the conditions had to be the same, no?

Funny how Global only wants to consider something relevant that she wants to be considered...

GlobeTrotter2000

You have got your Brexit, You won. Get over it.

As for the 1975 referendum, which I did vote in, unlike you, who I assume was either not born or was too young, I don't now remember the question but the answers were either Yes or No. So the question must have been phrased differently.

Shall the UK remain in the EU?

Bear in mind that the EU did not exist in 1975. It was then the EEC. When we did join the EEC Denmark and Ireland also joined. Norway was expected to join, but in their referendum they voted No (or Nej technically.)

We joined the European Community on 1 January 1973, along with, as @Peregrina points out, Ireland and Denmark. (That, incidentally, as also when I started crossing my 7s and my Zs ).

The question in the 1975 referendum was

The Government has announced the results of the renegotiation of the United Kingdom's terms of membership of the European Community. Do you think that the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community (the Common Market)?

...with a simple Yes/No answer required.

I was faaar too young to vote , but coming from a very politically aware family, I can remember the debates (and the bitterness within the Labour Party). I can even remember one of the cartoons in the Guardian at the time of someone in the Labour Party (Roy Jenkins or Harold Wilson?) wearing a suit backwards and telling someone else something like "Haven't you been told? This is the new fashion or was it uniform? "

It's interesting to compare the wording of the 2016 Referendum:

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union? The responses were:
1) Remain a member of the European Union
2) Leave the European Union

This is most emphatically not how it was asked in 1975. We can now only speculate whether the answer would have been different if it had been phrased the same way. Both in 1975 and 2016

@pointythings Well, we got that wrong, didn't we? By your reasoning, we should have reopened the pits, restored British manufacturing including bringing back British Leyland, shutting down the Internet, bringing back the cane in schools... After all the conditions had to be the same, no?

How does any of that relate to EU membership?

Pits would have closed anyway due to environmental issues.

UK, like Germany, has become more of a service economy. UK is split Approx. 80:20 services and manufacturing. German is Approx 70:.30.

@Peregrina The responses were:
1) Remain a member of the European Union
2) Leave the European Union

That sounds very like the choice presented in 2016, ie leave or remain.

Also, remember that the UK government had already taken upon itself to join in 1973 without a referendum. My parents vote to remain in 1975 on the basis:

"we have only just recently joined, so why go through another upheaval so soon"

41 years later, both of my parents voted to leave.

I thought 'we' were holding all the cards?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/05/uk-negotiators-fly-to-india-in-last-ditch-effort-to-seal-free-trade-deal

British negotiators have flown to India in a last-ditch attempt to clinch a trade deal

Yep.

@DuncinToffee

India's stategy to wait until after the UK general election makes sense to me. If Labour win, it will be very easy for India to write their own ticket. The Article makes the comment:

“UK negotiators are hearing from India that they will get more out of Labour on visas and social security. That has been the impact of Labour’s trip to India and meeting with trade minister, Piyush Goyal.”

That sounds very like the choice presented in 2016, ie leave or remain.

I have already told you that was what the 2016 Referendum asked.
Since we are being pedantic, your parents didn't vote Remain because the question required a yes/no answer and the European Union did not exist.

As for we didn't hold a Referendum to enter the then EEC - they were extremely rare and not really part of our Parliamentary Democracy. I do recall that there was one in Wales in I think the early sixties to ask whether pubs should open on Sundays, because some counties were dry and some not.

If we wish to have them now as a regular event we really need to get our act together on this as Ireland and Switzerland do and make some consistent rules. Some of the Brexit problems have been caused by the sloppy way the Referendum came about and was enacted.

As for we didn't hold a Referendum to enter the then EEC - they were extremely rare and not really part of our Parliamentary Democracy. I

Indeed. What are we paying our fucking MPs for ?

The UK lives under a fiction that we delegate our decisions to our elected representatives. If we want <x> then it's up to us to vote for enough representatives that agree in order to make <x> happen.

Or not happen if you want a ban.

It's precisely because we lack a constitution that we don't really know what to do with referenda. Even the basket case of the US has a clearly written mechanism to enforce change.

Of course we don't really live in a democracy. Not many people do. We have managed to create a system where the big boys might have to wait to get their way, but get their way they will.

I need to be careful now I don't get dragged away to the gulags, what with Rish! defining extremism as stating the obvious.

Yay! Another benefit! Food poisoning...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/06/people-in-england-facing-food-poisoning-russian-roulette-as-illnesses-soar

So we have finally reached the situation in UK where the poor have to buy eggs and meat from sub-standard sources in the supermarkets while the rich can eat local farm produce at x3 the price and cut the risk of this, or presumably the checks aren't being done on our farms either now as part of the Farmer's Brexit benefit.

That's not accidental.

Never underestimate the corrosive power of the peculiar English obsession with social status and peoples position therein.

It's one reason why conservatives hate foreigners. Because they haven't been born into this life, they don't "know their place".

It's hidden in plain sight in that lovely hymn we got our kids to sing at school, just in case anyone thinks there's anything sneaky going on.

https://x.com/OBR_UK/status/1765378763406156193?s=20

UK trade intensity (exports plus imports divided by GDP) has not recovered in line with other G7 countries since the pandemic.

We continue to expect that Brexit will reduce the UK’s potential GDP by 4% in the long run by lowering the trade intensity of the economy.

I am still waiting for a list of real tangible Brexit benefits

rather than endless rehash of words from 8 years ago

Here it is;

And, just in case you had the slightest bit of doubt about corruption in the government; Just two months before the UK Prime Minister opened hundreds of new licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea, Infosys signed a billion-dollar deal with BP...

And, in "Taking back control" news;

Bit more on food post Brexit which seems to cover the famers and cheaper imports
https://kentandsurreybylines.co.uk/business/food-farming-fishing/fairness-for-farmers-dealing-with-the-damage-of-brexit/

But again - how many farms did we all drive past with massive great posters telling us "no deal, no problem" and the likes. It is definitely a case of FAFO...