EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Not disagreeing there maybe the Euro was too soon and it needs scaled back.

But the Italian banks have a lot of bad loans the Euro zone will have to bail out...So they can't leave now, leaving later after bailouts will annoy the countries that pay for it.

It's tricky. Greece cooked their books btw to make it look like they were ok. But ultimately their people didn't vote for that and they have the same issues with lack of real new government, but going easy on them risks a can of worms.

I don't know ideally the banks could just GTFO and countries would be a big credit union. But even then unpaid loans will cause annoyance.

Really tricky. I wonder if the UK tried to exert influence to improve things?

I look at the situation in the US and, while it is pretty alarming, I am inspired by the widespread resistance to Trump's presidency. It is active, visible, and mostly positive.

By contrast, we seem to be sleep-walking into Brexit, and no-one appears to be doing much of significance about it. I'm not sure why not? Is it our stiff upper lip, our 'mustn't grumble' mindset, or something else?

While I hold out hope that the Americans may be able to over-turn (or at least seriously constrain) Trump, it seems highly unlikely that we will do anything meaningful with regard to Brexit. Or am I missing something?

WILL 👏 OF 👏 THE 👏 PEOPLE 👏

From twitter on Labour's strategy:

"You're doing [thing A]! We want [thing B] to happen on top of [thing A]. Beware! If you don't give us [thing B] we'll still take [thing A]"

I'm no student of game theory, but that doesn't sound like a winning strategy

Depends whose team you're playing on. Corbyn has always wanted out & he's cruising his way to victory - if the other labour MPs hadn't messed around so much already trying to get him out they could have done a concerted effort now & use this to ditch him but they wasted any credits they had on their pathetic attempts before.

I've got to the point where I've accepted we're out & are going to be in a rubbish position for years to come - all we can do now is try to vote for a better opposition to the tories next time & hope they can claw something back.

The UK has a lot of clout...It could choose to use that for good. Germany big, UK big... try to stand up for the little countries.

Not easy, but possible. But if you don't really believe in the glorious mess that's the EU...

Protests are on 20 February for international migrant day and 25 March for the EU.

Unfortunately brexit is, I think, seen as us (UK) vs them (EU) not trump bigotry VS be a better USA... :/

Bar calling general elections which we the voters cannot force, I'm not sure what can be done. Don't forget Trump is still working away, and the courts only have power to intervene.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2017/feb/07/only-a-third-of-voters-think-labour-will-win-an-election-by-2025-poll-suggests-politics-live

Politics live with Andrew Sparrow
Brexit debate: MPs vote down Labour move to give parliament veto over Brexit deal by majority of 33 - Politics live

...Sigh.

in terms of affecting popular perception, I agree.

i don't understand Labour's three line whip - I thought the point of those things was to make sure a vote went a certain way. but the vote was always going to go towards Article 50 because MPs would mostly likely vote with their constituents, and by constituency the vote was more towards Leave than Remain. so why not simply allow MPs a free vote, allowing those who represented strong Remain views, and themselves held Remain views, to vote that way. the end result would be the same, people would be a heck of a lot pissed off about it, and there would be less stupid attention on the disintegration of the shadow cabinet. again.
(I actually meant it as a "I don't understand, what am I missing?" comment but got carried away.)

Yes, it's a bit strange. I suspect deep down it's just that people like Corbyn have always wanted to 'leave'. And perhaps he also wants to be seen to be supporting the famous 'will of the people' as a typically half-arsed and wholly ineffective effort to win some popularity with the electorate.

I didn't get it either, but supposedly he wanted to get Tory revels on board for guaranteed rights of EU nationals and getting a say on the final deal.

Well...That worked well..

In some respects I feel sorry for Labour, they really are between a rock and a hard place (or a bunch of small minded racists in the north(of Watford) and their new is found "liberal elite" members)

The lord ashcroft polling post brexit suggested only 36% of people that identified as Labour voters voted out. With their current stance there chasing after those voters plus a lot of people who turned out to vote in the referendum but generally don't vote in elections. I assume there not going to win over any Tories or UKIP voters.

The rest of us the 64% we have to hold our noises and join/vote for the Lib dems ... or the Greens, something which from my prospective at least was unthinkable until recently.

Most labour voters are remain...But most constituencies are leave.

Could very well be "struggling smaller area" vs "well off city" but how brexit is going to fix that...

Unless Jezza makes everyone sponsor UK coal mines and steel (UK state help no-no under EU) and shitloads of transport... Not sure if that's possible either.

So yeah rock hard place but no balls to say brexit won't fix it either unless you want to have a strong state control. And not sure UK people want that either, as a whole..

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/dominic-cummings-brexit-referendum-won/

A huge read, and I only scanread it.

Basically, official getLeave can all get fucked in my honest opinion due to the dishonesty involved.

Exploiting genuine issues [immigration and the Eurozone issues etc.] in an "underbelly" way by mentioning Turkey (hahaha not a chance they join the EU) and exaggerating the refugee crisis, as the UK is not part of Schengen and quite frankly doesn't give a fuck. The UK isn't "overran" with people, and Cameron could have set limits on EU immigration, but choose not to.

Of course, such is politics, but did he really not expect a huge mess after? Seems a little too intelligent for that...

But I can only applaud the honesty shown here. He has put himself out there for everyone.

It does make you wonder if there are any UKIP MEPs who are not in some kind of legal trouble:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/06/ukip-mep-150000-libel-damages-to-labour-mps-rotherham

Clive Lewis stakes his claim to be the next Labour leader.

MPs vote against guaranteeing EU citizens right to stay in the UK. well done, brexit fuckwits, give yourself a fucking hand. hope you don't get sick soon.

the will of the people

Not even kippers support this if the hope not hate survey I saw was done right... it isn't the will of the people.

Well, I've given up. Next project: Project GTFO.

MPs vote against guaranteeing EU citizens right to stay in the UK.

Fucking hell, we're going to lose some very important people whom made a massive contribution to our society.

We're going back to the 70's.

not denying this

we're going to lose some very important people

but what's with this

We're going back to the 70's.

We're going back to the 70's.

We joined the UK in the 70's, granted I wasn't around, but my parents and other didn't paint a pretty picture of it back then.