No it's not really. The referendum was not a legally-binding vote, it was a purely voluntary thing to gauge support for the idea.
With respect I disagree. When the day came for us all to vote, we were given two options.
Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
- Remain a member of the European Union.
- Leave the European Union.
The government made it clear they would implement the decision we made, without reference to continual referendums.
A once in a generation decision
The referendum on Thursday, 23 June is your chance to decide if we should remain in or leave the European Union.
The government believes it is in the best interests of the UK to remain in the EU.
This is the way to protect jobs, provide security, and strengthen the UK’s economy for every family in this country – a clear path into the future, in contrast to the uncertainty of leaving.
This is your decision. The government will implement what you decide.
This was from Cameron's media blitz, sent via leaflet to every single household in the UK. You can find more from their speeches.
Yet it is now 2018, and to explain to non-Brits who haven't been drowning in the deluge of coverage this received, or perhaps have forgotten the origins or are unaware of the pitfalls of British politics, it is necessary to look farther back into the distant aeons of 2010.
The year was 2010, some MP's were jailed for exploiting government expenses, Tony Blair survived the Iraq inquiry a free man, Quangos were cut and the Crossbow Cannibal Killer was caught. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, then the leader of Labour Party, lost the general election. There was just one issue: No one had won it either. David Cameron, then the bright leader of the Conservative party, had failed to secure a majority for the Conservative party. In order to form a government and avoid another general election, David Cameron struck a deal with mai waifu, Nick Clegg, then the leader of the Liberal Democrats. That would be the start of the last days you ever saw Cleggers smile, and generally was a bad day for politics as the Liberal Democrats were unceremoniously torn to pieces by their erstwhile allies, their own compromises, mistakes, failings and unfortunate timing of strategy. The liberal democrats sought to turn the UK from a 2 party state into a 3 party state, and while they were to succeed, the third party was to end up being UKIP. Back then I supported Labour, and I had comfortably settled into interacting with those queer North Riverlanders in central London, leaving my quiet gang ridden, malaria infested but homely world of Saffeast, with its empty dockyards and abandoned warehouses or paper mills. It was also the year when the construction of the Shard began, completely shafting all of my travel plans, as it became abundantly clear the mayor of London (then Boris Johnson) did not consider what impact the infernal glass splinter would have on everyone commuting from my area into inner London.
2011: Cameron talks tough about protecting British sovereignty, deploys a veto to stop a Franco-German blueprint for the Eurozone coming to fruition. The European countries line up to vote 26-1 against the UK, thoroughly humiliating the British government within the EU, and within Britain.
And so we come to 2012. One year after David Cameron made his speech saying state multiculturalism had failed, the year where
the Times published their report on the attempted coverup of thousands of English children being groomed into sexual slavery by Muslim gangs; British far right, far left & Riot police fight in the streets; 11 Muslim Britons were arrested after using charity donations to fund a planned mass suicide bombing attack; EU migrant dilemma begins, one year until it became the EU migrant crisis; pictures of austerity Portugal, Greece, UK & Poland got juxtaposed next to the €1tn scandal of the EU's generous benefits for its workers - with the UK recommendations for cutting the EU budget going entirely ignored; the UK would come second last in Eurovision; Westminster & Holyrood begin discussing plans for what would become the 2014 Scottish independence referendum; Mock the Week was still funny; thousands of NHS & Defence workers were made redundant; polls find that 56% of Britons would leave the EU if a referendum to leave or stay was held that year; the UK accounts for 1/4 of the EU's entire illegal migrant population; the London 2012 Olympics would occur, I won four tickets to the Marathon in a lottery, I gave one away to some random old lady on the day of the event and she was so happy she cried; a study finds income inequality adjusted for inflation and purchasing power is at its highest since the financial crisis of 2008; local council research found that austerity UK's people live in "despair, isolation & indignity." I believe it was Charlie Brooker who coined the phrase "Oh dearism" in this year, in which everything was so unlimited in its capacity to always get worse that one could only respond with "Oh dear."
They were difficult times, with me and me m8s all joking it's down the road not across the street with 1/5s and all that, with me, my kin & fams and their fam, all living knowing one day we might just lose everything with one wrong letter in the post. People in politics didn't talk about policy, instead they were talking whether the UK would even exist in 10 years. They were simple times, they were 'appy times. People were giving up on any hope for the future of the state of the UK, on any hope for their own future. It was like there were three lots in life: You were a poor White Briton, and you drank and slagged yourself to death, spat on in contempt by the leaders you elected. You were a wealthy White Briton, and you sealed yourself in a gated world of cash and ethical opulence, served by a humble legion. You were a migrant and if you weren't trapped doing the jobs no one else wanted to do, you were getting harnessed to the chariots of the wealthy Whites one way or another.
So you have this fragile government built between an uneasy alliance between neoliberal Tories and liberal Libdems, where losing the confidence of the Libdems or the conservative Tory backbenchers can mean disaster for the government. The people as a whole are struggling, depressed, militant, and the UK itself might even be dissolved. With 1 in 4 MPs being Oxbridgers, 1/3 of all the UK's leaders being Oxbridgers, with 10 top private schools producing 12% of the nation's professional elite... The UK was in and still is in this particularly fucked up intellectual bottleneck. The BBC reported that for example the diplomatic service was 62% Oxbridge, law 58% Oxbridge, half of the UK's top literary figures Oxbridge, 47% of those in financial services or the City Oxbridge & the top echelons of the Civil Service 55% Oxbridge. Another study indicated independent schools made up 7% of school population yet had produced most leading news journalists, medics, chief executives and 70% of barristers and judges. This is important information to remember later. What you need to know is that in 2012, this meant that the majority of the UK's leaders in every manner of public influence was an ideologically coherent, connected network, working with the support of all branches of British governance, administration and influence - literary, news, military, security, judiciary, Commons, Lords, Civil Service, government, opposition, broadcasting, radio, University, finance, industry and naturally, the European Union. What's worse for them, is on that year the rest of the UK was painfully aware of this.
So the Conservatives begin to review their strategy, now faced with no less than two populist parties threatening to overturn the very national and supranational structures which guaranteed their career progression and pensions - the UK and the EU. Of especial relevance to Brexit of course, is that the Tories realized UKIP was not going away. In 2006 Cameron was calling UKIP a bunch of looneys, fruitcases and closet racists, in 2012 the vice-chairman of the Tory party urged Cameron to give Nigel Farage a cabinet seat and make a pact with UKIP, as UKIP had cost the Tories 40 seats in the general election and in doing so cost them a majority. For those who don't know what UKIP were, they were a political missile aimed right at kickstarting the Brexit referendum, and were bleeding support from the Labour and Conservatives' eurosceptic support bases.
Cameron retracted his statement calling UKIP looneys, fruitcases and closet racists, before retracting his retraction that same day - in a move which I believe indicates he considered it for a day before his advisors provided him with a plan to neutralize UKIP.
That plan would inevitably be to promise an EU referendum, neutralize the Tory backbenchers for as long as possible, delay the referendum for as long as possible with EU negotiations, buy enough time to campaign north against the SNP. Win the referendum versus the SNP, return south to campaign against the Tory backbenchers & UKIP, use the Remain win to lock the UK into the EU in perpetuity, secure further integration into the EU in order to ensure Brexit will no longer be a feasible possibility in future.
2014, the plan seemed to be working. The Scottish independence referendum failed in a 10 point gap, which was still far too close for comfort. The failure can be chalked up to several factors. The Westminster 3 all agreed on devolution of powers, the better together campaign successfully stressed the shared history, while the 300 year old union was a status quo considerably more difficult to break for both sentimental and practical reasons. Yet it also showed weaknesses which were to emerge in the Brexit referendum, with Cameron deploying his first usage of project fear, promising fire & brimstone to any Scottish person who dared to vote for independence. The reaction was suitable, with Cameron urging the Scottish to not vote independence "just to fuck the Tories." In short, Cameron did his best to make Scottish independence the most appealing prospect he could, with Nicola Sturgeon later remarking that he better not deploy project fear in the Brexit referendum, as he didn't have a comfortable lead to squander anymore. To make matters worse for Cameron, the media and political punditry predicting that UKIP was a flash in the pan soon to crumble were decisively proven wrong in the 2014 UK European Parliament elections, in which UKIP became the first non-Labour/Tory party to win a UK election in 108 years.
Cameron was now dreadfully certain that UKIP had ceased to be an irrelevant thorn in his side, and was now the single greatest obstacle guaranteeing his career prematurely terminating in the run-up to the 2015 general election. The Conservative party identified its Conservative constituents as a primary threat, the Labour party identified the Labour unions as their primary threat, in ironies which astound none familiar with the ideological cohesion of our British elites. Subsequently whilst the Conservatives sought to marginalize their losses from their hemorrhaging Conservative support, Labour sought to reform their party selection process in order to empower the party and sideline Labour. This meant for the Conservatives, turning Cameron's 2013 proposal for an EU referendum into a "cast-iron pledge" for an EU referendum in 2014. Cynics were concerned with this particular phrasing, as Cameron promised with a "cast-iron pledge" that the UK would have a referendum on signing up to the Lisbon treaty - before no such referendum occurred because PM Gordon Brown signed us up to it before he was removed from power.
It's 2015, hilarity would ensue when the Tories made the mistake of incorporating this pledge into their manifesto, and after an aborted attempt on television by one of Cameron's sacrificial lambs to deny that this pledge was made, the Tories were forced to honour their promise. The UK sighed in collective relief as Ed Miliband failed to become Prime Minister, after Miliband and Cameron attempted to replicate Farage's unique trick of appearing to be a normal British person. The looks of disgust on the dynamic duo's face as the men reared on French champagnes took one sip of beer and shirked in disgust - followed by a smile and thumbs up to the cameras was simply delicious. David Cameron announced that the EU referendum would indeed take place - BUT - first, he would embark upon renegotiation of the UK and the EU's relationship, in an attempt to ostensibly have membership of the EU without rule by the EU. During this time all Tory party members who supported Brexit would not be allowed to campaign for Brexit, in a move which I am sure was merely Cameron's attempt to delay Brexit campaigning.
C'est la vie, that when you lived in a country that was split half and half between Remain and Leave, you had no representation in finance, politics, media or academia. Few can empathize with the pain of 2015, when even if half the country agreed with you, the gatekeepers of culture considered you a savage & backwards enemy, while of the parties who could actually win seats outside of Northern Ireland, you were allowed the choice of voting for the pro-EU SNP, pro-EU Tories, pro-EU Labour, pro-EU Libdems... This was especially harrowing if you voted for the Conservatives, because 56% of your MPs, your Prime Minister and the whole fucking cabinet barring Bojo supported the EU even though 61% of Tory voters supported Leave :/
The men and women who wanted an EU referendum had only one chance to get it: And they had to put into power a pro-EU government to get it no matter what. This meant that all of the restrictions placed upon campaigners, how the referendum would be conducted right down to the debates & wording of the letters, how the government & private sector utilized its resources, how & when pro-Remain & pro-Leave MPs campaigned, when everything would happen - would all be controlled by the head of the Remain campaign. We were all fully aware we were being played like a damn fiddle and walking into a stacked table, but there was literally no other choice. Cameron had taken the genie out of the bottle and it was all we could do to be the electorate of ruin: If Cameron did not deliver, we would ruin his career, and in doing so install the men who would make mockery of his legacy, whoever they may be.
As it stands, Labour would be invaluable in this regard. Having reformed their party leader selection process in order to sideline the Unions, they were astounded to face their own internal revolt. An insignificant candidate who had long been with them suddenly appeared as the frontrunner, the man to lead Labour in opposition to the Conservatives.
That mandem was Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn aside, this time is also worthwhile, as it shows that from 2013 onwards it was abundantly clear that the Conservatives were elected in on the promise of delivering the EU referendum and on delivering the result the British electorate chose.
"It is time for the British people to have their say," he said. "It is time to settle this European question in British politics. I say to the British people: this will be your decision."
It should come as no surprise that whenever government promised us it was our choice, whenever government promised us this would be a once in a lifetime referendum with the decision being final and the referendum being unique - opinion polls showed Remain winning.
The moment government loses, suddenly it's up to them to vote with their conscience against us. It's up to them to decide that leaving the European Union means staying in the European Union's institutions. It's up to them to seek for more and more referendums.
And that brought us into 2016. After Cameron stopped pro-Leave MPs from campaigning, defined the limits of the Leave campaign whilst utilizing the full resources of every British institution for the Remain campaign, whilst being Prime Minister and promising he would implement the result of the referendum...
Leave won the referendum on a stormy night.
David Cameron quit, one day after saying he wouldn't quit if Leave won.
The rest is history.
You have a Prime Minister elected for promising us that he will respect our right to decide, respect our decision, implement our decision and trigger article 50 if we decide to leave to provide that legal impetus - and then say no! We will not listen to your decision, vote again!
It would've been bloody revolutionary, or revolutionarily bloody cor - after he did his best to promise us he'd respect our decision and lead us through it, only to fuck off literally the day after, salt in the salted wound.
Legally perhaps, you could argue that being possible. Politically, impossible. Going back on your word to gain power and betray your supporters is as treacherous as it gets. Were it only that the public had the means to select political candidates, we would not be in this mess to begin with. Leave voters would not be supported by Remain MPs. The notion that this was merely an opinion poll meant to gauge support for the idea of Brexit is mythical; the Conservatives were elected into power on the basis that they would implement the referendum and subsequently implement the result of the referendum. They were well aware of the popularity for the idea based off of state & private opinion polls, the rise of UKIP threatening their support base, and their subsequent election on the basis of an EU referendum. They may pretend to have forgotten these promises; yet we as a people never will.
If they finalized the form Brexit would take, then such a plan should require a second referendum, because nobody got to decide on whether they support a particular form of Brexit. It's like if you took a vote on whether to get pizza or burgers, and the majority said "pizza", then you say "ok, pineapple/anchovy pizzas it is!" then when people object and say that in that case, they might have preferred burgers after all, you say that you're just respecting the original "pizza" vote.
Had we been borne into the fray under such a system, Leave never would have won, as I am sure is the intention.
The EU referendum was promised to the UK electorate as a simple decision to be made. Do you wish to remain or leave the European Union. So how would you ensure Leave was never an option? With such a plan it would be fairly simple.
You start with a vote on whether to leave the European Union, with the options to "Leave" or "Remain."
When "Leave" wins, you demand that a second referendum be held which splits "Leave" into several options, all decided by a Government which is pro-Remain, allowing to make every option as palatable as vomit. You levy all of your institutional support and resources to outlast your opposition and once Remain inevitably wins, you conclude your referendum as a great success and continue with EU integration. This is of course ignoring that if "Leave the European Union" is to be split into "Leave the European Union in totality," "Leave this particular European Union Institution X," "Leave this particular European Union Institution Y," "Leave this particular European Union Institution Z," then it stands to reason that Remain must be split into "Remain in the European Union with support for integration," "Remain in the European Union while leaving European Union Institution X," "Remain in the European Union while leaving European Union Institution Y," "Remain in the European Union while leaving European Union Institution Z," "Remain in the European Union whilst opposing further integration," with a new referendum any time any such option fails to meet public standards. Of course, if some variant of Leave should subsequently win against all other variants of Leave or Remain, it will not have enough public support to justify its execution - meaning that a vote to Remain is a vote for Remain, and a vote for any Leave is a vote for Remain. With every echelon of British power in support of Remain, there would be no more referendums in favour of Leave, and there would be no recourse left for Leave except depression, rage and rioting. Assuming that such splits could be evenly made, and that they could be held in a referendum, there is still the issue of all of this being done by pro-Remain governance. It seems entirely according to the Remain strategy to attack Leave for having no policy, when Brexit policy has always been conducted by pro-Remain governance deliberately sabotaging itself in order to worsen the prospects of successful Leave, just as they sabotaged the NHS to worsen the prospects of state-managed healthcare.
A political party such as Labor could perfectly democratically campaign on a "we're not going to pursue Brexit" platform, and voters are free to support that without "betraying" anything. A key hallmark of democracy is the right of the public to change their minds. That's why you keep voting over and over.
The Labour party did perfectly and democratically campaign on "we're not going to pursue Brexit" platform twice, and voters rejected them twice. It is not a hallmark of democracy that you force the public to continually keep voting until they make the choice the establishment desires. In 1992 when Denmark voted against the Maastricht Treaty, they were made to vote again until they voted yes - then the referendums stopped. In 2001 when Ireland voted against the Nice Treaty, they were made to vote again until they voted yes - then the referendums stopped. In 2008 when Ireland voted against the Lisbon Treaty, they were made to vote again until they voted yes - then the referendums stopped.
In more transparent terms, I wouldn't trust the Government with a rented cock. All those Oxbridge dominated industries of power and influence I listed earlier:
-Government (Cabinet + PM), House of Commons, House of Lords, Literati, Diplomatic Service, Law, Financial Services, City of London, Civil Service, Leading news Journalists, Medics, Chief Executives, Barristers, Judges, Officers, University and so forth - would immediately place all of their support behind each and every successive referendum until they got the result they wanted. Terry down the road who votes Leave may be a sweet lad but times him by a million and they won't be able to outlast the resources pitted against them; Remain would just win by attrition, exhausting their public opposition until they got ousted from power or won. Without a pro-Leave MP in cabinet, let alone as Prime Minister, we'd be facing an even more fucked stacked table. Literally only Corbyn would be left to oppose such nonnery.
Just look at the professions by support for Leave or Remain; Metal Workers and Factory Assemblers who support Leave are far less capable of affecting public opinion or funding campaigns than Brokers or Directors who support Remain, while we'd be institutionally fucked if the elected and unelected branches of government were still entirely stacked full of pro-Remain professionals - more referendums where Remain and Leave were led by Remainers? I'd rather die.
And I'm sick of my every vote going towards an MP who is pro-Remain while our negotiations are made into a complete and utter farce. Our Brexit secretary was due to release his own paper outlining British Brexit policy before Theresa May announced her checquers paper - drafted by the civil service, dominated by unelected Oxbridge Remainers, and subsequently saw the UK Brexit department stripped of its authority to negotiate with the EU, with such negotiations being passed onto the pro-EU civil servant Olly Robbins. Government and Civil Service working together to sideline the few ministers that actually represented the choice their constituents voted for is a betrayal for which Theresa May's government will suffer electoral retribution - hilariously the majority of Britons on both aisles support the creation of a new pro-Brexit party and a new anti-Brexit party respectively, pressed out of a dire need to rid Parliament of these sycophants and careerists. Already UKIP's come back from the dead.
For those of you who struggle to envisage how bad things are, and why it is so that Leave supporters are so cautious leaving
anything open to "interpretation or consultation" in the hands of the British government:
52% of regular citizens who voted chose "Leave the European Union."
27% of our elected MPs voted chose "Leave the European Union."Even within the Tory party, the majority of Tory MPs chose Remain.
There is a particularly quaint phrase in British politics. There are those who follow public opinion, and those who guide it. It is after all, perfectly democratic to guide public opinion, having them vote again and again every day until they like it, and once they support your guidance, you are now following public opinion. I despise the phrase.
Tribalisation is a BAD THING. Locking ourselves away from our closest neighbours in order to allow Americanism to flood over our nation is a BAD THING. This whole right wing shitshow is... a BAD THING.
I genuinely have very little hope for the future and I very much worry about the world my daughter will have to inhabit, although I'm hoping betting that World War 3 will make this whole Brexit thing rather inconsequential.
I'm a real stickler whenever Buzzfeed Rhetorical style is deployed. This thing happened AND IT'S TERRIBLE. This thing exists AND IT'S AMAZING. This person said that AND HERE'S WHAT YOU SHOULD THINK. We are not a nation of unitary dogma. Be cosmopolitan, be anti-American, be left wing; I only request dialogue, and the permission to think differently.
I have long had no hope for the future, and I still have no hope for the future, especially the future of the UK. Hope is not so useful; ambition is much more useful. The former leads to praying for salvation, leaving you like a raft adrift at sea. The latter leads to planning, arming you with sails, charts equipment and supplies to navigate the currents ahead. I don't think WWIII is likely, rather we shall see more of what we have. An eternal state of global low intensity warfare the world is ignorant & forgetful of. I wish you fare well in the times ahead - may your casks be full of whiskey, your fields full of oats, and your wells full of water.
In all honesty scriver, you put too much stock in the honesty of JRM and co. Particularily when they've flip-flopped so much about this issue.
I'm not saying the EU comission is composed of pure beings, mind you, just that as far as I can tell the lead brexiteers have huge conflicts of interest and have changed their version of events more than once. I dont think they are embarking onto something that will make the UK richer in 50 years. I think that retrotracting their claims and saying that it will totally be worth it in 50 years gives them a ridiculously large margin to change their version.
Plus: I suspect this is bound to be a very right wing brexit.
No skin off my nose, mind you. I have no vested interest in any of this. :P
JRM is the only one I trust to be sincere in what they are. Bojo is transparently mercenary in nature, jumping at the chance to use the Brexit mandate as his personal war banner to claim the Prime Minister's chair - and unfortunately, we have no recourse because there are no other viable pro-Leave MPs to pick from [except Corbyn hahaha, and Theresa May ought not to forget that]. For clarification, it should be abundantly clear that the people who support Leave are indifferent to the excesses of financial workers being cut when the economic prosperity comes from sold sovereignty and does fuck all for the rest of us left behind. To be frank, it never was a successful argument for the Remainers to complain of their lack of Romanian maids and nannies, when to the rest of us it sounded like they were complaining of having to live like one of us. There is also the issue of how with the UK in the EU, I would not be richer, and in 50 years we'd be the European Union, not the United Kingdom. Better the United Kingdom in my opinion, than the European Union - it is a fool who is bribed by his own money into slavery. Lastly, money is always secondary to Queen, Kin and Country ;]
What's more, I have very little choice in the matter. It's choosing between placing my faith in the hands of the vultures, jackals, mosquitoes, wolves and lions of the UK & European Union, or placing my faith in the hands of the vipers & rattlesnakes of the UK. I am pretty fucked no matter what, but I shall choose the one I can most capably deal with, or at the very least escape or outlive it.
Don't worry guys, that we're serious about food stockpiling means you should be relaxed. Don't be worried!
As opposed to having no contingencies for food security making you
relaxed?
Also apologies in advance for the length of my post. It's been a while since I did story time and I seem to have gotten just a little bit carried away.
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Topic: The friendly and polite Europe related terrible jokes thread (Read 1105985 times)