Haven’t seen any. I also think things are changing very quickly. With people re aligning both ways each day.
What a load of old bollox. It’s those Tory MPs again that believe they know more about everything than anybody else - car manufacturing, agriculture, mining having done none of them.
The view from the GLA which they tie the previous article is interesting. I can’t find a source for the number but they do have a FOI which denies they have any information on (https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/governance-and-spending/sharing-our-information/freedom-information/foi-peoples-vote-march)
There’s another body that attempted to do an estimate of the previous march. (Did 670,000 march for a People’s Vote on Brexit? - Full Fact)
I was there on Saturday, but not in October, and I’d say an on Saturday an average of 4 people per sqm in Park Lane was conservative.
I also one of the stewards offering high fives to first-time marchers. He was getting very sore hands.
I was towards the bottom end of Park Lane having arrived dead on 12. We packed in like sardines and we didn’t move for a good 90 minutes after the march started.
While there is a ton of data, it’s three weeks old…
Wow… none of the four options has 50% support. The closest is the “We leave, but with an imaginary deal we don’t have” at 49%.
We are absolutely divided. Even with QT3 as a microcosm I think we are too :)
There has to be some kind of compromise in order to move forward. A 2nd referendum is a nuclear option. It will only further the divide. I think campaigning for it is massively short sighted. Even if I were Remain I would be against it. Mays deal locks us into a possibly never-ending interim period where we’re a defacto member of the EU but without any say in its policies. Any other option (Norway style, Canada style etc) all require signing the WA first which means indicative voting is useless.
The only viable options that I see are:
No deal, 2nd referendum in a few years as to whether to rejoin the EU - unpopular for Remain obv.
Revoke article 50 entirely and rethink the whole thing - unpopular for Leave obv.
EDIT:
We should put 50 Remainers and 50 Leavers into a game of Player Unknowns Battlegrounds and decide via a giant Battle Royale :)
EDIT2:
Playing fantasy politics:
I think you could get around the 2nd referendum problem by having a GE.
Labour = Remain, Conservative = Leave. Whomever wins the majority implements their policy.
However, both parties want to avoid this at all cost as it will split them both.
Sorry, I’m geeking out on Brexit at the moment so I’m posting a lot. I’ll try and shut up for a bit after this one :)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.12643
Good stuff. (and your below link). The only thing I disagree on is a second vote would be damaging, I honestly think its the only way to stop the damage.
Right now if May’s deal gets through, then even a large portion of Brexiteers are going to be pissed off, because its not the kind Brexit they wanted.
Its not predictable of course but I give May’s deal now a less then 50% chance of passing. I am not sure its even going to come to a third vote.
She just pissed off so many MP’s with her Trump like antics last week I think there is even more ill will towards her.
And I dont think Bercow CAN allow it back for a third vote. I mean “We have this rule of Parliament that goes back hundreds of years, but we will change it if a foreign leader says they want us to reconsider.” That doesnt sit well I think.
Agree with you though I am nerding out on this too! Feels exciting to see so much change.
You could be right, absolutely. I’ve been against a 2nd referendum since the beginning and my perception of it is obviously biased but here’s my reasoning as to how a 2nd referendum could be viewed if remaining was a possible ballot option:
For Remain a 2nd referendum is wholly positive. It’s seen as democratic, we’re giving people another chance to decide! (the original referendum was suspect anyway). If Remain win, Brexit is stopped and the crisis is averted.
For Leave it’s deeply offensive. With the first referendum they were told repeatedly:
“A once in a generation decision, the government will implement what you decide”
With a 2nd referendum that becomes:
You were too ignorant, stupid, manipulated and/or racist to make a good decision so we’re going to (unfairly) have a do-over. If Remain win then the Leave voter has been lied to, insulted and had their democratic rights discarded. Ouch!
I guess you could position it as a confirmation of the original decision but it would be a hard sell. Keep an eye out for the incoming spin. The “people’s vote” could very quickly become “the confirmation referendum”.
Now add in the 10 months (?) of hard campaigning on both sides. I think it would be like buying a 130 million GBP giant can of gasoline to throw onto the Brexit bonfire.
I think that Parliament immediately revoking A50 would still be massively incendiary but less so than a 2nd referendum. Revocation would be a knife in the back to Leave but losing a 2nd referendum would be like a knife in the back then rubbing salt into the wound.
I agree. I think it’s dead too. I give it even lower chances. Maybe 10%.
No.
A real life battle royale.
And make it pay to watch and live streaming.
Decide the matter, and get some entertainment too.
Throw in a bull and some hungry pitbulls, bull terriers etc for a bit of spice.
edit: @draxen I’m reading your linked article now.
It’s leading me on tangents to investigate the corn laws etc. Good stuff.
I like this site as it also shows how the constituency voted in the 2016 referendum. Interesting.
Also now up to 5.2M btw.
It could go to 60,000,000 and you would still wind up with “the people voted for pain” from the scum in parliament.
Not really a viable alternative, and doesn’t make sense. Once the UK leaves, it’s out. Even if the UK managed to put together a government willing to commit the risky act of starting an accession process, there’s still the small matter of figuring out how to convince all 27 EU member states - some of which will have been more hurt by a no deal Brexit than others - to accept the UK back into the Union. Those who benefit from the UK’s loss aren’t necessarily going to be thrilled either. I suspect a UK attempt to get back in will be at least as problematic as getting out has become.
We’re talking at least a couple of decades, IMO, even under the best of circumstances.
And they won’t be. If the UK crashes out without a deal, the hardship that results is going to be blamed 100% on the EU by the Brexit crowd. Official relationships may not be chilly, but talking about the EU is going to be political poison for at least a generation.
Ran into this analogy of the situation on reddit, really seems to boil down the issue?
I’d say the worst part is that the referendum was fundamentally flawed in the best of cases. The choices were “stay” - which had a very well-defined meaning as it was the status quo, or “leave” - which actually could mean anything since there was no agreement. Soft or hard Brexit, Irish ‘backstop’ and all that - these are things that ought to have been decided on before the referendum.
But precisely because it wasn’t defined what voting ‘leave’ would entail, people were free to project whatever the hell they wanted onto it. Any specific ‘leave’ agreement would (quite obviously by now) not have had as much support.
It’s like having a vote on dinner where you get to choose between “Pizza or something else” and the people voting for “something else” are split between those who want steak, those who want pasta, those who want curry and a bunch of fanatical vegans who want none of the above. Then it turns out that “something else” might have a thin majority but “pizza” is far-and-away more popular than any other concrete, actionable option.
Is it then “undermining democracy” to force people to chose one of the less popular “something else” categories, because ‘that’s what you chose’? Or maybe it’s time to just bite the bullet and concede that a choice between “pizza, or something else” wasn’t a well-posed question? It’s ridiculous.
I don’t think it is a good analogy as stay or leave is not like pizza or something else. Pizza is one food category among many, whereas stay vs. leave is a fundamental dichotomy. There are many positions in leave, and there are also many positions in stay. I am sure quite a few Remain voters would like the relationship with the EU to be reformed in some way, and may disagree with other Remain voters on what the future trajectory of the relationship should look like.
The referendum was vague, but not so vague that anyone with an IQ above 2 standard deviations below the mean would think of the referendum as status quo vs utopia. In theory it is up to the democratically elected representatives to hammer out the details after the ‘public had their say’.
What’s really screwed here is I just don’t see any way forward for the UK that doesn’t lead to either economic problems, political chaos so severe it might give rise to civil strife, or some combination. Every single option seems to have extremely negative consequences.
Very much agree with this. I think part of what you are seeing is a bunch of remain supporters who have major concerns about the EU now putting aside those concerns to keep the main prize.
Merkel’s arrogance over immigration has caused a lot of damage across the EU but in the UK particularly.
This is definitely me.
I’m sad to see it characterised as arrogance. I see Merkel’s reaction to the refugee crisis as her finest moment.
I agree, she was both humane and realistic. The immigration debate in the EU many times forgets that we need significant more immigration than we are getting if we are to keep our welfare state operative.
Agree 100%. Merkel’s reaction is one of the few truly humane responses shown by any world leader in decades; putting heart before cold-blooded calculation in politics. Surprising too, considering who we’re talking about.
Yeah I think that describes me.
EU needs some reforms, at the very least being much more transparent about what they do and how and why, else localised radicals will take control of the narrative. It’s far to easy to blame the faceless bureaucrats for whatever happens, than it is to sort your own life out.
We see the narrative being shifted already, for example in places like Italy, and even Germany.
I never thought I’d see a party in Germany that was deliberately against immigration…