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[Politics] Brexit

If there was a second Brexit referendum how would you vote?


  • Total voters
    1,111






Weststander

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Aug 25, 2011
69,870
Withdean area
Without another referendum rejoin is a non starter and it needs to be more decisive than 52 48. Best way to face down Farage once and for all.

Depending on the phrasing of the question, imho it would be decisive rejoin. I’ve only known movement from Brexiteers who voted in good faith / not realising real world effects on them, who regret it.

At the GE Reform got 14% of the vote, Tories 24%. I know many Tories who are consistently (lifelong) pro EU. In the other direction add x percent of Red Wall voters who went back to Labour, but are very anti EU in Wales/Midlands/North.

70/30?
 




Crawley Dingo

Political thread tourist.
Mar 31, 2022
1,110
Listening to rational, balanced viewpoints, as I'm sure Weststander does, is the way to ensure you don't pad an echo chamber. For example listening to The Rest is Politics with Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart.

Watching utter shyte like GBNews certainly does pad your echo chamber if you start believing the bollocks they spout
Watching a pair of globalists who consistently call everything wrong, balanced yea OK.

I dont watch GB news but you must if you have such a strong opinion unless you are crying.

But stick with the Guardian which ran away from X because it was getting fact checked....a lot.
 








Pavilionaire

Well-known member
Jul 7, 2003
31,312
So another day goes by, another large chunk of Labour political capital spent backtracking their former position, this time on the WASPI women.

Add this to this list of Winter Fuel Allowance, Employer NI hikes, Inheritance Tax for farmers, 2-child benefit cap, the Green Investment Pledge.

They're creating a political capital "Black Hole" of their own making by insisting that the Tory Brexit remains in place for the foreseeable future. The £100 billion hit to the economy annually would pay for all of the items I listed above with spare change for improving our defences against the Russian / Chinese threat.

It is staggering that Starmer did not leave his options open on Europe. He is cutting off his nose to spite his face. It is now time for the Lib Dems to ramp up the heat on this issue.
 


Weststander

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Aug 25, 2011
69,870
Withdean area
So another day goes by, another large chunk of Labour political capital spent backtracking their former position, this time on the WASPI women.

Add this to this list of Winter Fuel Allowance, Employer NI hikes, Inheritance Tax for farmers, 2-child benefit cap, the Green Investment Pledge.

They're creating a political capital "Black Hole" of their own making by insisting that the Tory Brexit remains in place for the foreseeable future. The £100 billion hit to the economy annually would pay for all of the items I listed above with spare change for improving our defences against the Russian / Chinese threat.

It is staggering that Starmer did not leave his options open on Europe. He is cutting off his nose to spite his face. It is now time for the Lib Dems to ramp up the heat on this issue.

Can only think LibDem polling shows the vast majority of people have no interest in Rejoin and the issue being at the forefront again (I know, sad that most don’t care). Also they won a load of marginals where Brexit was popular.

LibDem politicians themselves were passionately pro Europe. Must be uncomfortable spending years biting your tongue on Rejoin for the party’s greater good, when it means so much.
 




BN41Albion

Well-known member
Oct 1, 2017
6,892
Watching a pair of globalists who consistently call everything wrong, balanced yea OK.

I dont watch GB news but you must if you have such a strong opinion unless you are crying.

But stick with the Guardian which ran away from X because it was getting fact checked....a lot.
Who said I read the Guardian?

And as for Campbell and Stewart - I'm happy to largely trust two politicians who sit on the oposite rational sides of politics and who have and still do spend their lives traveling the world engaging in local and geopolitics. Besides, they aren't my only source.
 


cunning fergus

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jan 18, 2009
4,905
So another day goes by, another large chunk of Labour political capital spent backtracking their former position, this time on the WASPI women.

Add this to this list of Winter Fuel Allowance, Employer NI hikes, Inheritance Tax for farmers, 2-child benefit cap, the Green Investment Pledge.

They're creating a political capital "Black Hole" of their own making by insisting that the Tory Brexit remains in place for the foreseeable future. The £100 billion hit to the economy annually would pay for all of the items I listed above with spare change for improving our defences against the Russian / Chinese threat.

It is staggering that Starmer did not leave his options open on Europe. He is cutting off his nose to spite his face. It is now time for the Lib Dems to ramp up the heat on this issue.
There certainly couldn’t be a better time to hook back in could there……..


Mario Draghi called it………maybe if economic growth is genuinely your primary concern, Trump’s USA will be where it’s at.
 


Lever

Well-known member
Feb 6, 2019
5,472
There certainly couldn’t be a better time to hook back in could there……..


Mario Draghi called it………maybe if economic growth is genuinely your primary concern, Trump’s USA will be where it’s at.
Is that a rather crude attempt at irony?
 
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A1X

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Sep 1, 2017
20,798
Deepest, darkest Sussex
So another day goes by, another large chunk of Labour political capital spent backtracking their former position, this time on the WASPI women.

Add this to this list of Winter Fuel Allowance, Employer NI hikes, Inheritance Tax for farmers, 2-child benefit cap, the Green Investment Pledge.

They're creating a political capital "Black Hole" of their own making by insisting that the Tory Brexit remains in place for the foreseeable future. The £100 billion hit to the economy annually would pay for all of the items I listed above with spare change for improving our defences against the Russian / Chinese threat.

It is staggering that Starmer did not leave his options open on Europe. He is cutting off his nose to spite his face. It is now time for the Lib Dems to ramp up the heat on this issue.
I doubt they’re this cunning or clever, but it would be amusing to see the Government turn around and say “oh we could give everyone back the WFA / WASPI pensions / scrap the 2 child cap (etc.) if we hadn’t voted Leave”, I suspect the Rejoin movement would surge. It would also leave the likes of Farage having to argue that we should stay out and keep scrapping WFA etc.
 


Pavilionaire

Well-known member
Jul 7, 2003
31,312
I read today that on Sunday 15th December 2024 the UK acceded to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). CPTPP is a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between 11 countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

A Brexit dividend you ask? Membership is expected to boost UK's economy by a whole £2 billion a year.

Brexit costs the UK £100 billion a year.

To put this into context this 2% return is the same rate that St John's Ambulance got from the Crystal Palace FC administration in 2010.
 


WATFORD zero

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jul 10, 2003
27,945
I read today that on Sunday 15th December 2024 the UK acceded to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). CPTPP is a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between 11 countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

A Brexit dividend you ask? Membership is expected to boost UK's economy by a whole £2 billion a year.

Brexit costs the UK £100 billion a year.

To put this into context this 2% return is the same rate that St John's Ambulance got from the Crystal Palace FC administration in 2010.

This flagship deal which was feted as a 'wonderful new Brexit opportunity' by our Brexit supporting friends on here seems to have gone under the radar somewhat and even managed to fail to deliver what Boris's Government were predicting a mere 4 years ago. Who would've thunk it :dunce:

UK’s flagship post-Brexit trade deal worth even less than previously thought, OBR says

The UK’s flagship transatlantic trade deal, which was presented as a cornerstone of post-Brexit “global Britain”, will deliver even less benefit to the economy than the tiny uplift that was previously predicted, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. In a report accompanying last week’s autumn statement, the OBR said the UK’s entry into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) would add just 0.04% to GDP in the “long run”, which it defines as after 15 years of membership.

The OBR said two separate bilateral deals between the UK and Australia and New Zealand, also hailed as landmark trade agreements post-Brexit, “might increase the level of real GDP by a combined 0.1% by 2035”. The tiny predicted benefits from these trade deals contrast with the OBR’s own calculation that the UK economy will be 4% smaller than if we had stayed in the EU.


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-trade-deal-less-cptpp-b2453423.html

In other news, Bears defecate in woods, the Pope is Catholic, Dolly Parton sleeps on her back and a few more people have finally found out that Farage is a total **** :lolol:
 
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nicko31

Well-known member
Jan 7, 2010
18,707
Gods country fortnightly
There certainly couldn’t be a better time to hook back in could there……..


Mario Draghi called it………maybe if economic growth is genuinely your primary concern, Trump’s USA will be where it’s at.
Do you think an FTA from Trump would be better than EU single market/customs union for the UK?
 


Seagull58

In the Algarve
Jan 31, 2012
8,632
Vilamoura, Portugal
Given a little more thought I do think that Lord Mandelson is the only Labour member with enough experience, knowledge and gravitas to lead negotiations, he is the very definition of a political heavyweight.

Apart from Yvette Cooper the Labour Party in the commons is extremely light on experience and/or competence, many would be out of their depth.

To be honest there really should be a Parliamentary department with a designated minister if the Prime Minister insists on going down this route, any negotiations with the EU will be hellish and hellish long, no place for a Prime Minister to be spending time at all.

Even a European Union negotiations committee, similar to the one Hillary Benn chaired could act as a second tier scrutiny panel along with something similar in the upper house, There is a House of Lords International Agreements Committee which has 3 Labour Peers on , former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith and Barrister Lord Anderson among them.

However I expect that everything will go through the Cabinet Office and the PM’s desk. Edit: (I expect this because it would be the wrong decision)
Isn't Mandelson the one who got fired twice from the Cabinet for dishonesty? Did he get prosecuted for lying on his mortgage application?
 


Harry Wilson's tackle

Harry Wilson's Tackle
NSC Patron
Oct 8, 2003
56,707
Faversham
So another day goes by, another large chunk of Labour political capital spent backtracking their former position, this time on the WASPI women.

Add this to this list of Winter Fuel Allowance, Employer NI hikes, Inheritance Tax for farmers, 2-child benefit cap, the Green Investment Pledge.

They're creating a political capital "Black Hole" of their own making by insisting that the Tory Brexit remains in place for the foreseeable future. The £100 billion hit to the economy annually would pay for all of the items I listed above with spare change for improving our defences against the Russian / Chinese threat.

It is staggering that Starmer did not leave his options open on Europe. He is cutting off his nose to spite his face. It is now time for the Lib Dems to ramp up the heat on this issue.
The art of the possible.

Get the unpopular stuff done early.

(My views on the Waspi gold-diggers were posted yesterday. Their credibility was destroyed in exemplary fashion when a 70 year old working class woman phoned R5 to point out the changes were signalled in 1995, and all information has been available, and any woman who chose to assume they could carry on regardless and retire at 60 on full whack is/was deluded or disingenuous. She was an old working class women's libber and accepted that this means working for as long as men. She had no sympathy for the FeMail readers, with theit morning gin money snatched cruelly away from them by the evil socialists, leaving them bereft as they watch daytime TV in their nighties with nothing but a cup of cold tea to console them ???).

If you are criticizing Starmer for not leading on rejoining the EU, you know nothing about politics.

Farage has stolen millions of votes from the Tories, and they remain resolutely Brexit. Waving one's remain knickers in the air is not going to have any traction with m'learned voter for some years.

I am massively in favour of EU membership (and EU leadership from the UK, something lacking from Thatcher onward). But the time is not right. Yet.

Let the full force of the Brexit folly flow first. Then we shall see what the 'red wall' leavers think. Alright, they don't think very often but the have a vote, and seem to like to use it.
 


Pavilionaire

Well-known member
Jul 7, 2003
31,312
The art of the possible.

Get the unpopular stuff done early.

If you are criticizing Starmer for not leading on rejoining the EU, you know nothing about politics.

Farage has stolen millions of votes from the Tories, and they remain resolutely Brexit. Waving one's remain knickers in the air is not going to have any traction with m'learned voter for some years.

I am massively in favour of EU membership (and EU leadership from the UK, something lacking from Thatcher onward). But the time is not right. Yet.

Let the full force of the Brexit folly flow first. Then we shall see what the 'red wall' leavers think. Alright, they don't think very often but the have a vote, and seem to like to use it.
I'm not criticizing Starmer for not leading on rejoining the EU, I don't know what in my post gave you that idea.

If politics IS the art of the possible then give yourself wriggle room for events as they unfold. Starmer has done the opposite of this. In his haste to counter the profligacy of the Boris / Truss era by being all responsible and moral he has boxed himself in.

I don't agree with Trump on much, but his lack of detail on stuff like tariffs, Ukraine and China has got everybody on tenterhooks to see what he does. I don't remember a President Elect having this much influence over domestic and foreign policy before they've even taken office, and part of his power arises from him having been vague enough on policy to go whichever direction he chooses.

When you say "let the full force of the Brexit folly flow first" how much more time do you think is required? In a perfect world then YES he might let it play out until the 10th anniversary of the Referendum in 2026 but do we - and do Labour - have another 18 months to piss about?

Starmer is spooked by the idea there are millions of red wall voters who voted Brexit who will "lose their faith" in democracy if Brexit is reversed, but there are also millions who didn't, and now all the polls show there is a clear majority who regard Brexit as a failure. There has been a 20 point gap between 'wrong to leave' and 'right to leave' for two and a half years now, with wrong leading in the polls since June 2021. That's a hell of a long time, and as each day passes and the Brexit vote dies off, the gap persists.

Labour cannot afford to deliver what they pledged, and because of that they look just as much a bunch of liars as Boris ever did. The WASPI women situation is a fiasco. If Starmer thinks the women had enough time to adjust to the new rules then why did he and most of his front bench campaign for restitution for the women in 2019-2021? It now looks like a vote-grabbing opportunity.

The more Starmer repeats and reaffirms no backsliding on Brexit the less able he'll be to take that decision if - as seems likely - it will be the only way out of our economic death spiral.

The Tories are in a mess, and it is a joke them criticizing Labour over immigration and WASPI women when they themselves were asleep on the job for 14 years. Yet if Starmer keeps scoring own goals then it is conceivable Farage could get a majority down the line. There is absolutely no chance of economic growth without a reversal of some/all of Brexit, yet Farage has the ability and political statecraft to convince enough of the electorate to vote for him, and that really will hasten the demise of this once great country.
 




Weststander

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Aug 25, 2011
69,870
Withdean area
Personally I’ve rather not let further years and years of Brexit folly flow. The economy, livelihoods, lives are adversely affected on a daily basis. The effect must be compound macro economically. And there’ll never be a magic tangible moment where it can be empirically proved how large the UK economy would’ve been in the EU. ‘Truth seekers’ bankrolled by Musk et al will ensure Q&A’s remain murky.

Starmer/Lammy/Reeves need to set a pathway with clarity.
 


Harry Wilson's tackle

Harry Wilson's Tackle
NSC Patron
Oct 8, 2003
56,707
Faversham
I'm not criticizing Starmer for not leading on rejoining the EU, I don't know what in my post gave you that idea.

If politics IS the art of the possible then give yourself wriggle room for events as they unfold. Starmer has done the opposite of this. In his haste to counter the profligacy of the Boris / Truss era by being all responsible and moral he has boxed himself in.

I don't agree with Trump on much, but his lack of detail on stuff like tariffs, Ukraine and China has got everybody on tenterhooks to see what he does. I don't remember a President Elect having this much influence over domestic and foreign policy before they've even taken office, and part of his power arises from him having been vague enough on policy to go whichever direction he chooses.

When you say "let the full force of the Brexit folly flow first" how much more time do you think is required? In a perfect world then YES he might let it play out until the 10th anniversary of the Referendum in 2026 but do we - and do Labour - have another 18 months to piss about?

Starmer is spooked by the idea there are millions of red wall voters who voted Brexit who will "lose their faith" in democracy if Brexit is reversed, but there are also millions who didn't, and now all the polls show there is a clear majority who regard Brexit as a failure. There has been a 20 point gap between 'wrong to leave' and 'right to leave' for two and a half years now, with wrong leading in the polls since June 2021. That's a hell of a long time, and as each day passes and the Brexit vote dies off, the gap persists.

Labour cannot afford to deliver what they pledged, and because of that they look just as much a bunch of liars as Boris ever did. The WASPI women situation is a fiasco. If Starmer thinks the women had enough time to adjust to the new rules then why did he and most of his front bench campaign for restitution for the women in 2019-2021? It now looks like a vote-grabbing opportunity.

The more Starmer repeats and reaffirms no backsliding on Brexit the less able he'll be to take that decision if - as seems likely - it will be the only way out of our economic death spiral.

The Tories are in a mess, and it is a joke them criticizing Labour over immigration and WASPI women when they themselves were asleep on the job for 14 years. Yet if Starmer keeps scoring own goals then it is conceivable Farage could get a majority down the line. There is absolutely no chance of economic growth without a reversal of some/all of Brexit, yet Farage has the ability and political statecraft to convince enough of the electorate to vote for him, and that really will hasten the demise of this once great country.
Yes, good points.

I had hoped that Starmer would be a good politician, but he isn't. Trump, by contrast, is a brilliant politician.

Not sure Farage is a politician.

Well, if Starmer is making it possible for madness to flourish, we are all in trouble. Because there is no alternative right now. I'm not seeing a Streeting coup incoming.

As you imply, Badenough's Tories are made of crisps. Fazza though is largely a one man company. Sorry, not a company. A serious political particle. Sorry, not particle, a party.

(Starmer is dull, shrill and robotic in public. Ten times better than Truss, but that only takes him to around 35% of what he needs to be, in the great competition to bamboozle and hoodwink the public. Which is probably for the best. )
 


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