Friday 1 July 2016

Brexit: we took the wrong turn


They said ‘Take control’ and ‘Get your country back’. But instead, we have no one in control, and we’ve lost our country, which is in turmoil.

Leave leader Boris Johnson was supposed to take us to his promised land. But instead of leading us, he’s leaving us.

David Cameron, our Prime Minister, was supposed to stay in charge regardless of the Referendum result. But within hours of the Brexit vote, he resigned.

Michael Gove was supposed to agree a Brexit plan with Boris. But instead he’s now told us what he should have said months ago – Boris isn’t fit to lead. 

Oh, and they don’t have a Brexit plan (apparently, they never did).

So instead, Mr Gove is offering to lead us. But he never thought he could, or should, but now he thinks he would.

Theresa May wanted us to remain in the European Union. But she’ll be happy instead, she said, to lead a ‘Leave’ government to ensure we cut our ties with the EU. How could she?

The next Conservative Prime Minister won’t be elected until 9 September – not by the electorate, but only by members of the Conservative Party. Until then, many important government decisions are having to be postponed.

In the meantime, nobody knows if Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader of the official Opposition, will stay, or go, or be pushed out. Effectively, there is no Opposition.

The Referendum result was wafer thin – everybody knows that by now. The vote split the nation in two – 52% to 48%. 

But Scotland, Northern Ireland, and important cities such as London, Cambridge and Norwich, voted strongly to remain in the EU. 

The Leave campaign was based on lies – everybody knows that by now. 

A poll has indicated that over a million Leave voters would now vote Remain if they had only known on 23 June what they know now.

Over 4 million have now signed a petition to Parliament – ironically started by a Leave campaigner – calling for the Referendum only to be valid if more than 75% of the electorate voted, and at least 60% voted in favour of Remain or Leave. (Clearly, the Referendum result fell far short of that).

Something has gone drastically wrong. The Referendum result has caused chaos to the country, and for no good reason. 

When you take the wrong turn, shouldn’t you turn back? Who’s going to do that for the country? 

Somebody, take control. Do the right thing: rescind this rotten referendum, and let’s start again. Let’s get our country back. Let's do the next referendum properly. Or better, a General Election this autumn.

• Click to read
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Vital viewing to understand how Vote Leave lied 'on an industrial scale' to win the EU Referendum. Illuminating and brutally honest assessment by Professor Michael Dougan an EU law expert from Liverpool University. Click to view (20 minutes):


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2 comments:

  1. Well I haven't changed my mind. I think this is about who RULES us. It's about having a right to BE ASKED about major changes. Every 5 years we are asked to vote on a party and their manifesto. Can you ever remember being asked by the EU if you agreed with the the direction of travel it wants to take (which by the way is MORE integration, for which read taking more decisions away from our parliament). When we joined it was 6or 8 countries coming together into a common trade zone, now it's a political union with 27 countries and plans to take even more powers from them. On the Eurooean Commission website is a plan to centralise the Treasury (which in this country decides on public sector spending and our level of borrowing) AND the central Bank function (for ehich read the Bsnk of England ehich sets interest rates and ensures the health of all our high street banks). The plan is to do this within the next 9 years. It may sound dry, dusty and boring but for countries affected by this their governments will no-longer be running their economy. The economy as we know affects our jobs and lives and ours (despite the fer effects of the Brexit vote) is still FAR healthier than most of theirs.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for your comment, but unfortunately it has demonstrated just how misinformed so many people are about the EU. The EU doesn't rule us. We are the EU (well at least until we officially leave). We help to run the EU with the other 27 democratic governments of the EU, along with the directly elected European Parliament, which elects the Commission President, has to approve each Commissioner, and has the power to dismiss the entire Commission.

      The Commission hasn't any power to pass laws; only the EU Council, comprising the EU governments, and the European Parliament, has that power. The Commission has to abide by the tune of the Parliament and the Council, not the other way round. Didn't you notice that Prime Minister David Cameron discusses and negotiates EU issues not with the Commission, but with the other Prime Ministers of the 27 other EU countries?

      The EU cannot become anything without the unanimous consent of every single member. If you are not happy with the way the EU has gone, you would have to blame our Parliament in Westminster, that fully debated and democratically agreed to every single Treaty during our 43 years of membership. Not once were any changes to our membership of the EEC/EC/EU ever imposed upon us, and neither could they be.

      The EU is a democracy, but unfortunately you wouldn't know this from reading much of our media. I have visited the European Parliament and witnessed for myself democracy at work. In many ways, it's more democratic than our system in the UK, where we still have an unelected second chamber, and in last year's General Election, almost 65% of voters did not choose our current Tory government.

      The EEC, now called the EU, was always a political, economic, social and trading union, and we knew this clearly in 1975. We had left a free trade zone - the European Free Trade Area - to join the EEC. The pamphlet sent by the Labour government to all households in that first referendum informed voters that being a member gave Britain “a say in the economic and political development of the Common Market” (now called the European Union).

      The pamphlet also stated that the first aims of the Common Market were to “bring together the peoples of Europe”, to “raise living standards” and “to maintain peace”. That’s clearly much more than just a free trade area.

      Unfortunately, many people in Britain today seem to have forgotten that the EU was started after the Second World War for one purpose and one purpose alone: to achieve peace on our continent. That it has achieved with great success, as EU countries are all at peace with each other.

      The former Communist countries that joined the European Union (with great encouragement from our government) have seen their countries transformed and are now the fastest growing economies in Europe. The Economist recently described Romania as 'the tiger economy of Europe'. Poland now has the fastest growing number of millionaires in Europe. And Estonia, once a hidden back-water country of the USSR, is now the world's leading nation for internet technology.

      It greatly saddens to me that so many people are so misinformed about the EU, especially since we just had a referendum about it in which ‘Vote Leave’ distributed so much misinformation about how the EU is run.

      In my view, outside the EU Britain - and Britons - will be considerably poorer, and our nation (what's left of it as Scotland might leave) will be severely diminished and with much less influence in the world.

      Let's see. Come back in two or three years time. We no longer need Treasury modelling anymore – most unfortunately, we will be able to experience the impact of Brexit for real.

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