The British EU Referendum

[Pentagathus]

I don't know if I can be bothered to find my polling station. Still not entirely sure which way I would vote, probably remain but maybe I'll just flip a coin.

[comrade_general]

I had a thought. Why not have the rest of the EU decide if they even want you in it anymore. They must be feeling like you're conceited jerks for even putting this up for a vote.

[Clockwork]

Yeah we're doubly portugaled now. We can't renegotiate our terms, rest of Europe hates us and we're staying in the EU.

[DeepCandle Games]

woo, sounds fun.

[Clockwork]

Well turns out I was wrong. The referendum shows that more people want out than in.


A victory for the righteous, the salty tears of remain camp are flowing freely.

[Pentagathus]

Haven't checked Facebook yet, how bad is the ranting?

[Clockwork]

A lot of people are complaining. But I guess even more are just not saying anything so....democracy I guess


But yeah, over reactions are through the roof. This is the apocalypse btw in case there was any doubt.


EDIT: And here are the results in full I guess http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results

[comrade_general]

I imagine it'll just get put to a vote again before any leaving actually happens and it'll get reversed.

[Jubal]

Victory for the righteous? I was with you through "victory for the right" then got lost, hah.

And no, this won't be reversed. We're about to go into some of most uncertain and ill prepared for political times we've had in decades, and may be about to find out just how little of a plan anyone put in place for leaving. I mean, fingers crossed that all the Leave predictions come true now and the country isn't as poor and generally portugaled as I fear, but I still think they've worked themselves into a politically impossible situation.

We also now have the "what sort of deal" arguments - do we go EU lite like Norway or more heavily break away and more radically had painfully rebalance the economy to compensate. There are whole new areas of policy that we don't even have civil servants trained in covering any more and where previous consensus may be shattered. I think now Cameron is gone, a fresh GE may be likely to settle the question of who does the negotiations (probably the Tories still, but their majority is fragile).

Basically as Clockwork said this is a really really big deal, and it settles actually not very much given how unclear many people on either side were another what their respective options meant. Impossible to say how things will develop now, beyond a lot of confusion (which the markets won't like admittedly).

Anyway... on a personal level, I and a lot of people I work with are likely to get really heavily negatively impacted by this, so I really hope it does bring the benefits to those who voted for Leave that they wanted to make that worth it. As I've said elsewhere, and as is painfully obvious from Farage's victory speech, a lot of the Leave camp pushed this into being a referendum on "what counts as British"; I feel alienated and angry at the result, whether Leave voters saw it this way I can't say but in practice it is an attack on my identity and on people I love that was in some significant part won by dog-whistle racism and outright lies. Whether you want to call that overreaction or not, it's the harsh truth that's been staring out from every Leave leaflet I've seen in this campaign; they won fair and square by making these islands more divided, and that's the future we all now have to live with.

[comrade_general]

So will Scotland leave the UK now and rejoin EU?

[Pentagathus]

If they are allowed another referendum then quite probably.
Edit
Also look on the bright side joobs, the possibilities of brexit banter are endless. We could even be living in a world where Boris Johnson and the unstumpable Trump are global leaders. All aboard the banter bus.
#hashtag amusing hair

[Jubal]

Yeah, I think a Scots referendum is now quite likely.

The biggest question is really "what does Brexit mean in practice", especially given that the Vote Leave camp are rapidly rowing back on a lot of stuff they said during the campaign. I think this means we'll get a better deal on trade and movement rights than I'd perhaps feared, but the result of that may be a lot of very angry Leave voters when they realise that leaving the EU won't actually do jack s*it to reduce immigration or curb free movement and might still require us to accept some EU rules with less democratic say in them than we had before.

[Pentagathus]

I just hope we get a general election before negotiations get too heavy, the thought of Michael Gove having such a prominent role in our future is a pretty disgusting one.

[Jubal]

It seems likely. Boris is already pedalling rapidly towards a very minimal Brexit position, it seems far more likely that free movement and trade will be maintained (which may ironically include accepting big swathes of EU law with no say in it, so we might actually finally get to be governed by bureaucrats with no mandate which is fun).

Labour and Tories both ripping themselves to shreds, in any case. We're in deep political crisis, and only UKIP and the Lib Dems seem to have terribly clear positions on this.

[Clockwork]

The leave campaign is being demonised ao much it's becoming comical. Who thought that if leave won that farage would be in any place to enforce policy?

Nobody in their right mind believes that leave would bring instant economic benefits and apparently the remain thinks that what is happening now is a huge surprise. Lmao, been reading my facebook feed and it's ridiculous. XD