Agree i know nothing will change. I listened to the Jeremy Corbyn speech today and thought he doesn't even want to be doing this speech because he doesn't believe in it. He knows that nothing will change.
Off Topic The Politics Thread
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I hope we are better than that, most of us anyway. I've engaged in quite intense arguments with posters on this thread who I find myself in agreement with on most other threads, both football and off topic, and who I genuinely respect. There are, of course, a couple that I don't respect at all, but that's life. This is a big, divisive issue, but there is still more that we have in common and brings us together us than divides us, and we would all do well to remember that on Friday morning.
Politicians have done themselves a lot of harm over the last few weeks, but their stock was very low anyway. They have set a very low bar when it comes to integrity, but I'm guessing it will be business as usual pretty soon and the general electorate will sink back into its normal lethargy, apathy and sadly justified cynicism.
Ruth Davidson did well in the debate last night and it was notable that none of the Leave representatives said that they would actually cut immigration.
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I would imagine you are right sb , MOST of us are better than that, but as we've seen at the Euros it only takes a vocal minority to spoil it for everyone else. A million people turned out for the Stop the War protests all those year ago, a minority in terms of the overall population but still a mass demonstration.
There is also a contingency among the leave voters of far right supporters (not all of them by any means but again a vocal minority) and these people tend to be the ones itching for trouble should they lose.
I watched the debate last night having already posted my vote but still not completely sure I'd done the right thing. It confirmed for me that I had.
It appears to me that the leave campaign have a lot of good ideas but don't really seem to know how they are going to implement them, much like the tory manifesto at the last election, big promises, no delivery.
The remain campaign (interestingly with Cameron nowhere near the debate) seemed much more assured of the future.
My heart says I would love us to be a sovereign nation again cut free from the shackles of EU rule.
My head says, as a man with a young family, lots of years left on my mortgage and working for an international firm that trades heavily in the EU selling parts for cars, the gamble of leave and the uncertainty it could bring certainly in the short term and possibly for longer is just too bigger one to take for me personally.
I'm In.
I would imagine you are right sb , MOST of us are better than that, but as we've seen at the Euros it only takes a vocal minority to spoil it for everyone else. A million people turned out for the Stop the War protests all those year ago, a minority in terms of the overall population but still a mass demonstration.
There is also a contingency among the leave voters of far right supporters (not all of them by any means but again a vocal minority) and these people tend to be the ones itching for trouble should they lose.
I watched the debate last night having already posted my vote but still not completely sure I'd done the right thing. It confirmed for me that I had.
It appears to me that the leave campaign have a lot of good ideas but don't really seem to know how they are going to implement them, much like the tory manifesto at the last election, big promises, no delivery.
The remain campaign (interestingly with Cameron nowhere near the debate) seemed much more assured of the future.
My heart says I would love us to be a sovereign nation again cut free from the shackles of EU rule.
My head says, as a man with a young family, lots of years left on my mortgage and working for an international firm that trades heavily in the EU selling parts for cars, the gamble of leave and the uncertainty it could bring certainly in the short term and possibly for longer is just too bigger one to take for me personally.
I'm In.
If we get a "Remain" result, it mustn't stop there. Westminster has used the EU as a whipping boy for their own failures in managing our country and should be held to account. The EU is imperfect but worth trying to improve (IMHO), so let's make sure it isn't business as usual. If we permit that, we'll never heal the divisions within our country that this sorry referendum has brought us. The people personally affected by local immigration issues deserve better.
If we get a "Leave" result, then it mustn't stop there, either. This should not become a back door mechanism for regime change within the government. Gove, Johnson and co should not be permitted to take control of the government until 2010 without calling a general election to endorse it. Constitutionally, of course, they can do whatever they want. I truly fear for the NHS, schools and public services if they were to take charge - especially if they have the excuse of reduced public spending because the economy has plummeted.
If the vote is 48% to 52%, I hope the 48% spend a little time thinking about how well represented they feel under a first-past-the-post system! (Sorry, couldn't resist...)
Whatever happens, I expect the politicians to blame us, the electorate, for choosing one way or the other. If we "Leave" and the economy tanks, Johnson-Gove will tell us it's what we voted for, and it's not their fault, it's foreign investors and the EU being nasty 'coz we left. If we "Remain" and the EU national government leaders do not start a process for improvement, they'll tell us "we voted to stay, what's the problem?".
That's what happens when a government elected to make difficult decisions about complex subjects devolves its responsibility to the electorate and reduces it all to a simple question of yes or no.
If we get a "Leave" result, then it mustn't stop there, either. This should not become a back door mechanism for regime change within the government. Gove, Johnson and co should not be permitted to take control of the government until 2010 without calling a general election to endorse it. Constitutionally, of course, they can do whatever they want. I truly fear for the NHS, schools and public services if they were to take charge - especially if they have the excuse of reduced public spending because the economy has plummeted.
If the vote is 48% to 52%, I hope the 48% spend a little time thinking about how well represented they feel under a first-past-the-post system! (Sorry, couldn't resist...)
Whatever happens, I expect the politicians to blame us, the electorate, for choosing one way or the other. If we "Leave" and the economy tanks, Johnson-Gove will tell us it's what we voted for, and it's not their fault, it's foreign investors and the EU being nasty 'coz we left. If we "Remain" and the EU national government leaders do not start a process for improvement, they'll tell us "we voted to stay, what's the problem?".
That's what happens when a government elected to make difficult decisions about complex subjects devolves its responsibility to the electorate and reduces it all to a simple question of yes or no.
if we stay Osborne will get the PM job and ''call me Dave'' will be rewarded with a top position in Brussels
It's very close - I don't see how either side has a mandate. People will say Leave only won because it rained heavily, or Remain only got over the line because that nutter killed that MP. I have a fear its only just begun.
Should have been left to the MPs. You want to leave, vote for a UKIP government and leave that way. You want to stay vote for Cameron/Milliband.
...and a relevant thought at that. UK politics isn't going to be the same after this, particularly if the winning vote is narrow.
A scrape through win by Remain will simply highlight how many people in the UK want out, and the ongoing scrutiny of every move by Brussels will be intense, and the level of criticism and scepticism (particularly from the vocal Brexit press) will be deafening. Even a narrow lose by Brexit will send a message to the many of citizens on the Continent that are dissatisfied by being ruled by faceless, unaccountable grey suits and big lobbying corporates that they are not alone. People will start to rise...
Ruth Davidson put in a good performance. However, the Leave representatives cannot promise to cut immigration because they are not government. They aren't even all from the same party. It's for government to deal with immigration if and when free movement of people ends with a Brexit.
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Does any government in the UK. ever have a mandate ? The Conservatives have taken us to the brink of the most divisive decision in many years on the back of a majority based on 35% - and, if you take the electorate as a whole, only about 25%. Which brings us to the question of political participation in the UK. Around 16 million people did not vote at the last election. If you add this to the numbers of people who did not get their registrations in on time then the number grows even more. Surely in a referendum of this importance non voters should be seen as votes for 'no change' simply by virtue of their apathy. My question is, should voting be made compulsory in the UK. as is already the case in Belgium and Luxembourg ? That the political elite has become estranged from the concerns of normal people is to be expected - it is difficult to be politically active without being in a party, and only between 1 and 2% of the people in Britain are actually members of a party. This means that all political ideas stem from a small segment of society (which is getting even smaller) - at one time both the big parties had well over a million members, and around 10% of the population were members, and so there would have been more imput of ideas. The British relationship to politics has become more and more passive, year by year, dominated by newspapers telling them what to vote (something which doesn't happen in other countries) and by the personality politics inherant in such things as TV debates. Do others on here think that voting should be made compulsory ?
Good post, Stan, and I hope I'm not one of the unconscionables...
Ruth Davidson put in a good performance. However, the Leave representatives cannot promise to cut immigration because they are not government. They aren't even all from the same party. It's for government to deal with immigration if and when free movement of people ends with a Brexit.
The Leave representatives couldn't promise to spend an extra £350m per week on the NHS either, but they made out they could.
I think most people appreciate the difference between gross and net by now - last night, the Leave team referred simply to the 10 billion p.a. saving on leaving the EU, which is the net figure
There was a survey the other day that said something like 60% of people believed the £350m figure - If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
That wasn't my point, though. You said that they couldn't promise to cut immigration because they are not the government, yet they have been making promises on spending as if they were.
I can't remember the Leave phraseology tbh, but you're right, they should have been saying - "an extra £10 billion will be available for the NHS" and not committing to spend when it's not within their power
I've enjoyed reading this thread (I try to keep out of the politics threads), i can see the arguments on both sides but I've come to the conclusion
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You really have got it in for us, haven't you?
- UK turnout last election 66%, Germany 71%, not so different. It's our voting system which creates governments with a minority of the votes but a majority of the seats. We had a referendum a couple of years ago to see if we wanted to change it. We didn't.
- no you cannot equate not voting to 'no change'. Some people are apathetic, some don't have a view, others don't vote for political reasons. The most you could do in a referendum would be to distribute the missing votes equally between the choices, which would make no difference, so why bother?
- so what if we are 'passive'? We have a system of government which allows us to participate if we want to. That is all that can be provided. The careerists, enthusiasts and fanatics (including some very good people) are welcome to it, the rest of us are busy with our lives, checking our emails, shopping, ferrying our kids about. If one lot **** it up or we get bored of them, we give another lot a go. I have never been to a local council meeting, and have only ever met MPs, ministers and government officials in a work capacity. I'm happy to leave it like that. In my brief membership of a political party (Labour) decades ago I quickly reached 2 conclusions - most of the people were twats with a very narrow view of the world and I had much better things to do. I am sure it would have been the same had I joined the Tories, though the refreshments might have been better. They are welcome to it.
- no I don't want compulsory voting (or more accurately compulsory attendance at a polling station, I can't be forced to put an X against anything where I live, thankfully). If you want a fully participative democracy you have to abandon the representative system, get people voting on everything in small local units and sending their views upwards through delegates. It will be time consuming (not just the meetings, but educating yourself on the issues), boring and will quickly fall into the hands of the small group of nutters and fanatics of all persuasions you really don't want running things and rapidly become very anti democratic. We are no longer in ancient Republican Rome or Athens, where the supreme decision makers - citizens in the forum/agora - were frequently bribed for their votes anyway. Our system can be improved (House of Lords, for example) but overall it delivers what we expect.
Passive is good. I am grateful that a small group of people want to get involved in this stuff. As long as I have a chance to choose who they are every now and again, I have a rough idea of what they stand for, they abide by certain behavioural standards, and understand that their only job is to make the country (or continent) a better place to live (or failing that not appreciably worse- do no harm should tattooed on their foreheads, backwards, on election, so they see it in the mirror everyday) that's great, let them get on with it. There are different ways of doing it, none of which are completely right, which is why we need a mix of people involved. Fine.
And if they ever do step over the mark and make some decisions that the great, lumpen, passive mass that I am proud to be part of really doesn't like I am completely confident that we will get up off the sofa and let them know in no uncertain terms. And probably tell each other about it via text and Facebook.
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Not sure about compulsory voting. But I do agree a non vote in this referendum should be read as a vote for no change.
So if I don't vote because I don't believe in parliamentary democracy, or feel that the choice being offered is unrealistic or unhelpful, that means I support 'no change'? Not voting is a political act, even if an unwitting or unintentional one. It means 'I haven't voted', you cannot draw any further inference from it than that. To do so is undemocratic.
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