EU Referendum

[bindeweede]

And now, apparently, we have "Bregret" - I find it really hard to believe - isn't a referendum the ultimate FPTP vote?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 02516.html

[Tony Williams]

Which begs an interesting question: will the concessions negotiated by Cameron now come into effect while Brexit is expected? I suspect that the EU will leave them on the shelf.

[chaggle]

Which begs an interesting question: will the concessions negotiated by Cameron now come into effect while Brexit is expected? I suspect that the EU will leave them on the shelf.

I believe I remember hearing that they have been ditched.

[chaggle]

I firmly believe that if a referendum were held now, the result would be very different.

I also believe that, as Bob says, it is very likely we will not leave the EU - there is so much opposition to it in parliament and in the general public.


But I don't know by what mechanism that might be achieved. Yes - we know that the referendum was only advisory and could be overturned - but would parliament actually have the nerve to do that?

I can't see a second referendum being called - suppose the result was just as close for REMAIN?

How about a General Election in a month or two with overturning the referendum result as its only aim? Not quite sure how it would work - maybe cobble together an all-party 'in' party or maybe each party (con, lib, lab, snp etc.) declared as 'in' or 'out'?

Help!

[chaggle]

I've just seen that I wasn't the first to think of that...

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bre ... 02646.html

First, were we to have an early General Election fought by one party on an explicit Remain platform and were that party to prevail it would, I think, amount to a ‘refreshed democratic mandate’. The electorate would have spoken such that the result of the Referendum would be superseded.

[Tony Williams]

I firmly believe that if a referendum were held now, the result would be very different.

I think that it would probably go the other way, but not by a big enough margin to make the Brexiteers shut up - they would immediately start banging on about another referendum...

[Tony Williams]

I hope that someone in the Civil Service is compiling a list of all of the issues which have to be negotiated to implement Brexit, many of which will be controversial, particularly since (as I understand it) the whole package will require approval by the European Parliament.

To take one obvious example: fishing. The UK will want to re-acquire control of its EEZ for the exclusive use of UK fishermen, which will of course attract massive opposition from other EU countries with fishing fleets, so much negotiation of transition arrangements will be called for if agreement is to be reached. This will involve sorting out what exactly is a UK fishing boat - is it one registered in the UK (but perhaps in all other respects foreign)? Then there are quotas for the different types of fish - these will need to be sorted out with the UK fishing fleet. Then there will have to extra resources for patrolling our EEZ. I am not an expert on this subject and I do not doubt that it is far more complex than this, with a lot more issues to be determined.

Now try to guess how many working hours might be required to negotiate a satisfactory agreement with the EU - and how many skilled negotiators knowledgeable about the subject area will be required (assuming they could be found). Then multiply that by all of the other hundreds (conservative guess - possibly thousands) of issues which will need to be sorted out over the same time period. Then there is the question of replacing our EU trade umbrella with 50+ individual trading agreements which would need to be negotiated, so that's another army of negotiators.

The term "army" is quite appropriate here, since I suspect that the total number of negotiators needed could be somewhat larger than the size of the shrunken British Army. The mind boggles

[Tony Williams]

I have a dark suspicion that the real culprits for the Leave vote are the Chinese.

I am sure they have cursed us, as we are most certainly living in "interesting times"... :(

[Croydon13013]

I hope that someone in the Civil Service is compiling a list of all of the issues which have to be negotiated to implement Brexit, many of which will be controversial, particularly since (as I understand it) the whole package will require approval by the European Parliament.

Was already done, and I can tell you that one Department has over 50 different issues to be sorted. And it is not an obvious one like FCO or Defence. It will require at least a doubling of Civil Servants and the problems will hardly have begun to be sorted in two years.

[Matt]

Was already done, and I can tell you that one Department has over 50 different issues to be sorted. And it is not an obvious one like FCO or Defence. It will require at least a doubling of Civil Servants and the problems will hardly have begun to be sorted in two years.

Surely you simply restore government from the 1973 backup and reinstall all the legislation that you want to keep. Devolution agreements mention the EU, no problem simply repeal devolution. And if anyone wants to argue with this decree remind them that in 1973, treason was still a capital crime.

[Tony Williams]

Was already done, and I can tell you that one Department has over 50 different issues to be sorted. And it is not an obvious one like FCO or Defence. It will require at least a doubling of Civil Servants and the problems will hardly have begun to be sorted in two years.

I was obviously underestimating the problem.

Current number of FTE civil servants: c.400,000

Current size of British Army: c.150,000 (not including 88,000 reserves)

[Matt]

Was already done, and I can tell you that one Department has over 50 different issues to be sorted. And it is not an obvious one like FCO or Defence. It will require at least a doubling of Civil Servants and the problems will hardly have begun to be sorted in two years.

I was obviously underestimating the problem.

Current number of FTE civil servants: c.400,000

Current size of British Army: c.150,000 (not including 88,000 reserves)

Pedantry alert - that's the size to the British Armed forces, 90k are army, 30k are Airforce and 30k are Navy.

[Tony Williams]

Correct - it just gets better and better!

[Tony Williams]

A rather good joke from social media: a photo of the red "Vote Leave" battlebus, with its infamous claim of £350 million a week to be taken from the EU and used to fund the NHS, has been doctored to read "England footballers are paid £170 million a week..." etc!

[Matt]

A rather good joke from social media: a photo of the red "Vote Leave" battlebus, with its infamous claim of £350 million a week to be taken from the EU and used to fund the NHS, has been doctored to read "England footballers are paid £170 million a week..." etc!

One I saw on Monday was:

Q: How many Brexiters does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: I never said there was a lightbulb