cheesemp
(I don't want to drag this into a brexit debate, but I really don't think it's settled any more than it was after 1975 vote. The country is split still and the more extreme a Brexit we get the more like it is to reverse it. I've many many more years of voting left in me and it will be my main point of focus going forward - In 1975 33% of the population where ignored - this time its closer to 50%).
And back to the my point - it's not about the negotiation - If you planned to leave and gave time for infrastructure and business to adapt then maybe it would have be ok but having lived in kent growing up I know how utterly rubbish the port infrastructure is. It will not cope with this - neither will the m20. I also think the shock to business while it is still trying to recover from Covid is going to be a disaster. If you had set a date 5 years in the future everything would have worked. As it is I will be preparing for the worse. I moved 70% of my pension fund out of the UK a month after the vote. I have little confidence in the future for the UK. So far that gamble has paid off well.
I think that was polite and fair response. Of course you are welcome to disagree :).
That was absolutely a polite and fair response. Would that the past discussions, both on here and in the country, had been so. We might have had more light and less heat.
Some of those comments I agree with.
Points of difference :-
- infractructure is still, indirectly, about negotiation,
because we don't know if there will be a deal, and if there is, what it will say. Which provides a catch 22. If we get a ‘good’ deal, additional infrastructure to cope with resulting customs will be wasted. But if we don't, then it'll be needed. We won't know which until we know if there will be a deal or not which, as per my prevjous post, won't come, if it comes at all, until very late on. We could spend five years building infrastructure it turns out we won't need and so, building or not building it becomes a gamble on whether a deal is likely, a bet between unpreparedness and wasted expenditure. It is also, of course, a tool of political pressure.
- Is it settled? Long term, we still don't have a crystal ball. For instance, rising anti-EU sentiment in many member states could yet either break it up, or more likely, force a change in direction to a less federalist vision. In the former case tbere'd be nothing to rejoin, and i the latter, it's a vdry cifferent proposition to what we left . Or not. No crystal ball, remember? Will you get a chance to vote on it again? Who knows. It took some 45 years last time.
- The last vote wasn't on the EU. It was on the EEC, the Common Market. Many things we were explicitly promised wouldn't happen subsequently did, and more are in the federalist objectives of Commission EU-philes. Also, we joined 6, not 27. And add to that, the terms were different. If another vote does come around, my guess is it will be on very different terms to when we left. For instance, it's highly dubious if we could get a Schengen opt-out or a Eurozone opt-out if we applied to rejoin. So the 75 vote, the Referendum and any subsequent vote are all on different propositions which makes any direct inferences from percentages of very dubious value.
- A lot depends on the next few years …. assuming we can filter out Covid impacts. If the economic impact is as Remainers claim, it strengthens the rejoin case. But if it turns out we do just fine outside, it dextroys the economic case for rejoining. And, I hate to labour the point but, crystal balls are hard to find.
Where I entirely agree is that the country is still split.
But, for several decades, governments refused a public vote because even having the argument was damaging. The irony is that if severzl PMs hadn't bottled it such a vote would probsbly hzve confirmed remaining, and the actual referendum likely would never have happened. And it requires primary legislation to get a referendum. Do you foresee any government any time soon trying that? Do you foresee any government taking us back in without one …. like Ted Heath did the first time? And probably equally telling, how keen do you think the EU would be to re-open that can of worms?
Sure, the EU would, in the past, have welcomed a UK chsnge of heart but I'm not convinced they would now,
because, if nothing else, they can see the country here is still,split. They have enough problems of their own, and I can't see them welcoming another several years of Brexit-style rows, especially if another change of UK might ignite another art.50 five years later.
So sure, we might end up back in. I don't see it any time soon, though. But, still no crystal ball.
Oh, and of course, even that small chance of any near term re-entry requires EU states go unanimously agree, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the French gov't reprised De Gaulle with a simple “Non”.