Brexit now leading by 10 points

You do know Labour, under Brown, also promised a referendum don't you? It's hardly a Tory only issue, something many Labour doorsteppers have found out when campaigning for Remain only to discover their lifelong voters actually telling them to fuck off as they're voting Leave.

Both parties have blame to absorb. But don't bother yourself with facts, when you can boo the pantomime villain instead and call people who disagree with you stupid.

Having a referendum should not be seen as the problem. The UK is a democracy that joined a rather non-democratic club. That club places rules on the behavior of the democracy, and the only way for the UK to protect its own status is to get support from voters.

Blame a lack of EU reform, blame arrogant politicians, but don't blame the idea that voters should have a say in the matter.

The referendum-phobia is a British Left thing - people should have a voice, but only the right people, e.g. the ones who agree with them. Otherwise, you know, wrong choices may be made, and that would be dreadful. You can see the dead-eyed horror in the smarter ones that maybe, just maybe they're the same as those who like to stratify society by class, the disagreement is one of what to slice against rather than the morality of doing the actual slicing.

There something awry in our little British souls that means we need some group below, and some group above, otherwise we get so horribly lost in the enormity of the universe that there aren't enough cups of hot tea in the universe to make it all better.

We had a referendum in the 70's, which many seem to think ought to have settled it - utterly unaware that the UK was in tail-end of an authoritarian era where people listened to their "betters" and you couldn't google up information, you got to rely on the upper and middle class controlled media for that. And that generation was sold a Common Market despite closer integration being baked in from the start.

People forget what the UK used to be like - I've said before how they changed the Boat That Rocked to be set during a Conservative government as the current generation can't wrap their noodle around a Labour Party being so controlling - so they cannot comprehend that the public mostly went along with the establishment's advice.

Exactly. Was anyone even contemplating Brexit 15 years ago? No, it never would have crossed anyone's mind in the UK except the most rabid right or the jokers from the Referendum Party (remember them?).
Now it looks like most of the voters will be ticking the exit box. Had the EU not turned into an expansionist monster looking to swallow up all the poorer nations of Europe (nations that we have to keep funding and whose citizens we need to accommodate in this country in greater numbers each year), and not been determined to erode the sovereignty of member states in favour of increased rule and demands for increased integration from Brussels, we'd all still be happy with the EU.

That's not uniquely British. If you think about it, most people have reasons to be suspicious of democracy. There's always a big group of people ready to vote counter to what we each think is best. Look at all the Trumpistas. How can we possibly trust democracy if people like that form a substantial voting block, right? Unfortunately, the alternatives are even worse.

You obviously know fuck all about things like the Lisbon Treaty. It significantly undermines the sovereignty of Parliament, and frankly if I could be as sure of a more hardy renegotiation as @ecky seems to be I'd be inclined to vote leave for this reason alone. All you're doing is the same sort of scaremongering that the leave campaign has been doing. You're just throwing up standard soundbites without actually looking at the issues more thoroughly, and it's your kind of rhetoric that is helping the leave campaign to gain support as we approach next Thursday.

Silly remark. The vote is pretty much equally split. Whoever wins, the margin will likely be very small.

The fluctuations in the pound are temporary though the potential lose of export markets would be a longer term problem. Oh, and those EU rules tge exiters keep complaining about? Most of them will remain in place especially for exporters so there will be little to no relief on that front even if people vote for exit.

The bigger worry for the city of London should be how exit would negatively effect the city's current neck and neck tie with NYC for the world's leading financial center. I could see exit really hitting that industry hard with many companies hedging their bets by setting up offices in Paris and Frankfurt. Countries like Norway and Switzerland still have to follow most of tge EU laws but don't even get a vote onwhich laws are passed. That should be entirely unsatisfactory for the exiters yet they don't seem to have thought that far ahead.

Lastly, I think Ecky is wrong when he claims the EU will offer the UK a better deal if it votes for exit. You are going to see a lot of bad economic data in the UK and the EU will know they just have to sit tight until the little Englanders come crawling back hat in hand.

Yes, so do I. I very much hope he's right, but I don't think he is.

I remember the 1970s; very little has changed in that respect. Most people still rely on the same establishment media for news and views, and it shows. People are still patriotic, wave the flag, celebrate the Queen's birthday, sing the poxy anthem, and lap up all the attendant lies and nonsense that serve to shore up the state's primary functions: protection of private property and mass inculcation.

And in fact, I remember people being much more egalitarian and less individualistic in those days. In that respect, we've gone backwards.

What is wrong with being patriotic? Only the Eurotwats want to destroy people's heritage because they want to destroy historic nation states so they themselves can sneak in and replace them with their own undemocratic and unaccountable power grab.

I still think the UK should stay in the EU but the EU badly needs massive reforms.

Well done, you're making the precise same broad brush arguments about Leave voters as nasty little fuckers do about Muslims. Think about that.

Your post is precisely why Remain has pissed away all its advantages - it's nasty, arrogant, presumptive and belittling to those who have a different viewpoint.

I'm currently working with a range of people, most of whom are Leave voters and only one actually comes close to matching your definition. Small sample set to be sure, but I suspect a rather larger one than the one you have bouncing around in your imagination.

Have you considered a number of those may wish to see the UK broken up? The Scottish Nats may yet have their day!

I may very well be, but of the big hitters in the EU there's only France who would likely be inclined to punish the UK - they loathe the fact London is a magnet to French workers, and our attempts to stop CAP, without which most of the French countryside would be in very deep financial shit - Germany knows we're a hefty export market and a number of the Mittelstand have strong enough economic ties to the UK that the EU punishing the UK would be catastrophic to the German economy. Of the second stringers, the Dutch are well aware a UK blocked from the single market would see a hefty dent in their economy.

In short, if the EU decides to play hardball it'll suffer as much, if not more, than the UK, and with both the Greek and Italian economies hardly being robust, such an action could fracture the whole shebang a it drove many EU nations towards recession.

If the EU was to be so petty as to act in such a manner, not only would it prove the UK was right to leave such a foolish group, it would also prove the EU wasn't a worthwhile project at all.

They're not going to block UK access to the single market if they're smart. If they're not smart, they'll be sporting a well bitten nose upon their spite'd face.

Well, let's imagine that all the things I mentioned, the flag the Queen, the anthem, etc. simply ceased to exist tomorrow. What difference would it make to the real circumstances of people's lives? None at all. And that's what patriotism is in essence: getting people to value things that don't matter instead of things that do, and even to have them actively work against the latter in the service of the former.

I am one of an increasingly rare breed, a left-wing eurosceptic. Yet I shall almost certainly vote to remain because as bad as the EU is, its UK based opponents are far, far worse, and the thought of giving that bunch of fantasists and imbeciles any credibility fills me with horror.

I'm sorry, you appear to live in a time bubble. No one got stabbed for playing the Sex Pistols the last couple of Jubilees, and there have been plenty of street parties, but they're generally just a reason to party.

Outside of the nutter brigade, most peoples concept of patriotism and flag waving are as a far away from those days as a real life Jurassic Park would be from, well, the Jurassic.

From Glasgow to Margate, Connahs Quay to Lincoln, I see very little of what you describe.

Ah yes, those joyful days of groups going about paki bashing, shop signs proudly displaying "No Dogs. No Blacks. No Irish.", women still being frowned upon in the workplace and the tap room in pubs, and - if, on their own or with a friend, expected to put up with being drooled over, Unions blocking the likes of 'darkies' and 'wimmin'...

Good times, good times.

In the UK it's usually code for the kind of piggy-eyed nationalist who just hates everything not English.

They forget the days of the taxis that were barely a step up from a shit-tip, until Pakistani and Bangladeshi drivers came on the scene who took pride in their vehicles.
They bemoan the lack of English things, usually whilst munching a kebab from a non-English takeaway, mainly as you're more likely to find a rocking horse taking a shit than a UK takeaway being open past 10pm.

They basically whine a lot whilst wearing rose-tinted specs. Forgetting how hard it was to buy a pint of milk after 7pm before "paki shops" appeared, how we ate tripe and lambs frys out of need rather than actual desire.

If I thought for one moment the EU would reform, I'd vote Remain, but I don't. It's taken how long for debt forgiveness to be on the cards over Greece? And that's "on the cards", not "will actually happen"

The EU is a club of self-interests, and it's not going to get any better as any changes usually require an act of buying off a raft of nations with pork barrel politics that is eventually self-defeating. It's like running in quicksand.

LONDON — A member of Britain’s Parliament was shot and stabbed to death Thursday in an attack that stunned the nation and brought to an immediate halt the country's European Union referendum campaign just a week before the vote.

Police did not provide a motive for the killing. But British media organizations including the Guardian and Sky News quoted witnesses as saying that the assailant shouted "Britain First!" during and after the attack — a slogan linked to anti-immigrant groups.


Welp.

None of this even touches on the central point, which is that people are just as patriotic now as they were then, that they are just as open to being manipulated by the same forces, in the same way, and that this has the same baleful consequences.

I take it that the fact you ignored what I said and instead decided to rail against something else entirely means that you agree with the point I made.

Yes, that seems to explain most of your recent contributions.

While the great and principled hero of yours Corbyn sticks by all his beliefs......except he isn't.

Giving a Remain speech in Manchester, the mayor of London.



The British now have to segregate the sexes, with men in front and women in the back, as is proper. It's like the good old days of the British Empire before women had the right to vote because the fairer sex had no sense about political matters.

Yup, my Dad encountered quite a bit of that when he lived in Elephant & Castle in the early 60's.

There's at least five women at the front the in the picture dumbass, including two in headscarves.

Oh, and here's a photo from another angle...



Look, no women!!!

God, you're a detestable, lying, fearmongering, petty jobless cunt of a man.

Probably Sikh and Hindu women.

Sorry, but that sounds like the US Congress.