More people today telling me I mustn't "disrespect" the Brexit vote, it's "democracy" and so on. Well, I disrespect it about as much as it's possible to, so let's go into why.
Here is a list of reasons why Brexit is a giant bunch of bullshit:
- The Conservatives, while being investigated for electoral fraud after being given power by just 24% of the electorate, called a non-binding referendum to settle an internal party discipline issue.
- Cameron never expected to have to follow through with this, because he didn't expect to get sole power after the previous Coalition. He also genuinely didn't expect Leave COULD win, right up to the end.
- The Leave campaign was headed by MPs cynically using it to further their careers. It has since come out that not one of them expected to win, and several of them actively didn't WANT to win, only to use a close loss to boost their own power.
- The non-binding referendum went ahead. In legal terms it was an opinion poll with no existence in law.
- The entire campaign period was filled with proven lies by Leave MPs, and stupid scare stories of strong-arm punishment budgets by Remain.
- The Leave campaign was also filled with racism from the start, peaking in Farage's indefensible "breaking point" poster.
- Leave promised repeatedly that we could control immigration and still stay in the single market. (That was never going to happen, because the EU would be finished about 2 hours later). It didn't happen when Switzerland or anyone else asked for it, and it certainly won't for us.
- Dan Hannan, Leave campaign: "Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the Single Market"
- Owen Paterson, Leave campaign: "Because only a madman would actually leave the market"
- Boris Johnson every single day: "We can have both! Both! We can have everything. And all the money. Whooo. I'm a banana. Take back control."
- (As a journalist Boris Johnson had been lying about the EU for ratings for years. He was sacked from the Times for entirely making stuff up. He constantly promised the impossible during the Leave campaign.)
- The vote was to stay or to leave: no distinction on whether to have hard or soft Brexit, single market, customs union, immigration controls, anything.
- On the day 37.4% of eligible people chose catastrophic change to the rest of the country. You do not make any big change on a 52/48 vote. You can't even strike with those numbers.
- This poll (it's not a vote) was required to be taken about as seriously by anyone as the Boaty McBoatface poll.
- People also reported that they chose Leave as a protest and didn't actually want the outcome or think it could happen.
- Others said that they were protesting austerity and wanted to hurt David Cameron by the only means they had, or that they were entirely motivated by racism, or that they didn't understand what Brexit was.
- Most importantly, a lot of Leave voters wanted to Leave but stay in the single market. It'd only take a few % of them to make it the majority, and the number looks to be more like 20-40%. The vote to "Leave" was for a vague, undefined thing.
- Within weeks the totals appeared to have changed so that the majority of people wanted to Remain, especially once the financial implications were known.
- Slowly people realised that the EU wasn't causing them any hurt at all and that years of neglect by the UK government weren't going to be reversed by making the current Tory party more empowered. (Some of us knew this before the poll.) Some had wanted to save the NHS - that promise was abandoned within 24 hours, and the new government would doom it faster than ever. (Again, some of us knew this ahead of time.)
- They were sold a lie that keeping the foreigners out would improve the economy. It was a lie. It also gave all the racists permission to come out of the background. Areas with the fewest immigrants are the most racist, but ironically are also the places least affected economically by immigrants because there are hardly any there.
- Since Article 50 (which was never designed to be used) refers to the country's constitution, UK constitutional law says that MPs must vote to overturn a previous Act (the one where we joined the EU).
- This is what the Supreme Court said yesterday. Parliament is sovereign, MPs always vote to change anything this big. Everyone knew this.
- When judges said it the first time, they were called ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE by racist newspapers.
- Promising people on a leaflet that the referendum result will definitely be followed doesn't mean shit.
- The UK has a Parliamentary Democracy. In that, MPs are better informed than the public. MPs listen to views, then have a duty to decide against them if it's for the good of the country.
- This is especially true if the campaign was built on lies, or if there is evidence that their choice was uninformed or misled.
- Or the 2-year period would leave us crippled and we don't have enough civil servants to even do the paperwork in that time.
- Or the US now has a protectionist President it didn't have during the poll and our chances outside the EU just shrank drastically.
- Or we would lose our banking passport system and destroy finance in London, the only bit of our economy which works.
- Or it would damage how the rest of the World view us and harm our relationships with many countries (too late).
- Or the decision would cause the breakup of the UK because Scotland and Northern Ireland aren't having this nonsense.
- Or if the majority of the country (including those who didn't vote) have always wanted Remain, and 52/48 from a racist, lying campaign is the definition of "too close for big change".
- There is therefore no mandate for Hard Brexit at all. It was never asked during the poll, the majority DON'T want it and never did, and MPs have a duty not to sabotage the country regardless of the poll result because we're not a direct democracy. If we were, we wouldn't have safe seats and first-past-the-post and gerrymandering.
- The Supreme Court decision probably won't stop Brexit: Labour have said they'll vote with the Conservatives to make sure Article 50 is triggered.
- No-one knows quite why they'd do that, since Labour voters were strongly Remain and the party's position was Remain.
- They especially don't know why Corbyn (who was a symbol of hope to some precisely because he never played the compromise game) would just go along with Brexit when he is all about workers' rights and Liam Fox has said stripping workers' rights afterwards is what will make us "competitive".
- And this is why any of this is still relevant. The Tories are suggesting that JUST BY COINCIDENCE they will use Brexit to turn the UK into a Tory Paradise tax haven with no rights for workers. And no environmental protections - "on a level with India" was mentioned, again to be 'competitive'. And pulling us out of the Court of Human Rights and binning the Human Rights Act. This will probably all happen regardless of what type of Brexit we want, and it's the big danger to watch. Brexit means less money for the poor, fewer rights, fewer protections. Of course it never meant more money for the NHS or hope for the poorest. Brexit hands us to the Tory millionaire MPs who have spent their entire working lives voting for money to go to corporations and the rich at the expense of the poor.
- But Labour will vote this stinking thing through, because they don't get the message that UKIP and Tory voters won't go back to Labour when they can have the real thing, and Scotland will never go back at this rate, or the fact that Corbyn was put in to *oppose*, so they'll keep chasing votes they lost years ago which they can't win back this way anyway.
Here's that article from last year showing that the British public are totally wrong about immigration, incredibly strongly influenced by lies, and basically wrong about everything:
http://www.independent.co...urvey-shows-a7074311.html
And here is a chart showing how many people want hard brexit. Hint: not many.
https://www.facebook.com/...336009389/?type=3&theater
The tiniest sign that Brexit might be further examined or voted on instead of just immediately actioned is branded "Against the Will of The People". If you like checks and balances, they say you're unpatriotic and undemocratic. Which is the final straw for me, because if you're that stupid then I can't even tell you how your idea of "Democracy" (instant unquestioned implementation of majority rule or mob rule) was so far off actual Democracy that the Greeks had a separate word for it:
http://littleatoms.com/society-world/trump-brexit-and-mob
So when you tell me to "respect the Brexit vote", you're going to get a large raspberry noise in return. It was a poll, for something not very defined, after a racist campaign of lies.
The good news is, the PM is about to reveal an actual Brexit plan. The second she does, half the Tory party will be against it and the in-fighting can start. She can't deliver an end to Freedom of Movement without Hard Brexit, and not enough MPs or the public want Hard Brexit. Instant carnage. Get the popcorn.