Psychoactive Substances: Rolling UK Politics in The Neo-Con Era

there's possibility that the referendum result itself could be seen as triggering it, or that combined with representations of the govt during/after the neogtiations prior to the referednum. the text of article 50 gives no method or means of notification. few legal academics like green and maugham mostly seem to dismiss this. there are probably better ways to pressure politically rather than legally.

if the referendum was ever going to trigger it then there must have been pre-identified conditions like thresholds for turnout and majority. or am I totally mad to think that.

Yeah the referendum has no legal weight - it was an advisory. The EU can't in a sane way use that as notification.

Am assuming the EU don't truly want Britain out, but maybe they do?

nothing to do with its legal validity within the uk (it has none, unlike the av referendum) but that in the absence of stipulated means of activating article 50, it could be seen as automatically triggering within eu law. doesn't seem very plausible but the european court of justice have made some sophistic judgments under political pressure before.

xps right, suspect that making this happen this would soak up most of the resources of a lot of departments. If it goes ahead, staggeringly expensive + fuck all else is going to get done.

Doesn't seem remotely plausible imo. Would be like a poll result triggering leave. The U.K. State has to notify under Article 50. An advisory poll does not have the authority to speak for that state. xp

I'd love Brexit to somehow not happen, but maybe millions of (the non-regretful) Leave voters feeling cheated and angry is an even more terrifying prospect for Britain.

there's no way they won't feel cheated i reckon. it can't "happen" in any way that will sate, pacify, or unite the people who voted for it. nothing will happen.

that's why it would have to be combined with some other argument based on notice of what cameron et al already said. given this, which is all very tenuous, it's best to assume there are no legal means. but beyond this it's all really vague, most importantly, the revocability of an article 50 notification is unclear. different legal people arguing exactly opposite on this from cursory reading.

people cant face it. same way it seemed very muted for people to accept that jo coxs killer was motivated by the ugliness of nationalism, racism, etc (even if these were symptoms of larger problems).

the only reason youre getting all these reports of regretful voters is that the insular metropolitan complacency of media remainers cant get their head around the vote.

TBH the vote doesnt make logical sense to most labour voters/members/remainers. 'how did anyone voting leave think this would make their prospects better? how did they think farage, boris, gove, would care about their futures?' im not sure the leavers really thought they did.

IMO its a bit like the london riots. made no sense - looting expensive goods as a cry for help/howl of frustration? - but it wasnt about what it was, it was just about the reasons for those events and that behaviour.

ive missed a lot of the thread since yesterday so sorry if this has been repeated ad infintum.

the only reason youre getting all these reports of regretful voters is that the insular metropolitan complacency of media remainers cant get their head around the vote.

As someone said elsewhere, we are debating in a different world to that of most of those who voted to leave.

It is not impossible to imagine that the Article 50 notification will never be made, and that the possibility that it may one day be made will become another routine feature of UK politics – a sort of embedded threat which comes and goes out of focus. The notification will be made one day, politicians and pundits will say, but not yet.

And whilst it is not made, then other ways of solving the problem created by the referendum result may present themselves: another referendum, perhaps, so that UK voters can give the “correct” result, or a general election where EU membership is a manifesto issue, or some other thing.

http://jackofkent.com/2016/06/why-the-article-50-notification-is-important/

among all the stupid polling questions, one a few weeks before the referendum 'found' that two thirds of people would accept no loss of income in order to control immigration. apart from the tired regretful voter trope, which might have some facticity but is mostly a morality fable, two or three months of bad economic news would create plenty of them.

not actually leaving the eu after all suggests that this whole thing has been an elaborate plot to ensure that nobody in england outside of london ever has the temerity/will to vote ever again

xp you mean 2/3 would not accept any loss of income in order to control immigration?

yeah

broadly speaking i'm seeing a split between two reactions to the vote. the people who are saying "wait, it doesn't have to be this way", and people who suspect that "leave" voters have an incomplete and inadequate grasp of human suffering, and are eager that those voters be made to learn quickly, as an example to the rest of the world. i think both reactions are necessary.

I'd not really considered this till you guys bought it up. "100% anger 0% plans to deal with issues or make peoples lives better" is just going to make everyone more resentful and angry and go fucking cray cray, isnt it?

Kenneth Armstrong, professor of European Law at Cambridge University said: “There is no mechanism to compel a state to withdraw from the European Union. Article 50 is there to allow withdrawal, but no other party has the right to invoke article 50, no other state or institution. While delay is highly undesirable politically, legally there is nothing that can compel a state to withdraw.”

The only card the EU does hold is another article of the Lisbon Treaty - but it’s a big card, an ace. Under Article 7, the EU could suspend a member if it deems it to be in breach of basic principles of freedom, democracy, equality and rule of law.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/25/article-50-brexit-debate-britain-eu

"people cant face it. same way it seemed very muted for people to accept that jo coxs killer was motivated by the ugliness of nationalism, racism, etc (even if these were symptoms of larger problems)."

Or maybe, as in my case, I've actually done some EU lawyering at the actual EU and know have some idea of how this shit works. Oh, and classy to conflate my knowledge of the law and reticence to take Farage and Johnson and Cameron at their fucking word for excusing Jo Cox's racist killers and the scum who inspired him to do it.

The EU don't want Britain out. The moderate conservative leadership at the EU may -- imagine this! -- have have actually communicated with their party cousins in the UK and have some reason to believe that the referendum was a bit of a bluff and has more symbolic than actual weight. A different question could have been written -- this one, the one with no dates and no directions and the word "should" -- is the one that we are dealing with.

Most reassuring post of the day that

"Euroskeptic" far right morons are going to realize they've been screwed at some point and will react stupidly and violently when they do -- the question is whether you want them to be driving the bus when it happens.

LG I think we work in vaguely similar fields and with big sweeping calls/promises I tend to ignore the rhetoric - as in, I've literally no idea what Cameron's even said most of the time - and just think about the mechanisms, flow of funding, and legal processes, because I know from painful experience it usually comes down to this kind of 'detail' which often ends up quietly delivering something different from the promised headlines. Which does mean I'm often clueless about the political/strategical side of things. This whole thing has been surreal to me precisely because of the 'what Brexit are we voting for?' question, which I haven't really seen answered anywhere beforehand, and the sheer scale of actually implementing it/anything. All the statutory instruments that'd need looking at!

I was thinking about it this morning, like a lot of my job is turning legislation into actionable instructions for people who need to do something, and so a lot of the time I find myself thinking about the unreality of legislative language or bureaucracy, like maybe the source document will talk about a capitalised scheme as the subject of a sentence, rather than talking to the person who needs to do something with that. I feel a bit like I'm dealing with content of that nature when I try to think about "what is brexit". What would it mean? How would it be done? It's incredibly conceptual.

and as well as the bureaucratic level on which the meaning of brexit is unknown, there's also the fact that if you asked 100 people who voted to leave the EU what their definition of leaving the EU is, you probably wouldn't get the same answer twice. Or if you did, maybe it'd solely be about immigration and have little to do with the machinations of how to end/change the UK's relationship with the EU.

Since 2000, a majority of EU member states who have had a referendum on EU-related issues have voted against the pro-EU position: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_related_to_the_European_Union

Corbyn wants nothing to do with second-referendum talk or other ways of staying in EU, apparently.

maybe he's afraid of UKIP taking a lot of Labour seats next GE

Tactically speaking, there's no reason to talk about anything. Just sit. Bluff calling time. Let UKIP and Johnson's bunch take the fall for triggering or not triggering.

Corbyn wants nothing to do with second-referendum talk or other ways of staying in EU, apparently.

Quite right too. Anyone clinging to this is deluded imo, Austritt heißt Austritt.

I had to google that, I thought you were invoking the Anschluss there!

there's no way they won't feel cheated i reckon. it can't "happen" in any way that will sate, pacify, or unite the people who voted for it. nothing will happen.

But if Britain does technically leave the EU and they just feel cheated by continuing poor public services or immigration, then at least they might blame Boris Johnson and Dan Hannan rather than the whole world.

People of other skin colours and accents will still be here

dumb american question: if scotland leaves to join the EU, doesn't that result in a permanent shift towards the right for british politics, since you lose the left-wing scottish voting bloc? that seems bad.

yes

http://i.imgur.com/UsEEkih.png

The EDL were outnumbered ten to one by protesters in Newcastle.

https://twitter.com/ChukaUmunna/status/746694000262905856

Interesting hearing Brexit MPs seeking to disown Vote Leave promises now - we will hold them, Boris & the rest to each and everyone of them

lol

Hannan: We've decided we actually don't want to bar all EU migrants / scrap the Human Rights Act
Blairites: You have to! You said you would!

I've seen a lot of people compare this to the idea of Texas secession, but the legal barriers for Texas leaving the US are much higher. It seems utterly crazy to me that this was all decided by a simple majority vote. Nothing monumental like this in the US ever gets voted via referendum as far as I'm aware.

california does it and that's a bigger economy than the UK (so is france as of friday, btw)

although are CA proposition ballots simple majority?

Nothing monumental like this in the US ever gets voted via referendum really tho i think maybe some states do referendums

yep it's just 50% in california

most people agree the system is a disaster though

they should ask for a referendum on it then

true, California is a good exception. Don't know if they could use a referendum to leave the US, though.

xps

But states can't vote counter to federally legislated international treaties and laws, only on local issues. And even they can't go counter to federal law, or at least, are open to legal challenge.

Another dumber American question: why couldn't this vote have been non-binding and symbolic, just giving the people a chance to voice their opinion and pressure the government? As a first step or something, the first round to express approval/disapproval and get (or not get) the issue on a formal, legal, law-changing ballot, and then the second vote be the binding vote? You'd think for something this huge there would be another step between the vote and implementation.

Did the UK join the EU with a similar public referendum? Can people vote on referendums to break treaties and other laws, lower taxes, go to war or other decisions with huge repercussions? I have no idea how it works over there.

Gah, I meant by my initial statement that US states, even if they voted counter to federal law, still open themselves up to immediate legal challenge. There are checks in place, or at least a legal process that can staunch or stop the most boneheaded of moves, however slowly it may take the courts to decide.

It is non binding and up to the government to implement. They could either ignore it or call a second referendum if they wanted to but it's highly unlikely the grass roots of the ruling party would tolerate either and they're in charge of selecting the new Prime Minister.

There wasn't a referendum to join the EEC, as it was then, but there was one two years later to see whether people wanted to stay.

why couldn't this vote have been non-binding and symbolic, just giving the people a chance to voice their opinion and pressure the government?

technically it was. but the debate was conducted as if it were binding, and i suspect that's how most of the electorate understood it (aside from the "what is the EU" googlers, perhaps). and in any case there's no UK politician in a strong enough position to resist any pressure at all right now.

Scotland may have to rely on a (possibly unilateral) referendum soon, so I'd rather not try to undermine their position too much.

There should be one strong enough to shape the pressure though. "The people were lied to, look!" will find tons of fertile ground on both sides. And help to undermine the legitimacy of the result xp

David Lammy calls on parliament to disregard the result: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-result-latest-david-lammy-mp-eu-referendum-result-parliament-twitter-statement-stop-this-a7102931.html

Really wish the Labour leadership would take a similar stand here tbh, considering Leave are reneging on their pledges left right and centre

You know how their is a legal age where you are allowed to start voting? Could we just also cap when it ends, like 75 or something? You are too old and riddled with dementia and soz its over.