kneepel said:
I never stated that Johnson's resignation from the race was related to Brexit, it's just that he was the face of the leave voters.
You made it seem like he was abandoning leadership because he knew he fucked up by advocating Leave or something, I was pointing out that couldn't be further from the truth.
kneepel said:
Everything indicates that he is ending his career as a politician, a direct quote from him is below:
"During this referendum campaign I said I want my country back. Now I want my life back,"
He will continue on as an MEP for the next two years. Like I said, he has already said multiple times he would welcome any inclusion in the EU negotiation talks, he isn't walking away from anything. The UKIP leadership change is a purely political one to gain voters from the Labour party for any upcoming general election.
kneepel said:
Specifically, the US and France are Germany's largest trade partners (by a fairly wide margin). The EU imposes tariffs for every country outside of their trade union, and I believe the UK could join them while not being a member of the EU, but that's probably not going to happen. Negotiations will decide how trade between EU members and the UK continue, but that doesn't affect relations between the UK and the other 162 something WTO members.
It doesn't matter who Germany's largest trade partners are. They export
a lot to us also. You don't just turn down a better trade deal for your country because you have other large trade deals. If it's in their national interest to not impose tariffs on some trade sectors then they simply won't want to do it. As I said, the UK is one of the EU's closest trading partners. It sounds stupid to even say it because it should be so blindingly obvious but... we aren't going to be in the same situation as Canada (which everyone loves to cite for some reason). Of course it will take a few years, but the EU has trade deals with non-EU countries that include tariff-free trade in some sectors of the manufacturing. The UK could have a very similar deal for sectors that are heavily mutually dependent on the EU (for example, car industry, like I said earlier).
The Remain campaign simply wanted to put fear into the electorate by repeatedly citing the amount of time it takes the EU to make its trade deals with nations such as US and Canada which have taken very long. But, on both sides of the argument, it's widely recognised that the EU has been awful in making trade deals around the world, which is due to the fact it's negotiating on behalf of the 28 member states that don't have the ability to make their own trade deal. It's not a bad thing that we now have that ability to decide what's in the best interest of our own damn country.
The only negative is the few years of uncertainty ahead. But people knew that well ahead of voting, they just didn't care. This leave vote was about more than just the economy so I wish people outside the UK would stop reading the news and then spouting "rip UK the pound has fallen LOL their economy is RUINED XD". To people inside the UK, the economy was very low down on their priority list. How do I know that? The Remain campaign didn't shut the fuck up for over a year straight on how the economy would be shattered if we left. George Osborne was so desperate that he asked many EU finance ministers to publicly say that they would shun the UK if it left the UK (which they have come out after Brexit and said that some of them said that because Osborne asked them to), calling in favours from across the globe for people to shout about how bad it would be for our economy. He announced an emergency budget that he would implement if we leave the EU. It was instantly dubbed the 'punishment budget'. It was a £30 billion package of tax rises and spending cuts. Immediately, 65 MPs of his own party said they would force him to resign if he ever implemented such a budget, because it was quite clearly a scare tactic. It even scuppered his own chances to become next PM which everyone expected a few years ago. The point is, we were told about the woes to the economy for an eternity, but guess what, they still lost the vote. So people should realise leaving the EU is not about the economy, so repeatedly going on about it is just missing the point. We will be worse off economically? Probably. Will it be as bad as Remainers say? No. Can we rebounce in the long-term given the fact we can now make our own decisions? Certainly. It was a vote for the long-term.
kneepel said:
Funny enough, the most business heavy region in Britain (London) voted to remain.
Thankfully Brexit has slashed business confidence to an all-time low though, you know, because a quarter of FSB members export to the EU.
Okay let's get one thing straight here. London has a population of over 9 million. It is the most multi-cultural and diverse city in the world. It has a very, very large number of immigrants from around the world. I've lived here all my life. Is it really a shock to you that a city such as that voted to Remain, given how inclusive to immigrants it is? Let's not spread misinformation that London's large Remain vote was because of it being a "business heavy" region. The same voting trends were seen in other large cities such as Manchester and Bristol, also cities with a large immigrant population. (London was actually the only
region in the entirety of England to vote to remain)
kneepel said:
I understand it was the UK as a whole, but this is where the conflict of interest comes into play. You have Northern Ireland and Scotland with overwhelming Remain percentages, while Britain voted as a whole to Leave. There was just an election by the way which resulted in the SNP winning, coupled with an overwhelming majority of the Scottish public voting to remain, a referendum may not be far off at all.
The candidates to become the next PM have all already come out and said they would not offer Scotland a second referendum. Sturgeon isn't stupid. She knows she would most likely lose a second referendum right now. Will there be one in years down the line? Yes. But we knew that before we left the EU. Nothing has really changed.
Northern Ireland literally just elected a new parliament with the majority party being the one that publicly campaigned for Leave. The only ones clamouring for a referendum there are the minority party. It isn't the same situation and is very, very unlikely to happen. Again, misinformation spread by multiple news sites who just focus on the "Armageddon" theme of the result, not the facts.
kneepel said:
Years of economic uncertainty is not healthy, it's the reason why the Pound is continuing to drop against the Dollar and why there is somewhat of a "brain-drain" happening right now.
Read my paragraph on the economic uncertainty above.
kneepel said:
Still very bad for the millions who live as UK residents in other countries, or frequently travel back and forth. Whether or not if it's a negative consequence or not is left up to opinion I suppose.
I'll be honest. I wouldn't really give a fuck about the Brits living in retirement in their villa in sunny Spain if I was voting. It appeared I wasn't alone.
Either way, reform of freedom of movement was absolutely the #1 reason people voted leave, by an absolutely landslide. It is not a negative of Brexit, like you said it was, to the majority of the country. Everyone on both sides agree immigration needs to be reformed, the people on Remain side simply said that leaving the EU wasn't the way to do it. Over half the country didn't agree.
There is a possibility of there being a mutual agreement so there can be freedom of workers, so people who want to work in other EU states still can. We will see. It depends on our new government and the negotiations. We can come back to that in a few years.
Also there's currently 3 million EU nationals currently in the UK, with 2 million Brits working or living in the EU. Any negotations, in my opinion, are very unlikely to result in the departure of any of these EU nationals, and likewise for the Brits living in the EU. It would be very weird to impose restrospective laws. I don't think any of the beneficiaries of freedom of movement so far will be affected by Brexit, only in the future.
kneepel said:
63% of people aged 18-44 voted to leave, and interestingly enough, the higher of an education someone received, the more likely they were to vote remain.
Age =/= wisdom, after living in a retirement community all my life, I can safely say this.
I wasn't being truly serious when I said "fuck all seniors!", though it is pretty interesting to see the ridiculous age gap between leave and remain voters.
I know the figures. It doesn't invalidate the vote of over half the electorate. First I suggested to you an age restriction on the referendum, how about an IQ test before you can vote? It's democracy. I wish the same entitled students I mentioned earlier would realise there's more people in the country than them.
I was suggesting a reason as to why the older population voted the way they were. I wasn't suggesting age = wisdom explicitly. The point was there's a multitude of reasons, and it's not fair to say they "fucked it up for the rest of us". I think that's ludicrous to say.
kneepel said:
Funny enough, there still is somewhat of a chance the UK could not leave. Holyrood could withhold consent to leave the EU, that doesn't mean they'll 'block' it, but they could sure make it a lot harder although this is very unlikely to happen.
The Referendum was not legally binding, so it's not required for Cameron to invoke Article 50 and begin the process, though he would probably be stoned to death if he did that.
First statement is a myth. Scotland's parliament do not have the constitutional power to stop anything at all in any way shape or form. Sturgeon went to the EU for talks and went back to Scotland with her tails between her legs. The EU have made it clear they're not going to make any special arrangements for Scotland.
I know it was not legally binding. It actually triggers me when I read people saying we might not leave the EU. Of course it isn't required for Cameron to invoke Article 50. Every single notable politician who has any ounce of power in government has said the result must be respected and article 50 invoked. There is an absolute consensus on that. The people who think otherwise are the self-righteous, entitled students who signed the petition to reverse the result of the referendum and are holding on to false hope. More people voted to leave the EU than anything else in the history of the United Kingdom, over 17 million people. The result is not going to be denied by any politician who doesn't want to go down in history as the PM that denied the will of the British people and ignored a democratic vote. It's happening. The sooner people accept that the better. (I accept you said he'd be stoned to death, so you should have realised that while it is a possibility, there's 0 chance of it happening so no point in mentioning it)
Also Cameron has already said he isn't going to invoke it. He's leaving it for the next PM to decide when to invoke it. Some candidates for the PM have said they'll delay it until next year (Theresa May), others have said they'd trigger it immediately (Andrea Leadsom). Either way, it's happening.
kneepel said:
after you respond though i'm going to stop, because political arguments go nowhere.
ayy lmao here's to being canadian.
It's not a confrontational argument. You're clearly very negative on the prospects of the UK after Brexit and I think you've bought into the exact type of misinformation during the campaign you're talking about so I'm showing you the other side of the coin. There's no hard feelings, you can respond if you want, or just take on board some of my points and not respond. I don't mind. My posts were for other people to read to if they're interested in it. The Leave side is so misrepresented in the media, even supposedly "unbiased" news sources such as the BBC have grossly misreported during the campaign.