• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The UK votes to leave the European Union

Status
Not open for further replies.

dumbo

Member
They can apply to re-enter the Union.
The EU-members would have to approved their reentering, which I don't see happening.

That's quite incorrect - the EU would certainly accept the UK back into the union. The UK is a huge market, and it's everyone's best interest that it prospers *inside* the EU.

However they would not retain the advantages that they had beforehand. The opt-outs, the rebate, being the financial center of the EU - those would likely not be returned.
 

Calamari41

41 > 38
I don't know where the clip is from or what its context is within the story it's taking place in. I just was referring to the quote alone, and the context it was used in. I don't know if I interpreted it correctly of course.

It's from the movie Star Wars, and the line is said in response to the leader of a vast Republic of planets declaring emergency dictatorial powers (directly analogizing Hitler) in response to a group of planets attempting to leave the organization and a trumped up assassination attempt.
 
To which they'd probably answer its been over 40 years since we joined, we've given it a good go, and its still not working for us.

Given it a good go might be arguable given the amount of exemptions extended towards the UK. Regardless however, I think we'll figure out soon enough how well the EU was ACTUALLY working out for them.
 
The Scots had the chance to take their future into their own hands, but declined, even after centuries of domination and ridicule at the hands of the English.

Is this new development really enough to give them a change of heart? The stubbornness seems strong.

I hope it does. The Scots deserve better, and so do the Northern Irish. They should both leave the UK.
 
Can't believe anyone is still trying to peddle that it's not racism when literally every piece of analysis is putting it that way. Financial Times even found POSITIVE CORRELATION BETWEEN PLACES FUNDED BY THE EU AND LEAVE VOTES, which makes NO sense to anyone voting with a brain and not out of some misplaced anti-foreign feeling.

Fucking trash backwater racists and people who think they're not being racist over a false sense of sovereignty. Fuck this country.
 

Trump-poorly-educated.jpg
.
 
UK job hunters won't stop spamming my LinkedIN with job offers (me Canadian)

now pfffffffffff LOL, no way would I ever move to work there.

God bless Canada.
 

Lime

Member
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...litics-poisoned-racism?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Like the dog that chases the car only to amaze itself by catching it, those who campaigned for Brexit own what comes next. There were sound reasons why some people rejected the European Union. Sadly none of them made it to the mainstream. Instead, leave unleashed a range of demons it could not tame and then refused to face them honestly, preferring to wade to the finish line through a toxic swamp of postcolonial nostalgia, xenophobia and general disaffection.

Britain is no more sovereign today than it was yesterday. We will leave the EU but remain within the neoliberal system. Left to the mercy of the markets we are arguably now less capable of directing our affairs than we were. We are not independent. We are simply isolated.

on the Remain & Leave campaigns:

But if the question was crude the campaigns were vulgar. Sanctimonious, fearmongering and uninspiring, remain was tone-deaf to an insurrectionary mood that suffered fools more gladly than experts. Wheeling out John Major, Tony Blair and Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, they failed to realise that the surrogates they were employing represented the very establishment with which people were disillusioned. They produced budgets that didn’t add up, evoked wars that wouldn’t happen. Taxes would rise, pensions would fall, the sick would go untended.

Moreover, it never made a case for Europe, only for not leaving it on the basis that terrible things would happen. Commissioners nobody had elected and leaders of foreign states threatened us in a gentler tone but with the same purpose as they did the Greeks: “It’s your choice, don’t make the wrong one.”

Meanwhile a section of London-based commentariat anthropologised the British working class as though they were a lesser evolved breed from distant parts, all too often portraying them as bigots who did not know what was good for them. Having assumed themselves cosmopolitan, the more self-aware pundits began to realise just how parochial they were: having experienced much of the world, they discovered they didn’t know their own country as well as they might.

But if the remain campaign was incompetent and patronising, leave was both inflammatory and irresponsible.

It is a banal axiom to insist that “it’s not racist to talk about immigration”. It’s not racist to talk about black people, Jews or Muslims either. The issue is not whether you talk about them but how you talk about them and whether they ever get a chance to talk for themselves. When you dehumanise migrants, using vile imagery and language, scapegoating them for a nation’s ills and targeting them as job-stealing interlopers, you stoke prejudice and foment hatred.

The chutzpah with which the Tory right – the very people who had pioneered austerity, damaging jobs, services and communities – blamed migrants for the lack of resources was breathtaking. The mendacity with which a section of the press fanned those flames was nauseating. The pusillanimity of the remain campaign’s failure to counter these claims was indefensible.

Not everyone, or even most, of the people who voted leave were driven by racism. But the leave campaign imbued racists with a confidence they have not enjoyed for many decades and poured arsenic into the water supply of our national conversation.

In this atmosphere of racial animus and class contempt, political dislocation and electoral opportunism, the space for the arguments we need to have about immigration, democracy and austerity simply did not exist. This referendum raised questions it could not answer precisely because it identified problems politicians were not prepared to solve. Our politics failed us. And since it is our politics only we can fix it.

We are leaving the EU and entering a dark and uncertain period. Offered a choice between fear of the unknown or fear of the foreigner, fear inevitably won. Britain lost.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
I'm an American but this whole thing has really made me feel quite sad. I just can't stop thinking about how many lives this will negatively affect if it really goes through (which it sounds like it probably will...). All of those Brits studying, working, living in the various European countries, and all of those Europeans doing the same in Britain. They will all have their lives screwed with by this selfish act of ignorance.

My company has an office in London with whom I work rather closely, and I just can't imagine what is going through the minds of all of the non-British native employees (of which there are many).
 

RiggyRob

Member
Can't recall exactly but there are things in America voted on that unless they reach a certain majority are not carried forward, it seems wiser than this.

I know, but the calls for a recount/2nd referendum just sound petty to me - the idiots who voted Leave have to live with their decision.

Really it should be done by proportional representation, but for whatever reason the UK doesn't work like that.
 
Well for those on NeoGAF then. Not so much feeling sorry, just empathy cause if us Scots can hit eject and remain in the EU it makes things even more depressing for Remain-England.

I'd be sad to see Scotland go, but they've got to make the decision they feel is right for them. If we (the English) were held in against our will, I'm sure we'd do something about it.

Then again, knowing us, we probably wouldn't, but that's a debate for a different day.

My point exactly, look at the map, if Scotland was not voting it was a fucking landslide, the whole country apart from a few London suburbs want out...

If the media was not so London centric would not be seeing this reaction on TV.... come to a Yorkshire town and see if they feel they have been robbed

I agree. A lot of rural areas will be rejoicing.

Don't really see how any of this is true

Scotland is was 100% remain region-wise

And the primary topic of contention for Leave voters was immigration, not the EU itself

I made the classic Englishman mistake of generalising our views with Britain as a whole. My apologies.

I'm in my mid-20s, have both a degree and masters, and work in the press... but I also come from a very working class background, in a rural area.

I see both sides of the argument and in my personal experience there's always been debate surrounding the EU in general. Even when I went to universities in big cities - and it's not just immigration either.

Leave has won the referendum on immigration - but I think passionate leavers have more issues with the EU than that.


Frankly, as someone who voted to remain, I've found some of the comments made on here regarding leave voters shameful.
 
Can't recall exactly but there are things in America voted on that unless they reach a certain majority are not carried forward, it seems wiser than this.

Only because you side lost. Just stop denying the will of the people, Cameron already accept that and even say it, the will of the people must be respected and resigned as PM. People should have more respect of their democratic process.
 
Can't believe anyone is still trying to peddle that it's not racism when literally every piece of analysis is putting it that way. Financial Times even found POSITIVE CORRELATION BETWEEN PLACES FUNDED BY THE EU AND LEAVE VOTES, which makes NO sense to anyone voting with a brain and not out of some misplaced anti-foreign feeling.

Fucking trash backwater racists and people who think they're not being racist over a false sense of sovereignty. Fuck this country.

It's not racism, just xenophobia.

 

pitchfork

Member
So..

Absolutely shattered (36 hours without any sleep), got home from work around midnight and stayed up to watch the results come in.

Social media has been a fucking shitshow this morning and i'm far far too tired (and wound up after endless arguments throughout the night) to get into any debates on GAF about 'why' I voted LEAVE, but I stand by it and fully believe we ultimately made the right decision in an increasingly failing EU

Stay calm and be respectful of other peoples opinions..

A little light hearted humor is more than welcome though : )

I'm off to bed

Cheers!
 
It's a fine piece of comedy that people rather talking about a breaking apart of the United Kingdom than of the EU now.

The EU is only in danger of breaking apart if the UK succeeds and its economy recovers bar a few bruises. If the UK's economy collapses or at least takes a major blow, as it seems to be going towards, the EU is in a prime position to use the UK's failure as an example as to why EU membership is profitable.

And that's also, I believe, why the EU is trying to push out the UK ASAP as well. They know full well that leaving the British situation to fester within them is going to spread the infection to other countries, especially the ones that are already exchanging longing looks with dropping out of the EU (this seems to particularly be the case for the Netherlands, Sweden and Austria, but also other nations like France and Italy have those sentiments).

If the EU shows its muscle, though, and makes it absolutely clear that quitting means no candies anymore, it'll be a strong deterrent for other countries to leave.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Given it a good go might be arguable given the amount of exemptions extended towards the UK. Regardless however, I think we'll figure out soon enough how well the EU was ACTUALLY working out for them.

Well doesn't that by itself suggest a historic schism in political interests? Not to mention lack of monetary union, or even the ERM?
 

Acorn

Member
American checking in here:

All these stories about Leave voters that didn't think their vote would actually matter: are they just idiots or was there some kind of campaigning from either side with this message? Or was it the press acting like Remain was a sure thing?
Idiots. Stone cold sun reading, bacon butty, union jack tattoo having idiots.
 

Tak3n

Banned
after sitting up all night, the excitement of results coming in were brilliant.... the part where the remain campaign realised they needed Birmingham to come in for them and the drama when they realised Birmingham stood strong was just pure drama
 
No it really isn't. The EU isn't going to recognise a country unilaterally declaring itself independent like that in any way, shape or form - very few countries on earth will do. I'm absolutely positive that the EU would love Scotland to join, and if a legally binding referendum were held that voted for independence would absolutely roll out the red carpet - but that just won't happen. There's no appetite from any party ion Westminster apart from the SNP to agree to another referendum. So unless something weird happens where a minority government needs to pass something so desperately that they let Scotland become independent, then Scotland's hands are tied.

To be honest, an event like this would push me to actually revolt (peacefully of course). The Scottish have no reason to continue the UK, and I'd basically just pretend to be independent starting today.

And the EU would probably do a good bit to help them. It'd be a huge threat for other exiters; if you vote Leave, then we'll prop up your Remain folks and shatter your country. That's a helluva deterrent.
 

Nicktendo86

Member
So..

Absolutely shattered (36 hours without any sleep), got home from work around midnight and stayed up to watch the results come in.

Social media has been a fucking shitshow this morning and i'm far far too tired (and wound up after endless arguments throughout the night) to get into any debates on GAF about 'why' I voted LEAVE, but I stand by it and fully believe we ultimately made the right decision in an increasingly failing EU

Stay calm and be respectful of other peoples opinions..

A little light hearted humor is more than welcome though : )

I'm off to bed

Cheers!
Amen.
 
We're fucked. I'm living in Germany, but the UK is fucked for the next 20 years minimum. What an utterly disastrous decision. Xenophobia and lies won out over facts and figures. What a time to be alive.

I don't feel English anymore.
 

Audioboxer

Member
I'd be sad to see Scotland go, but they've got to make the decision they feel is right for them. If we (the English) were held in against our will, I'm sure we'd do something about it.

Then again, knowing us, we probably wouldn't, but that's a debate for a different day.



I agree. A lot of rural areas will be rejoicing.



I made the classic Englishman mistake of generalising our views with Britain as a whole. My apologies.

I'm in my mid-20s, have both a degree and masters, and work in the press... but I also come from a very working class background, in a rural area.

I see both sides of the argument and in my personal experience there's always been debate surrounding the EU in general. Even when I went to universities in big cities - and it's not just immigration either.

Leave has won the referendum on immigration - but I think passionate leavers have more issues with the EU than that.


Frankly, as someone who voted to remain, I've found some of the comments made on here regarding leave voters shameful.

I'd hope so, but that is the issue for English remain right now, sadly for you guys England as a country voted no by a landslide.

For your own sake I'd try to keep person to person bickering low, as usual your politicians are the ones who let you down with a web of lies, mismanagement, fuckery and just outright nonsense. London/English politics is rotten to the core. Outside of a few individual MPs being genuine compassionate humans. One of whom you just lost to a cold blooded killing.
 

Majukun

Member
Unbelievable. I voted leave for reasons of sovereignty and because I do not agree with the direction if the EU with ever closer union. The answer for problems always seems to be more EU, which is not the answer.

Shocked and unbelievably happy today. The prophets of doom will be proved wrong, a cordial deal with the EU will be struck and the EU will be allowed to integrate further if it wants without us constantly getting in the way. Or it will collapse, either of those really.

The labour party are finished as well by the way. Totally disconnected from the traditional base in the north of England left behind and taken for granted by a party that can't get its head out of Islington. Ukip, if smart, will get a proper leader and will hoover up labour seats in the north.

to be honest,petty as it may be,EU has now all the reason to make UK's life a living hell..economically speaking

if your "independence" goes well and dandy,all the other nation's "let's leave EU" parties will gain a big boost and have their own referendum approved.

also,you can't really have a "cordial" deal,since that's reserved for nation that are members,that shares advantages AND duties
 

TwoDurans

"Never said I wasn't a hypocrite."
When I first heard about the Brexit I thought that there was no way it would happen. After last night's vote I'm even more concerned that we could actually have a President Trump.

Never underestimate the power of dumb people when they band together.
 
Some choice quotes from a Leave voter on FB (not my friend, thankfully):
On a potential Scottish referendum - 'Is that supposed to scare us? If they go it alone they will fold faster than a chink with a bit of paper'
On the NHS - 'if we stayed in the EU they would ruin our NHS and make us pay for our own treatments'
On the EU - 'they are planning on making a European army and in the early 30s that Austrian dick wanted the same and 70 million people paid the price.'
And 'there's no way I wanted to be a part of the United States of Europe'

* edited his original post for legibility


I am fucking speechless.
 

Raven117

Member
Like the dog that chases the car only to amaze itself by catching it, those who campaigned for Brexit own what comes next. There were sound reasons why some people rejected the European Union. Sadly none of them made it to the mainstream. Instead, leave unleashed a range of demons it could not tame and then refused to face them honestly, preferring to wade to the finish line through a toxic swamp of postcolonial nostalgia, xenophobia and general disaffection.
This seems to be a reoccurring theme right now in the world. (At least the West).

You could take that exact same sentence and change EU to Trump and it would fit perfectly.
 

Lime

Member
I'm still so flabbergasted that Brits shot themselves in the head. Like, going against your own self-interest? I just don't get it. I can't get over it. It's completely senseless and damaging for everyone.

Half of the UK is completely detached from reality and will actively harm themselves.
 

Ash735

Member
I'm hoping the Government will take a look at the votes and NOT use Racism as a scapegoat here, for DECADES the Government has been too London focused with other areas of the UK, mainly the North, getting screwed over, and now after all this time, it's all those ignored and Non-London regions that have struct back.

With Cameron stepping down I REALLY hope the parties get together and actually change how they do the usual rat race, if this can lead to anything good it should be a Government that see's every area of Britain and not just London and thinking Birmingham is the furthest North point.

To set an example for people, this would be like if in America, your Government ONLY focused on New York and California and then we're shocked to find those other states they mainly ignored turned against them. Something had to be done, it's an issue the UK has had since the 1980s.
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
Spain biggest argument he makes to the locations that want independence from Spain is:"You won't be part of the EU! DON'T LEAVE!"

Which is true, but Scotland now is not part of the EU anyway!

The point is the EU doesn't want to favor independence in Spain or elsewhere, and Spain doesn't want a referendum, so do you really think they will promote Scotland's independence? That would promote similar referendums everywhere. The EU doesn't want that kind of popular-driven initiatives. It is better for the EU to make sure Scotland never joins the EU so that anyone else understands that voting for independence risks making them leave the EU.
 

Maledict

Member
England didn't vote in a landslide. It was 46.4% Remain, 53.4% Leave. That's not a landslide.

(England's population is so much larger than everywhere else that it can't be a landslide in England and not a landslide for the UK vote as a whole).
 
"let's just respect everyone's opinions and move on"
This attitude is Bullshit, we aren't talking about your favourite film or what is the best topping for a pizza.

This has dramatic effects on millions of people and when the 'winners' arguments are based on lies, misinformation and bigotry it should damn well be called out on.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom