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[Alx]

Countries like England Germany Italy Spain have an undercurrent of people who would vote leave, probably 30-35% and mostly motivated by xenophobia and racism.

What has happened is Gove and Johnson have sold people in the middle a lie, a pipe dream. That we can load up the removal truck and leave the crumbling EU. Unleash the shackles on the UK in business and decide better who comes in and out and the rate of immigration if we vote Leave.

(...)

What is stunning is how the lies and nightmare was allowed to be played out, as if somehow people at the top want to poke and prod the EU or fancy their chances. How a simple 2% majority can be called crystal clear that Britain has decide to leave.

Gullible and vulnerable people with real issues have been hoodwinked.

If anything is to be taken from this disaster, is that something has to be done to counter populist propaganda in major elections like that. Hopefully it will serve as a cautionary tale for other countries (although the campaign hasn't really be followed around here, unfortunately), and UK really needs to do something about it, be it about empty promises from politicians or sickening front pages from tabloids.

 

[SymbiantXenos]

That would actually be hilarious. I'd vote for him just on the principle of the balls it would take to do such a thing.

It'd be one hell of a plot twist

 

[GamerMax73]

The new leader will call an election - Boris's camp are already telling MPs that's part of his plan going forward. That will delay article 50 even further.

The plan is, delay activating article 50 long enough so that the economic costs of fully leaving are seen and understood, and make the case that it is better being in and having influence than being out, having no influence and still being subject to the laws.

While I agree the new leader must call an early election. I can't see how a pro-leave candidate can win an early election on that ticket. Sorry but that's political suicide for Boris. He ran as pro-leave, if he's elected he's pro-leave, in a general election campaign he must run as pro-leave, if he wins an early general election he must push the button.

The only way the delay article 50 plan can work for the Tories is to appoint a moderate pro-remainer like Teresa May and for her to win an early general election on a 'lets see the outcome of negotiations' ticket.

 

[Clear]

None, he is despised by the tories more then anyone else. If Cameron could have done it without giving ukip even more attention there would have been a news story one day about Farrage being found dead at home after a suicide, apparently shooting himself in the back of the head... twice.

Although to be fair most of the UK would have gone 'yep that sounds reasonable, best burn the body and move on.'

Farage is such an obvious fascist cunt, he's got no chance. Ironically the only political position he was ever likely to get was that of an MEP, because most people simply don't give a shit about those positions enough to vote!

 

[Darkstorne]

This is a cop out. In the age of the internet there is zero excuse for not being informed with the only exception of those who cannot access the internet.

And yet it's distressingly common. A huge number of Leave voters rely on their tabloid of choice for info, and because our Facebook feeds are 90% like-minded friends and family... we all live in a circle-jerk online community of confirmation bias. A lot of them probably still think they've done the right thing.

 

[teiresias]

He has no reason to call for article 50 because he'll want to negotiate the post-exit partnership with the EU through this process. He'll say it's the EU that is dragging things out, and that they are free to force the UK out now if they want to.

If they don't, blame is on them for not working with him to manage a proper exit, if they do kick the UK out then he'll blame them for rushing things through.

Considering the other thread and that many that voted Leave apparently thought all the immigrants would be deported by now would that voting block really care if the process was "rushed through"? They obviously don't care about the actual consequences.

 

[jakonovski]

nail meet head

I don't think that worked quite how it should've. Or maybe it did!

 

[PJV3]

I see that we are continuing with the hyperbole that all leave voters are xenophobic racists.

The oh so tolerant left i praise you for finally showing your true colours.

I'm left wing and don't believe that, I don't see how it helps. Dennis Skinner, John Mann, Arthur Scargill all for leaving and all left

Spoiler

Corbyn as well

 

[dealer-]

I see that we are continuing with the hyperbole that all leave voters are xenophobic racists.

The oh so tolerant left i praise you for finally showing your true colours.

Nobody believes that but the reality has been explained numerous times.

 

[GamerMax73]

She should. Quite simply, if she has that power and she doesn't use it then there's no point having her.

She's good for the tourism industry.

 

[nature boy]

Scotland welcome to join EU, Merkel ally says

An independent Scotland would be welcome to join the European Union, a senior German lawmaker and ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel has said after Britain's vote to leave the bloc.

"The EU will still consist of 28 member states, as I expect a new independence referendum in Scotland, which will then be successful," said Gunther Krichbaum, a member of Merkel's conservatives and chairman of the European affairs committee in parliament.

"We should respond quickly to an application for admission from the EU-friendly country," he told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

Well then.

 

[twobear]

Are countries that are members of the EU prevented from raising minimum wage to offset the downwards presure on wages that free movement can potentially cause?

 

[Ether_Snake]

Considering the other thread and that many that voted Leave apparently thought all the immigrants would be deported by now would that voting block really care if the process was "rushed through"? They obviously don't care about the actual consequences.

Like I said; you have a large chunk that don't want out, so they won't be calling for Boris to enact article 50. Second, among those that did vote leave, many don't want to leave, and many will claim that it's the responsible thing to do to take time to make a proper exit. Only a small margin, mainly UKIP folks, would complain. He'd get attacked by the opposition, but not for not enacting article 50.

Scotland welcome to join EU, Merkel ally says




Well then.

Merkel will contradict him within 24 hours.

 

[darkwing]

Scotland welcome to join EU, Merkel ally says




Well then.

takes two to tango though

 

[Respect]

This is a cop out. In the age of the internet there is zero excuse for not being informed with the only exception of those who cannot access the internet.

And that correlates perfectly to how voting went in regard to age groups, younger generations tended to vote "remain" while older generations tended to vote "leave."

 

[PipefishUK]

I don't see offering a more informed referendum before jumping as being a democratic failure.

Let's see the goods before we buy.

I don't think I realised just how uninformed some leave voters were, or indeed half the fucking leave campaign.

Yeah, now we've seen a glimpse of it we need to correct the fucking timeline - fast.

 

[teiresias]

Scotland welcome to join EU, Merkel ally says




Well then.

My my. Hehe.

 

[nOoblet16]

Scotland welcome to join EU, Merkel ally says




Well then.

wellthereitis.gif

 

[ThoughtsOfSpeaking]

While I agree the new leader must call an early election. I can't see how a pro-leave candidate can win an early election on that ticket. Sorry but that's political suicide for Boris. He ran as pro-leave, if he's elected he's pro-leave, in a general election campaign he must run as pro-leave, if he wins an early general election he must push the button.

The only way the delay article 50 plan can work for the Tories is to appoint a moderate pro-remainer like Teresa May and for her to win an early general election on a 'lets see the outcome of negotiations' ticket.

Boris will play the bumbling baffoon that didn't know what he was doing.

The brilliance of his act is that he is possibly the only politician that could actually admit publicly that he underestimated the consequences of a potential Brexit and he has now changed his mind. It doesn't really matter if the north howl in rage and don't vote for him, as under traditional party lines, they never would have in the first place.

All he needs to do is convince the conservative base that it's a bad idea.

 

[TheLaughingStock]

The main problem with the EU is probably that it doesn't appeal to nationalistic feelings people have, that alone would be a dealbreaker in the US, but in europe we managed so far.

At the end of the day european nations are so dependent on a construct like the EU that even in case of failure we would just try again. We can't go back to "sovereign nation states".

To the US the EU might seem like the wet dream of some leftie globalists, but in the end I'd say its one of the smartest moves europe could have come up with and honestly I think its the most promising concept for future forms of government.
Its a step to move beyond nation states, maybe a little ahead of its time.

It's not about nationalistic feelings being better per se. It's that it can and has been a significant piece of stability. Folks stick their fingers in their ears when it comes to group conflict in terms of ethnocentrism, the numbers game, and competition, but face the music you need degrees of separation to comprehend external threats and foster internal cohesion. Ideologies that argue unfettered movement and unification as the way forward have to rationalize how the EU and the Eurozone are experiencing political and economic failure. And I'm confident the top societies that do much more on their own as sovereign states and more importantly see success on the global stage aren't falling over themselves to emulate the EU and its corresponding monetary set-up.

At the end of the day, one of the strongest EU members that controls its banking system and benefits from a ton of exemptions couldn't shield itself from the kind of political and economic turmoil that you see in many countries that adopted virtually every rule and guideline and opened themselves up like they were told to. What do they have to show for it in 2016? It's a shame Mr. Trump hasn't seized the opportunity to move to any of these places because I think it would be an easy W. These people would eat Mr. Trump's rhetoric up even more than folks do in the US.

And you know the situation is pretty sad all around. Elites in the EU not only have been a big help in engineering political volcanoes, abysmal growth, double & triple dips into recession, and youth unemployment that makes Britain's peak youth unemployment rate look attractive...they think they're doing great work on top of that.

I don't see how the EU would be ahead of its time because it's a place for weak economies to gather and for bureaucrats continue to push silly ideas like the Eurozone. You don't want a bunch of weak economies hanging like an anchor directly around your neck rather than being a burden indirectly. And you definitely don't want to model treasury tools after the Eurozone by allowing investors to take instruments of the government from country to country. The US for example would be throwing over 200 years of making payments on time and in full out the window. Letting people, orgs, and financial assets free roam with no controls is a prime recipe for catastrophic failure.

 

[-Plasma Reus-]

He has no reason to call for article 50 because he'll want to negotiate the post-exit partnership with the EU through this process. He'll say it's the EU that is dragging things out, and that they are free to force the UK out now if they want to.

If they don't, blame is on them for not working with him to manage a proper exit, if they do kick the UK out then he'll blame them for rushing things through.

With the way things are going, if the EU had any legal way of doing it, it feels like they actually would kick the UK out.

 

[ClosingADoor]

Are countries that are members of the EU prevented from raising minimum wage to offset the downwards presure on wages that free movement can potentially cause?

No. Minimum wage is the nations own business.

 

[jakonovski]

Are countries that are members of the EU prevented from raising minimum wage to offset the downwards presure on wages that free movement can potentially cause?

Of course not. It's just that allowing undercutting is a nice combination of profit and fomenting xenophobia for the neoliberal political forces.

 

[Pandy]

'The person with the most thought-through plan, as evidence by the past 48 hours, is, astonishingly, Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland.'

nail meet head

During the Scottish Independance referendum, the SNP Scottish Government produced a 'blueprint' for making an independant Scotland. It got a lot of criticism from the 'No' camp who tried to pick apart the fine detail of something that was essentially an unknowable wish list, but at least they had something. They had a starting point for negotiations, something which people could look at and think, "Well, this might not be exactly how it goes down, but the process will proceed roughly along these lines."

The Leave campaign deliberately avoided duplicating this, because it meant the Remain campaign couldn't attack them on any specific plans. Not having a plan was the plan all along. With a bit of luck, Johnson, Gove and May are frantically scribbling one together right now.

 

[Ether_Snake]

No. Minimum wage is the nations own business.

Not 100% true, EU-countries are fairly limited in what they can do because it all goes back to not having control of their currencies. And then add to this the ideas that governments must run non-deficitary budgets, etc. Countries are not free to do as they want as you might think under the EU.

 

[Palculator]

Scotland welcome to join EU, Merkel ally says


Well then.

I love the Scots! Hope they can work out a deal.

 

[dumbo]

The only way the delay article 50 plan can work for the Tories is to appoint a moderate pro-remainer like Teresa May and for her to win an early general election on a 'lets see the outcome of negotiations' ticket.

Once we invoke article 50, it doesn't appear that there is any way to stop it. Waiting until the negotiations are complete would be too late.

The only obvious way to avoid brexit is to have an election before the process begins, and for a party to stand with a manifesto commitment to abort the brexit process.

 

[twobear]

Not 100% true, EU-countries are fairly limited in what they can do because it all goes back to not having control of their currencies. And then add to this the ideas that governments must run non-deficitary budgets, etc. Countries are not free to do as they want as you might think under the EU.

I'm talking about the UK, not a country in the Eurozone.

 

[nOoblet16]

I love the Scots! Hope they can work out a deal.

How I wish Liverpool was a part of Scotland.

 

[jakonovski]

Not 100% true, EU-countries are fairly limited in what they can do because it all goes back to not having control of their currencies. And then add to this the ideas that governments must run non-deficitary budgets, etc. Countries are not free to do as they want as you might think under the EU.

Non-Greece, non-Finland countries regularly wipe their arses with these EU controls.

 

[Jackpot]

So IDS claimed he never said they'd spend £350 million on the NHS.

 

[RedSparrows]

http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/

worth a read:

In this context, the slogan ‘take back control’ was a piece of political genius. It worked on every level between the macroeconomic and the psychoanalytic. Think of what it means on an individual level to rediscover control. To be a person without control (for instance to suffer incontinence or a facial tick) is to be the butt of cruel jokes, to be potentially embarrassed in public. It potentially reduces one’s independence. What was so clever about the language of the Leave campaign was that it spoke directly to this feeling of inadequacy and embarrassment, then promised to eradicate it. The promise had nothing to do with economics or policy, but everything to do with the psychological allure of autonomy and self-respect. Farrage’s political strategy was to take seriously communities who’d otherwise been taken for granted for much of the past 50 years.

This doesn’t necessarily have to translate into nationalistic pride or racism (although might well do), but does at the very least mean no longer being laughed at. Those that have ever laughed at ‘chavs’ (such as the millionaire stars of Little Britain) have something to answer for right now, as Rhian E. Jones’ Clampdown argued. The willingness of Nigel Farrage to weather the scornful laughter of metropolitan liberals (for instance through his periodic appearances on Have I Got News For You) could equally have made him look brave in the eyes of many potential Leave voters. I can’t help feeling that every smug, liberal, snobbish barb that Ian Hislop threw his way on that increasingly hateful programme was ensuring that revenge would be all the greater, once it arrived. The giggling, from which Boris Johnson also benefited handsomely, needs to stop.

This taps into a much broader cultural and political malaise, that also appears to be driving the rise of Donald Trump in the US. Amongst people who have utterly given up on the future, political movements don’t need to promise any desirable and realistic change. If anything, they are more comforting and trustworthy if predicated on the notion that the future is beyond rescue, for that chimes more closely with people’s private experiences. The discovery of the ‘Case Deaton effect’ in the US (unexpected rising mortality rates amongst white working classes) is linked to rising alcohol and opiate abuse and to rising suicide rates. It has also been shown to correlate closely to geographic areas with the greatest support for Trump. I don’t know of any direct equivalent to this in the UK, but it seems clear that – beyond the rhetoric of ‘Great Britain’ and ‘democracy’ – Brexit was never really articulated as a viable policy, and only ever as a destructive urge, which some no doubt now feel guilty for giving way to.

Thatcher and Reagan rode to power by promising a brighter future, which never quite materialised other than for a minority with access to elite education and capital assets. The contemporary populist promise to make Britain or American ‘great again’ is not made in the same way. It is not a pledge or a policy platform; it’s not to be measured in terms of results. When made by the likes of Boris Johnson, it’s not even clear if it’s meant seriously or not. It’s more an offer of a collective real-time halucination, that can be indulged in like a video game.

The attempt to reduce politics to a utilitarian science (most often, to neo-classical economics) eventually backfires, once the science in question then starts to become politicised. ‘Evidence-based policy’ is now far too long in the tooth to be treated entirely credulously, and people tacitly understand that it often involves a lot of ‘policy-based evidence’. When the Remain camp appealed to their ‘facts’, forecasts, and models, they hoped that these would be judged as outside of the fray of politics. More absurdly, they seemed to imagine that the opinions of bodies such as the IMF might be viewed as ‘independent’. Unfortunately, economics has been such a crucial prop for political authority over the past 35 years that it is now anything but outside of the fray of politics.

In place of facts, we now live in a world of data. Instead of trusted measures and methodologies being used to produce numbers, a dizzying array of numbers is produced by default, to be mined, visualised, analysed and interpreted however we wish. If risk modelling (using notions of statistical normality) was the defining research technique of the 19th and 20th centuries, sentiment analysis is the defining one of the emerging digital era. We no longer have stable, ‘factual’ representations of the world, but unprecedented new capacities to sense and monitor what is bubbling up where, who’s feeling what, what’s the general vibe.

Financial markets are themselves far more like tools of sentiment analysis (representing the mood of investors) than producers of ‘facts’. This is why it was so absurd to look to currency markets and spread-betters for the truth of what would happen in the referendum: they could only give a sense of what certain people at felt would happen in the referendum at certain times. Given the absence of any trustworthy facts (in the form of polls), they could then only provide a sense of how investors felt about Britain’s national mood: a sentiment regarding a sentiment. As the 23rd June turned into 24th June, it became manifestly clear that prediction markets are little more than an aggregative representation of the same feelings and moods that one might otherwise detect via twitter. They’re not in the business of truth-telling, but of mood-tracking

If the EU worked well for any nation in Europe, it was the UK. Thanks to the scepticism and paranoia of Gordon Brown, Britain dodged the catastrophic error of the single currency. As a result, it has been relatively free to pursue the fiscal policies that it deems socially and politically desirable. The fact that it has consistently chosen neoliberal ones is not really the fault of the EU, the stability and growth pact notwithstanding. But in contrast to southern European members of the EU, Britain is scarcely constrained at all. Instead, it has benefited from economic stability, a clear international regulatory framework and a sense of cultural fraternity with other member states. One could even argue that, being in the EU but outside of the Eurozone, Britain has had the best deal of any member state during the 21st century.

This has been abandoned. Meanwhile, nations that might genuinely describe themselves as ‘shackled’, have suffered such serious threats to their democracy as to have unelected Prime Ministers imposed upon them by the Troika, and have had their future forcibly removed thanks to the European Union, might look at Brexit and wonder.

Sorry, but it's interesting.

 

[KonradLaw]

Scotland welcome to join EU, Merkel ally says




Well then.

Makes sense. TImes are thought and this would allow us to save some money by avoiding redoing all the EU flags

 

[ClosingADoor]

Not 100% true, EU-countries are fairly limited in what they can do because it all goes back to not having control of their currencies. And then add to this the ideas that governments must run non-deficitary budgets, etc. Countries are not free to do as they want as you might think under the EU.

What does that have to do with the minimum wage? A country can raise or lower their minimum wage as they see fit as far as I know.

 

[deefol]

The Finances Services Sector needs it - London is the world's largest financial centre. Heck the services industry in general make up nearly 80% of the UK GDP. Not that that's related to migration. But to the former in some key parts, free movement in Labour is.
You would wreck the economy. Please abandon your prejudices. Or try and come up with an alternative.


edit: checked: it's 78%.

The finance sector already have plans in place to move their operations; so it is too late for the UK to offer any last minute alternatives as most of those firms would look at the UK as an uncertain place to operate.

They just like somewhere they can set up a base and carry out their operations without interruptions, not somewhere they have to move about every other year or so. Which could also mean some firms could shut down their European operations entirely as other EU countries might decide to have a referundum

 

[Hasney]

So IDS claimed he never said they'd spend £350 million on the NHS.

They were just suggestions!!

 

[Ether_Snake]

What does that have to do with the minimum wage? A country can raise or lower their minimum wage as they see fit as far as I know.

Tell that to Greece.

 

[gofreak]

And yet it's distressingly common. A huge number of Leave voters rely on their tabloid of choice for info, and because our Facebook feeds are 90% like-minded friends and family... we all live in a circle-jerk online community of confirmation bias. A lot of them probably still think they've done the right thing.

I hope I don't sound elitist but a huge factor in Brexit has been that whole swathes of folk have skipped through the education system ill prepared for the modern world. On one level this manifests itself in the media playing surrogate teacher, but on a more fundamental level it has created an 'underclass' that resents the success of better skilled foreigners who are relative newbies to the country. If people were generally happy with their lives, their opportunities, their skills, this wouldn't have happened. Though not exclusively so, I think this was in large part a failure of successive generations of domestic policy, not the EU. People now want to ignore the flat open world before them and instead compete on a contrived local playing field.

 

[Chinner]

If in some magical scenario we're about to avoid leaving the EU, our reputation is ruined anyway. They'll have no confidence that we will try again in the near future.

 

[Carl2291]

I see that we are continuing with the hyperbole that all leave voters are xenophobic racists.

The oh so tolerant left i praise you for finally showing your true colours.

Don't tar all the left with the same brush.

All sides of the political spectrum have idiots that should be ignored. Just ignore them.

 

[twobear]

They were just suggestions!!

I mean, to be perfectly fair, this is partly what happens when you're running a referendum about something significant and one of your choices is not (directly) the elected government of the country. The Leave campaign were making promises they could never keep. This was pointed out at various points during the refendum run-up, but I supposed nobody expected them to be quite so bare-faced about their lies in the aftermath.

 

[nature boy]

Merkel deputy: No half-partnership for Britain
Sigmar Gabriel, Angela Merkel's deputy and coalition partner, has broken from her conciliatory tone and demanded Britain gets no "half-partnership".

"The British have now decided to go. We will not hold talks about what the EU can still offer the Britons to keep them in. It is clear: You can't be a bit pregnant. Nor have half a partnership."

Mr Gabriel said David Cameron had committed a "grand and historic blunder" and said Britons will "one day curse" Boris Johnson.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...-benn-sacked-from-shadow-cabinet-by-jeremy-c/

One day? LOL.

Wonder if this means "no Norway" solution.

 

[Clear]

With the way things are going, if the EU had any legal way of doing it, it feels like they actually would kick the UK out.

That's just empty sabre-rattling. If there weren't serious ramifications for the EU in the case of the UK leaving, this wouldn't be such a big deal.

Turning a relatively rich and populous nation from a partner into a competitor is a significant change.

 

[twobear]

Tell that to Greece.

Sorry, I suppose I should have been more specific.

Was there anything preventing the UK from raising minimum wage to offset the potential downward pressure caused by free movement?

 

[Respect]

http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/

worth a read:

Sorry, but it's interesting.

The illusion of control.

 

[heidern]

If there is a GE and the referendum result is on the table then I could see Tory and Labour MPs going independent for the election if they oppose the party line. UKIP might pick up votes, perhaps we could even have a hung parliament with Boris as PM and Farage as deputy. If Scotland goes independent with the increased majority they might even be able to hang onto power in a second GE.

 

[oti]

Makes sense. TImes are thought and this would allow us to save some money by avoiding redoing all the EU flags

Yeah otherwise we would have to burn the old flags OH WAIT.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...test-against-forced-immigration-10141197.html

 

[Kadayi]

I doubt we'll see article 50 before 22 October 2017 (next German Federal elections). Germany and France don't want the headache of formal Brexit negotiations during an election year.

It's not up to Germany to decide. If on Monday the UK economy starts tanking dramatically Cameron will be on the first flight to Brussels with a Tory Whip up his arse to formally invoke it, regardless of how reluctant he might personally be is to do the deed himself.

Sure once it's underway there's every opportunity for it to get drawn out in terms of process, but establishing the roadmap of transition is going to happen sooner rather than later, otherwise not only is the UK economy likely to flatline through investor uncertainty but the next election will be a bloodbath for any politician who fails to demand the referendum be acted upon.

This conceit that somehow the leave camp are all going to be 'I made a huge mistake' and eat humble pie is a pipedream spun by a media still reeling from Friday's results, citing a few hangovers as a tidal wave of regret. If anything procrastination by either the government or the EU to start the process will simply encourage many of these people to double down in the face of what they would see as EU tyranny and a failure of democracy.

 

[twobear]

Yeah otherwise we would have to burn the old flags OH WAIT.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...test-against-forced-immigration-10141197.html

FUCKING EU FIRE PROOFING REGULATIONS

 

[phisheep]

This is a cop out. In the age of the internet there is zero excuse for not being informed with the only exception of those who cannot access the internet.

And yet it's distressingly common. A huge number of Leave voters rely on their tabloid of choice for info, and because our Facebook feeds are 90% like-minded friends and family... we all live in a circle-jerk online community of confirmation bias. A lot of them probably still think they've done the right thing.

Quite. The internet plus some basic research skills plus critical thinking plus bullshit detector plus some knowledge of UK and EU structures plus maths and basic economics.

How common is that again?

It's no good complaining about the electorate, the electorate is what it is. It is the politician's job to reach them, which Leave did brilliantly and Remain didn't.

Are countries that are members of the EU prevented from raising minimum wage to offset the downwards presure on wages that free movement can potentially cause?

No, but the immediate effects of free movement are felt mostly among the self-employed, who are not subject to minimum wage.

Boris will play the bumbling baffoon that didn't know what he was doing.

The brilliance of his act is that he is possibly the only politician that could actually admit publicly that he underestimated the consequences of a potential Brexit and he has now changed his mind. It doesn't really matter if the north howl in rage and don't vote for him, as under traditional party lines, they never would have in the first place.

All he needs to do is convince the conservative base that it's a bad idea.

I think Boris could pull this off. He is probably being, erhem, "persuaded" of that right now in some bunker somewhere.