[…] 43% in favour of rejoining the bloc, compared with 40% who want to stay out. But once the 18% who say they don’t know are taken out, 52% back EU membership with 48% opposing it […]
That’s not a “majority of voters”, that’s a “majority of people who report to know what they want”. These are not the same populations.
These are not the same populations.
According to the brexiteers, it was!
It’s only fair to use the same measurement standard now, right?
Sure, no problem. But this time without all the unfair special rules and exceptions that the UK had.
I fear the EU will take them right back and set a precedent for leaving and rejoining without so much problems as figuring out new contracts and agreements.
I’d demand worse terms for every time they leave and then try to rejoin (aka the cut was 50% but now the contribution has to be at least 55%)I dont think so. Its in the EU interest for them to come back in. It will show others that leaving is not a good idea. However, they wkbt want it to be easy as it might encourage others to leave. They will join in the same terms as new entrants.
They will have to join the euro and they wont get their previous favourabke rebate for agriculture.
Its still a good deal for both sides but Britain make a mistake, as most are aware.
All it takes is for one member country, no matter how tiny, to say “No” and it’s no, and in some countries like Belgium even a single region (say, “mighty” Walonia) can block it.
For example, I expect that Spain will want Gibraltar back as a condition for a Yes on a UK Membership vote.
A single region within a member country can veto an entire block’s will, even if the rest of the country assents? That seems very broken as a voting system, to me.
Belgium has an unusual constitution that lets its regions have veto power over some of its decisions in the international stage and adding a member to the EU is actually a change to a major Treaty that Belgium is part of.
For most EU member countries, there is no such thing, though I believe some (Luxemburg, Malta?) are actually smaller than Walonia in terms of population.
In regards of Gibraltar, the problem is it being a fiscal paradise. If one of the agreement was that Gibraltar has too have the same rules as the rest of the EU it could be enough for the Spanish government.
And if that meant enforcing the same for Ireland and Luxemburg, even better.
It’s my impression that it’s actually a lot more about national pride for Spain than about Gibraltar’s fiscal paradise status, since Gibraltar as not part of a member country can just be treated the same as any other offshore fiscal paradise, such as the Bahamas, which includes it being added to black lists. In this day and age, it’s not geographical proximity that matters when it comes to fiscal paradises.
This makes sense since Britain too doesn’t really gain much from having possession of Gibraltar so holding on to it is mainly a question of national pride for the UK - it would be strange if Spain’s motivations were wildly different.
PS: Also it’s funny how during the Leave campaign a lot of the “reason” why the EU would give Britain quasi-membership rights (without the responsabilities) after leaving the EU were a lot like this, about how those other countries or interests inside those countries would do it because they stood to gain monetarilly from it in the short term. All that turned out to be mainly wishful thinking and a serious misreading of the motivations of the leaders and people in said other countries.
Just found it funny how there are still people around thinking other countries are mainly motivated by the short term gains in sovereignty affairs, even whilst Britain itself again and again keeps doing things motivated by national pride when it comes to such affairs - one would’ve expected that “they’re a lot like us” would somehow been figured out by now.
But “llanitos” don’t want to be Spaniards. And I respect that. So the logical way is for Gibraltar to follow the rules of the EU.
Yeah I’m sure us Frenchies will make it veeery easy for UK to rejoin EU.
Can we just first have Scotland back in? Just to fuck with England.
Pass some pro-trans laws too
Seconded
Thirded so long as we can drop the border down to include Cumbria, Northumberland, and Tyne & Wear… maybe North Yorkshire, too. I’d love to be Scottish if they’d be happy to have us!
If Greater Manchester declares itself a city state, please can we join? Maybe let Wales in too as long as they take responsibility for Liverpool.
Manchester should be fine, and Wales is a given. Who wants to pay £4bn for a project which only benefits England?
We may need to include Merseyside, Lancs and Cheshire just to have a land connection between New Scotland and Wales so we don’t have to consider touching England.
They can come back with zero special privileges, as one among equals.
This is exactly why I don’t think they’re coming back just yet. If there’s one thing leavers and remainers agreed on it’s british exceptionalism. Remainers didn’t want to leave because EU in general was beneficial, remainers didn’t want to leave because UK had a good thing going in the EU and giving it up was stupid. Remainers want to join only if they get at least some of their special privileges back.
Maybe in another 10 years they’ll be more receptive towards joining without special privileges.
I’m ready now. Fuck sterling, fuck the vetos, fuck the opt-outs, etc. Yeah, the special arrangement we had was amazing and put us in a privileged position and we’ll be diminished if we rejoin without them, but that’s still a far better situation than we find ourselves in now. So yeah, warts and all; I’m in.
We should have gone full metric and adopted the Euro years ago. Then all this bollocks about pints and good old sterling would have been done with.
As usual with UK we do everything half arsed and settle for second best.Whores don’t get second chances… At least they don’t get taken back the first wife lol
Even if that’s true (and it probably is, because it was a pretty thin majority to exit in the first place) it would be absolute political suicide to go into this election on the promise of getting us back in.
The anti EU brigade are lunatics and people who voted leave are easily lead. The last thing we need is “Look, they’re ignoring your will!” followed by Emperor Farage…
Would be kind of funny if the reverse of Brexit happened. Have some pro Europe lunatics take over the fight and make a brexiteer accept the worst deal to re-enter the union.
It’s a completely moot point for another reason. The EU isn’t just going to let them back in with the same sweetheart deal they got as founding members. That alone means this won’t happen for decades if at all .
I mean, they could just join on the same conditions as everyone else
That will never fly with the public , especially since one of the “normal” conditions is giving up the pound, joining the Euro, and giving up direct control of their monetary policy. There is no way a majority would support that in the UK . None of these polls will even bother asking something like that. The polls are about whether they want to turn back time to before Brexit, which is somewhat interesting but isn’t possible.
I assume the UK would be obligated to adopt the Euro as a currency, and i have no doubt some people would absolutely rage stroke.
Sounds fun, if unviable.
I don’t think that is essential for trade. A Norwegian/ Icelandic/ Swiss etc. approach could be adopted.
EEA does allow free movement of people though, which is most of what made us leave to start with. Mostly because of this prick pretending that hordes of dirty brown refugees were somehow the fault of that.
Yeah. If free movement of people is excluded you are down to a European Union–Turkey Customs Union type agreement.
Joining at this point would require an insane effort on the UKs side. I am pretty sure that an undemocratic institution like the house of lords would not be acceptable under current EU laws and that is not even accounting for the UKs voting system. The UK would also have to join the currency union. The last point alone makes rejoining very unlikely in my opinion. I think the only thing UK citizens can realistically hope for is, at best, something similar to the Norway model.
Norway is a rule taker that pays into the EU without any influence. They’re also tiny and they know it. This is said with love from a neighbour who would love to see Norway join the EU.
I don’t think the UKs collective ego would allow them to join on Norway terms.
If I remember it correctly, members of the EFTA such as Norway have a vote with veto, and during the Brexit Deal negotiations they weren’t at all keen on having the UK joining the EFTA because it’s far bigger than all the others and would likely dominate.
Yeah, all EFTA members have veto rights towards new members, and you’re pretty much correct but it’s even worse. The UK economy is bigger than all other EFTA countries combined. There’s no way they’d let the UK in.
I would love for the UK to rejoin the EU, but the survey results mentioned in the article don’t really support the claim that there is a general desire to do so. A shift from 52% against to 52% in favor of EU membership is really not that significant.
- it is more about the trend
- 52% is a lot, if the other party has 35% and the rest “do not know”…
There has been no change for 1.5 years now, what trend? The 1.5 years where it changed a little(!) prior?
The fact that in 1.5 years there was no change IS a trend.
And notice the overall change after merely 3 years.
the trend between 3 years ago and now. also, don’t forget to combine that knowledge with my point 2.
Why specifically 3 years? Any other time frame will not support your argument? There is no trend on either direction currently, has not been for 1.5 years.
Brexit happened at the end of January of 2020, so 3 years is really the only viable amount of time to consider {since this year isn’t over to be considered).
This is not a “will the UK try to rejoin one day” trend, this is a brexit regret trend.
The people responding “rejoin” to these polls probably imagine that EU accession will be done on the previous terms. If you did the same graph but made it clear to pollees that rejoining would entail a switch to the Euro and many more legislative constraints, it would almost certainly read overwhelmingly “Stay out”.
deleted by creator
Hahahahhahahahaha
Go read literally any statement from EU officials on the subject. The Euro must legally be adopted by any country which has a good enough economy (exemptions aside such as the UK or Danemark IIRC).
Sweden benefits from a loophole where they legally have to switch to the Euro but haven’t started the process yet. However, there is not a chance in hell that the EU would give the same leniency to the UK, both for political (that’d make us look “weak”) and financial (the British economy is several times larger than Sweden’s) reasons.
The UK getting to keep the pound in a rejoin scenario is a delusion. Or at the very least the political hurdles must be made clear because it is anything BUT given (and should I remind you how the last 8 years of negotiations with the EU went?)
As much as I’d like this to happen I don’t think there’s a big push to rejoin. Nobody is talking about this this election.
I’m pretty anti-brexit, but I’m not sure whether I’m pro-rejoining. Taking the clusterfuck we’ve landed in and turning it in to somehow an even bigger clusterfuck may not necessarily yield good results and definitely won’t be some silver bullet. The massive middle finger we’d justifiably get from the EU should probably give us pause.
somehow an even bigger clusterfuck
I agree that rejoining won’t magically solve all problems but I don’t see how it would make things worse.
This. It’s not just a switch to be flipped.
What’s done is done. From day 1 after the referendum it was obvious to everyone that the UK would spend the next 50 years trying to mitigate the impact of that ridiculous decision. Hotting the “rejoin” button is not necessarily a short cut to the end.
Brenter
Breturn!
Brcatdoor
Is Brexit an ignorant, lazy, myopic tantrum you can undo?
Especially when you keep on giving the goddamned Tories the keys to the castle in every election that matters.
nAh I’m NoT vOtiNg MaTe PoLiTiCs Is FoR wAnKeRs sHaLL wE gO fOr dRiNkS iNsTeAd?
Is Brexit an ignorant, lazy, myopic tantrum you can undo?
No, you can only ask to join again, then start the discussion and if everyone agree, join again. But this time it will be on EU terms, not UK terms.
And the process can take years.
Crucially, although 52% of people polled think the downsides of Brexit outweigh the positives, engagement over Brexit is at the lowest it’s ever been. Most people simply don’t care about the issue any more.
The conservatives still have power in the UK and will continue to have influence for the foreseeable future. As long as conservatism has any place in UK politics, the UK should not be permitted to re-join. Conservatives will eventually just re-Brexit.
There is simply no place in a healthy, modern society for a conservative government. Let the UK rid themselves of their plague of conservatism first before being allowed to further harm the UE with this dangerous illness.
The conservatives still have power in the UK and will continue to have influence for the foreseeable future. As long as conservatism has any place in UK politics, the UK should not be permitted to re-join. Conservatives will eventually just re-Brexit.
I see what you are saying, but I don’t think you are completly right. Re-join can takes years and it will be under the EU rules, not UK, so no more special treatment like before. That alone is difficult to sell to UK, but I am not sure that if UK re-join people will vote again to exit, given that Brexit was sold with lies that was already exposed.
There is simply no place in a healthy, modern society for a conservative government. Let the UK rid themselves of their plague of conservatism first before being allowed to further harm the UE with this dangerous illness.
Disagree. A good government is a balance of progressivism and conservatism. Real life it is not black or white but a shade of grey (for the most part).
While balance can be good some times, the idea that a group of business interests and oligarchs coming together for the sole purpose of lowering their tax bills and buying the nations assets for peanuts, maskerading as a political party, could provide said balance is a strange one.
Conserving the established power and wealth as well as keeping everyone else down is the only thing they look to conservatives look to conserve. The rest is the lies they tell, in order to get in to do it.
While balance can be good some times, the idea that a group of business interests and oligarchs coming together for the sole purpose of lowering their tax bills and buying the nations assets for peanuts, maskerading as a political party, could provide said balance is a strange one.
On the other hand even trying to level everyone to the lowest level is wrong.
Conserving the established power and wealth as well as keeping everyone else down is the only thing they look to conservatives look to conserve. The rest is the lies they tell, in order to get in to do it.
True, the correct balance would be conserve the power and let everyone else to rise, but I undestand it is an utopian vision (the established power would never allow it).
But in the end I think that the main problem is that both parts lost the contact with the normal people but the conservatives are now starting to talk to them again while the progressives are still talking only to themself in an ivory tower.
On the other hand even trying to level everyone to the lowest level is wrong.
If only there was a third option. Somewhere between “a doctor and a kitchen hand earning the same money” and human greed, expressed in economic form. Oh well, never mind I guess.
True, the correct balance would be conserve the power and let everyone else to rise, but I undestand it is an utopian vision (the established power would never allow it).
Its not so much that. Its that their power is power over other people. Its the power to charge a levy (exactly like a tax) on the money people earn for using their things etc. The idea that one can be lifted while the other is retained is a contraction in terms.
but the conservatives are now starting to talk to them again while the progressives are still talking only to themself in an ivory tower.
Considering the conservatives are about to be whiped out at the next election, I hope that was meant to be ironic.
but the conservatives are now starting to talk to them again while the progressives are still talking only to themself in an ivory tower.
Considering the conservatives are about to be whiped out at the next election, I hope that was meant to be ironic
Not sure about that, honestly, at leasto from what I see in Italy.
This thread is about the UK, not Italy.
However, if we are to talk about Italy, its always had a problem with fascism, being its birthplace and all. A millenniam long hangover from Romes slave economies and Christianity is to blame for what makes it very much the outlier and not the norm here.
This thread is about the UK, not Italy.
I know. What I mean is that I would not be so sure that what people say they will vote will be what they actually vote.
In Italy many people told they would never vote for Berlusconi but somehow he won the elections. Same with Trump, the poll gave him losing yet he won.The point is: don’t trust the polls, especially if there is a social stigma associated with one of the options.
However, if we are to talk about Italy, its always had a problem with fascism, being its birthplace and all. A millenniam long hangover from Romes slave economies and Christianity is to blame for what makes it very much the outlier and not the norm here.
You sentence is the exact reason why people are going to vote for the right wings.
The only people talking about fascism in Italy is the left wing. At the last EU election the points of the left were that the fascism must not win and that their secretary is a multigender woman. Not a word about the actual problems we have (for example, that people have seen their purchasing power drop by a considerable amount, a couple that want to build a family must relay on their parents to be able to buy an house and even more if they decide to have a child, lines at soup kitchens get longer and longer and so on).But yes, we are going off-topic. My bad.
What is one good thing of conservative influence in government that wouldn’t also be there without them?
Everything. And nothing and all.
There is not a single thing the conservatives are completly right about and the progressives are completely wrong (or vice-versa of course), so I cannot truly pinpoint something specific.
The progressives are completely right about allowing two consenting adults to marry each other, regardless of other factors such as their skin color or their gender.
That’s just one thing. I can name more. We do not need condervatives in government, they are only holding us back.
The “conservatives” nowadays are just another far-right party, only they’re led by posh twats instead of rabble rousers and unlike in most of Europe (with noteable exceptions being Hungary and maybe Austria), in the UK are mainstream rather than fringe.
Nowadays they don’t really do “conserving”.
Well such timescale would in any case depend on EU, not on convenience for any british parliament. There are now N. Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, [ Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo ?], Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, [Turkey ?] all in the queue to join EU. On the other hand, it might help from point of view of geographic and economic balance, otherwise the centre of ‘gravity’ will shift even further SE away from Brussels. I think to expand EU has to reform processes, to end all vetos and generalise multi-speed / opt-outs.
Meanwhile a new british government could implement obviously convenient win-win cooperation step by step, until there isn’t so much left to change. And I’d be happy to see Scotland and Northern Ireland take a lead.There are now N. Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, [ Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo ?], Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, [Turkey ?] all in the queue to join EU
it is not FIFO queue. some of these countries are more prepared to actually join than the others.
Sure, but diplomacy is not logical, and EU has a habit (mistake?) to do things in mega packages (look at 2004). Last I heard, the gossip was ‘by 2030’.
my point is, if they actually asked, i am betting my left hand they would be in in the first possible wave (contrary to… majority of countries in that queue). 2030 would actually be super fast.
Hmm, did you consult the next french president about that ?
Nope, everyone behind Ukraine is now screwed. If they want to speed things up they need to help Ukraine win it’s war. Sorry, I don’t make the rules I just pretend to know them.
Although… Moldova and Georgia might as well. We all know they’re next on Putin’s list.
Labour, right before the election.
