Just slowly the penny is beginning to drop...

[Jim B]

In answer to your first point; I wasn't aware the UK had a written constitution. The Maastricht treaty was challenged by Lord Rees Mogg ( father of Mini Mogg)in the High Court and his appeal was thrown out so there must be a legal argument for it
Secondly we are the laughing stock of the world so an about turn wouldn't really matter as we can't lose any more respect than we already have. If there was a second referendum and we voted out again I personally would just keep campaigning to rejoin.
There was still bomb debris in my city in the late sixties and it wasn't until the massive injection of money by the EU in the nineties that the city was able to turn itself around, if we left it to successive UK governments we'd still be waiting.

Jim

[living the dream]

I firmly agree that the UK has become the laughing stock of the world - why because the country's politicians are divided and the country is divided and worse still in my humble opinion Labour will never agree to any deal as it is all about now forcing a general election.

Brussels could have prevented all this by compromise with Cameron and chose to ignore his warnings that he would have to call a referendum should he not succeed.

Lets just all keep campaigning leave on one side and remain on the other; whilst all this crap is going on and keeps going on global businesses based in the UK that bring in Billions of pounds a year will certainly start to seriously look at upping sticks and relocating leaving tens of thousands unemployed - and the people to blame will not be the politicians as many are just following what their constituents wanted and some not, but the public themselves will be to blame. Yes the country is divided which plays straight into the hands of the EU "Divide & Conquer" but the only way to win is to have solidarity "United We Stand - Divided We Fall"

[tonee]

Hi
Nice debate folks,makes interesting reading..my tuppence is..there will never be a united Ireland!

[Jimgward]

I agree, at some stage is suspect that Ireland will reunite, when and only when the majority of the citizens of Northern Ireland wish it to...The "Border" already exists and I am sure it is not beyond the wit of man to ensure that it remains as open as it is now, dispite the EU and the Eire PM attempting to use it as a stick to beat the UK. And Jim you know nothing of my military career, so please stop with the quite frankly snide remarks, as I have said before enough.

Apologies, you are correct

[Jimgward]

Hi
Nice debate folks,makes interesting reading..my tuppence is..there will never be a united Ireland!

And if the majority in NI vote for one? I don't think it will happen for 20 years - by then the Nationalist vote will be far larger than the Unionist one (according to all statistics) - that will be the case within the next 5 - 10 years, but many Nationalist don't want a united Ireland either, now.

At this stage the Republic doesn't want the North, as more than 50% of jobs are public sector. Eire has a higher GDP and would suffer from the North joining.....

[Jim B]

l

.....Brussels could have prevented all this by compromise with Cameron and chose to ignore his warnings that he would have to call a referendum should he not succeed......

We've discussed this many times; Cameron already had the means to control Immigration in accordance with EU legislation but chose to grandstand instead. He had no need to go to Brussels, all he had do do was introduce the same rules available to every other EU member country that most of them have introduced, even Cyprus. Instead he came back telling everyone the EU had offered him nothing which was shall we say misleading and as we can see many believed him.

Jim

[Jimgward]

Cameron was being pressured by the hard right and bowed to them in holding the referendum, with little input by himself - as he underestimated the negative voting aspect that the people made - which was against the establishment and not necessarily the EU.

Listen to Michael Moore - who has assessed the EU referendum and the Trump election and comes to the same conclusion. He was the only one to predict Trump winning from early on. He was in the UK for weeks before the EU vote and travelled around the country and predicted the Leave vote.

[bromerzz]

That was a powerful and well structured statement. Dear old Adolf Merkel looked rather uncomfortable.

[tyelaw47]

Well I did watch it because regardless of their policies I like to know what is happening rather than bury my head in the sand.
I have to say that it was a good,constructive speech which certainly did not incite hatred of any kind and received a lot of applause.

[jeba]

The AfD was founded specifically and explicitely with the aim of advocating for Germany leaving the Eurozone. And they had some good reasons for it (like that in effect Germany and a few other countries are having to indirectly provide funding for the deficits of mediterranian countries without much hope of ever getting that money back). However, they weren´t successful with that and never made it into parliament (probably because the issue is too complicated for the average voter to understand it). Only after they had kicked out their founder (a professor of economics) and changed their main topic to fighting Merkel´s refugee policy they made it into parliament. And quite a few xenophobes and racists joined the bandwagon and the party.

So it´s no surprise that they are critical of the EU. I don´t think though it´s fair to say that Merkel wants to punish the UK for Brexit. On the contrary she said that must not be done.

[Jim B]

I watched it and found it informative though what came across to me was that it's better to be on the inside fighting for change than on the outside looking in.
I find your dislike of anyone with socialist leanings sad; maybe if you had of worked in the private sector you would understand why many of us lean that way.
I find generally most military personnel favour the right wing of politics; it must be something they put in the tea.

Jim

[Jim B]

Hudswell
The below link may give a more balanced account of decision making in the UK than you believe, some interesting facts. Better in being part of the decision makers than being outside doing what we are told.

Jim

https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-facts-be ... influence/