Come off it.

Labours proposal is utterly ludicrous and beyond parody, even given the absolute rabbit-hole that British politics has plunged head-first into. Do you genuinely believe that they will offer us a Leave option that has even the smallest shred of credibility? Utterly delusional.

A second referendum with a Remain option threatens to destroy this country. It will undermine the very core of our democratic principles and if you think the divide is bad now, then it will become FAR worse if this happens, to the point of potentially no return. Leave does not go away. It merely becomes more entrenched along with a credible new narrative that there is no point in putting any more faith in our democratic processes to achieve our departure from the EU. One of the myriad of reasons for voting Leave in the first place was how other referendums in Ireland, France and Holland had been simply brushed aside and now our one? If you consider the likes of Farage and Cummings as chancers, then you are in for a real treat when it comes to what follows because why should anybody who voted Leave in 2016 believe anything they are told by our political class?

Let's assume we have this second referendum as proposed by Labour. Now I will not be voting and whilst I cannot speak for many of my fellow Leavers, I suspect that a huge boycott will take place. But the vote goes ahead and Remain wins, probably by some margin but on a much reduced turn-out. And less assume that turn out is below a figure like 52%? Just for argument's sake. How much credibility does it have? And why should we not demand another referendum? Or are we meant to just swallow this new one whilst ignoring the fact that the likes of you failed to understand how it is meant to work the first time around?

Now I loathe the Liberal Democrats as much as the next reasonable human being but their new stance of just revoking A50 has an honesty to it. The referendum from 2016 was advisory only and they mainly objected to it being held in the first place. Of course if they get their way Leave does not go away and the battle continues but democracy is not damaged as much. Because a case can still be made in the future for people to vote.

But another referendum with Remain as an option? No. That rips us apart even more.

And it is merely window dressing to assuage the guilt of many on the left who want to maintain their self-image as reasonable people who believe in democracy. But you don't get to maintain that illusion. You lost in 2016. The case for Remain is done and dusted. Over. There is possibly a coherent argument to be made for a second referendum on how we leave but that is still open for a huge debate but I am willing to concede that a case could be made. But Remain? It offers nothing. There is no return to the status quo. Britain goes back into the EU not only humiliated and open to all sorts of perfectly justifiable criticism from the other 27 states for pissing them about but Leave takes on an entirely new meaning. It becomes about so much more than just the EU. An absolute Pandora's box of unforeseen and potentially horrendous consequences.

If you want us Leavers f***ed over then have the balls to spit in our faces, like the Lib Dems want to do, rather than stab us in the back because whilst we will react BADLY to both, at least we would not have been made to suffer the indignity of you w***ers trying to maintain your stand on the moral high ground. Remain is a swamp dwellers position now. The antithesis of any semblance of democratic belief. Own that. Wear that hat.

Democracy needs people to accept that if you lose, you lose. You want that destroyed.

Edited by Matov (10 Sep 2019 8.17pm)

I'm not sure many people formerly labour will vote for them for the very reason that their brexit stance is ambiguous and their leader saying he voted remain where everyone knows he is as leave as you like.

That and the fact that he is an out and out marxist.

I'm unable to fully talk about my work in an open context. I work with supposed refugees on a daily basis. In private, you learn a lot. In public these people are all victims.
For example, speaking to one I was dealing with recently he told me he was South African and was here for a better life. In his asylum case he is from the Congo fleeing civil war - I'm not supposed to know that but I have a friend. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I see it every day. I reported it to my boss and they shrugged their shoulders. There is a conflict of interests when we are paid by numbers - quantity means funding.
I have been incredibly tempted to report the whole thing to immigration but people will lose their jobs and I doubt I will be thanked.
Do some research on whistleblowers in Ireland and you will see what I mean.
I will admit this outright on here - I'm not sure anyone on here works with asylum seekers. I have been for a few years now and I am increasingly anti-immigration to the point of disliking even the individuals. Yet tomorrow I will meet a new batch. I would say straight off the boat but many fly with airlines I couldn't afford.
There was an interesting Dublin incident recently that illustrates this. A taxi driver sexually assaulted a passenger - turned out his entire identity was fake. When the authorities investigated they found that over 80 percent of foreign taxi drivers in Dublin had fake papers and were not genuine asylum seekers at all. They had been paying for fake papers and having them stamped by a corrupt Gard (policeman). I believe the charge was 300 euro. The Gard has not been charged yet.

Here is some independent proof on this:

[Link]

Worryingly there have been no investigations in the rest of the country.

Here is a general piece on asylum seekers but it is not the mail or the express or anything like that.

[Link]

And here is an EU political journal that talks about what the US customs thinks of the EU - along with some interesting stats on Syrian passports.

[Link]

On a personal note, I interviewed three Algerians last year. All were posing as Syrians. I finished the interview with 'why are you seeking asylum from Algeria?'.
'Life is very hard there.'
We kept them on our programme. Funding for three refugees - genuine or not, not our problem.
I guess people will do anything for a better life and I find it hard to blame them. So when you meet your next Syrian asylum seeker just have a little think. And yes, I meet genuine ones every day too

From what you say it seems that the agency you work for is not doing their job at best and possibly acting corruptly at worst.

I know I couldn't live with that knowledge and would have to find a way to report it and stop it, whatever the cost to people's jobs.

I don't blame people for wanting a better life but we absolutely must have robust systems in place to ensure that our willingness to accept refugees and asylum seekers is not abused. If the agencies we employ to do that are failing then we need to find out why and act to stop it.

Believe me when I say unequivocally that an EU integrated army was exactly what it was to be but I guess the Iraq and Afghanistan deployments put paid to it. Now those are largely over, it will be back on the table. Merkel and Macron are the current drivers on this but Blair was big into it before being paid off by the states. I could even give figures but am prevented from doing so. Here the EU gives its own response to some difficult questions after journalists (Kilroy-Silk!) got wind of something. Loved their own badge and command answer. (Click on answers to see the EU's written response). This is from them so it is in the public domain. So not exactly the Express.

[Link]

I am a remainer but do struggle with the democracy issue.

Nope it's remain versus no deal for me.

Yes but i did say I posted that a million posts ago I.e. just after the vote. 3 years later and standing by a vote no matter how democratic is outweighed by the need to break the impasse with a second referendum.

Do you need that explained or are you ok with it?

This stinks of conspiracy theory, produced in a back bedroom by someone with an axe to grind.

I suspect Lord James was warned merely because he was making a fool of himself.

I scanned the piece referenced. Do you seriously expect people to believe that the "UK Column" is serious journalism?

I searched the Royal United Services institute for details of this alleged conference and could find no mention of it.

It's true that there are changes going on with the command structure of British Forces in response to the changing world with the JFC becoming the "Strategic Command" but there is no EU involvement either now or envisaged.

We would never agree to such an idea, and as the decision is ours alone to make, the suggestions are a total nonsense.

Can you seriously imagine our Parliament accepting such proposals? We are a sovereign state within Europe and make these decisions ourselves. Greater co-operation, sharing of resources and supply chains, training and acting together are all probable, but always under our ultimate control.

Come off it.

Labours proposal is utterly ludicrous and beyond parody, even given the absolute rabbit-hole that British politics has plunged head-first into. Do you genuinely believe that they will offer us a Leave option that has even the smallest shred of credibility? Utterly delusional.

If, as I suspect, what is negotiated is a slightly amended version of the "May" deal, then it already has a lot of credibility.

A second referendum with a Remain option threatens to destroy this country. It will undermine the very core of our democratic principles and if you think the divide is bad now, then it will become FAR worse if this happens, to the point of potentially no return.

Of course it doesn't. It just reflects the reality of a deeply divided country, as it was in 2016. If Parliament has tried, and failed so far, to agree a way to leave in an acceptable way then we just have to go on trying. If that means Parliament checking whether people still want to leave, alongside how they could leave then that's their decision. I would prefer they did it themselves though, rather than throw the decision into the winds of chance and political strategists.

Leave does not go away. It merely becomes more entrenched along with a credible new narrative that there is no point in putting any more faith in our democratic processes to achieve our departure from the EU.

You sound like Farage! Of course there will always be people who don't want us to belong to the EU, just as though there are those who will want us to rejoin if we do leave. That's how it is here now. What the leavers don't seem able to accept is that no decision is ever cast in stone and if events mean circumstances have changed then those changes cannot be ignored. Not finding an acceptable deal is such an event and Parliament reacting to it is evidence of our democratic system at it's finest.

One of the myriad of reasons for voting Leave in the first place was how other referendums in Ireland, France and Holland had been simply brushed aside and now our one? If you consider the likes of Farage and Cummings as chancers, then you are in for a real treat when it comes to what follows because why should anybody who voted Leave in 2016 believe anything they are told by our political class?

Individual politicians can spin the truth to suit their case and the increasing use of marketing techniques and social media to spread dubious targeted messages to particular groups, and not making public pronouncements to everyone is a very dangerous development. We are truly in an era of "fake news". As I don't believe in referendums as a means to decide anything I am pleased when their results are just used by Parliaments as tests of public opinion. I would hate to see us adopt any form of direct democracy as it would lead us down a path to disaster.

Let's assume we have this second referendum as proposed by Labour. Now I will not be voting and whilst I cannot speak for many of my fellow Leavers, I suspect that a huge boycott will take place.

Whilst that would be your choice it would not be a very wise one, in my view. Although against holding it I voted in the 2016 one.

But the vote goes ahead and Remain wins, probably by some margin but on a much reduced turn-out. And less assume that turn out is below a figure like 52%? Just for argument's sake. How much credibility does it have? And why should we not demand another referendum? Or are we meant to just swallow this new one whilst ignoring the fact that the likes of you failed to understand how it is meant to work the first time around?

How it was meant to work? It didn't work did it? That you think that you understand how "it was meant to work" doesn't mean you do. There are other opinions. It produced a tiny majority from a country split down the middle. That one side thought they had "won" says everything about how flawed the whole thing was in the first place. It was only given any kind of legitimacy by Parliament who have since failed to find a way forward that they can accept. So now they really have no other choice other than to withdraw that legitimacy.

Now I loathe the Liberal Democrats as much as the next reasonable human being but their new stance of just revoking A50 has an honesty to it. The referendum from 2016 was advisory only and they mainly objected to it being held in the first place. Of course if they get their way Leave does not go away and the battle continues but democracy is not damaged as much. Because a case can still be made in the future for people to vote.

I am a reasonable person and I don't loath the Liberal Democrats at all. We have many LD local politicians down here and the party has been traditionally strong in the south west. It may well capture seats here again. As I won't vote for a Johnson led Tory Party which is adopting the Brexit party strategy, nor for Labour under Corbyn the LDs are likely to get my vote. If the Tories get a deal before Oct 31st, dump the ERG and the DUP, and go back towards the centre I might change my mind.

But another referendum with Remain as an option? No. That rips us apart even more.

Let's see shall we? It amuses me though to read this kind of comment because if you are so confident that you are sure that the people still want to leave what are you scared of? They would only be asked to confirm that their opinion remains unchanged by the past 3 years of turmoil.

And it is merely window dressing to assuage the guilt of many on the left who want to maintain their self-image as reasonable people who believe in democracy. But you don't get to maintain that illusion. You lost in 2016. The case for Remain is done and dusted. Over. There is possibly a coherent argument to be made for a second referendum on how we leave but that is still open for a huge debate but I am willing to concede that a case could be made. But Remain? It offers nothing. There is no return to the status quo. Britain goes back into the EU not only humiliated and open to all sorts of perfectly justifiable criticism from the other 27 states for pissing them about but Leave takes on an entirely new meaning. It becomes about so much more than just the EU. An absolute Pandora's box of unforeseen and potentially horrendous consequences.

Completely wrong. We would remain a member strengthened by overcoming an enormous internal battle to get us out. Our negotiating position on achieving the changes to some of the more distasteful elements gets stronger because the EU would want to reward us for our efforts and not risk us going through it all again. I think we could achieve a special understanding on what "free movement" entails for countries like ours. Leave and they would punish us as an example to others.

If you want us Leavers f***ed over then have the balls to spit in our faces, like the Lib Dems want to do, rather than stab us in the back because whilst we will react BADLY to both, at least we would not have been made to suffer the indignity of you w***ers trying to maintain your stand on the moral high ground. Remain is a swamp dwellers position now. The antithesis of any semblance of democratic belief. Own that. Wear that hat.

That kind of vitriol doesn't deserve a reasoned response.

Democracy needs people to accept that if you lose, you lose. You want that destroyed.

British democracy needs people like you to accept that it is in Parliament that sovereignty resides. Not in any referendum. Especially one that was so close. No-one "won" the referendum. It wasn't a game of football or a war. It was a snapshot of how people felt on a particular day having been subjected to particular sets of information. As we can see 3 years later, we all lost as a consequence.

Edited by Matov (10 Sep 2019 8.17pm)