The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in CH

[Phos]

And Brexit proved how accurate these polls are, right?

I think Brexit was billed as some sort of attack on Europeans, and there is nothing like an external enemy to bring together a population. Also, Merkel appeared to chastise Juncker and Schulz, giving them a little more comfort about it all.

These polls are fairly meaningless and show fickle reactions to planted media stories. In a real referendum, I don't think they would get as petty as to digress into meaningless inconsequential topics. I think they would consider what their principles are, just like the Brits did. Although I don't believe their losing sides would demonstrate the same shrill petulance.

[Phil_MCR]

	Quote:	marton
	Brexit so far is a disaster and the result has terrified people in many EU countries!

Err. You do realise Brexit hasn't even happened yet?

I think we will know more late 2017 after various elections in EU countries have been held and the Brexit process begins in earnest.

[marton]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	But not for the majority of people who voted for it. The EU has a lot to learn, if it wants to survive. Bullying the UK has seriously backfired, the EU has far more to lose than the rest of the world put together. The S&P 500 closed less than 1 point off it's all time high, The FTSE 100 is way higher than before the vote as is the total market value of ALL UK companies traded on an exchange in the UK. The UK is winning the game, no denying it.

"The FTSE 100 is way higher" after the collapse of the £ so UK shares are now a discount bargain for foreign investors.

Investors in major property funds are blocked from getting their money back; strange way to win?

The S&P 500 is a US measure?

The BDO's monthly High Street Sales Tracker showed a strong start to June, with sales growing 3.8% year on year. That decreased throughout the month and by the end of June, after the referendum, sales had fallen by 8.1% compared with last year.

[marton]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	But not for the majority of people who voted for it. The EU has a lot to learn, if it wants to survive. Bullying the UK has seriously backfired, the EU has far more to lose than the rest of the world put together. The S&P 500 closed less than 1 point off it's all time high, The FTSE 100 is way higher than before the vote as is the total market value of ALL UK companies traded on an exchange in the UK. The UK is winning the game, no denying it.

"But not for the majority of people who voted for it." Does not seem so but if you want to think that?

[marton]

	Quote:	Phos
	And Brexit proved how accurate these polls are, right? I think Brexit was billed as some sort of attack on Europeans, and there is nothing like an external enemy to bring together a population. Also, Merkel appeared to chastise Juncker and Schulz, giving them a little more comfort about it all. These polls are fairly meaningless and show fickle reactions to planted media stories. In a real referendum, I don't think they would get as petty as to digress into meaningless inconsequential topics. I think they would consider what their principles are, just like the Brits did. Although I don't believe their losing sides would demonstrate the same shrill petulance.

This is a mess of assumptions with no supporting facts or sources.

"planted media stories"? Oh dear is this the best you can invent?

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:	marton
	"The FTSE 100 is way higher" after the collapse of the £ so UK shares are now a discount bargain for foreign investors. Investors in major property funds are blocked from getting their money back; strange way to win? The S&P 500 is a US measure? The BDO's monthly High Street Sales Tracker showed a strong start to June, with sales growing 3.8% year on year. That decreased throughout the month and by the end of June, after the referendum, sales had fallen by 8.1% compared with last year.

Well other stock markets have done less well, so the discount is less than you think in investment terms.

Property is an illiquid asset, you must realise it can easily take a year to sell an office block if you want a good price, so in times of uncertainty they can't quote you an accurate valuation on a daily basis. I don't like property as an investment, I might have mentioned that 100 times or more over the last 5 years on this forum.

The US has the biggest stock market in the world, it's not in the EU, the USD is the worlds reserve currency so it's very relevant. There has never been a good time to bet against the USA stock markets, thats been true for 200 years, it won't change next week either.

I really don't take notice of weekly hughstreet sales, it's just noise & people will need to eat regardless.

[Odile]

Food for thought:

http://www.ted.com/talks/alexander_b...aign=ios-share

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:	Odile
	Food for thought: http://www.ted.com/talks/alexander_b...aign=ios-share

The IMF's view is also food for thought
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...broken-EU.html

[Faltrad]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	The IMF's view is also food for thought http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...broken-EU.html

A dailymail link is supposed to be food for thought? You have a small appetite, Sir.
The Brit should leave for good, the sooner the better. Tomorrow is a good day for it. It would make a good new national day, after the US one, before the French. Perfect.

[marton]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	The IMF's view is also food for thought http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...broken-EU.html

This is the report that you mocked when I quoted it a couple of days ago.
I suggest you read the original rather than the link where the quotes have a lot of "journalistic licence" and are out of context
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ca...spx?sk=44067.0

[Phil_MCR]

It will be interesting to see the direction of the EU after Britain leaves, including whether EU will now create some EU defence structures parallel to NATO now that one of the biggest opponents to that is out of the EU.

https://www.gov.uk/government/speech...ce-9-july-2016

[yacek]

	Quote:	Phil_MCR
	It will be interesting to see the direction of the EU after Britain leaves, including whether EU will now create some EU defence structures parallel to NATO now that the biggest opponents to that is out. https://www.gov.uk/government/speech...ce-9-july-2016

The biggest oponent of it isn't UK, but US.

[yacek]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	The IMF's view is also food for thought http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...broken-EU.html

So IMF itself predicts further disasters and:

	Quote:
	And in its latest Global Strategy report, French bank Société Général carries a piece by one of its top analysts who says: ‘I believe it is only a matter of time before the eurozone project fractures’. He points out that Italy’s banking system is already on the verge of collapse.

[marton]

	Quote:	Odile
	Election of new Tory leader just cannot wait till September, surely. And all Recess should be cancelled to deal with the situation- again it cannot wait till September. They chose the timing- they have to deal with it now and can't just go off on holiday whilst the country falls apart.

Whatever the new leader will have an almost impossible task; the leave campaign did not have a consolidated and agreed view so whatever decisions are made some people will say "that is not what we voted for!"

[Phos]

	Quote:	marton
	Whatever the new leader will have an almost impossible task; the leave campaign did not have a consolidated and agreed view so whatever decisions are made some people will say "that is not what we voted for!"

The only point that was passed by voters is for UK to leave the EU. All others are just convolusions at this point.

[k_and_e]

	Quote:	marton
	Whatever the new leader will have an almost impossible task; the leave campaign did not have a consolidated and agreed view so whatever decisions are made some people will say "that is not what we voted for!"

can you please explain the consolidated and agreed view of the remain camp regarding the future of the UK in the EU?

[yacek]

	Quote:	Odile
	I am pretty sure that the racist abuse and vandalism thrown at 'immigrants' since the Brexit vote may well make their head hurt a lot more

It has simply increased somewhat, but some UK inhabitants are exhibiting hostility towards EU immigrants since at least the 2005 when the Easter European countries joined and UK promptly opened its labor market contrary to some others, notably Germany, which kept transitional restrictions until about 2012.

[marton]

	Quote:	k_and_e
	can you please explain the consolidated and agreed view of the remain camp regarding the future of the UK in the EU?

Why Me?

I assume the consolidated and agreed view of the remain camp was "business as usual"? No change?

You will notice I did not ask anybody here for the consolidated and agreed view of the leave camp; I simply stated it did not exist! I would be happy to be proved wrong.

[Odile]

You may or may not be a fan of Charlie Hebdo, but here is a translation of their latest on Brexit:

ÉDITO
RACISTS, GO HOME !
Par Charlie Hebdo - 29/06/2016
The British have voted to leave Europe. The most surprising part of this whole campaign has been the discovery of a clear and openly racist discourse in the UK. Right in front of microphones and cameras, a great many Brexit partisans were not at all shy about saying that there were too many foreigners and that immigration threatened their 'identity'. Did this near hate-speech, traditionally the preserve of the far-right parties in France or Austrian neo-Nazis, not seem to lose something of its utter abjection when openly and audibly intoned in the country of Shakespeare and Isaac Newton? As though, in some variant of a Harry Potter magic spell, the horridness of continental-style racism disappears in a puff of respectability as soon as it crosses the Channel. For years now, we've had our noses rubbed in the incontrovertible fact that, over there, in England, there weren't the same kinds of problems of integration as there are in France and the rest of Europe. That, across the water, multiculturalism was the winning recipe for allowing all identities the place and position they sought. That, in Britain, whether you wore a veil, a niqab, a turban or a bowler hat, everyone cohabited in perfect harmony in the enviable Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The success of Brexit shows us just how bogus that notion was. A majority of the British (more particularly the English) are fed up with foreigners. They can no longer bear seeing their 'identity' making ever more concessions to the identities of the newly-arrived. It wasn't Europe that burned down in the night between last Thursday and Friday, it was principally the dream-image of seamless Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism. And when you look at the success of the frankly racist discourse of Trump in the US, you can't help but think that the failure of the English-speaking world's model for dealing with migration has not yet reached its lowest point. There may be more ashes through which to sift.

So then, it seems that the majority of English people are racist and don't want their borders open to all those grubby brown down-and-outs setting out in inflatable boats for the dream of Europe. Who knew?

To frighten the British voter (and most of Europe), the media have emphasized the Stock Exchange meltdown that would surely follow Brexit. It has been the dominant idiom. There's been much too little talk about the more xenophobic and inhuman parts of the Brexit debate. But since racism isn't listed on the Stock Exchange, it's never considered a problem. According to the brilliant little wizards of the City, only the market can give value to things.

There's been too little talk about the xenophobic and inhuman parts of the Brexit debate.

In reality, we can't really give a damn about plunging currencies or stocks. Firstly because, before now, stocks and currencies have always managed to do lots of plunging all on their own without any help from referenda. And then, the markets are so profoundly and definitively irrational that there will be plenty of other financial fiascos. Tomorrow, next week, they're guaranteed - and inherent - a mere function of the absurdity and madness of global high finance. We don't need a Brexit for that.

For much too long, we have refused to believe in the existence of a racism that wears the Made in England label. We thought England was the Sex Pistols, James Bond and the Beatles. This picturesque myth, this cute postcard that continentals have so thoroughly bought, has made us forget that England was, historically, a colonial country, dominating and exploiting multitudes of people across the globe, 'those lawless and inferior peoples' as Kipling would have it. A similar French postcard would show only croissants, Burgundy and Monet. No place for military torture in the Algerian War of Independence, the Vichy Regime or the far Right paramilitary OAS in the fifties and sixties. Brexit has ripped up the postcard and shown us the more shameful face of England.

Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, was exultant on that starkest of Friday mornings. He hailed the victory of 'ordinary people', of 'honest folk'. According to him, the 'real people' had spoken. Fair enough, it's all very well that the people should be 'the people' but that doesn't stop them screwing up bigtime. If the elite sometimes talk a lot of crap, the people aren't that far behind them in the bullshit stakes. It was those same fabulous 'people' who burned books in 1930s Berlin because the authors were Jews. At the end of the Second World War in France, who was it that publicly shaved the heads of those French women who had slept with German soldiers? Yup, that's right. Those wonderful 'people' again. This vote to quit Europe by the 'people' of Britain can go right on the shelf beside all those other manifestations of hatred and fear.

For years now, we've been denouncing the European construct, the Commission and all its incoherence. We've heard repeatedly that the British couldn't take it anymore. We've seen geniuses like Boris Johnson solemnly explaining that Brussels now regulated the permitted size of bananas. But sovereign, national legal codes also produce cumbersome and absurd regulations. Sticking exclusively to a national parliament rather than a European one is not going to stop the law being an ass. Is being nationalist just a matter of preferring your own stupid stuff to the stupid stuff of foreigners? The private joke of indigenous incompetence as opposed to all that messy foreign mayhem?

Alas, the English want nothing to do with us. They want nothing to do with foreigners. Even perhaps the Scottish. Those pesky Picts are probably now going to try to detach from this long-united Kingdom. The English will live on their steadily shrinking bit of island. And since they want to become once more foreigners to the continent of Europe, does that mean that we should block up the Channel Tunnel? Then when they want to visit the continent, they'll have to climb into inflatable rafts and paddle across the narrow sea. Once at Calais, we'll give them hot coffee and blankets. Volunteers will take over, sort them and move them to reception centres for displaced (and unwanted) foreigners. That will make them feel right at home.

[marton]

Thanks for the Charlie Hebdo quotes

My favourites
"Is being nationalist just a matter of preferring your own stupid stuff to the stupid stuff of foreigners?"
"does that mean that we should block up the Channel Tunnel? Then when they want to visit the continent, they'll have to climb into inflatable rafts and paddle across the narrow sea."