Which way do you call the 23rd June UK referendum on the EU?

[ROB]

There is so much comedy gold in this NY Times piece, it's difficult to know where to begin. At least a laugh per paragraph.

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LONDON — With their giddy celebrations of “independence day” having given way to political and economic turmoil, one thing has become especially clear about the former London mayor Boris Johnson and other leaders of the successful campaign to vote Britain out of the European Union: They had no plan for what comes next.

In the days since Britain voted to leave the bloc, the movement’s leaders have often appeared as if they had not expected to win and were not prepared to cope with the consequences. Faced with the scope of the decision, they have been busy walking back promises they made during the campaign and scaling back expectations. They have failed to show a united front or to answer basic questions.

Their faltering performance has added to the sense of political chaos in Britain and, arguably, to the turmoil in the financial markets. And it has undercut their credibility and authority as Mr. Johnson prepares his bid to become prime minister and lead Britain into a new relationship with the Continent.

The stakes are high for Mr. Johnson in particular, as he tries to build an impression as a capable leader amid the chaos that followed the vote in favor of a British exit, or “Brexit.” But the mixed signals coming from him and other proponents of leaving the European Union have left their intentions unclear on such basic issues as when and how they will seek to negotiate a withdrawal, and what kind of new arrangement they want. To the degree that they have signaled a direction, it has often been substantially different from what they promised during the campaign.

On issues from immigration to spending on the National Health Service, the “Leave” coalition has retreated from its more populist and apparently exaggerated claims. Many of those assertions had been promoted by the right-wing U.K. Independence Party, or UKIP, led by Nigel Farage, and benefited the broader Leave campaign, whose most prominent figures included two senior Conservatives, Mr. Johnson and Michael Gove, the justice minister.

In changing their tune, the leaders of the anti-European Union campaign risk undermining whatever trust they had earned from the millions who voted to leave the bloc in the expectation that immigration would be cut sharply and that money now going to the European Union — which the Leave campaign said was 350 million pounds, or $465 million, a week — would be available to help finance the National Health Service.

For example, one Leave advocate, Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative Party leader and cabinet secretary, walked away from the campaign pledge to reallocate the £350 million a week to the health service. Instead, he said, “the lion’s share” of anything left from that amount after replacing subsidies from the bloc to British farmers could be available for health services.

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On immigration, too, there was immediate backtracking from Mr. Johnson and Daniel Hannan, a member of the European Parliament from the Conservative Party, who told the BBC, “Frankly, if people watching think that they have voted and there is now going to be zero immigration from the E.U., they are going to be disappointed.”

Analysts say the change in tone may be necessary to begin reeling in unrealistic expectations about the changes the referendum could produce, but it also holds considerable political peril for Mr. Johnson and other Conservative Party leaders of the Leave campaign, especially with populist sentiment spreading and right-wing groups like the U.K. Independence Party eager to build support.

“There is a clear tension between what the voter wanted and what senior euroskeptic leaders want to produce,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics and international relations at the University of Kent. “If they don’t deliver radical reforms on immigration, it would be the equivalent of pouring gasoline on the populist UKIP fire that has been burning since 2010.”

In his regular column in The Daily Telegraph on Monday, Mr. Johnson tried to strike a prime ministerial tone of unity in the wake of the divisive referendum, but he emphasized continuity over change and tried to argue that immigration, clearly the primary motivation for many voters in taking a position against Europe, was somehow not a major issue.

“It is said that those who voted Leave were mainly driven by anxieties about immigration,” Mr. Johnson wrote. “I do not believe that is so.”

Suggesting that he wants to keep some kind of open flow of people across the border with Europe, Mr. Johnson wrote, “British people will still be able to go and work in the E.U.; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down.”

Not only that, he asserted, “There will continue to be free trade, and access to the single market.”

What he described was a relationship with the European Union like that of Norway, which would allow freedom of movement and labor and would pay money to Brussels in return for access to the single market, but without having a voice in decision-making.

But Mr. Johnson rejected the Norway model during the campaign, and even if negotiations proved to lead to a slightly enhanced Norway, with some symbolic measures to restrict immigration of European Union citizens to Britain, the result would be a betrayal of those who voted Leave. And right now, Norway pays Brussels roughly per capita what Britain currently does as a full member.

“The difficulty for Boris and Gove is that Brexit feels like a column gone wrong, an academic exercise suddenly turned into reality,” Paul Waugh wrote in his blog for The Huffington Post, alluding to the shared backgrounds in journalism of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Gove. “And reality, particularly where the E.U. is concerned, is a messy, complex thing.”

Mr. Johnson is clearly looking to unite the divided Conservative Party behind his own, flamboyant self and to burnish his free-market economic credentials.

But playing down immigration, Mr. Goodwin said, could create more political trouble. “I worry for senior euroskeptic leaders, because there is a misunderstanding of the vote, and that will feed voter dissatisfaction,” he said, driving many of the voters who chose a British exit to turn away from both mainstream parties and move to the populist right.

The referendum was unusual, because it pitted a government on one side, “Remain,” against a loose coalition on the other, made up of Conservatives, some Labour legislators and U.K. Independence Party supporters. The Leave side never had to hammer out an agreement on how to proceed if it won, said Tony Travers, a professor of government at the London School of Economics.

“There was no coherence, because it wasn’t a political party fighting for government, but an odd coalition fighting against something, but with no consistent view of what it was fighting for,” he said.

Even on the economy, the Leave side was made of free-market economists who believe in no tariffs at all, those who believe in trade deals and protectionists who want to shield the declining working class against globalization, Professor Travers said.

“And now the government will have to be reformed as if it were representing the Leave side and yet represent both, a one-party government that must reflect the schism in itself,” he said.

In the aftermath of the Leave campaign’s victory, the political editor for Sky News, Faisal Islam, asked a Conservative member of Parliament who supported leaving the bloc to see his camp’s plan.

The legislator replied, according to Mr. Islam: “There is no plan. The Leave campaign don’t have a post-Brexit plan.” Then the legislator added, “Number 10 should have had a plan,” referring to the prime minister’s office.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/world ... -news&_r=0

[rickshaw92]

I saw this and thought you would get a laugh out of it ROB.


https://youtu.be/-a6HNXtdvVQ

[ROB]

Brilliant.

And now the hero of the Brexiteers has refused to step up for the Prime Ministership. Weak as fuck lol.

gold Gold GOLD

[Douchebag]

Brilliant.

And now the hero of the Brexiteers has refused to step up for the Prime Ministership. Weak as fuck lol.

gold Gold GOLD

Brits like you are cring because you lost the vote!
Face the facts. A Britain libtard is about to be come rare as stake!!!

[snaark]

Boris is now officially the world's biggest spanner. Not running for PM is tantamount to saying "oh sorry old chaps, this has all been a terrible mistake. But I'm sure everything will be fine. Best of luck cleaning up my shit. I'm off to hunt foxes on my estate. Toodles!".

[rickshaw92]

Brilliant.

And now the hero of the Brexiteers has refused to step up for the Prime Ministership.

I never could stand the goofy lookin twat.

[nowonmai]

Touching how you colonials are still fascinated by the country in charge of yours.

[snaark]

Touching how you colonials are still fascinated by the country in charge of yours.

You're not even in charge of your own country! Australia is just another example of how the world outgrew and eventually forgot about England.

[nowonmai]

Touching how you colonials are still fascinated by the country in charge of yours.

You're not even in charge of your own country! Australia is just another example of how the world outgrew and eventually forgot about England.

Cuz you and BOR are just forgetting the hell out of the UK. You just can't get enough of forgetting about it.

[ROB]

I am so fascinated by you that I stalk you around the Internet.

Oh hang on, that's you.

Lol

[Q]

Boris is now officially the world's biggest spanner. Not running for PM is tantamount to saying "oh sorry old chaps, this has all been a terrible mistake. But I'm sure everything will be fine. Best of luck cleaning up my shit. I'm off to hunt foxes on my estate. Toodles!".

Riiiight....because if he did run, major cities in the UK wouldn't be burnt to the ground by Soros backed rioters.


Really....there's no "winning" with you people. He's fucked for not running. He'd be fucked if he was.

[nowonmai]

Blah blah blah blah blah

Blah blah

Blah

uh huh...uh huh...no, absolutely....uh huh....er, sorry just got a call, can I, er, get back to you? Yeah bye.

Don't miss the next exciting episode in The Life of BOR; he meets someone at a bus stop and they have a brief conversation about the weather before going their separate ways.

[ROB]

lol - you can pretend you're bored.

But I ain't the one who chases you around the internet to report back here.

[ROB]

I think my personal favourite, "eat your own shit" moment had to be Farage's speech.

Insult each and every one of the people who you're going to be begging for a deal in a few months.

Such a great negotiation tactic.

lol

Bexiteers are stumbling over each other in how fast they're retreating from their bullshit promises. Best political entertainment in years and that includes Trumpocalpse which will hopefully deliver some luls in a few months.

[flipflop]

I hope you're not as premature in bed, for the sake of your missus, haha.

Getting worked up over Brexit, behave yourself. We'll be OK, there's nothing fucked, the U.K. just realigned itself to the right a bit. A lesson for every politician throughout Europe. I can earn a living no matter what type/style of government we have. Because I'm not scared of hard fucking work. Outside of London everyone is LOVING the vote and excited about where things go from here. Fuck London lol.

Ive never seen our establishment so fucking humbled before - from the BBC to those cunts in Westminster. It's been a brilliant week or so. The leftists and dickheads are in pantie wetting turmoil, everyone else is just carrying on putting steam on the table and looking forward to the future.

Farage was brilliant, they DID laugh at him, but he stuck to his guns. Watch UKIP grow exponentially now, especially as the Tories and Labour and the rest try to fudge the actual withdrawal. The lulz are on them, and it's been a long time coming.

Cheers