I mean the fight against the rise of extremism and nationalism.

I accept we disagree about the impact of the EU and our membership of it on this.

I get the impression that both sides agree that politics and politicians are disastrous.

The political system should be as small as possible. Any one line of responsibility's budget and jurisdiction should be as small as possible. There should be as much variety and redundancy across jurisdictions as is practical to avoid single points of failure and allow evolutionary improvement. Except to the extent that economies of scale, convenient geography and cultural fit make the ROI of mergers too overwhelmingly large to ignore.

That is clearly the case within England, it is clearly not the case across the EU. In the UK maybe Scotland is at the boundary.

I find that argument so elegant I'm amazed there is still a debate regarding the EU, except to the extent that this argument has failed to be communicated. I would never want a huge chunk of the developed liberal West to ignore this concept, and sell out just for a claim of a few points of GDP, when we already have all the food, flat screen tvs, takeaway restaurants and white goods that everyone could ever need. We consume too much, ship goods too cheaply, and make winner-takes-all markets too large and pay those companies' managers too much as a result - I don't want a solution that promises more of that. (And building the system like that, then attempting to elect Labour and the Greens to ban all its outcomes is a stupid idea.)

It's an interesting discussion but we have to deal with:

-Putin, trump etc.
-Global companies that can move capital, profits and jobs across borders
-climate change
-and I'd add the existential crisis of democratic capitalism in a world where labour is increasingly worthless
- the internet
- some other ***

So what is as small as possible?

I'm shocked bitter and lektor haven't weighed in with their full support.

Btw, we know this how the lousy tory bastards feel about us and more than just a few English feel the same.......it's only the stinking Irish, no surrender!

But we're the racists bigots for not wanting to have anything to do with the ****s.

Wtf this guy shuffle doing in here? Sure he has been laughed out of the trump threads for being another racist piece of dirt.

If I'm right, maybe we should do the same.

http://leavehq.com/blogview.aspx?blo...s9eTz74nTWYNpU

For you DB. Take the 10 minutes and read, do yourself and us all a favour.

Bet you have loads of black friends as well.

Go away, we have enough crackpots of our own already.

Oh what a surprise. You've finally outed yourself as someone whose regard for democracy is so flimsy that you're happy to abandon it and support violence if a second referendum, this time of better informed people, support Remain.

I bet you were probably secretly pleased the Jo Cox was murdered for not supporting your extremism.

And no, most Remainers are not blinkered about how awful you and others like you are, and to the depths to which you will stoop while the likes of chez try to engage you in "conversations".

Democracy will have let me down first.

I don't support violence, except against tyranny. Your reading is wrong anyway, I meant I will forfeit voting for anyone, cos the political system is broken and voting doesn't change things.


By better informed, I assume you mean being fed a steady diet of fear, uncertainty and doubt in order to gather support for the organisation you want everyone to be controlled by.

Says a lot about the organisation you support that it can't gather support by any positive mechanism, do you think?

And if remain wins a second referendum, I'll shrug, get on with life, but know that the dirty little (non)secret of the remain campaign is they didn't convince anyone to vote for the EU by showing how good it is, but by frightening people with how bad it can be if you don't tow the line.

I do expect a little backbone from the Brits on this though to recognise the tryanny, low-level psychological terrorism and basic unfairness of it, and vote accordingly. After all, we're not French/Irish/other countries that have been asked to redo referenda till they get it 'right'.

You're ****ing right you're not like the Irish. We haven't raped and pillaged our way around the world and back and still feel like we're owed something for that pleasure.

Address all the ****e by the leave campaign - dirty money, maybe hooked up with Russian interests and **** knows what else.

Yeah but you're a democrat.

Give my head peace ffs.

Needs repeating again and again, you dgaf about your country or your nearest and dearest next door neighbours. When you stop lying to yourself about being a democrat rather than a facist loving arsehole maybe you'll get an idea of how much of a cretin you really are.

It's good to see jalfrezi having a change of heart and coming out against violence.

lol more PF nonsense...

No-deal Brexit: Disruption at Dover 'could last six months'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46480374


I particularly like the 2nd highest comment

'6 months of pain to be free from the shackles of the EU? I’ll take that'


and 3rd highest starts even better.

'Compared to 40+ years of misery in the EU and its predecessors....'




Still waiting for a EU +ve story to support remain.... 2.5 years and counting...

"Stop going on about how our faces will get eaten", cry supporters of the the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party. "It's pathetic, just fearmongering. Don't you have anything positive to say instead?"

Regardless of polling, a second referendum - would go "leave" because of what my father calls the "Mark Oaten effect".

Mark Oaten was a candidate who won a seat in the 1997 election but due to irregularities the losing candidate forced voting to be re-run later in the year. The result was that Oaten increased his majority by more than a million percent.

Basically people don't like to be made to vote again about matters which they see as already having been settled earlier and they're likely merely to reconfirm the result.

You want me to come in and point out the irony of a person supporting a party called "Sinn Fein" crying because the the British are potentially leaving the Irish on their own? Do you even Gaelic?

If the Irish want to self-harm by remaining behind the EU trade wall that's their problem until they renegotiate with the EU or rearrange their trade in such away as to allow themselves a freer choice of who their import partners are, as some people in the UK want to do now. Ireland has sea ports and can import food from wherever it wants as long as it doesn't have dumb treaty obligations stopping it.

If the above creates an intolerable situation in the north then elect a first minister who's willing to hold a border poll. None of your problems add up to a right to stop my country choosing its own path.

You earlier said Varadkar was making sure the interests of Ireland were well represented at negotiations. I asked what you considered those interests to be and I may be wrong but I don't think you answered.

If you consider the interests of Ireland to be that the UK
Remain > Have May's deal with a permanent backstop > Leave with no deal > Have May's deal for now but without a permanent backstop

then presumably you feel the interests of Ireland are being very well represented at the moment. If you disagree about the ordering of the last two then its potentially very important as neither of the first two are likely to be politically possible in the UK and the EU may very well find itself choosing between the last two options.

Been feeling the same. Mostly people restating their positions without much actual interaction or progress forward in discussion as well as lots of off-topic stuff that belongs in the UK politics thread.

Brexit news is obviously interesting at the moment but I will be bowing out from following this thread after the new year.

You have to be some melodramatic mingebox to be complaining about how the last 40 years has been so awful. What I have experienced has been fine, so there is a positive story to support remain.

It didn't work out like that in Ireland, did it? If it is so unsuccessful, why are people always wailing about the EU making people vote again until they get the right result?

Lol that didn't take long lektor.

My posting history is here for you to search, I support my family and that's it. Have no time for self serving bastards (just about every politician ever) and I'm quite honest in saying so.

I did vote for SF that one time, 20+ years ago and have regretted it ever since lol. If that makes me a supporter then fair enough.

I told you ages ago, you are just another bitterballs but with more words, you don't deserve my attention.

Do you think making people vote over and over till right result is sharp practice, perhaps? (and interestingly, the right results seems to then lock out the ability to change direction/mind/possibility of reconsideration in perpetuity where votes go in favour of the EU....)

The EU do love a lockdown of thought once they get a vote that goes their way, don't they.

The EU didn't make anyone do anything. It was Ireland's choice.

The lockdown is what you sign up to. If you don't like it, don't sign it, and don't design it that way.

When did the citizenry of the UK sign up to this again?

I don't, I and rest of citizenry weren't given a choice, and we didn't.

My stance has always been violence as a last resort, either to overthrow a regime when there's no democratic route, or as a prophylactic against emerging tyranny.

Your stance is let's hold hands with violent extremists and try to understand why they're the psychopaths they are, and when we get used and burned by them (ldo), oh well at least we tried.

That's true. Not thought about it but I suppose the Mark Oaten effect doesn't work in the same way outside the UK.

So I assume you won't be complaining if leavers feel democracy is denied by remainer spoiler tactics leading to an overturning the first referendum results, and violence erupts?

Because, that would be hypocr...oh, wait...

Nice gif, but they didn't.

They didn't, we have a representative democracy.

No, your representatives did.

Alternatively the Mark Oaten effect is a one-off and there aren't enough data points to prove that this effect exists or is just bollocks.