Sunday 3 July 2016

4. The Elephant in the Brexit Room (TEITBR) - How the population reacted

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The population of all european countries have only ever had a vote on free trade. As far as the Uk is concerned, by 1973, when we move from EFTA to the EEC, we did not have a vote. This was promised, and finally delivered under the Wilson government in 1975, but after the event. The vote here was on Free Trade, the concept of a Federal Superstate was rarely if ever mentioned. I was doing Economics 'A' level at school... and did this in detail.

However, this was still put out as a widening of the Free Trade agreements, with relevant guards put in place to veto any further integration. The understanding of the population was largely that this would be free trade, and freer movement within member states. There was little, if any concept of political/economic integration.
As a result, 62% voted, retrospectively, to stay a part of the EEC (European Economic Commnity). Personally, I cant imagine that result if the true intentions had been made clear at the time of the vote, as we are talking a time, 30 years after the last european and worldwide war, when the majority of people voting would have been directly affected by those events, as well as having first hand knowledge of the previous conflicts.


Once the reality kicked in, and it was realised in the late 1980s and early 1990s that the intention was political integration concerns started to materialise.   
As a result of this, Sir John Goldsmith formed the Referendum Party in November 1994.while they did get 3% of the vote, it was not enough to gain traction. Despite this, most people were still unaware that the EEC was about total integration, helped by mis-information being given to the media.
Sir John Goldsmith died shortly afterwards, leaving a small group of people still trying to put the 'Leave' case forward, but resulting in a loss of a push for a referendum on Europe.

Finally, as an Election Promise in 2014, the Conservative Government agreed to a Referendum to be held on June 23rd 2016. There was a 3 month lead up to this referendum, which showed the true colours of all concerned, on both sides.
The information given out, by both sides, was not information, but was the 'politics of fear'. 
  • If you vote to leave it will cost each family an extra £4000.00 per year... how? why? Na.. not telling you that.
  • If you don't vote Remain, we will lose our trade with our nearest neighbours. Will we? Really? Why?
  • If we vote to leave, our cost of borrowing will go up, the value of the pound will fall, share markets will collapse, and we will have an emergency budget to put up tax to cover our losses? Really? Aside from the money markets playing havoc in the first 24 hours (predictable...either way), that did not happen. We had exactly the same arguments when we left the ERM, and that was proven to be completely wrong.
  • Not one single MEP, on either side of the argument, came to the fore. These are the people who we pay to give us information... and aside from Nigel Farage, who is an MEP, and at the time the leader of UKIP, not a single one of them came out. The 'debates' held by party leaders , should have been held by MEPs.
  • Immigration, unless we leave, we will consistently be flooded by immigrants, both economic and political. Really? (again). Why? We have always had an open door policy to true political asylum seekers (those in fear of their life), as well as those that provide a service we cant get internally. 
  • And the worst case of lying by any politician .. vote to leave and we risk being at war with Europe 
And so the 'arguments' went on. Not a single provable fact was put forward by either side. Nobody has ever been able to state the cost of being in Europe, the actual benefits, the cost of leaving, in real terms, the cost of keeping any number of MEPS and their civil servants there, and what the payback is that makes this financially or politically worthwhile. 

So, now that we had a referendum, we had little to no actual fact to base a decision on. Thanks people....much appreciated....and you winder why the slim majority voted to leave?

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