David Cameron: Britain's EU Referendum to be held June 23

MojoMan · Feb 20, 2016

There has long been skepticism in Britain and elsewhere about whether the British referendum on continuing their membership in the EU would ever be held. Many if not most believed that this was just a blatantly dishonest campaign ploy by Conservative Party PM David Cameron.

Today David Cameron announced the date of the referendum will be June 23, 2016, which is 123 days from today. This is a big F'ing deal, to quote our illustrious Vice President Joe Biden.

Here is a very insightful article on where the politics of all this currently stands in the UK:

David Cameron has wrongfooted everyone – the EU referendum is his to lose

He’s done it again. David Cameron has demonstrated that the biggest mistake in British politics is to underestimate him.

Admittedly, his deal is not a total overhaul of the European Union. But it’s a far more significant recalibration of Britain’s position within that Union than his critics were predicting.

The “emergency migrant benefit brake” exceeds the five-year ban Nigel Farage called for. The “principled and upfront” protection outside the eurozone that Mark Carney, the Bank of England Governor, advocated has been won. So have the guarantees that Britain will be exempt from further “political integration” – the nightmare scenario painted by the Eurosceptics.

This is not quite the fundamental reform Cameron spoke of in his 2013 Bloomberg speech. But while the Out camp will mock, his assertion that the UK now enjoys “special status” within the EU is entirely accurate.

For a while, David Cameron was caught up in the Euro weeds – debating the micro-detail of treaties and voting thresholds. In characteristically dramatic style, however, he has broken free.

We were told it would be impossible for him to maintain Cabinet unity through the course of the renegotiations. He did. We were told he would find it impossible to secure agreement on migrant benefits. He did – to the extent Out are now claiming the issue was never a major one at all. We were told the entire referendum pledge was hollow, and would be discarded when the general election was out of the way. It wasn’t. We were told pro-Brexit Cabinet ministers would be gagged. They aren’t.

Yesterday the Outers were scrabbling around attempting to unpick the details of the settlement. But Cameron was already moving on. The coming vote, he said, is about economic security as economic storm clouds are again gathering. Geo-political security in the face of Russian expansionism. A collective response to a once-in-a-generation refugee and terror crisis. Precisely the sort of big-picture focus that secured him victory last May.

To date, Cameron’s premiership has been defined by several narratives, most of them unflattering. One is that he is a “lucky general”. He was lucky to beat David Davis to the Tory leadership. He was lucky the economic and political cycles aligned in 2015. He was lucky to find himself running against Ed Miliband. He was even luckier to find himself running against Miliband while the Labour leader was being knee-capped by Nicola Sturgeon.

But the truth is that in politics, as in everything else, luck can only take you so far. And it certainly doesn’t take you as far as Downing Street.

Another narrative is that Cameron’s EU strategy has been determined by what is in the interests of the Tory party, rather than the interests of the nation. That’s partially true. Just as Tony Blair ultimately shelved his dream of eurozone entry to avoid a confrontation with Gordon Brown, and John Major’s Europe strategy was governed by a doomed attempt to placate his Cabinet critics, party political management is a frustrating but necessary part of any prime minister’s job description. On the issue of Europe, David Cameron has fulfilled his skilfully.

The final critique of Cameron is that he is an empty vessel. A PR hack in statesmen’s clothing. Those critics should look at the speech he delivered on Friday night as he unveiled his deal. Despite the lateness of the hour, it represented the most articulate and passionate case for Britain’s place in the EU made by a Tory party leader since Margaret was banging the drum for the In campaign in the EEC referendum of 1975.

A Conservative PM is leading the campaign for British EU membership. That is not a PR stunt, but a seismic political event many of us thought we would not see in our lifetime.

The Cabinet has agreed to recommend that the UK remains in a reformed European Union. I will be making a referendum announcement shortly.
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) February 20, 2016

There has been much debate over the leadership of the respective campaigns. The Out camp have successfully avoided the impression that they are secretly working on behalf of the British establishment. But they have done so by cementing the impression that they are a bunch of ideological cranks. Michael Gove may be the face of the Out campaign, but Nigel Farage and George Galloway are its heart.

The Prime Minister has again wrongfooted his critics. In doing so he has revealed that the most important voice in the forthcoming EU debate will be his own.
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Against all odds, David Cameron has recently negotiated a deal with the EU granting Britain special permissions and waivers designed to help the "Yes" camp win this referendum and keep Britain in the EU. Cameron did not get all that he wanted from the EU, but he did apparently get far more than anyone expected.

Now, despite the fact that much of his party is in favor of leaving the EU, David Cameron himself is leading the campaign to stay in. In a poll released today, the results are as follows:

36% - "No" (in favor of leaving)
34% - "Yes" (in favor of staying)
23% - Undecided

If they leave, Britain will be the first to leave the EU, and probably not the last. It could and very possibly will be the beginning of the end for the EU.

If they stay, Britain will be increasingly overrun by immigrants from all over the world, raising real problems for national security and undermining job security and wages for British citizens. It will result in Britain increasingly be absorbed into the EU, effectively abdicating whatever national identity it historically has had.

Personally, I see the allure of a close economic partnership between Britain and the EU. However, with their close proximity and long history, they are virtually certain to have that regardless. The EU is an economic wreck. The political correctness agenda as it has been applied to immigration policy is tearing Britain and the rest of Europe apart at the seams.

It is a tough call either way, but this current arrangement is not sustainable. Britain needs to exit the EU.

Mathloom · Feb 20, 2016

How is immigration tearing Britain apart?

What, in your opinion, are the befits of a liberal immigration policy? Even as a critic, you must be able to envision benefits.

Do you really think Germany, for example, doesn't have the political power to freeze immigration if it wanted to?

Why did Europe open its doors to immigration so heavily in the last several decades?

Northside Storm · Feb 20, 2016

Mathloom said: ↑

What, in your opinion, are the befits of a liberal immigration policy? Even as a critic, you must be able to envision benefits.
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Nobody look at Japan. Political correctness has left it overrun with a negative population growth rate, and negative interest rates.

People who are nativists, I always imagine, must not know how they get their cheap goods and who really builds the innovations that allows them to live their lives. The world is getting better all around them, despite them I suppose.

Mathloom · Feb 20, 2016

Northside Storm said: ↑

Nobody look at Japan. Political correctness has left it overrun with a negative population growth rate, and negative interest rates.

People who are nativists, I always imagine, must not know how they get their cheap goods and who really builds the innovations that allows them to live their lives. The world is getting better all around them, despite them I suppose.
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That's the thing, I have no problem discussing the negatives but it's pretty absurd that you would look at immigration and not realize a single positive thing about it. Is it hard to acknowledge how beneficial it is to people who have large manufacturing operations for immigrants to come in and do those jobs for less than anyone else? Is it reasonable to think these governments are accepting immigration to pander to a weak weak humanitarian subset of the population who are typically ignored?

Why are all these powerful countries accepting immigration so routinely? They are the least likely in the world to be forced into that position, yet they take the most immigrants.

MojoMan · Feb 22, 2016

Well, this is going to be interesting. Boris Johnson, who is simultaneously the Mayor of London, a Member of Parliament (MP) and a member of David Cameron's Conservative Party, has come out in favor of the "Leave" campaign.

For those who do not follow British politics, this Boris Johnson is quite a character. Many in the UK see him as high on the short list of possible successors to David Cameron in 2020, when his current term ends. Cameron has pledged not to seek a third term, although it is currently hard to imagine the UK ever having a PM that is more on his game than David Cameron, who is leading the "Remain" campaign, currently is right now.

Nevertheless, the top supporters of "Leave," including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove of the Conservative Party, and Nigel Farage of UKIP, are very popular, extremely influential, and in the case of Johnson and Farage, approximately as skilled at playing the media as Donald Trump here in the US.

In any case, here is the article that Boris Johnson wrote explaining himself this last weekend in the London Telegraph. It is long, about 2,000 words, but it is in my opinion a 'must read' for anyone who is interested in following this campaign at all closely. Johnson presents an argument for leaving that is powerfully persuasive and that will have a great deal of influence with the people of the UK. I have clipped a few sentences here and there that I thought were especially important below:

Boris Johnson exclusive: There is only one way to get the change we want – vote to leave the EU

Ask how much EU legislation the Commission has actually taken back under its various programmes for streamlining bureaucracy. The answer is none. That is why EU law is likened to a ratchet, clicking only forwards. We are seeing a slow and invisible process of legal colonisation, as the EU infiltrates just about every area of public policy.

Sometimes the public can see all too plainly the impotence of their own elected politicians – as with immigration. That enrages them; not so much the numbers as the lack of control. That is what we mean by loss of sovereignty – the inability of people to kick out, at elections, the men and women who control their lives. We are seeing an alienation of the people from the power they should hold, and I am sure this is contributing to the sense of disengagement, the apathy, the view that politicians are “all the same” and can change nothing, and to the rise of extremist parties.

There is only one way to get the change we need, and that is to vote to go, because all EU history shows that they only really listen to a population when it says No. The fundamental problem remains: that they have an ideal that we do not share. They want to create a truly federal union, e pluribus unum, when most British people do not.

Whatever happens, Britain needs to be supportive of its friends and allies – but on the lines originally proposed by Winston Churchill: interested, associated, but not absorbed; with Europe – but not comprised. We have spent 500 years trying to stop continental European powers uniting against us. There is no reason (if everyone is sensible) why that should happen now, and every reason for friendliness.

This is a moment to be brave, to reach out – not to hug the skirts of Nurse in Brussels, and refer all decisions to someone else.

We have given so much to the world, in ideas and culture, but the most valuable British export and the one for which we are most famous is the one that is now increasingly in question: parliamentary democracy – the way the people express their power.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to vote for real change in Britain’s relations with Europe. This is the only opportunity we will ever have to show that we care about self-rule. A vote to Remain will be taken in Brussels as a green light for more federalism, and for the erosion of democracy.
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Haymitch · Feb 22, 2016

I don't know a whole lot about Boris Johnson but the bits I've read I liked. I think he's pretty firmly anti-war and (obviously) anti-torture.

And as someone who is 6'4" I appreciate him taking short-man syndrome head on.

Sir Winston Churchill may have had 'short man syndrome', suggests Boris Johnson

Adolf Hitler had it. So too did Napoleon, Mussolini and Stalin. So-called "short man syndrome" has been blamed for the maniacal power-lust of some of history's greatest tyrants.

But now Boris Johnson has suggested that the name of another world leader should be added to that list: Sir Winston Churchill.

In his new book on Britain's wartime leader, The Churchill Factor, the Mayor of London points out that Churchill was even shorter than Hitler, and suggests that he was driven, in part, by a desire to prove something to those who had bullied him as a "runt" at school.

Churchill was never more than 5ft 8ins in height (in later years, the shrinkage that effects everyone as they grow older had diminished him to little over 5ft 6ins) and as a young man his chest measured just 31ins. His hands, of which bronze casts have survived, were no bigger than those of his mother, Jennie.

Mr Johnson writes: "Who else was 5 foot 6 or under? Some of the biggest tyrants and creeps in world history: Augustus (5 foot 6), Napoleon (ditto), Mussolini (ditto) Stalin (teensy at 5 foot 4). Hitler was only 5 foot 8. All these characters have been associated with the over-compensatory aggression that is sometimes referred to as 'short man' syndrome; and there is some evidence, at least on the face of it, that Churchill did, too."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...hort-man-syndrome-suggests-Boris-Johnson.html
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Cohete Rojo · Feb 22, 2016

Northside Storm said: ↑

Nobody look at Japan. Political correctness has left it overrun with a negative population growth rate, and negative interest rates.

People who are nativists, I always imagine, must not know how they get their cheap goods and who really builds the innovations that allows them to live their lives. The world is getting better all around them, despite them I suppose.
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Yeah, you shouldn't look at Japan. Japan is just fine despite a stagnant population.

Deckard · Feb 23, 2016

The deal Cameron was able to get to stay in the EU is much better than many of his critics (and supporters of staying in the EU) thought he would be able to pull off. The UK had a "special" relationship within the EU already. Now that special relationship has gotten even better for the island nation, with much better terms. The deal takes Britain out of the integration of the various members into a "United Europe" and insures British sovereignty, regardless of what the other members decide to do. It separates the British financial system from the rest of the Euro Zone more than it is now. Britain is no longer expected to contribute to the bailouts of those EU members that have put themselves in a pickle, Greece being the most obvious example. New limits have been placed on the terms of immigration into the UK from the EU. It will not end immigration, and that's a plus in my opinion, but it puts that immigration on much more favorable terms for Britain than was the case before.

Leaving the EU would be a major blow to the economy of the UK. Many of those for pulling out have a fantasy that the UK will be better off as a center of trade with the English speaking countries, mostly members of the Commonwealth, including India (where English is widely spoken by the educated), plus the United States. That the Commonwealth will be "renewed," with those members supposedly forgetting how they were royally screwed when Britain first joined the Common Market. Countries like Australia and New Zealand were hammered by the abrupt end of the "special relationship" with the mother country, losing preferential trade terms for their exports within the Commonwealth as the UK essentially dumped them for a Europe with a far larger market, offering them what they saw as a better deal for Britain.

This deal is good news for Great Britain and for the rest of us who care about Europe.

Commodore · Feb 23, 2016

<blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">EU passport held by over 500 million people. Let's leave EU & control our borders.<a href="https://t.co/k7Ik8YWS3v">https://t.co/k7Ik8YWS3v</a></p>— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/701873786161737729">February 22, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Only way we can stop handing EU over £50 million every day, control our borders and make our own laws is to Leave EU<a href="https://t.co/QGJjmvbnGW">https://t.co/QGJjmvbnGW</a></p>— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/701747162707693570">February 22, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Ignore the scaremongering from the pro-EU establishment. Outside of the EU there is a world of opportunity.<a href="https://t.co/3uQf0S7Gxf">https://t.co/3uQf0S7Gxf</a></p>— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/697038168919396354">February 9, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

MojoMan · Feb 24, 2016

Nigel Farage weighs in before the EU parliament on Britain's upcoming referendum on EU membership.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sllcexlb8TY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

It appears that the deal that David Cameron negotiated is not legally binding and that the members of the EU parliament are pretty strongly opposed to approving it after the fact, if the British people do vote to remain. This will surely be a powerful point that could well undermine David Cameron's campaign to keep the UK in the EU.

adoo · Feb 24, 2016

Northside Storm said: ↑

Nobody look at Japan. Political correctness has left it overrun with a negative population growth rate, and negative interest rates.

People who are nativists, I always imagine, must not know how they get their cheap goods and who really builds the innovations that allows them to live their lives. The world is getting better all around them, despite them I suppose.
Click to expand...

japan has been the opposite of being political correct

it has intentionally excluded her invasion of her Asian neighbors, and all the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers, in school textbooks.

negative interest rate is the cumulative effect of a "protectionist" economy stuck in mud since the early 1990s

pirc1 · Feb 24, 2016

Just leave already.

Commodore · Jun 11, 2016

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Leave opens up massive lead in exclusive Brexit poll for The Independent <a href="https://t.co/ATC1OxCQTS">https://t.co/ATC1OxCQTS</a></p>— The Independent (@Independent) <a href="https://twitter.com/Independent/status/741528913956900870">June 11, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mOXQZIAwAAg?start=22" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

MojoMan · Jun 11, 2016

The Bilderberger's are having their annual meeting this week and this is apparently one of their most serious concerns, as it will be a slap in the face to their globalist agenda.

Bilderberg 2016: Desperate lobbying against Brexit from Big Business

"A disaster for everyone" is how Henri de Castries, the boss of AXA and a director of HSBC, describes Brexit. But in particular, it is a disaster for his banking and big business colleagues at Bilderberg.

For Bilderberg, as for Goldman Sachs, the idea that there might be any kind of push-back against globalisation is a horrific one. I suspect we'll glimpse some frowning faces behind the tinted glass as the limousines start rolling up on Thursday.

An integrated EU, with the City at its centre, is a key building block in a globalised world, and its potential loss is a huge concern for "the high priests of globalisation", as Will Hutton called the members of Bilderberg. The prospect of Brexit "frightens me", admit Ken Jacobs, the head of Lazard, and another member of Bilderberg's inner circle. Not much frightens these people. Only two things: sunlight and Brexit.
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The Bilderburger's are the ultimate globalists. Globalism is of course represented here in this country by Barack Obama and his crew. Hillary Clinton will also carry that torch if she is elected, regardless of any lies she tells to the contrary prior to the election. Donald Trump - who has been a Democrat nearly all of his adult life - may also, as he is like Hillary such an epic liar that you really cannot trust a single word that comes out of his mouth.

Anyway, people express concern about "nationalists" - people who are proud of their nations and want to protect and defend the people in them - but globalists are worse, as they want to see the ability to provide any such protection taken away, once and for all, for the benefit of a tiny group of elite leaders, such as the Bilderburgers.

If the British vote to leave the EU, that would be a cold slap in the face to their plans, as the integration provided by the EU has been a huge success in their view. Who do these people in the UK think they are, voting their own interests and against the interests of their betters? Or even voting for that matter?

pippendagimp · Jun 11, 2016

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UTMxfAkxfQ0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Cohete Rojo · Jun 11, 2016

Northside Storm said: ↑

Nobody look at Japan. Political correctness has left it overrun with a negative population growth rate, and negative interest rates.
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So what?

Northside Storm · Jun 11, 2016

Cohete Rojo said: ↑

So what?
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you've taken Econ 101, you tell me why those things are bad

Northside Storm · Jun 11, 2016

MojoMan said: ↑

Anyway, people express concern about "nationalists" - people who are proud of their nations and want to protect and defend the people in them
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*want to protect and defend certain people in them

AroundTheWorld · Jun 11, 2016

Northside Storm said: ↑

Nobody look at Japan. Political correctness has left it overrun with a negative population growth rate, and negative interest rates.
Click to expand...

What exactly do you mean by "political correctness" in that context?

Northside Storm · Jun 11, 2016

AroundTheWorld said: ↑

What exactly do you mean by "political correctness" in that context?
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Mojoman ->

The political correctness agenda as it has been applied to immigration policy is tearing Britain and the rest of Europe apart at the seams.
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The context is that Mojoman can't help but cite political correctness as the mother of all ills.

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