Should the UK stay in or leave the EU?

I will admit that particular Clash song was among my first thoughts after seeing this thread title. I will also say that I was under no impression this was an original or clever thought.

store-bought food for thought

@immortal_guy: About the stats - I'd believe actuals over forecasts, so the DoE figure of what actually happened in 2015 must be accurate, since it fed into the 2016 education budget. The divisioning on the map is lop-sided and ranges must be trying to push some favoured stat, although I'm not sure what it is!

I like the EU as an idea too. I like the thought of the common market and think inter-country cooperation is a very good thing, not least because I have relatives living in Germany and France. The business about the EU fending off internal conflict is clearly exaggerated for me. We had the Balkan crisis and the Ukraine/Crimea conflict and the EU did chuff-all. It is a good job we are all in the UN and that Poland (for example) is in NATO. Those are the organisations maintaining the peace. The UK should be very proud of what it did in the Balkans. The worry for me is that the EU strategy is to promote an EU military force. The idea too that the EU is involved in UK policy is a recent change, as a product of John Major signing away our constitutional rights. It is clear to see that the EU is moving in one direction for union and unless we take on the Euro, we will suffer because of it. There is nothing we can do to democratise or the change the processes in the EU. We have tried this already. I think we need a restart.

One thing that has not been discussed here at all is where the bulk of the EU funding gets spent. The vast majority (around 60bn Euro/year) goes on farming subsidies. This money is paid proportionally to the amount of land open to farming. Not only is it paying some of the already wealthiest land owners in Europe to continue to own their land, it is also anti-environmental, since there is no compunction for land-owners to retain hedgerows or diverse ecologies if they can have huge fields and more EU cash instead. I saw a really interesting debate from a farming journalist about the way EU divides up farming subsidies. He was so highly critical of EU policy, but remained as an "Inner" because his debate was with the farming minister, who hadn't done anything to raise or address concerns about this himself.

I also worry that there is a news blackout for news that shows current issues with immigration and asylum seekers in the UK. We need to be told and we need to be able to learn from it and give people coming here an impression of what is culturally acceptable in the UK. I don't want lynch mobs, but I think we need the honest truth and a strategy to actively change things. Censorship of the press and bans on criticising religion are steps on the way to totalitarianism, as history shows us. It's one thing for people to call Farage a racist when he speaks of the stuff happening in Sweden that is suppressed by their own press, but the same things are starting to happen here too.

But when one of those terrible people is Katie Hopkins, who makes Donald Trump look like Martin Luther King Jr, it's cause for concern.

They should one hundred percent stay, and I hope to god that when the actual referendum takes place, a lot of people who have not yet spoken up come out of the woodwork and vote remain, because the leave side seems like a vocal minority to me.

Leaving the EU would accomplish nothing, aside from leaving the driver's seat the UK finds itself in within the union. If they were to leave, they would still have to make sure that their products are in accordance with EU regulations, and they need the mainland for their economy. There is no reason to assume leaving the EU would put a stop to the "fugitive problem" they have, because fugitives will still keep coming.

As it stands, Britain is part of the union, while still standing apart from it in a couple of significant ways. From within the union, it has the bargaining power to both enjoy some of the union's benefits (including the money that comes from having joint economies), and negotiate for particular regulatory freedoms at the same time. Leaving would only mean giving up this bargaining power, and for what? So they can close the borders?

Maybe the UK will leave the union at some point. I just hope to god, that when they do, they do it for a better reason than "the EU forces us to show solidarity with refugees."

For non-Brits reading this thread, Katie Hopkins is the UK's answer to Ann Coulter.

Actually, she might even be more 'out there' than Coulter... but they are cut from the same cloth.

Hopkins is Coulter if Coulter was bitten by a radioactive asshole.

Seriously.

Honestly the only time I've considered voting to leave was when my arsehole neighbour started playing Bryan Adams - Everything I Do, for an hour, full blast on repeat a few weeks ago. He's Polish so it's not like this was an unrelated moment of anger, other than that one time he's ok so I'm fine with him staying as he's only recently arrived.

As far as the campaigns go I think it's really quite interesting how the campaign to remain is basically one of fear while the leave campaign is all about hope. I'm really interested to see which way it goes later this week.

The hope is positively exploding out of this image!

That statement can easily be reversed.

Both campaigns have been awful, full of nonsense, scaremongering and lies. I'm very suspicious of anyone who is certain either way really, because the EU is a mess, and leaving it would at least remove it as an excuse for the terrible mismanagement of our country, but leaving is basically just suicide, because lots of fake money is going to get wiped off shares and normal folk will be the ones to lose out.

I just hope turnout is high, because the current political process is: 1. sort demographics by likelihood to vote 2. target the ones at the top, ignore the rest.

@sanj: Good lord, are the leave campaign allowed to just print outright lies? I thought as the official campaign they'd have some sort of watchdog making sure they weren't saying things that were literally wrong. Genuinely furious that that managed to make it out into the world without someone stopping it somewhere along the chain. Whether or not a new country can join the EU is one of the things that we have ABSOLUTE control over - control that we would relinquish if we left the EU! (I'm going to tactfully sidestep the incredible racism that the poster's insinuating - I guess that might be par for the course with the official leave campaign).

As a Danish person who value Britain in the EU, i really like this poll.

As a welsh person who has had enough of a torie government can i suggest a third option, England leaves the EU and donate wales to any Scandinavian country as a leaving gift?

I am very interested in seeing what happens if they leave and I say that as someone with no real clue what would actually happen. An agent of chaos, if you will (please don't).

Get the hell out before the Americans enslave us with TTIP. We're better off allying with the "Mandarins" than Trump and TTIP.

This is something that I've been thinking a lot about as well. My conclusion is that I think TTIP doesn't come in to it. The future of TTIP is shaky in and of itself, with France being quite hostile to it. Meanwhile out Government and a lot of the Leave campaign seem to be very pro-TTIP in or out of the EU. That's before we even get in to the difficulties of what impact it will have on trading regs that might still impact us if we want access to the single market.

Obviously it's silly to pin your hopes of resisting TTIP on the French response, but I don't know that it's a factor in this decision. There's a lot of variables to it.

I do not want to go through another recession, thanks.

yeah cause if we leave, we wont end up with a TTIP agreement with the USA anyway! also who do you think wrote most of it, UK lawmakers so yeah about that

There is a big televised debate happening in the UK at the moment and it's just a shit show of one side saying something, the crowd cheering, and the other side accusing them of lying.

I am actually somewhat sick of this entire thing now. It's seems to have slowed to a snails pace of the same fake statistics and the same misleading claims having to be refuted. I know that the 'we lose £350 million a week to Europe' claim and the 'Turkish citizens are going to flood the UK' claims are bullshit and have known that for weeks now, so it's frustrating to see the Brexit group keep wheeling it out and the Remain camp having to keep saying no, that's not true. It's boring. It's insulting the audiences intelligence.

I wish the Brexit side would try and use anything else to convince me when they're on stage, but they keep resorting to the same soundbites about 'taking control'. Please just say anything else. Please. It doesn't help that these big panel debates give their guests about 20 seconds to talk before switching.

Zooming out a little bit, it's interesting to see Brexit use 'Take back control' and Trump use 'Make America great again' as campaign slogans. They both want you to feel like something has been lost. They are appeals to nostalgia which you should always be suspicious of.

@paulmako:I agree that the debate on TV was a stage show. No-one on either side seemed to actually answer audience questions or debate each other and they all spouted rhetoric instead. But we do this ourselves too: I never heard 'Turkish citizens are going to flood the UK' - only about Turkey joining the EU in the debate (they are already an associate member). The bullshit you've known for weeks about Turkey not joining the EU was discussed afterwards and stated to be in process. See here for a fairly up-to-date progress report. They only recently missed visa-free EU travel this week and the only stumbling block seems to be Turkey's anti-terror laws.

Today's EU press Joint statement briefing stated this:

"The EU has repeatedly stressed that Turkey, as a candidate country, must aspire to the highest possible democratic standards and practices. Any country negotiating its EU accession must guarantee human rights, in line with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)."

I don't want to insult your intelligence further, but this is EU strategy. Use your intelligence to understand why there is this visa-free EU deal with Turkey in the first place.

Or perhaps this could this be the same sort of bullshit that Farage got called out for when he said that hundreds of thousands of Romanians and Bulgarians would come to the UK to live when the EU opened up it's borders to them in 2014? If you look at recent government stats ONS stats (table 5), you will see that 179,000 Romanians and 40,000 Bulgarians have registered for UK NI Numbers already. Government actual immigration figures are rolled up into "A8" countries that include these two, for some reason since 2014, but you can only apply for an NI number once you are in the UK and those stats do list by country.

The rhetoric is the same unimaginative sloganeering and smearing from both sides. I think all political "media briefers", "perception managers", "communications coaches", "spin doctors" and whips should be taken out of politics. Let politicians say what they really think. The current stadium show makes people focus on the messengers rather than the message and the TV media don't call them to account. It seems to make people rely on information they get given and not to look into it or seek more out for themselves. It presents "debate" as meaningless posturing, when it is critical in a dialogue of opposing ideas. It makes rejection a simple matter of personal dislike, rather than forcing deconstruction of an argument, presenting direct rebuttals, or investigating further what the EU is and does, and what the alternatives might be.

The core of Brexit is about Nationalism, Racism and Global Industrialization.

Brexit is about keeping out people who are deemed not British enough. This is about "foreigners taking our jobs." This is about people not coming to terms with the realities of globalism and what it means for Sovereign Nations of the world going forward. It's about scapegoating minorities for political gain.

This is not a new story but an old one. It has been told time and again, repeated where ignorance and deceit rule. Do not look to the future when you look at Brexit but study the past. Choose a path where we have yet to tread. Make accountable your leaders and not those they have sworn to lead. Make a choice that you choose and not that which you have been told.

The future is what we make of it. Perhaps some day that future may include us all. Good luck United Kingdom.

Ben Goldacre kicks some straight talk.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YdtUabICi-C1RMMJGOJQH2omv1sJ53zUlJLH1Ets8BM/preview?pref=2&pli=1

Meanwhile, here's a Leave effort.

How did you come to that conclusion? Do you have any polls or research about people explaining their choice to leave?

@shindig: Wow, that's just too subtle. You think the viewers will get the message?

@imsh_pl: By my reckoning, the leave campaign have two broadly incompatible factions.

The first is the xenophobic faction whose core motivation is the desire to 'unmix' the uk's cultural make up and revert it back to some imaginary pre-mixed state... A purity purge... An expression of a quasi-fascist instinct borne out of an existential insecurity. There are more moderate satellite factions to this first group who focus on ideas of birthright entitlements to jobs being 'taken' by invading 'others' but broadly this first group coalesces around the idea that to improve things in the UK we need to prevent 'other' people and their outside influence and culture from living here.

The second faction are those that are actually quite pro-European while being strongly anti-EU. Their issue is with the EU's structure, operation, and the democratic limitations within the existing system. They have a desire to re-institute greater agency in the affairs of the British people, as determined solely by the British people. They don't feel strongly about the free movement of people across borders as they recognize that they also might want to move across those same borders and that mobility of labor works both ways. They are also interested in improving the strength of the nations within the broader European Demos and in trusting in people to govern themselves more directly.

I have some serious respect and sympathy for the second group and close to none for the first group. The problem with the leave campaign for me is that the noise coming out of it has been mostly generated by the first group. Rightly or wrongly, they are the face of the 'leave' vote and I don't want to empower them by voting leave.

By default then, even if I am less than fully enthusiastic about it, I have to vote remain...

As an Australian outsider, I've been trying pretty hard to learn both sides of the argument. Which is hard when one side seems dominated by troubling reactionary views on immigration and non-English cultures and the other side only seems to make concessions about how the EU is deeply flawed but necessary anyway. As others have said, I'll always be in favor of star trek style unions where we can eventually join the federation as a single planet. But you should always be able to leave in order to negotiate a better union.(And Australia was the stubborn last country to join the world union in the Star trek universe...)

That said as someone who kind of despises nationalism I have to hope the UK remains. I can't see the situation in the UK getting better in isolation. Even if leaving allowed them to let more asylum seekers in at the expense of EU migrant workers, the tone of the debate has taken a turn that suggests no politician would stay elected on that platform. Being forced to compromise with EU standards seems better for the world.

@extintor: Why cast your vote based on a campaign, rather than on the issues that you're asked to vote for? Do you think the campaigns will give you everything you need to be able to cast your vote, or do you think it is worth a bit of personal effort on your own part to find out more? I wonder which one of your Brexit groups I'd fit in, but I can't see me being in either of those.

@diz: You are in a distinct third group to the above two? I'm happy to hear what that is?

@extintor: You seem to be the one who would group people, and I've written a lot of fairly consistent (I think) stuff in this thread. So I ask again, what group do you think I'd fit in?

I'm not very interested in categorising you individually, and I didn't realise you were actually asking me to do so as a question in you post #228 i.e. "I wonder which one of your Brexit groups I'd fit in, but I can't see me being in either of those".

So to speak to your question now I understand you are directing it at me... well I don't really know and as I'm at lunch, have 10 mins, and am not going to read everything you've written in this entire thread, I'll go by the content on this particular page only.

You might be either (or perhaps an amalgam of both). You've posted a link to an isolated case of Syrian rapists (which indicates you ascribe to the 'only takes one bad apple' to poison the bunch mentality). You're au fait with immigration statistics (while also being aware of their arbitrary nature and the nonsense politics that goes on around them). You've implied that infrastructural planning is hampered (rather than potentially supported) by immigration. So this general fixation with migrants sort of puts you in camp 1, but on the other hand you've expressed support for the common market and cooperation between countries which also puts you in camp 2. My estimation based on this page is that you're 2/3 camp one and 1/3 camp two.

I won't assume I've done any more or any less research than you ahead of reaching my decision and ultimately your reasons are your own and I have no interest in trying to convince you to vote either way.

@extintor: I'm not that interested in what group you'd put me in honestly, but I see the desire to compartmentalize as requiring effort to understand why people think and act the way they do - which is good. The idea that you'd put me in both camps that you say are broadly incompatible shows how pigeon-holing people isn't perhaps as constructive as looking into the arguments behind your profiling.

I think you misunderstand the nature of my arguments. For example, have you heard about the news story I linked to? Was it reported on national television news? That was my point. Also, the issue is not about immigration, but the rate of it. Do you think 179,000 Romanian National Insurance numbers issued in just over 2 years is the sort of thing the UK should worry about? How many more do you think will come next year? I'll give you a clue: the average wage in Romania is 463 Euro and in the UK it is 2312 Euro. The minimum wage differential is even worse.

It is when you say things like "Rightly or wrongly, they are the face of the 'leave' vote and I don't want to empower them by voting leave", it makes me wonder what why you're actually basing your decision on faces.

Fair enough duder and ditto regarding the value of empathy in discourse :) Perhaps I was wrong to say the groups are distinct, or that there's only two of them.

I will admit that I hadn't heard about the Syrian rape case but I suspect that if I had, I would likely have dismissed it as being unrepresentative of any broader trends by migrants. I take your point that news media might be reticent to cover such things for the same slightly parochial fear that I would have regarding such a story fueling xenophobic inclinations unnecessarily. Given the scale of the crime it could have had greater representation ergo yes, a conscious effort was made to depoliticize it. Fair enough.

Regarding Romanians. No. That doesn't worry me particularly. A few years ago it was Poland, and a lot of the Poles returned. Those that didn't integrated. They brought a huge economic benefit on balance, even if they priced out some natives in some work areas. I fully understand that it could worry others on a personal level and I wouldn't begrudge them their vote even if I thought they were missing the broader picture. That's their right and I'd defend it.

However, you present a good economic 'impact upon labor price' counter-point here that stands clearly aside from my other two characterizations. Allow me to revise my previous thought on there being two to three major groups, that aren't distinct, but 'leave' voters can potentially be primarily motivated by.

right... now I really must get back to work!

I can see what you're saying, but the accepted content of a campaign is the indicator of what the people with power / money / support behind a movement want so if they win the vote and you disagree with most of the platform, you're going to have to actively fight off the following power grabs.

@extintor: I sincerely respect your honesty, ability to think and debate. Of course I am interested in what you think and why. Thanks for our exchange.

Poll stations are officially open! GO VOTE! Remain or Leave: Vote!

I know nothing of this, but I think John Oliver did a good job with his segment on it. They usually do the extra legwork in their segments so I'll trust them (Im american I cant vote anyway)

@dixavd: Do when know when the results will be in?

Ironically, Sky didn't show that segment due to Ofcom regulations about bias stories during elections. Bet Murdoch was happy to pull it, seeing as his papers are all backing Leave.

@imsh_pl: It's complicated. Here are links to the explanation and differences from a normal General Election count. In short, results from each of the 382 "pots" of votes from different geographic regions will begin being announced form 12:30 am on the 24th (there will be no prediction tonight because those are usually based on previous voting trends which are non-existent for this referendum). By 4 am, a prediction of the total number of people who voted will be known such that an approximation of the number of votes needed to win the referendum should be calculated. The government isn't allowed to announce the result until all regions have published their vote-count but we should know much earlier what it will be. The counting stations released approximations of their expected announcements with the latest stated for 7 am. Though most should be released between 2-4am.

TL,DR: We should have a very good guess of the final result by 4 am on the 24th with the official announcement just after 7am.

Edit: All timings in BST: Current Time Zone of the UK - GMT+1

Jeremy Vine is gonna have a super dumb green screen thing for the voting tonight, I can't wait. Really enjoy the dumb green screen stuff. Clip: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36596648

@cirdain: I saw the image and thought "this is a very odd perspective, the world seems almost flat" and I then I checked out the video and it all made sense. That's the sort of dumb TV election bullshit I love on results night!

I miss Peter Snow swinging an arrow back and forth on a pie chart.

Here we go... probably the most significant vote of our lives UK people. Cup of tea and breakfast for me then I'm off to the polling station.

@shindig: How about the technological battle of the votes?! Check out from 1:21:

Man, I wish I was old enough to vote in 1997. The optimism. My vote's done. First time I've voted, too.

@dixavd: Thanks a ton. Do you know whether there eill be some kind of a streamed tv broadcast of the announcment available internationally?

@imsh_pl said:

The 'Stay' page makes it seem like voting for Brexit means that the country will physically separate from the continent.

Britain is already physically separated from mainland Europe, so none of this changes anything in that regard.

You can think of Britain as being similar to Japan, it's close to many countries but the island is separate (though Japan is broken up into a few islands itself).

I guess if you have access to the BBC News channel, you can watch it internationally. There's bound to be text coverage on the UK websites as the counts start coming in.

@imsh_pl:Sadly I do not. There is this live written feed from the BBC. They'll probably post updates of the votes, as well as videos of announcements and such there over the next day or so.

@shindig: Ha, I wasn't old enough to vote then either. But I do remember that clip, took a while to find it though. I'm 21 so I've voted 3/4 times before at this point. Congratulations on finally voting. I hope it was a welcoming experience (I have had one time where a group of people near a polling station made me feel uninvited before - hopefully that doesn't happen to anyone else)