UK remains in EU (A "Dewey defeats Truman!" moment for Wall Street hopes)

[C C]

Brexit Wins
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/...ays-leadi/

Dewey Defeats Truman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman

- - - - - - - Original Post:

You read it here with this slightly pre-mature announcement. But as if there was ever any doubt that the undecideds would not swing the tide that way.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/...-and-odds/

[Magical Realist]

I think that's a good thing. Isolationism is just a bad idea all around. We need to transcend our 20th century nationalism for a more global and multicultural vision of one human race. We need to recognize our shared status here on earth, a planet that has no state or national borderlines.

[elte]

Having a at least a somewhat technical view of things, I have thought that the term should be the clumsier one, Britexit.  That parallels the term Grexit and little closer in my opinion.  However, maybe it's better the original way because of human suggestibility being what it may be.  "Britexit" contains "Brite," and alternate though informal spelling for bright.

I also think staying in the EU was the best option because it keeps the world smaller in a social way to have fewer or no borders.

[Yazata]

Right now it looks too close to call.

Leave was narrowly ahead in early returns, then Glasgow in Scotland came in at something like 3 to 1 remain, putting remain slightly ahead. I'm getting the impression that Scotland and Northern Ireland are solidly for remain and Wales is more mixed. London seems to be solidly for remain, while the rest of England seems to mostly be tilting more towards leave.

Edit: Leave has just pulled ahead again, by a small margin (51.2% to 48.8%). Many smaller towns in England are voting for leave.

It will be interesting if England narrowly votes leave, but remain wins in the UK as a whole, based on big margins in Scotland. Things might be headed that way.

Another interesting thing is that both the leafy picturesque villages in southern England with their Conservative party voters and some of the working-class Labour bastions like Newcastle and Wolverhampton are voting leave. This is cutting across traditional party lines. I wonder if it will lead to a lasting realignment of British politics.

[C C]

Even if leave had prevailed in the voting (or yet pulled off a late count comeback), that authorization would still have to pass through the tumult of parliament. Assorted media roundtables have also brought up what Giles did below, that legislative assembly could still negate or make difficult the public's preference (if the majority had gone that way).

Professor Steve Giles (University of Nottingham): Your report on the consequences of a leave vote quotes a pro-European MP saying “We would have to respect the mandate of the referendum”. But it is quite unclear what that mandate might be, as the referendum question does not specify the range of alternatives to full EU membership should the UK vote to leave. Until parliament has determined whether, for example, it wishes the UK to remain in the European Economic Area, it would be inappropriate for David Cameron to formally notify the EU of the UK’s intention to withdraw from the EU. A leave vote would therefore need to be followed by an emergency debate in parliament from Monday 27 June onwards about the UK’s withdrawal options, where the most likely outcome, as you indicate, would be overwhelming support for the UK to remain in EEA, which would of course outrage hard-line Brexiters in the Conservative party.

At the same time another more fundamental problem might arise in the wake of a UK referendum leave vote. What if Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales vote remain, their MPs propose an amendment to parliament’s EEA motion in support of the UK’s continued membership of the EU, and pro-EU English MPs vote with them to pass their amendment? The UK would be plunged into a full-blown constitutional crisis concerning the very sovereignty of parliament. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016...for-brexit

[Yazata]

Reportedly BBC has just called the election for leave.

Judging from all the predictions of doom from just about every establishment figure on what would happen if leave wins, expect the zombie apocalypse to be going full-tilt in London by tomorrow.

[Magical Realist]

The anal retentive moneygrubbers of Wallstreet are freaking out now. And I feel fine.

[C C]

The anal retentive moneygrubbers of Wallstreet are freaking out now. And I feel fine.

I know my little jinx experiment wasn't really responsible, but the faux correlation of it still blows my mind. I truly didn't expect things to suddenly reverse after that. The remain vote was in the lead by 4% when I posted, and investors really had been crowing with optimism and rising stocks beforehand that the UK wouldn't leave. Thank goodness superstition is bunk, otherwise I might feel a touch guilty in the months to come if everything goes to weeds & ruins.

[stryder]

Not everybody in the country voted, about 49% stayed at home. (voting figures were about 33-34Million, populations was in 2013 64Million)

I personally had to abstain for two/three reasons:
One is that I don't really see England as my Country anymore. My political viewpoints is equally between Left and Libertarianism (although sometimes more Libertarian), whereas the Government has always been Authoritarian and Right. It literally puts me at complete odds with anything and everything they do. Sure the Brexit is going to push it more Authoritarian in the UK, but it's still not something that I can agree with or back.

(In some respects political positioning was one of the main problems when volunteering over at Sciforums, the moderators aren't all cut from the same cloth like some might have thought, but are actually uniquely different in their political/sociological viewpoints and this unfortunately can put people at odds which makes it very difficult to work well as a consensus.)

The other is the clandestine operations of the British Government (on it's own people) are little to be desired. In my particular case it's actually worse than being a Political Prisoner stuck under home arrest using an electronic tag. I wouldn't be able to trust any vote that I could of output as being distinctly my opinion due to that. (There's a lot of bullshit propaganda and manipulation at play)

Further still is the a conspiracy involving how the Syrian civil war was handled and how it was used to manufacture immigrants to undermine the EU in the long run.

[Magical Realist]

Listening to the pundits, one gets the sense that this wave of isolationism is not limited to the UK but may extend to other countries as well. Comparisons are made with the populist xenophobia of Trump. It seems a mass reaction to the recent influx of Syrian immigrants in Europe and an attempt to reassert white privelege and domination in these countries. Could racism be at the root of all this? The age-old attempt of the paler races to segregate and escape living with the darker skinned races? Look for the typical scapegoating of immigrants for economic hardship, unemployment, crime, disease, etc.