Brexit

No, they're not - they're based on nationality. The two concepts are not the same (although they may well be in many cases), and to conflate them is a gross over-simplification of this issue. The very benefit of past migration and modern multiculturalism is that nationality is not equivalent to racial homogeneity. To say that EU immigration policy is racist ignores all of that.

No country in the world has an immigration policy that gives equal treatment to all, and every country has favourable visa arrangements with some of its best friends - the EU Schengen area and the lack of visas required currently by British citizens visiting Europe are but two examples of that. I was in Zimbabwe recently and my visa was much more expensive than the Americans I was travelling with, but I had more visa options than the Canadians. There is often little rhyme or reason to the visa rules - it's just politics.

And because it's just politics, there is absolutely nothing to say that the situation will change in the slightest post-Brexit. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the ease of getting a UK visa will be more straightforward for European visitors than those who currently have more difficulties. That won't change anything in terms of perceived equality between nations, because it simply doesn't and will never exist anywhere in terms of entry requirements.

The public were misled by the Tories saying we would save the NHS by exiting the EU. Now it’s in an even worse state than it was before.

Vote Leave wasn't just the Conservatives though. All MPs from all parties who supported that campaign are equally responsible.

To give her at least some credit, at least May is trying to create some sort of solution that might lead to the least strife; unfortunately she diesn’t have the numbers to follow it through and, even if she did, she’s had to ignore concerns from the other half of the equation to even sidle up to this impasse, birthing some sort of unviable chimera that is destined to die a painful, early death.

I cannot see any way forward.

Part of the problem is that our education system, at all levels, has done a spectacularly terrible job of teaching how the EU works - what it does, what it doesn't do, how legislation gets introduced and passed, how the veto works, what the ECJ is for, and all the rest of it. That made it very easy, once the referendum campaign got underway, for Vote Leave to spin absolute garbage about Rules Being Imposed By A Corrupt Monolithic Bureaucracy. It also made it very easy for the Leave campaign(s) to encourage voters to make the EU a convenient scapegoat for all their frustrations. Wages are stagnating because too many Polish people are coming over and driving them down! (Not true, and EU migrants make a positive net contribution to the economy). There's a five-hour wait at A&E because too many immigrants are clogging up the system! (Not true, there's a five-hour wait at A&E because of years of austerity cuts). The local primary school is oversubscribed because there are too many immigrants! (Not precisely true, the local primary school is probably oversubscribed because LEAs have traditionally been very bad indeed at planning for demographic changes - and once schools are taken out of LEAs to become free schools or academies, that kind of planning more or less goes out of the window). There's a two-year waiting list (if you're lucky) for a council house because immigrants jump the queue! (Not true, there's a two-year wait for a council house because Thatcher introduced Right to Buy and the money raised from it was not invested back into replenishing the social housing stock). And so on.

NOBODY is going to get the "Brexit they voted for", because there are as many versions of that as there are people who voted for it. And in the meantime, a spineless PM and an equally spineless opposition appear, between them, to have backed Parliament into a corner, and both the government and the opposition seem to be perfectly prepared to throw very slightly under half the electorate under a bus, which is going to leave a lot of people - me included - feeling politically homeless. I don't see a way out without another public vote of some kind - and even after that, the referendum created huge divisions, and created them very quickly (EU membership was not a talking-point at all at the 2010 General Election), and I don't see any way forward that will lessen those divisions.

And the fact that we were led down this road in the first place simply in order to appease a gaggle of foaming-at-the-mouth back-benchers is breathtaking, and should cement Cameron's place in history as the worst PM since Lord North.

Isn't that always the way with our system? Ironic (as someone who used to go to campaign meetings for PR) that we might - who knows? - get some reform to the system now that a vote looks like it may actually affect the lives of the 'middle ground' who are normally pretty well unaffected by whichever Govt is in power.

A poll came out yesterday.

One in three would vote for a hard Brexit, given the option of hard, soft or remain.

When it was posited as a two way choice between hard Brexit and remain that number was 45%. Within the margin of error of that poll.

This is insane. After all of the warnings about the devastation of a hard Brexit, of the government warning about a need to stockpile food, of a collapse in the power grid in Northern Ireland and so on, nearly half of the population would think, yeah, go on then. I need to believe that the message has not got through fully. If it has and they still want this then we are in a very dark place as a nation.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/uncertain-voters-give-labour-a-poll-lead-bc77vwjsw

Or to put it another way, given the choice between a hard Brexit and remain, 55% of people would rather remain. Which rather makes the hard Brexiteer MP arguments that the people voted for a hard Brexit and they are therefore representing the will of the people look even more ridiculous...

I’ve had the Millennium Bug thing as a justification to me too! Where did that bizarre comparison start? It’s also come to something when global capitalism and the FBI are being looked to as the saviours of liberal democracy.

Interesting how foxa compares the q of capital punishment. It is a good example of why a referendum is problematic. There will never be a ref on capital punishment, I say, because no government could be sure of the answer. And being sure of the answer is the first rule of asking a question, particularly in law and controversial matters. Cameron called a ref without knowing the answer he would get. He thought he knew. Of course. But he didn’t know and so was not prepared for the answer he got. Referenda are not part of the UK's representional parliamentary system of government. We vote for a person who belongs to a party which forms a government in Parliament if they are in the majority. Might not be best way but it is what it is. Introducing a referendum was a mistake and pernicious. I don’t know why this subject of joining with Europe is the only referendum we have been offered, first in the 70s and then now. We were not asked about capital punishment, going to war on any occasion or on anything else. The way forward is a General Election and for that we need an effective opposition. And in the U.K. the Party divisions are breaking down. So what the future holds for our delicate democracy is anyone's guess.