the lunacy has only just started wait for it to really hit the fans ...

Time to dust off your copies of Passport to Pimlico.

And what platform will UKIP be standing on? They've achieved what they were ostensibly set up to do.
Are they going to stand on a platform of deporting anyone they see as not British? It's about the only place they have left to go.

I won't be surprised by the way if the EU put the boot in in a big way. You seem to think it's finished as an institution. I'm not convinced and I think the way it holds on to its existence is driving this country into the ground and pissing on the grave. It's not like they have to worry about the UK veto any more after all. The UK leaving may put a hold on closer integration and it may bring about change in the EU but I don't for a minute believe it will kill the institution.

Varrious politicians and large sections of the press have spent literally decades presenting the EU as some sort of monstrous appetite hell bent on crushing individual countries to further its own nefarious aims. We now have to rely on that presentation being entirely wrong or we're totally screwed. But how conciliatory are the 27 other EU states likely to feel towards a country that made them jump through hoops to get it to stay then turned round and told them to [LIFTED] off anyway? More to the point perhaps how keen to negotiate will they be, assuming key vote leave politicians end up in key government roles, with people who have been plain out lying to the electorate during the campaign to further their own ends.
The EU won't go quietly into the night, at the very least they have to stop what happened in the UK being seen as a good thing in other EU countries. That means if the UK wants to maintain any sort of trading relationship with the EU it has to be on materially worse terms than we had as a member state. I've not seen or heard a single rebuttal to that from the Leave camp that isn't fanciful nonsense.

Something flashed past on Twitter today that we have a very small humber of negotiators able to handle international trade deals. About 20. Apparently, we’ll need quite a few more. No source, sadly, but I expect we will need a much larger team to handle this than we have access to at the moment.

https://www.facebook.com/tom.short.351/ ... 4392909152

An interesting point of view - basically by resigning, Cameron has made it hard to be the next leader of the Tory Party.

https://www.facebook.com/tom.short.351/ ... 4392909152

An interesting point of view - basically by resigning, Cameron has made it hard to be the next leader of the Tory Party.

Off the top of my head I'd say it's the biggest national negotiation we've had since the agreement to pass Hong Kong over to Chinese sovereignty. And that took about five years of solid negotiation with however many relevant people we had then.

heard some extra detail today. The Article 50 negotiations have a set deadline - two years from the formal submission of the declaration to leave. if the agreement is not made by that point there are two options

1) continue negotiating for another two years. This will happen if and only if there is unanimous agreement from the 27 other members states to allow it. I suggest the chances of that happening are between slim and [lifted] all.

2) Negotiations cease, all existing trade agreements with the exiting state cease to be valid and the leaving nation gets exactly the same trade terms as any other WTO nation - i.e. we would have the same trade rights and agreement as, say, Iran. And to say those agreements are worse than the terms we have now is an understatement on the same scale as saying Thursday was 'a bit interesting' politically.

So, basically, we make the deal two years from kickoff or we're buggered. And Angela M is angling to get things rolling ASAP regardless of the fact the Tory party, who after all were the ones that wanted out of Europe in the first place, are now saying "No, No, there's no need to hurry, we'll get round to it at some point."

It's definitely one viewpoint - he'll be remembered as the bloke who started the whole ball rolling for selfish reasons, but someone else will be remembered as the one who actually pulled the trigger that blew the countries foot off.

And he's also right about something else - if whoever is next prime minister doesn't pull that trigger, they're finished. If Boris gets into office, this is something there's no wriggling around or getting away from. He is the man who stood at the front of the Brexit charge, he can't shuffle his way to the back row now with everybody watching. The only chance he has is if we leave and things do actually get better. And that is something he has pretty much no control over at all.

So something else..

Someone's been digging through the articles in the laws that govern Scotland's relationship with the rest of the UK. Section 29 of the Scotland Act 1998 requires 'The Scottish parliament to act in a manner compatible with EU law'. Removing that clause would require a redrafting of the Scotland Act, and doing so is explicitly listed as one of the changes which would trigger another referendum on Scottish independence.

Apparently The European Communities Act is also written into the laws which govern the sovereignty of Wales and Northern Ireland, removing that would require both those sets of laws to be passed through parliament again and would require agreement from the devolved government of both. If they didn't give such agreement, the legal relationship between those governments and Westminster would be technically unenforceable. That could lead to a referendum on independence (or Irish Unification) but there's no specific legal clause to say it will.

Basically put, if we say we don't want a bigger political unit governing us, it makes it much harder to argue that the same isn't true of any smaller political unit that we govern.

And one last thing...

Rudyard Kipling, not talking about The Leave campaign's leaders, but he might as well have been...

That was quoted here too : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... SApp_Other

2016 started as a year in which celebrities died. At this rate it looks like the year in which political parties die. The Tories in the UK, the GOP in America, leading parties in Spain, Italy, Greece, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina. All tearing themselves apart or collapsing through corruption. Maybe Labour too.

The problem isn't so much that it is at a given level today against where it was a few months or years ago. It doesn't matter if it hits a lowest or highest number since 1989 or 1763. What matters is volatility day by day.

Companies that export or import a lot, or which have bills to pay or investments to place in a foreign currency need to either have some idea of costs and values for these things, or they need to hedge via contracts and swaps. In either case, if the price is swinging wildly, that becomes more expensive which either pushes up prices or pushes down wages.

The problem now is that every rumour or suspicion will send the pound on another rollercoaster ride, probably for years. If there is some reason to think GB is going to get a good trade deal, it will soar for the afternoon. If the market sentiment is that we are about to walk away from that in order to meet a promise about repatriating money or blocking immigration (which both depend on us getting a bad trade deal) it will [LIFTED] value at an unprecedented rate.

A few hedge fund managers will make a pot of cash, and the best traders at Barcalys Capital will buy new Ferraris. Everyone else will just have their costs pushed up by a few points.

i wouldn't do a deal i would place article 50 down asap leave and use WTO rules for trade and then carry on as normal. any deals with others can be made at the time they are needed or if required ...