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Originally Posted by Sephiroth
Before giving my opinion (for what it's worth) on the un-snipped part of your post, I'd just like to take you up on the selected paragraph and sentence.
The so-called "status quo" was the big issue. With the EU, there is no "status quo". Each successive Commission President has vowed to extend the Commission's competences (or at least try to do that). In the case of VdL, she set her sights on competence over foreign policy. Bit by bit, the EU is trying to federalise - and where would that have left the EU? Sure, they'd want our money, so we'd be on the outside, perhaps with a few other nations. Obviously I can see a path where the UK's veto could prevent all this, but could I guarantee that our PM would exercise such a veto? Indeed, I'm convinced that Cameron was pro-Remain because he wanted to stay at the European top table - the big man. Add to that the supremacy of the ECR, the supporters of Leave had no doubt as to how they should vote.
The EEA possibility had merit in trade terms though less so in terms taking rules from the EU. You're right, this and other Leave alternatives were not proposed in the Referendum. But the complexity of such a referendum, and the series of referendums that the method would spawn could only lead to a Remain decision, imo.
Has Cameron & co been smart enough, the might have been able to engineer this. But public opinion could have erupted, egged on by an ever more popular Farage (a great man, btw) - so a binary referendum it was.
It now falls to business to forge ahead.
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You raised numerous issues with few words, some well rehearsed and refutable, but others mistaken and laughable. Forgive me.
1. Yes, there were a minority of voices, some influential, who were federalist, but every single one of the 27 EU nations, including the homelands of those voices, were and are against the proposition of a United States of Europe. It would have taken generations for all those veto wielding 27 nations and their populations to convert to the idea of an EU state. Effectively, this was part of Leave's very own Project Fear, as was the unlikely accession of Turkey, an EU army, a German NAZI-style takeover and the infamous Tipping Point poster summatively encapsulating the threat of brown Kalashnikov-bearing hordes invading our civilisation in order to rape our women and girls!
Yes! Farage, the 'Great Man' stooped that low!
2) Great men never use crude stereotypical photo-shopped images of brown, male refugees to trigger homegrown racists. Diminutive losers with toothbrush moustaches, a side parting and a massive chip on their shoulders do. Neither do great men entice the gullible with cuddly fantasies, such as an EEA Brexit, when they themselves have their sights on a much harsher reality. Here is a plausible Farage, the genius communicator, lying through his teeth to entrap the Leave waverers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtNr...ab_channel=LBC
3) Knowledge is good, Complexity is good, if it results in more choices. Time to reflect is good, if you want people to engage their intellect, rather than their emotions, in a big generational decision. All this is good. If the referendum had featured these things I would not be complaining so much, whatever the outcome. But it didn't. I find it very telling that you believe that extended choices, enhanced knowledge, opportunity to engage our intellects and time to reflect would have resulted in a Remain decision.
4) Yes, business will attempt to forge ahead. Rees-Mogg believes it will take up to 50 years for business to reap all the benefits of Brexit and for all the human cost, pain and damage caused by the transition to be deemed worthwhile. He won't care whether this happens or not, because he and his class are immune from the fallout, as are the billionaire owners of the Tory rags that conspired against the EU and conspired to misinform us all. In 50 years Mogg and I will be dead, my children dead or elderly and my grandchildren middle aged. I hope you can wait for the results of that shabby referendum to come to pass.