Strangely enough though the Govt publication sent to every home in Britain for the 1975 referendum mentions nothing about it at all. http://www.harvard-digital.co.uk/euro/pamphlet.htm
I'm very sorry that you lost two friends. I lost a good pal of my own. Just 20 he was. In a war for what?
A serious question. Which Labour Party politics are the ones you think are wrong or even beyond the pale.
I think Mr Jones summed it up far better than I ever could in this 2016 article. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/07/blair-chilcot-war-in-iraq-not-blunder-crime
I think I've finally admitted defeat here. I've realised what type of person I'm trying to argue with.
Thanks. Maybe I’m being naive here, but surely Gideon’s predictions of what happens “if we vote leave” are based on an assumption that a leave vote would, actually, mean we would leave the EU?? At that time, that’s what we understood, not that it would lead to three years of hand-wringing and inept bungling by the government. He may be proven wrong, but that shouldn’t be judged until the bloody thing has actually happened.
Fair comment, Whitey. But Owen Jones doesn't get round the fact that Parliament considered the evidence and voted by 412 to 149 to go to war on the basis of it. Yet people like Jones have always wanted Blair to carry the can alone because they have an irrational hatred of his centrist politics - even though it won Labour three landslide victories.
That pretty much sums it up - I was never in favour of the war and am not Tony Blairs greatest fan but to put the whole thing down to him is far too simplistic. In any case had we had a Tory PM and the same occurred with the USA wanting us to join them do you think the outcome would have been different I dont.
Is there not an argument here that the more centrist Labour got, to shore up their vote from the fallout from Iraq, the less popular they became? Compounded now by the fact that they abandoned the argument on economic competence by wrongly accepting the charge that they overspent, rather than the real cause which was the deregulation resulting from the lurch to the right. Which in turn fuelled the other fatal blow to Labour of the rise of the SNP who were able to present themselves as the progressives, and Westminster as a place inhabited by two parties only interested in swing seats in middle England.
And add in the usual fatigue that sets in with the electorate after a party has been in power for a number of years?
Thats not an unfair assessment tbf....Osborn though was very clear, I haven't got the quote to hand but he did say words to the effect that the world would end " the day after a vote to leave"...he deliberately used those terms for political advantage, he had done the same in the Scottish Indyref and assumed those tactics had worked, it was christened project fear by Rob Shorthouse of the " Better together" campaign...Alex Salmond picked up on it and rightly exposed it for what it was, whether it worked or not I can't really say, but whatever, Osborne was pushing his luck in hoping to get away with it twice. He was also disingenuous with his facts and figures to the point that Vince Cable has said he was embarrassed by the claims made. If you've got half an hour to spare watch Osborn being interrogated by Andrew Neil, he is totally exposed...
That's a simple graph of net receivers, expenders of EU funding. It doesn't take into account how much each country makes/loses by being part of the EU club with respect to trade, research, financial services, rules simplifications etc. If you take that into account the UK is a massive winner.
David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson all voted in favour of the Iraq War. As did Ann Widdecombe as the only member of the Brexit Party that has been in Parliament.
go and ask the fisherman who they blame, are they all wrong in their assumptions? you can read up on the earliest eu plans all you want but and i know all about the treaty of rome but the fact of the matter is that the 1975 referendum was sold as the common market and not much more, both ted heath and harold wilson knew that it was a lie but it did not stop the in campaign concentrating on the common market theme.. the biggest difference between then and now is that there is the internet and most people have access to a far broader range of debates to make up their own minds nato and the warsaw pact kept peace in europe and not the effin eu, british and american troops occupying west germany and the russians in the east, all to keep the germans in check, for 70 years that country could not make much more than airguns pal and now we are looking at increasing rearmament of a country that not once but twice caused the destruction and deaths of millions.
If you are on Facebook, then yes they did - illegally. You might not have noticed, but leavers were targeted with advertisements designed to get them to vote while those more likely to vote remain were targeted with advertisements to persuade them not to vote. The ads were based on preferences users of FB expressed in surveys and by liking posts - young men were targeted through sports ads, etc, and were "unfamiliar" with the truth. So if you were concerned about immigration you might get the ads that Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro were joining the EU. If you were passionate about animal welfare you got ads about the EU making polar bears extinct and so on. https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/26/facebook-finally-hands-over-leave-campaign-brexit-ads/ CA are heavily linked to Trump, and Steve Bannon, among others, which is where the suggestion that some rich Americans were pushing Brexit to weaken both the EU and UK to make money. They were also involved with the Trump campaign using the same methods, before going into liquidation and trying to destroy the evidence. It is also one of the illegalities of the Leave campaigns - data was shared between the Leave.EU and BeLeave campaigns without permission.
You wouldn’t know whether they did or not. You would have seen news articles about migrants and angry fishermen for example in your newsfeeds on social media but you wouldn’t have known that only you could see them or why. Not saying you definitely were but you can’t know you definitely weren’t.