Blair versus democracy

Greavswasthegreatest - 17/2/2017 09:01

Is he right to rally anti brexiters?
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He can do or say what he likes but at the end of the day the UK is leaving the EU :17:
 
I am puzzled at all the remoaners. It was a democratic vote and the result is not being respected. That is worrying. If the vote had gone the other way would the reaction be the same from the Brexits.? I think the reaction is purely financial in the short term to try to protect their money. No long term vision for the future of the population.
 
He is trying to protect his self interests with his european friends and magnates...he is selfish and egotistical and even if some of what he says is logical, I dismiss him out of hand for the dishonesty he portrayed when a PM...I do not trust the demon!,
 
Greavsie.... you and millions like you: honest, good-intentioned generous at heart Brits are cutting off your noses to spite your faces..

Brexit will lead to evermore spending-cuts to meet the needs of the collapsing NHS and social-care for the Elderly in particular.... it really isnt about just having a few extra quid in your pocket to blow on a flashy car or exotic holiday..

the idea that the whole Brexit question for the likes of you hinges on the relative integrity/honesty of just 1 individual speaks volumes for the level of debate most unfortunately can handle in this country..

dumbed-down debate = populist ignorance

 
Yep spot on as usual Dick as you know all things and all the answers.......

I personally like people with integrity...almost all politicians these days have very little of it..
Why bother with debte with the information we get from the elitist wankers running every country, the political press. They are all chancers, liars and no to be trusted. In this country political leavers or remainers are out for themselves. What the feck does it mattter about the debates. We control and influence sweet FA. There is no democracy there are lies and misdirections and noise. Brexit or not the govt will never sort out e.g the NHS because it is treated as a political hot potato. It should be non politicised and if any govt gave a flying feck about its people, they would et the right people to run it and fund it properly.....there is no need for spending cuts for the people, the ruling class choose to do so...they will always spend the money on where they have personal interests / jobs lined up after their tenures of offie. I dont give as hit anymore...feck your debates and feck trying to mke sense of it all....
 
Where did Greavsie say he based his entire mistrust of remoaners on one individual ?. He said he dismisses Blairs stance based on his dishonesty.

Greavsie mentioned his friends and magnates which means many rich families benefiting from the current set up who's wealth may be jeopardised from Brexit.

 
There is no sense to be made yet. It will take years to get the answer. Nobody knows the outcome. But we have paved the way to independence. I don't know if it will work or fail. Does anyone ?
 
Greavswasthegreatest - 17/2/2017 17:47

Yep spot on as usual Dick as you know all things and all the answers.......

I personally like people with integrity...almost all politicians these days have very little of it..
Why bother with debte with the information we get from the elitist wankers running every country, the political press. They are all chancers, liars and no to be trusted. In this country political leavers or remainers are out for themselves. What the feck does it mattter about the debates. We control and influence sweet FA. There is no democracy there are lies and misdirections and noise. Brexit or not the govt will never sort out e.g the NHS because it is treated as a political hot potato. It should be non politicised and if any govt gave a flying feck about its people, they would et the right people to run it and fund it properly.....there is no need for spending cuts for the people, the ruling class choose to do so...they will always spend the money on where they have personal interests / jobs lined up after their tenures of offie. I dont give as hit anymore...feck your debates and feck trying to mke sense of it all....
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well done greavsie... youve given the elites just what theyve wanted to hear... Apathy rules OK, so lets not even bother anymore.

if as you say, the so-called Ruling-Class decide it all, then why did the vote come about .... the minimum-wage... the NHS, etc etc..??.... they Ruling-Class always fight to keep these rights away from the likes of you... but they didnt succeed, they failed.... they ALWAYS do in the medium to long-term...

everytime the Elites lost and the Masses were more empowered, it was called Progress... the very movement that gives its soldiers the title Progressives..

its people like you that are just out to bite the hands that feed your very souls, that makes it so very hard for the people of vision and real courage to fight for the cause... do you think that over the last century or so the likes of the NHS, women's right to even vote, etc. were just handed on a plate to the majority of the Poor ??..

your naive idea that any cause that becomes politicised is therefore not bothering about is childlike.... everything is political whether we like it or not... social-justice is all about the political struggle for even the most basic rights we have nowadays.... hard-fought-for rights you so naively take for granted..

I really thought you were better than that.

 
Nick Real Deal - 17/2/2017 19:12

There is no sense to be made yet. It will take years to get the answer. Nobody knows the outcome. But we have paved the way to independence. I don't know if it will work or fail. Does anyone ?
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There isn't a right or wrong. Just the chosen path.
 
80deg16minW - 17/2/2017 20:25

Nick Real Deal - 17/2/2017 19:12

There is no sense to be made yet. It will take years to get the answer. Nobody knows the outcome. But we have paved the way to independence. I don't know if it will work or fail. Does anyone ?
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There isn't a right or wrong. Just the chosen path.
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...but not the one Blair wants!
 
Greavswasthegreatest - 17/2/2017 22:18

Blair is apparently now being accused in some areas of the media of being undemocratic...
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He's free to say what he wants, but remember he made no difference during the in/out debate and he won't make one now - this is a bid to make a political comeback, he can obviously see the destructive direction of what's left of the labour party and ask ten people who leads the liberals and nine of them will be scratching their heads.

He wouldn't be accepted back into Labour, so his only way back is to be the rallying point for the disaffected ....

Of course, he'll fail, he's so discredited now, he's almost one of the 'uncleans'.

Let's not forget he's the one that gave away a big chunk of our EU rebate for what turned out to be a complete failure to make any significant changes to the immoral and destruction Common Agricultural Policy (he and Brown basically trumpeted that they'd get it changed and failed to achieve anything worth calling 'reform').

We're going to get out before the Euro implodes on itself and then EU has to rip it self apart and put it make together again - what neither of these two failing constructs can do is last much longer without complete and total reform and rethinking of strategy - of course Germany continues to block ALL such policy changes as it has been a massive huge winner with the Euro (at the expense of the southern block) and it dominates the EU and blocks anything that might even remotely infringe it's strategic interests.

Next year we'll grow faster than most, if not all in the EU - we will of course have challenges, leaving a moribund organisation desperate to punish, yet save itself was never going to be plain sailing.

We've made the right strategic decision and we can now become the outward, World looking Nation we should be - instead of drinking the illusion that the EU is all that matters; it doesn't and it's importance is diminishing in the World, not growing.

Good on Blair, he's simply mimicking the poignant last post., but he'll be forgotten by the morning.
 
Brexit will no doubt be triggered and then happen 2yrs later... Blair knows that, theres nothing to now stop it.

what is unclear is how many people will continue to want this separation from the EU when times get tougher, harsher and even meaner... Blair is simply trying to band a huge and now growing constituency of Remainers together, to start a process... if theres a majority in future.... to return to the EU... probably after a decade or so after we join the EEA..

democracy is about giving all sides a chance to present their cases in the future, as well as present.... we are NOT bound forever to a decision made in the present...perceptions can... and will... change with time.

there probably ALREADY IS a majority now... after even a mere 8 months.... to now stay within the EU.. before the formal process to leave has even started.

that is the sad irony.

 
The reality inside the EU; Germany commands, the rest suffer.

The indignities imposed on Greece now are a harsh reminder of what the true nature of the Euro and the EU really is....

This once prosperous Greek builder is now living in a shack as his country’s economy collapses under the weight of German diktats and a never ending tide of migrants, says SUE REID

Published: 22:03, 17 February 2017 | Updated: 01:54, 18 February 2017


Every morning, just after sunrise, an army of charity workers descends on a grand, white building overlooking the Mediterranean in a suburb of Athens.

They bring duvets, crates of sandwiches, piles of clothes — even prayer mats — to the 1,600 migrants who have transformed what was once a glitzy international airport into a sprawling makeshift camp.

As the day goes on, groups of migrants hailing from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq emerge to queue at the bus stop outside. It is a ten-mile ride to the capital’s shopping streets, parks — and hospitals, where many can get free medical care.
Manthos Zymaris, a former builder, is 82, a forgotten victim of decades of feckless government, and now the draconian measures imposed on Greece by its European Union masters. He has no pension or medical insurance


Manthos Zymaris, a former builder, is 82, a forgotten victim of decades of feckless government, and now the draconian measures imposed on Greece by its European Union masters. He has no pension or medical insurance

Neither the migrants nor the charity workers pay any attention to a small shack opposite the bus stop, or to its occupants. This was once a smart cafe-bar, serving cocktails and pastries to people waiting for planes to arrive — but that was in the heyday of Hellinikon airport, which closed in 2001 and has been left to decay ever since.

Now, the cafe is a derelict shell, with a mud floor, no doors, no window panes and no heating. Its flat roof is patched up with bits of sacking — but these don’t stop the pigeons flying in and out through the gaps.

Inside, I found an elderly man sitting in a basket-weave chair in temperatures close to freezing. No charity workers have come with warm clothes, a duvet or new shoes for him.

And when I touched his hands, they were ice-cold, his eyes half-shut as he clutched damp blankets around him.

Manthos Zymaris, a former builder, is 82, a forgotten victim of decades of feckless government, and now the draconian measures imposed on Greece by its European Union masters. He has no pension or medical insurance, nor can the beleaguered Greek state afford to put a decent roof over his head.

His daughter Maria — who lives here, too — is reduced to scavenging for sandwiches dropped by the migrants, or creeping into the camp at night to look for leftovers. She said: ‘We Greeks believe we are European, but what has the EU given us’


His daughter Maria — who lives here, too — is reduced to scavenging for sandwiches dropped by the migrants, or creeping into the camp at night to look for leftovers. She said: ‘We Greeks believe we are European, but what has the EU given us?’

To Maria, the comfortable, middle-class life they used to lead is a distant memory. Like many, she and her elderly father are now reduced to fighting for survival in a once-proud country brought to its knees by crushing debt. The debt, of course, was racked up by Greece’s huge profligacy after joining the euro 16 years ago, when it milked the system for all it could get.

To Maria, the comfortable, middle-class life they used to lead is a distant memory. Like many, she and her elderly father are now reduced to fighting for survival in a once-proud country brought to its knees by crushing debt. The debt, of course, was racked up by Greece’s huge profligacy after joining the euro 16 years ago, when it milked the system for all it could get

And he has lived in this squalor for three years after losing the family house, in the nearby seaside suburb of Kalamaki, when he defaulted on his mortgage payments.

His daughter Maria — who lives here, too — is reduced to scavenging for sandwiches dropped by the migrants, or creeping into the camp at night to look for leftovers.

‘We Greeks believe we are European, but what has the EU given us?’ asks Maria, 61, a divorcee. ‘I look after my father because there is no one else to do it. We used to live so nicely. It was a different world then.’

But, despite everything, she says they are lucky to have found somewhere to shelter.
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A cafe is a derelict shell, with a mud floor, no doors, no window panes and no heating. Its flat roof is patched up with bits of sacking — but these don’t stop the pigeons flying in and out through the gaps.

A cafe is a derelict shell, with a mud floor, no doors, no window panes and no heating. Its flat roof is patched up with bits of sacking — but these don’t stop the pigeons flying in and out through the gaps

‘We are grateful to have found this place,’ she says. ‘It’s better than the pavement.’

From a box by her father’s feet, a tearful Maria produces a dog-eared family photo album. It shows the family in happier times: her smiling on a plane taking her to London for a holiday during the Seventies.

Another picture is of her, as a girl, racing her pony across the beach. A third shows Mr Zymaris as a handsome 40-year-old.

To Maria, the comfortable, middle-class life they used to lead is a distant memory. Like many, she and her elderly father are now reduced to fighting for survival in a once-proud country brought to its knees by crushing debt. The debt, of course, was racked up by Greece’s huge profligacy after joining the euro 16 years ago, when it milked the system for all it could get.
Ekbal Markos, a 34-year-old Egyptian visits a clinic run by private doctors who give the poorest Greeks — and, increasingly, migrants, too — free drugs, childhood vaccinations and baby milk with her two-month-old son, Alven, asleep in a pushchair

Ekbal Markos, a 34-year-old Egyptian visits a clinic run by private doctors who give the poorest Greeks — and, increasingly, migrants, too — free drugs, childhood vaccinations and baby milk with her two-month-old son, Alven, asleep in a pushchair

The public sector wage bill doubled, the benefits system swelled and corruption flourished. Paying taxes had always been considered ‘optional’ by many Greek citizens — but now, ignoring tax became the norm.

The gravy train raced on until, in 2009, the EU belatedly realised its most troublesome member was near to bankrupt.

Not only that, it was at risk of endangering the entire Eurozone project.

If Greece defaulted, the shock would have disastrous consequences for other EU countries who are its main creditors, and risk another banking crisis. And there would be calls for Greece to leave the Eurozone — and perhaps the EU altogether.

In return for £300 billion in bail-outs, savage austerity was imposed on Greece by the EU establishment and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). EU finance chiefs demanded a tough crackdown on benefits and state pensions — and hiked taxes to the skies. But the austerity programme not only failed to make the debt sustainable, it recreated the kind of poverty western Europe thought it had left behind.

The truth is that Greece has been crippled. One million jobs have disappeared and a third of its population live in poverty.

A quarter of adults are unemployed — as well as 44 per cent of under-25s. The retirement age has been put up to 67 — 12 years higher than the good old days (when even hairdressers stopped snipping at 55 due to ‘arduous’ conditions) and pensions have been slashed a dozen times.

Hospital budgets are down by a third, while VAT has soared to 24 per cent. Against this bleak backdrop, the divorce rate in this traditional, family-oriented nation is rising, as financial pressures tear couples apart. Babies are abandoned in maternity wards because mothers can’t afford to feed or clothe them, while bereaved families are pursued over unpaid invoices for the burial of their loved ones.

But the debt crisis is far from over — in fact, things are feared to be getting worse. The Greek economy shrunk in the final three months of last year; its debts are now a terrifying 177 per cent of its GDP.

And, in a bleak warning to both Greece and the EU this week, the IMF said that, by 2030, the Greek debt load would become ‘explosive’. It stated that ‘substantial debt relief from its European partners’ was needed.

But the European Central Bank insists writing off Greece’s debts is out of the question.

This week, an EU envoy was dispatched to order Greece to agree yet more austerity measures, in return for the EU unlocking more funds from what will be a third multi-billion-pound rescue programme.

Officials hoped for an agreement before a meeting of EU finance ministers on Monday. But so far, no deal has been reached.

To force the country to stand on its own two feet, the EU wants Greece to impose a tougher tax collection system, and lower the tax-free allowance on incomes to around £5,550 a year.

They have a point: some studies suggest as much as 89 per cent of the country’s tax receipts remain uncollected. In Germany, the figure is around 2 per cent.

Across town, on a scrap of land near the sea, I found Victor Mpakopoulos, a 69-year-old retired postman, collecting herbs in the undergrowth. He says he ‘sometimes’ paid his taxes, but that whatever the mistakes of the past, Greeks have taken enough punishment from the EU

Across town, on a scrap of land near the sea, I found Victor Mpakopoulos, a 69-year-old retired postman, collecting herbs in the undergrowth. He says he ‘sometimes’ paid his taxes, but that whatever the mistakes of the past, Greeks have taken enough punishment from the EU
‘We don’t like Mrs Merkel or Mr Juncker,’ he says with fervour. ‘We are better out of the Euro and Europe. I congratulate Britain for voting Brexit, closing borders, and hope we do the same thing because it will be better for us.’ His sentiment is shared by many Greeks

‘We don’t like Mrs Merkel or Mr Juncker,’ he says with fervour. ‘We are better out of the Euro and Europe. I congratulate Britain for voting Brexit, closing borders, and hope we do the same thing because it will be better for us.’ His sentiment is shared by many Greeks

It’s proof that the national habit of tax-dodging has not gone away: last year, £10 billion owed never made it to the nation’s coffers. Unsurprisingly, the Greeks are starting to loathe the EU, its German masters and the stranglehold they have placed on their country.

Polls show more than half believe scrapping the old currency, the drachma, and joining the Eurozone was a mistake — one in three would like to ditch the Euro altogether.

Meanwhile, the beleaguered country faces an additional crisis.

The unprecedented influx of migrants is costing Greece far more than the £512 million originally estimated, the Bank of Greece has warned.
Lena Tzika, 46, with son Christos, 3. Lena has been in Athens for a year because her husband is awaiting a heart transplant at the Onassis Hospital. As he is a critical case, the state is paying for his treatment

Lena Tzika, 46, with son Christos, 3. Lena has been in Athens for a year because her husband is awaiting a heart transplant at the Onassis Hospital. As he is a critical case, the state is paying for his treatment

The reason? Most of those arriving in Greece from North African ports were expected to travel quickly onwards, to once-welcoming Germany or ever-popular Britain.

But now, border closures and razor wire fences en-route have stopped that. And, as a result, Greece is playing unwilling host to tens of thousands of foreigners who do not want to be there anyway.

Those migrants who make the journey northwards to Macedonia — from where they hope to travel on to Western Europe — are turned back. Most end up at Athens’ old airport. These unexpected guests are a huge burden on the already creaking health system, too. One newly arrived five-year-old Syrian boy with the life-threatening blood-clotting disorder haemophilia was treated for three months last year at St Sophia, the state hospital for children in Athens.
Marble Ossuaries at the Cemetery of Paleo Faliro in Athens, where dead people's bones are kept after their bodies are exhumed. Families have to pay for exhumation, but many cannot afford to pay even for this limited dignity in death

Marble Ossuaries at the Cemetery of Paleo Faliro in Athens, where dead people's bones are kept after their bodies are exhumed. Families have to pay for exhumation, but many cannot afford to pay even for this limited dignity in death
A migrant child playing on an Olympic Airlines stairway fixture at the former Hellenikon Airport in Athens. The former Hellenikon airport in Athens is now a camp for over 1,600 migrants


A migrant child playing on an Olympic Airlines stairway fixture at the former Hellenikon Airport in Athens. The former Hellenikon airport in Athens is now a camp for over 1,600 migrants

The drugs and care he needed cost £645,000. Hospital director Manolis Papasavas explained: ‘We do not turn away children wherever they come from — even though we could never afford to treat three patients like him each year.’

Not long ago, a two-month-old baby was found abandoned at the door of a hospital. A desperate mother or father had left a note, saying: ‘I don’t want this child, I can’t afford to take care of it. Please take it.’

He was looked after by nurses, then sent to an already over-stretched children’s home. His family, thought to be from Albania, never returned to claim him.

Across town, on a scrap of land near the sea, I found Victor Mpakopoulos, a 69-year-old retired postman, collecting herbs in the undergrowth. He says he ‘sometimes’ paid his taxes, but that whatever the mistakes of the past, Greeks have taken enough punishment from the EU.

‘We don’t like Mrs Merkel or Mr Juncker,’ he says with fervour. ‘We are better out of the Euro and Europe. I congratulate Britain for voting Brexit, closing borders, and hope we do the same thing because it will be better for us.’ His sentiment is shared by many Greeks.
Not long ago, a two-month-old baby was found abandoned at the door of St Sophia Childrens Hospital, Athens. A desperate mother or father had left a note, saying: ‘I don’t want this child, I can’t afford to take care of it. Please take it.’

Not long ago, a two-month-old baby was found abandoned at the door of St Sophia Childrens Hospital, Athens. A desperate mother or father had left a note, saying: ‘I don’t want this child, I can’t afford to take care of it. Please take it.’
Hospital director Manolis Papasavas explained: ‘We do not turn away children wherever they come from — even though we could never afford to treat three patients like him each year'

Hospital director Manolis Papasavas explained: ‘We do not turn away children wherever they come from — even though we could never afford to treat three patients like him each year'

Along the coast, there is a clinic run by private doctors to give the poorest Greeks — and, increasingly, migrants, too — free drugs, childhood vaccinations and baby milk.

Ekbal Markos, a 34-year-old Egyptian is here with her two-month-old son, Alven, asleep in a pushchair. She’s taken a half-hour bus ride from the family’s tiny apartment in central Athens to collect powdered milk.

She says her three boys — Christian, eight, Kelvin, six, and baby Alven — will ‘be raised as Greeks’.

Four years ago, she ‘ran away’ from Egypt to join her husband Hannah, 36, in Athens, where he worked as a painter.

‘We are Coptic Christians and are afraid of the Islamic fundamentalism back home. We are relieved to be in Greece,’ said Ekbel, with a beaming smile.

But the financial crisis hit this family hard. Hannah, who has no medical insurance, lost his job because the Greeks now paint their own homes to save money.
When Alven (pictured) was born in December, Ekbal got a bed in a state maternity hospital by giving a wad of euros to a doctor
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When Alven (pictured) was born in December, Ekbal got a bed in a state maternity hospital by giving a wad of euros to a doctor

When Alven was born in December, Ekbal got a bed in a state maternity hospital by giving a wad of euros to a doctor.

‘We survive because my husband gets bits of work in the summer, and we save that money for the rent and other things like that,’ she says. It’s impossible not to feel sympathy.

Next in the queue is a Greek-born mother also needing help.

She is Lena Tzika, a 46-year-old with a three-year-old son, Christos, who has a bad cold and cough. Her husband, Christos Senior, is 59 and being treated for heart failure in an intensive care unit of an Athens state hospital.

He is being treated for free as an emergency patient. But without a transplant, he will die.

The family moved from Larissa, a city north of Athens, to save his life.

They had to give up their taxi business and rent a house in the city’s suburbs. But after a year, they have run out of money. ‘We come to the clinic because it is free, but it is often busy because so many others need help,’ says Lena.

She and her son face a long wait in a room full of mothers and children — some from Nigeria and Albania.

Back at the airport camp, the migrants appear well-fed and warmly dressed in the unseasonably cold weather, thanks to the generosity of Greek charity organisations.

One woman in a black parka jacket runs for the bus holding her seven-year-old daughter with one hand and an H&M bag in the other.

A teenage girl, in an orange hijab and a grey Gap top, follows closely behind, while her friend by her side jumps over muddy puddles to protect her new trainers.

Twelve days ago, discontented Afghans staged a riot here. They want to get out of Greece or — if forced to stay — be given better living conditions.

Scores of protesters climbed on the metal gates shouting ‘We Go, Go’ at Greece’s migration minister when he visited.

Mubashar Elisan, 24, lives at the camp, but did not join the protest. He and his friend, Mohammed Awais, 20, are from Lahore in Pakistan, and have been there for months.

They say they were students who left because of corruption and want a better life in Europe.
Stonemason Andreas Dumas at the Cemetery of Paleo Faliro in Athens. Cemeteries in Greek cities are so overcrowded that bodies are often only kept in the ground for three years

Stonemason Andreas Dumas at the Cemetery of Paleo Faliro in Athens. Cemeteries in Greek cities are so overcrowded that bodies are often only kept in the ground for three years
Neither the migrants nor the charity workers pay any attention to a small shack opposite the bus stop, or to its occupants. This was once a smart cafe-bar, serving cocktails and pastries to people waiting for planes to arrive — but that was in the heyday of Hellinikon airport, which closed in 2001 and has been left to decay ever since

Neither the migrants nor the charity workers pay any attention to a small shack opposite the bus stop, or to its occupants. This was once a smart cafe-bar, serving cocktails and pastries to people waiting for planes to arrive — but that was in the heyday of Hellinikon airport, which closed in 2001 and has been left to decay ever since

Three times, they have tried to get out of Greece by going up to the border with Macedonia.

They paid traffickers to get them through, but were caught and sent back.

The Macedonian police shot Mohammed, injuring his little finger on his left hand, which is now permanently crooked.

The Pakistanis are polite, immaculately dressed in ski jackets and squeaky-clean designer trainers given to them by charity workers.

They would seem an asset to any country. Yet they are only bringing more problems to Greece.

Mubashar needs regular medical treatment, which — as a migrant claiming asylum — he gets for free.

He will not say if he really came to Europe for free treatment with expensive drugs for a long-term illness. Whatever the truth, he is another migrant who is blissfully unaware that some of the Greek people are worse off than him.

We stand outside the airport near the bus stop. The young Pakistanis are about to catch a bus to Athens, and I point out the shack over the road where Maria and her near-to-death father are being left to rot.

I tell them that these two impoverished Greeks have no new clothes or duvets, and are forced to survive on scraps from the camp.

The young men stare blankly at me. For, like many in Greece, whether born here or not, it is all about survival.

Back in Brussels, EU leaders care little for these countless personal tragedies.

All they care about is that their grand European project doesn’t fall apart.

 
The reality...



Public back Brexit plan but think EU will nix it

Britons think Theresa May's vision of Brexit would be good for the country and believe no deal is better than a bad one
Follow @YouGov on twitter and stay up to date with the latest news and results

Theresa May set out the sort of Brexit she wants to achieve in Britain's negotiations with the remainder of the EU. The targets she set out lay somewhere in between a hard Brexit on WTO terms and a soft Brexit that included single market membership (both of which our previous polling suggested would be unpopular with the public). Instead May said she would take Britain out of the single market and customs union, but try to agree a new free trade and customs deal with the EU.

Our initial polling, conducted on Tuesday night and Wednesday, suggests the announcement went down well. All of the key negotiating points we asked about met with majority support. Most were uncontroversial and supported by both Remain and Leave voters: control of immigration, an open border with Ireland, guaranteeing the rights of existing EU immigrants and continuing to work with the EU on security matters all received over 70% support.

The two more divisive issues were the exact trading relationship between Britain and the EU. A majority of people supported Britain leaving the single market (57%) and the customs union (56%), but there was a contrast in opinion between Leave and Remain voters. A vast majority of Leave voters approved of both, Remain voters were opposed to leaving the single market and evenly split over the customs union.

However, a negotiation like this is more than just the sum of its parts. People won't judge Brexit on the minutiae of the deal (unless they actually work in exporting goods to Europe, most people do not - quite reasonably - spend much time trying to understand the precise details of our EU trade relationship). People will judge Brexit on the overall package, on whether it feels like a good deal for Britain or not. By that measure, Theresa May's announcement was a success - by 55% to 19% people think the Brexit she described would be good for Britain, 62% think it would respect the referendum result and by 53% to 26% people say that they would be happy with the outcome.

While the British people support the sort of Brexit deal that Theresa May is asking for they don’t necessarily think it is the sort of arrangement that other EU countries will agree to, or the sort that May will end up bringing back from Brussels. By 47% to 38% the public do say they have confidence in Theresa May to negotiate the sort of deal she described, but they do not expect the other member states of the EU to agree to them. Only 20% of people think that the EU will agree to the Brexit deal she wants, 56% think they will not.

And what happens then? Asked about May's statement that "no deal is better than a bad deal" 48% of the public agree, compared to 17% who would rather have a bad deal than no deal at all. 55% of people said that May should be prepared to walk away. It is a different question whether the public would actually be so sanguine about May coming back from negotiations empty handed. Our previous polls have suggested that less than a third of people think it would be good for Britain to leave the EU without any new trade deal.

Theresa May has passed her first Brexit test: she has managed to define a form of Brexit that the majority of the country can get behind. Getting the rest of Europe to agree to those proposals may be a more difficult challenge.
 
so... according to this report there is at least a 5% increase for Leave to the June result..lol

and no deal is better than a bad deal... cos bad everything else can sometimes be better than the neutral zero...lolol

this will be a very beneficial (to EU) tactical retreat from Europe before we go back in as an EEA member within a few yrs after exiting proper.... in that time the EU will be able to further integrate the socio-economic model Progressives want, without the cookoo in the nest (and the backward eastern-flank of nations rallying behind) deliberately obstructing this process..

we can... and will... return when the Project is further completed than its ever been.

but poorer, weaker and with less influence than at any time in the past few hundred yrs..
 
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