Good day all. In less than a week, Great Britain will go to the polls and decide whether or not they will leave the European Union. Currently, “Brexit” as it’s called, is leading in the polls. If the British Exit passes, there is a good chance Britain will be getting a new Prime Minister.
The current Prime Minister, David Cameron thought it would be a good idea to answer the critics of Britain being in the European Union by letting the people vote on whether to stay or go. After Scotland voted in large numbers to stay part of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Cameron felt that the voters would also choose to stay in the EU. As of now, that doesn’t look like it was a wise choice by Cameron.
If Brexit succeeds, in all probability, Cameron will be evicted from 10 Downing Street. This has led to some serious panicking among Cameron’s supporters. Here are the details from the Washington Post:
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s high-stakes decision to let the British public decide whether the country stays in the European Union looks increasingly like a bad bet, with his party veering into civil war, the polls pointing toward an exit and the Conservative leader’s job appearing ever more precarious.
Just a week before Britain votes, the prime minister’s hope of settling once and for all the country’s long-simmering European question with a resounding vote to stay in the E.U. may be out of reach. Surveys show the country is almost exactly divided, with momentum in recent days for “out.”
If Britain does vote to leave — a scenario popularly known as Brexit — analysts say that Cameron would probably be forced to resign, perhaps within hours of the result.
I’ve gone into this before, but it bears repeating. The United Kingdom is a parliamentarian system. People do not vote so much for the individual as they vote for the party. The head of the party, if the secure a majority in Parliament, becomes Prime Minister. (An aside. It isn’t “The” Prime Minister, it’s just “Prime Minister.” AW)
At any time, Parliament can take a vote of No Confidence, which if it passes, will force the current Prime Minister out of office. Then the fun and games begin. If Brexit succeeds, then Cameron, who has been pushing for Britain to remain in the EU will be discredited. He will then have no choice but to resign. Obviously, there is a lot more to this and I recommend looking up the details of how the British system works.
Even if British voters heed Cameron’s call to stay in the E.U., a narrow victory could leave him vulnerable to a vengeance-fueled coup by pro-Brexit politicians in his party who think the prime minister has played dirty in his no-holds-barred campaign to keep Britain in.
Cameron and his cronies completely missed just how unpopular the EU is within the Conservative party. While I don’t know the ins and outs of the Tories, as they’re called, from what I’ve seen, Cameron is not loved.
The fragility of Cameron’s position marks a stunning turnabout for a politician who won a commanding electoral victory just a year ago and who called the E.U. referendum as a way to unify his fractious party behind his leadership.
“This has turned out worse for Cameron than he ever conceived it could have,” said Roger Mortimore, a politics professor at King’s College London who directs political analysis at the polling firm Ipsos Mori. “I don’t think anyone really saw this coming. It’s very clear that David Cameron didn’t see it coming.”
I think the problem here is that the ruling elite on both sides of the aisle in Parliament forgot to ask their constituents what they thought about the EU. Originally, it seemed like a good idea, but over the last 10 years, the EU has morphed into a socialist central government that isn’t answerable to anyone. The regulations coming out of Brussels has raised costs to businesses and people and have started destroying the British way of life. People being told how they can cook their favorite dish of Fish and Chips by some overpaid bureaucrat in Brussels really ticked people off.
Among the prime minister’s gravest misjudgments, Mortimore said, was that he could rely on the small clique of Oxford-educated politicians who with Cameron form the upper echelon of Conservative Party politics.
Gee, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Could that be similar to what’s been happening in the Republican party this year?
Instead of loyalty, several have jettisoned the prime minister, and one — the shaggy-haired, populist former London mayor Boris Johnson — has all but declared his intention to topple the man who has led Britain for the past six years.
Boris Johnson was the Mayor of London for a couple of terms, and, to my eye, seems to be their version of Donald Trump. And about as politically correct too.
Johnson and other pro-Brexit dissidents, said professor Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London, form a “pop-up government in waiting” that is prepared to seize power if the Brexit vote does not go Cameron’s way.
And since it looks like Brexit is going to pass, well, stick the fork in, Cameron’s done. The problem is, Cameron isn’t going quietly into the night. He’s fighting Johnson and his group tooth and nail. It’s every bit as vicious as the recent Republican primary season. In other words, very entertaining.
Although the acerbic and personalized tone of the debate is new, the profound split within the Conservative Party is not. It dates at least to the 1980s and the reign of Tory icon Margaret Thatcher. Her views on Europe were decidedly mixed, and both sides in the current debate have claimed her backing from beyond the grave.
This sounds just like the various Republican groups claiming that they represent Ronald Reagan’s views. The problem there, is Reagan was unique and the current crop of RINO’s have as much in common with him as I have with the British Royal family. From what I recall, Thatcher wasn’t all that thrilled with the European Union and would be furious at what they are doing now to the United Kingdom.
One of the reasons that Cameron came up with this idea of a referendum on leaving the EU, was the assault on the Conservative party by another party called the United Kingdom Independence Party, or UKIP. People were leaving the Tories for the UKIP in droves and they were starting to win seats in Parliament.
When Cameron gambled and promised voters a direct say on the E.U. in January 2013, Conservatives faced a sharp challenge from their right by the anti-immigration U.K. Independence Party. By offering a referendum, Cameron thought he could outflank the UKIP and mend the long-standing rift within his party. The first part worked, with Conservatives winning an unexpected majority in last year’s general election while the UKIP remained marginalized.
But? You know there’s a great big “But” in there.
But the second part appears to have backfired.
Gee, ya think?
“It’s come at the price of creating these very public divisions within the party, and possibly setting off this chain of events that is spiraling out of control for him,” said Thomas Quinn, who teaches politics at the University of Essex.
If Britain votes to leave the E.U. on June 23, despite Cameron putting his full weight behind the case for staying in, Quinn said the prime minister’s odds of keeping his job would be “slim to nonexistent.”
But even if Cameron pulls out a close victory, he could still be in peril, with pro-Brexit Tories blaming him for undermining their long-awaited chance to break free of the E.U. Andrew Bridgen, a Tory member of Parliament who favors Brexit, said in an interview that unless Britain votes to stay in the E.U. by a wide margin, Cameron should step down.
“The prime minister has led a very disingenuous campaign on the most crucial question our country will face in my lifetime,” he said. “He’s blown his credibility with the electorate.”
It won’t take much to force Cameron out either.
If Cameron doesn’t step down, all it will take is for 50 Conservative members of Parliament — out of a total of 330 — to force a no-confidence vote.
Sometimes, I wish we had some sort of a “No Confidence” vote we could use on Presidents and Members of Congress. Hmm, I wonder how an Amendment could be worded so we could bounce these clowns out? Well that’s a post for another day I think. Anyway, if they do force Cameron out, the next round of political fun and games begins, and this is where we might see Boris Johnson come to the fore.
Quinn, who has written a book on British party leadership contests, rated Johnson’s chances of becoming prime minister by the end of the year at 40 percent. That is despite the fact that Johnson has alienated parliamentary colleagues and foreign leaders with his over-the-top comments during the campaign.
Again, that sounds an awful lot like Donald Trump. Well, Johnson does have the hair if not the billions.
The publicity-hungry Johnson has drawn comparisons to U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump for his suggestion that the E.U. and Hitler both had the same goal, and his insinuation that President Obama is hostile toward Britain because of his “part Kenyan” heritage.
[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbp_JQ7RxqM’]
Recently, King Putt paid a visit to England and as usual, put his foot in it. Basically, in true Obama style, he threatened the British voters that if they pulled out of the EU, then the United States would send them to the bottom with regards to trade deals. I’d guess that was good for a 5 point increase in the polls for Brexit.
Nonetheless, Johnson remains popular with the Conservative rank-and-file members who would ultimately pick the prime minister if Cameron steps down.
“He has that X-factor that other politicians don’t seem to have,” said Bale, the Queen Mary University professor. “But he’s hardly a safe pair of hands. I’m not sure he’s seen as someone who can lead the party — or, indeed, the country.”
Again, I’m seeing the exact same thing with regards to Donald Trump. I think that if Johnson does become Prime Minister, and Trump becomes President, the two of them will get along much like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did. Consider what the two of them achieved. An economic boom and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I’m going to close by saying that I’m in favor of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. I think they should also consider shutting down the trains and flooding the Channel Tunnel as well. You know, just to make sure. It seems to me that when that tunnel opened, that’s when the problems for Great Britain began. Good Luck to Great Britain. Choose Wisely. Choose Brexit.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
[yasr_visitor_votes size=”medium”]
