'We are the 48%': tens of thousands march in London for Europe

[malaise]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/02/march-for-europe-eu-referendum-london-protest
<snip>
The hollow, bitter wit of the banners and placards was a fair indication of who took to the streets of London, in their tens of thousands, on the March for Europe on Saturday, hastily scrambled on Facebook. “And if this isn’t big enough,” said Jonathan Shakhovskoy, who is with a marketing firm in the music industry, “we’ll do it again next week, and the week after. Normalise the mood, make it less ugly.”

“Un-Fuck My Future”, “No Brex Please, We’re British”, they read. Pictures of Whitney Houston with “I Will Always Love EU”, “Europe Innit” and “I wanna be deep inside EU”. “All EU Need is Love”, “Fromage not Farage”, “Eton Mess” and, more seriously, “Science Needs EU”. “Hell no, we won’t go!” they shouted, rounding Piccadilly Circus.

No one was fooling themselves that these were the penitent huddled masses from Ebbw Vale or Sunderland come to beg after all for EU funding; this was a vocal segment of the 48% for whom departure from the EU is a disgrace, a catastrophe or both.


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My favorite - "Eton Mess"

Great pics at link

[davidn3600]

1. OK. So the other 52% don't matter?

Some of these protesters have energy now but THEY DIDN'T VOTE WHEN IT MATTERED!!!!! The youth stayed home. So guess what....they don't get a say now.

[Nye Bevan]

3. It takes a two-thirds vote by both the House and the Senate, plus 75% of the state legislatures,

to make this kind of momentous, far-reaching change in the US. Absolutely ridiculous that something so important can be decided by 52% of the voters.

[malaise]

6. Britain has Parliamentary Supremacy

I expect them to ignore the vote

[davidn3600]

8. It wouldnt take that to break free from the EU

According to the treaty, all it takes for ANY member of the EU to leave is to invoke Article 50 of the treaty. That can be done simply by a parliament vote.

Which means if you hypothetically say the US was part of the EU, we could break free just by the House and Senate passing a law and the president signing it. That's it.

There is nothing in our constitution that says the states have to agree to break free from an international treaty.

[LeftishBrit]

9. Agree!

I might also add that if one is going to put such an important matter to a referendum, it MIGHT help if the leaders had the slightest clue what they were going to do in the event of a Leave vote!

Talk about utter chaos.

[pampango]

10. I agree but a Conservative prime minister thought he could pacify the far-right wing of

his party with a referendum on EU membership. The far-right said "Thank you very much. You have no idea what our campaign will look like."

If a conservative political party's establishment, at war with its far-right (Tea Party-ish) wing, can convince a country to make fundamental changes based on a referendum, you have to give them credit for controlling the political agenda.

[malaise]

12. He did

as the experts said - Cameron never thinks things through - he makes decisions based on limited self interest

[Myrddin]

13. I didn't vote - I wasn't allowed to.

I'm British, I have worked abroad more than I worked in UK, not through choice but necessity. So I fell foul of the 15 years residency rule.

I work abroad, I have not emigrated, but it was deemed my opinion was not worthy of consideration.

Thousands of ex-pat workers are in the same situation.

We didn't get a say last week, would be nice to be given that say in a re-run! Then you can spout about a wafer-thin democratic 'majority'?

[pampango]

14. If many of the 1,000,000+ Brits who live in European countries could not vote that

might have made a huge difference in the outcome. One would assume that most Brits living and working in other European countries would have voted for the UK to remain in the EU since their ability to live where they are may be compromised after Brexit.

[FLPanhandle]

2. The problem is, they complain but didn't vote.

All those young people could have changed the outcome, but they couldn't be bothered.

Hard to take them seriously now.

[Just reading posts]

4. Young people don't vote in large numbers unless they're forced to do so.

Never have, never will.

[pampango]

5. It's great that liberals turn out to protest a conservative victory. Better would have been

turning out to vote and countering the lies and bigoted fear-mongering that conservatives used to achieve their victory. (The same could be said of a Trump victory here in November.)

OTOH, large scale demonstrations are always welcome and a sign of a free society. At least it shows Europe that there are many younger, liberal Brits who want the country to proceed in a different direction.

I don't blame the EU for wanting the UK to leave ASAP. The UK has been a it of an 'exceptional' member of the EU from the beginning. But the rest of Europe should not give up on younger, liberal Brits who do want to be an integral part of Europe.

[malaise]

7. +1,000

What a mess

[Igel]

11. "Elections matter."

And in a majoritarian society they can be deadly serious.