If it opts for an EEA agreement, why should Britain be excluded from having to sign up to Schengen? It'll effectively walk away from an 'immigration' based referendum having less control over it.
You would not want to be one of the Tory Leavers if that happens would you? Hey everyone, another bone fide case of politicians telling literal lies to the electorate and so soon after the LibDem uni fees debacle!
I think it would serve voters right, because I think we have to accept that some people no matter how much politicians try and ‘reach’ them or how much they bleat about ‘being ignored’ don’t know what the f-ck they actually want.
‘Immigration’ is such a catch all title it doesn’t mean anything. It allows you to not have to actually vocalise any specifics, either because you don’t know what the problem is, or if you have a specific problem with specific types of people, then it covers up any undercurrent of racism. We know some people don’t like Poles or Bulgarians for the same reason they didn’t like ‘the Paddys’. We know (particularly from the results of this referendum) some second and third generation commonwealth migrants don’t like people in Europe being able to settle easily as it’s not as easy to bring your entire extended family/the entire village over from Pakistan anymore. And some people don’t like ‘Muslims’, in terms of those already settled or coming from commonwealth countries and for some reason think that’s got something to do with the EU.
Now politicians obfuscate this. The media most certainly do. Both built up a concept of the EU that isn’t real; from ‘red tape’ (another catch all that means nothing) to vacuous red top selling pap like ‘bendy bananas’ that was very easy to get the public to vote against.
These sorts of people will glibly speak to TV cameras or post online and regurgitate all these little pellets showing how
’really really smart and man on the street, tell it like it is’ they are. And then when we have a national car crash, the same people will
’blame the politicians, aren’t they all the same’ wearing the same sh-t eating grin without every accepting or internalising that it was their inability to understand what the issue was that caused this mess.
Part of the reason the Lib Dem’s collapsed was because the Lib Dems allowed voters to project whatever they thought onto their party. So people not engaged in politics, not understanding what the Lib Dems stood for, what ideology Nick Clegg espoused and the very fact that teaming up with the Tories was pretty much what they were always going to do toddled off and voted for them to ‘send a message.’ Then they were affronted that the Lib Dems did exactly what they were always going to do and then blamed the Lib Dems for doing exactly what they were going to do simply because it betrayed the
idea of the Lib Dems they had in their head.
The public are effectively ‘institutionalised’ and blame politicians for their own mistakes in judgment and the media cheer them on. Because ‘politicians are all the same’. At least until someone gets shot and people start to realise that maybe they are in fact not all the same. At least for a week.
