Can we stop the 'Democracy is beautiful' platitudes? This vote was a travesty

In the West we are brainwashed to always view more democracy as better. But the Brexit fiasco shows how inappropriate referenda are.

Being a Swiss person in England on Saturday, British journalists were keen to get tennis star Roger Federer's take on the Brexit chaos taking place around him. He gave a politician's answer. "It’s nice to have democracy here, that you have an opportunity to vote. It’s a beautiful thing."

Really Roger? You think what we've seen over the past days is "a beautiful thing?"

David Cameron expressed similar sentiments in his resignation speech after losing the vote. "The country has just taken part in a giant democratic exercise, perhaps the biggest in our history," he said. "We should be proud of the fact that in these islands we trust the people for these big decisions."

The UK Parliament can block Brexit, but it needs a mandate

There is zero prospect for a second referendum, but a general election may be called in the next few months that would be a de-facto second vote. The result could be an unravelling of the main political parties.

In the three days since Brexit, social media has been abuzz with the prospect of holding a second referendum. The argument goes that so many leave voters did not understand what they were voting for, it justifies holding a new poll. 

An official petition asking for a second referendum has collected more than four million signatures, which will force a parliamentary debate on the subject.

But the idea of a second referendum is fanciful. The process of the first referendum was so ugly, so destabilising, that few would want to put the UK through that again. 

Like Trump, Brexit won by accident

Brexiteer fumbling this weekend gives an impression of self-interested politicians who launched a campaign they didn't expect to actually win. Sound familiar?

This morning's appearances on the Sunday shows by the politicians who campaigned for Brexit was a full-on car crash. Perhaps the most extraordinary was Ian Duncan Smith's interview with Andrew Marr.

After trying to get any shred of information from IDS, Marr finally asked, exasperated, “What’s the plan?” “How do you mean?” IDS responded defensively. So Marr cited, for example, the leave campaign's promise to spend the "£350m per week that the UK sends to Brussels" (a completely inaccurate figure) to instead fund the NHS. 

“We never said that,” IDS replied. Marr was indignant. “Yes you did. So even if there was £350m per week, which there isn’t, how are you going to fulfil all of your other spending promises?”

“We never made any commitments. We just made a series of promises that were possibilities," IDS responded.

Ireland faces its doomsday scenario

Both sides of Ireland are in a panic because Brexit could make the peace process unravel. But perhaps the North has come far enough to allow a non-violent reunification of the island.

"Of all the things that could happen to an Irish government short of the outbreak of war, this is pretty much up there with the worst of them," wrote The Irish Times, the republic's main newspaper, as the world woke up to the "Brexit nightmare" on Friday morning.

"Ever since David Cameron announced that he would hold a referendum back in 2012, Irish officials have regarded the prospect of a British exit from the EU as the worst thing that could happen [to Ireland]," the paper wrote. "[Irish PM] Kenny now faces leading Ireland through a period of difficulty and uncertainty unprecedented in the last 50 years, more complex and unpredictable than the recent financial crisis, more destabilising the Northern Troubles."

The UK is Ireland's biggest trading partner. One billion euros worth of goods flow freely across the Irish Sea each week, tariff-free because both countries are in the European Union. If the UK leaves the EU while the Republic of Ireland stays in, customs duties will have to be imposed on that trade. That is, unless the UK joins the EEA, but I've written before on why that is unlikely.

Why Spain will not object this time to an independent Scotland

Spain is less likely to veto EU accession for a Scotland that is leaving a non-EU country.

Today Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of Scotland, left an emergency cabinet meeting in Edinburgh and declared that her government will seek "immediate" bilateral discussions with Brussels to "protect Scotland's place in the EU."

She already said yesterday that a second referendum on Scottish independence was "highly likely" following the UK's vote to leave the EU. The vast majority of voters in Scotland, Northern Ireland and London voted to remain in the EU, but a majority of people in England and Wales voted to leave - resulting in a 52% vote for leave. 

All of it gives the impression of a vote driven by English nationalism - whether the leave voters realised it or not. With their vote, they may have created the nation-state of England. It now seems likely Scotland and Northern Ireland will leave the union.

Sturgeon has said it would be unconstitutional for Scotland to be taken out of the EU against its will.

European in London? Here's what's going to happen to you

In a great irony, there is likely to be an increase in immigration from Europe over the next two years as people hope to be grandfathered in to a future visa regime.

Many of my friends who are non-English EU citizens living in London (a category I myself used to be in) have asked me today what's going to happen to them. 

They live and work in the UK on the basis of their EU passport. What happens when the UK pulls out of the EU, and freedom of movement across the channel comes to an end? Are they going to be immediately deported?

I've reassured them that most likely some kind of arrangement will be made for those EU citizens who have been living in the UK a long time. They're not all going to be immediately deported. But some of them might. I think it is likely that in two years, EU immigrants already in the country are going to have to apply for permission to remain, on the basis of the existing tiered visa regime.

Here are the different possibilities: