Thought I'd start a new thread as this is going to be a major talking point this year...have not made up my mind yet...(unlike bucksfizz)....but thinking of voting for an exit as Europe is not doing Britain any good at all it seems....

Congratulations to the loss of a real leader:




of lemmings.

Big shame Farage has gone ,without him we would never have got the vote on Europe ,i wish he had been involved in negotiating our exit .

jimmy he had no chance , the Cons can't even get on with each other , like being in a snake pit .

Well VIC we owe him that's for sure
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DAILY MAIL COMMENT: MUCH MOCKED FARAGE CHANGED BRITAIN
For years he was relentlessly sneered at and abused by supporters of every other party, yet Nigel Farage can genuinely claim to have been one of the most influential political figures of recent times.
Gutsy and tenacious, his achievement in taking Ukip from a fringe protest party to top the poll in the 2014 Euro elections was truly astonishing.
More than anyone, he recognised the depth of anger and disenfranchisement felt by ordinary people in huge swathes of Britain from the Thames estuary to Labour’s northern heartlands.
In particular, he articulated their very real concerns over mass migration when others feared being branded racist.
And of course, without him there would have been no EU referendum because David Cameron would have avoided calling it and the public would have been denied the democratic opportunity to express their disdain for life under the Brussels yoke by voting leave.
For that alone, Britain owes Mr Farage a debt of gratitude

He is staying on at the EU parliament to torment them. He does have a way with words doesn't he? Although at times he needs to think before speaking, like on referendum night with his early concession, based on the bookies odds, and there was no need to gloat at the EU parliamentary session. Sometimes less is more.

Yes iturama there are times when I thought he should have just let be , as it can look like he's rubbing their noses in it .

They need their noses rubbing in it, over and over again.

I think Merkel wants Juncker to go,his arrogance has become too much .

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-will-soon-have-to-deal-with-european-commission-president-jean-claude-juncker-sources-a7117536.html

Just goes to show who's running the democratic EU , I thought that was a dictator's job though .

The fatherland runs Brussels, everyone knows that.

From the Governor of the BoE's statement this morning, it looks like the predictions made by him, Cameron and Osborne are coming true. House prices may fall, the pound is at a 31 year low. We could soon be heading into a recession.

Just watch how many regret their decision when things get much worse in the UK economy. There will be a clamour for a second referendum. I hope the government resists the temptation to stay in the EU. Had the Leavers believed Cameron, Carney, the Treasury and Osborne they wouldn't have voted to leave.

I was expecting a recession, house prices to fall, the pound and stock market to fall but I think it is a price worth paying to leave the EU. This is just the beginning and it is going to get a lot worse. The benefits from being outside the EU may not appear this side of 10 years.

By whom and how will the price be paid?

What and incompetent government.

Like the Somme, a country lead by donkeys.

so how would corbyn be classed?
even the donkeys would disown him

Maybe something that donkeys leave behind.

Answer the questions, don't deviate.

Your beginning to sound like an old tory woman.

(I will now duck and work on my apology to women for calling them old.)

Andrea joined with 7 other MPs, adding her name to a letter of concern about HS2.

It's in PDF format and you can read it here:

http://www.andrealeadsom.com/downloads/mps-letter.pdf

Basically, these 8 MPs felt the decisions towards HS2 were against the democratic process and furthermore, that decisions taken on HS2 thus far have not adequately taken into account the strength of negative feeling at local level.

In other words, if Andrea gets elected to be leader, then HS2 stands a high chance of getting dumped. But something else would undoubtedly take its place, that would be less costly and more useful and much more favourably acceptable to the majority.

The minister who won't be cowed by Carney: Andrea Leadsom once worked WITH the Bank of England - now she's taking them on
By ALEX BRUMMER FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 21:55, 8 June 2016 | UPDATED: 21:55, 8 June 2016

No one could accuse Andrea Leadsom of being naïve about finance or of being elitist.
The elegant 53-year-old energy minister, with a penchant for glistening gold jewellery, brings to the Leave campaign real world City experience learned on the trading floors of the Square Mile and investment banking at Barclays.

The minister was brought up by a divorced mother in a tiny terraced house with a loo at the bottom of the garden in Tring, Buckinghamshire. She has experienced the perils of being a woman making her way in the super-competitive financial community while trying to rear her own family.

‘I really struggled, I was completely under pressure,’ she acknowledges.

These searing experiences have helped to make her one of the most fearless voices in the Leave campaign and as a result the former City minister is unafraid to challenge her former employers at the Treasury or the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney.

She argues Carney has betrayed the Bank’s independence ‘by going outside of his remit and giving a personal opinion’ about the economic impact of Brexit ‘that he cannot prove’.

She said: ‘He has no evidence for it and that is against his legal remit of impartiality. As an ex-Goldman Sachs banker Carney knew exactly what he was doing. He has encouraged financial instability and I think that absolutely damages the reputation of the Bank.’

She added: ‘I think where Mark Carney is concerned his intervention was outside of the remit of the Bank of England Act which is clear that he has complete independence in monetary policy, but in all other areas he should be impartial.’

As for the Treasury forecast that every UK household would be left £4,300 worse off if Britain left the EU Leadsom declares: ‘It has allowed itself to be abused.’ She questions the assumptions that went into the forecast.

Andrea Leadsom: A POLITICIAN WHO HAD A REAL JOB
Family: Leadsom, 53, is married to Ben, who runs a financial software business. Three children: Fred, 20, Harry, 18, and Charlotte, 12.
Career: Born in Aylesbury and went to Tonbridge Grammar School before reading political science at Warwick University.
Started out as a metal trader before joining BZW, which eventually became Barclays Capital. Bosses included Martin Taylor and Bob Diamond.
Worked in fund management at De Putron before becoming chief investor officer at Invesco Perpetual 1999-2009. Elected as Tory MP for South Northamptonshire in 2010.
Served on Treasury Select Committee, appointed City Minister in 2014 and is Minister of State at the Department of Energy.
Working day: Up at 6.30am. Breakfast is organic granola or fruit. Grabs a coffee from Pret in Westminster and jumps on the tube with her daughter and takes her to school, a task which she alternates with husband Ben.
Gets there about 8am and then heads off to Commons or Whitehall. Usually meets formally with fellow DECC ministers once a week. Otherwise in Westminster at her Parliamentary office.
On Mondays, she catches the train at Milton Keynes after leaving her 17th century Northamptonshire farmhouse.
Formative experience: Break-up of her parent’s marriage. ‘I’m the middle of three sisters.
My mother divorced when I was four so she brought us up while trying to train as a nurse at Great Ormond St. She raised us to believe the world doesn’t owe you a living.
Favourite things: Film – Four Weddings and a Funeral which she watches at least once a year. Book – Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith but loves the classic Australian children’s book Where’s the Wombat which she has read to all her children. Enjoys visiting the local pubs around her home village.

Leadsom visited the Daily Mail to rehearse some of the arguments she can be expected to use when she appears in an ITV debate today on behalf of the Leave campaign.

Among those she opposes is her boss at the Department for Energy & Climate Change Amber Rudd and brother of Remain campaigner and legendary City PR consultant Roland Rudd.

SHE is not flinching at publicly confronting her Secretary of State who has warned that our energy security could be jeopardised by a Brexit.

‘I utterly disagree with that. Amber and I are great friends but on this I completely disagree. On electricity security there is no case to answer,’ Leadsom says.
‘On gas security there is a very serious issue because gas is a global market, 40 per cent comes from the North Sea and the rest comes from liquefied natural gas from Norway and the Middle East. We have no exposure to the EU for gas,’ she asserts.

The defining period in Leadsom’s life was her stint in the City. She began as a trainee trading metals for brokers EF Hutton before moving to corporate finance and BZW, the investment banking arm of Barclays that became Barclays Capital.

There, she worked in the commercial paper market, raising cash for big corporates and rising through the ranks to become the youngest director of Barclays at the age of 32, when she was appointed head of UK banking.

‘I was promoted to become a senior executive when I was seven months’ pregnant and pressured to going back to work after just 11 weeks. 'I really struggled because I was desperate to be with my child. I said to the bank “I can’t cope with the hours”, the hours for a director were just ridiculous.

‘I was just never getting to see my son. I stuck with it for two years and through two miscarriages.’

It all became too much and she requested a part-time role. The response was brutal and sexist. She was told: ‘We have managed without senior women executives until now, we certainly don’t need part-time ones.’ She says: ‘That was in 1999 and they paid me to go quietly.’ Leadsom’s experience at Barclays means that she understands markets better than most. ‘This (the referendum campaign) is not a financial crisis,’ she insists.

‘I was a young trader at BZW when we crashed out of the ERM [Exchange Rate Mechanism]. I was running Barclays investments team when Barings went bust.
'I remember spending the weekend with Eddie George (the late governor) at the Bank of England, ringing all the banks in the world, all of Barclays’ counterparts, saying “Don’t panic, be calm.”’

She rejects the notion that the day after the referendum there will be mayhem. She says: ‘The truth is, when we leave, the next day traders will wake up, they close out their positions, they take their profits and they carry on with the new reality. The same is true of general elections, the same is true with all manner of events.’

The minister’s ferocious criticism of Mark Carney, over the Bank’s breach of impartiality, partly reflects her staunch support of the Old Lady’s independence.
As a member of the Treasury Select Committee she staunchly defended the Bank over allegations it conspired with Barclays to fix Libor interest rates in 2008.

She is dismissive of the suggestion that if Britain leaves, the City will be badly damaged because of the loss of ‘passporting’ arrangements which allow banks in London to perform wholesale services, such as foreign exchange transactions, across the 28 EU countries.

‘It is simply not the case that the UK will, in any shape or form, not continue trading with the European Union. We are 40 per cent of retail wholesale services.’ She says a French bank chairman told her: ‘The serious problem if the UK leaves is that the EU will still need access to UK financial services.’

The impressive thing about Leadsom, unlike many of those engaged in the Remain or Leave campaign, is that she has worked in financial services and knows the City inside out. When she speaks it is with real understanding and authority.

Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3631819/The-minister-won-t-cowed-Carney-Andrea-Leadsom-worked-Bank-England-s-taking-on.html#ixzz4DXhhycC3

i've heard that hungary is to hold an eu referendum in october, but i can't find any confirmation of this

anyone else heard of this?

I don't understand why Haystack feels he has to defend the Con party so vigorously and takes things so personal , here we have this party full of very rich powerful people and yet he feels he has to stand up for them , strange . At least the two front runners say no to any new ballot .

Hungary to hold an EU referendum in October: Nation will decide whether to ignore Brussels diktat on accepting a quota of migrants