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But are we really leaving Uncle? The country is completely spilt. The Union at risk of breaking up. These are perfect conditions for the man or woman who would be king (as UKIP have shown). Leaving or staying in the EU doesn't hurt the politicians you hate so much. It only hurts us, one way or the other.

That is very brave Louisa and commands huge respect. You are not alone. The most googled term after the result from the UK was 'what is the EU' and 'How does the EU work'. I think Boris wants a Norway style deal, but he'll wait until he's PM to argue for that. The referendum is not legally binding and he will follow the direction most likely to give the Tories a win in 2020. Mugging off the Farage leave brigade will cost Labour, not him. So as difficult as this initial phase is going to be, I think he'll take the huge political risk of keeping us in but in the same way that Norway and Switzerland are in. The EU can not refuse us deals on those same terms. And I don't think he'll find it too difficult to get parliament to vote for that.

Cameron resigned because he doesn't want to be the one that has to sort out a mess he never wnated to come about. He knows that the end result is not going to be what the public on the leave side truly want. Johnson knows it too, but wants to be PM more than he cares about upsetting people. I agree on the shock factor needing to reside Louisa, but those voting for leave did not vote for a Norway type deal with freeodm of movement still in place. We both know that Johnson is not against freedom of movement. Anyone involved in business and investment at that level wants freedom of movement, and they are the people that run the country. Whichever way you look at it, the leave voters are going to feel cheated. What that leads to in terms of civil unrest is what bothers me. There have already been several reported incidents of racist verbal attacks since the result. I also think that those 27 nations of the EU are not going to make negotiations easy for us. There will be no 'special' deals, which is what all of us arguing for remain were pointing out all along, and you seem to now be agreeing with that Louisa. Yes Merkel is a pragmatist, but the EU is 27 nations. We may well be made an example of. Jaywalker is right on the deep feelings of mourning and the remain voters are not going to to sit quietly once the shock is over either. It wasn't just the job cuts announced yesterday, the business relocations to mainland Europe, or the ?250bn put on the line to save the crashing pound (a bailout equivalent to the cost of being in the EU for around 20 years btw), it's every downturn we are going to feel with every difficulty in those negotiations. Inflation is already predicted to hit 4% by the end of next year. That's higher prices for all of us. We import most of our raw materials, fuel and energy for manufacturing too. These are serious repercussions that are going to hit the very people who voted leave the hardest. There are already many people who are regretting having voted leave. 'What is the EU' was the most googled phrase from the UK after the result. It seems people suddenly decided to find out what they had voted to leave, actually is. If Scotland and NI seperate, we won't even be an Island anymore.

There is no winner from this. A 3.8% difference between in and out means just one thing - that the UK is split down the middle, just like both the Tory and Labour parties are. These kinds of divisions are what lead to civil war. Equally at loggerheads are young and old. Johnson has used the referendum to get the prize he really wants, which is to be PM. He and others looked decidedly sheepish today as it dawned on them that they are never going to be able to deliver the promises they made. They've sold people a pack of lies, and those who fell for them, are going to learn the hard way, the consequences. I predict that the new Tory leadership will drag out EU exit for as long as they can, in the hope the EU gives the UK some amazing concessionary arrangement. A complete exit with no deal will see the break up of the UK. It's not just Scotland, it's Northern Ireland too. Boris has never been for a full exit. The only person who is for a full exit is the man who isn't even an MP. Farage will have no say in how Brexit evolves. Had the result been definitive one way or the other, then it would be different. But just as with the Scottish Independence Referendum, narrow margins leave the door open for another challenge.

Harriet and Cllrs will not be allowed to let it slip away. There are people at Labour branch meetings who have raised this and will keep Cllrs and Harriet involved.

It's hard though to gauge tone in written language and tone is everything when trying to gauge intent. LM (as I) posts because of a genuine interest in the subject and in what others have to say. I think we both get a little frustrated when there is hard data/evidence to support something and it is brushed aside. That is only human nature. But I've not seen LM write anything that would rile with me. I on the other hand definitely have days where my level of patience is tested. But I usually stay off public forums on those days :D

Good posts Loz amd Rendel.

I think you are being unfair to both LondonM and myself Maxxi. As London points out, the other thread was a good exercise in debate. No-one was rude, or was offended even though there are complete differences of opinion. So much is lost in translation when people who don't know each other personally speak with written words, that it is often unwise to judge anyone from language alone. I've done it lots of times, mistaken humour for sarcasm for example. It's so easily done.

And we are not part of the Euro zone either. EU directives only impact on 16% of our laws also. So as Loz asked, take back control of what? And just on migration, we already have a points system for non EU migrants, and we let in more of those than EU migrants last year. It's commerce that drives movement of people, not the EU.

Seconded Louisa. You sound almost presidential in that post btw :D

Rational and informative are big words Louisa, but you are fun to do battle with and I don't think I've ever seen you be rude to anyone.

Also, people within the UK move to where there are jobs which is why the populations of the North have decreased. I don't understand what part of that people don't get either. They are blaming the EU for things that are nothing to do with the EU but the demographic and economic strategies of our own governments.

That is completely right LondonM. The solution to housing pressure is to mass build. And we are only in that mess because of the failure to build enough over the lat 20 years. Why politicians cling to this idea that the private market alone will do it is anyone's guess. We've mass built before, and we weren't part of any EU then.

Yes there is an element of tell the people what they want to hear with elections. Watching that debate last night, it felt like a party rally for Boris, rather than any kind of balanced hustings.

And those free trade deals were done with a trading bloc of 500 million people, not a small island of just 65 million. Size of market matters in trade negotiations. You are not comparing like for like. But if you actually look at those deals, they are mainly with smaller countries, namely in South America with individual exports of less than 2bn. This is significant because there is no market competition detriment on such small levels of exports. They are deals set up namely to help poorer economies. We on the other hand export 200bn worth of goods/ervices to the EU annually, which is a different ball game altogether when it comes to market competiton.

Greece is always held up as an example of how bad things can go but as we see with Louisa, it's always to suit a misinformed world view. I do think that leavers are secretly hoping for the fall of the EU. But that would be an economic catastrophe for many smaller economies, and we all know what an unstable Europe descends into. You never hear leave campaigners trying to emplain the unemployment levels of America, India, China. Yet unemployment within the EU becomes the fault of the EU. Emerging economies are doing so on the backs of cheap exploited labour. We went through that, which is why employment legislation and protections were formed. Are we going to stay stuff all of that so we can become like China? Be careful what you wish for.

And just on tariffs. Even the WTO imposes tariffs, and there is no way of avoiding those, no way whatsoever.

Robbin, Germany is bound by the same rules as every EU member. She won't be able to do a unilateral deal with the UK on trade. We WILL be subject to the same rules as Norway and Switzerland. This is just fantasy to think we are so special that other EU members will just accept a special deal for us while they have no such deal. Clearly you have no understanding whatsever of how the EU and trading rules work.

Housing is a poor reference to make Fox. Housing shortage is not in the UK as a whole, but predominently in the South East, where the economy is centred. But that could be easily solved if we stopped selling off public housing and had a mass building programme. Governments have have 30 years to keep pace with changing demographics and have done nothing. 2.5 million people have moved south over the last 3 decades. We have had mass home building waves in the past, we can do that again. There just has to be the will from government. Also though, if government did something to help economy generate and grow in other parts of the country, people would move to other parts of the country. Don't confuse failures in national economic strategy with immigration.

He said that leaving the EU would be irreversible. Meaning that we would not be able to rejoin the EU with the concessions we already have on things like shenghen and the euro if our economy went belly up and we realised leaving was a huge mistake.

LondonM is right on fishing and agriculture. I grew up on a farm and know lots of farmers, so that is something I personally know a lot about. But I also take issue with Louisa's general view that it is the EU who are responsible for the UK's general decline in industry. Manufacturing and raw materials were already well into decline before we joined the EU. Shipbuilding is a perfect example of that. We went from being one of the worlds largest ship builders to being one of its smallest, simply because of the rise of other nations - nothing to do with the EU at all It was always going to be that other nations could provide coal cheaper, or steel. The EU actually has tried to protect those markets for its member states. The harsh reality is that we can not compete on production costs with countris that have lower costs of living for their labour. And that, if anything, is what is responsible for our decline in manufacturing. You can not have cheap goods and high wages at the same time. But this is what we seem to want.

I agree on a narrow win with the debate going on beyond too. The Tory party may well end up with Gove or Boris leading, but I don't see the promise of another referendum any time soon either.

"I get that you aren't familiar with all of this which of course is fine but its insane to simply dismiss it as speculation when these are bold face verifiable facts just because they don't dovetail with your world view." This for me has absolutely characterised my personal experiences of debating with people who are set on voting for leave.

I find it incredulous that anyone would think what happens on the stock market doesn't affect us all, esp given the history of austerity that follows every single major crash. When markets crash, government tax revenue falls, which means spending on services falls.

Quite Titch. The problem LM is that immigration has been confused with economic decline. Most parts of the country have seen local populations fall over the past 40 years as people have moved to the SE (i.e where the jobs are). Housing has even been demolished in parts of the North because there is no-one to live in it! And then if you take seaside areas like Thanet (where Farage stood) - you have areas long in economic decline having seen recent arrivals of the wrong sort of immigrants for locals liking. So the immigration issue is nuanced and wrongly blamed for things that have nothing to do with it. Governments don't mind this too much though if it steers blame away from their failure to regenerate local economies. For local economies to develop and exist of course, you need people of working age. It's no suprise to me that older people per se are backing leave whilst younger people are backing stay. Older generations are the ones who were promised cradle to grave state provision, whilst forgetting how that was going to be paid for. Younger people are used to the idea of having to pay for everything themselves, but resent shouldering the debt and responsibility for what they see as a pampered generation that had the best of everything, whilst they will have no such thing to look forward to. We really are a nation of two halves, in more ways than one.