Another piece from the FT: Presidential candidate of France's centre-right party Alain Juppé called for the “swift removal” of the UK from the EU on Monday, joining the chorus of leaders who want the UK to start the process of leaving the political bloc immediately. “The British cannot continue with one foot in Europe and another outside,” he said in an interview with Le Monde newspaper published on Monday. Mr Juppé, a former prime minister and one of the country’s most popular politicians, also said that holding a referendum in France on the EU – demanded by some on the far-right – would be “totally irresponsible”. He said, however, that “concrete proposals” were needed to “rebuild Europe” and that there could be a referendum on these proposals at some point. He also called for a new border agreement because “Schengen is no longer working”.
The point being that you, as a Hong Kong based poster, have a surface understanding of the issues here, and are "debating" with someone who does, and who correctly foresaw the Leave majority before the vote. You're not even British, but claim to be some expert on UK politics, posting random articles from the internet and soaking up everything your read as gospel, rather than thinking for yourself. I can't be bothered to pick apart every single straw man argument that you make because it's clearly a waste of my time. What I don't understand is how people who are disappointed at the UK's vote, including yourself, are in full meltdown mode, desperate for Article 50 to be triggered. First, you were desperate for the UK to stay, now you're desperate for them to leave. Anyway, I'll now do as I said and leave the thread rather than responding to more of your simplistic points.
Guys. You are obviously two intelligent people with differing views. I'm interested in both of them. If you were sat around a table discussing this there's no way you'd be tearing lumps out of each other. Personal attacks rather than reasoned debate are what makes this site such a total lost cause most of the time. Don't let yet another thread go down the toilet in a such a manner...please.
People who are demanding an immediate exit by the UK can take their demands and stick 'em where the sun don't shine. There is nothing in the Lisbon treaty which mandates the time period for the official invocation of the Article 50. Until the moment that the UK government decides to trigger the process, nothing changes and the UK remains a member of the EU. While I don't want to diminish the struggles that the UK will now face, one sure shouldn't listen to idiots like Alain Juppé, who seemingly just don't get what's going on around them.
Alain Juppe is not just one voice, the same opinion was voiced by all other ministers that met over the weekend, it is voiced today by the IMF, it is voiced by the US whose Kerry travels to London and Brussels as we speak. The rest of the world is wondering what is going on and why the UK is now in standstill mode when decisive action is the need of the hour? In your opinion what should now happen? Shall the rest of the world, particularly Europe stand in awe, unable to make any decisions, just because the UK first holds everyone hostage to their "either you give us or we are out" demeaning attitude and now as they voted out, again hold everyone hostage with the "hey, let us see whether we could possibly squeeze more concessions out of the Central European dummies by neither moving back nor forward" stance? Financial markets are in complete disarray, European leaders cannot make bold decisions because nobody, first and foremost, the British exit camp, has a clue how to proceed. Why would the British not move ahead after their referendum which they assured everyone domestically and around the world was brinding? This is exactly the attitude that had the rest of Europe raise their eyebrows for years over the British attitude to everything Europe. Honest question, what holds the UK back now?
When I saw this post by conduit: "another personal attack? Sad, it always goes down the drain so fast on this site" I realized that I'm probably dealing with the troll marketsurfer. It's that word "sad" again, something dratsum remarked on in an earlier thread:- http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index...er-has-been-banned.297437/page-3#post-4242160 Search the word "sad" in combination with poster marketsurfer and you find 185 posts. A coincidence? I think not. Edit - Mods, please check whether conduit is using an anonymizer to hide his source location.
Firstly, no, not everyone in Europe feels as you describe. Angela Merkel, for instance, voiced a somewhat different opinion, as I am sure you're aware... Note that the voices that you're referring to mostly belong to a particular group of Eurocrats, such as Martin Schulz, Jean-Claude Juncker etc. I suspect that their motivation isn't entirely of the "let's get on with it" variety. Finally, again, what holds the UK back is irrelevant. The point is that there is no legal obligation in the EU treaties which compels the UK to act swiftly, since the architects of the European project didn't think about these matters. While I appreciate that uncertainty is not a good thing, especially for the mkts, there's absolutely no reason why the people of the UK should feel rushed in matters such as this.
I have another prediction. Jean-Claude Juncker will resign over the next few weeks, possibly before the week is out. He's an obstacle to reaching an agreement that suits both the UK and Germany.
I hope he resigns... Frankly, it's mind-boggling that someone who presided over developments which led to the bloc's 5th largest economy to democratically choose to exit still has a job.
PEACE please I am from the US but spent a lot of time in the UK when I worked for a US company that had a large UK/Europe operation. At that time the UK operation was 'in charge' of the multiple European operations and the Europeans were in revolt. They wanted 'freedom from UK domination'. They actually said that. They sent letters to the chairman that upset him. He sent me to Europe to get things under control. Lotsa luck. One of the things I did when I was there was to spend a few evenings in a British pub listening to the locals excoriate the Europeans. Amazing. As I said before, a lot of the anger seemed almost genetic. All of this business including the formation of the EU, British membership, now with British withdrawal can be seen as an attempt to forge a post WWII union that would be beneficial to all. A lot of people have been narrow minded and have not understood the goal. I hope that eventually the goal will be reached. So please. Do not 'get personal', put each other on Ignore etc. You all have valuable viewpoints to share from which we can all benefit.