Independence Day for sure - From Edinburgh to Gibraltar, Brexit vote sparks new claim

[dunksby]

Bye bye UK

Within hours of Britons voting to leave the European Union, politicians in Scotland, Ireland and Spain raced on Friday to argue that the historic move bolstered claims over long-disputed parts of British territory.

In a referendum outcome that triggered Prime Minister David Cameron's resignation and record losses for sterling on foreign exchange markets, British voters chose by 52-48 percent to end the country's 43-year-old membership of the EU.

The move also threatened to strain the fabric of the 215-year-old United Kingdom itself. Scottish and Northern Irish nationalist politicians said it underlined just how different they were, while a Spanish official said Madrid would seek "co-sovereignty" of Gibraltar on the Spanish coast.

"Scotland has delivered a strong, unequivocal vote to remain in the EU, and I welcome that endorsement of our European status," First Minister and Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon said of a local Scottish vote that was 62-38 percent in favor of remaining in the 28-nation bloc.

Her predecessor Alex Salmond went further, explicitly saying Scotland was now likely to push for a second independence referendum, after Scots voted to remain in the UK in 2014.

England and Wales voted clearly to leave the EU on Thursday. With 56 percent of Northern Irish voting to stay, deputy government leader Martin McGuinness of the nationalist Sinn Fein party urged London to allow a referendum on whether to unite the two sides of the Irish border.

"The British government now has no democratic mandate to represent the views of the North in any future negotiations with the European Union and I do believe that there is a democratic imperative for a 'border poll' to be held," McGuinness told national Irish broadcaster RTE.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-br...KCN0ZA1SI?il=0

[kurple]

Nick Young

[Dresta]

Just goes to show how stupid it was for a union of countries to join an even bigger political union in the first place. And lets not pretend the creation of the EU didn't create a climate that encourages these things (why should the Flemish be a part of Belgium AND a part of the EU, for example); that's why we're seeing secessionist tendencies all throughout Europe (catalonia, flanders, basque, even Venice)--because imposing a new political order on Europe is obviously going to disrupt the old set-up, which only took hundreds of years to organically develop (unlike the EU, which was foisted on the people from the top-down by a bunch of technocrats).

edit: most people won't remember or know, but the EU has a history of encouraging such things, and played a big part in the rapid and violent break up of Yugoslavia.

Many countries of central and eastern europe were in fact blackmailed and browbeaten into joining, at great cost to themselves and their native industry.

[NumberSix]

Scottish "National" Party.

[Brunch@Five]

Just goes to show how stupid it was for a union of countries to join an even bigger political union in the first place. And lets not pretend the creation of the EU didn't create a climate that encourages these things (why should the Flemish be a part of Belgium AND a part of the EU, for example); that's why we're seeing secessionist tendencies all throughout Europe (catalonia, flanders, basque, even Venice)--because imposing a new political order on Europe is obviously going to disrupt the old set-up, which only took hundreds of years to organically develop (unlike the EU, which was foisted on the people from the top-down by a bunch of technocrats).

edit: most people won't remember or know, but the EU has a history of encouraging such things, and played a big part in the rapid and violent break up of Yugoslavia.

Many countries of central and eastern europe were in fact blackmailed and browbeaten into joining, at great cost to themselves and their native industry.

how were the countless wars and disputes over centuries, culminating in WWII, more organic than what the EU brought? You think it wasn't some power-hungry aristocrats that decided to have senseless wars over reformation? Are you seriously transfiguring decades and centuries of warfare into some "organic development" of nation states?

[Dresta]

how were the countless wars and disputes over centuries, culminating in WWII, more organic than what the EU brought? You think it wasn't some power-hungry aristocrats that decided to have senseless wars over reformation? Are you seriously transfiguring decades and centuries of warfare into some "organic development" of nation states?

What are you blabbering about? Through war the nation-state became solidified, as a means of defense; out of it grew traditions, ways of life, and a common bond between peoples. They developed naturally, and grew out of common cause and common experience, over hundreds of years; they wren't suddenly concocted by abstract metaphysicians in the political laboratories of Brussels like the European Union.

Men always make war. That is an historical constant. The biggest limiting factor regarding large-scale wars has been the nuclear bomb, not EU bureaucrats. The EU has played a clear role in 3 wars since its inception, and that's in only a couple of decades!

So cut the bullshit please. and lol @ you thinking the turmoil of the Reformation was the creation of "power-hungry aristocrats"--go learn some damn history you fool.