British tourists could be left stranded abroad if voters choose to quit the EU, ministers warned today.
We’re not in Schengen thus we need passports to travel. Leaving the EU will not mean that passports stop working.
Their lies are getting a touch desperate, no?
What are the odds against Schengen surviving to June 23rd?
Funnily enough, Project Fear now consists of ministers claiming that they are so incompetent that they cannot solve simple administrative issues.
Which is nice of them to admit to.
Even if they didn’t need passports, what the f**k do they think the Spanish are going to do? Hold British people hostage?
No offense to our European-dwelling regulars, but I have met some British people in Spanish, and the Czech Republic, and I would think the locals would be delighted to see the back of them.
@dearieme, Any “suspension” of Schengen will be fifth-hearted at most, just like all the previous temporary ones have been. There simply isn’t the infrastructure, manpower, or the will to machine gun people on mountain passes and agricultural lanes that would be needed to effectively de-Schengen Europe.
On the headline, referendum day isn’t important – but British citizens in other EU countries on departure day (in the unlikely event of it happening), whether resident or visiting, should be concerned about the legal basis on which they are actually in the EU. Currently you have a practically unlimited right of stay in any EU country – after departure that will no longer be the case and upon departure you will have no means of proving when you arrived (thus that you are compliant with whatever new maximum period of stay you are entitled to).
If Britain does leave, you can expect an example to be made. A very vindictive example. Which might well involve prosecuting a few drunks in Marbella for “overstaying”.
“what the f**k do they think the Spanish are going to do? Hold British people hostage?”
No, no, senor. You are not going home. You will be ordering another sangria and Full English, and you will like it. Si?
So when we leave the EU, we can look forward to forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes… The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
Sounds good to me.
The overwhelming majority of people pay no attention whatsoever to the news so repeating simplified twattery ad infinitum is the only way that any sort of message will percolate down to most voters. All they want to achieve is for most people to think ‘Brexit = maybe a tad risky’ and it’s game over.
They haven’t started even on the NHS yet. Without a shadow of a doubt we’ll get the “warning” that Brexit will cause the NHS to collapse as all the foreign staff will have to leave.
Alex – I’m hoping enough people are thoroughly disgustipated by the antics of the media and political establishment that they’ll vote “Leave, because fuck you.”
One bright hope is that the Leaves seem much more likely to actually turn out and vote than the Remains, who’ve always been squishy soft.
@BIGHK,
There won’t be much change for various legal reasons which are better explained on the EU referendum website.
Steve
You forgot Cthulhu rising. I have it on good authority that The Old Ones are very pro Europe indeed.
“if Britain does leave, you can expect an example to be made. A very vindictive example”: two can play at that game.
@Steve
“So when we leave the EU, we can look forward to forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes… The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!”
So, you’ve seen the latest cover of Private Eye (who seem to err on the side of anti-EU if memory serves me right)…
Thornavis – “You forgot Cthulhu rising. I have it on good authority that The Old Ones are very pro Europe indeed.”
Damn. I was looking forward to the great priest Cthulhu, rising from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, bringing the earth again beneath his sway.
But if there is going to be EU Health and Safety regulations to comply with, even virgin sacrifice loses its attraction.
dearieme – “two can play at that game.”
Yeah – if they don’t play nice, we send the Cheeky Girls back
SMFS
Apparently Rlyeh is twinned with Strasbourg but it’s a dark secret known only to those privileged few who have obtained the highest cult status and looked into the seething madness of the Necronomicon ( sub section 94 EU fishery regulations pertaining to Cephalopods ).
Thornavis – Yes, but as John Redwood pointed out, the Old Ones were wrong about the ERM, wrong about the Euro, and they’re wrong now.
I don’t know why we listen to their tentacley madness.
Lockers – I hadn’t, but I’ve seen it now and it is glorious. Hieronymus Bosch via Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.
Alex
They haven’t started even on the NHS yet.
The Brexit H-Bomb is House Prices. I am wondering when it will be delivered. That is, after all, the only thing anyone cares about in this fucking country.
YES!!!! House prices to rise as terrified Brits flee the EU.
BiG:”If Britain does leave, you can expect an example to be made. A very vindictive example. Which might well involve prosecuting a few drunks in Marbella for “overstaying”.”
Sorry but absolute bollocks . They stand there like wankers while their 10 years olds are forcibly sodomised and their women raped by illegals immigrants without enough paperwork to fill their bad teeth but UK tourists had best fear the deadly wrath of fat-arsed functionaries all across the Mighty Continent.
EU must be joking.
No, “British people abroad will be stranded” is not a big lie in the scheme of things. “The EU has kept the peace and NATO is irrelevant” is the big lie; everything else pales completely into insignificance by comparison.
Re: Steve
“Earthquakes, volcanoes… The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!”
But what about the 40 foot Twinkie?
@BIG in Honkers
‘Any “suspension” of Schengen will be fifth-hearted at most, just like all the previous temporary ones have been. There simply isn’t the infrastructure, manpower, or the will to machine gun people on mountain passes and agricultural lanes that would be needed to effectively de-Schengen Europe.’
Well. Not yet. I think the wise thing to do is to wait and see.
‘If Britain does leave, you can expect an example to be made. A very vindictive example. Which might well involve prosecuting a few drunks in Marbella for “overstaying”.’
I think it highly unlikely that Marbella’s cops and other civil auithorities will want to piss Brits off. Maybe in some other non touristy spot.
Given the behaviour they’ve accepted from the collective us (I doubt it has been any of _us_ personally, although I may be being too nice to you) in the past, I don’t think that merely “not being EU citizens” will suddenly cause them to become proud guardians of public morality. And there is possibly a superfluous “L” towards the end of the previous sentence.
Even more earth-shattering:
“Without British membership of the EU, millions of British children would have grown up without the Gruffalo, Room on the Broom’s witch, and Stickman – at least in their existing forms.”
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/01/axel-scheffler-gruffalo-wouldnt-exist-without-uk-eu-brexit
@BraveFart,
That Groaniad article is getting quite rightly rubbished in the comments, from both sides.
I even read the damn thing. There wasn’t even anything in it to explain why a British author would be prevented from working with a German illustrator. Nothing at all, no matter how tenouous and straw-graspy.
I just saw the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man straightening his hat.
Mr Ecks,
Actually that’s exactly how it will happen. Just as the police here find it easier to catch speeding drivers than hardened thugs, La Policia Nacional will find it easier deporting slow-moving British pensioners than fast-running young Moroccans.
The Daily Mail cites a Cabinet Office report, presumably this one: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-process-for-withdrawing-from-the-european-union
I can’t find the word “stranded” anywhere in that report, so I assume the Daily Mail is making it up.
A UK passport does not give you a right to be in a foreign country, it gives you a right to enter the UK. The only way the UK leaving the EU would result in UK passport holders being stranded overseas is if the UK decided to refuse entry to the UK to UK passport holders. I don’t think the UK government is even /that/ stupid.
And all this stupid fearmongery totally ignores basic legal principles such as :
1. Acquired rights.
2. Right to respect for private and family life (Art. 8 ECHR), which would seem to prohibit randomly expelling all Brits living in Foreign.
3. A whole bunch of other stuff in several articles of the ECHR which would prevent anything going further than “all Brits resident here have to apply for a piece of paper which will cost a nominal admin fee”.
4. The Norwegians, Swiss, Icelanders, Lichtensteiners etc. all seem to manage outside the EU…
UK passports state the following at the front:
“Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary”
Any Johnny Foreigner interfering with that requirement had better be prepared for stern action to be taken.
@Alex
The Vote Leave mob have jumped on the ‘TIPS is going to destroy the NHS’ bandwagon in order to garner some votes so Stronger In have some catching up to do.
Of course, if there was even the slightest possibility of that lie being true, I’d be very tempted to vote to remain…
Stupid, no. Vindictive and populated with petty minded bureaucrats, very much yes.
However, the reality is that nothing will happen overnight. Even if an “Out” decision came to pass the 2 year Lisbon Treaty countdown only starts once the formal paperwork has been filed, which I suspect would take at least a year, during which all sorts of back-room shenanigans will go on, possibly even the replacement of one or more Tory PM’s (Cameron followed by BoJo)
Election in 2020? queue early election with cancellation of BRexit as a manifesto commitment by Labour, Lib/Dems and SNP.
Given the date it looks like I will be a part of the electorate for this referendum. Well, the first one anyway.
@Surreptitious Evil
‘I may be being too nice to you’
Ha you cheeky fucker. I have never been to Benidorm in my life and if I were to go there I’d be a model of rectitude.
These days.
“Without British membership of the EU, millions of British children would have grown up without the Gruffalo, Room on the Broom’s witch, and Stickman – at least in their existing forms.”
Who knows, perhaps a Britain outside of the EU would have grown up with more and better children’s characters than the Gruffalo and the other two?
It’s standard Guardian ‘thinking’ – don’t criticise something, because it is a choice between that and absolutely nothing – a void. A good example is the NHS. The Guardian cannot conceive of any system other than the NHS, even though such systems exist in France and the Nordic countries, places the Guardian is usually tremendously positive about.
Nope. It’s either the NHS or Nothing, pensioners and children dying and rotting in the streets.
” as all the foreign staff [in the NHS] will have to leave.”
They don’t seem to be from the EU, in my admittedly fairly limited experience.
@CHF
Friend of mine has just spent three months in a cancer ward with lots of (OK at least two of the six on his ward) Portuguese nurses. Unscientific I accept.
Andrew M @4:51 PM:
Exactly. We see that the authorities can’t protect women from being the subject of mass gropings on New Year’s Eve, but the minute anybody comes out to protest the people doing the groping, the police can immediately arrest them.
In both the US and Europe, law enforcement is increasingly being used for political ends to punish wrongthink.
Ghostbusters is quite an apt analogy, given that it is effectively a story about bureaucracy being unable to deal with a problem. With William Atherton standing in for the EU.
“Is this true?”
“Yes, it’s true. This man has no dick.”
‘If Scotland were to vote in favour of EU membership and the rest of the UK were to vote to leave – if Scotland in other words was to be outvoted – then there is a real chance that that could lead to a second referendum on Scottish independence,’
Sounds like a win win to me.
Scexit?
It is so hard to buy a return ticket.