Applying for an Irish Passport - The background (Or 'The reason i voted Remain was because i could see this mess coming')

Whatever you think about Brexit it is certain that things will never be the same again. If you voted for Brexit then you'll be able to blame all the negative ramifications on the EU itself, on the Government, or whoever takes you fancy, if you voted to remain then you'll know who to blame but won't be able to express it for fear of being shouted down.

I for one concluded at the time of the referendum that leaving would be bad because, i reasoned, it wasn't possible for 1 country to negotiate with 27 and 'get a good deal', they hold all the cards. It also has a rather profound impact on my family as my wife is from a EU country and our children have dual nationality, this as you can imagine has all kinds of potential impacts, the obvious being travel.
And finally my job role requires me to travel to Europe on short notice, anyone who thinks travel will be unaffected is simply naive.

That said i blame the 'silent majority' more than those who voted Brexit. In fact i blame two people more than them:
#1 is Tony Blair. His decision not to limit the initial immigration from ascending countries (when all other countries did) did alot to create the problems and perceived problems with have with immigration. Also the way he and his wife implemented and profited from the human rights legislation also caused so many people to feel that Europe is something that is done TO us rather than FOR us.
#2 is David Cameron. His arrogance and naivety almost lost the United Kingdom itself on one referendum but did he learn from it ? Did this cause him to think he should be more cautious in future ? He correctly setup the referendum itself as legally only 'advisory' but then sold it to everyone as if it wasn't. He also continued the trend of blaming the EU for problems that he could of resolved with domestic legislation. Also the referendum itself should have been a qualified majority, deciding such a big issue (and one that turned out to have Fake News manipulation to boot) on the basis of simple majority was madness. Ireland was allowed to vote three times on the EU constitution but for some reason if we voted again that would be 'undemocratic'.

Finally it seems that a referendum so framed was always a bad idea. Its always easier to shout down a reasoned argument for something with angry rants and slogans, especially those targeted at your pre-disposed biases.

The other thing that annoys me about this whole process is that for some reason you can't just vote remain because you think leaving would make a big mess. You need to drape yourself in one flag or another. The thing that scares me the most is that the more i listen to James O'Brien the more he seems to be right on some things.

So now that's off my chest see the next post for what i have to do next....