Yes, you did : you kept voting in governments for the last 25 years who were pro-membership of the EU, pro- Single Market etc.

They have lied about the EU in the past. The Leave side were not in a position to promise anything Cameron would have been the leader of the government. I think that makes a difference, plus the fact that whatever money may or may not have been promised is still currently going to the EU. So I am not clear how it can be regarded as a broken promise.

We never voted in a government who were openly pro EU unless you count 2005 where that government openly and specifically stated we would have a referendum on that very EU.

Or they may not. It's not that easy to predict the future.

No they weren't - they felt quite free to grossly over exaggerate and lie outrageously without bothering to check quite how and where we would stand once Article 50 was activated.

It's becoming increasingly clear that it was a campaign of fantasy and illusion but they can stand back and put their hands in the air and say 'yeah but we're not the government - it was down to the government to have a plan'.

They delivered a 'wish list' and presented it as reality - it was grossly irresponsible.

We were led out of the EU on a pack of lies. It makes not a jot of difference to say 'yeah but - they were in no position to deliver'. If the stuff they spouted was undeliverable they should be held to account for deceiving. They should be made to go public on the reality of it all. It isn't an excuse to say 'they were not accountable'.

They were negligent and now they should come clean to the people who had faith in them and believed their spin. They should be telling it as it is!

I don't recall membership of the EU / Single Market being a major or primary issue at any general election prior to the one in 2010 : UKIP and the BNP only started coming into their own around that time (and even then could only muster 5% of the vote between them).

That is the point the EU was not mentioned in elections pre Maastricht, the actual EU was mentioned in 2005 and specifically where if voted for then that government would ask the electorate their decision on the EU. Now I know that government under Blair was voted for, I have no recollection of a referendum on the EU, do you? We did join however. Can you see the problem?

That is the point they were not and the money in any event is still going to the EU. We were led into the EU on a pack of lies with the worst one being Blair's absolute commitment to a referendum that NewLabour did not allow for fear that the EU would be rejected. If one lives by the sword then perhaps dying by the sword is a form of justice.

Depends on how flexible the law is!

Until UKIP came along at the last general election I had no option but to vote for pro EU parties - as no one bar Labour the Tories, LDs and Greens stood in my seat.

I expect that applied to most people - you had no alternative but to vote for pro EU parties.

I think you can. We would have voted to remain and lost our one final bargaining chip. In the EU for ever and ripe for taking us for every penny. How would we complain - we would have voted for the EU in all its glory.

Well even the supposed "freedom of movement crisis" seems a very recent phenomenon - the subject was barely even mentioned in the 2010 general election campaign. The Tories had a paragraph or two about reducing EU immigration in their manifesto, but it was not one of their main campaigning points.

Gosh, you must really see the EU as the ultimate in evil, rather than what it is - a grouping of nations for mutual benefit.

If you think it is just a grouping of nations for mutual benefit then you misunderstand the nature of the beast. It is, and was always intended to be, supranational.

I think it's you who misunderstand TBH.

Horse's mouth.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyour...FTU_1.4.1.html

It was brewing then, but it was focused on immigration more generally, EU immigration wasn't really a source of concern, generally they were coming to Britain looking for work or already had employment. The ramp in scaremongering rhetoric hit when the recession and austerity really began to take hold as people looked for someone to blame- And it's always easier to scapegoat someone different from you.

Nothing has changed in this regard of course. The only thing that has changed in the meantime is that the rhetoric has been ramped up to the max by the media, with talk of "out of control immigration" from the EU placing intolerable pressure on services and this being a major crisis for the UK.

Seems mostly one way to me - a few pay in most take out. How many Brits have moved to Romania or Slovakia or Poland.

When it was a Western European club of similar nations with similar standards of living and welfare systems it worked. What you have now doesn't work - and it's the poor and working classes in the UK that bear the consequences as employers who have a limitless supply of labour don't need to care too much about their staff. There will always be someone along soon willing to work for less and under worse conditions.

Housing benefit and tax credits pretty much don't exist in Eastern Europe - yet we dish it out here to EU nationals who have just arrived. If our poor and low paid can't get free housing or tax credits or free health care in Warsaw why should Poles here be able get free housing, tax credits and use the NHS for free effectively immediately?

The UK lobbied in favour of EU expansion and could have opted out of allowing immigration from the 10 new accession states in 2004. Anyone following the Brexit narrative would be under the impression that the UK tried to oppose EU expansion and that the influx of migrant workers was forced on Britain (indeed there are probably a considerable number of Leave voters who think this is what actually happened given the constant lies and misinformation they are reading in the press).

No one asked the UK public what they thought of it - the war criminal and his Cabinet just decided to do it anyway.

Be mindful that's what democratic governments do, they aren't there to give the public referendums on every issue, especially if the referendum is really about appeasing the privileged awkward mob in your own party.

Well, that is the way it works - each country has to treat EU citizens the same as their own. It may not be the best way of doing things, but governments through the years have presumably felt that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Which doesn't preclude it acting for its members' mutual benefit.

And when it came to the EU Constitution he said he would ask us, the party that became the government on that basis reneged and we were not asked yet again.