Iceland holds online Referendum on Althingi’s agreement with UK on Icesave

The reverberations of the UK’s shaming treatment of Icelandic banks continue.

In our name, the UK Government used Anti-Terrorism legislation to seize UK assets in a move which Iceland has declared forced a rescuable bank into administration with the  immediate collapse of public confidence.

The International Monetary Fund, as a condition of support for this small country’s financial recovery from an unprecedented disaster, insisted upon specif repayment agreements being made between Iceland and the UK and Netherland governments.

This has caused endless dissention and debate in the Althingi, the Iceland Parliament, often threatening to bring down the current Government.

Iceland is, of course, between a rock and a very hard place and some see that it has little alternative but to do the deal. Others, deeply angered by the national slur that, through the use of this particular legislation to grab their bank’s UK assets, equated a nation with, for example, Al Qaeda, insts that at all costs no such deal should be done.

Now an informal online national referendum is to be held on whether the Althingi should approve the state guarantee in the Icesave agreement with the UK and the Netherlands. This began on the Internet yesterday.