I'm a big believer in not having assumptions and testing things with actual experiments. This is one experiment I'd rather not be participating in, though.
It's difficult to see very much positive about this move; certainly there will be some benefits, but I expect greatly outweighed by the negatives (which will include higher prices, lower employment and probably lower standards for UK workers - the EU has consistently been the only organisation willing to drag us out of the dark ages).
I absolutely see the advantages of having common standards, tariff agreements etc. to make trade across borders easier (i.e. something akin to the European Economic Area). I'm however also a proponent of federalism, because I believe that for a democracy to truly work it is necessary that the people still feel responsible for their votes and their decisions. This is something which I'm missing in centralised and unitary states after they reach a certain size and heterogenity. I'm aware that the European Union is not (yet) a unitary state, but it is certainly shifting away democratic power from a more regional democratic system to a centralised government.
I agree that the UK's decision to leave the EU is not an optimal one (and potentially costly), but I believe it's long term the right one, given the current state. An alternative would be to change the EU within, to force it to focus on its core competencies (which I mainly see as a trade union, and leave most of the political decisions to its nation states); however I'm not sure that this would happen without any big bang, such as the Brexit might have been.
What's at stake here is more fundamental than federalism: it's self determination. Throughout history, discrete groups have waged wars of independence to ensure that they can have a government that reflects their shared history, culture, and values. My family is from Bangladesh, which fought a war to separate from Pakistan over cultural/linguistic differences. In another example, Israel is engaged in an existential battle to ensure the existence of a sovereign nation for its people.
In Europe, exactly the opposite is happening. People are being prodded to give up their sovereignty to a supra-national bureaucracy, and to be assimilated into a hetrogenous body politic with hundreds of millions of other people with which they share little other than said bureaucracy. People in the U.K. were very rightfully afraid of what that could lead to and decided they wanted to get off that train.
The core concept in EU law is subsidiarity. Look it up if you're unfamiliar - by treaty, the EU may only make laws where actions by individual countries are insufficient. I think you're being incredibly one-sided and myopic, if not ignorant.
Collective action problems are real. Nation states are a poor way to deal with many cross-border problems, just like individuals without a government is a poor way to deal with many problems in a community. Pooling sovereignty is a bargain: it's trading away freedom on one axis to gain freedom on another - freedom from certain kinds of problems. Whether it's war vs peace, mercantilism vs trade, security, administration of commons - there are real tradeoffs, and real wins to be had from pooling sovereignty.
The single biggest practical loss, that I feel most for the UK, is how her youth will have their horizons cut much shorter. The EU will be just another country; work visas will dissuade millions.
> The core concept in EU law is subsidiarity. Look it up if you're unfamiliar - by treaty, the EU may only make laws where actions by individual countries are insufficient.
I agree that collective action problems are real and centralized government is one way to address such problems. But selling the E.U. on the idea that it'll only invoke supra-national powers "where actions by individual countries are insufficient" is a bill of goods. The U.S. federal government was supposed to be a narrow one that acted only in specific areas where a national response was necessary (military, trade, foreign policy). But that got obliterated over time because it's much easier to dictate from the national level instead of getting buy-in from dozens of state legislatures.
You can't "pool sovereignty". This is a rhetorical trick designed to make people forget that they are not getting what they want.
When everyone agrees on something, you don't have to coerce them. So sure, their sovereignty is pooled.
As soon as someone disagrees on something, they have to be forced to accept the group's decision. Typically there's some sort of horse trade going on so that nobody gets everything they want, because there's several things on the table.
Yes collective action problems are real, but there's no reason the collective needs to be larger and larger and encompass all issues rather than just a subset. Let decisions be made at the local level by default, and the few things that need regional or global action, have a talk about that. If what you're bringing up is compelling, a lot of other countries will agree.
> What's at stake here is more fundamental than federalism: it's self determination.
Yet, Britain has done its best to deny the same right to self-determination to its subjects.
Self-determination seems to be an excuse trotted out to support existing power structures. "We should secede from _____ - but nobody should secede from us."
Britain and Ireland, Britain and India, Britain and Scotland... Britain had to be dragged, kicking and screaming through every single one of those conversations about self-determinism.
That's not jut tangential to the point (whataboutism?), it's what every country does. The UK has a better negotiating position than Britain would have. The EU(28) would have a better geopolitical posture (thanks to UK's military, as the EU has a hard power problem) than the EU(27) will have. Geopolitics is highly competitive and mostly zero-sum, which is why you have "unethical" behavior like that.
If anything that just demonstrates the point further. Ireland and India are now independent and are happier for it. Scotland will soon join them. The EU doesn't want Britain to leave. The oppressors and the oppressed do not have the same goals.
Of course it is oppression, it is antidemocratic, was forced on the people and pushed heavily by propaganda. It is a project of the elites and industry, any benefits to ordinary people are far outweighed by the benefits of industry. For the longest time it was simply that: A number of economic treaties, the political stuff was added later on because people realised that it would be far easier to push through their agenda if they only had one semi-democratic negotiating partner to deal with. In the last ten years several anti-democratic "directives" were pushed down to national parliaments, cast into law and later found to be unconstitutional. The best example would be the "Telecommunications data retention" laws:
- They were formulated as an EU-directive in 2006 (which means every national parliament is forced to pass a law based on this directive)
- The corresponding German law was passed in 2008
- The law was declared unconstitutional in 2010 by the German Supreme court and in 2014 by the EU high court
- Of course the german parliament reintroduced slightly changed legislation in 2015
I don't see how that is the Eu being anti-democratic. Note that I oppose the regulation on the merits as well but procedurally:
- all member countries except for Ireland and Slovakia voted for it in the council. That includes the German I have no illusions it wouldn't have passed in the German Bundestag
- the EU parliament voted for it
- the ECJ struck it down for violating the Charter of Fundamental Rights
It basically the same thing that keeps happening within Germany, it seems like the institutions work equally well or badly.
Now what is a problem is that national politicians like to hide behind the EU. That's why you should always check who voted for these things in the council. Usually it's the same people (or at least parties) who later they the EU is forcing their hand.
Well that is the problem: There is no good way for people to organise effectively on an European level, or at least it is much harder. By comparison is very easy for a determined few to organise at this level, which is why you have tons and tons of lobbyists in Brussels. You can partially observe this when "Wutbürger" protest against local changes like building a new railway station (months of protest, sitins, general disorder), but you barely get two days worth of protests against the ECB on the occasion of the opening of their new head quarters in Frankfurt.
Note it was not the ECJ which struck down the law first, they did it after the BGB did strike it down, partially because they did not want to get into a fight about who has primacy in decision making I believe (the BGB still claims to have the last word, changing this would be unconstitutional in Germany).
I don't think politicians "hiding behind the EU" is what is actually happening, what actually happens is collusion to shift away power from the people by obfuscation and misdirection. People like Schäuble have active contempt for democracy (According to Varoufakis he told him "Elections can't change economic policy"). See for example this discussion of ECB policies (https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2017/03/14/19258/).
I truly believe the EU has to go, in order for Europe to not further slide into a corporatist neo-liberal nightmare. It is very unfortunate that this push is lead by right-wing nationalists.
Britain is over within ten years, that's what today means. Scottish independence, some kind of enormous fudge in Northern Ireland, and Wales beginning to look towards the door.
Don't get where people get the idea that Wales are agitating for leaving the Union. Wales is more legally entrenched than any other of the constituent countries of the UK and also majority voted to leave the EU.
Uh, Britain organised a full blown referendum for Scotland after Scots voted a separatist party into their own local Parliament ... a referendum the nationalists then lost. Now perhaps there'll even be a second, despite said nationalists saying it would be a "once in a generation" event.
If I remember correctly, the SNP ran in 2016 (after the Scottish referendum) with a manifesto that said if UK voted "Leave" in Brexit but Scotland voted "Remain", they would push for a second independence referendum. So this was the platform on which they were returned to government.
Also, I think it's fair to say that Britain leaving the EU is a sizeable enough change to counter the "once in a generation" line — the choice is no longer Independence V status quo of 2014. Especially considering that at least some people voted to stay in the UK in order to remain in the EU.
Also the "better together" argument for UK is hurt. If not better together (eu) then why better together (uk)? Actually Scotland can join the Nordic examples of a very rich and welfare states in Scandinavia if not EU.
When the majority of Scotland wanted to remain part of the EU, the terms changed. The fact is Scotland, NI and Wales largely wanted to remain whilst England drags the rest along with. They have no choice.
That's a pretty big change in the game and wasn't really on people's minds in 2014. I certainly wasn't thinking about the EU exit in 2014. In fact, in 2015, a 2016 EU referendum wasn't widespread knowledge.
In fact, I was shocked by the leave vote. Almost as much as the Conservative majority a year before. I'm from Salford too and the vote was a highly Leave. I'm sure those in Scotland felt that more so.
> The fact is Scotland, NI and Wales largely wanted to remain whilst England drags the rest along with.
Scotland and NI wanted to stay by large margins, England and Wales to leave by much smaller margins. Were a majority of the four required to pass the referendum, it would have failed on a 2-2 tie.
There are very few countries in the world where a non-binding referendum with that kind of margin would be considered a mandate to make a fundamental change to the constitutional basis of the country.
I think if '52-48' is redefined as a 'big margin' then it becomes very hard to define 'a narrow margin' without running into the impact of statistical noise.
Efforts to paint this as purely an English problem are bizare, even in Scotland around a.third of voters voted to leave the EU. Surely that pojnts to huge dissatisfaction even without a majority for leaving?
> Britain organised a full blown referendum for Scotland after Scots voted a separatist party into their own local Parliament ... a referendum the nationalists then lost.
A major (and perhaps decisive) point in the remain campaign in that referendum was the (quite correct) point that Scotland leaving the UK would face significant risks in remaining in the EU, since other EU members with potential breakaway regions would see that as potentially encouraging their own breakaways.
Had it been known that staying in the UK would guarantee Scotland would be taken out of the EU and not even be in a position to try to negotiate admission, the independence referendum might well have gone the other way.
They voted to stay in the UK on the expectation that the UK would remain within the EU.
A second Scottish referendum is absolutely the right call to make and the only reason I can figure that English people are so against the idea, is that this time they expect to lose a member of the union.
> People are being prodded to give up their sovereignty to a supra-national bureaucracy, and to be assimilated into a hetrogenous body politic with hundreds of millions of other people with which they share little other than said bureaucracy.
It's just not true. People of the European continent have been mingling with each other for about 2000 years. The whole continent's juristic thinking roots in the Roman Empire, so do Romance languages (like Spanish and French). What's more, in the past various countries formed alliances to protect themselves against threats from the orient. There even have been "economic zones" like the Hansa which could be understood as a predecessor of the EU and so on. In short: EU countries do have a lot in common and these commonalities are part of national identities. Countries do also feature peculiarities and these may or may not decay (thanks to the EU). But change is inevitable anyhow.
countries have many element in common, but the eu as organization has given the middle fingers to those values putting economic interests of few above all else.
i.e. why do Italians have milk quotas, spain has orange quotas, but germany has not car quotas? the general feeling is that few are getting the advantages of the free market and many are taking the piss.
on the other hand where's the democracy in the Dublin III agrement? 15 or so states voted to screw the three southern states, of course those kind of provisions gets passed, the majority gets an advantage, but the minority of states having to bear the weight will breed resentement for years to come. and to add insult to perjury now that migrants have forced their way to the other countries they want to renegotiate migrant quotas
this is not the europe that was sold on us, and if it were to be an italeave I'd vote yes in a heartbeat
I think you are confused. The quotas (which are EU-wide) are there to protect farmers. By limiting the production there is no surplus (there used to be extraordinary surpluses) and therefore the prices are guaranteed not to drop or fluctuate too much. This also prevents monopolies from dominating the market. Particularly benefited are Italians, who would have a hard time competing against milk powerhouses in Germany.
As for cars, they are decidedly different products than food.
Clearly Europe has been highly intermingled throughout its history and shares some common roots but that is not what we're talking about here.
We're not talking about alliances (which happen all the time without political union) or trade areas (which the EU originally was) we're talking about supra-national centralised bureaucracy.
Change is inevitable and it's healthy to have multiple self governed states doing things differently from each other and co-operating from time to time.
^-- Submarine argument of the current white nationalist movement. Basic flaw: it elides "the wants of white nationalists" with "the culture of the country" and tries to imply that the wants of white nationalists are the only one that exists.
A subset of people are being prodded to give up their sovereignty; a significant chunk of folks in the UK actually wanted the EU, most notably immigrants, students, young folks.
As a British citizen I have more in common culturally with my German, Swedish, Austrian, Spanish, Danish, French etc friends and colleagues than I feel with a large chunk of my own country.
The people who tell me that I should be patriotic and culturally identify with them as British are the people I'd want to run a million miles from.
Of course. Who doesn't have more in common with actual people they've befriended and worked with, as opposed to a nebulous notion of nationality?
But that isn't a basis for political decisions. The fact that you like the people that you're friends with is no reason to be in or out of the EU.
I presume you have friends who aren't from the EU as well, yet surely you do not believe in closer integration with those countries?
I have a similarly diverse group of friends, but it makes very little difference to what I think politically. For one, I doubt they'll be kicked out, but also I can't make decisions about politics based on a few individuals I happen to know.
I was going to say that I made no claim about the role of culture and cultural identity in political decisions, but left it out. I was making a narrow point, and don't neccesarily disagree with yours.
That's a myopic and ignorant view. Not all nationalism is "white nationalism," and nationalism is often a strongly positive force. For example, in places like Bangladesh, Egypt, and Turkey, nationalism is the force opposing theocracy. Israeli nationalism has allowed them to carve out a relatively liberal democracy in a region that's hostile to it. (It's also a bizarre charge to level at U.K. nationalism, given that the U.K. is less white than the E.U. as a whole. Moreover, Indians - the largest non-white ethnic group in the U.K. - voted leave/remain along class lines, like whites: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world...).
^-- Submarine argument of the current globalist movement. Basic flaw: it elides "the wants of globalists" with "the culture of the world" and tries to imply that the wants of globalists are the only one that exists.
Yes, humans are inclined to form tribes and to fear the other, just like our primitive ancestors. It's little reason to justify such division today, and especially not to participate in mass murder to achieve it.
> It's little reason to justify such division today, and especially not to participate in mass murder to achieve it.
Not at all! To use my Bangladesh example. Bangladesh was founded in 1971 as a secular republic. Pakistan thereafter veered towards theocracy, e.g. adopting Sharia law for criminal proceedings in 1976. Subsequent events have slowly chipped away at Bangladeshi secularism over the years, but had they remained with Pakistan it would have been a lost hope. And as for tribalism being obsolete, I don't agree. There are hundreds of millions of people who think I should be executed for leaving the religion I was born into: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01.... Do you want those folks voting on the laws that govern you? If not, you're not arguing against "tribalism," you're just arguing about where the tribal lines should be drawn.
I would like to agree with you but there is not evidence that humans have not changed and that
>humans are inclined to form tribes and to fear the other
remains true.
Rather we should accept we are tribal and work to ensure our collaborations, alliances and policies have that in mind. To assume that we, by virtue of just living in the present day with more technology, are more advanced and that we have progressed is a big big error.
Progress is not something that just happens. Progress is not inevitable. Societies do not naturally become more civilised. People need to work to ensure civilisation doesn't fall apart. Progress was made by people, it is the result of actions made.
the whole point of delineating societal groups is to provide ring-fences for cultural groups that may otherwise be at each other's throats. Just look at the continuous fighting between Shi'ite and Sunni muslims that could arguably be traced back to the Sykes-Picot agreement drawing up borders that did not respect the locations of mutually-unfriendly groups.
Slight nitpick: The Shia-Sunni divide has plagued the Islamic world ever since the succession of Muhammad. Sure, Sykes-Picot aggravated it greatly, but it did not cause it.
That's not what Dominic Cummings gave as his reasoning. If you read his manifesto, he cites falling educational standards and scientific and technical competitiveness and cherry-picks a few mathematicians and scientists to say so, which is ridiculous given the situation of JET, Euratom, and the expressed wishes of the vast majority of practicing scientists.
While national independence is important, at a certain point, "sovereignty" is just a code word for some politicians or businessmen (like newspaper owners) to get more power.
Your complaint seems like a good parroting of the brexiters "worries", but they are mostly uninformed complaints
"hetrogenous body politic with hundreds of millions of other people with which they share little other than said bureaucracy"
What an ignorant statement. People in the EU share a lot of common values (like the Arts, and Continental Europe has had exchange of people and ideas for a long time). Language is irrelevant unless you (not you) are an ignorant bastard that can't be bothered to learn the basics of the national language of the country you live in (like a certain ex MEP)
> People in the U.K. were very rightfully afraid
I'm sure people on the countryside that gets their information off of tabloids have carefully evaluated all sides of the question. Hopefully they know as well they won't get their budget increase of the NHS (in fact there will be staff shortages), that cost of living will increase and their dole will most likely decrease.
And that's going fabulously. Our government is efficient and functional and totally manages to put aside regional differences to address pressing national issues.
You're still #1 in terms of total GDP and have the highest GDP per capita of any country with a population over 50 million. Don't sell your government short...
I'd wager that is more to do with its geography and wealth of natural resources in a land that was more or less ripe for the taking from the natives.
Think of it like starting a game of Civilization at renaissance/industrial age tech with democratic government on an island with abundant resources and no real enemies.
> But the EU does have a directly elected parliament? So where's the lack of democracy in the EU?
I'm not a European, but could it be that the bloc has gotten so large that an individual's vote is so diluted that it feels like it's not a democracy? Especially considering the number of different nationalities and language-groups of various sizes that are supposed to be represented by that one body.
I think federalism is a good idea because, at the end of the day, I want to be ruled by a government that represents my community, not some abstract mass of people.
Also note that EU bureaucracy is utterly bewildering to anyone who does not spend their whole life following it.
The average British person has no idea how the EU works. They don't know what the different bodies are. They don't know who their representative(s) are. They don't know how to make their voices heard. Maybe a third of people vote in the elections, and they don't really know what they're voting for.
How many Brits know that bishops sit in the house of Lords? Some know, sure, but many? How many of us know what the Privy Council is and who the members are? What powers are purely ceremonial and which have teeth? Why can't MPs resign like normal people? How and why there is judicial independence from parliament seems to be news to the Secretary of State for Justice, if she doesn't know how it works what hope do the general population have? Even how laws are passed seems to surprise people — "The Lords might disagree with us? Abolish them!" — to say nothing of the difference between primary and secondary legislation.
The UK has a constitution, but it's not written down in one place for convenience and understanding, it's spread over time-worn ritual, over the Queen's Speech and slamming doors in the face of Black Rod.
Maybe it's time for that last one to change. Refactoring a system in a well-intentioned way can optimize a lot of inefficient and ineffective approaches and gives an opportunity to bring things that may be scattered about in to locality for increased comprehension and decreased error in modification.
Although I expect some improvements to be possible, I doubt it's practical to do the sort of large-scale transformation that would really make a difference.
I mean, I keep reading stories about how famous corporations have terrible codebases which they can't fully fix it, and we're in a ___domain where deployment is trivial amd doesn't literally cost the time of the entire legal profession to familiaise themselves with the changes.
I'd love to be wrong. The saying "ignorance of the law is not an excuse" is necessary, yet at the same time not possible when the law is as complex as it is now.
How is the EU bewildering, compared to any other government bureaucracy?
The ignorance of the average British person about the actual functioning of the EU is indeed a problem, and probably a major contributor to Brexit, but that seems more of a failing of British education and media rather than the EU itself.
> I think federalism is a good idea because, at the end of the day, I want to be ruled by a government that represents my community, not some abstract mass of people.
What size do you think is the best for a democracy then? 10,000 people? 1000,000? The US is as big as the EU and certainly has a lot more centralized legislation.
So many issues today (taxes, trade, environmental protection, immigration, etc.) involve very large groups of people (if not all people), and so it really makes sense to have a body of representatives from all those people together. Some issues may only affect the local community (however big that is) and so of course the local community can take care of those.
My thought is something roughly the size of a large city state, or small regular state. Or the size of a US state. Or whatever the people of an area decide.
But don't we already have that with city/major councils? Are you arguing that these councils should just be given slightly more influence than they have now?, or that we don't need anything larger than them at all?
>What size do you think is the best for a democracy then? 10,000 people? 1000,000? The US is as big as the EU and certainly has a lot more centralized legislation.
The following is in the context of a representative democracy/republic:
Interesting question, as far as elected representatives and their number of constituents, I certainly support a maximum threshold, in the range of 10's of thousands at most. When groups larger than this are directly represented by single elected officials, it seems to increase the likelihood of the represented feeling removed or effectively excluded from the political process, which results in the sentiment (I suppose it's a leaning toward anti-globalist ideals) towards abstract, large centralized governance we see in many Brexit supporters as well as a portion of the supporters for Donald Trump in my home country the USA.
Interesting notes regarding American law on this topic:
"The U.S. Constitution called for at least one Representative per state and that no more than one for every 30,000 persons." [1]
The Appointment Act of 1911 and subsequent Permanent Appointment Act of 1929 capped the total number of House congressional representatives at 435 [2], so the degree of seperation between an individual elector and their representative in any given congressional district continues to grow as population increases. This also has an effect on the Electoral College, as it's membership numbers are based on the number of congress persons. Furthermore, I will assume this limit, combined with a growing population will increase the chances of a Presidential Candidate winning election without also winning the national popular vote, as we have seen on multiple occasions in recent decades.
I'm not a US American, but could it be that the bloc (of states) has gotten so large that an individual's vote is so diluted that it feels like it's not a democracy? Especially considering the number of different nationalities and language-groups of various sizes that are supposed to be represented by that one body.
One huge difference: There just are no inner-EU discussions and there is no EU-wide media. Everything takes place at the nation level. This is probably due to 24 different languages being spoken and most people cannot speak english well. But this will not change in the next 20 years.
Also heterogenity: A Texan surely has more in common with a New Yorker than a Portugese with a Latvian. This is not only about "values", but about consumed tv shows in the childhood, about similar experiences in school and about learned history - in short, culture.
It's mostly about the language and acquired culture. If they spoke the same language, a Portuguese and a Latvian will find that they get along extremely well.
Hell, I'd say language is the only barrier for those open minded who can learn about new cultural phenomenons and think before deciding whether they like/approve/hate/reject it...
Much of the work of the EU is done by the European Commission, which consists of one senior appointee from each member state. On one hand this is clearly not particularly democratic, but on the other hand it gives the member governments an avenue to make policy that doesn't go via their population, which is why none of the member governments wants to change it.
My point is that the more people feel detached from the political process, the less responsible they feel to take an active part in the process. This is why I believe that a regional government is to be preferred over a centralistic government.
I'm aware that not all problems can be solved on a regional level, but those that can, should. This is especially true on a cultural more diverse landscape such as Europe compared to e.g. the US.
Regarding your second question, lack of democracy: one thing that comes to mind is the lack of binding referendums and initiatives, as it happens e.g. in Switzerland on a regular basis.
Is there any that evidence the optimal administrative size for people not to feel "detached from the political process" is at state level? Why not further devolve sovereignty further to the british isles, regions, cities or counties?
The absurdity of it all is that the Tories say "It's good to leave the union" when the subject is Brexit, while also saying "It's not good to leave the union" when the subject is Indyref 2
The Nordic states are about 5M people each, and they routinely top the score cards for general wellbeing. Some people (who?) have suggested that 5M might be an optimal number.
> Why not further devolve sovereignty further to the british isles, regions, cities or counties?
That's a great idea, and precisely what they do in Switzerland. Stuff that's local is decided locally. What days are holidays? Depends on what canton you're in. How are schools organised? Local. What are taxes? Local.
That doesn't mean you can't organise some things on a national level, for instance the military, and federal projects like the excellent technical universities. And there's a federal tax to go with it.
If little regions had more power it would be a lot easier as an individual to shop around for the area you like, and for experiments to be made.
> Not to mention the hypocrisy of voting to remain and then championing the effort to leave.
I'm not sure if you're referring to Scotland/Indiref 2 -
but there's no hypocrisy if the voter's intention in both cases is to remain in the EU. Maybe you're referring to Theresa May? If so, I fully agree.
I have no desire to re-hash this particular argument, but the margin, 48/52 was very small. Very close to 50/50. And the turnout wasn't perfect. I've heard that only something like 30% of the eligible voters voted to leave.
There was no "will of the people". The people were undecided.
And then there's the fact that Britons settled in Europe didn't have a vote.
Whatever you can say about voting rights for overseas citizens in general elections, this vote was explicitly removing rights that they are currently exercising as part of EU membership — arguably they are the most affected by the outcome, yet were disenfranchised.
The often cited claim that the EU is undemocratic stems from a difference of opinion what "democratic" actually means.
First of all: there is barely any nation that is truly democratic in the historic sense of the word. Most democracies are actually representational systems: citizens don't vote on every single issue, they elect someone to represent them and vote in their name. Who each representative actually represents and how their votes are weighed varies but this is what almost all so-called democracies in existence have in common.
Additionally representatives may sometimes again elect other representatives who vote in their name in another group, or they may elect solitary rulers who act in their name. Keep in mind, this is a gross (and incorrect) simplification, but these are all things that happen in systems most people would call democratic.
Specifically:
The European Parliament is elected in a way most people would agree can be described as democratic: every EU citizen gets a vote. The MEPs are directly elected. This is pretty straightforward and not unlike how national governments are generally elected.
The MEPs elect the President of the European Parliament. Depending on what your national government's elections look like this may also be perfectly normal and expected.
There's also the European Commission. This is where things get slightly weirder: the Commission consists of one person per member nation but they are bound by oath to the EU rather than their own nation. One of them is the President of the European Commission who is proposed by the European Council and then confirmed by the European Parliament. The Council then nominates the other commissioners which are approved by the President of the European Commission.
The European Council in turn consists of all heads of state of the member nations plus the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission (but they don't get to vote). The President of the European Council in turn is elected by the European Council.
So in other words there are basically two groups of people both ultimately elected by EU citizens:
As a EU citizens you get a direct vote for the European Parliament, which elects the President of the European Parliament.
Additionally you (presumably) get a direct vote in your own national elections and your elected national governments gets to send its head of state (or a representative, plus maybe some non-voting attendees) to the European Council, which elects the President of the European Council.
Finally both the European Council and European Parliament (i.e. the representatives of the citizens and the representatives of the member nation governments) together elect the European Commission.
Yes, it's complicated (but in honesty all governments are if you try to understand them in detail) but I can't for the life of me see why you would call them undemocratic in comparison to any other "democratic" system.
I think "undemocratic" is just a shorthand for "subject to the will of other people than my own nation's citizens", which is the entire point of the EU and the only way you can have international organisations.
The complaint makes much more sense if you consider that the perspective of the EU critics that usually make this complaint isn't "we're part of the EU" but "the EU tries to tell us what to do". It's not so different from Americans who complain about "the government" because they see their ultimate authority at the state level than the federal level.
The Commission gets a bad rap because basically it's been stuffed with cronies and friends of council members. The UK may be the worst for this, we had one Commissioner who had been disgraced out of the UK cabinet twice, and then found himself in a nice 'untouchable' position on the Commission.
He's now a Lord.
There are flaws in UK democracy certainly but I don't think the EU got it right.
I also fundamentally have a problem with the scale of the thing - any government of a bloc that large is going to have problems with being unrepresentative. I look at Switzerland and Iceland with envy - the people can achieve change there. The USA, EU, even UK? Not so much.
The problem with the structure of the EU is basically: How do you set up a supranational state without massive constitutional changes in all the member states? Because the appetite is not there for large constitutional changes.
The result was basically a giant hack on top of the existing systems by leveraging the authority that the member state governments have to act as agents of their state in carrying out their duties under treaties.
More and more power has been handed to the EU Parliament with various treaty changes etc., but there is a limit there in that ultimately without enshrining the power of the EU Parliament in the member states constitutions, it is impossible to cede the kind of power vested in the member state governments to the EU Parliament.
So the irony is that a lot of the centralisation of power in EU organs is a result of opposition to further integration. Pretty much nobody likes the current structure of the EU. The problem is people dislike it different reasons: Some because they want the power handed back to the individual states. Some because they want a federalised EU or similar.
The irony there is that Brexit might end up a catalyst for tighter integration, because the UK has been one of the biggest brakes on that process.
> I look at Switzerland and Iceland with envy - the people can achieve change there. The USA, EU, even UK? Not so much.
I don't agree with this. There are policy areas we can't easily change unilaterally, sure. But at the same time, when a change is agreed there is far more power behind it. Some policies only make sense to make at large scale, some makes to push down as far as possible. Ideally I'd like to see the end of modern day nation states through devolution of as much power as possible. But some decisions will still need to be taken at a higher level.
As it stands, in the UK there is still plently of power at the local level, and while I am very upset at Brexit, the UK at least has one thing going for it in an ongoing long lasting process of gradually devolving more and more power to local councils and regions.
>>The problem with the structure of the EU is basically: How do you set up a supranational state without massive constitutional changes in all the member states? Because the appetite is not there for large constitutional changes.
Perhaps, don't?
If you can't take the people of a democracy with you on a project, perhaps it's best not to try and build such a thing anyway, and then end up with a hack?
On the rest - I would come to a similar state but from a different direction full autonomy for small democratic units, who voluntarily delegate some authority rather than get granted powers from "above"
The reason the EU always wanted to have the UK on board had more to do with marketing than with necessity: Europe is France, England and Germany; if the EU was to be Europe, it needed those three in it or it isn't going to happen. It's also Spain and Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands. The more the merrier. Open a history book and if a country playing a major role on the European continent is in it, it should probably be on that list.
But the EU now already exists and the UK has been so insistent on having a special status that Europeans have gotten used to the idea of the UK not "really" being in it despite being just another European country like the rest of us.
It's okay.
You can leave.
We no longer need you for the EU to be able to exist.
We tried to accommodate you and make it work but we've understood that the feelings aren't mutual.
We'll still keep in touch with your extended family, though, and maybe over the next two years we can find a way that you can still come over to party sometimes, or y'know, just hang out if you feel like it.
Once again, I get the feeling you know very little about the details of the EU.
The UK's attempt to join the (forerunner to the) EU was vetoed multiple times, by France. Your first sentence about how the EU "always wanted to have the UK on board" is factually and historically false. It never needed the UK to exist and it doesn't need it now.
As for "no hard feelings", tell that to your politicians, not us. Because they seem to think most so-called Europeans want the opposite.
Heh, I hope this sort of attitude prevails on both sides of this. There's no need for nastiness and lets hope the outcome is relatively positive with the repective parties feeling more free to pursue their own directions.
> we've understood that the feelings aren't mutual.
48% of Brits, 62% of Scots don't feel that way.
And literally no one in the UK voted for what the government is currently doing or how shittily it is treating it's EU partner governments or EU guests living in the UK.
We'll be back, hopefully less arrogant the next time.
"Played a major role in European history" is a very silly criterion. By those standards Russia, Austria, Spain, or even Turkey should be much higher on the list than Britain.
I think that's a fair description of how these things tend to work. Your only mistake is the assumption that because it's very silly nobody would actually use it, let alone that it wouldn't be incredibly widespread.
But as for the list, the EU came into being after WW2 so the USSR was out, Austria was politically irrelevant and Spain was a fascist dictatorship. Plus Turkey is on the other side of the Black Sea and the Greek really don't like them.
> If you can't take the people of a democracy with you on a project, perhaps it's best not to try and build such a thing anyway, and then end up with a hack?
The people have consistently voted for parties that wanted at least this level of integration. The problem has been that people disagree about how far to go, not that there has not been support for tighter integration.
Often to get from one local maxima to a higher local maxima you end up with options in between that are worse in various ways. Doesn't mean there aren't people who prefer to get there even if they're unable to get enough support to go further.
> On the rest - I would come to a similar state but from a different direction full autonomy for small democratic units, who voluntarily delegate some authority rather than get granted powers from "above"
I would argue that the delegation of powers and the dynamic of the power relationshio have been quite wrong in the case of the EU.
I agree, the people have voted for parties that had these policies. The problem is, people vote for the same two (occasionally three or four) parties regardless, and then expect them to change. Somewhat silly!
Lots of people wanted it to become a state. The ideal of a European state as a way of preventing war in Europe dates back centuries, and has been regularly proposed again. The most serious recent proposal being Winston Churchill who specifically argued for a United States of Europe after the war.
Churchill's efforts were a major factor in the establishment of the Council of Europe (not EU), and the European Court of Human Rights (CoE; not EU) and what became the EEC/EU.
So while many people involved also did not want to go all the way, historically the origin of the EU includes a lot of people who went into it with the explicit goal of eventually turning it into a state.
A core principle ever since the Treaty of Rome in 1957 has been to create "an ever closer union". You can't do that without eventually ending up with a state.
Heck, the Holy Roman Empire was basically that. From a modern point of view you could say "but it's basically just Germany" but Germany wasn't a thing back then. Except of course the Holy Roman Empire was a monarchy.
As for Britain's involvement in establishing the Council of Europe, I've heard Brits joke that Britain created the EU to keep the continent busy, not to be a part of it.
Iceland is part of the EEA through EFTA and as such needs to follow much of EU legislation without any real say in what it is. The country is actually split about 50/50 in whether they should continue talks to join the EU proper.
No, I think the point may have been missed - I envy the small size of their democracies and how they are able toneffect change as a result, not their interactions with the EU that stifle the ability of these populations to make change.
E.g. Switzerland's recent attempts to curtail freedom of movement.
On the world stage Iceland is irrelevant. It's a lot like Switzerland without influence. Sure, Iceland can afford to be eccentric about world politics because it's not under the direct influence of other countries to the same extent as most are but it also doesn't hold any real influence itself. The UK doesn't want to be Iceland, it wants to be like Iceland but with the political weight of the US.
Switzerland is more relevant, especially financially, but Switzerland is in a unique position that is the result of centuries of European history and of course its ___location and geography. The UK is just a bunch of islands off the coast of France that used to be a naval superpower (like Portugal). The UK can't be Switzerland because it isn't already Switzerland -- Switzerland is Switzerland.
If anything, Brexit was fuelled by impotent rage: the UK used to be an Empire, now her citizens are supposed to bow to a council of European nations and become just another cog in the machine of the continent. We want our Empire back! We're important! We shouldn't be subject to Europe, we should compete with it directly.
Except the UK doesn't matter anymore either. The UK used to matter up to WW 2 where it exhausted its remaining military might to help keep the free world free (which btw as a German I fully acknowledge and am thankful for). But even then it had already lost (or was in the process of losing) its colonies and was largely confined to its homeland and some assorted junk territories that ultimately don't matter much (sorry, Falkland islands).
Geographically, the UK needs to establish a working relationship with the EU to survive. Before Brexit it had it all: it was a member of the EU but had been able to negotiate special statuses all along the way by threatening to leave. Now it basically has to start from scratch and has only its own worth to prop itself up during the upcoming 2 years of bartering.
And that worth isn't much, to be honest. Sure, London is one of the most important financial centres of Europe. But in a large part it only stayed that way because Britain heavily relied on special exemptions from EU rules while still drawing on the benefits of that market. Sure the UK now definitely gets to keep its currency, but it no longer competes with Frankfurt but with New York, Tokyo and Shanghai. It's not a big fish in a pond anymore. And the pond has no more reason to be impressed. Economically the UK relies heavily on extremely expensive imports (it's a bunch of islands after all) and those are only going to become more expensive after leaving the EU. The financial centre is the biggest asset and its importance is heavily impacted by Brexit. Things are looking grim.
So in other words: the UK won't be the next Switzerland. It may become the next Iceland. But only in the sense that it will be out in the sea off the shore of France, doing its own thing while occasionally pouting about how silly everyone is and nobody will pay any attention.
At least this is the course Brexit seems to have taken the UK on. And if Scotland makes true on its threats to secede from the union, the UK may just end up as the good old England and Wales all alone, surrounded by Europe. But on the plus side Wales may finally have some pressure to get the UK to put that dragon on the flag.
I really can't see what you've got this idea about Empire and self-importance from. Seriously, it's not something anyone in the UK thinks about. Given recent history, I wonder if you are projecting your own Imperial ambitions onto the UK?
13% of UK GDP is from European trade (fact). So whilst the UK would quite like a trade deal it is hardly reliant on it. Any loss from tariffs on European trade may well be exceeded from the resulting drop in tariffs with non EU nations. Biggest difference post Brexit will be less BMWs and more Kias.
I think the thing you're missing is that the UK has a long history of democracy and slow improvements to it. Large parts of Europe do not have such a libertarian consciousness.
I'm sorry, you lost me when you started on about empire, I've seen nobody calling for a return to empire, or even invoking empire except as a way to harangue and belittle those who voted leave.
You seem very hostile to the UK generally. Weird given your last comparatively friendly comment.
> You seem very hostile to the UK generally. Weird given your last comparatively friendly comment
We'd better get used to this. Just look at statements by European politicians since the vote. Occasionally they make a token attempt to be friendly, and saying how of course everyone wants what's best for everyone, but then they go right back to talking about how awful it'll be for the UK and how it's like suicide, how they'd never be stupid enough to let people vote on the EU, etc.
My experience of anyone who thinks of themselves as "European" or a supporter of the EU is actually, when the surface is scratched, extremely angry and vicious. They want the UK to bleed and bleed hard, because they think if it doesn't their dream of a united European future will end. And they are correct: at this point the only thing holding the EU together is fear. They unfortunately don't see how dystopian this makes them.
> My experience of anyone who thinks of themselves as "European" or a supporter of the EU is actually, when the surface is scratched, extremely angry and vicious.
Well that's a delightfully insulting, sweeping and utterly untrue generalisation.
Whatever makes you feel validated in your choices though I guess. It's easier to assume your opponents are just full of hate and anger instead of trying to understand that they are people with actual thoughts and concerns that are opposed to yours.
There is a very real pro-Monarchy, post-Empire resentment of anything not British among a large section of the British people. They might not say it out loud, but it's clear in the things they say.
I think that is untrue. This thread is the first time I've heard anyone mention Empire in connection with Brexit.
There is xenophobia but I think if you look closely you'll find that in most European countries as well. No doubt that instinct will now be directed at the British.
You make good points, but the problem is in most countries knowledge of MEPs is close to nil. Turnout for European Parliament elections is also abysmal, in the UK 35%, NL 37% and even France and Germany are in the low 40s.
It would be even lower if other elections weren't tagged along with the EU ones (eg usually the UK has local elections at the same time).
There is an enormous amount of voter apathy towards the EU democratic processes. That starts IMO reducing the democratic legitimacy of the whole thing.
I don't think it's fair to blame the voters. If there were influential elections that nobody was voting in, then a few hardcore members of the electorate would see the potential and be all over them.
It seems much more likely that the voters are correctly detecting that the elections are not that important, either because the parliament has insufficient influence on EU policy, or because the candidates have insufficient influence on the parliament's decisions, or because the parties are all as bad as each other.
Why would you vote for an organisation you never wanted to be a part of in the first place? How does exercising your right to vote (or not) indicate that? Wanting to leave and voting are separate, but coupled, factors.
I always have voted out of duty as a citizen to vote, but it always felt like a waste of time. The MEPs are unknowns you never see, and the proceedings are so divorced from regular politics that they seem like they serve little practical purpose in representing our views. Particularly when the people you are voting for are then members of supranational blocs with their own agendas. It's so far removed from the individual voter that it seems like they could do whatever they wanted and claim a mandate for it. I don't think democracy is particularly effective at this scale.
Exactly. Either the EU is powerful and infringing on people's lives, but then it must be important. Or it's irrelevant and unimportant, but then it's not a threat. Yet the Brexit "sovereignty" argument is often reiterated alongside the complaint that the EU doesn't actually do anything.
I think it's a little more complicated than people not being bothered to vote. The European Parliament has relatively little power (e.g. to propose new laws) compared to a typical national parliament. I think people see that and also see that Euroskeptic MEPs are largely ignored. In the last UK European elections, UKIP won the most seats. That didn't get reflected in any shift in policy did it?
Any? Certainly. How much I would not want to say — my opinion is that UKIP created the dissatisfaction that they fed upon for votes. But that's just opinion.
I think it's unlikely that members skeptical of the institution itself would have much influence.
I think the Leavers were dissatisfied from the beginning. You can directly trace the formation of UKIP from the Maastricht Rebels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastricht_Rebels in the Major government.
UKIP was formed out of protest at what they saw as the EU going off in a highly political direction (i.e. becoming a lot more than just an economic area).
They may be wrong but the objections are based on fundamentals.
Those skeptics certainly started skeptical, but they were also a tiny minority. I was thinking about the people who they convinced to side with them, and how UKIP's refusal to participate in any meaningful way may have created the evidence they needed to convince people the EU wasn't listening.
The EU might have retained popular respect with UK voters if the MEPs that the UK sent to parliament had voted in accordance with their electorate's desires rather than not-voted-because-they-are-a-protest.
Or not. Quite a lot of stuff in the media that is anti-EU, too. That might be more powerful.
I just don't think many people in the UK in general (not just Parliament and the media) like the EU. I spoke to a lot of people who voiced anti-EU sentiment but voted Remain out of fear of the consequences. I remember there being just as much if not more dislike in the early 90's after Black Wednesday.
I'm not sure what you mean by a tiny minority. IIRC the UK Parliament voted against Maastricht twice and it went through on the third attempt. I think UKIP has exploited and perhaps stoked the skepticism, but IMO did not create it.
This polling history shows wild oscillation over time, and the EU was formed from its predecessor just as things were close. I had been under the impression it was a gradual shift from the high of 1979 to the low of 2016.
Regardless, "stoked" sounds like a good description of UKIP's behaviour to me, so I think we may be agreeing with each other.
No. People see the EU as undemocratic because Parliament is neither the main policy-making body nor the main executive power. It is more of a supervisory body, akin to the role of Congress or the House of Lords. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament#Control_of...
And the reason it is is that they don't want their own democratically elected governments to lose sovereignty. If you give the EU parliament more power, the national parliaments must lose power.
I don't see how one is more democratic than the other.
I'm saying that the EU is not sufficiently democratic because its executive bodies are not elected by the people whereas in national parliaments they are.
I'm not saying that national governments should give up sovereignty. I'm saying that what powers the EU already has should be more directly democratic.
Yes but mainly the executive parts. No doubt the UK government could be more democratic but however imperfect it is why would you want to layer something on top of it that is even less democratic?
Sorry, I missed the bit where the Council doesn't consist of the democratically heads of states of the member nations (or their individually appointed delegates).
If your country's Council member doesn't represent your interests, that's not the EU's fault, that's your government's fault.
Literally every person who gets to do anything in the EU Parliament, Commission or Council is ultimately in that position because of a democratic election in that member nation -- be it via the direct vote for the Parliament, the national election for the head of state or the combination of those two for the Commission.
The EU isn't full of corporate cronies because the EU sucks. The EU is full of corporate cronies because the member nations' governments suck. And that includes the UK (which in the EU has been at the forefront of various things people like to complain about -- including in the UK itself).
Let's caricature this a little bit: suppose it were a rule of the EU that each national government had to appoint half a dozen people to receive a million-euro salary straight from EU funds (that means, of course, from funds that ultimately the member states paid into the EU budget themselves) for doing nothing.
Even assuming the citizens of member states were fully conscious that this was happening, who do you think would be appointed to those positions? Who would you say sucks in this scenario, the member state governments or the EU?
I'd assume the government should take full responsibility for who it appoints to receive the subsidies and what they do with them.
But we're not talking about slush funds for doing nothing, we're talking about who makes policy. And funnily enough in Westminster we also have a Cabinet and PM setting the policy agenda that are chosen not by some universal franchise but nominated by the representatives of different localities. The transfer of executive power from the MP for Witney to the MP for Maidenhead happened without the involvement of a single person outside the political class, and I didn't vote for any of the Bill Select Committees proposing new legislation or any of the individuals heading up any of the departments responsible for implementing it. And so yeah, I'm holding Conservative MPs rather than the public or the drafters of Britain's constitution responsible for how Brexit gets implemented
Weirdly, few of the people insisting that the UK must leave because of the terrible system of government the EU has are remotely bothered about similar democratic deficits in Westminster.
Most of the tangible criticism/drama about the EU I've seen in UK media is actually about things people UK citizens or the UK government elected or otherwise put into those positions.
The UK was a major driving force behind many of the international trade agreements that are being criticised for infringing on the rights of EU citizens, for example.
That's not at all the problem with EU democracy. I'm sorry but you've clearly not understood the issues even slightly, given such a long explanation that overlooks the actual problem. The EU can never solve its issues when people are so confused about it.
The reason the EU Parliament isn't democratic is that its members can't actually change the law, which means it isn't a Parliament at all. Because MEPs can't change EU law, they can't have any policies. Because they can't have any policies, their "politics" such that it is simply boils down to how pro or anti EU they are. Inevitably, given the uselessness of the EU Parliament as an institution, the vast majority of people who run for election to it are ideologically driven EU-philes who are true believers in the vision and just want to be close to it. This means it is worthless even as a check and balance, so people tune out, which is why nobody knows or cares who their MEP is.
Moreover, even despite this withered and pointless setup, the EU Parliament fails to even be open and democratic within its constitutional limits. Last year all EU law was made in secret "trilogue" meetings that don't formally exist, so you can't find out when they happen, get notes, find out who attended etc. These meetings are not mentioned in the treaties for obvious reasons, yet they now are how the EU makes law. Only North Korea and the EU make law in secret this way.
Yes ... even if all these problems were solved, the EU would still have the problem of being far too large. But there's a thousand major reforms needed before that becomes the top issue and the EU's deceptively named 'democracy' has gone backwards over time, not forwards.
When I think "undemocratic", I think about the EU Constitution being rejected in a vote. Oh, OK, we'll just come back with the Lisbon Treaty, which you won't get to vote on.
Somebody (Netherlands or Ireland, I think, but I forget which) has an election about an EU matter, and it goes "the wrong way". The EU's response: Well, they'll just have to vote again.
Forgive me if the details are wrong (I'm writing from memory, and I'm not even in the EU). But that kind of thing has happened more than once - "the EU" has decided on a direction, and democracy is not going to be allowed to change it. That is why people feel the EU is undemocratic (as I understand it). The structure of the EU Parliament has nothing to do with it.
1. The European Commission is elected by the European Parliament.
2. The European Commission has the power to initiate legislation, but EU legislation is enacted by the European Parliament (lower chamber of the legislature) and the Council of the European Union (upper chamber of the legislature). This is why EU legislation begins with "REGULATION/DIRECTIVE ... OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL" [1].
First, the President is nominated. While this is technically a power of the European Council (not to be confused with the Council of the European Union), in 2004 the Parliament won the right to determine the president and the nomination by the European Council is only a formality. (Similar to the appointment of the British PM by the British monarch).
In practice, the choice of president is now the result of the elections to the European Parliament through the so-called "spitzenkandidaten" process [1], where each group in the EP nominates a candidate and the candidate of the largest party that can command a majority in the EP is chosen, who is then formally appointed.
Second, the Commission President in conjunction with the member states nominates the remaining commissioners. The EP conducts hearings, after which the Commission is voted on. The EP can reject the Commission. In 2014, this resulted in the rejection of the Slovenian commissioner [2] and the Hungarian commissioner being stripped of the citizenship portfolio [3] as the result of questions regarding Hungary's human rights record.
The EP can also remove the Commission through a motion of censure, Article 234 TFEU. This is what happened to the Santer commission (except that they resigned before the EP could vote them out of office).
Note that under the British system, the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet does not even have to face hearings. The members of the cabinet are simply chosen by the PM, the PM is appointed by the monarch.
That only the Commission can initiate legislation is not much of an issue and has more to do with how complex EU legislation is, which has to conform to the legislation of all the member states. The EP can propose legislation through Article 225 TFEU, can attach legislation to other legislation (such as the budget) through amendments if necessary (similar to how the US Senate gets around the Origination Clause) and simply force the Commission to initiate legislation or block other legislation (or, in the worst case, vote the Commission out of office).
1) you do understand that "unelected" doesn't mean "no vote was held". For example in the us system the supreme Court justices and the president's cabinet are referred to as "unelected" although they are held to confirmation votes in the us legislative assembly.
2) it doesn't strike you that this convoluted process with several confusing and in some cases similarly named governing organizations is itself the problem? It gives enough of a shade of the franchise to call itself "democratic" while insulating itself from the consequences through technicality and obfuscation of responsibility
> 1) you do understand that "unelected" doesn't mean "no vote was held". For example in the us system the supreme Court justices and the president's cabinet are referred to as "unelected" although they are held to confirmation votes in the us legislative assembly.
Then the British PM is also unelected, as is the British cabinet. Heck, it's even worse, as they're directly appointed without the House of Commons even getting to vote.
> 2) it doesn't strike you that this convoluted process with several confusing and in some cases similarly named governing organizations is itself the problem?
I am not particularly enamored with the names myself, but the process is not particularly convoluted in practice. I was spelling out the details in an effort to avoid technical quibbles.
The moment the EPP won the EP elections in 2014, it was pretty clear that Jean-Claude Juncker would be Commission President, even though it technically involved a couple more steps, which mirror the steps that other countries have, too (for example, in Germany, the Chancellor is also technically nominated before the election by the President and thereafter formally appointed, but as in the EU, these are purely formal steps in practice).
And let's not get started with the election process for the US president.
The election of the Commission is not more complicated than the election of the American Cabinet. One could do away with it, of course, as Britain does, but that would reduce democratic legitimacy, so I don't see the point.
The British prime minister and cabinet are all elected. They are elected MPs like any other, who are selected by their party to perform additional duties. That is not at all the case with the members of the European Commission.
1. When we're talking about this, this is generally about an election to the executive office the person holds, not the legislature. Plenty of countries have cabinet positions that are specifically not drawn from the legislature as the result of separation of powers. After all, part of the reason for an election to executive office is the control of the executive by the legislature.
2. British cabinet ministers can also come from the House of Lords and not just from the House of Commons. This is rare in modern times, though the Leader of the House of Lords, a cabinet position, always is a member of the Lords.
I'm sorry it's not false, and in fact you've more or less confirmed what I said, the Commission is put in place by the Council and they originate all legislation.
This byzantine system, so thoroughly removed from the populace, is one of the reasons I'm not sad we're leaving.
It is not. Even if you want to dispute the fact that the Commission President is de facto chosen by the voters and elected by the EP, the European Council has zero role in the selection of the remaining commissioners, who are nominated by the member states in consultation with the Commission President.
I'm not sure how you can live with the British system, though, if this is such a problem for you, as it is even worse in that regard.
Member states, indeed, Comissioners are generally put in place by the leaders of the member states, the Council. (I should stop arguing this point, the technicality is not really relevant, it's that they are several steps removed from any vote)
Where did I say I can live with the British system?
It reeks worse than the EU. I'll vote out of Westminster when I get the chance (which will never come for Hampshire, I'm not a fantasist)
The point is that powers of veto are less influential than powers of creating policy.
I don't think people are saying that the EU is completely undemocratic (as pointed out above, democracy is a somewhat muddy concept in practice), more that it falls short of the standards of a typical democracy (which to me means a directly elected executive body).
> The point is that powers of veto are less influential than powers of creating policy.
Can you explain what you are talking about? Because I honestly have no idea.
> democracy (which to me means a directly elected executive body).
Which happens pretty much nowhere in the world. Even in the US, only the President is directly elected, not the rest of the cabinet. In the UK, Germany, Spain, the executive is not directly elected.
And in actual practice, the Commission President is the result of the elections to the European Parliament, with each party nominating a candidate and the candidate of the winning party getting the job.
On the first point I mean that the policy creators (in this case the Commission) can make any policy of their choosing. The veto-ers (i.e. the European Parliament) can only block the legislation. As the former control what gets debated, they frame the debate and the latter can only react.
On the second point; you may in a narrow technical sense be correct. Taking the Uk as an example, the UK Cabinet is literally appointed by the PM. However the wider point is that the executive power of the PM and the ruling party is granted by winning an election based on a manifesto etc. The PM and cabinet members are also individually elected to their seats.
In contrast, the Commission is more akin to the Civil Service.
On your final point, that's a far cry from being elected by a voting public. Also I presume there are restrictions on who can stand for Commission President?
> On the first point I mean that the policy creators (in this case the Commission) can make any policy of their choosing. The veto-ers (i.e. the European Parliament) can only block the legislation. As the former control what gets debated, they frame the debate and the latter can only react.
The Parliament and Council do not just have veto power. The Parliament can in principle replace legislation entirely through amendments. (In practice, this does not happen, because the Commission isn't going to waste time on writing legislation where the Parliament would do just that.)
> However the wider point is that the executive power of the PM and the ruling party is granted by winning an election based on a manifesto etc. The PM and cabinet members are also individually elected to their seats.
The former part is also the case in the EU [1]. The latter is not universal among democracies (none of Trump's cabinet members was elected) and is not even always true in the UK, as members of the Lords are also eligible for cabinet positions. And in fact, the Leader of the House of Lords, which is a cabinet position, still always comes from the Lords.
Ok amendments as well as veto, but I think you see the point.
It is rare that a member of the Lords is in the Cabinet and it seems reasonable that the Leader of the Lords is from the Lords doesn't it?
Again the main point I'm trying to make is that the EU falls short of typical democratic standards which is a reasonably direct connection between the ruled and the rulers. Anything in between is highly subject to cronyism IMO.
> It is rare that a member of the Lords is in the Cabinet and it seems reasonable that the Leader of the Lords is from the Lords doesn't it?
I was just fighting literalism with literalism; you and I both know that this isn't what's usually meant when talking about "unelected bureaucrats" (keep also in mind that most prominent MPs are in safe seats where, as the saying goes, you could get a donkey elected on a party ticket). There are plenty of democracies around the world where members of the executive are NOT members of the legislature also and where this is actually discouraged (separation of powers and all that). Members of the executive also being members of the legislature has never been a criterion for a democracy.
> Again the main point I'm trying to make is that the EU falls short of typical democratic standards which is a reasonably direct connection between the ruled and the rulers.
Not sure where you're getting this from. The European Parliament is elected directly by the EU citizens. The Council of the EU comprises members of the governments, which are indirectly elected by EU citizens. The Commission President is chosen as the result of the European Parliament elections (as the candidate of the largest party that can command a majority in the European Parliament). The other Commissioners are proposed by the governments of the member states, again indirectly elected by EU citizens, and are then elected by the European Parliament. The European Parliament can also remove the Commission through a motion of censure (and that's not a paper tiger, it happened before).
If you look at your description all the methods of selection bar one are nothing like methods for publicly elected officials and as such massively subject to cronyism. This is worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission#Appointmen...
The one that isn't is the European Parliament which as we've already established is pretty toothless.
On a slight tangent you'll also notice that none of these bodies are s/elected with any commonality of purpose. Hence why IMO the EU struggles to agree on any difficult issues. Just wait and see how much indecision and infighting will occur over Brexit negotiations.
Why on earth would we give up a successfully evolved system of government for this?
> It is rare that a member of the Lords is in the Cabinet
As GP noted, it is always the case that at least one member of the Lords is in the cabinet, so not rare at all.
More broadly, there have typically been 1-2 Lords in cabinet in most governments of the past several decades (not counting the Leader of the Lords and, before 2005, Lord Chancellor, who always are/were cabinet ministers and members of the Lords.) John Major's government and the 2015- Cameron and May governments were notable in not having any "extra" Lords.
Its an indirectly elected chief executive and an appointed cabinet drawn largely from, and confirmed by, parliament, in practice. (In theory, they're all appointed by the monarch, but the traditional constraints on that make it a ministerial rather than discretionary act in practice.)
Leaving aside mid term leadership changes as a different can of worms, I think it's pretty clear that the UK public elected the Tories and David Cameron (and it was fairly obvious who his Cabinet would be even if they are not individually elected) on a fairly specific manifesto and with each MP being individually elected (limitations with FPTP notwithstanding).
No such equivalent exists in the EU no matter how hard you try and twist the facts.
You're right it's unelected but there's much more complexion to it than that:
>Selecting the team
>The president-elect selects potential Vice-Presidents and Commissioners based on suggestions from EU countries. The list of nominees has to be approved by all EU heads of state or government, meeting in the European Council.
>Each nominee must appear before the parliamentary committee with responsibility for his or her proposed portfolio. Committee members then vote on the nominee’s suitability for the position. Once the 27 nominees have been endorsed, Parliament as a whole votes whether or not to approve the entire team. Following Parliament's vote, the Commissioners are appointed by the European Council.
Accountability
>The European Commission is held democratically accountable by the European Parliament, which has the right to approve and dismiss the entire political leadership of the Commission.
>The European Commission is also accountable for putting the EU budget into practice. Every year, the Parliament chooses to give (or not) its blessing to the European Commission on the way it has managed the EU budget. This process is called the discharge. The Parliament bases its decision on several reports from the European Court of Auditors and from the European Commission, including the annual management and performance report for the EU budget.
Parliament has gained a lot of 'de jure' power since Lisbon. With it (and, some argue, a few good moves by the previous President of the EU Parliament) has come a rise in 'de facto' power and visibility.
Entirely left out of your answer is the Council, with heads of state elected by whatever their country deems to be a democratic process. In practice, EU legislation requires agreement between the three institutions.
A primarily trade union with most political decisions made by nation states is exactly what the EU is. The failure of the Euro has also pretty much guaranteed it will stay that way too.
The crucial difference is that the E.U. can impose regulations on citizens of member states that have the force of law, and those laws override national law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_(European_Union). The U.S. has a similar principal (the Supremacy Clause), and in the long term that resulted in the gutting of states as sovereign entities.
It can't do that without the agreement of the states though. Directives are created at the direction of the European Council, made up of the heads of state of every EU member state.
US states don't have veto powers over federal legislation, but EU states do. Hence Britain never joined the Schengen Agreement and kept its own currency. We had the best of both worlds and threw it away.
These are pretty much the same forecasts Switzerland and Norway were supposed to face when they rejected to join the EU... people losing jobs, Swiss Franc falling, export collapsing, etc... well, it went a little bit in a different way.
OFC leaving is totally a different thing from not being in at all, but still... there are going to be pro and cons, but the economy will adapt as happened in Switzerland and Norway. Some will gain, some will lose, but the general picture can be valid only in 3-5 years after the Kingdom is out, so not before 2022.
The UK is putting itself in a much tougher situation, this is absolutely not comparable to Switzerland and Norway.
And some of the forecasts about Switzerland turned out very real. We have to agree and comply with Europe on most things, without much bargaining power. And the EURCHF swings can literally put businesses to the ground overnight.
This could also be construed as the EU acting as a hegemony and abusing their economic power to force smaller countries to accept their terms. The same can be currently observed when some EU exponents demand that the Brits get punished for pulling out.
For Norway's case that is a meaningless statement.
Via the EEA, Norway accepted pretty much all of the EU with the exception of the Common Agricultural Policy and parts of the fishing policies, and the Euro.
Unlike the UK, Norway is part of Schengen, and outside of the areas mentioned above, Norway has fewer special considerations and opt-outs from EU directives than the UK has.
If the UK negotiates the same deal that Norway has, the UK will probably do ok, but that would in many areas mean tighter integration into the EU than currently. E.g. joining Schengen, dropping various opt-outs etc. It would also mean maintaining full freedom of movement.
I'd love to see that happen if only to hear the whining from the Leaver crowd, many of whom held up the Norwegian model as an alternative to convince people to vote Leave.
What? Norway is a member of the EEA and Switzerland has bilateral agreements that come to the same thing. Nothing changed for them they just don't get a say in the rules.
Norway and Switzerland are effectively EU members in everything but name -- they pay in to the single market and accept the four freedoms.
They both have very good reason for not joining EU proper - Norway has a giant fishing industry relative to other industries and Switzerland wishes to preserve her neutrality.
Note that Norway and Switzerland accept freedom of movement. Switzerland tried to introduce immigration quotas for EU workers, but that got scrapped a couple of months ago.
I'd say the desire to build empires is a far more dominant part of human history than fights for independence.
As for novelty, apart from drawing parallels to the establishment of the US, consider also the African Union.
The African Union includes every country on the African continent - 55 of them (as of Morocco joining/rejoining in January), and includes far more people, and is on a course towards similar levels of integration, with several free trade areas established and gradually coalescing, and several monetary unions being used to gradually pare down the number of currencies with the goal of a single African currency.
It has a long way to go to reach EU level integration, but considering how bad their starting point was (starting, in the form of the OAU with a continent that still had numerous wars and civil wars and independence struggles), what they've achieved is quite impressive.
>I'd say the desire to build empires is a far more dominant part of human history than fights for independence.
Explaining the state of the EU to any politician in the 1940s, the 1840s, or the 1740s would assume Germany is positioning to make a financial conquest of the entire continent.
It's really not. The American states were a loosely organized confederacy at outset as well. India has multiple languages. And of course the long history of empires, like the Ottoman, or Spanish control of Latin America. Yes they rise and fall, but often over the course of centuries and well out of the observational abilities of the human lifespan. There's nothing inevitable about the EU, in either direction.
During WW1 and WW2, some countries (France and the UK) pooled their resources so they could fight together better.
Then a few years after the war, the European Coal and Steel Community was created to regulate coal and steel in six countries under a single authority. Including West Germany, which had only been formed from the occupied territories a year before. It was certainly not unrelated to military force.
Its initial aims included making war between member states impossible, and eventual democratic unification of all of Europe. The later institutions up to the EU grew out of it.
So although it was completely peaceful, it's still an outcome of WW2.
> Membership in it is purely voluntary. This makes it quite unique.
NATO arose from the ashes of conflict but membership is entirely voluntary, and unlike leaving the EU there is no talk of 'punishing' those who no longer wish to remain.
For example France left the NATO integrated military structure in 1996 and rejoined in 2009 without penalty.
To be more precise: in 1966, France left indeed the integrated military structure, but it did not left NATO itself which is also a political structure. The goal of de Gaulle was to have all French troups under only French command (and not US or UK who were leading nearly everything then in NATO) and to have all foreign military bases leave France, so that France regains its full sovereignty. De Gaulle was very critical of the US wars led at the time actually and he wanted to have Europe independent from both the USSR and the USA (and as he considered the UK as the pawn of the USA and not reliable in their commitment to Europe, he was opposed to them entering the EU). A fun fact was that it was also a incidentally a smart move economically, even if those US military bases closings were hurting the towns they were in: because of the Mansfield agreements around precisely 1966, Germany which still had US bases was giving more and more money as part of participating to the defense of Germany (2 billions $ in the year 1971 alone for example). This is quite like what president Trump tried to reinstate very recently by presenting a bill to Angela Merkel, but Germany now is not the same as West Germany in 1966.
You are comparing apples and oranges though. NATO is a purely military alliance. It has no control over the non-military affairs of member states, and little or no effect on the day-to-day lives of member states' citizens. The EU, on the other hand, acts very much like a central government for its members and exerts a lot of pressure on them to make them comply with its policies. That's why I compared it to empires.
I wonder if the "desire for independence" is simply born out of the usual ingroup/outgroup dynamics - convince people they're being ruled by an outgroup, and suddenly they want to be independent.
The problem with this being that group borders are petty flexible and easily manipulated.
>The problem with this being that group borders are petty flexible and easily manipulated.
Not that flexible -- it takes long, historical processes to change them.
People were living within the same "unified" culture, state mandated et al, forced to be together in USSR and Yugoslavia for 50 to 80 years -- and yet those states exploded into multiple national countries as soon as they had the chance.
Some borders are organic (based on culture, shared history, geographical boundaries etc) and some are not (based on colonial rules drawing lines in a map which include groups with different cultures which have historically been enemies in the same "country": the British have done this time and again, and is also the most common cause of tension in Africa etc).
The USSR was a re-implementation of the Tsarist Russian empire by another name. The peoples yoked together in the USSR had been absorbed by Russian expansion in the 18th & 19th centuries. Yugoslavia was a variation on the same theme. The north had been part of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and the south part of the Ottoman Empire.
That's what I write. Merely getting people to live together under one "union" doesn't mean it will stick, or that they like it, or that they'll identify with it over their prior and existing identities.
Nor (as happened in both cases) that they wont split on the first chance they get.
Each British homeowner should be independent. A man's house is his castle. The could all be lords of their own empire but band together when needed to fight common enemies. Perhaps they could all group together money to help pay for common services like roads etc.
I had to check your history to see if this is satire.
Since it's not: this is a completely misguided view of human nature. Humans are among the most social of all animals, and our successes and failures have always been a function of our ability to work together. Humans everywhere, and at any time, have created groups held together by a lot more than transactional opportunities.
And even if you were right, and it is our fundamental nature to be lone wolfs, plundering the lesser lords and raping their ladies: the actual overarching feature of humanity is our unique ability to overcome base instincts with reason and morality. And both reason and experience tell us that cooperation is much more successful as a strategy for anything you could possibly desire than the alternatives.
The better question to ask is: Does Britain have identity as a nation?
Various surveys indicates that a lot of people in the UK - across all the constituents parts - see themselves as more English/Welsh/Scottish/Irish than British. Many don't see themselves as British at all (ironically immigrants who have become citizens are far more likely to see themselves as British first than people born here).
The British identity as a single nation is weak and fractured.
Keep in mind that the modern nation state and national identities are barely two centuries old and was largely an artificial construct to begin with, created as part of the romantic nationalism movement, and it has had various degrees of success in different places. In the UK a lot of that identity got built around and tied up in the Empire, and has fractured and gone into decline with the fall of the British Empire.
On top of that, I'd argue that London in many ways does have a distinct culture from the surrounding area. London - especially the centre - is a Labour stronghold in a sea of conservative areas. It voted far more for Remain than the surrounding area, despite a large proportion of the residents of London being unable to vote (seeing as London has a high proportion of non-citizen residents). It's far more immigration friendly, far more multicultural than the surrounding areas.
After the Brexit there has been proposals - some serious, and some not so much - for an independence movement for London. I know some concrete planning has been done. There was real and seething anger in London over the vote - in many areas it was seen as outright betrayal, and evidence that London does not really fit in with most of England. People joked about building a wall around the M25 (freeway circling London).
Now, there's no way there's any sizeable real support for an independent London, but the Brexit vote did plant a seed. We'll see if it grows - if the terms we leave the EU on are bad, and especially if they hit London hard, it very well might start growing. I genuinely think that while it won't get much support, ther likely will be a registered political party arguing for an independent London within the next decade.
Britain is not a nation, it is an island, so the question doesn't really make sense to ask. It's impossible to be English, Welsh or Scottish and not be British; you can't choose geography.
You're being a pedant and intentionally obtuse, so let me be one too: While we often refer to the island as Britain, it's name has been Great Britain for many centuries.
The use of variations of Great Britain for the island dates at least as far back as Ptolemy - the use of variations of Britain alone (without some variation of "Great") quickly fell out of use around that time.
And as I'm sure you're perfectly aware, Britain is equally used to refer to the UK in common parlance. The history of using precursors of Britain (without "Great") to refer to a political entity dates back to the Romans, who started using Britannia to refer to the Roman province.
It was exceedingly clear from context that it was used to refer to the UK rather than the island. When talking about national identity, one also specifically talk about "British", which makes it more natural to use Britain rather than the UK.
Right, this is why there have never been empires, kings, large nations or organized groups that have subsumed smaller groups around them, the United States, Great Britain itself, or any organization of peoples greater than just one lone man standing in a field bellowing 'ME!' at the emptiness.
"Independence" it's not about some lone man bellowing "ME".
It's about like-minded people sharing a common culture (as developed historically up to some point), over a hodge podge of states being united by sheer power or top-down dictum.
Empires and kings ruled thanks to tons of bloodshed and continued vigilance and stomping of revolts.
The "Great Britain" itself is a bad example -- it lost colony after colony due to wars for independence, and even sibling states like England, Ireland and Scotland have either split, or want to split. And of course it took some wars (and a lot of resentment) to bring down the Scottish into the UK's stable for example.
> It's about like-minded people sharing a common culture (as developed historically up to some point)
But it's that "some point" that makes everything wishy washy. If I'm in favour of Scottish independence I cite common Scottish culture. If I'm in favour of the UK I cite the hundreds of years of shared culture. If I'm in favour of the EU I cite decades of shared culture. None of these are wrong, despite being in clear disagreement with each other.
It's just an excuse for people to cite the opinion they already had and make it sound historically relevant. (and of course, has been the reasoning behind anti immigrant sentiment since time immaterial)
>But it's that "some point" that makes everything wishy washy. If I'm in favour of Scottish independence I cite common Scottish culture. If I'm in favour of the UK I cite the hundreds of years of shared culture. If I'm in favour of the EU I cite decades of shared culture. None of these are wrong, despite being in clear disagreement with each other.
Well, it's up to what the majority likes.
Everything is wishy-washy in human affairs -- because opinions differ, people value this or that more etc.
But in the end, it's also people who get, or should get, to decide what they want to do.
Majorities often shift, and depend on other changes. E.g. Brexit probably means the end of the UK as we know it - it substantially increased the odds of Scottish independence, as England is far more right wing, but have been held in check by EU law. It may even mean a unified Ireland, as there's been a solid shift towards the Republican side in Stormont, and even some unionists seem to be disillusioned by how the concerns of Northern Ireland gets ignored at Westminster.
Meanwhile London has demanded more devolved powers (partly because Manchester recently got lots of power devolved). More demands will follow.
The UK has been fracturing since the way it was created, and the cracks are getting deeper and deeper, and Brexit looks set to accelerate that process sharply.
For the avoidance of doubt, as I see this sentiment all over the frickin internet, a united Ireland is a very unlikely outcome of Brexit.
The Good Friday agreement states that the Secretary of State for NI shall call a referendum on the question if he or she believes that it will be passed.
Right now, there is a solid unionist majority in the North. The gains made by Sinn Fein are most likely the result of unionists staying home (the first minister, Arlene Foster was accused of corruption). This will most likely remain the case for the next twenty years.
And even, if by some miracle or amazing confluence of events this occurs, I fear that we would have hardline freedom-fighters blowing crap up in the island for some time afterwards.
Scotland is definitely looking more likely, given the long-standing differences between their social policy and England, but the Spanish veto is always an issue (unless they join after the UK leaves).
> Yes, but what's the alternative? Having countries run on "expert opinion" lest people shift their preferences later?
Requiring super-majorities for large constitutional changes, like most countries do.
> When majorities shift they can always revert course in any case.
Often that is not true. E.g. it is extremely unlikely the UK can ever get the same deal it had if it wishes to rejoin the EU later. Even if it gets offered the same deal, it requires unanimous approval - every single member state can veto.
Everything is wishy-washy. If you don't believe in complete individual sovereignty (no State) or in complete governmnent ownership and control of all production and thought, then you believe there are lines between individual freedom and societal coherence.
So wishy-washy!
It's ALWAYS about the line and where it is. I think sharing a language is an important factor in the ability to share culture and values. So I might put the line closer to the UK than to the EU in your example.
There's nothing that says that "top-down dictum" doesn't work for nation building. Indeed, looking at history, it's the only thing that ever did. From a purely bottom-up approach, your feeling of connection to someone else would be a linear function of distance to them. In such a world, it would be impossible to have a border between two people just a mile from each other, with people on each side speaking different languages.
Indeed, the whole concept of the nation-state was a top-down inventions. And possibly not the best, especially when some borders were famously drawn by British people with too much gin in their blood.
> And of course it took some wars (and a lot of resentment) to bring down the Scottish into the UK's stable for example.
It looks like it's going to take Brexit for Scotland to leave the UK. Politically, Scotland and England have very little in common yet they are handcuffed together by "sheer power of top-down dictum"
It's also a very weakly motivated experiment. At least based on the morning after TV appearance of Nigel Farrage. I've rarely seen such a buffon face on someone. Less than 24h after celebrating the "win".
Don't forget that in an interview yesterday he said that if Brexit turns out to be a failed experiment, he will leave UK and live somewhere else. I'm sure his buddy Donald Trump will offer him a place to live.
Oh no, the secret is out - Eastern Europe has sun, booze, food, mountains, snow and greenery and absolutely huge houses. The English invasion is imminent :D
> I'm a big believer in not having assumptions and testing things with actual experiments. This is one experiment I'd rather not be participating in, though.
Have you tried flipping that? The EU was an experiment, not the status quo.
> which will include higher prices, lower employment and probably lower standards for UK workers
I often see this kind of sweeping statement here on HN as if the consequences of Brexit are an already an established fact. How do you substantiate these predicitons? Are you aware of the term "project fear"[0]?
Maybe the small matter that every single economic authority on the matter from our foreign allies like Barack Obama, to the IMF, the Bank Of England, the Confederation of British Industry, (and endless list) said it would be an unmitigated disaster... and then there are the people who think it is a good idea... Trump, Putin, Lafarge, Gove, and not even the the PM thought it was a good idea to start off with. Project Fear? - more like Project Shit Your Pants Now...
Also, every single study bar one, from credible institutions like the London School Of Economics (and indeed HM Treasury), predicted a significant downswing in the UK economy post-Brexit.
The lone study is worth paying attention to. It's from a group calling themselves "Economists For Brexit". It proposes that the UK should, post-Brexit, unilaterally scrap all tariffs. Under those conditions, it predicts a minor rise in the UK's GDP, but notes that it also expects "a sharp rise in inequality".
So basically, everyone credible who has studied Brexit, including the guys calling themselves "Economists For Brexit", reckon that it's going to make the UK worse in some significant way.
It depends on the timescales of the predicted problems. I believe the studies predicted choppy waters whilst the UK divorces from the EU (short to medium term) which in my view is likely. However that's not the same as saying that leaving the EU is in principle bad for the economy.
Secondly there are plenty of economists that think Brexit will work out fine but that is a somewhat unfashionable view so they keep their heads down. Such is the nature of groupthink.
What is it exactly that you think will cause the UK's economic demise?
You could say that all those people have been wrong before and therefore could be wrong this time.
But, the problem you don't mention is that there is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy to those statements. There is no absolute objective metric that measure your country in a negotiation, it is more a market type thing. There is an element of irrationality and if all your partners think you are in trouble, then they will act toward you are if you were in trouble which may well be cause you to be in trouble.
That works at all level too. If enough people living in the UK think the UK is doomed, they will start saving money or investing in foreign countries. A slowing of consumption is a crisis, it does not matter if the slowness was caused by objective and rationale reason or not.
You can already see the effect. The last budget was another austerity budget with cuts and no investment. Despite the supposed economic nirvana that is only a few months away, the government is nevertheless bracing for trouble and that will affect the British people negatively regardless.
Hopefully there will be some sort of negotiation whereby workers in the UK can work in the EU, just like people who hold Swiss citizenship can.
Then, if the experiment turns out horrible, which it probably will, you will at least have the opportunity to move abroad for a better life.
I will extend to my condolences, but give it five years and I may very well be in your boat, and even if I'm not let's face it you can't use my condolences to anything.
Interesting. I was in a UK supermarket the other day and the asparagus on offer was from Spain and Mexico. The Mexican variety was cheaper, and just as good. Currently, Mexico pays a 14.4% common external tariff on this product, and it's still cheaper than what the EU (with it's massive array of agricultural subsidy) can produce. I imagine this is just the tip of the iceberg.
That may be because the minimum wages are massively different for the two countries, with $0.48/hr in Mexico vs $4.98/hr in Spain[1]. Globalism does exploit the lower standard of living of other countries, after all. That means that even though there are massive tariffs, these "third world" countries can still make a profit because of the abysmal quality of life for its citizens.
Of course it's because of wages! The point is, it is because of protectionism that Mexican and African farmers cant sell their products in to the EU at a fair price, and once outside the customs union, the poorest consumers in the UK and the poorest farmers in the world both stand to benefit. Global trade is lifting billions of the poorest people out of poverty, and long may it continue.
It's true that globalization is raising the average income of people in many places in the world, but it is also causing an increase in inequality within most countries[1]. It's not fair to the middle class of a country when it needs to compete against a country that doesn't have the same environmental or labor laws that it has. This leads to a race to the bottom and tanks the quality of life for most people, though the capital owners get out ahead. Why can't those countries form their own industries?
Serious question: What keeps Mexico and other smaller countries from forming their own industries and get their own economy going? Because if it's a systemic or governmental issue keeping their economy down, then why would we want to support that inefficient thing keeping it all down?
This is the UK's largest supermarket chain, so this it's hardly anecdotal evidence; What I said is verifiable, and doesn't rely on my own witness account.
Meanwhile, a statement like My weekly supermarket bill has been going up since the Brexit vote is completely meaningless.
> anecdotal: not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research.
By definition, it is anecdotal. A single piece of price data observed only by you with no evidence is not proof that EU grown vegetables are more expensive than those from Mexico.
To say that someones supermarket bill going up is somehow more anecdotal than "I found asparagus from Spain that cost more than asparagus from Mexico" is absurd.
Not really; there are differences between the two - a price differential is something that could possibly be checked, reasonably objective fact that inferences can be drawn from. Someone's weekly supermarket choices are not fixed like the cost-of-living index basket of goods, they are entirely subjective and will change, sometimes hugely, from week to week without anything needing to alter in the world economy, and the fact that a bill is reported as being higher does not allow me to make useful predictions.
I'm providing empirical evidence of a verifiable claim that is either true or false. You can argue about the rigorousness of the claim, but regardless it can be independently verified.
Empirical evidence justifies or disproves a claim. A single point of data does not justify the claim that vegetables from Mexico are cheaper than vegetables from the EU - all you have done is state that you once found a vegetable from one source country for cheaper than the same vegetable from another country - you haven't provided any evidence what-so-ever (the name of the supermarket, the prices, the volumes, the different brands), just made a claim.
Empirical evidence in this case would be a large scale survey of the prices of comparable vegetables across multiple supermarkets, over a long period (several years to cover seasonal variance in prices).
It's one datapoint alongside a well know fact that Southern European vegetables are more expensive atm because of a bad winter.
You have pointed out one good amongst thousands that was cheaper when it came from outside the EU. I'm sure there are many others but that's irrelevant. Those specific goods does not mean that this is the result of the EU. What everyone is afraid of is what will happen if tariffs are applied to EU goods when they come into the UK.
Given that Spain is still recovering from flooding, cold weather and a bunch of other issues [1] that have made growing vegetables impossible in many areas, that's not really a surprise.
This was only in a small part of Spain, mostly turistic. Those places full of english expatriates are always overrepresented in english newspapers IMHO, giving a false impression. It can seem worst that it is also. Free water means literally free money fallen from the sky and of course those big companies have enough muscle and resources to replace the plastic greenhouses and restart quickly.
The winter was not particularly hard. I remember a bad couple of weeks. Not much more. A little chill is good for most fruits.
Casually, I has aubergines for dining today. It seems that the problem to find spanish vegetables in the market is solved.
Vegetables don't just magically appear in minutes - they take weeks or months to grow, so bad winter has an effect which can last for most of the year.
That's because we are early in the asparagus season, and Mexico is a warmer country. Wait a couple of weeks and you will see mostly Spanish asparagus. A couple of more weeks and it will be British.
On those negatives: "higher prices" our food prices are rather high due to EU Tarrifs from none-eu countries. Food Prices can fall as the UK free to make trade deals with others. (Specific meat and Australia)
"lower employment" we have low-unemployment and a plan to reduce immigration. Employment will perhaps rise which may not be a good thing.
"lower standards for UK workers" labour opposition myth, its a good one "nasty tories". If they lower standards we elect labour in again to raise them. yey democracy
I'm a bit tired of reading doomsday messages by now. I am an European living and working in the UK and even though this affects me I have no reason to believe that things will go downwards now. If there's anything I've learned so far then that every analysis I've read couldn't have been more wrong.
It almost seems like the more the UK economy doesn't collapse the more people shout even louder how bad the Brexit is. Maybe I am just too indifferent or chilled, but I think the best is to just sit back and watch what will happen.
Also I seriously don't think of the Brexit that the UK leaves Europe. I think the UK and the EU will strive for the closest relationship possible. The only thing that I see changing is that the UK withdraws from a formal contract with the EU with the hope to negotiate a better deal. I don't think this is racist. Not every contract makes the same sense for every country in the world.
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EDIT:
Wow lots of responses to this comment. Thank you all. There's a lot of good discussion and some suggest that I am more relaxed perhaps because I am maybe financially secure, but that is not true. When I was a child I watched on television the Fukushima disaster in Japan and I was totally freaked out. I was afraid for many reasons and then as I watched longer I was totally amazed how relaxed the people in Japan dealt with the situation. There was a crisis, but nowhere near what I thought would have happened in the western world. Nobody was running or fleeing the country, nobody stopped going to work, etc. People worked together to fix the problem as good as they could and everyone lifted their weight. All news in Europe were talking about how cool-headed the Japanese dealt with this situation and it was something which I never forgot in my life. I then realised that only because everyone stayed calm and cool headed they were able to deal with this problem the way they did. It was not perfect, but boy it was much better than what I thought would happen.
So this is my childhood experience which has marked me for life and made me realise that mass hysteria is never good. No matter what the situation is.
You haven't been affected by the changes because nothing has happened yet. This is the start of the negotiations to decide what those changes will be.
And when I say nothing has happened yet, I mean apart from the massive drop in the value of sterling and inflation massively outstripping wage increases.
I assume you're based in London, which means you're fairly isolated from the social changes that have happened across the UK in recent years. London is very pro-EU and immigration friendly. The statistics do show a massive increase in race related hate crimes in the UK since the referendum, so even if the vote wasn't racist, it has given racists a confidence boost.
Except "the experts" were predicting terrible things immediately, not later on - remember the punishment budget necessity?
Inflation "massively outstripping wages" is just over the Bank of England's target, the one it has been massively under for the past 5 years. The drop in sterling doesn't lead to sustained inflationary pressure. Wages are also picking up as well, though not in the public sector.
The "massive increase in race related crime" is also far more complex than newspaper headlines give credit to. The big headlines came from the immediate aftermath 4 days where crimes reported to a website went from 54 to to 85 - i.e. 57%. The police statement on this made the point that it was only a single source that they weren't seeing an increase in community tension - guess what the press went with? The police statistics do bear out an overall increase since the previous year, but by a much lower margin - and in line with year on year increases.
The key point though is that in the UK hate crimes are defined as when the victim, or any other person, perceives a crime to be a hate crime - thanks to the legacy of Macpherson. Reported hate crimes have been trending up for years, partly because there has been a massive cultural shift in the police to record them and on people to report them. So, as with all statistics, it is complicated - did more people perceive an increase in hate crimes because they were being told that they were spiking? Has Britain become a more intolerant place or are we just recording better how intolerant we've been for a while? The Civitas report on this makes for interesting reading http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/hatecrimethefactsbeh...
> Except "the experts" were predicting terrible things immediately, not later on - remember the punishment budget necessity?
As a matter of fact, I do remember the "punishment budget", the one which was mocked up for 2019-20 [1], around the time that the UK would actually leave the EU.
No one expected the UK economy to crash the day of the referendum. The projections are all projections for AFTER we have left the EU, not before. The reason exports get that title is because they know enough to at least make their projections from when the changes actually happen.
The language around the budget was "emergency" and "in the event of a vote to leave". You are correct the IFS analysis was about post leaving the EU, that was certainly not the spin the remain campaign placed on it.
Saying "no one expected the UK economy to crash the day of" is a little odd - the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee certainly seemed to think they needed to act in the immediate aftermath of the vote with the interest rate cut which is now looking not such a great idea.
Remember that we had a prime minister that lied and said he'd invoke Article 50 immediately?
All the predictions were based on a bunch of promises by certain people to make rash, idiotic changes immediatly after the vote. Promises that were thankfully broken.
Most of the conditions that these kind of predictions were made under changed the moment Cameron resigned.
Not to mention the majority of people reading HN are in favorable economic situations, so will be among the least effected if/when shit hits the fan.
That said there is a large opportunity for change post EU if we go after it. Unfortunately that would require strong unified leadership from the left / non-tories.
The assumption that most of us work in technology, likely software engineers or closely related roles, combined with the fact that the average compensation for those roles is above average compared to most jobs and most employers in those areas are fairly international so less effected by local politics, compared to other uk centric companies.
According to the IMF [1], the pound was already overvalued. In currency markets, it usually takes large news events to prompt large fluctuations but they are just often the trigger, not the underlying cause.
If the pound was currently undervalued analysts would be all over that by now. None of the large investors in the world are currently investing hard in British assets.
There is nothing indicating that the market will correct itself.
Then the point is you can make your own laws and not wait for some committee of 20+ countries and some Brussels bureaucrats to decide their "one size fits all solution", especially one designed to fit Germany better because it bullies and controls more lackey states' votes?
Also note that by "nothing happens" I mean nothing that negative as the hysteria implies. Not that "nothing at all" happens.
>where the UK could not make a law that it wanted to because of "having to wait for Brussels"?
"Having to wait" not as in actually waiting (e.g. as if Brussels would somehow slow down the pace of law-making in the UK) but in the sense UK will have to be handed down to adopt and enforce EU laws. So, wanting to make a law about X, in the sense that UK citizens see it and to their interests? Tough luck, unless it matches the EU law on the subject.
So the answer to your question is, in any and all cases where the UK law doesn't agree with EU laws.
EU laws goes above national laws. This is based on "The primacy of EU law" doctrine.
The latest battle is over Brussels’ impending ban on the weedkiller glyphosate, the U.K.’s most widely used pesticide, largely due to political pressure from green groups on the Continent already skeptical of pesticides and certain other new technologies in agriculture. But pulling glyphosate, better known as Roundup, from the market, would be devastating to British farmers who rely on the herbicide to treat weeds.
You really did not know that there has been frequent tension between national laws (in the UK and elsewhere) and EU laws in all kinds of aspects (from labor laws to agriculture and shipping), or were you trolling?
(If not from EU or UK I can understand it, because you wouldn't be familiar with the subject matter -- but it's a very common occurence, and a very common theme in the news in EU countries).
The glyphosate thing was IARC (Int.Agency for Cancer Research) deeming that it was probably cancer causing; IIRC there's evidence suggesting that the US EPA had been corrupted in order to pass glyphosate for use. The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) and WHO have reportedly since determined that it is "safe" [enough] for human consumption and the ECHA (Euro. Chem. Agency) have determined that a ban is not required.
Pulling glyphosate would be devastating. But keeping it if it's causing widespread cancer would be continuing to ruin lives too. The Tories controlling the UK would IMO be more likely to let the proles die and support the farmers (who historically have a Tory preference). I prefer the EU's scientific and cautionary stance to the "will it cause loss of profit for shareholders" stance that we're going to be seeing much more of.
>I prefer the EU's scientific and cautionary stance to the "will it cause loss of profit for shareholders" stance that we're going to be seeing much more of.
I might too, but the question is if they are free to make their own laws or bound to EU law. Not whether EU law might be better (it obviously will be better in some cases, and worse in others).
> "Having to wait" not as in actually waiting (e.g. as if Brussels would somehow slow down the pace of law-making in the UK) but in the sense UK will have to adopt and enforce EU laws
There is no definition or synonym of "wait" that matches your attempt to salvage your initial argument.
No salvaging, what I wrote above is already in my initial argument. I'm just clarifying it further in case somebody got confused.
I wrote: "you can make your own laws and not wait for some committee of 20+ countries and some Brussels bureaucrats to decide their "one size fits all solution".
This means that (with the exit) the British people can make their own laws and don't have to wait for EU bureaucrats to make (one size fits all) laws for them.
I'm not a native english speaker but I don't think that makes any difference in this case, as the meaning from the above first comment is quite clear (and can hardly be read in another way).
What exactly do you find difficult to parse, or think that could be read in another way? Care to give us a plausible interpretation of my initial comment that is in a different spirit to my subsequent rephrasing?
As I wrote: "What exactly do you find difficult to parse, or think that could be read in another way? Care to give us a plausible interpretation of my initial comment that is in a different spirit to my subsequent rephrasing?"
I don't have any nefarious "purposes". If anything, I clarified what I mean in 2 follow-up comments to help anyone stuck up with the phrasing discuss the actual points.
If you don't like my use of "having to wait" you can always refer to the other 2 comments, and tell me any counter-arguments you have with my actual point as paraphrased there. Unless you want to stick to criticizing my use of english and avoid any more difficult subjects.
I still consider the initial phrasing perfectly valid for what I meant, which is: "UK people don't have to wait for EU bureaucrats to make laws for them anymore, they can now make their own laws" -- without being forced to automatically comply with any law or directive the EU puts out.
The UK not being able to make its own laws (as your original comment implied), seems to me to be a quite different thing to having to adopt EU directives (as you are now talking about), and I feel like it's exactly this kind of confusion (deliberate or otherwise) over the years that has contributed to the atmosphere that lead to Brexit.
I gave you a specific example. From this point on, I consider you a troll, but for the record:
The play of words "directives vs laws" doesn't change the fact that UK law is trumped by EU law (sorry, "directives").
The fact that the UK can "make its own laws" is insignificant if those laws have to comply with EU directives (and if new EU directives invalidate UK laws).
Nobody doubts that UK government can draft laws -- the nominal process of putting words to legal documents and enforcing them.
That's not what anybody means when they contest that the UK can't draft its OWN laws. Make one's own law obviously means: "as they see fit", not "but only in accordance to EU law".
>and I feel like it's exactly this kind of confusion (deliberate or otherwise) over the years that has contributed to the atmosphere that lead to Brexit.
The only confusion is between a sovereign state that can make any law its people want (in accordance to any international treaties they've signed) and one that has to consider the law of EU above its own. And you perpetuate it purposefully.
Even the current UK government doesn't try to argue that the UK has lost its sovereignty by virtue of its EU membership. Its own white paper on Brexit acknowledged that the UK was still entirely sovereign.
For the record, I'm really not trolling, but my position on the sovereignty argument is that for me as a UK citizen, it just doesn't matter since I have such a minuscule say in how things are run either way. And I tend to find legislation that comes from the EU (like the abolition of mobile roaming charges, or the working time directive) far less objectionable than the laws that UK politicians draw up by themselves.
>* Even the current UK government doesn't try to argue that the UK has lost its sovereignty by virtue of its EU membership. Its own white paper on Brexit acknowledged that the UK was still entirely sovereign.*
It's not something that's dependent on being acknowledged though. If your national laws have to comply with the laws (or directives if you prefer) passed by a third body, you concede your sovereignty. That's explicit in the very notion of sovereignty -- no matter how politicians might spin it.
>but my position on the sovereignty argument is that for me as a UK citizen, it just doesn't matter since I have such a minuscule say in how things are run either way.
That's a justifiable position one can legitimately hold.
But others can also legitimately feel that it very much matters. And historically and morally, the issue of sovereignty of a national state was never a light one to be set aside with "who cares, we don't very much affect our national policy anyway".
At best it's a stance that's ok for times of plenty or favorable laws, but that starts to matter more when the decisions that are taken go against a countries interests -- and there is no way to overrule them in the national level because even though e.g. 90% of the British are against, 60% of EU policy makers want them.
And despite the talk now being of right wingers being in favor of Brexit, we can very much imagine the opposite: a right wing EU (with e.g. Marie Lepen, the Netherlands guy, some German equivalent etc) that imposes right wing directives and laws upon a progressive Britain. (In fact we don't have to look that far for that: the EU has long impose right leaning labour laws upon more left leaning states).
What baffles me is why you see "but only in accordance to EU law" as a bad thing. Of course I want UK laws to be "in accordance with EU law", it's a positive thing in my mind.
And in those cases I have typically sided with the EU (I'm British).
Data protection laws, anti-trust laws, labour protections, a concerted effort to combat cross-border tax evasion (that the UK ruined by opting not to take part, due to it's enjoyment of being a fucking tax haven) just to name a few.
Seriously, when it comes to laws that protect the average schmuck, the EU is far from perfect but it has been a hell of a lot better than what our own politicians when it comes to looking out for us.
I'd rather be closer to Europe than closer to the US. No question, especially now with that batshit lunatic they have in charge.
Sure. Lets say the UK wants to implement an immigration point system for evaluating which immigrants to let in. They can't do that while being in the EU.
The question that was asked was "what laws is the UK unable to implement because of the EU".
And I gave an example. The EU prevents the UK from making this law. And if the UK wants to pass this law (which it does!!!), then it needs to leave the EU.
This is a perfectly valid reason for leaving the EU. Because the EU doesn't let you do this thing that you want to do.
The EU forbids its member states from reinstating capital punishment; if, for example, the fellow who attacked Parliament last week had lived and the UK wished to execute him it would be unable to.
As I recall, EU directives were behind the ban on traditional units of measure in the UK, although that may be incorrect.
Why is the national level different to the continental and regional levels?
You can apply that same logic to counties: Greater London is very different than Leicestershire. Why should Leicestershire apply laws that are designed to fit London workers? Why can't they make their own laws?
Forget counties, why not neighbourhoods? And so on.
I'm obviously not serious about this, but the logic doesn't hold just because your nationality is different. The average briton has far more in common with the average french, than the average londoner has in common with the average belfaster.
I'll say what I said before the referendum: the EU cannot strive for the closest relationship possible because that would encourage other countries to leave. There must be a price, an ongoing cost.
Britain is trapped with a forked strategy: it can go the Singapore route or the supplicant route. The two are incompatible and neither of them is realistically feasible. The Singapore route is what hard Brexiteers want but there's no mandate for it, and nor is there plurality of votes in it. The supplicant route is what Brexiteers will attack, and there probably isn't a majority of votes in the Tory party for it.
The UK's political landscape are in the wrong shape for the negotiation to come. Parties would need to be configured into those that are split according to negotiating strategy. Since they aren't, the fork will weaken Britain's negotiation throughout; every attempt to go down one road will face extreme resistance from those who prefer the other path.
Britain is screwed, AFAICT. Myself, I'm aiming at November or so to get out.
> * the EU cannot strive for the closest relationship possible because that would encourage other countries to leave. There must be a price, an ongoing cost*
Which is a symptom among many of how grossly dysfunctional and fragile the EU is. It's also compounded by the TARGET-2 mess and Germany's obligations to the South through rescue packages. Commenters above talking about the EU being a "voluntary alliance" conveniently obfuscate this.
the EU cannot strive for the closest relationship possible because that would encourage other countries to leave. There must be a price, an ongoing cost.
I don't understand why this wasn't a centerpiece of the Remain campaign.
The EU is a protectionist island in a global economy filled with large ambivalent actors. It's less evil, more like self-preservation, or an immune system. There has to be surface tension to retain mass, and there has to be barriers because that's it's raison d'etre.
I understand the game theory, but I think politically, it would be easy to spin this as the EU being a bully who punishes you if you don't play with them, and many voters would prefer to tell such a bully to bugger off than to play along (indeed, a lot of the Leave campaign was already about how Brussels bullies Brits into doing things they don't want).
Because, as it was also seen in the US election, it wasn't possible for them to win.
It will be interesting to watch, nothing has been negotiated, that's the irony, nobody even knows what they voted for. I can't imagine Europe making it easy though.
I don't see how it was impossible for Remain to win. There was <4% margin; different turnout demographics could have swung it. I can imagine holding it a week earlier or later could have led to a different result.
The risks are really only economic. And those can be solved with trade pacts... without having to sacrifice any other independence such as with laws, courts, and borders.
I'm from Canada and our economy (and defence) depends heavily on the US, we both strongly benefit from an economic relationship. It's mutually beneficial, as all pacts should be. Yet we don't have to worry about policy being dictated out of NAFTA or worry about the economy of Mexico - which is totally different than Canada - dragging down our own.
Once you look beyond short term economic risks I really don't see thee problem.
It seems to me that smaller countries have the healthiest democracies - one of the reason government functions so well in Scandinavia and here in Canada. The problems with US politics is largely the result of the disparate views of regional communities. Just look at the vast cultural/economic/educational gaps between California, the 'south', or the midwest.
Those gaps are even greater across Europe, so I'm hardly surprised that various countries in the EU, not only people in the UK as we've seen recently, is feeling uncomfortable with the idea. You're just lucky you don't have the Euro to further lock you into the relationship.
Edit: Also the idea the EU stops wars seems ridiculous to me in 2017 given we have NATO and the UN... and that the west only really cares about economics. Sanctions like that were done to Russia or Iran would not last long in a western country, they'd cave in so fast. Pretty much eliminating any risk of internal EU conflict without assuming total economic destruction.
This is all a good thing nonetheless. Trade deals generally bring a lot of wealth and other benefits to both sides. Still, it's definitely not historically the case that you can get the benefits of free trade without sacrificing some independence.
> Er, didn't Canada just sign a trade pact with the EU which does sacrifice some of the independence of their borders, laws and courts? CETA will:
Yes, if anything this supports what I'm talking about, this is why I'm critical of the EU, dealing with EU bureaucrats always goes beyond strictly economic interests... but still CETA is hardly comparable to the ever expanding scope of being part of the EU.
Nor would I assume that agreements between the UK + US or Asian countries would necessarily include EU style requirements... especially considering the UK leaving EU for such reasons.
That plus TPP failed for similar reasons... it was far too complex and include thousands of pages of policy that go beyond simple mutually beneficial trade pacts.
Regardless, just because other trade agreements are bad and include baggage doesn't mean the UK should just bend over and take it from the EU. We should strive for better policies. TPP was a disaster and the recent reconsideration of NAFTA should make us rethink how we approach trade pacts. It's an opportunity to evolve.
But to evolve it needs to be part of the public forum. CETA passed very quietly in Canada. I hardly remember any talk of it until it was already well beyond debate. Much like they tried to keep TPP in secret backroom meetings. If it became a political issue earlier I'm not 100% sure CETA would have passed in it's current state.
It's interesting. I agree the world would be easier and better if we could create trade deals without these extra rules. My impression is that they're all necessary parts of fair deals though.
> Nor would I assume that agreements between the UK + US or Asian countries would necessarily include EU style requirements
Sadly, they will. As an example, the UK trade deal with India has hit problems already (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-uk-brit...) because 'we cannot separate free movement of people from the free flow of goods, services and investments'. It's not the EU: trade deals necessitate much more than just agreeing to both remove your tariffs.
Some of these extra restrictions are pretty clearly necessary I think. You need to ensure matching certifications and quality standards and IP rules for the entire area covered by a free trade deal, and enshrine that in law on both ends. If you don't, you have no penalties (by definition, for a 'free' trade deal) for companies that move from the EU to Canada (or vice versa) to avoid some IP rules, or to sell products that wouldn't be up to scratch in the EU. I don't think there's any way you can solve that other than having the same rules for the whole area.
The arbitration courts are more contentious. I'm not sure exactly why they're necessary, or what alternatives there might be there.
I think there's a good argument for why the tie to free movement and more open borders is necessary too. The LSE has an article with the general argument, and some concrete examples: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2016/07/14/free-movement-f.... Essentially: if businesses can move around freely, people have to too, or you can screw your whole labour market.
I'm fairly convinced that this isn't ideological (or the vast majority isn't, certainly). It's not that the EU is pushing this beyond what's necessary for the economics, it's that the economic interests necessitate a lot of these rules, and trying to build a trade deal without them can blow up in your face.
Are there parts of these trade deals that could be removed without consequence? Genuine question, I really don't know.
Definitely agree though that more transparency and better explanations of all this to the public are important, that part is certainly an enormous mess right now.
> The arbitration courts are more contentious. I'm not sure exactly why they're necessary, or what alternatives there might be there.
If you agree there should be rules, you must also agree there should be a court for arbitration.
Of course the countries could use their local courts, but courts are hierarchial for a reason. Unless one country decides to subject itself to the other countries supreme court, it seems that an independent court is needed for the deal?
The risks are most certainly not only economic. The EU influences almost every aspect of the UK in one way or another.
Immigration and travel are both affected. The ability to travel and work in any country in the EU is a massive benefit which will likely be much more difficult. Visiting family in friends outside of the UK could become much more difficult.
Our laws are affected - there will be nothing to stop the UK Government from bringing in even more draconian and invasive spying laws [1] or scrapping the Human Rights Act as they have desired to do for so long.
The wonderful thing about the EU is that it has for the most part done nothing but protect people, and I worry what will happen when we leave.
Yes, but being a EU member requires treating ECHR [1] rulings as binding. Afer leaving UK will be free to disregard them (and it has already manifested intention to do so)
[1] which is distinct from ECJ, and not an EU organisation.
Trade pacts don't really cover what the EU does. The EU goes well beyond traditional trade pacts in services. Take for example passporting for financial firms. Also it provides a much better legal framework for disputes than arbitration tribunals. Unless you think it's a good idea for your judge one day to be your lawyer the next.
Comparing NAFTA to the EU shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how far reaching the EU is. We are only at the beginning of the economic integration. Take for example the recent progress on the digital market. One advantage US startups have is 350m consumers immediately, something the EU is only just starting to bring in.
As for peace you might dismiss it but Western Europe has experienced the longest period of peace in its entire history by a massive margin. To put that on NATO and the UN but not the EU seems odd considering conflicts outside that involve NATO and UN member countries.
Your analysis of democracies seems very limited. Why did you exclude Germany from that list? Why don't you include Greece on you list of small democracies?
> Also I seriously don't think of the Brexit that the UK leaves Europe. I think the UK and the EU will strive for the closest relationship possible. The only thing that I see changing is that the UK withdraws from a formal contract with the EU with the hope to negotiate a better deal.
It's against the EU's best interests to give the UK a good deal in Article 50 negotiations. This has been said over and over again and the arguments are still just as valid as they were right after the vote: giving the UK a good deal sets a precedent.
Likewise it was obvious that the UK would trigger Article 50 and wouldn't hold another referendum because it would have been against their best interests to do anything else.
Cameron played an international game of chicken, risking the UK's special privileges in the EU and the 51% called his bluff. Not following through would have meant losing the only trump card the UK had available in EU negotiations: threatening to leave if the UK can't have it "their way".
It's basically a scenario of Mutually Assured Destruction but the UK actually pulled the trigger. The UK had no other choice than to follow through and file for Article 50. The EU has no other choice than to give the UK the worst deal both sides can agree on. The incentives are simply stacked against a mutually beneficial agreement because either side backing off would lose their face.
Of course there are still open questions: will the UK accept a shoddy deal or just let the negotiations default to a complete exit, will Scotland force a Scottish referendum (and what happens if Britain tries to prevent it, what happens if the referendum succeeds, will the EU accept an independent Scotland back into the EU or will they punish it to appease EU members fearing similar fragmentation), will UK-based international companies pivot to adjust to the new situation or will they relocate to stay in the EU, etc etc.
These are all detailed questions with answers that are very difficult to predict. But the two predictions that have been evident from the start are: 1. Brexit will happen and 2. it's in the EU's best interests to make the experience as unpleasant as possible.
It's in the interest of some member states to give the UK a better deal than the deal that is in the interest of the EU. Whether this nets out to EU offering something less bad that the worst possible remains to be seen.
You are lucky then as you always have the choice to leave the UK and enjoy the protections of the EU.
A lot of the coverage is focussed on trade/immigration etc. but there are lots of wonderful human rights protections and consumer protections that are provided by the EU which the British government will be excited to get rid of. It's that that worries me.
Take the surveillance overreach for example. Thanks to it violating EU law there now has to be a rethink. Or the Human Rights Act that the tory's have wanted rid of since Cameron was in office - because they don't like some of the rights if guarantees.
> IIRC the human rights act and membership of the ECHR are separate to the EU.
Membership in the EU requires membership in the ECHR, that’s why Britain can only after Brexit go back to the human rights of the 1600s that the elected government wants.
It is almost certain that the British economy will not collapse. That said, it is also virtually certain that there will be at least a loss of economic growth, possibly a recession.
The worst prediction I've seen by reputable economists (though that was before it became clear that May was going to push for a hard Brexit) was a loss of 9% of GDP growth by 2030.
The bigger problem is that Britain is already facing significant structural challenges that are going to be compounded by Brexit. Too much of the economy is centered in the area around London [1], leaving the rest of the country relatively poor, and British productivity has consistently been low [2], compared to the US, Germany, and France. As Piketty discussed [3] (I'm greatly simplifying his more detailed analysis here), this leads to Americans working a lot and earning a lot, France and Germany trading income for more free time, and Brits working like Americans to have the economic per capita output of France and Germany.
This is not a good situation to be in to face additional economic challenges. This does not mean that the economy will implode (which would be rather unlikely), but it does create unnecessary stress.
Is it possible that some of the areas outside of London may benefit by having more competitive trade pacts with individual nations outside of the EU?
One note on productivity in UK:
My observation of UK business culture can be summed up as low-energy and stagnant, and that's compared to US business culture, which I don't like. An example of this is how low developer salaries are in the UK compared to other nations, relative to managers and bosses. I was blown away by how overpaid the managers are in the UK, and how underpaid the "doers" are.
My company's UK office reflects this. They are a notably low-energy group compared to our other offices. There are bright lights who seem to be cowed into submission by a cultural norm of never showing excitement or passion in the workplace. I'm sure there are benefits to removing emotion from interactions to an extent, but wow does that feel suffocating.
The UK economy will not collapse because of this, but it will cost them billions in the short term and a few basis points of yearly GDP growth for the next decade, and that really adds up.
What's even worse is that the UK leaving the EU can destabilize the Euro, which is already on a knife's edge. If the Euro collapses we'll get a worldwide recession, with a staggering human cost.
It's too easy to dismiss concerns as doomsaying. We know from history that civilization doesn't progress in a linear manner. It's entirely possible for societies to make mistakes that take a century to recovery from, and the EU and the US are not invulnerable.
The late economist Wynne Godley explained why the Euro couldn't work in the long run and described how it would cause problems like Greece back in 1992 [1]. There is simply no way a supra-national currency could work without a federal budget. It's probably time to accept that the Euro will likely fail no matter what we do. Sadly, the people of Greece have already paid a terrible cost...
I'm familiar with his work. Many economists gave similar warnings. The Euro was a poorly conceived idea, no doubt. That is a sunk cost, though. The question is how to best go forward from here.
Even if a Euro breakup is inevitable (it isn't; it can muddle along indefinitely if all countries adhere to a gold-standard-like fiscal policy) then a carefully premeditated breakup 8 years from now is much better than taking out the support beams now and watch it all fall apart.
The Eurozone hasn't even recovered from the 2008 crisis. The banks haven't been reformed, unemployment is still high, millennials are still struggling financially. Even if the countries agreed the Euro has to break up (and they don't) it would still take years of negotiations for a plan to materialize. There is nothing that can be done short term that wouldn't be a total disaster. So kicking the can down the road is likely the best option.
That would require huge reorganisations (probably including constitutional changes) of all the Eurozone states. While possible, I don't think there is much appetite for giving up more sovereignty much of Europe.
Sure, what could possibly go wrong with a radical decision taken by a narrow majority, with a significant part of the voters that supported it having racist motivations (even if the concept of Brexit itself is not racist), others motivated by lies (millions to the NHS et al) and the vast majority of economists describing it as a shoot in the foot?
I don't think it will be "doomsday" either, but I think believing that things won't go downwards is an exercise in self-fooling.
What exactly would you expect to change when nothing has actually changed yet?
What you're saying is as disingenuous as me saying that since all the horrible things people are afraid Trump didn't happy after the election before he came to power there was nothing to worry about.
> What exactly would you expect to change when nothing has actually changed yet?
This is my view point:
Reputable well known economists and analysts:
"If the UK votes to leave then the UK will suffer great economic consequences. As soon as in the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2016 the UK will see a recession which will continue into 2017, 2018, ..."
A few months later the same people: "OK, 2016 was actually quite solid, but 2017 the shit will hit the fan"
A few months later the same reputable people: "OK, it seems like we need to make some corrections to our prognosis. There will be no recession, not even in 2017, but the economy will definitely not grow as fast as it would otherwise."
Me: "Why is still everyone hysteric. Seems like nobody knows what is really going on. Nothing bad happened yet. Let's chill and watch"
People from before: "Of course nothing has happened yet!!! Why did you think something should have happened by now? Who did tell you that, ey?"
The Pounds fell as an immediate result. Since then the economy has been held up by very strong consumer spending which can only last so long in the face of rising prices and increased capital inflows taking advantage of the weaker pound.
The decline is not going to be sudden it'll be a gradual thing as companies move staff out and new investment fails to happen.
I'm guessing that your let's chill and watch comes from a secure position. There are people who 10% increases in prices makes a massive difference and they can't afford to just 'chill and watch.' This is going to have very big consequences.
The IMF said in 2015 that the pound was up to 20% overvalued though. I recall people talking about it being overvalued for many years before that - in fact, the pound being so highly valued (which was great for the financial industry but not that much else) probably led to a lot of the deindustrialisation over the last few decades which is probably where a lot of this really started.
Anyway, the U.K. is a fairly large advanced economy, and as a bystander outside the U.K., US and Europe, I find it pretty far fetched that what you say will occur, and that the U.K. will have problems long term outside the EU. There might be some short term pain but it's probably for the best long term.
I'm struggling to see why being outside of a large trading bloc is better than being inside a large trading bloc. You've said it is better off long term so there must be advantages to being outside.
EDIT
Just to clarify the UK exports much more in services to the EU than it imports from the EU. Services are exactly the type of thing that the EU is different from other trade deals. The UK loses what it has a surplus on and has to pay more for all the goods that it has to import.
As we are all guessing what might be: How about - Brexit as a stunning own-goal. The english can take their ball but the game will go on. Germany now the biggest contributer to the EU have unprecedented leverage in a lopsided eurocentric parliament over the other states including France (beneficiary) to forge a new closer, more centralised Europe solving many of the issues of the old. They must be rubbing their hands with glee. They folded! They walked away! New treaties are signed. There is no deal with Britain and no compromise. The time expired and they come back empty handed, a hard Brexit on the terms of the old treaties. No more pesky englanders to thwart every move to a superstate with a market of 650+ million people. When Europe speaks old allies of Britannia will heed and shrug their shoulders at their erstwhile master. Power and influence will drain as Britain becomes a poundshop, surrounded by EU states, international flights flying overhead. Shannon will become the US-Europe air hub Heathrow's new runways now unused car lots. Money will flow outwards from the City to Berlin the centre of the new Europe. The best minds will simply follow the money and leave the doomed vessel. Europe will use their sheer weight against the rump state at every turn until one day cap in hand it will return, new capital - Edinburgh... or it might work out great.
The worst effects will be felt when the UK is booted from the EU single market. UK trade policy has been based around being an entry point of products from elsewhere into the EU. When that goes poof, a whole lot of trade will go directly from the world to the EU countries and those areas will do their very best to make free trade agreements with the EU. The UK will simply lose out. That's the jackhammer awaiting the UK.
Similar to yourself, I'm an EU citizen living in the UK. The sheer hysteria from certain quarters is getting a bit much and my social media use has definitely changed in the past few months (not going on it as much due to the sheer bile on display).
As to work and the economy, I guess we'll see. My company is expanding at a good rate, and if worst came to worst then I could up sticks and bring my family home.
This isn't the end of history. It's one country leaving a political block, one that has it's pros and many cons. The majority decided they want out. That's the way it is.
The EU has been giving favours to the UK for decades. A better deal is not possible; the best next thing would be something like Norway, but since the UK doesn't want free movement, that is also out.
My wages, the value of my home, are now worth 20% less. If you're ok with that, good for you. I'm not.
My access to the EU faces being curtailed (not just travel inconvenience, but the permanent movement of my family). If you're ok with that, good for you. I'm not.
I could go on. You say: "maybe I'm just chilled". How about, maybe you're forgetting to put yourself in other peoples shoes, or grasping why it matters to them. If you're ok with that, good for you. I'm not.
Who would sell their home in a foreign currency? You're stating weirdly (imo, wrongly)
You would sell your home in sterling. Sterling has been devalued. If you then wanted to act internationally, you would be curtailed to the tune of 20%
Might not matter to you, but matters to me. I'm partially hedged but the vast asset base of the UK, and the salaries of all its workers, has been devalued by this move.
And don't get me wrong, economics is the least of my concerns.
I couldn't agree more. We've seen months of hysterics in the press and all over social media. It's unwarranted but it seems stuck in some sort of feedback loop.
I hope we'll get your ongoing rights in the UK sorted quickly. I'm fairly certain we will. Some stuff may be worse, some better.
The hysteria is doing nobody any favours - I've friends in London who seem convinced we're on our way to ethnic cleansing and probably war. They're scared, over very little.
> Also I seriously don't think of the Brexit that the UK leaves Europe.
What do you mean by "Europe" here? I guess you don't mean the Union nor the geographical continent (since the UK is obviously leaving one and staying in the other), so you must mean something else, but I'm not sure what.
I guess he means Europe the collection of states which is in the geographical continent. Which the UK is also obviously not leaving. And which is totally uninteresting since a "collection of countries" do not have a common interest, nor a common policy, nor a common market, nor a common anything.
The "Countries of the European Continent" have exactly the same international clout that any random group of world countries: without structures, without organization, without agreements, a bunch is just a bunch.
I agree with your observations entirely. It seems the UK is gripped by mass hysteria. Close friends of mine appear to believe this is the end of the world.
Just to put things on perspective. Most of HN people are developers, and the average salary for a developer (30K) is bigger than 70% of the population. A 50K salary is far from unusual (that under junior developer in a bank) and that better than 90% of the UK. I lived years on a 25K salary, which is better than 50% of the population and that's the kind of salary where it does not take much to put you in big trouble. Weathering the storm is a luxury for a lot of people.
So I'm not saying that it is the end of the world. But look at Spain. If you look at the raw economic numbers, Spain has barely changed from before 2007, yet everybody I know (and that's a bunch of people) has been affected negatively.
It does not take the end of the world to make big trouble for a lot of people.
It doesn't help the EU is acting like a petulant wronged partner. We didn't even cheat on you!
I mean, seriously, £68 billion for stuff we're not going to be able to use? Grow up and rework your budget. No trade negotiations until we leave?
It makes them look like utter fools, one dose of actual democracy deciding they've had enough of backdoor federalisation and they're threatening every punishment they can think of.
I know others now express regret at voting leave, but I now start to have the opposite, I voted remain and the way Junker et al. are acting is a stark reminder at how undemocratic, bureaucratic and unrepresentative of its citizens the EU is.
Petulant? It is your comment that seems quite emotional; "Grow up", "utter fools", etc. It is entirely rational for the EU to try to get the best possible deal they can.
How is it emotional to simply describe how people are acting? I don't understand your comment's relevancy?
How would you describe the EU's actions right now? Rather than firing Junker and reforming, they're going to try and punish the UK to try and frighten their own citizens into staying EU members.
That's not rational or a considered response, that's an emotional one at odds with what is best for all of Europe's citizens.
From my perspective (as a Brit) it's us that have been the petulant ones, demanding special treatment and opt-outs from this directive or that, then throwing a temper tantrum when we couldn't have our own way.
All of that, combined with a relentless decades-long campaign of lies and vitriol from the Murdoch press, resulting in such gems as "the EU demands we have straight bananas!" among various myths, falsehoods and outright lies about the EU;
The entire leave campaign has been fuelled by an outrageous sense of entitlement on the part of a huge swathe of the population that cannot accept that we are no longer a world power to be reckoned with, and the hilariously inaccurate perceptions people have of the various EU bodies and how they work.
The EU is far from perfect, but by comparison the UK is a fucking catastrophe of systemic classism, crony capitalism and unelected hereditary privilege.
As a collective, you voted to leave.
Now Junker et al represent the interests of the remaining members, of which you are no longer a part. Game theory dictactes that the EU must offer unfavorable terms to leavers.
Big Money is, in itself, in a different game level
Taking in mind the recent past we can expect that Juncker will represent the interests of Juncker. Maybe also the interests of a small fraction of Europeans. No more, not less.
I sincerely hope that today (and obviously the day it actually happens) isn't something that I look back on with sadness in the future. I live in the UK, and am really saddened by the way that politics is 'progressing' - in fact, regressing to a time where nationalism seems to be the voice, and one which I think will inevitably lead to conflict. Combined with the Trump situation in the USA, I am extremely pessimistic about the future - more so of my four step children, who are all going to reap the adult world that people such as Johnson, Gove and Farage have sewn.
Nationalism may have a voice but it hasn't been defeated on the continent at all. Golden Dawn, 5 Star Movement, Front Nationale, AfD. UKIP are currently polling 10% in the UK and have just lost their only MP (who it turns out only joined them to marginalise Farage in any EU referendum).
There's a case to be made that the increasing centralisation of Europe is provoking a national reaction in members states. You don't have to be Greek or Italian to empathise with why people might not be happy with their situation or the "German" approach to solving it.
I'm hoping that with the return of a lot of powers to Parliaments (be they Westminster or devolved) that there will be more of a distinction between parties and more debate around policies. The public will have to own far more than we currently do - the most high profile recent example is the "Tampon Tax", everyone seems to acknowledge it shouldn't exist but politicians currently shrug and say "Europe". That excuse is going away.
Well, you didn't see a war between Germany and England though... Bosnia, Iraq etc were not part of the EU. The point was to create a closely integrated Europe so that war would become unthinkable just like a war between England and Scotland is unthinkable now.
Of course it was nationalism which caused conflicts in Europe. Did democracy prevent Russia to invade Ukraine?
UK simply decided the European project is not worth it and they are better off trading as an independent country than part of a european family. This may prove true but we will have to see and for how long.
If the EU reforms and sticks together I fail to see how leaving it is a good choice. I hope this will make EU stronger and more competitive as UK will force their hand to do more.
I'd argue we didn't see a war between Germany and England, or Britain as we are these days, as we were occupying them in the aftermath until 1949 and maintained a British Army of the Rhine there until 1994. The Allies also established a new Constitution and political consensus that is vehemently anti-war - witness German reluctance to be involved in fighting in recent NATO and other coalition conflicts.
There's also the small matter that the Russians were effectively still occupying half of Germany until the late 1980s. The origins of the EU came that trade prevents wars. The Democratic Peace Thesis likes to discount all sorts of countries as "not a democracy", a good example of No True Scotsman. Given we're seeing Turkey rapidly heading towards dictatorship, Hungary's far right leadership despite being an EU member, and all the problems the US is going through it is a salient reminder that just because you are a democracy doesn't mean you stay one. One of the pretty unique things about the UK in the EU is its political history - France is on its 5th Republic, Germany has only been reunified within living memory, Italy's system is from 1946 etc. You can see how relatively new, potentially fragile systems of Government might want to prevent resurgences of problems, especially under the shadow of the Cold War.
Edit to add: Oh - there's also this thing called NATO as well. When two countries are in a military alliance they also tend to avoid going to war with each other. NATO is of course also the body that intervened far more decisively than the EU in the Bosnian and Kosovan Wars - those pesky examples of genocide in Europe that people overlook about how fantastic and peaceful we are as a continent.
A military alliance (such NATO) alone cannot prevent war between its members. The recent events(Trump threating to pull U.S. support or Turkey's behaviour) proves how fragile a such alliance is. I wouldn't be surprised to see Turkey leaving NATO and join an alliance with Russia.
If a member decides that the alliance doesn't serve its national interests anymore nothing can stop it from leaving and joining a different alliance.
The point of EU was to make european interests indistingusible from national interests. It seems it hit a brick wall on UK.
>> "It wasn't nationalism which caused conflicts in Europe, it was a lack of democracy."
The Yugoslav wars were centred around nationalism. The Irish conflict, again was centred around nationalism and civil rights (you can't seriously think there wasn't democracy in Ireland?).
Except I didn't say that the Falklands happened because of the EU, did I? It happened because Argentina invaded British sovereign territory, and the British defended it. Interestingly, not a single other EU country aided the UK.
France aided the UK and was the UK's best ally during the campaign. They declared an arms embargo against Argentina, they allowed use of french controlled ports in West Africa, they provided lots of information about Exocet missiles and they aided British intelligence in preventing Argentina obtaining more of them.
Our biggest "frenemies" during the Falklands were the USA and Israel. Israel were selling them arms (or attempting to) throughout the war and the USA was neutral (with lots of Argentinian sympathy) until their hand was forced.
> USA was neutral (with lots of Argentinian sympathy) until their hand was forced.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage would disagree with you. Reagan wanted to keep the USSR out of Argentina so the public line was neutrality even with Thatcher pushing him to do otherwise. Behind the scenes the US provided intelligence to Britain.
The USA was, at least at first, divided on the issue and didn't exactly come swingeing down on the British side - many members of the Reagan administration thought that aiding the UK would hamper their anti-communist efforts in South America generally and I guess as hegemon they just wanted the whole inconvenient problem between two US allies to go away.
Later when it became clear that the UK was going to war, that was that. They did support the British position but didn't get entangled publicly for their own reasons, not least there's no point getting involved if your ally can take care of it anyway.
That link showed that France did help the UK. Also they provided ports in West Africa for UK ships as well as details of all the weapon systems sold to the Argentinians. At least as much help as the Chileans.
I haven't said anything of the sort; I don't have enough knowledge of the period to comfortably comment on it.
I only commented above to explain why, it seemed, you were disagreeing on whether the multi-European-country group existed before the Falklands conflict.
Highlighting the Economic in EEC hardly seems relevant either, seeing as the EU is basically just MaastrichtTreaty(EEC) - a treaty which insofar I'm aware makes no mention of supporting member states' wars, "because.....reasons" or otherwise.
Since the founding of the EU there have been several steps towards common military work. In the mid 2000s EU battlegroups were created. In 2009 SAFE laid the foundations for a EU military. Since then EU forces have been involved in peacekeeping missions.
The EEC was very much just an economic body. Since then the EU has been taking steps in multiple areas beyond just it's initial economic competencies.
>Except I didn't say that the Falklands happened because of the EU, did I?
I understood that you implied that the UK 'did Falklands' because EU 'let the UK do it', as if .. as would have been proper, membership in the 'union' would have meant such unilateral warfare would have been anathema.
I mean, its not like the EU wants to sell billions of dollars of weapons to the world, including its enemies.
If anything, the existence of the EU almost certainly prevented things getting worse. While British warships were busy heading down to reclaim the Falklands, Spain was on the verge of invading Gibraltar...
Yeah, as someone with familial connections to both the Falklands and Gibraltar, this is absolute bullshit.
No citation needed, it's just cobblers.
There were Argentinians attempting to use Italian tech to cross the bay of Gibraltar and target Royal Navy assets at dock, but they were arrested by the Guardia Civil.
The UK does lack democracy. It has an unelected upper house and elections for the lower house are profoundly undemocratic. I have never lived anywhere in the UK where my vote counted for General Elections.
> It wasn't nationalism which caused conflicts in Europe, it was a lack of democracy.
This is infuriatingly vague.
What are you complaining about? That the various EU councils aren't directly elected? Well, they are all delegates of politicians who have been elected in their home country. And to have a direct election makes no sense, because it's not like a Swede will vote for an Italian politician. For that to happen the EU would have to turn into some kind of United States of Europe, but "surprisingly" people who complain about a lack of democracy also always want their own home country to remain autonomy. Which is a driving force in the exact opposite direction: less direct democracy, let the elected politicians duke things out while trying to work towards the best interest of their people.
I mean this is international legislation we are talking about, trying to navigate the different laws and customs of each individual EU member. It's inherently goddamn complicated and it's probably for the best that we let the delegated politicians deal with it for the most part.
Or is it about the supposed "unelected bureaucrats in Europe telling us what to do!" Because that's another part that I find really fucking annoying about Eurosceptics who talk out of their ass: the complaint that EU makes things more complicated and creates more red tape, when there hasn't been any other project remotely as effective at reducing as much bureaucracy from the European continent as the European Union.
You hear these complaints of "They're wasting time on creating more red tape and banning curved bananas!"? Because that too is nonsense, to the point that there is an entire blog dedicated to debunking such Euromyths[0]. Here, I'll give you an explicit example of one that I investigated myself:
On the 29th of May 2014 the Telegraph[1], the Daily Mail[2], the Independent[3] all published virtually identical articles accusing the EU of being out to ban classic perfumes. The next day the Times (sorry, no link) did the same.
None of the articles mentioned a source (of course), but they turned out to be rewritten versions of a Reuters article from a day earlier[4], pulling paragraphs out of context and omitting key information. The actual proposal consisted of a ban on three ingredients, and an increase of the number of ingredients that have to be clearly labelled, because they have been shown to be significantly allergenic.
A special report by Reuters from 2012[5] actually discussed much stronger restrictions that the perfume industry feared for, in anticipation of a report on allergenic ingredients by the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety. Moreover, that 2012 article discussed how the perfume industry has already been changing many of its formulas for decades, and went on to explain how a new labelling regulation – enforced by the same proposed legislation – would force them to disclose many (allergenic) ingredients of their secret formulas. Among other things, this would make it harder for brands to get away with changing their formulas unnoticed.
By contrast, the 2014 Reuters article indicates that the final changes were fairly non-controversial, likely because the EU held a number of public consultations with the perfume industry between 2012 and 2014. In other words: the European Union had been transparent to and cooperative with the cosmetics industry in implementing changes to its perfume regulation.
Now here's the real kicker: when researching this, we discovered that the main legislation surrounding cosmetic products – Regulation 1223/2009 – replaced the old directive of over 3500 pages, which was patched with 55 amendments and full of incoherent terminology, with a single coherent regulation of about 200 pages, greatly reducing costs for the cosmetic industry. Not that anyone took notice of that. And before you blame that old 3500 page document on the EU, realise that that was basically all the separate national laws thrown together onto one heap of amendments - hardly the EU's fault. Read the press release here[6].
A 3500 page document! Mind you, that wasn't the fault of of the EU, that represented the underlying, incompatible laws of the various member countries. And the EU fixed that and simplified it to a universal 200 pages, applicable everywhere. Do you have any idea how much administration costs that saves across the continent?
And this happens again and again, and you never hear anyone talk of this.
Yes, but that's just one body of the EU. The "lack direct elections" argument usually applies to how the EU is full of sub-groups that aren't directly elected. But like I said, I don't think that's necessarily bad.
Obviously words are a lot cheaper than action, but it's at least a small consolation that the current Government, for all its varied faults, remains a pretty globalist and free-trade one (despite being responsible for one of the most protectionist and nationalist actions in the last century).
Which is to say that I don't think the nationalist right-wing will be mollified entirely by the exit negotiations. If the UK had the equivalent of a Front Nationale government leading Brexit right now I'd find that much more worrisome.
Whatever one may think of the politics or if one's country should join/leave, it's absolutely true that EU has been a big factor in keeping the peace between European nations for decades. The Nobel Peace Prize to EU got a lot of criticism because of politics, but I think it was important to show that EU has helped keep the peace.
From what deeps analysis does this certainty come from? Seems like a propaganda point to me. Of course we cannot say what would have happened without the EU or how that would have come to pass, but I think the burden is on your side for showing that Europe could have gone to war without the EU.
If the question 'why peace?' was come at in a different context, in my opinion the EU would simply not rank as a primary cause. It would be something like (in order)
- Mutually Assured Destruction
- US/Soviet military dominance
- German Holocaust Shame after WW2
- Rising living standards/post war cultural revolution.
- End of Empire as a plausible goal for a nation
Furthermore, the UK wasn't a member for decades, and I don't think war was viewed as a possibility at the time it did join.
I know there has been intra-nation peace in western Europe since the end of WWII, but how do we know it was due to the EU?
Both the peace and the EU would seem to as easily explained by the post war situation where European nations were now second tier economicly, and threatened by a big external nation. The reward for war was no longer there, and the need for cooperation was high.
All of your points also existed before the second world war. Russia was already a big empire, other big empires existed throughout the history of Europe. That never stopped European countries from attacking each other. Basically, almost everything else has staid the same, the only change was the EU and its predecessors came into existence after WW2. That's certainly not a proof (it's impossible to proof such thins without a alternative-history-viewer-machine, which hasn't been developed so far) but it is a very strong hint.
I don't think either one of those was true after after WW1.
Russia, though large, was not regarded as a serious military threat to Europe. When attacked by Russia, Poland (!) beat Russia in the 1920's and gained half of the Ukraine and half of Belarus in the subsequent peace treaty.
An although a European nation was no longer the world largest economy, they were still regarded as the powers that mattered. The Washington Naval Treaty on arms control between the wars even gave the US a ship allocation on par with a European nation.
The world at the time still revolved around Europe and the actions of European powers. To be premininet in Europe was to lead the world.
This has been the longest period of Peace in Western Europe in history by a massive margin. That's evidence. Non top tier countries used to fight all the time in Europe before.
I don't think either one was true the case after after WW1.
Russia, though large, was not regarded as a serious military threat to Europe. When attacked by Russia, Poland (!) beat the snot out of Russia in the 1920's and gained half of the Ukraine and half of Belarus in the subsequent peace treaty.
An although a European nation was no longer the world largest economy, they were still regarded as the ones that mattered. The world at the time still revolved around Europe and the actions of European powers. To be premininet in Europe was to lead the world.
Yugoslavia wasn't part of the EU, so it doesn't apply here. Fact is no EU country attacked another EU country since the EU (and its predecessors) came into existence. Before that time the same countries attacked each other on a fairly regular schedule.
I don't buy this argument.
There was a long period of peace after Waterloo in 1815.
After WW1 the powers of Europe were still big players on the world stage and Germany still felt it had some sort of imperialist destiny to fulfill.
After world war two Europe was exhausted and reliant on the usa for protection from the warsaw pact.
Can we really say that it's the EU though? Europe has many international organizations that include member nations. Is the EU responsible or NATO or the UN or a simple exhaustion of war and extreme nationalism? The EU as it exists today has been alive fewer than 30 years! That's a blip in time.
Europe will remain strong, regardless of this, won't it?
For some conflicts, yes. The Good Friday agreement in Ireland is a legal fiction, only possible because of the EU. Basically, the border vanishes because both sides are members of the EU and thus, via the EU have the right to move across that border at any time for any purpose.
Are British HN'ers taking any mitigating steps due to this whole situation?
I'm currently in the process of incorporating in the Netherlands, and it turns out setting up a Ltd is a lot more expensive over there than in the UK. I just don't feel that the UK will make good use of my tax receipts any more, so I'm almost obligated to take my work elsewhere.
To be honest - one of the most disheartening parts of this experience is the lack of coherent opposition to the process being carried out. It's like we've moved quickly from a slender majority in a doubtful referendum to an almost entire acceptance that the consequence must be the 'hard' brexit narrative.
The only voices actively trying to counter that are former prime ministers (sorry Tony - right message, really really wrong guy) and the Lib Dems who lack the political presence at the moment.
Would you ask the same question if the "slender majority" was in your favour? If the referendum yielded a remain vote, would you accept people saying "hang on this margin was really slim, why are we accepting this and why aren't we opposing remaining?"
The fact of the matter is this - a referendum was held with the pre-agreed rule that what the majority decided would happen, and the majority of voters voted to leave the EU. So thats what needs to be done, regardless of how "slender" the margin was. All of this talk of "opposition" to Brexit just shows how many people really don't get why the vote happened as it did.
I think the problem is that a lot of Brexit support came from the working class - Labour supporters typically. So Labour are left to accept Brexit but push for a soft version which is what they seem to be doing (at least that's how it appeared in PMQ's today). Again though the problem is a lot of their base seem to want a hard Brexit so meaningful opposition with increased support isn't likely.
EU Citizen here, living in the UK or "wherever I may roam".
I have my Ltd in the UK. I am sticking to the UK for the time being, and will keep a close eye at:
1) Tax scheme/calculations for dividends.
2) Ability to transfer money in & out and at what cost (in the extreme case of Capital Controls or limiting transfers abroad).
3) Exchange Rate of GBP against EUR, USD, and a couple more so I make sure that my payments are not losing 10% on the get-go.
All the above are extreme situations. If I feel that my income/finances are threatened, then I will act, otherwise I will continue to support UK economy as UK has been "supporting" me (not really), these years.
GBP is not going to "collapse" any day soon (if at all). But if I feel that there is an "incident" imminent (e.g. an important negotiation about to fail, and I am expecting a large payment in GBP, I would still receive it and pay taxes within the UK, but I wouldn't mind receiving it in USD or EUR.
No, I'm not. Not sure why you'd feel the UK would make less good use of your tax receipts.
UK corporation tax is on the way down. It'd be higher in NL anyway than in the UK. Enjoy the cheaper rates and if you really feel obligated, give the surplus direct to whatever cause you want. I doubt going via the EU is the most efficient way of doing that.
indeed, but NOT campaigning is guaranteeing party death (disclosure: party member). The lib dems are pretty useless right now, but they may have a big swing next election and they need keeping alive until then. Generally, they're the only sane party. Mostly because it's easy to have ideals when you're not in power.
It's really sad that the Brits didn't succeed in getting rid of the first-past-the-post system. Here in the Netherlands with our somewhat extreme version of proportional representation we still have similar problems, but they seem to be much less than over there.
Yeah this. The fact they got completely played by the Conservatives in the last coalition, and failed to achieve their main goal (they lost the voting reform referendum they bargained everything away for), I am even more gloomy about the LD's prospects than I am Britain as a whole's. Maybe the Labour party will schism, and a new, strong lib-left party will form. One can but hope.
Depends where you are, but I'd say: find the contact details for your local party branch, and see if you can help with campaigning for the local elections this May.
At 11% in the polls we're not going to stop Brexit right now, but certainly (where I live) we have a real chance of becoming part of the local administration for the first time since 2005. From little acorns...
I'm not British but I live in the UK - I have based my entire life here, family, house, job, car, everything - and a year ago, I would have never considered leaving, this is my home. But right now, I'm weighting my options. I'm a huge believer in the European Union, so why would I want to live in a country that's not in it? And increasingly, I think the answer is - I wouldn't. So although I haven't started packing yet, if, for example, it turns out I have to get a visa to stay in the country that I consider my home, then I will most likely pack everything and leave to a different EU country that is more welcoming.
I have had the pleasure over the last few years or working in the UK with so many excellent people from elsewhere in the EU - from Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Germany, Portugal to name a few.
It really upsets me that the inclusive welcoming culture that we used to have (not to mention the economic benefits) is being destroyed.
I'm in the opposite situation, living in Germany as a British national. Since the EU is likely to respond in kind to any actions it takes out against EU nationals in the UK, I'm probably going to face the same in return, and it scares the crap out of me.
I've built my life over here, have a family and I really don't want to be forced back to the UK away from my children.
At present I'm considering taking out German nationality since I've pretty much been here long enough to do so, but I'm not keen on being forced to give up my British citizenship as a result. Being British is a core part of my identity.
The goalposts have been moved and after being encouraged to take advantage of freedom of movement I now find myself up against the wall as a result. This stinks.
> I'm not keen on being forced to give up my British citizenship as a result. Being British is a core part of my identity.
I hear you.
I have two nationalities (German and Italian). If Germany would force me to choose between them, I'd probably remain German for practical reasons -- but at the same time, it would greatly alienate me from the German state. As opposed to what politicians claim: that it would strengthen my integration into German society.
Being part of two nations, two peoples, is just fundamentally who I am, and I insist on governments acknowledging it.
I can't speak for gambiting, but I'm also going to leave the UK as a direct consequence of Brexit. It's not that it would be impossible to get some visa if I really wanted, it's that revoking the freedom of movement sends a strong signal that they don't want us here.
When I was choosing where I'd go for university, the UK wouldn't have even made the shortlist if moving here was even slightly more inconvenient than just walking in. The only thing the UK had going for it is that I already knew the language. There are plenty of other places in Europe where skilled labour is in demand.
Which is completely wrong. We have no problem with engineers, doctors and skilled people coming to the UK. We just don't want an open door policy where its free entry to EU migrants with no skills at all.
Let me ask you this, if the US or Canada offered you a job, would you refuse it as their requirement for a visa means they don't want you there?
I suspect a number of people do have problems with engineers, doctors and skilled people coming to the UK. The only question is how numerous those people really are.
Personally, I absolutely would refuse a job in US or Canada because it requires a visa. And there's a bit of a difference between requiring a visa on entry, and suddenly requiring a visa from someone who is fully settled in a country and didn't need a visa previously, don't you think?
From speaking to other EU nationals who've made their home in the UK it's more feeling like they're no longer welcome than the legal burden which is making them think about leaving.
It's a switch in the power structure. My wife is polish, working and living in germany. We don't need to ask for anything, no permissions for her to live here, to work, healthcare, taxes, all the same as for me. The most notable thing she can't do is vote in the national election (though she can vote in local elections). There is no interference from a government employee who may have a bad day - it's a right, not something you need to apply for.
Requiring a visa or a work permit would switch that around. It may expire and not be renewed for a formality. It certainly would make our live more miserable by introducing an extra element of uncertainty.
It might not be difficult to get one, but I'm fairly certain it would make me feel unwelcome. Right now I feel like I belong, thanks to EU freedom of movement I can come and go as I please - with a visa, it's never this easy, you are always questioned at the border, because you are not a citizen. My other concern is what will happen once my mum gets older and I will want her to come here so I can take care of her - I might get a visa as a working professional, but would they let her come? Again, I can live in any other EU country and just not have this problem, so it's definitely something I have to consider.
Recent events in my country (the US) have shown that visas don't really mean much of anything - here one day, gone the next. Most times they will be fine, but you can't trust them.
It just makes you feel more foreign though...You also have to consider deportation if the political environment changes or for some reasons you fail to extend your visa. That may give you a feel of insecurity and shortly said you may no longer feel "at home" anymore.
As a binational person, I can tell you that this is a much more emotional issue than you believe.
Being asked to leave your citizenship behind isn't just some paperwork, it's a very big blow to your identity. In my case, it would have almost no practical effect (I'm European either way), but it would be a huge issue.
It's kinda like marrying. You may claim that it's just paperwork (and I'm sure some people really feel that way), but I felt there was something more about it. Sure, I had been with my now-wife for eight years at that point, but being the act of marrying made it much more Serious (yes, capital S). If you've ever been married, maybe you can relate to that feeling.
Strongly considering this. The privacy issues caused by the Tories is also a factor. Thankfully I'm securely enough employed that the economic impact shouldn't be too bad for me personally, if it were to go through.
I'm formally getting EU citizenship (which I'm lucky enough to be entitled to as a citizen of Ireland). There is going to be increased demand for this, particularly as people realise that there is going to be a hard border (which seems inevitable, given the statements on freedom of movement). I won't actually move, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of personal and small businesses move in exactly the way you're suggesting.
How are you applying for EU citizenship? All I can find is that it is automatically granted to all Nationals if member states. I.e. if you are Irish then you automatically have EU citizenship.
If you are from Northern ireland, you have an automatic right to irish (and UK) citizenship. If your parent is Irish, and still alive, if they become a citizen, then you can too. This can be continued down the generations (presumably, but I'm not aware of it happening very often).
They can call for whatever they want, it's going to happen in some shape or form. To be honest, any border controls between NI/ROI will be a nightmare for people and with the political situation disintegrating in NI again there couldn't be a worse time for it.
It's virtually impossible to have tight and effective immigration controls, and open EU border. Also if UK ever passes laws that allow produce with EU import restrictions to be available it will mean hard customs border too... NI is at a genuine risk of crisis, or soft Brexit.
Why are EU countries allowed to have borders but the USA cannot?
Genuinely curious.
On this side of the pond its double plus ungood badthink to support borders of any sort, which makes discussion about the importance of borders in UK/EU sound really weird on this side of the pond.
> Why are EU countries allowed to have borders but the USA cannot?
The USA has always had borders, and absolutely is allowed to have them.
> On this side of the pond its double plus ungood badthink to support borders of any sort
No, it's not. It's just one set of extremists as to what the rules should be at the border portrays any disagreement with them as being opposed to borders (the same group does the same kind of generalization on other issues as well) to avoid engaging in debate about the substance of their proposals on the rules. There's a very small minority of actual open borders supporters, and except for the one group that rhetoricallt conflates that small group with their larger opponents, they basically are irrelevant in policy debate.
The letter is written by one of the two parties involved. There's no guarantee that the other party agrees with anything it says, except for things agreed upon earlier; basically the fact that the UK can ask to leave the EU and that a two-year deadline applies.
AFAIK incorporating in Netherlands is very cheap. You need 1 euro starting capital and the notary fee, which is a few hundred euros. Are you referring to the initial incorporation costs or the ongoing tax burden?
The UK has incredibly generous tax breaks for new companies. SEIS must be the most generous in the world, which for investments of up to £150k allows you to write 50% of the investment off directly against your tax bill and a further 25% if it fails. So in reality, you get a 75% reduction in exposure.
Combine this with R&D tax credits and it is a very tax efficient place to run a small tech startup.
That is income / corporate depending on your company legal form.
There is a similar tax break for startup as well, it is called startersaftrek.
There are R&D credit / subsidies as well.
I think you missed my point, which is you are legally unable to do this. Small businesses operating in the UK are required to pay tax within the UK, as is the case with much of Europe.
Further, unless the countries have a tax treaty, you might incur double tax and an arrest warrant may be issued if you fail to comply with the rules.
Sure, I'm well aware that big companies play games with this sort of thing, but the rules are pretty stingent and your SMB cannot take afvantage of the same complex legal structures.
> I think you missed my point, which is you are legally unable to do this
You missed my point, which is it's 100% legal to do this, it's not unreasonably difficult to do this, and people do this right now.
> Small businesses operating in the UK are required to pay tax within the UK
So, incorporated in the Netherlands (or elsewhere) and do business there, but subcontract the work to yourself through a UK company that is paid stuff-all (to avoid income/corporate tax). Then take the profits as dividends.
> your SMB cannot take afvantage of the same complex legal structures
Individuals can take advantage of these loopholes; e.g. most media celebrities do work as an employee of an off-shore incorporated business. Heck, you can get them with a UK business and UK employee (sole trading/contracting), if you can show non-habitual employment (i.e. more than one employer).
The law is as such if the company or directed from the UK, then you have to pay UK tax. Further, most of us would simply be bankrupted defending yourself.
You're peddling bad advice. I say this as someone who has had HMRC investigations against them.
I'ma software developer so I have skills in demand in Europe, but the language is a barrier in some places. My girlfriend is Polish and speaks a little German, and I have been considering taking German language lessons.
That said, a few people I know have moved to Germany without speaking the language and said they did fine and everyone was really friendly, so perhaps I could learn once I was there.
He gambled 64 million people's livelihoods to defend his party against another, that right now, doesn't even have a sitting MP (for those outside the UK, that's the UK Independence Party).
There's tables at Vegas that haven't seen that level of loss.
While technically true, that's deliberately misleading to those not familiar with the UK. That party got 3,881,099 votes (12.7% of all, making them the third biggest in results) but the craziness of the First Past The Post meant that didn't translate to seats.
While FPTP is responsible for its own share of distortions, in this case it's the use of Single Member Electorates that was the primary cause of UKIPs poor seat-for-vote return.
For example, something very similar happened in the last Australian Federal election, which doesn't use FPTP (it uses full preferential voting) but does also use Single Member Electorates: The Greens got 1,385,650 first preference votes, also making them the third-biggest party, for the return of 1 seat (out of 150).
He might have made a gamble for political reasons. But, don't forget that there had been strong demand for a referendum on the matter since at least the mid '90s. It was long overdue, and (being cynical) had been denied because the outcome wasn't going to be what the government wanted (i.e. they knew the majority would have consistently voted leave, and didn't want to hold the referendum until they could guarantee a remain vote).
When given the chance to express their true opinion of EU membership, the majority voted leave. Not a particularly shocking outcome, given the lack of love the EU had in the eyes of most of the populace, and always had despite several decades of indoctrination.
Not of the total electorate almost 30% did not vote passing major constitutional changes on such a small majority is counter to all custom and practice - A local Allotment society would not pass a rule change like this.
Not holding stupid, vague referendums with a mere 50% majority requirement, instead of a supermajority, that can trigger major, complex constitutional changes would be a start.
The rest of the people knew about this vote and they didn't care enough to vote. What are we supposed to do about that? Should we force everybody to vote?
>As Article 50 is triggered today, many European expats in Britain, as well as European-minded locals, are packing up, moving on or eyeing up their options. Brexit brain drain could spell disaster for industries like technology already facing shortages of skilled talent.
Sorry, what about the brain drain when those "European expats" came from their countries into the UK?
Or that doesn't matter because it was all "within EU" anyway?
Still, UK hadn't paid for their education and other benefits while they were growing up in their native countries, and their native countries didn't get taxes from those people while they were living in the UK.
And those countries would also like to have their scientists etc stay and work there to improve the country's industry and economy.
Brain drain works both ways. You can't lament brain drain from an economy that actually caused brain drain, and now those brains leave it.
What about the brains who never moved now moving away?
I am British and have lived here for nearly 40 years. I'm currently looking at an Irish passport (Irish wife) or maybe France. My taxes and know how will be better put to use somewhere our values (openness, tolerance, mutual respect) agree.
If having an irish spouse and not living in Ireland is all you've got, then you're not getting an Irish passport. On the other hand, you definitely can have one 3 years after you've moved here.
My theory on brexit has been for a long time now that, after entangling the EU with the Euro, and globalization actually hurting the first-world EU, the UK is simply attempting to isolate it's vulnerabilities to the coming impacts of globalization.
If my theory is true, it means essentially that brexit is designed not to create wealth in the UK, but to make the losses less than the rest of the world by comparison.
With such a large surveillance state though, and a massive propaganda operation wing, the UK has done a good job confusing it's people into the core reasons because to admit them would be to admit the weaknesses of the global monetary system it has had a large part in fostering on the world through the IMF, the World Bank, and fiat, fractional reserve central banking systems not tied to gold or oil (bretton woods without the key things that made bretton woods good).
Your theory assumes a lot of forward-thinking, competence, benevolence and cooperation between subsequent prime ministers.
The simpler explanation is that David Cameron's gamble to silence the more extreme side of his party (and UKIP) failed. His (or his pollsters) incompetence led to this, helped along by protest votes and online Russian campaigns.
A less charitable explanation is that certain Tory elites took advantage of the narrow majority to preserve power in their hands - there are a number of disagreements with the ECHR.
I saw it the opposite way - the UK elite sees the EU as being too slow at negotiating free trade treaties (too many other EU countries are protectionist) and think they can do better.
It's amusing to read all these calls for a more democratic EU, specially when comparisons with the USA are made.
EU membership is voluntary, you can leave if you want. What would happen if an USA state decided to leave? Check the history books.
Truly democratic nations respect self-determination principles. In this sense, USA is closer to the authoritarianism of Spain than to democracies like Canada or the UK itself.
To be fair, some of the EU leaders have made it clear that they intend to make the brexit so costly on britain that no one else dare leave. So, it remains to be seen how voluntary EU membership is.
> At a time when the growth of global trade is slowing and there are signs that protectionist instincts are on the rise in many part of the world, Europe has a responsibility to stand up for free trade in the interest of all our citizens
This is pretty rich. Protectionist "instincts" are on the rise in the UK and the US first and foremost today, so maybe those countries are not in the best position to lecture the rest of the world against them?
The crux of the matter is, countries have no friends and no moral imperatives, they only have interests; May's letter is very short on what the interests of the EU are, to try to give the UK a "nice" deal. How would the EU benefit from a deal -- any deal at all -- vs no deal?
(Also, this is a small detail but maybe not an insignificant one, negotiations cost money; if there is no hope of gaining anything, why should EU negotiators even show up? It would save money to simply not talk at all).
Corbyn for Labour Party: "There are Conservatives who want to use Brexit to turn this country into a low-wage tax haven." Well, full automation = no wages at all, ehehe. I am not sure how it is going to end and it is not my strict business anyway but there is a chance, not a slim chance imho, we may well see some sort of sci-fi dystopian UK emerging from this process. Interesting times ahead. Disclaimer: spent five years in the UK on the cusp of the 2007-8 financial crash and could see this was going to happen somehow someday, all starting from there and from perverse globalisation enhancing inequalities imho.
This story is going to get very boring very quickly.
Little will be decided until close to the deadline in two years.
In the meantime life will go on as normal as it has for the last year.
What is much more interesting is what will happen shortly in France and whether the phenomena that led to Trump and Brexit are repeated elsewhere in Europe.
So far it's looking good. Wilders did not make significant headway in NL, AfD is down significantly in the polls in Germany and the EU politician who returned to head the SPD in Germany has dramatically reversed that party's flagging poll numbers.
Opinion polling for the expected 2nd round of polling in the French presidential elections put Macron at almost 2/3rd majority vs. Le Pen.
Overall, pro-EU sentiment in EU member nations is rising.
Maybe, but opinion polls got it wrong in the cases of Trump and Brexit.
It seems a lot of people who intend vote on the right (for the want of a better term) are coy about it when asked.
However, I mostly talked about relative movement of polls. While not entirely impossible, it seems implausible that people should suddenly all get more coy. Especially after "their side" just had huge victories. If anything, I'd expect them to be less coy than before, because they just got validated.
And the one absolute I mentioned about the French runoff is 2/3rd vs. 1/3rd. Trump and Brexit polls were never that far apart.
Le Pen is steady at about 1/3 Macron is at about the same with everyone expecting the final 1/3 to support him in a run-off. Seems pretty safe for Macron. I don't know much about France, is there ever much of a shift before the second vote historically?
Since the actual outcome now seems to be that it'sore England leaving the UK, than the UK leaving the EU - doesn't that constitute a huge change in circumstances, enough to warrant at least a parliamentary election before the exit is triggered?
I mean, imagine if the Brexit ballot had said "Do you want for the UK to remain intact in the EU, or be broken apart with England and Wales leaving the EU?"
Or if it had 3 options
- remain
- leave
- leave, if the UK stays intact.
Leave would never had won. Which makes this whole charade completely insane.
Leave would probably never have won if the ballot paper specified leaving the single market, either.
It might also not have won if the ballot paper had said "leaving will provide no extra money for the NHS, actually probably less money because the pound will be devalued and much of the NHS workforce comes from Europe, and also various prominent Leave campaigners are actually eager to dismantle the NHS and privatise healthcare bit by bit".
Depends, I still haven't worked out who ultimately is driving this shi(p|t) but it would have been relatively easy to get a lot of Scottish and Welsh people to vote to leave England based on a millennium of ill-sentiment that "we're being governed by them without a proper say" and to get the English to ditch the rest based on "they get more spent on them per capita" and writing a big number on a bus.
Pages 1 and 4 are text (allow text selection), the other ones are images (on iPad)
I wonder what process could have led to that; it is not simply a matter of having one section produced in a different way from the other, as, for example, page 5 continues an enumeration started on page 4.
I had the feeling they were resting on the inherited wealth of their empire for rather long now. They always wanted special treatments in the EU. They even pay mad bucks on their royals for basically nothing.
Maybe this Brexit will go down bad and they will change their ways and join the EU in 10-20 years as 'real' members.
But I don't have many hopes in that. Probably they will end up like Switzerland or something :/
The first being that the Royal family actually makes the UK money because they cost less to maintain than what is made up for in brand image and tourism benefits.
The second is that because they don't pay tax, it means their enterprises are not as efficient and the return on the crown lands is about half of what could be expected on a normal enterprise.
The source for both these viewpoints are videos on YouTube. The first is from CGPGrey (I think), while the second is a reply to that video.
>> I may not like the way it cuts sometimes, but no way in hell I'll ever put it down.
Why not? It's not a perfect process and blindly accepting it because 'democracy is good' is dangerous.
Personally I'm against Brexit and don't think we should go through with it. BUT the reason I don't think we should go through with it is that most voters were woefully uninformed or completely misinformed. Both sides were lied to and manipulated. Having a referendum on an issue that experts fail to understand is just plain idiotic. If there was a way to have a well informed vote and it didn't go my way I would accept it without complaint.
I think democracy should be reserved for when people are given the true outcome on the ballot. Here the secret was that the kingdom will dissolve in case of leave. Had people known that the outcome would have been different. I think the will to keep the UK is stronger than the will to leave the EU. That, and the fake news storm about NHS money and whatnot led to this. It's a stolen referendum by the forces that wanted to leave.
Scotland now wants to get out of the United Kingdom and stay in the EU. When this thing settles down, the EU will probably be OK, but England will stand alone.
I'm British but live in the EU. I've been watching this from the outside and it makes me so very sad and despondent. Forgetting any inconvenience on my part (of which there are very few -I likely have access to an EU passport.).
It's fucking stupid. No ifs, no buts, no apologies and respecting of alternate opinions. Just fucking stupid. Every single reason for leaving (other than "leave so the EU can get on without UK obstructions) has been debunked. Poeple protest voted, they voted with feelings instead of sense. They ignored people who knew what they were talking about and went with idiotic soundbites. I don't know what the actual fuck is going through the minds of our government, but it's not sense.
Hell, it's going ahead. We don't have the manpower, experience or knowledge to replace things that have been done with the EU. The boring administration. Standards, procedures... All the little details that mean the difference between something that works and something that doesn't.
I trust the EU oversight much further than the bunch of fools in the UK. Too entwined with their own interests. Who has bought them, why are they so scared of newspapers, why they seem utter cowards... We have some wonderful examples of how education and arrogance can seem like intelligence.
Aaaand yup, this is a rant now. I shall carry on, because now I'm finding it a little cathartic.
I'm not left wing, not right. I earn well above the average. I'm a pragmatist and I firmly believe that having strong and successful neighbours is good. I do not want a neighbour that throws the metaphorical shite over the fence. There are poorer countries in the EU. Movement is good between countries and those that people complain about will not bother taking the leap when their home country is made attractive enough not to.
Nothing is perfect. The EU is far from it, because it involves people... But they move slowly in a direction of interest to its citizens. Not just in the interest of the people of those governments.
It's been pissed away by liars and imbeciles now. I cannot unite behind it in the same way I would try to stop idiots from walking off a cliff, rather than joining them.
It's rather notable that the UK has the option of aborting this process during the 2 years. (According to an EU official who's name I forget), it's incredibly unlikely that anyone will go back on this though. The uncertainty of having this option available is bad for the UK though. Markets hate uncertainty.
It doesn't have the option per se: it can ask to abort it, and it can do so with the agreement of the 27. Also, the 27 can agree to a date far off in the future (it doesn't have to be two years).
It seems staggeringly unlikely that they would allow us to abort without a major change in relationship, though, and politically things would need to get extremely difficult for the UK for that to become palatable. All the exceptions and discounts we get right now would absolutely cease.
There is no restriction anywhere on the content or effect of the agreement reached under Article 50, so in principle the exit terms could be readmission, which is equivalent to aborting the process by universal agreement (it could also be to extend the term for which they are still in the EU pending exit indefinitely, with the same effect.)
Once Article 50 is triggered, there are two possibilities: either they are out with no special status in two years because no other agreement is reached before that time, or some agreement is reached within two years which gives some other terms, which terms are nowhere restricted.
A new European parliament resolution, which is yet be ratified.
"the UK will be able to revoke its notification of article 50 but this must be “subject to conditions set by all EU27 so they cannot be used as a procedural device or abused in an attempt to improve the actual terms of the United Kingdom’s membership”.
I thought Article 50 was very much a 'hand grenade', once the pin is out there's no going back. If the two years run out without an agreement being reached, doesn't the UK just get chucked out and revert to WTO rules?
> "subject to conditions set by all EU27 so they cannot be used as a procedural device or abused in an attempt to improve the actual terms of the United Kingdom's membership."
Is an interesting quote. It implies that everyone has to be in agreement? So one country could veto our remaining?
I'm assuming any remaining being agreed would also be subject to us losing special privileges we enjoyed yesterday.
Who knows what the final process will be following negotiations & interpretations.
Perhaps people didn't want 'ever closer integration' to a very undemocratic system of government.
Unpopular opinion, but the economy isn't everything. I'd much rather live somewhere with a smaller economy where there's actually a mechanism to remove those in power.
Sure enough Henry VIII leaving the Holy Church of Rome will lead to all kinds of disaster for the kingdom. Oh wait no, they actually went on to rule about half of the world afterwards.
Theresa May wants deep and special partnership with the EU, without contributing at all to its existence. If every country in the EU does the same, guess what, there is no EU.
And without EU, without compromises, without rules, without standards, without common legislation, nothing of value rests. Just a bunch of countries, a bunch of private enterprises, trying to cherry pick in each an every transaction, looking for the shortest of short term profits, continuously changing course, now associating with this country, now with this other. Now selling round bananas, tomorrow selling bananas polluted with lead. Today not allowing imports of bananas from Romania because they are not straight enough, and tomorrow not accepting them from Italy because they are too straight.
Foreign citizens get expelled with made up reasons, according to what the popular opinion of the moment is. Trucks get delayed or not in a complete obscure manner.
Products get made and exported without any respect for work or environmental regulations. Quality does not satisfy any kind of standards. Nobody can trust any foreign business because there is no institution to complain to in case consumer rights are not respected. Financial products are sold to steal savings from foreign investors - until this is recognized and foreign investors stop using those investment vehicles, completely destroying the market.
It's worth noting that all three of those countries are either in the EEA or have similar agreements. That means they're following EU rules without having a say in them. I'm not sure why you think they have more autonomy.
Additionally if you want to selectively quote statistics I can just come back with 4 out of the top 10 are EU nations. 7 out of the top 10 have to follow EU rules.
GP's muddled claim was "Autonomy is crucial to happiness". Given Denmark (an EU country) is number two (and has been number one three times in the past), his claim is wrong on it's face.
Edit: and that's without even addressing the ridiculous straw man of "autonomy" (all sovereign countries are autonomous - no country is forced to be or remain an EU member against their will)
A great thing about autonomy is the ability to quickly solve national problems. Compare and contrast non-EU Iceland and EU Greece. Both came near to collapse due to financial crises. Iceland jailed the bankers and recovered. Greece is in the EU straight-jacket, the corrupt bankers became kings and the people will be in debt bondage for decades.
Brexit is comparable to the Berlin Wall falling. Like the Soviet Union, the technocratic elites could not imagine it collapsing until the people willed it.
If Greece could have solved their problems the same was Iceland did, they would have done so. The reality is Greece was economically dependent on a lot of business that stopped when the Credit Crunch hit, but Icleand had relatively small problems with three banks defaulting after a bank run and loss of access to credit, about 10% reduction in real-terms GDP.
"Relatively small", because UBS was warning the Greece faced hyperinflation, military coup, civil war — and that was just from leaving the Euro and revaluing their currency in an orderly default where they didn't have to repay everything.
It's not just the EU that told Greece what to do, the IMF is part of the Trokia.
The EU should treat this like America treated secessionist states - the UK should be compelled to stay by force. Obviously there should not be any actual war, since the Brtis should just say, "well, all right."
Afterward they should be full, normal participants, just as every state is a normal participant in the United States and has equal and fair votes in the Senate and House of Representatives.
Why should this be done:
1 - America shows that it is great that there is a unified country, which benefits from huge economies of scale.
2 - Can you imagine how much money is saved by not having to have border control, separate visas and citizenships in the United States? The same applies to the EU.
3 - The EU should directly compete with the United States as the second of three world poles (Asia being the third).
4 - The good of the Union outweighs the UK's selfish and shortsighted act.
Why shouldn't history repeat?
Would America be better-off if it were split into two countries?
Would America be the world's leading economy (by far)?
Citing the close historical precedent I have mentioned, I do not think that the UK should be allowed to leave the EU. Its request should be denied.
A United States of Europe would be great, but what you're proposing is insane.
First of all, it won't work at all without military conflict, and from there it's World War 3.
Based on language alone, the EU would self-destruct so quickly you won't believe it if one EU country went to war against another, especially for the purpose of maintaining the "union".
Putting aside the lack of knowledge of the situation or what the EU actually is, the UK has nuclear weapons, the highest EU defence spending and a permanent UN security council seat. The EU has no army.
What you propose would mean the end of the UN, the end of NATO, the end of the EU and a possible WW3. And Russia would probably 'liberate' a few border countries from the 'imperialistic EU' while that's all happening.
Its request should still be denied. I notice you have not in any way attacked my historical foundation, secessionist states. The implication that the UK would detonate a nuclear bomb over this is laughable on its face.
I'm not attacking it because it is stupid and shows a shocking lack of knowledge of the situation.
The EU is not a country, it is a trade union with aspirations to become a full political union one day. You're talking like it's the latter when it's not.
You grossly underestimate the long-term importance of it and its institutions. it's not just a "trade union" as a glance at its budget will show. Anyway we obviously have a different vision for it.
It's difficult to see very much positive about this move; certainly there will be some benefits, but I expect greatly outweighed by the negatives (which will include higher prices, lower employment and probably lower standards for UK workers - the EU has consistently been the only organisation willing to drag us out of the dark ages).