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
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).