So, any choice ever made is permanent, never mind if the conditions change? Oh. How come the 1975 referendum is invalid then, and a new one was needed? Smells like "keep voting etc" ;o)
Looking at how the prospect of Brexit changed from "we'll bring you Empire 3000 and a pony" through "meh, it was all lies, but we won, nyah nyah" to "at least it won't be much worse than the Blitz...we hope," I believe that the conditions have changed enough. But whatever, let the British drive off a cliff if they so fervently desire their Splendid Isolation. Indeed, as you say, who am I to tell them "that's patently idiotic," even if I do think so.
>So, any choice ever made is permanent, never mind if the conditions change?
Yes. That's the entire premise of a voting process. The will of the people who vote, at the time the vote is taken, is binding even if they change their minds later.
If an existing process allows for it then I wouldn't consider that a "take-back." I guess it depends on the system involved.
You can't just decide a vote doesn't count because you don't like the outcome, though. Setting that precedent would mean no one who disagreed with a result would ever accept its legitimacy. There has to be a limit set somewhere.
You can, though, in matters of legislature and referendum.
A vote passing is not a suicide pact that locks you into that course of action between now and the heat death of the universe. It's possible to pass something, and then do another vote, later, to revert the changes you've made.
Likewise, in a parliament, you can keep bringing an issue up to a vote over, and over, and over again (See: Everything that Congress did after passing Obamacare). There's occasionally some set of procedures that prevents this kind of denial-of-service from being used all the time... And occasionally not.
This happens in referendums, as well. The same issue appears on the ballot every few years, until the people pushing it get 50% + 1 support for it.
It's often the only way to actually get social progress. Keep hammering on your pet issue, until enough people agree with you, and it wins.
As long as you're not breaking any laws, or referendum procedures, it's completely fair game.
It does run the risk of seeming undemocratic. Let's say that Brexit now looses because 52% of the people vote against it. Do you let it rest there? Are you just taking votes until you get the right answer?
I don't see why Brexiters should be silenced forever if they lose the next vote, no. We repeat other votes on a regular basis, and sometimes when the facts change, politicians and the people change their minds. Something as complicated as Brexit seems like a particularly bad idea to make an exception for.
If a subsequent Remain vote resulted in a similar situation where any real world option to remain in the EU would be regarded as a betrayal worse than leaving by a large fraction of the people that voted for it, I'd think another vote was actually necessary...
The Scottish seem to think that when seceding from a Union is a legitimate option, and if a referendum can trigger a secession from the European Union, then, well, what about those 1707 Acts of Union with England? I believe this will happen come April, and that the current pro-brexit crowd will promptly label it undemocratic and unpatriotic - after all, breaking free from the yoke of Brussels is Something Completely Different than rejecting the friendly rule of Westminster. Right?
Madness, I tell you, with only more madness in sight.
If we were to accept May's deal as it was in December, the UK would leave the EU but remain entirely within the custom's union. Afterwards, plans would be made for NI to stay within the custom's union and the rest of the UK to leave. However, there is a term in the 1800 amendment of the the 1707 Acts of Union that says:
“that in all treaties made by his Majesty, his heirs, and successors, with any foreign power, his Majesty’s subjects of Ireland shall have the same privileges, and be on the same footing as his Majesty’s subjects of Great Britain.”
If this term is broken, it reverts all the countries of the UK back to individual states - i.e. Scotland would be independent by default and there is a good chance they would not vote for an amendment to the Acts of Union because they would prefer to stay in the EU.
That leaves politicians with two options: Either keep the UK in the custom's union indefinitely, or break up the United Kingdom.
That, too. I don't see any deal as likely, however - Tories seem to be steering for a hard Brexit, and Labour only presents token effort against. Hard Brexit forecast, with showers of martial law likely.
By hard Brexit, do you mean "no-deal"? Because they are very different things. I think no-deal is looking like the most likely outcome at the moment. I can't see any chance of the tories putting forward a harder version of the May's deal before March 19th.
Interesting - I've not spoken to anyone who is both pro-Brexit and pro-Scottish independence. A lot of my pro-Scottish independence friends are in favour of it as a means of getting closer ties to the EU (a la Republic of Ireland). Indeed, the main political party in Scotland is pro-independence but anti-Brexit. Polite request: would you mind giving your reasoning for this stance?
It's quite simple really, I'm pro-Brexit for two reasons primarily: The EU has legislated against religious displayed in the workplace. The EU also has anti-reverse engineering laws like the EU Trade Secrets Directive that I dislike greatly. I'm pro-Scottish independence because I believe the British government is incompetent and malicious and it is best that Scotland is kept far away from its immoral behavior.
Having another referendum now we know what the actual options for leaving are seems democratic to me. But you won't get people, including politicians, that want a no-deal brexit to agree to it.
And even though Farage himself said, "if the referendum was 52/48 to remain then in would not be the end of the matter"
Having another referendum now we know what the actual options for leaving are seems democratic to me.
I am wary of the assumption that we really do know what the actual options are for leaving now. In particular, there is at least one other avenue that has not been seriously explored so far even though it's probably the one that had most potential to achieve (or, being more blunt, any realistic possibility of achieving) some of the major changes that attracted Leave votes in the first place while still having significantly closer relations with our neighbours than just crashing out. It's also the one that many of the Brexiteers among our elected representatives have been openly advocating for some time, contrary to the various stereotypes about how the don't have any alternatives to propose.
There is a lot of political rhetoric at the moment, particularly the whole "this deal or no deal" dichotomy from the EU, but we surely wouldn't expect them to say anything else in the current context, would we? However, it doesn't take much reading between the lines to predict that if we do end up leaving with no big formal deal in March then lots of small alternative arrangements will be made very quickly and both sides will talk further about making more comprehensive and permanent arrangements down the line.
I'm not British, but I don't see any evidence that people have re-evaluated it. The political elite, sort of people you see on HN, and press have been screaming about it from the start. The polls haven't really changed a whole lot [0].
As far as I can tell canceling it would just be saying "we don't have to listen to referendums we don't like".
The crux of the problem is there is no majority opinion, nationwide, for any of the possible options. The 52% voted for something that in reality doesn't meet the expectations of those people.
There are plenty of surveys showing that opinions differ from the original result depending on what the terms of exit are.
You need more complex questions like these:
"Imagine that, at the next general election, the
Conservatives supported going ahead with Brexit,
whilst Labour and the Liberal Democrats
[SCOTLAND:
"and the SNP", WALES: "and Plaid Cymru"]
supported
a public vote on whether or not to go ahead with Brexit.
How would you then vote if there was another general
election"
Let's go absurd to illustrate how difficult the issue is.
Public vote for A or B.
52% choose A
A third of B accept the result.
It is later revealed that option A will cost you a finger.
One third of A voters are ok with that and say it's worth the cost.
Another third are uneasy and say we should be able to convice provider of A that a finger should not be needed but said provider are unwilling to change their minds having stated from the very begining that this is the price.
The final third are sure that no finger will be collected and in fact the provider will throw in a free finger in the end anyway. And if they don't who cares.
Roughly 1/3 of A voters who still fancy some idealised version of A accept that it's not on the table right now or maybe never so join 2/3s of B voters saying we should decide again in the face of the new information. Because there is still no absolute majority in favour of any one of the real possibilities.
Back to reality:
> "we don't have to listen to referendums we don't like".
It's not that at all. to quote Dave Allen Green:
"A referendum result either is democratic or it is irreversible, but it cannot both. Any democracy should be able to change its mind, at any time. Just as no parliament can bind another, no electorate can bind another."
The 52% voted for something that in reality doesn't meet the expectations of those people.
It seems to me that a big part of the current political stalemate is that many people want to tell us what the 52% or the 48% did or didn't vote for, but almost invariably it's just their opinion/projection with no particular evidentiary basis. There have been relatively few decent surveys from just before or since the referendum, and even those we do have available don't support a lot of the inflammatory rhetoric and stereotypes about who voted either way or why.
"A referendum result either is democratic or it is irreversible, but it cannot both. Any democracy should be able to change its mind, at any time. Just as no parliament can bind another, no electorate can bind another."
This is true as a matter of law under our constitution, but of course politically the situation isn't as simple as that. Running another referendum would be expensive and time-consuming, and unless there was going to be an overwhelming change to the opposite view (for which there is little expectation on current evidence) it's not clear that it would actually resolve anything, whether the result was again a slight majority for leave or reversed to a slight majority for remain.
> I'm not British, but I don't see any evidence that people have re-evaluated it.
"In hindsight, do you think Britain was right or wrong to vote to leave the EU?" - Wrong overtook Right around July 2017, and has been ahead since, with a seemingly increasing margin [1]
forgot [1]
"Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union, or leave the European Union? (Asked after the referendum)" - Again, in the same timeframe, Remain has consistently been ahead, and the margin generally seems to be growing [2]
I think there is evidence to suggest opinions are changing. Even if there isn't, a second referendum would confirm that the people still want to leave on these terms.
Actually it isn't. The EU Court of Justice ruled last month that the UK can unilaterally stop the process known as "Article 50" and stay in the Union. (Previously it was unclear whether Britain could stay in without reapplying for membership.)
All it takes is a vote by Parliament and the political will to admit that it was an insanely stupid idea to ask people to vote on a deal that didn't exist yet.
Countries that have previously held referendums on joining the EU have done so after negotiations were 100% completed. Britain should have done the same when leaving: negotiate a complete Brexit deal first, then vote on that.
They're not being offered more goodies, just to remain under the existing terms. The ongoing negotiations are about the terms if they do leave, where there will certainly be a net loss of goodies.
Except they have already lost two major European agencies (European Medicines Agency and European Banking Authority) that are being relocated to Amsterdam and Paris.
The UK declared Brexit after Cameron obtained a special deal with the EU. They won't get anything like that if they come back after a Brexit fiasco, they don't have any negotiating power anymore.
Agreements for trade aside (which they can negotiate with EU still, and they will), why would they want to "come back"? To have their monetary police decided with undue Berlin influence and restricted lawmaking sovereignty?
Agreements for trade are not a boolean issue; you can have better or worse ones. They could want to come back if offered a better deal than they get by being outside.
No EU hater has so far been able to explain to me how exactly Germany is forcing all other member states to acquiesce to a monetary policy that's only in Germany's interest.
Please explain in detail how Berlin is overcoming the fact that it is vastly outnumbered in the deciding (and voting) bodies.
By using its economic and diplomatic might, unofficial channels, backroom deals, and friendly (or bought) satellite countries that vote the way they're told.
The nominal equality (e.g. re: number of votes) is like that old Anatole France quote: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.".
Strangely, neither France, nor the UK or any other of the large European countries could ever counter that with their own unofficial channels and backroom deals. They must be real Gentlemen, not to stoop that low!
The Euro has strict monetary policy. This favours economies like those of Germany, and makes it very difficult for economies that often need to dilute their currencies to stay competitive.
In a 'currency union', basically, there can be no shenanigans. It has to be a 'strict' currency, because it's not like the French are going to allow the Poles to just start 'printing Euros'. So, by the very nature of the shared currency, it's going to be strict.
When Italy, Spain and Greece start to have trouble making bond payments - this poses a problem. They can't just start printing Liras or Drachmas anymore.
When their economies are faltering - they would normally print money, dilute their currency, meaning everyone in the country is taking a secret pay cut, retirees get less benefits vis-a-vis other countries. But it's stealthy. Nobody sees it. But in Euros ... everything would have to be repriced for the economy to remain competitive. People have to accept lower pay. Retirees lower benefits. That is politically impossible.
And so you end up with high unemployment for a very long time while it sinks in that they are poor.
Germany was very wary of entering into the Euro because of their historical fears of currency devaluation. It was a big thing for them, to the point that it was a major factor in the rise of Nazism, and that whole WW2 thing. So when they did it, there had to be controls.
Most citizens of Europe would prefer a more trade-like situation, not a true political union. The EU is ultimately an elitist project and it's showing serious signs of strain.
Given the impact of the whole Brexit process on the British economy since the referendum date, I don't really see many EU countries willing to repeat the experiment again.
That fits the mood, at least among the pro-Remain press and social circles, but I'm not sure how objectively true it is.
Based on the facts we can now measure, quite a lot of the negative predictions from before the referendum about the results of a Leave vote have not proved to be accurate. We haven't gone anywhere near entering a recession, there weren't emergency budgets costing households thousands of pounds, house prices haven't collapsed, etc. Inevitably this also reduces the credibility of the same sources when they now predict severe negative effects over the longer term based on similar models and assumptions.
At least in some respects, it appears that the UK economy may be doing better than it has for some time. In some other respects, it's doing worse, but whether the cause is Brexit-related or other factors like austerity or increasingly protectionist global trade is unclear.
Probably the two biggest economic effects that have surely been triggered by Brexit itself are the softening of Sterling and the shift in migration patterns, but those are also areas where the change isn't inherently bad. Certainly there are other negative results as well, but a lot of those are more due to uncertainty and negative sentiment than anything that has actually happened so far, so while they are clearly bad for the UK and neither our government nor the EU leadership is going to win any prizes for effective government and leadership any time soon, it wouldn't necessarily be the case that another state considering leaving in the future would mishandle the process as badly as the UK and EU have this time.
It's a fascinating social experiment to watch, particularly as someone who is conflicted on the issue and has a lot of friends and family on both sides of the debate, because if you step back and try to look at reality from a neutral point of view, there's a lot of confirmation bias and selective reporting happening on both sides.
> Shouldn’t every member constantly threaten exit, then, whenever it wants more goodies?
Brexit has given Britain a choice between (1) the same EU goodies (cancel Art. 50), (2) fewer EU goodies (take the negotiated exit deal), and (3) no EU goodies (no deal Brexit).
As a strategy for “more goodies”, it's a complete disaster.
> Countries that have previously held referendums on joining the EU have done so after negotiations were 100% completed. Britain should have done the same when leaving: negotiate a complete Brexit deal first, then vote on that.
Wouldn't a second referendum be basically the same effect? Vote now on a negotiation result, with the ability to stay in the EU if that's the voting outcome. But that's not how it had been sold and structured from the start, so now it's seen as going back on the result of the first referendum. (and it wasn't established beforehand that revoking the Article 50 notice is possible, so it's somewhat understandable that wasn't the initial structure - although if it had been taken seriously, that possibly could have been established)
From a legal perspective it might be as easy. From a political stance this is near impossible. No leading British politician offers a narrative supporting the EU in any way. Theresa May doesn't really like Brexit, but likes limiting immigration and has a position of "the people voted, so we have to deliver", opposition leader Corbyn says "Europe is okay, but EU is to capitalism, but we need more socialism", Rees-Mogg and other Brexiteers claim that a good Brexit was possible. Others are not as loud and present. If Parliament now votes to cancel Brexit this will lead to riots from hard core Brexiteers, both in Parliament and on the roads of some regions of especially England. To cancel Brexit you need leading politicians to admit they were stupid and form a positive narrative.
> To cancel Brexit you need leading politicians to admit they were stupid and form a positive narrative.
Which may not be possible. It's far easier, after a turnover of leadership, to say "they were stupid", than it is for a leader to admit, "we were stupid".
I'm not in the UK, and I'm not that current on UK politics, but I think there is a bare possibility that this could happen. It would take a no-confidence vote against May, though, and probably before March.
Such a turnover would need an potential leader and such a leader is not in sight. Even if there were such a character they'd have to deal with characters like Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson who will always claim that a "proper" Brexit were possible if the UK would show the "strength" against EU and not being as "weak" as Mrs. May.
Mind also that maybe a majority is pro remain now, but there is a notable amount of people who "want control" and by the Brexit vote "finally were heard" (even if consequences are bad it was their free and independent decision!) and where it is really hard to convince them to admit that their vote was "wrong" and tontolarate that other "smart people" in parliament overrule that will of "The People", again. This teaches those people, that voting doesn't matter.
In my opinion from a British perspective the best thing would be the software possible Brexit and then rejoin in a few years. However a soft Brexit isn't in the EU's interest. The EU has to distinguish between member and non-member. (While Norway and Switzerland historically have such complicated in between positions)
The only other way would be Brexiter to admit their failure and a charismatic leader without previous relevance who manages to unite the big divide with a magic wand. But I don't see such a person.
Post referendum hysteria, politicians serving their own interests and deferring responsibilities, national pride in having one word and sticking to it, a drone-esque Prime Minister incapable of statesmanship, a drone-esque EU bureaucracy sticking to small numbers instead of vision.
I can think of a few reasons. While the polls show that the remain vote would probably win if the referendum was held today, there's still a very large portion of the electorate who still favors brexit (even in a no-deal scenario). Clearly this portion of the electorate would (IMO rightfully) feel cheated if the UK backtracked. As a European I do not favor Brexit but I'm also a democrat. Cancelling Brexit would send a very bad signal IMO, the populists would be able to claim that the EU is un-democratic and that it doesn't respect the will of the people. How could you contradict them? France made the same mistake with the referendum on the European constitution almost 15 years ago (which was rejected, only to be effectively replaced by the Treaty of Lisbon a few years later), it left some scars and is often cited as an example of european un-democraticness by eurosceptics.
An other possibility would be a 2nd referendum but then you sort of have the same democratic problem (you can't keep asking the same question until you get the answer you want) and on top of that you'd probably need three options if you held a referendum today: no brexit, soft brexit with the current proposal or hard brexit. I don't think any of these three options could get an absolute majority so I don't really see how you'd deal with the outcome of such a vote, whatever it may be.
I guess the lesson to all the democracies in the world is that you shouldn't ask a question if you're not able to deal with all the potential outcomes. Cameron held the referendum because he fully expected "remain" to win and he quit as soon as he lost. Since then it's a shitshow because nobody can agree on what "brexit" means exactly.
At this point I think we should all brace ourselves for a hard brexit scenario, a big jump into the unknown for everyone involved.
We didn’t just drop the idea of Brexit either. The country has [supposedly] put more than two years hard graft into figuring this out. The unanimous result of the research time invested is that it’ll be worse for everyone.
Now that we have much more information, it’s not unreasonable to reconsider.
More realisticly this is would be the next election on the same idea. Treat the options like a political party.
The leave party made a lot of promises and people voted for them. They came into power. The leave party has no been shown to be pursuing, criminals, and incompetents over the period of their rule. Why not have the next election now so that the parties rule can be assessed?
Every election is a really a referendum on the promises and actions of the previous one. The US did it with prohibition, the UK could do it here.
Not in the UK, where in fact snap general elections are a thing, and Theresa May called one in 2017. In the absence of a snap election or no-confidence vote the election cycle in the UK takes place every five years. The point being that elections can be monstrously frequent under the right conditions in the UK.
The first referendum was on whether we should leave the EU. The second is on whether we should still leave on these terms. There's a subtle, but key, difference IMO.
Are you suggesting that the UK should vote every 4 year or so to decide whether they should be in the EU? I mean I guess at this point there are no bad ideas...
Maybe it would be a good idea that all EU countries have a periodic referendum on EU membership. If a rich and powerful country really wants to keep a smaller, more troubled country in the union, they will have to make it worth it for the citizens of that country. It would improve the balance of power and integration in the union.
> Are you suggesting that the UK should vote every 4 year or so to decide whether they should be in the EU?
Or maybe it shouldn't, in general, vote at all on that as a separate question (after first resolving if people really want to go forward with the current exit process now that there is more clarity on what that entails) except perhaps to confirm it reject an exit under a deal negotiated after a government-decided invocation of Art. 50 provides a concrete choice, since it's a complex question involving potential for negotiated terms that intersects with every other policy area; maybe the UK should vote for a Parliament and let Parliament balance the issues, proposing referenda only when the public have he information about the choices that makes the decision meaningful.
The first referendum on Brexit was a fairly naked political ploy to punt on exactly that Parliamentary duty with the hope of creating partisan advantage in a general election.
A second referendum, ideally, would be to confirm that the public were happy with what was "negotiated", rather than just a repeat:
* Yes please leave with the deal we got.
* Yes, we leave, but with no deal.
* No, let us stay after all.
The big problem really is that no deal will make a lot of people happy. The people that voted remain will be unhappy, and the people that voted leave voted for different reasons. So even among the people that voted to leave previously I can imagine changing their minds.
Anyway the whole thing is a mess, from start to finish.
Also this would probably end up with a high majority remain vote, since the leave voters would be split between options A and B. Similar to the issues with First Past the Post.
There's no reason, in theory, that it couldn't be a ranked vote (so people could vote, e.g. 1) Leave the EU with this deal, 2) Remain in the EU).
While ever there's the prospect of no deal, there's probably a bias towards Remain anyway (as many who want to leave probably don't want to leave without a deal). This avoids that.
1. Do you want to remain?
2. Do you accept the negotiated deal?
As a remainer, the idea of a vote split is nice, I don't think its fair or defensible and just stores issues for later as Brexiteers wont accept the result.
I'm not sure how that would work - say you get Do you want to remain? -> no; Do you accept the negotiated deal? -> no. Does that mean we should leave without a deal, OR does it mean we should negotiate for a different deal? Likewise, Do you want to remain -> yes; Do you accept the negotiated deal? -> yes - does that mean we should remain OR that we should accept the deal (you can't do both). You could _want_ to remain, but also find the negotiated deal acceptable. I don't think it gives a clear answer.
Obviously if we choose to remain, the negotiated deal wouldn't be needed.
That's just an issue with the current wording.
I'm not in favour of an open ended renegotiate option, we've had that, its a bit of a mess, but if parliament wants to put forward an actionable, achievable plan then I would be happy to vote on that.
I'm a Remainer. I'm Irish - Ireland is one of the most pro-EU nations - and I live and own a house in London. I think, despite my own interests, that the UK probably needs to leave the EU in order to resolve the splits in society and for the UK to figure out its place in the world.
The fact is that Brexit divisions have settled in in the country, becoming more part of people's political identity than political party.
There's a complete lack of political leadership, with May saying what she thinks majority Tory supports want to hear, and Corbyn saying as little as possible to try and avoid making any decisions on Brexit, hoping May pushes Brexit through so that Tories can be blamed for any downside. Functionally, that means the two main parties are pro-Brexit, Tories vocally, Labour passively. With FPTP voting, there can only be two parties without vote splitting, so there's no functional political opposition to Brexit.
If Brexit does happen, well, Brexit won't be over; it's going to grind on for decades of negotiations trying to replace and replicate what the EU already did. Hopefully, that ultimately means coming back to the EU.
Why do I think Brexit probably needs to happen, though, even though I don't want it and it's not in my interest? Leavers won't understand the folly of Brexit until after it has happened. If it doesn't happen, it will poison politics for decades, and the UK would be even more obstructionist than it's been to date.
There hasn't been a positive identity-based case made for Remain. Everything has been framed as economic arguments, and in particular economic harm from leaving. Free movement - a reciprocal right of EU citizens - has been misleadingly framed as immigration. The history of UK joining the EEC has been rewritten and misremembered as joining a simple trade area that got out of hand. It's too late to turn these sentiments around, and there's no leadership trying to do it. In fact quite the opposite: because Tory membership is so pro-leave, Tory leadership contenders are all out-doing one another in EU-bashing.
None of the political leadership is thinking of the good of the country, everything is on the basis of party politics.
It's the kind of thing that helps you understand why world wars get started.
> The fact is that Brexit divisions have settled in in the country, becoming more part of people's political identity than political party.
I wish people wouldn't see Brexit as the ultimate test of British values. It's just a thing that roughly 50% of the country are on different sides of - like milk in tea or marmite on toast. That doesn't mean they fundamentally disagree on every other political issue.
Even if as you suggest we go ahead with Brexit and somehow come out better off, do you think we won't find something else to divide us again? Whether you support Brexit or not says nothing about whether you support immigration rights, free trade and regulation and those political issues say nothing about what your values are as a person.
If this makes little sense to you then try this experiment, find a friend who is opposed to your view on Brexit and then try to find out whether or not they actually share the same fundamental values as you. I'm willing to bet that you have a lot more in common than you think.
No one in my social circle is pro-Brexit. The closest I get to pro-Brexit people are the people on a motorcycle forum I frequent. I have interacted with people there, and our positions are in fact quite opposed on the topics you mention.
On our values:
- London: I love London, whereas the pro-Brexiters generally see London as a filth-infested pit of crime, stabbings, Islamic terrorism, a failed experiment of multi-culturalism, and a grand distraction that occupies far too much public attention.
- Immigration: I distinguish between EU free movement and immigration, they do not. They do not value the right to settle anywhere you like in the EU in the same way I do. They see a feeling of European identity above national identity as stark raving bonkers, loony bin stuff.
- Nationalism: I've seen the poison of nationalism in Ireland and how it leads to conflict and violence; they seem to see little difference between nationalism and patriotism or supporting a football team. They don't understand the danger.
- Regulation: I am strongly in favour of central regulation for everything that affects inter-state commerce because the alternative is a race to the bottom with short-sighted politicians pursuing beggar-thy-neighbour policies. Whereas Brexiteers dislike regulations coming from Brussels, seeing it as an imposition with not enough democratic checks and balances. I'm sympathetic to the criticism of lack of democratic checks, but I think the answer is EU reform, not leaving the EU. Other, more left-leaning people might resent EU restrictions on state aid, I'm not in favour of state aid either - you see how US states competed with one another with tax breaks for Amazon, it's far better to have central restrictions on this nonsense to cut it out.
So on the topics you list, my position and pro-Brexit positions are opposed.
That's probably what the Cameron administration tried to do and failed. After he promused to hild the referendum and won tge majoriry, he probably hoped the outcome would be something like 48% leave and use that as a bargaining coin to negotiate with the EU. It didn't work because the Brtis voted to leave instead.
Cameron wanted an emergency brake on immigration; he got an emergency brake on benefits. I don't think he tried to make the commission more democratic, or enable EU parliament to propose legislation, and I'm pretty sure he didn't try to create any unifying executive head elected from across the whole population.
National governments are jealous of their powers, and fearful that the lightweight EU parliament would just be a tool of lobbyists rather than responsive to citizens, that citizens wouldn't be engaged with their representatives. And in many ways they're right. But it's a Catch-22: the EU parliament will remain a bunch of lightweights for as long as it has little power.
The EU definitely has a bunch of problems. Top of the list is democratic back-sliding in Hungary, Poland, Romania. And Euro area fiscal union or some other mechanism of fixing economic imbalances under monetary union without needing pro-cyclical austerity and depreciation. And migration from Middle East and Africa. And USA's pivot towards unenlightened self-interest and Russia's reawakened regional power-plays. Brexit is a fair ways down the list at this point for the rest of the EU, much less democratic reform, alas.
The EP and EC are by no means lightweights as long as any act voted or adopted by them becomes law, with the obligation of nation states to ratify it and transpose into national laws and regulations.
The fiscal union was flawed from the onset, which is why Margaret Tatcher opposed the UK joining the Eurozone. And she was right to do so.
People in Poland, Hungary and Romania should fight for democracy, as opposed to waiting for the EU to fix their problems. Democracy is won in the street, it isn't granted by decree.
How is Hungary not democratic? Fidesz won 3 times in a row, and the election system is more fair than FPTP, they aren't banning or killing the opposition.
While I don't like their policies, this is what the people want and this is what democracy in eastern europe looks like.
This is not what democracy looks like in Eastern Europe. Instead, this is how democracy goes off the rails and is replaced by something else.
I agree with Fidesz's anti immigration stance, but I what I don't agree with is eroding democracy.
Romania is practically led by crooks who also got elected democratically. Now they're eroding democracy and the judicial and giving themselves a get out of jail free ticket.
> How is Hungary not democratic? Fidesz won 3 times in a row
The 20th century was filled with dictators that won election repeatedly. Winning election repeatedly isn't the hallmark of democracy; peaceful and regular transfer of power is much more indicative.
In any case, democracy is about far more than simply winning elections. Protection of minorities, apolitical rule of law, independent media. Hungary is regressing badly across the board.
>Whether you support Brexit or not says nothing about whether you support immigration rights, free trade and regulation and those political issues say nothing about what your values are as a person.
Yes it does. This "my political views say nothing about me as a person" statement really aggravates me. It doesn't make any sense. Of course your views are part of you as a person.
More specifically to the matter at hand, how does your vote on an issue directly related to immigration, trade, and regulation have nothing to do with those issues?
Supporting brexit simply means you do not want the UK to be in the EU. It doesn't mean that you don't support any of the EU's policies. You might prefer more immigration from non-EU countries for example but still support Brexit. Similarly, you might think that the regulation that we get from the EU is a good thing - you just don't agree with the system of governance that the EU is built on.
> More specifically to the matter at hand, how does your vote on an issue directly related to immigration, trade, and regulation have nothing to do with those issues
Your vote on those issues of course does reflect your views on those issues. I am referring to values beyond those we are argue about in politics such as a value of fairness, justice, community, family etc. I.e there is a vast swathe of issues on which most people in society actually agree - violence is bad, dishonesty is bad, crime is probably bad etc but that large proportion of values are never shared because they are obvious. I want to bring them up because otherwise it's all to easy to project opposing values on all possible spectra onto those on which we disagree with only a few small issues.
How are these different issues to the ones that are voted on?
I fail to see any separation. Immigration is directly related to community, regulation to justice etc...
I think you're far too quick to make assumptions about what the baseline of shared values actually is. Yes, it may be easy for us to say that most people think violence, dishonesty or crime are bad things, but absolutely everyone on earth has a different definition for each of those, and differing ideas about to whom or what such definitions should apply.
At a certain point, there are hard lines in the sand, across which it is impossible to find common ground. For me, and many others, this issue is one of those.
Sure, positions on fairness and justice are shared. As are the requirement to breath air, drink water, eat food, and many other commonalities that are universally shared with pretty much all the people of world. Those positions are just not very relevant. Why have nation states at all, since we all share these values?
The small issues at hand are core to the role and conception of the nation state, and how it is changing in a globalizing and regionalizing world. Chris Grey wrote a very good article on this yesterday: http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2019/01/britain-is-o...
"I'm a Remainer. I'm Irish - Ireland is one of the most pro-EU nations - and I live and own a house in London. I think, despite my own interests, that the UK probably needs to leave the EU in order to resolve the splits in society and for the UK to figure out its place in the world."
I'm a UK citizen and I would really rather not have my economic future such as it is (I do not own a house in London, and would probably have difficulty raising a mortgage on a parking space there) flushed down the toilet for some mythical concept of 'control'.
Economics is really important as some of my pro-Brexit neighbours are beginning to realise.
I think identity trumps economics. People are willing to die for their identity, whereas it's harder to get people to die for some money when it's not a matter of survival. People would rather be proud and poor than getting by under what they've mentally envisioned as a yoke, instead of owning it.
Sure, economics is important. In global currency terms, the value of my home has declined substantially, I've lost a notional mid-5-figure amount expressed in EUR or USD terms. But if you're not internationally minded, if you don't visualize the possibility of yourself living outside of the UK, you're unlikely to consider it a real loss. It's a lot like how poor people can be self-limited by their self-conception, something you might have seen in teaching. (I grew up poor myself, it took some time to expand my horizons, and the process still isn't complete.)
If you live your life locally, why would you care if French cheese and Spanish ham gets more expensive? You probably think it'll be better for British producers. In fact you'd probably consider it just fine if the soft southerners have to pay more for their wine.
The big irony is that pro-Brexit regions have economies that are more dependent on the single market than pro-Remain London. Proving that's the case before Brexit, however, is hard - and if May's deal goes through, it'll go some way to softening the blow. So the decline will be even more imperceptible, until 20 years later, and finally you notice how shabby everything back home is when you come back from your Continental holiday.
Some people. Remember that the demographic changes by about 750k each year (grim reaper and new cohort entering electorate).
Remember also that the majority of degree educated people under 50 voted against this. I'm not seeing any decrease in polarisation whichever way it goes.
Where I live, many people depend on the automotive supply chain. This is not a case of boutique cheese for us, it is a case of mass unemployment. I've lived through one of those episodes.
The UK could join the EEA or the EFTA along with Iceland, Norway and Lichtenstein. Switzerland would also get to have more negotiatiating power with the UK in the EFTA.
You write as if that was just a matter of filling out a form. The UK could join if the existing members - and that includes the EU member states - allow them to do so. And why would they?
Because it would benefit everyone. The UK was an EFTA founding state and a former member between 1960 and 1973, before they joined the EU. The EFTA does not include the EU member states. The EEA includes both the EU member states and the EFTA states with the exception of Switzerland.
To answer that it helps to understand what Brexit is and isn’t. What it started out as was a platform for a marginal party, the BNP, later (essentially) rebranded as UKIP of Nigel Farrage fame. The problem is that some Tories (Jacob Rees-Mogg and the rest of the European Research Group) along with UKIP were causing a lot of infighting within the Tory party. So in walks our bum-faced catastrophe of a “hero” named David Cameron, who decides to use a brilliant political power play to shut down both UKIP and the Tory euroskeptics. That plan was a referendum on leaving the UK, which was expected to crash and burn horribly, thus giving political cover to Cameron and friends who could say “stop whining, the people have spoken.”
Then Cameron more or less sat on his thumbs while Rome burned, or in this case, Boris and Farrage ran around with torches (or a bus in Boris’ case.) As the US would learn shortly after, the power of shamelessly lying to pander to xenophobes is still very effective. In reaction Cameron and the remain crowd, confronted with people buying up ridiculous lies about vast savings and nonexistent trade deals, some dog whistles about Nazis... well the Remainers freaked out and tried to fight bullshit with bullshit.
That left a power vacuum into which the insanely ambitious tore each other to sheds while Theresa May watched and stirred a cauldron of baby seals and rendered hummingbird fat. When the scrum ended, the only person who hadn’t burned every bridge necessary for their colleagues to support was... Theresa May, originally for Remain, but happy to pull a complete 180 for power.
Now instead of Cameron bludgeoning UKIP and his own defectors with the “people’s will” it’s the Leavers who have that. Their position has finally evolved from lies and blandishments, to this one thing, “the people have spoken, even if they’re saying we need to slit our own throats.” Whoever tries to stop this will be ending their political career, and while history may appreciate their choice in the long the run, it would be a miserable retirement.
As a result we have a hardcore fanatical group led by Rees-Mogg who want the hardest Brexit possible, you have Boris just chasing power and willing to say or do anything, and the opposition is Jeremy Corbin. Whatever you think of his positions, his political skills are amateurish, and besides, he’s actually a Leaver too!
So... it’s a slow march off a cliff because the people in charge are too afraid to blink.
ICAO Air law rules date from 1949. Airlines are super aware of these treaties/rules whenever ownership changes hands. It's not like they thought about brexit as a particular scenario, it's more like, lets make sure the airline we're buying is actually embedded legally before stumping up the cash for it.
I'm not sure there are any unresolved disputes between the Republic of Ireland and the UK. There's the constitutional claim on the 32 counties, I suppose.
The conflict in Northern Ireland has had only very minor and indirect connections to the governments in Dublin and London, which are both a long way from the situation on the ground. Any central government intervention on either side of that conflict would have been strictly unofficial.
The Anglo-Irish Peace Treaty of 1921 was negotiated between an illegitimate/unrecognized state and the British government. Given such, it's intrinsically invalid, as an entity cannot negotiate on behalf of itself if it doesn't exist, and treaties can't be made with it as there's no partner to sign the treaty with.
As such, the whole of Ireland is still part of the UK, but the majority of it is occupied by EU forces. As part of peace negotiations, the EU and the UK should negotiate reasonable boundaries, such that Ireland, Scotland, and Greater London remain part of the EU, and the rest can form a rump UK Independent State.
Seems like they have followed the rules, if not the spirit of them, since well before Brexit became a thing. Given that even the popular airports in the UK are owned, in large part, by a variety of non-EU interests I’m not sure how anyone can really argue the point from a legal perspective.
> Whilst 100% of the ‘economic rights’ to Iberia’s revenue and profitability are owned by IAG, it turns out that 50.01% of Iberia’s ‘political rights’ are owned by the El Corte Ingles department store chain.
Does the EU have a legal concept akin to beneficial ownership [1] or control? Iberia seems to claim it is economically owned by IAG but that El Corte Ingles has a majority of its voting rights.
At face, that would seem to solve the EU’s issue with a no -EU owner. Whether ECI can veto anything IAG wants to do is the real question.
Yes, and it's used all over the place in EU corporate law. In most cases I've seen it applied (as a EU-based founder) to money laundering, taxation etc.
I'd be curious to see how this construction pans out. I bet it's been a good deal for the lawyers involved. They surely got paid well for figuring this out initially and will get paid again for testing it in the courts. So much for growing future revenue potential.
The subject of this story - El Corte Ingles [0] - is the the most diverse store I've every been in... they have everything from designer clothing to BBQ's. Think Amazon but with groceries, banking, travel agents, books for school, insurance, etc. Many goods and services you wouldn't find in a Walmart (some possibly at Costco). And their "house brands" aren't too bad they're fairly decent quality especially for the price.
> Only airlines which have 50.1% EU ownership have ‘flying rights’ to operate between two airports within the EU.
Forgive my ignorance towards this law. One wonders if this is economic protectionism or for security (I am aware of similar situations in other countries/regions). So I couldn't have a majority-Norwegian-owned airline that did Germany to France stops? One wonders if all countries are happy with such policies or if this type of protectionism is more justification for self-determinism for the countries that disagree.
Also, could this be another way to look at it: you no longer have to be a majority-EU-owned airline to fly between UK and EU country. I.e. UK would not be subject to such EU rules. Of course companies with many avenues for revenue are going to conform to the most strict of them to get all business when reasonable. That doesn't always make it best for citizens.
Most countries have a distinction between "domestic" airlines and "international" airlines that both protects the domestic airlines and regulates them more closely.
If you consider the entire EU one country from an airline perspective, this makes sense.
Sure, I acknowledged the "most countries" aspect specifically to avoid these comparisons and focus on the content. I wonder, in current times, if the policies remain more for security or economic reasons. Regardless, my comment is less about that these laws exist and more about lack of country-level sovereignty for those that disagree (regardless of how you consider the EU) and whether it can also be beneficial to the UK to be free of such a law.
As you mentioned yourself, similar regulations exist in most other countries, so it's not something specific to the EU. In fact the EU opened up the airline market and contributed to the spectacular growth of low-cost carriers like Ryanair or easyJet that could easily operate across the whole region (and hire where labour costs are lower), which was not possible before.
It's for protectionism (though in practice the EU lifted existing domestic protectionist barriers on intra-EU flights whilst keeping them against outside nations)
Reciprocity is important here. If EU rules imposed no operator nationality restrictions (other than safety ones) on operating intra-EU flights, there'd be no reason for a protectionist US or UAE to negotiate deals allowing EU carriers to fly into their country at all, and those countries' carriers would be able to use their monopolies on intercontinental routes into the EU as the starting point to dominate all the profitable intra-EU routes from their European hubs too.
From El Pais: Garanair has no economic rights over Iberia, and is itself nearly worthless (its 7,000 shares are worth one euro).
Some European M&A lawyer just had a heart attack. I bet this structure looked great to when no one was paying attention... Let's see how well it holds up under the gaze of ten thousand lawyers trying to re-unite $15B in market cap with a "worthless" parent company. British Airways may find it's been a wholy owned subsidary of El Corte Ingles this whole time.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] thread[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_%28game%29
If you do a new one before you even enforce the decision of the previous referendum it's hardly democracy, it's "keep voting".
Yes. That's the entire premise of a voting process. The will of the people who vote, at the time the vote is taken, is binding even if they change their minds later.
It's occasionally used when voters realize that what they voted for was incredibly stupid. So yes, you do get take-backsies in democracies.
You can't just decide a vote doesn't count because you don't like the outcome, though. Setting that precedent would mean no one who disagreed with a result would ever accept its legitimacy. There has to be a limit set somewhere.
A vote passing is not a suicide pact that locks you into that course of action between now and the heat death of the universe. It's possible to pass something, and then do another vote, later, to revert the changes you've made.
Likewise, in a parliament, you can keep bringing an issue up to a vote over, and over, and over again (See: Everything that Congress did after passing Obamacare). There's occasionally some set of procedures that prevents this kind of denial-of-service from being used all the time... And occasionally not.
This happens in referendums, as well. The same issue appears on the ballot every few years, until the people pushing it get 50% + 1 support for it.
It's often the only way to actually get social progress. Keep hammering on your pet issue, until enough people agree with you, and it wins.
As long as you're not breaking any laws, or referendum procedures, it's completely fair game.
As an aside, while Brexit seems to be getting less popular, there is still a big constituency for it. https://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-polls-show-britain-wa...
If a subsequent Remain vote resulted in a similar situation where any real world option to remain in the EU would be regarded as a betrayal worse than leaving by a large fraction of the people that voted for it, I'd think another vote was actually necessary...
The Scottish seem to think that when seceding from a Union is a legitimate option, and if a referendum can trigger a secession from the European Union, then, well, what about those 1707 Acts of Union with England? I believe this will happen come April, and that the current pro-brexit crowd will promptly label it undemocratic and unpatriotic - after all, breaking free from the yoke of Brussels is Something Completely Different than rejecting the friendly rule of Westminster. Right?
Madness, I tell you, with only more madness in sight.
If we were to accept May's deal as it was in December, the UK would leave the EU but remain entirely within the custom's union. Afterwards, plans would be made for NI to stay within the custom's union and the rest of the UK to leave. However, there is a term in the 1800 amendment of the the 1707 Acts of Union that says:
“that in all treaties made by his Majesty, his heirs, and successors, with any foreign power, his Majesty’s subjects of Ireland shall have the same privileges, and be on the same footing as his Majesty’s subjects of Great Britain.”
If this term is broken, it reverts all the countries of the UK back to individual states - i.e. Scotland would be independent by default and there is a good chance they would not vote for an amendment to the Acts of Union because they would prefer to stay in the EU.
That leaves politicians with two options: Either keep the UK in the custom's union indefinitely, or break up the United Kingdom.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/16989865.this-is-why-westm...
And even though Farage himself said, "if the referendum was 52/48 to remain then in would not be the end of the matter"
I am wary of the assumption that we really do know what the actual options are for leaving now. In particular, there is at least one other avenue that has not been seriously explored so far even though it's probably the one that had most potential to achieve (or, being more blunt, any realistic possibility of achieving) some of the major changes that attracted Leave votes in the first place while still having significantly closer relations with our neighbours than just crashing out. It's also the one that many of the Brexiteers among our elected representatives have been openly advocating for some time, contrary to the various stereotypes about how the don't have any alternatives to propose.
There is a lot of political rhetoric at the moment, particularly the whole "this deal or no deal" dichotomy from the EU, but we surely wouldn't expect them to say anything else in the current context, would we? However, it doesn't take much reading between the lines to predict that if we do end up leaving with no big formal deal in March then lots of small alternative arrangements will be made very quickly and both sides will talk further about making more comprehensive and permanent arrangements down the line.
As far as I can tell canceling it would just be saying "we don't have to listen to referendums we don't like".
[0] https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/if-a-second-eu-referen...
Nigel Farage
Of course he was talking about a result the other way but, for once, I find myself agreeing with Nigel.
There are plenty of surveys showing that opinions differ from the original result depending on what the terms of exit are.
You need more complex questions like these:
"Imagine that, at the next general election, the Conservatives supported going ahead with Brexit, whilst Labour and the Liberal Democrats [SCOTLAND: "and the SNP", WALES: "and Plaid Cymru"] supported a public vote on whether or not to go ahead with Brexit. How would you then vote if there was another general election"
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/docume...
Let's go absurd to illustrate how difficult the issue is.
Public vote for A or B.
52% choose A
A third of B accept the result.
It is later revealed that option A will cost you a finger. One third of A voters are ok with that and say it's worth the cost. Another third are uneasy and say we should be able to convice provider of A that a finger should not be needed but said provider are unwilling to change their minds having stated from the very begining that this is the price. The final third are sure that no finger will be collected and in fact the provider will throw in a free finger in the end anyway. And if they don't who cares.
Roughly 1/3 of A voters who still fancy some idealised version of A accept that it's not on the table right now or maybe never so join 2/3s of B voters saying we should decide again in the face of the new information. Because there is still no absolute majority in favour of any one of the real possibilities.
Back to reality: > "we don't have to listen to referendums we don't like".
It's not that at all. to quote Dave Allen Green:
"A referendum result either is democratic or it is irreversible, but it cannot both. Any democracy should be able to change its mind, at any time. Just as no parliament can bind another, no electorate can bind another."
It seems to me that a big part of the current political stalemate is that many people want to tell us what the 52% or the 48% did or didn't vote for, but almost invariably it's just their opinion/projection with no particular evidentiary basis. There have been relatively few decent surveys from just before or since the referendum, and even those we do have available don't support a lot of the inflammatory rhetoric and stereotypes about who voted either way or why.
"A referendum result either is democratic or it is irreversible, but it cannot both. Any democracy should be able to change its mind, at any time. Just as no parliament can bind another, no electorate can bind another."
This is true as a matter of law under our constitution, but of course politically the situation isn't as simple as that. Running another referendum would be expensive and time-consuming, and unless there was going to be an overwhelming change to the opposite view (for which there is little expectation on current evidence) it's not clear that it would actually resolve anything, whether the result was again a slight majority for leave or reversed to a slight majority for remain.
"In hindsight, do you think Britain was right or wrong to vote to leave the EU?" - Wrong overtook Right around July 2017, and has been ahead since, with a seemingly increasing margin [1]
forgot [1]
"Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union, or leave the European Union? (Asked after the referendum)" - Again, in the same timeframe, Remain has consistently been ahead, and the margin generally seems to be growing [2]
I think there is evidence to suggest opinions are changing. Even if there isn't, a second referendum would confirm that the people still want to leave on these terms.
[1] https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-th... [2] https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/should-the-united-king...
All it takes is a vote by Parliament and the political will to admit that it was an insanely stupid idea to ask people to vote on a deal that didn't exist yet.
Countries that have previously held referendums on joining the EU have done so after negotiations were 100% completed. Britain should have done the same when leaving: negotiate a complete Brexit deal first, then vote on that.
Shouldn’t every member constantly threaten exit, then, whenever it wants more goodies?
Except they have already lost two major European agencies (European Medicines Agency and European Banking Authority) that are being relocated to Amsterdam and Paris.
[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2018...
This is a proposal for relocation if Brexit goes ahead. If it doesn't go ahead, there's no point relocating.
No, they aren't held against their will. It's an (ever closer) union of friends.
We're still going to have those. We just won't be at the table to have any kind of influence.
Please explain in detail how Berlin is overcoming the fact that it is vastly outnumbered in the deciding (and voting) bodies.
The nominal equality (e.g. re: number of votes) is like that old Anatole France quote: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.".
The Euro has strict monetary policy. This favours economies like those of Germany, and makes it very difficult for economies that often need to dilute their currencies to stay competitive.
In a 'currency union', basically, there can be no shenanigans. It has to be a 'strict' currency, because it's not like the French are going to allow the Poles to just start 'printing Euros'. So, by the very nature of the shared currency, it's going to be strict.
When Italy, Spain and Greece start to have trouble making bond payments - this poses a problem. They can't just start printing Liras or Drachmas anymore.
When their economies are faltering - they would normally print money, dilute their currency, meaning everyone in the country is taking a secret pay cut, retirees get less benefits vis-a-vis other countries. But it's stealthy. Nobody sees it. But in Euros ... everything would have to be repriced for the economy to remain competitive. People have to accept lower pay. Retirees lower benefits. That is politically impossible.
And so you end up with high unemployment for a very long time while it sinks in that they are poor.
Germany was very wary of entering into the Euro because of their historical fears of currency devaluation. It was a big thing for them, to the point that it was a major factor in the rise of Nazism, and that whole WW2 thing. So when they did it, there had to be controls.
Most citizens of Europe would prefer a more trade-like situation, not a true political union. The EU is ultimately an elitist project and it's showing serious signs of strain.
Based on the facts we can now measure, quite a lot of the negative predictions from before the referendum about the results of a Leave vote have not proved to be accurate. We haven't gone anywhere near entering a recession, there weren't emergency budgets costing households thousands of pounds, house prices haven't collapsed, etc. Inevitably this also reduces the credibility of the same sources when they now predict severe negative effects over the longer term based on similar models and assumptions.
At least in some respects, it appears that the UK economy may be doing better than it has for some time. In some other respects, it's doing worse, but whether the cause is Brexit-related or other factors like austerity or increasingly protectionist global trade is unclear.
Probably the two biggest economic effects that have surely been triggered by Brexit itself are the softening of Sterling and the shift in migration patterns, but those are also areas where the change isn't inherently bad. Certainly there are other negative results as well, but a lot of those are more due to uncertainty and negative sentiment than anything that has actually happened so far, so while they are clearly bad for the UK and neither our government nor the EU leadership is going to win any prizes for effective government and leadership any time soon, it wouldn't necessarily be the case that another state considering leaving in the future would mishandle the process as badly as the UK and EU have this time.
It's a fascinating social experiment to watch, particularly as someone who is conflicted on the issue and has a lot of friends and family on both sides of the debate, because if you step back and try to look at reality from a neutral point of view, there's a lot of confirmation bias and selective reporting happening on both sides.
Brexit has given Britain a choice between (1) the same EU goodies (cancel Art. 50), (2) fewer EU goodies (take the negotiated exit deal), and (3) no EU goodies (no deal Brexit).
As a strategy for “more goodies”, it's a complete disaster.
that was refused.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/03/eu-commissi...
Which may not be possible. It's far easier, after a turnover of leadership, to say "they were stupid", than it is for a leader to admit, "we were stupid".
I'm not in the UK, and I'm not that current on UK politics, but I think there is a bare possibility that this could happen. It would take a no-confidence vote against May, though, and probably before March.
Mind also that maybe a majority is pro remain now, but there is a notable amount of people who "want control" and by the Brexit vote "finally were heard" (even if consequences are bad it was their free and independent decision!) and where it is really hard to convince them to admit that their vote was "wrong" and tontolarate that other "smart people" in parliament overrule that will of "The People", again. This teaches those people, that voting doesn't matter.
In my opinion from a British perspective the best thing would be the software possible Brexit and then rejoin in a few years. However a soft Brexit isn't in the EU's interest. The EU has to distinguish between member and non-member. (While Norway and Switzerland historically have such complicated in between positions)
The only other way would be Brexiter to admit their failure and a charismatic leader without previous relevance who manages to unite the big divide with a magic wand. But I don't see such a person.
An other possibility would be a 2nd referendum but then you sort of have the same democratic problem (you can't keep asking the same question until you get the answer you want) and on top of that you'd probably need three options if you held a referendum today: no brexit, soft brexit with the current proposal or hard brexit. I don't think any of these three options could get an absolute majority so I don't really see how you'd deal with the outcome of such a vote, whatever it may be.
I guess the lesson to all the democracies in the world is that you shouldn't ask a question if you're not able to deal with all the potential outcomes. Cameron held the referendum because he fully expected "remain" to win and he quit as soon as he lost. Since then it's a shitshow because nobody can agree on what "brexit" means exactly.
At this point I think we should all brace ourselves for a hard brexit scenario, a big jump into the unknown for everyone involved.
…Yes you can.
A general election is always the same question, and sometimes we come up with different results.
Now that we have much more information, it’s not unreasonable to reconsider.
More realisticly this is would be the next election on the same idea. Treat the options like a political party.
The leave party made a lot of promises and people voted for them. They came into power. The leave party has no been shown to be pursuing, criminals, and incompetents over the period of their rule. Why not have the next election now so that the parties rule can be assessed?
Every election is a really a referendum on the promises and actions of the previous one. The US did it with prohibition, the UK could do it here.
Or maybe it shouldn't, in general, vote at all on that as a separate question (after first resolving if people really want to go forward with the current exit process now that there is more clarity on what that entails) except perhaps to confirm it reject an exit under a deal negotiated after a government-decided invocation of Art. 50 provides a concrete choice, since it's a complex question involving potential for negotiated terms that intersects with every other policy area; maybe the UK should vote for a Parliament and let Parliament balance the issues, proposing referenda only when the public have he information about the choices that makes the decision meaningful.
The first referendum on Brexit was a fairly naked political ploy to punt on exactly that Parliamentary duty with the hope of creating partisan advantage in a general election.
* Yes please leave with the deal we got.
* Yes, we leave, but with no deal.
* No, let us stay after all.
The big problem really is that no deal will make a lot of people happy. The people that voted remain will be unhappy, and the people that voted leave voted for different reasons. So even among the people that voted to leave previously I can imagine changing their minds.
Anyway the whole thing is a mess, from start to finish.
While ever there's the prospect of no deal, there's probably a bias towards Remain anyway (as many who want to leave probably don't want to leave without a deal). This avoids that.
1. Do you want to remain? 2. Do you accept the negotiated deal?
As a remainer, the idea of a vote split is nice, I don't think its fair or defensible and just stores issues for later as Brexiteers wont accept the result.
Obviously if we choose to remain, the negotiated deal wouldn't be needed. That's just an issue with the current wording.
I'm not in favour of an open ended renegotiate option, we've had that, its a bit of a mess, but if parliament wants to put forward an actionable, achievable plan then I would be happy to vote on that.
The fact is that Brexit divisions have settled in in the country, becoming more part of people's political identity than political party.
There's a complete lack of political leadership, with May saying what she thinks majority Tory supports want to hear, and Corbyn saying as little as possible to try and avoid making any decisions on Brexit, hoping May pushes Brexit through so that Tories can be blamed for any downside. Functionally, that means the two main parties are pro-Brexit, Tories vocally, Labour passively. With FPTP voting, there can only be two parties without vote splitting, so there's no functional political opposition to Brexit.
If Brexit does happen, well, Brexit won't be over; it's going to grind on for decades of negotiations trying to replace and replicate what the EU already did. Hopefully, that ultimately means coming back to the EU.
Why do I think Brexit probably needs to happen, though, even though I don't want it and it's not in my interest? Leavers won't understand the folly of Brexit until after it has happened. If it doesn't happen, it will poison politics for decades, and the UK would be even more obstructionist than it's been to date.
There hasn't been a positive identity-based case made for Remain. Everything has been framed as economic arguments, and in particular economic harm from leaving. Free movement - a reciprocal right of EU citizens - has been misleadingly framed as immigration. The history of UK joining the EEC has been rewritten and misremembered as joining a simple trade area that got out of hand. It's too late to turn these sentiments around, and there's no leadership trying to do it. In fact quite the opposite: because Tory membership is so pro-leave, Tory leadership contenders are all out-doing one another in EU-bashing.
None of the political leadership is thinking of the good of the country, everything is on the basis of party politics.
It's the kind of thing that helps you understand why world wars get started.
I wish people wouldn't see Brexit as the ultimate test of British values. It's just a thing that roughly 50% of the country are on different sides of - like milk in tea or marmite on toast. That doesn't mean they fundamentally disagree on every other political issue.
Even if as you suggest we go ahead with Brexit and somehow come out better off, do you think we won't find something else to divide us again? Whether you support Brexit or not says nothing about whether you support immigration rights, free trade and regulation and those political issues say nothing about what your values are as a person.
If this makes little sense to you then try this experiment, find a friend who is opposed to your view on Brexit and then try to find out whether or not they actually share the same fundamental values as you. I'm willing to bet that you have a lot more in common than you think.
On our values:
- London: I love London, whereas the pro-Brexiters generally see London as a filth-infested pit of crime, stabbings, Islamic terrorism, a failed experiment of multi-culturalism, and a grand distraction that occupies far too much public attention.
- Immigration: I distinguish between EU free movement and immigration, they do not. They do not value the right to settle anywhere you like in the EU in the same way I do. They see a feeling of European identity above national identity as stark raving bonkers, loony bin stuff.
- Nationalism: I've seen the poison of nationalism in Ireland and how it leads to conflict and violence; they seem to see little difference between nationalism and patriotism or supporting a football team. They don't understand the danger.
- Regulation: I am strongly in favour of central regulation for everything that affects inter-state commerce because the alternative is a race to the bottom with short-sighted politicians pursuing beggar-thy-neighbour policies. Whereas Brexiteers dislike regulations coming from Brussels, seeing it as an imposition with not enough democratic checks and balances. I'm sympathetic to the criticism of lack of democratic checks, but I think the answer is EU reform, not leaving the EU. Other, more left-leaning people might resent EU restrictions on state aid, I'm not in favour of state aid either - you see how US states competed with one another with tax breaks for Amazon, it's far better to have central restrictions on this nonsense to cut it out.
So on the topics you list, my position and pro-Brexit positions are opposed.
That's probably what the Cameron administration tried to do and failed. After he promused to hild the referendum and won tge majoriry, he probably hoped the outcome would be something like 48% leave and use that as a bargaining coin to negotiate with the EU. It didn't work because the Brtis voted to leave instead.
National governments are jealous of their powers, and fearful that the lightweight EU parliament would just be a tool of lobbyists rather than responsive to citizens, that citizens wouldn't be engaged with their representatives. And in many ways they're right. But it's a Catch-22: the EU parliament will remain a bunch of lightweights for as long as it has little power.
The EU definitely has a bunch of problems. Top of the list is democratic back-sliding in Hungary, Poland, Romania. And Euro area fiscal union or some other mechanism of fixing economic imbalances under monetary union without needing pro-cyclical austerity and depreciation. And migration from Middle East and Africa. And USA's pivot towards unenlightened self-interest and Russia's reawakened regional power-plays. Brexit is a fair ways down the list at this point for the rest of the EU, much less democratic reform, alas.
The fiscal union was flawed from the onset, which is why Margaret Tatcher opposed the UK joining the Eurozone. And she was right to do so.
https://youtu.be/5TPpuIslzG4
People in Poland, Hungary and Romania should fight for democracy, as opposed to waiting for the EU to fix their problems. Democracy is won in the street, it isn't granted by decree.
While I don't like their policies, this is what the people want and this is what democracy in eastern europe looks like.
I agree with Fidesz's anti immigration stance, but I what I don't agree with is eroding democracy.
Romania is practically led by crooks who also got elected democratically. Now they're eroding democracy and the judicial and giving themselves a get out of jail free ticket.
The 20th century was filled with dictators that won election repeatedly. Winning election repeatedly isn't the hallmark of democracy; peaceful and regular transfer of power is much more indicative.
In any case, democracy is about far more than simply winning elections. Protection of minorities, apolitical rule of law, independent media. Hungary is regressing badly across the board.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-viktor-orban...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hungary-vikt...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/world/europe/hungary-orba...
Yes it does. This "my political views say nothing about me as a person" statement really aggravates me. It doesn't make any sense. Of course your views are part of you as a person.
More specifically to the matter at hand, how does your vote on an issue directly related to immigration, trade, and regulation have nothing to do with those issues?
Supporting brexit simply means you do not want the UK to be in the EU. It doesn't mean that you don't support any of the EU's policies. You might prefer more immigration from non-EU countries for example but still support Brexit. Similarly, you might think that the regulation that we get from the EU is a good thing - you just don't agree with the system of governance that the EU is built on.
> More specifically to the matter at hand, how does your vote on an issue directly related to immigration, trade, and regulation have nothing to do with those issues
Your vote on those issues of course does reflect your views on those issues. I am referring to values beyond those we are argue about in politics such as a value of fairness, justice, community, family etc. I.e there is a vast swathe of issues on which most people in society actually agree - violence is bad, dishonesty is bad, crime is probably bad etc but that large proportion of values are never shared because they are obvious. I want to bring them up because otherwise it's all to easy to project opposing values on all possible spectra onto those on which we disagree with only a few small issues.
How are these different issues to the ones that are voted on?
I fail to see any separation. Immigration is directly related to community, regulation to justice etc...
I think you're far too quick to make assumptions about what the baseline of shared values actually is. Yes, it may be easy for us to say that most people think violence, dishonesty or crime are bad things, but absolutely everyone on earth has a different definition for each of those, and differing ideas about to whom or what such definitions should apply.
At a certain point, there are hard lines in the sand, across which it is impossible to find common ground. For me, and many others, this issue is one of those.
The small issues at hand are core to the role and conception of the nation state, and how it is changing in a globalizing and regionalizing world. Chris Grey wrote a very good article on this yesterday: http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2019/01/britain-is-o...
I'm a UK citizen and I would really rather not have my economic future such as it is (I do not own a house in London, and would probably have difficulty raising a mortgage on a parking space there) flushed down the toilet for some mythical concept of 'control'.
Economics is really important as some of my pro-Brexit neighbours are beginning to realise.
Sure, economics is important. In global currency terms, the value of my home has declined substantially, I've lost a notional mid-5-figure amount expressed in EUR or USD terms. But if you're not internationally minded, if you don't visualize the possibility of yourself living outside of the UK, you're unlikely to consider it a real loss. It's a lot like how poor people can be self-limited by their self-conception, something you might have seen in teaching. (I grew up poor myself, it took some time to expand my horizons, and the process still isn't complete.)
If you live your life locally, why would you care if French cheese and Spanish ham gets more expensive? You probably think it'll be better for British producers. In fact you'd probably consider it just fine if the soft southerners have to pay more for their wine.
The big irony is that pro-Brexit regions have economies that are more dependent on the single market than pro-Remain London. Proving that's the case before Brexit, however, is hard - and if May's deal goes through, it'll go some way to softening the blow. So the decline will be even more imperceptible, until 20 years later, and finally you notice how shabby everything back home is when you come back from your Continental holiday.
Remember also that the majority of degree educated people under 50 voted against this. I'm not seeing any decrease in polarisation whichever way it goes.
Where I live, many people depend on the automotive supply chain. This is not a case of boutique cheese for us, it is a case of mass unemployment. I've lived through one of those episodes.
http://www.efta.int/About-EFTA/Frequently-asked-questions-EF...
Then Cameron more or less sat on his thumbs while Rome burned, or in this case, Boris and Farrage ran around with torches (or a bus in Boris’ case.) As the US would learn shortly after, the power of shamelessly lying to pander to xenophobes is still very effective. In reaction Cameron and the remain crowd, confronted with people buying up ridiculous lies about vast savings and nonexistent trade deals, some dog whistles about Nazis... well the Remainers freaked out and tried to fight bullshit with bullshit.
We know what happened next, and Cameron wasted no time resigning with a skip and a hum. Literally. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bprjHYY90lo
That left a power vacuum into which the insanely ambitious tore each other to sheds while Theresa May watched and stirred a cauldron of baby seals and rendered hummingbird fat. When the scrum ended, the only person who hadn’t burned every bridge necessary for their colleagues to support was... Theresa May, originally for Remain, but happy to pull a complete 180 for power.
Now instead of Cameron bludgeoning UKIP and his own defectors with the “people’s will” it’s the Leavers who have that. Their position has finally evolved from lies and blandishments, to this one thing, “the people have spoken, even if they’re saying we need to slit our own throats.” Whoever tries to stop this will be ending their political career, and while history may appreciate their choice in the long the run, it would be a miserable retirement.
As a result we have a hardcore fanatical group led by Rees-Mogg who want the hardest Brexit possible, you have Boris just chasing power and willing to say or do anything, and the opposition is Jeremy Corbin. Whatever you think of his positions, his political skills are amateurish, and besides, he’s actually a Leaver too!
So... it’s a slow march off a cliff because the people in charge are too afraid to blink.
It's a common ailment these days (see also: US, Brazil, Italy, the Philippines, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia...)
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/11/brexit-m...
I rather like the "surrender to the Republic of Ireland" option - if for no other reason than the effect it would have on the DUP.
The most significant formal dispute between the states was a trade war in the 30s, discussed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland–United_Kingdom_relatio...
The conflict in Northern Ireland has had only very minor and indirect connections to the governments in Dublin and London, which are both a long way from the situation on the ground. Any central government intervention on either side of that conflict would have been strictly unofficial.
As such, the whole of Ireland is still part of the UK, but the majority of it is occupied by EU forces. As part of peace negotiations, the EU and the UK should negotiate reasonable boundaries, such that Ireland, Scotland, and Greater London remain part of the EU, and the rest can form a rump UK Independent State.
Makes as much sense as May's deal.
Edit: typo
Does the EU have a legal concept akin to beneficial ownership [1] or control? Iberia seems to claim it is economically owned by IAG but that El Corte Ingles has a majority of its voting rights.
At face, that would seem to solve the EU’s issue with a no -EU owner. Whether ECI can veto anything IAG wants to do is the real question.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneficial_ownership
I'd be curious to see how this construction pans out. I bet it's been a good deal for the lawyers involved. They surely got paid well for figuring this out initially and will get paid again for testing it in the courts. So much for growing future revenue potential.
[0] https://www.elcorteingles.es/
Interesting analogy, since Amazon also has its own airline (albeit for cargo rather than passengers)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Air
https://www.iecisa.com/en/digital-solutions/
Forgive my ignorance towards this law. One wonders if this is economic protectionism or for security (I am aware of similar situations in other countries/regions). So I couldn't have a majority-Norwegian-owned airline that did Germany to France stops? One wonders if all countries are happy with such policies or if this type of protectionism is more justification for self-determinism for the countries that disagree.
Also, could this be another way to look at it: you no longer have to be a majority-EU-owned airline to fly between UK and EU country. I.e. UK would not be subject to such EU rules. Of course companies with many avenues for revenue are going to conform to the most strict of them to get all business when reasonable. That doesn't always make it best for citizens.
If you consider the entire EU one country from an airline perspective, this makes sense.
Reciprocity is important here. If EU rules imposed no operator nationality restrictions (other than safety ones) on operating intra-EU flights, there'd be no reason for a protectionist US or UAE to negotiate deals allowing EU carriers to fly into their country at all, and those countries' carriers would be able to use their monopolies on intercontinental routes into the EU as the starting point to dominate all the profitable intra-EU routes from their European hubs too.
Some European M&A lawyer just had a heart attack. I bet this structure looked great to when no one was paying attention... Let's see how well it holds up under the gaze of ten thousand lawyers trying to re-unite $15B in market cap with a "worthless" parent company. British Airways may find it's been a wholy owned subsidary of El Corte Ingles this whole time.