You got access to the EU's internal market without tariffs (except for financial services). The EU key people stated for a very long time - access to the internal EU market cannot be decoupled from the free movement of people. But still, you won that. All because you gave access to french fishers to some fishing waters. I think this bribe to one of the EU partners has been the key impetus for a lot of renewed EU resistance in Sweden. As an example:
After reading the terms of the deal, lots of Swedes in r/svenskpolitik ("swedish politics") actually wanted the same exit deal. I kind of agree.
Which is less than we had before. Also we now have non tariff barriers including a load more red tape bureaucracy even when sending things from one part of the U.K. to another thanks to the Irish Sea border
> We will need visas if we spend more than 90 days out of 180 in the EU
That's been the case since 2014, nothing to do with Brexit.
Before Brexit:
"From 9 June 2014, all British Overseas Territories citizens (BOTCs), British Overseas citizens (BOCs), British Protected Persons (BPPs), and British Subjects (BS) will be allowed to travel visa free to the EU Schengen Area for a maximum of 90 days."
After Brexit:
"If you’re a tourist, you do not need a visa for short trips to most EU countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. You’ll be able to stay for up to 90 days in any 180-day period."
All the passport categories you quoted (BOTC, BOC, BPP, BS) relate to former colonies (think the status given to inhabitants of Hong Kong after it was turned over to China).
This deal is available to most countries. That's the whole Canada deal thingie. Tariffs are usually pretty low anyway in today's world, and not a huge burden. What's unique about the internal market is the absence of paperwork. Regulatory harmonization and recognition of each other's authorities massively simplifies trade. No customs, no immigration, you load stuff on a truck, drive it to where the buyer is, and that's it.
Yup, it's the end of the transition period. But UK formally left EU 11 months ago. Unless of course the term "formally" has come to suffer similar inflation and inversion as the term "literally".
This is technically correct - however, there were few practical changes until the end of the transition period today, and the relationship was essentially equivalent. Today is really where the relationship changes in a practical sense.
De jure, yes. However, in practice the UK remained subject to EU law and retained freedom of movement and single market access at that point. De facto, Brexit happened 90 minutes ago (I am amazed that the Tories didn’t get more upset about the fact that it the appointed hour was midnight CET, not GMT).
Arguably the best country name trade deal abbreviation since renegotiating NAFTA to CAMUS (I know they use a different order but this suggestion is too good).
Except the ex-colonies want nothing to do with the UK. We can smell the fear and desperation. There is nothing in it for us. We aren't going to bail out the UK or take the influx of economic refugees.
> Except the ex-colonies want nothing to do with the UK.
That's a wild exaggeration. The UK is a tremendous export market for the US, we want everything to do with them, there is a lot in it for us ($700 billion per decade in purchased goods). Plus we have a rough split on trade, one of the few major nations we don't have a large trade deficit with.
The British import more US goods than the Germans do, and nearly as much as the Japanese do, with a far smaller economy.
In the context of this subthread about CANZUK, we're talking about Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, not the US. That said, sure, those countries have plenty of ties to the UK as well.
Everyone wants trade with everyone to their benefit. We also want to be friends and play cricket.
But there is no discussion of the other things related to CANZUK in Australia and NZ. We don't want open borders with the UK or to roll back the clock to the empire. Almost everything to do with CANZUK is a fantasy used to deflect from the very real problems associated with leaving the EU.
> Everyone wants trade with everyone to their benefit. We also want to be friends and play cricket.
Wait wait wait a second ago you said they 'want nothing to do with the UK', now you're saying they want to trade, and play sports? Clearly not 'nothing to do' is it?
We don't want anything to do with them in the context of an EU replacement including open borders or any form of of political or monetary union. The UK is a part of our history and we will always have ties. I don't think there is any will to give them preferential treatment over other trading partners. We are looking out for ourselves and any mistakes the UK makes they are going to have to wear like adults.
We are not getting the Empire band back together. I know modern conservatives have lost the plot but we can't turn back time like that. CANZUK as popularly described is a complete fantasy.
The reality is as sovereign nations trying to have influence in our own regions, often with countries with their own experiences of colonialism, any signs of subservience to an ex-colonial power is far more of a hindrance than a help.
I do support stronger ties between Canada, Australia and NZ though.
There are 900K plus Australians who were born in the UK. Australians who have a British parent or grandparent and can thus get a UK passport would number in the millions.
> Australians who have a British parent or grandparent and can thus get a UK passport would number in the millions
Generally speaking, a British grandparent does not get you UK citizenship, only a British parent does. (There are various obscure exceptions to that generalisation, but they don't apply to the vast majority of cases.)
Fair to call EU big, global and bureaucratic. But with 24 working languages, 27 represented states and 8 official political parties isn't it pretty much the opposite of homogeneous?
Depends how you look at it. The European Parliament is ethnically pretty homogeneous, for example.
The figures are hard to come by because the EU don't record ethnicity AFAIK, but in 2017 there were approximately 17 non-white MEPs out of a total 751. I think 8 of those were from the UK. Given the amount of times I've been called racist for voting to leave the EU, I always find that figure quite hilarious.
Now it's time for uk politicians to find the new scapegoat for their impressive incompetence. Here's for a stupid and xenophobic clown, a decade of ugly politics and the struggle of people hopes that, unfortunatly, will still be unanswered...
Now let's hope that the rock bottom that tories just hit will be the opportunity for people witb ideas and human values to step up.
Small businesses with EU customers or inputs are going to have to deal with bureaucratic crap on a scale that most of them will never have seen before.
People on Hacker News, being in general the knowledge workers and (at least in our minds) the intelligentsia that we are, have particular disdain for democracies doing things they disagree with.
I remember the day after Brexit passed my high school friend who was then working on her PhD in international theory asking how the government could revert such a decision. It seemed like the most out of touch ivory tower thing to say, and made me suspect of what educational institutions are teaching people these days.
It was a nonbinding referendum. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask why important policy decisions are being made by a simple majority of the voting public.
Didn’t the conservative party win a general election in 2015 in which the referendum was a manifesto pledge? So the conservatives promised a referendum and won that election - that seems like “the consent of the governed”, doesn’t it? And the british public could have voted for labour in 2017 or 2019 if they wanted a softer stance on Brexit, but they didn’t, and the Conservatives won both those elections too, albeit with a minority government from the 2017 election. Maybe that means something, in terms of what the british electorate thinks?
Perhaps, but landslide wins in U.K. general elections often involve significantly less than half the electorate voting for the winning party, and general elections come with all the baggage of the party manifestos and Red/Blue/etc. tribalism.
OTOH, there was a referendum on changing the voting system (which was also rejected).
>I remember the day after Brexit passed my high school friend who was then working on her PhD in international theory asking how the government could revert such a decision. It seemed like the most out of touch ivory tower thing to say, and made me suspect of what educational institutions are teaching people these days.
It's pretty clear in retrospect that part of what drove the Labour collapse in 2019 (In some Red Wall seats the Tories didn't have to gain a single vote to win) is Remainers who disliked the idea (whether explicit among Lib Dems, or implicit among much of Labour) of ignoring a democratic vote in 2016. That's why another referendum was so unpopular, because no one believes that it would not be rigged against Leave.[1]
People here calling the outcome of the referendum "racist" and "evil" conveniently forget the weeping and wailing that began the night of the referendum. By the next morning we were confidently told by the press and Reddit as a whole that millions of Leave voters were already regretting their vote, and that another referendum was thus the only fair/democratic/correct thing to do. (That even if such millions of Regretters actually existed that does not mean that a revote would occur is a minor technicality.)
People also forget how anger on Leavers' part against delay on Brexit did not become significant until 2019. The Supreme Court agreed that there was reasonable basis for the Miller case, and (more controversially) unexpectedly ruled for her in the second Miller case. But Leavers understandably came to see both lawsuits as part and parcel of an unrelenting attempt on Remainers' part to stop Brexit by any and all means, whether legitimate or not. The fact that Miller actively campaigned for revoking Article 50 didn't help the Remain cause, and discredited her claim during the first case that she wanted to protect parliamentary sovereignty.
Those who in other circumstances might have supported a "People's Vote" didn't, because they saw it as yet another attempt to delay and prevent Brexit via Neverendums. I think Leave would have won another referendum conducted under the circumstances of the first one, but Leavers understandably didn't trust the People's Vote folks to implement another referendum in any way that Leave can again win. Not after 3.5 years and counting of shenanigans such as the Miller case.
[1] Even supporters of same, no matter what they said. That's why they were for it.
A great day for the UK, able to now chart their own path instead of obediently marching along to the neoliberal EU apparatus. The big question is whether they will do anything worthwhile with their newfound freedom.
Remain high on the inequality index, I assume. The UK got destroyed by Thatcher, and hasn't recovered since.
> “She destroyed too many good things in society, and created too many bad ones, then left a social and moral vacuum in which the selfishly rich and unimaginatively fortunate could too easily destroy still more of what they don't need and can't see that everyone else does need,” said author Emma Darwin.
Thatcher wasn’t perfect, but England was an economic basket case before her premiership. Visceral Thatcher hate is a meme for nonthinking people.
The great irony is that one of the most significant effects of the EU has been to replicate many of her reforms across the continent. But the europhiles still reflexively hate her.
And why should I or anyone else care about what a fiction author thinks?
Labour were decimated in the last election. I don't suspect they'll be in power with a mandate to rejoin the EU.
Btw, things aren't as split down party lines as they may seem. Half the Tory party are Europhiles, and I know many of my Labour friends are anti-EU in a libertarian small government sense.
Indeed, trade deals and international relationships are bipartisan issues, labour’s last leader was anti EU for decades. The party lines in the UK are drawn along class and aspirational values, not policy decisions- although when a referendum is called 2 sides always step out to divide up the electorate in their favour
Agree. I'd always argue that this was broadly an anti austerity / inequality vote: people just basically pissed off with having a rubbish life voting against some notion of "authority" or "centralisation".
The sad fact is that it's exactly these people (in the Midlands, NE, those on lower wages, in rural communities, etc) who (generalising a bit, not much) voted out - these are the communities who will be hit hardest.
Well Labour will just waste another decade campaigning to rejoin the EU which has so far has been nothing but a complete failure given the last 3 consecutive election defeats since the referendum vote.
Here's to another decade of Labour being out of government. (Again).
IIRC the forecast economic damage is lost opportunity for growth rather than immediate losses, and any actual immediate losses could be easily dismissed (especially by this lot) as “COVID losses, not Brexit”.
It's unclear whether the collapse of the European banking system will have the effect of boosting support for rejoining the EU, but it's not impossible.
Agree. I personally think Labour blew it, big time. But: the lies that got us out of the EU were pretty unstoppable. Selling an out message on the back of sensationalist, shock messages was an easy PR hit.
We'll see. Personally, I'll always feel and be European. I reckon we'll be back.
It's perfectly consistent to feel European and also feel that EU membership is not a net positive for the UK. Being pro-Brexit does not make one less of a European.
The EU vote in Norway almost 30 years ago was very, very different from the British Brexit affair. Luckily for us Norwegians, we didn't suffer from anyone like Mark Francois, for example.
Of course you could say that Brexit has nothing to do with British culture.
Yes, but expressed in culturally different way. As I wrote, no Mark Francois for us. He's an important politician due to the peculiar British current political culture.
EDIT: I meant "peculiarly British", but I haven't the heart to edit that typo.
It's almost entropic really - there was a genuinely depressing YouGov graph from a few years ago which plotted the number of people who actually think the EU is an important issue vs. time: The number is almost nil (even the wonks didn't care) until the year/s directly leading up to the referendum.
Europe is a tricky problem, but the way Brexit specifically has happened (Lie, Damned Lies, and fake statistics - at best) means the only real lesson from this is that referenda are truly disastrous for complex policy decisions.
Certainly a referendum this vague. People were asked to vote for either status quo or... something very ill defined. Witness the ‘yes’ voters suddenly surprised they’re losing their jobs because the deal doesn’t cover selling live eels or sausages or banking services or whatever to Europe.
It’s easy to say “they condemned themselves” and they _were_ naive to buy into the cake-type Brexit narrative, but if the choice had been between status quo and “we’ll try to negotiate this sort of attainable deal”, people would have had some idea on what they were voting for. As it was, it could have been anything from Norway+ to autarky.
I'm not a fan of the "people can't be trusted with international law" thing. I mean, I also hate Brexit, but I hate policy laundering too. And international agreements are really good at just that, because they aren't democratically accessible. Ironically, the EU tried to solve this problem: it had a parliament with democratic elections that actually made decisions about the kinds of international treaties EU member states would adopt. However, most international law doesn't work that way. Instead, all of the sides negotiate in private and some negotiated agreement comes out the other end that local legislative bodies only get a final yay-or-nay vote on.
Fun fact: this is actually how we got the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This is commonly derided as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, but the actual legislative history is that the EU had already negotiated and passed identical term lengths five years prior. They also added a reciprocality clause, granting the same term lengths in the EU to any country that also extended terms in their own jurisdiction. This is a ratchet: there's no mechanism for an American or European to object to longer terms, aside from unilateral withdrawl that will disadvantage the first-moving party. In practice, the US agreed to longer terms, because what else are they going to do? Let France or Germany have more protection for their films than the US has?
(DMCA Section 1201 happened in a similar manner, but replace the EU with the WTO. The US wouldn't pass anti-circumvention laws first, so they snuck it into TRIPS, and then used that to force the DMCA into being. The beauty of international law is that you always can find another institution to launder policy through. If there was no TRIPS, then maybe they could have bundled it into NAFTA.)
People don't like it when they object to something, and their elected representatives try and shut down their concerns. That makes them feel disenfranchised. Brexit was the inevitable result of politicians doing unpopular things and using the EU as an excuse for it. Eventually, someone was going to say "why don't we just not have international agreements"? Bonus points if you are actually one of those politicians looking to get out of, say, an upcoming tax agreement. Cause the problem (anti-democratic ratcheting), sell the solution (economic isolationism)!
> Ironically, the EU tried to solve this problem: it had a parliament with democratic elections that actually made decisions about the kinds of international treaties EU member states would adopt.
the EU parliament can't do any of these things
it can't even propose legislation
at best it's a rubber stamp for the Council and the Commission
The keyword here is "tried". Pretty much every other multilateral trade agreement is entirely undemocratic. Parties to the agreement negotiate on a condition of unanimity. This isn't just minority rule (Council/Commission), it's minority-of-the-minority rule.
The solution to the EU being "undemocratic" is to make it democratic: move decision-making power to the European Parliament and away from member states. You can have democracy or soverignity but not both.
Tribalism prevails, humans have no fix. Perhaps in another reality or dimension it is conceivable for people to come together and form a truly resourceful world government.
Wait till you see how the lack of world coordination keeps this virus thriving in half of the planet. While we plot beautiful statistics to show which tribe has less cases in a non-uniform response.
Hail the great UK for awakening the UKIP with their fantastic referendum promise to reduce pest immigrants to hundreds. The UK had it long coming, the country lives in the 19th century, never moved towards becoming a modern republic. And now, people are shocked we voted out of the EU. Bad news is old news.
It is the UK's tradition to be a lone fighter in favour of customary nationalistic tribalism and island mentality. Worse of it is that it ended up waking up the dormant retarded far right around the world. Hell yea! great way to start 2021 UK!.
This was not tribalism. The vote was on a knife’s edge, and only after many years of anti-European sentiment stirred up by conservative and other Euro-skeptic sections of the media. We can squarely blame Rupert Murdoch for this, even if he did not directly pull the strings. People routinely vote against their best interests because they are convinced to do so by a pervasive, aggressive, psychologically damaging mass media, which is now exacerbated by social media.
The EU has really been quite a convenient scapegoat, not just in the UK. I wonder if politicians on all sides will/can continue to blame the EU now that the UK has "full control". I have a feeling that, yes, they will.
As much as I consider myself a pan-European, the European institutions, governance and government unfortunately make for a (mostly deservedly) great political target.
By that logic we would expect the German states to vote them self out of the German federation, Scotland and Wales to vote them self out of the UK, Nigeria to break apart, etc. And not only that we should expect it to happen with hostility towards the old nation, e.g. no trade unions after independence (unlike e.g. Catalonia not only voting them self out of Spain, but also out of the EU).
However that seems not be happening, nor does there seem to be any will towards it.
It seems people actually quite like each other, and they like to be able to visit each other, and trade with each other, even though they speak different language or have different religion. In fact in the world today, tribalism seems to becoming more and more on fringe.
I don’t believe for a second that people voted for Brexit because of tribalism. Some might have, but they were definitely a tiny minority.
> However that seems not be happening, nor does there seem to be any will towards it.
I don't know about your other examples, but there is definitely some will toward Scotland voting themselves out of the UK. There was already a referendum about it a few years ago, and there has been more talk again recently since Scottish voters didn't want Brexit and many would love for Scotland to be able to break from the UK and rejoin the EU.
Yeah I did think of that as I was writing this response, but there is a difference though. As I note in the Catalonia example the sentiment is not tribalism as people generally want to retain relations with the foreign neighbors post independence (e.g. I bet most Scots want to rejoin EU post independence).
I bet even most people voting for Brexit didn’t want this hard “we are on our own, and we don’t care for nobody” type Brexit as you would expect if tribalism prevailed (as evident that most people even in favor of hard no deal Brexit still favor CANZUK).
Is that language really necessary? Such divisive language doesn't help the debate at all. As mentioned below, it's also totally incorrect. Labour heartlands voted massively for leave. Labour and Tories went into the election saying they would honour the referendum vote. Tories cleaned up an 80 seat majority in December 2019 winning many Labour seats campaigning on the goal to get Brexit done.
Brexit has happened. I voted remain but I've moved on. Harbouring such negativity and pessimism isn't healthy.
"Cleaned up"? They got just 43% of the popular vote!
It's even more ridiculous than America. The whole thing's rigged, 60% of the country didn't want the Tories handling this and somehow they have an 80 seat majority!
> Here's hoping our kids manage to vote us back in as soon as those Tory f's are out.
I think there is a decent chance that sometime in the next few years there will be another Scottish independence referendum, that this time "Yes" will win, and then an independent Scotland will apply to rejoin the EU.
I think Scottish independence, combined with demographic changes in Northern Ireland – Catholics are likely to outnumber Protestants, possibly as early as this year's census, but if not in 2021, then almost certainly in 2031 – have a decent chance of leading to Irish reunification in the next couple of decades.
If Scotland and a united Ireland are in the EU, will the United Kingdom of England and Wales still want to stay out? (And will they still keep the "United" in their name?)
(Even Welsh independence might happen eventually, but I think that is a fair way further off than Scottish independence or Irish reunification.)
The SNP's majority and the remain vote in Scotland certainly give credence to that idea. Given how close the last referendum was the Brexit issue could easily be enough to tip the scales, granted it's always difficult to predict what other factors might be in play.
I must admit that part of me likes the irony of the UK "forging it's own path" resulting Westminster losing power and it's states gaining independence.
As a side note, I think it's better to refer to the northern Irish as republicans and unionists. The division is due to the partition of Ireland and not religious beliefs. The division lines might be the same but religious labels add irrelevant impactions. You don't have to be Catholic to be in favour of reunionification and vice versa.
> As a side note, I think it's better to refer to the northern Irish as republicans and unionists
The reason I spoke of Catholics and Protestants is because there is a religious background question ("what religion you were raised in") on the Northern Ireland Census, and it is widely expected to flip in this year's census, and if not this year, then almost surely by the next census in 2031.
By contrast, the Northern Ireland Census doesn't directly ask about whether one identifies as "republican/nationalist" or "unionist". The closest thing it comes to that is the question of whether one identifies as British, Irish, Northern Irish, or some combination of those three. But it isn't clear how exactly the answers to that question map to the community divide.
Religious background doesn't exactly map to community affiliation, but it mostly does. One thing to keep in mind is the distinction between small-u unionism (pragmatic support for the continuation of the status quo) and Big-U Unionism (support for traditional Unionist symbols such as the Orange Order parades, 12th of July celebrations, etc) – a decent percentage of Catholics support the former, very few (if any) Catholics support the later. Likewise, there are some Protestants who would vote for Irish reunification but very many of those would not want to associate with traditional nationalist community symbols.
> The division lines might be the same but religious labels add irrelevant impactions.
I think, historically, the religious division did play a major role in the partition of Ireland in the early 1920s. Many unionists saw Unionism and Protestantism as going hand-in-hand. The Republican/Nationalist side placed less emphasis on religion – although the vast majority of Republicans/Nationalists were Catholics, there was a small Protestant minority among them. Now, as the decades have passed, with continuing secularisation, religion is less an issue than it used to be, but it still lurks in the background. The DUP was originally strongly linked to the Free Presbyterian Church, although the DUP has de-emphasised the religious linkage as time goes by. Their traditionalist moral stances (anti-abortion, anti-LGBT rights, etc) have even won them the support of the ultra-conservative end of Northern Irish Catholicism, but that's only about 2% of the electorate. Still more than the number of Protestants voting for Sinn Fein or SDLP.
In the context of the census that certainly makes sense and there are obviously strong links between religious backgrounds and political beliefs.
The reason I mention it is because I've encountered too many people in continental Europe who assume the Troubles were purely due differences in religious beliefs which seems absurd given how similar those two branches of catholicism are. I realize it's entirely based on my personal experience but I've seen it too often to ignore!
> The reason I mention it is because I've encountered too many people in continental Europe who assume the Troubles were purely due differences in religious beliefs
I agree that it is a complex situation, and that while religion is a major factor, it is not the only factor, and painting it as purely about religion is an oversimplification. On the other hand, I worry that many people oversimplify it in the other direction, and try to present it as if it has nothing to do with religion, which is false.
> which seems absurd given how similar those two branches of catholicism are
I think you mean Christianity, not Catholicism here.
Britain and Ireland have a long history of religious conflict and sectarianism. In recent decades, the intensity of that conflict has dropped down dramatically, in large part due to secularisation. But decades ago, it was much more intense.
That conflict was never primarily about religious doctrine, although religious doctrine still had a big role to play in it. A lot of it was about the fear that Catholicism was a means for foreign Catholic political powers – Spain, France, etc – to take over. It was also about who was the rightful king – Catholic King James VII and II was removed in a coup in 1688 and replaced with his Protestant daughter Mary and son-in-law William of Orange. James had an authoritarian ruling style, which caused a lot of conflicts with Parliament; but he was also an advocate of religious toleration, which was deeply unpopular with the majority of Protestants; those two factors combined led to his removal. James sought to regain the throne, and many Irish Catholics supported him, along with France. His supporters (the Jacobites) fought a war (with French help) to gain control of Ireland (the Williamite War of 1689 to 1691), but lost. (His supporters included some Protestants, especially conservatives who viewed the removal of the king in a coup as a threat to the legitimacy of the monarchy.) Protestant Unionists in Northern Ireland still celebrate their side's victories in that war to this day, particularly on the 12th of July.
Even as an American with no stake in the UK, this departure saddens me after how hard my family fought in Europe in defense of stability in that region.
The best thing that can come of this is that the UK promptly rejoins and everyone tries to put this indiscretion in the past. But even assuming they do rejoin, this tantrum has still significantly increased the risk of a massive conflict for probably a century or longer -- any hell-bent ideological maniac in any member state can now effectively use Brexit as a populist rallying cry that might actually work. (And most certainly, states with minority viewpoints will use it as leverage against the majority for an untold length of time.)
Why don’t you demand the abolition of the monarchy while you’re at it? This sort of talk delights Brexiteers because all but a tiny number of hardcore pro-EU zealots will respond with a raised middle finger.
I think Denmark is the only country that opts out of the Euro, the rest are on track of getting it. Although it doesn’t look like Sweden and Poland are in any rush though.
The Euro has done huge damage to the EU project - because of it Greece is stuck in debt, smaller countries can't support their economies in the middle of the pandemic, etc. Even the most ardent europhiles have come around to realise gow problematic it is.
The real sovereignty of a country is not in it's armed forces - its the currency. Without control over the press and interest rates, all you can do is tax and spend in a region with no borders, its like running an oversized city councill. However the amount of solidarity and coordination in EU is not high enough that you can rely on it - you can see that in Dutch ministers refusing to back COVID bonds, and the amount of EU-level economix stimulous being miniscule for the economy size
But Greece would never had gotten that credit in drachmen and greek jurisprudence anyway. I dont think that inflation would make much difference to greek economic competitiveness either. It's not like the trajectory changed much since the Euro, the greek goverments only concealed the problems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Greece_and...
While I agree that Greece might have defaulted with drachmas, I still believe grandparent is right: the euro and the mastricht parameters have done immense damage to the EU idea.
Without it we literally wouldn't have a lot of anti-eu sentiment in many countries.
Since the introduction of the Euro, joining the eurozone is a requirement of being in the EU. My impression is that the UK and Denmark were given opt-out because we were already part of the EU at the time.
cough Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania cough
I can assure you there is no way Poland adopts Euro, we will sooner Pexit than let Germany manipulate our currency for their profit. Just look what they did to Greece.
Bailed them out of their own short-sightedness, helping to negotiate on Greece’s behalf to force the people Greece/Greek banks owed money to agree to not get it all back, and still helped them as best as possible even though they rejected the terms of the third bailout?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim to know economics well enough to argue how good the Euro is or what reforms it might need to make “The EU bails out Greece” an equivalent statement to “The USA bails out Alabama”, but politically the EU were good on this one.
* The mid-2000s British housing bubble, and its collapse in 2007, would have been even bigger.
* Britain would have had to ask the IMF, ECB, and EU for loans.
* The Tories would in 2010 have promised a referendum to leave the Euro and won a majority. Labour would have won fewer than 100 seats, and UKIP would have "made spectacular gains".
* The anti-Euro side would have won the referendum, and the currency would have collapsed.
* "after a deep and painful recession economic recovery began".
* "Britain would have destroyed the euro on departure, and would now be on the point of leaving the EU altogether. The idea that Farage might be the next prime minister would be quite credible."
This could be very bad or it could be very good. The chains of EU centralized bureaucracy are off, now the UK can chart their own destiny (hopefully for the better).
The chains are still on because the UK still needs to trade with said bureaucracy, and of course the fault of that lies with the EU's bureaucratic nature itself instead of the UK's decision to exit.
Ultimately we should want the EU to be eliminated entirely and replaced with a multilateral free trade treaty, and UK's exit is a very productive step in that direction.
The (wholly imaginary) one mandating red passports, I assume. The whole ‘sovereignty’ argument was always highly symbolic, and not very interested in specifics.
Are you sure? I think they will have to show their passport when entering Gibraltar from outside the Schengen area, not when crossing the Spain-Gibraltar border (the BBC page I linked to says they already have to show it now, so that won’t change)
How would that even work, a border where some persons have to identify themselves while others can cross freely? That would catch only the truly stupid criminals. (But what do I know? Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area makes my head go dizzy with all the exceptions. You can sort-of sneak into the Schengen area via Svalbard or the Faroe islands, for example, so some holes needed to be closed there)
Such a system only work when everybody already has to show ID, as is the case when traveling by boat or plane to and from the parts of Spain in Africa (that’s a security check, not a border check. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area#Air_travel)
You can go to Ireland, via the CTA. Live here five years, fill out a very long form, wait an indeterminate time for the form to be processed, and you have an EU citizenship again!(You can keep the UK one, too; dual Irish/UK citizenships are permissible and common).
Also, check for any Irish or Italian grandparents; you may already have won an exciting new citizenship!
One of you lot recently married an American and moved to Canada. Queen's a bit salty, but they seem to be doing well for themselves. But seriously, I'm an American living in Canada, planning on getting citizenship here. The British immigrants I've met seem to get along pretty well here.
Nah, they're back in Santa Barbara, California. Vancouver Island is a beautiful area, but it's pretty far from the nexus of the entertainment industry.
The UK and Canada are quite culturally similar though. I could see CANZUK working pretty well, if the politicians ever get around to implementing it.
Seconding Ireland. Also, out of habit I recommend The Netherlands + Scandinavia. Wealthy, competently run places. New Zealand is great, but 30 hours of travel to visit family is not super great.
Little to celebrate here. The main outcome is that it’s now going to be much more of a pain in the arse to perform lots of basic functions that we took for granted.
There is now a bunch more red tape involved involved in buying or selling goods or services to other European counties. It’s harder and more expensive to move for work or education, both to and from the UK. The UK now has a customs border inside it’s own territory (which is fairly mad in itself). We end up trapped in the wake of the EU with far less influence on what that environment looks like.
It’s not the end of the world, but it’s hard to find many positive opportunities that arise from it.
Wouldn't it be better to replace the EU with an expansive multilateral free trade treaty that encompasses the same states? Why do we need an additional layer of government?
Hard to answer that without defining what “better” means. It’s not clear what difference you would imagine between “an expansive multilateral free trade treaty” and the EU as it stands.
The European single market is essentially the largest international free trade agreement, going far further and deeper than any other by eliminating as many barriers to both trade and individual freedom between states. In order to support that and provide a level playing field, there needs to be common set of rules on things like regulation, worker’s rights, state funding of industry and so on. And in order to administer those, you need a level of bureaucracy. Quite quickly, you’ll find you’ve recreated the EU.
It’s totally reasonable to argue for the EU to take a particular direction - like closer integration, or more distant cooperation, or less bureaucracy or whatever. But the arguments in the Brexit case in particular often seem to fall apart on interrogation of the details.
EU's stated objectives go far beyond just facilitating free trade, with most of their budget allocated to unrelated projects and goals. To the extent that the EU does facilitate free trade, which is indeed one of its goals, I have no objection, but I believe we can do away with a huge amount of big government/globalist excess and just go for an explicit multilateral FTA with as little bureaucratic overhead as necessary to enact such a treaty. That would look distinctly different to the extant EU.
This sort of thing was the kind of statement we heard pretty frequently over the course of the Brexit process, but it’s really horribly nonspecific - “big government excess”, “bureaucratic overhead” etc.
The total EU budget is about 2% of the total public spending of the member states. That’s a chunk of change at at international level, but is relatively lightweight as a layer of government. Much of its spending is investment into shared projects that are intended to encourage development, trade and collaboration between member states.
What are the specific EU programmes or endeavours that represent “globalist excess” and should be cut? Do those changes really fundamentally affect the structure of the EU?
> What are the specific EU programmes or endeavours that represent “globalist excess” and should be cut?
I'm pro-EU, but I'd say the Euro is questionable, at least in hindsight. However the UK opted out of it (and Schengen), which makes this a non-argument for Brexit.
One thing the UK could have done but never did, was to require EU citizens to move out if they were jobless for 3 months. Given this, it's mind-boggling that part of the reason some voted for Brexit was to get foreigners out. One can say the UK purposefully didn't opt for less globalism in this case.
Another similar example is the "red-colored passports": a minor issue that got blown out of proportion, but the UK could have had them without leaving the EU.
Yes but now the politicians can't hide behind the idea that "we can't do that because we're in the EU" - even as you said they could. One big advantage for me with leaving is that British politicians can be brought to account. They will have no excuses.
Investment into renewables, as one example among others. Not that such investment shouldn't take place, but it has nothing to do with free trade, and I would much prefer a large carbon tax with minimal bureaucratic overhead than the centralized EU as-is allocating capital to ventures that the bureaucrats have decided are worthwhile. It's the globalist, big government and centrally planned solution to climate change.
Also two percent is a stupefyingly large amount if it were simply about effectively administering a FTA (and it isn't as per the above). NAFTA on the other hand requires roughly 0 percent, which is markedly better. Given the precedent of low overhead FTAs, I don't accept the premise of the EU.
Investment into renewables, as one example among others.
You could make a reasonable argument that the EU should generally refrain from funding infrastructure and other development projects, and that this is a power best reserved for member states.
But don’t sell it short; those programs are generally intended to provide long-term support for the stability of the single market by developing international cooperation and helping the least developed regions and countries catch up. It’s more intertwined with supporting free trade that it may initially seem.
NAFTA on the other hand requires roughly 0 percent, which is markedly better.
NAFTA (or USMCA now) is not really comparable to the European single market even from a free trade perspective. The latter eliminates barriers to the extent that trading with other member states is like trading between different US states. I could load a van up with products, drive them to another EU country, and deliver them to a customer - with no need for customs forms, tariffs, inspections, bureaucracy or anything else of the sort. It’s hard to overstate how much easier this makes trade.
The cost is that removing barriers means greater harmonisation between member states is required on many levels, and the purpose of the EU is to provide the means for that harmonisation.
Again, it’s fine to feel that a better approach is possible. But I think it’s also important to be honest about what the trade offs really are. Neglecting to do that is what led to Brexit.
> The total EU budget is about 2% of the total public spending of the member states. That’s a chunk of change at at international level, but is relatively lightweight as a layer of government.
this argument is constantly stated and it's still as bogus as ever
the vast majority cost of implementing powers delegated to the EU is borne by national budgets
once correctly attributed: the "lightweight" label becomes somewhat of a joke
I think you’d need to make a much more detailed analysis to come to that conclusion.
You’re right that implementation of regulation is funded domestically. But it would be incorrect to attribute all of the spending to “the EU”, given that much of it takes the place of whatever alternative domestic regulation and implementation would be required in the same area.
Depends how expansive you want it. At a certain point, to ease trade, you need common standards and rules and an enforcement mechanism for both, and, oops, suddenly you’ve got a government. That’s essentially how the EU came about in the first place.
Without a layer of government, the free trade agreement can’t adapt itself to a changing world. One of the bigger criticisms of the EU is that it adapts too slowly, so this would definitely be the opposite of an improvement.
Trade is not and was never was the primary purpose, either for the EEC or the EU. This was the lie (officially documented) that was sold to the UK population on the first referendum, in 1975.
> Wouldn't it be better to replace the EU with an expansive multilateral free trade treaty that encompasses the same states? Why do we need an additional layer of government?
I don't know much about it, but I suppose if you want a free trade without a race to the bottom or a "giant sucking sound," you'd need something like a government to set standards across the area.
Also, it seems like there's some obvious benefits to a currency union (drawbacks too), and if you want to have that, then you need some kind of body to manage it.
The world is becoming a smaller place with bigger fish every year. Without the EU powers like china and russia would have it even easier to dominate smaller european nations politics.
A tighter foreign and military policy integration could also enable more independence from the US but most EU countries prefer to reap the dividends of the waning pax americana than to spend necessary ressources on defense.
Interesting multipolar times are ahead where standing alone might not be the best choice.
As a Scotsman, this is a sad day. My only hope is that we leave the Union and that Ireland can work out it's differences and pursue reunification. There is nothing else left for it. A tragic time to be British and nothing to celebrate here.
Very interesting that you would be willing to make yourself into yet an even weaker entity. What a tragic and utterly preventable denouement for a once proud empire.
I'm curious in what way you think rump-UK would be weaker without Scotland? Economically it would be fine: England is by far the biggest economy in the UK. There would be some losses: about 10 percent of the UK GDP, Scottish military bases, natural gas and oil resources, about 5 million people.
But Scotland produces only about 6 percent of the UK's total exports. The vast majority of what it produces is "exported" to England, Wales, and Northern Ireland (about £50 billion to the UK compared to £15 billion to the EU and £17 billion to the rest of the world). It also has a fiscal deficit that's largely offset by the English taxpayer. Scotland is much more economically dependent on the UK than the UK is on Scotland.
Outside of the UK, Scotland may be a credible middle-ranking small country comparable to Czechia. It certainly could not afford to maintain its current level of public services. Without Scotland, the rest of the UK would remain one of the largest economies in the world.
(btw, Scotland was never an Imperial possession of British Empire. The Union with Scotland was peaceful, and largely in the interests of the Scots, who had succeeded in destroying their economy through mismanagement, unwise allegiances with the French, and unsuccessful attempts to build their own empire).
Your own first paragraph demonstrates the answer to your own question. 10% GDP is loads, and some of those military bases are the only places you currently have where you can fix up your “independent” nuclear deterrent.
Yes, the GDP reduction isn't trivial, but Scotland spends way more than it makes. The UK would no longer have to support that deficit and they wouldn't have to provide services to 5 million Scottish people.
The loss of the HMNB Clyde (the Trident base) poses problems, but not insurmountable ones. Devonport in Plymouth and Miford Haven (more problematically) are suitable replacements. Also, Trident provides about 8,000 jobs to the Scottish economy, and they'd all move south too.
You are asking why the UK would be weaker without Scotland. I do not understand why you do not find convincing the very claims you already concede? 10% weaker is weaker, specifically by 10%.
I do not find it convincing because reduced GDP does not equate to weakness. It has to be viewed in context: GDP would be reduced but per capita GDP would not be reduced by 10 percent (because the population would also be lower). Furthermore, the UK spends more on Scotland than Scotland contributes, so it's a net economic burden. Independence would remove that burden, leaving the UK better off.
I think I have already expressed this perfectly clearly in previous comments, so this is the last I will say about it.
Is West Germany better off with East Germany or without? Or how about is California better off with Alabama or without?
By all means continue to shrink yourself down into the smallest tribal sub-population you can slice yourself into. I’m sure prosperity is right around the corner when you finally do.
As a fellow Scot, i will vote SNP in next years Scottish election. That election could be a landslide for them, Leading to another independence vote. Even before the effects of Brexit are felt, there is a slight lead for the yes camp. Perhaps we need to be a poor small country in Europe with a voice rather than ignored in Westminster. A sad day.
If Scotland leaves the UK, how many Scots do you predict will leave Scotland so that they can continue to be citizens of the UK?
(Please assume that Westminster will offer UK citizenship to any Scot that moves to England, Wales or Northern Ireland and applies for UK citizenship.)
Scotland, NI, Wales and England are stronger together. Our shared history is to be celebrated and we should pull together in this new chapter, not tear ourselves apart.
Not wanting to be in the EU makes you a racist how exactly? Are we using the word “racist” in the same way as it was applied in the last four years in America?
I visit UK often because of family ties. The most frequent answer I get when I ask people why they voted to leave is that foreigners come over and take their jobs and put a strain on NHS, vaguely referencing the influx of Polish immigrants they got when Poland entered the EU.
You live in a society of people, the people that you interact with daily are people just like you. Some of them might be immigrants and some of them might have a foreign citizenship. That does not make them any lesser. They pay taxes to the same government as you, they abide by the same rules as you. If they brake the law, they have to answer for it just like you. The only reason I can think of why they shouldn’t accept the same benefits from your government as you is xenophobia.
Not to mention that all the complaints about "putting strain on NHS" were started by Murdoch's Sun.
From my experience:
1. I have a lot of friends from all over the world, that live in the UK. They have been there since their late 20's, make far more money than the median, and hence contributed a lot of money to NHS
2. I was living in UK during the Polish influx, and what I observed was that British people would prefer to use Polish builders as they were doing better work and got things done faster. My landlord was complaining that she was unable to book her favorite Polish builder for some work in the house.
Not saying that this is always the case and there weren't people who arrived to UK to take advantage of the better social services, but that's what my experience was, and maybe it's because of the specific bubble I live in.
Blaming foreigners for ills they do not cause is essentially, perhaps even literally, what the word “xenophobic” means, and migrants to the UK are collectively blamed for things they do not cause.
We're relatively lucky in the UK that our problems with racism are generally subtle enough to be missed by Americans - the EU referendum was fought on seriously dodgy grounds (even ignoring the lying)
It's complicated. I know some minority ethnic British people who voted for Brexit for entirely xenophobic reasons ... and others who would swear up and down that they were not racist one minute, and then spend the next spouting the most hateful sort of lies. Fear and hatred are powerful emotions, and the flames of discontent have been fanned for years by tabloid propaganda and industrialised hate.
On the other hand, most of the people who I know who voted 'Leave' had poorly disguised (and sometimes completely insane) xenophobic rationale for doing so.
Also - and significantly - racially motivated aggression and hostility toward my (mixed race) family suddenly increased to intolerable levels in the weeks and months following the Brexit vote.
The whole affair has been an undeniable victory for the nastiest sort of hatred, and has demolished the pride I felt in my country as a bastion of reasonableness and tolerance.
However, in the context of Brexit, Farage proudly stood before “breaking point” posters that showed the same scenes as a literal Nazi propaganda film picturing large streams of Jewish refugees as a threat:
I think you've got it wrong. Being a racist was a motivation for one part of the Brexit movement — to keep out the Poles and Romanians and all those smelly people. That wasn't an attitude they got from voting, rather, they voted (along with the other brexiters) because they already had the attitude.
And also the whole narrative that everyone in Romania and Turkey was going to move to the UK, and so on. Race-baiting was a big, important component of the Brexit campaign.
Obviously not everyone who voted for Brexit was a racist by a long shot, but it’s naive to think that it wasn’t a factor.
The UK has consistently been ranked one of the least racist countries in Europe, both pre and post referendum.
Do you know what stokes division? Demonstrably false narratives and accusing vast swathes of people who hold myriad views on an immensely complicated subject of racism. Whatever makes you feel better, I suppose.
Our civilization is about to face its darkest hour. We need everyone working together, not just in the EU.
Instead this type of isolationist response seems to be what we are going for, not just in the UK but the US and other places. Very sad that we don't seem to have learned much form the history of the civilizations that came before us.
Please support your first assertion with a comparison of the quality of life of humans on the planet, decade by decade, starting with whatever date you think you civilization started, and the changes you project for yourself in the “darkest hour” and how they compare...
The entire history since civilization started has been leading us to this point — climate change. Ever since fire was tamed (arguably defining the beginning of civilization), the emission of greenhouse gasses has been leading us here. And we have known it for decades, if not longer. Now it’s here, and this is the fight we need to be united for; not some trite idea of “quality of life”. This is about the whole of human survival.
Brexit was a triumph of evil men. We were foolish and naive, and did not expect these craven lies to have such dire effect. This tidal wave of pent up hatred unleashed from these deep and forgotten pools of animus and fear.
Nonetheless -- the world keeps on turning.
Evil may win a battle here and there, but it cannot be allowed to win the war. What these vandals destroy can always be built up anew.
A sad day indeed, and - as predicted widely - there is not a substantial upside to Brexit in sight.
Following UK politics, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the country is being held hostage by a Conservative (and Unionist, hah) party: past governments have been singularly focused on keeping the party in power and the country be damned. But this is not all: I think Brexit could have been much less destructive if it were not for the remarkable incompetence of and rash decision making of the last few governments.
It has been fascinating to see a country play its hand so immensely badly, even more so because the hand did not even need to be played.
I'm amazed at reading British HNers who are presumably mostly rational calling Brexit "evil" and "racist" on this thread.
I personally think Brexit is probably an ill-advised move for the UK, but the feelings provoked here by leaving a historically recent trade and cultural union are far, far out of proportion with the deed itself.
If anything actually destroys your country, it'll be the exaggerated emotional response shown by each of the two sides in this debate.
You're writing to people who have been fed The Guardian propaganda for years. It's now equivalent to Fox News in its levels of absurd toxicity. It used to be pretty damned good, just 10-15 years ago. I think the monetization rush made it go toxic/extremely one-sided.
From the outside it looks like a series of A/B monetization experiments gone horribly wrong. They have essentially gone all in on writing pieces that resonate well with a particular demographic. No other kind of journalism seems to be interesting or relevant.
Just compare the economic growth per capita of Norway (not in EU) with Sweden (in EU). It's at best an exaggeration that leaving the EU is going to have a significant deleterious impact on the UK.
In the long run, it may not make much difference, but I suspect there will be an economically rough transition.
But honestly, I’m not an economist and haven’t read a great deal about the projections. And many Brits will accept any difficulties in exchange for increased control over their own political destiny.
Norway is in EEA. For most (all?) economic purposes, being in EU, EEA, and Switzerland is equivalent. The same rules, procedures, responsibilities, and privileges apply whether the country is a member of EU or EEA.
Being in the EEA is somewhat worse than being in the EU; in particular, it's not in the customs union, so a lot of small businesses will not sell direct to Norway, and Norwegian SMEs are less likely to be direct exporters or to directly import their inputs. Being outside the customs union creates opportunities for middlemen, but otherwise isn't great for most people.
Norway's arrangement is much more comprehensive than the UK's, though.
>Just compare the economic growth per capita of Norway (not in EU) with Sweden (in EU). It's at best an exaggeration that leaving the EU is going to have a significant deleterious impact on the UK.
It's not quite an equivalent comparison, though; Norway is essentially a Middle East petrostate relocated to the North Sea.
Choosing the one European country that has vast amounts of oil and a very solid public investment strategy for it feels like a bad faith argument to me.
The thing is: five years of this process has worked to make me much more pissed off than I was. It might not have been clear from outside just how toxic this all was, and will have driven many of us away from our initial position of "this was merely a bad decision that we will work around".
It’s not specifically about the mechanics of the EU membership or "leaving a historically recent trade union". There are rational arguments to support doing these things, and there are ways to do them while not being dicks about it. But the UK's internal political environment has crumbled along with this process. It's become bound up in a "culture war", and many of us reasonably feel that this is just one of the manifestations of a country which is taking a negative and inward-looking approach to situations where we'd much rather take a positive and internationalist one.
It’s hard to maintain a dispassionate attitude sometimes when being deliberately provoked. So you’ll see people using the words “evil” and “racist” not to describe Brexit itself, but rather to some of the people it’s inseparable from. Although the campaign itself was explicitly racist, featuring cliché lies about an incoming horde of foreigners. Really grubby stuff that should shame the country, and it's getting worse.
I've spent the past five years watching a succession of (primarily government) politicians lying to my fucking face about the great opportunities that await us. Repeatedly compounding a bad decision with completely unjustified rhetoric about it.
What we could have seen was a sensible approach that appreciated that Brexit was a democratically-made decision and had to be respected, and then tried to build a national consensus about how best to deliver it. But we instead went for a take-no-prisoners approach and this has left many of us quite angry.
Even just from a purely practical level, I'm pretty pissed about this. After years of nonsense the final outcome is that it's going to be much more of a pain in the arse to do a bunch of stuff I did that was easy before. I've lost a set of rights that I had, used, and valued, and gained nothing in return. I could even deal with that a bit better if I didn't have to be constantly lied to about how great it is.
So yes. The country won't be destroyed – but it will be permanently weakened, and I think it's okay to be a bit emotionally invested in that.
> The country won't be destroyed – but it will be permanently weakened
Oh, I don't know. Keep it up with the overheated rhetoric and I suspect you all will succeed. Just ask your neighbors in SE Europe, where I spent part of the 90s, what that looks like.
And don't get me wrong, we're heading in the exact same direction here in the US.
By the way, this got a fair number of upvotes, so I'm glad to see that at least a portion of HN agrees.
Brexit is best major event in recent history of Europe.
Not only are almost all Brits now better off, but Brexit shows that Brussels has an extremely weak negotiating position. Why? Because they don't create anything, they plunder, add debt and regulations.
Now we know anyone can leave the EU and be better off.
What puzzles me the most about Brexit is reflected in the more...effusive...posts here as well. The overheated rhetoric and amazing one-sidedness of the discussion in the online media. Way over the top if you just step into the discussion as an objective observer. It’s been only 48 years, they are all supposedly mature democracies, what is the big deal?
I could only think of two excuses:
* some powerful entities had made some very big bets in the derivatives market tied to this and it was worth anything to not lose on those trades. Who knows, but seems extreme even for those sorts.
* there is some deep existential reason that UK’s membership was key to the EU enterprise.
The only thing I, as an outsider, could conjecture on the second point was the UK provided “karmic cover” for Germany (and France) to directly control the other EU member Nations.
In the media, Merkel’s statements were seemingly taken as the de facto EU position. Macron made an out-of-band agreement with Merkel, that made no sense if the EU was their platform for interaction. From an outsider perspective it seemed that Germany was running the show.
But remember Napoleon? Remember the Kaiser? Remember Kaiser 2.0 (Hitler)? But then remember the UK...they didn’t try a “Deutschland over all of us” or a Napoleonic union at the point of a bayonet. They comported themselves rather well.
So the EU really isn’t Germany finally winning WWII if the UK...hey wait, UK, where are you going?
That might be worth distorting the public debate in the UK over...
The true nature of all of this can be seen quite clearly in the fundamentally xenophobic, dishonest and hateful manner with which the Leave campaign comported itself, as well as the tidal wave of racist and intolerant behaviour which accompanied the Brexit vote and stains everything to do with it.
There are solid reasons why Brexit is the darling of the resurgent neofascist movement, and it should all be seen as part of the same picture.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 282 ms ] threadhttps://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-55502781
> The UK stopped following EU rules at 23:00 GMT
After reading the terms of the deal, lots of Swedes in r/svenskpolitik ("swedish politics") actually wanted the same exit deal. I kind of agree.
Yes you can. (Well, at least after covid-19 is over.)
That's been the case since 2014, nothing to do with Brexit.
Before Brexit:
"From 9 June 2014, all British Overseas Territories citizens (BOTCs), British Overseas citizens (BOCs), British Protected Persons (BPPs), and British Subjects (BS) will be allowed to travel visa free to the EU Schengen Area for a maximum of 90 days."
After Brexit:
"If you’re a tourist, you do not need a visa for short trips to most EU countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. You’ll be able to stay for up to 90 days in any 180-day period."
UK citizens could move around the EU freely.
Happy new year.
:’(
That's a wild exaggeration. The UK is a tremendous export market for the US, we want everything to do with them, there is a lot in it for us ($700 billion per decade in purchased goods). Plus we have a rough split on trade, one of the few major nations we don't have a large trade deficit with.
The British import more US goods than the Germans do, and nearly as much as the Japanese do, with a far smaller economy.
But they all signed trade agreements with the UK? So this is clearly not true.
But there is no discussion of the other things related to CANZUK in Australia and NZ. We don't want open borders with the UK or to roll back the clock to the empire. Almost everything to do with CANZUK is a fantasy used to deflect from the very real problems associated with leaving the EU.
Wait wait wait a second ago you said they 'want nothing to do with the UK', now you're saying they want to trade, and play sports? Clearly not 'nothing to do' is it?
We are not getting the Empire band back together. I know modern conservatives have lost the plot but we can't turn back time like that. CANZUK as popularly described is a complete fantasy.
The reality is as sovereign nations trying to have influence in our own regions, often with countries with their own experiences of colonialism, any signs of subservience to an ex-colonial power is far more of a hindrance than a help.
I do support stronger ties between Canada, Australia and NZ though.
>> We are not getting the Empire band back together
CANZUK would have no political union component so how can you maintain the EU and especially the British Empire comparison?
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/xkveiyy6w5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australians_in_the_United_King...
There are 900K plus Australians who were born in the UK. Australians who have a British parent or grandparent and can thus get a UK passport would number in the millions.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/almost-30-per-cent-of-the-austra...
Two of Australia's last 3 Prime Ministers did part of their University Education in the UK.
The ties between Australia and the UK are substantial. Many Australians would be keen to work with the UK for some kind of trade deal.
A CANZUK style deal wouldn't be the EU, but it might be beneficial to the countries involved.
Generally speaking, a British grandparent does not get you UK citizenship, only a British parent does. (There are various obscure exceptions to that generalisation, but they don't apply to the vast majority of cases.)
Based on laws they will have absolutely no say in.
This weakens the UK and the EU.
We should be coming together, not fracturing into scared, nationalistic islands.
In writing, even, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
The figures are hard to come by because the EU don't record ethnicity AFAIK, but in 2017 there were approximately 17 non-white MEPs out of a total 751. I think 8 of those were from the UK. Given the amount of times I've been called racist for voting to leave the EU, I always find that figure quite hilarious.
Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet, in terms of bureaucracy. Behold these wonderful documents that the UK government cleverly sneaked out on on NYE when no-one was looking: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-border-operat...
Small businesses with EU customers or inputs are going to have to deal with bureaucratic crap on a scale that most of them will never have seen before.
I remember the day after Brexit passed my high school friend who was then working on her PhD in international theory asking how the government could revert such a decision. It seemed like the most out of touch ivory tower thing to say, and made me suspect of what educational institutions are teaching people these days.
OTOH, there was a referendum on changing the voting system (which was also rejected).
It's pretty clear in retrospect that part of what drove the Labour collapse in 2019 (In some Red Wall seats the Tories didn't have to gain a single vote to win) is Remainers who disliked the idea (whether explicit among Lib Dems, or implicit among much of Labour) of ignoring a democratic vote in 2016. That's why another referendum was so unpopular, because no one believes that it would not be rigged against Leave.[1]
People here calling the outcome of the referendum "racist" and "evil" conveniently forget the weeping and wailing that began the night of the referendum. By the next morning we were confidently told by the press and Reddit as a whole that millions of Leave voters were already regretting their vote, and that another referendum was thus the only fair/democratic/correct thing to do. (That even if such millions of Regretters actually existed that does not mean that a revote would occur is a minor technicality.)
People also forget how anger on Leavers' part against delay on Brexit did not become significant until 2019. The Supreme Court agreed that there was reasonable basis for the Miller case, and (more controversially) unexpectedly ruled for her in the second Miller case. But Leavers understandably came to see both lawsuits as part and parcel of an unrelenting attempt on Remainers' part to stop Brexit by any and all means, whether legitimate or not. The fact that Miller actively campaigned for revoking Article 50 didn't help the Remain cause, and discredited her claim during the first case that she wanted to protect parliamentary sovereignty.
Those who in other circumstances might have supported a "People's Vote" didn't, because they saw it as yet another attempt to delay and prevent Brexit via Neverendums. I think Leave would have won another referendum conducted under the circumstances of the first one, but Leavers understandably didn't trust the People's Vote folks to implement another referendum in any way that Leave can again win. Not after 3.5 years and counting of shenanigans such as the Miller case.
[1] Even supporters of same, no matter what they said. That's why they were for it.
> “She destroyed too many good things in society, and created too many bad ones, then left a social and moral vacuum in which the selfishly rich and unimaginatively fortunate could too easily destroy still more of what they don't need and can't see that everyone else does need,” said author Emma Darwin.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/margaret-that...
https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-u...
The great irony is that one of the most significant effects of the EU has been to replicate many of her reforms across the continent. But the europhiles still reflexively hate her.
And why should I or anyone else care about what a fiction author thinks?
Oh wait, no, it's just that absolutely everything got harder, more expensive, more nationalistic, more pathetic and sad.
It's all incredibly depressing.
Here's hoping our kids manage to vote us back in as soon as those Tory f's are out.
Btw, things aren't as split down party lines as they may seem. Half the Tory party are Europhiles, and I know many of my Labour friends are anti-EU in a libertarian small government sense.
The sad fact is that it's exactly these people (in the Midlands, NE, those on lower wages, in rural communities, etc) who (generalising a bit, not much) voted out - these are the communities who will be hit hardest.
It explains a minor boost on the left, not main leaver sentiment.
Here's to another decade of Labour being out of government. (Again).
IIRC the forecast economic damage is lost opportunity for growth rather than immediate losses, and any actual immediate losses could be easily dismissed (especially by this lot) as “COVID losses, not Brexit”.
We'll see. Personally, I'll always feel and be European. I reckon we'll be back.
Of course you could say that Brexit has nothing to do with British culture.
It was driven by the same core concerns about national sovereignty.
EDIT: I meant "peculiarly British", but I haven't the heart to edit that typo.
New old people are created every day. So I wouldn't necessarily count on it.
I hope you're right though.
Europe is a tricky problem, but the way Brexit specifically has happened (Lie, Damned Lies, and fake statistics - at best) means the only real lesson from this is that referenda are truly disastrous for complex policy decisions.
Yeah, I think that's definitely the big lesson.
I feel it's exacerbated by decades of tabloid propaganda.
It’s easy to say “they condemned themselves” and they _were_ naive to buy into the cake-type Brexit narrative, but if the choice had been between status quo and “we’ll try to negotiate this sort of attainable deal”, people would have had some idea on what they were voting for. As it was, it could have been anything from Norway+ to autarky.
Fun fact: this is actually how we got the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This is commonly derided as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, but the actual legislative history is that the EU had already negotiated and passed identical term lengths five years prior. They also added a reciprocality clause, granting the same term lengths in the EU to any country that also extended terms in their own jurisdiction. This is a ratchet: there's no mechanism for an American or European to object to longer terms, aside from unilateral withdrawl that will disadvantage the first-moving party. In practice, the US agreed to longer terms, because what else are they going to do? Let France or Germany have more protection for their films than the US has?
(DMCA Section 1201 happened in a similar manner, but replace the EU with the WTO. The US wouldn't pass anti-circumvention laws first, so they snuck it into TRIPS, and then used that to force the DMCA into being. The beauty of international law is that you always can find another institution to launder policy through. If there was no TRIPS, then maybe they could have bundled it into NAFTA.)
People don't like it when they object to something, and their elected representatives try and shut down their concerns. That makes them feel disenfranchised. Brexit was the inevitable result of politicians doing unpopular things and using the EU as an excuse for it. Eventually, someone was going to say "why don't we just not have international agreements"? Bonus points if you are actually one of those politicians looking to get out of, say, an upcoming tax agreement. Cause the problem (anti-democratic ratcheting), sell the solution (economic isolationism)!
the EU parliament can't do any of these things
it can't even propose legislation
at best it's a rubber stamp for the Council and the Commission
The solution to the EU being "undemocratic" is to make it democratic: move decision-making power to the European Parliament and away from member states. You can have democracy or soverignity but not both.
Tribalism prevails, humans have no fix. Perhaps in another reality or dimension it is conceivable for people to come together and form a truly resourceful world government.
Wait till you see how the lack of world coordination keeps this virus thriving in half of the planet. While we plot beautiful statistics to show which tribe has less cases in a non-uniform response.
Hail the great UK for awakening the UKIP with their fantastic referendum promise to reduce pest immigrants to hundreds. The UK had it long coming, the country lives in the 19th century, never moved towards becoming a modern republic. And now, people are shocked we voted out of the EU. Bad news is old news.
It is the UK's tradition to be a lone fighter in favour of customary nationalistic tribalism and island mentality. Worse of it is that it ended up waking up the dormant retarded far right around the world. Hell yea! great way to start 2021 UK!.
The EU has really been quite a convenient scapegoat, not just in the UK. I wonder if politicians on all sides will/can continue to blame the EU now that the UK has "full control". I have a feeling that, yes, they will.
As much as I consider myself a pan-European, the European institutions, governance and government unfortunately make for a (mostly deservedly) great political target.
However that seems not be happening, nor does there seem to be any will towards it.
It seems people actually quite like each other, and they like to be able to visit each other, and trade with each other, even though they speak different language or have different religion. In fact in the world today, tribalism seems to becoming more and more on fringe.
I don’t believe for a second that people voted for Brexit because of tribalism. Some might have, but they were definitely a tiny minority.
I don't know about your other examples, but there is definitely some will toward Scotland voting themselves out of the UK. There was already a referendum about it a few years ago, and there has been more talk again recently since Scottish voters didn't want Brexit and many would love for Scotland to be able to break from the UK and rejoin the EU.
I bet even most people voting for Brexit didn’t want this hard “we are on our own, and we don’t care for nobody” type Brexit as you would expect if tribalism prevailed (as evident that most people even in favor of hard no deal Brexit still favor CANZUK).
Brexit was a howto manual for the other member states. :)
Is that language really necessary? Such divisive language doesn't help the debate at all. As mentioned below, it's also totally incorrect. Labour heartlands voted massively for leave. Labour and Tories went into the election saying they would honour the referendum vote. Tories cleaned up an 80 seat majority in December 2019 winning many Labour seats campaigning on the goal to get Brexit done.
Brexit has happened. I voted remain but I've moved on. Harbouring such negativity and pessimism isn't healthy.
It's even more ridiculous than America. The whole thing's rigged, 60% of the country didn't want the Tories handling this and somehow they have an 80 seat majority!
I think there is a decent chance that sometime in the next few years there will be another Scottish independence referendum, that this time "Yes" will win, and then an independent Scotland will apply to rejoin the EU.
I think Scottish independence, combined with demographic changes in Northern Ireland – Catholics are likely to outnumber Protestants, possibly as early as this year's census, but if not in 2021, then almost certainly in 2031 – have a decent chance of leading to Irish reunification in the next couple of decades.
If Scotland and a united Ireland are in the EU, will the United Kingdom of England and Wales still want to stay out? (And will they still keep the "United" in their name?)
(Even Welsh independence might happen eventually, but I think that is a fair way further off than Scottish independence or Irish reunification.)
I must admit that part of me likes the irony of the UK "forging it's own path" resulting Westminster losing power and it's states gaining independence.
As a side note, I think it's better to refer to the northern Irish as republicans and unionists. The division is due to the partition of Ireland and not religious beliefs. The division lines might be the same but religious labels add irrelevant impactions. You don't have to be Catholic to be in favour of reunionification and vice versa.
The reason I spoke of Catholics and Protestants is because there is a religious background question ("what religion you were raised in") on the Northern Ireland Census, and it is widely expected to flip in this year's census, and if not this year, then almost surely by the next census in 2031.
By contrast, the Northern Ireland Census doesn't directly ask about whether one identifies as "republican/nationalist" or "unionist". The closest thing it comes to that is the question of whether one identifies as British, Irish, Northern Irish, or some combination of those three. But it isn't clear how exactly the answers to that question map to the community divide.
Religious background doesn't exactly map to community affiliation, but it mostly does. One thing to keep in mind is the distinction between small-u unionism (pragmatic support for the continuation of the status quo) and Big-U Unionism (support for traditional Unionist symbols such as the Orange Order parades, 12th of July celebrations, etc) – a decent percentage of Catholics support the former, very few (if any) Catholics support the later. Likewise, there are some Protestants who would vote for Irish reunification but very many of those would not want to associate with traditional nationalist community symbols.
> The division lines might be the same but religious labels add irrelevant impactions.
I think, historically, the religious division did play a major role in the partition of Ireland in the early 1920s. Many unionists saw Unionism and Protestantism as going hand-in-hand. The Republican/Nationalist side placed less emphasis on religion – although the vast majority of Republicans/Nationalists were Catholics, there was a small Protestant minority among them. Now, as the decades have passed, with continuing secularisation, religion is less an issue than it used to be, but it still lurks in the background. The DUP was originally strongly linked to the Free Presbyterian Church, although the DUP has de-emphasised the religious linkage as time goes by. Their traditionalist moral stances (anti-abortion, anti-LGBT rights, etc) have even won them the support of the ultra-conservative end of Northern Irish Catholicism, but that's only about 2% of the electorate. Still more than the number of Protestants voting for Sinn Fein or SDLP.
The reason I mention it is because I've encountered too many people in continental Europe who assume the Troubles were purely due differences in religious beliefs which seems absurd given how similar those two branches of catholicism are. I realize it's entirely based on my personal experience but I've seen it too often to ignore!
I agree that it is a complex situation, and that while religion is a major factor, it is not the only factor, and painting it as purely about religion is an oversimplification. On the other hand, I worry that many people oversimplify it in the other direction, and try to present it as if it has nothing to do with religion, which is false.
> which seems absurd given how similar those two branches of catholicism are
I think you mean Christianity, not Catholicism here.
Britain and Ireland have a long history of religious conflict and sectarianism. In recent decades, the intensity of that conflict has dropped down dramatically, in large part due to secularisation. But decades ago, it was much more intense.
That conflict was never primarily about religious doctrine, although religious doctrine still had a big role to play in it. A lot of it was about the fear that Catholicism was a means for foreign Catholic political powers – Spain, France, etc – to take over. It was also about who was the rightful king – Catholic King James VII and II was removed in a coup in 1688 and replaced with his Protestant daughter Mary and son-in-law William of Orange. James had an authoritarian ruling style, which caused a lot of conflicts with Parliament; but he was also an advocate of religious toleration, which was deeply unpopular with the majority of Protestants; those two factors combined led to his removal. James sought to regain the throne, and many Irish Catholics supported him, along with France. His supporters (the Jacobites) fought a war (with French help) to gain control of Ireland (the Williamite War of 1689 to 1691), but lost. (His supporters included some Protestants, especially conservatives who viewed the removal of the king in a coup as a threat to the legitimacy of the monarchy.) Protestant Unionists in Northern Ireland still celebrate their side's victories in that war to this day, particularly on the 12th of July.
[1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/brexit-latest-eu-chief-gu... (I donated to fund the projection.)
The best thing that can come of this is that the UK promptly rejoins and everyone tries to put this indiscretion in the past. But even assuming they do rejoin, this tantrum has still significantly increased the risk of a massive conflict for probably a century or longer -- any hell-bent ideological maniac in any member state can now effectively use Brexit as a populist rallying cry that might actually work. (And most certainly, states with minority viewpoints will use it as leverage against the majority for an untold length of time.)
No more unelected religious leaders in Parliament, no more unelected upper house at all, and a replacement for FPTP for the Commons.
However, I don't think the Copenhagen Criteria are this specific.
The real sovereignty of a country is not in it's armed forces - its the currency. Without control over the press and interest rates, all you can do is tax and spend in a region with no borders, its like running an oversized city councill. However the amount of solidarity and coordination in EU is not high enough that you can rely on it - you can see that in Dutch ministers refusing to back COVID bonds, and the amount of EU-level economix stimulous being miniscule for the economy size
Without it we literally wouldn't have a lot of anti-eu sentiment in many countries.
I can assure you there is no way Poland adopts Euro, we will sooner Pexit than let Germany manipulate our currency for their profit. Just look what they did to Greece.
Bailed them out of their own short-sightedness, helping to negotiate on Greece’s behalf to force the people Greece/Greek banks owed money to agree to not get it all back, and still helped them as best as possible even though they rejected the terms of the third bailout?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim to know economics well enough to argue how good the Euro is or what reforms it might need to make “The EU bails out Greece” an equivalent statement to “The USA bails out Alabama”, but politically the EU were good on this one.
The Guardian speculated in 2013 (http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2013/jun/...) that if Britain had joined the Euro the first time:
* The mid-2000s British housing bubble, and its collapse in 2007, would have been even bigger.
* Britain would have had to ask the IMF, ECB, and EU for loans.
* The Tories would in 2010 have promised a referendum to leave the Euro and won a majority. Labour would have won fewer than 100 seats, and UKIP would have "made spectacular gains".
* The anti-Euro side would have won the referendum, and the currency would have collapsed.
* "after a deep and painful recession economic recovery began".
* "Britain would have destroyed the euro on departure, and would now be on the point of leaving the EU altogether. The idea that Farage might be the next prime minister would be quite credible."
Ultimately we should want the EU to be eliminated entirely and replaced with a multilateral free trade treaty, and UK's exit is a very productive step in that direction.
You'd still need the same bureaucracy compiling the norms, except instead of doing it once for 27 countries you'd do it 27 times.
See how long it took to create other agreements like the EU/Japan, EU/Canada and failed EU/US.
Once that comes into effect, the Spanish/Gibraltarian police will be allowed to enter Gibraltar/Spain when in hot pursuit and to continue observation operations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area#Police_and_judic...)
How would that even work, a border where some persons have to identify themselves while others can cross freely? That would catch only the truly stupid criminals. (But what do I know? Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area makes my head go dizzy with all the exceptions. You can sort-of sneak into the Schengen area via Svalbard or the Faroe islands, for example, so some holes needed to be closed there)
Such a system only work when everybody already has to show ID, as is the case when traveling by boat or plane to and from the parts of Spain in Africa (that’s a security check, not a border check. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area#Air_travel)
It’s a bit annoying, but the UK could emerge stronger or weaker from the whole situation.
One thing’s for sure, I wish we spent the last 4 years preparing for a 2020 scenario instead.
What countries would you go to as an English expat for a better life? Where can you change a useless English citizenship for another?
I guess you won't? So maybe it isn't useless?
Ignorant.
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/08/will-happen-seal...
YMMV
Also, check for any Irish or Italian grandparents; you may already have won an exciting new citizenship!
The UK and Canada are quite culturally similar though. I could see CANZUK working pretty well, if the politicians ever get around to implementing it.
There is now a bunch more red tape involved involved in buying or selling goods or services to other European counties. It’s harder and more expensive to move for work or education, both to and from the UK. The UK now has a customs border inside it’s own territory (which is fairly mad in itself). We end up trapped in the wake of the EU with far less influence on what that environment looks like.
It’s not the end of the world, but it’s hard to find many positive opportunities that arise from it.
The European single market is essentially the largest international free trade agreement, going far further and deeper than any other by eliminating as many barriers to both trade and individual freedom between states. In order to support that and provide a level playing field, there needs to be common set of rules on things like regulation, worker’s rights, state funding of industry and so on. And in order to administer those, you need a level of bureaucracy. Quite quickly, you’ll find you’ve recreated the EU.
It’s totally reasonable to argue for the EU to take a particular direction - like closer integration, or more distant cooperation, or less bureaucracy or whatever. But the arguments in the Brexit case in particular often seem to fall apart on interrogation of the details.
The total EU budget is about 2% of the total public spending of the member states. That’s a chunk of change at at international level, but is relatively lightweight as a layer of government. Much of its spending is investment into shared projects that are intended to encourage development, trade and collaboration between member states.
What are the specific EU programmes or endeavours that represent “globalist excess” and should be cut? Do those changes really fundamentally affect the structure of the EU?
I'm pro-EU, but I'd say the Euro is questionable, at least in hindsight. However the UK opted out of it (and Schengen), which makes this a non-argument for Brexit.
One thing the UK could have done but never did, was to require EU citizens to move out if they were jobless for 3 months. Given this, it's mind-boggling that part of the reason some voted for Brexit was to get foreigners out. One can say the UK purposefully didn't opt for less globalism in this case.
Another similar example is the "red-colored passports": a minor issue that got blown out of proportion, but the UK could have had them without leaving the EU.
Also two percent is a stupefyingly large amount if it were simply about effectively administering a FTA (and it isn't as per the above). NAFTA on the other hand requires roughly 0 percent, which is markedly better. Given the precedent of low overhead FTAs, I don't accept the premise of the EU.
You could make a reasonable argument that the EU should generally refrain from funding infrastructure and other development projects, and that this is a power best reserved for member states.
But don’t sell it short; those programs are generally intended to provide long-term support for the stability of the single market by developing international cooperation and helping the least developed regions and countries catch up. It’s more intertwined with supporting free trade that it may initially seem.
NAFTA on the other hand requires roughly 0 percent, which is markedly better.
NAFTA (or USMCA now) is not really comparable to the European single market even from a free trade perspective. The latter eliminates barriers to the extent that trading with other member states is like trading between different US states. I could load a van up with products, drive them to another EU country, and deliver them to a customer - with no need for customs forms, tariffs, inspections, bureaucracy or anything else of the sort. It’s hard to overstate how much easier this makes trade.
The cost is that removing barriers means greater harmonisation between member states is required on many levels, and the purpose of the EU is to provide the means for that harmonisation.
Again, it’s fine to feel that a better approach is possible. But I think it’s also important to be honest about what the trade offs really are. Neglecting to do that is what led to Brexit.
this argument is constantly stated and it's still as bogus as ever
the vast majority cost of implementing powers delegated to the EU is borne by national budgets
once correctly attributed: the "lightweight" label becomes somewhat of a joke
You’re right that implementation of regulation is funded domestically. But it would be incorrect to attribute all of the spending to “the EU”, given that much of it takes the place of whatever alternative domestic regulation and implementation would be required in the same area.
I don't know much about it, but I suppose if you want a free trade without a race to the bottom or a "giant sucking sound," you'd need something like a government to set standards across the area.
Also, it seems like there's some obvious benefits to a currency union (drawbacks too), and if you want to have that, then you need some kind of body to manage it.
Just being able to deflect other parties to negiotiate with the EU instead of national goverments can be a help: https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-merkel-germany-e...
A tighter foreign and military policy integration could also enable more independence from the US but most EU countries prefer to reap the dividends of the waning pax americana than to spend necessary ressources on defense.
Interesting multipolar times are ahead where standing alone might not be the best choice.
David Cameron - what a legacy!
But Scotland produces only about 6 percent of the UK's total exports. The vast majority of what it produces is "exported" to England, Wales, and Northern Ireland (about £50 billion to the UK compared to £15 billion to the EU and £17 billion to the rest of the world). It also has a fiscal deficit that's largely offset by the English taxpayer. Scotland is much more economically dependent on the UK than the UK is on Scotland.
Outside of the UK, Scotland may be a credible middle-ranking small country comparable to Czechia. It certainly could not afford to maintain its current level of public services. Without Scotland, the rest of the UK would remain one of the largest economies in the world.
(btw, Scotland was never an Imperial possession of British Empire. The Union with Scotland was peaceful, and largely in the interests of the Scots, who had succeeded in destroying their economy through mismanagement, unwise allegiances with the French, and unsuccessful attempts to build their own empire).
The loss of the HMNB Clyde (the Trident base) poses problems, but not insurmountable ones. Devonport in Plymouth and Miford Haven (more problematically) are suitable replacements. Also, Trident provides about 8,000 jobs to the Scottish economy, and they'd all move south too.
I think I have already expressed this perfectly clearly in previous comments, so this is the last I will say about it.
By all means continue to shrink yourself down into the smallest tribal sub-population you can slice yourself into. I’m sure prosperity is right around the corner when you finally do.
It would almost certainly be better off without.
(Please assume that Westminster will offer UK citizenship to any Scot that moves to England, Wales or Northern Ireland and applies for UK citizenship.)
What a great comment - it really shows true nature of collectivists.
Scotland, NI, Wales and England are stronger together. Our shared history is to be celebrated and we should pull together in this new chapter, not tear ourselves apart.
I wish you & your family an amazing 2021. Peace.
So maybe not racists, but xenophobes for sure.
EDIT longer answer:
You live in a society of people, the people that you interact with daily are people just like you. Some of them might be immigrants and some of them might have a foreign citizenship. That does not make them any lesser. They pay taxes to the same government as you, they abide by the same rules as you. If they brake the law, they have to answer for it just like you. The only reason I can think of why they shouldn’t accept the same benefits from your government as you is xenophobia.
From my experience:
1. I have a lot of friends from all over the world, that live in the UK. They have been there since their late 20's, make far more money than the median, and hence contributed a lot of money to NHS
2. I was living in UK during the Polish influx, and what I observed was that British people would prefer to use Polish builders as they were doing better work and got things done faster. My landlord was complaining that she was unable to book her favorite Polish builder for some work in the house.
Not saying that this is always the case and there weren't people who arrived to UK to take advantage of the better social services, but that's what my experience was, and maybe it's because of the specific bubble I live in.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farag... for example.
With the EU the racism on display is usually against eastern European migrants rather than black people.
That is not to say that even the most hardline Brexiteers are necessarily racists - they're naive and stupid but not racist.
On the other hand, most of the people who I know who voted 'Leave' had poorly disguised (and sometimes completely insane) xenophobic rationale for doing so.
Also - and significantly - racially motivated aggression and hostility toward my (mixed race) family suddenly increased to intolerable levels in the weeks and months following the Brexit vote.
The whole affair has been an undeniable victory for the nastiest sort of hatred, and has demolished the pride I felt in my country as a bastion of reasonableness and tolerance.
However, in the context of Brexit, Farage proudly stood before “breaking point” posters that showed the same scenes as a literal Nazi propaganda film picturing large streams of Jewish refugees as a threat:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Comparison-of-the-poster...
And also the whole narrative that everyone in Romania and Turkey was going to move to the UK, and so on. Race-baiting was a big, important component of the Brexit campaign.
Obviously not everyone who voted for Brexit was a racist by a long shot, but it’s naive to think that it wasn’t a factor.
Do you know what stokes division? Demonstrably false narratives and accusing vast swathes of people who hold myriad views on an immensely complicated subject of racism. Whatever makes you feel better, I suppose.
Nonetheless -- the world keeps on turning.
Evil may win a battle here and there, but it cannot be allowed to win the war. What these vandals destroy can always be built up anew.
That’s how Eurasia got the Crusades, you know. Operation Barbarossa used similar language.
Poetry is a poor platform on which to base actions that affect international relations. Leads to goose stepping and such..
So over the top! Calm down!
Following UK politics, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the country is being held hostage by a Conservative (and Unionist, hah) party: past governments have been singularly focused on keeping the party in power and the country be damned. But this is not all: I think Brexit could have been much less destructive if it were not for the remarkable incompetence of and rash decision making of the last few governments.
It has been fascinating to see a country play its hand so immensely badly, even more so because the hand did not even need to be played.
I personally think Brexit is probably an ill-advised move for the UK, but the feelings provoked here by leaving a historically recent trade and cultural union are far, far out of proportion with the deed itself.
If anything actually destroys your country, it'll be the exaggerated emotional response shown by each of the two sides in this debate.
From the outside it looks like a series of A/B monetization experiments gone horribly wrong. They have essentially gone all in on writing pieces that resonate well with a particular demographic. No other kind of journalism seems to be interesting or relevant.
But honestly, I’m not an economist and haven’t read a great deal about the projections. And many Brits will accept any difficulties in exchange for increased control over their own political destiny.
Norway's arrangement is much more comprehensive than the UK's, though.
It's not quite an equivalent comparison, though; Norway is essentially a Middle East petrostate relocated to the North Sea.
Removing free movement of people is the evil bit.
HN is _such_ an echo chamber!
The thing is: five years of this process has worked to make me much more pissed off than I was. It might not have been clear from outside just how toxic this all was, and will have driven many of us away from our initial position of "this was merely a bad decision that we will work around".
It’s not specifically about the mechanics of the EU membership or "leaving a historically recent trade union". There are rational arguments to support doing these things, and there are ways to do them while not being dicks about it. But the UK's internal political environment has crumbled along with this process. It's become bound up in a "culture war", and many of us reasonably feel that this is just one of the manifestations of a country which is taking a negative and inward-looking approach to situations where we'd much rather take a positive and internationalist one.
It’s hard to maintain a dispassionate attitude sometimes when being deliberately provoked. So you’ll see people using the words “evil” and “racist” not to describe Brexit itself, but rather to some of the people it’s inseparable from. Although the campaign itself was explicitly racist, featuring cliché lies about an incoming horde of foreigners. Really grubby stuff that should shame the country, and it's getting worse.
I've spent the past five years watching a succession of (primarily government) politicians lying to my fucking face about the great opportunities that await us. Repeatedly compounding a bad decision with completely unjustified rhetoric about it.
What we could have seen was a sensible approach that appreciated that Brexit was a democratically-made decision and had to be respected, and then tried to build a national consensus about how best to deliver it. But we instead went for a take-no-prisoners approach and this has left many of us quite angry.
Even just from a purely practical level, I'm pretty pissed about this. After years of nonsense the final outcome is that it's going to be much more of a pain in the arse to do a bunch of stuff I did that was easy before. I've lost a set of rights that I had, used, and valued, and gained nothing in return. I could even deal with that a bit better if I didn't have to be constantly lied to about how great it is.
So yes. The country won't be destroyed – but it will be permanently weakened, and I think it's okay to be a bit emotionally invested in that.
Oh, I don't know. Keep it up with the overheated rhetoric and I suspect you all will succeed. Just ask your neighbors in SE Europe, where I spent part of the 90s, what that looks like.
And don't get me wrong, we're heading in the exact same direction here in the US.
By the way, this got a fair number of upvotes, so I'm glad to see that at least a portion of HN agrees.
Not only are almost all Brits now better off, but Brexit shows that Brussels has an extremely weak negotiating position. Why? Because they don't create anything, they plunder, add debt and regulations.
Now we know anyone can leave the EU and be better off.
I could only think of two excuses:
* some powerful entities had made some very big bets in the derivatives market tied to this and it was worth anything to not lose on those trades. Who knows, but seems extreme even for those sorts.
* there is some deep existential reason that UK’s membership was key to the EU enterprise.
The only thing I, as an outsider, could conjecture on the second point was the UK provided “karmic cover” for Germany (and France) to directly control the other EU member Nations.
In the media, Merkel’s statements were seemingly taken as the de facto EU position. Macron made an out-of-band agreement with Merkel, that made no sense if the EU was their platform for interaction. From an outsider perspective it seemed that Germany was running the show.
But remember Napoleon? Remember the Kaiser? Remember Kaiser 2.0 (Hitler)? But then remember the UK...they didn’t try a “Deutschland over all of us” or a Napoleonic union at the point of a bayonet. They comported themselves rather well.
So the EU really isn’t Germany finally winning WWII if the UK...hey wait, UK, where are you going?
That might be worth distorting the public debate in the UK over...
Purely an ignorant outsider’s take.
There are solid reasons why Brexit is the darling of the resurgent neofascist movement, and it should all be seen as part of the same picture.