I would just like to note that March 25th (Saturday) is the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community (from which the EU evolved):
Imagine serving divorce papers on your spouse on a significant wedding anniversary, and now consider the message it sends.
It's like Theresa May has carefully picked the time to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty that will cause maximum offense to the people she's about to negotiate a critically important trade deal with (from a position of inferior leverage).
In her defence (not that she really deserves it), Theresa May was fucked either way by setting March as the deadline. The sad part is I'm sure it was incompetence rather than a calculated slight.
The filter bubble/group think is incredible in this thread! You'd think people are fleeing the UK in droves and driven to despair all round based on some of the comments here.
In reality, none of the dire predictions for the economy have come to pass and people are getting on with their lives. None of my friends (all educated, well-off remain voters) are talking about leaving.
Some people in this thread still seem to be in denial about the situation and completely ignore the flaws of the EU. Yes there are costs of leaving, but there are also potential upsides. e.g. having a more interventionist national economic strategy while pursuing more international trade deals. And it's likely that any trade tariffs imposed by the EU will be more than offset by the currency depreciation we've seen since the referendum.
There are risks for the UK going forward but I'm more worried about the EU at the moment. If it doesn't reform, we'll continue to see rising extremism on the continent - look at Holland, Italy, France, Austria where extreme (and anti EU) parties all receive more votes than UKIP does in the UK.
The most immediate prediction of a big FX sell-off has come to pass - and it has already lowered living standards and will continue to do so for the next few years. (Those few hundred quid that I have left over at the end of the month suddenly aren't enough for a holiday in Lanzarote or a new Macbook anymore. Gotta learn to love holidays in Blackpool or Brighton...)
As to living in a filter bubble and "none of my friends are talking about leaving"... It doesn't even take our EU friends leaving to get a shortage of talent. Shortages will occur even if new EU talent stops coming - as is evident in areas like nursing where that sort of thing is tracked [1]. The NHS nurse/doctor shortage is bad and it will get worse and worse year by year due to Brexit.
I agree. I am in the UK as an EU national, and I am not worried about my residency situation. We have a moderate government who I am confident will not make rash decisions and I am intelligent enough not to equate Europe or European civilisation with something as political as the EU.
Kudos to the Brits for doing what they think is best for them (if only the Greek government did the same). Even after the gnashing of teeth and wailing in Brussels & Strasbourg has died down, the Brits will still remain European.
I'd like to disagree. I work in advertising in London and about 50% of people I work with are from the EU. They're annoyed that they are being used as a bargaining chip for EU discussions. Many of my colleagues are already discussing / planning moving to Amsterdam, Berlin or Madrid. London is expensive enough to live in as it is, now no one feels welcome. And that's just advertising, then there's the NHS.
Well, most of the dire economic predictions of Brexit would never pan out until Brexit actually happens anyway, so it's way too early to expect that. It's not like things were going to collapse immediately upon the result of the vote (although the drop in Sterling in the immediate aftermath was pretty impressive).
Yes, there are downsides to the EU, but the idea that we can do better by going it alone just seems absurd to me.
Many of my European friends have left or are thinking about leaving. For them the UK is a much less friendly place since the referendum and is seeming less and less like a place where they would want to raise a family.
I myself left a few years ago and Brexit has only solidified my decision to never return. Unlike most Britons in the EU who are being left in limbo, I am lucky enough to also hold an Irish passport.
I'm moving from Birmingham UK to northern Italy at the end of the year. I will work remotely for the same employer, life is cheaper down there, and actually quality of life is higher in terms of healthcare, transportation, and services.
I didn't imagine the last part before I moved here, but a few years dealing with both the NHS and private health providers, plus poor bus transportation and street safety in Birmingham, changed my mind.
I have a similar opinion of the healthcare in the US, where I also lived for some time. Central Europe provides surprisingly good healthcare and even the private option is far cheaper.
I actually was looking for a house outside of Birmingham, but I decided to wait until after the referendum. After that I had little doubt I'd leave. The net effect for the UK will be that I'll pay taxes to another country. I'm not even complaining about paying more taxes.
I hear you. People are harping on about potentially positive outcomes, but right now, things are quite rubbish, and it's the present that I'm finding the problem, not a theoretical outcome. I lived through a previous round of all this in the 1970s and 80s, and I really don't think I should do it again when I have a choice.
I don't understand how they can still go through with this. As far as I've been following the analytics, news and coverage on this, the outcomes for UK are only negative. Can please someone enlighten me the good outcomes that will come out of this? Or is this really just about pride and stupidity?
I wonder when the actual talks are starting, in April France elects a new president. In September Germany elects a new parliament. Who knows how the situation is in October and who May has to talk to.
I don't think your logic works. Wouldn't loss aversion lead you to prefer the non-zero-sum game? After all, in a zero-sum game, you might lose, and if you do, you are guaranteed to be worse off. In a non-zero-sum game, you are not guaranteed to be worse off, even if you "lose" (win less than someone else).
Google[1], Apple[2] and Dyson[3] (ok, not quite London) are making quite big noises about big new offices, so I guess things can't be that bad? Possibly they're betting on picking up lots of tech staff cheap if the banks start leaving London?
Hacker News is full of people who are anti-Brexit. I see little understanding of the opposing point of view. I am quite happy to see Article 50 finally happen and will sum up why here. Take it or leave it.
18 months ago I was pro EU. Not strongly so, just because it was the status quo, in my mind was vaguely associated with co-operation and so I was for it by default.
Today I am pretty strongly eurosceptic. I think it's important for the UK to leave and if anything I'd like to see it collapse entirely. Europe would be stronger, more prosperous, more cooperative and freer if the EU were to die.
My reasoning goes like this. The EU is not simply a kind of really big working group for finding new ways to cooperate, as I had once tended to assume. It is a quasi-religious ideology with disturbing similarities to a cult. The people who control the EU and many European politicians don't simply see it as a way to foster collaboration and trade but rather as a way to replace existing European countries with a new country, one which would in my estimation be significantly worse than the countries we have now.
Calling the EU a cult may seem extreme, but to me it's not:
The EU and its supporters are not interested in debate on the future of Europe. The future is their intended future, and no other alternative futures are legitimised through recognition.
The EU does not provide any channel for people to reject or modify their plans. Its leaders consistently see referendums or politicians that are not blindly pro-EU as dangerous and if they occur anyway, often due to constitutional obligations, the results are simply ignored if they run counter to what the EU's leadership wants. The so-called Parliament cannot actually change anything about the EU itself (it is not a real Parliament) and is thus stuffed with yes men whose only reason for being there is ideological commitment to the vision itself (there are also a handful of no-men who got themselves voted in purely to try and slow it down, but they can't do anything and have no real power).
Indeed, we can safely assume that the new federal superstate the EU wants to build would not be a democracy. Given the EU's consistent lack of interest in actual, real democratic mechanisms, it is likely that if their plans succeed Europe's future looks pretty grim: something like the USSR of the 1980s. It is the avoidance of this fate that led me to vote out.
In common with many cults the EU deliberately tries to make leaving it as difficult as possible, through a variety of techniques such as insisting that the remaining cult members (who were of course previously supposedly loving friends and allies) shun the traitor and have nothing to do with them. Any sustained connection with members requires complete membership and suggesting it doesn't is an evil attempt to undermine the unity of the group.
The EU routinely abuses language in manipulative ways, for instance using the word "Europe" when they mean "the EU". They do this to plant the idea that any rejection of their plans is actually a rejection of "Europe" and "Europeans", although it isn't. They also like to suggest that any rejection of the EU is dirty backwards looking "nationalism", although the EU has its own civil service, its own "parliament", its own borders, its own currency, its own courts, its own flag, its own national anthem and wants its own army. The reality is that the EU is a country-under-construction and the EU is a fundamentally nationalist project.
Finally, the most disturbing similarity of all is the fact that the modern EU is a project held together by fear. Its leadership happily and openly says so: President Hollande's memorable "there must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price" quote (on the topic of Brexit) being the most extreme example, but even today I read that Juncker is saying that there's no risk to the EU because the British "example" will show others what happens to countries that leave. They frequently imply that the alternative to the EU is World War 3. European leaders talk this way constantly, apparently either not realising or not caring that it makes them sound like some sort of Mafia.
There is no reason European cooperation must take place through such an organisation. Before the EU was formed in the early 1990s there were many parallel integration projects that were improving cooperation independently. The EU eventually absorbed them all, but if it were to collapse, the result would not be World War 3 or a dark age of hatred. It'd be a return to the days when deals and international bodies were set up independently and countries could independently assess which were working well and which were not, instead of an "all or nothing" arrangement that artificially ties trade and cooperation to an irreversible loss of local control.
Edit: -1 within a few minutes. What a surprise. Don't downvote if you disagree, you won't change anything that way. Reply and debate instead.
Second edit: Thanks for the replies. I would like to engage and continue the debate with you guys but HN has throttled me so I can no longer reply. I'll try following up tomorrow and see if the throttle has been lifted. (I'm starting to conclude HN is not a particularly good place to debate political issues for this sort of reason ...)
I read your entire rant and it's based on the sole idea that the EU is a cult, not a single quantifiable fact. This is the kind of judgement that leads to bad decisions. I think it's best we make this kind of decisions based on numbers rather than abstract thinking.
For the record, I want to understand why people voted "leave" but every time I try I end up reading something like this which doesn't get me closer, it just upsets me.
People who accuse the EU of wanting to be a United States of Europe are at least a decade out of date. Political power within the EU ultimately lies in the hands of individual national governments, not the EU structure as a whole (who's Jean-Claude Juncker again?).
After the failed EU constitution and the tribulations of the Lisbon Treaty, there has been absolutely no energy towards attempting any further federalization. Look at the response to the Greek sovereign debt crisis, or the ongoing migrant crisis. I doubt there will be any credible push towards "ever closer union" for at least another decade--and even then, it would still require at least the cooperation of major national governments.
Yes, it's possible for the rest of the EU to gang up on one country if they do a vote "wrongly" (cf., Ireland). However, Britain is one of the largest countries in the EU. If the French or German governments objected to a proposed treaty revision, it would be incapable of passing. And Cameron's "renegotiation" actually did get a similar guarantee in writing to apply to Britain.
It's also worth pointing out that you're asking to leave the EU at this point, which means you should expect to forfeit the benefits of being in the EU and should not expect to receive any more favorable treatment than other countries outside the EU (such as Canada) with respect to things like trade.
There is this trend in online postings that I've only noticed recently with Trump and Brexit. Accounts come with huge walls of texts that always start with "I used to be super pro-EU/hippy liberal" but then they did their own research and found out that EU are actually mafia that eats babies and liberals are all pedophiles - opinions which are so out of the mainstream line of thinking that it's quite clear that they've never shared pro-EU/liberal values in the first place.
Is this "I use to be like you but then I saw the light"-sort of post effective at persuading people?
Originally when the vote was announced I was pro staying in, but like the above, the more I looked on to how the EU is run, how decisions are made, the more I didn't like it.
I have no issues with immigration, I'm all for people settling in whatever country the like!
I'm pro leaving the EU because I do not agree with how it is run and the direction it is heading.
The EU has many many problems. Of course. Many of the critcisms you level at it would be equally valid of any single political party without a competant opposition.
Currently the EU only really has visible 'opposition' in the form of (IMHO) petty nationalists who want their respective countries to leave, rather than from people who are quite happy to be part of the EU, but want it radically reformed, or changed in specific ways.
I was saddened that the UK voted to leave (I'm British, live in the UK, but grew up in Cyprus). And horrified by how the 'Brexit meanx Brexit' group are now pushing it through with very little discussion about what that could mean, or how Euroskepticsm could be rechanneled into something positive.
The idea of Europe-wide cooperation, freedom of travel/work, etc. isn't going away any time soon, and currently the vehicle it's embodied in is the EU. I deeply wish the UK government had said, "Right. So the referendum proves that enough of the country is very very unhappy with the status quo. Would leaving the EU fix that? Or is there a way we can change the EU, or our status in the EU, in such a way that the situation is better?"
Post Brexit, the UK has no voice into the EU governance, and it's very unlikely that the people with influence in the EU will lean in helpful directions to what the UK government(s) would like it to be.
I hope you're right, that we will return to much more ad-hoc co-operation, deals and many individual treaties and so on. I really really hope you're right.
But while the EU remains like it currently is, I suspect it's simply going to be awful for the UK for a very long time.
I guess it slightly depends on how grown up and generous the EU negotiators and leaders are. If they genuinely will look out for the British public (technially their citizens...) and their interests in this, then it may not be so bad. But the UK government is certainly perceived as being remarkably selfish and self-centered in the whole affair, which doesn't really fill me with confidence about the future of the UK.
I agree the EU is undemocratic and ideologically driven and it disturbs me how many people here don't seem to either care or realize it.
I'm not opposed to an EU superstate in principle. A well-structured EU would probably be useful in balancing the rising power of China. But the state of political affairs in Europe is intolerable and I'd rather see the EU collapse than the current trajectory continue.
The EU might be the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a century later - a collection of nationalities and things that had been countries, bolted together by a trans-national government that nobody really is all that fond of or loyal to.
Like all analogies, it has flaws, but it might be an interesting perspective...
Sorry - you said 'take it or leave it' - which strongly implies that you weren't interested in debate.
> It is a quasi-religious ideology with disturbing similarities to a cult.... The EU and its supporters are not interested in debate on the future of Europe.
Given the huge amounts of time that are spent in the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers discussing exactly these issues, I'm going to assume that you simply don't follow European affairs that closely.
> The so-called Parliament cannot actually change anything about the EU itself (it is not a real Parliament) and is thus stuffed with yes men whose only reason for being there is ideological commitment to the vision itself
Oddly enough, yes for the most part the people who stand for EU parliament are those people who think that the EU is valuable and want to get it to work.
You say the EU Parliament is not a 'real' parliament - I presume you mean because it cannot propose legislation. But that is precisely because the people who framed the EU wanted to limit the extent to which the EU Parliament would remove power from national parliaments and nation states. The Parliament can ask the Executive (the Commission) to draft legislation for it to vote on and you can certainly argue that the Commission should be more subservient to the Parliament's wishes - but again, nation states have proved resistant to that idea. Perhaps you would like more power to reside in the Council of Ministers?
There are many potential ways here that the EU could be reformed, if nation states got their arses into gear and actually did it.
> Indeed, we can safely assume that the new federal superstate the EU wants to build would not be a democracy.
No, one cannot safely state that.
> Given the EU's consistent lack of interest in actual, real democratic mechanisms, it is likely that if their plans succeed Europe's future looks pretty grim: something like the USSR of the 1980s. It is the avoidance of this fate that led me to vote out.
This is pretty much all in your head. Yes, if all the member states got together and said 'You know what, lets steer ourselves towards a dystopian future' it could happen. There's nothing in the EU institutions that says that this is an inevitable or even likely outcome.
> In common with many cults the EU deliberately tries to make leaving it as difficult as possible, through a variety of techniques such as insisting that the remaining cult members (who were of course previously supposedly loving friends and allies) shun the traitor and have nothing to do with them. Any sustained connection with members requires complete membership and suggesting it doesn't is an evil attempt to undermine the unity of the group.
Again, you're just making stuff up. So far various EU folks have pointed out, reasonably enough that if you want to have the benefits of full access to the single market, the other aspects, such as free movement of labour have to follow.
> The EU routinely abuses language in manipulative ways, for instance using the word "Europe" when they mean "the EU".
Or it's a verbal short hand. Let's try translating shall we?:
The United States of America routinely abuses language in manipulative ways, for instance using the word "America" when they mean "The United States of America".
> They also like to suggest that any rejection of the EU is dirty backwards looking "nationalism"
Partly, no-doubt because a large proportion of the people who reject the EU do so due to backwards-looking nationalism.
I don't think your argument is particularly rational. The EU is flawed, the EU can be reformed by its members
This is very depressing news. For those not living in the UK, I cannot recall a time in recent memory when UK politics has felt so dysfunctional, oppressive or regressive than it currently is.
1. Cost of living soars in Britain.
2. Britain's young people want to leave: Europe offers a better deal. Cheaper property, better employment conditions, better looking men and women, good food.
3. Britain's codger population votes to pull up the drawbridge - not to keep the foreigners out, but to keep its youth enslaved.
Even before either of the campaigns they were involved in succeeded, I've read articles that seem to suggest they were better at marketing themselves and selling than actually delivering what they claimed they could.
Maybe they got better at it, but personally I'd point the finger at decades of Murdoch-led media brainwashing rather than anything new-fangled. It used to be Boris Johnson's actual job as a journalist to make up lies about the EU to be fed to nationalistic, right-wing old people. And that demographic did much more for them than the (relative) youngsters on facebook.
[+] [-] cstross|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Rome
Imagine serving divorce papers on your spouse on a significant wedding anniversary, and now consider the message it sends.
It's like Theresa May has carefully picked the time to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty that will cause maximum offense to the people she's about to negotiate a critically important trade deal with (from a position of inferior leverage).
[+] [-] waqf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corford|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OJFord|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Von_Jones|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] agd|9 years ago|reply
In reality, none of the dire predictions for the economy have come to pass and people are getting on with their lives. None of my friends (all educated, well-off remain voters) are talking about leaving.
Some people in this thread still seem to be in denial about the situation and completely ignore the flaws of the EU. Yes there are costs of leaving, but there are also potential upsides. e.g. having a more interventionist national economic strategy while pursuing more international trade deals. And it's likely that any trade tariffs imposed by the EU will be more than offset by the currency depreciation we've seen since the referendum.
There are risks for the UK going forward but I'm more worried about the EU at the moment. If it doesn't reform, we'll continue to see rising extremism on the continent - look at Holland, Italy, France, Austria where extreme (and anti EU) parties all receive more votes than UKIP does in the UK.
[+] [-] MagnumOpus|9 years ago|reply
As to living in a filter bubble and "none of my friends are talking about leaving"... It doesn't even take our EU friends leaving to get a shortage of talent. Shortages will occur even if new EU talent stops coming - as is evident in areas like nursing where that sort of thing is tracked [1]. The NHS nurse/doctor shortage is bad and it will get worse and worse year by year due to Brexit.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/01/25/number-eu-nurs...
[+] [-] bb101|9 years ago|reply
Kudos to the Brits for doing what they think is best for them (if only the Greek government did the same). Even after the gnashing of teeth and wailing in Brussels & Strasbourg has died down, the Brits will still remain European.
[+] [-] rhys91|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathw|9 years ago|reply
Yes, there are downsides to the EU, but the idea that we can do better by going it alone just seems absurd to me.
[+] [-] mcjiggerlog|9 years ago|reply
I myself left a few years ago and Brexit has only solidified my decision to never return. Unlike most Britons in the EU who are being left in limbo, I am lucky enough to also hold an Irish passport.
[+] [-] karmacoda|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] merraksh|9 years ago|reply
I didn't imagine the last part before I moved here, but a few years dealing with both the NHS and private health providers, plus poor bus transportation and street safety in Birmingham, changed my mind.
I have a similar opinion of the healthcare in the US, where I also lived for some time. Central Europe provides surprisingly good healthcare and even the private option is far cheaper.
I actually was looking for a house outside of Birmingham, but I decided to wait until after the referendum. After that I had little doubt I'd leave. The net effect for the UK will be that I'll pay taxes to another country. I'm not even complaining about paying more taxes.
[+] [-] vr46|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orph4nus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tehabe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] splitrocket|9 years ago|reply
Experts create non-zero sum outcomes.
Humans, due to their loss aversion bias, prefer politics to expertise.
Thus brexit.
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danmaz74|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 46Bit|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zelos|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/15/google-co... [2] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/revealed-apple-to-crea... [3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-39117982
[+] [-] thenomad|9 years ago|reply
Currently the UK's Department For Brexit has stated they have no idea what will happen there.
That's likely to have an impact on any tech company trading with the EU that uses or accesses personal data.
[+] [-] andrewingram|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zigzigzag|9 years ago|reply
18 months ago I was pro EU. Not strongly so, just because it was the status quo, in my mind was vaguely associated with co-operation and so I was for it by default.
Today I am pretty strongly eurosceptic. I think it's important for the UK to leave and if anything I'd like to see it collapse entirely. Europe would be stronger, more prosperous, more cooperative and freer if the EU were to die.
My reasoning goes like this. The EU is not simply a kind of really big working group for finding new ways to cooperate, as I had once tended to assume. It is a quasi-religious ideology with disturbing similarities to a cult. The people who control the EU and many European politicians don't simply see it as a way to foster collaboration and trade but rather as a way to replace existing European countries with a new country, one which would in my estimation be significantly worse than the countries we have now.
Calling the EU a cult may seem extreme, but to me it's not:
The EU and its supporters are not interested in debate on the future of Europe. The future is their intended future, and no other alternative futures are legitimised through recognition.
The EU does not provide any channel for people to reject or modify their plans. Its leaders consistently see referendums or politicians that are not blindly pro-EU as dangerous and if they occur anyway, often due to constitutional obligations, the results are simply ignored if they run counter to what the EU's leadership wants. The so-called Parliament cannot actually change anything about the EU itself (it is not a real Parliament) and is thus stuffed with yes men whose only reason for being there is ideological commitment to the vision itself (there are also a handful of no-men who got themselves voted in purely to try and slow it down, but they can't do anything and have no real power).
Indeed, we can safely assume that the new federal superstate the EU wants to build would not be a democracy. Given the EU's consistent lack of interest in actual, real democratic mechanisms, it is likely that if their plans succeed Europe's future looks pretty grim: something like the USSR of the 1980s. It is the avoidance of this fate that led me to vote out.
In common with many cults the EU deliberately tries to make leaving it as difficult as possible, through a variety of techniques such as insisting that the remaining cult members (who were of course previously supposedly loving friends and allies) shun the traitor and have nothing to do with them. Any sustained connection with members requires complete membership and suggesting it doesn't is an evil attempt to undermine the unity of the group.
The EU routinely abuses language in manipulative ways, for instance using the word "Europe" when they mean "the EU". They do this to plant the idea that any rejection of their plans is actually a rejection of "Europe" and "Europeans", although it isn't. They also like to suggest that any rejection of the EU is dirty backwards looking "nationalism", although the EU has its own civil service, its own "parliament", its own borders, its own currency, its own courts, its own flag, its own national anthem and wants its own army. The reality is that the EU is a country-under-construction and the EU is a fundamentally nationalist project.
Finally, the most disturbing similarity of all is the fact that the modern EU is a project held together by fear. Its leadership happily and openly says so: President Hollande's memorable "there must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price" quote (on the topic of Brexit) being the most extreme example, but even today I read that Juncker is saying that there's no risk to the EU because the British "example" will show others what happens to countries that leave. They frequently imply that the alternative to the EU is World War 3. European leaders talk this way constantly, apparently either not realising or not caring that it makes them sound like some sort of Mafia.
There is no reason European cooperation must take place through such an organisation. Before the EU was formed in the early 1990s there were many parallel integration projects that were improving cooperation independently. The EU eventually absorbed them all, but if it were to collapse, the result would not be World War 3 or a dark age of hatred. It'd be a return to the days when deals and international bodies were set up independently and countries could independently assess which were working well and which were not, instead of an "all or nothing" arrangement that artificially ties trade and cooperation to an irreversible loss of local control.
Edit: -1 within a few minutes. What a surprise. Don't downvote if you disagree, you won't change anything that way. Reply and debate instead.
Second edit: Thanks for the replies. I would like to engage and continue the debate with you guys but HN has throttled me so I can no longer reply. I'll try following up tomorrow and see if the throttle has been lifted. (I'm starting to conclude HN is not a particularly good place to debate political issues for this sort of reason ...)
[+] [-] polmolea|9 years ago|reply
For the record, I want to understand why people voted "leave" but every time I try I end up reading something like this which doesn't get me closer, it just upsets me.
[+] [-] jcranmer|9 years ago|reply
After the failed EU constitution and the tribulations of the Lisbon Treaty, there has been absolutely no energy towards attempting any further federalization. Look at the response to the Greek sovereign debt crisis, or the ongoing migrant crisis. I doubt there will be any credible push towards "ever closer union" for at least another decade--and even then, it would still require at least the cooperation of major national governments.
Yes, it's possible for the rest of the EU to gang up on one country if they do a vote "wrongly" (cf., Ireland). However, Britain is one of the largest countries in the EU. If the French or German governments objected to a proposed treaty revision, it would be incapable of passing. And Cameron's "renegotiation" actually did get a similar guarantee in writing to apply to Britain.
It's also worth pointing out that you're asking to leave the EU at this point, which means you should expect to forfeit the benefits of being in the EU and should not expect to receive any more favorable treatment than other countries outside the EU (such as Canada) with respect to things like trade.
[+] [-] yread|9 years ago|reply
Is this "I use to be like you but then I saw the light"-sort of post effective at persuading people?
[+] [-] itsoggy|9 years ago|reply
I have no issues with immigration, I'm all for people settling in whatever country the like!
I'm pro leaving the EU because I do not agree with how it is run and the direction it is heading.
[+] [-] unprepare|9 years ago|reply
I dont think youre being downvoted because people disagree, you are being downvoted for making extreme claims and not supporting any of it.
[+] [-] deckiedan|9 years ago|reply
Currently the EU only really has visible 'opposition' in the form of (IMHO) petty nationalists who want their respective countries to leave, rather than from people who are quite happy to be part of the EU, but want it radically reformed, or changed in specific ways.
I was saddened that the UK voted to leave (I'm British, live in the UK, but grew up in Cyprus). And horrified by how the 'Brexit meanx Brexit' group are now pushing it through with very little discussion about what that could mean, or how Euroskepticsm could be rechanneled into something positive.
The idea of Europe-wide cooperation, freedom of travel/work, etc. isn't going away any time soon, and currently the vehicle it's embodied in is the EU. I deeply wish the UK government had said, "Right. So the referendum proves that enough of the country is very very unhappy with the status quo. Would leaving the EU fix that? Or is there a way we can change the EU, or our status in the EU, in such a way that the situation is better?"
Post Brexit, the UK has no voice into the EU governance, and it's very unlikely that the people with influence in the EU will lean in helpful directions to what the UK government(s) would like it to be.
I hope you're right, that we will return to much more ad-hoc co-operation, deals and many individual treaties and so on. I really really hope you're right.
But while the EU remains like it currently is, I suspect it's simply going to be awful for the UK for a very long time.
I guess it slightly depends on how grown up and generous the EU negotiators and leaders are. If they genuinely will look out for the British public (technially their citizens...) and their interests in this, then it may not be so bad. But the UK government is certainly perceived as being remarkably selfish and self-centered in the whole affair, which doesn't really fill me with confidence about the future of the UK.
[+] [-] pvdebbe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Oletros|9 years ago|reply
> The EU and its supporters are not interested in debate on the future of Europe.
> Reply and debate instead
What kind ofdebate do you want when you call the other side cultists and that they don't want to debate?
[+] [-] hyperdunc|9 years ago|reply
I'm not opposed to an EU superstate in principle. A well-structured EU would probably be useful in balancing the rising power of China. But the state of political affairs in Europe is intolerable and I'd rather see the EU collapse than the current trajectory continue.
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|9 years ago|reply
Like all analogies, it has flaws, but it might be an interesting perspective...
[+] [-] Angostura|9 years ago|reply
Sorry - you said 'take it or leave it' - which strongly implies that you weren't interested in debate.
> It is a quasi-religious ideology with disturbing similarities to a cult.... The EU and its supporters are not interested in debate on the future of Europe.
Given the huge amounts of time that are spent in the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers discussing exactly these issues, I'm going to assume that you simply don't follow European affairs that closely.
> The so-called Parliament cannot actually change anything about the EU itself (it is not a real Parliament) and is thus stuffed with yes men whose only reason for being there is ideological commitment to the vision itself
Oddly enough, yes for the most part the people who stand for EU parliament are those people who think that the EU is valuable and want to get it to work.
You say the EU Parliament is not a 'real' parliament - I presume you mean because it cannot propose legislation. But that is precisely because the people who framed the EU wanted to limit the extent to which the EU Parliament would remove power from national parliaments and nation states. The Parliament can ask the Executive (the Commission) to draft legislation for it to vote on and you can certainly argue that the Commission should be more subservient to the Parliament's wishes - but again, nation states have proved resistant to that idea. Perhaps you would like more power to reside in the Council of Ministers?
There are many potential ways here that the EU could be reformed, if nation states got their arses into gear and actually did it.
> Indeed, we can safely assume that the new federal superstate the EU wants to build would not be a democracy.
No, one cannot safely state that.
> Given the EU's consistent lack of interest in actual, real democratic mechanisms, it is likely that if their plans succeed Europe's future looks pretty grim: something like the USSR of the 1980s. It is the avoidance of this fate that led me to vote out.
This is pretty much all in your head. Yes, if all the member states got together and said 'You know what, lets steer ourselves towards a dystopian future' it could happen. There's nothing in the EU institutions that says that this is an inevitable or even likely outcome.
> In common with many cults the EU deliberately tries to make leaving it as difficult as possible, through a variety of techniques such as insisting that the remaining cult members (who were of course previously supposedly loving friends and allies) shun the traitor and have nothing to do with them. Any sustained connection with members requires complete membership and suggesting it doesn't is an evil attempt to undermine the unity of the group.
Again, you're just making stuff up. So far various EU folks have pointed out, reasonably enough that if you want to have the benefits of full access to the single market, the other aspects, such as free movement of labour have to follow.
> The EU routinely abuses language in manipulative ways, for instance using the word "Europe" when they mean "the EU".
Or it's a verbal short hand. Let's try translating shall we?:
The United States of America routinely abuses language in manipulative ways, for instance using the word "America" when they mean "The United States of America".
> They also like to suggest that any rejection of the EU is dirty backwards looking "nationalism"
Partly, no-doubt because a large proportion of the people who reject the EU do so due to backwards-looking nationalism.
I don't think your argument is particularly rational. The EU is flawed, the EU can be reformed by its members
[+] [-] urbanj|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] open-source-ux|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bnastic|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] branchless|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baby|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perseusprime11|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavlov|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Von_Jones|9 years ago|reply
You poor bastards, good luck to you.
[+] [-] rolandino|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] deepnet|9 years ago|reply
Allegedly CA has close ties to Brexit and donated services to the Brexit campaign, that went undeclared [2].
Cambridge Analytica data exists outside European Data protections.
Mercer also owns Breitbart .com [3]
[1] https://cambridgeanalytica.org/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb /26/us-billionaire-mercer-helped-back-brexit
[3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-38005983
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|9 years ago|reply
Maybe they got better at it, but personally I'd point the finger at decades of Murdoch-led media brainwashing rather than anything new-fangled. It used to be Boris Johnson's actual job as a journalist to make up lies about the EU to be fed to nationalistic, right-wing old people. And that demographic did much more for them than the (relative) youngsters on facebook.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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