6867

It’s also pretty important for non-members too. We’ll still be abiding by GDPR, for instance, because we want to remain compliant with various EU regulations.

Leaving doesn’t mean the EU isn’t there, making rules that affect us - it just means we have no voice when they’re being made.

6868

It’s hard to make a very strong argument that the GDPR is a regulation unrelated to trade.

Indeed, if the post-Brexit UK wants to do business in the EU or with EU citizens, they’ll have to comply with the GDPR. Everyone who does business in the EU or with EU citizens has to comply with the GDPR.

6869
6870

I’ll try to answer as best I can. I’m somewhat loath to make such a personal post. No doubt it will result in a smorgasbord of sniping but even after 3 years I feel this is still a discussion worth having.

I was eurosceptic before the referendum. I was never convinced that the UK needed the EU (in its current form). A trading bloc is just fine but the EU project encompasses so much more than that. Why would we want to allow others the ability to exert such a large amount of control over us - that makes no sense to me. If we make bad decisions at least they will be our own ones to make. The tentacles of the EU are broad and ever increasing and my personal philosophy is that of a desire for minimal state interference. The Greek financial crisis when the Troika imposed austerity was probably the tipping point for me. Here was the EU imposing austerity on a sovereign member state. It didn’t sit well with me at all.

With all that being said I was still a reluctant Remainer. EU membership just doesn’t affect me detrimentally in every day life. My objections were on general principal rather than any practical implications (other than stupid things like the Internet cookie law or the EU restrictions on tobacco products). Thanks to Thatcher (and others) we’d successfully avoided many of the most glaring issues with the EU - it’s possible we could continue to do so. If we’re inside the tent at least we can make our voice heard. The economic cost of Brexit is a pretty heavy cost to pay. Who wants to vote to be poorer?
Well, as it turns out quite a lot of people :)

I know, I know… you’ve heard it all before a thousand times but I ask you again to consider what you are suggesting. To ignore the result of a democratic referendum. To ignore millions of votes. To so casually ignore someones vote is deeply troubling to me. Democracy is at the very foundation of our society. The implementation of the referendum was grossly mishandled but the question itself was still valid. To ignore the result of the referendum is to set far too dangerous a precedent. That reason, that principal alone is enough for me to support Brexit regardless of any other reason.

Witnessing the systematic attempts to undermine the result has only reinforced my support. “It was the Russians!”, “The people were lied to!”, “It was a crypto-racist plot!” etc. We’re lucky in that we live in a country with unrestricted access to the Internet. Information is freely available. Ignorance, influence by political rhetoric, xenophobia or some other batshit crazy ideology based on the color of someones skin (!?) is no excuse - we are each responsible for our own vote (and our own opinions) and collectively responsible for upholding our democratic values. No criticism of the referendum I’ve encountered invalidates its result.

I’ve also always believed (and indeed reinforced that belief over the last 3 years) that leaving the EU is not the catastrophic event it’s purported to be. Trade still has to continue, planes still have to fly etc. Current estimates (always to be considered with a large pinch of salt) put the economic cost at somewhere between 3 - 7 percent of GDP over 15 years. That’s not a loss but a reduction in growth. If we leave with a deal and a decent transition period to allow for the bureaucratic readjustment then the impact should be minimal.

If we do manage to Leave. If Brexit is finally delivered and in x years time we have another referendum. If Rejoin the EU were to win (and there are strong reasons for being in the EU) then I wouldn’t be too concerned about doing so. I’d probably feel it was a pretty silly thing to do after going through all the pain of the leaving process and we would have to rejoin in a worse position than we were before but even so, if that’s what the electorate decided then so be it. I would hope we would never again be so silly as to run a referendum in so poor a fashion but if “Rejoin” were to win with 52% of the vote then you can bet I would be defending their right to make that decision.

I was discussing Brexit with my father recently who is a die-hard Remainer. He said to me that Brexit has made him politically radicalized. Radicalized. It’s an odd word to use but I know how he feels. Brexit strikes at both our personal and national identity.

Phew… this was a long one. I hope it provides some insight though.

6871

The GDPR applies to EU companies regardless of whether they engage in international trade. So whereas domestic-only businesses in the US are free to ignore NAFTA and other free trade agreements, domestic-only businesses in the EU cannot ignore EU regulations.

6872

So, for the past few decades, the EU has been used as a sort of Boogeyman for local and national politicians. And the UK has always been one of the largest breaks on EU integration.

So, I have to wonder, if the UK breaks with the EU, and the worst outcome comes to pass, would that good a long way to affirming the benefits of the EU to a lot of the eurosceptics in the rest of Europe, and hasten the integration of the rest of the EU?

6873

Polling seems to indicate this is going on already, with support for the EU growing since Brexit.

First Google result: https://www.google.es/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brexit-eu-survey-italy-ireland-portugal-eurosceptic-poll-a8888126.html%3Famp

6874

Can’t comment on the bulk of your post, as I know quite little about the dynamics of UK politics. But this section is pretty relevant to political activity in all Western democracies. In my opinion, though, I don’t think you have the right of it. “Democracy,” unless you are taking it at a very reductionist and absolutely literal level, is not in modern practice simply taking a vote and that’s that. Even the UK, with it’s hodgepodge of a constitutional setup has a definite structure in place that is democratic, but not pure democracy. The USA is the same, being a federal republic. In both of these cases, and in the case of pretty much every other European state, “democracy” means adherence to a set of broadly democratic principles set within a structure that attempts to minimize the drawbacks of raw democracy, which can become mob rule, without unduly restricting the popular will.

These structures operate democratically, in that they reflect the will of the people broadly construed and sustained over time. They set up processes for taking popular input, whether through representative government, petitions, referendums, and what not, and these processes are in turn subject to broader controls, reflecting the overarching ideology of the nation. These could include constitutions, basic laws, mixes of these and tradition, whatever, but in each case they are part of a system that we call democratic, but which is at no point really a pure majority rules democracy. And this is quite intentional.

A referendum in such a system I would argue does not supersede the rest of the political apparatus. Nowhere in any of these systems, as far as I know (though I’m no expert on European politics, for sure) is there the understanding that in the event of a popular vote on something, all the rest of the system gets bypassed. A vote to leave the EU in this case certainly seems to me to be a strong expression of the will of a large part of the electorate at the time, no doubt, but to say that this in turn should mean the national government ignore all the rest of the systems that govern the UK and turn into what amounts to an errand boy seems to violate the spirit of the entire system, if not its own internal rules.

It seems to me that the process that has ensued since the vote has in fact been democracy playing out as it does normally in the West, through the structures of the government. The referendum required the government to address the issue raised, which it has been doing. It does not require the government to abdicate its responsibilities and simply execute decisions made by majority vote without any other considerations. That would be a recipe for madness. We’ve gone through these things in the USA over our history, and there’s a reason why referendums and simple majority polling aren’t used for most serious decision making here.

6875

The difference is that if you were to have a referendum on re-joining, it would presumably be run the same way that all other referendums on joining the EU were done. First there’s a multi-year process to negotiate the deal, and then the voters accept or reject it. As far as a I know, no country ran a referendum for “should we join the EU” first, and only then try to negotiate. And the latter is what the brexit vote was.

I’m all for direct democracy, but it only works if the voters know exactly what’s being voted on. So the part of your position I can’t understand at all is the opposition to a second referendum, where the voters would actually be voting on something concrete rather than some rainbows and unicorns fantasy.

The closest example I can think of is the Swiss immigration referendum from five years ago, to re-introduce immigration quotas for EU nationals. It passed narrowly, but would have required re-negotiating most existing agreements with the EU. I live in Switzerland, and at the time was running a start-up where literally every employee was from the EU with all but me on temporary residential permits. So this was incredibly stressful.

But of course the government didn’t end up implementing the policy as voted, given how disruptive voiding all existing agreements with EU would have been. Instead they negotiated a compromise that doesn’t have quotas and mostly affects areas of the country with high unemployment. (And arguably does nothing at all.)

The party who sponsored the legislation would have had the option of redoing it, but this time it would have been explicit what the cost of the yes vote would have been, and there’s no way they were winning that. So they declined to bring it to a vote again, and are presumably cooking up some other similarly xenophobic vote to fire up the base.

6876

That’s a lot of words to justify double standards, hypocrisy and lying so that people on your “side” get what they want. Let’s just for a moent display a bit of fucking honesty on this issue. For the truth, just look at what remainers were saying before the referendum result came in when every poll said they would win. Every single politician of substance said they would respect the result: that if leave won, we would leave, and condemned anyone who would not respect the result (thinking, of course, they were talking about Farage).

If remainers win, people might grudgingly accept staying in the EU, but it will be decades before more than about 60% of the population believes we are living in a democracy. I’d have a lot more respect for you lot if you could fucking own that and be honest with yourselves about the price of our antidemocratic desires.

6877

Didn’t the Tory government impose austerity on you all when it wasn’t really needed?
About the Greek situation. Where would the Greeks be if they hadn’t had the EU during this? My guess is they would have gone two routes. One, they would have devalued their currency, foreign companies would have bought up anything of value, and Greece would have turned into what Chile is now experiencing. The second route would have been everyone lost everything. Instead of lowered social programs and pensions, there would have been none. Also, if Greece hated the EU because of their situation, couldn’t they have voted to leave like you did and gone on to try and do their own thing?

6878

I don’t see how supporting the result of a single vote held 3 years ago is democratic and…

  • Ignoring what seems to be the will of the majority right now (with most polls on the issue giving remain a majority of 5%).
  • Refusing to put the specific deal to a vote to confirm the loose wording of the referendum.
  • Refusing to give Scotland and NI a referendum in case of leave (as the Tory government has said it will), when polls suggest a majority wants it.

…is also democratic within a single framework.

I mean, I’m honestly asking here. For those who think the result must be held no matter what the people think: What is your definition of democratic rule and how you square it with upholding the vote but at the same time thinking parliament should not have interfered, refusing a new vote and taking a decision against the majority?

I mean, it’s clearly not about the will of the people anymore, since they want not a new vote not to listen to the opinion polls. And it’s not about the rule of law since the referendum was not binding and they are against the proper democratic procedures and checks that are happening in parliament. So what is it about? Sovereignty over democracy?

Edit: I’m not talking about supporting Brexit. While I disagree, others have expressed coherent opinions for it. I’m talking about implementing the referendum result as a purely democratic move while not having a second vote or listening to the polls being presented as anti-democratic. I fail to find a coherent framework that squares those two.

6879

I respectfully disagree with the quoted part of your post.

The referendum was Parliament devolving the decision to the people through direct democracy. Although the Brexit referendum was strange in that it was both advisory (by convention) yet the main political parties agreed to uphold the result. I would argue that the referendum is still an example of pure, direct democracy and it was up to Parliament to implement that decision to the best of their ability within the framework afforded to them. Indeed most in Parliament seemed to agree and immediately after the referendum passed the bill to invoke article 50 by 498 to 114.

Now that the Parliamentary impasse has led to a general election I hope the matter can be resolved. For my own part if a GE returns a Remain government then I would concede that the public has reversed it’s decision and we should remain in the EU. The election is currently the best solution I just pray we don’t end up with another hung Parliament.

6880

The difference is the Tory government was our government. Regardless of whether or not the Greeks were better off by having the EU impose austerity upon them (and that’s debatable) is moot. It was still the EU strong arming a member state. It left a bitter taste.

They could have but they were in a weakened state.

6881

So what was the EU supposed to do instead? Keep throwing billions of dollars at them til infinity?

6882

It’s hard not to seem to cast aspersions, because the above suggests you’re either lying, ignorant, or have a very short-term memory. The claim that the UK economy would be the same or stronger was central to the Leave campaign; cf. the “£350 million pounds a week” bus, as well as continuous claims by Leave campaigners that the Remain campaign was lying about the economic consequences. In fact, the Leave campaign did not even campaign on the premise of leaving the single market - to quote two of the most prominent Leavers:
“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” - Hannan
“Only a madman would actually leave the market.” - Paterson

Leave won a majority because it lied about the economic impact.

Well, I look forward to welcoming you to reality in a few years time. That being the reality where the vast majority of the laws you are so annoyed about Brussels “dictating” are still being dictated by the EU, because the only way your industry, universities, institutions, etc will be allowed to continue cooperating with EU’s industry and institutions, is to follow the rules laid down by the EU and to submit to the courts. The only difference, post-Brexit, is that the UK will be poorer, and will have no vote in which laws get made in Brussels.

Because that is the reality of trade agreement with the EU - the more access to the single market you gain, the more EU regulations and EU oversight you must accept. And in the UK’s case - the less access, the greater the impact on your economy.

As for the “respect Democracy” claims, please peddle that BS somewhere else. If you actually believed that - as opposed to paying lip service to it - you wouldn’t mind another referendum once a deal is negotiated.

6883

As I’ve said many times. The referendum was a political campaign. There was political rhetoric from both sides. The information was there though. It’s the responsibility of the individual to make their own informed decision.

Here is one of Boris’s loudest detractors, a lawyer and die-hard Remain campaigner discussing the intricacies of trying to prevent politicians from lying.

https://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2019/07/04/lies-politicians-and-the-criminal-law-how-do-we-solve-a-prob

Well, that’s one of the reasons for leaving. So those decisions, that balance can be re-evaluated.

I have maintained the same position for 3 years and 368 posts now.
From my very first post:

As I’ve always maintained a 2nd referendum is an idiotic and harmful solution. It would have no legitimacy with Leave voters. They already voted. The decision to leave has already been made. It would also just further divide the nation as we go through yet another Brexit referendum campaign cycle. Then what happens if Remain won… best 2 out of 3?

A possible solution would have been a 2nd referendum with the available leave options (with remain not a ballot option). In hindsight at that point we really needed some kind of compromise but it didn’t happen. We can thank May for that probably.

The next best solution is one we’ve already arrived at. A Brexit focused general election.

… that’s enough Brexit for one day. I’m going to play some Borderlands 3 :)

6884

Yeah, i recall this as well.

The leave folks suggested that leaving the EU would improve the British economy, which was clearly a lie.

6885

I think the EU could have handled the Greek crisis better than it did, and the replacement of the Drachma by the Euro certainly didn’t help. But at the end of the day, the EU was dealing with a government that had for more than a decade mishandled its economy and systematically lied about it while doing so. It’s hard to see many politically viable alternatives to what the Eurogroup + IMF did, because the narrative at the time was not “Oh, those poor Greeks being bullied by the EU”, but rather “those lying, lazy, tax-evading Greeks asking for more money” (a false narrative for a very complex situation, for sure, but the narrative nonetheless). The British wouldn’t have jumped to write-off billions of Greek debts if they had been to British banks. Merkel and other national government might have put more pressure on the IMF and central banks to help Greece more, but it’s not hard to understand why they didn’t, considering the political and policy implications.

And at the end of the day, the decision was down to the Greek government - they just realized that Grexit or defaulting on debts (much more painful in real life than in Europa Universalis) were significantly worse options than accepting the conditions for the loan - harsh as those conditions were. Which proves them smarter than British politicians, I guess, because bad as things are/have been, it’s likely most other scenarios would have been worse.

6886

So, much like the first one.