>>92359 I want people to realise that the EU was used as a scapegoat to cover up domestic failings, to the point that we end up with PR and British exceptionalism takes a humbling.
Right now I'm happy to settle for shits and giggles as I haven't lost out on anything by us leaving.
It's pissed a lot of people off who I enjoy the pissing off of, from whiny studenty liberal types on social media, to bigwig bourgey capitalists who had financial stakes in the UK's membership of the single market.
Their salty delicious tears are more valuable to me than any fraction of this nation's GDP. Brexit was a rare triumph of working democracy, and that is an inarguable fact.
>>92357 I actually owe getting into my career to Brexit. You can argue impacts but there's probably thousands of people who currently owe their jobs to Brexit.
>>92357 I don't vote with a mind to what I personally have to gain, perhaps we're different kinds of people.
As to what I hope to gain for my country?
- No longer paying billions every year to an unaccountable and only loosely democratic entity that creates laws for my homeland
- The ability to draft trade deals and other international treaties with greater speed and flexibility
- Less exposure to the enormous pending risk of sovereign debt in the Mediterranean states
Like most people who voted Brexit, I fully expected some immediate trade disruption when the deal came into force. Remainers are choosing to use this as a Gotcha! moment since (online at least) they've created a mental picture of Brexit voters as red-cheeked little Englanders who want to bring back John Bull and foresaw Brexit leading to a land of milk and honey overnight. To the surprise of no-one, leaving the Single Market has costs.
On a broader scale, I think my objection to the EU comes down to its insistence on becoming more than a free-trade zone with mutual standards, something that on the whole Britons were happy with and profited from. But with every treaty it gives itself more powers, a larger budget, more scope to affect the lives of its citizens. Its legislation is written by an unelected commission, while MEPs can only delay or request revisions - an absurd inversion of our own democracy, designed specifically to increase the power of technocrats who have no voters to answer to. And regarding the parliament itself, my general observation is that democracy doesn't scale well. It especially doesn't scale well when the boundaries between parties are obscured by coalitions across countries whose peoples can't even hold a conversation together. It's common to assume that people who voted for Brexit do so out of ignorance towards Europe; I would be surprised if a tenth of these people could name the three largest coalitions in the European parliament, or how they differ. Or, for that matter, how they would vote out the ruling one.
As for Italian and Spanish national debt, I think it's an enormous systemic risk that the EU never created a shared fiscal area for its currency union, even in light of the Greek fiasco. It nominally has rules regarding national spending that should diminish these risks over time, but the EU generally enforces national rules at its own convenience and kicks things into the long grass when it can. So their debt grows and grows without them having the national flexibility to do much about it while penned inside the Eurozone, except hope that the charitable central bank will bail them out when it is inevitably required to - a requirement that will only widen the rift between the Southern states and the fiscally prudent Northerners. Other internal rifts that centre on individual rights, treatment of minorities and defence of a free press are already growing between the Visegrad group and Western states. All of these issues will receive the bare minimum of a 'solution' until the EU decides that a new treaty should expand its powers even more and override the decisions of elected governments. As time goes on, the transfer of power between national capitals and Brussels is only ever going to be a one-way process. Better to leave in a shambolic divorce now than a catastrophic one in two generations' time.
Eurocratic ambitions to force through the creation of a super-state are plain to see; I do not desire to take part in it. If you disagree then that doesn't make either of us 'right' or 'wrong'. We are just different.
I voted leave.
My opinion at the time that it would at most amount to a vote of confidence in the EU and that's how I treated it, I couldn't vote stay as that would have supported the EUs slow march towards a nightmare undemocratic federation too bogged down in mindless beaurocracy to serve its public.
Best case scenarios that I would have believed were justified were remaining in the single market, or staying in the EU on the basis of some genuine and meaningful constitutional reforms.
The results of the referendum and the subsequent general elections in my opinion do not come close to resembling a mandate for the outcome we got. But it's not just that, we waste five years arguing about how much of the cake we should keep for ourselves and completely failed to make an account of WHY people wanted to leave.
To now have another referendum about "rejoin or stay out" completely misses this again. If there was a vote like this "stay out" would probably have a landslide just down to the majority of the public getting the feeling of being asked to crawl back on their hands and knees begging for forgiveness.
If there was a vote asking if we should rejoin the single market and/or free movement, of course I'd fucking vote yes. You'd have to be mental, utterly ignorant, or have your hands in certain pockets to want to stay out.
The real pain of being out of the EU is yet to come, once the new UKCA product safety standards start to be phased in later this year and CE marked products are no longer legal, consumer choice of products is going to shrink drastically as many manufacturers simply aren't going to go to the expense of dual-certifying their products to sell in the UK so they'll just pull out. At the same time prices of products that are certified UK-legal are going to increase. Be prepared for a year or two of dire inflation to come.
And of course getting the power to set our own standards is completely pointless, for most products it will affect, the cost and expertise needed to develop standards will be huge and there will be little benefit in deviating at all for products that are mostly made in the far east, or for products produced in the UK or the EU that we want to trade back and forth, hence we will mostly just be mirroring EU standards entirely for the foreseeable future.
And if you look at areas of industry where the UK was free to set its own standards while it was in the EU, (such as building and fire safety regulations), the UKs own efforts have been dire, the standards agencies have been woefully underfunded, overly influenced by industry lobbying, underpoliced, and have generally always been much more lax than the rest of Europe.
>>92365 >I don't vote with a mind to what I personally have to gain, perhaps we're different kinds of people.
Most of the people in this country vote based on how it will impact them personally, unfortunately. Also, absolutely amazed how much faith people have in this country after the past few years.
>>92361 >to bigwig bourgey capitalists who had financial stakes in the UK's membership of the single market.
Oh but for every bigwig bourgey capitalist who is pissed off about leaving the single market, there's two bigwig bourgey capitalists laughing all the way to the bank.
I voted remain with no enthusiasm, so I was actually quite excited seeing the results come in saying that Leave had won it. Not so much because I wanted to leave as because "this wasn't supposed to happen", it helped shake me out of a sort of fatalistic view of politics I'd gotten into where we were more or less condemned to watch "sensible" liberals manage our decline until the sun burns out.
It helped that Stronger In learned precisely the wrong lessons from Scotland's Better Together campaign, generating no emotional investment in the union they were trying to protect while falling back on a pessimistic mantra of "better things aren't possible, let's stick with the miserable status quo".
The Leave campaign was one I found pretty dire - it clearly didn't get people going like Yes Scotland, and the bulk of the campaign felt more like channeling resentment than generating hope - but it's hard to fault their basic competence. They played their hand well while the Remain side smugly blundered.
In a hypothetical second referendum I suspect I would vote leave. I want to see the faces on the People's Vote lot when they get what they ask for only to have it return a higher % of leave votes. Their campaign was incompetent, and in a low-investment issue like this you might as well treat it as sport.
Also I still haven't forgotten that the Liberals + CUKTIGers scuppered the customs union plan because they thought they could get some magic beans.
>>92371 >Also I still haven't forgotten that the Liberals + CUKTIGers scuppered the customs union plan because they thought they could get some magic beans.
I still don't know what they were actually aiming to achieve by blocking May at every turn. Surely what they've ended up with is far worse for them.
>>92368 I don't have a large degree of faith in Boris and never did, I would have been happier if he wasn't the face of Brexit. As for the deal, it could have been better but could have been a lot worse. We have tariff-free access to the Single Market, kept the Horizons programme for shared scientific research and have obtained the right to take the EU to court if they attempt unfair trade practices with us (this is mutual, originally they wanted only this ability for themselves with no reciprocity). I could give you a clearer answer in a few months' time when they've finished the wrangling over financial markets.
>>92369 >Oh but for every bigwig bourgey capitalist who is pissed off about leaving the single market, there's two bigwig bourgey capitalists laughing all the way to the bank.
Bigwig bourgey capitalists are always laughing. There's a reason the closing bell in stock exchanges always brings cheer no matter the weather.
It wasn't tariffs that industry was worried about, but non-tariff barriers. Exports to the EU have slumped because we don't have the capacity for dealing with export paperwork and building up that capacity will cost industry billions of pounds a year.
Remainers were scare-mongering during the campaign, but Leavers were being utterly blasé about the costs and difficulties of leaving. It's now inarguable that Britain will be worse off for the foreseeable future as a result of Brexit; those who spent years crowing about all the exciting opportunities for Britain outside the EU are now saying "it was never about the economy, it was about sovereignty", whatever that's supposed to mean.
>>92378 No, quite the opposite, because again that's reducing it to a game with rules where you either win or lose and the impact you have on people's lives doesn't matter.
>>92377 My privilege is to have all of my political problems and all of their potential solutions come from the UK government, not the EU. It is also to live in a world where Brexit is a fait accompli, meaning there's no reason to agonise over hypotheticals
A good UK government could offset any issues from leaving Europe at a stroke, while a bad one could (and was) running us into the ground despite EU membership.
>>92379 The impact on people's lives would probably be better if parties did treat elections as a matter of sport.
If everyone in Labour just accepted that their job was to pull together and win elections, they'd be free to adopt the right strategies to do so rather than tearing one another's limbs off because they deeply feel that a given policy is The Wrong Thing To Do and they feel a responsibility to Be Honest With The Country that they will need to Make Tough Decisions as The Adults In The Room.
Infighting out of moral principle is associated with the Labour left, but it's a universal vice in the party. Taken on good faith, many on the right will fight against a policy of (say) free tuition because they believe that means tested assistance would be a better way to help the worse off - and in the process, just like the left pushing for abolishing Trident or whatever - they miss that they're doing their part to keep Labour fighting internally for their moral beliefs instead of directing their frustration out at the Conservatives and sucking up that they're going to win on policies they find mediocre at best.
>>92376 >"it was never about the economy, it was about sovereignty"
Love that most of the brexit-voting British public think that brexit was about a thing they would struggle to spell and almost certainly are unable to define.
Psychologically, for most it was about the NHS and immigration. Lies about the source of austerity being imposed by Brussels meant that a slogan on a bus was a rallying cry, and ending the Schengen zone free movement just means that they get more of the 'bad kind' of immigration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaMDe3eetc8 The guy yelling 'bananas' at Boris at 1:17 in this clip like he can't wait for Lynyrd Skynyrd to play 'Freebird' is exemplary of the kind of electorate that voted these people in. Easy to lie to, unable to see the connections between the actions of those in charge and the effects, and vociferously supportive of the demagogues from their tribe.
>>92388 The fact that they all laughed at Boris' analogy of the situation being the "biggest stitch-up since the Bayeux Tapestry" demonstrates that the electorate aren't as stupid as you think.
Stop being so arrogant and bemoaning of a hard-fought and won democracy and you might get somewhere you pretentious toad.
>>92388 I'm not so sure I'd ascribe it to overt lies.
Think about it psychologically: "Vote Leave, Take back control" is a great slogan at capturing a sort of dispossessed sense of having no control over things, of your life being run by out of touch cunts who you can't fire because your votes don't matter and the alternative set are just as bad.
But it's not lying to you - it's not saying "Vote Leave, get rid of David Cameron and everyone like him" or "Vote Leave, prevent history progressing beyond 1963 when you were still young" - it's an emotional thing, a psychological thing: Take back control. Whatever makes you feel you've lost control, take it back.
>Aristotle was right about Democracy.
Our society has the form of a democracy, but not much of the content. That is a large part of the problem. Give people a society where their range of choice is compressed down to "Tony Blair or Michael Howard" and you should not at all be surprised when they're all pissed off and looking for something to smash. yes I know it was Corbyn v. Cameron by this point, that Corbyn had broadened the choice available to voters, etc, but he too was basically a symptom of people being fucked off with the status quo.
>>92387 The article largely agrees with his point only it attempts to qualify it. From a British perspective it is objectively true to say that the EU model is incompatible with our tradition of parliamentary sovereignty and the dodgy effects like Factortame are evidence of this.
It's also completely true that the referendum was an expression of democracy you wouldn't expect to see and probably won't see again.
>>92393 Literally could not care less about promises slapped on the side of a bus and, here's a spoiler for you, neither could 90% of the people gathered there.
The EU is undemocratic, end of.
Not really pal. I find it interesting that the current Gov complains about the undemocratic nature of Civil Servants and Quangos and stuff, but the minute they have the opportunity to take back control, they immediately sell it to their mates who do a worse job for a much greater cost with less accountability and zero transparency.
The Track and Trace fiasco being the most egregious example of this.
I get why people have a legitimate grievance and I definitely understand the appeal of the 'take back control' slogan, but how people like Boris and Nige managed to paint themselves as jovial everyman figures in what's essentially a battle between elites and counter-elites is astonishing.
>>92400 Sorry lad, I don't understand the point you are making. Are you referring to Crimea being annexed by Russia in 2014? because I fail to see that having anything to do with the price of tea in China.
>>92396 >the EU is at it's core a transnational organization which serves to prevent the conditions that resulted in WWI and WWII
The problem is that the union has developed beyond those original goals and now the way it is perceived by common people across the EU is probably doing a lot to drive right-wing nationalism itself.
The way they've royally cocked up their vaccination program gives justification to a lot of these peoples complaints.
>What is democratic about the house of lords?
People vote for MPs, MPs form governments, and governments appoint to the Lords. So it's kind of democratic in a very indirect way.
Despite its problems I'd still argue that the Lords are a huge benefit to British democracy because it puts check on the power of political parties which is pretty unique in the developed world.
>>92401 There was the matter of the EU pushing ahead with plans for closer economic and social ties with Ukraine, completely naive of Russias desire to protect their own interests in the region.
>Function creep of EU is shit
Agreed, but the issues that surround EU bureaucracy don't magically disappear if it were dismantled.
>House of Lords is democratic
People vote for MSPs and MSPs decide on the governance of the EU no? Let us not forget are Dom, the patron saint of shady unelected bureaucrats in government.
Arguing that the strengths of UK democracy are the moderating influence of a non-democratic body is incompatible with complaining about the EU being undemocratic.
Russia obviously will continue to exert its political influence in its sphere of influence, but I think you must agree that many of the former soviet nations enjoy a much higher degree of democratic freedom under the aegis of the EU than they would outside of it. If Russia was to annex part of Lithuania for example (and a lot of Lithuanian grandmas have hidden stores of stale bread in preparation of this) this point would hit its mark.
I've never really understood this. From my own experience, EU bureaucracy is much less of a ball-ache than national bureaucracy. I've only really had to deal with the Radio Equipment Directive, the Low Voltage Directive, the General Product Safety Directive and the GDPR, but they all struck me as sensible, logical and fairly straightforward to comply with.
>>92395 I'm not sure what part of my post you're trying to argue with. If you fancy a cunt-off about Aristotle then I'll put the kettle on.
>>92397 >the EU is at it's core a transnational organization which serves to prevent the conditions that resulted in WWI and WWII
That's a load of nonsense. The EU did nothing as genocide went on in the Balkans and continues to do nothing to address instability in the Balkans. Ironically it's only contribution to preventing a great power confabulation around Serbia has been in pretending it doesn't exist.
>What is democratic about the house of lords?
That the system accepts that it doesn't carry a direct democratic mandate and so can be overruled by the House of Commons.
I deal with the pressure equipment sometimes. The majority of the text is legalese, assigning responsibilities and discussing import arrangements etc. Very little of it covers any of the technical considerations of designing a pressure vessel and a lot of important things are left to the whim of the manufacturer or importer.
Compare that to the American boiler and pressure vessel code, an almighty tome stuffed full of detailed technical requirements. Although the downside here is that the committees who write it arguably make a lot of points overly onerous in a way intended to create a barrier to entry for other manufacturers, especially from 3rd countries.
From my perspective a big problem I see with the EU isn't the intentions of the people running it, it's the fact that the commission is producing such a vast volume of legislation year upon year that it is completely beyond the comprehension of any one person, and even beyond the ability of whole governments to truly understand and critique.
The EU parliament itself only really debates a small amount of the legislation that is likely to be divisive such as GPDR, most of it simply gets voted through automatically. The result is that there is a constant background murmur of complaints from small industries and citizens that are suddenly becoming affected by obscure rules and regulations that barely anyone knew about.
>>92410 People voted to leave, we've left. At no stage were people consulted on what they thought leaving should actually look like but the 2019 GE result confirmed they wanted to continue down this path.
>>92411 >the 2019 GE result confirmed they wanted to continue down this path.
Labour's policy was to negotiate with the EU a deal that, according to them, protected jobs and standards, and then put it to the vote whether people preferred it over remaining.
The Tory policy was, I dunno, drive a forklift through a polystyrene wall? Over ready? Voting Tory wasn't an expression of people liking what they were offering, it was an expression of how brainwashed they were that Labour 'wanted to overturn the will of the people'.
>>92407 >The EU did nothing as genocide went on in the Balkans
So far as I'm aware we didn't help there. I recall reading that for a long time the British position was basically "let the Serbs do whatever they want to keep Yugoslavia together, give us peace."
This being in the Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia phase of the Yugoslav wars - not the Kosovo part where even the Americans thought we were over-eager to go after Serbia.
>>92414 The Tory slogan was "Get Brexit Done". A message they enthusiastically adopted after the thrashing the main parties received in the EU elections of which the Brexit party was the far and away winner.
Are there any other dead horses you would like us to beat while you're here, a good old abortion thread with what's going on in NI?
>>92417 And the fool knows more in his own house than the wise man in someone else’s. What's your point?
>>92417 We know what the fucking slogan was. That's not the point. The point we are discussing is that there was no elucidation over what Brexit, to the Tories, actually meant. And we know that even they didn't have a clue because they were determined to pass legislation that broke their own withdrawal agreement and negotiated a trade deal at the last possible second.
>>92418 And the lib-dems, Labour, and greens collectively had a higher vote share, and nearly higher seats, than the brexit party, ukip and tories combined.
Add in the fact that EU elections generally have a dismally small turnout, that's not a mandate that's just the Tories turning vote-splitting to their advantage.
>>92418 >What's your point?
A mixture of a desire to see if anyone agrees/disagrees with that version of events because I might learn something, suspicion it might be of interest to some, and perhaps a little bit of the view that Britain has been a barrier to a unified Europe more generally.
>>92419 >The point we are discussing is that there was no elucidation over what Brexit, to the Tories, actually meant
We do however know what it didn't mean: Stay in the EU or de-facto stay in the EU via the EEA. Labour screwed up massively by their pro-remain elements trying to fudge the issue in a way that would get them back into Europe, instead of keeping their 2017 position of negotiating the least bad Brexit possible with no second referendum. Labour's 2019 platform managed to be the opposite of all things to all men: Remainers saw a party prepared to negotiate Brexit, Leavers saw a party trying to claw it away with a second referendum, and the indifferent knew they were split like a fat lad's jeans.
Had pro-EU types been more subtle and competent they could just possibly have nudged us back into the EEA, but they blew it and once everything went up in the air the Tory Brexiteers got a blank cheque.
(Full disclosure: Voted Labour, Remain.)
I voted for brexit when I was in a kind of aburdist-nihilistic phase, so I wanted my news to be more entertaining. Recently, my nan left me a sizeable inheritance and I think it'd be nice to live somewhere sunny and warm, so I would now vote remain.
I remember watching an interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg where he said that Britain would only start feeling the economic benefits from leaving the EU fifty years from now. As a member of the gentry, he's insulated from regular concerns and can obviously think along long-term lines (no shortage of willing suitors to carry forward that noble weak chin), but if I had voted leave for a legitimate reason, I would've been pretty pissed off at only being able to reap the benefits of brexit around the time when I can scarcely remember my own name and might need a diaper.
