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UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

bbc.com

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Re: UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

#591

Post by ben_w »

mjevans wrote: post #435
ben_w wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a bit like the British democracy to me. How many Brits know that bishops sit in the house of Lords? Some know, sure, but many? How many of us know what the Privy Council is and who the members are? What powers are purely ceremonial and which have teeth? Why can't MPs resign like normal people? How and why there is judicial independence from parliament seems to be news to the Secretary of State for Justice, if…

Maybe it's time for that last one to change. Refactoring a system in a well-intentioned way can optimize a lot of inefficient and ineffective approaches and gives an opportunity to bring things that may be scattered about in to locality for increased comprehension and decreased error in modification.

Although I expect some improvements to be possible, I doubt it's practical to do the sort of large-scale transformation that would really make a difference.

I mean, I keep reading stories about how famous corporations have terrible codebases which they can't fully fix it, and we're in a domain where deployment is trivial amd doesn't literally cost the time of the entire legal profession to familiaise themselves with the changes.

I'd love to be wrong. The saying "ignorance of the law is not an excuse" is necessary, yet at the same time not possible when the law is as complex as it is now.

Re: UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

#592

Post by stephen_g »

gpderetta wrote: post #560
stephen_g wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The late economist Wynne Godley explained why the Euro couldn't work in the long run and described how it would cause problems like Greece back in 1992 [1]. There is simply no way a supra-national currency could work without a federal budget. It's probably time to accept that the Euro will likely fail no matter what we do. Sadly, the people of Greece have already paid a terrible cost... 1. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n…

Or we get a federal budget.

That would require huge reorganisations (probably including constitutional changes) of all the Eurozone states. While possible, I don't think there is much appetite for giving up more sovereignty much of Europe.

Re: UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

#593

Post by genericpseudo »

kebolio wrote: post #507
genericpseudo wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain is over within ten years, that's what today means. Scottish independence, some kind of enormous fudge in Northern Ireland, and Wales beginning to look towards the door. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Don't get where people get the idea that Wales are agitating for leaving the Union. Wales is more legally entrenched than any other of the constituent countries of the UK and also majority voted to leave the EU.

Yep. But I anticipate the Plaid vote will head rapidly upwards – not to SNP levels, but 25% territory.

Re: UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

#594

Post by cryptonector »

pluma wrote: post #206
dustinmoris wrote: post #51

I'm a bit tired of reading doomsday messages by now. I am an European living and working in the UK and even though this affects me I have no reason to believe that things will go downwards now. If there's anything I've learned so far then that every analysis I've read couldn't have been more wrong. It almost seems like the more the UK economy doesn't collapse the more people shout even louder how bad the Brexit is. M…

> Also I seriously don't think of the Brexit that the UK leaves Europe. I think the UK and the EU will strive for the closest relationship possible. The only thing that I see changing is that the UK withdraws from a formal contract with the EU with the hope to negotiate a better deal. It's against the EU's best interests to give the UK a good deal in Article 50 negotiations. This has been said over and over again and…

It's in the interest of some member states to give the UK a better deal than the deal that is in the interest of the EU. Whether this nets out to EU offering something less bad that the worst possible remains to be seen.

Re: UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

#595

Post by te_chris »

rleigh wrote: post #530
csmattryder wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He gambled 64 million people's livelihoods to defend his party against another, that right now, doesn't even have a sitting MP (for those outside the UK, that's the UK Independence Party). There's tables at Vegas that haven't seen that level of loss.

He might have made a gamble for political reasons. But, don't forget that there had been strong demand for a referendum on the matter since at least the mid '90s. It was long overdue, and (being cynical) had been denied because the outcome wasn't going to be what the government wanted (i.e. they knew the majority would have consistently voted leave, and didn't want to hold the referendum until they could guarantee a…

More like given mediocre UK politicians had blamed their own failings on the EU for 30 years.

Re: UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

#596

Post by zigzigzag »

pluma wrote: post #246
Svip wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the EU does have a directly elected parliament? So where's the lack of democracy in the EU?

The often cited claim that the EU is undemocratic stems from a difference of opinion what "democratic" actually means. First of all: there is barely any nation that is truly democratic in the historic sense of the word. Most democracies are actually representational systems: citizens don't vote on every single issue, they elect someone to represent them and vote in their name. Who each representative actually represe…

That's not at all the problem with EU democracy. I'm sorry but you've clearly not understood the issues even slightly, given such a long explanation that overlooks the actual problem. The EU can never solve its issues when people are so confused about it.

The reason the EU Parliament isn't democratic is that its members can't actually change the law, which means it isn't a Parliament at all. Because MEPs can't change EU law, they can't have any policies. Because they can't have any policies, their "politics" such that it is simply boils down to how pro or anti EU they are. Inevitably, given the uselessness of the EU Parliament as an institution, the vast majority of people who run for election to it are ideologically driven EU-philes who are true believers in the vision and just want to be close to it. This means it is worthless even as a check and balance, so people tune out, which is why nobody knows or cares who their MEP is.

Moreover, even despite this withered and pointless setup, the EU Parliament fails to even be open and democratic within its constitutional limits. Last year all EU law was made in secret "trilogue" meetings that don't formally exist, so you can't find out when they happen, get notes, find out who attended etc. These meetings are not mentioned in the treaties for obvious reasons, yet they now are how the EU makes law. Only North Korea and the EU make law in secret this way.

Yes ... even if all these problems were solved, the EU would still have the problem of being far too large. But there's a thousand major reforms needed before that becomes the top issue and the EU's deceptively named 'democracy' has gone backwards over time, not forwards.

Re: UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

#597

Post by zigzigzag »

pluma wrote: post #397
Nursie wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The problem with the structure of the EU is basically: How do you set up a supranational state without massive constitutional changes in all the member states? Because the appetite is not there for large constitutional changes. Perhaps, don't? If you can't take the people of a democracy with you on a project, perhaps it's best not to try and build such a thing anyway, and then end up with a hack? On the rest - I wo…

The reason the EU always wanted to have the UK on board had more to do with marketing than with necessity: Europe is France, England and Germany; if the EU was to be Europe, it needed those three in it or it isn't going to happen. It's also Spain and Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands. The more the merrier. Open a history book and if a country playing a major role on the European continent is in it, it should prob…

Once again, I get the feeling you know very little about the details of the EU.

The UK's attempt to join the (forerunner to the) EU was vetoed multiple times, by France. Your first sentence about how the EU "always wanted to have the UK on board" is factually and historically false. It never needed the UK to exist and it doesn't need it now.

As for "no hard feelings", tell that to your politicians, not us. Because they seem to think most so-called Europeans want the opposite.

Re: UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

#598

Post by taejo »

barrkel wrote: post #257
taejo wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it makes the EU look evil, and remaining looks like submitting to bullies.

The EU is a protectionist island in a global economy filled with large ambivalent actors. It's less evil, more like self-preservation, or an immune system. There has to be surface tension to retain mass, and there has to be barriers because that's it's raison d'etre.

I understand the game theory, but I think politically, it would be easy to spin this as the EU being a bully who punishes you if you don't play with them, and many voters would prefer to tell such a bully to bugger off than to play along (indeed, a lot of the Leave campaign was already about how Brussels bullies Brits into doing things they don't want).

Re: UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

#599

Post by zigzigzag »

Nursie wrote: post #421
pluma wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Switzerland and Iceland Sure but the UK is not Switzerland or Iceland. On the world stage Iceland is irrelevant. It's a lot like Switzerland without influence. Sure, Iceland can afford to be eccentric about world politics because it's not under the direct influence of other countries to the same extent as most are but it also doesn't hold any real influence itself. The UK doesn't want to be Iceland, it wants to be…

I'm sorry, you lost me when you started on about empire, I've seen nobody calling for a return to empire, or even invoking empire except as a way to harangue and belittle those who voted leave. You seem very hostile to the UK generally. Weird given your last comparatively friendly comment.

> You seem very hostile to the UK generally. Weird given your last comparatively friendly comment

We'd better get used to this. Just look at statements by European politicians since the vote. Occasionally they make a token attempt to be friendly, and saying how of course everyone wants what's best for everyone, but then they go right back to talking about how awful it'll be for the UK and how it's like suicide, how they'd never be stupid enough to let people vote on the EU, etc.

My experience of anyone who thinks of themselves as "European" or a supporter of the EU is actually, when the surface is scratched, extremely angry and vicious. They want the UK to bleed and bleed hard, because they think if it doesn't their dream of a united European future will end. And they are correct: at this point the only thing holding the EU together is fear. They unfortunately don't see how dystopian this makes them.

Re: UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

#600

Post by taejo »

TheCondor wrote: post #213
mdekkers wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the EU cannot strive for the closest relationship possible because that would encourage other countries to leave. There must be a price, an ongoing cost. I don't understand why this wasn't a centerpiece of the Remain campaign.

Because, as it was also seen in the US election, it wasn't possible for them to win. It will be interesting to watch, nothing has been negotiated, that's the irony, nobody even knows what they voted for. I can't imagine Europe making it easy though.

I don't see how it was impossible for Remain to win. There was <4% margin; different turnout demographics could have swung it. I can imagine holding it a week earlier or later could have led to a different result.
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