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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

#611

Post by pluma »

794CD01 wrote: post #475
pluma wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Played a major role in European history" is a very silly criterion. By those standards Russia, Austria, Spain, or even Turkey should be much higher on the list than Britain.

> a very silly criterion

I think that's a fair description of how these things tend to work. Your only mistake is the assumption that because it's very silly nobody would actually use it, let alone that it wouldn't be incredibly widespread.

But as for the list, the EU came into being after WW2 so the USSR was out, Austria was politically irrelevant and Spain was a fascist dictatorship. Plus Turkey is on the other side of the Black Sea and the Greek really don't like them.

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

#612

Post by pluma »

vidarh wrote: post #607
cat199 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you set up a supranational state without massive constitutional changes in all the member states? Considering it was never intended to be a state , I think your argument belies the source of the complaints..

Lots of people wanted it to become a state. The ideal of a European state as a way of preventing war in Europe dates back centuries, and has been regularly proposed again. The most serious recent proposal being Winston Churchill who specifically argued for a United States of Europe after the war. Churchill's efforts were a major factor in the establishment of the Council of Europe (not EU), and the European Court of…

Heck, the Holy Roman Empire was basically that. From a modern point of view you could say "but it's basically just Germany" but Germany wasn't a thing back then. Except of course the Holy Roman Empire was a monarchy.

As for Britain's involvement in establishing the Council of Europe, I've heard Brits joke that Britain created the EU to keep the continent busy, not to be a part of it.

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

#613

Post by pluma »

Nursie wrote: post #501
meheleventyone wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iceland is part of the EEA through EFTA and as such needs to follow much of EU legislation without any real say in what it is. The country is actually split about 50/50 in whether they should continue talks to join the EU proper. Edit: Replied to the wrong comment. :(

Sure, but in a lot of matters where Iceland can make a decision, it can be effected by relatively small numbers of people, something I like very much.

So basically like how an independent Scotland or England+Wales would interact with the EU, not a post-Brexit UK.

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

#614

Post by pluma »

random_comment wrote: post #556
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…

> If anything, Brexit was fuelled by impotent rage Ignorant rage, perhaps. https://www.google.com/search?q=daily+mail+eu&source=lnms&tb...

The two do tend to go hand-in-hand.

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

#615

Post by pluma »

presidente20 wrote: post #576
Scarblac wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the reason it is is that they don't want their own democratically elected governments to lose sovereignty. If you give the EU parliament more power, the national parliaments must lose power. I don't see how one is more democratic than the other.

I'm saying that the EU is not sufficiently democratic because its executive bodies are not elected by the people whereas in national parliaments they are. I'm not saying that national governments should give up sovereignty. I'm saying that what powers the EU already has should be more directly democratic.

So you're saying the only valid democracy is one where every body of government is directly elected. Got it.

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

#616

Post by pluma »

notahacker wrote: post #572
waqf wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's caricature this a little bit: suppose it were a rule of the EU that each national government had to appoint half a dozen people to receive a million-euro salary straight from EU funds (that means, of course, from funds that ultimately the member states paid into the EU budget themselves) for doing nothing. Even assuming the citizens of member states were fully conscious that this was happening, who do you think…

I'd assume the government should take full responsibility for who it appoints to receive the subsidies and what they do with them. But we're not talking about slush funds for doing nothing, we're talking about who makes policy. And funnily enough in Westminster we also have a Cabinet and PM setting the policy agenda that are chosen not by some universal franchise but nominated by the representatives of different loca…

Most of the tangible criticism/drama about the EU I've seen in UK media is actually about things people UK citizens or the UK government elected or otherwise put into those positions.

The UK was a major driving force behind many of the international trade agreements that are being criticised for infringing on the rights of EU citizens, for example.

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

#617

Post by Nursie »

pluma wrote: post #613
Nursie wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but in a lot of matters where Iceland can make a decision, it can be effected by relatively small numbers of people, something I like very much.

So basically like how an independent Scotland or England+Wales would interact with the EU, not a post-Brexit UK.

No, I think the point may have been missed - I envy the small size of their democracies and how they are able toneffect change as a result, not their interactions with the EU that stifle the ability of these populations to make change.

E.g. Switzerland's recent attempts to curtail freedom of movement.

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

#618

Post by mmjaa »

adnam wrote: post #40
mmjaa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falklands happened "because of the EU"? Thats news to me. I thought it happened because the UK needs the oil reserves to prop up its broken economy.

Except I didn't say that the Falklands happened because of the EU, did I? It happened because Argentina invaded British sovereign territory, and the British defended it. Interestingly, not a single other EU country aided the UK.

>Except I didn't say that the Falklands happened because of the EU, did I?

I understood that you implied that the UK 'did Falklands' because EU 'let the UK do it', as if .. as would have been proper, membership in the 'union' would have meant such unilateral warfare would have been anathema.

I mean, its not like the EU wants to sell billions of dollars of weapons to the world, including its enemies.

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

#619

Post by ben_w »

presidente20 wrote: post #394
Angostura wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd isn't it. In the UK, people are so apathetic about the EU that they won't bother voting and so exercised by the EU that they want to leave.

I think it's a little more complicated than people not being bothered to vote. The European Parliament has relatively little power (e.g. to propose new laws) compared to a typical national parliament. I think people see that and also see that Euroskeptic MEPs are largely ignored. In the last UK European elections, UKIP won the most seats. That didn't get reflected in any shift in policy did it?

UKIP MEPs rather famously don't bother to vote in the EP as much as other MEPs.

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

#620

Post by presidente20 »

pluma wrote: post #615
presidente20 wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that the EU is not sufficiently democratic because its executive bodies are not elected by the people whereas in national parliaments they are. I'm not saying that national governments should give up sovereignty. I'm saying that what powers the EU already has should be more directly democratic.

So you're saying the only valid democracy is one where every body of government is directly elected. Got it.

Yes but mainly the executive parts. No doubt the UK government could be more democratic but however imperfect it is why would you want to layer something on top of it that is even less democratic?
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