Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 71 posts

Re: EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote

#31

Post by tonyedgecombe »

calpaterson wrote: post #22
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #10

Worth noting this is only happening because the British electoral system is broken. A small anti-EU, right-wing party could have stolen just enough votes on this issue to turn the tide on the two party system result due to the brain damage of first-past-the-post[1], so the main right-wing party started this hare-brained scheme in motion to head that off. This, in a nation where PR and full democracy is derided becaus…

Indeed it is happening because the political system is broken, but in the exact opposite way from how you have described. "A small anti-EU, right wing party" - UKIP got nearly 13% of the vote and would probably be part of a coalition government with the Conservative party if we had a proportional representation system. Instead they have 1 MP. The SNP got only 8.6% of the vote and they have 56 MPs. The referendum is h…

The EU has 33,000[1] direct employees, I'd hardly call that a superstate.

[1] http://ec.europa.eu/civil_service/docs/hr_key_figures_2016.p...

Re: EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote

#32

Post by aembleton »

junto wrote: post #14
masklinn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC a fair few of those work in finance in the City, things are going to be… interesting.

Indeed. Border control policies end up being a tit for tat affair. The only reason EU countries have border controls on flights landing in their respective countries from the UK, is because the UK applies border controls on their citizens entering the United Kingdom. I can fly from Germany to Spain without ever showing my passport at my destination, but if I fly to and from the UK I need to show my passport on both s…

Maybe we will have to get visas to visit the EU. If the EU want to make it harder for us to visit, then that is their choice and they have every right to do so. I don't see why we should expect others to just let us into their country if they'd rather we weren't there.

Re: EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote

#33

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

calpaterson wrote: post #22
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #10

Worth noting this is only happening because the British electoral system is broken. A small anti-EU, right-wing party could have stolen just enough votes on this issue to turn the tide on the two party system result due to the brain damage of first-past-the-post[1], so the main right-wing party started this hare-brained scheme in motion to head that off. This, in a nation where PR and full democracy is derided becaus…

Indeed it is happening because the political system is broken, but in the exact opposite way from how you have described. "A small anti-EU, right wing party" - UKIP got nearly 13% of the vote and would probably be part of a coalition government with the Conservative party if we had a proportional representation system. Instead they have 1 MP. The SNP got only 8.6% of the vote and they have 56 MPs. The referendum is h…

> The UK joined an economic community that has somehow transformed into a superstate

I've seen some variant of this claimed time and time again, but I don't really get it. The EU has always been supranational, always been pro-harmonisation and -integration. The scope of what it covers may have expanded somewhat over time (and that's been actively participated in by the UK anyway), but is it really a fundamentally different institution in 2016 from what there was in 1975? The main thing it did in 1975 and does in 2016 is set common rules for trade. Okay, it has nominal leaders now and some semblance of democratic process, but that's a feature of the UN, too, and nobody describes it as a superstate.

Re: EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote

#34

Post by aembleton »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #29

This is going to have wide-reaching consequences no matter what way it goes. Off the top of my head, potential issues include: * Combined with the sovereign debt crisis and the migrant crisis, this could be the end of the EU (perhaps unlikely, but) * The UK leaving the EU with the Republic of Ireland staying in (there's little support for RoI leaving) could create problems in Northern Ireland * The UK voting to leave…

Membership of the EU requires you to sign up to the ECHR, but countries outside of the EU are also members of the ECHR. We can continue to be part of the ECHR without being inside the EU.

By leaving the EU, all our existing legislation that has been enacted will stay. It just means that our elected government will have the power to remove legislation without getting permission from unelected commissioners.

Under the Lisbon treaty, we will continue to be members of the EU for two years following a vote to leave. I expect if we vote to leave, there will be another referendum in 2017 after the EU has had some serious introspection about the democratic deficit. I would expect them to try to keep the UK as a member.

Re: EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote

#35

Post by calpaterson »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #31
calpaterson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed it is happening because the political system is broken, but in the exact opposite way from how you have described. "A small anti-EU, right wing party" - UKIP got nearly 13% of the vote and would probably be part of a coalition government with the Conservative party if we had a proportional representation system. Instead they have 1 MP. The SNP got only 8.6% of the vote and they have 56 MPs. The referendum is h…

The EU has 33,000[1] direct employees, I'd hardly call that a superstate. [1] http://ec.europa.eu/civil_service/docs/hr_key_figures_2016.p...

My definition is not about number of employees and is common usage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstate

Re: EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote

#36

Post by s_kilk »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #29

This is going to have wide-reaching consequences no matter what way it goes. Off the top of my head, potential issues include: * Combined with the sovereign debt crisis and the migrant crisis, this could be the end of the EU (perhaps unlikely, but) * The UK leaving the EU with the Republic of Ireland staying in (there's little support for RoI leaving) could create problems in Northern Ireland * The UK voting to leave…

Certainly an interesting time to be alive. A part of me thinks we (the rest of the U.K.) should just jettison England and be done with it. They're dragging the rest of us down.

[edit for clarity]

Re: EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote

#37

Post by masklinn »

aembleton wrote: post #32
junto wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Border control policies end up being a tit for tat affair. The only reason EU countries have border controls on flights landing in their respective countries from the UK, is because the UK applies border controls on their citizens entering the United Kingdom. I can fly from Germany to Spain without ever showing my passport at my destination, but if I fly to and from the UK I need to show my passport on both s…

Maybe we will have to get visas to visit the EU. If the EU want to make it harder for us to visit, then that is their choice and they have every right to do so. I don't see why we should expect others to just let us into their country if they'd rather we weren't there.

> Maybe we will have to get visas to visit the EU.

That's really unlikely, though that would be a hilarious hit to the "power" of the UK passport (in terms of countries you can enter visa-free).

Re: EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote

#38

Post by wiz21 »

bjourne wrote: post #13

I hope Sweden leaves too, and/or Brexit causes the union to collapse. We have paid billions in aid to the poorer EU countries for years and all we get back are refugees, Romanian beggars and criminal gangs from the Balkans.

I can't believe I read this here. Hope you're joking. I don't wear rosy glasses, I won't say there's no trouble, but targeting some people the way you do... awful.

Re: EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote

#39

Post by Silhouette »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #10

Worth noting this is only happening because the British electoral system is broken. A small anti-EU, right-wing party could have stolen just enough votes on this issue to turn the tide on the two party system result due to the brain damage of first-past-the-post[1], so the main right-wing party started this hare-brained scheme in motion to head that off. This, in a nation where PR and full democracy is derided becaus…

The British political and electoral systems are fundamentally broken, to be sure. That said, it's also worth noting that in this case by far the biggest loser at the last general election because of that broken system was UKIP, the "small anti-EU, right-wing party" you mentioned, which despite commanding 12.7% of the popular vote wound up with only 1 MP out of 650. Even the Lib Dems, who took probably the biggest political battering in a generation at that election, didn't lose out that badly.

Had we had anything resembling proportionate representation in the House of Commons after the election, it is not unlikely that UKIP would have held the balance of power in a hung parliament, and that as effectively a single-issue party they would then have demanded action on their main issue as the price of co-operation. Whether any of us would agree with them or not, the fact is that nearly 4 million people did vote for them, so it's hard to argue that the current situation is somehow unjustified.

My personal view is that one good way to bring more accountability into British politics would be to make more use of direct democracy on specific issues, moving away from the transparent fiction that whichever party wound up in power despite almost always receiving a minority of the popular vote somehow has a popular mandate to implement any policy that was in their manifesto on any issue. From that point of view I'm happy to see a referendum that splits party lines take place on such a controversial issue anyway, regardless of my personal preference for its outcome.

Re: EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote

#40

Post by antillean »

mino wrote: post #9
junto wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Brit living in Germany. A vote to leave the EU is likely to mean that I will need to apply for a work visa to stay here. It is more than likely going to cause me a major pain in the arse. On the other hand I'm tempted to have the anti-EU Brits win and let them see what a disaster that will be for the UK, shutting them up once and for all. Then have them come back with their tails between their legs asking to be…

Also, don't forget that: > It’s a peculiarity of this referendum that Commonwealth citizens may vote in it, whereas French, Italians and Germans who have lived here for many years, and are much more directly affected, may not. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/20/how-to-...

I'm one of those Commonwealth nationals resident in the UK with the right to vote in this referendum. I had thought the case for the UK staying in the EU was obvious until I started thinking about it and, in the process, stumbled upon a frustratingly alluring argument for me -- and other non-EU, British-resident Commonwealth nationals (that is, other Commonwealth nationals legally living in the UK who are not also nationals of an EU country) -- to vote for the UK to leave.

The argument runs like this.

The UK's current level of migration is seen as a problem by the current UK government, by a significant proportion of British citizens, and probably even by a good few in the left-leaning parties. While the UK's in the EU, there's almost nothing that can be done to curb skilled or unskilled migration from the EU. Any government of a UK in the EU that wants to curb migration has to do so by clamping down on non-EU migrants. There's already no legal unskilled migrant route to the UK, so that means cutting back on skilled migration.

That clamping down is for me a personal pain, so much of a pain that it feels like every time I see Theresa May in the news it's because she wants to make it harder for me and other non-EU nationals to work in the UK. (I try really, really hard not to hate her.) If the UK left the EU, that'd allow the British government to apply the same rules across the board (to EU citizens as well as non-EU citizens) which'd probably lead to any UK government (from migration-hating UKIP to migration-loving Greens) having a more sensible approach to skilled migration. And not only is that in my own interest as a non-EU Commonwealth national, it's also in the UK's interest as far as having a sensible skilled migration policy goes.

This argument is, of course, too narrow on something as broad as the UK's members in the EU to be enough: it doesn't deal with the host of other things around British EU membership (wealth, security, environment, international influence etc). But my working visa issues are so frustrating that I find it a very, very tempting argument.

Post reply on HN