Jun
24th
2016
(Non-Pony) Britain Gets To Have a Future · 1:16pm Jun 24th, 2016
By voting to leave the European Union, Britain will take back control of her own borders and economy, and will get to have a future independent of whatever happens across the Channel. This may have been Britain's last chance at doing so by peaceful, democratic means.
The European Union is an essentially non-democratic oligarchy, with a government that selected its own successors and whose democratic component had no actual power to make laws or set policy. Britain's exit may serve as a reminder to the EU government that the ultimate sanction on rulership is the consent of the governed.
Or it may not. In either case, Britain won't be caught up in the consequences.
So, any chance of building up the Anglosphere instead?
what exactly did they lose being part of the EU?
4046072
Money. Control over their own borders. The right to choose their own laws. Ultimately, sovereignty.
4046066
Eventually perhaps. Aside from America herself rhe healthiest part is Australia. Canada is drifting toward less freedom under the current Trudeau.
4046078 other countries get control over their own borders now too. Britain actually sent more immigrants out into the EU than it took in, which makes sense as it's many countries and they're one. As for control over it's laws and money, they didn't vote to remove themselves from the planet, they still have to work with these people. As Abraham Lincoln once put it "Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws?" The answer by the way is no.
Of course I wonder if it's going to happen. Cameron said it would take effect despite not being binding. But Cameron's out. The economic mess it's started. Scotland and Northern Ireland wanting out. The politicians who were for it seem under the impression they don't have to use the steps that are set up to remove a country from the EU right now, I guess figuring they'll get everything squared away then start the clock, rather than the other way. There's even voters going on TV saying they voted to leave but didn't expect it to happen, they didn't think there vote would count
4046092
The difference is that Britain would have had to take in a quota of "refugees." At the last the Brits weren't willing to sign onto Merkel's suicide pact. Which, incidentally may be Merkel's actual goal. She appears to hate her own country and the rest of Europe by extension.
We live on the same planet with Europe too. Doesn't mean we have to obey their laws. Soon, Britain won't have to either.
If Brexit doesn't happen now, next election either Britain swings sharply right or (if the EU blocks or rigs the next election) there'll be real violence. With the Brits winning and the Europeans being the enemy for a generation or more.
All I can say is that I hope this works for the best for both Great Britain and Europe.
well, if there's enough guys like
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/eu-referendum-man_uk_576cf8e4e4b08d2c5638ee29
this guy, it might not.
And I'm not sure a two percent majority could give the wild swing you expect
we never made a commitment to though.
What worries me is the current Mayor of London and the Muslim population of Britain. Are they sizable enough and have enough supporters to put him or someone like him in power as a PM in the near future?
I am asking from a position of near-complete ignorance here regarding their political system, Jordan. Any illumination is appreciated.
I'm sure you're absolutely rosy about the UN too, eh?
4046359
The UN has turned into rather a sick joke, which luckily has no real power and declining influence.
My hat's off to Britain for doing that.
They need to be able to choose how they themselves run things, not let other countries do it for them.
well, the people who were behind the leave campaign seem to be backing off on some of their promises/ideas on immigration and the money that goes into the EU being redirected to their National Health Service
Numerous people are publicly stating having regrets apparently having gone to the polls believing their votes wouldn't matter, treating it as a protest vote
And apparently Britain has a thing where a petition getting over 100,000 signatures gets debated in Parliament. A petition for a second referendum already has 200,000 and is crashing the gov't website
And the highest google searches over there are about the consequences of leaving the EU, r even what exactly it is
4046130
The treaty contained an escape clause, so invoking it is perfeclty lawful.
4046953
The British Establishment finds it very difficult to accept that they have just been chastised by the hoi polloi, I see.
4047066 you think Scotland and N. Ireland really represent the British "establishment"?! Hell, they're talking about leaving the UK because of it. You think the "hoi polloi" would be pleading ignorance or feeling their vote didn't matter? In fact, nothing of what I said suggests anything to do with what you said
4047055 no one ever claimed it wasn't. The question is merely is it wise. And just so you know, this is a non binding referendum. Ignoring it is also lawful
4047117
Well, yes ... and the British can vote out those parliamentarians who ignored their will.
4047130 48 percent voted to stay. A lot of folks will be facing voting out if they don't fight to stay.
I don't know that much about British politics (i have watched almost every ep of Spitting Image but that was on in the 80's mostly) or the EU (I listen to NPR fairly often so i know enough to know it's a mess that has mostly made Greece's problems worse). But i have to respect any nation that has a Official Monster Raving Loony Party (The USA has an Unofficial one... it's called the Republicans).
Any way i wish Britain the best of luck with leaving the EU, may they be the first but not the last to fully leave that sinking ship.
4047161
... and more will be facing voting out if they vote to stay. That's how democracy works. The majority outvotes the minority.
4047564
You do know that the Republicans are the one in favor of racial and sexual equality under the law?
4047597 WERE in favor of racial and sexual equality. These days they are an ever Older, Whiter and more male party that not only welcomed former Southern Democrats (Like Strom Thurmond who ran on a openly pro-segregation ticket) but has actively courted such voters. In recent years they celebrated the election of our first Black president by becoming the party of no and deciding that they would do their best to make his presidency a failure. Further more it has been said only somewhat jokingly that the real leader of the party is Rush Limbaugh, a over weight radio talk show host who dodged Vietnam because he had a boil on his butt who none the less has made party leaders apologize to HIM for criticizing him.
Most recently they nominated Donald Trump as the parties candidate for President, a man who is far more openly racist, sexist and bigoted than anyone on national level has been for many decades. A demagogue and huckster who openly encourages violence, makes very outrageous statements and has at least two position on ever issue (sometimes in the same paragraph).
Also it's a party who elected officials site "Gods Law" and the Bible to justify policies, want to teach creationism is science classes, deny global warming and many other things.
4047676
No, the Democrats remained racist. They accepted Robert K. Byrd as Senate Majority Leader, and now support reverse discrimination. The notion that Obama should be able to govern without legislative opposition, simply because he's black, is itself racist, because it would not apply to a white President.
4047683 "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
claim it was for racism or not to me this goes beyond mere legislative opposition
GIve me leave, Master Jordan, to speak of Britain, for from there I am come.
As fun as it is to watch all you Americans talking about my country.
In my view this referendum was a question of head versus heart. On the one hand (or the head), the economy is almost certainly going to be weaker if we leave the EU (I am not yet wholly convinced that we will) at least in the short term, assuming that the EU doesn't collapse as we cause a domino effect of suffix-exit referendums.
On the other hand (or the heart) I'm not immune to the appeal of issues of sovereignty and our proud standard, of being able to set our own laws without reference to far-off bureaucrats. And as for immigration...I blame the left for this. During the years of Blairism (1997-2010) any criticism of immigration was met with cries of 'Racist!', and fact-based discussion was neglected in favour of shaming people in shutting up. Not only did this lead to a situatin where the only people willing to talk about the downside of immigration were actual racists (though thankfully we're starting to move past that now) but it has reached the point where any factual discussion has become impossible and we're stuck with two groups of people yelling 'Bloody Foreigners!' and 'Racist!' at each other.
And the heart won out, as it so often does. We may regret it later or we may not, at this point any speculation says more about the speculator than about the actual potential possiblities.
4046072
The EU's problem is that it has consisently failed to answer, has shown no interest in answering, has seemed actively hostile too, the question that Tony Benn posed in 1975: How do we get rid of these people? Whether that ultimately matters to you or not is entirely your affair, but the question is not, on the face of it, an unreasonable one and to object to the answer 'You can't' is not prima facie unreasonable either.
4046121
Thank you for your thoughts, they are much appreciated.
4046148
It depends on what you mean by the near future. Sadiq Khan is not presently an MP, which any Prime Minister must be in this day and age. Considering that he resigned his seat when he became Mayor of London, it's fair to say that he won't be seeking a new seat in the next few years.
That said, it is becoming precedent for Mayor of London to be something of an alternative to a cabinet/shadow cabinet for ambitious politicians (Boris Johnson, the previous mayor, looks poised to become Prime Minister despite never having held a cabinet post) so it isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that he might seek the leadership of the Labour Party in future with an eye to becoming Prime Minister. However he would probably want to serve at least one full term as Mayor first in order to prove his capabilities as a leader and administrator.
Then there is the question of whether he could get the leadership. At the moment the Labour Party is having a low-key civil war between those who want it to be a socialist party, and those who want it to be a neo-liberal social democratic party. The socialists predominate in the grass roots, but the MPs are almost all social democrats (it's rather like the Republican party in the US, with a party establishments that fears and loathes its base and a base that has come to hate and despise its establishment). As a social democrat, Khan could probably get nominated for leader (the way it works is that you need 15% of MPs to nominate you for leadership, and then the party members vote on the candidates) but on the recent he would get steamrollered by a truly socialist candidate come election time.
So in the immediate short term, I don't think it's likely. But who knows what could happen in ten years time?
4047738 you say it's reasonable to ask how you can get rid of people. Would you feel it was reasonable for people to ask how to gt rid of you?
4047744
You do realise I'm talking about dismissing public officials from office, not murdering people, right? Benn's point was that even in the 1970s the EUs byzantine organisation prevented effective excercise of popular displeasure against officials (not least because the really important ones aren't even elected), and it's only gotten worse since. And yet one of the cornerstones of a functioning democracy is the ability to hold our leaders to account and to remind them that, though we may allow them to lead us, they remain our servants not our masters.
On that basis, if people want to talk about getting me fired from my job I can't do much to stop them, and recent history shows that if enough folks on twitter wanted to make it happen they could.
4047699 Oh yeah, it isn't like that's the goal of the opposing party of the sitting President, like, ever.
Dry up, will you? Stop reading into crap.
4047738 Thank you, Scipio.
4047744
It's a goddamned conspiracy!!!
4047786 John Wayne wasn't a politician of course, but he was a conservative and when Kennedy was elected he had this to say "I didn't vote for him, but he's my President, and I hope he does a good job." That should be the attitude politicians have.
4047817 And I should be able to see without glasses, Communism and Socialism should be regarded as laughable at best, and Fruity Pebbles should taste the same great way they did when I was a kid, but hey. Them's the breaks.
4047699
Why do you assume that the only reason to have wanted Obama to be a one-term President was the color of his skin? He is an incompetent leader of dubious loyalties who has been remarkably ineffectual at the main job of the President -- foreign policy -- and took upon a job which is not the President's -- health care -- and failed at this as well. He's failed to suppress interstate domestic conspiracies which have caused severe rioting, and he's failed to control our own borders. The Republicans have adduced all these reasons for opposing him, have not gone on about his race, and yet you assume that all these reasons are merely cover for dislike of his race -- the race which the Republicans freed and gained the vote for. What reason do you have for these assumptions?
I wrote this to an English friend about BrExit. It is on-topic, so I repost it here:
For a decision as monumental as seceding, you should require a supermajority ⅔rds plus + 1 vote. Because of meh-ers who just happened to come down slightly on secede, you are in for hard times. This is something you need to be certain you want to do before you do it. Here is a breakdown for you:
* Less than < ⅓rd means that things are great.
* More than > ⅔rds means that things are so bad that you would be better off from day 0 if you secede.
* Between ⅓rd and ⅔rds means that you have problems needing addressing before they get worse, but at this time, maintaining the union is better than the disruption of secession.
4047941 no, no he is not of dubious loyalty and there is no reason to assume he is except his name and skin color. He's actually pursued terrorists stronger than the last Democratic president.
I disgree with your politics completely, I think they're bad for America and I'm a strugging white man.
I am extremely sick of the ignorance displayed when people talk about Republican history and act like it wasn't flipped on it's head in the middle of last century.
4047738
I'm not sure that fears of losing sovereignity are merely emotional. The big structural problem with the EU is that the officials who actually get to make executive decisions and originate policy are chosen oligarchically rather than democratically. The democratically-chosen officials are only able to make resolutions on various topics; they lack decision-making power.
This was unimportant when the EU was merely a trading bloc and currency zone (the EEC), because then the check on an overly-interfering officialdom was the inability of the EU to actually enforce its decisions without cooperation from the member states. But if the EU acquires an army and centralized banking / treasury system, it becomes a state -- specifically, an imperial state governed from the Brussels metropole which is in turn controlled by an axis of Franco-German officialdom.
At this point, Britain would really be surrendering her sovereignity, and to an organization over which she could exert no democratic control. The EU has already been showing a frightening willingness to micro-regulate the British economy and even culture; and once the EU had an army, it could enforce these regulations if the British chose not to cooperate with them.
This means that the future freedom of Britain -- the European culture with the longest and brightest tradition of continuous representative government and respect for the rights of her subjects -- would be at the mercy of other countries, most notably France and Germany, which dramatically lack such traditions. The tradition of France is random destructive democratic enthusiasm followed by dictatorship; of Germany, of dictatorship masked by rubber-stamp legislatures.
It is not foolish sentimentality that leads one to conclude that this could lead to Britain having a very insecure future. It is rather a regard for the historical precedents.
Now, will Britain lose a lot of money by leaving the EU? Possibly, in the short run, as the markets roil to readjust. But in the medium run, the British would form new trading arrangements, either with the countries of the EU as a bloc or possibly severally (as one effect of Brexit may be that the EU is leerier of standing in the way of trading deals, as was the case with Amerexit in the 18th century), (*) or with other countries, perhaps ones that the EU planned to block off from British access). Most likely, most of Britain's existing trade details with EU countries will be renegotatied.
The key here is that the only reason why the EU would cut trade ties with Britain is spite: the EU stands to lose more money than Britain doing this. I don't know which the EU will choose, but given the EU's weaknesses, if they choose "spite" the sequel will probably be the collapse of the EU as an organization. Of course, given the influence of Merkel and her suicide-clique, perhaps they shall choose scolding death over productive life.
That's only another reason for the British to leave the EU. Merkel appears to genuinely feel that the culture of Germany and countries like her -- including France and Britain -- are somehow evil and tainted and deserve to be destroyed. She hates her own country. She's in many ways just the reverse image of the Hitler coin -- he destroyed Germany by his excessive aggressiveness and she is destroying Germany by her excessive passivity. This is of course deeply ironic given that Hitler is probably the reason Merkel hates Germany, but it appears to be reality.
Do you think Britain would have had much future, shackled to suicides? (And it's not just Merkel; she appears to be merely the leader of a whole cultural and political movement of doom-seekers).
The immigration issue is at the core of the suicide movement, because it is the suicide weapon. Normally, an emotionally-depressed elite is a self-correcting problem -- the suicidal people kill themselves or let themselves die (or more likely, whine on about how depressed they are in endless dreary books and plays, and live into their nineties). But Angela Merkel has imported millions into Europe who will gladly kill the Europeans and their culture for them. And do so by torture, yet.
===
(*) America's economy was actually badly damaged by leaving the British Empire, economic development in the 1780's and 1790's was notably slowed. Then, it took off like a rocketplane when America started industrializing, something the British of the time wouldn't let us do because they didn't want commercial competition from their colonies.
4047817
JFK didn't show contempt for America, nor was he spectacularly incompetent. Obama does, and is.
Your argument amounts to "because Obama is black, any opposition to him is racist." This argument is itself racist, since it decrees different political rules for dealing with black individuals than dealing with white ones.
no, no it isn't. You're so used to applying that narrative that you just can't see it any other way
oh by the way, Wayne said that at the beginning of JFK's presidency before any judgement of his competency could be made, at a time they were probably still talking about him buying the election, something he even made jokes about.
4047957
Your proposed rule is "criticizing black Presidents is racist, criticizing white Presidents isn't." That rule is prima faciae racist.
I have no problem with Obama's race. I have a problem with his ideology and policies.
Oh, please, I remember his Apology World Tours? The way he started his Presidency sucking up to Islamist dictators?
That's damnation by faint praise if I ever heard it!
It wasn't flipped on its head in the middle of the last century. That's a lie -- the Democrats never repudiated their racist leadership.
Not only am I not "ignorant," I know things you haven't studied, largely because the education establishment is Demoratic Party controlled and they don't like raising parts of mid to late 20th century racial history inconvenient to their thesis that Republicans are evil.
As to Democratic racism, consider that the Mexican fascist group La Raza and the anti-white black racist group Black Lives Matter are both Democratic.
4048013
that is not my proposed rule, please stop hallucinating
you don't have to repudiate anyone if you stop pursuing policies they like, although considering how obnoxious modern liberals can be I don't know what you think that is? Are Republicans the ones pushing political correctness? It was the Republicans who benefited from Democrats pushing through the civil rights bill
I haven't been in the education establishment for 20 years so you can't blame my opinions on them
http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-george-w-bush-holds-hands-with-saudi-arabian-crown-prince-picture-id52693444
4046080
I do not know about Canadian politics, but I am into skepticism, science and atheism. The previous government (Harper) muzzled scientists working for the Canadian Government and pushed scam (Supplemental Complementary Alternative Medicine), and suppressed belief and nonbelief except christanity which it encouraged. 1 of the 1st thing Trudeau did was let scientists under the employ of the Canadian Government freely speak publicly.
4048063
Try criticizing Islam in Trudeau's Canada and see how far you get. And Islam is far more opposed to atheism, rationality and sketicism than is Christianity.
4048067
Like I stated, I do not know about Canadian Politics, but I have heard about the dominionism, pushing of alternative medicine, and oppression of inconvenient scientific discoveries under Harper and it ending under Trudeau.
4047981
I must confess, a very spiteful part of me hopes that when we leave the EU, the EU itself will collapse in short order. That way we can't suffer from being out if there is no longer anything to be 'In'.
It will be good to have control of our courts back, if we get them. I wasn't a big fan of us being told that prisoners had a human right to vote.
4048109
I think it's quite likely the EU will collapse. WIth Britain out, that leaves France and Germany glaring at one another. I don't think that the French are as suicidal as the Germans either; nor are all the Scandinavians as suicidal as the Swedes, and so on. The suicide pact will fall apart as the members realize what they're being asked to do.
4048078 I'm Canadian, but haven't heard a thing about Harper pushing dominionism or alt medicine. I have heard that scientists were "muzzled", but I don't know if I believe that claim.
4048109 sure you can. All the EU nations have adapted to being in the EU. All the nations outside the EU have adapted to working with the EU. Remove the EU and there's chaos as things adapt and chaos almost always leads to people suffering.
Wonder if you will encourage the democratic choice of Scotland if it wishes to leave U.K. too.
4050568
Scotland can remain a slave-colony of the EU, to which the EU exports Muslims to rape and pillage the Scots, yes. Until the Scots remember their own courage, and the Scots rise, and the land runs red, and the Muslims there are no more.
Or, Scotland could simply avoid this dramatic but bloody episode by remaining with Britain.