Brexit Update · 10:01pm Jun 30th, 2018
Last weekend I was in London, with over 100,000 people, at a protest calling for a People’s Vote on Brexit. As you may have heard, the UK is scheduled to leave the European Union on 29 March 2019.
Reading comments on this site and others, it is clear that there is a lot of confusion about what this actually means. I presume this is partly because so many people are so busy fighting the forces of fascism in their own countries that they don’t have time to keep up with the news from Britain, and partly because the situation is so messy and complicated that even freaks like me, who read a lot of newspapers and attend lectures and rallies, don’t know what the hell is going to happen.
There are four broad possibilities, any of which could happen, and at the moment it's hard to say which is most likely.
- Soft Brexit: This would leave the UK in a similar position to Norway (without the oil money). Not part of the EU, but trading with it as an EU member, and with citizens free to move between the UK and EU.
- Hard Brexit: Would leave the UK independent from Europe with some sort of deal negotiated to handle trade and other stuff.
- Train Crash Brexit: We fail to reach a deal and ‘crash out’ of the European Union with no legal protection for trade beyond basic international rules. Long queues of trucks develop at ports due to new customs requirements. The inability to efficiency move goods and people cripples supply chains. British industry collapses with the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.
- It never happens. We all wake up one morning and realise that this whole Brexit thing was a silly idea, it is never going to give the benefits that were promised and will trash the economy, so we ditch the idea, revoke article 50, smooth over relations with our European friends, and get back to our lives with a sigh of relief.
The obvious sensible compromise is (1), but sensible compromises are not very fashionable at the moment. The British government is trying to get (2) with a deal to include the benefits of (1). However this is turning out to be logically impossible, as we now learn that you can’t have unrestricted trade with Europe and not accept European rules, as apparently the whole idea of a single market is accepting common standards. Who’d have thought that? The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is being problematic. It turns out the people of Ireland regard themselves as an independent European country, and not a British satellite state. Nobody wants an Irish border. Unfortunately you can’t have a hard border between Britain and the EU, and no border between Britain and Ireland, as Ireland is part of the EU.
As every politician knows, being seen to be a tough negotiator is more important than what you negotiate. The strategy is to make impossible demands, and blame the other side when they don’t agree. Hence we are currently on track for (3).
This is what is drove 100,000+ of us to London to push for (4) or at least another referendum with that option. Another vote really is the sensible democratic thing to do. The referendum result was very close (52% Leave 48% Remain), and at the time nobody knew what we were voting for. The Leave campaign told some outrageous lies. They breached electoral law. There are now questions about Russian interference. In these circumstances, it seems quite likely that some people might have changed their mind, so once the terms under which we will leave the EU are clear it would be best to have another vote on it. It would be a real shame if we go to all the trouble of leaving the EU, lose our rights as EU citizens, trash our economy, and promote the rise of racism and xenophobia, if it isn’t really the Will of The People after all.
I'm not British (or even part of the northern hemisphere) to tote about that, but there's one doubt I have. It's about Scotland's referendum to leave UK, and northern Ireland's will to do so. If I'm not mistaken the only thing that kept Scotland as part of UK was the damage that leaving would have on the economy, as it would mean leaving the EU. And as far as I know Ireland kinda wants to be a single entity again. How true are those, and how likely are they to happen if the UK does leave the EU?
I ask these as a foreigner to the situation curious about an inside perspective, please.
Yikes. Here's hoping someone with some pull realizes that all of that posturing actually has consequences before it's too late.
Lets move past reality and facts, because that was never an issue. What were the claimed problems with the EU, besides the bogus number about NIH money on that bus. The only other thing I ever heard was general animosity towards "bureacrats in Brussels". What were the other claims, even if they were ridiculous?
I'm not an expert (though I am a Norwegian), but it is my understanding that this similar position to Norway is strictly worse than the deal the UK already has as an EU member state. In exchange for access to the single market Norway pays into the EU as member states do, and agrees to abide by EU rules and regulations, including the free movement of people and capital. So with a deal like that the UK would not get those things that motivated people to vote leave in any case.
There are two main differences between Norway's deal and just being a member. One is that as a non-member Norway doesn't have a voice in the European parliament: advantage to the UK. The other is that Norway has kept its own currency, which since the Euro crisis has seemed like a good bet. But the UK already had a deal to keep its own currency anyway.
Mind you, at this point this kind of quibbling seems wildly out of place, like comparing power companies while the house is burning down. But when it was clear from day one that the best possible outcome was "things stay almost exactly the same, but worse," it's only made it scarier to watch the process play out these past two years.
Cant have 4. Any attempt to keep the EU going the way it has will lead to total catastrophic economic collapse within 20 years.
First Wales and Scotland, then UK, Brexit is following the rule of scale free avalanche. A brutal hard Brexit on the day of announcement wouldve been the same as using avalanch cannon, trying to make up and return to the EU would be like spraying ice on the overhang, letting it build up far beyond natural limits so when it does go, and it will, not only will it take out everything in its way but evreything associated with it.
Just announced, sparce connection small world neural model means deep mind style human replacement computers only need 1% of th processing power. You could run Debator ona desktop PC. So if the people dont use these, goverments and companies will use them to have the computers lawyer away human rights to have free computer legal representation.
Be a luddite. Fight for the human right for technological representation. Because we are but a tiny population of this planet, and China and India will implement it, thoughly, pervausively, and restrictively. The hold our trades to hostage to apply their demands. And because weve given them everything, theres nothing we can do about it.
Intresting fact, If the resources on the planet were distributed equally, the average person would have the riches equivalent to the average UK person, meaning almost 5 billion people would be richer and fed better than they could ever imagine, and using local population density, no high rise, just moors and semis and trerraces, would occupy an area a quarter to half USA.
Dont forget first rule of a governing servomechanism, it has to have two equal capable opposing forces to be a governer, regulator, otherwise its broken, jammed against the stops and the machine rips itself apart.
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A sassanach's perspective here, so it may vary slightly from Pineta's.
At least partly true.
The Scottish independence referendum in 2014 was also incredibly close, at 55%-45%, and while there are some people who want to take independence at any price, there are others for whom economic reality was more important. So while EU membership wasn't the only issue around, it may have been the one that pushed that vote under the line. Over the course of that referendum debate it became clear that an independent Scotland would have to begin the process of qualifying for EU membership (and eventually the Euro, if it went that way) from scratch, which would inevitably take years, during which trade and jobs would suffer. It also became clear that the SNP didn't have a clear plan for how to do any of that.
Now, the tables have been turned. If the UK has a spectacularly bad Brexit, as is looking increasingly likely, then Scotland's best bet for staying in the EU is to break off from the UK and then ask Europe very nicely; and there are voices in the EU that have hinted that, as long as Scotland grovels enough, they can get fast-tracked back in once they leave these English losers behind.
However, that can only happen if they actually get a vote about it. Setting aside claims of "once in a lifetime decision" etc - because, let's be honest, politicians of every colour lie and exaggerate all the time, so getting hung up on the words they use is pointless - there's no guarantee that the British government, sitting all the way down in London, would offer Scotland another vote if the likely answer was 'yes'. They only offered the last vote because they were confident the answer would be 'no' (though it was probably a lot closer than they'd anticipated). Nobody wants to go down in history as the Prime Minister that ended the UK.
Also, once Brexit actually happens, the British government will be too busy scrambling for the bunkers and trying to hold the hordes of zombies at bay to actually do anything.
Only half true, and it's complicated.
Northern Ireland likes to think of itself as both British and Irish at the same time. While the population of Northern Ireland is divided on the question of which country they belong with, once you chop off the extremes at both ends, most people are reasonably content with the current messy compromise - at least, they are now that there aren't bombs going off. Most people will take peace and prosperity over a theoretical boundary.
Since both the UK and the Republic of Ireland are currently in the EU, that means people can move freely between the three of them. There are people who commute across the Irish border to go to work every day. There's also a lot of goods and services flowing across the border both ways. A hard Brexit would change that, requiring both governments to put up barriers and start checking passports and charging customs at the border.
That would be a total failure for several reasons. First, nobody wants to pay for it. Both governments have been quite happy with not having to maintain an expensive border, and money customs wouldn't even begin to cover it. Second the Irish land border is huge, there's no way you could hope to police it all, and Irish are cheeky enough to just drive round any barriers you put up - probably while waving cheerfully to their cousins manning the border. Sure, you could arrest people found on the wrong side of the border, but the harder you try to police it, the more of a bad guy you are, the nasty British border police cracking down on the locals. It would spur a certain amount of violence, but it wouldn't do the job.
So while there isn't currently much appetite for change, a bad Brexit could shift public opinion a lot. Given time and enough political mistakes, it could even shift it far enough for them to demand independence.
But even if Northern Ireland was able to get its independence from the UK, there's no reason to think the Republic of Ireland would want to take them over. Changing all your administrative districts, your democracy, your budgets etc is a pain they'd probably rather avoid, as is integrating people with a slightly different culture. More likely they'd want to arrange a partnership of some sort, that allowed for a degree of free movement while allowing both parts of Ireland to stay sovereign. And since the Republic of Ireland is in the EU, that basically means Northern Ireland would be as well.
Meanwhile, evidence across the UK shows an increasing number of people don't actually want to leave. But we aren't being given a choice in the matter. If there was another referendum, it would most likely come down in favour of staying in the EU - and knowing what the answer will be is inevitably going to affect the government's decision of whether or not to ask the question.
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Interesting question.
Straight after the result of the EU referendum, the Scottish government immediately started planning for a second independence referendum. However it turned out this was very unpopular with the Scottish people. It's not entirely clear why. It seems people are just sick of referenda - they're devisive and people lose friends over them. In the general election last year, the Scottish National Party lost a lot of seats because of this. Hence the second referendum plans were shelved, but I'm sure they will bring it back if things reach a point where they think they can win it.
Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement which led to peace in Northern Ireland, the sovereignty of Northern Ireland is determined the view of the majority of the population. It was last said ~70% favoured remaining in the UK, but if Brexit leads to economic damage in the North while the Republic of Ireland continues to prosper, that opinion might change. The Democratic Unionist Party is totally against any referendum on Irish reunification, and they are currently propping up Theresa May's government. They call the shots. There is a very real fear is that Brexit could lead to the collapse of the peace process and a return to violence through issues like the border.
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Yes, a Norway-style deal would indeed mean paying the EU membership fees and abiding by its rules while not getting a say in its decisions. ...but looking at the voting record, I'm not sure Europe would be less representative of Britain's interests without Britain at the governing table.
The advantage of a soft Brexit is that it would be the easiest place from which to rejoin the EU. Which is, presumably, why the hard-liners are trying to get a hard Brexit instead, even knowing the damage it will do.
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If you want to know, you can read the Leave campaign leaflet page here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591226/More-28-MILLION-households-sent-leaflet-register-vote-Brexit-referendum.html
The big thing, other than the promised £350 million a week to the NHS, was a hostility towards immigrants and a claim that Turkey was about to join the EU.
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As someone who has lived in Scotland for the last 10 years and thus voted in the independence referendum I would say that saying the only thing which kept Scotland in the UK was the EU is a gross oversimplification. There were lots of factors in play one of which was EU membership and it would be more or less impossible to say if X was different then the outcome would have been Y. Its similar with Britexit its hard to say what impact any particular change would have made on the final result.
I think that in both cases, Scottish Independence and Britexit, I don't think a simple yes / no vote was a good idea because the final outcome is so complex. As given in the article above there are 4 general things that could happen by actually each of 1-3 is not a single option by each represents a set of possible by similar outcomes and I'm not even sure if 4 is actually legally possible.
Now I voted to stay as part of the EU and think that Britexit would be devastating for the country however I do not support a further referendum basically because we made our bed and now need to sleep in it and because I feel that just having referendum after referendum until you get a certain outcome is a dangerous precedent. A will admit the fact I am in Scotland and want to stay part of the UK is part of this, it seems that hardly a week goes by without the ruling Scottish National Party saying they want another referendum. It just doesn't work if you ask the country a question, say every year, and if they say no then you ask them again next year and if they ever say yes then you say the decision is final.
Now I've not followed the whole whole Britexit process closely and certainly from the British side there has been much arguing and fighting but it does seem like the European side isn't helping much by not giving any guidance on what they might possibly accept. It seems like Britain comes up with some idea of what they want and then just keep getting told no without really being given a counter offer. For instance something like (based on the options above) option 1 is not going to happen but we are open to the possibility of option 2. Although as I said this is entirely my own feeling and the actual reality might be very different.
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You're quite right. There is not really any point in moving to a Norway-style agreement as we would still be bound by EU rules but have no say in making them. And as a larger country, the UK has a larger influence on EU policy than Norway would have had had they joined. This is why people like me voted against Brexit.
However, given that 52% voted to leave, there is an argument that we should respect that, but also acknowledge that 48% wanted to stay. Soft Brexit is the obviously compromise. It's a fudge. Not what either side wanted, but it respects the vote without destroying the country. Since so many people voted to leave not because of a particular issue, but just because of a vague anti-EU sentiment, this would give them the satisfaction of being able to say 'we have left'.
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I see, thanks for the clarification. Oh, and dunno if you know about it, but the rest of the world (except the US because they don't care about that) worries on how Brexit will affect the EU because, well, the EU is the prototype of an unified nation body. It it perseveres it bodes well for the future of humankind and unity for betterment of all.
If it doesn't and the EU fails it might take centuries for a new effort to be made.
I know the UK alone couldn't make it tank, but that in conjunction with all the other crisis it seems to be facing could deal a blow hard to recover. You guys must be worried about the internal consequences, but from outside there are people more worried about the whole. Even if it stopping would be even worse for the confiability of the inspiring itself.
This is a very good post.
I am into the mathematics of voting systems. I started to write this and the wordcount exploded, so I focus like a laser:
In binary reversible decision a simple majority (½ + 1) is best, but if a decision is irreversible a ⅔ + 1 to be certain is desirable. Setting everything else aside, you are causing huge disruption over a wishy/washy-vote.
I think you are, sadly, going to have 3), since your government is composed of incompetents, fools, and malicious actors. Good luck, in any case!
Really, the Brexit referendum was botched from the start. It was grudgingly given by Cameron, who thought he had at least a two-thirds majority, and instead demonstrated exactly how badly he was out of touch with the actual country.
The referendum should have been between Soft, Hard, Full and Stay (as listed above), and decided by clear favourite. Even in the binary vote we had, change (ie, exit) should have been decided by a clear (~2/3) majority.
After that we have the (grimly) amusing scene of a largely pro-Europe Parliament trying to enact an exit from the EU. The people in charge know it is a poisoned chalice. May further botched things by going for an election while she had a clear majority, which she then had slashed.
While it is true that the EU aren't exactly being helpful, I can't really fault them on this - they don't want Brexit either, and the last thing they need is a country successfully leaving the EU as several member states have huge anti-EU factions.
It is also worth remembering in this mess that in the '70s we never actually voted to join the EU, because that body didn't really exist at the time. What was actually voted on was continued membership of the EEC - which was a trading community. When the EU (political harmonisation) came up (mid '90s?) there was a huge demand for a referendum which was never given (largely, I think, because the government of the time knew it would lose).
This is where a lot of the antagonism towards the EU comes from: We voted for a trading agreement, not a full political union, and we were never given a choice about joining the EU, which was arguably a much bigger issue than the EEC.
Full disclosure: I voted to remain on the grounds that you don't break your current system unless you are sure the replacement will work (I am mildly anti-EU, but didn't think there was enough to work with on the Brexit side).
The UK is now one step closer to make "V for Vendetta" canon for it.
Seriously, that the UK leaves the European Union is a good thing. Ever since the EU was formed, I found myself very wary of it and alerted. I always had the feeling that the EU just wants to control everyone's lives and that it will, one day, become the equivalent of one of the superstates and their mass-control and oppression Orwell warned about in "1984". More so, I was and am convinced that this is the goal of the EU since it became established.
And this hasn't become better over the years, it has become worse, especially in recent years. The EU is notoriously known for being very aggressive with regulations and laws that restrict or inflict everyone's daily life.
And while that was mostly silly at first, like with regulating the length every cucumber that gets on the market should have (but still bad, because obviously this results in the waste of a ton of food), it has become more serious recently.
Not too long ago, the EU tried to ban a cooling medium that is used to freeze kebab skewers, claiming that it would threaten the health of people who eat doner kebab. Which was not a direct attack on the food itself and it was luckily overturned in a vote, but if the EU would have succeeded with that, it would have kicked most, if not all, restaurants who offer mostly doner kebab out of business, because while they would have still been allowed to sell doner kebab, they wouldn't have been able to use what they need to cool it with anymore. Especially small concession stands would have gone out of business by this.
It doesn't need a genius to see what the goal with that was.
Effectively, this would have meant that the market for doner kebab dies and that no one in the EU can eat it anymore, unless you go for the effort to make it yourself.
Another thing the EU did even more recently, something that DID succeed, is a regulation that says to what extent fries can be roasted exactly and how brown and crunchy they are allowed to be. The EU legitly uses color tables for that so that restaurants know when their fries are "too brown". If they are "too brown", it's not legal to sell them anymore.
This isn't just a huge inconvenience for any restaurant that has fries on the menu, it also means that customers who like to eat their fries more crunchy and brown can't order them that way anymore and, therefore, can only eat "perfect" fries with just the "right amount" of crunchyness anymore.
The reason the EU names for that is, you guessed it, once again health. Because fries that are fried too much are supposedly causing cancer.
The bad thing about this reasoning is, how much sense it makes when you hear it. Everyone knows that you shouldn't eat something that's burned, it's well-known for a very long time that this can indeed cause cancer. So when the EU says that even fries that are just roasted enough to be brown and crunchy let you get cancer, this stirs enough fear that no one will oppose it and that everyone will just accept that regulation.
In case I wasn't clear enough with this yet, what the EU does lately is dictating us what to eat. It tells us how crunchy and roasted we can eat our ordered fries now. Sounds an awful lot like Orwell, isn't it?
It started with the length and size of vegetables and now continues with banning certain ways people like to eat their food. What is next?
It's best for the UK to get its head out of this. It might have economic disadvantages for a while, but it will secure the freedom of the people of the UK at least, once the EU goes full-on Orwell on everyone and informs us how much chocolate we are still allowed to eat this week while the camera in our bedroom makes sure we aren't hiding any illegal amounts of chocolate under the bed.
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You really need to know, most of that is lies. The cucumber thing was made up by lazy British journalists who knew that painting the EU in a negative light would sell to their core readership of thick racists. It's one of a long, long line of things said about the EU by the right-wing press in various countries that just isn't true.
Most of the regulations the EU brings in are quite sensible, and many of them really are there to protect people. When people talk about "cutting through red tape", they mean cutting back on workers rights - decent pay, maternity leave, sick leave, the right to strike, the right to unionise, etc. Throughout its history the EU has done a lot to improve the lot of ordinary people, which is why so many selfish rich guys are trying to ruin it.
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https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-stop-the-censorship-machinery-save-the-internet?recruiter=50668942&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial
Presented without comment.
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Yes, that one is stupid, I agree. But don't forget all the times the UK government has been caught breaking rules, laws and human rights to spy on its own citizens. It's European courts that have called them out held them to account. Outside of the EU there'll be fewer checks and balances to prevent abuse of power like that.
The EU isn't perfect - none of us are - but it's more positive than not. And many of the things said about the EU in the British press are complete lies.
Theresa May faces Tory anger over soft Brexit proposal
Like I said, Britain faces massive disruption over a wishy/washy-vote:
A simple majority (½ + 1 vote) is fine for reversible decisions (we tried something, but it did not work; so now, we revert to the previous status quo); but truly however, if a decision is irreversible one should require a supermajority (⅔ + 1 vote) to be sure —— ¡everything has gone to hell and we cannot reverse course!
If I could be Prime Minister, I would call of BrExit because it did not get a supermajority. When the ProBrExits complain, I would tell them that they are free to hold another vote, but I shall not take Britain out of the European Union without a supermajority.
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Indeed. Legally the referendum was only advisory. The final decision is up to parliament, so the Prime Minister could, in principle, say that it requires a supermajority. The real problem is that nothing was clear before the vote. There should have been a plan stating the terms under which the UK would leave the EU and what majority would be required first. This is what happened before the referenda on the devolution of power to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which went much more smoothly.
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In that case, I would just throw out the vote and tell the supporters of BRExit that they are free to try again, but Britain will not leave without 2 things: