- The EU won’t start the process to admit the UK until joining is politically settled
- Until the Tory party is also onboard with rejoining, it can’t be politically settled
- The Tory party will only get onboard when it’s no longer possible to win power without wanting to rejoin
- Despite there being over 30m voters in the UK, our system ensures only a few hundred thousand swing voters decide the government
- Those voters are still in favour of Brexit
- Finally, ALL polls showing a majority rejoin exclude “Don’t knows,” meaning there’s no actual majority for rejoin
The above facts explain why the Labour Party is not campaigning to rejoin. Until a number of those are changed, the UK simply will not rejoin the EU.
That'll be like the referendum then.
My point is that you can’t just read a poll and confidently declare there’s popular support for rejoining the EU.
Labour are doing what any good politicians do and are avoiding a divisive issue to try to appeal to both sides.
EDIT: I missed the source for the polls. This YouGov poll shows a big “Don’t know” block which is completely missing from the news reports.
Poll: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/0...
Sample report: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/23/britons-who...
- they'll vote remain
- they'll ignore the referendum result
- they won't invoke article 50
- the article 50 court case will prevent it being triggered
- we won't exit
- we'll stay in the single market
(though I suppose it's possible they may eventually get one right)
(similarly: their recently retired stock-picking columnist revealed he'd never traded a stock)
This article shows what seems to be becoming a general growing consensus that "some people (prominent campaigners and politicians) lied to us for their own benefit" - and there is a more subtle second consensus of "and then forced a hard brexit for their own career gains".
This is a nice consensus because it has evil people to blame, and removes the blame from 50% of the voting public
I am not sure that's a good idea.
We have more or less proof that 50 % of the country cannot work out basics of social democracy, of trade agreements and referendums. Even things like self interest or which of the bastards is lying to you.
It was a massive act of self harm and it was an act of democracy.
Brexit shows there are viable mental models of the world and there are mental models the equivalent of crayon drawings of the sun and ann apple tree.
How do we get sensible disagreement on the viable ones and laugh the crayon drawings out?
I am always reminded of the woman who told John McCain "I am scared of Obama, he is an Arab". McCains reply was inspiring but the look on his face seemed to me to say "how can I fix this one voter at a time? It will take forever".
Things have been so much smoother in the EU since UK left. Their politicians had this idea that Europe was out to screw them in every deal and that made it a very annoying 30 years of "collaboration".
As a result, if EU offered X, UK representatives would argue that they must get at least X + 25%. During the 30 years this continued, it led to an atmosphere of distrust and aggressive behaviour that honestly the rest of EU was very tired of.
Additionally given that we'll all need security cooperation for the foreseeable it would be easier if that took place under the EU aegis.
Further more, the UK was an important net contributor.
So I think, on the whole, Brexit was bad for Germany.
But I still feel skeptical regarding Brits and British politicians actually being ready to accept the fact they're not special and that they will not have special treatment. I am pretty sure they'll want to pull a sneaky and try to sneak something in to calm down the Tories.
The special treatment for the old guard (German automotive, French farming industries) also needs to be expunged.
I don't know why this keeps coming up-- joining the EU does not require adopting the Euro.
Do you think these 60% are unaware that there would be no special deals? And it's 79% of young voters, so even just the demographics will only shift this further, in addition to the ever more obvious data showing just how disastrous Brexit has been, that all the claims were lies.
And what special treatment does the German automative industry get?
The referendum should've been nullified when the scale of political interference via social media in 2016 came to light. Also, 52% to 48% is not a resounding "yes" and should not have been considered as one.
Exactly, nobody voting for Brexit even knew what they were voting for! Many just had some nebulous, fantastical idea of independence from some "evil" organisation in Brussels.
the previous sovereign states that were dissolved to form it are called "countries" for historical reasons
the referendum was 1 person 1 vote
populations:
- Scotland and NI (voted Remain): 7.5 million
- England and Wales (vote Leave): 60 million
not to mention completely undemocratic
They fucked around and now they are in the finding out phase. There is no way the EU will allow them to continue with their jackasseries. If you want back in apply like a new state and accept the shit conditions new members have to accept. You're not special. You're a shadow of a former great empire and your economy is collapsing. Immigrants? Those fools are actually keeping you afloat while you pretend they're the root of all your problems.
We also do not particularly keep the UK (politically speaking) close to our hearts. The Calais situation, pour contact for submarines passed to the UK (and US), etc.
Pour gouvernement is seen as weak when it comes to conflicts with the UK so politicians will need to take that into account as well.
No. You only have to adopt the euro if you meet the convergence criteria. One of the criteria is joining ERM II. There's no mechanism that can force a country to join ERM II. This is why Sweden, although theoretically obliged to join the eurozone, still has its own currency.
The rules say that to join you must adopt the euro. The EU has chosen not to enforce this rule on legacy members for now, but certainly would enforce it on Britain and anyway good luck selling "we want to join but we plan to illegally ignore the rules" to either the EU or the British electorate.
Reality is the EU wasn't every opportunity in the UK and it's blue going to rejoin unless there's essentially some undemocratic coup. The moment is explained what thinking would entail the proposal is dead.
Instead of accussing me of lying, you could've just looked up the relevant treaties.
Here's an abridged summary: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/euro/enlargement-euro-a...
And this is about ERM II, it explicitly says that it's voluntary: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/euro/enlargement-euro-a...
The full treaty on European Union is here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
As a European citizen, I think that Britain belongs in Europe. On the other hand it’s time to grow up for Europe.
2. The obligations that people read into the referendum (incorrectly, but whatever) have been discharged: Brexit happened. That is the past.
3. Democracy is not "One man, one vote, one time". New majorities mean new democratic mandates. Time moves on.
4. And these majorities are much, much larger than ~ 52:48 majority for Brexit. A split that, had it gone for remain, Nigel Farage said would have meant "unfinished business".
Stories like this and —more recently— anti-green policies will run thick throughout the coming campaign.
De Gaulle also wanted to shield the nascent EEC from the United States's influence as much as possible. For him, integrating the United Kingdom into the EEC would have moved the EEC's barycenter too far towards Washington.
Already happened. From the fine article:
"60 per cent of Britons now think Brexit was the wrong decision and would vote to rejoin the EU at a second referendum"
And young voters are just a tad more lopsided:
"Young voters are the most pro-EU of the lot, with 79 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds wanting to rejoin"
People vote with their emotions, regardless of education. But I will concede education helps. However, look at all the educated but gullible fools who still think the Democrat Party is "for the people" compared to the Republican Party. Both parties are for the Ruling Elite. Its just different Rhetoric but same actions and outcomes.
Pieter Hintjens the ZeroMQ founder wrote the book "The Psychopath Code". I learnt that some bad people are enough to make a community capsize. I am not sure whether this applies to democracies as well. It is a completely different scale from Open Source projects. However I think, this book is very valuable in learning why democracies have enormous difficulties.
I am afraid, however, that the alternatives are even worse.
This is the biggest problem. It's an even bigger problem in the US.
The issue is lack of education. There's a reason repub voters are generally not college educated.
The answer is also education, with the caveat you can't educate people who don't want to be educated because they are already too far down a rabbit hole.
Tony Blair was the only leader to allow Immigration ["free-movement"] from Eastern Europe the from moment they joined the EU. Coupled with English being most peoples second language the UK was flooded with people that helped to keep the wages down (by design of course). And who benefited from that? Not the working class.
And Boris was savvy enough to know that if he campaigned on "get Brexit done" he could topple the "red wall" and score a huge victory.
Keir Starmer thinks Corbyn's "socialism" is what cost them the election (2019). No, it was Brexit and possibly Corbyn's "open borders" policy which killed Labour at the polls.
Next election, no-one will be voting FOR Labour, they will be voting AGAINST the Tories.
They are everywhere, and Labour is sadly doing anything to court these self-flagellant types, so we'll keep ignoring this shadow over our heads for the next 30 years at least.
The difference in policies between most major parties in any country is small and the difference across counties is much smaller than you would think.
So if you vote on "traditional party lines" you more or less get forward progess.
But if one party actually wants to harm the democracy / state then you get Hitler elected (ok very special case he already had a 3 million person country wide organisational apparatus) but you get my point - if politicians are actually intent on sinking the boat they can slip through if we are not careful.
That seems to have been the 2016 case - europe, Brexit, Trump. Wolves appeared in sheep's clothing and people just picked between sheep.
it's not clear how to fix the problem other than to accept that sometimes we will self harm, and we will need to pay the price, not of electing someone who will promise to fix it for us, but to do the hard work as citizens and become educated, informed, engaged.
I think something like citizenship tests for not immigrants but natives might be an interesting start. USA has an odd head start in you learn to swear allegiance to a flag and a reply bloc every day as kids. That makes some kind of diffeeebce.
Of course it has been a success. I (half-German, half-Croatian) grew up in times where each of the borders from Germany to Croatia had anything from 1-4 hours of waiting time, you'd need to exchange currency at each border (at outrageous rates) as well simply to be able to pay for fuel and food, and heaven forbid you even got a call on your phone due to roaming charges.
Nowadays? No border controls at least on the way to Croatia any more (the other way around does because of certain far-right politicians), no currency exchanges, no leftover currency when you go back, seamless cross-border bank transfers, no phone roaming surprise bills... it's utterly awesome.
[1] https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-germany-shock-the-...
That day I understood a lot more about brexit (that was still undecided at the time I think) than the day before: those who'd vote leave (and even most of those who'd vote stay) never had the opportunity to enjoy anything about the EU as a live, graspable experience, it had always just been an abstract concept for them. Something-something-economy, nothing that touched their lives.
If you're old enough (or sufficiently well-traveled) to have been stopped at borders, gone through the hassle of foreign currency, it's such an awesome "yes, this is the future!" moment to go to a place where people talk a language you don't understand, road signs are weird, but you never stopped, you can use the cash from home and the only sign of passing the border was the customary SMS telling you that all is fine when the phone logs into the roaming network. UK people never had any of that and I believe that the vote would have gone quite different if they did.
Would you also be a fan of a global union with a single currency?
I can’t imagine anyone would bend over backwards to accommodate the UK at this point.
Doubtful that they could avoid a commitment to joining the eurozone though.
Airports would still require travel documentation (e.g id card or passport)
The UK has had a declining car manufacturing industry also, so the same applies to German industry.
The redistribution of contributions may very well appear fair on paper, but countries cannot simply magic up a pivot to farming and automotive industries as a way to receive funds...
Like how in the Electoral College here in the US, one vote in Wyoming can have almost two orders of magnitude more impact than a vote in California when it comes to electing senators, as each state gets two regardless of population [0]. Similarly, when one looks at the extent of gerrymandering, it’s clear that the winners, and especially one party in particular, love to redraw the lines to cherry-pick the voters that will elect them while excluding others that might challenge them [1]. For presidential elections, the difference between a Wyoming voter’s say and the average say of a voter from any other state is around 3.18:1. Worst-case is of course California, where it’s about 3.6:1 when compared to Wyoming, or said another way, a vote here is worth 27.7% of a Wyoming vote. [2][3]
0. https://wallethub.com/edu/how-much-is-your-vote-worth/7932
1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2021/nov/12/gerrymander-redistricting-map-republicans-democrats-visual
2. https://fairvote.org/archives/the_electoral_college-population_vs_electoral_votes/
3. https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/how-much-voting-power-do-you-really-have-in-your-stateBut, because they pushed for enlargement, they then felt obliged to open their markets to the countries immediately, and that was definitely one of the drivers of the Brexit vote.
And any future referendum as being: do you wish you hadn’t cheated on your wife?
So basically it was 51% leave and it will be 55% regret.
The proverbial has hit the fan in the UK since Brexit. It is all very real now for people and not just some silly wet dream
I mean that happened anyway, but at least they don't need to keep all of the laws.
Honestly, I never understood why EFTA made any sense for the UK (although as an Irish person I'd have been very happy if they went that way).
I'm sortof not really joking but the German export driven economy would have been much harder to maintain with the DM.
The Euro was a concession by Germany in order to get France to agree to unification.
One of life's little ironies I suppose.
The way I'd imagine the UK retaining it's opt-out here, is that it's something that the EU could compromise on without really losing much (and importantly without losing face, as the Irish border and preservation of the GFA is a reasonable excuse to find reason to compromise) and that the UK negotiators could then present as a "win" back home, making the other conditions that the UK now has to accept (for example the euro) easier to sell the general populace on.
Obviously though, I'd much prefer if both the UK and Ireland joined Schengen together.
from June 24th 2016: a hard exit with a fudge on the NI border was the only path that kept the tory party in one piece
and the tory party has always prioritised that over everything else
remember: it's the only reason they called a referendum in the first place
the only way it would have gone differently would have been if Labour had a leader other than Corbyn
having him as the opposition guaranteed it would happen
(because Middle England hated the idea of Corbyn in power more than they hated brexit)
Like, the Tory party didn't remain in one piece, they expelled a bunch of people and are almost unrecognisable from the people in power in 2016.
Any chance you have comments here or elsewhere supporting your predictions?
That's not true. Bulgaria and Romania were limited for the full seven year period.
> Next election, no-one will be voting FOR Labour, they will be voting AGAINST the Tories.
That's true of most elections where power changes hands. If the party in power is doing an average job, the electorate tends not to replace them with an unknown. They have to be doing badly to get kicked out.
It always helps to read the sources you cite...
- Those numbers are much closer than 60/40, for a start
- People change their mind because of a campaign
- The poll doesn’t show how different constituencies will vote
- To get elected, you win constituencies, not the popular vote
- YouGov polling puts “leaving the EU” down at 17% in importance https://yougov.co.uk/topics/education/trackers/the-most-impo...
- Meaning the public don’t want to talk about it
- Labour are focus-grouping EVERY MESSAGE; if they decided rejoin is bad for them, it’s because it’s not what key voters want
Since that is exactly how polls work, not sure how you could have read it.
> Those numbers are much closer than 60/40, for a start
Only because I lumped all of the "Don't Knows" into "Leave". Which is unrealistic, but a lower bound for the vote for remain that is above what you claim. So your claim isn't just not right, it isn't even wrong.
If instead I lump the "Don't Knows" in with "Remain", it turns into 68/31. The truth is probably somewhere between 55/44, which is still a 10% spread, and 68/31, which is 37% spread. And 60/40 is not splitting the difference in the middle, it is giving more of the undecideds to leave.
> To get elected, you win constituencies, not the popular vote
To leave the EU, you win the popular vote in a referendum, not individual constituencies. To rejoin would most likely be the same.
And it turns out that the result is even more lopsided in thinking Brexit was mistake when you look at constituencies. In effect the entire country is now Remain.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-regret...
etc.
The EU website disagrees:
> All EU Member States, except Denmark, are required to adopt the euro and join the euro area. To do this they must meet certain conditions known as 'convergence criteria'.
https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/euro/enlargement-euro-a...
I was a remainer and I'd love to rejoin and Schengen, the mobile roaming stuff, etc. are all wonderful and I would like them back.
I'm not convinced the Euro would be a good idea and I'm absolutely convinced that you'd lose public support for rejoining if you tried to go that route.
I keep wondering if EEA + Schengen would be a viable middle ground.
The friction between Ireland and the UK is near zero, both have different currencies.
This isn't to say there aren't benefits to the Euro; on an individual level of course not thinking about exchanging or exchange rates makes life easy. It's simply not palatable to the UK, Brits or the core financial institutions by which its service oriented economy excels.
Indeed, Schengen and Euro were only introduced this year - but I lived through how all of the old crap slowly got dismantled, each year it was one annoyance less.
The most painful thing is to see how many people want to dismantle all of that progress.
For what it’s worth, I’m in favour of the euro (and further EU integration).
Nowadays when I travel, I just pay with my usual bank or credit card and get good rates without thinking about it. If my bank didn't have good rates, there's Revolut.
The main pain is that the EU hasn't standardised payment systems. So in parts of NL and Germany, you might find your Visa isn't accepted because they only take Maestro, or, in Sweden, Swish, for example.
- This poll doesn’t do constituency breakdown
- How many of those people would actually vote?
- Do they know what rejoining entails?
- There is no campaign on rejoin
- In such a campaign, the Brexit media will absolutely spell out how hard rejoining actually is
- Only 17% of people actually think this is important
- The EU still wouldn’t re-admit the UK because nearly half the fucking country still wants to be out!
Speaking of referendums:
> To rejoin would most likely be the same.
No, to rejoin, first you elect a party that either campaigns on rejoin or to hold a referendum. Both are guaranteed vote-losers because of what I posted above: 83% of the country doesn’t want to reopen the Brexit discussion. In addition, with the UK’s voting system, you can have 55% support your position and hand an 80-seat majority to the 45% who oppose.
> And it turns out that the result is even more lopsided in thinking Brexit was mistake
This is simply a garbage poll and doesn’t back up your claim at all. “Do you regret” is not the same as “should we rejoin.”
Let’s go back to the core issue: in the best case, half the country wants to stay out the EU. That is NOT “politically settled” in any sense of the term. Until that changes, with all major parties supporting rejoin, actually rejoining is total fantasy politics.