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Brexit: give me a positive effect (2023 ‘Epic Fail’ box set edition)

ff1d1l said:
Stand back!
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Ha ha! I have read a lot of wordy tracts on this forum and others, but I'm interested to really get to the nub of it. If 50 years of scepticism / division really was all down to that, it seems a bit pathetic to me.

Not only was it confirmed by a democratic majority a couple of years later, but the EU has changed a lot in that time too. All the while we were a member there was plenty of opportunity to drive for change and reform, if that was what we really wanted.

The benefits we accrued along the way, both in terms of soft power and influence, as well as direct gains from shared standards, no tariffs, investment in infrastructure etc. etc., all rather outweigh both the theoretical as well as the actual (I was going to say 'benefits') er.... 'changes' we saw on leaving. We got to learn how to work more closely with our neighbours too, and I think that has become increasingly important over the last 50 years.

I'm sure I will now be pointed to the plaque of Lord Lothian's quote from 1939 in the EU parliament as evidence of their monstrous, oppressive, destructive intentions, but seriously, was sharing all that bad? It's not like any Belgians, Spaniards, Italians etc. are all going to simultaneously surrender their nationalities, is it? So why the paranoia?

Making a big thing about the patch of land where your mum happened to squirt you out is completely ridiculous. It's not like the resultant proud patriots had any influence over that billions-to-one chance.
We need to wake up and work together, there are bigger fish to fry than the alleged unfairness of a fishing policy that affects 0.03% of a tiny country's economy as we watch the waters rise.
 
@Graham B

The 2016 referendum is considered undemocratic because people were lied to. They were lied to in 1975 too.

The turnout in 1975 was 65% of the electorate and was preceded by promises from the govt to implement the result. In 2016 the turnout was 72% with similar govt promises.

The reason I believe brexit had to be implemented is the same reason the correct thing was done in 1975.
 
Brian said:
@Graham B

The 2016 referendum is considered undemocratic because people were lied to. They were lied to in 1975 too.

The turnout in 1975 was 65% of the electorate and was preceded by promises from the govt to implement the result. In 2016 the turnout was 72% with similar govt promises.

The reason I believe brexit had to be implemented is the same reason the correct thing was done in 1975.
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What has happened has happened, but the referendums of 1975 and 2016 were different in one important respect. Neither specified a supermajority, but the 1975 ref would have carried one, since the vote in favour was 67% to 33%, rather different from 52% to 48%.
I think all this proves is that referendums are completely unsuitable vehicles for important national decisions, and if anything we should have just stuck with our representatives decision to take us into the EC in 1973.
 
Brian said:
The reason I believe brexit had to be implemented is the same reason the correct thing was done in 1975.
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This makes sense in political theory, but again points to referendums as being hopelessly inadequate and unrepresentative. For example, the hard-brexit we have now is hardly representative of a 52 - 48 vote.

There are also the rather obvious pitfalls resulting from the 2016 decision which we normally rely upon our representatives to steer us safely through. If you saw your best mate about to jump off a rooftop, you'd try and stop him, right?
 
Graham B said:
What has happened has happened, but the referendums of 1975 and 2016 were different in one important respect. Neither specified a supermajority, but the 1975 ref would have carried one, since the vote in favour was 67% to 33%, rather different from 52% to 48%.
I think all this proves is that referendums are completely unsuitable vehicles for important national decisions, and if anything we should have just stuck with our representatives decision to take us into the EC in 1973.
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One of the main arguments from the gang is the lies in 2016. People were lied to in 1975.

On the supermajority thing, 67% from a lower turnout is still scraping in.

Bottom line for me is, although I believe a referendum for such things should not happen, they both did. As such, both should be carried through.
 
Brian said:
One of the main arguments from the gang is the lies in 2016. People were lied to in 1975.

On the supermajority thing, 67% from a lower turnout is still scraping in.

Bottom line for me is, although I believe a referendum for such things should not happen, they both did. As such, both should be carried through.
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Like I said, what has happened has happened. We have left, and I fully agree that doing so via a referendum was utterly daft, and will have long reaching implications.

As with the eventual results though, the level of misinformation would have been different. I was only a toddler at the time of the first one, but I'm willing to bet there was not a co-ordinated and highly funded campaign of micro-targeted ads on Facebook, informed by illegal data harvesting, and guided and promoted by malign actors in Russia and the US. Arguments about the legal standing of an 'advisory' referendum also hold water, but part of that can be put down to Cameron being an arrogant jerk.

Whether you scrape to a supermajorityof 67% or win by 95% to 5% is irrelevant. If the threshold is 66%, then the first EU ref was a valid win, and the second one would not have been. Cameron was an arrogant jerk, or maybe too frightened to impose such a threshold.
Now we have to focus on repairing the damage before it is too late.
 
eternumviti said:
Sure, but it is the original lie that was the problem, Nick.
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Graham B said:
Like I said, what has happened has happened. We have left, and I fully agree that doing so via a referendum was utterly daft, and will have long reaching implications.

As with the eventual results though, the level of misinformation would have been different. I was only a toddler at the time of the first one, but I'm willing to bet there was not a co-ordinated and highly funded campaign of micro-targeted ads on Facebook, informed by illegal data harvesting, and guided and promoted by malign actors in Russia and the US. Arguments about the legal standing of an 'advisory' referendum also hold water, but part of that can be put down to Cameron being an arrogant jerk.

Whether you scrape to a supermajorityof 67% or win by 95% to 5% is irrelevant. If the threshold is 66%, then the first EU ref was a valid win, and the second one would not have been. Cameron was an arrogant jerk, or maybe too frightened to impose such a threshold.
Now we have to focus on repairing the damage before it is too late.
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Forgive me, but you seem to be swinging from posing as something of an ingénue in your recent posts, not really understanding what the EU fuss is all about, to expressing strong anti-brexit opinions, deploying the extremely tired 'only an advisory referendum'/'we should have stayed in to bring about reform' tropes. You also stated that you think borders are essentially rather silly and unneccessary things, which is fair enough if democracy - the ability to hire and sanction the people who raise and spend your taxes, and make your laws - isn't particularly your thing, but you have to accept that to many of us, it is.

You also display a fundamental misunderstanding, if you'll forgive me again, of what the EU is, for in stating that the 1975 referendum was decisive you entirely miss the point that the EU didn't exist in 1975, and wasn't to do so for another 18 years. Whilst the lie had been formulated my Macmillan and his advisers (who included Heath) as far back as the 1950s, prior to the UK's original bids for membership, it didn't properly coalesce until the Maastricht Treaty of 1992/3 created the European Union, subsuming the citizens of the member states into citizens of the EU, launching the EU Single Currency, and creating the framework for the successor EU constitution (the Lisbon Treaty) of 2007, within which the EU evolved into a legal international entity in its own right. This 2 part process involved a shift of constitutional power from the member states to the institutions of Brussels so fundamental and far-reaching that it cannot but be beyond dispute that the electorates - the reach of whose whose suffrage would be fundamentally diluted - should have been given the right to decide by plebiscite. You and I were not consulted over either Maastricht or Lisbon. Therein lay the foundations of Brexit.
 
Graham B said:
Ha ha! I have read a lot of wordy tracts on this forum and others, but I'm interested to really get to the nub of it. If 50 years of scepticism / division really was all down to that, it seems a bit pathetic to me.

Not only was it confirmed by a democratic majority a couple of years later, but the EU has changed a lot in that time too. All the while we were a member there was plenty of opportunity to drive for change and reform, if that was what we really wanted.

The benefits we accrued along the way, both in terms of soft power and influence, as well as direct gains from shared standards, no tariffs, investment in infrastructure etc. etc., all rather outweigh both the theoretical as well as the actual (I was going to say 'benefits') er.... 'changes' we saw on leaving. We got to learn how to work more closely with our neighbours too, and I think that has become increasingly important over the last 50 years.
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IIUC, EV and many other Brexiters affect to be in favour of the Single Market (or some version of it) but refuse the idea that closer regulatory and political union is required to make it happen. Most other countries have accepted that you can't have one without the other, and are willing to get stuck in to shape an overall outcome they can live with.

The UK governments of the 70s and 80s (mostly headed by Conservative PMs) were not shy about pushing for the changes they wanted, and were among the prime instigators of the Single Market. They understood give & take and were successful in overcoming all sorts of obstacles. Some started getting cold feet when they realized that a true Single Market requires a higher degree of political cohesion than a simple free trade area. After Thatcher's Bruges speech in 1988, a narrative was developed that the UK had willingly signed up in 1975 to a Common Market but not to a political union. Anyone that bothered to read the treaties the UK signed, which must surely include all MPs voting on the subject from the 70s onward, would have known this was disingenuous, but it became a popular way of explaining the Conservatives' change of heart.

A majority of British politicians and bureaucrats used to be willing to engage with the rest of Europe in order to get things done and advance the British economy. UK GDP rose tremendously during the 90s and 00s as a result of this and globalization. Their successors are much more timid, inward looking creatures. They toe the line of the non-dom tabloid and PE owners and the loud minority of ERG headbangers, who are quite willing to inflict economic hardship on the majority to save their offshore trusts and sundry loopholes.
 
eternumviti said:
You also display a fundamental misunderstanding, if you'll forgive me again, of what the EU is, for in stating that the 1975 referendum was decisive you entirely miss the point that the EU didn't exist in 1975, and wasn't to do so for another 18 years. Whilst the lie had been formulated my Macmillan and his advisers (who included Heath) as far back as the 1950s, prior to the UK's original bids for membership, it didn't properly coalesce until the Maastricht Treaty of 1992/3 created the European Union, subsuming the citizens of the member states into citizens of the EU, launching the EU Single Currency, and creating the framework for the successor EU constitution (the Lisbon Treaty) of 2007, within which the EU evolved into a legal international entity in its own right. This 2 part process involved a shift of constitutional power from the member states to the institutions of Brussels so fundamental and far-reaching that it cannot but be beyond dispute that the electorates - the reach of whose whose suffrage would be fundamentally diluted - should have been given the right to decide by plebiscite. You and I were not consulted over either Maastricht or Lisbon. Therein lay the foundations of Brexit.
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This is a good summary of a potentially valid reason for voting Leave, and I'd be interested in seeing a poll showing how many Leave voters did so because of the above.
Taking Back Control could have in theory produced a more democratic Britain. But reality has bit us on the backside...
 
I don't think so. What we are seeing now is our governing elites utterly exposed. It might not be what we expected it to look like, but this is democracy in action.
 
PsB said:
IIUC, EV and many other Brexiters affect to be in favour of the Single Market (or some version of it) but refuse the idea that closer regulatory and political union is required to make it happen. Most other countries have accepted that you can't have one without the other, and are willing to get stuck in to shape an overall outcome they can live with.

The UK governments of the 70s and 80s (mostly headed by Conservative PMs) were not shy about pushing for the changes they wanted, and were among the prime instigators of the Single Market. They understood give & take and were successful in overcoming all sorts of obstacles. Some started getting cold feet when they realized that a true Single Market requires a higher degree of political cohesion than a simple free trade area. After Thatcher's Bruges speech in 1988, a narrative was developed that the UK had willingly signed up in 1975 to a Common Market but not to a political union. Anyone that bothered to read the treaties the UK signed, which must surely include all MPs voting on the subject from the 70s onward, would have known this was disingenuous, but it became a popular way of explaining the Conservatives' change of heart.

A majority of British politicians and bureaucrats used to be willing to engage with the rest of Europe in order to get things done and advance the British economy. UK GDP rose tremendously during the 90s and 00s as a result of this and globalization. Their successors are much more timid, inward looking creatures. They toe the line of the non-dom tabloid and PE owners and the loud minority of ERG headbangers, who are quite willing to inflict economic hardship on the majority to save their offshore trusts and sundry loopholes.
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I fail to understand why a single market (I'm not sure how you define 'full') should need political union. It is surely true for a single currency, which to function properly requires central fiscal oversight, but a single market? No.

The persistent issue with the EU is that the regulatory authority is also the political one, and a political one with a foundational ideological dynamic towards a full political union, all overseen by powerful court of justice which is steeped in the same brew.
 
PsB said:
IIUC, EV and many other Brexiters affect to be in favour of the Single Market (or some version of it) but refuse the idea that closer regulatory and political union is required to make it happen. Most other countries have accepted that you can't have one without the other, and are willing to get stuck in to shape an overall outcome they can live with.

The UK governments of the 70s and 80s (mostly headed by Conservative PMs) were not shy about pushing for the changes they wanted, and were among the prime instigators of the Single Market. They understood give & take and were successful in overcoming all sorts of obstacles. Some started getting cold feet when they realized that a true Single Market requires a higher degree of political cohesion than a simple free trade area. After Thatcher's Bruges speech in 1988, a narrative was developed that the UK had willingly signed up in 1975 to a Common Market but not to a political union. Anyone that bothered to read the treaties the UK signed, which must surely include all MPs voting on the subject from the 70s onward, would have known this was disingenuous, but it became a popular way of explaining the Conservatives' change of heart.

A majority of British politicians and bureaucrats used to be willing to engage with the rest of Europe in order to get things done and advance the British economy. UK GDP rose tremendously during the 90s and 00s as a result of this and globalization. Their successors are much more timid, inward looking creatures. They toe the line of the non-dom tabloid and PE owners and the loud minority of ERG headbangers, who are quite willing to inflict economic hardship on the majority to save their offshore trusts and sundry loopholes.
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Closer political union is absolutely not required for the Single Market. Folk such as yourself, insisting it is are part of the issue that resulted in brexit.

Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Not seeing much ‘voting them out’ happening, yet.
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Of course, but we will have the chance.

When did you last get the chance to vote on the general direction of travel/policies of the EEC/EU and when did you expect the chance to vote for something else had we not left and you wanted an alternative?
 
eternumviti said:
I fail to understand why a single market (I'm not sure how you define 'full') should need political union. It is surely true for a single currency, which to function properly requires central fiscal oversight, but a single market? No.
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I know you fail to understand it - we've been through this before.
Take it from the other direction: do you know of any effective single market that does not have some form of political union?
 
PsB said:
I know you fail to understand it - we've been through this before.
Take it from the other direction: do you know of any effective single market that does not have some form of political union?
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Irrelevant whataboutism.

Look, it’s clear you’re keen on no borders and Europe being one, big country. Some are not so keen. I suggest if such a Europe was put to the voters in all EU member states it would be rejected by a landslide, which is the reason why there is no chance to vote on the path being taken by the EU.

Political union is simply not required for a Single Market.
 
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