The Brexit disaster

[UWSaint]

When the referendum was held, no one knew the details of what Brexit would bring. Today they have a written document that explains the terms of the divorce, and thus the voters would actually have a pretty good idea of what Brexit means, and thus be able to make an informed decision.

When the referendum was held UK (or any other nation) joined the EU, no one knew the details of what Brexit membership would bring. No one was certain as to extent the EU would disrupt local and national control of a wide variety of affairs that are only indirectly related to the EU's initial purposes. Today they have a written document history of both increasing scope and centralization of regulatory affairs that explains the terms consequences of the divorce joining the union. This includes a sense of a lack of democratic responsiveness that is concomitant with all centralization and with an acute feeling of dispossession that occurs when self-determination is eliminated. This dispossession is because the EU's regulatory powers are vast and a majority of EU parliament is, by definition, not of the nation being regulated. , and t [T]hus the voters would actually have a pretty good idea of what Brexitbeing part of the EU means, and thus bewere able to make an informed decision about whether to remain.

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The EU might bring efficiencies. The EU might contribute to relative peace on the continent -- though peace itself can be obtained as easily through submission as cooperation. Leaving the EU might cause a disruption (at least initially) greater than the disruption that is caused by losing parts of national sovereignty. But unless and until Britons see themselves as Europeans first and not Britons first, they will feel this dispossession because they are in fact dispossessed of sovereign self-determination concerns they did not think they were bargaining away when they joined the EU (or now realize it was a bargain too much).

Remainers (or EU-loving Swedes) can accuse leavers as being "deplorables" motivated by racism or Woke-ID-of-the-day-phobia. They can (absurdly) equate having a national sentiment with being xenophobic or Nazi or whatever. But they do themselves no favors by seeing Brexit as simply that and ignoring the political self-determination component of leaver sentiment. And they do themselves no favors if they don't see that the EU's teleological end is to eliminate the nation-state entirely, for Europe to be the "nation" -- and that any nation-state that doesn't want that end ought to jump ship while the water's temperature rises and not wait until it boils. Because leaving won't get easier. There are lots of people that think the idea of "Europe" as the sovereign entity and eliminating the nation-state is a good thing. There is a logic to that argument. Make it. But that is the argument and that is what Brexit is about.

The UK will survive fine without the EU. Whatever complications there are to leaving, they will be temporary until a new norm is established. Like ripping off a band-aid, the UK will absorb those things and move along. There are many nations that prosper without being part of the EU and have more or less friendly relations with the member countries of Europe and the EU. The UK will likely join Switzerland, Norway, Canada, the United States, and Australia among those nations that prosper without being member states.

[Per]

Remainers (or EU-loving Swedes) can accuse leavers as being "deplorables" motivated by racism or Woke-ID-of-the-day-phobia. They can (absurdly) equate having a national sentiment with being xenophobic or Nazi or whatever. But they do themselves no favors by seeing Brexit as simply that and ignoring the political self-determination component of leaver sentiment.

Even though there certainly was an anti-immigration component in the arguments made for Brexit, that’s typically not what the remainers have focused on in their quest to revoke article 50. There are basically three things:

1) The main focus has been on leaving being economic suicide, or at least economic self injury behaviour. Economic growth will suffer, and especially if the UK leaves without a deal. At least 60% of UK trade is with the EU. In a no deal situation, all companies relying on imports and all companies that have a substantial part of their income from exports will suffer greatly, as it could take weeks or months before things start to function, and even then far less smoothly than before. Negotiating a trade deal with the EU may take years, and until that deal is finalized, the UK will have to do business with Europe on WTO terms, which will increase costs greatly. If they leave under the deal May negotiated, they will more or less remain in the single market until the new deal has been agreed upon, so it would soften the blow substantially, but at the moment it seems they are headed for a no deal scenario.

2) The Irish border. At present there is no visible border, and many farmers have fields that extend across the border. With both parts of the island being within the EU, people can come and go as they please, and the violence has subsided. Most people feel like the island is united, eventhough the Northern tip technically belongs to the UK.
The deal on the table includes a backstop that means the UK will remain in the single market until a solution has been found that allows them to leave the market without creating a hard border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. If they leave without a deal, the border on Ireland becomes the outer border of the EU, and all goods and all people crossing that border must be checked. A return to fences, walls, watch towers and border control will also mean a return to attacks on these structures by the IRA, who want to see a reunited Ireland. This will almost certainly lead to bloodshed, and it will definitely mess up the lives of many Irish.


3) The leave campaign broke the financing rules of the referendum, spending far more they were allowed to, and knowingly lied about several aspects of Brexit. If the referendum had been binding, the courts would almost certainly have declared it invalid, but since a referendum, under British law, is not binding but only advisory, It cannot be declared invalid, and since the major parties had promised to adher to it, the very fact that it isn’t binding has made it binding despite the winning side having been found in a court of law to be in violation of the election rules.

The UK will survive fine without the EU. Whatever complications there are to leaving, they will be temporary until a new norm is established. Like ripping off a band-aid, the UK will absorb those things and move along.

Possibly, but not certainly. More people in Scotland voted to remain in the EU than to remain in the UK, and in the independence referendum, one of the strongest arguments for remaining in the UK was that they otherwise would be forced to leave the EU. Now the opposite is true. If they leave the UK, they could rejoin the EU.

Likewise, a poll earlier this year showed that under current circumstances only some 30% of Northern Irish favour reunification with the Republic, but in the case of a no deal Brexit, that figure rises to just over 50%. In the terms of the Good Friday peace agreement it says that if any time polls show a majority of Northern Irish in favour of reunification, a referendum must be held. Thus it is quite possible that Brexit could lead to the dissolving of the United Kingdom, leaving England and Wales to fend for themselves.

There are many nations that prosper without being part of the EU and have more or less friendly relations with the member countries of Europe and the EU. The UK will likely join Switzerland, Norway, Canada, the United States, and Australia among those nations that prosper without being member states.

True. But all those countries have trade agreements with the EU. Switzerland, Norway and Canada even have free trade agreements with the EU. In the case of a no deal Brexit, the UK will not have that, and it could take years to negotiate one. In the mean time consumer prices in the UK will soar and some products may disappear from shelves altogether or become scarce. Some 75% of medical supplies in the UK are imported from the EU. People with chronic diseases are already stockpiling Mëds to be prepared.

[UWSaint]

1) The main focus has been on leaving being economic suicide, or at least economic self injury behaviour. Economic growth will suffer, and especially if the UK leaves without a deal. At least 60% of UK trade is with the EU. In a no deal situation, all companies relying on imports and all companies that have a substantial part of their income from exports will suffer greatly, as it could take weeks or months before things start to function, and even then far less smoothly than before. Negotiating a trade deal with the EU may take years, and until that deal is finalized, the UK will have to do business with Europe on WTO terms, which will increase costs greatly. If they leave under the deal May negotiated, they will more or less remain in the single market until the new deal has been agreed upon, so it would soften the blow substantially, but at the moment it seems they are headed for a no deal scenario.

Exactly. Trade becomes a little more expensive, particularly in the short term. Far from end of times scenario. And a small price for sovereignty, particularly where EU long-term scenario is no nation-state and remote government with minimal local responsiveness.

UK will likely shift its trade focus if favorable deals can't be made; won't be 60% of UK trade in that scenario.

2) The Irish border. At present there is no visible border, and many farmers have fields that extend across the border.

Are you suggesting they build a wall? Countries can determine how they want to have and patrol a border. Its the price of being a nation. Somehow Canada and the United States manage it....

With both parts of the island being within the EU, people can come and go as they please, and the violence has subsided.

Descriptive, descriptive, non-causal.

Most people feel like the island is united, even though the Northern tip technically belongs to the UK.

United? Really? The absence of war does not mean the state of brotherhood. That Northern Ireland is part of the UK is not a "technicality." Lots and lots and lots of bloodshed over that one....

The deal on the table includes a backstop that means the UK will remain in the single market until a solution has been found that allows them to leave the market without creating a hard border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. If they leave without a deal, the border on Ireland becomes the outer border of the EU, and all goods and all people crossing that border must be checked. A return to fences, walls, watch towers and border control will also mean a return to attacks on these structures by the IRA, who want to see a reunited Ireland. This will almost certainly lead to bloodshed, and it will definitely mess up the lives of many Irish.

"Allowed" to not have a physical barrier? By whom? If a nation is sovereign, it chooses its border policy. They aren't free; its part of the price of being a nation. That border policy is dictated by the EU for EU members is both a feature and a bug; that it might portend to dictate border policy of a non-member state is (1) non-binding and (2) at a minimum, an aggressive presumption.

Nations choose to check goods and people as their national policy provides.

If Ireland has to do things because of EU rules that results in bloodshed, perhaps the EU should reconsider those rules and weigh the harm of black market trade and movement of peoples vs. the value of maintaining peace. I am not saying that there aren't increased risks to increased violence with any destabilization, but nothing Ireland, the EU, or the UK does is automatic or required. These are political questions, and decisions made one day can be changed the next (democratic responsiveness and all). Until you lose sovereignty, that is.

But the bottom line is that neighboring nations have been dealing with these kinds of problems as long as there have been nations. How they deal with it will be messy at times, imperfect, come with a cost -- as it always does -- but c'mon, it is only new (or renewed) to these entities, not novel.

3) The leave campaign broke the financing rules of the referendum, spending far more they were allowed to, and knowingly lied about several aspects of Brexit. If the referendum had been binding, the courts would almost certainly have declared it invalid, but since a referendum, under British law, is not binding but only advisory, It cannot be declared invalid, and since the major parties had promised to adher to it, the very fact that it isn’t binding has made it binding despite the winning side having been found in a court of law to be in violation of the election rules.

Let me translate what you are saying: People spent too much money or raised too much money in an effort to have a robust dialogue about the most pressing political issue in the UK, probably Europe, and possibly the West. They shouldn't be allowed to do that! The marketplace of ideas is so broken that it isn't enough to counter a lie with truth in the public marketplace of ideas. People are too stupid for that! People can't be trusted to separate the wheat from chaff! People can't be trusted with self-determination in this crazy world where people have different opinions and sometimes even lie! We need our betters to adjudicate good speech from bad, and if bad speech was there, it is better to invalidate an election because we will presume that lies are like maggots that have eaten their way into the brains of these rubes that will believe anything (i.e., aren't really worthy of political citizenship).

You might have guessed, I am nonplussed by this complaint....

Possibly, but not certainly. More people in Scotland voted to remain in the EU than to remain in the UK, and in the independence referendum, one of the strongest arguments for remaining in the UK was that they otherwise would be forced to leave the EU. Now the opposite is true. If they leave the UK, they could rejoin the EU. Likewise, a poll earlier this year showed that under current circumstances only some 30% of Northern Irish favour reunification with the Republic, but in the case of a no deal Brexit, that figure rises to just over 50%. In the terms of the Good Friday peace agreement it says that if any time polls show a majority of Northern Irish in favour of reunification, a referendum must be held. Thus it is quite possible that Brexit could lead to the dissolving of the United Kingdom, leaving England and Wales to fend for themselves.

Descriptively, I am not surprised that political sovereign entities which are comprised of amalgams of different nations are more likely to see minority nations/political geographies choose Europe over being a part of that nation. Being a minority in an entity that lacks a majority may appear better than being a minority in an entity that has a majority, particularly where there is a wash in terms of the benefits of consolidation. So the Scottish might find being part of the EU is better than being part of the UK if given the choice. But I am agnostic about what the Scots decide to do in this scenario. Why would you care? Because of another series of inefficiencies?

I think the majority of English do care about the integrity of the UK. But if they had to make a choice, I bet the leavers value the political sovereignty of the United Kingdom minus whoever chooses to leave (even is that ends up being only England and Wales) over a united United Kingdom that is well down the path of being Europe's vassal state.

In the mean time consumer prices in the UK will soar and some products may disappear from shelves altogether or become scarce. Some 75% of medical supplies in the UK are imported from the EU. People with chronic diseases are already stockpiling Mëds to be prepared.

Temporary stuff -- all of which misses the rub. In the United States, we have unbelievable product distribution networks. Shortages are almost non-existent -- so long as there are buyers and the market is not one in which suppliers manipulate markets to create shortages to charge premiums (like, say, really cool shoes). Of course we are largely free market, which means that you have to pay for what you buy (including to a large degree health care, one of our more regulated markets). If I offered the people of Sweden access to everything that rich Americans have access to at the price of Swedish sovereignty, would the Swedes accept the offer? No, and not because Swedish markets are also pretty damn good at getting people what they need. My guess is that Greenland markets are not so plentiful, and the Danes won't make the deal.

(The last bit is a joke. But its not. Some things are more important than economic convenience and efficiency. Including political self-determination.)

[Topper]

Per, a few farms near where I live straddle the US/Canada border. The last time it was an issue was during a mad cow outbreak where livestock was not permitted to cross the border. The farmers had to deal with animals trapped on either side and which pastures could be used. In the 1970' there was a copper mine 200m inside the US. The ore was milled at a facility 20km inside Canada. For all operational purposes, the mine was in Canada with a fence around the southern perimeter. All access to the site was from Canada.

Borders can be made to work as efficiently as security will allow.

[Per]

Per, a few farms near where I live straddle the US/Canada border. The last time it was an issue was during a mad cow outbreak where livestock was not permitted to cross the border. The farmers had to deal with animals trapped on either side and which pastures could be used. In the 1970' there was a copper mine 200m inside the US. The ore was milled at a facility 20km inside Canada. For all operational purposes, the mine was in Canada with a fence around the southern perimeter. All access to the site was from Canada.

Borders can be made to work as efficiently as security will allow.

Sure, if the UK leaves with a deal in place, like the one agreed upon by all 28 member states, including the UK govt, but then rejected by the UK parliament, things should be managable.

But if the UK leaves without a deal, things immediately get worse. WTO rules state that you cannot give preferential treatment to one nation over another, unless it is regulated by a trade deal. Thus if Irish cows are allowed to cross the border into the UK, or UK cows allowed to cross the border into Ireland, this would mean ALL livestock from any country on the planet have a similar right to enter these countries without tariffs or border checks.

Once there is a trade deal in place, which typically might take between two to four years to negotiate, things could be sorted out.

This is one of many reasons why leaving under a no deal scenario is utter madness.

[Per]

If I offered the people of Sweden access to everything that rich Americans have access to at the price of Swedish sovereignty, would the Swedes accept the offer? No, and not because Swedish markets are also pretty damn good at getting people what they need.

I think we already have access to all that, at least rich Swedes, except for semi-automatic rifles and legal marijuana.
And on top of that we have access to Kinder eggs, free healthcare, free university education.



Also, in all fairness, no one is asking for the EU member states to give up sovereignty.
Pretty much all EU legislation requires unanimous decisions, where each member state has a veto right.

This is actually one of the problems with the Union, that because of this things tend to move very slowly.

Fortunately, everyone sees the benefit of harmonized legislation, and with some give and take, more often than not, compromises can be reached that all member states are willing to accept. Immigration is an example of an area where we still struggle. Most countries want to pass union-wide legislation that would harmonize rules and create a system to help alleviate the pressure on the countries (eg Greece, Italy and Malta) that receive most refugees by distributing them proportionally over the EU, but a handful of countries are using their veto right to block this.

The problem is more that national governments often present impopular legislation to their electorate saying "we didn't want to do this, but we were forced by the EU", which is bullshit. They could have vetoed it. Most likely they did favour whatever it was, but don't want to admit this to their voters, or they were willing to accept that in exchange for getting something else that they considered more important.

But as of now, the EU is not a federal construction, as the USA, but rather just an organisation of 28 sovereign nations that have agreed to harmonize rules and allow the free passage of goods, services, money and people within the union.

There are some (eg France and Germany) that would like to see the creation of a United States of Europe, but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.

A clear difference can be seen in how secession is handled. When the confederate states wanted to leave the USA they were forced to remain through warfare. When the UK wanted to leave the EU, everyone sat down to negotiate the terms. I mean, we're all frustrated that they leave, but it is their right to do so. Yet it comes at a cost for all of us. The UK is Sweden's sixth biggest export market (after Germany, Finland, Denmark, Norway and the USA), so there are quite a few Swedish companies that will suffer both in the context of lost revenue and increase cost for handling all the red tape that will be incurred on imports as the British leave the single market. There are also more than 100,000 Swedes living in London alone. At present you don't need a visa or work permit or anything to do so, but it remains to be seen what their status will be after Brexit. And apart from just the right to stay there, at present as an EU citizen you have access to health care throughout the union at the same terms as you're granted at home, ie for most people that means full coverage at no charge. If the UK leaves without a deal, no one really knows what rules will apply. Also people who spend part of the year in one country, part in another.

Within the EU you can bring your pets with you, as long as they have a EU passport and have had their rabies shots, but these rules do not apply to third countries. As the UK leaves the union with no deal, any animal leaving or entering the UK will most likely have to be quarantined until there are treaties and legislation in place regarding this.

And there are lots of ways companies can end up as collateral damage by a no deal Brexit, eg airlines operating within the EU must have at least 51% European ownership, and as of Oct 31st British will not count:
https://www.euronews.com/2019/01/14/ibe ... -by-brexit

[Mickey107]

from my chair, "literally", the male looks much more dangerous.

[Per]

from my chair, "literally", the male looks much more dangerous.

Do you have diabetes?

[Mickey107]

from my chair, "literally", the male looks much more dangerous.

Do you have diabetes?

no

[Strangelove]

from my chair, "literally", the male looks much more dangerous.

Racist!

[Cousin Strawberry]

The terrorist color chart is real

[Strangelove]

[Mickey107]

from my chair, "literally", the male looks much more dangerous.

Racist!

I said from my chair. https://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress ... own-04.jpg

Besides; the girls' a Russian.

[Strangelove]

Besides; the girls' a Russian.

Bigot!

[Mickey107]

Besides; the girls' a Russian.

Bigot!