Petition for London independence signed by thousands after Brexit vote
bbc.com
bbc.com
The Brexit vote was basically rural England telling London to shove it. "You wanted to be a cosmopolitan world city, but if us old people in the county don't like what we see, you can't have it."
As an analogy, imagine if the people in California that voted for Proposition 8 got really upset about the Supreme Court overruling them, and didn't like all the non-native Californians immigrating to SF and LA, so they voted to secede.
Don't get me wrong, I live in London, and I didnt vote 'Leave' but I can fully understand the frustrations of a domestic populace whose voice in their own country is ever increasingly marginalised.
Britain isn't the US - we're not (and I apologise in advance to the indigineous 'Indian' populations of North America) an 'immigrant country', despite what some people might suggest when they mention a few thousand Hugenots popping over for a few decades, hundreds of years ago.
It's not in our culture so therefore who is right to say it should be?
The UK has been bad for the EU in general. Don't get me wrong, the EU has its share of supporting wars, supporting the US (and hence more wars), but the UK is a huge piece of that. It's part of the five eyes and the hegemony.
The GPB has been horribly overvalued for years. It's bullshit the UK gets so much leverage in the EU, yet they refuse to adopt the currency and refuse to be part of the Schengen Area (which combined with their high GPB value ensures they make a shit-ton off long term backpackers; most countries get 120 days of tourism in the UK, but only 90 per 180 in the Schengen Area).
It's a two year exit process. I'm sure the UK will make new work/visa agreements so many living abroad can still do so (and if not, well you have 2 years to see if you can get a visa), but I don't see it being reverse. It was a voter initiative. That's not something you can neg on.
Scotland has talked about independence and it's often been viewed in the same light as the UK leaving the EU. But now that the later has been shown as possible, maybe it's time to finally break up this weird not-really-a-country country.
I think before people blame the voters for being misinformed or illogical, it's useful to question why our current economic and political system would push people towards fear, nationalism and xenophobia. Wealth inequality is probabaly a big part.
Now the feeling is mutual.
"London should" ? I know several people (Londoners) who would retort "London reliably votes for Labour. If they were in power there would be more redistribution, rural people don't vote for their own best interests, fools, etc."
You could argue that labour has been "neoliberal" and not very good at this lately; you cannot say that the Conservatives have been better.
The real problem arises when the needs of one side are only met through contributions from the other. That is complicated in this matter beyond the tax base of London.
Should be interesting to see, at the very least. Personally, I think much is overblown with regard to economic impacts. This strikes me as more about identity politics. Again, not uncommon these days.
UK had a pretty good deal with EU. Now, securing a trade deal similar to that of Norway will require also accepting freedom of movement, whose termination was one of the main arguments used by Brexit campaigners.
The science & tech sector is gonna get hit badly. Some of my British colleagues here in Cambridge are very upset and considering to move out. For young progressive people, it's pretty dramatic to see a big regression in your own country I guess. The Guardian is registering some of their opinions, and they are pretty heart-breaking:
http://the75percent.tumblr.com/
I imagine the finance sector, which fuels most London economy will get a big hit too.
Also, I have a hard time understanding how Brexit voters, who have a vision of a strong UK, did not factor in a more than likely split-up with Scotland after this.
Very disturbing. It seems overly easy to trick masses into acting irrationally.
Also many who voted remain wanted the EU to reform and people have been hoping for that for decades and nothing improved alas.
Now they have an opportunity to listen to the people instead of dismissing those who do not fully agree with them and step away from this label and dismissal of issues.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/6/news...
That said, all predictions about the future right now should be taken with a pinch of salt. Nobody predicted this result, and nobpdy has a clue what comes next.
I would understand the need to discourage secession of regions who would then leave the EU, however the EU has an incentive to accept Scotland because its secession would be the first step towards restoring EU membership.
If they can get the north of the UK without the "haters" in the south, they will grab it.
In the short run, things will be bad. In the long run, nobody has any idea. It's the medium term where the real threats lie - how long it takes to leave, what terms we get from the EU, and how eager the rest of the world is to set up direct relationships with us.
I'm not going to rule out that the EU will see this as such an existential threat that they will change enough that a future government will be able to make the case for staying in after all. I know that Juncker said no to that, but today has made his position untenable as well.
You also need to look at how they became dead weight and why they feel differently - I'm going to project a bit but I'm guessing they'd say that Londoners were out of touch with the rest of the country. It's a shame that the ruling elites have become so good at disenfranchising their constituents.
Let's take the idea of an independent London to a humorous conclusion. I'm imagining the rest of the country building a "Trump Wall" around London to keep the undesirable elitists contained in their fancy playground. Then heavy tariffs on imports and exports on trade. Those who live outside London but provide the rudimentary services will dramatically increase their prices (you still can't make due in London without four maids and a cook!) which will, combined with tarriffs/taxes levied by the non-Londoners will improve the GDP of the rest of the country dramatically.
So in the end, those who voted to leave the EU because they weren't benefiting from the economy between the UK and the EU will start benefiting - the Londoners will have no choice but to share. And that's all the proletariat wanted to begin with.
You what?
Okay, first of all, define the area of london. I think if London seceded pretty much every satellite town that mostly lives from business with London would go with it. So hopefully people who work in london wouldn't have to go through the wall.
London is already responsible for a huge portion of the taxes that UK collects; if the mechanism of collection is changed to tarriffs instead it would hardly matter. And the rest of the UK would still ahve to compete with the EU providers in that, so they couldn't be that prescriptive. (Assuming of course london gets to keep its airports)
Those who voted leave weren't voting for economical reasons; they were voting out of protest, against their own interest.
Still, more people voted to leave the EU than voted for the current government, so can see how some things are viewed by the loosing side and some people sore losers would be putting it mildly.
(EDIT: a lot of my replies seem to be missing the point. I mean why is London's desire less valid philosophically, not legally. Obviously London could not legally depart without a vote in Parliament, but if Londoners clearly express their desire to leave the UK and the UK doesn't let them, well, that seems awfully antithetical to the direct democracy that the Brexiters say they want)
Some of the comments in the petition page (https://www.change.org/p/sadiq-khan-declare-london-independe...) are interesting:
"Even though the Houses of Parliament are situated in London, Londoners are only able to elect around 11% of MPs in the commons; Londoners have no say in how the vast majority of MPs are elected, yet they are still subject to their laws."
Yes, as they are subject to the laws of the entire country. The location of the Houses of Parliament has nothing at all to do with this. Plus, are we talking about the City of London or Greater London? The "11%" number essentially comes down to area boundaries and what is and isn't considered "London".
"London has no control over its borders while it remains a member of the UK."
What borders? London is a single city in a country. By definition the type of borders they are referring to don't exist, as it's not a country boundary.
Since when London is a sovereign country ?
Obviously this isn't going to happen, there's no reasonable mechanism by which London could gain independence. But if there was, I'm pretty sure London would go for it
Scotland has been its own traditional country for a very long time, and the union with England was formed when the King of Scotland became also King of England and not the other way around.
Northern Ireland is the vestige of a brutal occupation of Ireland by England. The Catholic population traditionally loyal to Ireland now outnumbers the UK-supporting Protestants.
London has never been a country. This is obviously a protest demonstration and not a serious proposition.
Whilst the argument is for all of London to be independent. It would surely be possible for the 'City of London' to remain in the EU.
What is or is not a sovereign nation is not an immutable fact of nature, and the Brexit vote may change that.
Though Scotland is more likely than London to get away.
For 25 million.
To a Chinese tycoon.
Again, I must emphasise I'm not making an opinion either way. Just pointing out there are statistics and opinions both ways.
Well, keep seceding from things and you'll get there.
Back in the 1990s, a lot of technoutopians thought that in the future, polities would tend to break into smaller pieces naturally. Computers would tend to reduce the scales necessary to make services work, by lowering the number of administrative personnel needed. Big government has had a pretty good run in the past 20 years and people forgot about the idea, but maybe that was just a big government bubble.
Silicon Valley makes a lot of money on disintermediation. Who's to say government itself isn't something that can and should be disintermediated?
I think people subconsciously assume that if the system holds together, their side will naturally win out, due to sheer rightness. (And won't it be fun to rub your power in the loser's face?) One of the things Brexit ought to be doing to a lot of HN posters here is reminding them quite concretely that that is not true. You may just bind everything and everybody into one big polity, only for it at the last moment to be taken over by the very people you didn't like. It's all fun and games to increase Federal power and jurisdiction over a lot of life to show those racist everything-phobic bumpkins in the flyover states how they are supposed to live life... then you wake up one day and the entire apparatus is at Trump's fingertips. Maybe building that big apparatus wasn't as good an idea as it seemed at the time. Maybe we'd all be better off leaving each other alone a bit more.
Besides changes to the system itself, doesn't having a smaller country equal better representation for their constituents? Being part of the EU created a further layer of disconnect from decision making. I read that the UK only represented 3% of EU voting boards.
It's not surprising that people feel disconnected and left out from the political process. That's a natural outcome of attempting to manage the interests of 500 million people (EU) instead of 65 million (UK) with a centralized system.
I also see a correlation between the size of a country and the apparent dysfunction of their governments. Living in Canada and seeing other similar countries like Australia, Sweden, Denmark, etc with healthy economies and governments, it seems that smaller is better.
Accountability, progress/innovation, and appeasing members is far easier with a small organization than a large corporation... the same must apply to countries at some level.
The larger a state becomes, the more top heavy they become with bureaucrats trying to appease various sides of the greater and greater diversity in political bases, where no-one ends up being happy with the result.
One of the big factors in US politics that is often not mentioned is how much larger the US is now compared to early years that everyone harks back to when it had healthier and stronger governance, economic growth, and national identity.
There is quite a bit lost in between in the exchange for an economies of scale style bloc arrangement like the EU.
What would a proportional general elections have helped with other than making Nigel Farage deputy prime minister?
I live in a big city in Germany and most of the people in rural areas of my state vote conservative, only the people in big cities vote liberal.
It already feels like the cities are different than the rest of the country.
Much like the London Mayoral Election it would probably include European Union Citizens in the vote to leave England so I'd say it has a fairly good chance of passing should Sadiq Khan decide a vote were sensible.
As another commenter said, there is no sensible way to organise society through direct democracy because of bad decision making on behalf of the electorate, but once pandoras box is opened it becomes hard to say no.
"As a Swiss citizen and, thus, a strong believer in the merits of direct democracy, I have to respectfully disagree :-) Elements of direct democracy can work very well, 'if' (and that's a pretty significant if) there are appropriate institutional safeguards in place and there is an actual lived culture of regular direct democratic political participation (as in Switzerland where we vote four times a year on numerous important and less important issues both on the communal, the state and the federal level).
However, calling one-off referendums on momentous issues that severely affect the course of an entire nation in a representative democracy is, indeed, bullshit if you ask me. I mean, we're seeing the results right now. [1]
Several things in fact:
- We have proportional representation, which insures that the constitution of our parliament actually reflects the will of the voting populace (but that's true of most representative democracies as well, of course; I know that the UK with its FPtP system is a special case in that regard).
- There is no oppositional party system. No party has an absolute majority in parliament (as in the UK) and there are also no formal coalitions among parties (as, for example, in Germany). Individual bills are drafted and passed as a result of compromises among several parties.
- Same goes for the executive branch. Our government is a directorate of seven ministers elected from the country's four largest parties. We don't have a PM calling the shots and setting the agenda, but a committee of politicians with different ideas and ideologies being bound to constructively work together and compromise to actually get things done.
- All this means that bills passing through parliament are usually rather moderate compromises that already have the support of several parties. Swiss parliament procedures are usually very slow because of that whole "finding compromises" thing, but it also means less "scattershot politics". When a bill passes, it usually means that it's here to stay and won't be rescinded by a different government just a few years down the line.
- Furthermore, politicians are fully aware that controversial bills will ultimately have to pass a people's referendum. This means that they tend not to come up with proposals that go too far or are too radical, because radical (far-left or far-right) bills usually don't stand a chance in a referendum.
- With regards to people's initiatives, they're quite rare to actually pass, because you don't just have to carry the majority of the voting populace but of the Cantons (states) as well.
- Also, people's initiatives can only be proposed on a constitutional level. That means that if an initiative passes, it is up to the government and/or parliament to actually implement this and come up with the actual laws. Usually, this means that radical proposals put forward through people's initiatives are, if they actually manage to pass a vote, toned down significantly the parliamentary procedure that follows.
That's just a very rough outline of what I meant by "institutional safeguards". I'm not saying that it's perfect (nothing is), but considering the sheer amount of issues that we have the privilege to vote on each year, I think it's safe to say that the system works out very well in >90% of the cases. As I said, however, all of this is deeply ingrained in the structure and everyday reality of our political system, so it's a different beast to a purely representative democracy doing a one-off referendum on a momentous issue." [2]
[1] http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=208220412&postcou...
[2] http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=208223523&postcou...
Europe once had free cities. Why not again?
In The Star Faction, the UK has devolved into a bunch of autonomous microstates, which the government in exile is trying to reunite.
From what I can see, the real focus should have been, long ago, making sure ALL of Britain was doing well. Not just London. That ship has sailed and now the UK will have to come together and ensure mutual prosperity or risk further divide.
On Scotland, it seems to me that Scotland already got their vote. I can't see the UK allowing another one. There may be a SNP staged vote, but it won't have any teeth without it coming from Downing St. So I'm dismissive of the Scottish indie idea at this point. It just didn't pan out. Anyone who wants that, needs to at minimum, wait until oil prices rise again. But I don't see any of it happening.
Scotland's chance may have already been spent but Northern Ireland is in the best position of anyone. They're in the best position of all the UK 'principalities' to barter the best economic deal between either the UK or Ireland/EU. They can basically become the New Scotland and do what Scotland was doing, pre-Scottish independence vote. The SNP made a big mistake pushing for their vote before the EU-UK referendum.
I expect Wales and England (outside of London) are pretty content with the outcome of the vote. They had the most to gain. Though I don't think NI and Scotland are going to lose economic power with an independent UK, if they don't start revolting.
Interesting how it all turned out, because this time London was in agreement with the UK states on the periphery. It was Wales and England who wanted out, and I think this was rational and the right move from a working man's standpoint. The EU from what I've seen (I've lived and worked in the EU) is mostly beneficial the elites and people doing well. Most of my friends in France and other EU countries curse the EU a bit. It's not just the Brits who are upset with the undemocratic system the EU put into place or the policies.
I watched all the Scottish independence debates with Alex Salmond vs Alistair Darling and was letdown by Salmond's general performance. Also recently watched the Brexit 'documentary' and was not impressed with the arguments put in place there. Especially the comparison to Switzerland which is the wrong example, for many reasons that I won't go into here. The UK may become a Norway of sorts but not a Switzerland. Honestly, not sure I'd want to become a Switzerland given how they make a lot of their money.
Completely with you up to this point.
> On Scotland, it seems to me that Scotland already got their vote
100% agree. If we hadn't just voted to leave the EU. There is every chance that a second referendum will have a significant backing in Scotland now. The last one died mostly from an economic argument. We've just royally blown that as the line "England can't be trusted with the economy" will have more than enough evidence regardless of the oil price. My guess is that it'll all come down to the EU's reaction. In the first ref they were against a break up so they said it would be difficult to re-join. If they spin that around and welcome Scotland, which is a very real possibility, then I think they'll go independent.
> Northern Ireland is in the best position of anyone
Indeed. But they'll not be a New Scotland. Scotland's pretty prosperous nowadays. NI not so much. But the EU is good at throwing cash at small nations so if they vote to leave the UK, and can stay in the EU, they'll be fine. Well, assuming that it doesn't re-ignite the Troubles, of course, which is a not insignificant risk if there's a strong push for a united Ireland.
> I expect Wales and England ... had the most to gain
Really? What I don't get is why the rural parts of England voted out. Westminster really couldn't give a shit about them. As far as I can tell, the whole economies of East Anglia and Wales are based on EU subsidies. I could understand (though not agree with) an immigration argument for cities but they all voted to stay except Birmingham.
> The UK may become a Norway
I sincerely hope not. It's got a much smaller economy that's really quite reliant on oil (though they're working on that). Fortunately we have a fairly large economy although it's centred on services so it's going to get a pummeling for a while. Hopefully we'll only regress about 5 years and not take a lot more than 10 years to make it back up.
> of course the do-well Londoners want to be a part of the EU system
This'll be me in case it wasn't clear from the rant. What's not massively clear though is, while a lot of England and Wales was doing badly in the EU, what is it about leaving that will turn, say Doncaster, into Croesusville?
As a distant observer, it seems to me that the second sentence is the resolution to the problem posted in the first: Westminster clearly wanted a "Remain" result, Westminster is seen as being unresponsive to the needs of the group in question, so there was a reaction against Westminster and in favor of groups challenging the consensus there.
Now, it may not be rational to expect that the result of that would be a change in government that would result in Westminster caring, but voting is often emotional and not always rational.
OTOH, if you see it as about "Westminster" as the an institutional consensus that unites the notionally opposing major parties, then its easy to see the Brexit as a vote against that consensus and for a radical realignment of power, not just in terms of dominance between the existing parties but in terms of the divisions around which major policy debate and partisan divides should be structured.
>If we hadn't just voted to leave the EU. If they spin that around and welcome Scotland, which is a very real possibility, then I think they'll go independent.
I see it more like, "you chose whether to toss your hat in with an independent Scotland, or with the UK". They chose the UK. So now if the UK is going independent, then that's also their fate. This was to be thought about before voting on the Scots indie vote, not now. It wasn't a vote on EU membership. That came later and everyone knew it was coming so no excuses.
I pointed this out at the time, that Scots should consider how much they value the UK vs EU, because staying in the UK probably meant leaving the EU. Just because the wind blows another way tomorrow doesn't mean yesterday's decisions are invalidated. And it doesn't seem like honorable behavior. The choice was presented, and made.
>But they'll not be a New Scotland. Scotland's pretty prosperous nowadays. NI not so much.
I meant in a "bartering for the best deal" sense. Not that NI is economically trouncing Scotland. But Scotland is probably done bartering now that the Scot indie vote is spent. I'd rather be in NI right now, rather than Scotland trying to get a 2nd vote on independence, which in my view shouldn't be allowed.
I think NI may be ready to simply join Ireland. That to me has always been the preferred arrangement. Ulster has always been kind of a ridiculous arrangement and Ireland should push to make their case for 'one Ireland'. Scotland, England and Wales would be best served staying together.
>What I don't get is why the rural parts of England voted out. Westminster really couldn't give a shit about them.
True, but I think Brussels gave even less of a shit. Smaller governments are easier to influence.
> As far as I can tell, the whole economies of East Anglia and Wales are based on EU subsidies.
Probably, that's called a bribe to shut people up and get them to sit down. Not a good situation.
>It's (Norway) got a much smaller economy that's really quite reliant on oil (though they're working on that).
I didn't mean economically. I just meant an independent, doing-well nation. It's not going to become Zaire and it's not going to become Switzerland either. But I do think it will do better standing alone than with the EU. The UK has plenty of strings to pull with the UKUSA Agreement anyway and the 5 members there and that pact is more powerful than the European one. The UK will be fine and better off overall.
It seems like other than do-well Londoners, immigrants from the EU and mideast were the most against independence. They didn't care really about the UK. They wanted the cosmopolitan lifestyle (if wealthy) in the EU, or ability to bail on the UK when the economy was better elsewhere in the EU.
I see the vote as a victory for the British. A failure for the elites of all nations and opportunists.
I thought we Americans were the dumb dumbs...