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Comment by Zenst | Hacker News Reader

I live in London, this is silly and seeing so many remain/pro-eu people chuck toys out of prams and be frankly akin to upset children being told no you can not stay up past 9pm as it is a school night, play out in many forms.

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.

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Explain to me why London's clearly expressed democratic desire to stay is less valid than the overall nation's vote to leave (especially when the margin in London was much larger than for the nation overall). This is the problem with direct referendums, and why this Brexit vote should never have happened: as soon as you say that "we need direct democracy so the people can have a voice", smaller geographic areas which hold the opposite view have equally valid claims.

(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)

I'm not sure this has any impact on the validity of the desire, but it sounds like a border-control nightmare.

Because London isn't a sovereign nation.

Nor is Scotland or Northern Ireland, but they're talking about independence.

These are completely different cases.

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.

Not strictly true. The 'City of London' (not to be confused with London) is and has always been its own country.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London

The City of London, as shown in that link, is a city and COUNTY in England, and not a country. That 'r' makes a difference.

Thus the sentiment of seceding; if the desires of people in London are so different to rural UK, why force them to follow the same policy?

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

> Because London isn't a sovereign nation.

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.

Because they're just one voting area among many. It's not as if laws and services only apply to the individuals who vote for them.

Is the UK just one area in the EU? Their decision affected the US economy. Should the US get to vote about whether they stay? That's GP's point.

Just because the vote was counted at the level of voting districts doesn't mean those districts are having different referendums. It was a single referendum across the whole country.

> Explain to me why London's clearly expressed democratic desire to stay is less valid than the overall nation's vote to leave

Since when London is a sovereign country ?

Well that's exactly what the petition is about changing.

London's desire to stay is not less valid than the overall nation's, but neither is it more valid, which is roughly the sentiment expressed by this petition. It comes across as a sense of misplaced entitlement for someone to believe that because they live in a specific region of the UK that their vote is somehow more valid.

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.

I think you're missing the sarcasm in those comments. Just like this petition as a whole, they are deliberate ironic echoes of the Leave camp's claims in order to raise the question of "Why is your vote valid but not ours"

Yes, bad losers that's it. It wouldn't anything to do with sterling dropping to incredibly low levels? Scotland and NI both calling for independence? Farage admitting on live TV that one of the major leave adverts was completely false? The fate of a country being decided by a public that is very uninformed and swayed, on both sides, by baseless propaganda?

I think people are scared of the very real financial implications this will have on London. What interest does the EU have now in keeping the key finance entities in London now that Britain has made clear its not interested in controlling or actively participating in The EUROPE economy.

I'd be seriously upset if my country voted to destroy itself too. Luckily we're doing pretty good in Canada.

Yeah, I even heard there's a little land in Vancouver that's still owned by Canadians

aaaaaaand it's gone.

For 25 million.

To a Chinese tycoon.

A vote to leave EU is hardly a vote to destroy itself. Saying it is is blatant fear-mongering.

I don't necessarily agree with the parent's sentiment; however, I agree with the observation that there seems to be more hysteria on the remain side, than celebration on the leave side.

Possibly due to the fact that we can see the immediate negatives and nobody - not event he people who campaigned to leave - can honestly say they know what's going to happen in the long-term. There are things they hope will happen but there are no immediate benefits, only immediate harm.

Again, playing devil's advocate: what are the immediate downsides? We're still in the EU today, and will be for apparently 2 and half years. The currency movements are positive for as many people as they are negative. The share movement has taken us to last weeks level on the FTSE 100 (FTSE 250 is down on a week). Interesting impact on Euro and european stocks, which suffered worse than UK stocks.

Again, I must emphasise I'm not making an opinion either way. Just pointing out there are statistics and opinions both ways.

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