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Comment by byefruit | Hacker News Reader

What a legacy Cameron has left.

Alienation of our nearest neighbours and the likely dissolution of the Union.

It's also looking likely that Brexit will cause problems for the Northern Ireland peace arrangement.

And that's before you mention that he left UK with the most mass surveillance-friendly laws of the western world [1], that would've likely been declared invalid under EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. There May also played a big role in that. And let's not forget about the "porn filter" that includes much more than just porn, and it will soon become mandatory [2].

Cameron also helped Saudi Arabia [3] become the head of UN's human rights council, and who knows what other kind of corrupt deals he made with China. Cameron was really "looking up" to the leaders in China and how they're doing things there, so to me it didn't come as a surprise that he would try to turn UK into West's China (from a surveillance/censorship point of view).

[1] http://europe.newsweek.com/ip-bill-most-extreme-surveillance...

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/26/porn-blocki...

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uk-and-saudi-arabia-ma...

I'm certainly no Cameron supporter but The Investigatory Powers Bill was passed under May's government. It also had no real opposition from Labour. We are still subject to EU law and there has already been a ruling in the CJEU (in December 2016) against the UK's surveillance which will have consequences for the IP Act. And the 'porn filter' (Digital Economy Bill) is still being debated so hopefully something can be done about it.

The Union has long operated as internal colonialism; this is just the next step in de-colonising the system.

It'll be interesting to see how often Conservative ministers promise that there will be no border between UK and ROI but there will be a hard border between England and Scotland, despite none of this making any sense.

On the point of internal colonialism: it might have been true once, but certainly not true today.

All of the countries in the union have seats in Westminster, dedicate ministers and committees, as well as their own devolved parliaments. I'd say things are much worse for counties in the North of England, than for the other countries in the UK.

The nature of democracy means the majority rules, which will always be problematic for minority communities. The only solutions I can see are to be more cohesive and unified in opinion, divorce completely, or accept differences as the cost of peace and stability and continue working to improve the balance.

I grew up in the north of England, Cumbria to be exact. My extended family are all in the north of Scotland.

There is no doubt in my mind that the loser in all of this is the north of England. They are repeatedly denied a voice, publicly scorned, and they see all their talent move south or abroad. England is a lopsided country and I don't know how to fix it.

> the loser in all of this is the north of England. They are repeatedly denied a voice

Well, they had their voice, they cast their lot, they were the deciding vote for Brexit. Now they can lie in the bed they made for themselves. No pity lost from anyone up beyond the Wall or down in the South.

Don't be so stupid.

People throwing the towel in and blaming others for everything that is wrong is how we've ended up in this political mess. No leaders. No vision. Just pity and blame.

The North of England has consistently been stripped of its talent for the last fifty years. To blame them for wanting change and not being attracted to the same campaign you were is idiotic.

The 200 year-old idea that democracy means majority rules is rather naive. Naive in the sense that it assumes a simplistic model of political dynamics where every voter is an independent agent, and this assumption has not stood up well to history. The impact of political movements and demogogues, as well as economic coercion of the working classes, has shown that it is in fact possible for a democracy to be controlled by minority interests. It turns out that most people are vulnerable to the influence of thought leaders with their own agenda, can be manipulated to act against their interests, and so it can not be said that the majority of voters exercise political agency.

Hi philipov... I would be really interested to hear your proposed solution.

I think it'll take many changes along the lines of: a constitutional convention to patch holes in the bill of rights; restoring financial independence to states so they can act as a check on the power of the national government; and universal basic income to eliminate financial coercion of the electorate. But I'm not convinced that will work, or even that it's possible. There are serious practical and political barriers. I think the existence of private institutions that are "too big to fail" is a very dangerous situation to be in. On the other hand, it's not clear how it's possible to prevent our political process from being captured by special interests while also avoiding descent into tyranny of a different form.

Wouldn't the first step be to abolish the welfare state? That way it eliminates financial coercion of the electorate and stops the viability of r-selection reproduction that resulted in the demographic shift that enables these sorts of politicians in the first place?

> Wouldn't the first step be to abolish the welfare state?

Universal Basic Income is the very definition of welfare state, and the purpose of which is to counter the effect special interests coercion. To abolish it would be to empower the lobbyists and too-big-to-fail corporates

No, I think the first place to start is figuring out how, even assuming you come up with a plan that works, to ever get it implemented it in good faith when both political parties represent a threat to free society. Both sides of the aisle have already been captured, and will never allow legislation that threatens their hold on power. They will eviscerate it with amendments and poison it with riders.

> majority rules, which will always be problematic for minority communities

This is arguably the big problem of the 20th and 21st centuries: not all questions are sensibly amenable to majority rule, and minorities must have rights and protections against discriminatory politics. This tends to grate a bit with the majority, which is tolerable in OK economic times but can be vulnerable to demagogues.

Protection of minorities is baked into the Good Friday agreement. It's also differently baked into the Human Rights Act, which seems to be part of why the HRA is so unpopular in some quarters.

Hi biofox, there are other solutions... for example changing from a democracy to a republic.

As an aside, I think that most people don't understand these concepts because the word 'democracy' is used so much in political rhetoric and in the media that people have taken it to mean a representational system of government. For example the US is not a democracy... it is a republic, while the UK is indeed a democracy (which causes the problems that you mention). Both are still representational systems of government.

To give an extreme example say you have 3 foxes and 1 sheep at a table and all 4 of them represent a country. In a democracy the majority rules, and it would be perfectly legal for the 3 foxes to vote and eat the sheep.

However in a republic, legal limits are placed on the government (think constitution), which has implications for all citizens--but especially minorities. In a republic with a constitution that states that all citizens have the right to life and liberty, those 3 foxes could vote to eat the 1 sheep but that sheep is protected by the constitution. Therefore in that example, the vote would be illegal.

It is no coincidence that the founding fathers of the United States set America up to be a republic and why constitutional matters are so important even today.

Now having said all this I am aware that many believe that the UK has an "unwritten" or uncodified constitution. While I don't outrightly reject this concept, I believe it doesn't give a country a strong ethical or moral foundation because it does not offer clarity or consistency when ethics or morality are legally challenged. Ideally ethics and morality are codified in law so that all citizens know where they stand with regards to the power of their government.

Coming back to the issue of Scottish independence, it could be rooted in the very real problem that most people are nescient--or worse, selectively ignorant--about these issues. Unfortunately in the UK we seem to be perpetually locked in a 'treat the symptoms rather than the disease' scenario.

> All of the countries in the union have ... their own devolved parliaments.

England?

In 2014, 55% of Scots voted to stay. If we are to learn the lessons of the Brexit referendum, you need consensus to enact any major change to people's citizenship rights. Consensus there is not.

Yes - but Brexit has shot away the status quo and is proceeding to remove people's free movement and other rights without consensus. Change is now underway whether we want it or not. Scotland has to pick a European future or an increasingly risky looking English future.

" If we are to learn the lessons of the Brexit referendum, you need consensus to enact any major change to people's citizenship rights. Consensus there is not."

UK citizens were never given a vote on their 'citizenship' rights in the EU.

UK citizens only voted to join the EEC - not the EU. They voted to join what was essentially a 'trade block'. Not a supra-federal state. (UK citizens were not given a vote on the treaty of Rome.)

The French voted against the treaty of Rome - and guess what? Their Parliament enacted it! How's that for consensus?

Same thing in the Netherlands.

In Ireland, they were forced to 'keep voting until it passed'.

Most other countries did not get a referendum on joining the EU.

There was never any 'popular consensus' on the EU as we know it - it likely may never have existed if it were put to referendum.

I would argue that a 'strong consensus' would be needed to have Scottish, Catalonian or Quebec separation - those are parts of nations.

The EU is not quite the same thing.

While that might be the case, the resounding pro-remain vote in Scotland at the EU referendum is convincingly a vote for EU membership. It's fair to say that there is a popular consensus that Scotland should be a member of the EU.

This post seems to have become a victim of "disagreement downvoting". Whether or not it's correct I think it's a well made point, I wish the moderation system worked more for contribution than consensus.

It's off-topic: the subject is Scotland independence, not the failings of the democratic processes of the EU.

It's incredible when you consider Queen Elizabeth's reign. From visiting India as a British realm to overseeing the dissolution of the Union itself.

I guess that's democracy for you if you let people a vote on it. I wouldn't be surprised if California left Trumpland if it was on the ballot.

I bet you that if you held the Brexit referendum 10 days in a row, you'd get different results every time

Unless she's been very active behind the scenes, and we find out later, I think she'll go down in history as one of the worst British monarchs ever. Even as a constitutional monarch, she has influence and she has some reserve powers, but from what I've seen she hasn't used any of it to prevent the disasters of the past half-century of British history. Yes, if she exercised some of her power it'd probably spark a constitutional crisis and she'd probably be overthrown — but that's her job, to act as a last-chance sanity check when the people, the aristocracy and the government itself have all gone mad.

It's very, very sad. She seems like a nice lady, but she has (apparently) been extremely ineffectual.

Like I noted, maybe someday we'll discover that she's actually been extremely involved, preventing one disaster after another, and that Britain's fall would have been much worse without her expert guidance. I don't expect that's the case, but maybe it'll happen.

I disagree, in that I think everyone's long accepted that the Queen should be "above" or at least apart from actual politics, and therefore intervening would be an unpopular disaster. Ever since King Edward VIII was forced to abdicate, nominally due to marrying a divorcee but secretly due to Fascist sympathies ( https://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the-great-times-they... ). It's just not her responsibility and no blame attaches to her.

(I'm also reminded of the line from the Australian constitutional crisis, "God save the Queen, for nothing shall save the Govenor-General!")

Could be worse than that, at least from the viewpoint of the Conservative and Unionist Party, to give them their full (and oft-forgot) name:

> "For the first time in my life, the prospect of a united Ireland is not only credible but inevitable"

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/northern-ireland-stormon...

Unionist means union between Northern Ireland and England, not a united Ireland - the term for that is Republican.

Yes, that's what I meant. It's coded into their DNA (and their name) to not want the union to disintegrate.

That might have been m0nty's exact point

>> It's also looking likely that Brexit will cause problems for the Northern Ireland peace arrangement.

This is the first time I've felt a border poll in Northern Ireland is a possibility. The recent election resulted in a huge swing in power and a hard border with the south would be devastating for a lot of people regardless of political persuasion. It'll be interesting to see how each part of the UK ends up in 5-10 years time.

> It'll be interesting to see how each part of the UK ends up in 5-10 years time.

NI could ally with Scotland and remain a United Kingdom in the EU. Then it would be England and Wales leaving the Union.

I must admit this is more of a board game fantasy than an actual possibility given the time and I/NI politics, but is amusing to consider.

It would never happen but definitely fun to consider. It would solve the EU border issue and the NI/ROI border issue. I wonder if NI and Scotland paired would do better economically together than on their own.

There were some local political scandals ("cash for ash") in NI which could have also changed the polling results.

The people voted, not Cameron.

One could argue that the root political problem is the EU itself.

Nationalist movements are on the rise across Europe: The Dutch are about to give their top choice a pretty hard core 'anti Muslim' guy. The French will have a runoff between Le Pen and probably Macron. The Sweden Democrats are polling at 22%. True Finns have incredible influence. Austrian nationalists lost the presidency by a tiny margin. Brexit. Poland. Danish nationalists form government. Admittedly, Catalonia and Scotland are a different strain.

And a massive division between periphery, core and Eastern Europe on 'existential' issues.

For most of these issue, failure of EU leadership, and hostility and intransigence towards the will of the plebes led to this. It could have been avoided.

'For or Against' - the EU as we know it is dead - it didn't want to adapt - so Europe is adapting underneath it.

I don't think it will break up, but nothing will ever be the same in EU-land.

* Austrian nationalists lost the presidency by a tiny margin. *

46.21 % to 53.79 % is NOT a tiny margin.

Those are the numbers for the second attempt, where the first attempt was 50.3% vs. 49.7%, won only after counting mail votes, and that first result got annulled because of challenged vote counts.

This second attempt is a huge success of the far left wing candidate, while everybody was and is still babbling about an unstoppable right wing trend.

>> One could argue that the root political problem is the EU itself.

I would argue it's the politicians. No matter what way you voted it's clear that the campaigns around the referendum were incredibly dishonest. Politicians were largely playing games to further their careers and were willing to say what they had to to succeed. We need to do something to ensure referendums deal only in fact because a large portion of voters have no interest in doing their own research and will vote on lies and propaganda.

> The people voted, not Cameron.

Cameron only offered the Brexit referendum because he was afraid of the more far-right Tories going UKIP.

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