U.K. to Trigger Brexit March 29, Starting Two Years of Talks
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Rome
Imagine serving divorce papers on your spouse on a significant wedding anniversary, and now consider the message it sends.
It's like Theresa May has carefully picked the time to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty that will cause maximum offense to the people she's about to negotiate a critically important trade deal with (from a position of inferior leverage).
In reality, none of the dire predictions for the economy have come to pass and people are getting on with their lives. None of my friends (all educated, well-off remain voters) are talking about leaving.
Some people in this thread still seem to be in denial about the situation and completely ignore the flaws of the EU. Yes there are costs of leaving, but there are also potential upsides. e.g. having a more interventionist national economic strategy while pursuing more international trade deals. And it's likely that any trade tariffs imposed by the EU will be more than offset by the currency depreciation we've seen since the referendum.
There are risks for the UK going forward but I'm more worried about the EU at the moment. If it doesn't reform, we'll continue to see rising extremism on the continent - look at Holland, Italy, France, Austria where extreme (and anti EU) parties all receive more votes than UKIP does in the UK.
Yes, there are downsides to the EU, but the idea that we can do better by going it alone just seems absurd to me.
What we do know is that the specific growth predictions from the government, thinktanks, Bank of England, and independent economists for the immediate aftermath of the referendum turned out to be completely wrong.
Also, you need to take anything the UK government says with a grain of salt. Once upon a time, what looked like a promise to invest 350M into the NHS after Brexit appeared to be nothing but a political ploy.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/10/brexit-camp...
Why not? Why do people expect the UK to act unilaterally but not EU countries? It's a double-standard.
> Also, you need to take anything the UK government says with a grain of salt.
I do. None of the EU leaders (or foreign press) has contested the UK's accounting of this. i.e. the UK has tried to have this sorted before article 50, but elements of the EU said no.
No, it is not a double standard. The UK is the one that will trigger unilaterally the Article 50 and they want the cake and eat it.
> None of the EU leaders (or foreign press) has contested the UK's accounting of this
Why they should? They are not the ones leaving the EU
I pay my taxes in the UK - hence, I want the UK government to guarantee my rights to stay here, to openly say that yes, my work here is appreciated and will be protected.
I do not agree with the sentiment that UK should wait until EU guarantees the same thing for UK citizens - because that's exactly what's turning me into a bargaining chip.
Either I am welcome here, or I am not - it cannot be a conditional thing.
My other concern is that the Polish government has repeatedly expressed hopes that all Poles would come back and work in their home country - so there is a real concern they will be dicks when it comes to offering rights to UK citizens, in hope that UK retaliates and doesn't give Poles in the UK rights to stay.
The government has to look after both groups.
I myself left a few years ago and Brexit has only solidified my decision to never return. Unlike most Britons in the EU who are being left in limbo, I am lucky enough to also hold an Irish passport.
As to living in a filter bubble and "none of my friends are talking about leaving"... It doesn't even take our EU friends leaving to get a shortage of talent. Shortages will occur even if new EU talent stops coming - as is evident in areas like nursing where that sort of thing is tracked [1]. The NHS nurse/doctor shortage is bad and it will get worse and worse year by year due to Brexit.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/01/25/number-eu-nurs...
The process is not even fully defined yet, and it's already scaring people away - but things like less PhD students won't be damaging until 3-4 years from now, and then everyone will blame whatever else but brexit. Things might not be going down the drain right now, but there's no way it will turn into anything positive for years.
Kudos to the Brits for doing what they think is best for them (if only the Greek government did the same). Even after the gnashing of teeth and wailing in Brussels & Strasbourg has died down, the Brits will still remain European.
The Brits have always been, and will always be European. The difficulty is that lots of the integration that's happened over the past 50 years was predicated on the single market, and disentangling all of that in two years is a very difficult prospect. For instance, what happens to Open Skies? And what happens if Ryanair reduce services (which they may have to, if Open Skies goes away)?
Suddenly some of that stuff starts falling apart, and people are no longer casually exposed to difference, and the learnings that come from that.
And of course none of the young people have the right to live in the EU anymore, which kinda sucks for them.
I didn't imagine the last part before I moved here, but a few years dealing with both the NHS and private health providers, plus poor bus transportation and street safety in Birmingham, changed my mind.
I have a similar opinion of the healthcare in the US, where I also lived for some time. Central Europe provides surprisingly good healthcare and even the private option is far cheaper.
I actually was looking for a house outside of Birmingham, but I decided to wait until after the referendum. After that I had little doubt I'd leave. The net effect for the UK will be that I'll pay taxes to another country. I'm not even complaining about paying more taxes.
Because there was a referendum where a majority decided it was what they wanted. The Government is hell bent on doing it for ideological reasons. The Opposition believe they are following the 'will of the people'. It's a shit state of affairs, but I don't see how it can be averted now, unless there is enough political pressure over the next two years to hold a referendum on the final deal.
You are making some big assumptions about why people voted. For instance, you're assuming that because one or two people made some claims, everyone believed them and voted accordingly.
Speaking for myself, I expect there to be no deal at all between the EU and UK, I expected that before I voted out, I expect it to be very tough for everyone including Europeans, and I still support Brexit and want it to occur as quickly as possible. "More information" about how little the EU cares about cooperation with the UK obviously isn't going to change my mind at all.
I think you'll find many voters are like that: they aren't changing their minds because they didn't base their opinion on the things you believe they did to start with.
'Scots vote to remain in the UK by 55 per cent to 45 per cent' and 'Sixty per cent of respondents agreed that Britain’s EU departure mattered more than stopping the UK’s break-up, while just 27 per cent disagreed.'
Secondly, it won't be tough for Europe, either financially or politically. Politically there was a vague and ridiculous notion that other EU nations would take the UK's lead and leave too. That's not just not happening, the "reverse domino effect" means that federalisation is likely to accelerate now.
Financially, the UK is something like 9% of the rest of the EU's export market. Even if all of that trade disappeared overnight a good part of it will be replaced by businesses leaving the UK for the mainland.
Europe is 43% of the UK's export market, and the UK is a net importer. So it really can't afford to lose that trade. Most of its exports are services which will - again - be moving to the mainland.
The bottom line is that Brexit will bankrupt the UK. Unless someone discovers an asteroid made of solid gold and stolen bitcoins under London, there is no other possible outcome.
I mean that literally. There is no possible way the UK - or England as we should start calling it - can turn into some kind of dynamo of international trade. We don't make enough, we don't invent enough, and none of the things we're actually good at - law, management, fintech, technology, pharma, art and culture - are being helped by Brexit in any way.
So the absolute best that will happen is a massive drop in living standards for most of the population.
The worst is Zimbabwe-style hyper-inflation and dictatorship.
Either way, it's a suicide note.
So, how many of the UK's ~3m resident Europeans do you expect to be leave, and how many to be deported? How do you expect that to work out? What do you expect couples who suddenly have no right to reside in the same country to do?
Even a 15% swing from Conservative to UKIP would destroy most of the party, due to the awfulness of the FPTP voting system.
And the Conservative leadership won't risk that.
I'm not from the UK and neither for or against Brexit, but what good is a petition with 100,000 signatures when they'd just had a referendum with 17.4 million people voting 'leave'. [0]
Considering most of the signatures would have been people who voted to 'remain', in what world does it make sense for a 100,000 signature petition to overturn a referendum with a 1.3 million vote difference?
Even assuming those 100,000 signatures were all from former 'leave' voters switching sides, it would only change the result to be 17.3 million vs 16.2 million. A difference of 1.1 million.
I don't think there's any other conclusion the UK parliament could have come to without destroying faith in the democratic process.
The two objectives the government are aiming to please "the will of the people" with are limiting immigration from the EU and to regain sovereignty.
The deceit is that immigration provides more benefits to the UK than costs (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/05/eu-migrants-...) and our parliament is already sovereign (the ironic proof being that they're the ones deciding we're leaving the EU).
They think politics is a football match. Their team won the match and now they're oh so happy.
May is playing to that base. But she's using them to pursue far-right extremist Tory policy - which means the end of the welfare state, the end of affordable public health insurance, the end of free education, and so on.
A small cabal of business insiders, including not a few US corporations, stand to profit mightily from all this, even though it will leave most of the population in permanent financial insecurity and/or catastrophic debt.
Of course it's nonsense, and will turn the UK into some kind of fascist North Korea for a decade or so.
The EU is the only organisation that has some interest, no matter how patchy (sorry Greece...), in maintaining humane government and corporate oversight across most of the region.
With the EU out of the picture, the radical neoliberalisation of England can proceed at full speed. (Scotland will probably leave, Ireland will turn back into a mess, Wales is making noises about leaving, so is London, and so to a much lesser extent are some of the regions.)
Most of the people who voted for Brexit will be horribly damaged by this, but by the time they realise they've been conned it will be too late.
It's a world leader in environmental standards, and some countries - like Germany - are working towards moving to an economy that runs exclusively on renewables.
You're certainly not going to find that kind of resistance in any of the Anglo countries.
Microsoft bundling a media player is nothing in comparison
of course, MS, Google and Apple are American firms, while VW is German
What collaboration? Do you have links? I really ignore it.
[1] https://fullfact.org/europe/did-auditors-sign-eu-budget/
As opossed to the tribal flag waving from the bureaucrats in Brussels and those they've brainwashed into supporting them?
didn't know Ireland was in the UK?
I've lived in the UK 30 years and I've never heard any nostalgia for the empire at all
> But she's using them to pursue far-right extremist Tory policy - which means the end of the welfare state, the end of affordable public health insurance, the end of free education, and so on
I must have missed these parts of the tory manifesto, can you point out where any of these things are promised, or being acted upon?
> Wales is making noises about leaving, so is London
both completely unrealistic
this sort of hysteria helps no-one, and only undermines any genuine points you may have
Which bit of the UK were you living in?
I have lived there for ten, and heard it all the time.
Was it under a rock? Because I lived the first 26 years of my life in the U.K. and practically every conversation around patriotism was a bunch of faded empire nostalgia.
Hell, the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony contained a lot of it.
>It would if the report was comprehensive. It isn't. It ignored housing benefit in private rentals. Housing benefit budget is £25b per year.
>It doesn't look at child benefit or break down tax credits.
>It doesn't include costs of increased school places (£5 billion additional allocated for this) nor health costs.
>The data is does use is not comprehensive from govt departments but a survey. Fact is we don't know all the costs as many are not recorded.
using the Guardian to back up a left leaning idea is like quoting The Daily Mail to back up a right leaning idea.
I'm not from the UK, but my impression was that for many it wasn't about economic optimization, it was also about the notion of freedom - being less intertwined with the EU (and thus its regulations, economics, security concerns, etc.). Immigration was probably an issue as well.
If freedom was the issue, you get the freedom and work out the consequences later. Some people would rather feel like their nation has more control over their destiny, even if that destiny isn't as comfortable as it could have been under someone else's control.
I would also contend that as long as Brexit hasn't happened, there are plenty of forces that would want to keep the status quo and would therefore try to project as much negativity as possible.
Also, I'm not an economist, futurist, or a stockbroker (so one can correct me if I'm wrong), but humans aren't always great at predicting things in these areas. So it's not fair to assume that there is no positive outcome.
That is an illusory kind of freedom because you can't turn the clock back. Reducing trade with the EU would be a loss for everyone. If the UK breaks from EU norms and enacts its own regulatory frameworks, that just means more overhead for companies that want to operate there... And so on.
The English habit of blaming Europe for regulations has always puzzled me, because pre-EU Britain was in many ways a bureaucrats' paradise. The number of civil servants peaked in the mid-1970s and has been declining since.
From what I've heard, just getting a telephone line in '70s England could be a nightmare. There's a lot of things that are so much better today thanks to a pan-European competitive environment and free trade. Imagine if Britain had created its own mobile phone standard instead of going with the European GSM. That would have been more "independent", but to no benefit at all.
A lot of things post-Brexit will end up like that: it's just easiest for everyone if Britain tags along with the EU standards rather than reinvents the wheel -- only Britain won't have a say in the processes anymore.
But citizens of countries are adults and have to live with the consequences of their dealing. When a country is poor it is not the responsibility of other country to feed it but of the people to change their government.
Anecdotally, I've spoken to a number of Leavers who talk about taking back control (most of them also believe immigration is a problem). They tend to be working class and feel that the government doesn't listen to them. I really seriously doubt this vote will make a blind bit of difference on that front.
The rest was just a smokescreen to pretend like that wasn't their only reason.
Fear of 'the other' is a timeless scapegoating tactic when you really want to distract people from the real causes of their problems.
In the case of the UK those problems are entrenched and systemic classism and privilege, a financial services industry rife with fraud and cowboy behaviour and our own sycophantic career politicians that compared to the EU, have done very little for the working poor and other disadvantaged demographics in society.
Anecdotally, this is also what my parents found on the doorstep.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/dominic-cummings-brexi...
(We really need a good word for "forward-looking statements that are really unlikely to be true"; not quite lies, but very highly misleading. If Brexit was a form of insurance it would be the mis-selling scandal of the century.)
Those same sceptics are now running government policy and wont be satisfied with anything short of a full, hard separation from Europe. They've waited 30+ years for this and are hell-bent on finally achieving it, rest of the country be damned.
It's going to be a long, sad car crash and, with no effective domestic political opposition in sight, I hope Europe has the balls to make it as difficult for us as possible. The faster the country hits rock bottom the faster we can have a wholesale purge of the UK political class and start again.
Re: Lib Dem referendum - I think you're referring to the pledge they made in 2008 when the Lisbon treaty was being ratified (saying if there was ever another massive treaty change the country should have a referendum, presumably rather that than block the other 27 states from adopting the treaty if that's what they wanted) or the 2010 manifesto point about a referendum on joining the Euro. Neither of them are mad and the first one would likely never have happened.
See:
http://www.libdemvoice.org/the-surprising-truth-about-that-l...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/15/how-much-of...
However, reforming the EU political structure would be preferable to leaving.
The EU is fundamentally irreformable to reduce its power, it is the modern embodiment of Whig history - the view that progress is inevitable towards every greater liberty and enlightenment. This is the sort of attitude that leads to things like Greece being allowed to join the Euro when it was patently unready to do so.
One of the things you need to remember about the older people who tended to vote Leave is that they either voted in or remember the circumstances of the initial EU referendum in the UK. They remember what the UK joined and how it was presented to the UK. Other European countries with a much more recent history of revolution or dictatorship might want to remove power away from themselves, that is a view that is much more at odds with how Britain perceives itself.
The Commission operates as a cabinet government, with 28 members of the Commission (informally known as "commissioners"). There is one member per member state, but members are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state.[3] One of the 28 is the Commission President (currently Jean-Claude Juncker) proposed by the European Council and elected by the European Parliament. The Council of the European Union then nominates the other 27 members of the Commission in agreement with the nominated President, and the 28 members as a single body are then subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament. The current Commission is the Juncker Commission, which took office in late 2014.
We call that a functioning democracy. The EU is the opposite of that.
EU: "You have to accept our way, even if you don't want it and it's bad for your country. It's for the good of our global group."
Drawing the line at a country level as opposed to an international level is a perfectly valid opinion to have, but I don't think its right to call the UK a functioning democracy and the EU the opposite
The UK absolutely does not hve that.
48% of those who voted voted to Remain 52% of those who voted voted to Leave 28% of the electorate didn't bother to vote
But "the will of the people", "the people have spoken". A good few million didn't bother to say anything at all (I do not find myself thinking generously of this at all, it was the most important vote most of us will ever see), and the gap between leave and remain is a hardly-unanimous 4%. If this was representative, nearly half the MPs should be arguing against leaving the EU.
But as you say, few MPs want to say it because they're terrified they're going to lose their jobs next election.
Most news is pure propaganda. All of the so-called "news" (BBC, etc.) has a vested interest in keeping the status quo. They've tried to brainwash people how Brexit would instantly collapse the econ (didn't happen, did it) and they are continuing that route.
Don't fall for their lies. More self-control is not pride and stupidity.
I may be just silly, but Brexit hasn't happened yet.
Bad thing happens = THIS IS BECAUSE OF BREXIT
Good thing happens = BREXIT HASN'T HAPPENED YET
Bad thing happens = THIS IS BECAUSE OF WE HAVEN'T LEFT THE EU
Good thing happens = THIS IS BECAUSE WE ARE LEAVING THE EU
The EU was asked to reform to accommodate those nations that don't want ever closer union and to become part of a European super-state, but they chose not to change.
Those who voted for Brexit (including 2 in my family) didn't think it through.
As far as I'm following the media. All the companies I worked with stopped recruiting and some even shut down their London offices entirely.
Meanwhile, work as usual at the same places. If only we had a law department to sue them and get these fake news removed.
Experts create non-zero sum outcomes.
Humans, due to their loss aversion bias, prefer politics to expertise.
Thus brexit.
It would be an uncomfortable situation, but it's vastly preferable to a decade or more of economic turmoil. Not to mention the probable loss of Scotland, huge questions about the Irish border, etc etc.
I don't think any retreat would have ever been politically acceptable. The general public saw through the "hard/soft" Brexit angle, it was clear that remaining in the single market would not have delivered the majority of leavers wishes.
Worse still, this heavy push on "soft Brexit" made the perception that certain sections of the establishment was trying to deceive their way out of the vote stronger. This sort of feeling, that outside powers are pursuing objectives against our wishes, was a strong driver in the ref vote.
Well, with a 52:48 majority for leave and with almost all Remain voters probably preferring "soft" to "hard" Brexit, it would only need to satisfy a tiny % of leavers for it to have more a mandate than the "hard", no-deal Brexit cliff edge the government seem determined to steer us all over without any debate.
What if 'leave' won that referendum by an even larger margin?
Before you think it couldn't happen, bear in mind that the whole mess was started by someone calling a referendum they clearly thought they'd win as a way to shut down political opponents who wanted to 'leave'.
That didn't exactly work out the way he expected, and there's no reason to believe a second referendum would work out any better - especially since the pendulum swing is currently swinging hard against globalism.
That would be good. A clear majority on a concrete plan indicates what the voters want, if it's leave then be it. That's way better than a vague 52:48 on some vaguely formulated question where there is a magnitude of possible ways to go, from "soft" to "hard" brexit.
:(
It's basically why Germany sees this enormous trade surplus - the bad economic shape of southern states such as Greece, Italy, Spain "artificially" keeps the euro low, and Germany profits from that in a major way.
Of course, this isn't 1:1 because the devaluation of the GBP also means that trust was lost in the GB economy, which might hurt British companies in the long run.
Anyways, charts that show upwards/downards trends are not always bad/good and should be taken with a grain of salt. Especially if used by either party for making the other look dumb. This is true for the US stock market right now as it is for the GBP.
ps: I'm German and I do not support Brexit, but the world is not black and white.
Isn't this bad given that the UK currently operates with a trade deficit?
- It is really really bad for anyone buying foreign goods and services (which is 100% of the UK population, because very little gets made here)
- It is nice for anyone who has major shares of UK manufacturing companies (0.01% of people) and who own foreign assets (the 0.1% of people who have 6-7 digits of globally diversified assets). Maybe for people who might find a manufacturing job that otherwise wouldn't have gone to the UK - but frankly the Ford Transit production that moved to Turkey won't come back to Southampton anytime soon...
It's not black and white, but it is a pretty dark shade of grey for the huge part of the population who used to be able to easily afford nice foreign food and cheap foreign holidays and consumer electronics, and now suddenly has to cut back. And the manufacturers whose domestic revenue suffers after these cutbacks.
Tech people are already leaving and not being replaced, I'm ready to quit my six-figures and bail out while the going's relatively good - just have to await my EU spouse getting their residency so we can definitely move back and forth freely.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/15/google-co... [2] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/revealed-apple-to-crea... [3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-39117982
Smaller tech companies will probably be hit the hardest if they only have a London presence and they lose half of their employees. Depending on the employee composition, it may even make sense to move the company entirely to another country in Europe.
Similarly, if you're starting a company it probably makes sense to make Berlin or somewhere like that your home. Why risk potentially having your supply of engineers reduced dramatically post-Brexit? Funding could start to dry up in the UK for the same reason.
1). Is it easy to do most company filing work, taxes, VAT etc. on-line 2). Is it easy to open a business bank account there 3). Are investors familiar with that country 4). Is the required paid up share capital on incorporation small 5). Is the process quick (and corporate tax rate & legal compliance burden not too onerous)
The only way Brexit involves people being forced to leave where they live is if the EU forces it to happen. The UK has already said many times it wants to take that possibility off the table as soon as possible.
Whether those controls will actually make any difference to highly-educated, well-paid, in-demand employees like software developers, I don't know.
(note: not _all_ developers, the list goes into particular backgrounds and specialities).
For example, I would consider UK after brexit only if I get a substantially better deal than anywhere else in Europe. Otherwise it is just not worth going through the "immigration" process.
Words are cheap. If they really wanted to do it, they would have done it already. I guess you're also expecting the NHS to get £350 million a week extra soon.
More interesting will be what happens to tech immigration from the rest of world. It is entirely possible that we end up with easier immigration to/from North America as a result.
Such as? I don't believe that there are.
This is all being predicated on a more specific settlement not being reached with the EU. Given the UK says it wants one that shouldn't be a problem and may well turn into the UK making a unilateral grant of residence even if the EU decides to play hardball.
The UK may well threaten the EU with mass deportations, especially since the Brexiters running the UK don't give two shits about the status of UK expats in the EU.
While I don't consider deportations likely, when there are stronger forces at play (e.g. economic security of the UK) then all sorts of "barriers" have a tendency to disappear.
The example I have in mind is that Home Office requires that EU citizens who are in education or self employed should have Private Comprehensive Health Insurance to have right to permanent residence in the UK, despite the fact that such requirement is literally illegal in EU. The law states clearly that if you lived somewhere for 5 years, you have the right to permanent residence in that country - but Home Office will ask you for proof that you had comprehensive health insurance as a student for example, before issuing the Right To Permanent Residence permit. So people like me, who lived here for 7 years now, and were in university for 4, are fucked, because all the time spent here does not count towards the 5 year minimum requirement for permanent residence(and of course no one at uni told us we needed private health insurance - we were told to register with NHS and could use NHS like any EU citizen without any limits). I live here, I pay my taxes, I'm starting a family, want to buy a house soon - and then I ask myself, why the hell would I, if I can literally get kicked out in 2 years because someone decides not to give me a visa.
I would have never considered leaving UK otherwise, this is my home now, but it looks like I will have to at least consider my options now.
Except of course that the government repeatedly blocked attempts to give guarantees for people already living here.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/18/nhs-eu-nurse...
"Only 96 nurses joined the NHS from other European nations in December 2016 – a drop from 1,304 in July, the month after the referendum.
At the same time, freedom of information responses compiled by the Liberal Democrats from 80 of the 136 NHS acute trusts in England show that 2,700 EU nurses left the health service in 2016, compared to 1,600 EU nurses in 2014 – a 68% increase."
It seems cold but it would be irresponsible of the UK to not defend the rights of the millions of British citizens living in Europe. You'll notice that all EU countries have acted the same way.
Why pick a country that at best will grudgingly tolerate you when you have so many other easier and increasingly more attractive options on your doorstep?
EU citizenship entails, among others, the rights of freedom of movement and of non-discrimination because of nationality. The UK has made it abundantly clear that it will not respect these rights, regardless of what the EU or its member states do. Ending freedom of movement and being able to "put British people first" were among the main arguments of the Brexit campaign.
So why wouldn't somebody consider leaving a place where they and their families will be open to discrimination, and where they will be allowed to remain only at the whim of the UKBA?
Rupert bloody Murdoch has spoken more like.
Dyson is pro-brexit and has had a problem with having enough office space for a while (so probably unrelated to timing of referendum but making noise because it supports his position).
Apple are the only one who are new in that list, and it may just be a consolidation of existing office space.
AFAIK that's largely it; I don't know how much of this is expansion, but it's certainly mostly about getting their 1400 employees in/around London in a single space (with all the simplification of security, etc. that entails). It's worth pointing out that AFAIK the majority of those employees ultimately come from other companies that Apple has acquired over the years, hence the disparate offices.
Currently the UK's Department For Brexit has stated they have no idea what will happen there.
That's likely to have an impact on any tech company trading with the EU that uses or accesses personal data.
That applies to everything not just Data Protection/Retention.
They have no plan, no mandate for what they are doing and no sensible way to even begin the planning.
18 months ago I was pro EU. Not strongly so, just because it was the status quo, in my mind was vaguely associated with co-operation and so I was for it by default.
Today I am pretty strongly eurosceptic. I think it's important for the UK to leave and if anything I'd like to see it collapse entirely. Europe would be stronger, more prosperous, more cooperative and freer if the EU were to die.
My reasoning goes like this. The EU is not simply a kind of really big working group for finding new ways to cooperate, as I had once tended to assume. It is a quasi-religious ideology with disturbing similarities to a cult. The people who control the EU and many European politicians don't simply see it as a way to foster collaboration and trade but rather as a way to replace existing European countries with a new country, one which would in my estimation be significantly worse than the countries we have now.
Calling the EU a cult may seem extreme, but to me it's not:
The EU and its supporters are not interested in debate on the future of Europe. The future is their intended future, and no other alternative futures are legitimised through recognition.
The EU does not provide any channel for people to reject or modify their plans. Its leaders consistently see referendums or politicians that are not blindly pro-EU as dangerous and if they occur anyway, often due to constitutional obligations, the results are simply ignored if they run counter to what the EU's leadership wants. The so-called Parliament cannot actually change anything about the EU itself (it is not a real Parliament) and is thus stuffed with yes men whose only reason for being there is ideological commitment to the vision itself (there are also a handful of no-men who got themselves voted in purely to try and slow it down, but they can't do anything and have no real power).
Indeed, we can safely assume that the new federal superstate the EU wants to build would not be a democracy. Given the EU's consistent lack of interest in actual, real democratic mechanisms, it is likely that if their plans succeed Europe's future looks pretty grim: something like the USSR of the 1980s. It is the avoidance of this fate that led me to vote out.
In common with many cults the EU deliberately tries to make leaving it as difficult as possible, through a variety of techniques such as insisting that the remaining cult members (who were of course previously supposedly loving friends and allies) shun the traitor and have nothing to do with them. Any sustained connection with members requires complete membership and suggesting it doesn't is an evil attempt to undermine the unity of the group.
The EU routinely abuses language in manipulative ways, for instance using the word "Europe" when they mean "the EU". They do this to plant the idea that any rejection of their plans is actually a rejection of "Europe" and "Europeans", although it isn't. They also like to suggest that any rejection of the EU is dirty backwards looking "nationalism", although the EU has its own civil service, its own "parliament", its own borders, its own currency, its own courts, its own flag, its own national anthem and wants its own army. The reality is that the EU is a country-under-construction and the EU is a fundamentally nationalist project.
Finally, the most disturbing similarity of all is the fact that the modern EU is a project held together by fear. Its leadership happily and openly says so: President Hollande's memorable "there must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price" quote (on the topic of Brexit) being the most extreme example, but even today I read that Juncker is saying that there's no risk to the EU because the British "example" will show others what happens to countries that leave. They frequently imply that the alternative to the EU is World War 3. European leaders talk this way constantly, apparently either not realising or not caring that it makes them sound like some sort of Mafia.
There is no reason European cooperation must take place through such an organisation. Before the EU was formed in the early 1990s there were many parallel integration projects that were improving cooperation independently. The EU eventually absorbed them all, but if it were to collapse, the result would not be World War 3 or a dark age of hatred. It'd be a return to the days when deals and international bodies were set up independently and countries could independently assess which were working well and which were not, instead of an "all or nothing" arrangement that artificially ties trade and cooperation to an irreversible loss of local control.
Edit: -1 within a few minutes. What a surprise. Don't downvote if you disagree, you won't change anything that way. Reply and debate instead.
Second edit: Thanks for the replies. I would like to engage and continue the debate with you guys but HN has throttled me so I can no longer reply. I'll try following up tomorrow and see if the throttle has been lifted. (I'm starting to conclude HN is not a particularly good place to debate political issues for this sort of reason ...)
For the record, I want to understand why people voted "leave" but every time I try I end up reading something like this which doesn't get me closer, it just upsets me.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/03/23/leaving-...
'So, obviously, it's not in fact the leaving or not of the EU that causes the changes in the economy. It's the policies of openness to trade that do.'
https://euobserver.com/institutional/136630
> Secret EU law making reached a high in 2016 that has only been matched once before, according to figures obtained by EUobserver ... according to figures provided by the parliament, not a single bill ended up in a second reading agreement in 2016, only the second time this has happened since EU parliament record keeping began in 2004
If you dig into that story you will find people (Brits) raising the trend towards secret law making as a problem way back in 2005. The EU said it'd improve, it didn't, it got worse. Only one other legislature in the world makes law in secret: North Korea.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/24/eu-faces-brexit-c...
> A recent survey by the Pew Research Centre found that only 38 per cent of France had a favourable view of the EU, marking an astonishing negative shift in attitudes towards Brussels since the 2009 financial crisis that has been mirrored to varying degrees all across Europe. A poll last month by Ipsos-MORI found that nearly half of voters in eight European Union countries want to be able to vote on whether to remain members of the bloc, with a third saying they would opt to leave, if given the choice.
That's a pretty large number of people wanting their own exit referendums. However, there appears to be no chance of them getting such a vote. European politicians tend to describe allowing people to vote on the EU as a "contagion", a "mistake", "populism" etc.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/10/is-the-ignorant-l...
> learning more about the EU may be just as likely to lead people to have a negative view of the EU as a positive view ... in 2003 a team of researchers from University of Twente in the Netherlands concluded that, contrary to Inglehart’s thesis, the more voters understand about European democracy the less satisfied they become.
Summary: the idea that people can only disagree with the EU because they don't know the facts is not supported by the EU's own polling and studies.
The quotes and references to events I suppose you can Google for yourself. Are there other things you'd like me to provide data for?
I note that some people seem to think my post says things that are wild/extreme/unsubstantiated. But we're talking about the UK which just voted to leave despite all the warnings about how painful it's going to be. What I wrote above is not really considered an extreme POV in the UK, you can find op-eds with similar lines of reasoning in mainstream newspapers. And many of the things I refer to can be easily checked with a few minutes on a search engine, like the quotes from European politicians.
I have no issues with immigration, I'm all for people settling in whatever country the like!
I'm pro leaving the EU because I do not agree with how it is run and the direction it is heading.
... such as?
I'd say that the UK would have a problem in the long run if the EU had any chance of reforming Brussels. I don't see how this can happen. The EU is disintegrating as we speak.
Regarding the anti-immigrant feeling of Britons. It's not just the UK. Greece has Nazis in parliament since 2010 or 2012 AFAIK. Anti-immigrant policies are enforced by socialist governments throughout Europe (Hollande, Merkel, etc.) as result of Brussel's austerity policy which led to a financial stagnation, but hey if it brings votes to the party. Far right parties already set the agenda in the EU, without being in power, because their positions are the ones that bring votes.
Picturing the EU as a nice place is misleading at best.
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/eurogroup/
> All other European Bodies hold literally no formal powers
What other bodies are you referring to?
By does not exist on paper I am referring to the lack of transcript and formal responsibility about what can be said and done there.
Except, of course that all the Eurogroup does is feed suggestions into the Council of Ministers, which literally holds the formal powers.
So, other than that - what do you have problems with?
Nope. That's what you might wanna believe. Finance Ministers are treated like total idiots - most of them are tbh. They have 10 minutes each to talk about the problems of their country and that's about it. While they are talking others are cheerfully blabbing about personal shit. After this happy exchange of opinions, the German FinMin passes a set of papers which other FinMins are forced to sign blindly, go home and say something along the lines "I know it sucks, but if we want to be part of the EU we need to sign this...". Every now and then the French and Italian FinMin try to express an alternative view but they get quickly spanked and sent home crying like babies.
You might find that acceptable. I don't. I am part of the majority apparently, so fasten your seatbelt 'cause the next couple of years we're going for a wild ride in Europe.
Because it sounds like you're inventing it as you go along.
[1] https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2016/03/30/the-eurogroup-made...
> The EU and its supporters are not interested in debate on the future of Europe.
> Reply and debate instead
What kind ofdebate do you want when you call the other side cultists and that they don't want to debate?
After the failed EU constitution and the tribulations of the Lisbon Treaty, there has been absolutely no energy towards attempting any further federalization. Look at the response to the Greek sovereign debt crisis, or the ongoing migrant crisis. I doubt there will be any credible push towards "ever closer union" for at least another decade--and even then, it would still require at least the cooperation of major national governments.
Yes, it's possible for the rest of the EU to gang up on one country if they do a vote "wrongly" (cf., Ireland). However, Britain is one of the largest countries in the EU. If the French or German governments objected to a proposed treaty revision, it would be incapable of passing. And Cameron's "renegotiation" actually did get a similar guarantee in writing to apply to Britain.
It's also worth pointing out that you're asking to leave the EU at this point, which means you should expect to forfeit the benefits of being in the EU and should not expect to receive any more favorable treatment than other countries outside the EU (such as Canada) with respect to things like trade.
Is this "I use to be like you but then I saw the light"-sort of post effective at persuading people?
I dont think youre being downvoted because people disagree, you are being downvoted for making extreme claims and not supporting any of it.
I'm not opposed to an EU superstate in principle. A well-structured EU would probably be useful in balancing the rising power of China. But the state of political affairs in Europe is intolerable and I'd rather see the EU collapse than the current trajectory continue.
AFAIK the EU Parliament cannot even propose legislation. The unelected Commission holds that power.
So we have Commissioners who are appointed by elected governments (in much the same way that the UK government appoints ministers, that's one level of indirection away from the voters) and are approved by directly-elected MEPs (assuming that the UK's shambolic turnout rates for EU elections mean the MEPs are actually directly-elected, since most people don't seem very interested). So the Commission is, what, half a level of indirection away from the voters? And they're directed by the governments they represent to adopt certain positions and advocate for what is in their government's interest.
So, yeah. We don't directly elect the Commissioners, but we don't directly elect the Chancellor of the Exchequer either.
Sorry - you said 'take it or leave it' - which strongly implies that you weren't interested in debate.
> It is a quasi-religious ideology with disturbing similarities to a cult.... The EU and its supporters are not interested in debate on the future of Europe.
Given the huge amounts of time that are spent in the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers discussing exactly these issues, I'm going to assume that you simply don't follow European affairs that closely.
> The so-called Parliament cannot actually change anything about the EU itself (it is not a real Parliament) and is thus stuffed with yes men whose only reason for being there is ideological commitment to the vision itself
Oddly enough, yes for the most part the people who stand for EU parliament are those people who think that the EU is valuable and want to get it to work.
You say the EU Parliament is not a 'real' parliament - I presume you mean because it cannot propose legislation. But that is precisely because the people who framed the EU wanted to limit the extent to which the EU Parliament would remove power from national parliaments and nation states. The Parliament can ask the Executive (the Commission) to draft legislation for it to vote on and you can certainly argue that the Commission should be more subservient to the Parliament's wishes - but again, nation states have proved resistant to that idea. Perhaps you would like more power to reside in the Council of Ministers?
There are many potential ways here that the EU could be reformed, if nation states got their arses into gear and actually did it.
> Indeed, we can safely assume that the new federal superstate the EU wants to build would not be a democracy.
No, one cannot safely state that.
> Given the EU's consistent lack of interest in actual, real democratic mechanisms, it is likely that if their plans succeed Europe's future looks pretty grim: something like the USSR of the 1980s. It is the avoidance of this fate that led me to vote out.
This is pretty much all in your head. Yes, if all the member states got together and said 'You know what, lets steer ourselves towards a dystopian future' it could happen. There's nothing in the EU institutions that says that this is an inevitable or even likely outcome.
> In common with many cults the EU deliberately tries to make leaving it as difficult as possible, through a variety of techniques such as insisting that the remaining cult members (who were of course previously supposedly loving friends and allies) shun the traitor and have nothing to do with them. Any sustained connection with members requires complete membership and suggesting it doesn't is an evil attempt to undermine the unity of the group.
Again, you're just making stuff up. So far various EU folks have pointed out, reasonably enough that if you want to have the benefits of full access to the single market, the other aspects, such as free movement of labour have to follow.
> The EU routinely abuses language in manipulative ways, for instance using the word "Europe" when they mean "the EU".
Or it's a verbal short hand. Let's try translating shall we?:
The United States of America routinely abuses language in manipulative ways, for instance using the word "America" when they mean "The United States of America".
> They also like to suggest that any rejection of the EU is dirty backwards looking "nationalism"
Partly, no-doubt because a large proportion of the people who reject the EU do so due to backwards-looking nationalism.
I don't think your argument is particularly rational. The EU is flawed, the EU can be reformed by its members
Currently the EU only really has visible 'opposition' in the form of (IMHO) petty nationalists who want their respective countries to leave, rather than from people who are quite happy to be part of the EU, but want it radically reformed, or changed in specific ways.
I was saddened that the UK voted to leave (I'm British, live in the UK, but grew up in Cyprus). And horrified by how the 'Brexit meanx Brexit' group are now pushing it through with very little discussion about what that could mean, or how Euroskepticsm could be rechanneled into something positive.
The idea of Europe-wide cooperation, freedom of travel/work, etc. isn't going away any time soon, and currently the vehicle it's embodied in is the EU. I deeply wish the UK government had said, "Right. So the referendum proves that enough of the country is very very unhappy with the status quo. Would leaving the EU fix that? Or is there a way we can change the EU, or our status in the EU, in such a way that the situation is better?"
Post Brexit, the UK has no voice into the EU governance, and it's very unlikely that the people with influence in the EU will lean in helpful directions to what the UK government(s) would like it to be.
I hope you're right, that we will return to much more ad-hoc co-operation, deals and many individual treaties and so on. I really really hope you're right.
But while the EU remains like it currently is, I suspect it's simply going to be awful for the UK for a very long time.
I guess it slightly depends on how grown up and generous the EU negotiators and leaders are. If they genuinely will look out for the British public (technially their citizens...) and their interests in this, then it may not be so bad. But the UK government is certainly perceived as being remarkably selfish and self-centered in the whole affair, which doesn't really fill me with confidence about the future of the UK.
The EU was unwilling to budge at all because the idea the Brits might actually do it and the government might not ignore the vote was unthinkable to them. You could find quotes at the time along the lines of "we are so glad this whole British business is behind us" after they sent Cameron packing: the idea the vote might be lost simply didn't occur at all.
So he came home and told the country he'd got a great deal that solved people's problems. But it didn't and nobody believed him. It also killed the "we can stay in a reformed EU" argument dead.
There is no chance of constructively working with the EU. It believes in commanding, not compromising.
Like all analogies, it has flaws, but it might be an interesting perspective...
A further statement saying that it will be March 29th instead of "by the end of March" makes it seem ever more likely to happen (compared with the seeming uncertainty last summer).
-George Carlin
Really makes you wonder if the populous can be trusted to make big decisions. I'd like to think I'm a smart person but I'm not sure if I'm smart enough (or dumb enough) for politics.
They can't. That's why we elect representatives who should be talking to experts and figuring out the impact of decisions. And then for some reason they take the biggest decision of our generation, give it to us, lie to us about the impact, and tell us to ignore the experts.
This article blew my mind. https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e...
"I think the people in this country have had enough of experts" - Michael Gove
I realize how stupid I am in a lot of areas. And if I think I'm better than others, it's in my ability to realize my shortcomings.
If only people more knowledgable than me ruled (and there's obviously nothing stopping me from learning/becoming more involved), I'd be very happy, even if I knew too little to get a vote.
Problem is, a non-binding referendum with just a binary subject with virtually zero clarity on how the process will be exercised was shoved down our throats. It's easy to blame the masses but the real problem was created by the politicians (e.g. David Cameron/the Tories) and their arrogance and short-sightedness.
Neither side chose to express the positives.
Brexiters were portrayed as small-minded xenophobes.
The EU took the "We won't throw you a bone, what are you going to do about it?" approach.
If there was a middle-ground option it would have won by a landslide.
I don't see large enough majority worthy of this amount of change.
Plato classifies democracy as the least effective political system when it's good and the least worst whenit's corrupt (Politikos 302b-303c), and I think that's sort if a nice trade off, but functions better when fake religions like nationalism and patriotism are not around and the countries are smaller.
"Democracy" and "Republic" are overlapping categories, rather than opposed ones.
Though, not everything is rosy: The Germans will still win the football games.
"The pledge was central to the official Vote Leave campaign and was controversially emblazoned on the side of the bus which shuttled Boris Johnson and Michael Gove around the country. "[0][1]
[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/24/nigel-farage-350-...
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-vote-...
They took highly populist positions, completely divorced from reality just to win votes, then shrugged their shoulders post-referendum when asked how they would be implemented.
You're giving the Leave campaign a free pass on a technicality of language.
I don't believe the 51.9% of voters who saw an emotive slogan on the side of a bus and in a 1001 tabloid headlines assumed this was a gentle suggestion. They thought this might actually be done.
The Leave campaign knew emphatically it would not, but pushed it anyway because many voters care about the NHS and it was an easy way to win their votes.
I don't think it's unreasonable to hold a political organisation to account on their policy positions. To not do so condemns us to live in the kind of post-truth swamp we're seeing unravel on the other side of the pond.
I suppose that's probably right.
I just don't like seeing snide throwaway remarks that when you think them, they aren't really exactly what the situation is. Like the Leave slogan, the snide remarks are also damaging to making sure everyone has a fair understanding of the true situation.
Attacking the logic of the idea is sensible. Asking why it isn't happening now is ignorance of the whole setup.
You have to remember Leave vs Remain was for the most part government ministers arguing with each other, and the PM lost his job over the result, with the current Foreign Secretary and his colleague in the Leave campaign both planning to run for that office.
To say that they are not in Government, just because they have not taken the role of PM, is shaky ground: they will be judged on this at the next election, to some extent.
The problem is people still think this number is real. If they knew the true numbers, they would likely vote differently. Hence the back-pressure: now we know the numbers, it might be sensible to re-think this project in its entirety.
Alas, common sense can't prevail because to point out that politicians currently serving in HMG's cabinet are lying liars who lie is politically toxic, and saving face is more important than doing the right thing by the country.
And although they withdrew it the morning of the referendum results, it's fair to keep reminding people that some voted "leave" because of this promise.
If they were not able to keep this promise they should not have made it. They should have said that this is not something they can offer.
Remember when Nolan Principles were a thing?
Meanwhile NHS bosses are already warning they can't hit the target budgets for next year, and we're about to see the currency deflate to a point where imports - including agricultural produce - is going to rise in price dramatically.
There is a small chance that the EU might now decide to give more generous terms than they have indicated in the past to the UK, and all will be well. That looks unlikely however.
The problem with pronouncements like that is we've repeatedly seen economists and independent bodies be heavily politically biased in favour of the EU and seem to heavily exaggerate consequences and costs.
As someone who is disappointed by our exit, I still want to see a reasonable assessment of our chances and frankly a lot of people like the IMF, etc. increasingly look like little more than shills for the EU political elite who are desperately clinging to their federalisation plans and need those bodies to tell other countries in the EU that the consequences of even considering an exit is dire.
However this bias is informed by pronouncements from the EU themselves declaring they want £50 billion up-front for us leaving, and models that have been updated based on agreements we can see in action elsewhere (Norway, Sweden, WTO tariffs, etc.)
So... yes, it might all be wrong. But if you aren't prepared to accept any model because in the past some models were a little off, well, how are we meant to make reasonable decisions about the future.
They also include something like £15 billion because of a drop in immigration. The OBR present growth figures include a built in "we're going to keep on ignoring our immigration targets" figure, and by removing that, "lost" that money. So it's basically two parts of government doing opposite things and then talking as if it's a "cost".
You poor bastards, good luck to you.
I think Canadian immigration policy is a bit over hyped for being 'great'. Trudeau took a lot of great PR with getting some Syrian refugees, but getting into Canada is still hard. Just easier in comparison to your neighbour to the south.
Nothing beats the EU though. Live in one country working a job on Friday, move to another over the weekend and start a new job on Monday – I've done literally this multiple times now. This alone is reason to stay in, as far as I'm concerned. The UK leaving is incredibly sad. :o(
But I check out the point systems the Canadian visa system has, and it turns out that I could get without a bachelor's degree, but only if I aced the language test. Apparently, without the degree, you have to get the highest points available from the language test.
See this for more details: http://www.canadavisa.com/canadian-skilled-worker-immigratio...
(Also, I think they changed the immigration policy a few years ago, so your friend may have been able to get in before they changed it.)
I'm not in the EU, but one of my brothers in law ended up moving to the U.S. from Austria in part because the pay difference was humongous (and of course the scene is completely different).
The only other country he considered was the U.K.
Austria/Germany/Benelux vs UK isn't - outside London, the pay is now about the same order of magnitude. While London salaries are higher for now, London living costs are much higher, so disposable income suffers.
(However, I'm still worried about what's going to happen to our 3m EU residents; there are a lot of ways in which the government could mess this up badly in a blood on the streets way. Will they? We don't know. But saying "that would be stupid, they won't do that" is no longer valid.)
Especially in the context of the NHS and social care, both of which have many employees from the EU.
Allegedly CA has close ties to Brexit and donated services to the Brexit campaign, that went undeclared [2].
Cambridge Analytica data exists outside European Data protections.
Mercer also owns Breitbart .com [3]
[1] https://cambridgeanalytica.org/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb /26/us-billionaire-mercer-helped-back-brexit
Maybe they got better at it, but personally I'd point the finger at decades of Murdoch-led media brainwashing rather than anything new-fangled. It used to be Boris Johnson's actual job as a journalist to make up lies about the EU to be fed to nationalistic, right-wing old people. And that demographic did much more for them than the (relative) youngsters on facebook.