UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU

It looks like it's going to take Brexit for Scotland to leave the UK. Politically, Scotland and England have very little in common yet they are handcuffed together by "sheer power of top-down dictum"

But it's that "some point" that makes everything wishy washy. If I'm in favour of Scottish independence I cite common Scottish culture. If I'm in favour of the UK I cite the hundreds of years of shared culture. If I'm in favour of the EU I cite decades of shared culture. None of these are wrong, despite being in clear disagreement with each other.

It's just an excuse for people to cite the opinion they already had and make it sound historically relevant. (and of course, has been the reasoning behind anti immigrant sentiment since time immaterial)

Indeed, the whole concept of the nation-state was a top-down inventions. And possibly not the best, especially when some borders were famously drawn by British people with too much gin in their blood.

Since it's not: this is a completely misguided view of human nature. Humans are among the most social of all animals, and our successes and failures have always been a function of our ability to work together. Humans everywhere, and at any time, have created groups held together by a lot more than transactional opportunities.

And even if you were right, and it is our fundamental nature to be lone wolfs, plundering the lesser lords and raping their ladies: the actual overarching feature of humanity is our unique ability to overcome base instincts with reason and morality. And both reason and experience tell us that cooperation is much more successful as a strategy for anything you could possibly desire than the alternatives.

Could, but won't. Everyone would rather get 4x4's than pay a small fee for maintaining the roads.

Various surveys indicates that a lot of people in the UK - across all the constituents parts - see themselves as more English/Welsh/Scottish/Irish than British. Many don't see themselves as British at all (ironically immigrants who have become citizens are far more likely to see themselves as British first than people born here).

The British identity as a single nation is weak and fractured.

Keep in mind that the modern nation state and national identities are barely two centuries old and was largely an artificial construct to begin with, created as part of the romantic nationalism movement, and it has had various degrees of success in different places. In the UK a lot of that identity got built around and tied up in the Empire, and has fractured and gone into decline with the fall of the British Empire.

On top of that, I'd argue that London in many ways does have a distinct culture from the surrounding area. London - especially the centre - is a Labour stronghold in a sea of conservative areas. It voted far more for Remain than the surrounding area, despite a large proportion of the residents of London being unable to vote (seeing as London has a high proportion of non-citizen residents). It's far more immigration friendly, far more multicultural than the surrounding areas.

After the Brexit there has been proposals - some serious, and some not so much - for an independence movement for London. I know some concrete planning has been done. There was real and seething anger in London over the vote - in many areas it was seen as outright betrayal, and evidence that London does not really fit in with most of England. People joked about building a wall around the M25 (freeway circling London).

Now, there's no way there's any sizeable real support for an independent London, but the Brexit vote did plant a seed. We'll see if it grows - if the terms we leave the EU on are bad, and especially if they hit London hard, it very well might start growing. I genuinely think that while it won't get much support, ther likely will be a registered political party arguing for an independent London within the next decade.

NATO arose from the ashes of conflict but membership is entirely voluntary, and unlike leaving the EU there is no talk of 'punishing' those who no longer wish to remain.

For example France left the NATO integrated military structure in 1996 and rejoined in 2009 without penalty.

Then a few years after the war, the European Coal and Steel Community was created to regulate coal and steel in six countries under a single authority. Including West Germany, which had only been formed from the occupied territories a year before. It was certainly not unrelated to military force.

Its initial aims included making war between member states impossible, and eventual democratic unification of all of Europe. The later institutions up to the EU grew out of it.

So although it was completely peaceful, it's still an outcome of WW2.

Vegetables don't just magically appear in minutes - they take weeks or months to grow, so bad winter has an effect which can last for most of the year.

You have pointed out one good amongst thousands that was cheaper when it came from outside the EU. I'm sure there are many others but that's irrelevant. Those specific goods does not mean that this is the result of the EU. What everyone is afraid of is what will happen if tariffs are applied to EU goods when they come into the UK.

By definition, it is anecdotal. A single piece of price data observed only by you with no evidence is not proof that EU grown vegetables are more expensive than those from Mexico.

To say that someones supermarket bill going up is somehow more anecdotal than "I found asparagus from Spain that cost more than asparagus from Mexico" is absurd.

[1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2007/02/pdf/c4.pdf

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/subsidiarity.html

Whether that's true in practice is a matter of opinion.

The absurdity of it all is that the Tories say "It's good to leave the union" when the subject is Brexit, while also saying "It's not good to leave the union" when the subject is Indyref 2

He's now a Lord.

There are flaws in UK democracy certainly but I don't think the EU got it right.

I also fundamentally have a problem with the scale of the thing - any government of a bloc that large is going to have problems with being unrepresentative. I look at Switzerland and Iceland with envy - the people can achieve change there. The USA, EU, even UK? Not so much.

It would be even lower if other elections weren't tagged along with the EU ones (eg usually the UK has local elections at the same time).

There is an enormous amount of voter apathy towards the EU democratic processes. That starts IMO reducing the democratic legitimacy of the whole thing.

Somebody (Netherlands or Ireland, I think, but I forget which) has an election about an EU matter, and it goes "the wrong way". The EU's response: Well, they'll just have to vote again.

Forgive me if the details are wrong (I'm writing from memory, and I'm not even in the EU). But that kind of thing has happened more than once - "the EU" has decided on a direction, and democracy is not going to be allowed to change it. That is why people feel the EU is undemocratic (as I understand it). The structure of the EU Parliament has nothing to do with it.

The reason the EU Parliament isn't democratic is that its members can't actually change the law, which means it isn't a Parliament at all. Because MEPs can't change EU law, they can't have any policies. Because they can't have any policies, their "politics" such that it is simply boils down to how pro or anti EU they are. Inevitably, given the uselessness of the EU Parliament as an institution, the vast majority of people who run for election to it are ideologically driven EU-philes who are true believers in the vision and just want to be close to it. This means it is worthless even as a check and balance, so people tune out, which is why nobody knows or cares who their MEP is.

Moreover, even despite this withered and pointless setup, the EU Parliament fails to even be open and democratic within its constitutional limits. Last year all EU law was made in secret "trilogue" meetings that don't formally exist, so you can't find out when they happen, get notes, find out who attended etc. These meetings are not mentioned in the treaties for obvious reasons, yet they now are how the EU makes law. Only North Korea and the EU make law in secret this way.

Yes ... even if all these problems were solved, the EU would still have the problem of being far too large. But there's a thousand major reforms needed before that becomes the top issue and the EU's deceptively named 'democracy' has gone backwards over time, not forwards.

>Selecting the team

>The president-elect selects potential Vice-Presidents and Commissioners based on suggestions from EU countries. The list of nominees has to be approved by all EU heads of state or government, meeting in the European Council.

>Each nominee must appear before the parliamentary committee with responsibility for his or her proposed portfolio. Committee members then vote on the nominee’s suitability for the position. Once the 27 nominees have been endorsed, Parliament as a whole votes whether or not to approve the entire team. Following Parliament's vote, the Commissioners are appointed by the European Council. Accountability

>The European Commission is held democratically accountable by the European Parliament, which has the right to approve and dismiss the entire political leadership of the Commission.

>The European Commission is also accountable for putting the EU budget into practice. Every year, the Parliament chooses to give (or not) its blessing to the European Commission on the way it has managed the EU budget. This process is called the discharge. The Parliament bases its decision on several reports from the European Court of Auditors and from the European Commission, including the annual management and performance report for the EU budget.

https://ec.europa.eu/info/about-european-union/organisationa...

1. The European Commission is elected by the European Parliament.

2. The European Commission has the power to initiate legislation, but EU legislation is enacted by the European Parliament (lower chamber of the legislature) and the Council of the European Union (upper chamber of the legislature). This is why EU legislation begins with "REGULATION/DIRECTIVE ... OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL" [1].

[1] Example: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj

Entirely left out of your answer is the Council, with heads of state elected by whatever their country deems to be a democratic process. In practice, EU legislation requires agreement between the three institutions.

The average British person has no idea how the EU works. They don't know what the different bodies are. They don't know who their representative(s) are. They don't know how to make their voices heard. Maybe a third of people vote in the elections, and they don't really know what they're voting for.

What kind of democracy is that?

What size do you think is the best for a democracy then? 10,000 people? 1000,000? The US is as big as the EU and certainly has a lot more centralized legislation.

So many issues today (taxes, trade, environmental protection, immigration, etc.) involve very large groups of people (if not all people), and so it really makes sense to have a body of representatives from all those people together. Some issues may only affect the local community (however big that is) and so of course the local community can take care of those.

Not at all! To use my Bangladesh example. Bangladesh was founded in 1971 as a secular republic. Pakistan thereafter veered towards theocracy, e.g. adopting Sharia law for criminal proceedings in 1976. Subsequent events have slowly chipped away at Bangladeshi secularism over the years, but had they remained with Pakistan it would have been a lost hope. And as for tribalism being obsolete, I don't agree. There are hundreds of millions of people who think I should be executed for leaving the religion I was born into: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01.... Do you want those folks voting on the laws that govern you? If not, you're not arguing against "tribalism," you're just arguing about where the tribal lines should be drawn.

I would like to agree with you but there is not evidence that humans have not changed and that

>humans are inclined to form tribes and to fear the other

remains true.

Rather we should accept we are tribal and work to ensure our collaborations, alliances and policies have that in mind. To assume that we, by virtue of just living in the present day with more technology, are more advanced and that we have progressed is a big big error.

Progress is not something that just happens. Progress is not inevitable. Societies do not naturally become more civilised. People need to work to ensure civilisation doesn't fall apart. Progress was made by people, it is the result of actions made.

The people who tell me that I should be patriotic and culturally identify with them as British are the people I'd want to run a million miles from.

Jews voted for Leave more than any other demographic group, even more than whites. Arguing about hypothetical white nationalists is total FUD.

i.e. why do Italians have milk quotas, spain has orange quotas, but germany has not car quotas? the general feeling is that few are getting the advantages of the free market and many are taking the piss.

on the other hand where's the democracy in the Dublin III agrement? 15 or so states voted to screw the three southern states, of course those kind of provisions gets passed, the majority gets an advantage, but the minority of states having to bear the weight will breed resentement for years to come. and to add insult to perjury now that migrants have forced their way to the other countries they want to renegotiate migrant quotas

this is not the europe that was sold on us, and if it were to be an italeave I'd vote yes in a heartbeat

We're not talking about alliances (which happen all the time without political union) or trade areas (which the EU originally was) we're talking about supra-national centralised bureaucracy.

Change is inevitable and it's healthy to have multiple self governed states doing things differently from each other and co-operating from time to time.

How is that being dragged, kicking and screaming?

Who decides what is insufficient? When culture and values are different the call on what is insufficient may not work for everyone.

I agree that collective action problems are real and centralized government is one way to address such problems. But selling the E.U. on the idea that it'll only invoke supra-national powers "where actions by individual countries are insufficient" is a bill of goods. The U.S. federal government was supposed to be a narrow one that acted only in specific areas where a national response was necessary (military, trade, foreign policy). But that got obliterated over time because it's much easier to dictate from the national level instead of getting buy-in from dozens of state legislatures.

When everyone agrees on something, you don't have to coerce them. So sure, their sovereignty is pooled.

As soon as someone disagrees on something, they have to be forced to accept the group's decision. Typically there's some sort of horse trade going on so that nobody gets everything they want, because there's several things on the table.

Yes collective action problems are real, but there's no reason the collective needs to be larger and larger and encompass all issues rather than just a subset. Let decisions be made at the local level by default, and the few things that need regional or global action, have a talk about that. If what you're bringing up is compelling, a lot of other countries will agree.

Sounds a lot like the USA.

US states don't have veto powers over federal legislation, but EU states do. Hence Britain never joined the Schengen Agreement and kept its own currency. We had the best of both worlds and threw it away.

Secondly there are plenty of economists that think Brexit will work out fine but that is a somewhat unfashionable view so they keep their heads down. Such is the nature of groupthink.

What is it exactly that you think will cause the UK's economic demise?

Also note that by "nothing happens" I mean nothing that negative as the hysteria implies. Not that "nothing at all" happens.

Saying "no one expected the UK economy to crash the day of" is a little odd - the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee certainly seemed to think they needed to act in the immediate aftermath of the vote with the interest rate cut which is now looking not such a great idea.

But leaving the EU does noy (yet) mean leaving ECHR.

Anyway, the U.K. is a fairly large advanced economy, and as a bystander outside the U.K., US and Europe, I find it pretty far fetched that what you say will occur, and that the U.K. will have problems long term outside the EU. There might be some short term pain but it's probably for the best long term.

[1] which is distinct from ECJ, and not an EU organisation.

> Nor would I assume that agreements between the UK + US or Asian countries would necessarily include EU style requirements

Sadly, they will. As an example, the UK trade deal with India has hit problems already (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-uk-brit...) because 'we cannot separate free movement of people from the free flow of goods, services and investments'. It's not the EU: trade deals necessitate much more than just agreeing to both remove your tariffs.

Some of these extra restrictions are pretty clearly necessary I think. You need to ensure matching certifications and quality standards and IP rules for the entire area covered by a free trade deal, and enshrine that in law on both ends. If you don't, you have no penalties (by definition, for a 'free' trade deal) for companies that move from the EU to Canada (or vice versa) to avoid some IP rules, or to sell products that wouldn't be up to scratch in the EU. I don't think there's any way you can solve that other than having the same rules for the whole area.

The arbitration courts are more contentious. I'm not sure exactly why they're necessary, or what alternatives there might be there.

I think there's a good argument for why the tie to free movement and more open borders is necessary too. The LSE has an article with the general argument, and some concrete examples: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2016/07/14/free-movement-f.... Essentially: if businesses can move around freely, people have to too, or you can screw your whole labour market.

I'm fairly convinced that this isn't ideological (or the vast majority isn't, certainly). It's not that the EU is pushing this beyond what's necessary for the economics, it's that the economic interests necessitate a lot of these rules, and trying to build a trade deal without them can blow up in your face.

Are there parts of these trade deals that could be removed without consequence? Genuine question, I really don't know.

Definitely agree though that more transparency and better explanations of all this to the public are important, that part is certainly an enormous mess right now.

From my perspective (as a Brit) it's us that have been the petulant ones, demanding special treatment and opt-outs from this directive or that, then throwing a temper tantrum when we couldn't have our own way.

All of that, combined with a relentless decades-long campaign of lies and vitriol from the Murdoch press, resulting in such gems as "the EU demands we have straight bananas!" among various myths, falsehoods and outright lies about the EU;

http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/

The entire leave campaign has been fuelled by an outrageous sense of entitlement on the part of a huge swathe of the population that cannot accept that we are no longer a world power to be reckoned with, and the hilariously inaccurate perceptions people have of the various EU bodies and how they work.

The EU is far from perfect, but by comparison the UK is a fucking catastrophe of systemic classism, crony capitalism and unelected hereditary privilege.

While we're putting forward spurious facts not a single non-EU country aided the UK.

Our biggest "frenemies" during the Falklands were the USA and Israel. Israel were selling them arms (or attempting to) throughout the war and the USA was neutral (with lots of Argentinian sympathy) until their hand was forced.

I understood that you implied that the UK 'did Falklands' because EU 'let the UK do it', as if .. as would have been proper, membership in the 'union' would have meant such unilateral warfare would have been anathema.

I mean, its not like the EU wants to sell billions of dollars of weapons to the world, including its enemies.

If a member decides that the alliance doesn't serve its national interests anymore nothing can stop it from leaving and joining a different alliance.

The point of EU was to make european interests indistingusible from national interests. It seems it hit a brick wall on UK.

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the country's designation I gather, at least based on the title of the head of state it is.

To be fair, we are in crisis 90% of the time. This just adds fuel to the fire.

Genuinely curious.

On this side of the pond its double plus ungood badthink to support borders of any sort, which makes discussion about the importance of borders in UK/EU sound really weird on this side of the pond.

Being asked to leave your citizenship behind isn't just some paperwork, it's a very big blow to your identity. In my case, it would have almost no practical effect (I'm European either way), but it would be a huge issue.

It's kinda like marrying. You may claim that it's just paperwork (and I'm sure some people really feel that way), but I felt there was something more about it. Sure, I had been with my now-wife for eight years at that point, but being the act of marrying made it much more Serious (yes, capital S). If you've ever been married, maybe you can relate to that feeling.

Requiring a visa or a work permit would switch that around. It may expire and not be renewed for a formality. It certainly would make our live more miserable by introducing an extra element of uncertainty.

Let me ask you this, if the US or Canada offered you a job, would you refuse it as their requirement for a visa means they don't want you there?

The UK has incredibly generous tax breaks for new companies. SEIS must be the most generous in the world, which for investments of up to £150k allows you to write 50% of the investment off directly against your tax bill and a further 25% if it fails. So in reality, you get a 75% reduction in exposure.

Combine this with R&D tax credits and it is a very tax efficient place to run a small tech startup.

You missed my point, which is it's 100% legal to do this, it's not unreasonably difficult to do this, and people do this right now.

> Small businesses operating in the UK are required to pay tax within the UK

So, incorporated in the Netherlands (or elsewhere) and do business there, but subcontract the work to yourself through a UK company that is paid stuff-all (to avoid income/corporate tax). Then take the profits as dividends.

> your SMB cannot take afvantage of the same complex legal structures

Individuals can take advantage of these loopholes; e.g. most media celebrities do work as an employee of an off-shore incorporated business. Heck, you can get them with a UK business and UK employee (sole trading/contracting), if you can show non-habitual employment (i.e. more than one employer).

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

The first being that the Royal family actually makes the UK money because they cost less to maintain than what is made up for in brand image and tourism benefits.

The second is that because they don't pay tax, it means their enterprises are not as efficient and the return on the crown lands is about half of what could be expected on a normal enterprise.

The source for both these viewpoints are videos on YouTube. The first is from CGPGrey (I think), while the second is a reply to that video.

Is an interesting quote. It implies that everyone has to be in agreement? So one country could veto our remaining?

I'm assuming any remaining being agreed would also be subject to us losing special privileges we enjoyed yesterday.

Who knows what the final process will be following negotiations & interpretations.

"the UK will be able to revoke its notification of article 50 but this must be “subject to conditions set by all EU27 so they cannot be used as a procedural device or abused in an attempt to improve the actual terms of the United Kingdom’s membership”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/29/first-eu-re...

Once Article 50 is triggered, there are two possibilities: either they are out with no special status in two years because no other agreement is reached before that time, or some agreement is reached within two years which gives some other terms, which terms are nowhere restricted.