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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

> What's at stake here is more fundamental than federalism: it's self determination.

Yet, Britain has done its best to deny the same right to self-determination to its subjects.

Self-determination seems to be an excuse trotted out to support existing power structures. "We should secede from _____ - but nobody should secede from us."

Britain and Ireland, Britain and India, Britain and Scotland... Britain had to be dragged, kicking and screaming through every single one of those conversations about self-determinism.

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That's not jut tangential to the point (whataboutism?), it's what every country does. The UK has a better negotiating position than Britain would have. The EU(28) would have a better geopolitical posture (thanks to UK's military, as the EU has a hard power problem) than the EU(27) will have. Geopolitics is highly competitive and mostly zero-sum, which is why you have "unethical" behavior like that.

If anything that just demonstrates the point further. Ireland and India are now independent and are happier for it. Scotland will soon join them. The EU doesn't want Britain to leave. The oppressors and the oppressed do not have the same goals.

The EU is an oppressor, really? Hyperbole, much?

Everyone joined the EU willingly. The fact that they can leave whenever is further proof that the EU is not autocratic.

Of course it is oppression, it is antidemocratic, was forced on the people and pushed heavily by propaganda. It is a project of the elites and industry, any benefits to ordinary people are far outweighed by the benefits of industry. For the longest time it was simply that: A number of economic treaties, the political stuff was added later on because people realised that it would be far easier to push through their agenda if they only had one semi-democratic negotiating partner to deal with. In the last ten years several anti-democratic "directives" were pushed down to national parliaments, cast into law and later found to be unconstitutional. The best example would be the "Telecommunications data retention" laws:

- They were formulated as an EU-directive in 2006 (which means every national parliament is forced to pass a law based on this directive)

- The corresponding German law was passed in 2008

- The law was declared unconstitutional in 2010 by the German Supreme court and in 2014 by the EU high court

- Of course the german parliament reintroduced slightly changed legislation in 2015

I don't see how that is the Eu being anti-democratic. Note that I oppose the regulation on the merits as well but procedurally: - all member countries except for Ireland and Slovakia voted for it in the council. That includes the German I have no illusions it wouldn't have passed in the German Bundestag - the EU parliament voted for it - the ECJ struck it down for violating the Charter of Fundamental Rights

It basically the same thing that keeps happening within Germany, it seems like the institutions work equally well or badly.

Now what is a problem is that national politicians like to hide behind the EU. That's why you should always check who voted for these things in the council. Usually it's the same people (or at least parties) who later they the EU is forcing their hand.

Well that is the problem: There is no good way for people to organise effectively on an European level, or at least it is much harder. By comparison is very easy for a determined few to organise at this level, which is why you have tons and tons of lobbyists in Brussels. You can partially observe this when "Wutbürger" protest against local changes like building a new railway station (months of protest, sitins, general disorder), but you barely get two days worth of protests against the ECB on the occasion of the opening of their new head quarters in Frankfurt.

Note it was not the ECJ which struck down the law first, they did it after the BGB did strike it down, partially because they did not want to get into a fight about who has primacy in decision making I believe (the BGB still claims to have the last word, changing this would be unconstitutional in Germany).

I don't think politicians "hiding behind the EU" is what is actually happening, what actually happens is collusion to shift away power from the people by obfuscation and misdirection. People like Schäuble have active contempt for democracy (According to Varoufakis he told him "Elections can't change economic policy"). See for example this discussion of ECB policies (https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2017/03/14/19258/).

I truly believe the EU has to go, in order for Europe to not further slide into a corporatist neo-liberal nightmare. It is very unfortunate that this push is lead by right-wing nationalists.

> was forced on the people

When?

Ireland is a member of the EU.

Indeed, there's the Troubles on the horizon again, as various Irish factions start talking about a united Ireland.

Britain is over within ten years, that's what today means. Scottish independence, some kind of enormous fudge in Northern Ireland, and Wales beginning to look towards the door.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Don't get where people get the idea that Wales are agitating for leaving the Union. Wales is more legally entrenched than any other of the constituent countries of the UK and also majority voted to leave the EU.

Yep. But I anticipate the Plaid vote will head rapidly upwards – not to SNP levels, but 25% territory.

Welsh independence has generally been supported by less than 10% of the population.

Uh, Britain organised a full blown referendum for Scotland after Scots voted a separatist party into their own local Parliament ... a referendum the nationalists then lost. Now perhaps there'll even be a second, despite said nationalists saying it would be a "once in a generation" event.

How is that being dragged, kicking and screaming?

If I remember correctly, the SNP ran in 2016 (after the Scottish referendum) with a manifesto that said if UK voted "Leave" in Brexit but Scotland voted "Remain", they would push for a second independence referendum. So this was the platform on which they were returned to government.

Also, I think it's fair to say that Britain leaving the EU is a sizeable enough change to counter the "once in a generation" line — the choice is no longer Independence V status quo of 2014. Especially considering that at least some people voted to stay in the UK in order to remain in the EU.

Also the "better together" argument for UK is hurt. If not better together (eu) then why better together (uk)? Actually Scotland can join the Nordic examples of a very rich and welfare states in Scandinavia if not EU.

When the majority of Scotland wanted to remain part of the EU, the terms changed. The fact is Scotland, NI and Wales largely wanted to remain whilst England drags the rest along with. They have no choice.

That's a pretty big change in the game and wasn't really on people's minds in 2014. I certainly wasn't thinking about the EU exit in 2014. In fact, in 2015, a 2016 EU referendum wasn't widespread knowledge.

In fact, I was shocked by the leave vote. Almost as much as the Conservative majority a year before. I'm from Salford too and the vote was a highly Leave. I'm sure those in Scotland felt that more so.

> The fact is Scotland, NI and Wales largely wanted to remain whilst England drags the rest along with.

Scotland and NI wanted to stay by large margins, England and Wales to leave by much smaller margins. Were a majority of the four required to pass the referendum, it would have failed on a 2-2 tie.

Wales voted to leave by a large margin.

This is factually untrue.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36612308

Wales voted by a 52.5% to 47.5% margin to leave.

There are very few countries in the world where a non-binding referendum with that kind of margin would be considered a mandate to make a fundamental change to the constitutional basis of the country.

So they voted to leave by a bigger margin than the UK as a whole did then.

Correct, a narrowly bigger margin.

I think if '52-48' is redefined as a 'big margin' then it becomes very hard to define 'a narrow margin' without running into the impact of statistical noise.

Thanks for the correction :)

Wales didn't largely want to remain.

Efforts to paint this as purely an English problem are bizare, even in Scotland around a.third of voters voted to leave the EU. Surely that pojnts to huge dissatisfaction even without a majority for leaving?

> Britain organised a full blown referendum for Scotland after Scots voted a separatist party into their own local Parliament ... a referendum the nationalists then lost.

A major (and perhaps decisive) point in the remain campaign in that referendum was the (quite correct) point that Scotland leaving the UK would face significant risks in remaining in the EU, since other EU members with potential breakaway regions would see that as potentially encouraging their own breakaways.

Had it been known that staying in the UK would guarantee Scotland would be taken out of the EU and not even be in a position to try to negotiate admission, the independence referendum might well have gone the other way.

They voted to stay in the UK on the expectation that the UK would remain within the EU.

A second Scottish referendum is absolutely the right call to make and the only reason I can figure that English people are so against the idea, is that this time they expect to lose a member of the union.

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