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Comment by jwdunne | Hacker News Reader

A few older working class specifically cited being ruled by Germany by stealth. I think that's totally ridiculous and I voted to remain, though I am a millennial and don't know life outside of the EU.

Irish tensions are resurfacing now too. A sticking point is the Irish/Northern Irish border. The government is being propped up by 10 fanatical, conservative unionist MPs (not the Tory kind) and have literally tanked what could have been significant EU progress.

Now the feeling is that the unions hold disproportionate power over the UK government and that doesn't play well with a fragile good Friday agreement.

Same story with Scotland. Now that NI potentially had single market access plus customs union, which those in power in NI didn't want, Scotland wants this too. Independence referendum was won based on "better together" and yet it seems they are now being dragged out of the EU against their will.

What a mess!

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One of the key factors in the Scottish referendum was EU membership, with Spain having said the would veto Scottish membership. The EU referendum leaves many here feeling cheated

Spain said it would veto only if Scotland unilaterally declares independence. Big difference to what you're saying.

That's because they're nervous about two regions declaring independence from Spain, and Scotland setting a precedent. They can't permit that and be consistent domestically.

But it's ironic that Scotland got f'd over by England taking most of its petrol resources and Scotland got pretty much jack for it. So now their balance sheet may not qualify them for joining the EU alone, not dissimilar to how Greece probably wasn't but it wasn't caught in time because they cooked their books and banks looked the other way.

> Scotland got f'd over by England taking most of its petrol resources and Scotland got pretty much jack for it

Not before the recent squeeze:

the Barnett formula already allows Scotland to sustain higher levels of per capita public spending relative to the rest of the UK, which is approximately equivalent to its disproportionately high annual contribution of tax revenues to the central UK Treasury from Oil production.

However Scotland's per capita spending growth, relative to the rest of the UK, has in recent years, been nominally reduced by the operation of the Barnett formula, in order to bring public spending levels into line with the UK average, in a phenomenon that had been dubbed the "Barnett Squeeze"

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Scotland%27s_oil

As an American it was hard to relate to the fear of being ruled by Germany by stealth which it came up in the TV series Victoria because her husband Prince Albert was German - it seems fairly deeply rooted xenophobia? or something if it still gets brought up.

A huge chunk of the British Royal Family is German. Albert (of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) was Victoria's first cousin.

And at the time of the Great War, the monarchs of Britain, Germany and Russia were all first cousins.

This photo is particularly striking:

https://i.redditmedia.com/2ZKJnNVW1-Mn41TE8dqXFMten1_L6gBZ7I...

One small details from the months before the war: No one invited the greater family to the funeral of the murdered arch-duke.

Another detail near the end of the war: King George wanted to give his cousin Tsar Nicholas asylum after the Bolshevik Revolution but chose not to for political reasons.

Family eh?

> it seems fairly deeply rooted xenophobia

How does it seem that?

There's a question mark you left out in your quote because I was wondering what to call it but to express it as you ask - a sentiment by some in the country (UK) expressing a resentment or paranoia over another country (Germany) potentially having control somehow over what happens in the first country(UK) when there appears to an outsider (me) to be very little control by Angela Merkel (or whomever is in charge of Germany at this moment) of what the UK is doing or Brexit would not be happening ( at any and all costs from what I'm reading about the process favoured by the ruling party in the news)

That Brexit is happening doesn't mean Germany has no influence over the UK. Just not enough to prevent Brexit; "very little" is not the only alternative to "absolute".

UK pushing hard on the multiculturalism agenda yet haven't even managed to unify Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. More variables - biting off more than they can chew.

Not sure what you mean? A big plank in Brexit rationale is restricting freedom of movement. I think some hope for a scale back on multiculturalism.

Due to once owning an overwhelming empire, I think a lot of people forget "British culture" is inherently "multicultural". A national British dish is chicken tikka masala, a curry, and nobody can tell if it was invented in India or the UK.

> "British culture" is inherently "multicultural"

This highlights the ambiguity. There is no single multi-culture - it is an adjective that can apply to many distinct mixed cultures.

Some of the pushback is because some multicultures are better than others.

>>Now the feeling is that the unions hold disproportionate power over the UK government and that doesn't play well with a fragile good Friday agreement.<<

I believe you mean that the "unionists hold disproportionate power". Your statement will, however, probably hold true after the next general election...

Yes, meant unionists. I don't agree with that though. Right now, they are feeble. That's not a good thing when really it's a body representing workers.

Productivity, wage growth in the UK is a problem. Is that going to get fixed by carrying on as we are? Should the workers not have more say?

I don't subscribe to the idea that what's best for the corporation and board of directors is what's best for everyone. Thats how we're operating. I think the next general election will change the record i.e what's best for workers, for the average person, for the sick and disabled, is ultimately best for the corporations. After all, a happy, healthy worker is a productive worker.

>A few older working class specifically cited being ruled by Germany by stealth. I think that's totally ridiculous

Not very ridiculous. The EU decision making process is a mess, and Germany controls the votes of many "proxy" states.

That is usch a big oversimplification it nearly makes the comment pointless.

Care to explain further for an interested American?

The EU processes are pretty complicated and limited in their powers. Each country remains sovereign and only signs up to deals they choose to so with for example the introduction of the Euro, which was mostly a French-German product, the UK and various countries chose not to join. The UK chose to join the single market which has common standards so Germany may indeed get input on our sausage standards for example but I wouldn't call that ruled by Germany.

The main things people get annoyed with in the UK are parts of the single market agreement that we signed up to such as free movement of people and the inability to cut our own independent trade deals but that stuff was there from day one.

That is not the complete truth, is it? There is a large expectation that different countries implement new laws or they could be fined for it. For example, my country implemented some data storing laws from the EU, the EU then decided that those laws were against human rights and removed them. Sweden then got fined because we still kept those laws and continued storing data on civilians that was against the human rights.

That is pretty much a bit of a special case, but I expect there exists a plethora of those special cases. Since Germany and France I believe have the most representatives (since they are the biggest countries) the thinking goes that they have more power than smaller countries such as mine.

The funny thing is that the UK is one of the biggest countries in EU in terms of population and thus have a lot of representatives in the EU parliament.

It would be unfair if smaller countries had as much representives as the bigger countries. The problem does not lie there. If the representatives decided in the interest of the country they are from and not in the interest of everybody in EU, then that is a problem.

Indeed what I wrote is a considerable simplification. Ironically the 'human rights' laws you mention and that annoy many Brexiters were largely a British thing:

>Originally proposed by Winston Churchill and drafted mainly by British lawyers, the Convention was based on the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ( https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/what-european-convent... )

The fact the individual countries are mostly sovereign and sign up to agreements is not that appreciated. Many have the idea that we can negotiate with Merkel/the EU and say give us free trade without free movement of people or we won't take your Mercedes and BMWs but they don't have the power to do that sort of deal. The EU trade agreements are what the 27 countries signed up to and they can't just go and change them after the event without getting everyone to sign up to a new agreement.

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