Brexit Deal Fails in Parliament

12.6% is really high to be getting only 1 seat, but it definitely isn't 20%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_United_Kingdom_local_elec...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_European_Parliament_elect...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party#Entering... "In March 2014, Ofcom awarded UKIP "major party status"."

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-rele... "Ofcom’s initial view is that UKIP may qualify for major party status in England and Wales for the General Election and English local elections on 7 May 2015."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-31906154 "Ofcom says UKIP, but not Greens, are 'major party'"

'The election of a Conservative MP could have been declared void if he had filed accurate returns that showed he had overspent on his campaign to beat Nigel Farage, a court has heard.

Craig Mackinlay, an accountant, stands accused along with his election agent and a party official of deliberately submitting “woefully inaccurate” expenditure returns.'

the head of the Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, on the 2005 French referendum on the Lisbon Treaty:

"If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'."

the result being that the French rejected it, but it was adopted regardless

"the will of 52% of the people" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

I'm not claiming that I don't understand the concept of referendum by simple majority - merely that there's a certain duplicity in the sanctimonious language being used to describe the result.

Note that there won't be a democratic vote on any particular Brexit deal, which is likely to be less popular than the abstract idea of a Brexit. So if a Brexit deal is brokered, there's a good chance it won't be what a majority of people want to do.

If that’s the degree of freedom you need to be happy, you probably need to live somewhere that has ever claimed to offer it. If you’re just convinced of the incompetence and doom of the race then while I can certainly see your point of view and don’t dismiss it, I don’t know that such a perspective is useful in a public policy context as it offers no solutions or hope.

Not accepting that we’re fallible, that principle is subservient to outcomes, and that a 48%-52% split is not exactly a significant minority-majority split seems unhelpful. More, if you see doom around every corner then what’s the harm in another referendum with a better defined question, and better controls on lying, dirty money and foreign influence? Remember that we’re less than a century away from the last time Europe tried to tear itself apart and take the rest of the world with it, maybe some caution is warranted here.

The west and what it stands for is threatened both directly (Russian involvement in attacking elections both in the US, in the UK with brexit, and elsewhere) and indirectly (rise of authoritarian power/censorship in China). This is ignoring smaller, but still violent direct threats like ISIS.

With the remaining powerful moderates in Europe struggling (Merkel, Macron) and extremists waiting at the sidelines to be elected, increased nationalism and division from brexit could lead to more instability creating a situation where a large scale conflict is more likely or a west that isn't as united and can't respond as well to aggression from Russia.

To reiterate, my main objection to asserting "democracy is the best" is that it discourages thought about other possibilities.

I don't know what work better. But I do think there are other possibilities. I'm using a somewhat stricter definition of democracy and autocracy. For our purposes, lets say a democracy allows nearly everyone to vote for a person or party that will have complete or nearly complete control over the government. We'll allow exceptions for felons and young people not voting. Lets call countries where one person has full power an autocracy.

I'm not going to give an example of a perfect form of government. But I'll give some bad or half-baked ideas just to illustrate it's possible.

As you mentioned, there's anarchy. Not far from there, you could have rule by corporations, where corporations hire their own internal police force to protect their employees, enforce their rules, and make up for the lack of national government. I know, scary. I said these weren't good ideas.

You could have rule by experts. Technocracy, or something similar. Only economists would vote on economic policy, medical professionals would vote on healthcare policy, etc.

We could say all new laws must be in pursuit of some mandate, such as increasing standard of living for the lowest 30% of the population. Laws that don't work towards this goal could be challenged and struck down in courts. Maybe laws could be proposed by anyone and the most upvoted ones would be considered by the courts.

Maybe direct democracy should be revisited now that we have the internet.

We could allow more departments to operate independently, much like the Federal Reserve Bank does now.

Maybe it's totally impossible to improve on the democracy we have now. I'd still rather not discourage thinking about it.

China's a pretty interesting counter-example. I don't know very much about their government unfortunately, beyond what tends to make the news.

My objection to refrains along the lines of "democracy is the best system" is that it tends to shut down thought about other possibilities. We were taught from the time we're young that democracy is the best. But in reality, there's been very little experimentation. I'd rather encourage people to think on how we can continue to evolve our forms of government, not just in the details, but all the way up to how we choose our leadership.

I don't know how we'd test them. Computer models? Trial runs in small communities?

I don't know if anyone will come up with anything better. But there are possibilities other than "everyone votes for a leader" or, "one leader has power for life".

Democracy can be damn scary sometimes. The Nazi party was democratically elected. Who's to say that in 20 years, the majority of Americans couldn't be bigoted against some minority?

(I have no idea whether the number 500 is correct)

If you want your business to say no to that, go ahead - by all means. Most businesses won't, though.

It's a political union, with an unelected Executive body, and a very powerful Supreme Court (Court of Justice), and so much more - that almost no European citizen ever voted for.

Everyone is for trade, most are for open borders, very few for deep political integration.

To the extent the elites push against the underlying sentiment - there will be problems. Such problems are clearly on the rise all over the EU in various incarnations, it'd be nice if the EU took this time of crisis to re-evaluate it's existence and reconsider a bunch of things.

FTAs aren't zero-sum. Free trade benefits both parties; neither needs to get a "better end".

The UK is growing financial services exports in almost all of the markets you mentioned, so I don't really see what your point is there. [1]

Third - the UK is not 'leaving' European markets, they are changing the terms of trade. Goods and services will continue to flow.

(Thankfully, 'services' don't face the fundamental challenges that 'goods' do at the border outside of a customs union)

The UK already exports as much financial services to the US as it does to the entire EU [2] and the underlying impetus is fundamentally in the rest of the world.

Similar to your comment about Japan - the UK already exports quite a lot in financial services (3 billion pounds/year and growing).

" Also, trust me, the Chinese have not forgotten the Opium war" No, I don't trust you.

[1] https://colresearch.typepad.com/colresearch/2017/03/trends-a...

[2] https://colresearch.typepad.com/colresearch/2016/08/how-impo...

These direct democracy votes often turn out this way - the people vote on a topic differently than how they vote for representatives. But a large portion of why we don't practice direct democracy in most of the west is because you don't want a mob of opinions dictating national law.

It isn't undemocratic for democratically elected representatives to go against a referendum. They were elected to rule on behalf of their people, even if that is in contradiction to non-binding votes by said people. Its their reelection funeral if they go against popular opinion and turn out wrong, but its their job to do it if they think its right. Its why we have representatives in the first place!

Regardless, I don't really know why, because the heads of all the major ports in both the UK and France have said they expect minimal or no disruption. But maybe part of why they're saying that, is the preparations being done.

And by having the support of the largest empire the world has ever seen ...

You're arguing with a straw man. Nobody claims the EU had to do anything, it can ban people who live there from buying British things if it wants. But the idea that this will cause food and medicine shortages is simply silly - the rest of the world manages to buy these things without being in the EU so why does this story keep being promoted?

The UK has a lot going for it. It might not be hunky-dory immediately after leaving, but there's plenty to suggest that the UK will do just fine in the medium to long term.

The point about other European countries is well taken and I believe there have been talks to get some countries out of the Euro zone. In part this is a big deal because countries like Germany don't want to prop up countries that are in financial difficulty. They have no controls for dealing with these problems and the result is that you need cash infusions from the EU to keep it all swimming.

But that's really the point, isn't it? How much of a "Union" do you want? It even gets to the heart of why some people want Briton to leave the EU.

The US is at least somewhat willing to tax money made in California and spend the takings in Michigan. Greece or Italy gets the worst of both worlds: they can't devalue their currency to make their industries competitive with Germany, but they don't receive much share of German taxes either.

In Europe you have tens of countries that speak different languages and have cultures that go back 1000-2000 years. That, along with a bunch of political baggage and that each nation has its own fiscal policy, and the starting points between EU and US are very very different.

I would instead extend your concession that given the single currency already exhibits creaks in the US, imagine how hard it would be to manage in the EU.

Y2K could have been really bad. The reason it wasn’t as bad was because people took the threat seriously and spent nearly the last 5-10 years in the 90s spending billions of dollars, and many millions of man hours preventing the worst case scenarios.

Have you worked with bureaucrats? They won't view it as stopping, but rules and paperwork need to be filed. If processes are followed stuff will flow, but there will be a flow stopping shockwave propagating backward at the rate of tps-1c.

They made it so difficult and so scary to warn the other states to not even try to think about an exit.

How is that democratic?

If the EU is so convinced that the only way is the EU way they should have made it easy for the UK to leave, then watch it as it burned to the ground and groveled to try to buy its way back into the EU then maybe the other states would have thought: Gee, it did not work for the EU but at least now we know and we won't try!

Instead, the EU is trying to make an example of the Uk as a show of force to the other states. The EU is ruling with fear and acting like a bully!

And that's forgetting the fact the EU leaders could have seen Brexit as a wake-up call and maybe changed the course of action and reform the EU from within to give people what they fucking promised when this thing was made in the first place: prosperity, safety, so on and so forth.

Instead, they march forward with more integration, more federalism, more Europe, as if the nations don't count anymore. Free trade is the new God in town and it doesn't take prisoners.

Lets forget the fact the economic growth for the EU is one of the weakest in the world for the last 15 years, that the youth unemployment rate is roughly 25% and that because the wages are so low due to the enormous amount of tax being paid by the companies and citizens, they have resorted to importing people from 3rd world countries in order to fill job vacancies that only exists because nobody can actually afford to work for such a low wage.

A new age of slavery built on top of migrant workers.

Ain't the EU pretty?

God forbid you are against them! 30 years ago if you showed any sign of reservation towards unregulated capitalism you were labeled a communist and shamed by the major political parties, nowadays if you are against the EU, you are labeled as backward, illiterate and racist/fascist/populist.

The words have changed, the technics are the same.

I can't believe anyone would make such an assumption. I know some people who 1) voted leave 2) are perfectly aware that under WTO rules their businesses would literally have to close because they trade with EU and their European partners won't accept a ~20% hike on the price of British products due to non-EU custom duties. They all wanted out of EU because they don't like the immigrants, because they think Brussels has too much power, but they all wanted easy trade with the EU. WTO trade is not what they voted for.

Trade without agreements is subject to tariffs and major restrictions severe enough to cause serious economic damage.

Agreeing FTAs can take years, hence the need for a transition period until one is agreed between UK & EU.

What May did was entirely consistent with trying to achieve the Brexit that was voted for.

When people fall for blatant, untrue propaganda, they are dupes. Democratically empowered dupes, but dupes none the less.

In fact, there's an argument that the in-built government majority in the Commons makes that far more of a powerless rubber-stamping body in normal times (recent events notwithstanding!)

Ironic that remain was labelled Project Fear as the most direct lies were on the leave side - the £350m that is nowhere near and never has been, and the claims of mass Turkish immigration when Turkey isn't even in the EU stand out as easily memorable.

Remain were less blatant, but gave numerous predictions and estimates of the consequence of leaving. Some were reasonable, from good sources. Others appear to have been back of an envelope escalating wildness like that house prices would fall 10%, then 20, then 25% and more. Often very poor credibility sources but still repeated as though just as credible as the Treasury or BoE etc. Which just gave easy ammunition for the Mail etc.

So I'm not arguing that the Soviets created the antiwar opposition. But they clearly helped it develop. As I understand it, the main actors were domestic US communists, who were encouraged to join the movement, help train and organize, and so on. I was there, and I was part of it.

About Russian-influence conspiracy theory, have you actually watched RT very much? They've been trolling disgruntled Americans for almost 15 years. As subversive as VoA ever was, they've been total straight shooters compared with RT.

Reading the history of American foreign policy, it’s difficult to see it otherwise. It’s one long list of screwing other countries to serve the interests of the American people. That list contains a lot of bungled operations so the goals weren’t achieved some of the time. America has had 0 issues propping up brutal, venal, self-serving dictators if it meant benefit to America. Examples include Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Chile, Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan. These are the ones I can name off hand.

At the same time, American leaders are quick to get on their high horse talking about the values of democracy. Talk is cheap though.

Even after all that, our view of America dropped precipitously with the election of Donald Trump. I think it’s safe to say that a democracy elects people who embody the electorate. You know what Trump is like. That’s how we think of you (as a whole) right now. However, as a great man once said “some, I assume, are good people”.

If you’d like to learn more about the misadventures of America in the Middle East in particular check out The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan. The last few chapters cover the 20th and 21st centuries.

I think that what the OP is saying is that it's way too easy to always blame it on someone else when actually it's the voters' responsibility. We are definitely influenced by media, however, ultimately it's up to us to decide who to vote for, so it's our responsibility. Ignoring it doesn't make us less accountable.

There is an argument that this view is too simplistic and that the trade situation is complicated; but it seems a lot more plausible than a Russian conspiracy to ... do something.

There is always some level of background interference by foreign nations (as an Australian I shudder to think how much influence the US must have over Australia's politics in practice) but typically it would be cheaper to buy off or otherwise influence entrenched politicians rather than try to influence popular votes. I expect the Russians can figure that out too.

However, that doesn’t mean the movements of dissent is caused by this. They could be, or they could be a symptom of the problems not solved by a long term malfunctioning Democratic system.

[1] https://youtu.be/bX3EZCVj2XA

Now, if someone challenges you and you are easily defeated, then it means you don't deserve to be the leader. If our leadership is failing, then so be it, they don't deserve to rule the world.

Blaming brexit on Russia is new to me, albeit not surprising.

Brexit was a timed event destined to happen for the simple reason that Germany France and Great Britain cannot rule at the same time. They never could and they never will.

And Great Britain for one reason or the other found itself behind, they were unable to do push their supremacy over Germany and France. Either you leave or you knee, or you fight. They were unable to force other powerful countries to make them do what they wished, as they had done in the last 6 centuries before.

[1] https://youtu.be/bX3EZCVj2XA

In the end it was a younger pupil and far too many people used their surname as password.

I doubt that a significant part of the population are reiterating Kremlin-propaganda.

It seems to be a hysterical Red Scare 2.0, just from a different political side, that is just as opportunistic.

If you always see Putin in your dreams, I doubt you should point a finger on people and diagnose any form of manipulation.

There are certainly some bots, but I doubt Russia is represented disproportionally. Just the language barrier alone would lessen their numbers significantly. It often just serves as a convenient excuse for political defeat.

Putin is totalitarian dick. Why not just leave it at that instead of accusing people of asserting his will?

  for the first time

Do people really forget David Cameron's renegotiation prior to the referendum that quickly?

Small is not beautiful in global trade.

Protectionism is what we like to think of as standards. It improves lives in Europe.

[1]: https://qr.ae/TUnWGJ

-'The EU' might be talking about them, they probably talk about a lot of things that aren't going to happen. And some are probably more reasonable than you are making out.

- I don't agree it's undemocratic, but yes there is poor engagement. I think that's a reason why we voted to leave, rather than a reason to leave in and of itself.

- That's less than 1% of govt spending. That is cheap. Brexit will cut growth, this money may plug the gap, we aren't going to be economically better off after leaving though.

- The EU reflects its citizens, you only have to look at Britain itself to see the same thing happening.

Also, we're mostly a representative democracy. That means we vote for representatives whose job it is to.. represent us. Make decisions on our behalf. etc.

Most of that stuff was in the EEC that the British did vote for. The EU did guarantee that Britain could further opt out of "ever closer union" if it wanted to.

> The EU is openly talking about a unified army, implementation of a law requiring all members to join the Euro and 'tax harmonisation': the removal of sovereign countries to set their own tax policies.

Britain also had a guaranteed opt-out of the Euro. Since Britain and France are the only EU countries with any military capabilities worth speaking out, Britain has an effective veto over any unified military policy.

> The EU is very expensive to the UK which makes a net contribution of £9 billion / year. This is money that could be spent on hospitals, teachers, police, etc.

You do know that the Leave campaign basically said the day after the referendum "oops, this part of our plank was a big, fat, steaming lie"?

> Oh I know you'll tell me elected chambers that elect councils that distribute swords allocating a table of 7 presidents who nominate a head hobbit but the EU is patently undemocratic: noone knows who's in it, what they do or how they got there. Turnout for EU elections runs around 25% in the UK: it's hardly a mandate from the people is it?

I'll grant you that the EU has a hard time trying to overcome apathy in its democratic institutions. But apathy doesn't make it less democratic.

> I know you like the EU because you see it as some hippy, huggy federation of nations

Ha ha ha. No, that's not how I see the EU at all.

Yes, but Tory Britain is even more so.

Wouldn't exit polls record the ages of voters though? Seems strange that there's so little data on this.

But EU agreed to the decision? UK didn't.

> Britain will be absolutely fine.

We will see I guess :)

However, the UK will lose the huge amount of influence it has at the moment on the world stage, will be pressured by bigger economies to accept unfavorable trade deals and deregulation (US food standards, VISAs, etc) and its manufacturing will be severely damaged; it could possibly collapse entirely. The irony is that this will likely create a wave of unemployment in the very regions that voted in favour of Brexit.

But regardless of the consequences, if you think people voted for a "no deal" when they voted Brexit, you are deluded. Let's illustrate my point with a few quotes:

"The free trade agreement that we will ahve to do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history" - Liam Fox - 2017

"Getting out of the EU can be quick and easy - the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation" - John Redwood - 2016

"Within minutes of a vote for Brexit, CEO's would be knocking down Chancellor Merkel's door demanding access to the British market" - David Davis 2016

“It is also true that the single market is of considerable value to many UK companies and consumers, and that leaving would cause at least some business uncertainty, while embroiling the Government for several years in a fiddly process of negotiating new arrangements, so diverting energy from the real problems of this country – low skills, low social mobility, low investment etc – that have nothing to do with Europe.” - Boris Johnson 2016

As you can see, no deal is far from the position that was pushed to the people, even after the vote had occurred. Saying people voted for a "no deal" because they voted for Brexit is disingenuous. Long gone is the time of "Having our cake and eat it"

Or just people don't like bashing them for voting populists :)

> Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell define populism as an ideology that "pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous 'others' who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity, and voice".

I don't have problems recognizing politicians propagating such views. Do you?

And trying to use such evidence in court could be repealed then as obtained illegally. (Surveillance without a warrant.) The spirit of the law is to allow reasonably incidental recording only. A zoom camera pointed at your window is not covered, neither are directional microphones etc.

Law is not an algorithm. It is executed by judges and jurors.

(Note: not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.)

They want May to come up with a better plan for a "No deal" Brexit. To take a much harder stance against the EU in negotiations. THAT's why they voted against her.

I feel like this is going in a VERY different direction than is being implied in the comments here.

And let's be honest here: it might work. In the EU, in all countries where I can understand the language: France, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands there are artikels on the front page of the main newspaper about companies lobbying to force their governments to simply break ranks with the EU in case of "No deal": to have a trade pact with the UK ready to go March 29. In theory, that's not legal, but there is precedent. If the UK can get trade deals with the US (which is not going to be a problem), Ireland, Belgium, France and the Netherlands, the damage of a no deal Brexit will be limited quite a bit. A "fuck the lot of you. No deal !" approach ... it's not out of the question that they actually make it work.

Plus, you know, it's clearly what the majority of the voters want and in theory both the UK and these European countries are democracies. On would think that would make it simple.

And then there's the question of what happens if Juncker gets called on his bluff. AFD, 5*, Lega Nord and FN will certainly see their hand strengthened quite a bit if the UK blows up their EU membership and actually gets away with it. Talk about worst possible outcome for everyone.

The EU should say "ok ... voters decided, sucks, but let's make this work. Let's give the UK a fair exit and a fair trade deal". That is in the interest of everyone in the EU AND everyone in the UK ... with the notable exception of the EU politicians themselves.

1) UKIP (or a coalition of Brexit-minded parties) wins general election.

2) PM Nigel Farage opens withdrawal negotiations with the EU.

3) 2+ years later, with a complete withdrawal agreement on the table, a referendum is held on whether to accept the deal.

4) If at least 50% of voters support the withdrawal agreement, it comes into effect within two months.

This is not a pipe dream — it's exactly how the countries who joined EU in 1995 did it.

David Cameron is entirely to blame for this ongoing sad charade that makes a mockery of UK's democratic processes.

Nonetheless, having that be the only thing governing one state's relationships with another is so rare and unpleasant that unless that state of affairs is explicitly requested with a declaration of war it is natural to assume something else is intended.

As soon as he won the nomination, they all fell in line. So clearly he was the "conservative peoples" choice, but not the "conservative establishment" choice. Once he was elected, republicans (even the establishment) further fell into line by continuing to support, condone and cover for his (and the GOP leadership's) corruption.

"Independents and particularly white women elected Trump"

Independents sure but white ... republican women voted for him too. Being a "white woman' does not automatically make you a liberal democrat.

"Hillary's massive $2 billion political campaign"

Cute. All presidential campaigns are massive on the $ scale.

"Hillary's failure to resonate with independent white women and minorities, particularly black voters, sank her campaign."

Lots of factors contributed to Hillary's loss, it was not just "white women and minorities" who failed her.

Anecdotally, the people who have admitted to me (they feel shame BTW) voting for Trump did so out of their own self-interest. They thought they were "shaking up the system".

I don't think it's a lack of plastic cheese alternatives that has people buying French cheese.

https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Sum...

When I said "reduced economic activity in the EU", I mean as a whole. This is an over simplfiication, but imagine a situation where everything is 20% more expensive than the normal asking price, this leads to less purchases being made as a whole. It doesn't matter if you're purchasing from outside the EU too, because it's still 20% more expensive. The overall economic activity in such an area is simply reduced.

The trade numbers simply are the way they are because importing doesn't really reduce the costs either. It should also be noted that exporting products outside of the EU has additional fees that make us less competitive than the alternatives outside of the EU too, so our exports are impacted too.

That scenario is exactly what happened in the Doha Development Round.

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

Why do people spout such provable nonsense?! Inflation is around the BoE target rate of 2% having just nudged down a touch (consensus forecast for Jan 2019 is 2.1%). Rampant inflation is what you see in Venezuela and Zimbabwe. A moment's thought should disabuse you of this opinion.

Back in late 2015, the UK's growth was around 2.9% based primarily on fundamentals that are largely unrelated to Brexit (IT and software). Those fundamentals haven't changed so there's a high likelihood that growth is dragging due to overall negative sentiment as a result of Brexit uncertainty.

Clear that fog, and growth should bounce back. The fastest way to clarity that honours the referendum result, though many don't want to hear it, is a no-deal departure with appropriate WTO exceptions based on national security assertions (de-risking essential supplies) during an FTA negotiation period coupled with the (already given) assertions on the EU citizens' right-to-remain in the UK.

I actually find it really remarkable that 50% of voters were unhappy enough with the EU to go against the status quo.

I mean, your post basically is: Why can't we all just get along.

While it's a noble feeling, the reality is society is fractious, and for complex and nuanced decisions such as brexit there are people who will net-net benefit and people who will net net see detriment. And 'leave option' was the underdog, you might not like to admit it but, the financial and betting markets saw it as such objectively. I'm not sure why you feel the need to try and deny this.

https://twitter.com/EUCourtPress/status/1072039706123210752

As for MP's being neutral, well, it's not impossible, and would be refreshing and well needed change. Otherwise we will just repeat the same old mess with no central point of facts and impartiality to look at for contrast. Making the whole vote a futile mess that will only end up with the same divide, whatever the outcome.

If only the EU stepped back and said we are looking at reforming certain area's, offering up something new to vote upon, at least that would appease the sense of democracy. Otherwise it would be seen as some as another case of the EU not liking the result and being told to vote again. Which is how they will see it, more so as that is what they feared publicly before the referendum and got shot down by the other side for lies.

So to say it is complicated is an understatement. But some grounding is needed and the MP's being neutral and not taking sides, same with parties. Would only help.

But then, much in politics that is flawed and in need of reform. Yet we can't even agree upon a digital voting system, let alone the ability to use more than a single character.

Imagine if Twitter had a limit of one character and you could only post once every 5 years. Think of the level of debate and productivity that would be achieved with such limitations and that is what politics is too the people and we call that democracy.

A democratic decision on a poorly formulated question at best. Democracy assumes informed decisions by the people and this was anything but. The leave campaign made every misrepresentation they could in order to paint a rosy future we all knew would never be possible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army

Dan Carlin has a series on his podcast discussing the background of the war in Asia in 1937-1945 (https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-62-supern...). One of his major points about the Japanese government at the time was that the military held allegiance to the emperor, who couldn't or didn't actually do anything, rather than the civilian government. As a result, the military could do essentially anything it wanted.

That didn't end well.

The UK, as a sovereign nation, is party to international agreements which it has signed in the past which commit it to doing various things, many of them intended to be permanent and many unrelated to the EU. One of those is with the Republic of Ireland, over peaceful relations in the UK territory of Northern Ireland. The Irish government and many Northern Irish people regard this agreement, broadly construed, as implying that no new barriers will be set up on the Irish border. Another international agreement, WTO rules, which the EU is signed up to (and the UK also intends to trade under) implies that if the UK and EU adopt different customs regimes they will also be required to actively monitor customs borders between the UK trading bloc and the EU trading bloc. The Irish government (and by an extension EU negotiators representing their interests) regards feasible customs border check regimes as violating the spirit of the Good Friday agreement over security barriers. Therefore unless and until some border solution in line with WTO regulations and acceptable to the Irish government or an adjudicating party is found (or the Republic of Ireland also chooses to leave the EU, which is highly unlikely) Northern Ireland must not become part of a different customs area from the Republic of Ireland and therefore must remain subject to some relevant EU laws.

Being a sovereign country means the possibility of reneging upon prior commitments, but it doesn't mean these agreements don't exist or that parties won't insist you honour [their interpretation of] them when offering new agreements

The "backstop" stipulates that any future trading relationship does not violate terms of the Irish peace agreement known as the Good Friday Agreement - specifically that there would be no physical checks at the border in Ireland.

Currently the border is virtually invisible because the UK and Ireland are EU members and in the same customs zone.

If, in the future, the UK decides it would prefer to leave the Customs Union (you can be in the customs union but not in the EU), then this would require a special arrangement for Ireland - probably requiring customs checking to be done between Northern Ireland and Britain instead of between north and south in Ireland.

For some people (and I don't know why - see my comment above), this is absolutely objectionable even though this arrangement would enjoy popular support in both parts of Ireland. If you're not prepared to accept this arrangement, then the UK would be stuck in the EU's customs union.

Of course if you want to leave the customs union (otherwise what's the point of brexit), then you have to accept the special arrangement for Northern Ireland or basically renege on the terms of Irish peace agreement.

My point was that you cannot invite real interest-driven negotiations and then complain about red lines the other side draws in the sand.

It's either a real negotiation or an agreement between friends.

The latter would have been preferable, but all the hatred towards the EU side made that an immediate non-starter.