I do not understand why not call the entire Brexit thing off; why is that political suicide?
. [ ] Remain a member of the European Union
. [ ] Leave the European Union
Do you see the huge honking flashing design flaw here?
No? Let's rephrase this with a little substitution:
. [ ] Continue the known reality
. [ ] Do something else (to be determined later)
There's the problem. The second was a catch-all that cast a huge net encompassing all imagined alternatives. Everything that isn't what is currently now, that's option 2.
That's what won, because it's every imagined alternative tossed in a huge pile. Your Own Personal Favorite Idea is option 2! Hooray!
The problem is that when that has to become concrete it turns out that staying in the EU outweighs any one particular instance of the "leave the EU" reality ... and one of them has to be executed on.
WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED
The plebiscite should have had detailed, specific scenarios and been structured as follows:
. [ ] Remain in the EU
. [ ] Option 1 (addendum 1)
. [ ] Option 2 (addendum 2)
. [ ] ...
. [ ] Option N (addendum n)
Why? Because that's what would actually be happening, the actual reality that has to be contended with, not just some undefined fantasy.
BUT THIS FAVORS STAYING, ALWAYS
No. Not necessarily. If the Brexiters could offer a real-world, concrete, provable, air-tight demonstrably better alternative instead of amorphous good-feelings then they can persuade the public with this imagined reality instead of relying on a reality imagined.
What shouldn't have been allowed, and why this is a total mess, is an option of amorphous make-believe. Make-believe will always win.
(1) Accept deal and exit,
(2) Exit with no deal,
(3) Rescind Article 50
As the options.
Or, the government should just not have used a non-binding referendum on such a complex policy matter as an electoral ploy in the first place and actually governed as elected to do rather than passing the buck.
There's basically two big stumbling blocks:
The first is that there has to be a customs check between either: (1) The EU/Republic of Ireland , (2) ROI and Northern Ireland, or (3) Northern Ireland and Britain (the island).
(1) is unacceptable to the EU. (2) breaks the Good Friday agreement and could reignite violence in Ireland. (3) is unacceptable to the Northern Ireland political party propping up the government.
The second is that from the perspective of the EU, Britain has to get a worse deal by leaving the EU than what they had when they were in it. Otherwise, every other country sees that it's better to be out than in and the EU risks collapse.
These are more or less intractable problems. I'm sure we've all had the experience where an IT project is obviously doomed but nobody wants the responsibility and blame for pulling the plug. That's where Brexit is today.
i.e. each party says "you do it, I won't", and it ends up that no one did?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1Yv24cM2os
If you are unaware of the issues with ROI and NI, I'll say that a bit of education is really needed. The history there is very complicated and can't really be boiled down here on HN.
That said, the threat of renewed violence on Ireland is absolutely real and very possible. During The Troubles (lasting ~35 years) there were ~50k casualties in total. The peace is fragile and renewed violence could very possibly result in much higher casualty numbers.
Lives are quite literally on the line.
EDIT: Sometimes pictures are better than words. We can talk about 50k casualties, but seeing some of them is a lot more 'real', at least to me. If you have the inclination, this image gallery does an alright job showing the long and very bloody history of ROI-UK relations during The Troubles: https://allthatsinteresting.com/the-troubles#31
The problem is that by using a trade deal the status quo the UK is effectively losing its voice in the EU parliament without gainign anything in exchange. This is unsatisfactory to both the leave and remain camps of the UK parliament.
Also, doesn't brexit basically guarantee Scottish independence? The Scotts were way more opposed to brexit than the English in the brexit referendum and their most recent independence referendum stated as a condition of the delay until the next independence referendum that the UK's relationship with the EU did not change? Is that right?
It's unclear whether or not it will be possible to construct majority support in parliament for that at present. There's also the issue of legitimacy; while I don't agree with the view myself, there is concern that a second referendum smacks of an attitude of "you did it wrong the first time, try again". This is the outcome of a badly-designed referendum, which should probably have included a ratification vote.
Also, doesn't brexit basically guarantee Scottish independence?
While I'm a huge Scottish independence fan and would love this to be the case, the reality on the ground is more complex. The case for the previous independence vote in 2014 was based heavily on continued EU membership for both Scotland and the rest of the UK. An unstable, hard-Brexit neighbour will be difficult for Scotland, which is heavily intertwined economically, culturally and politically with the rest of the UK. Brexit probably enhances the emotional case, but doesn't help the practical one. Additionally, due to the constitutional structure of the UK, Scotland cannot hold a legitimate referendum on independence without the consent of the UK parliament – something which is unlikely to be granted any time soon.
It seems like a second referendum would optimally be framed differently than the first, but it seems like the best option as an outsider. The current scenario doesn't seem to be working.
Strange times we all live in.
Or let's say that I'm President. You are the challenger in the election. If I win, I go on being President. But you win, and I and my friends at powerful agencies and media outlets all agree that, since we are entitled to rule, the election is not valid and has to be overturned by some means. But I'm willing to compromise. Surely even you could have no complaint about just repeating the election. Either that, or we just void the election entirely, which would probably be best for all, I'm sure you'd agree.
So this prime minister named David Cameron thought he would squash the whole "let's leave the EU" dissent by revealing it to be a minority position by some clever politicking: he would call a referendum and they would get only 15% of the vote and he could dust his hands and say "well we had this vote and you were wrong and let's stop holding untenable positions here." The problem was that rather than 15% of the vote, Leave carried 52% of the vote. Legally it was not a binding vote, the Parliament is still allowed to do whatever they want. But the Conservative Party that Cameron had led was sincere about "we're going to do whatever the public decides." Due to the complete reversal of his expectations, Cameron resigned as PM and was replaced by May.
May is in a tricky situation because if she holds a second referendum, "really, truly, are we going to leave the EU?" then it looks like her party is just going to keep asking the question until they get the answer they want -- and that is not really democracy. If they just say "eff it we give up, we're not doing this Brexit thing" then they are reneging their earlier promise.
With that said there is now a widespread belief that if they did re-ask the question the majority would say "hell no, remain in the EU, we didn't mobilize with enough urgency because we didn't understand what the country was signing up for in that last vote." If a different party were in power, probably they would have done so by now. But because there is this direct line from Cameron to May, May has been very firm on her belief that they need to go through with Brexit one way or the other.
Because May was so obstinate on this point, there have most recently (Dec 2018, Jan 2019) been some votes of no confidence trying to upset the government and have a new government that might be able to do the actually-popular thing. Those have failed.
You missed the part where May called a general election right after sending the official withdrawal notice where she only barely gained a majority giving the Brexit hardliners a lot of additional power. Again based on way too favorable predictions about voters preferences.
The government voted itself to have more power without any validation with other countries, this caused a massive push back against the EU is ALL of Europe. Don't forget that France has been revolting for almost three months now.
The problem there is that there are now several groupings of representatives – some of them would like to push forward with a "cliff-edge" style exit, some would like a negotiated but "hard" deal, some would like a very soft "technical Brexit", and others would prefer to remain entirely. The parliament is politically bound by the outcome of the referendum—it would be a damaging move to hold a referendum then not implement the result—but at the same time, there is no consensus on what "Brexit" actually means, so it's not currently possible to construct a majority for any individual plan.
It's not a good situation.
My opinion is that a deal cannot be negotiated among uneven parties. Right now, the UK can either leave with no deal, or leave on the terms demanded by the EU, with no concessions whatsoever. There is no table for negotiation. It is leave or surrender. Once we leave, we are no longer the begging party asking for concessions, but the roles will be reversed. The EU does not want to lose one of their largest export markets, and will quickly change their mind about a trade deal.
The UK exports ~50% of its goods and services to the EU. The EU exports 8% of it's good and services to the UK. The latter is in absolute terms the larger amount of goods and services, but the former is just a massive portion of total trade to have to suddenly replace or re-negotiate.
Think about it this way: SMB company A has to suddenly replace 50% of its customer base. Enterprise company B has to suddenly replace 8% of it's customers. I know which one I'd rather be!
Pointing out the reality of the weak and pathetic position the UK finds itself in is not 'scaremongering', it is simply the first of many wake-up calls the UK will be facing in the near future.
They thought they could simply quickly negotiate trade deals using the existing EU ones as a blueprint. I think they now reached a single digit number of agreements but nothing with a huge trade volume (includes economic superpowers like the Faroe Islands or Liechtenstein and as the list goes on it does only get slightly better).
Agrees in Russian
A delay plus a new vote (now that people are more educated on things) seems like the most democratic way to handle this.
But I don't think it quite fits here. The people of the UK voted for an abstract Brexit - one in which everyone could pin their dreams for what it would be. When there is a concrete Brexit plan - the best negotiated deal, hard Brexit, or whatever - when it's no longer something amorphous that you can imagine is whatever you want, but is instead something specific that you can't change, the people do in fact know more. They know what the deal actually is. Letting them ratify the actual deal rather than an abstract one seems quite reasonable to me.
2. Why do you expect that the vote will turn out any different? One third of the country wants a hard brexit, one third wants a soft brexit, and one third wants no brexit. There is no way to make even a majority happy. Having another vote will put you right back where you were two years ago.
Here's some more realistic numbers-
> The survey by polling firm YouGov showed that if a referendum were held immediately, 46 percent would vote to remain, 39 percent would vote to leave, and the rest either did not know, would not vote, or refused to answer the question.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/06/britons-would-now-vote-to-st...
Here's an aggregate of polls that show much stronger support for "stay" than "leave":
https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/if-a-second-eu-referen...
What do you do when nothing gets a majority? You could go with whatever gets the most votes, but as you said, that leaves the majority unhappy. Instead, on the same ballot, ask everyone what their second choice is. If nothing gets a majority of first place votes, then go with whatever got the most first and second place votes.
What do you mean by this?
Most of the articles I've read and people I've talked with from England have said that immigration and keeping England English was the main concern behind Brexit...have views on non-English immigrants changed?
If you want a good laugh you should take a look at some of the claims made by Johnson, Farage, and Gove during the campaign.
There are lots of MPs who would want nothing more than to scrap Brexit or at least hold a second referendum. However, the situation is similar to what's happening with Trump and the Republican Party in the US: Politicians vote on party lines against their personal beliefs (or the desires of their constituents) simply so the party can hold on to power.
May and the Tories can't backpedal on Brexit because it would, at this point, be political suicide. It would significantly weaken the Conservative Party (the Tories) politically, and pave the way for a Labour government. May and her colleagues would prefer Brexit to losing their power. Of course, May says she sees it as her duty to fulfill the "will of the people" despite the fact that, according to insiders, she doesn't actually believe in Brexit.
What's remarkable is that the Conservative leadership has never been able swing the rhetoric around in their favour. A more cunning politican should have been able to turn David Cameron (who was responsible for setting Brexit in motion in the first place) into a scapegoat as well as point the finger at the Brexit faction for poisoning the well. There's a whole group of politicians, including Boris Johnson, that are now hated by the general public following the revelations about the Leave campaign.
What's also remarkable is how badly Labour has miscalculated the opportunity to gain a huge political momentum by becoming the anti-Brexit party. But its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is an EU skeptic, and hasn't stepped up.
That I think is the fundamental problem. It's not unique to May, or even to the UK, either. You see this all the time. Politicians want to win the next election more than they want to do the right thing (or even the right thing according to their own views). But if you can't do what you think should be done, what's the point of having power?
There is no reason to believe MPs can "do the right thing". Their analysis skills are weak, they routinely say things that are factually false, they manipulate, they lie and their numeracy skills are nearly non-existent.
Some examples. Most of them can't even tell you what the probability of flipping two heads in a row is:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-19801666
The Shadow Home Secretary, i.e. the woman who is one election victory away from running the police, went on public radio and simply made numbers up off the top of her head for how much money would be spent on the police. Even worse the numbers were absurd, like costing only £300,000 pounds to hire 10,000 police officers:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/diane-abbot-l...
It's clear that Theresa May and most MPs don't even understand the basics of negotiation, like "you must be willing to walk away".
Politicians should absolutely not be doing what they think the right thing is, they are wildly unqualified to decide that. Their job is to do what their voters ask them to do, as faithfully as possible, and nothing else. It's when politicians start to think they know better than their voters that power has corrupted them and the problems really start. That's the root of all dictatorships and the sorts of miseries that have throughout history killed millions of people.
Pretty bad.
Second of all, bringing something up for a vote more that once is not like ignoring the vote. Rejected proposals are very often brought back up, maybe with some retooling, maybe just in hopes that the passage of time has made them more palatable. For example, Quebec voted on its equivalent of Brexit twice, and though it was a bit of a joke, it wasn't generally viewed as shady.
It is possible to use additional referendums as a stalling tactic, and if you kept doing it forever, you would effectively be ignoring the vote. But again, nobody is suggesting that. Putting it up for another vote now that the public has more information would literally just be democracy.
Of course not, just until people vote remain!
That’s the whole issue (apart from putting Brexit up to a 50% referendum in the first place).
People voted based on russian-funded lies funnelled through corrupt millionaires like Arron Banks, illegally funded and illegally targetting voters with murky data from the likes of cambridge analytica, using extensive and highly targetted ad campaigns on FB (still going on btw - over £500k spent this week). Among other lies politicians told them that we'd stay in the custons union and havd more money for the nhs, but mostly they played on a fear of immigrants.
Brexit won by a tiny margin on the largest constitutional change since the act of union, but somehow 'the will of the people' at that moment in time is inviolate and can never be questioned.
That's facism, not democracy.
You think the EU funded illegal propaganda like that funded via the russian embassy? Got any proof of that? Arron banks is being investigated currently:
https://www.politico.eu/article/arron-banks-investigated-ove...
I believe rhetoric like 'the will of the people' is facist.
Well I voted Leave because this is likely to be the last chance for the UK to get out of ever-tighter European political integration. About which we were never consulted before engaging.
In the 1980s I backpacked around Europe and met many wonderful people. But not once did I think that "what we need is an additional layer of federal government to bind us all into one destiny". They were countries of Europe, but beyond trade every country got on with its own affairs. And things seemed to be OK.
The Common Market was a good idea, but things took a more sinister turn in 1992 with the Maastricht Treaty. Who was driving that? Not the common people of Europe as far as I could tell.
To me, Brexit was an opportunity for asking myself: why does the EU exist, why did it supercede the EEC and what is the end-goal? I didn't like any of the answers.
Personally I think the EU is a force for good in the world. It has failings - the parliament does not yet have enough power, and the treatment of Greece was a travesty, but in spite of that it has lead Europe from war, dictatorship and acrimony to peace and prosperity. The end goal is of course a federal state and for the states within that to be subsidiary, and a large free market of work and goods within that area. Sounds good to me compared to the sclerotic British state still fondly grasping at dreams of lost Empire.
If the EU fails, the UK fails with it, regardless of whether we are in or out. If war comes to Europe we will not be able to avoid it. So the independence given by Brexit is an illusion. I find it highly unlikely that the UK will have more influence, more independence ore more power outside the EU, simply because of its size and proximity. So in my view Brexit is a false choice between a dream of independence which cannot truly exist in our global world, and the spectre of an evil federal state dictating our every move. Why not help to build the federal state we'd like to see in the world? If I had to start somewhere building a new state, I certainly wouldn't start with the current UK political system and UK state.
It is legitimately damaging to democracy to have the results of a referendum ignored. That referendum shouldn't have been executed in the manner it was, but we can't ignore the outcome.
The problem is, the practical reality of that vote (as it has worked out) is pretty sketchy, and pleases very few people. So now we have the three immediate options of "no deal" (obviously catastrophic), "negotiated deal" (no political support) and "cancel" (directly opposed to the referendum outcome).
Honestly the only way I see out of it with even a shred of democracy left is to hold a second referendum to ratify the deal.
The problem with a second referendum, though, is that the vote is to stay it won't be "the country" changing its mind. The country doesn't have one. If 5 percentage points of the previous 52% change their minds, the 47% that voted (Brexit, Brexit) will feel betrayed, as they will (actually) have been sold out. They were told that their first decision would count, then people-who-were-not-them demanded another vote, then people-who-were-not-them took their victory away.
Of course, those of us who voted (Remain, Remain) will be happy, but this isn't exactly analogous to a general election, where this kind of change-of-result is expected. The referendum was supposed to be a one-off, and 'those people' will have stolen Brexit.
I have a bit of sympathy for this position, but I have a lot more concern for the long-term consequences of reducing trust in the political process even further.
It's the same for me as a non-American looking at the whole Trump situation. The people chose him as their president, yet I get the impression (again, I'm an outsider) that very few people like him as a president.
Yes, Trump's approval rating is dead average for President’s taking office after the end of Obama’s second term at the same point in their term of office.
But unless you reduce the domain so much that you compare Trump only to himself, it's not perfectly normal.
This is true, but maybe not for the reasons you think. The number of people who self-identify as "Republican" has shrunk considerably over the past few years. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/06/14/trump-owns-...
That's not really true if you talk to people. He is also being helped by the fact that the democrats have not much to offer either. I bet almost anybody except Clinton would have won the election.
Regardless of the validity of this argument as to Constitutional legitimacy, it's inapplicable to th claim made upthread which is that “the people chose him as their President”. They did not.
If the popular vote won the presidency, Trump and Hillary would have campaigned for the popular vote, and there's no way of knowing what that outcome would have been.
The losing side is always more emotional and vocal in politics. The winning side has nothing to prove, except during a re-election. It was that way for Bush, Obama, Trump, and it will be true of the next President.
Well, he did get almost as many votes as the top vote getter, so that's almost true.
Brexit and Trump are just these people saying they want a big change in direction. I dont think they're sure Brexit and Trump will improve things but at least the city dwelling elite doesn't like it so there must be something good about it.
Apart from the 17.4 million majority that voted for it?
One trouble with the media is they never leave their echo chambers in these cities and find out what people across the country think. I don't know of anybody in my town who voted Brexit and has changed their mind since. In fact, many who voted to remain have said they would vote to leave in a second referendum, because the contempt that the political elite in Westminster and Brussels have for the result of a democratic vote has been laid bare for all to see.
There is only a majority in favour of renaming in parliament, but as you note, it would be political suicide for them to cut off Brexit, which is why we have this shitshow where they try to stop it by pretending to try and make it happen. ("Brexit in name only")
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/United_K...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2018/jan...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/06/britons-would-now-vote-to-st...