This “reasonableness is weakness” thing seems to be a more and more clear trend in western culture... It’s quite disturbing and seems very dangerous to me.
Or is it something that’s been circulating for a long time, just that I haven’t noticed?
It intersects with other 'tough guy' identity tropes that are being (successfully) used in domestic political battles to gain power, and then are repositioned to be used in foreign relations with predictably terrible outcomes.
The problem is the audience of the negotiating stance isn't the counterparty, it's the domestic base who elected you because they were fed up with nuance and are suspicious of the counterparty.
This isn't just a Brexit problem, but is much more widespread.
I don't know how you'd be able to align incentives any worse.
See also: "the art of the deal"
> The problem is the audience of the negotiating stance isn't the counterparty, it's the domestic base who elected you because they were fed up with nuance and are suspicious of the counterparty.
Not just the nuance, but the lack of dramatic change, a handful of examples of bad behavior by the party of nuance being equally corrupt or useless, and a constant stream of propaganda highlighting that.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/05/04/leavers-have-a-bet...
Really I think most people generally agree on what they want from society. Outside of the fringes, the primary points of contention revolve around how to prioritize issues over other issues, and the specifics of the approach to solving them.
One aspect of that is that people are not rational by nature. Another is that we cannot change that about them and actually it's as much a force of nature as a hurricane or an earthquake. You cannot argue or reason with any of these forces.
Our mistake has been failing to build quake proof cities, not failing to appreciate the earthquakes point of view...
So we're presented with 2 possible realities:
* EITHER, there is no rationale for brexit beyond the "It's what I want and I don't know why but I do" rationale (weak right?). I might not agree with this, but I would respect it if that was what brexiteers said. I can't justify my love of chocolate but I still love it.
* OR, There is a rationale for brexit, but it is secret and cannot be shared with me, and people insist they will share it for unknown reasons, but then don't also for other unknown reasons.
This second position seems a little crazy, but I will admit it is technically possible. Perhaps 17million people have all been initiated into the secrets of brexit and my small remainer mind cannot fathoms such great matters...
How have you managed hundreds of conversations with hundreds of different "brexiteers"? Do you have exact figures? Is it part of your job? Is a "brexiteer" the same as someone who voted to leave the EU, or do you mean something more specific?
People need to stop pretending they had a viable reason for their vote. If they admitted it was just personal preference I'd accept that. But pretending it was logical when it wasn't is frankly insulting.
Honestly I think your attitude here is terrible
One of the major reasons given there in the surveys is that leave voters wanted UK law to be made by the UK. How has that been "disproven"?
It may not be something you care about, but that's very different.
Respectfully, neither will many 'remainers'. There are many who refuse to even consider reasons people may have had for wanting to leave, and insist on viewing everything through a lens of presumed racism.
I voted to remain, but not through any great conviction. I don't believe that any sort of responsive democracy is really possible at the scale of the EU, and I do believe that the democratic institutions of the EU are lacking. We know that comparatively not all that many British people make much use of freedom of movement. I also don't believe that all concerns about the volume and speed of immigration to the UK should be brushed off as mere xenophobia or racism, in light of housing shortages. That's not to say that these necessarily add up to a leave vote, they didn't in my case, nor that leaving the EU will fix anything.
But to view the entirety of 17 million leave voters as unreasonable by definition, well that's pretty unreasonable itself.
I disagree with your statement on the democracy not working at the scale of the EU. The EU is a democratic institution, with limited responsibilities (the UK famously fought back against tighter integration). Recent history in the EU has shown that people are ready for more integration now that the UK is (unfortunately) gone (as seen 2 weeks ago with the common debt).
> The soft Brexit proposition exploded right after the vote,
I've not seen much evidence of this particularly, our parliament spent a long time arguing over exactly what flavour of soft brexit might be acceptable while both hard brexiter and hard remainer minorities postured and shouted and in some cases started legal proceedings. Eventually the different groups blocked and barracked each other so much the whole thing fell apart.
Outside of parliament there were plenty of cheerleaders for just leaving, absent any ongoing agreement, but also plenty for finding methods to overturn the entire thing.
> I disagree with your statement on the democracy not working at the scale of the EU.
But you understand that I have an opinion based on looking at the EU and at other large democracies (like the US), observing how their political classes are remote from the public and relatively unaccountable, and how hard it seems to be for citizens to affect change? As compared to somewhere like Iceland, where a small movement can have a big effect? And you grant that it is a reasonable opinion to hold even if you yourself don't hold it and disagree with it being important?
That's my point here really, we don't have to agree, but casting everyone that disagrees you as unreasonable and unwilling to listen to reason is not a good thing. Though it does seem to happen in a lot of public discourse these days.
The problem with a referendum and abstract propositions is that people all put something different behind the Brexit vote and it was then impossible to reconcile all the positions (plus all the empty promises like the 350m for the NHS). Brexit became something very different than what was originally sold and some people asked for a second referendum to clarify the situation now that things were getting clearer. This act can be criticized or misunderstood, but I don't think anyone can argue that Brexit is a very different animal 4 years later (the unicorn honestly looks more like a donkey up close).
Brexit has shown that the disconnection between the political class and the people had nothing to do with the EU. Dominic Cumming refused to quit despite being caught in clear breach of the lockdown is the perfect example of it.
The EU parliament is elected directly by the voters, and representative are nominated by governments that are also elected. The US has a completely different electoral system, where (like in the UK), candidates with fewer national votes can become leaders (I find these systems undemocratic, a voice is a voice, its geographical location should not matter).
You didn't, that's not an accusation I'm making against you, it was the point I tried to get across in the first post of mine that you replied to. I was hoping you'd agree that it was unhelpful to cast all disagreement as necessarily unreasonable, something the top poster seemed to be doing.
> Brexit has shown that the disconnection between the political class and the people had nothing to do with the EU
I don't disagree with this either (well, maybe I'd modify it slightly, and say it has more to do with Westminster than the EU, but I don't absolve the EU entirely). In fact I think we need much more devolved and locally empowered democracy within the UK. And this isn't incompatible with EU membership. (I mentioned I voted 'remain', right?)
However, as the EU drives towards closer union I fear that we'll see the problems that are present in other large democracies, and which I think are already present in the EU structures to various extents, exaggerate.
> The EU parliament is elected directly by the voters, and representative are nominated by governments that are also elected.
That second part there is an issue, IMHO, because I vote for a local candidate for the UK parliament, they then (if part of the ruling party) put their mandate behind a prime minister, and (s)he effectively chooses our representative on the Commission, which has a lot of power. This is several steps removed from any vote. Is it the fault of the EU? I'm unsure, perhaps we could have a system of directly electing a commissioner, but perhaps that's a bad idea as a technocrat is what's wanted there. Either way the UK seat on the commission has been held by people like Lord Mandelson - twice disgraced out of cabinet, an electoral liability who got promoted to the lords and then the commission. I'd prefer to see the commission de-emphasised (which I know has been happening to some extent, slowly).
I think the whole edifice needs a rework, local, national and supra-national.
It's an amazing way to move to the EU, and in Germany it's a really easy way to get Permanent Residence (you can do it in 21 months, if you learn German up to B1, or 36 otherwise). It also guarantees a high enough salary (55k minimum).
There are far far easier way and often under much better terms to get a work visa in virtually any EU member state as both skilled and unskilled workers.
Although, getting the appointment with foreigners office took 5 months (after my first entry to the country), because of the high number of applicants, but they have a legislation that automatically extends your visa if you have an appointment for a long term residence permit.
https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa/kinds-of-visa/eu-...
It has higher requirements than a Tier 2 General Work Visa in the UK for example, both in terms of salary and education.
For Germany specifically if you are over 45 years old getting a work visa would hard to impossible, you need to provide proof of substantial existing retirement funds such as a private pension.
I assume most of the readers here would be able to get a job that is above Blue Card minimum salary, since the median pay for software developers here are above the requirement.
God this whole thing is a huge mess...
Edit: if you live in Berlin: https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/328595/
Not all EU member states have implemented Blue Card. Ireland and Denmark have an opt-out of EU immigration policy under the EU treaties. (So did the United Kingdom prior to Brexit.) All other member states are supposed to implement it, but the issue with directives is that member states often fail to do so at all, or fail to do so properly. The European Commission can prosecute them in the European Court of Justice for those failures, which can result in them being fined by the EU.
So if you seriously plan to move, now is a very good time to do it.
Lots of info here: https://britishineurope.org/
But that's not true at all. If you asked a Brexiteer, they would say Article 50 could have been invoked the day after the referendum, and instead they spent 2 whole years trying to find an accommodation that would satisfy Remainers too, you can't ask for any more "reasoning with" than that. But Remainers wouldn't budge from the position of ignoring the referendum result completely, they had no regard whatsoever for the wishes of Brexiteers. None at all. We could have had such a soft Brexit that it would have been indistinguishable from remaining, but hardline Remainers made that all but impossible with their intransigence.
Eventually the entire country grew tired of those antics and delivered Boris an 80-seat majority on his single mantra of "get Brexit done". I know this is off-narrative but the Brexiteers bent over backwards to be reasonable.
From the outside, Leavers ran the government. Leavers insisted that May was a great negotiator by holding her cards close to her chest (and then fired her ASAP when they saw her cards).
From the outside, Leavers openly told Remainers that Leavers had no reason to compromise with anyone — not the EU, not Remainers, and not each other.
Every time I discussed anything with a Leaver, my concerns were always and without fail dismissed as “Project Fear” — the other party would even say that about the possibility of no deal while saying no deal was their negotiating tactic.
Now, I don’t doubt that you’ve seen some idiots promoting Remain just as I’ve seen idiots promoting Leave — but can you give any example of Leave trying to compromise with Remain?
Not with each other (basically everyone hates what May came up with, Remain and Leave alike), not with the EU, but with Remain?
It would have been about as good as Brexit could have been, conditional on reducing immigration bring the primary goal.
Berlin has a tech startup sector (supposedly) almost as big as London. So whether it's a good place to start a company may not matter: if it is where all the jobs are, and I need a job then I'm there.
I do Fintech, so I'm looking at a niche of startups. That pushes me to Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris and Zurich as those are the (non London) finance hubs in the EU. But if I saw a job where I could work remotely or where they were based elsewhere, I'd go elsewhere.
I actually just started working remotely for a company technically incorporated in London. So once I pass probation etc, I may go to Germany to master my German. But as you indicate, I'd find a place with good work life balance and low costs and opportunities that suit me. Not just blindly walk to Berlin. :)
>It's also quite hard to get a work visa for UK
The UK has had enough of experts...
> The UK has had enough of experts...
What do you mean?