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Comment by moystard | Hacker News Reader

The vote was a close one; it should have been taken into account to come up with a compromise. I think remainers were ready to accept a soft Brexit and everyone would have moved on. It would have represented a loss of influence for the UK (it's going to happen anyway), but it would not have been the shit show that we have seen since then. The soft Brexit proposition exploded right after the vote, and Brexiters started pushing for a very hard Brexit.

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).

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> I think remainers were ready to accept a soft Brexit and everyone would have moved on.

> 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.

Where exactly did I cast anyone who disagrees with me as unreasonable and/or unwilling to listen to reason?

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).

> Where exactly did I cast anyone who disagrees with me as unreasonable and/or unwilling to listen to reason?

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.

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