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Comment by seanwilson | Hacker News Reader

Are there any major benefits for the UK in the deal? The list of changes so far on the BBC site just reads like a big list of negatives.

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The whole idea of the EU was to make sure we all find a benefit, and end zero sum thinking. If you've read any of the leaked scoring cards out of London you see how they're fundamentally a bad fit. I pity the British citizens really.

Therin lies the fundamental problem of Brexit. (I voted against it). It is _inherently_ a regressive move.

Why? Joining up with a bloc that has so vastly different values between its members, with multiple points of internal chaos - Greece, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Sweden - raised against it. An army an an anthem that nobody asked for, when they just wanted a single market. A single nation able to admit anyone they like, who become citizens and therefore able to immigrate to any other nation - it's very clear there are many downsides of EU membership. Not just for the UK but for everyone else.

Keep in mind I was a Remain campaigner - you can find the submissions to HN back in 2016 if you check my post history.

If you see the EU just as a trade relationship then of course there are some things that look out of place. But there are several other incentives for being part of a supranational arrangement such as the EU: safety in numbers (hi Russia), trade negotiation weight (Canada, China, Mercosur, .. ), standardisation power (DIN has become global status in some ways (think paper) and ISO is often led by EU)), rulesetting power (think GDPR, what other non-US legislation has such global impact on the internet?). Germany and France still have a small say on the global scale without the EU, but Slovakia or even Poland or Spain do not - as a single block they are less flexible but can bring their weight to bear.

Not to mention that still today a key narrative of EU membership is the EU as a peace project. After 2000+ years of unending war western Europe has not had a single border conflict since WW2. That's in large part due to the EU and it's predecessors.

A civil war disintegrated Yugoslavia. Is a conflict that created a border a border conflict?

I would suggest that aggressive expansionism eastwards from the EU (and NATO) has done more to create an issue with Russia and more to gift power to Putin than any other factor. It's been far from a peacemaker on the macro scale.

I would agree with the standards body part. Although I would question why you need a parliament, senate, executive, judiciary, foreign policy etc to act as a standards body and to implement a free trade area and free movement area.

If the EU had not expanded eastwards we would have the same issues as we do now.

Only 1000km westwards.

What safety in numbers? France helped both Britain and Argentina during the Falklands War [0].

The Dutch did give GCHQ strong hints about how to break Argentine encryption though [1].

The EU did nothing during the war in Yugoslavia, and nothing when Russia annexed Crimea.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17256975

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/18/maximator_euro_spy_al...

The EU did not exist in 1982. Its predecessor, the EEC, was more like a trade-bloc and lacked any sort of foreign-policy cooperation. The creation of the EU in 1993 was supposed to improve this state of things, and it did - in a lot of situations, the EU now speaks with one (bigger) voice. It might not be as loud as some would like (partially because the UK pushed hard to water down anything defence-related, for fear it would supercede the NATO setup they prefer), but it's there.

Similar considerations apply for the Balkan wars, that started before the EU existed.

On Ukraine: it's not like the US did anything either. Ukraine is not an EU member. The responsibility for guaranteeing Crimea's security, under the Budapest memorandum, sat squarely with the US and... the UK.

So could you name some of the disadvantages that no longer apply with this agreement?

we've taken back control!!1! /s

My post didn't mention the agreement. It was about leaving. The advantages of leaving are in the post you're replying to.

The benefit to the deal is that without the deal, there would be no free trade with the countries the UK does the majority of its free trade with.

In comparison to remaining, the overall decision to leave whilst putting the deal in place ensure that UK [i] decoupled from a political project it had already negotiated an arms-length relationship with [ii] satisfied the sort of person enraged by seeing Polish shops that we could start denying Polish people visas should we wish to do so, whilst net migration is actually expected to continue at similar levels to before and we now face similar mostly theoretical restrictions on our own ability to live in EU countries and [iii] negotiated a slightly larger share of a fish quota, a political priority which has seen significantly more lucrative industries take the hit instead.

We also have more ability to not follow EU law or product/service guidelines, but whether that's a benefit or not depends on which person you ask who's affected by which regulation

It said we're going to get a £350E6 a week on the side of a bus, what more could we need!

It's incredible how powerful that advert was. Did they even show it outside of London?

The four freedoms of the EU are asserting the primacy of free markets and the importance of trade. Much of the rest of the EU is structures to try and tame and regulate the negative effects of these freedoms, and then endlessly work around closing loopholes in the previous regulations.

I think much of the EU laws were breakable / bendable / vetoable especially as one of the large members, so I don't think that was really a concern.

The issue was that the EU was held up as an example onto which to project (in the case of the UK at least) some rather right wing economics. The primacy of markets, the need for competition, the unease of public or cooperative ownership, the importance of trade no matter what was being traded, fiscal responsibility i.e. 'balancing the books' which was the theoretical underpinning for austerity.

It will still function in this role, but maybe with less of a role.

In addition . The Common Agricultural Policy. This is a horrific way of subsidising some environmental destructive practices, and in the case of the UK at least a way of reinforcing regressive historical land ownership and inequality issues. This now ends in the UK.

The main thing I see though is that it will force UK to focus on structural issues in their economy and society and environment that were previously at best just ignored (and contributed themselves to the result of the Brexit vote), at worst assumed that they were being handled by an assumed enlightened and benevolent superstrate. When all that existed was just another artificial power structure that was subject to just the same issues of all power structures; politics, vested interests, lobbying, control by capital, corruption. Only it was of a distance from everyday life and normal political scrutiny and engagement that people could just outsource some idealised values onto it and ignore it or at least offer it none of the scepticism and scrutiny that structures closer to them were subjected to.

Not for the UK, but it's been good for Vladimir Putin and others who want to break up the international order for their own selfish reasons.

(Unless you are very well connected evil billionaire, these reasons probably do not align with those of you or your family)

As documented in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

I know you're getting downvoted because this sounds political but it is true... Russia is related to this and it is much more than any kind of shenanigans with the Brexit referendum. The geopolitical reality is simple... The EU is expanding East and Russia is expanding West, and so the UK does not want to be pulled into a situation like that where the EU is making all of the decisions. Not to say this is the only reason for Brexit. It is just one of a million.

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