It makes travelling in the EU harder, let alone it risks upsetting the Ireland situation. You can expect an international audience to disapprove.
The electoral commission went to great lengths and expense to find any wrong doing and came up with nothing.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20...
Edit: Rant alert: It really irks me that the people who call the Brexit election unfair, don't seem to acknowledge that Britain was never given any kind of referendum when joining the EU
"Although the United Kingdom ratified the treaty in Parliament, this was not without some opposition. Broadly the governing Labour party supported the treaty, while the opposition Conservatives did not. The Liberal Democrats supported the treaty, while calling for a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU as a whole.[119] Several 'Eurosceptic' MPs called for a referendum on the ratification of the treaty. Daniel Hannan pointed out that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair had twice promised a referendum on the matter, to which Blair replied that he had promised a referendum on the European Constitution rather than the Lisbon Treaty, which unlike the former was not a constitutional treaty.[120] In early October 2007, the Commons' European Scrutiny Committee had found that the treaty was "substantially equivalent" to the rejected constitution.[121]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification_of_the_Treaty_of_...
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-w...
Conclusion: Leave.EU was ultimately fined £66,000 in total after their appeal.
Vote Leave Ltd:
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-w...
Conclusion: commission found evidence, issued fines, most significant fines appealed, commission lost appeal and paid costs.
Investigation into payments made to Better for the Country and Leave.EU:
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-w...
Conclusion: The Commission had reasonable grounds to suspect a number of criminal offences and have referred the matter to the National Crime Agency, who investigated and found not much.
They lost their appeal but the Chairman of the Electoral Commission aplogised, and the Met found nothing
The specific offence was that there was collusion between BeLeave and Vote Leave which ultimately meant that money spent by BeLeave was actually supporting Vote Leave's campaign, which was not lawful.
Both 'parties' were fined - Vote Leave and BeLeave/Darren Grimes.
The judge who overturned Grimes's fine did not pass judgement on whether the spending was lawful or not.
The appeal was upheld based on the ruling that the Electoral Commission had not properly done their homework to prove BeLeave's legal status, or justify the maximum fine permissible for Grimes - essentially a procedural error, rather than a factual error.
You're right that there was no referendum for the Treaty of Maastricht which formally created "the European Union", but I think that places undue significance on that single event in terms of the trajectory of the European communities.
Personally, I don't think the Brexit referendum was unfair (what does that even mean?).
I do think that "the Brexit that was voted for" (i.e. the Leave platform) was quite different from "the Brexit that we got", and I therefore have some sympathy with those who ask for another vote. Whether the difference between the two versions of Brexit is down to deliberate lies, misunderstanding of the scope and complexity, wrong expectations about the ease of concluding agreements with trade partners, I cannot even begin to guess.
"Never given any kind of referendum" is far fetched.
When it’s half the country each way, you’re going to get a lot of people with very different ideas on what they voted for even at the best of times; with two different competing leave campaigns and shockingly inept government communications on the topic, it’s even worse.
[0] I’ve tried to engage with someone who blamed “the EU” for Russia annexing the Ukraine.
You mean someone blamed the EU for what Russia did under Catherine the Great (or whenever it was they originally annexed the Ukraine), or you mean someone blamed the EU for Russia annexing Crimea in 2014?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Community
So no, the UK joined the EU in 2009.
Also note:
The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE; commonly referred to as the European Constitution or as the Constitutional Treaty) was an unratified international treaty intended to create a consolidated constitution for the European Union (EU). It would have replaced the existing European Union treaties with a single text, given legal force to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and expanded Qualified Majority Voting into policy areas which had previously been decided by unanimity among member states.
The Treaty was signed on 29 October 2004 by representatives of the then 25 member states of the European Union. It was later ratified by 18 member states, which included referendums endorsing it in Spain and Luxembourg. However, the rejection of the document by French and Dutch voters in May and June 2005 brought the ratification process to an end.
Following a period of reflection, the Treaty of Lisbon was created to replace the Constitutional Treaty. This contained many of the changes that were originally placed in the Constitutional Treaty but, instead of repealing and replacing the existing treaties, simply amended them and abandoned the idea of a single codified constitution. Signed on 13 December 2007, the Lisbon Treaty entered into force on 1 December 2009.
So it was initially reject, some cosmtetic changes were made and it was shoe-horned through. Hardly what I would call democratic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitu...
The "European Union" as an entity came into existence at the time of the Maastricht Treaty (aka Treaty on European Union), and the UK was a signatory to that treaty. That was in 1992.
Could you explain why you think 2009 is the relevant date?
While we did have a referendum to join the EEC, I maintain that the EEC served a very different purpose (being a trade based agreement) to the EU.
The Treaty of Maastricht was passed by parliament, though was never put to the public vote.
The subsequent treaty of Lisbon and consolidation of the EU had no public vote either.
Brexit was a public vote.
It would be interesting to see what would have happened if the other two had been put to the vote
There's a handy dropdown that lets you pick the lie you want to explore.
EDIT: I replied to the wrong comment accidentally due to the delayed rendering from an HN helper extension I use, my apologies. I can't delete the comment once someone has replied to it.
Given what we know about Russian interference in other elections, it would be strange if Putin said "Nah, let's sit this one out..."
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/media-centre/vote-lea...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/29/vote-leave-...
The organisation (Vote Leave) withdrew their appeal, and paid the fine.