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Comment by darkteflon | Hacker News Reader

Won’t ever forgive or forget Brexit. Took away our rights, and the rights of our kids, to live in Europe and to be European. My contempt is boundless.

Edit: Bit surprised at some of these responses. You absolutely can use the word “European” to mean “a participant in the political project that is Europe”. This has nothing to do with ethnicity.

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Nah, thy UK wasn't banished, just decided to leave. If the people will it, it has the right to reapply and queue orderly behind Macedonia and Ukraine.

Accession to the EU isn't dependent on other countries' applications. If Iceland, Norway, the UK, Switzerland or Liechtenstein decided one day they suddenly wanted to be in the EU, they wouldn't go in a queue behind the other applications - they'd rightly be assessed as "Generally aligned" with the all parts of the EU acquis and the process would be relatively quick, all things considered.

Of course they won't reapply any time soon, but that's nothing to do with Ukraine, Macedonia, Turkey, Bosnia, Serbia and all the other countries who are at various staged of the application process.

I don't think it's an ordered queue?

Not that it really matters, I think it would be unwise to readmit the UK unless EU membership becomes overwhelmingly popular, and I don't think that's going to take less than 15 years.

I agree with this, but what I find scary is the prospect that if the gap is too long, you will see the emergence of another generation that is as parochial and anti-Europe as the one I grew up in. The political leaders that took the UK into the EEC in the 1970s did so in the face of a great deal of public opposition.

If I try to be optimistic, perhaps cheap holidays in the sun will keep another generation feeling as connected to Europe as those in the 17-40 range currently seem to be. But I'm not an optimist by nature.

The UK will not survive this. The government's next order of business is to tear up the Northern Ireland Protocol. This unilateral breach of the Withdrawal Agreement reverts the UK to 'no-deal' status. i.e. massive economic pain when we have just gone into a downturn. This will be the straw that breaks Scotland away to return closer to the EU, and maybe even Northern Ireland too.

Welcome to the not-so-united Kingdom of England and Wales. The Queen will die along with her Kingdom as a symbolic cherry on the cake.

If that happens, it will be interesting to see which of the UK’s constituent nations thrives on its own. My money is on England. The Scots will quickly find they can’t fund their current level of public expenditure without English taxpayer’s money.

Scotland would probably adopt the Euro as an independent nation, the EU paying much of that public spending but also tempering it.

1) Hundreds of thousands of British citizens live and work in the EU.

2) The EU is not Europe. Leaving the EU did not stop British citizens from being European.

>The EU is not Europe

I'm starting to understand how Americans get annoyed when people keep going "but the USA is not America"

Are Norwegians and the Swiss European?

Not fully. :)

1) as one of those people, I moved while it was still a right, and am only allowed to stay because it's a grandfathered-in right for people like me. The right — as in, you don't need to ask for permission — no longer exists for single citizenship Brits.

2) Do you also insist on calling Venezuelans "American"? Because that's also technically accurate, in a way most people consider hair-splitting.

> 2) Do you also insist on calling Venezuelans "American"? Because that's also technically accurate, in a way most people consider hair-splitting.

I find the distinction worth making because I refuse to let pro-EU people co-opt the European identity for their own purposes. I am British and European. Whether Britain is in the EU is irrelevant.

OK, so you're British and European, but (now) you cannot travel, work or live freely across the vast majority of the territory that even you would call Europe. Your "European-ness" would seem to be some sort of cultural thing rather than any set of actual rights or legal identity.

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