Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmyteh | Hacker News Reader

It does, and did: Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty[0]. It says that "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements" and sets out a procedure for negotiating an exit agreement, with a backstop provision for an exit without an agreement if one can't be agreed.

The actual procedure hasn't been perfect (six months turns out to be too short a period to negotiate a future relationship from scratch, and there are some awkward game theory problems with extensions to that period needing unanimous approval) but the principle that a state can leave is both clearly written down and entirely uncontested. Disagreements have been about the scope of the future relationship, not the principle that the UK can leave and have the treaties cease to apply.

[0]: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eut/teu/article/50

View on HN

This is news to me, because I was told repeatedly by the anti-Brexit people that this was unthinkable, there was no method in place, and so on, and so Brexit shouldn't occur because no procedures had been made for it. I didn't buy that reasoning, but I had foolishly assumed that they were telling the truth. More fool I, I guess.

Are you in the UK - there was a lot of coverage about "Article 50" at the time it was invoked.

Nope, US. I also found the "We should vote again, and vote the right way this time!" thing baffling, but again, it was an outsider's view.

That was more based upon nobody having a clear vision of what leaving the EU should look like. Even amongst the Brexit crowd some wanted single market membership and some did not. Some wanted to pull out of completely unrelated organisations that just so happen to have the word 'Europe' in the name.

I personally feel that side won by promising many conflicting visions to different groups and not being able to deliver when they won the vote.

One of the most accurate predictions about Brexit was made by Nigel Farage, one of the leaders of the Brexit campaign - this was before the referendum:

"“In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way."

Of course he was thinking of a 52-48 vote for Remain - but his point is still valid.

Yes, but he also wasn't thinking about the four subsequent years in which anti-Brexit forces tried everything they could (and more) to stop the duly passed referendum from actually taking effect. That went a long way toward causing the collapse of Labour's "red wall" in northern England in the 2019 election.

FWIW the trend in the vulnerable 'red wall' seats has been towards the Conservatives for decades. This is partly as a result of partisan and class dealignment, and partly because the Labour-leaning forces of the organised working class have been in retreat there since the 70s. A former mining area like Bolsover, for example, has moved to vote more like similarly situated semi-rural, increasingly elderly, and low-wage areas since the pits closed.

Brexit also a factor in '19, of course, but those seats are red in history and not any more in demographics.

That’s a very strange thing for anti-Brexit people to have told you. The existence of Article 50 was sufficiently well known before the referendum itself that the BBC wrote about it in “what happens next” hypotheticals months ahead of the vote itself: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35946617

Reply on news.ycombinator.com