After seven years of Brexit talks, Europe has emerged as the clear winner
economist.com
economist.com
Barriers on trade and travel were raised without purpose other than having barriers.
Even the brexiteers lost their mojo as their purpose of existence disappeared and a particularly incompetent and toxic breed of politicians dominated the political discussions. Those too lost by getting exposed for what they are, destroying the support for legitimate position which those were pretending to stand for.
Absolutely no winners. Any perceived winners are temporary simply because you don't have anything to win by destroying your tight and fruitful relationship with your closest neighbours and you can't move somewhere else.
In that sense, EU kind of prevailed. But yes, not really better off.
Democracies for some reason seem to shoot themselves in the foot periodically when a popular idea takes hold despite rational arguments against it. If you can come up with a good sounding idea that is devoid of facts, dumb citizens will gleefully support it.
— EM Forster
Libertarianism and communism may be naive, but as I understand it, they aren't forms of government, as in "providing a framework for governance".
Democracy, authoritarianism, fascism, monarchy, oligarchy, anarchy - those are all forms of government.
this is a terrific turn of phrase. thanks.
plus don't conflate low info to == low intelligence. low info is as much about attention and willingness to delve into policies as it is about sharpness. your Stanford STEM grad working 60 hours a week doesn't have time to dig deep into anything outside of some casual reddit or wired or HN browsing, and efforts to convey expectations via simple things like screenshoting someone else's tweets work very well.
I would however argue that low info often correlates with low access to info. Or perhaps more correctly, you don’t know what you don’t know, so you don’t know to look.
If theres anything I’ve learned as I’ve become older it’s how little I know about anything.
You can also apply the same thinking to "rational", fact-based ideas held by intellectuals.
Sometimes they backfire in horrific ways and you need the truck drivers of the world to keep you in line.
— Winston Churchill (probably not, actually, but it's usually attributed to him)
Or just read any poli-sci research concerning voters. It's basically all horrifying and/or depressing.
I’d love to invite more folks to give feedback and think about some of these ideas. It is possible to design a better system, but somewhere along the way we sort of gave up on doing more than incremental reform. I'm currently still laying foundations, but hope to be laying out a worked out proposal within the next few months.
https://bestofagreatlot.substack.com/p/a-beginning https://bestofagreatlot.substack.com/p/table-of-contents
To which one would reply...
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form...
Your other points may be “true” but in a rather hollow way. We’re all subsidizing the impact of fossil fuel waste for example, it just isn’t correctly accounted for.
> and think that learning to live with cheap fickle solar is a smaller problem
Even if we accept this to be true now, we will have been burning fossil fuels for over a century by the time we actually learn to live with solar at a scale relevant to climate change. I place blame for that squarely on low information liberals.
The waste problem isn't solved. It's entirely a political problem rather than a technical problem, but it's still a problem.
> we will have been burning fossil fuels for over a century by the time we actually learn to live with solar at a scale relevant to climate change.
In 2015, wind&solar was 5.7% of US electricity generation. In 2021 it was 13%. In 2022 it was 16.5%. How can you extrapolate from that and come up with a century?
You may argue that the x, y, a and b are wrong, and therefore the conclusions is wrong. Well, fine, as you please. What I'm saying is that learning about x, y, a and b, then forming conclusions, is a high-information mode.
It isn't necessarily the case that low-information voters are distributed equally across the political spectrum.
> what bad policies were enacted as a result of such voters
It's not a legal policy, but consider usage of the word "latinx" which most Americans of Latin American heritage strongly dislike.
Last I saw, the majority don’t care: https://news.gallup.com/poll/353000/no-preferred-racial-term...
Combine this with the decimation of the middle class and democracy has a big problem.
The average person has an IQ of 100. Given that average IQ is defined as being one standard deviation of average, the vast majority of voters are between low intelligence and average intelligence. About 84% of voters thus have low-to-average intelligence (68% fits in one standard deviation of average; 68/2 + 50 = 84%).
Regardless of your political leaning, I think it’s worthwhile accepting that most governments are elected by people who aren’t as smart as the typical HN contributor.
Either way, even if it's true that some significant percentage of voters have below-average IQ, how strong is the evidence that they'll make a "worse" collective choice of government than those with above-average IQs? That's basically assuming that the properties of candidates that will ensure they can act as part of an effective government are somehow "too hard" to accurately judge unless you have above average IQ. It seems just as possible the opposite is true - i.e. those with above average IQ aren't good at judging the sorts of properties candidates need to be govern effectively - at least partly because that implies being able to govern in way that works well for those in the below-average-IQ group (i.e. those in the above-average-IQ group will probably do reasonably well for themselves regardless of the quality of government).
Google provides many hits of people using average to mean within one standard deviation, or 85-115, but in a few minutes of searching I couldn't figure out a proper authority for that.
- Antivaccine politics (before covid) was mostly liberal.
- Progressive regulation of housing construction/affordable housing policies in liberal cities are (probably) well intentioned but economically naive
- Some environmental policies (banning plastic straws, grocery bags, some water conservation efforts) are again well intentioned but a complete waste of breath for either side.
Most people living in democracies don't really understand - or just don't think about - how good they have it. At the same time, the human brain is wired to react strongly to outrage. Living the sweet life in a democracy, and with less valid things to outrage about, the brain is vulnerable to outrage exploitation about manufactured controversies, like who must bake a cake for who, or whether this statue or that should be allowed to stand in the park. Social media hostility and polarisation flourish.
But when the chips are down and democracy itself is at stake, people wake up and start thinking more rationally about the things that really matter.
Case in point from a news article this morning - Ukraine is normalising LGBTQ attitudes rapidly because suddenly their democracy is at risk. And suddenly it seems more sensible to have your LGBTQ neighbour alongside you in the trenches rather than hating on them because of your weird religious hangups or whatever (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/03/07/russias-wa...).
So perhaps democracy does indeed shoot itself in the foot, but perhaps also the system can be self-balancing when things finally go off the rails or a threat from outside arrives.
My bet is that this is just signaling to their western allies(us) but hopefully I am wrong.
Absolutely not.
It was because the HST added an extra 7% tax onto a whole ton of things that were exempt from the 7% PST previously. The HST was costing people a lot money on everyday items.
Yeah when most things start cost an extra 7% in tax, you're going to mobilize people against you.
There's a reason our democracies are representative democracies. It allows things to slow down and our representatives to have cooler heads and make informed decisions.
In contrast a referendum is easily instantly hijacked and there's never any guarantee that the way people are voting in the referendum has anything actually to do with the referendum issue.
In BC's case with the HST the vote on the tax quickly became a way to poke the unpopular Premier Gordon Campbell in the eye, and many people voted against the HST to make a point against a government that they were mad at for other reasons.
Referendums are bad bad bad.
Referendums were effectively used to limit their rights for decades upon decades longer than other democracies.
Russia, of course.
Their investments in Murdoch media and other hyperpartisan media and disinformation-warfare techniques have paid massive dividends - the US is the most hyper-polarized it's been since the civil war, the UK has been pulled out of the EU fold are both massive successes. Australia and Canada and several other countries are dealing with similar polarization - although of course not Murdoch media in Canada, but it's not a coincidence that the other three are all Murdoch strongholds.
Not a coincidence the NRA got busted for funnelling russian money into US politics and working hand-in-glove with russian intelligence operators, and I don't think they're the only one, not even close. Just as the republican majority leader noted in 2017 - there's probably even a few specific congresspeople and other powerful politicians on the Russian payroll. Throw in a few shells for plausible deniability and it's all for sale.
The performative theatrics around ukraine have certainly been interesting and I don't think it's all just ritual opposition to whatever the party in power is doing either. The politicians McCarthy identified have been particularly outspoken too.
As they say: "Lock it up, no leaks, that's how we know we're family here."
(and as far as Brexit goes they undoubtedly funnelled a lot of money to certain campaigns, but Mail/Murdoch coverage of the EU in the UK was just as hysterical in the 1990s when Russia was a non factor)
What does a regular russian citizen gain from increased corruption in EU - that used to be Russia's biggest trading partner? Or from a potential civil war in US, that is the source of most progress and new technology in the world?
Once the Russian people can do that, the rest of us can too.
What is the difference between the people and the regime? The GOP lost elections; they voted in Obama, and later Biden. Control of the House and Senate changes, or is often perilously close.
There is no such change in Russia. There is only the regime, and it's grasp on the country is stronger than ever.
> Or from a potential civil war in US, that is the source of most progress and new technology in the world?
the only ones who think civil war is a real possibility in the US are foreign intelligence types pushing for destabilization, or a handful of GOP politicians trying to ride the hard right for their advantage. for all of the Texas will be independent grandstanding, it's just that -- grandstanding.
On the flip side, the UK remains a global power with significant influence although Brexit was a needless shot in the foot. This is something that a lot of Europeans forget in their attempt to paint Brexit as a disaster - something it definitely is. The UK is a diminished power, but still a power.
TIL
In 10 or 20 years when most of the leave voters die out and a new generation of politicians grows up it's completely possible for UK to re-join the EU.
It will be interesting to see if that new generation stick to their current political beliefs in 10 or 20 years.
The older generation who were most heavily in favour of Brexit were the same younger generation who voted for the EU's predecessor at the previous referendum a few decades earlier. A person's political views can change over time. And of course so can both the UK and the EU.
On the other hand the traditional patterns of individual political evolution and voting behaviour in British politics haven't really held recently and no-one seems to know why yet. So we shouldn't assume that younger voters who skew pro-EU at present will turn into older voters who skew the other way in a decade or two.
As an example GDPR is great for protecting privacy, but makes data mining for businesses really hard. Great for people, but on the long term these protections can weaken the economy which makes EU more and more vulnerable to outside control.
At the same time it's not a new thing: it's happening gradually over the last few hundreds of years.
Also in US people are fat and die much sooner than Western-Europeans (health is the most important thing a country can provide in my opinion).
With AI coming tech is really taking over from oil in importance (especially long term), so I'm not that worried about it as much as the incompetency and mismanaged EU money that should just go to the venture funds instead of how its distributed.
Yah there are economic costs to brexit but surely self-determination has some value right?
EU is not some Belgian club you subscribe to, Brussels is just a location for meeting with your partners. People who make the EU laws were British, among others.
EU is useful when you want to have interoperability and resolve conflicts before they happen.
So essentially, if you like to have flying cars that can travel across all the Europe, your people posted in Brussels come to agreement with the others on the flux capacitor fuel types and pass an EU law. Then your people at home pass a domestic law that follows the EU law and you end up with standardized flux capacitor fuels.
As a result being in EU gives you the say on what suits you so the EU law be designed that way. When out of the EU, EU does it’s own thing and if you like to sell flying cars to EU, you need to comply to their flux capacitor requirements anyway(AKA Brussels effect). That’s why Brexit made trade with EU so bureaucratic.
amongst other abuses of their powers
They get to impose modern requirements when pieces of the UK want to rejoin
The UK wasnt part of the monetary union and all I guess is that some import export duties have to be reimplemented and now counted differently.
France was an original founding member of NATO but partially withdrew in 1966 for reasons not unlike the UK leaving the EU, populist nationalism. They returned 43 years later.
My guess is that Scotland will leave the UK and join the EU. Maybe in 50 years a rump England will apply to re-join.
UK leaving the EU is like losing your USB-C port.
EU citizens can still get to London, UK citizens can still go on holiday in Europe
work visas are needed for more now
It also served to provide an excellent stress-test of the EU bureaucracy, helping to increase coordination pretty much everywhere.
It looks like it will further serve to provide yet another stimulus to the subjects of the UK to modernise their systems, which is very long overdue.
But any politician sensible and capable enough of achieving that would have been against Brexit in the first place, and would have to deal with the sniping of idiots that were for Brexit and promising the moon on a stick.
> 1. Norway option: Staying in the EU Single Market and leaving the Customs Union would mean full access to the Single Market for both goods and services, but the UK would have to continue to abide by the EU’s four freedoms, including freedom of movement. […]
> 2. Turkey option: Leaving the EU Single Market and EU Customs Union, but creating a new customs union with the EU. This would ensure tariff-free trade for goods covered by new customs union, but mean applying the EU’s common external tariff for trade to those goods imported from other countries. […]
> 3. Leaving the Single Market and Customs Union, but negotiating a new bespoke bilateral free trade and customs agreement. […] Swiss, Ukraine, Canada as examples
> 4. World Trade Organization (WTO) option: Leaving the Single Market and Customs Union without a deal. […]
* https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/...
But is that what they did?
I did not vote to Leave but I think it is also a case of direction. Even outside the EU and the UK, I think people look at the direction the EU is going and realise it is a bit mad. Those differences would only have grown over time with the UK because unemployment is so low and govt is naturally turning towards supply-side reforms. Some countries in Europe have been doing supply-side reforms since the early 90s.
Even here in the mainland, the ECB is being forced to stop printing money at the usual rate.
The last PM didn't cut taxes and didn't grow the budget. The vast majority of her policies did not happen.
The ECB has not stopped printing money because they aren't selling bonds and are (I believe) still intervening in Southern Europe bond markets because of their dire fiscal situation. The BoE stopped QE and began selling bonds in February 2021. Still far too late, but the ECB has (imo) gone so far with QE that it is impossible to stop (iirc, most new corporate loans in most of Western Europe are now govt-guaranteed...their intervention into banking has been far deeper than any other country).
Brexit was never a plan, it was a slogan. The vote had no realistic framing for what the status of things between the EU and UK would be, or any other details. Everyone was free to imagine any outcome they please, and quite a number imagined they'd be richer.
I will give you a brief precis. UK announces they are leaving, projections that hundreds of thousands of jobs will go from the City, massive drop in trade and growth, and that the EU will never concede anything in negotiations.
Time has now passed. The number of jobs gone is likely negative, projections that have found positive numbers (usually in the thousands) typically use any job created in Europe in financial services as a job "taken" from the City...the number is still tiny.
Trade with the EU is above pre-Brexit levels. Exports are growing slowly but that is because the EU is growing slowly. Exports to RoW are up (but the main issue with the UK remains supply growth, even if we were in the EU it wouldn't change the fact that unemployment is extremely low).
EU has conceded everything. The 2019 deal was regarded as totally impossible, it happened. The EU turned NI into a political football then people started being shot in NI, and they have conceded that now too.
Btw, you are right...you didn't need to know much about trade or economics to know this. I do happen to know a bit about both, but it was obvious before because trade is based on mutual interest. The EU is highly protectionist, but the UK is such a large trading partner that the eventual outcome (a deal that resulted in no costs for either side) was predictable...but no-one was making that prediction beforehand (and, unfortunately, much of the debate in the UK is composed of people who made very confident-sounding predictions without much understanding of economics, and were wrong).
That’s a pretty bizarre interpretation of events given that it was the UK that threatened to unilaterally abandon the Northern Ireland protocol as a negotiating tactic
The reason why the UK had to look at unilateral action was: because the EU wouldn't negotiate (the original position paper was made with the premise that the UK would actually go back on Brexit and that the issue could be used to force another vote), because NI hadn't had a govt for years as a result, and because terrorist attacks were increasing. This isn't a negotiating tactic, the EU attempted to break up the UK in order to "win" at Brexit.
You may call that a "bizarre interpretation" but the Windsor framework accepted this because all the EU's previous reservations were dropped entirely (i.e. they were negotiating tactics).
The mistake that previous UK govts made was to accept the EU turning the UK's territorial integrity into an issue over, essentially, a trade deal.
please give details?
please explain the costs and screw up to our military of pulling out of Galileo??
What has been the military cost of Brexit in Ukraine? The UK had to lead alone at the start, as we would have done in the EU. Foreign policy generally is one of the key advantages because, so far, the EU fails to be serious.
The US has funded their defence for decades: anti-US. Blocked sanctions on Iran. Helped Russia break off Ukraine. Now moving closer to China. If the EU wants to do that, fine. But I don't see why any country needs to go along with that because Germany says so.
I did NOT say anything about Ukraine - I'm talking about the next generation stuff, not the older stuff Ukraine is getting
UK has gone to the 3rd country status and lost (Billions) crap loads of research on weapons - why do you think the gov has done the laughable investment in to OneWeb??
but Money does not seem to factor in to any discussions??
Money? France is the only European country that spends anywhere close to the amount required by NATO on defence. European countries rely very heavily on the US. If we were in the EU, Europe is still not going to spend enough.
OneWeb merged with Eutelsat. Iirc, the UK invested in OneWeb at a £1bn valuation, and the Eutelsat transaction valued OneWeb at just under £3bn. The UK govt gets a stake in the largest satellite company in Europe, it does so at a lower price by making a shrewd investment in a company in bankruptcy, and all outside of the EU.
strangly this was never discussed by the racist gammons wittering on about take back control
Fair views on Brexit are hard to have in general but the idea the "common consensus" (or more specifically, the media consensus) is giving a fair one is nonsense.
other trolls -- get a look at this, you need to be copying this approach.
Brexit, COVID, China, and a dig at what is implied to be mainstream media. Some masterfully crafted dog-whistles here.
Some people's brains are so addled they think they hear dog whistles when really it is an original thought struggling to breakthrough from the sludge they've buried their mind with. No bigger tell these days for someone being an ideologue than dog whistle talk.
Even the FBI is saying the lab leak is the most likely cause of Covid now. Must be a dog whistle I suppose (rolls eyes)
EU Agreeing to everything? Like giving access to the single market? Nope, that't didn't happen.
The City of London not losing its business to Frankfurt etc. is true though.
Also, some bureaucracy jobs are probably created to deal with all the compliance requirements for selling to EU through the new free trade deal.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_empire.png
It took a lot of political insanity to turn that into what it is now. Not sure what it means but all of those countries wanted independence from the empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_have_ga...
oh they missed Scotland(1320) ha-ha
this is very effective, esp. in the US, because we've ignored huge systemic problems across multiple demographics for decades. there are a lot of issues to hammer.
less so in Europe, but there are still real issues to hammer.
social media made it far easier to track and chart these issues and how people respond to them -- in real-time. and since most are publicly traded companies, they have no incentive to actually make things better -- they gotta keep that stock price up.
I didn't know it would coincide with two other economic challenges: COVID, and Ukraine. Disentangling the effects of those three events is like trying to decode entrails; and anyway, I think "it's too early to say" (Chou Enlai).
I have no Bregret.
What positive things do you think came out of Brexit?
It almost always comes from people who didn't care about economics until Brexit, and now won't shut up about it...whilst being completely unaware of the lack of substance of their argument...they just read something on the BBC website written by a 21-year old politics grad (btw, this is the real issue with the UK, the Cabinet is one of the only places in British society where you actually have people who are up to the job...and I am not a Tory or Leave voter).
The positive things are the things you see happening: financial deregulation, enterprise zones/freeports, greater political agency over economic decisions (this sounds soft, but the difference in spirit is huge...dirigiste corporatism is popular with the civil servant elite as in Brussels...voters here just don't like it), reorienting trade towards growing economies, can choose not to move closer to China/Russia, the list goes on and on.
I will say this another way: if the UK didn't leave, would GDP have been higher? No. It wouldn't have been lower either. Brexit offers more opportunities in the future, it is up to govt to take them but by itself it has very little economic significance.
Insufficient regulation is the eternal excuse...it is like saying that your business failed because you can't beat your staff to force them to work more hours. No-one wants to talk about the fact that most regulators are idiots, and will fuck it up (which they have done post-GFC, we have given massive powers to the BoE and they have done nothing else but cause financial problems...but the media just wants to talk about "the bankers, the bonuses").
Either way, you are seeing the UK move very swiftly towards the heavy corporatist banking system in Europe which requires bailouts and subsidies every few years (you are complaining about the GFC, Europe has been doing GFC-size interventions to save their banking system every few years SINCE the GFC). Financial deregulation is the only way to stop this. It will be huge for growth because the UK's financial markets are ossifying heavily under current regs.
> financial deregulation, enterprise zones/freeports, greater political agency over economic decisions
we cannot do deviate much from the norms any way, otherwise we'll lose access to the free market
and where are all these new trade deals that are better than the EU's?
Lets face it, the EU has been a massive misdirection for the tories and the propaganda papers to hide their huge failings
let not talk about the massive f*k up of NI issue or the fact Scotland will try and get independance if given the chance, the massasive screw up to our miltary by coming out of Galilieo
I didn't mention trade deals. Exports outside the EU are up significantly, exports to the EU are above pre-Brexit levels but have continued to stagnate due to weak growth in the EU.
The massive misdirection argument is just...bizarre. I have no idea why people believe this...you see this literally every time the govt does anything good amongst people who seem to be terminally online.
NI issues have been solved due to the EU deciding that attempting to break up another country to reverse a democratic decision wasn't a great look. Independence in Scotland has never had a majority and still isn't particularly close to it. Military? Most EU countries do not spend the required amount by NATO (btw, this Galileo thing is some kind of bot online comment that I have seen elsewhere...Remainers are genuinely the biggest bot thinkers, "this is just a distraction", "Galileo", "where are the trade deals"...you are arguing with ghosts in your head).
>No, we won't. This is a common misconception amongst people who stopped reading about Brexit after it happened...the deal we got largely preserves access to the Single Market and will allow regulatory divergence.
Have a read of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU%E2%80%93UK_Trade_and_Cooper... - mainlt the part..... " For its part, the EU insisted that the price for UK access to the European Single Market was compliance with EU subsidies, social, environmental and other regulations to avoid distorting competition in the single market."
so you're completely wrong there
>I didn't mention trade deals. Exports outside the EU are up significantly, exports to the EU are above pre-Brexit levels but have continued to stagnate due to weak growth in the EU.
Uk is almost in recession, where the rest of the EU is doing relatively very well
>The massive misdirection argument is just...bizarre
It will be you, if you've no idea why cameron presented the non binding referendum in the first place
>NI issues have been solved due to the EU deciding that attempting to break up another country to reverse a democratic decision wasn't a great look.
really? I'm not even going to answer that drivel - almost straight from daily express
They said it: they "objected to the EU on political and economic grounds" and now they are out of the EU.
> Sure, leaver's favorite excuse "Things got worse, but it's not because of Brexit".
That's not true, they said that they expected a short term economical decline: "and I figured we could recover, in about a decade, economically.".
I wonder if chatGPT could remind you if you flood your favourite phrases on a comment that they don't hold.
No doubt the areas of politics you take an interest in are different from the ones I do, but in almost every area I saw policies that no-one wanted being forced through with the excuse that it was an EU requirement, and putting an end to that is enough to justify Brexit. Trust and accountability in the political system is priceless.
Politically, there are no shared constituencies. I don't mean in the sense of individual candidates; I mean there are no cross-border leaders or parties. We barely know the names of the party leaders in neighbouring countries. The EU is a treaty organisation, not a shared democracy.
Policy initiatives come from the Commission, which is a collection of political has-beens, failed politicians that are of no further value in their own countries. The European Council is simply an ad-hoc gathering of representatives of the government of the day in their respective countries; as a body, it has no legityimacy whatsoever. The third leg of EU "democracy" is the EU Parliament. Apart from it's lack of electoral legitimacy, it was deliberately made feeble. It can't initiate legislation. Debates in the parliament chamber are so polite and decorous that it's impossible to stay awake - nobody listens to broadcasts of proceedings in the EU Parliament.
The EU is very corrupt. To a large extent, that is because it is free from proper oversight; in theory, the Parliament is a constraint on the power of the executive (the Commission). In practise, the EU has exercised that power only once, when it became clear that roughly all Commissioners were corrupt. The only power they had was to sack the entire Commission, which they did. Once. And it didn't make much difference. The Parliament's powers have since been increased a little, I know.
In theory, the EU has a border with common rules. In practice, that's not how it works; EU member nations just love it when the refugees they have admitted decide to leave for another European country, relying on Free Movement. They build fences to stop people entering, but not to stop people leaving.
A number of very authoritarian countries from the East were admitted to the EU a couple of decades ago, and they are doing things like sacking judges that disagree with the government. The EU is doing nothing to prevent this kind of behaviour, although it is a violation of the treaties between member states. I don't want to be in a treaty organisation with racists and dictators.
There; I hope that helps.
Also curious what you think of the perspective that acknowledges most of the dysfunction you're naming while considering it part of the growing pains of figuring out how to do transnational politics as a species. RE no cross-border parties, what about parties like Volt Europa?
I don't know anywhere there is a clear, plain and unbiased presentation of the EU institutions.
As regards growing pains, I think the problems are not a matter of adjustments that need to be made; they are fundamental to the principles of the EU. The idea was to create a region where nations would not go to war with one-another, because they were bound together by trade.
For that to work, trade had to be conducted on a level playing field; that meant free movement of capital and labour, so that corporations could invest where the profits were greatest. At the same time, there had to be controls on government subsidies; governments were supposed to privatise everything, and could not use taxpayer money to help their national champions.
The UK privatised nearly everything; other countries weren't so enthusiastic.
Without these rules, the EU is nothing.
I don't see how the EU can "grow up" out of that. It's not a set of policies, that can be tweaked by a stroke of the legislative pen every few years; it's a bunch of international treaties, with 27 signatories, with many of the signatories having held national referendums on them.
Regarding "Volt Europa": I've never heard of it. Are they new? They've never canvassed me, so perhaps they came into existence since Brexit. Ah - in the 2021 local elections, Volt UK stood one council candidate, somewhere in Warwickshire. They've never stood a candidate for the UK Parliament, nor any European Parliament candidates. They've never won an election. Apparently they are federalists; even among pro-Europeans in UK, not many want to subordinate the UK to an EU super-state.
You lost me here. Recover from what, exactly? You've alluded to some problems here - which I'm happy to consider as valid - but you haven't described them as anything but "political" and "economic". Was Britain on some terrible downhill plummet in these areas?
It wans't a plummet; it's that the EU is designed to prevent certain kinds of political change, in particular changes that I want to see. By staying in the EU, we'd be accepting that we can't ever make those kinds of changes. I don't think we should make that kind of concession.
That's the politics; as for the economics, I don't share the German view of how to manage the European economy. Germany dominates European banking and finance. I think European bankers have made some awful decisions in the last couple of decades, and we have been dragged along. I don't think Tory economics is any better; but we won't have neo-liberals running the UK forever.
Zero regret. Leaving is heart surgery and within 10 years of officially leaving I don't think we'll be worse off.
And for that matter, the UK is slightly better off than a severed limb.
Still, I love the vividness of this analogy and will probably steal it from you...
Not only have we lost huge swathes of close-quarters financial industry to Berlin et al, suffer shortages thanks —in part— to producers and consumers being unwilling to swallow import duties, massive interruptions to what's left of local manufacturing, and all the other rubbish that's distracting us daily…
… All of that and we still have to suffer the idiots who pushed this. In 2019 the party in power distilled itself into Brexit loyalists and it wasn't a good crop that year. The few with an IQ over 100, are cartoon evil. "Eat the poor" grade stuff. They've ennobled a lot of the people who made Brexit happen to lifetime positions in power.
And 20% of the electorate still thinks this —and all the other rubbish they've been doing— is okay. It's well beyond nationalism.
There's a lot of history; and we're not trusted, for fairly good reasons.
I think all of us, the UK and the EU, will benefit in the long run.
Additionally, COVID and Ukraine have caused significant disruptions that put a stop to the entire process.
In my view, we'll need to wait until the end of the decade, at a minimum, to determine whether remaining in the EU or striking out on one's own was the correct decision.
Nor the US "health care" system, or US "food standards".