The UK's Association to Horizon Europe and Copernicus

> It could also be argued that 16-year olds could have been given a say in their entire future

Having chatted to a few of that age group about the subject, I agree. That generation is also more flexible, more mobile than the last, so I doubt they would think twice about leaving the UK in pursuit of better opportunities abroad.

I mean, if I was 16 again, moving to the EU for Schengen access alone would be highly attractive !

> the euro and schengen

The UK was never going to join the euro, that was one of the major carve-outs. There are also other EU countries operating outside the euro and highly-unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Technically the UK was not in Schengen, sure, again it was another UK carve-out. But with the EU passport there was no practical difference for the holder, you had the same freedom of movement in the Schengen area as a UK(EU) passport holder.

Leaving the EU also meant loss of access to EU security databases etc., which is why "stopping the boats" is harder from outside than within.

I don't see why UK citizens abroad should get a vote; they should vote abroad.

You're right that 16 year olds deserve a vote. It's their future, and 16 year olds are smart and politically engaged.

Also there were huge other legitimacy issues, like dodgy donations. And data breaches and highly, highly targeted advertising, allowing Cambridge Analytics to buy a result.

That's on top of the leave prospectus (essentially, EFTA + EEA, before the vote) being reinterpreted as the hardest Brexit imaginable.

> It wasn’t a fair vote because of deliberate disenfranchisement.

the franchise was identical to that for general elections

any attempt to alter the franchise for the referendum would have been rightly seen as gerrymandering

> UK citizens settled abroad weren’t allowed a say because the vote was only “advisory”.

over the past 7 years I've not heard this one before!

it is not possible to have a binding referendum in the UK due to parliamentary sovereignty, all referendums are "advisory"

people living abroad retain their right to vote for 15 years (and regain it if they come back)

Re "fair vote"

It wasn't the advisory nature of the referendum which denied some British citizens living abroad a say, it was that they'd been domiciled abroad for at least certain number of years. That has long been a rule of our system. Those folks also did not get to vote in UK general elections.

The vote by the citizens within the UK was largely in the end an irrelevance, due to the consequences of the Miller court case, which pushed the decision back to Parliament. It ensured that the referendum actually was advisory in fact, as well as in law. So any arguments about the fairness of the referendum are moot.

The Parliament had a vote on if, and under what conditions, to authorise the sending of the Article 50 notification. They chose to allow it, and to do so with no conditions whatsoever. Giving the government of the day a "blank cheque".

That is the vote people should complain of, the MPs were generally whipped, and overwhelmingly voted to grant the blank cheque to leave.

The MPs could have chosen to either not pass the Bill, or attach whatever conditions to it. There would be no legal recourse if they had done so - but they may not have been re-elected.

World War II was in practice not a choice. The timing is a choice. But basically once Hitler controls Germany, it's going to invade its neighbours and it's going to win, and the UK only has a choice of whether and where to fight - if it won't fight it becomes at best a client state, taking orders from Hitler's Germany under threat of invasion once the Germans control mainland Europe. Eventually it will be under German control de facto.

For example, as a party to the war, Britain's navy is of course entitled to fire upon German vessels, or ostensibly neutral vessels clearly operating under German control, in the strait. This capability makes Sea Lion (amphibious invasion of Britain) essentially suicide, German troop barges would be destroyed by British Navy vessels, and even if some of the British vessels are damaged or destroyed in the process the manpower losses for Germany are devastating. However if Britain is not a party to the war, those troop barges can just cross the strait unmolested, with no naval support - right up until the troops disembark and begin seizing control of British ports.

I was referring to “The conditions for associating the UK were not opportune, in view of the overall EU-UK relationship”, but there are other sentences like that in the document. It’s a diplomat’s way of calling them untrustworthy bastards. Which is fair (they are referring to May, Johnson and Truss, all of them are liars of the worst sort), but I do wish the facts were otherwise.

I don’t blame the EC for saying it, I just regret that the UK took such a destructive path.