Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

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It was a good idea in principle.

It was a reaction to regulatory over-reach by unelected officials on the continent, which even those officials acknowledged at the time: https://www.politico.eu/article/jean-claude-juncker-says-eu-...

Yet I don't think that anybody can argue that it was handled well. It was handled abysmally poorly.

- The regulatory burden on individuals and small businesses has increased quite dramatically since Brexit. New customs declarations, VAT rules, compliance checks, etc.

- Transit of goods to and from EU states is now many times more difficult than it was, and a lot of European firms simply don't want to ship to the UK any longer.

- Temporary skilled immigration from places like Poland and Romania has been replaced by permanent and largely unskilled immigration from places like Pakistan. En masse. Much to the consternation of Brexit voters, who have, for the most part, simply become anti-status-quo voters.

The impression I get is that the UK political establishment reclaimed some control over its laws, regulations, and borders -- and proceeded to spite the populace with them. Maybe they wanted revenge for being forced into a Brexit they didn't want to go through with. "We'll give it to 'em, good and hard."

> It was a reaction to regulatory over-reach by unelected officials on the continent

It's quite funny to see that 5 years after Brexit the UK is still governed by unelected bureaucrats, including a few Russians in the House of Lords.

Are they going to get rid of hereditary membership for the House of Lords?

I'm not sure how the 3 points you mentioned could have not ended like this.

For example, for point 2, what do you expect? That somehow EU states will provide to UK all the advantages of being in the union even if it is a bad strategy for them while at the same time UK does not give them any advantages?

The Brexit took a really long time to be installed. There were TONS of people telling "ok, the previous one is an idiot, put me in charge and I will reach the greatest deal ever", then failing and being replaced by someone saying the same. And a lot of these people were actively pro-brexit from the start, so it's hard to believe they fudged it on purpose. Also, what would be the point? They are also living in UK, and they are politician here. Surely, it is in their interest to get a strong country and be seen as a hero rather than as an incompetent.

A more realistic hypothesis is simply that it is just impossible to reach a perfect situation where you have the cake and eat it.

Referring to 'unelected officials' highlights a misunderstanding of how the EU operates and getting really tiring. They are named like most executive of other countries and confirmed by the EU parliament. The French prime minister is even more an unelected official than a EU commmissioner.

In the US, executive branch functionaries don't get to propose legislation, and even their ability to interpret rules has recently been constrained.

The EU commission consists of appointed bureaucrats, and one's national representatives in the EU commission and the EU parliament are always -- by definition -- a minority. I think that the UK's old share was something like 9%, which was not nearly enough to pass or block legislation without a lot of outside assistance.

Simply put, there was no way for a voter in the UK to meaningfully affect EU regulations. There was -- and still is -- essentially zero democratic influence at the member-state level.

But similarly, for a voter in Kansas, there is no way for them to meaningfully affect US regulation: Kansas people and representatives are a minority when taken at the level of the US, and they will not be enough to pass or block legislation without a lot of non-Kansas assistance. (and, sure, Kansas also has its own laws, the same way being in the EU does not mean each country does not have their own government able to take a lot of decisions independently of the EU decisions)

Sure, but there are important differences.

Kansas is run by officials who are formally affiliated with the national political parties -- the Democrats or Republicans -- and in most cases they'll push the party line. In the UK, if you're an old-school Tory, which is a sizable portion of the national voting demographic, the majority of the political parties in the EU commission and parliament will not reflect, promote, or support many of the positions you feel most comfortable with. The EU commission and parliament are dominated by centrist, pan-European blocs (e.g., EPP, S&D, Renew Europe) that rarely align with Tory priorities.

Kansas itself is not a uniparty state; the current governor is a Democrat, the former was a Republican. The EU, in contrast, had (and still has) an entrenched majority that is to the Tories as the Democracts are to Republicans -- and there's no prospect of that changing. So, de facto, those old-school Tories were like Republicans in Hawaii -- set to lose every contest.

Further, if Kansas were somehow a uniparty state, a Kansas man who feels out of place or unhappy with his local political situation could pack up and move to Texas, or Idaho, or Vermont. Happens all the time. But you can't exactly ask a working-age man from Leeds to pack up and move to Luxembourg or Slovenia. It's a much more difficult proposition, and it almost never happens.

Ok, so the problem is not that the UK representatives in EU was in minority. This was your argument, that you are now admitting is not a good one. You change your argument now, in your previous message, you say nowhere that one condition for being "unelected" is someone to be not culturally integrated with the EU (or something like that). And that is a different discussion, where there is no winner, because the pro-remain people are probably considering themselves close to EU, and therefore, for them, your argument does not correspond to their reality (and "unelected" becomes rather subjective).

But also, if you don't like Kansas as an example, you can take any different example, taking any region, in any country. You often have parties that are located in some part of a country and not the other (Scottish and Welsh for example, but you probably have that in plenty of other places) and that don't align either with the dominant parties. Where do you stop? It looks like you it's just an easy no-true-scotsman argument where you just decide that this specific case is "unelected officials", and you can always find unrelated differences to pretend that other cases are ok.

> It was a reaction to regulatory over-reach by unelected officials on the continent

This bullshit again.

Pray tell me, who exactly are the unelected officials?

Are you talking about the EU commission? They are appointed by the national governments, who are all elected.

It's like complaining that some minister in your own damn government did something you dislike, and call him an "unelected official".

You sound like those old-school communists who insist that it's a very good idea in principle, but the proletariat has always been betrayed by leaders who didn't have enough faith.

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