I’m as pro-EU as they come, but if Brexit taught me one thing, it’s: when you make decisions like this, you need a stable popular majority. Otherwise the “fool all the people some of the time” crowd will see an opportunity.
- it's much easier to influence politics in English than in Norwegian (or Dutch or Greek, etc.). The language can act as a protective barrier making it obvious which message is from the 'out' group and which is from the 'in' group.
- there was a lot of money invested by foreign actors in into influencing brexit because the UK is a large economy. The RoI is there.
- UK joining the EU came in tandem with the end of the Imperial times. The significance of the UK and it's economy is now proportional to their population. On the way down people are always ready to hear about scapegoats.
Norway has none of these things. Culturally well protected, not big enough to be a priority in influences and they went from poverty to wealthy in the same time.
On the other hand. Imperial times are making a comeback.
I would say in all areas of governance, post-Brexit the quality of government has decreased, despite throwing off the yoke of EU. And UK has one of the more professional civil service bodies out there.
I do.
>EU rules are generally good things: rule of law, sane deficit and debt rules etc
Those are all very obscure "rules" And we had such rules even without the EU.
> And in practice states have a lot of sway.
How do states not do what Ursula v.d. Leyen says? What is their say in the matter? Or more importantly, what's their citizens' say in the matter? Since citizens did not elect her to be their representative.
>post-Brexit the quality of government has decreased,
That's because their government is incompetent, not because they left the EU.
Not at all. Maybe you are thinking of EFTA, not EU. Or you are just revisionist.
EU was never just about free trade. Back when it was founded as ECSC it was about maintaining peace and putting community interest over national interest.
Quite soon after the UK joined, environmental regulations took hold that forced it to stop being the "Dirty man of Europe". Brexit opponents rightly feared that this would return after leaving the EU.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/03/brexit-w...
Restrictions on free movements were too weak and the UK was the only country to choose not to impose any (along with Ireland). This created a huge influc of Eastern Europeans into the UK, which resulted in a surge of support for abolising, or at least strongly limiting, free movement.
Then, fate struck and Merkel had the "good idea" to unilaterally have an open border policy towards Middle Eastern "refugees" right before the Brexit referendum... The rest, as they say, is history.
And yet the Brits don't seem to want these people. Fine - their country, their right. But instead, free of the yoke of the EU, they got themselves lots of immigrants from far abroad, while doctor and nurse shortages abound.
I guess sometimes it's hard to get the thing you want, and not the consequences of it.
Every local shop seemed to have a Polish person on the till back then and it was a real culture shock for most. Would they have been worse off if the position went unfilled? Perhaps, but I can also say as a then teenager looking for summer work I lost access to starter jobs.
I understand some people didn't like this experience, but I loved it.
In term of immigration the EU actually faces the same issue, and the people are voting more and more to make it known. This will end badly on both sides if governments don't get a grip.
The EU expansion that was promoted by the UK government (presumably after reading Machiavelli's Republics)?
> Restrictions on free movements were too weak and the UK was the only country to choose not to impose any (along with Ireland). This created a huge influc of Eastern Europeans into the UK, which resulted in a surge of support for abolising, or at least strongly limiting, free movement.
They didn't impose any because they were pushing for this expansion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Dutch_European_Constituti...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constitut...
(look at the list of all referenda in those pages, because this wasn't just the Netherlands and France rejecting the EU)
Note almost all the referendums that were planned, were canceled. Any honest person should point out: they were canceled because the odds of the referendum passing was negligible. Of course, the EU immediately went against the obvious will of the voters through the treaty of Lisbon.
Needless to say, as per usual, the EU makes sure it's popular with politicians (e.g. special tax-exempt status, BUT full social benefits, for any EU personnel. Plus many other things, including an excellent restaurant). So there was a long and thorough discussion in the NL parliament on how to override the will of the voters.
Just like, in this case, the party in parliament is bluntly stating they're looking for a way to get membership approved knowing full well a majority is against it.
There's yet another reason I'd be wary: the poorer an EU citizen is, the more likely they're to vote against EU. Given the economic performance of the EU of the last 10 years I would expect ... and I do see recent election results (near-majorities for the extreme right, and growth for extreme-left parties that also aren't helpful, in both France and Germany)
The EU itself is extremely frustrated about these events, because the whole point of the "EU constitution" that became the Treaty of Lisbon was to trade a bit of EU power for increased legitimacy through a popular Europe-wide constitution. After forcing through the treaty of Lisbon ... the net result of it was less legitimacy instead of more, and less power for the EU executive. They are pretty frustrated since the EU executive actually fulfills a LOT of government functions of the member states.
Reality is that for ~70 years the people of the EU have rejected the EU the vast majority of chances they got. Politicians have seen it, imho correctly, as a necessity. Even a country like Germany cannot reasonably negotiate as equals with something like the US, Russia or China, to say nothing of countries like Luxembourgh or Serbia.
I guarantee you that while Norway's politicians want to join the EU, they are very unlikely to actually commit to a fair vote to join the bloc.
This suggests actually most referenda passed in favour of EU membership. There are 48 events and 7 "rejections". These are the votes in Greenland, San Marino, two in Norway, two in Switzerland, and Brexit. Still a fairly conclusive record of 85% in favour of EU membership.
And I don't understand, given western European election results of the last 20 years, anyone could argue the EU either is popular or is becoming more popular. Even in Germany (which along with France has more than it's fair share of power in the EU), the German state is 1000x more popular than the EU.
Anti-EU parties, though admittedly rising in popularity in some countries, are still losing popular e locations by a long way. AfD got 20% of the vote recently. 80% of the voters rejected then - and that is historically their best result. That's very far from a rejection of the EU in a popular vote.
Great example in democracy. Unfortunately, and not unusual in the EU, they carried on without taking notice and most of the content was simply moved into the Lisbon Treaty.
More generally, the world is extremely complex. None of us understand all of it, but the constitution of the EU needs to engage with a surprisingly large percentage of it. There's no way such a document can ever be easy to read.
I strongly disagree.
A Constitution ought to put forward key things. It is not to cover everything and anything. Such a key piece of legislation should be kept concise and understandable.
The US Constitution is understandable. Magna Carta is understandable. The 1798 "Declaration of the Right of Man and of the Citizen" (still part of the French Constitution) is understandable.
Hundreds of pages without focus wasn't [1] and was rightly rejected. The issue is that the people's voice was ignored, as is often the case in the EU when the people choose the "wrong" answer.
[1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constit...
No county court is to be held save from month to month, and where the greater term used to be held, so will it be in future, nor will any sheriff or his bailiff make his tourn through the hundred save for twice a year and only in the place that is due and customary, namely once after Easter and again after Michaelmas, and the view of frankpledge is to be taken at the Michaelmas term without exception, in such a way that every man is to have his liberties which he had or used to have in the time of King H(enry II) my grandfather or which he has acquired since. The view of frankpledge is to be taken so that our peace be held and so that the tithing is to be held entire as it used to be, and so that the sheriff does not seek exceptions but remains content with that which the sheriff used to have in taking the view in the time of King H(enry) our grandfather.
And you know none of the documents you mention were ever put to a popular vote?
I really don't agree, I thought it was much better than Lisbon (which I voted against twice on the principle that the rest of the EU didn't appear to want it).