Brexit

[Justinr]

What did you expect?  The EU wants to make the period of uncertainty for the financial markets as short as possible in its own interest but also in the interest of the whole world.

It is not the EU's fault that the Leave camp has no clue what happens next...

Unanimity Voting is pretty inefficient but I would hardly call it undemocratic...

Of course, the markets, that's what's really important and they are always to trump the good of society.

[Rob C]

Rob, when Yugoslavia disintegrated, my father, living in Serbia, was receiving his pension from a Croatian (an archenemy, if you will) company. After an initial hickup, while the war was going on, the pension resumed, with all retroactive debt paid. If two Balkan(ized) countries can achieve that, you should be ok.

On another note, I was getting free medical care just by a virtue of renting an apartment in Barcelona, so you should be good for that too.

I keep my fingers crossed, Slobodan, and reading some of the comments on LuLa makes me think staying on here is a better alternative, whatever it costs, to returning to the land of gloom and envy, especially the latter, which has been the root cause of Britain's descent from a great industrial power to a service industry.

The first thing I heard Farage declare on tv when the result came in was to the effect that it was a great, wonderful blow against the banks! Caught in the moment of euphoria, as with in vino, veritas! Now the true intentions and philosophies are clear. Not extreme right at all: quite the opposite, in fact. How cleverly hidden that one was, but it worked.

So now we know: don't waste time looking under the bed for those brightly coloured ones; just check out the wannabes. Explains quite a lot about the reticent Socialist 'leader' and his surprising loss of voice when it mattered. Wasn't lost at all.

There's the old saying that those who seek public office should be banned from holding public office.

[john beardsworth]

Are you saying that just because British democracy, in fact most democracies, are flawed that we should give up on the idea altogether? What would you have in its place?

t

No, just ridiculing your point about the deficiencies in Eu democracy.

[Justinr]

t

No, just ridiculing your point about the deficiencies in Eu democracy.

No you were not.

But anyway, two questions.

1. What powers does the EU parliament (the bit you vote for) actually hold?

2. Can you ever recall voting for Jean Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, which is where the real power lies?

[thierrylegros396]

Name me any country in the world that is a real democracy?

All have their drawbacks, and EU is not the worst.

I hope Brexit will be a truth "electoshock" for the EU!

And the creation of a "6 country hard core" will help to take good decisions for a real social Europe.

Have a Nice Day.

Thierry

[Justinr]

I keep my fingers crossed, Slobodan, and reading some of the comments on LuLa makes me think staying on here is a better alternative, whatever it costs, to returning to the land of gloom and envy, especially the latter, which has been the root cause of Britain's descent from a great industrial power to a service industry.

The first thing I heard Farage declare on tv when the result came in was to the effect that it was a great, wonderful blow against the banks! Caught in the moment of euphoria, as with in vino, veritas! Now the true intentions and philosophies are clear. Not extreme right at all: quite the opposite, in fact. How cleverly hidden that one was, but it worked.

So now we know: don't waste time looking under the bed for those brightly coloured ones; just check out the wannabes. Explains quite a lot about the reticent Socialist 'leader' and his surprising loss of voice when it mattered. Wasn't lost at all.

There's the old saying that those who seek public office should be banned from holding public office.

I really shouldn't but here goes.

The land of gloom and envy. A place where the serfs are getting uppity about a society riven by the divisions of class and inequality? 

The root cause of Britains descent. Was asset stripping, poor management and attention to immediate returns rather than long term strategy.

wonderful blow against the banks! Who have had to be repeatedly bailed out by the long suffering tax payer because of their own stupidity. Otherwise known as social welfare for the wealthy.

 reticent Socialist 'leader' If you mean Farage I think you will find his Thatcherite credentials still quite intact, he was, after all, a member of the Conservative party since his youth and fell out with John Major over the Maastricht treaty.

Otherwise very good.

[Justinr]

Name me any country in the world that is a real democracy?

All have their drawbacks, and EU is not the worst.

I hope Brexit will be a truth "electoshock" for the EU!

And the creation of a "6 country hard core" will help to take good decisions for a real social Europe.

Have a Nice Day.

Thierry

As I noted there are few democracies that are perfect and probably none are, but that doesn't mean to say we should accept the imposition of legislation and budgets by the EU commission who are in no way directly elected, in fact this is how they are appointed -

Each Commissioner is first nominated by their member state in consultation with the Commission President, although the President holds little practical power to force a change in candidate. The more capable the candidate is, the more likely the Commission President will assign them a powerful portfolio, the distribution of which is entirely at his discretion. The President's team is then subject to hearings at the European Parliament which will question them and then vote on their suitability as a whole. If members of the team are found to be inappropriate, the President must then reshuffle the team or request a new candidate from the member state or risk the whole Commission being voted down. As Parliament cannot vote against individual Commissioners there is usually a compromise whereby the worst candidates are removed but minor objections are put aside so the Commission can take office. Once the team is approved by parliament, it is formally put into office by the European Council

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commissioner

At least in the UK and all other EU countries the voters have the opportunity to throw out a minister on a regular basis.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Why? What makes you think that a high level education results in a single opinion, let alone a PC one? A lot of highly educated people were for the exit, and a lot highly educated people are for Trump. That's just another example of the typical condescension that whoever disagrees with me must be stupid, uneducated, racist, and bigot.

Really?  I've been looking for one and haven't found that person yet (maybe you want to volunteer?).  Hank Paulson, a life long Republican and Secretary of the Treasury under Bush II, has an op-ed in tomorrow's Washington Post announcing he is voting for Hilary Clinton and urging other Republicans to do the same!!  http://tinyurl.com/zytbmbn

[mecrox]

Too many people and too many places have been left behind by globalisation and the free movement of people. It gets to a point where they feel so disadvantaged that they have nothing left to lose and so the result of the referendum should not be a surprise. It will be welcome if it comes to be seen as signalling the end of the age of elites which began when the Iron Curtain came down at the end of the 1980s. The elites were always undemocratic, very greedy and in Europe obsessed with crazy social engineering. They were also incompetent as the 2007/2008 crash showed. This could never last, imho.

Far too early to say how all this will pan out. But if the EU starts to blow up from a combination of popular pressure for reform and permanent, deflationary austerity across a vaste swathe of Europe in order to "protect" the euro currency, then "Brexit" may be seen as a canny bit of damage limitation before the real explosions occur. The euro cannot succeed unless nation states are more or less dissolved, but there will simply never be a democratic mandate for the dissolution of one's own nation state. Result = foobar. Probably best to get clear of the blast radius.

[Justinr]

Too many people and too many places have been left behind by globalisation and the free movement of people. It gets to a point where they feel so disadvantaged that they have nothing left to lose and so the result of the referendum should not be a surprise. It will be welcome if it comes to be seen as signalling the end of the age of elites which began when the Iron Curtain came down at the end of the 1980s. The elites were always undemocratic, very greedy and in Europe obsessed with crazy social engineering. They were also incompetent as the 2007/2008 crash showed. This could never last, imho.

Far too early to say how all this will pan out. But if the EU starts to blow up from a combination of popular pressure for reform and permanent, deflationary austerity across a vaste swathe of Europe in order to "protect" the euro currency, then "Brexit" may be seen as a canny bit of damage limitation before the real explosions occur. The euro cannot succeed unless nation states are more or less dissolved, but there will simply never be a democratic mandate for the dissolution of one's own nation state. Result = foobar. Probably best to get clear of the blast radius.

Agreed, the EU is heading for a major crisis and probable oblivion if it does not mend its ways. Brexit is a wake up call, one which they cannot ignore and there are signs that senior figures are taking it on board, I have already mentioned Merkel and Valls in this context.

However, it must also be noted that the EU is a useful stick for national governments to beat their electorate with and they will only reluctantly give up the chance to blame their own favoured but unpopular policies on European directives, directives which do not always say what national governments tell us they do. This is yet another reason why there will be no simple solution to the situation, national politicians have too much at stake themselves to readily agree to major reform, especially when they were looking for forward to a cushy job in Brussels.   

[john beardsworth]

No you were not.

But anyway, two questions.

1. What powers does the EU parliament (the bit you vote for) actually hold?

2. Can you ever recall voting for Jean Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, which is where the real power lies?

So what? I have indirectly voted for the government that agreed to him and which gives him instructions. I haven't ever voted for a bureaucrat in the UK government.

In the 25 years I have lived in my UK constituency, a safe seat, my vote has never mattered. Every time I've voted for the EU parliament, my vote has counted equally to anyone else's.

Just face it, Brexit is just a protest vote against immigration and the fear of it. Claiming it's about democracy is ridiculous and dishonest.

[mecrox]

Agreed, the EU is heading for a major crisis and probable oblivion if it does not mend its ways. Brexit is a wake up call, one which they cannot ignore and there are signs that senior figures are taking it on board, I have already mentioned Merkel and Valls in this context.

However, it must also be noted that the EU is a useful stick for national governments to beat their electorate with and they will only reluctantly give up the chance to blame their own favoured but unpopular policies on European directives, directives which do not always say what national governments tell us they do. This is yet another reason why there will be no simple solution to the situation, national politicians have too much at stake themselves to readily agree to major reform, especially when they were looking for forward to a cushy job in Brussels.

Yes, that and the huge difficulty of reverting to national currencies which would involve an admission of catastrophic failure by the governing classes. Politicians are elected for fairly short terms, so the temptation to kick the can of serious reform down the road is overwhelming.

[Jeremy Roussak]

So what ?

You're jesting no doubt , but if you're not then I suggest reading the link I posted above to the article by Jolyon Maugham QC.

No, I'm not jesting. It will be debated, but the idea that parliament would dare retrospectively to change the rules under which the referendum was conducted is patently absurd. The author of the petition clearly fails to understand it.

I've read Maugham QC's article. He's a tax barrister. I've no reason to assume that his knowledge of constitutional law is any better than mine, or anyone else's. The article is speculation, not an Advice or an Opinion: it sets out things which might happen. Yes, they might. Yes, the EU might suddenly realise that humiliating Cameron when he attempted to renegotiate some terms of our membership was a phenomenally bad idea. Yes, the referendum was advisory, not mandatory. Yes, Article 50 has not yet been invoked (and, contrary to what Juncker et al have been saying, we are perfectly free to invoke it at a time entirely of our choosing).

But we are where we are, which is that a consultative process has yielded a clear outcome and it is expected that Parliament will accede to the expressed wishes of the people it chose to consult.

And, incidentally, if you really think that "As an example of contempt for democracy, it's hard to beat" I'd suggest that you haven't looked too hard!

I've looked hard enough. It shows utter contempt for the electorate who voted in a referendum with defined rules to suggest that as you don't like the outcome, you must change the rules.

Given the dissatisfaction with Corbyn, the split within the Tories, disaffected Scots, Irish unrest and a polarised electorate you can't preclude any number of possible developments.

I'd never preclude any development, save for that petition producing a retrospective change in the law.

Jeremy

[Justinr]

So what? I have indirectly voted for the government that agreed to him and which gives him instructions. I haven't ever voted for a bureaucrat in the UK government.

In the 25 years I have lived in my UK constituency, a safe seat, my vote has never mattered. Every time I've voted for the EU parliament, my vote has counted equally to anyone else's.

Just face it, Brexit is just a protest vote against immigration and the fear of it. Claiming it's about democracy is ridiculous and dishonest.

1.These civil servants in Brussels are not supporting a political agenda, they are creating it, something of a difference.

2. In what way would it possible to influence the choice of a commissioner, have you ever seen a manifesto where a party has declared it will propose a given person for the role?

If you feel that your vote doesn't count then by extension nobody's vote counts, so what is the point of anyboy voting?

Do you really know other people's minds so well that you can claim why they voted in a particular way? Are you calling me a liar when I state quite clearly that it is the democratic deficit and detached decision making that are my major concerns about the EU?

[Justinr]

No, I'm not jesting. It will be debated, but the idea that parliament would dare retrospectively to change the rules under which the referendum was conducted is patently absurd. The author of the petition clearly fails to understand it.

I've read Maugham QC's article. He's a tax barrister. I've no reason to assume that his knowledge of constitutional law is any better than mine, or anyone else's. The article is speculation, not an Advice or an Opinion: it sets out things which might happen. Yes, they might. Yes, the EU might suddenly realise that humiliating Cameron when he attempted to renegotiate some terms of our membership was a phenomenally bad idea. Yes, the referendum was advisory, not mandatory. Yes, Article 50 has not yet been invoked (and, contrary to what Juncker et al have been saying, we are perfectly free to invoke it at a time entirely of our choosing).

But we are where we are, which is that a consultative process has yielded a clear outcome and it is expected that Parliament will accede to the expressed wishes of the people it chose to consult.

I've looked hard enough. It shows utter contempt for the electorate who voted in a referendum with defined rules to suggest that as you don't like the outcome, you must change the rules.

I'd never preclude any development, save for that petition producing a retrospective change in the law.

Jeremy

Talking of phenomenally bad ideas I would suggest that Juncker or Schuable opening their mouths with regard to Brexit should be firmly placed in that category.

[Hulyss]

I think that EU was a dream after the war, diluted by the years and the new generations. Now, time as passed, money is the core and humans absolutely didn't progressed. If there is something after Homo Sapiens we are extremely far from it...

Europe is complicated in the sense of you need to know almost 23 different languages and almost the same amount of cultures to "almost" (again) get the picture. This in not impossible but one need several life to achieve that. In my book Europe should be split into 4 independent sectors with active borders :

 * France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Scotland, Great Britain, Portugal and Iceland for the West Europe.

 * Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia for the North Europe.

 * Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Belarus, Slovakia and Hungary for the Central Europe.
 
 * Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova + all the patch front Italy for the southern Europe.

I would dump half of Ukraine to Mother Russia, all what is East of the Dniepr.

We make our own business in our respective corners and help each other if there is some sort of conflicts and voilà.

Europe is old, his bureaucratie is very heavy and Europe is not fair.

The West sector is Atlantist. We need US and US need us. US would then open the door more easy to the "westerners" with a real economic synergy.
In every sector students should be obliged without any choice to move into other country for a period of 4 years. The splitting should be equal between country. After 25 to 30 years we should start to see some change and homogeneity.

All of this is cool but the world is a real mess and humans are islands of individualism when they taste capitalism or other religions. Just look at this forum and others... Their is no grey zone; it is black or white.

Humanity is worshipping the golden calf and will be punished in accordance.

[Telecaster]

The time has come for compromise and real reform of the EU, both Merkel and Manuel Valls have hinted that it might be necessary for they too are looking at a great deal of dissent in their own countries.

Yes. Wouldn't it be ironic if this vote turned out to be the catalyst for such reform? We shall see…

-Dave-

[Justinr]

Yes. Wouldn't it be ironic if this vote turned out to be the catalyst for such reform? We shall see…

-Dave-

It is what I fervently hope, and major reform at that.

[Hulyss]

Ho, and also, the major problem of "Europe" is wanting to compete against other continent such as US... and also wanting to mimic them. We can't compete; we can only collaborate with intelligence.

[Justinr]

I think that EU was a dream after the war, diluted by the years and the new generations. Now, time as passed, money is the core and humans absolutely didn't progressed. If there is something after Homo Sapiens we are extremely far from it...

Europe is complicated in the sense of you need to know almost 23 different languages and almost the same amount of cultures to "almost" (again) get the picture. This in not impossible but one need several life to achieve that. In my book Europe should be split into 4 independent sectors with active borders :

 * France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Scotland, Great Britain, Portugal and Iceland for the West Europe.

 * Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia for the North Europe.

 * Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Belarus, Slovakia and Hungary for the Central Europe.
 
 * Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova + all the patch front Italy for the southern Europe.

I would dump half of Ukraine to Mother Russia, all what is East of the Dniepr.

We make our own business in our respective corners and help each other if there is some sort of conflicts and voilà.

Europe is old, his bureaucratie is very heavy and Europe is not fair.

The West sector is Atlantist. We need US and US need us. US would then open the door more easy to the "westerners" with a real economic synergy.
In every sector students should be obliged without any choice to move into other country for a period of 4 years. The splitting should be equal between country. After 25 to 30 years we should start to see some change and homogeneity.

All of this is cool but the world is a real mess and humans are islands of individualism when they taste capitalism or other religions. Just look at this forum and others... Their is no grey zone; it is black or white.

Humanity is worshipping the golden calf and will be punished in accordance.

The division of the EU into the four sectors you mention is an interesting idea but I doubt that it would answer the problem of the democratic deficit or the desire for greater self determination. But I would agree entirely that the EU construct needs breaking down into smaller units while preserving the ability to trade and travel freely amongst them, perhaps 28 of them and we could call them countries.

What's the reaction to Brexit in France BTW?