4 ms·

On the contrary, the fact the EU had enormous power over British people, yet barely anyone knew what it was, what it did, or why it was important, was a compell

On the contrary, the fact the EU had enormous power over British people, yet barely anyone knew what it was, what it did, or why it was important, was a compelling reason for the UK to leave.

a-priori 10y ago
Or, perhaps, it's a compelling reason why things like this shouldn't be decided by referendum.
- TearsInTheRain 10y ago
  how should they be decided then?
  - a-priori 10y ago
    We elect politicians whose full-time jobs it is to understand big and complicated issues, and to decide on our behalf how to deal with them. That includes the right to make and break treaties with other world powers. Why should something like this be any different?
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > We elect politicians whose full-time jobs it is to understand big and complicated issues, and to decide on our behalf how to deal with them. But, on Brexit specifically, the British people elected a government that made a campaign promise to hold exactly such a referendum, and to abide by its results.
      - makomk 10y ago
        One very plausible theory I've seen doing the rounds is that the government never actually expected to have to follow through on that campaign promise. Strategically speaking it was a terrible idea and Cameron was always pretty pro-EU, but he needed the support of the anti-EU faction of his party, so he promised the vote as a sop to them. The theory goes that he didn't expect to get an absolute majority in Parliament and hoped the other parties would "force" him to to not follow through.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    By representatives. You need a buffer between raw emotion and action. Otherwise, this happens.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      But the referendum was how the representatives elected by the people decided to address the problem.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Cameron screwed up. Oops? Don't try to meet political goals by suggesting a referendum with enormous consequences.
    - jazzyk 10y ago
      How is this "raw emotion", though? Leaving the EU has been discussed for a few years now, quite widely. Also, "raw emotion", direct democracy (in Switzerland, for example) can work very well. Direct democracy may not scale well, hence we need representation, but big issues should be left up to the people to be voted on. In the end, I believe, the people in the UK voted against not so much the idea of EU, but rather expressed their frustration with the EU's inability (unwillingness?) to fix its problems. It's been brewing for a while.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - rahoulb 10y ago
      A big part of this vote is a huge swathe of voters who felt that they were not being properly represented by their representatives. All three major parties had similar lines on economic liberalisation, immigration and freedom of movement and so on and this has been the case for almost 20 years. So when a new party stepped in and said "we hear you, we want things to change to" it's not surprising it captured some of the public's imagination.
  - tacon 10y ago
    Remember the European Constitution that failed a few years ago? (At least the three hundred page document that they were calling a constitution.) I was shocked when my German friends mentioned that the German people would certainly have voted no, but they never got the chance. The German legislature voted for it, and that was it. Apparently most Europeans had no direct vote up or down for that constitution. And when it finally failed, it came from one of the countries that got a direct referendum. But then thinking back to the US Constitution, it was voted in by the state legislatures without a direct vote, too. Somehow that seems OK back then, but an affront to democracy in today's world. How times change.
    - nickik 10y ago
      Even worse, many nations did not go into the EU by popular vote. Generally if people are asked about the EU, they don't follow the line of the politcal classes. This is just the latest example.
- mr_sturd 10y ago
  There's nothing wrong with having a referendum over it. But a horrible media industry has made a circus over the entire thing, leaving many people misinformed.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - henriks 10y ago
    But that is exactly what is wrong with having a referendum over it. The circus is inevitable, as are emotional arguments abused by populist politicians. Some matters shouldn't be decided by which side of an argument happens to have hired the better team of PR consultants.
- winterismute 10y ago
  Or even more, maybe a compelling reason for Britons to elect representatives in the government and EU parliament who could actually push the reforms the EU needs?
  - grive 10y ago
    As if they knew what the EU needs. Britain always pushed for more liberalization. See where it led them. They were able to push for what their GDP needed, alright.
- Nelson69 10y ago
  Well you can have another, can't you? Or is leaving the EU a one-way thing? I'm sort of jealous. They had a referendum on Scottish independence and they honored the outcome. I'd love to have an up/down national vote on abortion, gay marriage, gun background checks.. At best here in the US, you're voting for a derivative, you're electing someone on the wish/hope that they support your issues if they get a chance or opportunity to of if they're willing to use political capital to actually propose the issues.. With something like abortion, it's at least 2 derivatives removed, you're voting for someone who will hopefully select a court justice (should they get to) that will align with your issues should the opportunity ever arise for them to make a judgement on it. And what's more perverse, there are a lot of single issue voters that take that multiple derivative issue situation as the only issue that matters. It'd be an interesting experiment if nothing else.
  - mediocrejoker 10y ago
    I believe the EU has already put out a statement saying they want the exit to happen quickly, and they don't have any desire to renegotiate.
  - DrJokepu 10y ago
    > Or is leaving the EU a one-way thing? It's possible to get readmitted, but only with the consent of every single member state.
tamana 10y ago
Or it's a compelling reason for a Brit to open a web page and read. Most Brits don't know how their cars or trains work either , but they don't give up and walk.
mevile 10y ago
Is this also an argument for states to pull out of the USA? Because I doubt your average voter understands much about the US or state government or federalism.
- rando18423 10y ago
  Anecdotal, but in public elementary school in the US they actually did do a good job of explaining this. I mean I know it's very complex in some ways, but it's also not that complex?
- rayiner 10y ago
  To the contrary: Americans are usually more invested in federal politics than state politics. E.g. turnout is usually higher in federal elections, and more people know who their federal senators are than their state senators.
- Amezarak 10y ago
  I would actually wager the average American understands the federal government much better than their state government, due to the hyperfocus in schools and in the media on the federal government. State and local governments get away with incredible amounts of nonsense because people don't know or care anything about them.
  - epalmer 10y ago
    I agree. My daughter knows both. She just graduated High School. She has lobbied Congress and The Senate at the federal level and written a state bill (with 2 other high school students) that passed and was signed by our governor. While her experience is unusual, the schools here focus on us history and us government history. I do think when I was in high school I learned more about the rest of the world than they do. And that is sad.
    - Inthenameofmine 10y ago
      > She has lobbied Congress and The Senate at the federal level and written a state bill (with 2 other high school students) that passed and was signed by our governor. At least doing auch lobbying and drafting was possible. This would be unthinkable in the EU. The disconnect to even the highly involved politically aware person in the EU to the power structures is huge. In manu cases purposefully and by design so. After all, the EU was born oit of a price pact essentially stablished though conglomerate economic interest. (steel, coal, electricity, transport, machinery).
wzdd 10y ago
What? That doesn't follow at all.
cm3 10y ago
I'm genuinely curious how someone living in an EU state does not know what it is and some of the stuff the org does day-to-day. How does this happen?
- overcast 10y ago
  That's why governments and more specifically republics exist, because the masses are stupid.
  - cm3 10y ago
    If that's true, then having them vote is a game of those in power to get what they want by trying to keep them stupid. Is that the rest of your thought? We can see how places with conflicts try to keep the population misinformed or under-informed in order to more easily justify violent actions, so who's to benefit (besides Boris Johnson) from a proper exit?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- _9MOTHER9HORSE 10y ago
  The EU is an utterly bewildering bureaucracy. Barely anyone fully understands what it does.
  - cm3 10y ago
    Yeah, but barely anyone fully understands their municipal org either, and I took the comment to mean people have no idea at all what the EU is. For example, Iceland is not part of the EU, just part of another construct which kinda/sorta makes it easy for them to do business with the EU.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  The EU has an official blog keeping track of all the lies that the british press publish about the EU. http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ It's worse than not knowing stuff, most UK people have negative knowledge of the EU since their heads are full of lies.
grive 10y ago
"Enormous power"; do not paint it as if it were a confederacy. The EU has been a scapegoat in Britain for decades. The elites used it to justify many a policy that would hurt the middle class, while pushing for more and more liberalization once in the EU parliament. The average guy in Britain is just as much at fault here for not following what has been happening. They kept reading their fucking tabloids, the reality-check will be harsh and gruesome. No, it's not a compelling reason for the UK to leave. It was a compelling reason for the average Briton to learn and educate himself. Now they shot themselves in the foot. Well done!
- Shivetya 10y ago
  The problem the EU has always had is that it wasn't really unified and that non elected officials held to much sway over countries. Countries, not states, not territories, or such. Meaning that you had distinct separation, governments, and the like, being controlled by people not of the same. This will always lead to strife. If anything vote simply reaffirms that EU favoring side either failed to communicate properly why it was good to stay or worse, failed to recognize or acknowledge real issues that existed and take action to explain them or fix them. As in, far too often the exit crowd was portrayed and ignorant, bigoted, or worse, and you do not convince people your side is right when you attack them plus it benefits the EU to make it all doom and gloom because this loose grouping was never bound to be successful without more tight knit integration, something they knew they could not sell.
  - k__ 10y ago
    Is the EU really that bad?! I had the feeling that they forced countries to do the right thing, for example granting human rights. Even here in Germany we had laws that let you lock up people forever. What was the bad stuff that happend in the EU? The "crisis" was mostly due to the "elected" governments of the countries which have now financial problems. What the EU did in the last years was mainly telling "the people" that they elected a bunch of assholes that milked their countries dry.
    - rahoulb 10y ago
arrrg 10y ago
The EU is not other people. The UK has always held large power in controlling the EU. Obviously in concert with others, but such is the nature of cooperation. This othering of the EU is really lazy. The EU was never some ominous foreign entity. Plus, get better education if that's the problem. My civics teacher was quite adept at explaining the EU. For historic reasons there is some ugly cruft, but it's nevertheless not that hard to understand.
- _9MOTHER9HORSE 10y ago
  Barely anyone knew who represented them in Europe. Fewer still knew what powers those representatives had. I suspect 99% could not name more than five people in the EU machine, including Nigel Farage as a free point. The EU is absolutely other people to the UK.
  - arrrg 10y ago
    This is a failure of media coverage and attention, not the EU. And the people who were representing them are, well, mostly still David Cameron. One of the sad things about the EU is that it could never completely shake this thing many supranational organizations have, i.e. that the top-dogs are the heads of the respective member-state governments (and maybe their ministers if it’s about more narrow areas of expertise). Without them nothing can happen. They are still centrally important and involved everywhere and most everything that’s decided is done with consensus and not majority rule. The people implementing the details are truly not that important. Do you know (many) people below the minister level in your country? It’s not relevant. People I can think of in the EU off the top of my head: Jean-Claude Junker, president of the commission. Martin Schulz, president of the parliament. Julia Reda, cool European MP from Germany. Beatrix von Storch, racist European MP from Germany. Martin Sonneborn, European MP from Germany, member of a satirical joke party.
Eupolemos 10y ago
How should the ordinary UK citizen know anything solid? Their newspapers are downright bonkers.
- dba7dba 10y ago
  So is US newspapers.
  - Eupolemos 10y ago
    As a European, I don't find US media a good measuring stick.

On the contrary, the fact the EU had enormous power over British people, yet barely anyone knew what it was, what it did, or why it was important, was a compelling reason for the UK to leave.

a-priori 10y ago

Or, perhaps, it's a compelling reason why things like this shouldn't be decided by referendum.

TearsInTheRain 10y ago
how should they be decided then?
- a-priori 10y ago
  We elect politicians whose full-time jobs it is to understand big and complicated issues, and to decide on our behalf how to deal with them. That includes the right to make and break treaties with other world powers. Why should something like this be any different?
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > We elect politicians whose full-time jobs it is to understand big and complicated issues, and to decide on our behalf how to deal with them. But, on Brexit specifically, the British people elected a government that made a campaign promise to hold exactly such a referendum, and to abide by its results.
    - makomk 10y ago
      One very plausible theory I've seen doing the rounds is that the government never actually expected to have to follow through on that campaign promise. Strategically speaking it was a terrible idea and Cameron was always pretty pro-EU, but he needed the support of the anti-EU faction of his party, so he promised the vote as a sop to them. The theory goes that he didn't expect to get an absolute majority in Parliament and hoped the other parties would "force" him to to not follow through.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  By representatives. You need a buffer between raw emotion and action. Otherwise, this happens.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    But the referendum was how the representatives elected by the people decided to address the problem.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Cameron screwed up. Oops? Don't try to meet political goals by suggesting a referendum with enormous consequences.
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    How is this "raw emotion", though? Leaving the EU has been discussed for a few years now, quite widely. Also, "raw emotion", direct democracy (in Switzerland, for example) can work very well. Direct democracy may not scale well, hence we need representation, but big issues should be left up to the people to be voted on. In the end, I believe, the people in the UK voted against not so much the idea of EU, but rather expressed their frustration with the EU's inability (unwillingness?) to fix its problems. It's been brewing for a while.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - rahoulb 10y ago
    A big part of this vote is a huge swathe of voters who felt that they were not being properly represented by their representatives. All three major parties had similar lines on economic liberalisation, immigration and freedom of movement and so on and this has been the case for almost 20 years. So when a new party stepped in and said "we hear you, we want things to change to" it's not surprising it captured some of the public's imagination.
- tacon 10y ago
  Remember the European Constitution that failed a few years ago? (At least the three hundred page document that they were calling a constitution.) I was shocked when my German friends mentioned that the German people would certainly have voted no, but they never got the chance. The German legislature voted for it, and that was it. Apparently most Europeans had no direct vote up or down for that constitution. And when it finally failed, it came from one of the countries that got a direct referendum. But then thinking back to the US Constitution, it was voted in by the state legislatures without a direct vote, too. Somehow that seems OK back then, but an affront to democracy in today's world. How times change.
  - nickik 10y ago
    Even worse, many nations did not go into the EU by popular vote. Generally if people are asked about the EU, they don't follow the line of the politcal classes. This is just the latest example.
mr_sturd 10y ago
There's nothing wrong with having a referendum over it. But a horrible media industry has made a circus over the entire thing, leaving many people misinformed.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- henriks 10y ago
  But that is exactly what is wrong with having a referendum over it. The circus is inevitable, as are emotional arguments abused by populist politicians. Some matters shouldn't be decided by which side of an argument happens to have hired the better team of PR consultants.
winterismute 10y ago
Or even more, maybe a compelling reason for Britons to elect representatives in the government and EU parliament who could actually push the reforms the EU needs?
- grive 10y ago
  As if they knew what the EU needs. Britain always pushed for more liberalization. See where it led them. They were able to push for what their GDP needed, alright.
Nelson69 10y ago
Well you can have another, can't you? Or is leaving the EU a one-way thing? I'm sort of jealous. They had a referendum on Scottish independence and they honored the outcome. I'd love to have an up/down national vote on abortion, gay marriage, gun background checks.. At best here in the US, you're voting for a derivative, you're electing someone on the wish/hope that they support your issues if they get a chance or opportunity to of if they're willing to use political capital to actually propose the issues.. With something like abortion, it's at least 2 derivatives removed, you're voting for someone who will hopefully select a court justice (should they get to) that will align with your issues should the opportunity ever arise for them to make a judgement on it. And what's more perverse, there are a lot of single issue voters that take that multiple derivative issue situation as the only issue that matters. It'd be an interesting experiment if nothing else.
- mediocrejoker 10y ago
  I believe the EU has already put out a statement saying they want the exit to happen quickly, and they don't have any desire to renegotiate.
- DrJokepu 10y ago
  > Or is leaving the EU a one-way thing? It's possible to get readmitted, but only with the consent of every single member state.

tamana 10y ago

Or it's a compelling reason for a Brit to open a web page and read. Most Brits don't know how their cars or trains work either , but they don't give up and walk.

mevile 10y ago

Is this also an argument for states to pull out of the USA? Because I doubt your average voter understands much about the US or state government or federalism.

rando18423 10y ago
Anecdotal, but in public elementary school in the US they actually did do a good job of explaining this. I mean I know it's very complex in some ways, but it's also not that complex?
rayiner 10y ago
To the contrary: Americans are usually more invested in federal politics than state politics. E.g. turnout is usually higher in federal elections, and more people know who their federal senators are than their state senators.
Amezarak 10y ago
I would actually wager the average American understands the federal government much better than their state government, due to the hyperfocus in schools and in the media on the federal government. State and local governments get away with incredible amounts of nonsense because people don't know or care anything about them.
- epalmer 10y ago
  I agree. My daughter knows both. She just graduated High School. She has lobbied Congress and The Senate at the federal level and written a state bill (with 2 other high school students) that passed and was signed by our governor. While her experience is unusual, the schools here focus on us history and us government history. I do think when I was in high school I learned more about the rest of the world than they do. And that is sad.
  - Inthenameofmine 10y ago
    > She has lobbied Congress and The Senate at the federal level and written a state bill (with 2 other high school students) that passed and was signed by our governor. At least doing auch lobbying and drafting was possible. This would be unthinkable in the EU. The disconnect to even the highly involved politically aware person in the EU to the power structures is huge. In manu cases purposefully and by design so. After all, the EU was born oit of a price pact essentially stablished though conglomerate economic interest. (steel, coal, electricity, transport, machinery).

wzdd 10y ago

What? That doesn't follow at all.

cm3 10y ago

I'm genuinely curious how someone living in an EU state does not know what it is and some of the stuff the org does day-to-day. How does this happen?

overcast 10y ago
That's why governments and more specifically republics exist, because the masses are stupid.
- cm3 10y ago
  If that's true, then having them vote is a game of those in power to get what they want by trying to keep them stupid. Is that the rest of your thought? We can see how places with conflicts try to keep the population misinformed or under-informed in order to more easily justify violent actions, so who's to benefit (besides Boris Johnson) from a proper exit?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
_9MOTHER9HORSE 10y ago
The EU is an utterly bewildering bureaucracy. Barely anyone fully understands what it does.
- cm3 10y ago
  Yeah, but barely anyone fully understands their municipal org either, and I took the comment to mean people have no idea at all what the EU is. For example, Iceland is not part of the EU, just part of another construct which kinda/sorta makes it easy for them to do business with the EU.
ZeroGravitas 10y ago
The EU has an official blog keeping track of all the lies that the british press publish about the EU. http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ It's worse than not knowing stuff, most UK people have negative knowledge of the EU since their heads are full of lies.

grive 10y ago

"Enormous power"; do not paint it as if it were a confederacy. The EU has been a scapegoat in Britain for decades. The elites used it to justify many a policy that would hurt the middle class, while pushing for more and more liberalization once in the EU parliament. The average guy in Britain is just as much at fault here for not following what has been happening. They kept reading their fucking tabloids, the reality-check will be harsh and gruesome. No, it's not a compelling reason for the UK to leave. It was a compelling reason for the average Briton to learn and educate himself. Now they shot themselves in the foot. Well done!

Shivetya 10y ago
The problem the EU has always had is that it wasn't really unified and that non elected officials held to much sway over countries. Countries, not states, not territories, or such. Meaning that you had distinct separation, governments, and the like, being controlled by people not of the same. This will always lead to strife. If anything vote simply reaffirms that EU favoring side either failed to communicate properly why it was good to stay or worse, failed to recognize or acknowledge real issues that existed and take action to explain them or fix them. As in, far too often the exit crowd was portrayed and ignorant, bigoted, or worse, and you do not convince people your side is right when you attack them plus it benefits the EU to make it all doom and gloom because this loose grouping was never bound to be successful without more tight knit integration, something they knew they could not sell.
- k__ 10y ago
  Is the EU really that bad?! I had the feeling that they forced countries to do the right thing, for example granting human rights. Even here in Germany we had laws that let you lock up people forever. What was the bad stuff that happend in the EU? The "crisis" was mostly due to the "elected" governments of the countries which have now financial problems. What the EU did in the last years was mainly telling "the people" that they elected a bunch of assholes that milked their countries dry.
  - rahoulb 10y ago

arrrg 10y ago

The EU is not other people. The UK has always held large power in controlling the EU. Obviously in concert with others, but such is the nature of cooperation. This othering of the EU is really lazy. The EU was never some ominous foreign entity. Plus, get better education if that's the problem. My civics teacher was quite adept at explaining the EU. For historic reasons there is some ugly cruft, but it's nevertheless not that hard to understand.

_9MOTHER9HORSE 10y ago
Barely anyone knew who represented them in Europe. Fewer still knew what powers those representatives had. I suspect 99% could not name more than five people in the EU machine, including Nigel Farage as a free point. The EU is absolutely other people to the UK.
- arrrg 10y ago
  This is a failure of media coverage and attention, not the EU. And the people who were representing them are, well, mostly still David Cameron. One of the sad things about the EU is that it could never completely shake this thing many supranational organizations have, i.e. that the top-dogs are the heads of the respective member-state governments (and maybe their ministers if it’s about more narrow areas of expertise). Without them nothing can happen. They are still centrally important and involved everywhere and most everything that’s decided is done with consensus and not majority rule. The people implementing the details are truly not that important. Do you know (many) people below the minister level in your country? It’s not relevant. People I can think of in the EU off the top of my head: Jean-Claude Junker, president of the commission. Martin Schulz, president of the parliament. Julia Reda, cool European MP from Germany. Beatrix von Storch, racist European MP from Germany. Martin Sonneborn, European MP from Germany, member of a satirical joke party.

Eupolemos 10y ago

How should the ordinary UK citizen know anything solid? Their newspapers are downright bonkers.

dba7dba 10y ago
So is US newspapers.
- Eupolemos 10y ago
  As a European, I don't find US media a good measuring stick.