6 ms·

The president that got elected is the candidate of the green party, which happens to be very pro-europe. The reason those (edit: austrian) parties got the turn

by rmu09 10y ago

The president that got elected is the candidate of the green party, which happens to be very pro-europe. The reason those (edit: austrian) parties got the turnout they got is a consequence of years of misgovernment and corruption scandals, real and perceived, and using the european parliament and the commission as kind of "retirement"-option for politicians that need to get out of the light. The UK already had a very favorable deal with the EU, it is not imaginable that they get a better deal than norway or switzerland, which will amount to "pay the same, have no say". What "leave"-voters somehow didn't get: free trade, free movement of labor, unrestricted mobilitiy only go one way. So you either have british retirees living in spain for cheap, and spanish workers in britain. Or you don't.

marcoperaza 10y ago
Merkel and Hollande want Britain to bleed to scare other countries from following suit. But you forget that Britain has immense economic leverage over the continent that Switzerland and Norway do not. Britain is a huge market for French and German goods (more so than the other way around). Many of these, like German cars, are easily substituted with goods from other countries. The gloves are coming off. The British government would be doing a disservice to their people if a threat to sink the German car market in the UK is not on the table. We all know that Merkel does not like to play dangerously. I suspect Britain wins this game of chicken. This could play out very well for all of Europe if the EU disintegrates into what it really should have been, a European trade agreement and not much more. But that will have to come from the people of the continent, not their leaders, who are totally sold on the concept of a European superstate. "The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony."
- __jal 10y ago
  Interesting way to look at it. A different way is that Britain (through the mealy mouths of the Boris and Nigel show) is massively conflicted; the ever-popular (Wo)man on the Street is confused and angry from a decade of being bled by "conservatives", and, as often happens, responded to their pain by symbolically punching down. It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters. This is unfortunate, but often happens, especially when there are opportunists looking to ride anger to power. The problem is that that anger is dangerous and unpredictable. I think the little weasels never expected to actually win, and now they've had their bluff called. Just watch little Boris try to jib and dance around all their lies on his recent appearances - it would be great comedy if this weren't all so dangerous. My bet is that England (I'm not talking about Britain) doesn't leave; Scotland, however, does eventually get a divorce, and I don't yet know what I think about Ireland. And the Boris and Nigel show ends like a lot of these little fits - they both learn to not care about their reputations and make out just fine after demonstrating their incompetence at running a proper insurrection.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    >It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters. Just because they don't approach it from some high-minded constitutional-philosophy or European-project perspective doesn't mean that it wasn't about the EU. The biggest issue was immigration, because the EU doesn't allow the British to control immigration into their own country. If you wanted lower immigration, the EU gave you one option: leave the EU. When the continent totally rejected David Cameron's reasonable (and I think insufficient) list of reforms, they confirmed that. For the Tories who voted Leave, it was also about economic growth because the EU has forced all member countries into a high-regulation (and in my opinion, low-growth) model that's more about protecting inefficient French businesses from competition than about raising the fortunes of the British people. It didn't matter how many elections Conservatives won, because socialism was imposed at the EU level. The EU even ganged up on Ireland for daring to have a low corporate tax rate. No change in the composition of the British delegation to the powerless European Parliament, where they were severely outnumbered anyway, had any chance of ever changing any of this. Again, the only way to even get the chance to vote for free market policies was to leave the EU. Now the British people can decide for themselves what path they will take, a choice which is by no means predetermined. Many Scottish people feel the same way about their membership in the UK. I think that autonomy within the UK is the answer for them, but they really should leave if they think it's the only way they can control their own destiny. They definitely deserve a second Scottish independence referendum once the Brexit instability calms down.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    > "It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters." I'd recommend thinking twice when it comes to blanket statements like that. The only thing I'd be willing to make a blanket statement on is that the mainstream news media has been very manipulative when it comes to pushing their own agendas, and this applies both to the Remain camp and the Leave camp. With that in mind, I couldn't honestly put my finger on what mattered most to the 30,000,000+ voters, though I'd suspect the reasons for Remain and Leave were a lot more diverse than the mainstream media wanted to suggest.
    - 10y ago

by rmu09 10y ago

marcoperaza 10y ago

Merkel and Hollande want Britain to bleed to scare other countries from following suit. But you forget that Britain has immense economic leverage over the continent that Switzerland and Norway do not. Britain is a huge market for French and German goods (more so than the other way around). Many of these, like German cars, are easily substituted with goods from other countries. The gloves are coming off. The British government would be doing a disservice to their people if a threat to sink the German car market in the UK is not on the table. We all know that Merkel does not like to play dangerously. I suspect Britain wins this game of chicken. This could play out very well for all of Europe if the EU disintegrates into what it really should have been, a European trade agreement and not much more. But that will have to come from the people of the continent, not their leaders, who are totally sold on the concept of a European superstate. "The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony."

__jal 10y ago
Interesting way to look at it. A different way is that Britain (through the mealy mouths of the Boris and Nigel show) is massively conflicted; the ever-popular (Wo)man on the Street is confused and angry from a decade of being bled by "conservatives", and, as often happens, responded to their pain by symbolically punching down. It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters. This is unfortunate, but often happens, especially when there are opportunists looking to ride anger to power. The problem is that that anger is dangerous and unpredictable. I think the little weasels never expected to actually win, and now they've had their bluff called. Just watch little Boris try to jib and dance around all their lies on his recent appearances - it would be great comedy if this weren't all so dangerous. My bet is that England (I'm not talking about Britain) doesn't leave; Scotland, however, does eventually get a divorce, and I don't yet know what I think about Ireland. And the Boris and Nigel show ends like a lot of these little fits - they both learn to not care about their reputations and make out just fine after demonstrating their incompetence at running a proper insurrection.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  >It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters. Just because they don't approach it from some high-minded constitutional-philosophy or European-project perspective doesn't mean that it wasn't about the EU. The biggest issue was immigration, because the EU doesn't allow the British to control immigration into their own country. If you wanted lower immigration, the EU gave you one option: leave the EU. When the continent totally rejected David Cameron's reasonable (and I think insufficient) list of reforms, they confirmed that. For the Tories who voted Leave, it was also about economic growth because the EU has forced all member countries into a high-regulation (and in my opinion, low-growth) model that's more about protecting inefficient French businesses from competition than about raising the fortunes of the British people. It didn't matter how many elections Conservatives won, because socialism was imposed at the EU level. The EU even ganged up on Ireland for daring to have a low corporate tax rate. No change in the composition of the British delegation to the powerless European Parliament, where they were severely outnumbered anyway, had any chance of ever changing any of this. Again, the only way to even get the chance to vote for free market policies was to leave the EU. Now the British people can decide for themselves what path they will take, a choice which is by no means predetermined. Many Scottish people feel the same way about their membership in the UK. I think that autonomy within the UK is the answer for them, but they really should leave if they think it's the only way they can control their own destiny. They definitely deserve a second Scottish independence referendum once the Brexit instability calms down.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters." I'd recommend thinking twice when it comes to blanket statements like that. The only thing I'd be willing to make a blanket statement on is that the mainstream news media has been very manipulative when it comes to pushing their own agendas, and this applies both to the Remain camp and the Leave camp. With that in mind, I couldn't honestly put my finger on what mattered most to the 30,000,000+ voters, though I'd suspect the reasons for Remain and Leave were a lot more diverse than the mainstream media wanted to suggest.
  - 10y ago