6 ms·

George Orwell would have voted to leave the European Union

45 points by snake117 10y ago

slavik81 10y ago
They tell an interesting story, but the only part of it that directly addresses the title is the final paragraph. Frankly, it would be a better piece if they cut that paragraph out and changed the title. It was too brief to be convincing anyways.
rbanffy 10y ago
If someone is uncomfortable by "being ruled" by an unelected bureaucracy, then question it and fix it. The very definition of "being ruled" here is open to debate, as well as the role of elected officials both within nations and on supranational bodies. Orwell was a smart person. He'd see the EU would be problematic and that it probably wouldn't be a perfect government on the first attempt. He would, however, quickly notice how unpractical leaving is and vote against it.
- j-pb 10y ago
  I feel like most people perceive it as a "unelected bureaucracy" because they don't understand it, despite the eu spending a huge amount of resources trying to educate people (there is a huge amount of free Hotlines and information material in all languages of the eu). The European pairlament is even elected directly with direct appointment of the parliamentarians, which is more direct than in a lot of eu countries where you only elect parties which in turn propose concrete politicians. While all the other bodies are elected indirectly in the national elections. The problem is that people neither understand nor care for the elections of the pairlament, and thus they think that "they did not vote for this".
  - teamonkey 10y ago
    In the UK there is virtually no coverage of the European parliament. It's not televised on any channel, you don't hear coverage on the radio or read it in the papers like the UK parliament. People don't know who their who their elected representative is. It's really no surprise that people think they have no representation, despite the UK having significant influence.
    - misnome 10y ago
      Well, when asked to vote for representation "The People" elect Nigel Farage who campaigns purely on a platform of "I will do nothing except vote against everything", which I believe his record supports. It's voting for non-representation.
      - SixSigma 10y ago
        As Daniel Hannan [1] (Conservative MEP for 17 years) says : "Uniquely, we have managed to create a system that is anti-democratic - you only get to go there when you have lost an election. Only when, like: Chris Patten, Neil Kinnock, and Jean-Claude Junkers, you have been expressly rejected by voters are you invited to sit as an MEP" [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Hannan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Hannan [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJcuKfcxo9w#t=6m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJcuKfcxo9w#t=6m50s
        tormeh 10y ago
        Which is because you can always have more power by becoming a leader of a member state than a leader of some part of the EU machine. Becoming a MEP or commissioner/MEP is not exactly a move towards power. Therefore it's usually a path taken by those whose time in the national spotlight have passed or those who have had to adjust their ambitions. It's not anti-democratic that the players for the lower-rang positions are of lower rang.
      - teamonkey 10y ago
        Well yes, but I don't think people even realise that there are actually representatives from the UK there who don't do nothing. There was a Scottish MEP who made an impassioned speech in contrast to Farage's nonsense. a) I only saw it due to it showing up in my relatively pro-EU Facebook echo chamber; b) I'd never heard of him before.
    - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      There is plenty of coverage, it's nearly all negative rather than factual though. My biggest worry now is we are likely to go through a difficult period in the UK and all those politicians and journalists that told us our problems are the fault of those foreigners will continue to do so.
  - marak830 10y ago
    Thank you for this explanation. I'm an Australian in Japan, I had no idea how it all worked in Europe(admittedly I should have looked it up a long time ago)
  - misnome 10y ago
    Exactly - the EU is more complicated than the UK parliament, and I honestly think that most people who call it democratic have no idea how it works (or have thought whether the equivalent institutions in the UK are just as 'undemocratic'). Someone on my facebook feed actually stated, in a patronising tone, that it was clearly undemocratic because the president chose the council directly, and the council then chose the president - so they just all vote for each other - and that the president was the only person on the Ballot when the MEPs were asked (obviously they view the MEPs as an entirely useless institution to make the process 'appear' legitimate to the easily fooled). I mean clearly a little of the functionality has got through, but in such a garbled way that they really have no idea how it works, but think that they do.
  - Pamar 10y ago
    Italian expat here (moderately anti-EU, so you know my bias from the start). It does not help that (in my country, cannot say about others) parties seems to see a seat in the EU parliament as a place you can give to end-of-career candidates or as a sort of consolatory prize to people that would not get much use in national politics.
    - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      We have the House of Lords[1] for that in the UK. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords
    - kh_hk 10y ago
      Italy currently holds 73 seats on the EU parliament. That puts their vote on the top 5 on influential countries on EU policy ruling (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain). If the public was educated enough to know how important their vote is on EU policies maybe the parliament wouldn't be such an elephant's graveyard.
      - Pamar 10y ago
        Well, we can only vote for candidates. If the main parties select these from the dead wood pile what can we do?
        kh_hk 10y ago
        One option would be to follow what the MEPs are up to at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html , which of course is not perfect, since politics is exactly about the contrary. We vote so we can offload the task of decision making. The other is to not vote for candidates on parties that select their MEPs from the dead wood pile. The main parties will either be part of EPP or S&D, so it will be a dead vote anyway.
        Pamar 10y ago
        So, in other words, you are confirming that my vote as an (Italian) citizen is basically worthless. This was precisely my point.
  - RobertoG 10y ago
    One of the complains about the EU is that the parliament have not the powers of a real parliament. Proof of that is how the EU parliament is used to 'park' politicians that are not relevant in their own countries. When the European Parliament is the place where the politicians want to be, we will know that we have an Europe not controlled by unelected bureaucrats (for better or worse).
    - j-pb 10y ago
      Interestingly there is lots of politicians that want to be there. Those from parties that would have little chance to get elected into a national government because of 1 3-5% hurdle. The pirate party is a prime example for this, even though they hold no seats in germany they hold 1 seat as a representative from germany.
  - J_Darnley 10y ago
    The EU is undemocratic. The EU constitution was rejected by national referenda in two countries, France and the Netherlands. A few others had pledged to hold their own, the UK for example. When it was rejected the constitution was renamed into the Lisbon Treaty and then was voted on again. Now most countries decided to not ask the public but just sign it anyway. Ireland managed to hold a referendum, which rejected it. They were then forced to vote again to get the correct answer. Now the constitution is in place despite it being rejected in three national referenda. A giant "fuck you" to democracy.
    - j-pb 10y ago
      Democracy means the majority vote wins. Clearly the majority wanted a european constitution. I live in the Netherlands so I'm sorry to say this, but they hold way to much power in the eu. Their population is ridiculously tiny and they only have so much money because they act as a soft tax haven. These referendums should be held EU wide and decided upon based on a total count of all votes from all eu members, where each person holds one vote. Not by asking every state individually and then having a all or nothing ruling. Then it would be truly democratic.
      - J_Darnley 10y ago
        Yes, the referenda should be held EU wide (I doubt the EU would ever allow something as low class as a popular vote) but that is not what the rules said at the time. It needed to be ratified by each country. It wasn't so the bureaucrats decided to ignore their own rules, rename it, and say "this is totally not the constitution". Oh and both remove that pesky need for unanimity agreement among the nations. Further, having an EU wide referendum would require acknowledging that the EU is the supreme governing body in Europe and that all national parliaments are subservient to it. The nations are not ready for that yet and the EU elite know it.
        rbanffy 10y ago
        > something as low class as a popular vote you may consider the Brexit was democratic. In a sense, it was, but it was also one of the most stupid collective acts I ever witnessed. Most people who voted didn't understand what they were actually voting for or against. Welcome to the rule of the uninformed. We elect people so they can make informed decisions for us. Asking an imbecile about something extremely complicated is not helpful. Asking millions of them is equally useless.
moomin 10y ago
I'm reasonably sure I could use Orwell's history in the civil war and Trotskyists being accused of being leftists in league with the right to argue the exact opposite of the article's headline.
- ihsw 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure Stalinists/other commies would worship Hitler if he didn't betray their beloved Stalin. Personally I view the political spectrum as a donut rather than straight left-to-right -- there is a point where the two become equal before diverging again.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    So you resolve the forced one-dimensionality by making the dimension circular rather than making more dimensions? The left/right divide is one of my pet peeves...
    - Rexxar 10y ago
      I think we have a multidimensional doughnut. But maybe not all dimensions are circulars.
danmaz74 10y ago
> Orwell ends the review by stating that the best defence people have in a capitalist world is the democratic form of government. The EU is part of a "democratic form of government": the Parliament is elected directly by its citizens, while the Commission is nominated by the democratically elected governments of its member countries. What we miss is more accountability, which we could get if the Commission was expressed directly by the Parliament, or elected directly by EU citizens.
- m_mueller 10y ago
  While it's sort of democratic, IMO the EU totally went wrong on separating the powers. The Commission is in many ways a Legislative body [1], without it pretty much nothing happens in EU government. So it's an indirect indirect democracy with screwed up checks and balances. Call that what you want, as a Swiss I don't want anything to do with it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission#Legislative_initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission#Legislativ...
  - Brakenshire 10y ago
    The head of the Commission is now chosen by the Parliament. Juncker was the EPP candidate.
  - danmaz74 10y ago
    I agree that there's too much indirection, and I wish we'll make it more directly representative.
  - ProxCoques 10y ago
    And how is that any different from a civil service? Let me guess - you've never seen an episode of "Yes, Minister", have you?
    - m_mueller 10y ago
      Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about. Civil service has a very specific meaning to me, am obligated to do it as a male Swiss.
dri_ft 10y ago
I don't know whether Orwell would have voted to leave the European Union, but I'm sure that the article's last sentence - "I think there is no doubt" that he would - is wildly overconfident.
cabalamat 10y ago
Actually, Orwell wrote an essay "Toward European Unity" http://orwell.ru/library/articles/European_Unity/english/e_teu http://orwell.ru/library/articles/European_Unity/english/e_t... in which he explicitly argues for something like the EU: > the spectacle of a community where people are relatively free and happy and where the main motive in life is not the pursuit of money or power. In other words, democratic Socialism must be made to work throughout some large area. But the only area in which it could conceivably be made to work, in any near future, is Western Europe. Apart from Australia and New Zealand, the tradition of democratic Socialism can only be said to exist — even there it only exists precariously — in Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, the Low Countries, France, Britain, Spain, and Italy. Only in those countries are there still large numbers of people to whom the word ‘Socialism’ has some appeal, and for whom it is bound up with liberty, equality, and internationalism. [...] Therefore a Socialist United States of Europe seems to me the only worth-while political objective today.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  I wonder of the author of the posted article read much of Orwell at all, or did much background research (though to be fair, finding this could have been difficult)
  - cabalamat 10y ago
    > (though to be fair, finding this could have been difficult) When you do a Google search on "Orwell European Union", the article is the 3rd result. Looks like the writer couldn't be bothered to JFGI.
derriz 10y ago
The headline is supported by a single claim that Orwell would oppose being ruled by an unelected bureaucracy. Such a claim is disengenious. Of course nobody likes "being ruled" - so on an emotional level the EU must be a bad thing. Also, this makes no sense unless supported by a claim that such a condition is unique to living in the EU. The only way to interpret "being ruled" in the context of the EU is that it means having a hierarchical civil service (the EU commission). So why would having a UK civil servant (instead of an EU one) decide how bananas should be graded be considered a liberation from bureaucracy? In fact, Orwell hated this kind of weaselly, ambiguous and emotionally manipulatitve statement - particulary when use to advance a political adgenda.
- notahacker 10y ago
  The article offers a secondary argument that Orwell didn't mind disagreeing with other radical leftists, but again that's just as easily read the other way: left-wing cheerleaders for Brexit like George Galloway are the modern embodiment of pretty much everything Orwell hated about radical left wing politics in Britain... The "[Dead person] would have voted [x] on the EU" is the most facile form of political argumentation we've had the misfortune to experience over the past few month, and this is one of the weakest examples of this kind of argument I've seen. And if you forced me at gunpoint to construct an argument from the authority of a long dead person on Brexit, I'd probably pick someone whose politics were a little more consistent, considerably more pragmatic and a lot less a product of the very specific political climates of the era he found himself in than Orwell.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
tormeh 10y ago
I haven't read the article and I'm not going to dignify it with my view, but I highly doubt its conclusion. The UK has a deeply undemocratic voting system and one of the leaders in government surveillance. Someone who cares for democracy and privacy can't possibly want Britain's institutions to be unconstrained by the EU, however little the EU may help.

45 points by snake117 10y ago

They tell an interesting story, but the only part of it that directly addresses the title is the final paragraph. Frankly, it would be a better piece if they cut that paragraph out and changed the title. It was too brief to be convincing anyways.

rbanffy 10y ago

If someone is uncomfortable by "being ruled" by an unelected bureaucracy, then question it and fix it. The very definition of "being ruled" here is open to debate, as well as the role of elected officials both within nations and on supranational bodies. Orwell was a smart person. He'd see the EU would be problematic and that it probably wouldn't be a perfect government on the first attempt. He would, however, quickly notice how unpractical leaving is and vote against it.

j-pb 10y ago
I feel like most people perceive it as a "unelected bureaucracy" because they don't understand it, despite the eu spending a huge amount of resources trying to educate people (there is a huge amount of free Hotlines and information material in all languages of the eu). The European pairlament is even elected directly with direct appointment of the parliamentarians, which is more direct than in a lot of eu countries where you only elect parties which in turn propose concrete politicians. While all the other bodies are elected indirectly in the national elections. The problem is that people neither understand nor care for the elections of the pairlament, and thus they think that "they did not vote for this".
- teamonkey 10y ago
  In the UK there is virtually no coverage of the European parliament. It's not televised on any channel, you don't hear coverage on the radio or read it in the papers like the UK parliament. People don't know who their who their elected representative is. It's really no surprise that people think they have no representation, despite the UK having significant influence.
  - misnome 10y ago
    Well, when asked to vote for representation "The People" elect Nigel Farage who campaigns purely on a platform of "I will do nothing except vote against everything", which I believe his record supports. It's voting for non-representation.
    - SixSigma 10y ago
      As Daniel Hannan [1] (Conservative MEP for 17 years) says : "Uniquely, we have managed to create a system that is anti-democratic - you only get to go there when you have lost an election. Only when, like: Chris Patten, Neil Kinnock, and Jean-Claude Junkers, you have been expressly rejected by voters are you invited to sit as an MEP" [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Hannan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Hannan [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJcuKfcxo9w#t=6m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJcuKfcxo9w#t=6m50s
      - tormeh 10y ago
        Which is because you can always have more power by becoming a leader of a member state than a leader of some part of the EU machine. Becoming a MEP or commissioner/MEP is not exactly a move towards power. Therefore it's usually a path taken by those whose time in the national spotlight have passed or those who have had to adjust their ambitions. It's not anti-democratic that the players for the lower-rang positions are of lower rang.
    - teamonkey 10y ago
      Well yes, but I don't think people even realise that there are actually representatives from the UK there who don't do nothing. There was a Scottish MEP who made an impassioned speech in contrast to Farage's nonsense. a) I only saw it due to it showing up in my relatively pro-EU Facebook echo chamber; b) I'd never heard of him before.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    There is plenty of coverage, it's nearly all negative rather than factual though. My biggest worry now is we are likely to go through a difficult period in the UK and all those politicians and journalists that told us our problems are the fault of those foreigners will continue to do so.
- marak830 10y ago
  Thank you for this explanation. I'm an Australian in Japan, I had no idea how it all worked in Europe(admittedly I should have looked it up a long time ago)
- misnome 10y ago
  Exactly - the EU is more complicated than the UK parliament, and I honestly think that most people who call it democratic have no idea how it works (or have thought whether the equivalent institutions in the UK are just as 'undemocratic'). Someone on my facebook feed actually stated, in a patronising tone, that it was clearly undemocratic because the president chose the council directly, and the council then chose the president - so they just all vote for each other - and that the president was the only person on the Ballot when the MEPs were asked (obviously they view the MEPs as an entirely useless institution to make the process 'appear' legitimate to the easily fooled). I mean clearly a little of the functionality has got through, but in such a garbled way that they really have no idea how it works, but think that they do.
- Pamar 10y ago
  Italian expat here (moderately anti-EU, so you know my bias from the start). It does not help that (in my country, cannot say about others) parties seems to see a seat in the EU parliament as a place you can give to end-of-career candidates or as a sort of consolatory prize to people that would not get much use in national politics.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    We have the House of Lords[1] for that in the UK. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords
  - kh_hk 10y ago
    Italy currently holds 73 seats on the EU parliament. That puts their vote on the top 5 on influential countries on EU policy ruling (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain). If the public was educated enough to know how important their vote is on EU policies maybe the parliament wouldn't be such an elephant's graveyard.
    - Pamar 10y ago
      Well, we can only vote for candidates. If the main parties select these from the dead wood pile what can we do?
      - kh_hk 10y ago
        One option would be to follow what the MEPs are up to at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html , which of course is not perfect, since politics is exactly about the contrary. We vote so we can offload the task of decision making. The other is to not vote for candidates on parties that select their MEPs from the dead wood pile. The main parties will either be part of EPP or S&D, so it will be a dead vote anyway.
        Pamar 10y ago
        So, in other words, you are confirming that my vote as an (Italian) citizen is basically worthless. This was precisely my point.
- RobertoG 10y ago
  One of the complains about the EU is that the parliament have not the powers of a real parliament. Proof of that is how the EU parliament is used to 'park' politicians that are not relevant in their own countries. When the European Parliament is the place where the politicians want to be, we will know that we have an Europe not controlled by unelected bureaucrats (for better or worse).
  - j-pb 10y ago
    Interestingly there is lots of politicians that want to be there. Those from parties that would have little chance to get elected into a national government because of 1 3-5% hurdle. The pirate party is a prime example for this, even though they hold no seats in germany they hold 1 seat as a representative from germany.
- J_Darnley 10y ago
  The EU is undemocratic. The EU constitution was rejected by national referenda in two countries, France and the Netherlands. A few others had pledged to hold their own, the UK for example. When it was rejected the constitution was renamed into the Lisbon Treaty and then was voted on again. Now most countries decided to not ask the public but just sign it anyway. Ireland managed to hold a referendum, which rejected it. They were then forced to vote again to get the correct answer. Now the constitution is in place despite it being rejected in three national referenda. A giant "fuck you" to democracy.
  - j-pb 10y ago
    Democracy means the majority vote wins. Clearly the majority wanted a european constitution. I live in the Netherlands so I'm sorry to say this, but they hold way to much power in the eu. Their population is ridiculously tiny and they only have so much money because they act as a soft tax haven. These referendums should be held EU wide and decided upon based on a total count of all votes from all eu members, where each person holds one vote. Not by asking every state individually and then having a all or nothing ruling. Then it would be truly democratic.
    - J_Darnley 10y ago
      Yes, the referenda should be held EU wide (I doubt the EU would ever allow something as low class as a popular vote) but that is not what the rules said at the time. It needed to be ratified by each country. It wasn't so the bureaucrats decided to ignore their own rules, rename it, and say "this is totally not the constitution". Oh and both remove that pesky need for unanimity agreement among the nations. Further, having an EU wide referendum would require acknowledging that the EU is the supreme governing body in Europe and that all national parliaments are subservient to it. The nations are not ready for that yet and the EU elite know it.
      - rbanffy 10y ago
        > something as low class as a popular vote you may consider the Brexit was democratic. In a sense, it was, but it was also one of the most stupid collective acts I ever witnessed. Most people who voted didn't understand what they were actually voting for or against. Welcome to the rule of the uninformed. We elect people so they can make informed decisions for us. Asking an imbecile about something extremely complicated is not helpful. Asking millions of them is equally useless.

moomin 10y ago

I'm reasonably sure I could use Orwell's history in the civil war and Trotskyists being accused of being leftists in league with the right to argue the exact opposite of the article's headline.

ihsw 10y ago
I'm pretty sure Stalinists/other commies would worship Hitler if he didn't betray their beloved Stalin. Personally I view the political spectrum as a donut rather than straight left-to-right -- there is a point where the two become equal before diverging again.
- tormeh 10y ago
  So you resolve the forced one-dimensionality by making the dimension circular rather than making more dimensions? The left/right divide is one of my pet peeves...
  - Rexxar 10y ago
    I think we have a multidimensional doughnut. But maybe not all dimensions are circulars.

danmaz74 10y ago

> Orwell ends the review by stating that the best defence people have in a capitalist world is the democratic form of government. The EU is part of a "democratic form of government": the Parliament is elected directly by its citizens, while the Commission is nominated by the democratically elected governments of its member countries. What we miss is more accountability, which we could get if the Commission was expressed directly by the Parliament, or elected directly by EU citizens.

m_mueller 10y ago
While it's sort of democratic, IMO the EU totally went wrong on separating the powers. The Commission is in many ways a Legislative body [1], without it pretty much nothing happens in EU government. So it's an indirect indirect democracy with screwed up checks and balances. Call that what you want, as a Swiss I don't want anything to do with it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission#Legislative_initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission#Legislativ...
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  The head of the Commission is now chosen by the Parliament. Juncker was the EPP candidate.
- danmaz74 10y ago
  I agree that there's too much indirection, and I wish we'll make it more directly representative.
- ProxCoques 10y ago
  And how is that any different from a civil service? Let me guess - you've never seen an episode of "Yes, Minister", have you?
  - m_mueller 10y ago
    Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about. Civil service has a very specific meaning to me, am obligated to do it as a male Swiss.

dri_ft 10y ago

I don't know whether Orwell would have voted to leave the European Union, but I'm sure that the article's last sentence - "I think there is no doubt" that he would - is wildly overconfident.

cabalamat 10y ago

Actually, Orwell wrote an essay "Toward European Unity" http://orwell.ru/library/articles/European_Unity/english/e_teu http://orwell.ru/library/articles/European_Unity/english/e_t... in which he explicitly argues for something like the EU: > the spectacle of a community where people are relatively free and happy and where the main motive in life is not the pursuit of money or power. In other words, democratic Socialism must be made to work throughout some large area. But the only area in which it could conceivably be made to work, in any near future, is Western Europe. Apart from Australia and New Zealand, the tradition of democratic Socialism can only be said to exist — even there it only exists precariously — in Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, the Low Countries, France, Britain, Spain, and Italy. Only in those countries are there still large numbers of people to whom the word ‘Socialism’ has some appeal, and for whom it is bound up with liberty, equality, and internationalism. [...] Therefore a Socialist United States of Europe seems to me the only worth-while political objective today.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago
I wonder of the author of the posted article read much of Orwell at all, or did much background research (though to be fair, finding this could have been difficult)
- cabalamat 10y ago
  > (though to be fair, finding this could have been difficult) When you do a Google search on "Orwell European Union", the article is the 3rd result. Looks like the writer couldn't be bothered to JFGI.

derriz 10y ago

The headline is supported by a single claim that Orwell would oppose being ruled by an unelected bureaucracy. Such a claim is disengenious. Of course nobody likes "being ruled" - so on an emotional level the EU must be a bad thing. Also, this makes no sense unless supported by a claim that such a condition is unique to living in the EU. The only way to interpret "being ruled" in the context of the EU is that it means having a hierarchical civil service (the EU commission). So why would having a UK civil servant (instead of an EU one) decide how bananas should be graded be considered a liberation from bureaucracy? In fact, Orwell hated this kind of weaselly, ambiguous and emotionally manipulatitve statement - particulary when use to advance a political adgenda.

notahacker 10y ago
The article offers a secondary argument that Orwell didn't mind disagreeing with other radical leftists, but again that's just as easily read the other way: left-wing cheerleaders for Brexit like George Galloway are the modern embodiment of pretty much everything Orwell hated about radical left wing politics in Britain... The "[Dead person] would have voted [x] on the EU" is the most facile form of political argumentation we've had the misfortune to experience over the past few month, and this is one of the weakest examples of this kind of argument I've seen. And if you forced me at gunpoint to construct an argument from the authority of a long dead person on Brexit, I'd probably pick someone whose politics were a little more consistent, considerably more pragmatic and a lot less a product of the very specific political climates of the era he found himself in than Orwell.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

tormeh 10y ago

I haven't read the article and I'm not going to dignify it with my view, but I highly doubt its conclusion. The UK has a deeply undemocratic voting system and one of the leaders in government surveillance. Someone who cares for democracy and privacy can't possibly want Britain's institutions to be unconstrained by the EU, however little the EU may help.