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I find it amazing how people can stay in denial about the Brexit vote: that it happened, and that people in Britain actually disliked EU enough to want to get o

I find it amazing how people can stay in denial about the Brexit vote: that it happened, and that people in Britain actually disliked EU enough to want to get out of it. That what people voted for is not their will. I'm in the remaining EU, if I'd had a vote in the British referendum, I'd have voted for Remain. But the increasingly paranoid conspiracy theories about shadowy conspiracies makes me more and more disgusted with the EU status quo. New emperor-wannabes come up with 50 billion or 100 billion or 200 billion that Britain should pay to the union. Looks like that the more absurd numbers you can come up with to punish Britain for insulting the honor of EU institutions, the better. Get real: such payments are not going to happen. You're coming up with a "favoured trade partner" or whatever status with Uganda; you'll be able to do that with Britain as well. The British isles aren't floating away to the Atlantic, and the countries will need to continue trading. EU is not working very well. The leader of the Commission is a drunkard. Institutions are grabbing power that I and very many others want to belong to national governments. The union wants to expand to new countries and deepen to a federal state at the same time. Very many people want free trade, but otherwise want to retain national sovereignty. Accept that, stop blaming Trump and shadowy conspiracies.

Tomte 9y ago
200 billion is most probably too high, but dozens of billons? Easily. The UK has committed themselves to paying this, they don't get to withhold the money now. Those sums aren't some arbitrarily thought up "exit fees", it's regular funding that has been decided on and committed to years ago. If the UK wanted to avoid that they should have exited somewhere in the future, outside of the current budgetary periods.
- vixen99 9y ago
  Actually they do. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/06/100bn-brexit-bill-legally-impossible-enforce-european-commissions/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/06/100bn-brexit-bill...
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    The legality is irrelevant. If Britain refuses to pay what the rEU decides is fair, it will have a very poor position for the trade negotiations which follow. (I'm not paying to read the Telegraph, but "admit" in the headline is loaded language, and intentionally missing the point.)
    - blibble 9y ago
      it is politically impossible to pay a bill of that scale when the UK has paid in for 40 years the prime minister would be out within hours and would be replaced by someone who would refuse to pay it
    - jwlato 9y ago
      No, Britain will have a very poor position in the negotiations that follow regardless. That's why the E.U. is insisting on the payments and citizen's rights issues being resolved first: they want a British commitment to items the E.U. cares about without having to make any concessions. If you think the E.U. will go back and renegotiate, or take British payments into account at later stages of negotiation, you're as delusional as May. I hate to admit it, but May and Davis should absolutely refuse to play ball. They should agree to terms they think are fair here, and if the E.U. doesn't go along, prepare for a really hard brexit. Which of course means that they'll capitulate.
      - pjc50 9y ago
        > prepare for a really hard brexit. Which of course means that they'll capitulate. Ah, the "throw your steering wheel out the window" strategy in "chicken". Greece tried this. It didn't work. What sort of "capitulation" do you expect? The EU have already said that any deal cannot be allowed to be better than EU membership (which is kind of obvious). Would "hard Brexit" include deporting the 3m EU nationals in the UK? How do you expect that to work out?
        Boothroid 9y ago
        The UK is not Greece - it is, still, one of the most advanced and powerful countries in the world, of global importance culturally, economically, scientifically, militarily, and in myriad other ways. For its own sake the EU better hope the UK does not go tits up.
- gaius 9y ago
  Those sums aren't some arbitrarily thought up "exit fees", it's regular funding that has been decided on and committed to years ago Oh but they are, because they ignore the things that the UK has already paid for! We could for example calculate exactly how many miles of Ireland's EU-funded road building projects are actually "owned" by the UK based on our contribution. Should we be entitled to charge Ireland tolls for those sections of roads too?
- seefer 9y ago
  Dozens of billions I agree with. But isn't £12 billion just the accepted EU membership cost after rebates that we continue to pay while we negotiate our leaving the EU? This 'Brexit divorce' bill of €100 billion (£84 billion) confuses me. As far as I understand this is to cover commitment costs to the year 2020. £84 billion over that period is £24 billion yes? How does this square with the £12 billion annual cost of EU membership after rebates? Does this then mean that the £24 billion a year Brexit divorce bill consists of the 'known' £12 billion membership commitments and then £12 billion 'hidden' costs or is it the £12 billion known membership fee plus hidden costs of a £24 billion divorce bill? If it is indeed a punitive financial slap for leaving, does this not make the inherent attitudes of the EU powers that be somewhat akin to a cult like Scientology?
- zigzigzag 9y ago
  Those sums aren't some arbitrarily thought up "exit fees" They are, actually: 1) The number being cited keeps changing (upwards) 2) When asked how they calculated those figures, and what the legal basis was, the Commission said it wasn't going to tell you. There is a useful analysis of what's going on here: https://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/pb_barker_brexit_bill_3feb17.pdf https://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/pb_barker_brexit_...
prodmerc 9y ago
I think it would be way easier to devolve into an authoritarian government when there's no one to tell you to slow down and rethink it. There's already plenty of Nazis in Britain. "Britannia rules", "Destroy the fascist/socialist/capitalist EU" (yeah, make up your mind please), "kick out the foreigners". Remove the EU oversight and they can do whatever they want.
- beaconstudios 9y ago
  are there really that many Nazis in Britain? Sure, the BNP are pretty fascist, but they're such a minority party as to be almost completely irrelevant. Being a nationalist, disliking the EU or being anti-immigration are not traits that make someone a Nazi, and overusing the term diminishes quite how horrific the Nazis were and makes room for actual neo-Nazis to think they are more commonplace than they are, bolstering their confidence. If you want to criticise people for these traits then do so, but using "Nazi" as a snarl word does nothing to back up your point. If you are arguing that there are many actual Nazis in the UK, I'm fairly skeptical but open to believing you if you have the data to back up your position.
  - prodmerc 9y ago
    I don't know their actual numbers. Yeah, probably should've said Nationalists, but I wanted to accentuate what the worst case scenario happened. Unlike other countries with nationalism on the rise, the UK can actually do a lot of damage (including to itself).
    - beaconstudios 9y ago
      I don't think nationalism is really tied to Nazism fundamentally. Nazis were very ethnically focused where civic nationalism really isn't - it's about valuing your own country and it's history, and wanting to protect its values. It's basically a synonym with patriotism. It's a big leap to go from nationalism to Nazism.
      - mschuster91 9y ago
Kenji 9y ago
I just wanted to say that I agree with you and I find your point perfectly respectable, and I have no idea why you get downvoted.
- cryptarch 9y ago
  On a related tangent, what reasons are there not to publicize votes and voters in discussion fora? I think it would be very interesting to be able to identify "voting blocks" and voting patterns on HN. I'm not saying HN should implement that, but it could make for an interesting experimental feature for forum software.
vacri 9y ago
> The British isles aren't floating away to the Atlantic, and the countries will need to continue trading. Europe has been bluntly honest about this. They've said that the UK leaving the single market will hurt them, but they're bigger than the UK and the UK will hurt more. They've also pointed out that they can't give the UK a soft landing, as they need to show that leaving the EU is not without consequences; there's a few states thinking of departing, and if departing is painless, why wouldn't they? Remember that the EU isn't just about the fat cats in Brussels. It's also about bringing the people together. Europe has historically been the most divisive and warlike continent, with neighbours at each others' throats since records began. You only need to go back to the 90s to see a genocide between europeans who looked the same as each other, and it's within living memory that Europe gave us the worst war of all time and the Holocaust. But 'bendy bananas' is worth it, right?
- ptaipale 9y ago
  If EU needs to scare its members to show how badly a leaving member would be treated, it's no longer a union of consenting, democratic members. It's not the union that I voted to join, a union that works for the benefit of member countries under guidance of their respective governments for free trade and co-operation; someone started to build an empire and is now mightily pissed off as some people don't want to be in an empire but just have a free trade union of independent countries.
  - saimiam 9y ago
    This is naive. Divorces are designed to be painful and marriage was literally a union of people who wanted to be together.
- dTal 9y ago
  >a few states thinking of departing, and if departing is painless, why wouldn't they? That sounds awfully... federalist. If that's the best reasoning they can give for staying, then better to leave.
  - baq 9y ago
sorokod 9y ago
"people in Britain actually disliked EU enough to want to get out of it" The people of Britain where split 52% - 48%. Hardly a clear mandate politicians make it to be.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Note that the split was between classes, a term that has been anathema in western politics since the 80s or so. Present and former industrial workers basically all voted leave, while knowledge workers and finance voted remain. What is telling is how the former class' way of life was ravaged first by thatcher's union busting, and then by management (under pressure from finance) either moving production abroad, or shipping cheap workers in. Knowledge workers, particularly the kind that is frequenting this very site, have a much easier time moving around as the needs or desires require. Especially as the market segment prefer younger employees, unlikely to be "burdened" by family and such.
  - MarkMc 9y ago
    > Present and former industrial workers basically all voted leave, while knowledge workers and finance voted remain. Do you have a source for that claim? According to The Australian: "Leave was backed by almost two-thirds of those considered “working class and non-workers”, meaning skilled manual workers through to those with lower grade jobs, pensioners or welfare dependants." http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/brexit-who-voted-leave-the-old-less-educated-and-christians/news-story/55d06ce2bf15e99fe577d0f2fefa25ef http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/brexit-who-vot...
  - sorokod 9y ago
    You omitted the young Vs old divide.
  - Boothroid 9y ago
    'shipping cheap workers in'.. and from where did these workers come? The EU perhaps?
- krona 9y ago
petre 9y ago
Exactly. "Trump and his billionaire friends bought the Brexit vote", even before Trump became president. This is just typical leftst rethoric of not accepting defeat. The UK (67% of the people, not the government) voted to be a part of the CE, not the EU. Then the EU happened, the Euro, the centralization of power and now Germany runs the show, unilaterally imposes austerity on other states (Greece, Cyprus, Italy), invites in 2+M refugees and then imposes migrant quotas on everyone. The EU president is taking a rough stance with the UK to make an example out of it.

Tomte 9y ago

200 billion is most probably too high, but dozens of billons? Easily. The UK has committed themselves to paying this, they don't get to withhold the money now. Those sums aren't some arbitrarily thought up "exit fees", it's regular funding that has been decided on and committed to years ago. If the UK wanted to avoid that they should have exited somewhere in the future, outside of the current budgetary periods.

vixen99 9y ago
Actually they do. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/06/100bn-brexit-bill-legally-impossible-enforce-european-commissions/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/06/100bn-brexit-bill...
- Symbiote 9y ago
  The legality is irrelevant. If Britain refuses to pay what the rEU decides is fair, it will have a very poor position for the trade negotiations which follow. (I'm not paying to read the Telegraph, but "admit" in the headline is loaded language, and intentionally missing the point.)
  - blibble 9y ago
    it is politically impossible to pay a bill of that scale when the UK has paid in for 40 years the prime minister would be out within hours and would be replaced by someone who would refuse to pay it
  - jwlato 9y ago
    No, Britain will have a very poor position in the negotiations that follow regardless. That's why the E.U. is insisting on the payments and citizen's rights issues being resolved first: they want a British commitment to items the E.U. cares about without having to make any concessions. If you think the E.U. will go back and renegotiate, or take British payments into account at later stages of negotiation, you're as delusional as May. I hate to admit it, but May and Davis should absolutely refuse to play ball. They should agree to terms they think are fair here, and if the E.U. doesn't go along, prepare for a really hard brexit. Which of course means that they'll capitulate.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      > prepare for a really hard brexit. Which of course means that they'll capitulate. Ah, the "throw your steering wheel out the window" strategy in "chicken". Greece tried this. It didn't work. What sort of "capitulation" do you expect? The EU have already said that any deal cannot be allowed to be better than EU membership (which is kind of obvious). Would "hard Brexit" include deporting the 3m EU nationals in the UK? How do you expect that to work out?
      - Boothroid 9y ago
        The UK is not Greece - it is, still, one of the most advanced and powerful countries in the world, of global importance culturally, economically, scientifically, militarily, and in myriad other ways. For its own sake the EU better hope the UK does not go tits up.
gaius 9y ago
Those sums aren't some arbitrarily thought up "exit fees", it's regular funding that has been decided on and committed to years ago Oh but they are, because they ignore the things that the UK has already paid for! We could for example calculate exactly how many miles of Ireland's EU-funded road building projects are actually "owned" by the UK based on our contribution. Should we be entitled to charge Ireland tolls for those sections of roads too?
seefer 9y ago
Dozens of billions I agree with. But isn't £12 billion just the accepted EU membership cost after rebates that we continue to pay while we negotiate our leaving the EU? This 'Brexit divorce' bill of €100 billion (£84 billion) confuses me. As far as I understand this is to cover commitment costs to the year 2020. £84 billion over that period is £24 billion yes? How does this square with the £12 billion annual cost of EU membership after rebates? Does this then mean that the £24 billion a year Brexit divorce bill consists of the 'known' £12 billion membership commitments and then £12 billion 'hidden' costs or is it the £12 billion known membership fee plus hidden costs of a £24 billion divorce bill? If it is indeed a punitive financial slap for leaving, does this not make the inherent attitudes of the EU powers that be somewhat akin to a cult like Scientology?
zigzigzag 9y ago
Those sums aren't some arbitrarily thought up "exit fees" They are, actually: 1) The number being cited keeps changing (upwards) 2) When asked how they calculated those figures, and what the legal basis was, the Commission said it wasn't going to tell you. There is a useful analysis of what's going on here: https://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/pb_barker_brexit_bill_3feb17.pdf https://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/pb_barker_brexit_...

prodmerc 9y ago

I think it would be way easier to devolve into an authoritarian government when there's no one to tell you to slow down and rethink it. There's already plenty of Nazis in Britain. "Britannia rules", "Destroy the fascist/socialist/capitalist EU" (yeah, make up your mind please), "kick out the foreigners". Remove the EU oversight and they can do whatever they want.

beaconstudios 9y ago
are there really that many Nazis in Britain? Sure, the BNP are pretty fascist, but they're such a minority party as to be almost completely irrelevant. Being a nationalist, disliking the EU or being anti-immigration are not traits that make someone a Nazi, and overusing the term diminishes quite how horrific the Nazis were and makes room for actual neo-Nazis to think they are more commonplace than they are, bolstering their confidence. If you want to criticise people for these traits then do so, but using "Nazi" as a snarl word does nothing to back up your point. If you are arguing that there are many actual Nazis in the UK, I'm fairly skeptical but open to believing you if you have the data to back up your position.
- prodmerc 9y ago
  I don't know their actual numbers. Yeah, probably should've said Nationalists, but I wanted to accentuate what the worst case scenario happened. Unlike other countries with nationalism on the rise, the UK can actually do a lot of damage (including to itself).
  - beaconstudios 9y ago
    I don't think nationalism is really tied to Nazism fundamentally. Nazis were very ethnically focused where civic nationalism really isn't - it's about valuing your own country and it's history, and wanting to protect its values. It's basically a synonym with patriotism. It's a big leap to go from nationalism to Nazism.
    - mschuster91 9y ago

Kenji 9y ago

I just wanted to say that I agree with you and I find your point perfectly respectable, and I have no idea why you get downvoted.

cryptarch 9y ago
On a related tangent, what reasons are there not to publicize votes and voters in discussion fora? I think it would be very interesting to be able to identify "voting blocks" and voting patterns on HN. I'm not saying HN should implement that, but it could make for an interesting experimental feature for forum software.

vacri 9y ago

> The British isles aren't floating away to the Atlantic, and the countries will need to continue trading. Europe has been bluntly honest about this. They've said that the UK leaving the single market will hurt them, but they're bigger than the UK and the UK will hurt more. They've also pointed out that they can't give the UK a soft landing, as they need to show that leaving the EU is not without consequences; there's a few states thinking of departing, and if departing is painless, why wouldn't they? Remember that the EU isn't just about the fat cats in Brussels. It's also about bringing the people together. Europe has historically been the most divisive and warlike continent, with neighbours at each others' throats since records began. You only need to go back to the 90s to see a genocide between europeans who looked the same as each other, and it's within living memory that Europe gave us the worst war of all time and the Holocaust. But 'bendy bananas' is worth it, right?

ptaipale 9y ago
If EU needs to scare its members to show how badly a leaving member would be treated, it's no longer a union of consenting, democratic members. It's not the union that I voted to join, a union that works for the benefit of member countries under guidance of their respective governments for free trade and co-operation; someone started to build an empire and is now mightily pissed off as some people don't want to be in an empire but just have a free trade union of independent countries.
- saimiam 9y ago
  This is naive. Divorces are designed to be painful and marriage was literally a union of people who wanted to be together.
dTal 9y ago
>a few states thinking of departing, and if departing is painless, why wouldn't they? That sounds awfully... federalist. If that's the best reasoning they can give for staying, then better to leave.
- baq 9y ago

sorokod 9y ago

"people in Britain actually disliked EU enough to want to get out of it" The people of Britain where split 52% - 48%. Hardly a clear mandate politicians make it to be.

digi_owl 9y ago
Note that the split was between classes, a term that has been anathema in western politics since the 80s or so. Present and former industrial workers basically all voted leave, while knowledge workers and finance voted remain. What is telling is how the former class' way of life was ravaged first by thatcher's union busting, and then by management (under pressure from finance) either moving production abroad, or shipping cheap workers in. Knowledge workers, particularly the kind that is frequenting this very site, have a much easier time moving around as the needs or desires require. Especially as the market segment prefer younger employees, unlikely to be "burdened" by family and such.
- MarkMc 9y ago
  > Present and former industrial workers basically all voted leave, while knowledge workers and finance voted remain. Do you have a source for that claim? According to The Australian: "Leave was backed by almost two-thirds of those considered “working class and non-workers”, meaning skilled manual workers through to those with lower grade jobs, pensioners or welfare dependants." http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/brexit-who-voted-leave-the-old-less-educated-and-christians/news-story/55d06ce2bf15e99fe577d0f2fefa25ef http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/brexit-who-vot...
- sorokod 9y ago
  You omitted the young Vs old divide.
- Boothroid 9y ago
  'shipping cheap workers in'.. and from where did these workers come? The EU perhaps?
krona 9y ago

petre 9y ago

Exactly. "Trump and his billionaire friends bought the Brexit vote", even before Trump became president. This is just typical leftst rethoric of not accepting defeat. The UK (67% of the people, not the government) voted to be a part of the CE, not the EU. Then the EU happened, the Euro, the centralization of power and now Germany runs the show, unilaterally imposes austerity on other states (Greece, Cyprus, Italy), invites in 2+M refugees and then imposes migrant quotas on everyone. The EU president is taking a rough stance with the UK to make an example out of it.