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The UK votes to leave the European Union |OUT2| Mayday, Mayday, I've lost an ARM
- Thread starter Hasney
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Yes, of course, direct democracy is a horrible idea while politicians avoiding accountability for unpopular decisions by hiding behind an undemocratic institution like the EU isn't. I also like how you use the Brexit as the "shining example" of that, as if everyone agrees that the Brexit is a terrible idea or has been spoonfed the corporate media propaganda that the 52% of the British public and everyone who agrees with it are racists and far-right assholes.
Because the frustration with the EU that exists throughout Europe is only based on racism not its inhumane policies or the fact that it has become a trojan horse for corporate lobbyists and neoliberalism.
Yeap.
Theonik
Member
They are all either directly or indirectly elected by the public depending on how election works for these representatives in that country. People directly elect the French president for instance. Also the same can be extended to how government is appointed in states.
Finally the Lisbon Treaty made it so laws are co-decided by European Parliament and the council. Laws also need to be ratified in national parliaments. These mechanisms don't differ much from how a representational democracy is usually run.
maquiladora
Member
So his problem is how Prime Ministers come to power in their own states in the first place? And this is the fault of the European Council how?
shinra-bansho
Member
If so, it's a somewhat strange critique. And basically a claim that throughout much of the world that practices democratic elections the heads of government have no democratic mandate.
maquiladora
Member
:lol Exactly. Not to mention that leaving the EU does absolutely nothing to change this.
Succinct Verbosity
Member
Wow that's quite a lot of people:
(Never mind the pics don't work.)
I wonder how this protest would look like if this were Brexit supporters that lost the referendum.
Old people vote. Young people protest.
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
Checked via search and didn't see this posted yet, but sorry if it was:
A map showing how knowledgeable Europeans are about the EU
A map showing how knowledgeable Europeans are about the EU
With data taken from the Eurobarometer linked to in the article.Amongst all Europeans, the British are the least informed when it comes to the European Union. Did that have any influence on the way they voted on 23 June? Apparently so.
BrainZEROX
Member
Oh sh... EU here and currently looking for a mortgage plan to buy my own home sweet home and I got several offers from different banks. Of course the best deal I got had to be from a British bank... HSBC. Besides the fact I'm not super happy my money could ultimately help the leavers, I'm wondering if I'm not making a mistake going with them. I guess I'm a bit stupid and HSBC is too big to fail but so was Lehman Brother. Also, once UK is out, having a non EU bank may bite me in the ass. Of course it's hard to get any advice on the situation because nobody has any clue about what will come next... Maybe I should put aside my absolute financial interest and consider the best deal that does not involve a soon to be non-EU bank? Fuck Brexit.. :-(
Wow that's quite a lot of people:
(Never mind the pics don't work.
I wonder how this protest would look like if this were Brexit supporters that lost the referendum.
Probably more bloody.
The papers are useless and lie more or less, the news media are almost worthless countering the lies and being informative or positive. Not surprised.
They should i̶n̶d̶o̶c̶t̶r̶i̶n̶a̶t̶e̶ educate children already in school about the EU in every member country in the future.
It would also be interesting to compare education levels of those countries. Poor understanding of politics is more understandable in less educated societies, but I think the UK would look even worse in such a comparison.
Well look at that entire graph and it says youth unemployment rate:
Greece 48.9%
France 24.6%
EU 19.4%
Great Britain 13.4%
Germany 6.9%
I can see why Germany are wanting young immigrants from the UK. No doubt particularly from the 57% of graduates that voted Remain. Maybe some junior doctors too I'd guess...
So wait, let's pretend the UK goes down in flames and the EU somehow manages to soldier on without too much bloodletting. In that case, instead of earning big bucks in a stable country and sending a good chunk of change and care packages home as the sole reliable breadwinner of your extended family, you choose to stay and share the misery? You'd easily be able to fly or drive over on holidays or in emergencies, the distance isn't that bad, really.
Obviously this depends on your skillset and likely wages, but all in all it'd be a net benefit to move to the continent.
...
Well, I hope you can actually meet a German one day.
Napoleonthechimp
Member
No they didn't. It was always considered advisory and not a direct instruction.
I love how you and a lot of leavers add the "won by a million" as if it was a landslide (the daily mail, or express, even said remain were "hammered"). A million in this case is less than 4%. That is a small margin for something this significant, especially as it is based on misinformation and lies.
But the leavers would have thrown the baby out of the bathwater if the result didn't go their way. In fact they'd be calling for referendum after referendum if Nigel Farage's comments are any indication. So spare me your spoiled child rhetoric.
It's not the same as representatives of representatives governing countries and governing EU. The keyword in my previous post is accountability. When a country's government makes unpopular decisions in that country the accountability is on them. When a country's government makes unpopular decisions hiding behind the EU they avoid any accountability since they're not elected representatives in that institution, they just blame the vague EU for them. So don't complain when the people of a country finally decide to punish that vague EU.
I'll just repeat this because it was an edit and some people might have missed it, the members of an organization with so much power should be elected directly from the public. Everything else is a clever ruse to bypass the will of the people and the Council is exactly that.
That's exactly what the remain side are doing now...
How long do you think we should wait until it is alright to hold another referendum? Like, if in five years public opinion had changed would it be okay to hold another referendum? What if public opinion changed in one year, or one week? Where do you draw the line? It's possible that public opinion has already changed dramatically in just one week. Farage himself was calling for a second referendum if Remain won 52-48, before the results had even come in! There is nothing undemocratic about wanting to re-evaluate public opinion
STOP TAKIN MAH JERBS!
Nah, it's alright. Come, all of you. Just don't bring any food, okay?
Hilarious that the least informed country has the most exceptions and the most benign terms for EU membership...and whips its cock out to piss all over its special snowflake status. To turn around and demand more benefits for leaving and dropping its part of the burden.
Napoleonthechimp
Member
Except we've got a bunch of leavers resorting to "shut up and get on with it" "you're all losers" "you're whiny children" which to me is stupid and pathetic behaviour. I genuinely think on the remain side you'd never see that response. If anything this whole thing has shown a clear division in mentality between two halves of the country.
Last week I even had someone tell me he didn't care that my industry would falter in the wake of Brexit, because his would be just fine. Selfish egotistical behaviour from the leave side. It's sad that the Thatcherite mentality that puts the self first has infested a good chunk of the working class across England.
cormack12
Gold Member
I suppose it depends on how bad it gets. We've spoken about it in the past, I think I'm more for it than she is. I work in infrastructure (high end SANs, datacentres, virtualisation tc.), integration engines and development. She works in education, qualified teacher of twenty years (early years).
We were speaking the other night about it. I think honestly, it would be Canada, Germany, California, Australia in that order of preference if we did go for it. It's weird, I mean we're both in good jobs now, so I'm hoping that as we don't have dependents we'll still have surplus to help those closest to us whatever happens. It's weird, I never really thought I'd see leaving family behind as an issue to moving. I'm also hoping beyond hope that this all blows over somehow as well :/
If anything it's made me consider options anyway.
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
This is something I hear pretty often, but obviously it's impossible for me to really judge as a native speaker. Picking some random example from our The Office clone, though, does a normal conversation like this sound particularly angry to others?
Crap, Poland is basically the Wales of Europe
Not really surprised by that, but it still hurts
They are elected directly. Hollande was elected directly, Cameron was clearly the candidate for the United Kingdom as nobody voted Tory back then and thought it meant Gove would be PM, Merkel was elected directly, ...
Rags like the Daily Mail regularly (like, almost daily) run some sensationalist story with IMMIGRANTS DID X in the headline, only to have a tiny retraction on page 30-something the next day stating that the story was false and blaming it on a bad source or something giving them misinformation. Like fucking clockwork. These endless fear stories play to the thickest fucks out there who, even if they don't buy a paper, still see the headlines in their newsagents.
This is how we got a leave vote. This is why stupid idiots think it's now acceptable to call people n****r and tell them to "go home".
We NEED to stop letting these newspapers and other media outlets (BBC/SKY) talk utter trash and get away with it. There needs to be laws, laws that actually get upheld, and the punishments must be severe for this kind of propaganda, and it IS propaganda, no less than the wartime stuff from the Nazis. Literally just as bad, and just as toxic for our democracy. Democracy can't function when half the population just gobble up bullshit and let that, and only that, rather than informed debate, pepper their opinions.
Nothing will change for the better until all this crap is dealt with.
We have Corbyn (whatever you think of him) being hounded because one person heckled him (who it turns out was a Lib Dem candidate) and the papers and TV made a big deal of it. Today tens of thousands marching to show support fro Corbyn against his own PLP and not a peep on the mainstream media.
It's beyond belief now but I'm glad people in England might realise just how fucked up it is, the Scottish referendum was an absolute joke, bias everywhere you turned.
shinra-bansho
Member
I'm still not entirely sure what you're proposing. That every country within the EU should become a republic that has an elected head of state? That Lithuania's Council seat has more mandate than Germany's? That an MEP should be there instead? That there should be some other elected individual that serves on the European Council - elected how and under who's authority I'm not clear on?
I'm not sure how exactly the latter would claim more authority and mandate with their own populace than the respective Prime Minister or Chancellor.
And besides, as already noted, laws need to pass the European Parliament and be ratified by national parliaments.
I'm not sure how exactly the latter would claim more authority and mandate with their own populace than the respective Prime Minister or Chancellor.
And besides, as already noted, laws need to pass the European Parliament and be ratified by national parliaments.
Succinct Verbosity
Member
nice people on twitter:
the guy deleted it but I managed to get a screenshot... if you look at his other tweets you can see how nice he is...
I'm sorry for you guys who voted remain, but as an immigrant there are zero chances I'll stay here...
I don't blame you, man. Good luck with whatever you choose.
iz.podpolja
Neo Member
I agree with you to some degree - EU needs to give more power to direct representatives. This would mean bypassing the nation-state institution though, which would likely lead to a surge of "proud to be x" nationalistic rhetoric. The problem is this kind of move is very much needed, as EU as it is now is unable to cope with EU-wide problems due to what I perceive as national particularisms, yet does not have enough of a democratic mandate to do this on its own. However, all this being said, you cannot claim a body consisting of elected officials to be undemocratic - it is simply a false statement, unless you contest legitimacy of national governments that is.
But as it is now it can also be seen as a problem with EU PR - it is often seen that members of the 28 governments agree to some policies behind the closed doors, and then shamelessly claim the opposite for internal politics purpose on the press briefing only minutes after the meeting ends. EU is an easy scapegoat here.
I completely disagree however about the description of EU as an exclusively corporate liberal force, because - especially where I live now - Wrocław in W. Poland - as a leftist myself & member of ethnic minority, especially with the UKIP-like conservative & nationalistic force at the helm (Law & Justice party) & their push for "national" (as in ethnic Polish) economics & roaring "Great Poland" rhetoric & gradual dismantling of democratic institutions & minority protections, I often find (the NGO that I'm working with to be precise) the EU the only force we can rely on (both financially & ideologically) in implementing our programmes (as in immigration related projects, protection of workers - especially of non-Polish nationals - employed by various Polish & less often international companies without any legal status or protection). In the case of our Syrian refugee oriented projects (very simple ones - volunteers are given lessons on Syrian culture, Islam from our local Tatar imam, some knowledge about how to work with persons experienced by war & various other traumas and/or PTSD, and so on ) we received both death threats from Polish nationalists and pressure from the ruling party MPs who were pushing us to scrap the project or at least submit ourselves to a full Ministry of Interior & Administration supervision [mind that we're talking about 40 volunteers, and the refugees aren't even here] & were it not for the intervention of our EU partner we would be forced to do so.
I think in discussions about the EU it is absolutely mandatory to have the full outlook, including what's happening in the "New Europe" & undeniably positive role it is playing in our region (at least to someone with my mindset).
One last thing: sometimes I think that many in the "Old Europe" forget how fragile our relative prosperity is - I was in Ukraine when Maidan events unfolded & then the war began & saw how easily it is to turn an undeniably European (despite all of its shortcomings and problems) country into a very much literal bloodbath. As a Russian speaker I followed the official Russian media spin on the events & how they were preparing their population for the war (same thing to a degree happened in Ukraine as well) and it is truly scary how easily this can be done. To my eyes European project is the only safeguard against such developments (as imperfect as it is), and these dangers are far from abstract unfortunately. Food for thought.
EDIT: Sorry for the wall of text.
Scotland, we're like England's Canada. Come here, we're lovely. Apart from the Orange Order fuckwits, but we let them bang their drum and forget about them.
Not really sure why people are complaining about the Council when it is the Commission which really has a "democratic deficit" more than any other part of the EU. Especially due to it's legislative power compared to the parliament.
Of course, the thing to bear in mind is that these sorts of things aren't necessarily to blame for things like austerity in Greece which are generally popular in most member states as far as I can tell. Also, always worth remembering that the EU =/= the Eurozone. Lots of left-wing criticisms of the UK's membership of the EU conflate them in an unhelpful way.
Of course, the thing to bear in mind is that these sorts of things aren't necessarily to blame for things like austerity in Greece which are generally popular in most member states as far as I can tell. Also, always worth remembering that the EU =/= the Eurozone. Lots of left-wing criticisms of the UK's membership of the EU conflate them in an unhelpful way.
maquiladora
Member
nice people on twitter:
the guy deleted it but I managed to get a screenshot... if you look at his other tweets you can see how nice he is...
I'm sorry for you guys who voted remain, but as an immigrant there are zero chances I'll stay here...
Disgusting but absolutely not surprising to see comments like that.
Scotland, we're like England's Canada. Come here, we're lovely. Apart from the Orange Order fuckwits, but we let them bang their drum and forget about them.
me and my bf are actually right now in Glasgow to meet some friends XD and we saw those guys with their drums this morning. It's our first time in Scotland and everyone has been beyond nice. We actually joked about you being like canada XD
Scotland would be a nice option, but I'm afraid it will take you guys too much time to leave england.
Good luck, I'm rooting for you!
GamerMax73
Member
I'm sorry, but while we still have FPTP voting and the house of lords in this country, we are on very shaky ground when it comes to arguments on representative democracy.
GamerMax73
Member
nice people on twitter:
the guy deleted it but I managed to get a screenshot... if you look at his other tweets you can see how nice he is...
I'm sorry for you guys who voted remain, but as an immigrant there are zero chances I'll stay here...
No offense taken, as a natural born white british male (not a demographic I'm overly happy with associating with atm), I'm also offski at the earliest opportunity that presents itself.
Mr. Luchador
Member
Their leader is a dog, I suspect great things!
Helensmith
Member
I suspect the reason why Leavers are against a second referendum is because they're worried they would lose. With some original Leavers defecting and more young people motivated to vote now they see the consequences, I think there is a good chance the second result would be the better permanent democratic choice.
And the Leave campaign wouldn't be able to use such brazen lies again - that tactic only works once.
But regardless, a second referendum is a mistake. The country needs to see how ridiculous Brexit is, and scrap it altogether.
Statements like this make me laugh;
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/4qx35c/signs_of_trouble_for_deutsche_bank/
Ignoring of course what any of the above would mean for European Banks, International Banks, British Banks and you know changing fuck all about the current situation of Britain.
Same people running around claiming everyone is offering great trade deals and how we'll be a sea nation again. Simply trying to grasp that they will end out on topic - Cameron and the Tories are the natural government of the UK, its not bollocks - it seems Brits are fine to gamble big for the price and blame anyone but themselves when they fail.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/4qx35c/signs_of_trouble_for_deutsche_bank/
Ignoring of course what any of the above would mean for European Banks, International Banks, British Banks and you know changing fuck all about the current situation of Britain.
Same people running around claiming everyone is offering great trade deals and how we'll be a sea nation again. Simply trying to grasp that they will end out on topic - Cameron and the Tories are the natural government of the UK, its not bollocks - it seems Brits are fine to gamble big for the price and blame anyone but themselves when they fail.
Agree although a second ref would be worth it, if only for the Remain Campaign being able to just play Farage saying '£350 million was rubbish' and Bojo looking like he's having a nervous breakdown on a loop as their promotion
Geminosity
Member
Considering that the country is in absolutely no way prepared or equipped to leave right now I'm not really sure what point there'd be in giving a second referendum anyway: It wouldn't change the fact that 'leave' is blatantly a completely invalid option and wasn't really realisable for the first ref either. At this point we should just admit it was never on the cards and bring legal action crushing down on the people who falsely promised it for being a disgrace to humanity (plus whatever Gove is.)
I don't think the question is worth asking of us until the UK actually have something even resembling an actual leadership, some semblance of a plan and actual resources dedicated/prepared for leaving. As far as I'm concerned this is already a dud and the fact they even put it to us is lunacy as our government were clearly unfit/unwilling to provide something even in the ballpark of what was required to fulfil it. They might as well just have asked us all "would you like a million pounds each?" because actual sane delivery of that is about as equally as possible.
EU is already bypassing the nation-state institution, all they need to do is dissolve the Council and give all legislation power to the Parliament in order for it to at least become democratic.
This is the equivalent of claiming that TTP is democratic because elected officials are trying to push for it. In the age of the upper class hijacking our democracies and politicians one by one we need more direct democracy instead of representatives of representatives making the decisions for Europe while hiding behind EU to enforce them. No accountability means no democracy, it's that simple.
As for the rest of your post I don't need to tell you what the main driving force behind the far-right surge. It's the fucking EU. Since the far-right is by definition populist they're using people frustration with EU and its idiotic decision making as their main argument. Farage only became popular because of the EU. It wasn't migrants and it wasn't his members' constant fuckups, it's was the EU. He's been feeding of it for years and after a temporary surge because of his "victory" he's eventually gonna starve.
The majority of European nations does elect their leaders directly. Others do it like UK where you vote for a party and you know who will be the leader of that party. So I don't know what you want to change unless you simply don't know that the European Council is not the European Commission or you think that every country should be able to vote on all the other countries.
A new organization needs its own elected officials, I don't know why it is so hard for people to understand this or miss how easy it is to bypass democracy using that new organization as a front to pass unpopular legislation or make unpopular decisions because there's no accountability (which is EXACTLY what happening).
At the current state this abomination we call EU is a trojan horse for the powerful either that's corporations or wealthy nations to impose their will on the weak, either that the European citizens of poor nations. Any leftist with a conscience cannot possibly support that especially after the disgraceful , and I can't stress that characterization enough, decisions of the last few years.
If you truly want to go to Canada, you should start preparing as soon as possible, unless you know you can easily get a job offer there, because the process to become a Canadian citizen, is not an expedient one, the costs for doing so are relatively minor, and ofc if you change your mind in a few months you can always not go through with it, but it is not anywhere close to the easiness to which you can go to a country in the EU.
I mean that is assuming you aren't willing to take the risk and go to Canada without a job, because if you are then the process is supposedly fairly quick.
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