
The elite that failed - sajid
https://www.economist.com/britain/2018/12/22/the-elite-that-failed
======
makomk
I've seen the argument this article trots out that the referendum should've
required a supermajority a lot, but it always seems more like an attempt to
block something the author doesn't want than an actual principled argument.

There was no supermajority required to take the major and quite possibly
irreversible step of joining the EU. Indeed, there was no referendum on it at
all; the 1975 referendum was on leaving after we'd already joined, and came
with the same terrifying warnings about the perils of leaving as the more
recent one. The government of the time just decided to join and put it through
parliament like any other law. It squeaked through the House of Commons on an
incredibly tight 309-301 vote...

~~~
scarmig
It's tricky. The EU of 1975 is very different from the EU of 2018 (indeed, the
"EU" didn't exist then, just the EEC). Does joining a customs union even
require a referendum? My initial strong gut response to this is that it
shouldn't, but it's also abundantly clear now that a customs union can easily
lead to much greater integration over decades. Boiling a frog. Note that all
the increased integration was accepted by the elected governments of the UK,
so you can't write this off as some authoritarian, anti-democratic power creep
by the EU bureaucracy.

And now the immediate implications of leaving the EU are much greater than the
immediate implications in 1975 of joining a customs union, so even if a 50%+
referendum was enough for a customs union, a strong argument can be made that
leaving the EU should be held to a higher standard.

I think the main takeaway of this experience should be this: the EU should
never accept new members unless there's durable majority support in the member
country for being a part of the EU. One plausible version of this is 60%+
support in two consecutive elections.

~~~
makomk
You're technically right, but I'm not sure it helps here; every step that took
us from the EEC of 1972 to the modern EU was done with no UK referendum and
required at most an ordinary majority in Parliament as far as I know. (Also,
EU supporters rely quite heavily on the argument that the modern EU is
basically the same as the original EEC, just refined, and that all of the
subsequent changes were part of the original intention.)

Now, other member states did hold referendums on these changes, of course -
and in some cases, their voting public ended up rejecting those changes. They
went ahead anyway, usually with some tweaks to the language used to describe
them but very few substantiative differences.

~~~
toyg
_> They went ahead anyway, usually with some tweaks to the language used to
describe them but very few substantiative differences._

That's utterly false.

Ireland (twice) got legal guarantees that the scary scenarios evoked by the
rejectors, would never happen.

Denmark obtained opt-outs, again listening to concerns and guaranteeing that
they would never happen.

France (and basically the Dutch) literally re-negotiated the whole treaty.

Those are substantive changes. I don't know how more substantive you can get
than "if we make a law you don't like, you're free to ignore it" and "ok,
we'll do it again from scratch".

------
georgeecollins
There is a great Alvin Toffler quote that foretold this: " One of the
functions of a legislature is to negotiate compromises among various
constituencies. Well, the constituencies today are so numerous, their demands
are so complex, and the rate of change in their demands and in the
constituencies is so high that nobody in Congress represents anybody anymore.
They represent themselves. Because their constituency changes from day to day.
And as a consequence, their ability to broker out differences to arrive at
compromise is more limited than it was. "

~~~
jbob2000
I had this same thought when thinking about Toronto and their distinct lack of
action on public transit. We keep flip flopping on whether or not to build
this or build that or tear down this or that, blah blah blah.

It’s all because the city is waaaayyy too diverse and there’s literally no way
to meet in the middle on this; _somebody_ is going to lose, and anybody losing
is unfathomable, so the better option is... for everybody to lose.

~~~
georgeecollins
Another thing is how commentators describe constituencies in psycho-graphic
terms, not concrete interests. You hear that rural people are "unhappy and
left behind." Well some rural people in England are that, and some work at the
Nissan factory and they probably don't see Brexit as being good for their job.
The point is that there aren't enough people working at an automobile plant
(in England) to form a really powerful constituency. Society is more
fragmented and there are fewer large blocks of people who have a concrete
political interest.

------
netwanderer3
The law of the universe dictates that our world is always moving toward
entropy (chaos) no matter what, and things will keep getting more and more
chaos everyday.

These so called "elite" politicians are after all just homo sapiens, thus
limited by human capabilities. They are nothing more special than you and me.
Nobody really has any fucking clue what's going on or how to fix it. Nobody
has been more wrong throughout the history than those expert economists.
Everybody sort of just wings it and hope they will get lucky. Even a broken
clock is correct twice a day.

This shows you what a clusterfuck we are all in. Stop fighting, go get a drink
and just enjoy the ride as there's nothing we can do to fight against the
force of entropy. Shit will sort itself out.

~~~
hemantv
But human nature is Inertia. So humans should be striving for less Chaos.

~~~
netwanderer3
Which I think precisely is reason why so many people are suffering with
depression and anxiety. People just cannot cope with the speed of change
everywhere around the world.

Compared to the 80's or 90's in which life was much more slower and calmer,
today everybody is living life on steroid. Everyone constantly feels they must
optimize every detail of their life to increase productivity and yet it's
still not enough.

Things will get more chaos everyday and there is no way for us to avoid it. We
just need to let it all go and accept the fact that nobody can change this
world, especially not by these politicians who are completely useless. Don't
cling onto the life of the past, embrace the state of entropy and do not fight
it.

------
fishermanbill
A system failed not the ‘elites’. This was a referendum we should never have
had. This was a referendum that was badly executed. This was a referendum
whose result was impossible to achieve. This is a disaster of a modern
democracy.

Never have a referendum that doesn’t explain in detail how to achieve either
result. If you can’t explain how to achieve the results then it’s not a matter
that is appropriate for a referendum. Brexit falls squarely in the latter
camp.

------
lettergram
This is a time where the monarch can and should apply mild pressure. That’s
kind of the benefit of a monarchy, they have the long term interest at heart
and can (used sparingly) knock people into place

~~~
lainga
Wouldn't that only aggravate republicans?

~~~
toyg
Do republicans even exist, outside London?

------
benmmurphy
I'm not sure how this is a failure of the elite. The elite want to be in the
EU and we are still in the EU. That doesn't seem to be a failure to me. That
seems to be a success.

~~~
kuhhk
> and we are still in the EU

Ben, I hope you do realize your premise changes in roughly ~10 weeks, unless
something extraordinary happens. Theresa is determined to leave..

~~~
benmmurphy
I actually think this is unlikely. I actually I hope it happens because I
think the EU is a long term con. Basically the EU is holding free trade as a
hostage. Free trade offers great benefits but the EU as an institution can
continue to force a greater political union on the countries forming the union
even if this political union is not to the benefit of these countries. We are
seeing it right now with the Brexit negotiations. There are two clear paths
that solve the Irish issue but neither of them are possible because it would
destroy the EU as an institution.

Solution 1)

Split the tariff union and the political union. The UK joins the tariff union.
I honestly think most leave voters would be happy with the compromise of
losing control over tariffs if they retain control over everything else.
However, this basically destroys the EU as a political union because the EU as
political union only exists because of the benefits of free trade and if every
country can defect and maintain free trade they will.

Solution 2)

The EU offers a free trade area between the EU and the UK. This has some
negative consequences for the EU and the UK in that they are restricted in the
way in which they can increase tariffs from before the agreement to post the
agreement. Again I think most leave voters would be happy with this trade off.
Also, this restriction should not be a big deal for the EU. However, from the
point of view of the EU as institution this is very bad because the UK is
basically enjoying the benefits of free trade without the political union. If
the UK is able to do this then all the other countries who do not benefit from
the political union will want to do it and the political union will collapse.

The EU is a big problem for the UK going forward because they can keep
demanding a closer and closer political union and use the threat of the UK
losing free trade to make this possible. At what point should the UK walk away
from the EU? I think it is better to rip off the band-aid now.

And just to add. Most economists believe free trade is beneficial to all
parties. So why are the UK and the EU not able to agree on a WTO free trade
area deal which would solve the Irish issue and presumably benefit both the EU
and the UK in a post-brexit world?

Surely, this is a win-win outcome unless you are trying to punish someone for
taking a branch in the game tree you don't want them to.

The reason I think it is unlikely that the UK will leave the EU with a hard
brexit is because it doesn't seem like the government has taken reasonable
steps in order to maximise the benefit for this course of action. Surely, if
you considered a hard brexit an option you would be actively negotiating
bilateral and free trade agreements with other countries. I understand if you
were resource strapped this might not be something you would pursue but the UK
government is not resource strapped and it would seem to make sense to pursue
these deals even if there was like a 10% chance of a hard brexit.

May and her government are probably massively incompetent but it is hard to
believe that they are that incompetent. I suspect either May or her
bureaucracy believe the Britain's interests are best served staying in the EU
and they are trying to engineer the situation to maximise the chance of this
happening.

~~~
toyg
I stopped reading once you made a distinction between “tariffs” and
“politics”: you don’t have one without the other. You have a common market
only if you can agree common rules, and you agree common rules with shared
political institutions.

You cannot buy chlorine-washed chicken in the EU because EU countries agreed
that, in order to be able to freely trade chicken in the union, chicken should
have certain qualities - qualities defined through a political process.

The EU is simply a place where all the stuff that used to get done with slow
and opaque bilateral treaties or with wars, now gets done mostly in the open,
faster and more democratically than before. It doesn’t “hold free trade
hostage”, it’s actually the opposite: it takes free trade to its eventual
consequences. Everything is free to trade, all the time; but to do that, we
must agree on common standards to make, sell, buy, and consume all stuff - it
wouldn’t be fair competition, otherwise, right?

So we built a process to write these rules together. Once we have rules, we
need ways to enforce them and amend them - which happen to be useful to also
sort out other pesky issues like borders and to foster collaboration in
various endeavours. And if all products and services can be freely moved
across the market, why shouldn’t people be allowed to do the same?

That’s the EU, in a nutshell; built on and for commerce. Trying to unpick
trade from the rule-writing is nonsensical.

------
oh_sigh
Perhaps if the Brexit referendum required 66% or some other supermajority,
this would not be so hard to make happen.

I don't know enough about Brexit to know whether I would be in the leave or
remain camp if I was allowed to vote in the referendum, but I do know that
they screwed up in the beginning by making this massive decision only need 50%
+ 1 vote in order to be passed. However, since those were the rules of the
game, I do think they should go forward with it.

~~~
pintxo
The required acceptance level is one factor. But I guess an even more
important factor is the „what are we actually voting for“ question.

I‘d have solved this by having two votes, one to start a negotiation about the
exit terms. And then a second one, once an agreement on the terms has been
reached. That way, everyone can know ehat they are actually voting for.

------
timwaagh
how is it a failure? they are in power. all a politician should care about is
getting into power and remaining in power (and gracefully exiting gracefully
before people shoot you out) they promised a referendum because that's what
people wanted in order to vote for them. success #1.

they held the referendum and accepted the result, based their policy on it,
because that was people had voted for. the result was winning an election and
clinging to power. success #2.

perhaps the new leader of the tories will do things differently and ignore the
referendum, but that will only be a succcess if he manages to win the
election. but to me it seems unlikely that will be a succesful strategy
especially with that corbyn dude breathing down your neck. papers like the
economist tend to dismiss him as an extremist, but he's a man with an affinity
for populism and a serious problem for the tories.

apparantly chooosing your schoolmates to be your running mate is the recipe
for success in politics. perhaps power is all about whom you can trust. maybe
boris johnson is an idiot, but he is someone who has affinity for the common
man, she knows him from way back and she knows he would not stab her in the
back. that makes him a rather useful idiot.

------
rbg246
From my reading of Brexit it appears that there are a lot of elites on both
sides of the fight...

Just seems to me that one side of elites has co-opted the non-elites more
effectively on this occasion.

------
paulpauper
2016: brexit vote indicates failure of elite

2019: failure to ratify vote indicates failure of elite

pick one

~~~
topspin
> pick one

That is a model example of a false dichotomy.

~~~
Gibbon1
Yeah that is just sophistry.

2016: Incompetent elite's create a problem.

2019: Incompetent elites make it worse.

Deeper problem is part of the neoliberal revolution was popular will was to be
neutered, the political process was to be neutered. So that they couldn't
interfere with the the free market or oppose the power of the rentier class.

So now you have voters, politicians, and the media that see politics and
policy as a game that doesn't matter. Two generations of this and people
wonder why there is no competence. Big wonder!

~~~
User23
The problems of the EU were well known among educated persons well before the
Maastricht treaty was even signed.

[https://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-
al...](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all-that)

~~~
Gibbon1
And that's just another data point that shows incompetence.

The Maastricht treaty took away fiscal and central banking tools that
governments could use and replaced them with... nothing.

That just proves my point here.

~~~
User23
Indeed. I am agreeing with you and supporting your perspective.

~~~
Gibbon1
One of the things I realized watching this was this stuff probably holds
together in the US because.

Federal Social Insurance programs, Social security, Unemployment, food stamps,
and other transfer payments. These substitute for states inability to print
their own money. and set exchange rates or control the flow of capital.

The Banking system is backstopped by the Federal Reserve not individual
states. See Texas and California during the S&L crisis.

And the lack of tribal attitudes. Europeans think Greeks need to pay back all
the money their government borrowed from French and German Banks. No one in
the US really feels that way about Puerto Ricans.

~~~
User23
You're exactly correct. Transfer payments keep our federal union whole.

As an aside, the states actually do have de facto currency issuing power as a
function of their sovereignty and taxing authority. It's rarely exercised, but
it has been done. For example when California failed to pass a budget a decade
ago, it started paying with IOUs that it also accepted as payment for state
tax liabilities[1]. They even strong-armed banks into accepting the IOUs as
deposits. The total sum was nearly $3 billion. So the states can print money.

[1]
[https://www.sco.ca.gov/eo_news_registeredwarrants.html](https://www.sco.ca.gov/eo_news_registeredwarrants.html)

~~~
Gibbon1
Reminded me, the EU has the power to limit the size of member states budget
deficits. But this only enforced against economically weaker states. The US
federal government has no such power.

I think China in the last 15 years has taken the opposite tack, demanding
regional governments run large deficits and loaning them the money. Which
works because, Chinese leadership can give two shits about the books.

