
Why it's time to accept the fact that Brexit may never actually happen - jaoued
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/why-its-time-to-accept-the-fact-that-brexit-may-never-actually-happen-a7148816.html
======
carsongross
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable.

~~~
Nacraile
Can we stop claiming 52% is any sort of clear majority? 52% doesn't mean "most
people want this", it means "the country is evenly split, so we flipped a
coin, and it came up Leave". You need much more than 52% of the population
behind you to have a revolution (of any sort).

There's a reason that most functional democracies have a constitution can only
by changed by meeting a higher bar than simple majority: it's too important,
too sensitive, and too irreversible to be decided without something closer to
consensus. I would argue that that logic applies here.

~~~
khattam
It was not decided that if there would be <60%, there would be another
referendum or the other side will win.

Staying in EU is a horrible idea as far as Britian is concerned. If they don't
have to pay to corrupt government officials of poorer countries in the EU, it
is already a win (for citizens of those countries and for Britain)... but I
can see why the corrupt unelected EU officials don't want them (or anyone else
for that matter) to leave.

~~~
Oletros
> but I can see why the corrupt unelected EU officials don't want them

Can you give any proof of those corruptions?

And, by the way, calling them unelected is a good way of showing a lack of
knowledge about the EU

~~~
Ygg2
He probably means, not directly voted for. You only directly vote for MEP.

~~~
makomk
Of course, right now Britain is ruled by a Prime Minister who we didn't vote
for either, so...

------
paublyrne
It's certainly not a given. May is not _very_ remain though. It would take
political bravery to go against the referendum result.

It would be easier for a new non Conservative party government to avoid Brexit
as remaining can be part of the manifesto, which somewhat explains the urgency
with which Labour MPs are trying to eject Corbyn, who can not be relied on to
make remain a manifesto pledge.

Interesting times.

~~~
tanderson92
Labour MPs are trying to eject Corbyn because they were never happy he was
elected leader of the party in the first place. They wish they could take a
page from the Conservatives and select a new leader without the people's
voice.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Can somebody in the UK explain to me what happened to the Liberal Democrats?
Did they implode after tying their hitch to the Cameron wagon in the last
parliament?

Because it seems to me like a bulk of these supposed Blair-ite 'Labour'
supporters who want Corbyn out so they don't have to be sullied with ugly old
words like "socialism" and "wealth redistribution" more properly belong in a
party closer to Canada's Liberal Party, and it is Corbyn who is inheriting the
mantle of the more traditional Labour constituency? Why have the Liberal
Democrats not done better out of the cataclysm in British party politics over
the last few months?

~~~
tomelliott
Yes. They got burned badly for 'breaking their promises' after being elected
into the coalition.

What nobody seems to have realised is that they didn't have anything close to
a majority, so of course they weren't able to completely prevent the Tories
from doing everything.

It's a shame IMO because what we clearly need right now is a Centralist party,
especially with Labour going further and further to the Left under Corbyn.

~~~
d4rti
> They got burned badly for 'breaking their promises' after being elected into
> the coalition.

Particularly university tuition fees, which was an important issue for much of
the base.

(It's pretty sad what happened, and I think even now they get very little of
the credit they deserve for their work in the previous parliament)

------
huherto
Not leaving will create a moral danger. Wouldn't it?

It will make it too easy for people to vote according with their guts knowing
that they will be saved.

It will also empower anti-EU parties in other countries in EU.

~~~
netcan
It would be a disaster for British Democracy. Imagine if the reverse happened.

I would also regard the morning after regrets with a grain of salt. The
political establishment (Labour & Tories) were against leaving. The
politically influential corporate sectors (especially banking) were against
leaving. The media was generally against leaving. The leavers are pretty
underrepresented, it would seem. It's not surprising that leave voters seem to
have vanished, or changed their minds.

Some may have, but even if there was a massive swing (say from 52% to 45%),
the un-regretful leave voters are half the country. They won the vote. How can
they trust democracy if they are "robbed" of their democratic right.

Not leaving will create a mockery of democratic process. It would delegitimize
the EU, & even the British polity.

------
atemerev
I am pro-Remain, but democracy is democracy; ignoring the popular vote would
create much more dangerous precedent than any bad things that may happen from
Brexit.

~~~
hinkley
Majority rule without checks and balances is mob rule.

And a simple majority can take away something that 49% of the population
thinks is important. This is where your democratic utopia goes to die.

Open voting is a blame shedding trick. If 'everybody' agreed with your bad
idea then it's not your fault when the consequences happen. Even if you were
the one who put it in people's heads in the first place.

As a citizen of a country in crisis, who to blame might be of some importance,
and organized media will certainly get you fixated on that aspect. But maybe
the fact that there's a crisis is a little more important, and you should try
to avoid then in the first place instead of just having an audit trail.

~~~
atemerev
Here in Switzerland, we have direct democracy, with referendums every two
months. Some bad decisions were taken, but most of them are easily reversed
when proved wrong.

~~~
hinkley
In the case of the U.K., it's news to absolutely no one that there are some
fundamental and ancient grudges between regions. Voting on things for spite
isn't entirely out of the realm of possibilities.

It is a common complaint that Europeans have no grasp of how goddamned big the
US is, and make "helpful" suggestions to fix our problems with solutions that
simply don't scale with geography. It's a big place full of people who either
came here to be left alone, or were kicked out of Europe because they wouldn't
leave other people alone. People sort themselves and there's plenty of
physical and emotional space for echo chambers if you want them.

Neighboring states are not as different as neighboring countries, but we have
50 of them and among those you can find two that completely disagree with each
other on nearly every topic you can imagine. If Europe voted that Switzerland
should pay off the Spanish national debt, I bet you'd be pretty pissed. If
they tried to take your guns, you'd probably start loading.

Hell, even Roman politicians had things to say about the ways a straight
democracy can go bad. Bread and circuses.

~~~
atemerev
Switzerland is not a part of European Union. And Germans were paying for Greek
debts more than once.

(US is no exception; banks bailouts were paying for someone else's debts. The
difference is most banks returned bailout money when things got better,
though; good luck with that in the case of Greece).

------
captainmuon
What most people are missing is the third option, how Britain can both avoid
leaving the EU and staying in the EU: Namely that the EU in it's current form
stops existing before the Brexit can be completed.

There are compelling (or at least popular) arguments both from the left and
the right against the EU in it's current form, but for some kind of
international European organization. It's not too far fetched that (due to
various crises like in Greece, the Brexit, etc.) the EU would break apart at
some point. In that case, due to necessity and realpolitik, I don't believe it
would leave a void, but would be replaced by a leaner organization, more
individual multilateral treaties etc., and hopefully something more
democratic. And as I said this idea is popular with the left and the right - I
believe this restructuring could be positive and utopian, or regressive and
apocalyptic (you choose which side is which).

~~~
Daishiman
What you claim such a high risk and costly endeavour that it's ridiculous to
contemplate it happening in the span of 10 years. Organizations collapse long
before they have such large reforms, and we're talking about a union of a
couple dozen countries that given the opportunity for reform, would pull a
dozen different ways with no consensus.

------
s_kilk
As much as I'm opposed to Brexit, we can't simply un-ring this bell and
pretend it never happened. The issues which lead to the Leave result aren't
going to disappear, and ignoring the result will just add further to the
(already scary) rise in far-right sentiment in the UK.

~~~
socialist_coder
I think it is already spawning change. It's waking up the complacent
establishment who thinks they can keep shitting on the working class. The
right wing is already capitalizing on this by blaming the problems on
immigrants. Hopefully, the left wing wakes up too and brings forth some
candidates who can address the real root causes instead of blaming it on
immigration.

~~~
s_kilk
> It's waking up the complacent establishment who thinks they can keep
> shitting on the working class.

How so? Theresa May has just formed the most right-wing, anti-working-class
Cabinet in living memory, while Labour are busy tearing themselves apart. It
doesn't seem the establishment is waking up in any meaningful way.

~~~
socialist_coder
Yeah, no argument there. I guess my point is that the rise of Trump and the
passing of the Brexit has made a lot of people actually realize there is a
problem. They still don't want to face it, and you can see with Labour they
have no effing clue how to handle it, but at least they see that they can't
just continue with business as usual and expect the people to stay happy.

------
socialist_coder
That is my assumption too. It will never happen.

The UK cannot afford to not have free trade with the EU, and a stipulation of
free trade is to allow open immigration and travel. The main reason that many
people even voted for leaving was to stop the EU immigration! So, just based
on this 1 thing, it doesn't seem like it has a chance of happening.

Additionally, there is the whole thing about sending money to the NHS instead
of the EU that turned out to be false.

And, many Leave voters actually didn't even want it to pass, they were just
doing it as a protest vote.

So, half the stuff the Leave campaign said has turned out to be a lie and some
portion (not really sure how big) of the voters didn't even want it to pass.
Expecting the Brexit to happen just seems completely crazy.

~~~
rogerdpack
I assume "free trade" is possible without allowing open immigration...

~~~
socialist_coder
It's not, the EU has said so multiple times.

[http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/21/may-gets-
hol...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/21/may-gets-hollande-
ultimatum-free-trade-depends-on-free-movement)

[https://infacts.org/mythbusts/uk-wont-single-market-
without-...](https://infacts.org/mythbusts/uk-wont-single-market-without-free-
movement/)

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-
wa...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-warned-free-
trade-brexit-deal-without-cutting-immigration-is-pie-in-the-sky-a7150351.html)

The EU does not allow member countries to negotiate trade deals privately. All
trade deals must go through the EU, which means any trade deals applies to all
EU countries. It's an all or nothing thing. So even though Poland might want
to allow free trade with the UK, they simply cannot do it. It must go through
the EU, and the EU has said very strongly that they will not allow it. Free
trade means free movement. No exceptions.

Once you understand that, the Brexit is just even stupid to consider.

------
egwynn
There are legitimate ways to be critical of the UK’s EU membership as a long-
term economic strategy. Reasoning through these criticisms carefully and
cogently might be possible. And afterward, it’s not out of the question that
someone could come up with a plan for how the UK could leave the EU in order
to bring real growth and prosperity to the UK (and maybe the EU also?).

But that’s not what happened, and it’s not what’s going to happen. The Brexit
vote happened with _no plan_ for how the follow-through would work. It’s as if
my family were to vote _against_ the current foundation of my house, and then
start ripping it up without first voting _for_ a new foundation.

------
AnimalMuppet
Many people felt that the EU was too undemocratic. Too often it decided what
to do, without letting people vote on it. And when people _did_ vote against
the EU's plan, the EU found ways to ignore or bypass the vote.

This was a big part of the reason for the Brexit vote. If _that_ vote gets
ignored, there's going to be trouble. I don't know what form it will take, but
there _will_ be trouble.

~~~
Panoramix
That's how democracy works. You elect people so they decide things for the
people. Sometimes they can in turn elect other people. It's impossible to put
everything up for vote (and the results would be disastrous unless the
majority of the population would be highly educated).

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, that's how _representative_ democracy works. It's not how _democracy_
works.

But even in a representative democracy, there's still this line out of
history: "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed". If the
EU (or the US Congress) makes decisions that alienate too large a chunk of
their citizens, then you wind up with a government in power that does not have
the consent of the governed, and which therefore is viewed as illegitimate by
a large chunk of the people. And then comes trouble, in one form or another.

------
sbmassey
If Brexit gets brushed under the carpet, and the EU continues its legacy of
greed, stupidity and incompetence in every area it involves itself in, then I
imagine the next referendum will be a lot more bitter and painful, if not
outright violent.

~~~
Oletros
> and the EU continues its legacy of greed, stupidity and incompetence in
> every area it involves itself i

Citation needed

~~~
sbmassey
I can't think of anything the EU has been involved in over the last couple of
decades that isn't accurately described as such: the Euro? the Lisbon treaty
debacle? the immigration catastrope? Greece? Unemployment? Agricultural
policy? God forbid they ever get an army: they would probably attack their own
citizenry, declare a great victory, and people like yourself would start
cheering

~~~
Oletros
So, no citation and just a bunch of opinion.

Thanks

~~~
sbmassey
You could disprove it by coting a single area where they are a widely
acknowledge success, but that is of course impossible: even the Remain
campaign was unable to come up with anything beyond vague threats of doom,
which have now proven false

------
dudul
Sure, what a better move from an organization that is more and more compared
to the USSR than completely ignore the result of a direct consultation of the
citizens. Especially when anti-EU parties are gaining traction is a lot of
other countries.

If the UK does not leave the EU despite the will of the people, it will be the
clearest message ever sent to everybody in Europe that they have basically
lost the right to decide for themselves. That would probably not be without
consequences.

~~~
jboydyhacker
Democracy is not a right, it's a responsibility. That means if you want to
decide for yourself you have to actually educate yourself on the ramifications
of the decisions.

Nobody on the Brexit camp even had a plan on how to leave. That's not
democracy that's just a tantrum.

~~~
kadabra9
Ah yes, the classic "My side lost, so the other side must be uneducated"
argument.

Democracy is great up until the point people dont vote the way you want them
to vote.

~~~
lotyrin
Can the majority not be wrong?

It seems like they are in a number of states, on a number of issues, should we
not desire a correct government over a popular one? Whether it's a majority
that is wrong, or a representative class that is wrong, or a despot that is
wrong, should we not have a voice to point out what we see as errors?

~~~
tomp
Poliyics is not math. There's no right or wrong. There are just priorities.

~~~
makomk
The Brexit referendum didn't offer people a choice of priorities. It offered
them a binary in vs out decision where the differences between different ways
of implementing each choice were arguably wider than the difference between
the choices. Then voters had to try and map their actual priorities onto this
decision based on dubious information from media and politicians who had their
own interests at heart.

