
Brexit: MPs overwhelmingly back Article 50 bill - gfmio
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38833883
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tetraodonpuffer
Leaving the pros/cons of brexit out: if there was a plebiscite where the
electorate voted in favor of something, and if we assume that politicians are
supposed to be representing the electorate, shouldn't it have been pretty
straightforward that the corresponding bill would pass largely unchallenged?

If it had failed, how would the politicians have justified to their electors
voting against their express intentions?

~~~
Veen
MPs represent constituencies in parliament. Many constituencies voted
overwhelmingly to remain, which is why some MPs, especially on the labour
side, felt they couldn't vote for the the bill.

Some, like Ken Clark, have been pro-EU for decades and simply believe Brexit
is the wrong thing to do. He opposed the referendum. If you strongly believe
something to be a terrible mistake, should you support it just because it's
popular?

The UK isn't a direct democracy. We vote for the people who will make
decisions on our behalf. I'm glad there are politicians who refuse to follow a
marginally popular opinion because they believe it's wrong. That's their job.

~~~
flukus
So your happy for MP's to cede your sovereignty rather than risk a popular
vote? Because that's how Britain ended up in the EU in the first place.

~~~
ubernostrum
In representative democracies, generally the idea is to substitute someone
else's judgment for your own. And then if you sufficiently dislike their
judgment, vote for someone else next time.

So in general, MPs should vote what _they_ believe, and let their
constituencies decide whether to return them for it.

~~~
Silhouette
Sadly, as we've seen in recent years, in practice this system often does not
even resemble having representative government or any real accountability to
the electorate.

Mostly it actually resembles having a field of candidates where many voters
don't much like any of them (with an inevitable "Well you should just run for
office yourself then!" retort when this is pointed out), who campaign based on
a tiny number of issues that will utterly dominate the voting but that are
invariably determined by what is prominent in people's mind during the
relatively short electoral period, and who may then proceed to do whatever
they like, even to the extent of completely reversing their stated pre-
election positions on those major issues for no apparent reason, with at most
a possibility of subsequently losing their job as much as five years later. In
many cases, even that won't happen.

However, in almost all cases, issues outside the top 2 or 3 in election season
don't count for much at all, even those that may significantly affect millions
of people over the term of the next parliament and government. Sometimes,
issues that come to dominate politics for several years -- such as the Iraq
war, or the negotiations to come over what Brexit will look like -- will be
mostly or completely unmentioned at election time. By the time the people have
any say over those decisions at the next election, the country may already
have been committed whatever the consequences or (un)popularity of the
decision with the electorate.

If the Brexit referendum campaigns showed us anything, it was that any
pretense of elected politicians somehow being better informed or better able
to make good decisions than a lot of the voters could make for themselves is
laughable. The biggest sources of misinformation during the campaign were
almost all senior MPs, and those on both sides repeated half-truth after
arbitrary prediction after outright implausibility. The best sources of
objective information and considered opinions were mostly non-political
experts, and the best arguments I heard for voting one way or the other
invariably came from normal people who had used the multi-month campaign
window to educate themselves and form their own opinions on the issues.

~~~
Veen
In your final paragraph you seem to be saying that because politicians lie,
they're obviously incapable of making better decisions than the populous at
large. That's a non-sequitur.

Of course politicians lie — they do it consciously and strategically. They do
not believe their lies (unless they're also insane). When politicians speak,
their aim is to persuade people, not to speak the unvarnished truth. Speaking
the plain truth often has results that are directly contrary to their
persuasive goals — so they lie, obfuscate, and misdirect. That's been the case
for politicians of all stripes for all time and probably always will be.

But that doesn't mean the underlying goals aren't sound. Good leaders lie, bad
leaders lie. Lying is not in itself proof of incompetence. Brexit is good or
bad independent of whether politicians lie about it. If you understand that,
you can assess the arguments of politicians, experts, and everyone else in the
proper context.

The problem is that most people just choose the side that tells the lies that
conform to their existing predjuduces, seek facts that confirm those
predjuduces, and reject facts that contradict them — which is exactly what
politicians are exploiting when they engage in persuasive speech, and why it's
better that the populous at large don't make critical decisions. Telling the
truth doesn't help.

~~~
Silhouette
_In your final paragraph you seem to be saying that because politicians lie,
they 're obviously incapable of making better decisions than the populous at
large._

That's not quite what I said, but the difference probably doesn't matter.

The principal argument for having a representative democracy rather than a
direct one is that normal people cannot realistically be well enough informed
on all major issues to make reasonable judgements in their own interests. No-
one has enough time to be an expert on everything while still living a normal
life and doing a regular job. Instead, normal people delegate decision-making
authority to specialist people who do have the time to become better informed
and thus have the potential to make better decisions on behalf of everyone
else than the normal people could themselves.

Crucially, the normal people are supposed to delegate this power voluntarily,
typically by holding elections to find a suitable representative, and this is
the ethical basis for some individuals wielding more power than others in
society. The point is not for someone to be "in charge" because they are
somehow more important or worthy or otherwise better than everyone else. The
elected representatives are there to make decisions on behalf of and in the
interests of society as a whole, the same way you would consult a specialist
lawyer on legal matters or a specialist accountant about your tax affairs.

However, I see little evidence that this is what actually happens in practice.
If that's because politicians don't really believe or mean the rubbish they
say, I have no sympathy. But in reality, having worked with various government
representatives and MPs over the years, I see little evidence that most of
them are any more competent or better informed in private than an interested
but otherwise average member of the public either. Frequently there may be no
suitable representative available to elect, which defeats the entire ethical
basis for the system, and even with an apparently suitable candidate at
election time, the system is hugely vulnerable to principal-agent conflicts of
interest.

So on really big decisions, including the kind of issue where a referendum
gets held after a multi-month period of debate that gives ample opportunity
for everyone who cares to examine the issues and form their opinions, I see
absolutely no ethical basis for making society as a whole defer to a small
number of MPs. If people are smart and well-informed enough to choose good MPs
in the first place, they're smart and well-informed enough to make a
reasonable decision on a specific issue with several months of notice, and
having done so, what basis is there for saying any elected representative --
who presumably campaigned on a range of issues and probably got elected with
far less support than carries any referendum -- should be empowered to
override the will of the people on a specific decision they have made?

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EnderMB
Whether you agree with Brexit or not, I think it's safe to say that the way
MP's voted will be looked at with as much scrutiny as those that voted for the
Iraq war.

My Labour MP supported Remain, and our area voted strongly to remain in the
EU, but she has backed the bill, leading to a lot of angry people. It's a
reasonably safe Labour seat, but with increasing numbers of young people
moving here, I can see her struggling next election.

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H4CK3RM4N
This will have huge implications for tech industry in the UK with drawing
employees from the EU becoming a lot harder, as a result of uncertainty over
visas if nothing else.

~~~
elastic_church
such that London software engineering salaries will no longer be comparably
pitiful to America's?

~~~
cletus
Upvote.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted because you are correct: London salaries
are pitiful even before you factor in the enormous cost of living there (I
lived and worked in London for 4 years but did contracting as the salaries
even 10+ years ago were and are a joke comparatively).

It's one reason I and many others work in the US instead.

No idea what Brexit will do to relative incomes. It depends on what happens
with the pound, what the visa situation looks like and so on.

~~~
elastic_church
Simply put, I would not code for other people at the salaries that Romanians
accept.

~~~
kodfodrasz
This basically means you would not code for other people only at a pay lower
than what a Romanian would accept, as if a Romanian would accept a pay of X,
that also means he/she would accept a pay of X+ε, for all wages from X to ∞.

This makes you a pretty cheap labour, and if your hate against Romanian people
can somehow be turned to motivation, probably a very productive one!

If you are formulating hatespeach against Eastern-Europeans, please be
precise!

~~~
elastic_church
How did you extrapolate low wages to hatespeech against Eastern-Europeans?
This presupposes quite a lot and suggests a lot more about you.

I made a pretty specific and narrowly tailored statement. Your postulate
primarily neglects reality.

~~~
wtfishackernews
You implied that Romanians are beneath you.

~~~
elastic_church
Because there are actually a lot of people in Romania that across Europe to
work for a lower salary and be totally content with that while I wouldn't? How
free trade drives down labor costs when a government promotes an actual
borderless free market? How it is an actually good business plan to go
recruiting in Romania and other surrounding countries for both skilled and
unskilled labor?

I don't know guys, I think you are attempting to censor reality by latching
onto something that isn't even considered insensitive.

Disrupting free trade agreements like that disrupts cheaper labor. The same
concept inflates the salaries within the United States as well with its
limited visas and exiting trade agreements.

I see "standards of living costs are lower in those countries so it is
rational to undercut the local workers" you see "he's saying they're beneath
him". Are we really at an impasse? How deep in the gutter are your minds

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toyg
For all the arguments from brexiters about democracy, this vote was yet
another travesty. Somehow a narrow 52% majority of votes became 70%+ in
Parliament. And of course the few millions of EU citizens living here went
completely unrepresented, again.

What a disappointment, this country turned out to be.

~~~
KitDuncan
You are looking at this the wrong way. This vote wasn't supposed to represent
the exact percentage of the referendum, just wether or not they want to
overule the referendum, which 70% did not want to do, even though many of
those MPs did not support the Brexit.

