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The UK Votes to Leave the EU - PM David Cameron Resigns


DonRocks

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In some of the most stunning news you will read in your lifetime, the United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union, and Prime Minister David Cameron has resigned. Start with this article:

"The UK's EU Referendum: All You Need To Know" by Brian Wheeler and Alex Hunt on bbc.com

And then continue with these:

"David Cameron Resigns After Votes to Leave European Union" on theguardian.com

"What Happens Now the UK has Voted Brexit - and What is Article 50?" by Matthew Holehouse on telegraph.co.uk

"'Explosive Shock' as Britain Votes to Leave EU, Cameron Quits" by Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton on reuters.com

Do not underestimate the importance of Scotland and Northern Ireland voting against the majority (England and Wales).

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For some recent "historical" perspective, here's a thread from May 21, 2016:

"Brexit - The UK's Potential Withdrawal From the European Union"

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53 minutes ago, Bart said:

I saw this chart on twitter with the headline, "Baby boomers screw Millennials once again"

They forgot a column: "Average number of years they've lived to develop the wisdom to arrive at this decision."

(I honestly don't have an opinion on this issue; it's just that statistics can be manipulated so easily (as we all know)), and the same argument can be made for every vote passed on every issue.)

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As my American friend who lives in Scotland said, "It just shows there are dumbasses in every country."

From the Guardian article that Don linked to in his first post:

Quote

Cameron and Osborne – who were both closely involved in running the campaign – wheeled out an array of global policymakers and experts, including the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, and the US president, Barack Obama, to make the case that leaving the EU would inflict severe economic damage.

But Gove caught the public mood when he said the public had had enough of “experts”.

 

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There are many news reports out of Britain suggesting that a not insignificant number of people who voted for Brexit are now having post-decision regret.  Apparently, they believed that there was no way that Brexit would pass, so they used their vote in favor of it as a kind of cathartic middle-finger gesture to the EU, the British government, and whomever else they're angry with.  And now that the disastrous consequences have come home to roost, they want a do-over.  It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that this is exactly how the United States will wind up with President Donald J. Trump.  

His performance in Scotland this morning was horrifying.  The world had just experienced one of the most significant historical events in the lifetimes of most of us and he's talking about the luxury suites at his golf course.  

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39 minutes ago, LauraB said:

His performance in Scotland this morning was horrifying.  The world had just experienced one of the most significant historical events in the lifetimes of most of us and he's talking about the luxury suites at his golf course.  

The other terrifying statement he made was regarding the overnight crash of the Pound.  He was happy because it would be good for his golf course over there(!). 

Can you imagine that attitude after 9-11??!?!  Trump:  "Yeah, a couple towers came down, but it's great for me because I can now charge more for office space in my buildings"

 

But back to the current thread, did you see where the leader of the "Leave the EU" movement, Nigel Farage, said that main selling point of the movement was a "mistake".  Their main point was that they should take the 350M pounds they give to the EU weekly and use it to fund the NHS (whatever that is......National Health Something??).  Now he says it was a mistake to make that claim.....the centerpiece of their campaign.  Video here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/24/nigel-farage-350-million-pledge-to-fund-the-nhs-was-a-mistake/

 

I can't wait until President says it was a mistake to say Mexico will pay for the wall, and "they" shouldn't have said that.  That's what Nigel Farage basically did.

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Most of the discussion here assumes that Brexit will be a very bad thing. I'd have be persuaded of that. Say what you will about Nigel Farage, and I certainly don't agree with his views generally, but he's quite right that the EU is more and more about the abandonment of sovereign democratic institutions, built up over thousands of years, to the unelected, unaccountable institutions in Brussels. Britain should never have joined, and while extricating herself from the spider's web is going to be extremely painful and messy, good money should never be thrown after bad.

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44 minutes ago, The Hersch said:

Most of the discussion here assumes that Brexit will be a very bad thing. I'd have be persuaded of that. Say what you will about Nigel Farage, and I certainly don't agree with his views generally, but he's quite right that the EU is more and more about the abandonment of sovereign democratic institutions, built up over thousands of years, to the unelected, unaccountable institutions in Brussels. Britain should never have joined, and while extricating herself from the spider's web is going to be extremely painful and messy, good money should never be thrown after bad.

While it's obviously not a perfect analogy, you could say something similar about the 13 American colonies, who were sovereign prior to ratifying the Constitution, coming together and giving up most of their sovereign rights to a central government. We've managed. And the so-called unelected bureaucracy is really no different from the unelected regulatory agencies in Washington who make regulations that apply to all the states, but nobody raises a sovereignty issue about that.  It's all perception and emotion, and the sovereignty argument is bunk in my opinion. 

Maybe most here are too young to remember, but the EU was created with a major goal of insuring that the nations of Europe, in spite of their dissimilar languages and cultures,  would forevermore cooperate and be interdependent, and thus never again go to war, as they already had twice in the 20th century and continuously for hundreds of years before that.  Weakening the EU works against this principle, and in my view is dangerous and ill-advised for that reason alone.  Yes, something like that could still happen.  Once the cart is tipped over, it's not possible to know where the contents will roll.

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Sovereignty issues (ie: states rights) is exactly the argument of conservatives/Republicans:  devolve power from Washington back to that states.  That's pretty much Ted Cruz's entire platform.

your second paragraph was good.

 

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3 hours ago, johnb said:

While it's obviously not a perfect analogy, you could say something similar about the 13 American colonies, who were sovereign prior to ratifying the Constitution, coming together and giving up most of their sovereign rights to a central government. We've managed. And the so-called unelected bureaucracy is really no different from the unelected regulatory agencies in Washington who make regulations that apply to all the states, but nobody raises a sovereignty issue about that.  It's all perception and emotion, and the sovereignty argument is bunk in my opinion. 

You and I may disagree profoundly, but I think in at least one way we are talking at cross purposes. My reference to "sovereignty" was not intended to refer to thing like "states' rights" or the like. I was attempting to make the point that to the extent institutions are founded upon popular sovereignty they are democratic. To the extent they're not, they're not. The European Commission, which is roughly the executive branch of the EU government, is essentially answerable to no one. Its president is elected by the European Parliament, but solely on nomination by the European Council, which represents the current administrations of the member countries, who in turn are answerable to nobody. There is a European Parliament, of course, but it is largely a talking shop, with no ability to propose laws, which is the sole province of the unaccountable President of the Commission. If that looks to you like a set of institutions based on popular sovereignty, I'm afraid I'll have to borrow your spectacles.

On the 13 American colonies giving up most of their sovereign rights, that was only accomplished via the most calamitous episode in our history.

Oh, and a free Scotland and a free and united Ireland wouldn't be such a bad result.

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7 minutes ago, The Hersch said:

You and I may disagree profoundly, but I think in at least one way we are talking at cross purposes. My reference to "sovereignty" was not intended to refer to thing like "states' rights" or the like. I was attempting to make the point that to the extent institutions are founded upon popular sovereignty they are democratic. To the extent they're not, they're not. The European Commission, which is roughly the executive branch of the EU government, is essentially answerable to no one. Its president is elected by the European Parliament, but solely on nomination by the European Council, which represents the current administrations of the member countries, who in turn are answerable to nobody. There is a European Parliament, of course, but it is largely a talking shop, with no ability to propose laws, which is the sole province of the unaccountable President of the Commission. If that looks to you like a set of institutions based on popular sovereignty, I'm afraid I'll have to borrow your spectacles.

On the 13 American colonies giving up most of their sovereign rights, that was only accomplished via the most calamitous episode in our history.

The giving up of sovereignty by the 13 colonies was accomplished by the Constitutional Convention.  I'm unclear why that was calamitous.

I don't see where the various regulatory agencies, or the various departments for that matter, were created in any more a manner embracing "popular sovereignty," as you have defined it, than was the European Commission. For example, I don't ever recall being asked to vote on whether I wanted a, say, FCC, but what they decide does affect me, like dozens of other regulatory bodies who do things I may or may not agree with.  The mechanism by which they are created may not be the same, but that doesn't change the reality that I see.

There's a larger point here as well.  Democracy has been deified of late, e.g. by Bernie Sanders and others.  But think about it.  Pure democracy has a fundamental weakness -- it is subject to the popular whims of crowds, and in the heat of the moment can lead to very bad results when voters are not fully cognizant of the ramifications of what they are voting on.  There are already stories in the press about second thoughts that many who voted "leave" are having.  The founding fathers had read their Plato, and were well aware of this weakness.  That's one reason they designed the government as they did, to force decisions to be a multi-step process that would counteract the heat of the moment.  Pure democracy scares me, and count me with those who don't believe in it.

 

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I'm a little surprised people are drawing a parallel between the U.S. federal government in the 1780's, to Brussels being the center of the EU, but ... whatever spices your sausage. Personally, I'm having trouble finishing some of these posts.

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19 minutes ago, johnb said:

The giving up of sovereignty by the 13 colonies was accomplished by the Constitutional Convention.  I'm unclear why that was calamitous.

I don't see where the various regulatory agencies, or the various departments for that matter, were created in any more a manner embracing "popular sovereignty," as you have defined it, than was the European Commission. For example, I don't ever recall being asked to vote on whether I wanted a, say, FCC, but what they decide does affect me, like dozens of other regulatory bodies who do things I may or may not agree with.  The mechanism by which they are created may not be the same, but that doesn't change the reality that I see.

There's a larger point here as well.  Democracy has been deified of late, e.g. by Bernie Sanders and others.  But think about it.  Pure democracy has a fundamental weakness -- it is subject to the popular whims of crowds, and in the heat of the moment can lead to very bad results when voters are not fully cognizant of the ramifications of what they are voting on.  There are already stories in the press about second thoughts that many who voted "leave" are having.  The founding fathers had read their Plato, and were well aware of this weakness.  That's one reason they designed the government as they did, to force decisions to be a multi-step process that would counteract the heat of the moment.  Pure democracy scares me, and count me with those who don't believe in it.

The sovereignty of the individual states was firmly subordinated to the national government only by the Civil War.

Of course you don't get a vote on whether to have an FCC, but the FCC was created by act of Congress (all of which was popularly elected at the time) and signed into law by the more-or-less popularly elected President, who could have vetoed it if he cared to. The bills that became the Communications Act were introduced in Congress by duly elected representatives, written by them and their staffs, not handed to them on a like-it-or-lump-it basis by the executive branch. It would be absurd to deny that the United States has a lot of unaccountable bureaucrats, but the government's underlying popular sovereignty gives democratic legitimacy to the whole enterprise, and there is nothing remotely comparable about the governance structure of the EU.

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24 minutes ago, The Hersch said:

Matt Taibbi, making sense as usual.

This is an excellent article, a thought-provoking article.

First thought: If this community (ours) was a pure democracy, it would go entirely to hell in less than one month.

Second thought: Why should our society have any laws at all?

We have global warming because of the freedom to pollute, and we're quite possibly going to become extinct thanks to the masses not paying attention to the very, very few educated scientists who have been warning us about this for decades. If I could peak forward to the year 3000, and see a thriving, happy, human population - one which hasn't destroyed itself due to misuse of technology - I would be shocked.

We had slavery because it was the will of the people - it took someone with balls, Abraham Lincoln, to step up and lead.

Andrew Sullivan, quoted in the article, is right: "Democracies end when they are too democratic."

There cannot be a "one size fits all" philosophy (or belief system) for this issue - every situation must be judged on its own merits. Judged by whom? I'll leave that for others to decide.

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