That’s not a claim. That’s an action. That’s like saying a benefit of leaving is to have left it.
The Commons CMS Committee and the earlier inquiry into fake news give some indicators into how the. Likes of Cambridge Analytica were able to target special ads to Facebook users based on their behavioural data. It’s all there for you.
Why on earth do you assume in this analogy that Brexit=efficiency? If anything, it means returning to steam and coal.
We all lost. Democracy does not end with a fraudulent vote, narrowly won, three years ago.
The only reason Brexiters oppose a second vote is because they know they’ll lose. Badly. Up to the vote, they were loud in claiming a close result would mean a rerun in a few years. Then, they won, and they clam up. Hypocrites.
I see that Macron is now aligning with Spain in resistance to a pointless extension. While it might be seen as pushing us further towards the brink, I think it’s a positive development. It does seem that there’s at least a solid majority in parliament to block No Deal, and if that doesn’t waver, this increases the probability of a much longer extension.
But why would the EU agree to a longer extension, a longer period of uncertainty? Their interests would seem to be better served by getting it all over with, now, in whatever manner.
Indeed. Why would the UK want it as well? Unless there is a path forward from the stalemate for which additional time would be helpful, why not just rip the bandaid off?
Sorry, I didn’t think I needed to detail it out. Your request was:
Paraphrasing, the Leave campaign claimed they would successfully lead the UK out of the EU. They won the referendum. Parliament passed the Withdrawal Act. Those are both successes for the Leave campaign. The UK hasn’t left the EU yet, but it’s arguably likely to happen and inarguably possible. So that claim has survived and is deliverable.
Other deliverable claims are that, post-Brexit, the UK will stop paying a membership fee to the EU, and the UK will be less subject to EU bureaucracy.
Because two of the planks in the Leave platform were based on efficiency. The UK sends money to the EU, and a portion of that money is allocated to EU sponsored projects in the UK. UK projects hoping to receive grants apply to both the relevant UK office and EU office. Making a single application would be more efficient, and UK evaluators should be better at assessing UK based grant requests than EU evaluators.
The EU as an entity is not known for cost efficiency. The movement of the EU parliament between Brussels and Strasbourg is a glaring inefficiency. Brexit would mean that the UK would no longer be paying for such EU cost inefficiencies.
The contra to these arguments is that several EU agencies that deliver services across the EU provide better and more cost efficient services than 27 or 28 individual country-based agencies could. I acknowledge that buying into services from these agencies is a win-win scenario that as a whole outweighs the EU inefficiencies.
I dunno. If somebody has made a commitment which they ought never to have made, are they morally bound to uphold it. Or might they be, in fact, morally bound to repudiate it (and take the resulting flak)?
By choosing to frame the referendum as an advisory referendum, parliament/the government ensured that it was not attended by the controls, protections, etc that would have applied if it had been a self-executing referendum. That imports an obligation on parliament/the government to exercise appropriate caution, judgment, etc when assessing and acting on the result of the referendum. That’s not compatible with a commitment to implement the apparent majority outcome of the referendum (if that is the correct interpretation of the “respect the result” promise).
There is a second point here. The “respect the result” commitment was included in the Tory manifesto for the 2015 general election. But the Tories only secured 36.9% of the vote in that election; 63.1% of the electorate did not endorse that manifesto. In Scotland, which voted to remain in the EU, the Tory manifesto committing to honour the (UK-wide) result of the referendum secured the endorsement of just 14.9% of the voters. In Northern Ireland, which also voted to remain, it secured the endorsement of just 1.6% of the voters. Even in England, onlly 40.9% voted Tory at the 2015 general election.
The bottom line is that parliament has a constitutional responsibility here, it can’t abdicate that responsibility by an uncritical acceptance of the outcome of an advisory referendum. Had they wanted the referendum to be self-executing, they could have so framed it, but they chose not to. That leaves them with a responsibility which they are not excused from by pointing to an improper commitment made in a manifesto which a substantial majority of the voters in every part of the UK rejected.
With this argument, isn’t everything that Parliament passed from 2015-2017 not really legitimate since only 36.9% of the people voted for the controlling party?
I understand your frustration, but the quotes provided by Wrenching Spanners above show pretty clearly that the UK Government made a commitment to follow the results of the referendum.
It wasn’t “binding” in the sense that nothing is ever binding from one Parliament to the next. However, I think it is very clear that the people understood that they were promised that the vote mattered and that the winning side would have its wishes carried out.
To hand waive this away as a merely advisory referendum simply does not comport with the facts, unless you want to be hypertechnical and say that no referendum is ever binding in the sense that Parliament is supreme, has the power to change its mind, and the people should have known that.
No. The Tories won the election - as in, they secured enough seats in the Commons to form a government - and that gives them a mandate to govern the UK.
That’s not the same thing as a mandate which requires them to deliver on a manifesto commitment which the electorate has not accepted and which, properly judged, they should never have made.
Yes. My point is that its an improper commitment. Having chosen to hold an advisory referendum, thereby ruling out the precautions and protections that would apply in an election or a self-executing referendum, it’s improper to commit themselves in advance to treat the referendum as binding. If they want a binding referendum, they can have one. If they choose to have an advisory referendum, that gives them certain responsibilities which they can’t abdicate simply by pointing to their manifesto commitment and saying “we choose to interpret this as preventing us from discharging our constitutional responsiblity”.
Yeah, but by a mechanism which deprives the losing side of the benefit of the rule of law.
No, no, there’s nothing hypertechnical about it. The UK system does accomodate both self-executing and advisory referendums, and there are material differences between them, and for good reasons. A decision to hold an advisory referendum, but then treat it is if it were self-executing, is a really bad decision. It adss up to an attempt to evade the protections that attend a self-executing referendum, while disclaiming any responsibility for doing so.
Sure, if you promise to do that, and then realise that its a bad thing to do and so don’t do it, you will get blowback from people who voted for you, in reliance on the promise. But you should take that blowback; you deserve it for having made a promise that you should never have made. Promising to ignore your constitutional responisiblities is a bad thing to do but, if you do it, that doesn’t justify you in actually going on to ignore your constitutional responsibilities. You should discharge your constituional responsibilities and submit yourself to the judgment of the electorate for doing so.
Weak. They’re little more than requirements of the act of leaving the EU. None of the advantages they claimed would be waiting for us have, or will, materialise.
In so doing we’ll be outright and become less efficient by having to duplicate all that EU bureaucracy. It’s a false economy.
The EU’s reputation for inefficiency is highly overblown. It is slow, perhaps, but what it tends to do is * comprehensive*; its trade deals tend to be more detailed, and it conducts more of them simultaneously, compared to, say the US. Regulations may take years, but in doing it resolves disputes between 28 Member States and bends over backwards to respect regional peculiarities. Yes, the Strasbourg/Luxembourg migration of the Parliament is fucking stupid, but it’s a testament to the utter hollowness of claims of the EU being some superstate empire.
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I’m asking how many referendum voters who were predisposed to vote Remain changed their minds during the last 10-15% of the referendum campaign and voted Leave based on Leave advertising. Feel free to do a detailed analysis and provide an estimate. Please show your work.
Those are different grants. Part of the money involved has at one point been in a single bag, but it has then been distributed to different ones (some managed at the higher level, some locally); also, some of the local grants are from money which never traveled to Brussels.
Might as well complain about why I can’t just use my mother’s CC’s to pay for my spending. After all, her pension comes from my taxes.
System 1. I have 10 pounds. You want me to donate 1 pound to you. You ask me nicely. I decide whether or not to give you that pound.
System 2. I have 10 pounds I give 5 pounds to your mother. She keeps 1 pound as an administrative fee. You ask each of us nicely for 1 pound. We each decide if we want to give you 1 pound, and then try to coordinate between us that we both haven’t given you a pound.
System 1. I have 10 pounds. You want me to donate 1 pound to you. Since I have grants for “buying food” and you’re buying food, you ask me for a 1 pound grant. I decide whether to give you that pound or not.
System 2. I have 10 pounds. I give 5 pounds to your mother. You would like to get some pounds to buy food for your kids. Since I have grants for “buying food” and you’re buying food, you ask me for a 1 pound grant, which I grant or not. Your mother happens to have different grants, for feeding her grandchildren. Since you’re feeding her grandchildren, you ask her for 1 pound, which she grants or not. The two pounds are given for different reasons even though they involve the same meal: you can get both.
The UK has agreed a £39 billion divorce payment with the EU. That money is legislated for in the Withdrawal Agreement. It’s uncertain if it will be paid if there’s a hard exit with no withdrawal agreement.
Depending on the terms and length of the extension, the EU could ask the UK to continue making membership payments. (If anyone has more insight on this, please provide it. This is something I’ve heard in conversation, but not read in detail.)
A hard no-deal exit hurts both sides. Per-capita, the pain will be more intense for the UK. However, the pain in the EU will be concentrated in points, some of which will respond by screaming loudly. French farmers, Spanish beach resorts, and Greek islands are three groups among several that would be severely hurt by a disastrous Brexit.
You’re severely overestimating the value of British tourism for Spain and severely underestimating the troubles caused if Iberia and vueling can’t fly thanks to y’all.
In both of our examples, in System 1 the entity that started with the 10 pounds retains control of the 10 pounds. The Leave argument is that this is a good thing.
Likewise, in both of our examples, in System 2 the requestor has to make two separate requests, which both have to be considered. That’s why System 2 is less efficient.
In your example, in System 2, when I received 2 pounds, that’s a good thing me, but a bad thing for the guy down the line who missed out and got nothing. That’s a misallocation of resources, which is also inefficient.
The divorce bill covers things like pensions and funding of projects we had agreed to contribute towards. If we extend for say 2 years and make membership payments during that time, the divorce bill should go down. A good negotiator would be able to argue the point such that we end up not much worse off once EU payments back to the uk are considered. It’s a shame we don’t appear to have any!
This is one of those “If I can balance my chequebook, the government can balance the budget” arguments based on gross oversimplification. It ignores several levels of complexity and excludes the rather substantial benefits the UK gains from EU membership in order to inaccurately portray the EU as a mere conduit for monetary reallocation, an argument the Leave campaign made repeatedly.
But if you prefer your simple analogy, in System 1 you can keep your ten pounds but every time you go shopping you have to pay an extra 50p to park, whereas under System 2 you got free parking. Are you still getting a better deal?