Welcome to the EU: you can check out but you can never leave
Some interesting background on the history of Brexit:
It was at 6:22 a.m. on June 24, 2016 — 59 minutes before the official tally was unveiled — that the European Council sent its first “lines to take” to the national governments that make up the EU.
The United Kingdom was leaving the European Union and Brussels was determined to seize control of the process.
In the short five-paragraph document written by Council President Donald Tusk’s chief of staff, Piotr Serafin, and circulated among EU ambassadors, the bloc’s remaining 27 national governments were urged to speak with one voice and to insist that the U.K. leave through the Article 50 process set down in EU law.
This meant settling the divorce first and the future relationship second, once the U.K. had left. “In the future we hope to have the U.K. as a close partner of the EU,” the document read. “First we need to agree the arrangements for the withdrawal.”
This was crucial. It ran counter to declarations by the U.K.’s victorious Vote Leave campaign not to be bound by the formal exit procedure. If the U.K. agreed to the terms of its departure before its future relationship was settled, the Brexit campaigners had argued, it would deprive itself of much of its leverage.
Joining the EU is a dangerous proposition. Brussels and the member states as a whole take control to a certain extent, and each individual country (and its people) loses autonomy. Divorce becomes very very difficult, and that is by design.
It reminds me of the lyrics to “Hotel California,” in particular the last verse:
Mirrors on the ceiling
The pink champagne on ice
And she said: “We are all just prisoners here
Of our own device”
And in the master’s chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can’t kill the beast
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
“Relax,” said the night man
“We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave!”
I think it should be clear that Theresa May was a Remainer then, and is a Remainer now. People wonder how it is possible to come up with a plan that loses vote after vote in Parliament, but the answer is right there in front of everyone- May never wanted her plan to pass. The goal has always been to find some way to overturn that first vote, but to make it look like it is something else.
She raised the specter of snap elections, and I think I see what the plan might be here- rather than a second referendum or an outright cancellation of Article 50 by the present Parliament, it is possible that the MPs collectively will run as Brexit or Remain, with the declaration that whichever faction on this one issue is a majority after the snap elections, then the new Parliament will enact that result as a de facto second referendum. As it stands right now, it is clear that there are about 400 MPs who would like to stay in the EU, but they can’t just vote that sentiment- they have to find a way to blame it on the voters.
The people in Brussels don’t talk to their own people anymore. Germany wants Russian gas via Nordstream and doesn’t listen to Eastern countries that Russia has been intimidating over fuel for years. They also don’t want to listen to the US about using Huawei for its 5G. The latter may be a reaction to Trump and to his insistence that they pay their 2% NATO share. France is generally in shambles. Italy wants to go along with China’s Belt and Road program. The anti-Americanism is showing itself all over, and this didn’t start with Trump. They want to trade with Iran. These are not top-priority things of average citizens. The response to Brexit is a bunch of Brussels idiots wanting to save their own asses. But at least the curve of bananas is regulated.
I saw a piece critical of Amazon the other night. There was some mention of working conditions, but the big point was about a family that bought a cell phone over Amazon from an independent seller. It blew up and started a fire. So Amazon is now supposed to test and guarantee every product the independents sell. The phone was a super cheap thing made in China. Every one wants to be protected so they don’t have to take responsibilty for their own idiocy.
All political unions are like that. Look what happened when the southern states tried to secede from the Union.
I am one of the ones that thinks that Brexit was a foolish proposition.
Agreeing to be ruled by unelected bureaucrats is arguably one of the more foolish agreements ever entered into.
Roy N,
The Constitution’s Article 1, Section 10 prohibits unilateral secession. Every single State voluntarily entered into that contract.
What exactly is “foolish” about Brexit?
Wanting to be free of unelected bureaucrats in Brussels is never foolish. “May your chains set lightly upon you, and may prosperity forget you were ever our countrymen.” The EU is doomed to failure. The Euro is doomed. Experiments commenced without considering the possibilities of unintended consequences and Murphy’s Law are the providence of fools, and an invitation to tyranny. The next time the tribal war begins, we need to stay out of the blood bath. Let them live under the iron fist of Mother Russia for 100 years.
More like roach motel…
Since the end of WWII, with a respite while Thatcher was PM, Britain has been giving away its tradition of freedoms and parliamentary government. We’ve been headed that way, ourselves, and I hope the current administration is more than just a brief respite in the decline.
parker,
Not one more drop of American blood should be shed for those ingrates. Indeed their future will either be under the Russian boot or as dhimmis.
Kate,
If unfamiliar, search for Enoch Powell and his “Rivers of Blood” speech. In the 60s he warned his people and was politically crucified for it. Arguably, the UK has already crossed into a police state.
Lyrics by: Don Felder, Henley, and Frey.
At this point I’m in favor of the U.K. crashing out. If T. May were interested in getting out in the best possible fashion, and I suspect she isn’t, she should start lobbying Italy and France to crash out with the U.K. There’s nearly zero chance France would go, but a small chance that Italy might, and it would scare the crap out of the E.U. Then they could renegotiate the Brexit.
There are some complexities here that I wish I understood better. Part of Ireland is in the country of Ireland, and the other part is in the U.K. So that totally free flow of people, goods, and services throughout the E.U. would stop if the U.K. crashes out, and Ireland would thereby be seriously divided.
As a shareholder in Ford Motor Co. I understand they are having a bit of a heart attack. They spent a bundle over many years building production in the U.K. with the understanding that all of the vehicles would then flow freely across the E.U. Oops!
Yes GB, under the Russians for 100 or so years, or Islam for however before we decide to nuke them into the age of glass parking lots. I am old, I have grandchildren and a great grandchild (!) on the way, given the power Mecca and Medina would be gone. Europe could fester under the dictates of the Kremlin. My give a damn is busted.
TommyJay,
The situation is inded more complicated than we outside the EU can grok. But when in doubt hold to first principles. Freedom and national sovereignty. It is one thing to contend with the bureaucrats of the UK, it is a dangerous thing to contend with the bureaucrats of the EU. Neither have your best interests at heart, but the first is more controllable, the second is fascism.
At least one-half of the British Parliament is playing a version of the 4-corners offense…Stalling for time until they can properly welcome their Islamic and Russian Overlords.
Artfldgr on March 29, 2019 at 8:12 pm at 8:12 pm said:
More like roach motel…
* * *
..and you told me you would never be accused of succinct accuracy!
I have never believed the apocalyptic scenarios painted by Brexit opponents. I can believe Brexit will cause the UK some economic dislocation and visa-versa, but markets are markets and the goods must flow. Eventually a new equilibrium will be reached.
Furthermore, I have doubts concerning the prospects of the EU, what with mass immigration, the failing economies of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain (PIGS) and the competence of EU elites to run the continent in an increasingly top-down fashion.
Leaving aside the issues of sovereignty parker rightly brings up, I wonder if long-term the UK is better off economically without the EU.
Autocrats gotta do what autocrats gotta do—and no matter how suave their manners, no matter how impeccable their taste, they are autocrats. Moreover, their fears of losing leverage (aka power) make them more uncompromising.
(One can agree or disagree with the whole idea of the referendum. I happen to believe—if California is any example—that it’s an awful way to decide anything politically, except maybe at the most local level, and that it’s basically antithetical to the American Constitution FWIW in that it’s the kind of “pure” democracy against which most of the Founders fought tooth and nail… But back to the UK…:)
The belief that the EU would in any way assist Britain in the disengagement process (and by so doing encourage others??!!) was/is sheer fantasy. In fact, the opposite.
If Brexit is going to happen, it will have to be the result of a “Gordian knot” decision.
(Whereupon, one will likely discover—dollars to doughnuts—that the UK is in far better shape than the EU….)
The problem is taking that plunge….
(Another problem, it seems, is that everyone “wants to be loved”….)
The belief that the EU would in any way assist Britain in the disengagement process (and by so doing encourage others??!!) was/is sheer fantasy. In fact, the opposite.
Barry Meislin: That’s my take. Since the referendum, it’s all been kabuki. As Hamlet once said (I’m paraphrasing), “To crash or not to crash. That is the question.”
The problem for EUcrats is everyone has noticed the “Keep voting until you get it right” scam.
Related (but who knows how accurate it will turn out to be?):
https://admin.express.co.uk/news/politics/1107156/eu-news-european-parliament-election-populist-parties-nigel-farage-brexit-party
And another, sober, view from one who’s been around the block:
https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2019/03/29/brexit-day-cancelled/