Indeed. Hurray! But then this:


The bill is expected to receive Royal Assent and become law on Tuesday.

____________________________


When are you island tribal barbarians going to extract yourself out of the Middle Ages?

Every sane person in the US should now be wishing they had some means of safeguarding its democratic processes and institutions from a rogue leader hell-bent on destroying them.

You don't understand. We like our tribal island ways and kings and queens and banners. It keeps us match-fit for when ze Germans kick off.

Yay! trade and political isolation and rising food prices.

But hey the little racist ***** are happy because the Mail patted them on the head.

yay democracy coming home!

That would be Greece...

Yep. Poland is actually a really good example of this. After they were conquered in 1939 by Germany and the USSR, their government reformed in exile in London, and continued meeting there for the next 50 years.

Of course the Germans and then the Russians put in place there own "Polish" governments which originally had little credibility but as time went on started to be recognised as the genuine government of Poland, and the exiles in London started to be forgotten. Eventually Walesa won the free presidential election in 1990 and President Kaczorowski (the sixth exile president) handed him the seals of the Republic of Poland (which of course the occupiers never had).

The point about that story is that "state seals" are a pretty lame embodiment of a nation - if the Germans had got to Britain and the King and his government had been exiled in Canada or somewhere it would always have been clear to the world that this was the legitimate government of the UK to which its population was loyal.

Maybe you need a history lesson in where our kings and queens actually come from.

House_of_Windsor


Well, my opinion is that you need to jettison this old style European family/dynasty stuff. You need more modern weapons to stave off the German menace. And the French.

Yep, what we need is more modern dynasties such as the Bush and Trump families to really keep the fascists down.

can I make a housekeeping suggestion that this thread is merged with the UK politics thread? I keep forgetting which thread I currently have an active argument in.

Brexit is a topic that might be interesting for people who are not interested in UK politics in general. I'd prefer to keep it separate.

Most of the discussion in that thread is about brexit too tho.

just lock this thread and come back when there's a deal in place and something real to discuss. the next two years will be dreadful and pointless, just like this entire thing really.

The left wing case for Brexit

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/2...-case.amp.html

I'm normally the libertarian in our pub debates, but it is a primarily left wing argument I find convincing for Brexit, and I have found myself repeatedly explaining market externalites, market failures and the environmental impact of importing vs buying locally (as well as strategically securing supply) to hippy labour / lib dem types who are suddenly distraught about small, self correcting impacts to forex markets, commodities futures and GDP forecasts that they just recently heard about.

Its almost like they got told which team to be on from an external source, and then had to rationalise whatever arguments they could get hold of.

lol

it's so divorced from reality. other than immigration, none of the stuff mentioned is actually prevented by the eu. you can be social democrats in europe too.

it also misunderstands why the institutions are kept purposely weak. it's to not go too far in taking away power from the nations.

I think the point about the main treaties being effectively unavailable for democratic reevaluation is really important though.

maybe there should have been more/fewer referendums, but that was up to every country to decide on it's own. and the treaties are agreed on by the heads of government of every member country. is wasnt something pushed on people by a bureaucratic eu. it was the member countries deciding between them where everyone had a veto.

(or, well, new members have to take it or leave now i guess)

Well that's why the UK constitution (or lack thereof) prevents a parliament from binding its successors. Other countries have similar rules (ordinary law can be replaced by ordinary law, constitutional law can be replaced by other constitutional law), and the EU often seems to be attempting to lock things into treaties that properly are decisions for future generations to make.

im not sure what shouldnt have been in the treaties, but to give everyone a veto and make decisions by consensus does make change hard. it also gives every country security that they'll not just be overruled on important stuff tho

so democracies can't change their mind on the treaties about "important stuff".


This kind of thing is funny when you think about the particular hardcore of EU-loving remainers who still going on about 'well, people can always change their mind'. Not if you're in the EU unless you leave, it seems.

Hardly, the party lines were hardly followed by either labour or tories.

I don't find your apologia for Brexit convincing. It sounds like you picked some words out of an economics textbook.

The main economic impact of brexit on the poor will be to push up food prices by increasing the cost of labour, something which has already happened, driving millions into poverty.

Deeply ironic given that the whole time Thatcher was in power she was railing against the socialism of the EU.