So the UK is only pretending to be a democratic nation.

Can't see how SNP telling their supporters not to vote helps tbh as everyone else that wanted to leave would still have taken part, leaving the way open for brexiters to claim an overwhelming victory.

I seem to think we should all have our sovereignty, that's for Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England if they want it. Not some crap about the score being 2-2.

Tbh as an Irishman born and raised in NI, I get more protection and benefits from the EU than Westminster ever provided.

The parliament has no power to propose new legislation.

yeah the idea that there's an "eu itself", divorced from the populace, driving things is silly. the power is with the member states in the council and the democratic parliament. with the commission appointed by them to execute their ideas.

the treaties set up the structure and lay down basic principles (liberal democracy, human rights, freedom of movement, single market etc.). they are hard to change, but without them there wouldnt be an union at all. constitutions are hard to change too.

the eu also isnt failing at much imo. the euro just sucks.

Merkel immediately vetoes Britain's plan to have parallel divorce and trade discussions.

Given May's refusal to even slightly condemn the behaviour of the clown in the White House and that administration's desire to destroy the EU, I can see a huge rift developing.

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. You have no issue about the most powerful political position in the UK not being directly elected. But on European level it's somehow intolerable that the people proposing new legislation are not directly elected.

not only that, but the anti-eu types would be furious in the parliament could propose and pass new legislation on its own. it's an entirely disingenuous argument.

the reason the parliament isnt stronger is to not take away more power from the member states.

Well, the fact it's the first time ever would suggest it's just differential turnout, but in any case I would be fine with the newly elected government in Stormont holding a referendum on leaving the UK to join the Republic.

I'd agree with you btw that the creation of this artificial 6-county "demos" a hundred years ago was disingenuous and a terrible mistake, but no British government is going to ignore the will of that demos if it wants reunification and NI being in the UK is valid at least to the extent that NI is a valid demos.

The point is it's pretending to be a nation with a common citizenry, not something like the V4.

Leave would have won and the SNP could say "clearly rUK have decided to leave and we shouldn't follow them". Look, if the result had gone the other way and they'd tipped the balance we would have had to accept it.

Agreed. I'd be fine with another Scottish referendum about 10 years after the last one - also one on rejoining the EU around 2030.

I don't support either continually holding referenda until the get the "right" result or seeing a referendum as having closed an issue for a full 40 years as happened with our 1975 referendum. 10-15 years is a good gap if the issue is still live (so Wales or NI could hold one now as far as I'm concerned.)

Can a German speaker help out on this please.

Reports I read had a 'big' headline but then I read it reported as Merkel saying that clarification of how the divorce would be handled was required before trade talks could start. Depending on what she actually said the statement could range from the very mild defense of the known negotiating position to a very serious 'the divorce details must be finalised before trade negotiations start'

The following snip (from FT) is a good translation of the relevant part:
The segment is only a few sentences and the FT snip is basically a literal translation. To me it implies that the divorce talks need to be *completed* before negotiations about the future relationship can be started, but it's not worded entirely clear in German either. (If another German speaker wants to give it a shot, it's @2min mark here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Tpu15zlmo&t=120)

I agree and the democratic institutions in the EU will strengthen as the project develops. Otherwise it's exactly the same argument as the first Scottish independent vote - I'm not sure many who could see why many Scottish people wanted 'to take back control' can see why many Brits feel the same about the EU.

My attempt of a transcript of Merkel's statement:

"The federal government (of Germany) has prepared itself well for this process and will take a position regarding every upcoming question. To name just a few points that appear important to me: First, for many people in Europe the aspired EU exit of Great Britain is linked with concrete worries about their own personal future. This is especially true for the many German and European nationals living in Great Britain. Therefore the federal government will intensely campaign for the consequences to be as small as possible for the everyday life of those affected. Secondly, we know that between Great Britain and the European Union and Germany,of course, exist close (tight-knit) commitments that resulted from the 44 year membership. During the negotiations we will first have to settle how we will disentangle these commitments in an orderly fashion and it will also be about the handling of the many rights and obligations that are associated with the membership to date. Only when these questions have been answered can we subsequently but nevertheless hopefully soon talk about our future relationship."

plexiq presumably spricht deutsch

Are you kidding?

Txs.

Hopefully wise heads on both sides will prevail although I'm half expecting the EU to insist on absolutely no trade talks until the bill is agreed and the UK to then walk out of talks (maybe not literally) before the wise heads step in. The EU has to realise that it's probably politically impossible for the UK to agree a big settlement figure with no sort of trade deal - so it must be a negotiating tactic.

Pure speculation obviously, but the wording makes me think that this is more likely to be a negotiation tactic than a strict insistence. They had plenty of time to craft that specific statement, so the slight ambiguity is probably not accidental.

Both are ridiculous concepts frankly. Being ruled by an EU elite, an Edinburgh elite or a Westminster elite makes no practical difference. The rhetoric is different but the policies largely identical except on largely meaningless stylistic issues.

None of these groupings give a **** about their populations. They exist solely for the benefit of their corporate donors and self-interested.

What I particulary loathe about the working/middle-class Brexiteers is that they are so f***ing stupid that they believe because they share a nationality with their political elite that they will be looked after. In fact the reverse is the case: political elites of foreign ethnicity will placate their populations to some extent, elites of the same ethnicity know they can get away with murder.

It is interesting that amongst the elite themselves there is very little discrimination and prejudice on an ethnic basis. They don't care about your skin. They care about how much money and power you have. If you don't have any, you can f*** off.

^This is pretty cynical and dark. There are plenty of EU countries with well functioning re-distributive policies that help the poorer parts of the population in very significant ways.

The UK is closer to the US model than to your typical European social democracy, but this wasn't magically set in stone. Exiting the EU and repeatedly electing conservatives is probably only going to intensify that trend though.

Arguing whether the EU is more or less democratic than the UK is not quite the right question, in my opinion, because being the most 'democratic' does not seem to be what people want, they want a bigger weight in the democratic decision.

As an example, if we had a perfect global democracy, UK policy would be decided by the preferences of India and China. It would be democratic, but we would not want that.

It's the same problem with the EU. We have policy determined by a population in which we are not a cultural majority, so whatever we think about current policy, its a framework in which we end up in a country we do not want to live in in the long run.

Unlike Scotland from the UK, the balance of long term costs and benefits for the UK from the EU are probably not in our favour either. Even if they are, it is close, so it isn't worth being miserable because we have to live in someone else's culture instead of building our own.

Manfred Weber was in radio 4 this morning, virtually crying about it all.

Lol

All DB has done though is regurgitate his second hand middle brow newspaper opinions about the democratic structure and processes of the EU.

Actual processes by which the EU can effect culture etc are few and far between and most control over such remains patriated.

Can you give a specific example of a how the EU has legislated in such a way that the culture of the UK somehow become other than how the population would want it, which of course is a nonsense in and of itself, but never mind, can you give an example?

Obviously their is immigration, if you want to just come out and say it, would be better.

Remember that we aren't comparing the EU's current effect on UK policy, but rather what it would do in future under 'ever closer union'. They wouldn't be reevaluating if we hadn't voted out, and Cameron proved he couldn't influence anything at the time.

An example that worried me was employment law like the Working Time Directive. We fashioned an opt out then, but we could forecast a rising tide of oppressive employment law driven by overly socialist, uncompetitive, unsuccessful European cultures that would prevent British entrepreneurship.

Corbyn calls them 'protections', but they are really a ban on free adults contracting consensually, and I want to try to maintain system where too much of that is unlikely to be enforced, and if it is enforced, it is unlikely to last.

Running a business in Germany and Italy sucks, you can't risk trying to scale up headcount in case you need to cut back again. They seem to prefer a company to shut down than be able to cut headcount quickly and survive. I know these aren't laws that currently affect the UK, but I forecast this as a huge risk, much more than than a dodgy short term treasury forecast.

I like that we have Uber and self driving cars and screw top wine bottles, I don't want an averaged-out European approach to progression.

I'd always wondered why Germany was such an economic failure.

So they had not really done anything in X years but could do something to influence our culture in the future.

Also the only "culture" you are expressing are those of your singular personal preferences and employment law is a bit of tangent to culture.

The next block buster from Hollywood will have more effect on our "culture" than the EU did.

Your arguments are a total nonsense.

Speaking of which, there hasn't been much mention of this. I'd change my vote to Remain under with #2 or #4. Which I think is pretty much all the UK government had a mandate to join given the prior referendum.