SiMor29:

Thanks for your enlightening clarification. (I especially love your Shakespearean reference to "... the poison chalice that is Brexit." Political calamities like this are not exclusive to the UK - they happen here in the USA as well ...

The Brexit debacle is yet another illustration of a stark political truth noted by Todd Purdum following President Obama's "victory" in passing the Affordable Care Act over vehement Republican opposition.

https://www.politico.com/story/2013/...are-aca-097687

As Mr. Purdum points out, any meaningful legislative reform that directly impacts the economy - and a large proportion of the citizenry - must pass with broad bipartisan support. Lacking such broad support, the initiative is doomed to fail. (That is certainly the case with "Obamacare" as Trump and the Republicans have virtually succeeded in "pulling out by the roots" nearly all of what Obama and the Democrats just barely managed to get passed into law.)

It appears that is the problem with Brexit. Mr. Cameron forced a vote on a sweeping measure that didn't have broad bipartisan support. Now he (and his party) are paying the price for that mistake.

DJ, cameron is the real villain of the piece. He said he would trigger article 50 post referendum but instead he did what all weasels do and ran. Gutless. I want to give a more involved response, but I’m pretty drunk and having a good time and to be honest there are people here who can give you a better run down than I can.

I will say that a second referendum is pie in the sky and it will not happen. We will leave and revert to WTO rules, ruining our economy in the short term, organising chaos and the morons who voted for this will sit here bemused, blaming the EU for not kowtowing to our demands. It will be an absolute disaster. Have fun!

What does that mean? Are you referencing the Roman invasion of Britain?

DJ, in any other world TM would be facing a serious leadership challenge. The fact that she’s not speaks volumes.

The Euro was a good idea. Lowering the entry criteria to let countries in that were not ready for it caused the issues.

That's a fair and good point. So could it have been reversed via democratic processes once found to be a bad idea?

Yes.

.

Jesus man. Do you seriously think the EU is some sort of undemocratic fascist monster?

Don’t answer that.

That’s aimed at the bitter man not you, of course.

So if it's a really bad idea and it's possible to reverse democratically, why hasn't it happened?


Do you think there is a lack of mechanisns to deal with bad ideas?

Do you think the decisions around the euro were made on practical grounds or ideological grounds?

So how do voters reverse bad decisions and treaties again? Who do they vote in/out?

Can the EP change laws they decide are bad without recourse to unelected bodies?

Swap fascist for dictatorial or ideologically-driven, and that's about right.

What bad decisions?

The euro is what we were talking about, keep up.

And we adopted the euro?

We are talking about the Eu's accountabilities.

And maybe you are too young, but some of us remember the project fear that was applied about the disaster that would befall the UK if it didn't join the euro...

But we didn’t adopt the euro, so what’s your point?

If you’re implying that we would have to change currency at some unknown point in an unknown future USE agreement then ffs. I dont know what to say.

My point is when the EU make bad decisions about big things, there's no democratic recourse available to the people of Europe.

Other than leaving.


Please find some other way to avoid answering the actual points, it's fun to see you getting more and more disengenuous, makes me know you know I'm right.

Fine. But you’re neglecting to mention that this has never happened(and it never would ffs) and we had veto power even in the small chance that it did.

You’re not right mate, we had so much power to drive EU policy and we’ve surrendered that because of people like you.

You edited your post but the point remains, we have democratic recourse. Always. Our government negotiates with the EU, we don’t like the negotiations, we vote against it.

the main reason nobody has left the euro is that 75+% of people in all the euro countries want to stay in. changing a currency also requires a good bit of planning. but they could leave if they wanted to

but it wasn't "the eu" that forced it on anyone (maybe with the exception of germany). countries wanted to join it or they stayed out

So you don't think there was a massive propaganda drive telling people how terrible it would be if you didnt join?