trollercoaster

But since these decisions were difficult, perhaps they could have held a referendum to clarify what type of Brexit people wanted.

Asking the people what they want while government and parliament are having wild delusions about what they can actually have makes zero sense, though.

Also the UK had one of the best EU membership deals with tons of exceptions. (Of which Cameron was demanding more on a weekly basis in his insane PR stunt of “negotiating a better deal”) Those exceptions aren’t going to come back on a rejoin.

Cameron was running a populist xenophobic anti-EU campaign to appease the UKIP and its voters. His actual intention never was to leave the EU because he isn’t that stupid, but his publicity stunt of the referendum backfired spectacularly by the votes for “leave” coming up ever so slightly ahead. An outcome for which there was no plan at all. And then the monumental fuck-up really started.

The problem is that neither the British public nor the politicians ever really understood the implications nor the point of the EU. They largely only viewed (and still view) it as just another trade agreement, which it really, really isn’t. The EU and its predecessors always were a political project, which did (and does) heavily rely on trade to achieve the main political goal of lasting peace and cooperation between the member states.

This led to insane and impossible attempts at cherry picking benefits for potential future relationships, which the EU could and did not accept. You cannot have free movement of goods without free movement of people, because the EU isn’t just a free trade organisation. You cannot have access to the single market without accepting and implementing regulations, because this would allow you to endanger EU citizens with substandard goods and undercut EU producers with prices only achievable by substandard production.

Another stupid misunderstanding that backfired spectacularly is the silly notion that the EU saps away a member country’s sovereignty and replaces it with some dictates from Brussles. In fact, EU members do pool their sovereignty and, by doing so, give it more weight than that of every individual member alone could ever carry. This is how Ireland was able to dictate its conditions for the Northern Ireland border situation. The logical consequence of this was the sea border with all its absurd complications, because the UK didn’t want freedom of movement nor regulatory alignment, and a hard border on the Island of Ireland would automatically have meant no deal at all.

Speaking of “no deal”, it was peak comedy when the UK parliament repeatedly voted “against” “no deal”, yet refused every deal the EU was willing to accept. The utter stupidity of assuming that “no deal” wasn’t automatically the outcome of not making a deal, and the idea that a single country somehow would have a strong negotiating position against an alliance of 27 countries, among them some of the largest and most prosperous in Europe, having in total more than 17 times the land mass, and over 6 times the population and GDP, was utterly ridiculous.

I am a big fan of British comedy, but none of your brilliant comedians could have delivered such a hilarious absurd comedy show as the Brexit negotiations were.

Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland all participate in the EU single market to some degree, without being EU members.

The thing is, you only get the single market proper if you accept freedom of movement. It’s a package deal.

Also, in order to get access to the single market, you have to accept and implement regulations.

Of course, you’ll have to pay for access to the single market, as well, but as a non member have no say on regulations.

Neither of those implications was wanted by the UK.

The window for arresting a suspected war criminal on a short visit isn’t very long, courts against which the government loses cases tend to decide very slowly. So a suspect who hasn’t been arrested in the first place, or has been released due to government interference, will have left the country long before the government loses its case.

The “peace” Trump is going to “negotiate” isn’t peace, it’s surrender and submission.

This reeks of the appeasement policy the major European powers pursued towards Nazi Germany up until they invaded Poland.

It’s quite a stupid move to tie such a consequential decision as leaving the EU to a non binding referendum with a 51 to 49 52 to 48 outcome. Something with such massive consequences should require a 2/3 majority.

Especially if there is as much foreign interference as with the Brexit campaign.

Edit: Got the numbers slightly wrong

The executive does have quite some influence over the justice system. Prosecutors are subject to directives from the Ministry of Justice, and judges who go against the ministry’s explicit wishes will hit a very definitive dead end in their further career, as they can forget future promotions.

Thanks to federalism, we might get lucky anyway, because every state runs its own justice system, but it’s still highly doubtful this will happen, as pretty much all major German parties subscribe to the same ideological stance towards Israel.

Brexit was largely fuelled by xenophobic fairy tales. Blaming the EU and immigration for pretty much everything that went badly.

It’s a positive feedback loop. Some voters are xenophobes, party caters to the xenophobes by perpetuating xenophobe fairy tales, more voters become xenophobes from hearing those fairy tales.

It’s less than worthless. A dog turd on the sidewalk is worth more than the word of Friedrich Merz. That guy is a pathological opportunistic liar.

I meant the politicians, who do typically sit at the capital. Of course there might be a xenophobic sentiment in the population, but the political elites can somewhat steer the popular sentiment. The current political meta (not only in the UK, but unfortunately pretty much worldwide) is to reinforce xenophobic tendencies in order to have an easy scapegoat in “them evil foreigners™” for things going wrong due to the political establishment and their benefactors in “the economy™” benefiting from things going wrong for ordinary people.

Pledges and promises from Friedrich Merz are worth less than pledges and promises from any other politician, this vile character is a serial liar who would sell his own grandmother for a seat at the table and a fistful of dollars.

If you still haven’t noticed, NATO really is mostly an US tool for power projection in Europe and the surrounding areas. It does cosplay as a defensive alliance against Russia, but without the US, there isn’t that much to it. Especially as long as the US is a member and can prevent NATO from actually defending against Russia.

Because freedom of trade with the EU always comes as a package deal with freedom of movement, which the xenophobes in London find unacceptable.