Prime Minister Theresa May has signed the letter that officially begins the process of the UK leaving the European Union. It’s done. You’re going to blow the whole thing up.
What with the political chaos and growing fascism in the US, it feels like the English-speaking part of the world is doing its damnedest to flush itself down the tubes of history. I’m wondering if I’m going to have to learn Icelandic.
So…what stupidity on a par with Trump and Brexit has Australia committed lately? Ireland and Canada, are you staying sane, mostly?
I have noticed the English-speaking world seems to be filled with sucky morons, but that could just be a bias I have with trying to look at countries to move to that primarily speak English and being like “no, why do they all suck”.
Canada usually seems okay. Australia might be a bit of a toss-up. If Scotland became its own thing I think it could be an awesome country. Shrug.
We got rid of Harper and elected a center-left pretty boy: we’re still ok. for now.
Harper expanded Canada’s “security” apparatus, easily my top 3 of his Worst Decisions Ever. Trudeau has yet to do anything about it. There was a leak a little while ago–turns out Canadian intelligence prefers surveilling environmentalists as opposed to literal Nazis.
So it’s a mixed bag in Canuckistan. At least when the police come to barge down my door in the middle of the night, they’ll let me put on pants before arresting me at gunpoint. Oh, and they’ll be real polite about it. C’est la vie.
Well, I’m from alberta which is traditionally the most conservative part of the country. Our resident bat shit insane tea party (the wild rose) lost the last two elections for being bat shit insane. We have two progressive mayors and the NDP in power provincially. Right now they are low in polls with the whole carbon tax thing and the opposition is doubling down on the lake of fire BS. The funny thing is that I work in the oil industry and I don’t have a problem with the tax. Hell, a lot of the guys I know aren’t even keen on all these new pipelines. We’d like alternative industries. Only the must regressive people I know actually like our industry. My family and I thought about moving to bc before we bought our house. We still talk about it. I suspect the right won’t fair as well as sun media and their ilk claim. The grass is always greener when your the opposition. The province is along ways left of when I was a kid (mind you my parents were anti PC since Ralph Klein took power( they didn’t mind Stella have as much)) and now the left actually goes to the voting booth because of how bat shit crazy, Lake of fire the right has gotten. For along time the only demographic that came out in force was old people. Notley changed that.
Don’t blame me, I voted to remain.
The UK needs a free press. The majority of its newspapers are currently in the hands of right wing oligarchs with a vicious neoliberal agenda and are nothing more than PR mouthpieces for Ayn Rand acolytes. Coupled with the fact that most people want their fears dispelled and their prejudices confirmed, those newspapers have a ready market for their immigrant-bashing, super-rich loving conspiracy theories. And the agenda is this – remove the UK from the EU’s ‘red tape’, that is, the regulatory restrictions that help to limit environmental damage, protect workers’ rights and ensure social adhesion. In other words, anything that gets in the way of corporate profits and the rentiers’ accumulation of wealth. There is nothing the UK will gain from leaving the EU that it couldn’t have gained more of within it. Stupid, stupid, stupid move.
Australia’s ruling party is still full of suck holes desperately trying to follow the US in all things, predominately Trump’s brain farts on coal and climate change denial. Guardian article.
.
However I think the tide has definitely turned against the conservatives and the next time they face the electorate they’re going to be out on their collective asses. A recent state election (Western Australia) had the conservatives thoroughy routed and reduced to a quarter of available seats in the house of reps.
Ditto on the Harper and Trudeau thing. I wanted mulcair since he was anti Cpl and c-51. I knew Trudeau was blowing smoke with those public consultations.
Cpl was supposed to be tpp.
Stelmach not Stella. God damn auto correct.
Sadly… The sane places are not safe either. Spent a few days corresponding with some clown who left the US because of all the BS, and the “socialism”, to move to… I think New Zealand, or maybe it was one of the other two countries he praised with everything from actually progressive rehabilitating legal systems, free collage, socialized medicine, etc. I mean, not that I don’t agree with the fact that there is something terribly wrong in the US, but how the F do you leave it, go to one of these countries, then whine about how it was the fault of all those “damn liberals” in the US, that everything went wrong, while blatantly ignorant of how liberal the countries you are praising are?
I mean, how long before people like him do what they did in the US, and start going, “Damn, we are spending too much government money to make this all work, and I think all those people are cheating us!! We need to stop the cheaters, and.. when that doesn’t work (because I just made the problem worse, and turned the safety net into a spider web, which glues people in, instead of helping them survive a fall) *austerity*!!”
Not sure if it shows that a lot of “conservatives” have no bloody clue what side they are, or should, really be on, or… what exactly, but.. I can’t imagine people who think like that lasting in progressive countries, without eventually dismantling them in the process of “making them better”.
“I’m wondering if I’m going to have to learn Icelandic.”
As much as I love my Icelandic hosts and the country – it is a great place to live – there is plenty of the same mindset here that caused the Brexit: Nationalistic, small-minded and wanting to return to a simpler past where everything was better but which only existed in fairy tales.
Also learning Icelandic is a bitch! :-)
“I’m wondering if I’m going to have to learn Icelandic.”
As much as I love my Icelandic hosts and the country – it is a great place to live – there is plenty of the same mindset here that caused the Brexit: Nationalistic, small-minded and wanting to return to a simpler past where everything was better but which only existed in fairy tales.
Also learning Icelandic is a bitch! :-)
Another Bob and Rebekah Mercer project. Here’s a guy who has made a fortune off globalized capital doing everything he can to break up any form of trans-national governance. Wonder why that might be.
Oh, don’t rule out the non-English speaking parts of the world – there’s just as much corruption and stupidity in South America, Africa, Asia and mainland Europe. We just don’t tend to hear about it as much in our little Anglophone bubble.
Even little Iceland suffered drastically from the collapse of its financial services bubble not so long ago. And it never joined the EU in the first place.
PZ, you must not have spent much time here in Ireland recently, or read up much about our recent social or political history. We are a nation of wilful idiots, and the only reason we have not elected a Trump-like figure to lead the country is there hasn’t been one on the ballot as a party leader. But its just a matter of time. Trump is widely admired over here, and we suffer from the delusion that if something or someone is “good for business” or “good for jobs”, then let’s go for it and screw everything else. We know this, and are proud of it. We call ourselves “cute hoors” which is Irish for being sly and devious people but its OK because we can smile at it. This is a country where people will moan about the Irish language being taught in schools (because they think it has no value), and criticise environmentalists for wanting to protect national monuments and nature reserves from development (because if you bury them in concrete you might create jobs, don’t ya know) … all while complaining about immigrants coming into this green and pleasant land and eroding our heritage. I deal with the bullshit every day, and its depressing. Unless we grow the fuck up, the only thing separating Ireland from a US-type mess is time.
I think we’re OK up here for the moment, though it will be interesting to see whether the Tories pick a non-batshit leader or a Trump clone, and how the electorate responds to that. And fuck Trudeau for renegging on electoral reform, the bastard. Also: I just cost the Ontario medical system about $25k (at a guess), and I paid a few dozen bucks for parking at the hospital and a few meds. So I’m feeling very kindly towards our socialized medical system at the moment. (OK, I also pay a good chunk of my taxes to make that system work, but I’m good with that, both on enlightened-self-interest grounds, and general humanitarianism).
I’ll be going to Merrie Englande (by way of Iceland, as it happens) this summer. One set of cousins over there is solidly anti-Brexit; It will be interesting to poll the others. And a young Canadian friend who’s been there for seven or eight years is considering repatriating.
I’d wish for someone like Nicola Sturgeon to become our prime minister.
I voted remain, for many reasons, but the EU is a curates egg, in many ways.
A number of major UK businesses avoid paying their corporation tax, by routing profits into Luxemburg. We’re talking hundreds of millions of pounds here – facilitated by the EU structure, and many set up when John Claude Junker was finance\prime minister.
ajbjasus, #17
It is very true that there are lots of good left-wing reasons to oppose EU membership. The whole institution is run by and in thrall to corporatists and commercial interests, and its human rights legislation has far too little binding force to be truly effective.
The problem is that getting out now, in the current political climate, in a break negotiated by Tory appointees, is not going to do a thing to address these issues. We basically have a choice between remaining in a stable relationship with European corporate interests and taking an isolationist stance at the behest of UK nationalists. Neither is especially appealing, and the latter scotches any chance we might have of reforming the problematic institutions of the EU from within.
On the other hand, I still think the Americans out-moroned us many times over. We might have damaged our economy and relations with our neighbours, but Donald Trump seems hell-bent on ruining literally every aspect of American life.
cartomancer #18
You sum up the dilemma very well.
I have just approved this years CT tax payment for my small business, where we have to jump through hoops backwards to comply with one of the afore-referenced large company’s procurement processes which allow them to dodge paying tax. I have honestly no idea if we will be able to deal with this scandal better or worse being in or out of the EU.
On the Trump front – I see he is busy repealing Obama’s climate change legislation now :-(
Strong and secure international boundaries serve an important function that many on the left often ignore, and that is this: If a particular country manages to completely screw itself up with kleptocratic leadership, religious nuttery, civil wars, or any number of other bad things, the damage can be quarantined and contained far more easily with strong international borders than it can with porous borders. And while I’m in favor of helping others up to a point, I see no reason to give those problems free transit to the rest of the world.
Think of it as the political equivalent of a medical quarantine. Back in the day, if a family member got Spanish flu, the neighbors did what they could to help, but they also insisted that the family remain away from the uninfected.
Without the EU, it’d be even worse. Just today or yesterday the EU prevented the stock exchanges of London and Frankfurt from merging and creating a big fat monopoly…
Are you trying to say the refugees fleeing* from precisely this kleptocratic leadership, religious nuttery, civil war, and any number of other bad things in Syria are the damage you’re talking about?
* That’s the -fug- part of refugee.
My main hope in the last election in Canada was that Trudeau would win a minority with Tory opposition and NDP effectively coalition partner. My hope at the outset was that Mulcair would win, but he forgot to make a case for *why* he should win.
I figured electoral reform was dead when Trudeau won a majority.
My main disappointment with Trudeau is all the green-lighting of fossil fuel development. He’s basically set up a government of lukewarmers: they “believe in” global warming but they draw the line at believing it’s a problem.
And yet, there are party insiders in the NDP who want to bring him back.
I liked his campaign too, but he barely won in his own riding. Time to wake up and smell the… whatever that stink is.
In all these countries, including mine (Canada) people, including the people in political power, somehow manage to believe that a country that is sovereign in it’s own currency (basically all of them except European states in the Eurozone), and whose federal governments have the exclusive monopoly right to create their own money out of basically nothing at no significant cost, can somehow run out of it!!
Thus they all, sooner or later, push the “austerity” budget and manage to send their countries into completely unnecessary recessions and depressions. All in the name of “fiscal responsibility”.
And this, alas, was even believed by the only vaguely progressive party in Canada (the N.D.P.). Of course if they had achieved power this delusion would have prevented them from doing much really progressive because they would be afraid of “running out of money”.
David, No. 21, it depends. People who say we should let no one in, and people who say we should let everyone in, are each guilty of trying to adopt a simplistic one-size-fits-all solution to a problem that is highly complex, nuanced, and changes by the day.
It’s not the fault of any given refugee that they were born in a fucked up place, and most of them are probably decent people with the bad luck to be born in a fucked up place. At the same time, one of ISIS’ strategies was to de-stabilize Europe by flooding it with refugees, and in some places it seems to be working. At what point does a society say that even though it’s not the refugees’ fault, it has its own interests to look after?
If I have limited resources, and I do, I’m going to feed my own children first. If you’re honest, so will you.
Only if you believe in right-wing lies.
“At the same time, one of ISIS’ strategies was to de-stabilize Europe by flooding it with refugees”
Ably assisted by Putin and Erdogan. It worked nicely for all of them. After the Turks shot down that Russian aircraft, Putin probably made Erdogan an offer he cpouldn’t refuse, then went on to destroy the opposition to Assad (and ISIS) while the Turks were free to play at the only sort of war they are interested in- stuffing the Kurds.
Meanwhile a couple of weeks before the referendum, the Daily Telegraph illustrated an article about immigrant workers in Britain from EU Eastern Europe with a picture of a people- smuggling boat from North Africa sinking in the Med. Thereby promoting the association of all the UK rightwing demons in one go.
That’s not even true. They were, and are, royally pissed that anyone fled from them instead of to them – after all, when there is a caliph, all Muslims must either move to the caliphate or extend the caliphate to them, so fleeing from them tells them that they’re theologically full of shit!
And please do tell me how Europe is destabilized by a few tens of thousands of refugees. I’m living in Berlin and not seeing any destabilization. The local extreme-right party hasn’t even reached Austrian levels, and the Austrian one had its peak about fifteen years ago.
You don’t, actually, for any value of “you” larger than you personally. As a whole, the EU is rich. Germany even had a budget surplus last year, and there’s a debate going on about what to do with all this money!
And that’s even after all the waste that dwarfs all expenses for refugees. The EU has 28 militaries where one would suffice. it’s ridiculous once you think about it.
Telling people to lie down and die is not an option.
Specifically that their caliph is not a true caliph, which is nothing short of an accusation of blasphemy.
Farage comes to mind. He can be blamed for both Brexit AND Trump (and perhaps the demise of Ukip too).
David, No. 28, for all its faults, ISIS is run by astute politicians and military tacticians, otherwise it would not have succeeded as well as it has. Yes, Muslims are supposed to run toward a caliphate, but in practice many if not most Muslims would run away from that particular one, and ISIS knew it. They knew that lots of them would run in the direction of safety, which means Europe and (if they can get there) the United States.
And destabilization is not just having enough money to feed people. Any time you bring in a wave of people with different language, culture, and religion, it will lead to friction. You may be a fine liberal who believes in multi-culturalism, but not everyone is. And even when everyone is trying to get along, the mere fact that people are different from each other is going to generate friction. Berlin is far enough removed from the problem that I doubt you notice it, but what about those countries that are actually on the frontiers.
So if you want to spend money on the problem, I think a far better use of resources would be to eradicate the problems that created the refugees in the first place, which means eradicating ISIS. Unfortunately there are some who think any military solution is imperialistic and racist, but in this case if the West is going to pick up the tab for it (literally as well as figuratively) then maybe stopping the source isn’t a bad idea.
Thirdmill, #32
Except the root cause of ISIS is the legacy of Western military imperialism in their region, particularly in the aftermath of the Iraq war. This is exacerbated by a reckless “clash of civilizations” rhetoric peddled by both Middle Eastern theocrats and right-wing ideologues in Europe and America. Make no mistake, ISIS wants people in the West to talk about military solutions being the only solutions and refugees being dangerous fifth-columnists who are stealing our food and must be shunned. By buying into that nonsense you are doing their propaganda work for them.
No, the solution is to invite any and all refugees in, with courtesy, kindness and respect. Obviously some nations are better equipped to deal with bigger numbers than others, and a coordinated international effort is required to make sure the heaviest burdens fall on the sturdiest shoulders. The solution is to eradicate, root and branch, the kinds of racist, islamophobic and xenophobic sentiments that are fuelling the conflict in the first place (and, yeah, stop stealing their oil would be quite helpful too).
In fact, an influx of refugees and migrants is a wonderful opportunity for building bridges and quelling tensions. Because what are those refugees going to tell one another and their families back home about the West once ISIS has died down and stability has returned to the region? That we’re a bunch of violent racists who barely tolerate them or that we’re nice people who help out others because we take our moral responsibilities seriously? The children of those refugees are going to be the Prime Ministers and elected representatives of Syria and Iraq in thirty or forty years’ time – what we do about it now really matters.
@thirdmill #32:
And isn’t this exactly what is happening now? it is mostly Iraqi troops, Kurdish rebels and Syrian anti-Assad fighters doing the hard work, backed by the US et al, but that’s hardly surprising since the last time the US, UK and a handful of other countries sent their troops en masse into a Middle Eastern country the results led to, well, ISIS.
This is like saying Trump must be an astute politician because otherwise he wouldn’t have become president! That’s not how the world works.
The people running ISIS are religious nuts. They actually believe what they’re saying (not unlike Trump, except that Trump so often changes what he says and believes, and doesn’t give a shit about a great many topics that ISIS kills for every day). This is obvious not only from their propaganda, but also from their actions.
Are you kidding me? That’s where a large part of the refugees that have reached Germany have ended up, and Germany has taken up more than any other EU country both in absolute and in relative numbers*!
*…because the EU hasn’t managed to negotiate more equitable quotas.
Yeah, I know that. I see that every day. Again, I live in Berlin – so where is the destabilization? Where are the marauding hordes beating up the police, let alone trying to storm parliament? Where is the government crisis? Where is even the protest party shouting to throw the bums out? The AfD (“Alternative for Germany”, in reality to Germany) is stagnant somewhere at 10%, which is pathetic – Austria shows that right-wing protest parties can get to 30% without any crisis at all.
What next? “O noes, there are both White and Black people in the US, and they’ve developed separate subcultures that really don’t like each other much, this can’t work out, the country is DOOOOOOMED”?
Oh. I thought you were arguing against the EU, so that the UK could “protect” its borders without interference from Brussels (even though the UK never joined the Schengen treaty in the first place). Now you’re arguing for Fortress Europe? Am I getting that right?
The countries on the frontiers are Spain, Italy and Greece – Greece in particular is where most refugees from Syria have passed through. Those countries indeed have troubles, but they already had them before the refugees started pouring out of Syria…
Oh, absolutely.
And Assad and Fatah ash-Sham (formerly an-Nusra, aka al-Qaida) and several other nutjob fractions. Well. There we get into global politics. I’ll just bring up Putin and Iran.
If a military solution were halfway easy, I’d be for it. After all, I’m fine with the ultimate outcome of WWII. If someone could very quickly occupy the whole country, stop all the fighting, put a democratic constitution in place, hold elections and then withdraw, I’d be all for it and worry about the paternalistic optics later if ever. But I’m aware this is a pipe dream. How do you propose to stop Putin from supporting Assad militarily, for starters?
Sometimes, the world really does suck.
That’s what ISIS expected, because Muslims can’t possibly live in peace among benighted unbelievers, can they? That’s just basic theo-logic, isn’t it?
They immediately celebrated Trump’s travel ban while it lasted. They want an apocalyptic war of “Islam” (ISIS) and everyone else, and they thought they were a big step closer to getting it.
Isis and the other radical terrorists have mainly one weapon ,suicide bombers .
Sooner or later one poor sod selected is going to ask the guy further up the food chain ,if dying as a martyr is going to get me 72 virgins ,why aren’t you doing it .
As General Patton said ,no one won a war by dying for their Country .
Until the early 20th Century ,Jews , Muslims ,and Christians in the middle East got along ok ,apart from the odd Crusade or 4 .The Balfour Declaration and Zionism was when it all started to go wrong ,just my view .
Well. We elected this in Australia.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/malcolm-roberts-climate-change-press-conference-starts-bad-ends-even-worse-20161106-gsjg86.html
And then there is Pauline Hanson. It’s to early to look up depressing articles on her.
“You’re going to blow the whole thing up”
While I’m particularly happy with the Brexit this is apocalyptic nonsense. It’s in nobodies interest. In the end everybody will cooperate to minimize the damage.
Plus there is a precedent. Greenland left the EEC in 1985. Nothing was blown up.
Better to save your dramatic tendencies for your president. According to Surinamese TV News he just has given Global Warming a nice boost by removing restrictions on coal mining.
Buggers.
While I’m not particularly happy with the Brexit.
mnb0:
The European Economic Community was purely economic; the European Union is also political.
(Or: your comparison is inapt)
—
PS did you mean to write “While I’m [not] particularly happy with the Brexit”?
(Your comment makes much more sense if you did)
[Duh. We crossed]
mnb0: There’s a thousand Brits for every Greenlander!
Of course it didn’t do much to the EEC to lose a country with the population of a small provincial city.
#1 and 16
I’m struggling to understand why nationalism and separatism which are bad, in my view when it comes to Brexit, are good when it comes to Scotland ?
Holy hell, it’s David Marjanovic! And in Berlin! If I had known I would have come to say hello. Next thing you know Walton will be commenting again!
As to the decline of the anglosaxon world, I welcome it. Here in Australia, it’s a function of the stupidity and corruptability of the ruling politicians. Can’t have fast trains, can’t have fast internet, can’t have clean energy, it’s all too hard and the lobbyists have paid officials to preserve the status quo. Same idiocy at work in the US now, if on a greater scale, with nepotism and overt kleptocracy.
My son is learning Mandarin for a reason.
Brexit was all triggered by the Tory government being scared of UKIP’s potential for taking away their voters, so the referendum was a way of appease the Tory voters. Once they were committed, it was left to the rightwing press to fuel the anti-EU rhetoric and the leavers to lie about what it all meant. What saddened me the most was that a politician lost her life because of being against Brexit and still people voted for it.
“While I’m particularly happy with the Brexit this is apocalyptic nonsense. It’s in nobodies interest. In the end everybody will cooperate to minimize the damage.”
The EU have a very clear interest in making Brexit as painful as possible without actually destroying Britain; it’s good for the EU to have London-based businesses choose the EU over the UK, and a painful, clearly disadvantageous Brexit makes leaving the EU unattractive for other wavering countries, in the same way that the prospect of having their own Donald Trump has focused the attentions of some of the European nations.
So there hasn’t been any real left-wing fightback in Australia yet, but the states have all realised that they can score huge political points by engaging in projects while thumbing their nose at the increasingly dysfunctional federal system. South Australia declared it was going to build new gas power plants and energy storage so it could up its renewables, while very deliberately blaming the federal government for its inaction on renewable energy policy. Still, it’s very slim pickings, and there’s a lot to be done in Australia that isn’t being done because the current government is too busy infighting and the current opposition is too incompetent to hold them to task.
Our right-wing nutjob is Pauline Hanson, who has been around since the 90s when she launched her political career by warning that Australia would be “swamped by Asians”, apparently not caring that Asia was within earshot. Asians are fine now, apparently! Now it’s Muslims. The most populous Muslim nation in the world is also within earshot (and we treat them terribly and it would probably be in our best interest to not keep antagonising them because they’re good people).
She’s a Senator, though, which means that she has a bloc of four, all of whom are dickheads. Most of the agenda-setting in Australia does not take place in the Senate, unless you are Senator Nick Xenophon who is an independent that specialises in highly visible quixotic campaigns of various worthiness. (He led the charge on Scientology, for instance, but he’s done plenty of stupid things in his time.) Her sole value is rubber-stamping the more cruel ideas the current right-wing government put forward, except she can’t actually deliver all four votes all the time, and the government needs more than Hanson to get things through anyway.
Some of the shine’s come off Hanson, actually, after she suggested parents do their own research on vaccinations. Surprisingly, the Western drop in trusting experts does not extend to vaccination – there’s a broad belief that a) vaccination prevents sick babies, b) the government’s going to pay for it anyway so no skin off my nose, and c) the anti-vaccination people are a bit shonky. This gave both the left and right wing party a common reason to go double barrel on Hanson, appealingly, for the reason she is a problem in the first place: her gut feeling and terrible opinions are probably going to get people killed.
Every time there is a news article or an online discussion about ISIS, people seem to have the impression that some malevolent force called ISIS invaded some peaceful country called Syria, more or less like Germany invaded Poland… I’d wish people were more educated. Syria is one big bloody mess of fighting factions, and ISIS is just one of the parties involved. IMO it’s not even the most evil one.
@ajbjasus 45
Because that’s not what happening in Scotland right now.
The Scots already had a vote if they wanted to leave the UK. It was defeated and one deciding factor was that nobody knew if Scotland could remain in the EU after leaving the UK.
Which also showed at the referendum: Scotland voted with 69 % to remain.
But now the Brexit is happening, and the major reason to remain in the UK is gone. So now they want to separate from the UK not (only) for nationalistic reasons but to stay in an multinational construct.
Yeah, I’m not feeling so smug about you guys electing Trump, now. We elected May, somehow. And we have Rudd running around breaking everything May doesn’t have time to get to.
We firmly believe, despite the evidence of millennia to the contrary, that we can have our cake and eat it. At least it will be proper British cake, I guess, not like the anti-British cakes idiots are somehow convinced the EU made us bake instead. This whole thing was parodied on Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister decades ago and is panning out like they’re using the actual script.
I’m struggling to understand why you’re struggling to understand this*. It depends on the content and context of the separatist campaign. The campaign for Scottish independence is predominantly internationalist and welcoming to immigrants. The Brexit campaign was for the most part the exact opposite. Of course there are exceptions in both cases, but that’s the general picture. Although my position as an English immigrant to Scotland is certainly not the same as that of a Polish or Syrian immigrant, and of course Scotland has its quota of racists, I can say that I never heard either anti-English or racist sentiments expressed within the official Yes campaign or the local pro-independence groups I worked with last time. There’s also the point that the Scottish political system is far more democratic than the UK system, while claims that the UK system is more democratic than the EU’s are extremely dubious.
Turi1337. The Remain vote in Scotland was 62%, not 69%.
It’s more complicated than that: the Yes/No and Leave/Remain axes are more or less orthogonal – around 1/3 of SNP voters** apparently voted Leave. This is a big complication for the pro-independence campaign; my own view is that if and when we get independence (more likely to be after Brexit than before) we should have our own referendum on the EU – and this should be promised in any Indyref2 campaign (I voted Remain – because I could see that a Leave win would be a huge victory for the right and far right and a real threat to immigrants and ethnic minorities, as has proved to be the case – but wouldn’t necessarily vote the same way in an independent Scotland).
*Actually, I’m not, any more than you are. You saying you are is just a rather silly and pretentious rhetorical device – “I don’t see why” would be the non-pretentious way of saying it – and I’m just taking the piss.
**SNP voters and Yes voters are not exactly the same, but there’s a big overlap.
There is a need to examine what’s happening among the population more than what the pplies are up to. Here in Queensland progressive sentiment is growing rapidly around greater Brisbane region. Despite that I have close friends who are MRA and small government nuts etc. I take them to task face to face as often as possible. The trick is to back the conversation away from the conflict end and look at each others underlying assumptions. Hard work but lots of victories.
I frankly doubt that the Yes campaign (now Yes2) or even the Scottish National Party are nationalist. They are attempts to get the Tories outta here, and Scotland is just a convenient way of defining “here” – seeing as keeping the Tories out of the UK as a whole has proved to be impractical.
While there certainly are nationalists among the Brexiteers, xenophobes don’t have to be nationalists: you can be against something (or everything) without necessarily being for anything!
Oh, sorry. I should have dropped by at Pharyngula a little earlier. :-(