The distinction is less important than you think, because the second question gets at the heart of the issue and naturally follows the first. Unlike the US, The EU does not have a strong executive/legislative/judicial (and perhaps more-importantly, a shared language/national history) backbone that ties the member states together.
Also, the UK is still the 5th largest economy in the world by GDP ($2.8T). It may be 1/7 the size of the US economy and 1/4 the size of the Chinese economy, but it's hardly going to be ignored.
> Also, the UK is still the 5th largest economy in the world by GDP ($2.8T).
But relatively speaking, it's position is weakening year by year, as it's seeing anaemic growth compared to a large number of other economies.
More importantly, we're seeing the rise of more and more trading blocks, at a time when the UK has decided to stand outside. E.g. Africa is going to overtake the UK as a whole shortly. Hardly all that strange given we're talking about more countries than the EU. But ECOWAS - one of the regional pillars of the African Union - is on a trajectory to overtake the UK all on its own sometime in the next couple of decades, and with current growth it is likely more of them will.
It is pretty much inconceivable that the UK will remain 5th over the next decade, and it's looking likely that the UK won't even remain in the top ten over the next two decades, unless something happens to massively increase UK growth.
You misunderstand my point. Even if, on the surface, they continue to ask what the "EU" thinks, they'll actually be asking (as they always have) what Merkel, Hollande, and (now) Theresa May think. Greece, Italy, Portugal, etc. don't have a say because they need to keep their heads down and continue to service their debt to the big 3 EU leaders, who clearly don't agree on much, even at the global level (war, trade agreements, etc).
Have you been to Africa? Have you seen the level of infrastructure (education, access to electricity and clean water) relative to violence (civil wars), corruption, and pillaging of resources (western countries, China) that continues to take place across even the most developed African nations?
The UK may not even exit the EU at the end of the day [1]. It's much too early to make such dire predictions for the future of UK growth. I prefer the simple or "naive" view that things will not change much.
[1] A referendum in the UK is not binding on the government of the day; it is advisory. The UK has a government with a slender majority (implying it will be tricky to ram things through parliament), it is looking for a new prime minister (and, possibly, a new leader of the opposition), the referendum result was close (the country is split) and no one seems certain who has the power to get the ball rolling by triggering the “infamous” Article 50.
EU will die its slow death, Brexit is not the cause, its the catalyst.
The EU sceptics may be smug now but the EU is not some selfserving idea. It's now more relevant than ever.
2. The pound is recovering, and has already climbed back up beyond the point when the calculation in the article was made.
3. 5th or 6th, honestly, what difference does it make? The point is that they're still a major player in the world economy.
The UK was also going to give it up (alongside its WTO seat) which was what drove Cameron's 'ever closer union' clause.
[citation needed]
So, I for one see the Brexit (the process, not the outcome) as positive to European democracy. The process will (and should) be long and hard to reach a fair outcome to both Britain and EU and voters will learn from this.
The EU is messy by design, despite its obvious democratic-deficits which needs to be tackled by those who believe in european integration. I'd rather have neighbours settle their issues and common goals in a messy, frustrating forum then in the good-old battle-field (military or economic).
How? Seems to me most of the predicted bad consequences were tied to leaving the EU, which (barring some mutual agreement with the EU on an alternate timetable) happens two years after Article 50 is invoked, which it has not yet been. Why would the UK continuing to do well while it is still in the EU discredit any of the predictions of problems stemming from leaving the EU?
The Brexit crash was the beginning. The media told everyone to panic, so everyone sold. Then people realized how irrational that was. Personally, I'm hoping for more liberal-media driven sell offs. They're great opportunities to invest.
The future of the British economy is strong: an educated populace, competitive companies, and a pro-business government. They're going to get a great trade deal with America. They're going to do better than ever before having thrown off the beaurocrats in Brussels.
In response to dragonwriter below (I'm rate-limited):
In two years time is when the tariffs would kick in overnight in the absence of a deal. No company is stupid enough to wait that long to adjust their operations.
No, so actual consequences of leaving will take significant time to be clear after the exit, not be immediately apparent the day Britain finally leaves the EU.
(Which rather reinforces the point that they won't be clear long before Britain leaves the EU.)
> Don't you think markets take into account expected future outcomes?
Yes, but that's just another set of predictions, not actual counterevidence to any conflicting set of predictions.
So, in your view, the UK is doing " phenomenally well" right now? I mean I have read other opinions, including "deep political, social, democratic and economic crisis" and "value of the pound plunges".
If the EU is trying to convince the remaining member states that "leaving is terrible, you should remain", then it's absolutely working:
http://www.politico.eu/article/support-for-angela-merkel-ris... https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/support-for-eu-memb...
And as for today vs a month ago, what's the evidence for that? I see them in a very strong position. The anti-business Labour Party is doing poorly in the polls, and the Conservatives have quickly coalesced around a new leader. The FTSE100 and FTSE250 are doing fine. There's every reason to believe that both Hillary (judging by her policies over time) and Trump (by explicit statement) are eager to sign a great deal with the UK. The future is bright for Britain.
But not in very good shape at all compared to say, the UK a month ago.
We'll see what comes of this, but as I said, I think Britain's fundamentals are very strong right now. There's no doubt that Brexit created uncertainty in areas where there was none before; markets hate uncertainty. Britain's trade relations were certainties within the EU, but so were uncontrolled migration and over-regulation. Now, on those and many more issues, the Brits themselves will decide and negotiate. No one is quite sure what they will do, especially after the next election. But if Britain makes the right choices, and at least for now I think they have leadership that's inclined to make those right choices, I believe that they will do better than they could have within the EU.
Just like the Brexit campaign. Good job.
The likely dissolution of the political entity currently known as the UK, more formally the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" would preclude it "doing well", not so?
Now of course, if support for Scottish independence consistently polls at over 60% for years, that's a different story. But I think that pro-independence forces are likely to weaken as Brexit proves to have been a good move.
Or not, in which case England loses 5 million people (England is 53 million btw) and some oil. On the plus side, they'd shake off a chunk of the electorate that seems to be set on economic suicide by socialism.
> The EU referendum was already on the table during the Scottish referendum. The people of Scotland knew the risk.
Incorrect, it was sold as the other way around: Scotland must stay in the UK or it might be out of the EU. You are detached from reality. A second Scottish referendum is likely.
1) https://next.ft.com/content/1219f41c-4456-11e6-9b66-0712b387...
David Cameron said he was going to wait for his replacement to start Article 50, and he would step down in October. Now that he's announced that he's stepping down tomorrow, we'll have a new prime minister much more quickly than anticipated. That might mean Article 50 could be coming within the next few weeks/months.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/legal-attemp... [2] http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/bu...
Britain could have national votes every week if the Government decided to hold them, but the government seems disinclined to have another referendum on Brexit.
More than 4 million people signed a petition for a new referendum
On top of that we now know that most of the promises from the leave camp were flat out lies, and they've basically been shown to not have the faintest idea what they want to achieve.
I'm sure some would switch and vote leave out of spite, but frankly I don't think the vote was fair or democratic to begin with - it presented a false choice, in that "leave" could campaign on anything under the sun, with contradicting ideas about what leaving actually meant, and we see now the problems that causes: Did the 52% want EEA membership? Did they want full on isolationism? Something in between? We don't know. And we don't know how the results would be if they had to pick a specific option, but it is highly unlikely that they'd be unchanged.
Cameron (our DM) came along and gave us all a free re-roll.
People with 10 or less voted yes. 11 - 15 were about 50/50 depending on risk aversion. 16 - 20 voted no.
The numbers are almost always going to sway in favour of change, there are too many people down at the bottom.
Sure, more options on how to leave would have been amazing, left-exit was interesting, green-exit was also interesting. Right-racist-exit was bonkers, but people liked it.
But remember that remain-the-same and remain-and-re-negotiate had both been tried. And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car, no life insurance, no pension, crap.
Next time you're in an Oxfam shop look at us. Picking over dead man suits for our next job interview. The shame of it. Jobs gone. High streets gone. Only option is to move to London away from elderly parents, our kids, our friends.
Yep.
Except for one teeny weeny insignificantly minor detail: these things have nothing whatsoever to do with the EU, and everything to do with the austerity/de-industrialization policies of neo-liberal UK governments, primarily Tory, but to a somewhat less extent also New-Labour.
And the EU was, if anything, a counter to those forces, with structural funds, with labor standards, with investments by non-UK firms in the de-industrialized parts of the UK for access to the common market etc.
And leaving the EU will make these things worse.
So voting against the EU to protest these conditions is not even cutting off your nose to spite your face, it's cutting off your nose to spite someone else's face!
While it deserves the word "pathetic" I can't bring myself to it. It really is just sad. Very, very sad.
Pathetic? Name calling, wow that's low. I love how butt hurt you are. The more furious rich people are the better the decision feels.
In fact there may be no way to keep any of them happy, since apparently many of them voted Leave for impossible/EU-unrelated reasons: to keep non-EU immigration down; to spend money we won't even have on the NHS; because they don't like what the UK government has been doing and will keep doing outside the EU with even greater impunity, etc.
"Pathetic" 1. Arousing sadness, compassion, or sympathy, esp. through vulnerability or sadness; pitiable.
Seems fair enough. "Name-calling"?
"Rich people": I work for a university as support staff. I earn under the median UK wage and surely well under the median HN wage. We've had deeper and deeper cuts year on year for the past several years and post-Brexit an even bigger chunk of our budget looks like disappearing along with our best academics and researchers, not to mention other support staff, foreign language teachers/cataloguers/negotiators, etc. Education and research careers have been a route into the middle class for many and it's a shame to see that threatened - even more of a shame when the people who voted for it, the press, politicians have hardly even acknowledged it's a problem.
But have fun assuming that only rich people are interested in science or can get any benefit from cooperating with colleagues elsewhere in Europe...
And I still think it's a crying shame to flush science, research and education in this country down the toilet just for the sake of waving two fingers at some unknown bureaucrats and uncaring politicians, whether I get paid or not.
To address the description of the source of the problem offered upthread? Voting against the people actually responsible for the problems in UK elections (general elections and otherwise.)
If the problem is in Westminster, voting against the EU does nothing to solve the problem.
If you are unhappy with what the UK government is doing, and the things you say you are unhappy about are 100% UK gov, not EU, then the time to "vote the bums out" is the UK general election.
Really having a hard time figuring out what you were/are trying to accomplish.
One side was allowed to sell a fairy-tale that was customised for each recipient, while the other had to deal with reality. The fairy-tales may have been appealing, but only one of them can even potentially become reality.
The reality is that we're ending up with something that nobody voted for, because it hasn't been put together yet. The only thing we do know is that it won't look like any of the promises, because most them have already been shown to be lies.
As it stands, remaining is the most democratic option, as it is the only promised alternative that actually exist and that we have an indicator of the level of support for, and the only option that doesn't rule out substantial subsets of the others later on.
Barring that, many of us will do what we can to minimise the ability for the Leave voters to harm us, by fighting for independence.
> And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car, no life insurance, no pension, crap.
And I respect that a lot of people got it hard. But none of that has anything to do with the EU, and everything to do with the same governments that have been lying to you for decades (and yes, I include New Labour in that).
Brexit is going to affect those of us who are most angry about this least in most respects. I can deal with the economic fallout. I'll benefit from the housing market collapsing, as we can afford to take advantage of it. The impending interest rate drop means I will now pay less on my mortgage per month than I had budgeted with paying per week when we took it out before the financial crisis.
Meanwhile those in the most precarious situations are likely to get hit by slowdowns coupled with the effects of a government that doesn't give a shit about them.
And with the EU gone, a bunch of regulations that have prevented successive UK governments from stepping all over you will be gone.
If this country doesn't get ripped apart by independence movements, it will be torn apart through anger that'll make the winter of discontent seems like a polite garden party at the current rate when people realise the effects of Brexit.
I suspect not; for one, I think many of the 4+ million who signed the petition for a new referendum would probably vote "Remain".
This has been debated to death, 99% of politicians agree that the vote is cast, let's move on.
A central aspect of a democracy is that people are allowed to change their mind, and that people are allowed to continue to campaign for a decision to be overturned.
So no, we won't move on. Even after a Brexit we won't move on - some of us will fight to rejoin, some of us will work for independence (for my part, I've offered to help one of the groups starting to work for independence for London).
But this is not over, even it if takes breaking the UK apart to finish it.
What some leavers don't realise is that the entire world had gotten used to dealing with the EU as a whole and that the world probably doesn't care that much about what Britain (or England/Wales) thinks about tariffs, terrorism, refugees, wars, human rights, etc.
Britain will have to follow the EU on many issues if it wants access to the common market.
Britain is going from having a very strong voice in a very powerful organisation that the world has to deal with to being a rather small country the world can largely ignore.