> I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. 'That’s easy,' he replied. 'When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.

He may or may not have said that, but what's clear is the perceived power of the UK press to manipulate governments. UK PM in the 90s, John Major, told an inquiry that Murdoch had demanded he change his position on Europe otherwise lose support. [0]

He didn't change, and Murdoch supported his opponent in 1997 (who then went on to win)

20 years later, Murdoch executives met with the UK PM or Chancellor (the second most important person in government) 10 times. [1]

So while perceived EU lobbying may have contributed to brexit, far more likely was 40 years of proven newspaper lobbying.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18405629 [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/05/rupert-murdoch...

Isn't that how democracy is supposed to work? I mean not for Mr. Murdoch personally, but if you take the whole press, isn't that one of the instruments through which the society controls - or, if you will, "manipulates" - the government? And if the government can't be "manipulated" by the society, isn't that the definition of tyranny?

As we are now seeing on trade, immigration, agriculture, etc, having the UK government try to take responsibility for those areas means the controversy immediately blows up in their face as suddenly they can no longer say different things to different audiences.

It's quite possible that this behaviour by the UK political classes is what hastened to movement towards Brexit. I personally think that many people in the UK were aware of the behaviour, by both major parties, of using the EU to impose laws for which they lacked democratic support technocratically. Since there was no electable party that stood in contrast to this, the electorate took its opportunity by evicting the EU instead. Seen in this light, Brexit is as much a reflection of a failure of national politics, as it is of continental politics.

The mantra 'taking back control' of many Brexit supporters is perhaps better seen as citizens wanting to stop their government from acting in ways they don't vote for, than as the government taking back control from the EU.

The dissembling (as I see it) of politicians from across the EU on this law (and others before it) indicates that this is not a problem that is restricted to the UK.

Britain more than any other member has managed to get exclusion clauses from any EU regulations or rules we didn't want, so the argument that we couldn't do anything about rules imposed by Brussels is obviously untrue. We opted out of stuff all the time, it was routine. The irony is that if we end up in a soft Brexit situation with an open trade deal with the EU, we won't be able to negotiate any opt-outs anymore because we won't have any representation in Brussels. We'll have to take everything Brussels serves up, or crash out hard.

In order for the government to achieve something at the national level, it would have to have to convince its MPs to publicly vote in support of it and risk losing their seats over it at the next election. The power in the EU rests with people appointed by people appointed by the people we vote for, and that completely diffuses all responsibility. (The elected European Parliament are pretty toothless compared to the unelected appointees.)

You can also vote out your representative in the EU Council (and the council of ministers) because the UK member of the council also has to be a UK MP.

So the power in the EU rests with directly elected politicians and with the Commission, which is appointed/approved/dismissed by directly elected politicians. The Commission alone cannot pass laws.

In some countries, neither the prime minister nor cabinet ministers have to be elected politicians (unlike in the UK). This additional level of indirection obviously extends to the members of the EU council from these countries, but that is a function of national constitutions.

Of course you can vote out your MP, however there is a calculus at play: your MP might be great at the local issues, but then they may support a European rep that is not as good. It would be much better if the EU were directly accountable to the people upon whom they inflict their decrees.

But I actually think that none of these technicalities matter that much. What's missing in the EU democratic process is an EU wide platform for debate, a platform for campaigning on EU wide issues.

This is made more difficult by the fact that we speak so many different languages and that English proficiency is very unevenly distributed among the economic classes (and among countries).

I think what could spark EU wide political debates and allow campaigners to create real political pressure on an EU level would be a directly elected EU president. A face that you can properly hate and blame and really really want to kick out of office :)

I am very much in favour of the United States of Europe, modelled after the USA.

More theater, and a punchbag to sacrifice, like Bush was for Cheney. No thanks!

This is the fundamental problem with representative 'democracy' in general (at least with regard to legislatures); representatives aren't and inherently can't be held accountable for more than one thing per election cycle.

You can say "that's democracy", but it's so diluted it's almost homeopathic.

No. He needs a majority in both the Council _and_ the directly elected EU parliament. Nothing homeopathic about that.

Like in many democratic countries, the head of the EU executive body is not directly elected by the people.

Probably didn't help that they sent useless do-nothing no-show UKIPers like Nigel to the European Parliament.

(Please don't think about it too hard, or look at who introduced the legislation to the EU, or anything else, because it really was us pushing it hard...)

Yeah it irritates me. I'm a bit in-between on the whole Brexit question, I've enjoyed the political chaos that ensues, and things like this just show up the brokenness of the current situation. The EU is very flawed. I voted to remain, but I was under no illusion that we'd get sensible reform to the way the countries engage and participate in the whole thing.

The "accelerationist" approach motivated Dominic Cummings, as well. It's surprising in that with the names filed off you could present it as orthodox Marxism. The key question is "does the Conservative party (and media) collapse before we get into the situation where flights are grounded and we're running out of food, or afterwards". History suggests that we'll have to end up in a full Winter of Discontent situation before they back down.

This is a pretty extreme prediction of the consequences of Brexit.

That's the "zero preparation" scenario. If there is no deal, no deal at all, then the existing flight approval regime ends and carriers are not allowed to fly from the UK to the EU .. or the US. https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites/transport/files/legisla...

Similarly if the customs arrangement is not sorted out, everyone travelling in both directions through Dover-Calais will have to clear customs. At the moment that will involve "operation Stack" all the way down the M20. Similar regulatory requirements problems will arise; direct delivery will almost certainly still be allowed, but "cabotage" rules apply limiting multi-leg trips.

We had two feet of snow earlier this year which resulted in Scottish supermarkets running out of fresh food for a few days. Snow melts. Brexit doesn't.

We had a civil war for forty years in Northern Ireland. The peace treaty stipulated that there must not be a border on the island of Ireland. The government is refusing to present a viable proposal for Brexit that does not require a border.

Unfortunately, “no deal” is looking increasingly likely. While UK rhetoric appears to still be “[The EU] needs us more than we need them”, the EU’s responses have consistently been otherwise.

This may be related to the observation that the UK’s goals and red-lines (when taken together rather than separately) are incompatible with WTO rules.

The PM stated (in writing!) that she called that election in order to increase her majority and so be able to force through her version of Brexit; however despite losing so many seats she needed a coalition afterwards, which in a democracy ought to be pause for thought, her post-election government not only still wants Brexit but also refuses to countenance any variation from her implausibly over-ambitious goals.

Worth pointing out that the Labour opposition in that election had also pledged to respect the referendum result. Over 89% of votes went to parties with "leave the Single Market and Customs Union" in their manifesto.

Given her current trajectory and staffing picks, I think it's at least plausible that May's objective was to get enough of a majority that she could pursue a "Brexit In Name Only" strategy without being blocked by the Tories' Brexiteer wing, and that the collapse of her vote was a reaction to this by the UKIP-inclined. I certainly saw conspiracy theories along these lines bandied about in the run-up to the election.

If anything, I suspect you'd have more luck arguing from the latest Tory poll bump that the population had gone off the idea.

This confuses me.

[1] The only claim of yours I am not sure of is the UKIP one: I have not seen evidence to convince me UKIP voters voted tactically to prevent BINO. However, I don’t think it alters your point.

Yup. Treating May as some sort of extreme "hard Brexiteer" is even more hilariously silly.

Labour is the nakedly opportunistic promise-everything-to-everyone-if-it-gets-us-into-power party at the moment. One important point to remember is that the Labour membership and the traditional core Labour vote are very, very different things. The membership, massively skewed by Momentum entryists, is heavily Remain.

> I have not seen evidence to convince me UKIP voters voted tactically to prevent BINO

I'm not convinced of it either, I just find it plausible as a hypothesis. Particularly since May was a (lukewarm) Remainer while Corbyn, despite bowing to pressure during the referendum campaign, is a lifelong Eurosceptic pitching a manifesto which depends heavily on getting out of the EU. State support and renationalization in particular are banned under present rules.

I'd argue that's because of the first-past-the-post voting system in the UK - they trend towards two main parties, which are realistically people's only options ('to stop the other party getting in').

Also, while Labour are officially 'leavers', they've been very ambiguous about where exactly their position is. A lot of remainers will have voted for them just because they're not the Tories.

Wasn't her version "remain"? It's not like she can actually do anything but brexit.

(Apart from the last two, I’m not even listing all the red lines that prevent each of these).

I understand what you're saying but it's not what people voted for. She knows that, Corbyn (EU skeptic) knows that.

There were no discussions about soft vs hard brexit around the referendum, I was there.

Very few parties had your versions of Brexit in their manifesto. All of them lost. It's just not what the people want.

I was also there. I remember many of the Brexit campaigners explicitly naming some of these options:

“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the Single Market” - Daniel Hannan, Vote Leave founder

“Only a madman would actually leave the Market” - Owen Paterson MP, Vote Leave backer

“Wouldn't it be terrible if we were really like Norway and Switzerland? Really? They're rich. They're happy. They're self-governing” - Nigel Farage, Ukip leader

“The Norwegian option, the EEA option, I think that it might be initally attractive for some business people” - Matthew Elliot, Vote Leave chief executive

“Increasingly, the Norway option looks the best for the UK” - Arron Banks, Leave.EU founder

From my list, the Turkey and Ukraine models were not something I remember prior to the referendum, but “deep and comprehensive free trade area” sounds a lot like the “deep and comprehensive free trade agreement” the government continues to talk about: https://www.ceps.eu/publications/theresa-mays-deep-and-compr...

(Turkey is just there for the sake of completeness).

> Very few parties had your versions of Brexit in their manifesto. All of them lost. It's just not what the people want.

The election happened after May made her red lines. True, Corbyn also wanted a deal that can’t be done, but given polls still show 50-50 (+/- margin of error), I think basically everyone still wants what they voted for during the referendum.

However, my point was more that she had options for various types of Brexit and could’ve made a different choice rather than what the people want from the options they were given.

This is a mess.

What would make it a better process for trading off openness to needed change vs changes under the radar vs stagnation where nothing changes?