News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Italy Wikipedia shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law. Parent comment

Re:Italy Wikipedia shuts down in protest at proposed EU copy... by simonh on Tuesday July 03, 2018 @12:28PM (#17451505)
Brexit was about immigration. Nothing else comes close. I think you're right that this was in the mix, but so were a hundred other factors that might have got raised here or there, but they're all dwarfed by immigration.

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Italy Wikipedia shuts down in protest at proposed EU copy... by ben_w on Tuesday July 03, 2018 @02:31PM (#17452607)
Not to deny that immigration was a major part, but the belief is more important than reality for both that and sovereignty. Yes, the UK had a great deal with loads of opt-outs, but that didn’t stop the papers blaming the EU for everything — including immigration, which was mostly non-EU.
[ Parent | on HN ]