One of the realisations from after the result was Leave had no plan at all. Nothing admissible or written. I'm sure Rees Mogg had a plan, but it wouldn't have won votes, so that's staying in his head.

The Scottish Independence referendum had a plan running to hundreds of pages. Good bits and bad bits, but a good few people had put thought into what came next.

Leave had a bus, with a slogan.

> Leave had a bus, with a slogan.

Not just any slogan, a slogan that was blatantly misleading to say the least.

slogan >> plan

sadly visible all over the world

Free trade is a socially acceptable excuse Brexit voters can use to mask the real reasons they voted to leave. As is sovereignty.

I don't get the ridicule the argument about sovereignty is exposed to. Of course that is one of the most important discussion within the European Union.

You can argue that external forces decrease the room for maneuvers for a single nation. Just as you can argue that member states have the tendency to fiercely guard sovereignty anyway and did so in the past. Nothing to say against that.

But to say that sovereignty is not an important issue to discuss within the European Union isn't an informed position at all.

Most new laws are enacted by the EU in most member states.

Setting aside the fact that the UK has a veto over pretty much any important EU decision...

> Of course that is one of the most important discussion within the European Union.

Is it? Why?

> Nothing to say against that.

Why should the sovereignty of the UK be paramount? Why not the sovereignty of (for example) London, Cornwall or Scotland?

The UK is a mix of geographically-close former countries, inhabited by people with different backgrounds who speak different native languages and used to be at war with each other.

I fail to see why the UK should have any greater claim to sovereignty than the EU or a subsection of the UK...

> Most new laws are enacted by the EU in most member states.

No idea if that's true, but I do know that the vast majority of laws enacted by the EU are done so because it is more beneficial for the UK (and other member states) if the EU enacts them as opposed to each EU state enacting their own version. Much simpler when it comes to trade etc.

> Setting aside the fact that the UK has a veto over pretty much any important EU decision...

this is not a fact at all, Lisbon removed the veto from nearly every area, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_E...

Pretty much all of the important stuff is still covered (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_E...)

To argue otherwise would be akin to arguing that the UK parliament isn't sovereign because local councils can make some local decisions independently.

EDIT (To reply to the comment below):

If you read the information in the link posted, it's obvious that the important decisions still require unanimity, even if minor decisions (yes, some of them in important fields) now only require QMV.

FWIW, I'm a fan of QMV.

that very much depends on your definition of "important"

personally I would call employment, business, immigration, social security, criminal law, and half a dozen things listed there as important, but there you go

what's wrong with the reply button?

> If you read the information in the link posted, it's obvious that the important decisions still require unanimity, even if minor decisions (yes, some of them in important fields) now only require QMV.

not true (again)... might be true most of the time, but not always (which is the entire problem)

see the fuss over the past two years where eastern european countries were forced over their explicit objections to accept migrant quotas using QMV

If you think Leave voters are worried about looking politically correct, I think you haven't met many Leave voters.

People also dislike the idea of the EU forcing every child to eat a kilogram of french cheese every morning before school.

Luckily, neither is likely to happen and - even if it were proposed - the UK has the power to veto it ever happening.

assuming we are in the EU. if we're outside, we just watch and weep.

Veto is going to be dismantled sooner or later. There are plans to scrap veto for tax policy. Furthermore if there will be no veto and the citizens would dislike the new legislation there will be new EU army to keep people in check.

Let's see in 10 years.

Do not mistake campaign arguments for facts. They're more of the "arguments as soldiers" variety. It's rational to only care how effective they are at influencing public oppinion, they're not peer reviewed publications.

Where do you stand morally?

You may be right, but it's not right

It doesn't matter where one stands. If you want to fight against, say, the people that run campaigns, you'll have to fight in their chosen arena, that of public oppinion and elections. It's empirically found effective to use "arguments as soldiers" in that arena. If we chose policies through a peer-reviewed search for truth, we wouldn't have this discussion.

But then it becomes a race to the bottom.

So I think you need some enforcement of standards, whether moral or legal.

And to enforce standards, you better win some elections, right ? And how are you going to win them ?