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Re:UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for pe... by pjc50 on Thursday March 21, 2019 @07:09AM (#19450942)
Popular movement sponsored by a weird coalition of lying press, controversy-driven TV, illegal use of personal data, and (seemingly) foreign intelligence services?

The inability to force a clear Leave manifesto is the root of the disaster. What "should" have happened is either a Leave PM, or the 2017 election should have been run on a clear Leave manifesto specifying a realistic deal to be sought against a Remain opposition.

Re:UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for pe... by dalbasal on Thursday March 21, 2019 @07:23AM (#19451012)
Nothing in politics is ever clean, and all those things are problems. But, we have a tendency to notice these things more when we don't like the outcome. Treating Brexit as illegitimate is not a recipe for a good way forward, IMO. Democracy works better with respect
Re:UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for pe... by wallace_f on Thursday March 21, 2019 @07:24AM (#19451020)
Ok here's an angle. I can completely understand you if you are concerned about wanting free trade, free migration; but abstracted representation? Foreign authoritative bureaucracies?

I don't mean to say you're wrong. I'm just saying there appears to be obvious, legitimate concerns here, and your suggesting otherwise seems possibly disingenuous.

Re:UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for pe... by pjc50 on Thursday March 21, 2019 @07:37AM (#19451108)
> abstracted representation

Yes, the EU representation is quite distant. The UK has an unelected upper house.

> Foreign authoritative bureaucracies?

This isn't great, but at least the EU one is elected. The alternative in all the other trade deals is unelected. Hence all the opposition to things like TTIP, and earlier complaints about GATT etc.

Fundamentally, voting against the EU doesn't make it go away. Some sort of framework always needs to exist to make agreements with other European countries. If the EU didn't exist, it would probably be necessary to invent it.

Hence the Norway/Switzerland situation: not in the EU, has to follow EU rules without having a vote on them.

> legitimate concerns

Here's the thing: hardly anyone talks about those anymore. Brexit has been absolutely dominated by antipathy towards immigrants, both EU and non-EU (despite this not being anything to do with the EU). There's no way to "unwind" EU immigration without ripping families apart.

(I was a Euroskeptic about the treatment of Greece, for example. But ultimately Greece realised that however bad a situation it was in, crashing out would be worse. The same applies to the UK, with "Tory Syriza" running it)