Right, but they’ll inevitably leave the EPO too - I’d say this was the shot across the bows.

It’s easy to predict - just consider what the worst, most self-destructive course of action available is, and voila, you know what the British government will do next.

> Right, but they’ll inevitably leave the EPO too

based on what?

the government is pulling out of anything where the ECJ has jurisdiction, which you might not agree with, but is perfectly consistent with leaving the EU's institutional control

the EPO is not under the control of the ECJ

Based on the word Europe being in the name. Brexiters are quite petty.

Now, more than ever, it should be clear that further political integration in the EU would be an absolutely terrible idea. Look over the pond to see what a disaster it has been in the US. You can't effectively run a country of 325 million people with widely divergent viewpoints in a top-down fashion.

When people imagine a more politically integrated EU, I bet they don't imagine that government run by whoever they consider the kookiest people in the body politic. Imagine that EU integration proceeded apace, and Duda, or Orban, or Johnson became the popularly-elected President of the EU. (The current EU executive structure would never be adequate, of course, in a more politically integrated future.)

Remind me, how many times have Michigan and Illinois gone to war with each other since joining the union?

Federalism, in principle, is no bad thing - but it should keep to regulation and overarching legislation while letting states largely self govern (i.e. the EU model) rather than top-down tactical governance, which is where the US has ended up.

Ultimately, it’s a question of identity. Americans call themselves Americans. Europeans call themselves French, Dutch, Greek. That shared identity is the key to preventing war - everything else is just a means to that end.

> Federalism, in principle, is no bad thing - but it should keep to regulation and overarching legislation while letting states largely self govern (i.e. the EU model) rather than top-down tactical governance, which is where the US has ended up.

The US couldn’t maintain federalism, and the EU will ultimately end up in the same place. There is no additional structural protection in the EU, there just hasn’t been enough time to erode the sovereignty of the individual member states yet. In some respects, the EU is actually structurally worse. For example, the EU has no equivalent to our anti-Commandeering principle, so the central government can force the member states to execute EU legislation using the apparatus of the domestic governments.

They left euratom, which has nothing to do with either the ECJ or EU. There’s precedent.

> They left euratom, which has nothing to do with either the ECJ or EU. There’s precedent.

afraid not: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-uk-leaves-the-eu-4057...

> The UK joined Euratom when it joined the EEC in 1973. It is a separate legal entity from the EU, but is tied up with its laws and institutions, and subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

you may want to revisit essentially everything you've posted here, because most of it is just flat out wrong

Handing over significant degrees of sovereignty to unelected EU organisations in the Treaty of Lisbon without popular consent - in fact - directly against popular consent (France, Netherlands etc), was by far the most 'self destructive' act in modern politics.

The dint on the UPC and other EU organisations due to this, is a function of the existentially problematic manner in which the EU was formed.

Europe would work much better with a series of consistent bilateral treaties on issues such as patents and regulations, instead of trying to be a Federal Superstate led by the Chancellor of Germany ... who incidentally chose Urusula Von Der Leyen, not the electors, who didn't even know who she was literally at the time they voted. If that fact alone is not cause enough for revolution.