EU Referendum: The result and aftermath...

[EM2]

You do realise it doesn't matter either way now, don't you? The time to fight the referendum was in the run up to it, not retrospectively.

So why should I take any notice of what he said, or put any store by what he wants for the EU, or influence my decision in the referendum?

 

[najaB]

That's one of the least defensible comebacks I've ever heard in a public discussion.

It's quite easily defended: let's say that Mr Barroso had decided to enact his dastardly plan. The first port of call would have been a vote in the EU Commission, where he would have had: one vote.

If it passed, it likely would have triggered a referendum in Portugal where, as a citizen, he would have had: one vote.

So it despite his job title he was still only one man.

 

[meridian2]

So why should I take any notice of what he said, or put any store by what he wants for the EU, or influence my decision in the referendum?

You shouldn't. It's only of interest to those seeking a handle on what the EU's senior apparatchiks are thinking. As the referendum vote has passed and the government aren't displaying any stomach for a re-run, the opinions of EU presidents past and present are irrelevant. In that you're absolutely correct.

 

[EM2]

You shouldn't. It's only of interest to those seeking a handle on what the EU's senior apparatchiks are thinking.

And he no longer is one, hence why said I'd take more notice of Juncker's putative White Paper.
And we have no further evidence of a future federalisation of the EU.

 

[meridian2]

And he no longer is one, hence why said I'd take more notice of Juncker's putative White Paper.
And we have no further evidence of a future federalisation of the EU.

Unless you're thinking of migrating to an EU country, the opinions and ambitions of commissioners are irrelevant as we're about to leave the Eurozone.

 

[najaB]

Parliament has not been actively sovereign since 1972.

And that is a disingenuous description of the relationship between the EU parliament and the UK Parliament. The UK parliament has full sovereignty to legislate whatever laws it chooses to as long as they don't contradict an EU regulation or EU treaty.

 

[Barn]

The UK parliament has full sovereignty to legislate whatever laws it chooses to as long as they don't contradict an EU regulation or EU treaty.

Did you write that with a straight face?!

 

[EM2]

Unless you're thinking of migrating to an EU country, the opinions and ambitions of commissioners are irrelevant as we're about to leave the Eurozone.

Way back on page 344, Howardh asked for just a straw to clutch at that Brexit would turn out OK and I asked what evidence you had that what you believe would come to pass.
And apart from one quote from an ex-EU Commission President, there has been none.

 

[najaB]

Did you write that with a straight face?!

Yes. Because it's true. Name a law that didn't conflict with an EU regulation or Treaty yet which the EU has blocked passage through the UK parliament.

 

[meridian2]

Way back on page 344, Howardh asked for just a straw to clutch at that Brexit would turn out OK and I asked what evidence you had that what you believe would come to pass.
And apart from one quote from an ex-EU Commission President, there has been none.

Depends what you mean by OK. I think British wages will buy less for the next decade, but withdrawing from the EU mire was always going to have consequences. I'd say control over Britain's borders is a big plus as you can't be serious about sovereignty without it. Cheap weekend trip to Bruges, German cars and Amazon.de bargains aren't fair exchange that.

 

[Barn]

I can't believe I have to say this, but sovereignty with a massive proviso of no conflict with another parliament's legislation is not sovereignty.

 

[meridian2]

Yes. Because it's true. Name a law that didn't conflict with an EU regulation or Treaty yet which the EU has blocked passage through the UK parliament.

You missed his point.

 

[najaB]

I can't believe I have to say this, but sovereignty with a massive proviso of no conflict with another parliament's legislation is not sovereignty.

Where the delegation is by choice and the option to end the delegation exists then it is, in every respect that matters.

 

[Barn]

Where the delegation is by choice and the option to end the delegation exists then it is, in every respect that matters.

I covered this in my earlier post that you said was disingenuous.

It is correct to say that Parliament has a choice:

• It can accept that it is not actively sovereign and remain in the EU
• It can leave the EU and retake its sovereignty.

Because asserting sovereignty means leaving the EU, the mere fact that Parliament has this reserve choice does not mean that EU membership is compatible with a sovereign Parliament.

Or to put it another way, you can claim that Parliament is sovereign but not as part of an argument for remaining in the EU.

It's a completely circular argument. "Parliament was sovereign within the EU because we could have left the EU."

 

[EM2]

So you don't believe the Government, when in the White Paper it says:

Parliamentary sovereignty
2.1
The sovereignty of Parliament is a fundamental principle of the UK constitution. Whilst Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU, it has not always felt like that.

(my bold)

 

[miami]

International trade agreements also block parliaments from doing things. They remain socereign as they can withdraw front such agreements.

Canada attempted to ban MMT (a petroleum additive) in the 90s, but had to rescind the law when it was ruled that is broke the Nafta rules.

Does the inability of Canada to uphold its own law mean Canada isn't sovereign? If so, brexit refs have a rude shock coming when we start negotiating our own trade deals. If not, how is it different to EU law?

Unlike with most trade agreements, we the people actually have a say. Want to ban MMT, just get your MEP to do so.

 

[Barn]

So you don't believe the Government, when in the White Paper it says:
(my bold)

No, I don't agree that it could correctly be described as sovereign, except in the technical 'reserve power' sense I have described above.

The very next part of the sentence you quoted is an implied acknowledgement by the Government that this technical sense does not translate into sovereignty in a real sense.

We have had to squeeze the supranational, supreme nature of EU law into our Westminster constitution. Nothing has affected the ultimate power of Westminster to disagree with EU law, but this means nothing in a political sense because to exercise that sovereignty we have to leave the EU. This is why sovereignty is completely bound up with the question of continued membership. People arguing that sovereignty is retained on a day-to-day decision making basis (I used the word 'actively' above) within the EU are simply wrong. It is this meaning, and not the meaning you might find in a constitutional treatise, that is the correct one to bear in mind when taking decisions about our membership.

 

[miami]

I know you don't: you're a Remainer. No Remainer could logically have any concern with being linked into a single demos with other EU countries.

I'm pleased that you have confirmed the point that you're happy because you feel close enough to the particular countries that we currently share the EU with. The point is that democracy isn't just about voting systems, it is about feeling such an intense level of common purpose with your fellow electors that you are happy to share a democratic outcome with them. If it comes to it, you are happy to be outvoted by them.

Clearly the anger still in place over the referendum shows that it was undemocratic. A large number of people are very upgappy to be outvoted by them, probably because the change is irreversible - unlike with normal parliamentary elections where the damage can be fixed after 5 years, leaving the EU is a one way leap, driven by lies and ignorance.

 

[WelshBluebird]

The difference is EU commissioners are not subject to removal from office by democratic vote. Brown was and in due course May will be.

Of course, technically May could remain PM even if voted out as MP. In reality that will be not happen, but if you want to talk about technicalities and how democratic or not the systems are then.

 

[WelshBluebird]

I think you're absolutely right, but I don't think assuming the role of the EU's conscience is an interesting long term job. Our history is in direct distinction to the EU public model, and we're not the only such member. What suits France and Germany may not fit Greece and Ireland. It's one of the reasons some EU members sustain such high rates of youth unemployment to pay blue chip public sector pensions.

I am not talking of anyone "assuming the role of the EU's conscience". I am saying that until recently we have been a fairly powerful force in Europe and could guide things the way we wanted (in a similar way to what you suggest France and Germany do). Indeed if you actually do the reading, a fairly large number of the "EU red tape" we see complained about in the media is actually pretty heavily influenced by the UK.

I don't know if I'd go quite that far. The sensationalist 'Euro army' that features in the tabloid headlines most certainly will never happen, but there is the Eurocorps which is a permanent military corps of HQ staff to which national army troops can be assigned on a case-by-case basis - primarily for peace-keeping operations.

So there is a standing European army but they aren't a fighting force by any description.

And even if it was to happen, until we started all this lunacy, we were a powerful member of the EU. Powerful enough to veto plans we didn't like such as that.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Democracy is about submitting to the collective view of your fellow citizens.

You could also argue that would just be "tyranny of the majority".

The way I see it, democracy is a hell of a lot more complex than just "the people voted for it so lets do it". It is about balancing rights and responsibilities, it is about taking votes as a guideline for which direction to go in, it is about trying to reconcile differences between groups of people to work for the best outcome possible.

 

[3141]

and, being completely frank for a moment, a wide spectrum of IQ.

It interests me that you. and others in similar situations, feel the need to put in the bit about being completely frank. It's a fact that up to 50% of the population have an IQ that's below the average, and in some cases it's well below. Yet there's a widespread hesitancy about saying that. Is there a collective guilt about recognising that not everyone is equal in intelligence?

It is more likely that many voters made the decision on gut feel.

There was an interesting example of that in a BBC radio report. The reporter travelled to several towns and interviewed people about how they were going to vote and why. Several people in Sunderland referred to immigration as a reason for voting to leave. The reporter asked them if there were many immigrants in Sunderland. Did immigrants have much impact on Sunderland or on employment opportunities? "No," they answered, though some commented that there were other places where the impact was much greater. "But not here in Sunderland?" he asked them. "No, not here" they said. I got the feeling that the reporter reckoned he had made his point quite convincingly. But Sunderland voted strongly to leave.

Whilst I think that both sides made use of gut feel, there is a difference in how that has been interpreted since the referendum. Remainers made a principally economic argument which, although not really a science, at least uses a language of numbers and figures. Gut feel seems wrong as a response to economics, and experts seem appropriate.

Leavers made a great deal of sovereignty and control. Gut feel seems much more appropriate in this area, and experts seem patronising.

I think that's a very important distinction, and Nicola Sturgeon will be thinking hard about how to make the gut appeal, which wasn't strong enough to carry the day in 2014.

 

[3141]

I look forward to the current British government being removed from power in 2019 then (although technically 5 years for this government would be 2021). I believe you meant '5 years'.

No PM or even ex-PM has been voted out of office by the general public, they simply lose support of parliament.

Since 1911 the law has required an election not less frequently than every five years. The only exceptions have been during world wars. The coalition government of 2010-15 changed this so that, additionally, an election won't normally occur less than five years after the previous one. The next one is due in 2020.

It is literally true that no PM has been voted out of office by the general public, because we vote for someone to be the MP in our constituency and not for the PM - though we obviously have the likely person very much in mind. But when a PM, e.g. Major, finds that his party no longer has a majority in the House of Commons, he knows he will be unable to continue in office and resigns. The Queen invites the leader of the party with a majority to form a government. In effect the public did vote Major out by taking away the majority that he'd need in order to continue. It was more complicated in 2010 because no party gained an overall majority, and Brown remained in office for a week till it was clear that Cameron could form a government with Lib Dem support, when the Queen asked him to form it and Brown resigned. Ex-PMs can if they wish remain in Parliament as back-benchers (if they've retained their seat), as Heath and many others did in the past, but these days they mostly decide to move on to something else.

 

[Busaholic]

Since 1911 the law has required an election not less frequently than every five years. The only exceptions have been during world wars. The coalition government of 2010-15 changed this so that, additionally, an election won't normally occur less than five years after the previous one. The next one is due in 2020.

It is literally true that no PM has been voted out of office by the general public, because we vote for someone to be the MP in our constituency and not for the PM - though we obviously have the likely person very much in mind. But when a PM, e.g. Major, finds that his party no longer has a majority in the House of Commons, he knows he will be unable to continue in office and resigns. The Queen invites the leader of the party with a majority to form a government. In effect the public did vote Major out by taking away the majority that he'd need in order to continue. It was more complicated in 2010 because no party gained an overall majority, and Brown remained in office for a week till it was clear that Cameron could form a government with Lib Dem support, when the Queen asked him to form it and Brown resigned. Ex-PMs can if they wish remain in Parliament as back-benchers (if they've retained their seat), as Heath and many others did in the past, but these days they mostly decide to move on to something else.

The P.M doesn't even have to be an M.P. of course. Alec Douglas-Home was the last such, and he was certainly within my memory. ''Baillie Hume'' was the name given to him by 'Private Eye' iirc and their mockery of both him and his position helped make his stay thankfully short-lived.

 

[HSTEd]

The P.M doesn't even have to be an M.P. of course. Alec Douglas-Home was the last such, and he was certainly within my memory. ''Baillie Hume'' was the name given to him by 'Private Eye' iirc and their mockery of both him and his position helped make his stay thankfully short-lived.

He was only a PM in the Lords for a few weeks as he stood in a byelection at the first opportunity and disclaimed his peerage.

 

[Barn]

The P.M doesn't even have to be an M.P. of course. Alec Douglas-Home was the last such, and he was certainly within my memory. ''Baillie Hume'' was the name given to him by 'Private Eye' iirc and their mockery of both him and his position helped make his stay thankfully short-lived.

I think this is an example of how our largely unwritten constitution changes as new conventions arise. It would be completely unthinkable now.

 

[Howardh]

I think this is an example of how our largely unwritten constitution changes as new conventions arise. It would be completely unthinkable now.

Does a PM have to be in the winning party (save when a coalition of third and second puts them first)?
For example, constitutionally, could Clegg have been PM?

 

[furnessvale]

Does a PM have to be in the winning party (save when a coalition of third and second puts them first)?
For example, constitutionally, could Clegg have been PM?

By convention, the Queen asks the leader of the largest party within the Commons to form a government.

I suppose there is nothing to stop her asking Mickey Mouse to try and form a government if she thought he would command a working majority in Parliament.

 

[Domh245]

I thought that the rule is the person who can command the support of the majority of MPs, so a situation where conservative MPs rallied around Clegg instead of Cameron, leading to PM Clegg would have been possible, if not highly unlikely.

 

[me123]

Does a PM have to be in the winning party (save when a coalition of third and second puts them first)?
For example, constitutionally, could Clegg have been PM?

In theory, no. There's nothing in our current system to say that any member of either house couldn't become PM, provided of course that (s)he be able to command a majority of the majority of the House of Commons. Of course, it's highly unlikely that anyone other than the leader of the largest party will become PM (although it potentially could be the second largest party if they got the support from a smaller third party).