EU
One of my memories growing up was the news of John Major vowing to veto every piece of EU legislation in retaliation for the BSE trade restrictions: http://articles.latimes.com/1996-06-22/news/mn-17472_1_european-union
It wasn’t very effective.
My father told me it had failed because it meant the UK was vetoing everything that the UK wanted to do as a member of the EU while also failing to prevent other member states from agreeing with each other to do things that only the UK stood in the way of.
What happens if we leave? Well, we don’t get so many chances to tell the EU decision makers what we want the EU to do while also failing to prevent other member states from agreeing with each other to do whatever they want.
Stay in? Well, a veto can be used more effectively that it was. Vetoing everything is just throwing a temper tantrum no more effective than holding your breath until you go purple — they know you’ll give in without them having to do anything. Vetoing just the stuff you don’t like? That can work.
We can’t just order the EU around like it’s one of our colonies. We can send our representatives there to negotiate our interests on our behalf (and we do), but the difference between a negotiator and a dictator is that negotiators can agree to bear costs — money, changes to the law, to keep troops away from certain places or in other places, and presumably just about anything else.
Claiming the EU "dictates" the laws of the UK is deceptive; we ask our people to negotiate the details of what the entire EU will do. We ask. Our people.
And if the result of that negotiation really sucks, we can say no in a multitude of ways — and I don't just mean "Non", "Nein" and so forth. We have vetoes. And we choose the specifics of the laws the negotiations asked for, giving us the power to frustrate the spirit of an agreement while keeping to its letter. And ultimately, we can invoke the same powers that a "leave" vote would invoke.
Of course, some of those ways of saying "no" are rubbish (just ask Major!) but that's true for much of life: if your boss asks you to go to a conference in Qatar, you could say "No, I quit!" and look for another job, or you could say "I'm openly gay and they have anti-gay laws. Find someone else."
Brexit? Well, it looks more like a teenager yelling "I hate you!" and slamming the door on their parents than a new graduate moving out of the family home for their first job — strong feelings, no appreciation for the benefits they have enjoyed nor the costs others have borne, and a plan for the future so vague it can only be described as "speculative".
Original post: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/eu/
Original post timestamp: Mon, 09 May 2016 20:40:01 +0000
Categories: Politics