News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe πͺπΊ
(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, π©πͺ ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures
(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)
Also check out !yurop@lemm.ee
Can we just first have Scotland back in? Just to fuck with England.
Seconded
Thirded so long as we can drop the border down to include Cumbria, Northumberland, and Tyne & Wear... maybe North Yorkshire, too. I'd love to be Scottish if they'd be happy to have us!
If Greater Manchester declares itself a city state, please can we join? Maybe let Wales in too as long as they take responsibility for Liverpool.
This kind of cycle back and forth between full-throated conservative idiocy and then demanding to be saved from the consequences of their own actions is what really makes me so depressed about the majority of voters.
I could excuse a young person maybe for being naive and inexperienced enough to think conservativism might have some kind of merit, but grown-ass adults have literally no excuse to ever believe the right-wing ever about anything.
Not just in the UK, but everywhere.
Well their voting system that overinflates the seats of the winning party does not help either.
Sure, no problem. But this time without all the unfair special rules and exceptions that the UK had.
Joining at this point would require an insane effort on the UKs side. I am pretty sure that an undemocratic institution like the house of lords would not be acceptable under current EU laws and that is not even accounting for the UKs voting system. The UK would also have to join the currency union. The last point alone makes rejoining very unlikely in my opinion. I think the only thing UK citizens can realistically hope for is, at best, something similar to the Norway model.
Norway is a rule taker that pays into the EU without any influence. They're also tiny and they know it. This is said with love from a neighbour who would love to see Norway join the EU.
I don't think the UKs collective ego would allow them to join on Norway terms.
I've been patiently waiting for all these Brexit benefits we were promised. But they haven't been forthcoming. In fact, it's just been a shambles from day one. We've just given ourselves more problems to (not) deal with.
The main Brexit benefit appears to be the disintegration of the conservative party. Pretty good benefit really.
Hey that's exactly how it is with American conservatives. Just constantly causing more issues without solving anything whatsoever.
Brentrance.
Breturn
Breunion
When the EU turns around and predictably tells us to fuck off:
The EU won't turn you down, but you won't want to meet the necessary conditions
Even if that's true (and it probably is, because it was a pretty thin majority to exit in the first place) it would be absolute political suicide to go into this election on the promise of getting us back in.
The anti EU brigade are lunatics and people who voted leave are easily lead. The last thing we need is "Look, they're ignoring your will!" followed by Emperor Farage...
It's a completely moot point for another reason. The EU isn't just going to let them back in with the same sweetheart deal they got as founding members. That alone means this won't happen for decades if at all .
I assume the UK would be obligated to adopt the Euro as a currency, and i have no doubt some people would absolutely rage stroke.
I suspect that the majority of voters never wanted to leave in the first place. Results-wise, there was like 1.2% in it. And the leave voters were more likely to actually turn up. The problem is that too many "remainers" didn't actually vote.
People who don't go to elections (laziness, confidence to win anyway, boycott) accept the election's outcome.
The original Brexit vote should have been at 2/3 majority vote. The fact that it was a simple majority was absolutely bonkers and I'm sure the ones who put it in the ballot knew exactly what they were doing. They all made massive sums of money on Brexit while the morons who voted for it are losing their shirt.
Nowhere is this more evidenced than in this statement from the article.
But once the 18% who say they donβt know are taken out, 52% back EU membership with 48% opposing it - a complete reversal of the 2016Β BrexitΒ referendum result.
A full 18% of those polled couldn't even make up their damned mind about it. And the people who wrote this chose to clip those idiots out of the picture in order to create the narrative they wanted for this clickbait as fuck article. And I will bet you anything the the Brexit framers would make serious bank on any effort to rejoin. [/removes tin hat]
Oh it's worse than that. It was never even legally binding, it was just a finger-in-the air - only after the fact was it treated like the cast iron democratic will of the people while over in the real world the Electoral Commission would've actually declared the whole thing void if it was a legally binding referendum because of illegal overspend by the grifters pushing it in the first place.
The whole thing is maddening to think about, honestly
I would love for the UK to rejoin the EU, but the survey results mentioned in the article don't really support the claim that there is a general desire to do so. A shift from 52% against to 52% in favor of EU membership is really not that significant.
Bregret is a Britch
[..] 43% in favour of rejoining the bloc, compared with 40% who want to stay out. But once the 18% who say they donβt know are taken out, 52% back EU membership with 48% opposing it [...]
That's not a "majority of voters", that's a "majority of people who report to know what they want". These are not the same populations.
My hope is that Labour are playing this smart. They'll bang on about how Brexit won't change, but that "we'll look to increase economic and social strengths via our relationship with the EU". We'll reintroduce entry to the single market, ensure freedom of movement, and basically rejoin in everything but name - and then eventually say "well, if we want to rejoin it's basically a tick in a box".
The EU will likely be happy for the UK to rejoin, even without punishment. The most reliable ally in the battle against Euroscepticism is a former Eurosceptic that can say how shit things were after leaving, and how much better they are since rejoining.
They could do what Norway does, paying for an almost membership that doesn't give them any voting rights.
I'm pretty anti-brexit, but I'm not sure whether I'm pro-rejoining. Taking the clusterfuck we've landed in and turning it in to somehow an even bigger clusterfuck may not necessarily yield good results and definitely won't be some silver bullet. The massive middle finger we'd justifiably get from the EU should probably give us pause.
This. It's not just a switch to be flipped.
What's done is done. From day 1 after the referendum it was obvious to everyone that the UK would spend the next 50 years trying to mitigate the impact of that ridiculous decision. Hotting the "rejoin" button is not necessarily a short cut to the end.
They can come back with zero special privileges, as one among equals.
Of course we do, but it ain't gonna happen. Best you can hope for is the custom union in seven to ten years' time.
Is Brexit an ignorant, lazy, myopic tantrum you can undo?
Especially when you keep on giving the goddamned Tories the keys to the castle in every election that matters.
nAh I'm NoT vOtiNg MaTe PoLiTiCs Is FoR wAnKeRs sHaLL wE gO fOr dRiNkS iNsTeAd?
The conservatives still have power in the UK and will continue to have influence for the foreseeable future. As long as conservatism has any place in UK politics, the UK should not be permitted to re-join. Conservatives will eventually just re-Brexit.
There is simply no place in a healthy, modern society for a conservative government. Let the UK rid themselves of their plague of conservatism first before being allowed to further harm the UE with this dangerous illness.
How I imagine that would go:
