Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[garbon]

As for the bullying part: sorry this is politics. People get pissed off. The EU is not some paradise of the dispassionate demi-Gods. When you go on a xenophobic rant about how horrible European immigrants are destroying your country thanks to the EU those countries are going to be pissed off and do angry nationalistic shit right back. Imagine that?

That sounds like a stupid way to make political decisions. What use is emotion in such matters? After all, it was emotion that lead the UK to exiting in the first place.

Also, I'm confused. Is the UK to be punished simply for its bad behaviour or is it being punished to set an example?

[garbon]

However, I think it is a mistake to try to force nations to stay in a union if their governments and people do not will it.

OK. Mew.

Despite his special pleading, the South was not and is not a nation.

[Valmy]

That sounds like a stupid way to make political decisions. What use is emotion in such matters? After all, it was emotion that lead the UK to exiting in the first place.

Also, I'm confused. Is the UK to be punished simply for its bad behaviour or is it being punished to set an example?

I agree. The UK will be threatened with punishment to make some people less pissed off. What will actually happen remains to be seen.

[garbon]

Theresa really is quite useless, what with such novel concepts that she'll be unveiling.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/19/theresa-may-to-warn-un-of-dangers-of-uncontrolled-mass-migration

Theresa May to warn UN of dangers of uncontrolled mass migration

Theresa May is to tell the UN general assembly of the dangers of "uncontrolled mass migration" as it meets in New York to discuss how to help more than 21 million refugees around the world.

The prime minister will call for a different global approach to migration aimed at "reducing today's unmanaged population movement" as world leaders gather for the general assembly and a separate summit hosted by Barack Obama.

At the UN, May will argue that it is not in the interests of the migrants to be exposed to exploitation and danger as they cross borders, nor the interests of the countries they are leaving, travelling through or seeking to reach. She will say that mass population movements reduce resources and popular support for refugees.

Her arguments appear to echo those made by David Cameron's government, which targeted most of its aid to refugees in countries bordering war zones, in contrast to Germany's approach of accepting hundreds of thousands of people who had journeyed across Europe.

It does, however, leave the door open for the UK to accept more refugees straight from camps, who have not embarked on journeys across seas and borders.

May will propose three measures: helping refugees to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach; a better distinction between refugees and economic migrants; and the right of all countries to control their borders, along with a responsibility to stop uncontrolled migration flows.

Speaking before the general assembly, May said: "We cannot simply focus on treating the symptoms of this crisis, we need to address its root causes too."

The gathering comes as May faces criticism in the UK for failing to do enough to help refugees and demands to improve the UK's pledge to settle 20,000 people from Syria over four years.

Last week, the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was one of 200 religious leaders to call for more action, criticising the government's response as "too slow, too low and too narrow".

David Miliband, the head of the International Rescue Committee, said this weekend that May should use the summit to promise that the UK will resettle more refugees.

"Frankly, the UK should be saying we'll take 20,000 or 25,000 a year, so four times the current level, 25 refugees per parliamentary constituency rather than just six, because countries like Canada are already doing that," he said. "So I think the UK could do more on the refugee resettlement side to match the frankly exemplary performance that the UK has on international humanitarian aid."

Yvette Cooper, the chair of Labour's refugee taskforce, called on May to speed up the government's pledge to resettle 20,000 Syrians – setting a 2018 target rather than 2020 – and offer more help to those fleeing the war.

She urged the prime minister to resettle 500 unaccompanied child refugees from the Calais camp and ensure that none were left by Christmas.

"The prime minister must show leadership on the refugee crisis," Cooper said. "She must go to this summit to galvanise international support for refugees and show that Britain can and will meet our commitments. Right now, the decisions parliament and our country have taken are being mired in red tape and government foot-dragging."

The UN summit on refugees and migrants comes as the outgoing secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and Obama attempt to use their remaining time in office to try to make some headway on issue.

The UK government has said it will support the New York declaration on refugees and migrants due to be adopted at the UN, which reaffirms humanitarian principles but has been criticised by campaign groups for lacking teeth. Human Rights Watch called the draft of the final document "a missed opportunity" and Amnesty International accused member states of stripping away any proposals of substance.

On Tuesday, Obama will host a separate leaders' summit which will attempt to raise money and secure concrete pledges from countries to accept higher numbers of refugees for resettlement.

May is expected to announce additional humanitarian support for refugees from the government's ring-fenced aid budget later this week, and further action to provide services and create jobs in host countries.

[grumbler]

As for the bullying part: sorry this is politics. People get pissed off. The EU is not some paradise of the dispassionate demi-Gods. When you go on a xenophobic rant about how horrible European immigrants are destroying your country thanks to the EU those countries are going to be pissed off and do angry nationalistic shit right back. Imagine that?

If EU governments are going to make policies based on the anger (or other emotions) of the politicians, rather than the good of the populace, then it is time to scrap the EU.  Such actions are precisely the kind of undemocratic impositions that the Brexiteers claimed made it imperative to leave the EU.  Sorry, but that's politics.

The idea that the EU (who in the EU?) should fuck over Britain to scare other countries' governments into ignoring their constituents' interests is bureaucratic moral bankruptcy at its clearest.

[Berkut]

I don't think the EU is saying they should screw over the UK though, are they?

I think they are saying that being in the EU should be beneficial. That seems obvious, otherwise why would anyone be in it.

Therefore, leaving the EU ought to be harmful, otherwise it makes no sense to be in it - therefore, whatever dal is made with the UK, there should not be any attempt to make any accommodation with the UK that would allow them to lessen that pain, say by arranging to get some or any of the benefits without membership.

[Zanza]

I don't think the EU is saying they should screw over the UK though, are they?

I think they are saying that being in the EU should be beneficial. That seems obvious, otherwise why would anyone be in it.

Therefore, leaving the EU ought to be harmful, otherwise it makes no sense to be in it - therefore, whatever dal is made with the UK, there should not be any attempt to make any accommodation with the UK that would allow them to lessen that pain, say by arranging to get some or any of the benefits without membership.

This. It's also perfectly rational and normal that club members get benefits that non-members don't get. That's all I read into Fico's original comment that sparked the last page of the thread. No emotion or punishment or so.

[Tamas]

Indeed.

It is worth pointing out that the Leave campaign however operated with the public assumption of keeping all the membership benefits without any of the requirements. So when that won't happen, there will be some political upheaval.

[Zanza]

I doubt that. A lot of the benefits of the EU are hard to grasp as they are not that visible for the normal citizen (e.g. one set of regulation instead of 27) or are taken for granted (e.g. airline liberalization).

[grumbler]

I don't think the EU is saying they should screw over the UK though, are they?

I think they are saying that being in the EU should be beneficial. That seems obvious, otherwise why would anyone be in it.

Therefore, leaving the EU ought to be harmful, otherwise it makes no sense to be in it - therefore, whatever dal is made with the UK, there should not be any attempt to make any accommodation with the UK that would allow them to lessen that pain, say by arranging to get some or any of the benefits without membership.

I disagree.  Leaving the EU should not be harmful.  It should simply be a rational decision that the long-term costs of membership exceed the long-term benefits, for that particular member.  The EU shouldn't care whether or not they are "lessening the pain" or whatever.  The deal with the UK should be exactly the deal struck (ignoring transitional costs) as it would have been had the UK never been a member of the EU.

This should purely be a marginal cost/marginal utility analysis.  Sunk costs should be ignored, as always.

[grumbler]

Indeed.

It is worth pointing out that the Leave campaign however operated with the public assumption of keeping all the membership benefits without any of the requirements. So when that won't happen, there will be some political upheaval.

It is worth pointing out that your conclusion isn't supported by the evidence, and that others could see that, while each side emphasized the evidence that seemed to support their preferred outcome, neither side was as black and white as you personally seem to believe.

[Tamas]

[garbon]

In this instance, I don't think that grumbler is being pedantic - though maybe slightly dickish.

I'd say any upheaval would be more the result of voters who thought better things would happen for the UK and are going to realise that didn't happen. I'm not sure how many will actually come to that realisation though.

[Zanza]

The deal with the UK should be exactly the deal struck (ignoring transitional costs) as it would have been had the UK never been a member of the EU.

This should purely be a marginal cost/marginal utility analysis.  Sunk costs should be ignored, as always.

If the he EU was just a treaty between states, I would agree with you.

But it is more than that, namely a political entity that has given and guaranteed certain individual rights to its citizens. There are currently a few million non-British EU citizens living in the UK. The "sunk cost" you are talking about are the very life choices of these people, among them our own Tamas.

As PM Fico of Slovakia said, the EU should not accept any deal that does not guarantee the rights of these citizens for perpetuity. As Theresa May has already hinted that she wants to bring exactly that to the table, the EU is right to draw a red line there. A pure marginal cost/utility analysis does not work if you have a conditio sine qua non, which these rights are in my opinion.

If the EU can no longer safeguard the rights of its citizens, it has truely lost its purpose.

[The Minsky Moment]

The EU looks like a bit of a bureaucratic monstronsity, but consider the alternative.  If there was no EU, all of its members would have to separately negotiate their own economic and political arrangements with one another.  The EU solves that problem with a single set of common rules.  Those rules aren't perfect - far from it - but they are a decent approximation to a "second best" solution and the benefit is that there is one set of rules to implement rather than (potentially) hundreds.  Another key feature is that the EU makes things a lot more convenient for non-members, for the same reason: that is why the US government was so anti-Brexit.  In short, the EU is a public good, with some of the value accruing outside of its own membership.

This public good quality can be a problem, however, in that it makes it easier or more attractive to leave.  The fact that there would still be an EU if the UK left made it easier to leave.  The UK now faces tough negotiations with the EU, but that is still far easier and more convenient than 27 separate sets of negotiations with 27 individual countries.  So the downside of leaving the EU is moderated by the fact that the EU is still there, providing virtual benefits to all non-members.  Of course of every country follows that logic, the EU and benefits it provides is destroyed. 

Hence there is a logic to making exit from the EU more difficult, although it's a logic that has to weighed against other political factors.