Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Richard Hakluyt]

The Taoiseach has said the government and the EU must prepare seriously for the prospect of a border poll

Interesting.

I'm for a unified Ireland, but are they ready for it? Could be a huge disaster.

[The Minsky Moment]

I read that Germany is the country in the world that has most of these arbitration rules in other countries through bilateral treaties. Which doesn't surprise me considering the high degree of dependency on international trade we have.

Also Germany as a traditionally high trade surplus country with worker shortage issues is likely to find itself more in the position of investing out, perhaps in places where the independence of the local court systems is less than assured.

Sovereignty is all fine and good in principle.  But one should always keep in mind the potential that in any given instance the Sovereign may be prone to act like a son of a bitch.

[Zanza]

Yeah, but those are banana republics not our fine and upstanding courts. 

From what I read, a lot of German companies are currently suing Spain in such forums of arbitration because they invested heavily into solar energy in Spain and then Spain cut the subsidies for that so their investments went sour.

[Sheilbh]

I can't really say why, but a democratic election where the minority just doesn't turn out and the majority vote 99-1 in favor of something seems to be a farce. Not sure how to address that though.

Agreed. It was done by the British government to give 'legitimacy' to the Unionist dominated Stormont Assembly at the time. But every Nationalist party and some of the (few) secularist parties opposed it as sectarian head-counting.

A piece from before the referendum on Northern Ireland:

Your EU referendum vote could change things forever in Northern Ireland
Brexit would have an impact across these isles – and could cause particular problems when it comes to the border between the Republic of Ireland and the North.

BY
STEPHANIE BOLAND

With all the tussles about immigration from mainland Europe, British commenters all too readily forget that there is another border, closer to home. And voters across the UK need to consider it as we head to the polls.

Belfast is a city which wears its past close to the surface, and the EU referendum has become part of a fraught landscape.

Walking through West Belfast last week, I was struck by the roads hung with Union Jacks and 1916 flags (no, not that 1916 - these flags mark the sacrifice of soldiers from the 36th Ulster Division in the Somme), and how many also featured Leave posters in residents' windows. A few streets away, on the Falls Road, the Irish tricolour and Irish-language murals were joined by signs urging voters to back Remain.

Polling in Northern Ireland over the last few days has shown support for Remain (although the gap is closing), particularly among Catholic voters. But what could the vote mean for the province?

The border between the North and the Republic

I've heard people joke, when talking about border controls, that the UK should have little problem as it's an island. Well, actually, it's not. One of the biggest concerns for Northern Ireland is what would happen to the border with the Republic if Brexit occurs. Suddenly it will become a land border between a non-EU and an EU country.

Last week – the same week I casually took a bus from Donegal Town over the border to Derry – David Cameron warned that border controls would have to be introduced.

"If we were to Leave, and, as the Leave campaigners want, make a big issue about our borders, then you've got a land border with Britain outside the European Union and the Republic of Ireland inside the EU.

"Therefore you can only either have new border controls between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, or, which I would regret hugely, you would have to have some sort of checks on people as they left Belfast or other parts of Northern Ireland to come to the rest of UK."


Both options would be controversial. The Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said that a new boundary within the island of Ireland would signify a return to "division, isolation and difference", with the potential to provide "an opportunity for others with malign agendas".

What would happen to the Good Friday Agreement?

Brendan Donnolly, a former MEP and senior research fellow at the LSE, recently penned a blog post explaining that "it is not by chance that in the Good Friday agreement... so much emphasis is laid on the membership of both the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in the European Union".

Funnily enough, the same people who don't trust Britain to administer the peace process would also be unhappy with the EU leaving that process. Donnolly writes:

"Nationalist sentiment in Ireland since 1973 has seen the sharing of British and Irish national sovereignty within the Union as an important softening of the bipolar choice between British and Irish dominion in Northern Ireland. A DUP-inspired option for the UK to leave the Union will be seen by many nationalists as a reconstruction of political and even physical barriers between the north and south of Ireland, which the Good Friday agreement was designed to reduce...

"The UK's continuing membership of the European Convention of Human Rights, which plays such an important part in the Good Friday agreement, is moreover guaranteed and reinforced by its membership of the EU. There are many in today's Conservative party who would wish to use British exit from the European Union as an opportunity to terminate British membership of the Convention. This would be an existential threat to the Good Friday agreement."

The question of a united Ireland rears its head

Of course, the campaign to remove Northern Ireland from British control has never really ceased. But Brexit would undoubtedly lend a renewed urgency to the question of whether the North should become part of the Republic.

Before the election, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said that the EU referendum must be met with "a seperate and binding one here in the North". More recently, he has said that Brexit would constitute "a democratic imperative to have a border poll", although he refused to comment on the possibility that border crossing points might become a target for dissidents.

The unravelling of peace

Aside from EU funding helping to regenerate Northern Ireland generally – they received almost £2.5bn of funding in the last EU funding round – the Union has also contributed to specific programs across the island, including specific peace initiatives.

Anyone who has spent much time in Belfast recently can't have missed the general geographical distribution of "Leave" and "Remain" posters. And within Stormont, the DUP have been campaigning for a Leave vote and Sinn Féin for Remain.

More generally, there are fears that the possible introduction of border checks could reignite an atmosphere of conflict and distrust, as former NI secretary Peter Mandelson recently warned.

A situation in which Northern Ireland, and particularly the nationalist communtiy, vote for Remain but Britain (or, more specifically, England) votes Leave could be disastrous for Anglo-Irish relations. And with marching season making July a tense month, the timing couldn't be worse.

I'm for a unified Ireland, but are they ready for it? Could be a huge disaster.

Same. He's not calling for a poll but saying it's a possibility that needs to be taken into account.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah, but those are banana republics not our fine and upstanding courts. 

From what I read, a lot of German companies are currently suing Spain in such forums of arbitration because they invested heavily into solar energy in Spain and then Spain cut the subsidies for that so their investments went sour.

Often in London I imagine. It's the most popular venue for arbitration followed by Paris and Hong Kong.

[The Larch]

Australia is quite popular for Spanish emigrants, for whatever reasons. It's one of the top non-European, non-Spanish speaking destinations.

Really? I haven't heard of anyone going there. I'd say that the top non-European, non Spanish speaking destination for recent inmigrants has been Brazil.

Forgot about Brazil :p

I have a few friends that have gone there. According to wikipedia it's the 20th overall and the 3rd non-Spanish, non-European.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigraci%C3%B3n_espa%C3%B1ola

It gets almost as many Spanish emigrants as Italy (which would be a more natural destination). So that's not too shabby.

EDIT: Might be a Catalan thing? Apparently it has the 7th highest number of registered Catalan communities according to our regional government.

Yeah, we know you're a bunch of hipsters that do things different than anybody else. 

Then again I'd bet a couple of beer rounds that a sizeable number of those Spaniards in South American countries are 2nd or 3rd generation and possibly have never even been to Spain.

[mongers]

You know, if we were to have a Languish cabinet, I'd vote for Sheilbh to be The official lobby correspondent.   

[The Larch]

EU referendum: youth turnout almost twice as high as first thought
About 64% of registered voters aged 18-24 went to polls, study reveals, but 90% of over-65s voted

The turnout among young people aged 18 to 24 in the EU referendum was almost double the level that has been widely reported since polling day, according to evidence compiled at the London School of Economics.

The new findings – based on detailed polling conducted since the referendum by Opinium, and analysed by Michael Bruter, professor of political science and European politics at the LSE, and his colleague, Dr Sarah Harrison – suggests the turnout was 64% among this age group.

It has been widely assumed since the referendum that the turnout among young people was around 36% – a figure that has allowed Brexit campaigners to say young people cannot claim that they were betrayed by older pro-Brexit voters, as almost two-thirds did not bother to vote.

Bruter and Harrison say the lower and wrong estimate was based on information released by Sky Data which relied on data compiled after last year's general election, which looked at the proportion within each generation who said they always vote.

The new, far higher, figures emerged after Opinium conducted post-referendum polling among 2,002 people that asked four questions about how and whether they voted. They asked whether people voted at polling stations or by post, whether they were registered but did not vote, and whether they were not registered at all.

The results found that 64% of those young people who were registered did vote, rising to 65% among 25-to-39-year-olds and 66% among those aged between 40 and 54. It increased to 74% among the 55-to-64 age group and 90% for those aged 65 and over. It is thought that more than 70% of young voters chose to remain in the EU.

In a report, Bruter and Harrison say: "The question of whether young people voted or not is politically important for two critical reasons. First, because there continues to be a significant proportion of younger voters who say that they are unhappy with the result of the referendum and want to be heard, and one of the key arguments that has been made in answer to them is that they should have bothered to vote if they cared that much. And, second, because the government chose not to give the right to vote to 16- and 17-year-olds in the referendum. It is fair to ask whether allowing them to vote could have changed the result of the referendum or not."

They say the assumption that a majority of young people who were registered did not bother to vote can be laid to rest. "While young people voted a little bit less than average, they were probably quite close to the national average (only 8% below according to our survey)."

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/09/young-people-referendum-turnout-brexit-twice-as-high

[The Brain]

Why the fuck would you give 16-17 year olds the right to vote?

[Richard Hakluyt]

Why the fuck would you give 16-17 year olds the right to vote?

The assumption is that they are more "progressive", in favour of protectionist trade blocs for example.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally on the, would May definitely win an election question, some polling from last week:

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, Labour is going to need to fix that to be even remotely competitive. I think  even Trump currently looks far better in polling.

[Monoriu]

When I studied there I found the education underwhelming despite supposedly studying at one of their finest universities. Agreed on the first two sentences though. Job prospects back then were excellent though. Tax burden is less than in Europe. I guess they don't offer HK civil service jobs though, which is apparently your measure for every job market.

I initially wanted to become an accountant.  Civil service wasn't even my target.  I only applied because they conducted interviews in Canada. 

My measure is more like "is there a reasonable chance for a 21 year old university graduate without experience or connections to get an office job?"  In Hong Kong, the answer is still yes.  My experience in Canada pointed to no. 

[Valmy]

Huh. This was no problem in Texas. Are offices particularly difficult points of entry in Canada?

[Monoriu]

Huh. This was no problem in Texas. Are offices particularly difficult points of entry in Canada?

The difference between Hong Kong and Canada was profound.

Canada: you are fresh out of college, never done *any* work, no internship experience at all, no references, your CV is empty, are you [expletive deleted] kidding me?  You are wasting my time.

Hong Kong: flew a civil service team to Vancouver to look for us, conducted talks, held exams and interviews, and gave me a job offer before I set foot in Hong Kong.