Absentia wrote:No Brexit is still the only sane option
I respectfully disagree on that point.
I have been thinking though, about the argument that we have to stay in the EU because it would be economically bad for the UK if we left. This is really the primary and only argument for remaining in the EU at this point. If you ask most reasonable people who support remain they won't pretend the EU is a perfect institution that doesn't need reform. The economic argument, dubbed "Project Fear" all too often, is the really central reason why we're told we should remain in the EU.
But we do things which are economically inefficient all the time. We do so because we as a society choose to, and because we think it's the right thing to do. We don't, for example, engage in slavery even though that is very economically efficient. We don't engage in the sale of arms to regimes we think will use them for repression (more or less). We don't purchase things which do not meet our quality standards even though lower quality products would be cheaper. We don't use child labour. And so on.
Framing leaving the EU as a purely economic decision is wrong because the EU itself aspires to be more than a simple economic union. Paring the decision to remain or leave back to economic terms alone misses the point: people want to leave because they don't want to have any further part in the EU superstate project and progress towards the ever closer union EU treaties demand. There's plenty of evidence that this opinion is not unique in Europe right now. At its heart the EU is a political organisation, and the question of whether to leave such an organisation is essentially a political one.
So then what is the problem with a political EU? The problem is that it lacks consent to govern the people it presumes to rule. Regardless of its parliament, whose members are elected in a remote way and play very little part in the day to day lives of people who elected them, the meat of the business of the EU is conducted by the commission, which is opaque and operates in a way that suggests it is on a different plane to the rest of the european governments. The way that it has handled the migrant crisis, the rebellious governments in Hungary and Poland, the budget in Italy and the Brexit negotiations has indicated that it is an increasingly remote and unrepresentative organisation which is determined to rule as technocrats over the whole of the EU regardless of their feelings on the matter. In their minds, and in our law, their rule takes precedent over our own (and that of other member states). To use an example Americans might resonate with, it's as though the individual states joined together and then someone tried to set up a federal government
with themselves at the head claiming to be able to override state law.
The problem with the EU as it is currently formulated is that it wishes to override the national sovereignty of the individual countries in Europe on the assumption that they are more able to handle the issues facing the continent than national governments are. In this assumption it has been shown to be wrong many times. In fact, policy decisions are increasingly informed by the desires of a group in one or some nations which are to the detriment of other ones, the CAP and CFP being two prime examples. Policy writ large doesn't work for a continent as diverse as Europe and it's reasonable to make a political argument that unitary government on national lines with strong solidarity and cooperation is far more preferable to large scale federal management of the whole of the current EU. It seems to be a principle that the wider a decision is cast, the less efficient overall it is, and I don't see why that doesn't apply to the EU in particular.
Leaving the EU now is a mess, because of reasons I have gone into before. Part of this is the EU desire to tie the UK into the union by an agreement which does not allow the UK to unilaterally decide to leave. This is characteristic of European politicians insisting on holding the keys to our government for us. It is a definite loss of freedom to be unable to decide within the British parliament whether to cease to participate in a political organisation that the people have (however narrowly) determined they do not wish to be a part of. However economically harmful it may be, it is not worth the loss of freedom that the EU has demanded to remain part of the union or tied to it in the invidious way Teresa May and Michel Barnier have brokered.
how Theresa May has managed to keep her job is beyond me
It is a very sad fact of British politics right now that there is nobody capable of stepping up and taking over. On any side of the house.