[fenk85]

You are missing the point, Brexit was sold as a "Britania would rule the waves, Singapore on Thames selling into Europe, rah rah" to the public.

However that's not what happened as it was never realistic or possible, and now the 46% of UK goods exports that go to EU27 are in a very tough spot, thousands of businesses and jobs at risk, direct and indirect. Not to say anything of services which are of course not included in tarrif free trade deal UK now has.

anyways purpose of Brexit was not "sovereignity" or whatever other lies were told, the purpose was to distract from decades of mismanagement by political elites in what is a fundamentally undemoratic system (Monarchy with hereditary head of state, vs presidential republic, upper house made of lords vs elected senators, lower house composed of Etonian elites, no constitution, centralisation of power at expense of Scotland, Wales, N. England, well basically everywhere outside the M25)

[cyberpunk]

Meh, the Monarchy has no power it’s just a ceremonial position, and as for the lords yes the process of becoming one is not great (it is no longer hereditary however) but it actually is a bit useful these days and many in the upper house are genuinely experts on some aspects of policy and do provide some valuable input.

I don’t think you can really compare with the American system where you elect a de-facto king every 4 years...

[dane-pgp]

> Meh, the Monarchy has no power it’s just a ceremonial position

Even ignoring the secret veto that the Queen and Prince Charles continue to use against proposed legislation[0], the effect of the Monarchy (and the uncodified constitution) is that the Prime Minister of the day can effectively act as a monarch without the checks and balances that would exist in a republic.

> as for the lords yes the process of becoming one is not great (it is no longer hereditary however)

The House of Lords is the biggest parliamentary chamber of any democracy in the world (currently at 792 members), which is not a sign of how much expertise exists in it, but rather how easy it is for the government of the day to expand it with their cronies, who may then hardly ever turn up, except to vote to force through whatever legislation has passed in the Commons.

Also, it is incorrect to say it is "no longer hereditary" since there are, by law, 92 members who hold hereditary peerages.[1] Admittedly, the specific selection of these peers is subject to a vote (some elected by the House as a whole, though most are elected by only their fellow hereditary peers), but it is still an affront to democracy to have dozens of seats in a legislature which citizens are ineligible for due to their ancestry.

> I don’t think you can really compare with the American system where you elect a de-facto king every 4 years

You absolutely can compare it with the American system, and it compares badly, since the UK's de-facto king is elected only every 5 years, and they are chosen not by the people, but by the MPs, who on average were voted for by 37% of eligible voters at the last election.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-roy...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords#Hereditary_peer...

[dastx]

> without the checks and balances that would exist in a republic.

As we've seen in the past 4 years, these checks and balances in a republic like the US can be completely invalidated without the relevant laws in place. Things like senate majority leader having the final say on what gets debated, or how a criminal trial is conducted (e.g. during Trump's impeachment).

Neither our current system works properly, nor does the US system, and I'm willing to bet this two party system is the bigger issue rather than having a monarch whose power is mostly ceremonial.

I will say, I was unaware of the what was layed out in the guardian article. I'd be curious how much this had happened since 2013.

[throw0101a]

> without the checks and balances that would exist in a republic.

The much vaunted checks and balances may have come to one dude in Michigan upholding democracy:

> The monstrous pressure that descended upon Van Langevelde is not easy to convey. He was one of two Republicans on the four-person board of state canvassers. Trump needed them both to sabotage the certification, and one had already signed on. State and national party leaders were broadcasting lies about fraud. The president and a parade of prominent Republicans had sent the message that Van Langevelde must follow along. He ducked their calls. He went off the grid. Observers in Lansing expected him to resign.

> He did not. On the afternoon of November 23, Van Langevelde showed up, pen in hand, for a public hearing. All 83 county authorities reported valid election results. Van Langevelde leaned forward to toggle on his mike, pulling down his face mask to speak. “The board’s duty today is very clear,” he said calmly. “We have a duty to certify this election based on the returns.”

[…]

> If Trump had suborned just that one man, Van Langevelde, the Michigan certification would have failed and the Republican legislature would have had an excuse to meddle. Van Langevelde was not a prominent party member—his day job was deputy counsel to the state House Republican Caucus—but he was thought to be a reliable one. All he really had to do was abstain, and the board would have been unable to certify the results.

* https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/how-clo...

See also Georgia:

> “If Brian Kemp had agreed to be completely lawless, he could have called in the state legislature and they could have tried to appoint a different slate of electors,” Richard Hasen, an election-law expert at UC Irvine, told me. “He could have refused to sign the certificate of the electors. I’ve never thought of Kemp as a voting-rights hero … but he was a hero here, stood up to tremendous pressure given the hold that Trump has over the Republican Party right now.”

* Ibid

I won't claim that a Westminster system is better, but I'm not sure how the US is something to use as an example (there may be theoretical ways it is better, but the implementation seems to suck).

[dan-robertson]

Yeah I really don’t understand the American comparison in this case. The monarch is unelected but basically powerless while in America the president wields the kinds of powers that the U.K. has removed from the monarch since the US was founded. And while the House of Lords suffers from a lot of issues (eg nominating party donors or stuffing the house,) they are far more constitutionally limited than the us senate which means we don’t get the kind of gridlock and inability to pass legislation that the US has.

[emteycz]

I don't think they're arguing against monarchy because of the ceremonial ruler. The problem seems to lie within the Prime Minister who essentially replaced the king. It's no longer hereditary, but the position seems to have very absolute powers and just a few checks/balances. That level of power is impossible to gather in European republics, they don't view the prime minister as a ruler, it's merely a manager of ministers who are each focused on managing one aspect of the state, also with very limited power, and each minister has a non-political counterpart who's actually in charge of running the ministry itself according to law.

[lotsofpulp]

How is the US president a king? Without the legislature, they can’t get any laws passed, and not even appoint people to important positions in the government. Both of the last 2 presidents were severely handicapped once they lost their party’s control of the legislature 2 years after being elected.

[cyberpunk]

Don’t executive orders bypass all of that? Isn’t that absolute power?

[skywhopper]

No, executive orders can only function in areas where Congress has delegated control to the Executive branch but not to a specific body. ie, setting details of employment policy for the federal government, or setting priorities for prosecution of crimes, or making decisions about how administrative policies happen. But the President can’t provision new funds, raise taxes, make decisions that have specific bodies set up for a regulatory purpose (FCC, SEC, Federal Reserve). A lot of what recent Presidents have done with executive orders could be rolled back by Congress if they chose.

[lotsofpulp]

No, they do not bypass all of it, or even much of it. Their limits are being stretched, and courts may decide that they’re being used improperly, but I don’t know of any big legal changes enacted by executive order.

But a president just tried to use all of the power in the executive branch to overturn an election. And he didn’t even come close. That doesn’t seem very king like to me.

[wil421]

No they can only issue things related to a law passed by Congress or a power granted to the executive branch by the Constitution. The Judicial branch can invalidate them.

[Symbiote]

Also the presidential pardons.

[lotsofpulp]

That is a huge power, but a president’s pardons are limited to federal crimes. State level charges still apply, and that doesn’t seem very king like. I also forgot to mention the previous president is about to go on trial in Congress starting Monday. Also far from what I would expect of a king.

A couple of US websites even banned the previous president while he was president, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

[matthewheath]

> no constitution

We don't have a codified constitution, but we still have one; it's just made up of various written laws and unwritten things like conventions.

I agree that the system isn't particularly democratic though: the executive (Government) can pretty much do what it wants when it has a majority in the Commons and the relevant promises in its manifesto (to bypass the Salisbury Convention in the Lords).

[tremon]

anyways purpose of Brexit was not "sovereignity" or whatever other lies were told, the purpose was to distract from decades of mismanagement by political elites

No, that's missing the point too. The purpose of Brexit was very much sovereignty for the political elites. The entire point of Brexit was that the policital elites were ceding too much power to Brussels and they explicitly campaigned to "take back control". The Monarchy doesn't enter into it, they'd ceded their political power to the elites centuries ago.

[JeanMarcS]

Let's not forget artists that are also hit roughtly by Brexit.

A good text by Fish "How Brexit Has Destroyed UK Artists’ Ability To Tour In The EU" [0]

[0] https://www.facebook.com/derek.dick/posts/10157827728953587

[LatteLazy]

Brexit was sold to different people as different things. You're right for some people but you're missing a much bigger voter block: the lazy and jealous.

A shit tonne of brits haven't done much with their lives. They've just sat and grumbled that their job doesn't pay enough (while refusing to work harder or change employer or get a qualification).

At the same time, for the last 30 years anyone who worked hard, invested, got skills, started businesses etc has been rewarded.

The first group are really upset they're being left out. That's why you get all this talk about mysterious "elites".

The first group voted for brexit to fuck with people just trying to get on. They're actually very pleased that those companies are struggling and their workers are suffering. The first group would never have started a small business exporting to the EU. They'd have stayed in the pub moaning over stale lager.

This is result (and many more to come) is exactly what many brexiteers wanted and voted for: a fuck you for trying hard.

[agd]

To suggest that inequality is due to people being lazy is not supported by the facts. Opportunity is not equally distributed and there’s a reason many people felt left behind.

[makomk]

Not only that, the fact that some of these people don't have jobs is directly related to the things that were removed by Brexit and that "fuck with people just trying to get on". For example, the top comment on the other Brexit-related article on the HN front page right now is about how logistics companies are pulling out of the UK because it's just too much hassle and gave this as one reason:

"For those who believe the market will fix it: Well paid drivers no longer exist. The last time he has seen a local work as truck driver was in mid-2000 and meanwhile salaries have dropped to ~€700 and less therefore only some Eastern Europeans can justify that working as a driver still makes sense for them. There is not much wiggle room left in terms of just paying better salaries - even smaller freight-forwarders are asking themselves whether it continues to go there (at least for now)."

Think about that. A job which used to pay enough for British people to live on had its pay driven down so much by EU rules that the only people who can afford to do it are Eastern Europeans living in countries with much lower cost of living. (More specifically, by the requirement that people living in those low-CoL states and with licenses issued by them be able to compete freely with local drivers for deliveries.) In this case, the Brexit-related change that's fucking with businesses is literally the removal of the direct, casual reason why some people are unemployed in Britain - and the response has been to insist that it didn't happen, that those people were just brainwashed into thinking the EU was the reason they didn't have work.

(The Eastern European countries with lower cost of living don't seem to be doing all that well in many ways either after joining the EU, which is probably partly why they continue to have such low cost of living in the first place.)

[LatteLazy]

I didn't say inequality is due to people being lazy. It's not.

Nor did I say equality was equally distributed. It's not.

I just said a significant number of people CHOOSE (chose) not to take whatever opportunities they were presented with. Now they're upset because the world where you sit in 1 job for 50 year, get a pay rise every year, don't have to worry about anything, and get a nice house and to retire early is long dead.

Some of the most deprived places in the country voted to stay in (London) because they choose opportunity. Plenty of well off rural areas voted out because people their don't like others succeeding.

That's the great irony here. The people with the least opportunity and the ones at the worst part of the inequality problem mostly want opportunity. It's the ones further up the curve that are standing on the hose. Those who insist they're middle class but are really just workers who inherited a bit of cash or got a free council house.

[radicalbyte]

The North of England has suffered from generational lack of investment. If you follow the UK elections, there was a big fall of the "red wall", which put the Tories in power. That "red wall" are all areas which have been totally abandoned by the UK Government for the last 30+ years.

For these people, the "elites" are people in the South East: people in Greater London who have benefited from enormous investment - the investment which should have been spread out more fairly.

Because these areas have seen a lack of investment, they are cheap to live in. They also see a lot of Polish/Romanian/Hungarian immigrants who are doing seasonal / tough work (because it's cheap).

So if you're going to get **d anyway, why not take some of those smug **s down with you?

* Even TheGuardian are a great example of this horrible LONDON focus.

[jlokier]

> That "red wall" are all areas which have been totally abandoned by the UK Government for the last 30+ years

Ironically, in some of the poorer areas there's been a fair amount of investment by the EU (via local development grants). You can see it: There are signs on various local features and buildings saying supported an EU grant, with an EU symbol.

That EU funding in poorer areas is now going away, to be replaced by what?

The UK gov't promised it would make up for the lost funding, but I honestly don't believe them, because it could have done so before and did not.

[LatteLazy]

So now we're right done here in the depths of grievance politics. That's where I thought we'd get to. That's what I was talking about above.

Let me surprise you: I don't really disagree about the North getting a rough time. I'd argue about some definitions and whether that excuses crashing the rest of the country in revenge. But whatever.

Here is the thing though: why do you think that makes you special?

I am in Dagenham in East London. We were dock workers. Then the docks shut or went containerized and electric so there were no jobs and a lot of poverty.

Westminster, less than 50 miles away did nothing for us.

Ford came and opened a plant here because we were willing to work. They became the major employer.

Then they shut.

Central government again did nothing for us.

So we went up into London, got jobs in insurance. We had to start at the bottom. We had to spend a lot of money and time on overpriced trains. We had to retrain, office work is nothing like assembly lines.

Tell me I'm wrong.

When a load of that offshored, we jumped to finance.

Right now, they're building crossrail near me. The first investment we've had in a century.

I don't doubt the North has had it hard. But so had the South. I agree Westminster is a bunch of toffs with no interest in the lives of real people. But I'm as much of a real person as you.

The only difference here is we know no White Knight is coming to save us. Given the last 1000 years of history, I don't know why the North keeps thinking that the likes of Boris and Farage are "on their side". It's especially amazing to me that you call me and elite (first person in my family to go to uni, born and raised in one of Europe's most deprived areas, no inheritance coming for me) and not them?

Your comment on immigrants underlines my point: immigrants getting on and working hard is exactly the sort of thing people who don't want to get on and work hard find maddening.

Are you now ready to go to those fields and do that work? Or will you continue waiting for Westminster to save you?

I've been quite blunt with you here. Its not because I don't like you. It's not because I think I'll win something. Its because this is where we are. Whether I like it or not, we're in this together now. The North, like everyone else, will need to get on and go. If you don't think the North got the investment it needed before, it won't get it now, so there is no point waiting. Its go time.

This is the horrible truth that Farage and Bojo will never speak aloud. They'll keep lying and telling you it's the Europeans, the immigrants, the elite, the educated, the benefit claimants, and whoever else.

Now tell me I'm wrong.

[radicalbyte]

I'm not from the North. Grew up in Devon and lived in the South Midlands on the M4. Left the UK 15 years ago for somewhere better :)

The UK has - quite literally - decayed in that time. It's really sad visiting, seeing high streets gutted. Infrastructure dilapidated. So few young people. So many people in terrible shape. All signs of the economic disparity that the statistics showed.

The right have their modus operandi, they're the same everywhere. The two-party system in the UK (and US) enables the very worst of their behaviour because they're able to concentrate power more easily and have paths to minority rule.

I almost suspect that the Farage class of politicians are designed (and funded) to fill the gap which which would otherwise be filled by socially progressive populists. Someone to the left of Corbyn (who is center-left despite the media lies) but with charisma.

[notdang]

Just to chime in about immigrants, since I've seen them mentioned several times as hard working and willing to do so for little remuneration and you are suggesting that British people should be more like them.

I am from one of those countries that come and work in UK. The people that work in the fields for cheap, live in horrible conditions in UK, just to be able to send money to their families back home, their life is not in UK. That's not a role model for hardworking, these people are just desperate and would prefer to live a more normal, less hardworking life.

[foolmeonce]

I don't really see that. Working very hard in the UK pays very little, less than most second cities in the US, and it generally requires living in or near London with one of the highest costs in the world.

The general problem with the UK is that it has the expectations of being treated according to its legacy. It expects the world to keep throwing away money on financial services in London, because?! As part of the EU, if they switched to Euro, that could have made a little sense.

I think the US also spent the last two decades going into that legacy rut where it expects it can sell high priced information while becoming increasingly disconnected from the actual places information is used. The US is quite lucky to have had some industrial restart thanks to greater automation.

[LatteLazy]

People buy financial services because they're really really useful and important. I don't know why some don't see that. But no one is paying bankers trillions just because of our legacy.

I agree the uk and London are high cost. For the uk that won't change. For London, it's high cost and high wage. Maybe when the wages disappear the costs will fall. But I don't think that's what people want. At least not what they claim to want.

[foolmeonce]

Finance is important, a foreign national paying a premium for the inconvenience of services being conducted in London is a very old signal that is approaching worthless. It probably made a lot more sense when language barrier issues required a native English speaking intermediary.

The wages in the UK are embarrassing, I think your reference must be within the UK and maybe part of Europe? There is simply limited capacity and a lot of old legacy things competing to occupy London. Plenty of east coast US cities are similar. Not enough going on, but insufficient housing stock. Rents take too much of the profits and are driven up by older businesses owning things they could not afford to rent at the market price on their income.

[LatteLazy]

I'm not following your point on finance, surely people paying a premium (either cash or inconvenience) for London shows London is either the only supplier or a very high quality one? Otherwise why not buy local?

[foolmeonce]

> Otherwise why not buy local?

Yes, why not? Reasons like expertise on EU investments in English were already an eroding advantage. Many finance groups were already reducing the portion of their staff there and are now moving more of their staff to offices in the EU.

(The UK was in a tough spot because it wouldn't commit to the EU. The fix was to make a worse choice, the UK is too small and too dependent on eroding advantages to maintain what it had.)

[mrlonglong]

I'm pretty angry with the first group for doing this to the country. I've had to get an EU passport as it was vital to keeping my domains as a consequence. I shall keep fighting until the day the UK reconnects.

[LatteLazy]

Agreed. I think we're both in for a long "winter" until brexit voters basically die out.

[mrlonglong]

Scotland is quite likely to leave the UK and join the EU. Hoping that happens within my life time

[iamacyborg]

There are plenty of Brexit voters in their 20's and 30's. You'll be waiting a long time.

[LatteLazy]

They're really aren't.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36616028

A nice fat majoring of people under 45 voted Remain.

Edit: and that was when the bore happened, so that's not basically everyone under 50...

[Semaphor]

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2016/0...

A majority, sure. But that’s still 29% (or 27% with your source) of 18-24 year olds. That is certainly what I’d call "plenty"

[brigandish]

Where is the evidence for these two groups and the behaviour you describe? Anecdotally, my experience is quite dissimilar, so I'd be interested to know.

[Tarq0n]

You should read up on Dutch disease and how that might affect a country with a large financial industry and a highly regarded currency.

[LatteLazy]

Oh, I know only too well!

If only we'd stayed in, we could have joined the euro and fixed that issue.

As it is, places will have to compete or we'll need a second currency?

[iamacyborg]

> A shit tonne of brits haven't done much with their lives. They've just sat and grumbled that their job doesn't pay enough (while refusing to work harder or change employer or get a qualification).

This is neither fair nor accurate, and is the same kind of thinking that people attributed to Trump supporters in 2016. The reality is there are whole areas of the country that feel unsupported by their government.

Jobs they held have been offshored as a result of globalalisation and deepening income inequality ensures that they receive smaller and smaller shares of the pie, despite worker productivity vastly increasing.

[pwm]

Do you think brexit will solve this?

[iamacyborg]

Not at all. I think politicians exploited the plight of workers.

[bassman9000]

Monarchy is a red herring. You'll find monarchies between top adjusted HDI and other indicators (like democracy quality) indexes.

Monarchy tends also to be cheaper than presidential offices, in countries with president/prime minister (UK may be an exception).

edit: grammar