[KarlKemp]

The EU does not think of the UK in that way.

In fact it tends not to think of the UK at all, these days.

As to being "fair game": that's true, in the sense that the EU will place the interests of member states over those of the UK. That dynamic must be among the least surprising developments of history, considering it is both obvious and formed the core of every serious prediction in the run-up to Brexit.

There was plenty of swagger back in those days with fantasies of renewed UK superpower domineering the EU and extracting every concession it can think of. "Fantasy" because that's just not how it works if the other party makes up 60 % of your foreign trade, but you make up less than 10 % of theirs.

So here we are now, with the UK coming up with these harebrained schemes that feel like some party organized with the specific purpose of not inviting your ex.

[toper-centage]

The UK playing victim is the reason Brexit happened in the first place. No wonder their residents continue being brainwashed in that sense.

[gizajob]

Maybe many of the residents of the UK see the creepy undemocratic bureaucracy of the EU for what it is, and it's single-speed forward into the future federal state of Europe wasn't something they wanted to be a part of. This isn't brainwashing, but people feeling more need for control and action on a local level, not their national parliaments being subsumed and subverted by Brussels, and the diverse peoples of the continent being treated as if they were all one thing.

[dmitriid]

> creepy undemocratic bureaucracy of the EU

> need for control and action on a local level

Ah you mean that local control and democracy when the party with 13% of the votes gets 0.2% seats in the parliament", right? [1]

[1] Great CGP Grey video on the 2015 General Election in the UK: https://youtu.be/r9rGX91rq5I

[gizajob]

I haven't got time for a deep-dive into statistics or methods of representation right now, which clearly need improving. The fact of the matter is that more people in the UK voted to leave the EU than even bothered to vote in the election of EU representatives in the election before. The EU failed to make a case for the importance of its democratic process, and rested content in its level of power existing despite this failure to reach people with its electoral process, and 51% of the electorate of the UK saw fit to remove themselves from the EU when given the opportunity to. My main suprise was caused by the UK doing this probably some 15-20 years before it really became a pressing question, but it was a case of "now or never" and swathes of people in the UK decided they didn't want to be involved (all seemingly for an individual set of personal reasons that are hard to form any consensus toward).

[dmitriid]

> which clearly need improving.

Indeed, they do. So you really have no right to point fingers at "non-democratic EU bureaucracy" when at worst it's the same system as in the UK.

> The EU failed to make a case for the importance of its democratic process

You realise that the UK was in the EU? That it was one of its founding members? That the perceived failure to do anything about this process is shared by the UK as well?

[gizajob]

The UK wasn't a founding member of the EU, but I see your point. Regardless of the UK's role, I feel that many in the UK regard it's parliament as the highest authority in law- and decision-making. Any body resting higher than that is going to face difficulty when attempting to claim greater and greater control over laws, and running them from "far away" even if that far away place was Brussels. The UK also wasn't part of the Euro, and so one of the main benefits of EU membership and coherence was missing. There was also a general feeling amongst the working classes that the low-wage sector was being undermined by labour coming in freely from abroad, mainly eastern Europe, and this wasn't reciprocal, i.e. they couldn't go to eastern Europe, or basically anywhere else in Europe, and get the same benefit from doing so.

P.s. a broken and undemocratic or unrepresentative bureaucracy is not going to be solved or fixed by adding higher levels of beuraucracy.

[mike_hearn]

It's not the same system. In the EU the executive dominates the legislature because only the executive can initiate the process of changing the law. The executive in turn is controlled by one person who is not selected via any democratic process or in fact any documented process at all (nobody really knows why vDL was selected as current EU Commission head).

That's why when you read about EU law changes you so often read about negotiations between the Parliament and Commission. In the UK the executive branch implements the will of the legislative branch. In the EU the Parliament is often found implementing the will of the executive. Technically it's not a Parliament at all, due to this lack of the "right of initiation".

[KarlKemp]

yawn

[gizajob]

This doesn't seem like a harebrained scheme, but a challenging one of moving renewable energy from where it is abundant to where it is required. An example of a harebrained scheme would be Germany's reliance on Russian oil and gas.