We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Thought of the day… It is quite possible the REMAIN side will win the vote regarding the UK’s membership of the sclerotic regulatory suicide club called the EU. This would be a horrendous outcome in my view, but there is something to keep in mind. The EU will be rocked by crisis in the future, that is a certainly, because it is intrinsically unstable. And that means even if the UK is still an EU member when that happens, the LEAVE/REMAIN vote can also happen again.
They have to win every single time.
We only have to win once.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Except that winnng once, even this once, changes nothing. The only consequences that follow from ‘Leave’ prevailing are political, there is no mechanism to extract the UK from the EU in the Act providing for the referendum, the outcome is not binding on anyone, nor is it even ‘advisory‘.
Parliament would have to pass an Act to leave, which poses many problems: MPs obstructing, the Lords obstructing, and a ‘Human Rights’ challenge, and then an EU law compatibility challenge to the decision to leave, a crisis or two, a ‘changed landscape’ and many reasons to drag feet.
No I think that is not true at all. There is simply no way Parliament would *not* to pass an Act to leave, the pressure would simply be too overwhelming.
I would like to be wrong Perry, but what is there to stop mischief, a few ‘Tory’ rebels, an opportunist Labour Party, the SNP, the Ulster crowd bar the DUP all sticking it to the government?
And then another ‘Factortame‘ judicial coup were an Act passed, if it were ‘incompatible’ with EU or ‘Human Rights’ law to leave?
I’m with Mr Ed on this (and of course Peter Hitchens). The key step in putting distance between the referendum and actually repealing ECA 72 is another general election – if it produces a government of inners then its own democratic mandate can be claimed to have priority over the older referendum mandate, and even if Lisbon Art 50 has been invoked by HMG there’s nobody to enforce this if HMG has changed its mind and EU still fancies keeping UK. It doesn’t take a great number of last ditch inners to paralyse progress to Brexit, but of course this is one of the scenarios that splits the Tory party, Corn Laws style. Voting Leave would certainly be better box office.
Well we will see. Maybe.
“We only have to win once.”
No, no, a thousand times no. The fight against collectivism will NEVER end. To believe it will end is as silly as the commies believing that they could change humans into New Soviet Man.
We are hairless monkeys with an itch for trouble and fighting and a taste for gin and bad women. That won’t change any time soon and if it did I would hate it.
The true object is to fight the good fight, enjoy the occasional small victories and not to lose heart at the defeats.
I was not making a wider point. This is not about the fight against collectivism, it is about the fight to get the UK out of the EU. I am talking about a very specific battle… a campaign even… but I’m not talking about the whole war.
There are 14 Federal Politicians under close protection by the Federal Police in Astraya.
Get the fu☆city out out the EU. Save. Yourself! Avoid the TPP. We need our special Anglo-American alliance to save Europe and the West.
If Remain win it will be a temporary victory. As the EU ossifies and is unable to react to world events it will shed members over the next ten years regardless, probably without those members going through any formal process other than the relevant governments saying “Right, that’s it. F*ck this for a game of soldiers, we’re off’.
I can’t see Britain not doing the same once the process starts. Failure of the system will be that obvious.
If the leave camp win and the government refuse to abide by the result, what will that do to the chances for UKIP in the following GE? I would expect there to be an awful lot of very pissed off leave voters voting for them.
The E.U. is turning into a circus of dead bouncing cats much like the present Democratic Party in America where Sanders versus Clinton is turning into a circus.
The EU will face endless crises but there is the danger – not the certainty but the very real danger – that each crisis will normalise the next one. Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France”) has wise words on this. So does more recent history: Russia went through many a crisis in the 20s and 30s, each one making the next more possible and less surprising than it would have been earlier.
The good news is that the reverse is also true. Victory in the Brexit vote will normalise some things that are now in the “unthinkable, ever-closer union is irreversible, you can’t say that” category. Even moving the discussion on to “you can’t do that” is an advance, and when the sayers are Eurocrats, the reply, “Er, we just did” is still a viable reply. Ever-closer union has not yet reached the point of practicable external enforcement on the UK at least, and the upcoming crises that Perry mentions will ensure the EU has very little time to spare on trying.
More generally, I’m all for not believing that 2+2=5 simply because a vote or a an activist court says it does. When the claim is that 2+2=42.424242 then the motive to ‘remain’ a dissenter / to ‘leave’ the ‘new consensus’ is if possible still greater. 🙂
Meanwhile, I see no reason for despair, or to let doubts cause any slackening of the (alas, already fairly feeble in my case) effort that anyone is putting in.
It’s true that there will be huge pressure to leave the EU if the ‘Leave’ vote wins… but don’t expect the Establishment to just meekly roll over and make it happen. They will pull out every trick to try to stop it. Look at how Cameron and Osborne are happy to do great damage to the Conservative party in order to keep us in.
(On that matter, is there really any doubt left now that everything the libertarian blogosphere has been saying about those scumbag chancers Cameron and Osborne for years is true?)
“We only have to win once.”
This is true of anything that changes the status quo, given the existence of status quo bias.
I am pessimistic – even if Vote Leave played their hand perfectly, at best a narrow victory could be hoped for. As it is, they are making a hash of things.
Best thing to come out of this is likely to be Cameron’s removal as leader of the Tory party. Hard to see how he can continue with half of his MPs hopping mad about his betrayal (and that is what it is; plain as day for all to see). Furthermore, Boris will at this point have nothing to lose, unless Cameron buys him off with a senior ministerial post. Thinking about it, that is perhaps the most likely outcome.
The future economics of the EU is one of the most interesting aspect. It’s likely that in the future the UK will be largest economy in the EU. That will change the whole nature of the EU. It’s hard to predict exactly how though.
I am pretty resigned to Leave losing the referendum in June.
Even if Leave won, I doubt we would actually leave. Instead, the Foreign Office would spend a few years negotiating the most horrendous, politically unacceptable “trade treaty” they could possibly dream up (FCO officials being the most passionate Europhiles in the land), and then there would be a new referendum “The first vote was just a question in principle. Now that we can see what the actual proposal is, do you still want to go ahead” – with every sinew strained to persuade the public to reverse itself.
But Remain will very probably win, and possibly convincingly.
It is very important that the outcome is close. If the vote is a fifteen point margin or more, the media will declare the result “settled”, and agitating for another vote during a future crisis will be characterised once again as “unthinkable” and “extremist” and, this time, “undemocratic”.
But if the margin of separation is under ten points, the media will fret about a “Neverendum”. And that is practically to concede defeat; it is to admit that the pressure to leave will never let up until we regain our national independence. All talk of “Neverendum” (even in fear or horror) is essentially to agree with Perry, that we only need to win this vote once and until we do can keep on demanding it be repeated.
An optimistic and accurate post Perry.
Thank you for writing it.