New York Times

[Behemoth]

Simples! 

[Wilfrid]

No can do.

[Sneakeater]

I don't know why it took them more than 70 years to decide the Schleswig-Holstein Question.

 

I mean, come on, decide:  Denmark or Germany?

[Sneakeater]

[double post]

[Sneakeater]

In case anyone genuinely doesn't understand why Brexit isn't simple:            https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/04/how-brexit-will-end

[Wilfrid]

As I have been explaining to anyone interested for months now, the constitutional jam over exit is caused by the fact that the referendum, randomly invented by PM Cameron, has no legal force. Parliament is sovereign, members are there to represent their constituents, not the “will of the people,” so you won’t get a Brexit until Parliament agrees; a fact underlined by BJ’s great wheeze of shutting Parliament down.

[Wilfrid]

Imagine a referendum in the US over, say, gun laws. The will of the people says, let’s do x, y, z.

 

Senate says, well no.

[Orik]

Wouldn't it be simpler, not to mention cheaper, to seek out some number of people who supported this idiocy and execute them by order of The Queen before holding another referendum?

[voyager]

If you doubt the influence of the press...  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/business/media/trump-subscription-new-york-times.html

[Behemoth]

Wouldn't it be simpler, not to mention cheaper, to seek out some number of people who supported this idiocy and execute them by order of The Queen before holding another referendum?

 

Referenda are simply an unacceptable form of governance -- and frankly an abdication of leadership -- when it comes to decisions that catastrophically punish one subset of the population for the perceived benefit of a small (or even large) majority. This is exactly why we have parliaments and (for better or worse) why the US senate is constructed as it is. 

[Orik]

I thought we had parliaments to make lobbying work more productive.

 

But I agree of course.

[Rich]

All of this is true, but the incessant back and forth is what makes it ludicrous. The British have never fully embraced the EU (never accepted the Euro over the Pound, etc...), always felt they were supporting "lazy" nations - their word not mine.

 

At the end someone, somewhere needs to have the courage and insight to make a decision. What makes this "not simple" is the total ineptitude of those seeking to put forward their own agenda.

 

That New Yorker article makes it appear as an impossible situation, which it's not. It's only impossible because the "leaders" can't or won't see the forest for the trees.

[Orik]

Right, if only they had the wisdom of North American leaders who have long ago formed a single federation, redrew and reduced the number of historical subdivisions ("states"), and allowed free immigration to fill up their giant swaths of empty land. 

[Rich]

LOL

[Sneakeater]

All of this is true, but the incessant back and forth is what makes it ludicrous. The British have never fully embraced the EU (never accepted the Euro over the Pound, etc...), always felt they were supporting "lazy" nations - their word not mine.

 

At the end someone, somewhere needs to have the courage and insight to make a decision. What makes this "not simple" is the total ineptitude of those seeking to put forward their own agenda.

 

That New Yorker article makes it appear as an impossible situation, which it's not. It's only impossible because the "leaders" can't or won't see the forest for the trees.

Denmark seems able to do this without any undo angst.

 

The problem is that David Cameron unwisely called for that referendum, and given the Irish border there’s no intelligent politically acceptable way to effectuate the result.

 

(Also the vision of post-EU Britain held by the faction whose propaganda caused that result is truly odious— and not what the Leavers were led to believe they were voting for.)