What the brexit? From the outside looking in

Full disclosure: As an American with all the nonsense that is going on in the USA, it’s kind of hilarious for me point at the UK and ask what-the-frick-frack is going on, but nonetheless, I’m going to take a stab at it, if only to invite conversation and gain some actual clarity.

The whole concept of brexit confuses me. No, really, it confuses me. Ignoring all the misinformation thrown about during the referendum, what I could glean from watching this hot mess unfold was that people were under some strange idea that their nation lacked sovereignty while working with the EU. Of course, I invite anyone who is better informed of these things to certainly chime in, but from my perspective it the relationship between the EU and the UK isn’t that much different than the one that is had in the USA with it’s federal and state level.

For those who aren’t familiar with how the US federal and state laws work, at the risk of oversimplifying: federal laws set the minimum standard and state laws can be stricter. The laws are proposed and voted on by representatives of all the states (though sometimes the President can give his own to be considered) and it is these representatives (see: congress) that has final say.

Again, with my limited understanding, the EU works more or less the same way. Representatives from the nations write and vote on laws to set the minimum standard by which all nations must comply – nations are still well within their rights to make their own laws that are more strict, but this is the bar that they must meet or exceed.

In short, the EU/federal level says you cannot have certain chemicals in your petrol (lead) and must meet certain safety standards (airbags, seat belts… etc.); UK/state level says not only can you not have lead in your petrol and need the those safety features, but your car must meet certain requirements for toxicity (such is/was the case with California). Again, that’s a very simplified comparison and isn’t exact.

So I’m confused. You voted for people to represent your interests in the EU, The UK has (or had, depending on how you want to look at it) a significant amount of influence within the EU in its own right, but you’re unhappy with the laws that have been made? You’re actually complaining about the laws that your own people voted on and/or wrote? That isn’t the EU’s fault, that’s your own. Excuse me for saying so, but that sounds a lot like someone being angry that they’re being told that they have to be held to the same standards as everyone else. What sort of privileged lives did you think you were entitled to have, exactly?

Honestly, I’m annoyed with the UK, people here have effectively disowned any responsibility for their own actions by pointing to some strange boogie-man on the outside and blaming that on the root of their problems (see: migrants and the EU on a whole). Much as I’m sure they’d love to see otherwise, I can’t foresee leaving the EU as being beneficial – if they want to do business within the EU, they’ll still have to conform to the laws and regulations for their goods. From my perspective as an armchair critic: ya’ll just voted to sit down and shut up about anything the EU says or does. Congratulations on silencing yourself.

As for the people who voted remain who are sitting there fuming: yes, I know it was by a slim margin, but what do you want me to say about it? It isn’t like there wasn’t a good turnout – a lot of people came out to vote. The only thing I can argue is that point about the misinformation that people were fed.

Let’s be honest here: I knew a BS statistic when I saw it back in 2016; how much do you want to insult the intelligence of your people? They knew what they were voting on lies: they just didn’t care. It’s called cognitive bias, they did studies on that.

Still, if you want to blame it on low intelligence, how about own up to the fact that, after factoring inflation, money spent on education in the UK has flat-lined since 2015? If you want them to be more intelligent, invest more in education – yes, I know, it’s rich coming from an American, even if I’m living here, but doesn’t make it less legit.

But that’s all done now, we’re in the soup and it’s getting hotter – what are we going to do about it? Much as people would love to think that Teresa May will step down, I just don’t see it happening and here’s why: she has proven herself to be stubborn to an extreme fault. She doesn’t seem to care in the slightest what anyone else thinks, she’s going to push whatever idea she has and she will die on that hill before she surrenders (metaphorically speaking). What makes me say that? She was the same way with the changes to immigration she imposed when she was in charge of it – people pointed out what was wrong with her ideas, but she plugged her ears and ignored them, wilfully doing whatever she wanted because she wanted to do it.

And she did the exact same thing by not having a bipartisan team established to negotiate with Brussels. Had she opted to have input from someone who wasn’t in her camp, she might well have gotten a deal that enough people could actually vote on to pass. Did she want a second option? Nope. She refused to even have another deal to consider on the table – as though that somehow made her’s more valid (hint: it doesn’t). So what is she doing now? She’s running down the clock. She’s going to keep pushing her stupid deal because Brussels has told her, effectively, that she’s made her own bed and she needs to sleep in it – they gave the UK a deal that they were assured that the UK wanted; a lack of foresight on her part does not constitute an emergency on theirs.

Is the EU going to hurt with a no-deal exit? Yes, yes it will. But not as much as the UK will and I’m pretty sure that all goodwill has been completely exhausted by the EU at this point; they don’t seem to mind getting scorched while watching the UK go up in flames of panic and discord. Frankly, I wouldn’t blame them.

But what’s going to happen? My uneducated guess is this: either the UK parliament will eventually pass Teresa May’s balls-up deal on brexit – probably on the day of the deadline – OR they will vote to kill that cut-off date to renegotiate, triggered by article 50. Both options have their pros and cons. I suspect Teresa will push for the deal until the end no matter what because she simply cannot accept that she’s made a massive miscalculation. Labour will keep pushing to have another vote of no-confidence and another election – which, I’ll be blunt, I don’t see that going very well for them. Unfortunately, Jeremy Corbyn can’t get his people to stop trying to stab him in the back and undermine basically everything he wants to do.

With luck, I’m kind of hoping that both parties fragment and one or two new parties are formed as a result: a Labour Socialist group and Conservative British Independence Party. Given how the lower-class is tired of being kicked, I suspect that the Labour Socialist group would amount traction very quickly in the grassroots and that, good people, is where change happens. But, again, that is my woefully optimistic outcome. It isn’t very likely – if only because both Labour and the Conservatives would fight tooth and nail within themselves to keep their large-party status.

I can’t account for anything more beyond that – my magic 8-ball keeps telling me “try again later,” which makes me wonder if Teresa May isn’t doing the same thing.