Independence referenda

[mtbc]

It may be that in a few months the UK will vote on the question of whether to remain in the EU. If David Cameron fails to negotiate strong national controls against immigration or welfare for immigrants then there is the prospect of a vote to leave. That would probably provoke another vote in Scotland about remaining in the UK, with the no votes boosted by those wishing to remain in the EU. It is plausible that Scotland will no longer be in both the UK and the EU.

I like the idea of being able to move to somewhere like France or Germany though it now looks less likely to ever happen. I would like my children to have some stability during their full-time education. Perturbations of the current situation could be a great inconvenience for me: my position at work is funded largely by UK and European Union sources and I have no reason to expect Scottish government funding to replace that so I may find either vote being for independence to be deleteriously life-changing.

While I am hardly an expert on European governance I am disappointed by having the distinct impression that many people don't know who their parliamentary representative is partly because it matters little as in practical terms the European Parliament is underpowered in comparison with the European Commission. I am also disappointed by the great diversity in how assiduously member states actually enforce European law. Voting for membership of the EU could unfortunately seem like an endorsement of the EU as it presently is. Though, not so badly as a vote for independence for Scotland from the UK could be interpreted as a feeling that the Scottish National Party should have their hands even more strongly on the Scottish levers of power.

A greater source of conflict is the sense that the European Union as it is is a mess: the member states are too strong and separate for the EU to live long and prosper. The Eurozone crisis and the Syrian refugee crisis have definitely been throwing some of the faultlines into sharp relief. If the cultural differences can tolerate it then I believe the EU would do better as a superstate with more fiscal and political integration to make it more like the USA than a free trade and visa area. The UK may be as a millstone impeding the EU in finding its way to that workable state.

So while I would like Scotland to remain in both the UK and the EU I wouldn't want that to be taken as support for the EU as currently realized and I wonder if the UK's influence isn't overall a bad thing for the EU.

Comments

[mindstalk]

I think that's a pretty static view. Ideally the question would be of moving power from the (sort of) democratic government of Westminster to a democratic EU government. Yes, the national level would lose power, and votes would be diluted, but in exchange you'd be a citizen in a greater polity, one better able to make decisions good for all Europeans.

So it wouldn't be a theft of public rights, it'd be moving and consolidating those rights at a higher level, hopefully with popular approval first.

Fundamentally it's whether you stick to seeing yourself as British, French, Polish first, or move to seeing yourselves as Europeans.

Of course, it'd help if the EU were more democratic and less a coalition of governments, but the fundamental problem seems to be that the citizens of European countries don't want to see themselves and each other as Europeans.

[gerald_duck]

It would be a theft of public rights. It is plain wrong to perform that kind of restructuring without a referendum.

I, a voter, have vested power in my MP. In due course, my MP must give that power back. It's not his to consolidate it to a higher level without my permission and a vote for him in a General Election is not permission. (Not that I voted for him, anyway.)

But now, because politicians have abused the public trust in that way, as and when there is a referendum, I will vote to leave the EU. I feel we're better off without an institution that has so little respect for the people of Europe that, when their plan for a European Constitution faltered in referenda, they decided to re-brand it as a "treaty" and cajole national governments into rubberstamping it without a plebiscite.

[mtbc]

You do raise an interesting point of where the threshold should be beyond which only a referendum should suffice. This makes me wonder about other treaty commitments that could be thought to bind HMG long-term.

It certainly doesn't help that, despite the UK apparently veering to being quite near voting to leave the EU, the EU seems to have continued to consistently behave as if they're trying to add straws to that camel's back: I can't quite tell if they want us to stay and realize they're saying and doing annoying things and are simply constrained to do so because of other political forces, or what.