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Comment by dnautics | Hacker News Reader

The assumption here is that the Brexit will be bad for the UK. What if it winds up being good for the UK? The EU has had some serious near-meltdowns. In particular the issue with Greek bailouts and the conflict with germany comes to mind. Why would you want to be part of an organization where you could wind up being the next germany - let alone an organization where there's a structure where 1) such an irresponsible mismanagement of funds is not firewalled and 2) a tax compliant region (like the UK or Germany) has to pay for the sins of a country where paying taxes is a joke?

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The fact that young voters overwhelmingly decided they wanted to stay in has nothing to do with whether or not it's a good thing - it's merely a statement that, as usual for this country, young voters seem to be at odds with everyone else.

There's a huge generational gap - probably larger than that in the US even. Many younger voters are far further left than the country as a whole, and concepts like equality, human rights and social justice are a huge part of our politics.

There's a strong belief that the reasons for leaving the EU are, aside from kicking the Polish out, to start attacking the human rights, equality, worker protection, and welfare laws and procedures that were only implemented because we were forced to.

First sentence in the article: "Younger voters will be the losers from today's historic vote to leave the EU after polls repeatedly showed they back Remain" (emphasis mine)

Yes, younger voters lost. That's quite clear. We didn't get what we voted for. And thus we have no control over our future.

Additionally, leaving the EU, if we're correct in our beliefs, damages our country far more than any economic crisis would. An economic crisis means people have less to spend, and might struggle to find work for a few years. A change in how our country approaches various things that we consider to be rights? That could have effects lasting the next 50 years.

I'm just going to say while clearly there is a problem with a small but not insignificant minority of racists hijacking political agendas in the UK (but what country doesn't have that) - I don't see how being a part of the EU has a realistically significant effect an agenda of "social justice". That's an awfully weak crutch you're leaning on.

Basically, as much as the Tories are attempting to dismantle as many of the systems that reduce inequality as possible, we currently have a strong body of law based primarily on EU Directives and ECHR judgements which provides a minimal amount of protection to some of the worst-off.[0]

Leaving the EU means that the former are now subject to direct attack, and the latter's meaning and intent might reasonably be bent to breaking point - people seem to conflate the EU and the European Council a lot, and that confusion may allow our Government to get away with a lot given that people will argue that they voted for less international oversight and more ability to decide for ourselves. Being part of the EU was a bit of a legal buffer.

[0] Particularly interesting to me personally, much all our trans-related law is heavily influenced by the EU (although in Scotland, our Government has taken transgender protections to heart, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland it's not quite so rosy).

Isn't the ECHR is distinct from the EU, I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think leaving the EU changes the UK's relationship with the ECHR (Iceland and Switzerland and Norway, which are not in the EU are in the ECHR).

Yes, technically - the ECHR uses the European Council as its enforcement arm. The European Council is separate from the EU. This isn't particularly widely understood, which is what's going to cause the issues - if people believe that they voted to be apart from the rest of Europe politically, the idea that we still have to adhere to judgements from a court that is not a part of the UK justice system is going to be unpalatable to many, whether they actually voted for that or not.

The result of that is going to be pressure on politicians to see how much the Government can get away with ignoring or only partially implementing ECHR judgements. Given that the only thing the European Council can actually do is put political pressure on us, it's possible that the Government might have a lot of leeway.

Additionally, both the Conservatives and UKIP agree on wanting to step away from the ECHR (and thus the European Council) entirely, with the Conservatives wanting to implement our own Bill of Rights to be implemented by British courts.

Southern european bailouts - Euro and EU are two separate things, although interconnected. The UK is not a part of the euro.

I don't see how trade tariffs (which the UK will now have to negotiate) will be a good thing for the UK.

you're right. the UK is not part of the Euro, but by continuing to be in the EU, they would have been shoehorned in, and it would have been more inevitable.

>I don't see how trade tariffs (which the UK will now have to negotiate) will be a good thing for the UK.

Just set up free trade zones. Unless the EU will be a bunch of un-self-intereseted dicks with a chip on their shoulder and for no other reason than spite exclude the UK from free trade networks.

the UK is not part of the Euro, but by continuing to be in the EU, they would have been shoehorned in, and it would have been more inevitable.

I see absolutely no evidence of that. There has been no indication, and recent EU negotiations indicate, that there was negligible chance of the UK ever joining the Euro.

ultimately both of our claims are not falsifiable.

> "The UK is not a part of the euro."

Turns out that, with regards to the Southern European bailouts, that didn't matter. Even with a deal in place to protect against being part of bailouts, the UK was still asked to pay £850 million towards the last Greek bailout.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/15/european-co...

The UK would have been protected against Euro bailouts in the future

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36456277

The UK already had such a deal before the last round of bailouts, didn't stop the EU from going back on their word...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11737286/EU-dem...

"Britain will be liable for close to £1 billion of emergency loans to Greece, it can be revealed, after Jean-Claude Juncker tore up a “black and white” deal to protect UK taxpayers from Eurozone bailouts."

"Britain pays around 14 per cent of the EU budget – meaning that lending Greece 8.6 billion euros would leave UK taxpayers exposed to the tune of around £850 million. The risk of default is high. Yet Mr Cameron secured a binding written agreement with his counterparts at a Brussels summit in December 2010, explicitly prohibiting such a deal. In exchange for British consent to treaty change to create the ESM, the text of the deal stated that the EFSM would not be used again to bailout Eurozone members."

It might end up being good for the UK, but to be honest no-one knows, and it'll probably take at least 5 years to get back to some level of stability, and then another 5 before the effects really show themselves.

The UK isn't a member of the eurozone.

How's the pound doing? How's the FTSE 100? How's the FTSE 250?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/24/ftse-100-an...

https://www.google.com/search?site=&source=hp&q=ftse+250

Markets are not generally logical, but definitely not in the short term. Currently they're running high on emotion. We shall see.

>How's the FTSE 100?

It's up 9% from where it was in February of this year. Surely the immediate market reaction to a huge political change is not a good indicator of anything.

The FTSE is now trading above its pre-brexit levels.

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