Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

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PaulDavisThe1st

What makes it even worse is that Cameron made a verbal committment to ensuring that ex-patriates gone for more than 15 years would be able to vote in the Brexit referendum, and did not make good on that promise.

Look, I left the UK 33 years ago, and am a dual citizen of the UK & US. I would never think of voting or in any way participating in regular UK politics - I left, my choice, that's over with.

But Brexit was different. It directly affected my rights as a citizen, to travel and work and live freely within the EU, and Cameron's fuck up and lies took that away from me (and my daughter) without my ability to vote on it.

I can't say for sure, but there are supposedly about 5.5M expat Brits. How many of them are over the 15 year limit for voting I don't know but I would guess that there are enough that it could have made a difference to the vote. I would also guess that an overwhelming of those (excluding the idiots on the Costa del Sol) would have voted against Brexit.

Not that this excuses false promises, but: why should expatriates who left a country decades ago get any say in pivotal decisions on its future? That seems like a really dumb idea.

> But Brexit was different. It directly affected my rights as a citizen

You got some nice free perks at no cost to yourself and are now sore that the people who had had a less lopsided exposure (i.e. needed to shoulder costs for benefits you could enjoy without downside) decided, rightly or wrongly, the costs (non-existent to you) were not worth the benefits. I can see how that would be annoying to you personally, and I will not attempt to defend anything else about Brexit, but generally few decision making processes are improved by voluntarily involving more free-riders.

> why should expatriates who left a country decades ago get any say in pivotal decisions on its future? That seems like a really dumb idea

We don't. If you have not resided there for 15 years or longer, you have no vote. And I'm totally fine with that, it makes sense to me, for a variety of reasons, including that I pay no taxes in the UK, and that to a large degree nothing that happens in the UK affects me directly (it does affect my family, but they all get their own vote).

However, most democracies have a general policy of not taking away the rights and priviledges of citizenship without giving those affected a vote to at least nominally affect the decision. I remain a UK citizen and could return there to reside at any time. It is precisely because (a) this is a pivotal decision about the future and (b) it was a decision that would change the status of anyone with UK citizenship, whether or not they resided there, that I felt that someone like myself should have been able to vote. So for example, had Brexit actually been a vote on some sort of reconfiguration of the relationship with the EU that ended up with UK citizens still having the same individual relationship with the EU (unlikely, but you can half imagine it, I think), again, I don't think that people like me should have been able to vote. But when you're going to strip millions of people with the right to permanently reside in the UK of their relationship with the EU, it seems democratic and fair to me that you give them some say.

And Cameron apparently felt that way too, or at least voiced that opinion during his final election campaign, but then didn't follow through (not really a surprise).

You should lose voting rights 12 months after you leave, which is when tax and residency starts being considered as "not" - I've said this before Brexit too,if you leave you lose all rights (including things like unemployment and healthcare)

I say this as an expat and a vote leave individual (flame away).

That's a ridiculously short time. If someone takes a position in another part of the world (perhaps behind the wheel of a large automobile), for a year or two, they could trivially find themselves coming back to a government they were unable to vote for, which will govern their lives for up to 4-5 years.

I'm not advocating for the rights of expats to be expanded, and I'd probably support some of them being shrunk somewhat, as a general rule.

I just think that a once-in-several-generational essentially constitutional vote is different, and that the normal rules (which I support) should be modified for such a thing.

There is a difference between being out of the country and making a choice to not be part of it, obviously it requires some degree of flexibility but you shouldn't be able to abandon the country and then expect benefits or any say in how it's run, same applies to any country.

The easy other point is people who haven't even stepped foot in the country in decades are dictating to people who still live there and drawing money away despite contributing very little when they did live there and absolutely nothing for the past 20 years in their hovel in Spain or whatever the current sufferer of British expats is.

> had Brexit actually been ...

Hindsight is 20/20; but this was Cameron's major oversight. The referendum should've been "more or less EU", not "yes or no EU".

He would've gotten a very strong mandate for less and the EU would've been forced to accommodate. (They wouldn't want to risk losing the UK.)

Alas.

This seems counterfactual. The EU was fine losing the UK. They may not have wanted it, but nobody broke down in tears over it.

The UK already had exceptional status on various rules - they were more a half-member than a full member. So clearly, the EU already cared enough to make exceptions. The Brexit vote was different: the UK government chose[1] to interpret its results as a requirement to leave the EU. That's not something an outsider can upend without interfering in the day-to-day governance of the state. And no member state wants the EU to interfere with its sovereignty on that level. So the only possible outcome was acceptance.

On the other hand, had Cameron gone to the EU with a 90% "less EU" mandate in hand, the EU would either have to accede or kick the UK out. Kicking out a member state... pfffft. I would guess it can be vetoed by any member state - or at least any other (not being kicked out) member state. And some would - their EU track record is such that they could be next.

Basically, the EU had no choice whilst respecting sovereignty of Member States. A less/more vote would have put the onus of kicking out a member on the EU, something I don't see the member states reaching a unanimous decision on. Which would leave negotiation.

The referendum was set up that way specifically because Cameron felt he couldn't lose such an "extreme" choice, and then when people voted for less EU - as they always do in every country - the question would be sufficiently vague that it could have been ignored. As it always is. The binary choice was really quite a stroke of luck because it made it impossible for the government to pretend the decision had been implemented when it hadn't been, despite obviously being desperate to do so.

As for the EU being "forced" to accommodate, that tactic was also tried. That was Cameron's pre-referendum negotiations. It was a total failure, he was rebuffed on everything and hardly talked about his supposedly great deal after he returned because it was clear to all that the EU had compromised on nothing. Both during the process and after it, the EU's position was always the same and boiled down to "we don't care what voters think, you obey entirely or quit and accept that we'll blank you from then on".

> The binary choice was really quite a stroke of luck because it made it impossible for the government to pretend the decision had been implemented when it hadn't been, despite obviously being desperate to do so.

I believe there was a referendum in Wales on more independence, with a stronger result (60+% in favor), which was basically ignored. (That is: much handwringing and discussion whether the mandate was clear enough). There was a link with Theresa May - she may have been in Welsh parliament.

Could be this one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Welsh_devolution_refere...

If that recollection is roughly correct, political implications of the Brexit result would be "whatever suits you best".

A reason in favour of expats voting is that they should have a say on things that affect their citizenship.

You can definitely argue how far that argument holds sway - after all, any government could change its citizenship rules for expats. But Brexit clearly was a different case than regular elections. The government was embarking upon a sea change for expats - changing the rules of the game while playing.

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