Comment by sentenza | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sentenza | Hacker News Reader

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You bring up an interesting point. I very often read that the UK joined for the single market but then afterwards the EU started taking away national sovereignty.

I don't quite understand how this view of things is possible.

From the very start, when the Coal and Steel Community was created in 1952, loss of national sovereignty was, to a certain degree, built into the system. The primary goal of European cooperation was to take away the ability of European nations to go to war with one another. Also remember the "de fact solidarity" that Robert Schuman spoke of in his famous declaration in 1950: With all the horrors of WW2 fresh in mind, nobody could expect the people of Europe to show solidarity for another, so the framework of Europe must be set up to generate a "de facto solidarity". The whole system should be set up in such a way that the people of Europe cannot _not_ show solidarity.

We learned this in school and it seems to be generally accepted by the general populace, at least in the "old" continental Western Europe. If you ask older Germans or French about European integration, they will talk about avoiding war, not about the single market.

The only possible explanation I can come up with for the sentiment that the EU was "all about the single market" is that UK voters were horribly misled by their press and politicians at the time of EU accession. Is this plausible?

On a side note: I admit that what I wrote about hating Europe was harsh, but we (i.e., me and many others I've spoken to) do feel genuinely betrayed.

The problem is we're an ex-Imperialist island nation. That breeds a certain psyche of superiority and xenophobia that I think is very hard for us to shake off en-masse. I think there's a sense with the British that we brought 'civilisation' to a huge portion of the world, why do we need anybody else telling us what to do?

Even as children we're constantly fed war movies about the plucky Brits fighting against the evil Germans, so therefore most Brits hate Germans, and we've been at odds with the French forever. There are many English terms/phrases which are derogatory about the French. French kiss, French letter, French disease etc.

This is a very useful tool for the politician who wants to stir up a hornets nest of outrage or just shore up some votes by looking 'anti-Europe'. And it works.

Even myself -- someone who has friends in many European countries (Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Serbia, Romania, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Austria, Slovakia - just quickly off the top of my head!) -- get caught up in it.

It's pure xenophobia, and it's frankly disgusting. We don't have the English channel and the North Sea around us, we have a moat.

However.

There is always the argument for a greater say from the people of Europe. It certainly seems there is a huge bureaucracy with very little public oversight. And it seems incredibly inflexible. The impression many have is that they can't vote the bureaucrats out, and there's very little to stop them haemorrhaging money/rights/power.

In an era where we have the technology to bring democratic decision making closer to the individual, the EU definitely seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

(Then again, this could just be the years of 'conditioning' that make me think this!)

</waffle>

> we have a moat

I think this is a large part of why GB has a different relationship with Europe. In other European countries you can just jump in a car and drive almost anywhere else in Europe. For many people they can be in a couple of different countries in under an hour. Compare this to Gavin to book a flight or a ferry crossing, with the time and cost involved, and it's not too surprising that we're not as neighbourly as the other members of the EU.

There is a bullet train, the Eurostar, that puts London at 2h15 from Paris. It's quite expensive though, compared to a car ride. Anyway, I do not think that the Channel accounts for the peculiar relationship of the UK with Europe. Instead, it might have something to do with the relationship between the UK and the US, I believe. That is what is tinting the UK-Europe relation.

Which blows my mind, since I live in Texas where you can drive 10 hours in the same direction on the same road at freeway speeds, and still be an hour or two from reaching another state.

For whatever reason people have a very different relationship with travelling in their own car and via some other form of transport. The perceived cost of a trip seems to drop for a lot of people, both with regards to price and time. Perhaps less so in the millennial generation but in the preceeding generation there is a very strong association between owning a car and personal freedom.

Probably because owning a car means you can go anywhere your wallet ($ for gas) and time will allow you to go. Anywhere, any time, with very little hassle. Taxis come close to this, but only in and for (geographically) small areas/trips. Bicycles also come close. Other forms of transit are limited in terms of endpoints (*ports for planes/ferries, stations for trains/subways, stops for buses), time (dependent on the schedule), and may cost more.

Owning a car often gives you a lot of options you don't have without it.

Unless you live in NYC/similar.

In Europe 100 miles is a long distance, but in America 100 years is a long time.

Ireland, which is also an island, and even more cut off from the Continent, is less europhobic than UK.

Why do you think that is? I would have thought it's primarily because of the economic benefits that Ireland got after joining?

That's one aspect. There are lots of new motorways in Ireland (and many poor EU states) which are mostly financied by the EU. Ireland as a small country can't generate a big local market, free trade with the rest of Europe is good. Many liberal people support it because it's forced through a lot of liberal law changes. And, we're either align ourselves economically with Britain or Europe. Nothing like a bit of anti-British sentiment.

It's funny hearing the UK people complain about the "democratic deficit" in the EU. The UK voting system (of First Past the Post, single member constituencies and a party whip) is quite weird and appears undemocratic. I'm in Ireland with a party whip system, but Proportional Represetation and multiseat consultancies, so not being able to vote 1,2,3,… appears undemocratic to me.

"Unelected buerocrats"? You mean like the House of Lords which allows someone who wasn't elected to be a cabinet minister? (Lord Mandelson, Baroness Warsi, etc.)

"Haemorrhaging money"? Remember the UK MP expenses?

So ask yourself, is the UK Parliament more or less democratic than the EU?

Oh I totally agree with you. However I can vote for my MP, and I know who it is. I don't think anybody in the UK has any idea who represents them in Europe.

The problem with concentrating power is that you have fewer representatives representing more people, which breaks democracy outright. We should be looking to localise power where we can, give people responsibility and a say in their lot.

Europe should be a framework and an enabler, not a system for centralising as much power as possible. Do we really want a federal Europe? Absolute power corrupts.

Ah, but all of those are traditional! /s

"The only possible explanation I can come up with for the sentiment that the EU was "all about the single market" is that UK voters were horribly misled by their press and politicians at the time of EU accession. Is this plausible?"

This is the correct interpretation, at least as far as public polls over EU prove time and again in the UK.

If you actually combine the different responses to EU surveys, almost everyone in the UK across all factions of life, even today, mostly have interest in remaining in the EU solely for the common market, if that.

It is probably not helped by the fact that the most respected or even revered UK political leaders of the last 50 years, i.e. Churchhill and Thatcher, were extremely lukewarm about the EU project.

The difference compared to political attitudes of the public on the continent is very stark indeed.

Note. As for the European Convention on Human Rights opt-out, that is mostly a UK Conservative government/conservative media issue that they want to force through and they have had very little actual broader public debate or support. Of course, that does not mean that it will not go through eventually regardless, especially when "terrorism" is used to justify just about anything these days...

"the most respected or even revered UK political leaders of the last 50 years ... Thatcher"

Maybe in some quarters/communities. Definitely not revered or respected in some parts of the UK.

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