Soundwave said:
The fact is the UK had a very, very sweet deal in the EU where they basically got all the benefits of it without many or even any of the downsides. They got to keep their own currency, they got free movement (over 1 million Brits reside elsewhere in Europe, millions more enjoy visa free travel; see those drunken British going on stag parties in Amsterdam and Prague), they got favorable trade deals, and they even were able to control their own borders, for example they admitted basically no refugees from Syria. They didn't have to pay much of anything to Greece.
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US citizens have visa free travel to EU, most of Latin American has visa free travel to EU, UAE has visa free travel to EU.
People want to ascribe too many things to the EU when that just isn't the case for many of them.
I get your broader point though, and it is legit enough, although re: trade the issue isn't so much tarriffs,
those are already low enough just thru WTO, the issue is more "equal treatment rules" re: non-tarriff barriers,
while UK largely was able to have it's own carve-outs in certain sectors, which rest of EU largely didn't like the fact of.
Think on it though: Turkey is currently member of EU customs union, without visa-free travel (that US/Latin America/etc DO have).
Clearly an independent UK pretty easily can still have AT LEAST as close of trade ties as Turkey has with EU, if not more.
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The only thing that will change now is they are going to basically get a worse deal from the EU, the EU cannot give them the same deal as before because it would encourage other countries to do the same. That and their economy is going to be under a large black cloud for a while because too many businesses are going to be weighed under by uncertainty.
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OK, although EU is also facing similar side effects, you can see EU finance markets taking bigger hit than UK already.
EU can't just say "we will let trade treaties lapse and you suffer trade embargo" when Airbus depends on UK, x1000 other companies.
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Also now the UK basically has no say in European policy at all, they've basically (stupidly IMO) locked themselves out of that. No one's going to listen to them now, they wanted this, well ok, now you can have it. You have basically no say in Europe going forward. A country like Bulgaria can have more say going forward in the future of Europe than big, proud Britain can.
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Sure, great, and the Baltics locked themselves out of a say in USSR, and America locked itself out of a say in the UK. Okay.
Point is, the democratic choice for sovereignty was made, and UK cares more about UK than about imposing it's will on EU.
Certainly an EU overtly hostile to democracy (when it doesn't go it's way) is not one open to influence of UK /people/. (or others)
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And they're likely to lose Scotland and possibly Northern Ireland too going forward, which effectively ends the UK basically as an entity.
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Sure, Scotland and NI may leave, that's that. Doesn't mean any more than that. NI is a sectarian colonial aberration to begin with, honestly.
