Should There be a Revote on Brexit?

[DavidB.]

Absolutely not. The British people voted to leave the EU. Sorry cosmopolitans, you lost and you don't get to have the nation vote on the same issue over and over again until they finally give you the answer you want.

[DavidB.]

A revote would mean that the cosmopolitan class will truly never take no for an answer and that the EU truly is Hotel California: you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. It would essentially mean that democracy in Britain is no more - not that it is presumably any better in other EU countries.

Of course, if this happens, God forbid, it would be mostly because of delusional Brexiteer fools in the Conservative party who think May's perfectly fine deal isn't good enough, who think the UK can just replace its EU trade relations with some Commonwealth countries that don't even produce what Britain needs.

[DavidB.]

I am not "confused", you simply disagree with me - don't get it twisted.

It makes no sense for the UK to leave the highly profitable single market and I never expected the UK to actually do that. The UK benefited from being able to export its products to the rest of the EU and the British economy is highly interconnected with other EU economies. The costs of changing to other supply chains will be big (and unnecessary), small and medium-sized businesses would have to find new reliable partners overseas in countries that don't necessarily have the same culture in doing business as their partners in the EU at all, and it will all just be a big waste of money. I'm not a UK citizen and I frankly couldn't care less since I don't have a job that is in any way affected by Brexit, but the no-vote on this deal out of the desire to completely leave the single market just seems like a dumb decision.

For me Brexit was all intergovernmentalism prevailing over supranationalism. The UK already had control over its own borders to a large extent due to the opt-out, but there is an argument to be made that as the EU becomes an ever-closer union, the UK's sovereignty to decide on its own borders and its own demographics would diminish. What's more, I've always supported European economic cooperation and deep economic trade relationships without the political integration, so a soft Brexit always made sense to me - and May's final deal is pretty close to what seemed good to me, and certainly better than anything I expected after the EU and Barnier's tough talk. Your negotiators really got the best they could get. A new round of negotiations could yield even more, who knows, but the principles behind the agreement seem good to me.

[DavidB.]

I don't necessarily disagree with a lot of what you say, but that condescending tone is simply ludicrous and you need to get rid of it if you want to have a serious discussion on this subject. I fully agree that the EU is not reformable from within, which is why I had a great night back then in 2016 and why I envy the UK for leaving it (and why I want Brexit to be a success: if the UK is screwed, no EU country will leave anymore, which is why the current sh**tshow in the UK is pretty painful to watch for a Nexiteer).

However, I also think half-in/half-out would for now allow the UK to gradually move beyond the EU market and become less interconnected with that EU market. You don't have a vote in the EU (not that it matters much...), but you're able to end the agreement unilaterally at any time, which means it is intergovernmental and not supranational - this is an enormous difference to being in the EU. The UK is in control. There is a reason why Norwegians are mostly very happy with their current arrangement. And a non-EU immigration opt-out the UK already had. Subsequently taking in millions of Pakistanis anyway just to show the Tories how successful the multicultural dream would be was your own Labour government's absolutely brilliant decision.

I wouldn't necessarily trust your political elites to actually implement this "diversification" of economic ties as, indeed, many are cosmopolitans and globalists at heart, but the end of that process would ideally entail the disentanglement of the UK and EU economies except for a free trade agreement. By contrast, a hard Brexit right now (or a no-deal Brexit) would do a lot of damage to the UK economy which seems wholly unnecessary.