Counterpoint: is there an obligation to share in ITER such that walking away could produce competitive advantage, or are there no such restrictions on non-ITER national projects?
Doing what you promised based a referendum is "what's best for the UK". What constitutes rationality in a democratic process is a matter of opinion - and the point is no one is allowed a privileged opinion over consensus.
Funny you should say that because the Tory election promise for the referendum was that they would give a referendum on the deal they arranged ... so, not "what [they] promised" in a pretty key way.
Also I'm pretty sure they promised not to break the Good Friday Agreement; and it seems clear they don't care.
That aside, the whole point of having a representative democracy was supposed to be that expert politicians could act on the public's behalf in complex arrangements. The vast majority of MPs (including ex-PM May, for example) supported UK staying in the EU ...
Then there's things like how almost all countries have rules requiring a supermajority in any vote leading to major constitutional change ... but the advisory vote of the referendum was passed on the slimmest of margins. If the vote has been "leave with no deal" then the Leave, camp (funded heavily by a Russian oligarch as we now know) would have lost the vote.
The whole point of our UK democracy was supposed to be to allow complex decisions to be made without simplistic populism.
The economic experts, the scientific experts, the political experts, the legal experts ... amongst these groups the consensus was very clearly for remaining in the EU. It was an act of subversion to arrange a referendum with no clear aim (contrary to the election manifesto) in which the population could be swayed with simple lies.
It hasn't even brought the much maligned sovereignty, instead we had an unlawful prorogation of parliament and because of the removal of oversight the current Covid19 crisis has been used to route 100s of £millions to Tory owned corporations under the guise of buying PPE which simply hasn't been delivered (or has and had been deficient ... but that's no surprise, none of these companies were previously PPE suppliers).
What constitutes rationality in a democracy surely is open, fair, and democratic as a first step. It's truthful and forthright. These words do not fit this process at all.
Convincing people through lies to vote against their own interests isn't democracy.
Convince me.
[These views are my own and do not relate to my employment.]
So, allow the GFA to hold the rest of the country hostage? Maybe such considerations should have been made when britain joined the EU - I voted for brexit, but I had no choice on whether to join. It's been argued that the current generation has no right to make such an impactful action as brexit, but why is it such that a single generation can sign up to such an alliance without an exit plan in the first place?
> expert politicians could act on the public's behalf in complex arrangements
And yet do they? How much does the public trust the motivations of their politicians? It seems to me that the public inherits an old and cludgy system, and you'd have to spend multiple lifetimes fighting it to have a chance of change. That the majority needed to accept the leadership of a clown like Boris shows how little the political class represents its public.
> funded heavily by a Russian
As opposed to public funds? Or English oligarchs?
There are many factors that could affect the vote; having a goverment that represents, rather than manipulates, the public for instance.
> without simplistic populism
What about simplistic dismissals of brexit as racist/xenophobic. So many characterisations of the EU as the spirit of cooperation; where is the scepticism towards large political unions, democratic divide and conquer, and the forgotten fact that the EU is still an elitist institution despite whatever diversity you might think it has.
> economic experts, the scientific experts, the political experts, the legal experts
There are winners and losers in brexit. The biggest losers tend to be lower paid, lower class demographics who where fed promises (lies) about how joining the EU would help them somehow. The biggest winners are businesses who can squeeze those lower classes, and middle class professionals (who started off with greater mobility in the first place). Guess which camp economists, scientists, politicians and lawyers fall into...
> Convincing people through lies to vote against their own interests isn't democracy
Who convinced people through lies? And since when is that acted on? I dont recall anyone suggesting we be able to kick out Thatcher when she turned on the miners. The issue is, the public don't seem to get to decide when to hold a referendum, nor control the narrative of whether it is appropriate to do so; hence thd suggestion yhe Brexit is based on lied, when in fact any/all referendums are.
In any case, how does brexit relate specidically to that. For whatever democracy is worth the EU will fix nothing of the rot in britain or its politics, but joining the EU is likely to make it worse. Reforming the electoral system might be a start, hopefully both Tories and neo-tories aka labour will die, but that's a scope beyond.
I thought the UK has left, giving notice for Euratom explicitly at the same time as for the EU because the UK government wasn’t sure leaving Euratom would be automatic? And that Switzerland was a participating associated state?
UK leaving EURATOM was widely criticised, I struggle to see how it makes any sence to leave an purely technical institution that has nothing to do with brexit.
The UK is part of ITER via Euratom, which requires EU membership. It seems the UK is in a grace period for the time being, but hasnt quite left:
https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3394