> But it seems they chose to be dicks about it, perhaps to spite the UK I guess. Maybe to send a warning to other truculent EU countries.
Well, of course the EU chose to be dicks about it - the various UK governments did all their best to ensure an as-chaotic-as-possible Brexit, constantly derailing discussions, even risking setting the Northern Ireland civil war alight again and demand that the EU concede to prevent that.
It was dumb enough that Brexit happened in the first place (some say, the vote was close enough that Russian propaganda made the key difference), but the way that Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and now Sunak have handled Brexit made an already bad situation even worse. Had they shown even the slightest bit of respect and solution-oriented thinking towards the EU, the EU negotiators would have been far more interested in solutions that don't mess up stuff too much.
Yes but… Some current EU states have not exactly covered themselves in glory whilst their elected governments have rode roughshod over some of the EU’s most fundamental principles, and what sanctions have their citizens faced?
I’m not proud of the UK when it comes to Brexit, but I can’t take the whole ‘follow the rules of the club / stay in it to enjoy the benefits’ seriously anymore.
I assume you're referring to pre-Tusk Poland and Hungary? If yes, I agree with you... the key problem is that the EU has been founded on the implicit assumption that its members would follow the law and if they wouldn't they would at least follow the courts. That held up for a long time, and then populism took over, but by the time that was realized there were too many countries in the EU to ever get consensus to truly fix this issue.
American politics suffer from the same issue IMHO, their system can't cope with the Republicans being willfully obstructionist for decades now.
Indeed - and so this explains why I roll my eyes at silly comments along the lines as 'they [Brits] voted for it, let them stand in a queue at the airport or lose their .eu domains'.
It would seem to be more equitable to me a least (someone who voted remain and lives in the EU) if the ballot had presented the options of "Remain" or "Remain and ignore all of the rules". But I don't think that would be particularly popular with the rest of the EU populace, and yet, effectively, it's what's happening.
> Indeed - and so this explains why I roll my eyes at silly comments along the lines as 'they [Brits] voted for it, let them stand in a queue at the airport or lose their .eu domains'.
For me, the most sad thing to see was that despite all of these issues and the utterly insane blunders of the last years that weren't even related to Brexit or Covid, the Tories are still in charge...
I have a slightly controversial opinion on this in that I apportion quite a lot of the blame onto Labour at the time too - pre Johnson (i.e. the Corbyn years) what effective opposition was there? Why did they then perform so utterly poorly in the election? It’s one thing to be popular with a vocal segment of enthusiasts, but unfortunately they only count votes.
And yes, first past the post and all that, but there was still an incredibly clear swing on the popular vote (-8%) away from them.
Well, of course the EU chose to be dicks about it - the various UK governments did all their best to ensure an as-chaotic-as-possible Brexit, constantly derailing discussions, even risking setting the Northern Ireland civil war alight again and demand that the EU concede to prevent that.
It was dumb enough that Brexit happened in the first place (some say, the vote was close enough that Russian propaganda made the key difference), but the way that Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and now Sunak have handled Brexit made an already bad situation even worse. Had they shown even the slightest bit of respect and solution-oriented thinking towards the EU, the EU negotiators would have been far more interested in solutions that don't mess up stuff too much.