Brenter and Brexit

   To begin, I won't even attempt to try and explain what's currently going on in Britain with their efforts to leave or to remain in the European Union, especially since I'm not there and I'm only reading or hearing about the events  second- or third-hand.  Which is not to say that other news sources are any clearer on the picture, one which seems to change almost daily if not hourly.  But the deadline looms and it would appear that if another vote is to be placed before Parliament and would again result in there being no agreement before the agreed date in a week, then there will likely be a request for an "extension" so that Britain can let the negotiations continue.  The one lingering problem is that no matter what Britain requests, the vote by the EU (to extend the talks) has to be unanimous in which all 27 countries have to agree; if just one country votes no then the severing would be a done deal.  So, good or bad?  For this question, the London Review of Books asked for the mood from other countries, what their papers and their reporters were saying, and some of the results proved surprising, especially in Poland where correspondent Aslak Sira Myhre said: These days, one has also to take into consideration Poland’s huge shift to the right.  What passes for ‘left’ or ‘liberal’ in Poland would be deemed ‘conservative’ or ‘right-wing’ in Britain.  Swedish correspondent Lorna Scott Fox wrote: Swedes are going through their own political crisis just now, without a workable government in sight; but their press still finds time to marvel at the chaos of Britain’s shenanigans over Brexit, sometimes derisorily but more often in genuine puzzlement and sorrow...Much is made of the extraordinary number of Britons suddenly applying for Swedish citizenship.  More generally, the papers worry about the global rise of nationalism and populism that Brexit represents, and which currently affects Sweden too: the anti-EU and anti-immigrant Sverigedemokraterna party (SD) has much in common with Ukip.  It is calling for a ‘Swexit’ referendum.  One writer tried to explain the process to those of us in the U.S. by trying to picture New York wanting to break away from the rest of the U.S. and just how split our own country would be in so many areas once the emotional furor had settled a bit and the economic and financial realities had begun to set in.

Map of the Irish border from an article in the BBC

    Give credit to the BBC for making a relatively easy guide to navigate through the Brexit dilemma but a quick peek at just the one graph above showing the departing banking jobs* is indicative of the many industries already exiting as a preventative measure.  Throw in the Irish border dispute, the terms "hard" and "soft" Brexit, and well, it's a right mess as the saying goes.  The Channel and its Eurostar trains could now involve stopping for Customs checks and possible long delays, something some British vacationers are already experiencing.  And for those going in the other direction or into France and Europe, similar waiting times are being anticipated as work continues on the creation of a 13-mile long waiting area for freight trucks.  And as to that border which separates northern Ireland (which is still part of the U.K.) and southern Ireland (which is a sovereign republic unto itself and part of the European Union), take a quick peek at the effort by Bloomberg Businessweek to make some sense of it all, showing parts of the 499 km border going though broken bridges and the middle of houses and farms.  No big deal, you say?  Yet the Irish border is one of the largest sticking points to an agreement, perhaps an effort to avoid another repeat of a controversial and violent "hard" border as summed up in the article.

   Of course, here in the U.S. we have our own border dispute, at least on the southern end of our country (the Canadian border is 250% larger than the border with Mexico).  So here's a basic view of  that process works in the U.S.   Our government is divided into three parts, the judiciary (the courts), the executive (the President) and the legislative (the Congress) and it is the latter which controls the "purse strings" or the budget, a branch from which the President asks to borrow money for projects and which the Congress has to approve.  In this case, when the Republicans controlled Congress, the budget they were willing to spend on the Mexican border "wall" was over $25 billion; but it wasn't a priority at the time and was placed on the back burner, so to speak.  Then the Republicans lost their majority control in one section of Congress (the House of Representatives) and when the President asked for approximately $8 billion, his request was rejected and he invoked a government shutdown, the "wall" being part of an overall budget deal; the shutdown placed 800,000+ federal workers out of work (this included traffic controllers, airport security and national park employees).  Shutting down the government is a mess and in this case the shutdown lasted over a month.  And when it appeared that his requested monies for the "wall" were still not going to be approved, the President declared a national emergency in order to use monies already approved from other parts of the government (in this case, the military) to build an additional section of the "wall."  This declaration was rejected by Congress, which the President then vetoed (within his power), knowing that Congress now needs 2/3 of its voters to override a sitting president's veto which is unlikely to happen.  Two possible problems now appear: 1) if Congress fails to override the veto then this will set a precedent that a sitting precedent can gain some control of the "purse strings" and thus upset some of the balance of power of the government; and 2) Congress people who voted one way (to block the emergency declaration) could now vote against overriding the veto and thus tell their constituents that they voted "against" or "for" the border wall and be telling both sides of their citizenry the truth...such is politics.

   For Britain, it's been 2+ years since the voters actually approved Brexit, a referendum which passed by just over 1.2 million votes; but one has to remember that over 30 million voters (which represented close to half of the country) either did not or could not vote for that measure; and it would appear that people in both the E.U. and in Britain are growing a bit weary of the delay and indecision as if to say, stay or leave but let's just get it over with.  But as a reporter there pointed out, their government is not one of direct democracy but one of representative democracy as it is here in the U.S.; in other words the will of the people and what they voted for is then interpreted and determined by elected representatives who decide what the people "really" want.  As with us here in the U.S., such voting decisions can be radically altered.  In my own state, 3 propositions** were passed and almost just as immediately altered or completely changed by the legislature  (our Congress does the same thing often by tacking on unrelated provisions to bills at the last moment, often late at night when few members are present).  But as Ballotpedia reported regarding my own state's laws: Citizens of Utah may initiate legislation as either a direct or indirect state statute.  In Utah, citizens also have the power to repeal legislation via veto referendum. Citizens may not initiate constitutional amendments.  The Utah State Legislature, however, may place legislatively referred constitutional amendments on the ballot with a two-thirds majority vote of each chamber.  In other words, what the legislature did in changing the results of what we citizens voted on was legal...and efforts by the legislature are underway to make it even more difficult for citizens to introduce a bill.

   So there's a movie out titled Boy Erased based on the book with the same title.  Starring Lucas Hedges, Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, the movie (based on a true story) traces the continuing practice of "conversion therapy" on minors, often by unlicensed practitioners, a boot camp of sorts that uses a basis of religion to sway a young boy or girl away from their feelings of possibly being homosexual or of feeling that they were born the wrong gender (this puzzling swirl of emotions for children was the featured story in a recent issue of National Geographic).  For these children and teens, they are facing the difficulty of crossing their own border wall and encountering resistance from parents and other adults "in charge"...their representatives.  They too are in a democracy, albeit a representative one.  Only, perhaps like we are, they're children...the practice of conversion therapy goes on in 36 of our 50 states.


*Two interesting but brief articles which explored more of this banking exodus from Britain (and the resulting influx of Wall Street into Britain) appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek...and as a final updated perspective, the same magazine glanced back at history --six centuries worth-- and found that the French-English divide still exists, despite the connecting Channel; the sole vote against unanimity of the E.U. allowing a longer stay for Britain, if there is to be one, might just be France.

**A "direct" democracy is strictly one made and ruled by the people; whereas a "representative" democracy is one where the people elect a limited number of people to act as their representatives in making laws.  In the U.S. as with many parts of the world, we have a representative democracy.  A proposition, as mentioned above, is a citizens' initiative which requires 10% of the voting public to sign a petition in order to get a proposed bill to appear on the general election ballot so that the overall voting public can vote on the measure at a scheduled date.