Brexit Thread V - The Final Countdown?!?

[Mega Tsunami]

I didn't vote for Theresa May, yet she's still the Prime Minister (and thus our representative on the European Council).

No, you might not have, but at least you had the opportunity to, and Mrs May has to answer us the voters who did vote for her every single day and if we, the people don’t like what she does, we the people can kick her out.
The people of the EU cannot kick Tusk and Junker out.

Why do you, Kyriakos & Cheetah ignore this, the most important bit of my post:

[T&J]has no actual, real voters to answer to

Junker and Tusk are two very powerful people. It is a bit like us voting in a GE and then some unknown civil servant, who does not have to answer to any voters, is made our President!
Utterly ridiculous.

 

[Samson]

Not that I think you'll actually consider any information on the subject, but let's give it a try, at least for any other observer which might stumble in on this:

Tusk, the President of the European Council, was chosen by a qualified majority vote, where your representative -- your democratically elected Prime Minister -- had one of twenty seven votes, and one of the most powerful votes, seeing as she represented one of the biggest populations.

Tusk needed at least 16 votes representing at least 65% of the EU population to be elected, and got that.

Juncker, the President of the European Commission, was the candidate proposed for the position by the European People's Party (EPP). The party getting the most votes in the parliamentary election gets the presidency.

The EPP won the parliamentary election in 2014 with 36% of the votes (11%-points ahead of the second largest party), and Juncker then became President.

No UK parties are members of the EPP, so you're right that no one in the UK voted for Juncker. But that doesn't make it not-democratic! UK voters voted for S&D's Martin Schulz (Labour) or ALDE's Guy Verhofstadt (Liberal Democrats). UK voters also voted for ECR (Tories, UUP) and EFDD (UKIP, Libertarian Party, Social Democratic Party, Thurrock Independents, etc.), but neither of those groups cared enough to nominate any candidate.

But the point is that appointed by democratically elected people is not the same as democratically elected. We do not generally refer to civil servants, judges or the house of lords as democratic, even though they are (mostly) appointed by democratically elected people.

 

[Arakhor]

Well, if I lived in Maidenhead, then yes, I absolutely would have the opportunity to vote against her, not that it would do any good of course.

 

[Hrothbern]

I am glad that for example Donald Tusk is not elected by a direct election of all the EU people.
Why ?
Because now the PM's of the member states are sovereign together in their European Council. The EU is a Union, not a federal state with a presidential system like the US.
(ofc within the defined role of the European Council in the EU structure)

Donald Tusk is "just" the spokesman of that Council.
But having that spokesman is very practical.
Just imagine that the European Council is asked for a pressconference reaction on some latest Brexit development.
Who is going to react ?
All 27 PM's ???
Babylon ?
The PM of the biggest country ?
ofc not, because in that case that PM must speak on behalf of the Council and not his/her country, and not a shred of confusion.

With a "spokesman" we have the clearness of what the opinion of the Council is as a whole, AND when (not often) an individual PM has an opinion it stays the opinion of his role as national PM.

 

[uppi]

No, you might not have, but at least you had the opportunity to, and Mrs May has to answer us the voters who did vote for her every single day and if we, the people don’t like what she does, we the people can kick her out.

No, the people of the UK cannot instigate a general election, so they cannot kick her out. Term limits dictate that Tusk has to leave office before the people of the UK have any chance to kick May out.

 

[Yeekim]

No, you might not have, but at least you had the opportunity to, and Mrs May has to answer us the voters who did vote for her every single day and if we, the people don’t like what she does, we the people can kick her out.
The people of the EU cannot kick Tusk and Junker out.

Why do you, Kyriakos & Cheetah ignore this, the most important bit of my post:

[T&J]has no actual, real voters to answer to

Junker and Tusk are two very powerful people. It is a bit like us voting in a GE and then some unknown civil servant, who does not have to answer to any voters, is made our President!
Utterly ridiculous.

I'm willing to bet you have no idea what Donald Tusk's actual powers are.

Spoiler :

According to Article 15 (6) of the Treaty on the European Union, the President of the European Council:
• chairs it and drives forward its work;
• ensures the preparation and continuity of the work of the European Council in cooperation with the President of the Commission, and on the basis of the work of the General Affairs Council;
• endeavours to facilitate cohesion and consensus within the European Council;
• presents a report to the European Parliament after each of the meetings of the European Council.

 

[mitsho]

I might shock you now but the prime ministers of Switzerland are elected by the Parliament, not by the people and we still regard them as democraticall elected. Just as a reminder, what you regard as democratic needn't be the same for everyone. For example, I would regard the first-past the post system of England as highly undemocratic, not representing a huge swath of people. Or the complete lack of rules for the UK parliament. No sense of reliability and process, a cornerstone of democracy in my opinion. The indirect elections of tusk and junker are a far smaller problem than that.

Now we shall not discuss that here, that wouldn't lead anywhere. But just to show that views may differ.

 

[Kyriakos]

I am glad that for example Donald Tusk is not elected by a direct election of all the EU people.
Why ?
Because now the PM's of the member states are sovereign together in their European Council. The EU is a Union, not a federal state with a presidential system like the US.
(ofc within the defined role of the European Council in the EU structure)

Donald Tusk is "just" the spokesman of that Council.
But having that spokesman is very practical.
Just imagine that the European Council is asked for a pressconference reaction on some latest Brexit development.
Who is going to react ?
All 27 PM's ???
Babylon ?
The PM of the biggest country ?
ofc not, because that PM must speak on behalf of the Council and not his/her country, and not a shred of confusion.

With a "spokesman" we have the clearness of what the opinion of the Council is as a whole, AND when (not often) an individual PM has an opinion it stays the opinion of his role as national PM.

Lets not pretend that tusk gives a crap about what anyone other than the cabal in germany and france wants.
Imo that tusk and drunker are elected in a convoluted manner isnt the issue. The issue is the eu itself.
Re jean claude drunker, he was the pm of luxemburg, a state which exists for two reasons: being a tax-haven and a eu-sponsored services hub. It barely has more land than a town; its income per capita shows how fake an economy you can have.

 

[Cheetah]

No, you might not have, but at least you had the opportunity to, and Mrs May has to answer us the voters who did vote for her every single day and if we, the people don’t like what she does, we the people can kick her out.
The people of the EU cannot kick Tusk and Junker out.

Why do you, Kyriakos & Cheetah ignore this, the most important bit of my post:

[T&J]has no actual, real voters to answer to

But the point is that appointed by democratically elected people is not the same as democratically elected. We do not generally refer to civil servants, judges or the house of lords as democratic, even though they are (mostly) appointed by democratically elected people.

Tusk, as the head of a council of sovereign states does not have any voters to directly answer to, no. Instead he very much answers to the governments of the member states. Are you telling me you two wouldn't be screaming about «sovereignty» if it was different?

Juncker most certainly answers to «actual, real voters». He was the candidate of the party that won the election. Juncker was literally elected!

How on Earth you can find him to be unelected, but consider May to be elected is beyond me...

And I'd like to echo what mitsho was saying: Your country is, in practice, a two-party state. I don't consider you a real democracy at all (and the same for the US, for that matter).

 

[Arakhor]

Re jean claude drunker, he was the pm of luxemburg, a state which exists for two reasons: being a tax-haven and a eu-sponsored services hub. It barely has more land than a town; its income per capita shows how fake an economy you can have.

Sounds like JRM and his ilk should love him, then.

 

[Hrothbern]

Lets not pretend that tusk gives a crap about what anyone other than the cabal in germany and france wants.
Imo that tusk and drunker are elected in a convoluted manner isnt the issue. The issue is the eu itself.

I can understand very well what you say
But please do be aware that this France-Germany talk is severely rude towards small members, their representatives and their populations !
It happens mostly in the newsmedia and is therefore now ingrained in the popular opinion of many people.
And even if a quality newsmedium would try to prevent that funneling towards those two... giving the opinion of someone of Germany "for" the more northern countries and France "for" the more southern countries is so very convenient. Especially when reporters have no clue about all kinds of details of smaller countries.
And when something "nasty" has to be said when EU officials are ignored or marginalised... who is going to back those EU spokesmen, to speak out to the international newsmedia ?
Trump doing something stupid again ???
Who is going to react ?
(no offense Yeekim)... Our Estonian PM ???

The internal power balance in the EU (between the members) is not what we see in the media !

 

[Kyriakos]

^would you really want to see austria-hungary-polonia-exsovietia ?
Neither does the eu spin doctoring. At some point, though, it should be obvious that this has lost any elements of union since the stupid 2003-2004 expansion.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

Juncker most certainly answers to «actual, real voters». He was the candidate of the party that won the election. Juncker was literally elected!

Well I don’t recall having a chance to vote for him. Did you? And yet he is one of our presidents.

And I'd like to echo what mitsho was saying: Your country is, in practice, a two-party state. I don't consider you a real democracy at all (and the same for the US, for that matter).

I would say ours is ‘the least worse’ of all democracies. At least we don’t have the likes of afd, Le Penn and UKIP types having dozens of MPs in parliament.

I'm willing to bet you have no idea what Donald Tusk's actual powers are.

He has the power, it seems, to scupper a good Brexit deal. That is plenty powerful. And I had no chance to vote for or against him. Did you?

No, the people of the UK cannot instigate a general election, so they cannot kick her out. Term limits dictate that Tusk has to leave office before the people of the UK have any chance to kick May out.

You know full well I meant when the next GE came along we could vote and effectively kick whoever was pm out.

 

[Yeekim]

He has the power, it seems, to scupper a good Brexit deal.

No he does not. He does not make the decisions for the Council, he relays them.

 

[Yeekim]

^would you really want to see austria-hungary-polonia-exsovietia ?
Neither does the eu spin doctoring. At some point, though, it should be obvious that this has lost any elements of union since the stupid 2003-2004 expansion.

I say it all went downhill from 1981!
#1204expansiontheonegoodexpansion

 

[Samson]

Tusk, as the head of a council of sovereign states does not have any voters to directly answer to, no. Instead he very much answers to the governments of the member states. Are you telling me you two wouldn't be screaming about «sovereignty» if it was different?

I certainly would not be. I do not agree with the implied statement "The EU is evil because the president is not democratically chosen". However the response to that implied statement should not be "well the president is appointed not elected but that is still democratic" if that is not true. The truth, as you alluded to, is that the block is not (yet) ready for an executive with real power and it is the eurosceptics that would be against that if it did come up.

 

[Takhisis]

I need some help in English to understand precisely what Boris Johnson is saying there:

"Boris Johnson has suggested he could back the Prime Minister's Brexit deal if she manages to secure a time limit or exit mechanism in the Irish backstop"

Now.... if I remove that "suggested" .... Boris is saying: "he could back....."

What does that mean ?
Is it:
"he will back" ?
"he is going to back" ?
Does he commit to anything at all ???

My understanding of English is that he does not commit to anything with his statement.
Correct ?

And then the article (or Boris ?) adds in front: "suggested"

For me, but please correct if my understanding of English is wrong... for me Boris says:
Hey May, do your thing, get that permanent backstop out of the way... and then I will see what I will do... but don't count on anything !
And even if I back you... you know... it is up to Rees-Mogg to have ofc his own opinion, etc, etc.

Correct ?
And if correct... than both the statement from Boris Johnson as the article of the Telegraph are just hot air.

I am a native English speaker who uses English on a daily basis and I actually work as an interpreter so I can tell you that he's saying a lot of words without any clear message and making no commitments whatsoever.
Basically it's a lot of words which he can later misinterpret, or reinterpret if you prefer, in his favour whatever happens. He's a demagogue with no clear policy on anything who does this for fun and for kicks becuause he thinks that's what people of his birth and wealth are meant to be doing.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I am a native English speaker who uses English on a daily basis and I actually work as an interpreter so I can tell you that he's saying a lot of words without any clear message and making no commitments whatsoever.
Basically it's a lot of words which he can later misinterpret, or reinterpret if you prefer, in his favour whatever happens. He's a demagogue with no clear policy on anything who does this for fun and for kicks becuause he thinks that's what people of his birth and wealth are meant to be doing.

He still wants to be prime minister so he wants May to make a mess of things but he can't afford to say that so he'll give vague sound bites but whatever she comes back with it won't be good enough for him.

 

[Arakhor]

Is Boris even able to become PM as a US citizen? I don't think we have any laws against that, but various other countries certainly do.

 

[Takhisis]

vague sound bites

Exactly. As described in your signature -I still remember that diplomat trying not to laugh on camera when a journalist sprang the news of A.B. de Pf. Johnson's new ministerial appointment.

Is Boris even able to become PM as a US citizen? I don't think we have any laws against that, but various other countries certainly do.

Parliamentary sovereignty. Absolutely anybody could be proclaimed Prime Minister from a strictly legal point of view. Including my old teddy bear.