26+6=32, but it was much less painlful under the EU

Or EU membership as the solution to Irish Unity.

 I would put in that the European Union was the solution to the "Irish problem" in the things I would have pointed out had anyone asked me department. People either didn't realise, or just forgot, that the Good Friday Agreement wouldn't have been possible if both sides hadn't been members of the EU.

What made it possible was the right of free movement, which is the thing I like most about the EU. That means that internal borders within the European Union went away. No hard border between the UK and the Republic during the EU period.

So, the Irish could be happily Irish if thy lived in either set of the 26 or 6 counties that make up Ireland's 32 counties. They could be citizens of the UK, Ireland, or Both.

Which led to some amusing situations once the reality of Brexit set in.

Especially since both sides during the "Troubles" hated the concept of the EU. Maybe because it would make their positions untenable once the borders went away.

So, the Democratic Unionists, the group who were the most glued to the United Kingdom, and Brexit supporters, were the biggest block to Brexit. Mostly because they realised the return of a hard border meant a return to the Troubles. The amusing bit is that Ian Paisley's son told his supporters to apply for an Irish Passport. Trust me, the irony isn't lost on me.

It may be an "EU Document", but it preserves your European Union rights.

So, while the rest of us who supported remaining are scrambling to get EU citizenship, the Ulster Irish can get their Irish Passports. And keep their UK passports. Sadly, Irish Citizenship only goes back to your grandparents (unlike Italy, which will give you citizenship no matter how far back your ancestor emigrated as long as it was post-Unification).

Anyway, I have been laughing my ass off about the current Irish Situation since one of the largest contingencies for Brexit is turning out to be one of the worst problem of leaving the European Union. I only hope it serves as a warning to the other countries who are trying to break out of the EU.

Another issue for the people who pushed for Brexit is that the United Kingdom had a pretty good situation when it was last in the EU (another thing no one asked me about). I hope that any return will not be as accommodating. Again, I want to see Brexit as a lesson that the EU is here to stay.

I just hope that a hard border in Ireland doesn't mean a return to bloodshed, but one of the reasons for the EU was to end wars by removing borders between member states.

Thoughts on the British Election

Britain has a hung parliament, which means that neither party really has enough members to make a majority.  The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is now being seen as a coalition ally for the Tories. That goes to my Thoughts on US Third Parties since the DUP is a relic of the troubles and known to people like me who spent time in Ulster, but pretty much ignored.

Unless we are talking about Iris Robinson, who is sort of the Ulster version of Michele Bachmann, but much more amusing.  Iris went down with something called Irisgate. [1] Michele Bachmann is only an embarrassment for people who come from Minnesota (Iris did her part to embarrass Ulster Unionists,  but did it in a way that was funny [2]).

So, Most people know little about the DUP besides it being a political party founded by Ian Paisley which Iris Robinson once belonged to: if even that much. Of course, that pretty much sums up the DUP for those who don't know anything about it.

On the other hand, this is a party which pretty much would be like the religious/reality challenged right wing of the US Republican Party: Except they had nothing to do with Irish Republicans since they were Unionists (people who know Irish politics will get that comment).

Well, other than trying to kill the Irish Republicans (which clarifies the previous comment a bit).

Where was I? Oh, yeah, an otherwise insignificant party is playing a big role since there isn't a real majority in parliament, which also gets into how a parliamentary system works. 

That is the party with a majority runs the show. The leader of the majority party runs the government. If the party can't run the government it is dissolved, which happens if they can't pass a budget bill. 

Taking that description it is easy to see why the US isn't a parliamentary democracy since the current "leader" not only lost the election, but lost it with 46.4% of the popular vote (his opponent did slightly better with 48.5%, but still not a majority).  The opposition is known to not pass budget bills, leading to the government actually shutting down.

The US would go through governments faster than the Italians or Belgians, making both countries seem paragons of stability, if it were a parliamentary democracy.

Seriously, the bottom line of watching the UK election is that the US has a defacto parliamentary system since the legislature has the power of the purse.  Any small party (or faction) is better off being separate since the large "coalition" parties are meaningless. 

Another thing I have to say is that people are sick of politics as usual.  The Brexit vote, US, French, and UK elections have demonstrated that "non-traditional" politicians can do well.  Bernie did a hell of a lot better than I thought he would have.  And Trump showed that a clever politician can game the system (he spent far less than Clinton and got free publicity by being outrageous).

Also, people need to understand they are not as powerless as they are led to believe. In the US, they can vote their consciences in legislative elections to make more of a statement than they can in the presidential election.  The real power is in the legislature (which makes the electoral college superfluous).

And the establishment parties need to understand that they are near the end of life if they don't undergo drastic changes.

[1] Irisgate probably made Iris Robinson better known than her husband, Peter, which compounded the embarrassment since Peter Robinson was DUP leader at the time.
[2] Alternate version of this here.

Conservatives Brexit, Conservatives broke it. 'It' being the UK.

The vote to leave the UK was along party lines, being overwhelmingly a vote by Conservatives both conventional 'mainstream' conservatives, and the more rabid UKIP crowd, comparable to our teabaggers and birchers. Conservatives not only were willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces, they were willing to slit their economic throats to express their hatred of immigrants.

Sarah Palin demonstrated her deep ignorance on financial and foreign policy matters, speaking as a surrogate for Donald Trump, peddling ridiculous conspiracy theories about the EU, and advocating even more ridiculous policy positions that are not even remotely similar, about the UN.  From FB

Sarah Palin June 24 at 10:48am ·

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another...
The UK knew - it was that time. And now is that time in the USA.
The Brexit referendum is akin to our own Declaration of Independence. May that refreshed spirit of sovereignty spread over the pond to America's shores!
Congratulations, smart Brits. Good on you for ignoring all the fear mongering from special interest globalists who tend to aim for that apocalyptic One World Government that dissolves a nation's self-determination and sovereignty... the EU being a One World Government mini-me.
America can learn an encouraging lesson from this.
It is time to dissolve political bands that connect us to agendas not in our best interest. May UN shackles be next on the chopping block.
- Sarah Palin

The WaPo covered it very well:

As the United Kingdom prepared to leave the European Union, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced his resignation, the value of the pound fell and HBO had to assure worried “Game of Thrones” fans that future Northern Ireland film shoots were going to be fine, Sarah Palin came forth with her own take.
On Friday, the former Alaskan governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate congratulated the “smart Brits,” likening the June referendum to the Declaration of Independence. After all, as she noted in a Facebook post, the citizens of the United Kingdom may have avoided nothing less than the end of the world.
Palin, a Donald Trump supporter, applauded the “leave” voters for outfoxing “globalists” who would bring about an “apocalyptic One World Government,” she wrote on Facebook. That is because the European Union, in her words, is a “One World Government mini-me.”
Palin’s comments marked a public embrace of a conspiracy theory popularly known as the New World Order. Palin did not elaborate what, exactly, the apocalypse would look like. But the details of who or what make up the New World Order depend on the theorist — it is a secret organization of politicians, banks, the Illuminati, the media or, perhaps, lizard people. Distilled, the main goal of the organization is a totalitarian regime that will emerge from the shadows: One World Government to rule them all.

So far as I can discern, the whole one world order nonsense is reminiscent of J.R.R. Tokien's lines from the Lord of the Rings saga:

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Crackpot conspiracy theories like the One World Order play to the lowest, and basest common denominators of the ignorant, acting as propaganda to divert those it affects from rational and fact based thought to emotional thinking that ignores fact.  It plays as well on the worst tendencies and beliefs of those it affects, in this case promoting an evil form of nationalism and the worst of "Us vs. Them" thinking.  It is notably anti-immigrant, with people wanting to 'take back' their country from those bad brown people who are 'not like us'.

Beyond the political conservative vs liberal division, voters for Brexit were older, white, and less educated, and tended to be more rural, which has correlated with less educated generally.   In other words, the Brexit voters were the Brit equivalent of Trump supporters specifically, and more extreme right wing conservatives in the US generally.  They are the resentful and bigoted "I shouldn't have to know anything" scientist and other 'elite' hating folks.

What do I mean by 'breaking' the UK?  Financial decline, certainly.  The why and how of that is outlined here very well by the prestigious London School of Economics (and political science).

The British stock market has already faced serious losses, and foreign investors are talking about pulling out of the UK -- or at the very least, phasing out manufacturing and instead taking their new investment to the continental EU.  The Guardian article here addresses the example of the Japanese investors.

From the Guardian:

It echoed a plea in May by the prime minister Shinzo Abe for Britain to remain in the EU, pointing out that those Japanese companies employ around 140,000 people in the UK.
“There would be an immeasurable impact on their businesses” in the event of a victory for the Leave campaign, he said.

...Several Japanese firms have voiced alarm at the prospect of Britain leaving the EU.
Hitachi has said Britain’s membership of the EU had influenced its decision to open a train maintenance depot in west London last year.
“We built the plant because Britain is part of the EU and we are considering expanding into the EU,” the Asahi Shimbun quoted Toshiaki Higashihara, Hitachi’s president, as saying this week, adding that he opposed a Brexit.

Tatsuya Tanaka, the president of Fujitsu, whose information technology arm employs 14,000 people in Britain, has said that a vote to leave the EU would be “a huge negative” for the electronics firm’s business in the UK.
Abe has voiced support for David Cameron’s campaign to keep Britain in the EU, warning British voters that leaving could threaten Japanese investment and put more than 100,000 jobs at risk.

But more than that, Scotland where a close vote regarding independence failed, is looking at a new vote, with a change in support for leaving the UK now that the Brexit vote has succeeded.  Scotland voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU.  Looks like they won't vote to stay in the UK however.

It has begun, as reflected in this news coverage from France:

EU leaders meet without UK for first time in wake of Brexit

Cameron flew back to London after Tuesday's summit, as Scotland's first minister headed in the opposite direction to test the waters in Brussels for her country joining the bloc as a separate entity.

And we have this about Northern Ireland wanting to stay in the EU - even if it means leaving the UK, which it happens was provided for in a 1998 accord between the UK and Ireland.

Then there is the post-Brexit vote news about Australia wanting to leave the Commonwealth, for their own economic reasons.  This underlines how Brexit makes the UK less influential and successful.

Palin got it so very wrong, as she always does. Apparently a lot of anti-Brexit voters want to take back their respective countries, not from the EU or the UN, but from the UK, because Brexit so badly damages the UK both politically and economically in the world.  It is clearly an attempt by those other parts of the UK to dump the dummies, the crazy conservatives, the petty and fearful bigots, to go their own way without the conservative baggage that is an anchor dragging them down, down, down.

Once again, conservatives demonstrate that they are poorly informed on factual, substantive matters,, and that they cannot, or will not (same effective result), participate in mature, responsible, informed democracy.  Rather conservatives act like petty children badly in need of a time out until they can conduct themselves properly.

Long term, Brexit will no doubt do for the UK what the conservatives would not do for themselves, resulting in a massive breakdown of the conservative side of the political spectrum, leading to a purge of the destructive controlling factions and eliminating their influence for a period of time.

We can probably expect the same thing as conservatives in the US implode with the nomination of Donald Trump destroys the existing GOP.