The EU Has Orbits, and the UK Fell Out of All of Them

What people said

dmitriid · 2023-01 · Recommendation

The EU is a huge economic block, and Britain's single most important trading partner. They can be whatever the fuck they like to be. And the EU was exceptionally friendly and patient towards the UK which demanded all the benefits with none of the responsibilities. UK's entire chain of options were known to everyone with half a brain even before Brexit started. Described succintly in this chart: [LINK] and explained very briefly in this video: [VIDEO]

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dmitriid · 2022-04 · Recommendation

> The EU wants the UK to be subservient to the Commission for ideological, political and economic reasons You mean, the UK was one of the three largest powers in the EU with all the power to influence its policy and direction which it did. Instead, the UK adopted the attitude of "we are a superpower, you owe us everything, we owe you nothing" to which the planet's largest economic union and one of the planet's largest markets calmly responded, "u wot mate?" About a year into the whole Brexit brouhaha the EU said, look, here are the various agreements and levels of agreements we have with all the countries [1] (taking from the amazing short overview here [2]). You don't want Norway style because "it's EU with extra steps", you don't want Switzerland-style because "same thing", you don't want Ukraine or Turkey-style because you don't want to be bound by EU trade agreements etc. At every step of the way UK's reaction was "these Brussels democrats are smothering our great independent nation, they must give us everything we want". That's not how negotiations work. Especially not with an economic block of ~450 million people who are your biggest trading partners. And after all that puffing and chest-beating, almost seven years into the whole Brexit ordeal UK also "suddenly" discovered the whole Northern Ireland border issue. Which tells you a lot about the competence of your government. So, no. UK went from being the country with the largest influence on EU policy to an outside cou

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Kim_Bruning · 2021-12 · Recommendation

Can you provide some examples? As far as I know there are many countries that cooperate with the EU but are not a part of it, based on many levels of compromise. (This video proposes we replace the european flag's stars with asterisks for all the exceptions and compromises! [LINK] ) In fact the UK took several of those types/levels of cooperation into consideration and rejected each. (Here's a quick video overview of that [VIDEO] )

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