Heey, whats up everyone. Welcome to my Brexit video, alternative title
: âReality is often disappointingâ. The video weâre looking at today is from
fake university PragerU. And ist not about why the UK should leave
the EU, that's an old hat by now, but why it voted to leave. Iâve chosen this one because as soon as
the referendum was over, a lot of talking points from the pro-Brexit lot got dropped
and exposed as the obvious lies that they were. But this video, because it came out after
the referendum, only features the bare bones of the pro-Brexit side. It also asks bigger questions like âIs the
EU undemocratic?â or âWhat does sovereignty really mean?â. To top things of, it's made by Mr. Brexit
himself, former UKIP member Nigel Farage who has been doing nothing but agitating for the
UK to leave the EU, so ideally, he should offer the best arguments. So, without stalling or endlessly prolonging
what will ultimately be a very painful experience, lets dive into the video: If one big government is bad, imagine how
much worse two big governments would be. But thatâs what people living in Europe
have had to deal with: their own nationâs bloated government and the super-national
government of Europe, now known as the European Union. Bureaucracy times two! Howâs that for a horror show? Well, actually, youâve no idea. Itâs worse than you think. Believe meâI know, because for seventeen
years, Iâve represented South East England as a member of the European Parliament, the
EUâs legislative body. Okay, big government. And this is actually another reason why I
like this video about Brexit so much. It becomes pretty clear from the get go that
this video is designed as propaganda, targeting an American audience. This is why the video starts out with the
âbig governmentâ talking point although the dichotomy of small vs. Big government
usually isnât used as a political slogan in Europe. Its predominantly a pejorative in the American
lexicon and doesnât make much sense in the context of European governmental bodies since
theyâre pretty much all big by American standards. But Farage uses the slogan nonetheless, because
he wants to paint a picture of an overarching giant bureaucracy wasting tax money by shoving
papers around. That doesnât really work with the EU though. The percentage of the EUâs annual budget
that goes towards administrative costs is about 6%, which is way less than what other
national governments spend. Comparing the EU to any national governmental
body in terms of efficiency is going to end up in a win for the EU, because its way smaller
and fulfills different functions. A look at the EUâs costs per capita, makes
this blatantly obvious. The EU doesnât pay out social benefits or
any of that which allows it to pour the majority of its budget directly back into its member
states, with the biggest chunk going towards furthering economic development. If youâre curious where the money goes that
your country pays in, you can just look it up by selecting a country in the EUâs Budget
at a glance tool. Or if you want to know how it might affect
you directly, you can visit âwhat-the-eu-does-for-me.euâ and check out what local projects have been
supported with EU funds. It's also wrong to think having the EU as
a super national body means significantly more bureaucracy for its member states, let
alone times 2. For instance, because of the common market,
national governments donât have to negotiate trade agreements with one another and because
of free travel there are no border checks anymore. The Big government slogan is put in this video
to cause a gut reaction from an American audience to view the membership in the EU as bad, without
having to justify that claim. And you could easily use the same big vs.
Small government dichotomy to justify any kind of separatist cause. Imagine having to deal with a city administration,
a state government and a federal government on top of that! Bureaucracy times three. Ludacris, I tell you. Let's get Germany back to when we had real
freedom as a patchwork of feudal city states. But that was just the intro, so let's see
what Nigel Farage has in store for us. I was also leader of the UK Independence Party,
or UKIP, where I lead Britainâs efforts to leave the European Union. To their everlasting credit, thatâs just
what happened on June the 23rd, 2016: The United Kingdom left the European Union. The world knows it as âBrexit.â Just a minor nitpick and some additional information
here. It's worth mentioning that Nigel Farage has
left UKIP since this video came out of the parties âanti-Islam fixationâ and for
cuddling up to racist fraudster Tommy Robinson or Andrew McMaster or whatever pseudonym he
goes by these days. Iâm also not sure why Farage claims the
UK left on June 23ed 2016 or why the video is titled in the past tense. The UK hasnât left the EU, they just had
a non-binding referendum on if they should do it but then again, minor nitpick. Brexit is a statement of national sovereignty. Donât misunderstand me: I like nations. I like borders. I like the people that live within those borders
making their own laws. But I donât like it when faceless bureaucrats
make laws for nations they donât even live in. But thatâs what they do in the European
Union. Imagine a Belgian telling a Brit how much
he can charge his customersâor the reverse. The EU bureaucrats do this in a myriad of
different ways, all day, every day. Okay. First real point, sovereignty. And what sovereignty actually means can vary
a lot depending on who you ask, but for the sake of argument, let's use it as a standing
for self-governance. So the question is âwill the UK have more
self-governance outside the EU than inside.â Well, it definitely will have in some regards. Brushing aside that there are no EU laws on
the books, to whom the UK has not agreed, there wonât be other nations involved in
the making of laws and regulations. Or will there? Looking at the trade talks that have been
going on since the referendum, it becomes clear that the former supposed âshacklesâ
the UK had a say over, will be replaced by new ones, with much less leveraging power
on the side of the Brits. The US. For instance, knows that the UK is in a weak
position at the moment and uses that to push for de-regulation of British markets and to
get rid of consumer protection guidelines. The most recent example being the US insisting
on lifting UK regulations on agricultural goods as part of a post-Brexit trade deal. This could also reduce the quality of food
for UK citizens since local industry might have to lower its standards as well, to stay
competitive with US companies. And this is not project fear, its reality. It's happening right now. The US to UK ambassador recently even felt
obliged to publish and op-ed defending the practice of bleaching chicken meat with chlorine,
a practice that has been banned in the EU since the late nineties. And because these regulations are not linked
to access to the world's largest trading bloc anymore, the UK doesnât have much to combat
these demands. How's that for sovereignty. And if the UK wants to continue to sell its
goods on the European market, its will still have to abide by EU rules but without having
a seat at the table in terms of what those rules actually are. Or take immigration for example, which I know
was a hot button issue prior to the referendum. Again, brushing aside that the UK already
had complete control over outside EU immigration and also asylum policy, it looks like leaving
the EU will have the exact opposite effect of what a lot of Brexiteers hoped for. While it's safe to say that immigration from
EU countries towards the UK will decline, in fact that is already happening, immigration
from outside EU countries is rising, at the same time. And here is where we get back to leveraging
power. Countries like India or China, will couple
trade agreements with easier access to visas for their citizens, something we are also
already seeing. Regarding those âfaceless bureaucrats". If I want to check who represents me in the
European parliament for instance, I can pretty easily look up not only their faces but contact
details and parliamentary activities. But, in all fairness, people from other EU
member states are involved in drafting and passing legislation that affects the UK. But it's not like those laws only affect the
UK. They affect the entirety of the EU. Similar to how MPS in British parliament get
to vote on legislation that not only affects the district they represent, but the rest
of the country as well. You see it right now with Brexit itself. Scotland for instance voted to stay in the
EU but now are forced to leave regardless. And sadly there is no body like the EU commission
in the UK in which Scotland could veto important decisions. But I donât want to get ahead of myself. It is a conspiracy of the elites. Who are those elites? Well, theyâre a bunch of self-important,
overpaid, social engineers with useless college degrees who have never done a proper dayâs
work in their lives and have no connection with ordinary, decent people. Iâll take the good sense of an Italian farmer
or a French baker over the arid intellectualism of an EU bureaucrat any day. Now, there isnât that much to say here except
that it's trying to frame Brexit as a âordinary people vs. Elites" issue, when I would say
itâs the exact opposite. The winners of Brexit will be rich people,
who due to the weak pound, will have it way easier snatching up property in the UK. But regardless, if that prediction turns out
to be wrong it's not like Farageâs talking point holds much water in the present. A 2013 study on the EUâs MEPs has found
that the number of elected officials who have never been employed outside of politics, comes
in at about 10%. And while I had a hard time finding matching
data for the British parliament, a 2018 paper by the House of Commons library puts the number
of MPS formerly working in politics at 17,1% as of 2015. It's true however, that the EU parliament
has a large share of people from the upper categories of the social space, like all parliaments
really. But there are also exceptions like former
President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, who was a bookseller prior to becoming
a politician. Compare that to Farage himself, who is a former
Broker, definitely a real job there. BUT if comrade Farage wants to make the case
how financial inequality translates into political inequality, Iâm all for that. Power to the people and all. I doubt thatâs what he is going for though. And this is kind of unrelated but looking
up Farageâs background I got curious about some other top Brexiteers, you know, the vanguard
against the out of touch EU elites and what I found was reeeeaaally entertaining. For instance, while Jacob Rees Mogg was out
campaigning in his mid-twenties driving his mother's Mercedes Benz he took the family
nanny with him. *sigh* what a joke this all is. And I say these things not as an anti-European;
I love Europe! Itâs a fantastic, exciting, great continent:
different peoples, languages, and cultures. But these peoples, with their languages and
cultures, have effectively been hijacked by a giant, ever-expanding bureaucracy: the European
Union. People will say, âbut isnât there a parliament,
a European parliament, that represents the people of Europe?â Well, yes, but this body has got no real power;
it canât make its own laws. Rather, the power resides with the European
Commission. Theyâre unelected and they canât be removed,
and thatâs how absurd the whole thing is. Before we jump into the EUâs political system,
if âhighjackedâ means, they joined out of their own will to do so because they benefit
from EU membership, I would agree, otherwise it's just a lie really. Here is where we get to the big one. The EU commission and parliament. And the commission has been a target for the
Leave campaign pretty much from the get-go portraying it as the tool with which unelected
EU officials rule over EU citizens, who canât even vote them out of office. I donât want to get into too much detail
on how EU legislation is drafted but it is correct that the EU commission ultimately
calls the shorts. While laws can be requested by the parliament,
the European central & investment bank, 25% of member states or the citizens themselves
by gathering signatures or submitting petitions, the commission doesnât have to comply with
that. The parliament for instance canât push a
law through the commission, no matter how big the support is. And as far as I can see this argument has
been one that convinced a lot of people that the EU is ultimately undemocratic and strips
its member states of their sovereignty. In my opinion that viewpoint stems from a
fundamental misunderstanding of why the commission exists in the first place, and what might
that be. Drumrolls please. The EU commission exists to protect the sovereignty
of its member states. For instance, if a couple of member states
would push for a legislation in parliament that is to the disadvantage of another state,
that state can just veto the law via its seat on the EU commission. It's true that the members of the commission
arenât elected directly, but they have about as much democratic legitimacy as a minister
on a national level. In addition, if the commission wants to pass
something, it has to be agreed upon by every state representative. In the EU parliament, it's not that way. Germany for instance has 99 MEPs, proportional
to the number of its citizens. A much smaller country like Estonia only has
6. But through the commission, it could block
legislation it didnât want to pass despite its much smaller representation in the EU
parliament. Further the Commission can only propose laws
in areas where the national governments have unanimously agreed to allow it. Put another way, the Commission can only propose
EU laws in areas where the UK government has allowed it to do so. And naturally the EU parliament as well as
other stakeholders also have to approve laws put forward by the commission. It's also not true that EU commissioners canât
be removed. The European Court of Justice as well as the
EU commission president can force a member to resign and the EU parliament can even make
the entire commission resign via a vote of no confidence. But just so you know, that doesnât mean
there isn't a case in reforming the system with for instance letting the commission president
be elected directly by the people. There is actually a lot of stuff about the
EU that sucks and Iâll talk about that a bit later in the video but the sheer idiocy
by Farage and other Brexiteers doesnât even allow for that kind of nuance. The European Parliament meets in Brussels. At least, thatâs what I thought when I was
elected there. But once a month, do you know what happens? They load the contents of our offices and
papers into big, plastic trunks, and they put those trunks on lorries, and they drive
them nearly 400 miles down Europeâs motorways to a French city called Strasbourg where,
for four days, the contents of our offices, and our papers, are put into a new office,
and the parliament then sits there. Twelve times a year this back-and-forth happens,
and this from an organization who say they want to reduce their level of carbon footprint! This, from an organization whose accounts
have not been given a clean bill of health by the auditors for the last twenty years! ThisâŚa parliament? Itâs more like a traveling circus. Now, all of Europe knows that itâs costing
nearly âŹ300 million every year to move this back and forth from Brussels to Strasbourg. Sorry I have to chime in here folks but with
these PragerU videos it's very hard to take everything point by point. What is described here as the traveling circus
is actually true. Although the costs are closer to 114 million
euro annually according to a recent audit. Itâs a waste of money that I think should
not happen. Funnily enough this was initially done to
save money. Back in the fifties, there was no suitable
building available in Luxembourg, the seat of the European coal and steel community which
was the predecessor to the EU. So, they picked Strasbourg and were able to
use the seat of the European Council, to save money. Since then, a lot has happened and more and
more EU institutions have been concentrated in Brussels but France does not want to let
go of their only major EU institution. That said, the EU is not a monolith, most
MEPs actually oppose this and sometimes even boycott gatherings in Strasbourg. So, weâll see where it goes, I guess. But just to insert a sense of scale here. If you take the annual costs for moving to
Strasbourg and multiply that times three, you roughly have the estimated costs for Brexit
according to a study by the Centre for European Reform. Although these numbers are hard to determine,
this estimate falls in line with the ones from officials at the bank of England and
the UBS group. And when I say costs for Brexit, I mean costs
each week from the time of the referendum to September 2018 resulting in roughly 20
billion euros up until that point. Thatâs just the estimated loss in GDP growth
by the way, not the money the British government spends directly. Be that as it may, I genuinely have no idea
why they decided to include the records of the EUâs court of auditors at that point
in the video. This court doesnât judge what money is being
spent for, but the reliability of the financial records. So this money being spend on moving to Strasbourg,
in itself has no effect on their assessment. For the last few years, the court has judged
the records of the EU to be fair and accurate but also found that more than 2% of payments
contain errors. And these errors usually boil down to stuff
like EU funds not being spent according to established guidelines like awarding a EU-funded
contract directly without holding a proper bidding process. And guess who is responsible for that. Itâs the member states. In the UKâs example a 2014 public accounts
committee criticized the following: âOver the last decade, the UK Government
has incurred at least ÂŁ650 million in penalties to the European Commission because of errors
in how UK public bodies have spent European Union funds. EU rules and regulations for spending EU funds
are complex, and this in itself contributes to errors; however, UK governments have chosen
to design programmes which have added to this complexity, driving up the risk of errors
and penalties further. UK government departments have exhibited a
distinct lack of urgency in tackling complexity and reducing the levels of penalties incurred. HM Treasury has not done enough to hold departments
to account for spending EU funds, nor to encourage learning from best practice, nor to lead by
example by improving the quality of information available on how well EU funds are spent in
the UKâ So much for that. Now let's listen to what Nigel Concludes from
the fact that France is able to block the moving of parliament to Brussels entirely. So why isnât it reformed? Well, the way the EU has been structured,
to change that would require changing the treaties, and to change the treaties would
need all 28 member governments to agree not to go to Strasbourg twelve times a year. And do you know something? The French are never going to agree to that,
âcause itâs in their economic interests for the traveling circus to go to Strasbourg. And it shows you that a system of law-making
has been devised where not only can the voters not change anything, but the institutions
themselves are pretty much incapable of reform. Now if youâre like me, you might be a bit
confused by now. Because apparently, itâs a big problem for
Nigel Farage that member states can dictate law to other member states (which they canât,
for the record) but it's also bad that every country has the ability to block changes that
are not in their interest. Iâm starting to think a large portion of
EU criticism by right-wingers is just a inner political tool and lacks any kind of substance
or consistency. But were about to be served a real example
of supposed EU tyranny so let's listen in: The United Kingdom is an island; itâs surrounded
by the sea, and yet, as members of the European Union, we were only allowed to catch 20% of
the fish swimming in territorial British waters. What that meant was tens of thousands of jobs
were lost in Britainâs coastal communities as we effectively gave away the ability to
look after one of our greatest resources to a bureaucracy based in Brussels. This is the last point Nigel brings up and
it's also a very common one. But the way this is framed should make your
ears ring from the start really. Because if Britain was only allowed to catch
20% of the fish swimming in British waters, implying other EU states take the other 80%
there wouldnât be any fish left would there. It's true however that how much fish Britain
is allowed to catch, is subject to a quota, negotiated on an EU level. Britain's share in this quota is about 30%
and that is because there is no such thing as a âBritish fishâ. That implication is a red herring. Fish donât respect national boundaries and
depending on the fish and time of year they move in and out of British waters. In the case of North Sea herring for example,
most of the juveniles live in the south east corner around the German bight, whereas the
adults tend to congregate around the Shetland Isles prior to spawning at various sites along
the British coast. This is why EU countries strike agreements
on how much each member state can catch. It's also not like it's just 30% that Britain
gets, it depends on the fish really. For example, the UK gets 84% of the North
Sea haddock quota, 81% of the North Sea monkfish quota and 98% of the west of Scotland prawn
quota; but only 4% of the North Sea sprat quota. Adding to that, these quotas are largely based
around the agreements that existed prior to the EU, some even date back to the middle
ages. So leaving the EU does not mean the UK will
have more control over how much fish they catch, they just opt-out of the existing agreement
and will ultimately have to strike another one. But wait, I hear you say. Canât the UK just say, these are our waters,
we will catch how much we please, and we donât care about other countries, they can just
stick to their own waters. Theoretically speaking thatâs possible but
hereâs where we get to what actually destroyed a significant part of the British fishing
industry. It's called the âcod warsâ which were
a series of disputes over fishing rights between the UK and Iceland. Mostly they were kicked off by Iceland going:
âSee these waters over there? Yeah thatâs our fishing territory nowâ. At one point it even escalated to ships intentionally
ramming in to one another, British fisher boats requiring protection from the royal
navy and Iceland allegedly demanding the US to send fighter jets and bomb British ships. Isnât history amazing. In the end all these disputes ended in favor
of Iceland, resulting in thousands of British fishermen becoming redundant. Here you might be asking yourself how a nation
like Iceland, was able to force a naval super power like Britain into submission. It was actually pretty easy for Iceland. They just threatened to pull out of NATO. And since Iceland is placed in the Greenland
Iceland UK Gap which was a submarine warfare chokepoint during the cold war, the UK had
no choice but to back down. One more thing regarding fishing rights tough. It's true that even after the cod wars, small
fishing business that make up the engines of a lot of coastal communities have been
declining. But this is much more likely down to the fact
that the splitting up of the quota, which the UK government is responsible for, is mostly
ending in favor of large companies, rather than small ones. Now why am I telling you about the cod wars? In my opinion this is the perfect showcase
why âsovereigntyâ is such a useless term surrounding the Brexit discussion. Britain isn't an empire anymore. They will have to work with other countries
in an increasing globalized world. Understanding that is one of the reasons the
EU exists in the first place. Together, we have a much better chance to
make our own rules and not become prey to other world powers imposing their will onto
us. That's why the domino effect that Nigel Farage
predicts at the end of the video didnât happen. I want good relations between all the European
nations. I want prosperous, free, and fair trade between
those nations. But Iâll be damned if Iâm going to give
up my rights as a British citizen so that some Eurocrat can tell me how to live. I wonât do it, and Iâm certain that across
the continent, ultimately, the French and the Italians wonât put up with it either. Iâm Nigel Farage The leave camp seems to have miscalculated
who the dominant power in Europe really is and that this power will do everything to
protect its member states and demonstrate that being in the EU actually means something. F.I. prior to the referendum when the subject
of the Irish border came up, as rarely as that happened, prominent Brexiteers seemed
pretty confident to be able to struck a deal with the EU, despite its red lines on the
issue. Now, it turns out that the EU won't throw
Ireland under the bus and the UK slowly starts to realize what being outside the club really
means. And donât get me wrong there are aspects
about the EU that are genuinely worth of criticism. We see it right now with the huge opposition
to article 13. And if youâre mad about that, hereâs what
you can do. Keep that anger inside, grow it, care for
it like some kind of rage baby and then let it out at the ballot box during the European
elections in May. Hereâs a handy breakdown of which party
voted in favor of it. Besides that, I would even go as far as to
say the EU project will fail if it doesnât find an alternative to its dysfunctional monetary
policy. Setting up the EU like I would like to have
it would not only require changing several treaties but also the shift away from neo-liberal
politics. And although movements a springing up that
push for a change like this, it remains a gigantic challenge. But even if the UK would take a significant
swing to the left after leaving the EU, it cannot escape the gravitational influence
of Europe. 21st century socialism requires trans-national
cooperation. Brexit as a project of nationalist retrenchment
offers nothing to combat the effects of global capitalism. I always felt like I missed my chance to make
a video about Brexit since I wasnât making videos while the decision was made but as
seen in this video, even now the people who pushed for Brexit deny to accept what has
become an obvious truth. Brexit was and is a giant con. Itâs a dangerous fantasy that wonât solve
Britain's problems and will also make life worse for the average person. And the people who pushed for it and remain
to push for it despite this reality, deserve to be hounded out of their political careers
for so willingly deceiving the people they are supposed to represent. So that was that. What kind of put me of about making a video
on Brexit was that the timing always seemed wrong since so much is happening and there
are new developments every day. And with Brexit possibly being postponed now
and Labor backing a second referendum, who knows what will happen? Maybe there will really be a second chance
to decide. Or perhaps Iâll have to set up some kind
of refugee commune for British left-tubers here on the mainland. Another thing that I couldnât find a right
spot for in this video is that non-Brits who oppose Brexit should keep in mind that a bunch
of people didnât vote for Brexit or have since changed their mind. With Europeâs growing frustration at Brexit
Iâve repeatedly seen anger over Brexit being expressed as sort of casual bigotry and we
shouldnât ever let that slide. I think thatâs it for today. If you listened to me ramble over the credits,
youâre probably extremely impressed by the names rolling by. Luckily you can get in on the action by becoming
a Patron via the link in the description. My last couple of videos weâre light on
history unfortunately but Iâm going to make it up with the next one, when weâll talk
about the Crusades. How exciting! Until then, let's just all try to stick it
out and I hope to see you the next time. Have a good one.
Great: Arrows Video
Not so Great: Physical effort to maintain sanity listening to even parts of pragerU
I fucking lost it when he was talking about the fishery management. "It's true however that how much fish Britain is allowed to catch is subject to a quota negotiated on an EU level. Britain's share in this quota is about 30%, and that is because there's no such thing as a British fish. That implication is a red herring."
Lol Farage making a Video on Brexit.
I would've loved it if there was a more in-depth leftist critique of the EU besides "but muh meeeemz".
Still, it is always good to trash on fash.
It shocked me how fast he gained subscribers. After watching some of his videos, the quality of content explains it all.
I really love these PragerU breakdowns. There's no way to better understand the opposition than systematically tearing apart their flimsy arguments.
I thought he was a social democrat, Is he officially a socialist?