The post you are reporting:
The present EU camp is split between those that want to stuff the UK at whatever price (President of the EU Commission included); those that want to ensure the future of a disintigrating Union, and those that realise the fragility of an ever controlling centralised federation hell bend on ensuring its own existence at the expense of national sovereignty.
Then there is UKIP, hell bent on eliminating the lot of them, and saving everyone a lot of money, currently going back and forth on the EU gravy train.
As for the UK - it has a mandate to exit the European Union, NOT exit Europe. The problem with BREXIT is that we have to negotiate with the EU, not with those Countries that make up the Union, who are unable to strike any kind of deal, political, financial, social or economical, on their own behalf whilst they are totally controlled by the bureaucrats in Brussels.
It follows that any Country currently within the EU would have to have the equivalent of a 'BREXIT' before they can talk directly with the UK in any of those areas, however keen they might be to have their own trade and financial deals with the UK.
The UK, in the meantime, has to rely on the present Government to implement the outcome of the Referendum. That means interepretation of what consititutes 'OUT'; how it is to be achieved and how long it will take after invoking Article 50. There is a 2 year limit on this process (only extended by the agreement of all EU member Countries) but silent on detail of the actual process. This leaves the UK with a mandate to exit but not how, as the EU could merely sit on their backsides and refuse to listen to any proposals proferred by the UK to secure exit terms. In reality, provided we get as far as invoking Article 50, there will be negotiations on our exit but these appear loaded in favour of the EU unless we have some very skilled and determined negotiators who understand not just the political implications for both sides, but the financial, economic and social repercussions for both the EU as a whole and its individual member states.
All this may well turn on whether individual Countries wish to continue to adhere to and support a centralised federalistic control over that process, or whether they, in turn, revolt and demand their own say.
Aristotle's saying that "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" may not be as appropriate as it would seem. The parts in this case are required to gel together to make a cohesive whole - a greater bond in strength than the individual component parts. By no stretch of the imagination can that be said of the present make up of the EU. There are gaping differences, political, ecomonic and social between the northern and southern communities and within those communities themselves.
Without offering judgement on what is right or wrong it is purely a matter of fact that social needs, priorities and observances, differ greatly across the Union. Even more importantly is the need to protect self respect and self interest from outside interference. Perceptions of what these amount to differ greatly between communities, languages, religions and classes. If these are taken away by virtue of an annonymous heirachy sitting hundreds of miles away in another Country it become almost inevitable that disquient and dissent (or even revolt) will follow.
How this plays out is anybody's guess. It is now out of the hands of both you and I, left to the manderins of Whitehall and a Prime Minister that no one elected outside of Tory party members.
"Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and indignation" Atifete Jahjaga
