If they do give a deal to the UK wouldn't that trigger more exits? If countries see they can leave the EU and still get a trade deal they'd be more likely to leave than if they saw the UK get shafted (so to speak).
Yes, that's why the EU is doomed and will be gone within a decade no matter what they do now.
It is a fundamentally unattractive entity. The people who run it have never even tried to combat rising anti-EU feeling across the continent, as they believe the EU is inevitable and unstoppable, so why bother trying to make it more popular.
Now it's probably too late: they've become so gripped by groupthink they can't reform quickly enough even if they wanted to, hence the focus is now 100% on trying to make leaving as scary as possible vs trying to make staying in as attractive as possible.
In the long run this is a failing strategy. The EU is unresponsive and so makes mistakes that upset local populations. In the UK it was migration policy. The latest was telling Spain and Portugal they'd be punished for breaking rules that France and Germany also break punishment free. That's not going down well.
The combination of a retention policy based on fear rather than respect + a succession of local gaffes do not bode well for the future of the union.
Yes, that's why the EU is doomed and will be gone within a decade no matter what they do now.
"I give the Bolsheviks a year, two at most". Quote from a famous Czech movie [1] about the ill-fated Prague Spring, 1968 :-)
But in fact, communism survived for more than another twenty years...
My point: these things take longer than one would expect. Unlike logic, where a proven theorem takes its "logical effect" immediately, the politic process has massive inertia. The time gap between "result obvious and unavoidable" and "result effective" can be decades.
I second your sentiment, but I'm afraid it will take much longer for the EU to fall apart. Just like with communism before (and about as "reformable"). I personally think it will take a generation, starting now -- especially in parts of the west that have to tread this glorious neo-marxist path for the first time.
I agree it will take longer than anyone thinks, and wanted to add that the EU has been struggling for awhile now. Greece, Italy, and Spain are the real tests.
This presumably explains why 28 countries have joined and there are still more waiting to join.
> The people who run it (...) believe the EU is inevitable and unstoppable
The people who run it are for the most part the elected leaders of the member states, who are no strangers to euro-skepticism, since they never fail to exploit it when it suits them (e.g. to deflect criticism of unpopular legislation by claiming that "Brussels" requires it).
That dynamic is exactly why it is unattractive - rather than having a single government responsible for running the country, you get organisations that resort to passing the buck whenever anything bad happens. In the US and Germany, this was eventually solved by putting all the power in the Federal government, but this is fundamentally impossible in the EU, because there is no agreement on how government shoukd work between the different cultures in Europe. The EU should have remained a customs union, in a better world.
