I mean, not really, since the UK was trying to renegotiate an existing deal (which they profited from for decades) towards a deal that would favor the UK more than the EU and would trigger an entire blow-back of other member-states wanting to renegotiate on their EU responsibilities without losing the advantages that this deal brought, whereas the deal with Canada is a new deal where the EU gains better trading and less dependence on the US and Canada gains better trading and more security if their next door neighbor falls apart even further.

The UK renegotiation was a net loss for the EU, this Canada deal is a deal where both parties gain something.

Also, the Brexit referendum was a campaign promise of David Cameron that was going to trigger if his conservative party won the 2015 general election. Sure, the relationship between EU and UK had strained over the years, but trying to pin this on the inflexibility of the EU feels a bit misdirected.

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fidotron an hour ago | parent [-]

> Also, the Brexit referendum was a campaign promise of David Cameron that was going to trigger if his conservative party won the 2015 general election

That is iff the renegotiations with Brussels failed, which they did.

> The UK renegotiation was a net loss for the EU, this Canada deal is a deal where both parties gain something.

V. hard to see what Canada gets out of it. All the roadblocks to Canadian trade with the EU today (especially around resources) are internal to Canada and have nothing at all to do with EU status.

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rsynnott 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> All the roadblocks to Canadian trade with the EU today (especially around resources) are internal to Canada and have nothing at all to do with EU status.

Presumably under the proposed thing Canada would largely adopt EU regulations. This would make trade (particularly for small businesses) _far_ easier. See the UK for how difficult this can become if you're not in alignment; it's survivable for huge companies (though even some of them had trouble; for instance Marks and Spencers' stores in Ireland literally went empty for a while because they were insufficiently prepared), but if you're a small business importing a bunch of components from Europe and making a thing which is largely sold to Europe, there's a _massive_ difference in bureaucratic overhead between being in and out.

Even many Norwegian SMEs don't see direct sales to Europe as worth the overhead, and Norway's in the EEA, as close to the EU as you can get without actually being in it.

	▲	fidotron 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Presumably under the proposed thing Canada would largely adopt EU regulations. Canadian provinces do not agree with each other about trade regulations. They will not surrender this to the federal government, and they certainly won't to the EU. Canada isn't actually a single market itself.

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foldr 17 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

>[The Conservatives promised a referendum] iff the renegotiations with Brussels failed, which they did.

No. The Conservative party promised an EU membership referendum by 2017 in its 2015 manifesto. That was not conditional on a failure of renegotiations. Nor, indeed, did David Cameron even concede that the renegotiations had failed, so that can’t possibly have been his stated reason for calling the referendum.

You can check the summary of the manifesto at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32302062, or page 30 (printed page number) of the original document at https://www.barnetconservatives.co.uk/sites/www.barnetconser....

Another clear indicator can be found in this article: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/10/david-camer.... Here, Cameron is directly quoted as saying:

> My policy is to hold a renegotiation and then a referendum. That is what we promised in the manifesto and then to abide by what the British public say.

So you can see that there was never any suggestion that the referendum would be called or not called depending on the outcome of the renegotiations.