Do not resist evil

[APeacefulWarrior]

I am always against any centralisation of power, it's dangerous on a mixed polarity planet.

I really have to disagree with this. Broadly speaking, the positive polarity is one of coming-together, and the negative polarity is one of breaking-apart. People in small groups are almost always easier to control\dominate than people in larger groups. Large unions of disparate peoples coming together for common purpose, and doing so peacefully, is going to do more to promote Positive thinking than small groups being egged on with tribal\xenophobic arguments for why they should distrust other groups.

Also, there's a certain paradox which comes with the centralization of power: The more it's centralized, the more the power is far away from people's day to day lives. A small town with a single ruling family or "good 'ol boy network" with most of the wealth and power will almost inevitably be vastly more corrupt and directly abusive than even a heavily corrupt Federal government thousands of miles away.

Why must a group of democratic countries institute yet another layer of governance above them?

For the same reason America settled on a relatively powerful Federal government after experimenting with a weak decentralized government under the Articles of Confederation. If you're not familiar with that period, the short version is simply that it was a disaster and nearly ended the new country before it had barely started.

A stronger central government has the power to prevent harmful disagreements between states\countries which can end up trickling down to harm the everyday people. It also creates regularized diplomatic channels for resolving disputes that, previously, would often spark wars. Remember, Europe's history was basically 2,000 years of violence with occasional outbreaks of peace, right up until the post-WWII reforms and treaties that started building the foundation of the EU. Since then, the only large-scale violence in Europe has been in countries NOT part of the Union, such as the former Yugoslavia and various Eastern-bloc ex-Soviet states.

I find it very underhanded when a democratic referendum has been held, and the losers say "we don't like the outcome, let's vote again".

The problem is, most of the Brexit propaganda was INCREDIBLY underhanded. In their victory speeches, the Brexit leaders basically admitted that most of their campaigning points were total BS. No, immigration won't be affected much. No, the money previously sent to the EU will not be going into the NHS instead, despite plastering the country with posters saying it would. (That was a "mistake.") No, Cornwall, you are not getting matching funds to replace the large subsidies the EU had previously been giving you. Almost nothing the Brexiters claimed will come to pass, and in the meantime, almost all the negative effects the Bremain side warned about are already happening. There are large numbers of Britons\Welsh who voted to Leave and now feel like they were flat-out lied to.

I dislike using this line out of context too often, but to me, this epitomizes Ra's comment that "The negative polarity is clever." If the Brexit side had run a clean campaign, it would be different, but they simply did not and they aren't even pretending they did.

Besides, it was a non-binding referendum. It was basically a big opinion poll. And now that Cameron has already announced that he won't be the one who initiates Article 50, that's going to leave it to the "victorious" Brexit side to decide whether any of them really wants to be the one who begins a process which is likely to result in the complete disintegration of the United Kingdom. Hell, even Boris Johnson is suddenly waffling and saying there's no hurry to initiate Article 50 proceedings, which suggests the Brexit leadership is getting cold feet when faced with the reality of what they've started.