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Should the UK remain a member of the EU


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317 members have voted

  1. 1. Should the UK remain a member of the EU

    • Yes
      259
    • No
      58


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56 minutes ago, Nelly-Torres said:

Should "democracy" really be respected when it produces a blatantly wrong and dangerous result that might decimate the economy and risk people's lives, particularly when there's a chance that people might have changed their mind? 

 

Fuck it. Bring on the yellow vested fuckwits. We'll have them off anyway. 

Leave was a generic term and was never defined so MP's have the right to mitigate the worst effects of that decision : I would say duty.  Voters get shat on after elections when promises are broken so why should the 2016 referendum be set in stone. Facts and reality can't be ignored forever.  Put it back to the people and let them confirm they meant crashing out was really what they meant when they voted Leave. Why are they afraid of that? 

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1 hour ago, Section_31 said:

Does the act of leaving the EU have that impact though or is it the way it's been handled?

 

Norway seems to manage okay and it has a customs border with Sweden.

 

Norway is not in the customs union, but it is in the single market, so it has to accept freedom of movement.

 

It has to pay to be in the single market, its per capita costs for that are about the same as ours, but it has no say in the making of the rules. The customs border requires heavy bureaucracy, and is absolutely rife with smuggling.

 

So, yes, Norway "manages", but it's hardly an optimal situation.

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51 minutes ago, skend04 said:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/23/michel-barnier-warns-against-time-limited-irish-backstop

 

Barnier confirms that any vote in Parliament to prevent a no-deal won't matter as Art.50 runs out in 10 weeks without significant movement. Tick tock mother fuckers. If the MPs are going to grow a set, they better start soon.

Presumably preventing a no deal Brexit means extending article 50 or revoking it should no deal be reached.

 

Given that the EU won't extend, it's a move to cancel Brexit no?

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1 hour ago, Section_31 said:

As if anyone in this country could be arsed taking part in a civil war. It'll be a a Twitter skirmish at best and it'll be talked about briefly on Gogglebox

True.

 

Every now and then a few right-wing gobshites would go looking for trouble and some antifa would lamp them.

 

Plus ça change (as they say in the EU).

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8 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

I'd say Norway more than manages from what I've seen. As does Switzerland and Iceland. Greece, Portugal and Spain however don't seem to have got the memo about EU membership boosting your economy.

 

You're certainly an expert in erecting strawmen.

 

I can't wait for No Deal, the Brexit Britain deserves.

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16 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

I'd say Norway more than manages from what I've seen. As does Switzerland and Iceland. Greece, Portugal and Spain however don't seem to have got the memo about EU membership boosting your economy.

Norway's economy hasn't been run by a succession of self serving cunts for the better part of 40 years.

 

They didn't just sell off the oil rights to their mates and pocket the money without thinking about the future like we did.

 

Unfortunately I doubt we will ever be like Norway, which is a shame as Norway is fucking ace. 

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28 minutes ago, rico1304 said:

Haven’t Norway said their deal won’t suit an economy like ours?  Think it was their President. 

 

PM, as Norway is also a monarchy. The lady said what would be the point of leaving if you accept the Norway model of free movement of people and accepting EU legislation with financial contributions. 

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Barnier has offered Norway plus here is what Boles who is championing this as a solution has said. Their PM said they would find a solution if the UK really wanted this.

 

Published: December 18, 2018

 

Nick Boles: Demolishing five myths about Norway Plus

 
 

Nick Boles is a former Planning Minister and Education Minister, and is MP for Grantham and Stamford.

There is growing support in Parliament for the idea that after Brexit the UK should move to a position a bit like Norway’s or Iceland’s – inside the common market of the European Economic Area (EEA) and the European Free Trade Association (Efta) with some kind of customs arrangement that preserves frictionless trade. Just in the last few days Mark Hendrick, Labour MP for Preston, Paul Masterton, Conservative MP for East Renfrewshire, and Jonathan Djanogly, Conservative MP for Huntingdon, joined the ranks of those declaring their backing for a version of the plan.

As the idea has gathered momentum, so it has also attracted the attention of opponents. An unholy alliance of hardline Brexiters who want to crash out of the European Union with “no deal” and hardline Remainers who want to use a second referendum to overturn the result of the first has been born. One MP linked to the People’s Vote campaign recently told a Times journalist: “We have to kill Norway Plus”. I suppose we should be flattered that they are taking the idea so seriously.

The Norway Plus plan is not perfect. It is a compromise. It has downsides as well as benefits. But people should judge it based on the facts not on misleading claims put about by its opponents.

Rule taker

Some have claimed that Norway Plus would leave the UK as a pure ‘rule taker’. This is not true. Most EU rules would not apply to us at all as we would be outside the common agriculture, fisheries, justice and home affairs policies. Furthermore, as a member of the EEA, the UK would have a right to be consulted on proposed new Single Market rules. UK representatives would take part sit on the policy-shaping committees that draw up proposals for new Single Market legislation. In the EEA, EU law would no longer take effect automatically so the UK would have the power to delay the incorporation of laws we did not like, contest the Single Market relevance of such laws, negotiate derogations and in extreme cases refuse to incorporate Single Market legislation into UK law. All these options have been used by the existing EEA/Efta states. Under Norway Plus we would be under the jurisdiction of the Efta court instead of the European Court of Justice. We can expect to be able to negotiate the appointment of at least one British judge to the court.

Freedom of movement

Some have claimed that Norway Plus leaves the UK in the same position on free movement as we currently have inside the EU. This is not true. Free movement applies to members of EEA/Efta. But Article 112 of the EEA Agreement gives them the right to pull an emergency brake on free movement if events give rise to “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties of a sectorial or regional nature”. We do not know exactly in what circumstances we could take advantage of this provision, or what it would deliver. But it is the very thing that David Cameron sought during his renegotiation of the terms of our EU membership and the EU refused. So it clearly has some legal force. From 2020, after the UK has required all EEA nationals currently living in the UK to register with the Home Office, the Government will be able to identify and remove new EEA migrants who do not find work after three months. This is something we could do as a member of the EU but successive governments have failed to grapple with the administrative reforms required to make it effective.

Financial contributions

Some have claimed that as a member of EEA/Efta we would pay about as much to the EU as we currently do. This is not true. According to the Norwegian Mission to the EU, Norway pays approximately £800 million a year in costs arising from its membership of the EEA. This amounts to £152 for each Norwegian citizen. The UK currently pays the EU £13 billion a year gross which amounts to approximately £220 for each British citizen.

£352 million of Norway’s £800 million total contribution relates to grants that Norway makes to European states via the EEA Grants Scheme. While the UK would be expected to make a contribution to this scheme, the level of contribution would reflect our GDP per capita which at $39,000 is not much more than half that of Norway’s at $76,000. So the UK could expect financial contributions in relation to membership of the EEA and Efta to be substantially less than our contributions to the EU.

Backstop

Some have claimed that signing up to Norway Plus would make no difference to the backstop. This is not true. While we would certainly need to sign up to the legal provisions relating to the backstop in the draft Withdrawal Agreement, joining Efta, moving into the Efta pillar of the EEA, and agreeing a customs arrangement that preserves frictionless trade are all arrangements that can be negotiated and implemented before the end of the transition in December 2020. So the backstop would never need to be activated. Last week, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit representative, said, “If (Theresa May) is looking for a closer relationship with the EU to avoid the use of this backstop there will be no obstacle.”

Opposition in Norway or EU

Some have claimed that Norway is opposed to British membership of EEA/Efta. This is not true. A recent headline in Norway’s Nationen newspaper read “Solberg sier britene er velhomne i EFTA.” In the piece, Erna Solberg, the Norwegian Prime Minister, confirmed “if that is what they [UK] really want then we will find a solution in the future.” We would need to negotiate a derogation to the Efta Convention so we could be part of a customs arrangement with the EU. But this is something that could be negotiated by December 2020 as part of our Efta accession.

Others have claimed that the EU would not want the UK to join Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein in the Efta pillar of the EEA. This is also not true. Michel Barnier has repeatedly offered Norway Plus as the only Brexit deal that guarantees ‘frictionless trade’. It may be that some people in the European Commission, and some politicians in Norway and elsewhere, would prefer to create a new EEA pillar for the UK. But what matters is what the leader of Norway’s government and the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator think, and they are clear: the UK would be welcome to join Norway in the EEA and Efta.

As MPs grapple with difficult choices about the Brexit deal, they should be in no doubt: Norway Plus is real, it is workable and it would deliver significantly more control over our money, our borders and our laws than we currently have as members of the EU

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21 minutes ago, chevettehs said:

Norway's economy hasn't been run by a succession of self serving cunts for the better part of 40 years.

 

They didn't just sell off the oil rights to their mates and pocket the money without thinking about the future like we did.

 

Unfortunately I doubt we will ever be like Norway, which is a shame as Norway is fucking ace. 

This is the point I was making though. 

 

Britain leaving the EU isn't the issue, as ever, it's the people running the country and the way they've mishandled it that is.

 

It's perfectly possible to be outside the EU and thrive, it's been done and is being done.

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18 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

This is the point I was making though. 

 

Britain leaving the EU isn't the issue, as ever, it's the people running the country and the way they've mishandled it that is.

 

It's perfectly possible to be outside the EU and thrive, it's been done and is being done.

I tend to concur. Personally I'd rather remain, not because the EU is all sunshine and lollipops but because as things stand I think we're better in than out.

 

Our biggest problems are mostly internal and self inflicted. Leaving in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but leaving when you have a massive import/export deficit and no strategy in place to deal with that is absolutely mental in my opinion. 

 

Plus as I've said on here before having actually had to work with EU regs, if we leave companies will still have to abide by them if they want to sell into the EU. In much the same way as we had to make stuff that complied to UL regs to sell in the States.

 

Some of the regs were bullshit but most of them were actually fairly sensible, at least in our field, obviously I can't vouch for elsewhere, however the UK basically deferred these things to the EU anyway. I would be very surprised if British Standards are in a position to deal with these things once we leave. For our field there was one person qualified to test if products met the standards, let alone to be able to come up with new standards. 

 

The other issue I see is if even if we scrapped the stipulation for applying these regs, is what happens if there is an incident (the obvious example being something like Grenfell) where a company has started selling products to the UK that it knows are of a lower standard. 

 

My strong expectation is that we'll see no major political change here anyway if we do leave, just a string of politicians of both major parties trotting out that any failure or problem is a legacy of having been in the EU whether it's something the EU imposed or not while journalists don't bother their arse to actually question this.

 

And I say all of this as someone who, if I look at leaving the EU leaving us with importation issues, could actually have skills and knowledge that would be very useful if we had to stand alone so would probably benefit. 

 

Worst case, I actually know someone who lives in Norway so arrange marriage and run away could work as well! As long as they don't limit the exportation of Ford Escorts as I can't leave those behind. 

 

Edit: to clarify, the reason I mention Grenfell is I worked in the Fire Industry so that's the area I know about. 

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1 hour ago, rico1304 said:

David Davis has just disclosed a new £60,000-a-year job at JCB, whose chairman is pro-Brexit Anthony Bamford

Who is a rabid Brexiteer and has donated over 4 mill to the Tories

 

Interestingly Mark Bamford is a director of the law firm that are lawyers for Seaborne Freight that share the same registered office. I haven't been able to find if they are related yet but would it be any surprise ?

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