Should the UK remain a member of the EU

[skend04]

What would be high on the list would be access to global markets including the EU. That’s why I have no hesitation in endorsing remaining in the single market and customs union.

 

Cake.

 

 

Eat.

[Anny Road]

Cake.

 

 

Eat.

The Cambridge debating society rang they want the hat back.

[skend04]

The Cambridge debating society rang they want the hat back.

Fuck 'em. They can't.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

What have the Romanians ever done for us?

[AngryOfTuebrook]

On the contrary.

I have no doubt in the ability of Eastern European workers. However if I was looking at a multimillion pound investment in a high skilled industry low wages would not be top of my list of requirements.

What would be high on the list would be access to global markets including the EU. That’s why I have no hesitation in endorsing remaining in the single market and customs union.

The policies of Rees Mogg and Johnson do not accurately represent the views of those that want to remain a vibrant trading partner with Europe whilst distancing ourselves from the aspirations of the political federalists.

It might sound like splitting hairs, but there really is no such thing as "remaining in the Single Market" apart from remaining in the EU.

[Anny Road]

It might sound like splitting hairs, but there really is no such thing as "remaining in the Single Market" apart from remaining in the EU.

ok maintaining access to the single market. Subject to fee.

[Anubis]

ok maintaining access to the single market. Subject to fee.

And EU regulations governing it.

[Anny Road]

And EU regulations governing it.

For me yes.

[Rico1304]

For me yes.

And subject to EU courts?

[Anny Road]

And this and that and the other. Where to stop?

Look I have no problem with the EU in terms of trade, trading standards, customs, free movement and a whole plethora of other hugely positive things the community brings. The peace dividend alone is worth the membership fee.

All the ancillary aspects like court jurisdiction, ability to agree trade deals outside EU on our terms, future defence commitments, inclusion of other states in any agreement following expansion etc would be all the things that need negotiation once we have agreed the fundamentals of a successful cooperative way forward.

Extract ourself from the political movement but cooperate fully in aspects beneficial to both sets of people. If that includes courts I have no massive issue with that particularly in areas where we are in a agreement ie trading standards.

[Neil G]

Anny, if you’re fine with being in the single market and the customs union and it’s political integration that you’re worried about, you know that any revisions to the EU treaty have to be agreed unanimously by all the member states, don’t you? Meaning that we, or any other member, can veto any moves towards further integration that we’re not happy with.

[Anny Road]

Anny, if you’re fine with being in the single market and the customs union and it’s political integration that you’re worried about, you know that any revisions to the EU treaty have to be agreed unanimously by all the member states, don’t you? Meaning that we, or any other member, can veto any moves towards further integration that we’re not happy with.

Yeah aware of that. And the veto obviously applies for now. I suspect majority voting is not a million miles down the road. For example if the UK France Germany wanted a peice of legislation enacted and it was blocked by say Malta that would render the system ineffective.

Plus why join a club when you do not share the central aspirations at its heart. Little point staying in and vetoing everything. Get out wish them well and begin a new era of Cooperation with non of the overtones usually associated with anything EU related this country throws up.

[magicrat]

Back in the Westminster bubble Soubry has tabled an amendment to force May to stay in the customs union which she will be unable to accept,

If as she claims there is cross party support to pass this then it would almost certainly trigger a confidence vote. Tories would win but leadership election to follow and then a GE with potentially a second referendum on offer, Massive few days for Corbyn as he re-defines Labours Brexit stance

[Anny Road]

My hope as a softer than soft Brexit supporter was always that this would result in the destruction of the Tories for a generation.

It is impossible for them to continue to govern it their current setup regardless of which direction they shift.

 

My only fear is the relative inaction of the opposition parties. We could really do with a strong pro EU charismatic Liberal leader to shift the direction which Corbyn could use to seize the middle with a cross party coalition at least on Europe. That is not the fault of the Liberals all opposition has been ineffective.

[Neil G]

Yeah aware of that. And the veto obviously applies for now. I suspect majority voting is not a million miles down the road. For example if the UK France Germany wanted a peice of legislation enacted and it was blocked by say Malta that would render the system ineffective.

 

Plus why join a club when you do not share the central aspirations at its heart. Little point staying in and vetoing everything. Get out wish them well and begin a new era of Cooperation with non of the overtones usually associated with anything EU related this country throws up.

Mate, majority voting has been used right from the start of the EEC, before we even joined. Each increase in its use has had to be agreed by unanimity among all member states, and that will remain the case for any future increases. It’s worked well, the EC / EU has always favoured constructive discussion and consensus when it comes to votes in the Council of Ministers, so that common positions can be agreed in advance without the need for a minority to be overruled.

 

It’s commendable that you haven’t swallowed the Brexiter bullshit about the ECJ and the single market and Britain being dictated to by unelected Brussels bureaucrats, but you’ve bought into an equally damaging fiction, that of blocs of states led by the biggest ganging up on smaller or individual states and forcing through rules the latter don’t want. That’s not how the EU works, it would have fallen apart long ago if that was the approach taken by members.

 

As for disagreeing with the central aspirations of the EU, then assuming you mean greater federalism and centralisation, that ship has sailed. The penny has dropped that a one size fits all approach doesn’t work with 28 plus member states with widely varying political, economic and social traditions and circumstances. The UK isn’t the only country opposed to federalism, the Eastern European states for example spent decades under Soviet domination and aren’t going to sign over their sovereignty to an EU superstate. Even governments who might be inclined to further integration will refrain from pushing it as they’re wary of populist parties and movements, from the right and the left, that will punish them at the ballot box if they do.

 

Macron has revived the idea of a multi-speed EU where different groups of states sign up to different levels of integration, and he’s suggested that this could make it easier for the UK to stay, or failing that rejoin. The goal of ever closer union for all EU member states is dead, and fear of it is a flimsy reason for wanting to leave if you’re ok with all the economic stuff.

[Anny Road]

Good post Neil. Nice to discus these things without being derided as thick or racist.

I would like to believe you in your assertions however I remain unconvinced that the goal of the superstate is dead. Macron may raising be the idea of a multi speed EU at the current time but this could simply be the reaction to the spreading unsettled feeling with the EU held in the populace of many of its members. At least there is a reaction but I feel it is simply an act of self preservation rather than deep reform of the political ideology. The desire for closer ties across many institutions is still on the agenda and is in my opinion bears all the characteristics of a union of states in all but name.

While in some cases I see advantages in that I am not comfortable with the centralisation of authority when the global mood appears to to favour a move to decentralise power and give greater autonomy to regions. ie Catalonia,Basque and Scotland

 

With regards the big bullying the small and the desire for cooperation rather than imposition I only have to look at the example of Greece and the imposed austerity against the specifics protests of its people. Whilst I will agree that this was as a direct result of financial support for the failing Euro of which we are not apart of I think it is indicative of the desire to see the survival of the institutions over the will of the people. Institutions that have no electoral mandate.

 

The Greece example also illustrates that the divides within the geographical region are too broad to be encompassed under one flag or political structure. Fisheries and agricultural policies are a shambles and are unsustainable under the current setup and no one system will be applicable to a Greek olive farmer and Romanian tilling the soil with horse drawn ploughs and a billionaire UK aristocrat with tens of thousands of acres. Just as it is not sustainable to give fishing subsidies to member states who have no coastline or fleet. It simply is not workable. Yet somehow funded.

 

I don’t claim to be an expect in any area of EU policy and part of the problem with it is it is unfathomable even to the experts. It is a flawed system with huge democracy issues. Reliant upon the financial clout of a few whilst trying to be the master of many.

[magicrat]

My hope as a softer than soft Brexit supporter was always that this would result in the destruction of the Tories for a generation.

It is impossible for them to continue to govern it their current setup regardless of which direction they shift.

 

My only fear is the relative inaction of the opposition parties. We could really do with a strong pro EU charismatic Liberal leader to shift the direction which Corbyn could use to seize the middle with a cross party coalition at least on Europe. That is not the fault of the Liberals all opposition has been ineffective.

 

I largely share those sentiments although would prefer we just ditch Brexit, I think the chance is there right now for Corbyn to make a real power play and take the Tories down over Brexit. Face up to the loons and side with soft Brexit whilst not ruling out a second referendum to break any deadlock,  They are in complete and utter disarray with May desperately trying to reconcile the impossible,  

[skend04]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/23/eu-pours-cold-water-on-uk-hopes-of-chequers-brexit-breakthrough

 

The poor twat hasn't even made it to her speech next Friday with the latest version of cake and consumption and the EU are already pouring scorn on the managed divergence.

[Anny Road]

She is being set up to be the natural scapegoat.

[skend04]

She is being set up to be the natural scapegoat.

A human shield.

[magicrat]

She is being set up to be the natural scapegoat.

 

Remainers will be No1 scapegoat for refusing to bend over and take it up the shitter after the people had spoken then our Overlords in Brussels for not needing us more than we need them.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

She is being set up to be the natural scapegoat.

She has been ever since everyone else ran away from the race to succeed Cameron.

[Neil G]

Good post Neil. Nice to discus these things without being derided as thick or racist.

I would like to believe you in your assertions however I remain unconvinced that the goal of the superstate is dead. Macron may raising be the idea of a multi speed EU at the current time but this could simply be the reaction to the spreading unsettled feeling with the EU held in the populace of many of its members. At least there is a reaction but I feel it is simply an act of self preservation rather than deep reform of the political ideology. The desire for closer ties across many institutions is still on the agenda and is in my opinion bears all the characteristics of a union of states in all but name.

While in some cases I see advantages in that I am not comfortable with the centralisation of authority when the global mood appears to to favour a move to decentralise power and give greater autonomy to regions. ie Catalonia,Basque and Scotland

With regards the big bullying the small and the desire for cooperation rather than imposition I only have to look at the example of Greece and the imposed austerity against the specifics protests of its people. Whilst I will agree that this was as a direct result of financial support for the failing Euro of which we are not apart of I think it is indicative of the desire to see the survival of the institutions over the will of the people. Institutions that have no electoral mandate.

The Greece example also illustrates that the divides within the geographical region are too broad to be encompassed under one flag or political structure. Fisheries and agricultural policies are a shambles and are unsustainable under the current setup and no one system will be applicable to a Greek olive farmer and Romanian tilling the soil with horse drawn ploughs and a billionaire UK aristocrat with tens of thousands of acres. Just as it is not sustainable to give fishing subsidies to member states who have no coastline or fleet. It simply is not workable. Yet somehow funded.

I don’t claim to be an expect in any area of EU policy and part of the problem with it is it is unfathomable even to the experts. It is a flawed system with huge democracy issues. Reliant upon the financial clout of a few whilst trying to be the master of many.

I don’t doubt there are still lots of people within national governments and the EU institutions who support federalism, but the drive and the case for it is no longer strong enough to win the unanimous approval of 28 governments and their parliaments as well. Remember that PR is more common on the continent, meaning that at any one time many, perhaps most of the governments negotiating EU treaties and agreements won’t have majorities in their national parliaments, so trying to force through measures that clearly don’t have the backing of their populations will be nigh on impossible. There is now much more scepticism across the EU towards centralising power on both the right and the left, including among people who strongly support remaining in the EU, since the euro (the last big centralising project) failed to deliver the promised benefits for millions and took power out of the hands of national governments.

 

The treatment of Greece was a clear case of bullying, but it was a different situation from the kind of discussions we’re talking about, because those ultimately making the decisions (the troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF, plus the German government as Greece’s biggest state creditor) weren’t accountable to those who were opposed to the decisions (the government and people of Greece) and so they could act without fear of being punished. By contrast, in intergovernmental votes in the Council of Ministers on transferring powers to the EU, most of the governments involved will have a large bloc of eurosceptic voters that they’ll have to answer to if they give away too much sovereignty.

 

If we stay / rejoin, then in the unlikely event that we ended up having to continually veto moves towards more federalism that all the other member states’ governments were happy with, that would be ok and wouldn’t delegitimise our membership. We wouldn’t be being obstructionist and simply representing ourselves against the rest of the EU, we’d also be representing the millions of people across the continent of all political persuasions who don’t want further centralisation. This would force the EU to act pragmatically and look at more flexible solutions where different states can choose different levels of integration that they’re happy with and their people will accept, like Macron is suggesting.

 

And at the end of the day, if that didn’t work and we found ourselves completely isolated and being criticised for holding up things for everyone else, and if it was politically unsustainable, we would always have the option of leaving again, only this time to stay closely tied economically via the SM and CU, and not mess around with the bullshit and bad faith over unachievable special deals that we’re seeing from this government.

 

I don’t believe it would ever come to that though. The UK is genuinely valued and respected as a partner in the EU, and not just because we make a big contribution to the budget. When we act constructively and in good faith we have influence and can shape the debate in a way that protects our interests while not damaging those of other members. We did it over the single market, we did it over our opt-outs from the euro and Schengen, and even the concessions Cameron won before calling the referendum were pretty good, or at least would have been if we’d stayed - the reason they were belittled by so many voters was that he built up unrealistic expectations of what he could achieve.

 

The image of Britain as a lone holdout, constantly being ganged up on by the rest and digging its heels in to prevent progress, is a myth perpetuated by the right wing press who want to convince people that the EU isn’t a natural or worthwhile place for us to be.

[Stickman]

Great article by Harry Leslie Smith taken from his book "Don't Let My Past Be Your Future", 95 years old as well and still puts 99% of politicians to shame

 

Brexit threatens everything I fought for in the Second World War. On my 95th birthday, this is what I need people to know

 

No political party in my youth advocated isolation, which is what leaving the EU means for Britain. Instead all insisted that our military and political survival depended on cooperation and integration with other nations

 

 

It was at the end of February in 1945 that I celebrated, courtesy of the RAF and Hitler, my 22nd birthday in Belgium. I was stationed at a former Luftwaffe airfield that was at that time used for fighter planes to fly short reconnaissance missions to the nearby collapsing German front.

Then the world was in turmoil from five long years of world war that had turned Europe into a charnel house. But at the time I didn’t feel jaded because I believed that the tide of evil that had enveloped my generation’s world since the Great Depression was retreating from the shoreline of civilisation.

On that night, 73 years ago, my future and Europe’s stood before me and I faced it with wonder and the fragile grace that comes from having lived through tumultuous events. I remember on that long-ago evening of my 22nd birthday drinking whiskey to take the edge off the cold breath of winter with mates on a deserted tarmac.

Above me, a darkened sky was torn violently open by an endless stream of artillery shells that were trying to pulverise a German V2 rocket emplacement several miles away from our base. As the earth around me shook with the thunder of war, I was overcome with the realisation that, as this conflict was nearing its end, I had a good chance of walking away from it without a scratch. The premonition that I was going to live whilst millions of others had died because of the evil machinations of tyranny and the indifference of the entitled to the suffering of others humbled me on that long-ago birthday.

It was blind luck that I survived both the Great Depression and the Second World War both physically and emotionally intact, but Britain was a different country from what it is today because all of us, from worker to intellectual, felt we were part of a great cause that was vital for the survival of civilisation. And that spirit of destiny and optimism didn’t die when we’d vanquished Hitler; it lived on through the people’s desire to elect a Labour government intent on changing our nation for the better.

Unlike today, no political party in my youth advocated the isolation that Brexit will bring to Britain. Instead all insisted that our military and political survival depended on cooperation and integration with other nations. Yet today, the political descendants of Winston Churchill are turning our nation into a hermit kingdom whose wealth and ingenuity are being squandered for an idealised notion that we are still a mighty power that the nations of the world want to trade with on our terms. 

So much has changed in my mood since those early months of 1945 when I felt optimistic for our world’s future. But then America’s president was Franklin D Roosevelt, a man who had made his country great again not by tax cuts but by making sure that each citizen could afford a decent roof over their heads and food on their tables. Whereas today Donald Trump occupies the Oval Office with the malevolence of a Pinochet-in-waiting who is only restrained by a constitution that maybe can prevent tyrants but never the indifference of citizens addicted to reality TV shows and online shopping.

So, as I stand on the cusp of my 95th birthday the night air still bites but my confidence in humanity’s survival and its march towards progress dims like the afternoon sky just before the approach of rain. In fact, my hope that all will be well for my grandchildren’s generation is circumscribed by a growing anger and frustration towards my children’s generation because they bottled their responsibilities to our country and society in pursuit of personal pleasures.

The baby boomers were bequeathed by my generation a society built upon a bedrock of personal sacrifice and a commitment to social and economic justice. Yet all of our accomplishments, from the NHS to council housing as well as our unfinished work trying to ensure a more equal Britain, was pawned off by them to the hedge funds, tax-avoiding corporations and political parties that believe governments should be run like businesses.  

And now with our nation in chaos over Brexit, and fascism becoming as great a threat to our security as it once was in the 1930s, the majority in this country and the western world sit like the inhabitants of Pompeii the day before Vesuvius destroyed their city and their lives, ignoring the warning calls of imminent destruction.

I have almost a hundred years of lived history pulsing through my blood and memories. So when I tell you that this is the best of times for the one per cent and the worst of times for everyone else, heed my words. It is now time that you gather the spirit of my generation into your hearts to begin the task of rebuilding this country, Europe and the world as it should be. It is time to make our Britain a green and pleasant land for all who live here.

It’s why with the little time I have remaining on this earth, I plan to journey to the refugee hot spots of the world and use my voice to end this crisis and teach people that xenophobia only leads to repression and war. On my 95th birthday, I will toast my longevity with sherry and declare that my last stand as a human being was to not go gently into the good night.

 

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-second-world-war-soldier-army-blitz-spirit-uk-a8225826.html

[skend04]

Fucking hell. Davis saying Labour's position on the CU would mean we couldn't prevent Chinese dumping steel on the market. Short memory? The Tories prevented the EU levying tariffs on Chinese steel.