Tory UK EU Exit Referendum

[gosub]

mauvais The democratic structures (EU Parliament) aren't there really to drive things. Good job too, you end up with the gad flies like Le Pen and farage spouting rather than anything else. EU Commisson do drive things though to call Juncker 'democratically elected' is a woeful distortion.


Back to the global vs EU. i remember one,pissed me off at the time, but turns out sort of example you want. Couple of months ago heard a couple of EUrophiles explaining how Switzerland wasn't in the EU so had no option but to implement EU banking regulation without input, much to their detriment. Much as you are saying Norway has that problem. Completely ignored the Basel accords which over-arch the EU legislation, and I don't see how you'd stop Switerland putting out a seat for itself at that table

 

[weltweit]

You sound as though you own a trans-national company!

Pretty much every employer I have had relied on selling their goods across the European Union and needed to in order to get economies of scale. I like free movement of goods AND people.

Why? Do you export a lot of goods to European markets? ..

I have exported to the continent yes. A lot of jobs depend on free access to the larger EU.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I hate the EU.

I'm looking forward to watching the tories destroy themselves too.

I dislike the EU, but I worry that given the political system within which EU members exist (neoliberalism) that the exit of a nation-state may have an adverse effect on elements of the populace of that nation-state. The EU as a power bloc has (mostly despite itself) preserved a few protections through HR legislation, and there's absolutely no guarantee that any exiting govt will legislate to continue those protections - in fact we already know that the Tories will be resiling either from the Human Rights Act in toto and replacing it with some nebuolous "bill of rights", or slicing out any provisions that they believe affect capitalism's "right" to maximally exploit.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Seems quite a strong emotion to have about something that is basically a trade block.

If it were only a trade bloc, life would be much simpler. Thatcher and Major both, though, signed up to provisions that increased the ambit beyond trade.

 

[ViolentPanda]

A SAFE PAIR OF HANDS WITH DAVID CAMERON DEFENDING OUR INTERESTS IN EUROPE OR THE CHAOS OF NIGEL FARAGE , EXTREMISTS AND NO WAY TO DEFEND OUR BORDERS AGAINST THE SCOTTISH THREAT

TBF, the latter sounds like much more fun than the former. I like the idea of David Cameron as a lone sentinel on the border, hiding every time he sees a flash of plaid on the horizon, the light glinting off of his sweaty pink hamface.

 

[steeplejack]

I'll be voting to come out as well, if this referendum happens.

The EU is a bloated, undemocratic, neoliberal happy-clapping outfit these days. I am genuinely sad as ten-fifteen years ago I was a passionate pro-European.

I still am, but I am now vehemently anti-EU. Passionately European, passionately anti-EU.

I'd sooner eat my own eyeballs than vote UKIP. But being on the same side as Farage and other assorted racist crackpots on this issue is not an argument to vote "Yes".

 

[redsquirrel]

You'd expect that blue line to be heading upwards in a referendum campaign, I think. Amount of cash and fearmongering they'll throw at it...

Yeah, I think what that plot shows is that while people like to hate on the EU once the question of leaving it becomes something that could be real rather than just a hypothetical a lot of people answer the question differently.

Which is true to a lot of referendums really

 

[mather]

Yeah, I think what that plot shows is that while people like to hate on the EU once the question of leaving it becomes something that could be real rather than just a hypothetical a lot of people answer the question differently.

Which is true to a lot of referendums really

I fear your right. Any ideas one how such a phenomenon can be overcome?

 

[Lo Siento.]

Yeah, I think what that plot shows is that while people like to hate on the EU once the question of leaving it becomes something that could be real rather than just a hypothetical a lot of people answer the question differently.

Which is true to a lot of referendums really

People are often risk averse in secret ballots. Voting booths are very lonely, fearful places for many.

 

[prunus]

I hate the EU.

Why? What's there to hate? Genuinely confused.

 

[frogwoman]

Well proposing to bomb libya and griund troops to stop immigrants getting in, imposing austerity beyond camerons wildest dreams in greece and removing elected governments to do so in italy, the unelected unaccountable bureaucrats that control it...thats just for a start. We need to get out and its embarrassing that the left has entirely abandoned this terrain to ukip and the tory right.

 

[mather]

Why? What's there to hate? Genuinely confused.

Name me one thing about the EU thats not to hate.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Name me one thing about the EU thats not to hate.

Free movement of Cheese

 

[weltweit]

Name me one thing about the EU thats not to hate.

The free movement of people.
The free movement of goods and services.
The Union of Germany France and Britain.

 

[frogwoman]

The free movement of people.
The free movement of goods and services.
The Union of Germany France and Britain.

Strangely this principle of the free movement of the people doesnt seem to extend to the people the EU is expending vast sums to keep out.

 

[weltweit]

Strangely this principle of the free movement of the people doesnt seem to extend to the people the EU is expending vast sums to keep out.

Don't you think it would be a bit ambitious of the EU to think it could solve the whole world's problems when there are plenty of problems within the EU itself it hasn't solved?

 

[frogwoman]

Its embarrassing that the left is reduced to defending why there should be an unaccountable, pro business, anti immigrant, anti worker bureaucracy being the final arbiter of policy in member states simply because of the lunacy of farage and the tory right.

 

[frogwoman]

Don't you think it would be a bit ambitious of the EU to think it could solve the whole world's problems when there are plenty of problems within the EU itself it hasn't solved?

Problems which the EU itself has created. Because the best way of adsressing 'problems in the EU itself it hasnt solved' is through militarisation, austerity and war obvs

 

[frogwoman]

We didnt fucking elect these people! Whatever you think of the tories at least they have the mandate of a fraction of the electorate. Those running the EU and imposing austerity in have no such mandate yet we're meant to believe that's OK!

 

[SpackleFrog]

If the UK failed to maintain a set of national legislation that put into effect the requisites of the European Convention on Human Rights, a fundamental membership obligation, what do you suppose would happen? I don't know either, but I don't imagine it'd be straightforward.

And maybe you're not looking for that, but I'm not sure how you expect these elements to practically improve if we exit either. Are the left going to rise up from the grave any time soon?

The UK doesn't have legislation that makes the ECHR law. The Human Rights Act only came in 2000 under New Labour (who promptly suspended bits of it so they could detain people without trial).

The ECHR has nothing to do with the EU either.

 

[SpackleFrog]

Nonetheless even that has deep complexities - I'm no economist but on the face of it, the EU brought boom as well as bust to Ireland, for example, and the crisis that brought it all down was/is one of simply beyond the Eurozone, and so what would have happened to these countries without integration?

 

[mauvais]

Most of that amounts to pedantry.

The HRA is an attempt to domestically implement the ECHR to avoid having to send cases to Europe. Absence or partial absence of it wouldn't breach the obligations of the ECHR, but a contrary replacement obviously would.

The ECHR has nothing to do with the EU in so far as it's an obligation of being part of the Council of Europe instead, but you would struggle to shrug off either of those without exiting the EU.

As for the facepalm regarding a tiny piece of what I wrote, you could at least elaborate.

 

[hot air baboon]

....this old platitude about nation states being "...too small..." to cope with the problems of the 21st century basically means too democratically accountable to their electorates...

 

[frogwoman]

The UK doesn't have legislation that makes the ECHR law. The Human Rights Act only came in 2000 under New Labour (who promptly suspended bits of it so they could detain people without trial).

The ECHR has nothing to do with the EU either.

Yeah yeah but do you want nigel farage as prime minister? What about free movements of goods and services you tory bastard?

 

[SpackleFrog]

Yeah yeah but do you want nigel farage as prime minister? What about free movements of goods and services you tory bastard?

I confess. I love Nige. #Nige4PM

 

[SpackleFrog]

Most of that amounts to pedantry.

The HRA is an attempt to domestically implement the ECHR to avoid having to send cases to Europe. Absence or partial absence of it wouldn't breach the obligations of the ECHR, but a contrary replacement obviously would.

The ECHR has nothing to do with the EU in so far as it's an obligation of being part of the Council of Europe instead, but you would struggle to shrug off either of those without exiting the EU.

As for the facepalm regarding a tiny piece of what I wrote, you could at least elaborate.

It's not pedantry! You're talking total shite on the basis of no knowledge at all, I'm trying to help you!

If you don't understand why pointing to Ireland and saying "look how the EU helped them" requires a facepalm then you're a muppet.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

....this old platitude about nation states being "...too small..." to cope with the problems of the 21st century basically means too democratically accountable to their electorates...

I'm happy to accept that equivalence. It reinforces the appeal of supranationalism, as far as I am concerned.

 

[frogwoman]

It's not pedantry! You're talking total shite on the basis of no knowledge at all, I'm trying to help you!

If you don't understand why pointing to Ireland and saying "look how the EU helped them" requires a facepalm then you're a muppet.

Yeah but if we leave the EU we'll have no human rights

 

[mauvais]

It's not pedantry! You're talking total shite on the basis of no knowledge at all, I'm trying to help you!

And all the while missing the point that maintaining workable EU membership obliges the UK to at least pretend to tread water on civil liberties, in the face of decades of wilful Labour & Tory erosion that outpaces the EU's own illiberalism.

If you don't understand why pointing to Ireland and saying "look how the EU helped them" requires a facepalm then you're a muppet.

I never said it helped them overall. The rapid growth in the 1990s appears largely attributable to EU membership, and even the cascade of direct EU funding - ever driven a car in Ireland? Hence boom, even if not the one you or I would like. Then the over expansion and the rest of the EU economic disaster undoubtedly reversed it faster than it came, hence bust, but if you're going to compare apples, you need to know what the alternate reality of an independent Irish economy would have looked like, or what the world economy would have looked like without any Eurozone debt crisis at all because there was no Eurozone. By that point we might as well just pen sci-fi novels instead.

 

[NoXion]

The ECHR has nothing to do with the EU in so far as it's an obligation of being part of the Council of Europe instead, but you would struggle to shrug off either of those without exiting the EU.

Leaving the EU doesn't necessarily imply leaving the Council of Europe.