Lawson says you don't have to be in the EU to export to other markets.
You don't, but that doesn't explain why Germany stomps all over the UK in terms of non EU trade - despite being within the EU.
That argument goes with all the other logical fallacies in Lawson's piece this morning.
Epic eurosceptic fail.
On the point above Germany does make a lot of stuff people want to buy. Good high quality, not sold on price, stuff. However, the Chinese would want BMW's or plastic extrusion lines, or railways or whatever if Germany were not a member of the EU too. Same applies to us, and I should know as I compete every day of my working life against both the Germans and the Chinese and whomever else, trying to sell the good, high quality goods we make (that's right good old fashioned stuff you can drop on your foot), right around the world. As it happens our sales are almost exactly split three ways UK/EU/ Rest of World. No prizes for guessing where the growth has been over the past five years.
We must be OK at it as we've won two Queen's Awards in the past five years for international trade. It also means I'm at the front line on this, so if it goes pear shaped it affects me next day.
So am I a rabid Clegg like "Europe is good at all costs whatever", or a Farage "out out out"? Probably neither but I am persuadable both ways.
Essentially as long as we have free trade I simply cannot see the world would end if we left. There is an argument about we couldn't influence regulations etc but it seems we get precious little now, and a lot of rubbish back (the CAP for Christ's sake! 37% of a 21st century budget spent on tilling the land!). The Clegg's of this world are deploying the "we'll all be poor argument" as they did with the Euro which would've been a total catasrophe if we'd listened to the swivel eyed ramblings of the LD's and others on that.
However, there is a case to be made the other way that says "the European countries place in the world is shrinking, in a few decades it's going to be a really multi polar with the USA, China, Brazil, India and others (Indonesia?) running the show and even the biggest European countries will not get more than a small seat at the top a table and then only as observers. Why not try to create a proper state to conteract that - not a halfway, "we'll get there by stealth, using the Euro as a stepping stone and hope nobody rumbles what we're up to in the meantime" as they are trying now.
The problem with the "let's unify" agrument is nobody but nobody has the nerve or the vision or the faith to set out what "more Europe" means, and try to postively sell it to the electorate. Where is Barroso or Merkel or whoever, standing up and saying "look here's vision "2025" we'll have a federal state, an army, unified taxes, we'll teach all kids one lingua franca in schools do we can all communicate etc". Instead we have this mealy mouthed web of summits, rinky dink Parliaments, commissioners nobody's heard of from Ruritanian states that we cannot fire via a ballot box having influence over our lives. It's a 21st century Austro Hungarian Empire, created piecemeal and by accident, fraying at the edges, paying lip service to the legitimacy of the state, and inexorably going downhill to utter irrelevance comforting ourselves, that the titles, wine, acrhitecture, and cream cakes are all still great.
At present I'm leaning to "out", primarily because of Tony Benn's argument about people in power "how do I get rid of you?". I can answer that about Cameron, Clegg, and a future Miliband. I cannot answer it about Barroso, van Rompuy, Ashton and all the nameless others. That central democratic flaw has to be adressed or it will all end in tears and not just here in the UK.
And it would be a shame, as not having shot at each other since 1945 is really rather good.
Well said by someone who makes his living in the real world. As a supporter of manufacturing I rather liked the bit about "good old fashioned stuff you can drop on your foot".
Briton fails to overturn ban on long-term expats voting in UK elections
Although directly affected by this - I think the UK government position is fair - if I want a vote, I can move back to the UK. Similarly the Scottish Govt position on 'who gets to vote' on independence - 'residents' is also reasonable.
Fair schmair. If the British government thinks that after 15 years out of the country your democratic rights transfer somewhere else, they should be giving the vote to foreigners who stay in Britain for 15 years, regardless of nationality.
Why should someone not resident in a country, probably not paying tax in that country enjoy indefinite enfranchisement, while denied to some resident tax payers?
If it was up to me the right to vote would be based on the country you're resident in, based on the same tests they use to work out if you need to pay tax there. But if the government wants to base this on nationality, they should base it on nationality.
" Mr Miliband held a half-hour meeting with the French president, a fellow centre-left leader, at the Elysee Palace, saying afterwards: "The points of agreement we have were around the fact that the tide is turning against an austerity approach, that there needs to be a different way forward found.
"What President Hollande is seeking to do in France and what he is seeking to do in leading the debate in Europe is find that different way forward.
"We are in agreement in seeking that new way that needs to be found and I think can be found." "
If @SouthamObserver is around, what's going on with the EU Patent Court? Apparently it's a different thing to the original EU Patent, and Ireland and Denmark reckon they need to have referendums on it. Can we assume the Referendum Lock legislation has a get-out for this somehow, or does Britain get to have a referendum on this too?
I am about - but in Dallas so not really piosting much at the moment.
But to answer your question, it's complicated,m but put very briefly the EU patent and court are not, strictly speaking, EU initiatives. They are the result of an inter-governmental agreement, so in technical terms fall outside the scope of the coalition's referendum lock. The original EU plans were abandoned because Spain and Italy would not sign up.
Blimey, do you get out of the referendum lock just by doing something with Enhanced Cooperation? That makes it a bit of a waste of space - it's going to be such a PITA getting 28 countries to agree on anything that pretty much _all_ future EU integration is going to be done by Enhanced Cooperation...
Couldn't agree more Charles. In most of its most important and significant features such as privatisation; freeing of markets; tax simplification; the use of monetary policy and the importance of countries and governments living within their means I think both Lawson and Howe were actually more important than Mrs T herself.
It is a lot of years now since I read "The View from No 11" but it was a book that shaped my thinking like few others.
"The importance of countries living with their means".
The kind of thinking that gives us the eurozone crisis and non growth in the UK?
Both the Eurozone crisis and Britain's non-growth are a direct result of countries NOT living within their means, and that history catching up with them.
This is nonsense - and we know its nonsense because countries like Spain were living well within their means (if we use the neo-liberal definition of running balanced budgets) before the whole show crashed into the wall and European policymakers made the same elementary mistakes as Osborne has done thus leading to massive recession and an exacerbated crisis.
Nick Sutton @suttonnick Lawson: "I have a lot of friends within...the Eurocracy and they all assure me [PM] will not be given any significant changes at all"
Why is this news?
Dave will be waving a renegotiation of the Melton Mowbray pork pie directive while urging Tories to vote "In"
Two points. Firstly, the Eurocracy will say that but there are a great many more reformers in the national governments than in the Eurocracy i.e. those paying for the shebang and some in Eastern Europe sceptical about overmighty superpowers. It's there rather than in Brussels that Cameron would try to build his coalition for change. I'm sceptical that he could do it but wouldn't rule out the possibility.
Secondly, don't assume that Cameron would be campaigning for In no matter what. If the EU really did stick two fingers up at any attempt at the sort of reform he wants, it would undermine every argument he's made about why Britain should remain a member. in which case, he'd have to walk away from the table - something he's done before - and campaign for Out.
Couldn't agree more Charles. In most of its most important and significant features such as privatisation; freeing of markets; tax simplification; the use of monetary policy and the importance of countries and governments living within their means I think both Lawson and Howe were actually more important than Mrs T herself.
It is a lot of years now since I read "The View from No 11" but it was a book that shaped my thinking like few others.
"The importance of countries living with their means".
The kind of thinking that gives us the eurozone crisis and non growth in the UK?
Both the Eurozone crisis and Britain's non-growth are a direct result of countries NOT living within their means, and that history catching up with them.
This is nonsense - and we know its nonsense because countries like Spain were living well within their means (if we use the neo-liberal definition of running balanced budgets) before the whole show crashed into the wall and European policymakers made the same elementary mistakes as Osborne has done thus leading to massive recession and an exacerbated crisis.
The government running a balanced budget isn't the entirety of the economy. The private sector in Spain was running up stupid amounts of debt. But I agree with you that this wasn't the underlying cause: the stupidity of the single currency was.
Although public discontent with the EU is high, a referendum is likely to see the UK stay in – whoever wins the next election
Kellner should have carried this disclaimer ;
I'm married to Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, a British Labour politician who in 2009 became the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy for the European Union.
Nick Sutton @suttonnick Lawson: "I have a lot of friends within...the Eurocracy and they all assure me [PM] will not be given any significant changes at all"
Why is this news?
Dave will be waving a renegotiation of the Melton Mowbray pork pie directive while urging Tories to vote "In"
If the EU really did stick two fingers up at any attempt at the sort of reform he wants, it would undermine every argument he's made about why Britain should remain a member. in which case, he'd have to walk away from the table - something he's done before - and campaign for Out.
This lack of clarity exposes the threadbare platform of the repatriators.
They haven't a clue what they want to repatriate and certainly can't spell it out.
In fact they're blustering - saying anything to deflect attention from this glaring fact.
If @SouthamObserver is around, what's going on with the EU Patent Court? Apparently it's a different thing to the original EU Patent, and Ireland and Denmark reckon they need to have referendums on it. Can we assume the Referendum Lock legislation has a get-out for this somehow, or does Britain get to have a referendum on this too?
I am about - but in Dallas so not really piosting much at the moment.
But to answer your question, it's complicated,m but put very briefly the EU patent and court are not, strictly speaking, EU initiatives. They are the result of an inter-governmental agreement, so in technical terms fall outside the scope of the coalition's referendum lock. The original EU plans were abandoned because Spain and Italy would not sign up.
Blimey, do you get out of the referendum lock just by doing something with Enhanced Cooperation? That makes it a bit of a waste of space - it's going to be such a PITA getting 28 countries to agree on anything that pretty much _all_ future EU integration is going to be done by Enhanced Cooperation...
Yep...lets not give those 'little people' a say in anything should we..
Nick Sutton @suttonnick Lawson: "I have a lot of friends within...the Eurocracy and they all assure me [PM] will not be given any significant changes at all"
Why is this news?
Dave will be waving a renegotiation of the Melton Mowbray pork pie directive while urging Tories to vote "In"
Briton fails to overturn ban on long-term expats voting in UK elections
Although directly affected by this - I think the UK government position is fair - if I want a vote, I can move back to the UK. Similarly the Scottish Govt position on 'who gets to vote' on independence - 'residents' is also reasonable.
Fair schmair. If the British government thinks that after 15 years out of the country your democratic rights transfer somewhere else, they should be giving the vote to foreigners who stay in Britain for 15 years, regardless of nationality.
Not particularly. The franchise is about having a stake in society. There's a reasonable argument that neither those British nationals who've chosen to make their home elsewhere nor those foreigners who've come to Britain but opted not to take up British citizenship have a sufficient stake to merit a vote.
Yet the government thinks Commonwealth citizens who have been resident only a year have a stake? It's a completely inconsistent system that should be reformed.
Blimey, do you get out of the referendum lock just by doing something with Enhanced Cooperation? That makes it a bit of a waste of space - it's going to be such a PITA getting 28 countries to agree on anything that pretty much _all_ future EU integration is going to be done by Enhanced Cooperation.
Referendum lock = tooth fairy
If @SouthamObserver is right about this it's a tooth fairy who only comes if you lose 28 teeth on the same day and leave them all under your pillow...
Seems tame to me. The real put down needs to be that Clegg is knowingly distorting a report against the views of the report's author. He's deliberately lying over this, and this goes to the heart of the europhile case.
'That's poppycock. But I don't think Nick Clegg, who is a charming young man, has ever purported to know anything about economics'
Clegg as a Dutchman will recognise the precision of Lord Lawson's use of poppycock ;
" [Dutch dialectal pappekak : pap, pap (from Middle Dutch pappe, perhaps from Latin pappa, food) + kak, dung (from kakken, to defecate, from Middle Dutch kacken, from Latin cacre; see kakka- in Indo-European roots).] "
Blimey, do you get out of the referendum lock just by doing something with Enhanced Cooperation? That makes it a bit of a waste of space - it's going to be such a PITA getting 28 countries to agree on anything that pretty much _all_ future EU integration is going to be done by Enhanced Cooperation.
Referendum lock = tooth fairy
The other puzzling thing about this if it's as described is that presumably at some point in the future France and Spain are going to give up bitching about what language people are writing the documents in and join the patent agreement. To let the last member in they'll presumably have to turn it into an agreement of the full EU. Is Britain then going to have to have a referendum on whether to join the patent union that they're already in?
There is no "referendum lock" and there has never been. Parliament can simply declare that the provisions of the European Union Act 2011 do not apply to the treaty in question.
Briton fails to overturn ban on long-term expats voting in UK elections
Although directly affected by this - I think the UK government position is fair - if I want a vote, I can move back to the UK. Similarly the Scottish Govt position on 'who gets to vote' on independence - 'residents' is also reasonable.
Fair schmair. If the British government thinks that after 15 years out of the country your democratic rights transfer somewhere else, they should be giving the vote to foreigners who stay in Britain for 15 years, regardless of nationality.
Not particularly. The franchise is about having a stake in society. There's a reasonable argument that neither those British nationals who've chosen to make their home elsewhere nor those foreigners who've come to Britain but opted not to take up British citizenship have a sufficient stake to merit a vote.
Yet the government thinks Commonwealth citizens who have been resident only a year have a stake? It's a completely inconsistent system that should be reformed.
"David Cameron is probably the cleverest prime minister since Harold Wilson, the last holder of the post to offer the British people a referendum on Britain's membership of what was then called the EEC."
There is no "referendum lock" and there has never been. Parliament can simply declare that the provisions of the European Union Act 2011 do not apply to the treaty in question.
I think this passage from Simms in respect of the HRA is just as appropriate:
“Parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament can, if it chooses, legislate contrary to fundamental principles of human rights. The Human Rights Act 1998 will not detract from this power. The constraints upon its exercise by Parliament are ultimately political, not legal. But the principle of legality means that Parliament must squarely confront what it is doing and accept the political cost.
The Fixed Term Parliaments Act can similar be repealed, and so on. It is the political cost that is the barrier to doing so.
Couldn't agree more Charles. In most of its most important and significant features such as privatisation; freeing of markets; tax simplification; the use of monetary policy and the importance of countries and governments living within their means I think both Lawson and Howe were actually more important than Mrs T herself.
It is a lot of years now since I read "The View from No 11" but it was a book that shaped my thinking like few others.
"The importance of countries living with their means".
The kind of thinking that gives us the eurozone crisis and non growth in the UK?
Both the Eurozone crisis and Britain's non-growth are a direct result of countries NOT living within their means, and that history catching up with them.
This is nonsense - and we know its nonsense because countries like Spain were living well within their means (if we use the neo-liberal definition of running balanced budgets) before the whole show crashed into the wall and European policymakers made the same elementary mistakes as Osborne has done thus leading to massive recession and an exacerbated crisis.
Nick Sutton @suttonnick Lawson: "I have a lot of friends within...the Eurocracy and they all assure me [PM] will not be given any significant changes at all"
Why is this news?
Dave will be waving a renegotiation of the Melton Mowbray pork pie directive while urging Tories to vote "In"
If the EU really did stick two fingers up at any attempt at the sort of reform he wants, it would undermine every argument he's made about why Britain should remain a member. in which case, he'd have to walk away from the table - something he's done before - and campaign for Out.
This lack of clarity exposes the threadbare platform of the repatriators.
They haven't a clue what they want to repatriate and certainly can't spell it out.
In fact they're blustering - saying anything to deflect attention from this glaring fact.
I'm sorry but in my view Spain et al (and the UK) were only running balanced budgets or "acceptable" defecits because the economies were like aircraft only staying aloft by using the afterburners of debt to create growth (which Govt could tax). As soon as the fuel ran out we all came back down to earth.
That said I'd agree on your second point that notwithstanding my doubts posted below about democratic defecits in the EU, I tend to think if a vote were held next Thursday we'd vote in reality to stay in, as the status quo tends to win these things (see Scotland too were it held next week). However, "events dear boy, events" may yet alter the dynamic on all of this, as Europe certainly has the capacity to have rather too many events at the moment for everyone's liking.
I still feel long term that you cannot just keep ignoring the will of the people, patting them on the head and telling them to "run along now, it's too hard for you to understand" as the political class has for years and years on this without ultimately storing up trouble. Maybe not in the near future but ultimately, certainly.
As I said below too, a real shame. I am no Europhobe, I've travelled hundreds of times to the Continent, lived there, and speak two languages, so if someone like me is agnostic at best there's a problem.
There is no "referendum lock" and there has never been. Parliament can simply declare that the provisions of the European Union Act 2011 do not apply to the treaty in question.
Utter garbage.
Parliament can of course repeal or amend any law, or parts of it, subject to the normal parliamentary process including scrutiny by both Houses. But they can't simply 'declare that the provisions' of a law don't apply.
@edmundintoky: For the millionth time: the referendum lock is absolutely unambiguous. It details the exact clauses which can't be changed without a referendum.
If the EU really did stick two fingers up at any attempt at the sort of reform he wants
And what precisely is the sort of reform that he wants?
Read the speech.
The speech is all high minded visions and principles. There was little in there detailing the concrete reforms he wants.
Some Cameroons try to defend him by saying that announcing what he wants back would be "giving the game away" and would weaken him in negotiations. They seem to be confused regarding the difference of an opening position or a fallback position. An opening position needs to be stated up front.
Couldn't agree more Charles. In most of its most important and significant features such as privatisation; freeing of markets; tax simplification; the use of monetary policy and the importance of countries and governments living within their means I think both Lawson and Howe were actually more important than Mrs T herself.
It is a lot of years now since I read "The View from No 11" but it was a book that shaped my thinking like few others.
"The importance of countries living with their means".
The kind of thinking that gives us the eurozone crisis and non growth in the UK?
Both the Eurozone crisis and Britain's non-growth are a direct result of countries NOT living within their means, and that history catching up with them.
This is nonsense - and we know its nonsense because countries like Spain were living well within their means (if we use the neo-liberal definition of running balanced budgets) before the whole show crashed into the wall and European policymakers made the same elementary mistakes as Osborne has done thus leading to massive recession and an exacerbated crisis.
No Ben, they really weren't. In the years up to the crash Spain was running a horrendous trade deficit as too low interest rates and too loose a monetary policy by the ECB created a housing and consumer boom of epic proportions: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/spain/balance-of-trade
The fact that that boom created a temporary surplus in Spanish government funds is irrelevant. They had a large structural deficit which has now been exposed when the froth of tax revenues from the boom faded away. It is one of the many mistakes of Brown that he did the same in this country with the income from financial services although he was stupid enough to not even get to surplus.
Spain is in its current mess because as a country, both public and private together it has unsustainable debts from the boom. It needs to address those debts before it can go forward. The easy way to do this would be to have a soft default and devalue those debts by devaluing the currency. They can't so they suffer.
Debt is never a cost free option, whether it is in the public or private sector. We had both which is why we have also been struggling but we devalued and printed a lot more money to take away some of the pain. Spain can't do that either.
Mentioning the European elections, what are the chances of the Lib Dems ending with zero MEPs? Polling around 10% is flirting with the threshold given the size of the constituencies and the Lib Dems often under-perform at EP elections anyway. You'd think they'd take something out of the SE, East Anglia or the SW but if the numbers break badly it's not guaranteed.
For Euro Elections conducted under d'Hondt we need to bear in mind two numbers.
1. The Threshold of Exclusion 1/(s+1), the proportion of votes above which a party is guaranteed a seat. So in the South East it is 9.09% and in the South West it is 14.29%
2. The Threshold of Inclusion 1/(s+p-1), the proportion of votes below which a party is guaranteed no seats. p is the number of parties contesting the election. The best estimate of p is the ENP (effective number of parties), which is given by the formula 1/SumSquares(votes%). ENP was around 5.0 in the SE in 2009 (although of course it will change in 2014) and around 5.4 in the SW. So we might surmise the LDs will win no seats in the SE if their vote falls below 7.1% and none in the SW below 9.6%
Of course, a voteshare between the figures mentioned in 1 and 2 is still no guarantee of a seat. That will depend on precisely how the votes fall - essentially whether the other parties collectively have the same number of multiples of the LD vote share as there are seats.
If the EU really did stick two fingers up at any attempt at the sort of reform he wants
And what precisely is the sort of reform that he wants?
Read the speech.
The speech is all high minded visions and principles. There was little in there detailing the concrete reforms he wants.
Some Cameroons try to defend him by saying that announcing what he wants back would be "giving the game away" and would weaken him in negotiations. They seem to be confused regarding the difference of an opening position or a fallback position. An opening position needs to be stated up front.
Isn't calling Cameron a "Cameroon" racist against the people of Cameroon?
'ntrigued to spot billionaire Tory ex-deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft at lunch with 3 Labour MPs Probably discussing Lynton Crosby's xenophobic Tory strategy.'
Or John Mann's latest EU thoughts.
'However, we will fundamentally fail if we do not see that the UKIP appeal is well beyond UKIP. For every Labour vote lost to UKIP, there are many more lost 97 voters refusing to turn out. The issues are the same. We can expose UKIP on their love of bankers, hatred of the NHS and general Thatcherism, but this does not bring back the lost voters.
Let me pose three questions therefore.
How is it fair that a youth can be born in a council house, live in it for 18 years and then lose out in allocation to a Polish family who have been in the country for a few months. How is this social justice?
Why is it fair that a 58 year old man, disabled from coal mining loses his incapacity benefit, but a family new to the country gets full housing benefit?
Why should an employer be able to employ from a Polish agency and refuse to interview a 24 local person seeking work?
@edmundintokyo: For the millionth time: the referendum lock is absolutely unambiguous. It details the exact clauses which can't be changed without a referendum.
One of the weird habits people pick up after spending too long listening to politicians is saying things are absolutely clear, then not saying the thing that is supposed to be clear.
Is the suggestion up-thread right that the patent treaties don't need referendums in Britain (unlike Ireland and Denmark) because it's being done by Enhanced Cooperation rather than a treaty of the 27 correct? Or would it not need a referendum even if it was a regular EU treaty?
Is the suggestion up-thread right that the patent treaties don't need referendums in Britain (unlike Ireland and Denmark) because it's being done by Enhanced Cooperation rather than a treaty of the 27 correct? Or would it not need a referendum even if it was a regular EU treaty?
As far as I know it would not trigger a referendum, but the definitive answer can be found by cross-checking against Schedule 1 of the European Union Act 2011, which is - as you will see - completely unambiguous:
Jeremy Warner thinks Lord Lawson has helped Cameron:
Only if Cameron decides to change his current European policy. Which he won't.
No, Cameron can say to Merkel, 'its not just fruitcakes, loonies & closet racists (to borrow a phrase) who want out - serious senior former pro-EU politicians do too...' It won't weaken his hand - in any case, nowt is going to happen this side of the German election.....
Comments
"What President Hollande is seeking to do in France and what he is seeking to do in leading the debate in Europe is find that different way forward.
"We are in agreement in seeking that new way that needs to be found and I think can be found." "
EdM ,the wrong'n , gets it wrong again.
http://order-order.com/2013/05/07/this-wont-be-on-labour-leaflets/
Secondly, don't assume that Cameron would be campaigning for In no matter what. If the EU really did stick two fingers up at any attempt at the sort of reform he wants, it would undermine every argument he's made about why Britain should remain a member. in which case, he'd have to walk away from the table - something he's done before - and campaign for Out.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/07/britain-eu-referendum
Kellner should have carried this disclaimer ;
I'm married to Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, a British Labour politician who in 2009 became the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy for the European Union.
They haven't a clue what they want to repatriate and certainly can't spell it out.
In fact they're blustering - saying anything to deflect attention from this glaring fact.
Net "aid" (or protection money!) paid to the EU approx. 10 billion quid p.a.
check out the bar chart!:
http://t.co/4FH2Oryd8I
http://audioboo.fm/boos/1375937-lord-lawson-on-why-uk-should-leave-eu-the-world-at-one-bbc-radio-4
'That's poppycock. But I don't think Nick Clegg, who is a charming young man, has ever purported to know anything about economics'
Seems tame to me. The real put down needs to be that Clegg is knowingly distorting a report against the views of the report's author. He's deliberately lying over this, and this goes to the heart of the europhile case.
Clegg as a Dutchman will recognise the precision of Lord Lawson's use of poppycock ;
" [Dutch dialectal pappekak : pap, pap (from Middle Dutch pappe, perhaps from Latin pappa, food) + kak, dung (from kakken, to defecate, from Middle Dutch kacken, from Latin cacre; see kakka- in Indo-European roots).] "
"David Cameron is probably the cleverest prime minister since Harold Wilson, the last holder of the post to offer the British people a referendum on Britain's membership of what was then called the EEC."
It then goes on to explain his current pickle....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/wintour-and-watt/2013/may/07/eu-davidcameron
That said I'd agree on your second point that notwithstanding my doubts posted below about democratic defecits in the EU, I tend to think if a vote were held next Thursday we'd vote in reality to stay in, as the status quo tends to win these things (see Scotland too were it held next week). However, "events dear boy, events" may yet alter the dynamic on all of this, as Europe certainly has the capacity to have rather too many events at the moment for everyone's liking.
I still feel long term that you cannot just keep ignoring the will of the people, patting them on the head and telling them to "run along now, it's too hard for you to understand" as the political class has for years and years on this without ultimately storing up trouble. Maybe not in the near future but ultimately, certainly.
As I said below too, a real shame. I am no Europhobe, I've travelled hundreds of times to the Continent, lived there, and speak two languages, so if someone like me is agnostic at best there's a problem.
Parliament can of course repeal or amend any law, or parts of it, subject to the normal parliamentary process including scrutiny by both Houses. But they can't simply 'declare that the provisions' of a law don't apply.
@edmundintoky: For the millionth time: the referendum lock is absolutely unambiguous. It details the exact clauses which can't be changed without a referendum.
Some Cameroons try to defend him by saying that announcing what he wants back would be "giving the game away" and would weaken him in negotiations. They seem to be confused regarding the difference of an opening position or a fallback position. An opening position needs to be stated up front.
"Nigel Lawson has done David Cameron a big favour by coming out against Europe"
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100024434/nigel-lawson-has-done-david-cameron-a-big-favour-by-coming-out-against-europe/
The fact that that boom created a temporary surplus in Spanish government funds is irrelevant. They had a large structural deficit which has now been exposed when the froth of tax revenues from the boom faded away. It is one of the many mistakes of Brown that he did the same in this country with the income from financial services although he was stupid enough to not even get to surplus.
Spain is in its current mess because as a country, both public and private together it has unsustainable debts from the boom. It needs to address those debts before it can go forward. The easy way to do this would be to have a soft default and devalue those debts by devaluing the currency. They can't so they suffer.
Debt is never a cost free option, whether it is in the public or private sector. We had both which is why we have also been struggling but we devalued and printed a lot more money to take away some of the pain. Spain can't do that either.
1. The Threshold of Exclusion 1/(s+1), the proportion of votes above which a party is guaranteed a seat. So in the South East it is 9.09% and in the South West it is 14.29%
2. The Threshold of Inclusion 1/(s+p-1), the proportion of votes below which a party is guaranteed no seats. p is the number of parties contesting the election. The best estimate of p is the ENP (effective number of parties), which is given by the formula 1/SumSquares(votes%). ENP was around 5.0 in the SE in 2009 (although of course it will change in 2014) and around 5.4 in the SW. So we might surmise the LDs will win no seats in the SE if their vote falls below 7.1% and none in the SW below 9.6%
Of course, a voteshare between the figures mentioned in 1 and 2 is still no guarantee of a seat. That will depend on precisely how the votes fall - essentially whether the other parties collectively have the same number of multiples of the LD vote share as there are seats.
http://order-order.com/2013/05/07/compare-and-contrast-bbc-v-public-newspaper-consumption/
'ntrigued to spot billionaire Tory ex-deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft at lunch with 3 Labour MPs Probably discussing Lynton Crosby's xenophobic Tory strategy.'
Or John Mann's latest EU thoughts.
'However, we will fundamentally fail if we do not see that the UKIP appeal is well beyond UKIP. For every Labour vote lost to UKIP, there are many more lost 97 voters refusing to turn out. The issues are the same. We can expose UKIP on their love of bankers, hatred of the NHS and general Thatcherism, but this does not bring back the lost voters.
Let me pose three questions therefore.
How is it fair that a youth can be born in a council house, live in it for 18 years and then lose out in allocation to a Polish family who have been in the country for a few months. How is this social justice?
Why is it fair that a 58 year old man, disabled from coal mining loses his incapacity benefit, but a family new to the country gets full housing benefit?
Why should an employer be able to employ from a Polish agency and refuse to interview a 24 local person seeking work?
Is the suggestion up-thread right that the patent treaties don't need referendums in Britain (unlike Ireland and Denmark) because it's being done by Enhanced Cooperation rather than a treaty of the 27 correct? Or would it not need a referendum even if it was a regular EU treaty?
Mats Persson @matsJpersson 2m
Denmark set to hold a referendum on whether to accept the EU patent court http://www.b.dk/politiko/el-la-og-df-kraever-folkeafstemning …
So..we could easily have one here too.....
Only if Cameron decides to change his current European policy. Which he won't.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/12/schedule/1
My mum is a Brit expat in Spain for over 15 years and is incensed by her disenfranchisement. Because she pays UK tax on her pension.
@Life in a Market Town
You have comitted a tautology sir. A ratchet can only go one way.