We will have a European army. We will have further controls over the City of London by the Eurozone (the opt out isn't worth the paper it was scrawled on). We will continue the ratchet effect of more and more powers moving to the EU. There is very little at all that can be done about it.
In the end the damage done by staying will be far better than any possible damage done by leaving now.
Possibly (although the European Army is scaremongering), but the Leave side won't be able to persuade me that the nebulous risk you refer to outweighs the near-certain economic damage. I did make the point clear several years ago that they should have got their act together on addressing the economic concerns, but nothing was done, and they've been flailing around like beached fish right up until now.
Richard, I appreciate you only care about short-term economic changes. Some of us care about the politics.
For that matter, if we Leave some future UK government could decide to rejoin, no doubt on worse terms.
That seems more likely than not. The generation that grew up in the EU will be a bigger proportion of the electorate as older people die, and Scotland would very likely become independent and rejoin the EU (after which Wales may follow) which leaves an England outside the EU a less viable proposition.
Haven't bothered to think about this post after reading 'Wales may follow'. Financially impossible and probably geographically; North Wales is more akin to NW England than South Wales.
Truth is if you read what Nabavi says he's not opposed to a federal Europe. He claims he's concerned about economic damage, but it seems there's really nothing the EU could do in terms of seizing powers that would persuade him to take the 'risk' to secure our national independence - just as there's no reasoned argument anybody could make to him how leaving the EU isn't an economic act but a political one. No matter how much one tries to explain the final destination, he buries his head in the sand to what the ENTIRE EU elite are saying. Cameron and Osborne claim the opposite of course, so they must be right and generations of EU commissioners, central bankers and statesmen must be wrong then. Rightttttt.
No, he'll do whatever the Tory leadership decide he should do. The next few years he'll talk a good fight just like his party, rah rah against Brussels but when it comes to the crunch time and in 2025 they're arguing for us to join the Eurozone and to join political union or risk "economic shock" he'll follow them because y'know 1,000 years of national independence isn't worth the 'risk' of 1% GDP.
He's as captive to the devious Conservative leadership as the children of Hamelin so you have to really ask yourself what is the point in trying to reason with a closed book.
Truth is if you read what Nabavi says he's not opposed to a federal Europe. He claims he's concerned about economic damage, but it seems there's really nothing the EU could do in terms of seizing powers that would persuade him to take the risk to secure or national independence - just as there's no reasoned argument anybody could make to him how leaving the EU isn't an economic act but a political one. No matter how much one tries to explain the final destination, he buries his head in the sand to what the ENTIRE EU are saying. Cameron and Osborne claim the opposite of course, so they must be right and generations of EU commissioners, central bankers and statesmen must be wrong then. Rightttttt.
No, he'll do whatever the Tory leadership decide he should do. The next few years he'll talk a good fight just like his party, rah rah against Brussels but when it comes to the crunch time and in 2025 they're arguing for us to join the Eurozone and political union or risk "economic shock" he'll follow them because y'know the risks of losing 1% GDP just aren't worth 1,000 years of national independence.
He's as captive to the devious Conservative leadership as the children of Hamelin so you have to really ask yourself what is the point in trying to reason with a closed book.
Richard N is a fully paid-up Europhile. That's been clear for a long time. He barely even tries to disguise it now.
No I really haven't. The EU works by ratchet effects. Once powers are surrendered they cannot be reclaimed. So unless and until you are ready to leave you have to accept everything that has been given up to the EU even if you don't agree with it. And so we are back to the same point again. Either you accept ever closer union or you leave. There is no turning back the clock and no stopping that slow ratchet effect.
There I would agree, but the problem is some people (well represented on this thread) absurdly exaggerate the effect. We are not headed to a superstate, and if we were we can leave anyway. I accept that there is likely to be a further slow transfer of powers; for example, I wouldn't be shocked to see more harmonisation of VAT rules in the next few years. Does that matter to me? On that particular issue, no, not especially, although there might be other issues which would bother me more more. But those have to be set against the economic damage of leaving. To me it is very simply a straightforward trade-off.
The economic damage of leaving is based on a bit of a mis understanding I suspect.
Firstly there is the many experts things. Surely that many must be right. Thing is that all those experts are fundamentally doing the same sum on the same numbers with the same assumptions. As a consequence they get the same answer (without the requirement for a conspiracy), You can argue having 200 adds weight, it doesn't add any more weight than 10 or 10,000. Besides which more have been wrong. (364 in 1981 anyone?)
The thing is, the assumptions are wrong.
For a start the EU is unlikely to return to trend growth. Bits of it will but the error that is the Euro amongst other things are a brake.
The other assumption is that it will be hard to get new free trade agreements. Only if we make it so. Planning permission hasn't even been applied for yet there is a (small) queue forming outside where they think the door will be.
As such, as Churchill implied, our future is in the open sea.
We will have a European army. We will have further controls over the City of London by the Eurozone (the opt out isn't worth the paper it was scrawled on). We will continue the ratchet effect of more and more powers moving to the EU. There is very little at all that can be done about it.
In the end the damage done by staying will be far better than any possible damage done by leaving now.
Possibly (although the European Army is scaremongering), but the Leave side won't be able to persuade me that the nebulous risk you refer to outweighs the near-certain economic damage. I did make the point clear several years ago that they should have got their act together on addressing the economic concerns, but nothing was done, and they've been flailing around like beached fish right up until now.
On what leave have done on the economic questions I'd agree. The path and arguments are clear to me and winnable. Alas despite trying to get them to listen they will not which is a shame. The arguments are there and it can be won.
Truth is if you read what Nabavi says he's not opposed to a federal Europe. He claims he's concerned about economic damage, but it seems there's really nothing the EU could do in terms of seizing powers that would persuade him to take the risk to secure or national independence - just as there's no reasoned argument anybody could make to him how leaving the EU isn't an economic act but a political one. No matter how much one tries to explain the final destination, he buries his head in the sand to what the ENTIRE EU are saying. Cameron and Osborne claim the opposite of course, so they must be right and generations of EU commissioners, central bankers and statesmen must be wrong then. Rightttttt.
No, he'll do whatever the Tory leadership decide he should do. The next few years he'll talk a good fight just like his party, rah rah against Brussels but when it comes to the crunch time and in 2025 they're arguing for us to join the Eurozone and political union or risk "economic shock" he'll follow them because y'know the risks of losing 1% GDP just aren't worth 1,000 years of national independence.
He's as captive to the devious Conservative leadership as the children of Hamelin so you have to really ask yourself what is the point in trying to reason with a closed book.
Richard N is a fully paid-up Europhile. That's been clear for a long time. He barely even tries to disguise it now.
There is no argument that we could have made to persuade Richard that political integration was not a good thing.
First, thanks to Cyclefree for an excellent thoughtful piece. It brings some interesting new dimensions to a debate which has become increasingly sterile and ill-tempered on here in recent days.
My view has long been that LEAVE doesn't have to spell out the future but REMAIN does. LEAVE is in effect developing (though it should have done so months ago) a series of negotiating positions with regard to the withdrawal of Britain from the EU. Team LEAVE should have sat down and worked out its red lines - control of our borders, free trade perhaps - and those areas where compromise was possible.
REMAIN has the problem not so much of defending the status quo but defending the unknown i.e: the future. I have come to the LEAVE camp because I can no longer accept the mantra from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties that it is possible for the EU to be reformed from within.
Whether the EU doesn't want to reform or it does but it doesn't know how doesn't really matter. Successive British Governments have tried engagement (Blair), non-engagement (Major) and flouncing (Cameron) but none have achieved more than transitory successes which are soon watered down or flatly ignored.
Why will the future, if we vote to REMAIN, be any different from the past or present ?
National independence and sovereignty or the creation of a federal European state are something you either believe in or do not. There's no halfway house about it.
So you keep saying, and yet my bank balance is still in pounds sterling, not Euros, and there's not a snowflake's chance in hell of that changing anytime soon. So there very much seems to be a halfway house about it; the plain unarguable facts refute your point.
Is this true, Richard?
You have no bank accounts denominated in a foreign currency?
Blimey, this is the first time I've heard this story.
BORIS Johnson’s wife is the subject of a vicious sex smear campaign designed to derail his battle for Britain to leave the EU.
False claims have been swirling around Westminster and online that Marina Wheeler was the high-profile QC caught in a drunken clinch with a fellow lawyer at Waterloo station last summer.
And it’s members of the Remain camp that have helped fuel the lie, a Tory minister says.
Sources claim the slur was spread around a champagne reception for Lord Ashcroft in early March
For that matter, if we Leave some future UK government could decide to rejoin, no doubt on worse terms.
That seems more likely than not. The generation that grew up in the EU will be a bigger proportion of the electorate as older people die, and Scotland would very likely become independent and rejoin the EU (after which Wales may follow) which leaves an England outside the EU a less viable proposition.
Haven't bothered to think about this post after reading 'Wales may follow'. Financially impossible and probably geographically; North Wales is more akin to NW England than South Wales.
For Wales read Northern Ireland uniting with the rest of the island to get EU membership through the back door. England and Wales would almost certainly be out on a limb, even within the British Isles, in the long term.
We will have a European army. We will have further controls over the City of London by the Eurozone (the opt out isn't worth the paper it was scrawled on). We will continue the ratchet effect of more and more powers moving to the EU. There is very little at all that can be done about it.
In the end the damage done by staying will be far better than any possible damage done by leaving now.
Possibly (although the European Army is scaremongering), but the Leave side won't be able to persuade me that the nebulous risk you refer to outweighs the near-certain economic damage. I did make the point clear several years ago that they should have got their act together on addressing the economic concerns, but nothing was done, and they've been flailing around like beached fish right up until now.
Address what specifically? That we may lose a few points from GDP? You act as if the sky will fall in if that happens, we've survived a 7 point fall as recently as 2008.
Our relationship with the EU is not just economic, it is political, every single time a PM has come back saying we've managed to extricate the nation from the political aspect, we've quickly been pulled back in. After Maastricht, Nice and Lisbon we've been assured that Britain will be protected from meddlesome eurocrats and each time that has been false. This latest deal is no different, 40 years of experience shows us that is true. You may be happy thinking "this time it'll be different" but a remain vote hitches us to the superstate train, getting off that will be even costlier than leaving today, at that point the doom scenarios may well have some truth in them as our economy and politics will be so very intertwined with the EU that leaving will cause untold damage. If you are worried about the march to the superstate, and I am far from convinced that you are, then Leave is the only option, economic damage be damned, we'll survive. I also say this as someone who's job may be in the firing line if we do Leave, so it isn't some self-interest that drives me towards Leave, if anything my self interest is probably for Remain.
As good and interesting a piece as this is, I would point out that our politicians and those of the EU and the other member states have had 40 years to set out their vision for the future. The last five years has been a shower of shit I'm afraid. The reason they're not out there selling the EU is that they are too busy fire fighting the Euro and Migration crises, both of which were self inflicted.
National independence and sovereignty or the creation of a federal European state are something you either believe in or do not. There's no halfway house about it.
So you keep saying, and yet my bank balance is still in pounds sterling, not Euros, and there's not a snowflake's chance in hell of that changing anytime soon. So there very much seems to be a halfway house about it; the plain unarguable facts refute your point.
Is this true, Richard?
You have no bank accounts denominated in a foreign currency?
Richard used to think the euro was inevitable, as he has said on here. So I doubt he would have been much troubled had we joined.
And even after it proved a disaster he would be arguing we should stay in.
First, thanks to Cyclefree for an excellent thoughtful piece. It brings some interesting new dimensions to a debate which has become increasingly sterile and ill-tempered on here in recent days.
My view has long been that LEAVE doesn't have to spell out the future but REMAIN does. LEAVE is in effect developing (though it should have done so months ago) a series of negotiating positions with regard to the withdrawal of Britain from the EU. Team LEAVE should have sat down and worked out its red lines - control of our borders, free trade perhaps - and those areas where compromise was possible.
REMAIN has the problem not so much of defending the status quo but defending the unknown i.e: the future. I have come to the LEAVE camp because I can no longer accept the mantra from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties that it is possible for the EU to be reformed from within.
Whether the EU doesn't want to reform or it does but it doesn't know how doesn't really matter. Successive British Governments have tried engagement (Blair), non-engagement (Major) and flouncing (Cameron) but none have achieved more than transitory successes which are soon watered down or flatly ignored.
Why will the future, if we vote to REMAIN, be any different from the past or present ?
Streuth Stodge.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
Blimey, this is the first time I've heard this story.
BORIS Johnson’s wife is the subject of a vicious sex smear campaign designed to derail his battle for Britain to leave the EU.
False claims have been swirling around Westminster and online that Marina Wheeler was the high-profile QC caught in a drunken clinch with a fellow lawyer at Waterloo station last summer.
And it’s members of the Remain camp that have helped fuel the lie, a Tory minister says.
Sources claim the slur was spread around a champagne reception for Lord Ashcroft in early March
An interesting article cyclefree. I'm not sure what purpose involving still more arguments would serve. Very few people have the patience to follow those already in play. It's a binary contest so adding layers of complexities like the criminal justice system of jurisdictions where we have no interest or involvement would just confuse and turn more people off.
I'm happy with the way things are. Both sides have two months to get their arguments and their teams together and put their case. The public as they are accustomed to doing will weigh them and make a decision. Like a general election it'll always be the lesser of two evils.
I read yesterday someone saying we build our information as birds build a nest. Picking out pieces of information over a long time. There are no killer arguments. The most either side can do is reinforce existing prejudices.
Blimey, this is the first time I've heard this story.
BORIS Johnson’s wife is the subject of a vicious sex smear campaign designed to derail his battle for Britain to leave the EU.
False claims have been swirling around Westminster and online that Marina Wheeler was the high-profile QC caught in a drunken clinch with a fellow lawyer at Waterloo station last summer.
And it’s members of the Remain camp that have helped fuel the lie, a Tory minister says.
Sources claim the slur was spread around a champagne reception for Lord Ashcroft in early March
First, thanks to Cyclefree for an excellent thoughtful piece. It brings some interesting new dimensions to a debate which has become increasingly sterile and ill-tempered on here in recent days.
My view has long been that LEAVE doesn't have to spell out the future but REMAIN does. LEAVE is in effect developing (though it should have done so months ago) a series of negotiating positions with regard to the withdrawal of Britain from the EU. Team LEAVE should have sat down and worked out its red lines - control of our borders, free trade perhaps - and those areas where compromise was possible.
REMAIN has the problem not so much of defending the status quo but defending the unknown i.e: the future. I have come to the LEAVE camp because I can no longer accept the mantra from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties that it is possible for the EU to be reformed from within.
Whether the EU doesn't want to reform or it does but it doesn't know how doesn't really matter. Successive British Governments have tried engagement (Blair), non-engagement (Major) and flouncing (Cameron) but none have achieved more than transitory successes which are soon watered down or flatly ignored.
Why will the future, if we vote to REMAIN, be any different from the past or present ?
Streuth Stodge.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
How about the "British Liberal Party - This time we're actually liberal"?
I honestly can't understand how people get so worked up on either side. The EU has been negative in some ways, positive in others. Ultimately the amount of time we spend arguing about the Queen's speech or party manifestos shows that we still have a pretty firm handle on the big issues in our national parliament.
But as Cyclefree argues for: some actual arguments on the case for remain and leave would be nice. Remain and Brexit campaigns have been p*ss poor.
For that matter, if we Leave some future UK government could decide to rejoin, no doubt on worse terms.
That seems more likely than not. The generation that grew up in the EU will be a bigger proportion of the electorate as older people die, and Scotland would very likely become independent and rejoin the EU (after which Wales may follow) which leaves an England outside the EU a less viable proposition.
Haven't bothered to think about this post after reading 'Wales may follow'. Financially impossible and probably geographically; North Wales is more akin to NW England than South Wales.
For Wales read Northern Ireland uniting with the rest of the island to get EU membership through the back door. England and Wales would almost certainly be out on a limb, even within the British Isles, in the long term.
England and Wales is 85% of the British Isles, in terms of population. And, there's not the slightest prospect of Ulster Unionists joining the Republic.
Blimey, this is the first time I've heard this story.
BORIS Johnson’s wife is the subject of a vicious sex smear campaign designed to derail his battle for Britain to leave the EU.
False claims have been swirling around Westminster and online that Marina Wheeler was the high-profile QC caught in a drunken clinch with a fellow lawyer at Waterloo station last summer.
And it’s members of the Remain camp that have helped fuel the lie, a Tory minister says.
Sources claim the slur was spread around a champagne reception for Lord Ashcroft in early March
I had thought this referendum was a cracking good wheeze to get more powers back from the EU, then tell the whingers to shut up whilst winning the argument.
Instead its been a farce of a renegotiation, then the biggest stitch up since the Bayou tapestry followed by every attempt by Cameron and the remainers to go out of their way to sow discord within the party.
You appear to be part of that. There are ways of winning and ways of winning. Some make the loser feel they were beaten by the better opponent and some make the loser feel they were beaten by a complete c**t. In the latter case the loser waits for revenge. This is not good.
Blimey, this is the first time I've heard this story.
BORIS Johnson’s wife is the subject of a vicious sex smear campaign designed to derail his battle for Britain to leave the EU.
False claims have been swirling around Westminster and online that Marina Wheeler was the high-profile QC caught in a drunken clinch with a fellow lawyer at Waterloo station last summer.
And it’s members of the Remain camp that have helped fuel the lie, a Tory minister says.
Sources claim the slur was spread around a champagne reception for Lord Ashcroft in early March
That's more interesting than the football right now.
If I had a choice of hitting Mark Reckless or Alberto Moreno with a rolled up Volkswagen, Moreno would be my only choice.
Glad I didn't buy that 8 grand ticket for the final
I was supposed to go to the official Dubai Reds party for 300 fans in a bar here, but had a bad feeling about tonight. Hey ho, looks like we concentrate on the league next season.
Maybe. But the Remain focus on economic matters is telling. It is what we want the EU to be about. And it just isn't.
The EU is not only about economic matters, certainly, but economics is a big chunk of it.
But we think that it ends there whereas for pretty much most of the rest of the EU economics is a means to a political end. And the political end is far more important than the economics.
We make the mistake - in this context - of thinking like merchants. It is the wrong way of looking at the EU. The economics are being used to create political facts on the ground and the issue - to my mind, the only - or the most important - issue is whether we are content with the political facts which are being and will be created.
Being satisfied with the economics is necessary - but not a sufficient - answer to the question which faces us.
The real failure of the Remain campaign - even if it wins, which seems likely - is that it will not have asked, let alone got an answer to, the question: "Do you really understand what Remain means?"
Blimey, this is the first time I've heard this story.
BORIS Johnson’s wife is the subject of a vicious sex smear campaign designed to derail his battle for Britain to leave the EU.
False claims have been swirling around Westminster and online that Marina Wheeler was the high-profile QC caught in a drunken clinch with a fellow lawyer at Waterloo station last summer.
And it’s members of the Remain camp that have helped fuel the lie, a Tory minister says.
Sources claim the slur was spread around a champagne reception for Lord Ashcroft in early March
I had thought this referendum was a cracking good wheeze to get more powers back from the EU, then tell the whingers to shut up whilst winning the argument.
Instead its been a farce of a renegotiation, then the biggest stitch up since the Bayou tapestry followed by every attempt by Cameron and the remainers to go out of their way to sow discord within the party.
You appear to be part of that. There are ways of winning and ways of winning. Some make the loser feel they were beaten by the better opponent and some make the loser feel they were beaten by a complete c**t. In the latter case the loser waits for revenge. This is not good.
This article is a useful contribution to the Referendum debate. So much of what I have read on the site recently has been a turn off. There has been preaching to the converted on an industrial scale. I doubt that it has shifted one vote. We have had the full Judy Collins from the politicians -Send In The Clowns. Now finally someone asks the question that interests me. What will we do in Europe after we vote to stay next month? I hope that we will become ever more critical of the tendency to centralise decision making. I hope that we tell the ECHR to take a running jump on issues like prisoner voting and deportation. These 5 weeks will soon pass. In the 200 weeks that will then exist between the referendum and GE 2020 I hope that we strengthen alliances with those that see the EU as a trading bloc and work towards more national autonomy and away from federalism. Until the decision is made I shall check out of PB. I am bored with the obsession with the issue and the way some people express themselves towards those with whom they disagree.
Blimey, this is the first time I've heard this story.
BORIS Johnson’s wife is the subject of a vicious sex smear campaign designed to derail his battle for Britain to leave the EU.
False claims have been swirling around Westminster and online that Marina Wheeler was the high-profile QC caught in a drunken clinch with a fellow lawyer at Waterloo station last summer.
And it’s members of the Remain camp that have helped fuel the lie, a Tory minister says.
Sources claim the slur was spread around a champagne reception for Lord Ashcroft in early March
I had thought this referendum was a cracking good wheeze to get more powers back from the EU, then tell the whingers to shut up whilst winning the argument.
Instead its been a farce of a renegotiation, then the biggest stitch up since the Bayou tapestry followed by every attempt by Cameron and the remainers to go out of their way to sow discord within the party.
You appear to be part of that. There are ways of winning and ways of winning. Some make the loser feel they were beaten by the better opponent and some make the loser feel they were beaten by a complete c**t. In the latter case the loser waits for revenge. This is not good.
This story has been swirling long before Boris came out for Leave
Maybe. But the Remain focus on economic matters is telling. It is what we want the EU to be about. And it just isn't.
The EU is not only about economic matters, certainly, but economics is a big chunk of it.
But we think that it ends there whereas for pretty much most of the rest of the EU economics is a means to a political end. And the political end is far more important than the economics.
We make the mistake - in this context - of thinking like merchants. It is the wrong way of looking at the EU. The economics are being used to create political facts on the ground and the issue - to my mind, the only - or the most important - issue is whether we are content with the political facts which are being and will be created.
Being satisfied with the economics is necessary - but not a sufficient - answer to the question which faces us.
The real failure of the Remain campaign - even if it wins, which seems likely - is that it will not have asked, let alone got an answer to, the question: "Do you really understand what Remain means?"
The EU is a political union and the Remain argument (not just this time, every time the issue arises) is selling us an economic partnership. It feels like a short term victory, even TSE said today that within the next decade he expects us to Leave (I'm not so sure we will get such a vote), and though he didn't explain why, I'm guess it has to do with this mis-selling of the EU to the public.
Maybe. But the Remain focus on economic matters is telling. It is what we want the EU to be about. And it just isn't.
The EU is not only about economic matters, certainly, but economics is a big chunk of it.
But we think that it ends there whereas for pretty much most of the rest of the EU economics is a means to a political end. And the political end is far more important than the economics.
We make the mistake - in this context - of thinking like merchants. It is the wrong way of looking at the EU. The economics are being used to create political facts on the ground and the issue - to my mind, the only - or the most important - issue is whether we are content with the political facts which are being and will be created.
Being satisfied with the economics is necessary - but not a sufficient - answer to the question which faces us.
The real failure of the Remain campaign - even if it wins, which seems likely - is that it will not have asked, let alone got an answer to, the question: "Do you really understand what Remain means?"
They won't consider that a failure - it's exactly what they don't want the voters to do.
If the voters feel shortchanged later, they won't be too bothered about that either.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
To be honest, I may be looking for a new Party myself fairly soon. I've found Tim Farron's supine attitude toward the EU very difficult to accept - he churns out the old "it can be reformed" mantra but if the Government can't get anything out of a re-negotiation, a Party with 8 MPs won't do any better.
I'm an internationalist - I want nations to work together, to collaborate and co-operate and there are huge areas where such collaboration needs to happen but the EU isn't about collaboration but coercion. The way countries like Greece have been treated is repellent.
I would have thought you would find it difficult to be a Conservative right now.
We will have a European army. We will have further controls over the City of London by the Eurozone (the opt out isn't worth the paper it was scrawled on). We will continue the ratchet effect of more and more powers moving to the EU. There is very little at all that can be done about it.
In the end the damage done by staying will be far better than any possible damage done by leaving now.
Possibly (although the European Army is scaremongering), but the Leave side won't be able to persuade me that the nebulous risk you refer to outweighs the near-certain economic damage. I did make the point clear several years ago that they should have got their act together on addressing the economic concerns, but nothing was done, and they've been flailing around like beached fish right up until now.
Richard, I appreciate you only care about short-term economic changes. Some of us care about the politics.
I care about both (and the long-term economic effects as well). I just give different weights to the risks and rewards compared with the weights you give.
Sadly, you are very much in a minority amongst Leavers in accepting that there is such a trade-off. Most bury their heads in the sand and engage in ludicrous messenger-shooting, as we see each and every time an economic forecast or opinion appears.
First, thanks to Cyclefree for an excellent thoughtful piece. It brings some interesting new dimensions to a debate which has become increasingly sterile and ill-tempered on here in recent days.
My view has long been that LEAVE doesn't have to spell out the future but REMAIN does. LEAVE is in effect developing (though it should have done so months ago) a series of negotiating positions with regard to the withdrawal of Britain from the EU. Team LEAVE should have sat down and worked out its red lines - control of our borders, free trade perhaps - and those areas where compromise was possible.
REMAIN has the problem not so much of defending the status quo but defending the unknown i.e: the future. I have come to the LEAVE camp because I can no longer accept the mantra from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties that it is possible for the EU to be reformed from within.
Whether the EU doesn't want to reform or it does but it doesn't know how doesn't really matter. Successive British Governments have tried engagement (Blair), non-engagement (Major) and flouncing (Cameron) but none have achieved more than transitory successes which are soon watered down or flatly ignored.
Why will the future, if we vote to REMAIN, be any different from the past or present ?
Streuth Stodge.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
How about the "British Liberal Party - This time we're actually liberal"?
I'd join and donate the same £100 per year!
We would have to sort out where we stood on immigration.
We'd also have to storm and occupy the National Liberal club, it is a rather nice club to have after all.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
To be honest, I may be looking for a new Party myself fairly soon. I've found Tim Farron's supine attitude toward the EU very difficult to accept - he churns out the old "it can be reformed" mantra but if the Government can't get anything out of a re-negotiation, a Party with 8 MPs won't do any better.
I'm an internationalist - I want nations to work together, to collaborate and co-operate and there are huge areas where such collaboration needs to happen but the EU isn't about collaboration but coercion. The way countries like Greece have been treated is repellent.
I would have thought you would find it difficult to be a Conservative right now.
It isn't easy, but I'm not ripping up the membership just yet, have to stick around to ensure I can vote for anyone but Osborne/Osborne's toady in the next leadership election.
This was not written from a pro-Remain or pro-Leave perspective: plenty in it for both sides.
There were 3 impulses behind it:-
1. With all the hoo-ha over Obama/the IMF etc it struck me as odd - if not downright daft - that the one group of foreigners we weren't talking to or hearing from were other EU states. A bit like putting one's life savings in a fund without even getting -let alone reading - the prospectus.
2. The delusions or dishonesty of pretty much all British politicians about what the EU is is the principal reason why this has been such a running sore in British politics for so long, will continue to be and why the debate has been so acrimonious at times (even here, alas). Far too many people believe what they want to be true. They are letting their opinions determine the facts rather than the other way around - and this has been particularly so with the Remain / pro-EU side, though it is by no means restricted to them (see Leave and migration, for instance).
If we don't look at the EU for what it really is now, when?
3. And finally I wanted to see if I could write about the referendum from a perspective which had not been done before.
First, thanks to Cyclefree for an excellent thoughtful piece. It brings some interesting new dimensions to a debate which has become increasingly sterile and ill-tempered on here in recent days.
My view has long been that LEAVE doesn't have to spell out the future but REMAIN does. LEAVE is in effect developing (though it should have done so months ago) a series of negotiating positions with regard to the withdrawal of Britain from the EU. Team LEAVE should have sat down and worked out its red lines - control of our borders, free trade perhaps - and those areas where compromise was possible.
REMAIN has the problem not so much of defending the status quo but defending the unknown i.e: the future. I have come to the LEAVE camp because I can no longer accept the mantra from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties that it is possible for the EU to be reformed from within.
Whether the EU doesn't want to reform or it does but it doesn't know how doesn't really matter. Successive British Governments have tried engagement (Blair), non-engagement (Major) and flouncing (Cameron) but none have achieved more than transitory successes which are soon watered down or flatly ignored.
Why will the future, if we vote to REMAIN, be any different from the past or present ?
Streuth Stodge.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
How about the "British Liberal Party - This time we're actually liberal"?
I'd join and donate the same £100 per year!
We would have to sort out where we stood on immigration.
We'd also have to storm and occupy the National Liberal club, it is a rather nice club to have after all.
Any person is free to come to the UK, they will have no access to the NHS or benefits system until they achieve residency. To access healthcare while non-resident a mandatory insurance policy must be purchased or provided by one's employer, this is on top of NICs and can be purchased from the NHS. It's really that simple. That way low skilled/low paid people won't bother as employers will face increased costs for employing someone from overseas or coming to the UK won't be workable on a low wage. Highly skilled people are not discouraged.
This was not written from a pro-Remain or pro-Leave perspective: plenty in it for both sides.
There were 3 impulses behind it:-
1. With all the hoo-ha over Obama/the IMF etc it struck me as odd - if not downright daft - that the one group of foreigners we weren't talking to or hearing from were other EU states. A bit like putting one's life savings in a fund without even getting -let alone reading - the prospectus.
2. The delusions or dishonesty of pretty much all British politicians about what the EU is is the principal reason why this has been such a running sore in British politics for so long, will continue to be and why the debate has been so acrimonious at times (even here, alas). Far too many people believe what they want to be true. They are letting their opinions determine the facts rather than the other way around - and this has been particularly so with the Remain / pro-EU side, though it is by no means restricted to them (see Leave and migration, for instance).
If we don't look at the EU for what it really is now, when?
3. And finally I wanted to see if I could write about the referendum from a perspective which had not been done before.
Well you achieved all those and it was very interesting. The threads been cut off too soon
On topic: I would love this idea if we think we could get all these career politicians to speak openly and honestly, but I fear they know they could be blamed for Brexit if they mis-stepped, and so we would get distinctly guarded responses or more of the usual bluster. But, yes, it would be nice to hear what they had to say.
Maybe. But the Remain focus on economic matters is telling. It is what we want the EU to be about. And it just isn't.
The EU is not only about economic matters, certainly, but economics is a big chunk of it.
But we think that it ends there whereas for pretty much most of the rest of the EU economics is a means to a political end. And the political end is far more important than the economics.
We make the mistake - in this context - of thinking like merchants. It is the wrong way of looking at the EU. The economics are being used to create political facts on the ground and the issue - to my mind, the only - or the most important - issue is whether we are content with the political facts which are being and will be created.
Being satisfied with the economics is necessary - but not a sufficient - answer to the question which faces us.
The real failure of the Remain campaign - even if it wins, which seems likely - is that it will not have asked, let alone got an answer to, the question: "Do you really understand what Remain means?"
It's a chunk but I don't think it is what most of our neighbours think it is about. For them it is about political cooperation, risk sharing, common ideals standards and principles, protecting, promoting and projecting European culture and ethics. Economics is really a means to those ends rather than end in itself.
And by no more means is all of that bad. There is much to be said for European culture, much that we share. It's just that none of our politicians (with the honourable exception of Clegg and, arguably, Mandelson, ) is ever willing to admit this so we miss out like some tiresome guest at a wedding who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. So we get the worst of both worlds.
Or we get the best of both worlds. I must say, that's more how it looks to me, even if I'd have preferred more protections and wouldn't have signed Lisbon.
Lisbon was a huge mistake and the lies that were told to get what amounted to a new constitution through were unforgivable, and not just in this country. You can make the argument that national vetoes were by then a recipe for inertia and frustration but the pass was sold and Cameron did not get a tenth of it back.
More or less what has decided me to vote Leave. I was rather afraid that my 'heart' was just my gut instinct wanting to say Yah-boo to the politicians, but the whole EU project (where the UK is concerned) is built on lies. (Not saying anything about other nations because I don't know. Maybe their politicians didn't need to lie to win support for the project.)
Blimey, this is the first time I've heard this story.
BORIS Johnson’s wife is the subject of a vicious sex smear campaign designed to derail his battle for Britain to leave the EU.
False claims have been swirling around Westminster and online that Marina Wheeler was the high-profile QC caught in a drunken clinch with a fellow lawyer at Waterloo station last summer.
And it’s members of the Remain camp that have helped fuel the lie, a Tory minister says.
Sources claim the slur was spread around a champagne reception for Lord Ashcroft in early March
I had thought this referendum was a cracking good wheeze to get more powers back from the EU, then tell the whingers to shut up whilst winning the argument.
Instead its been a farce of a renegotiation, then the biggest stitch up since the Bayou tapestry followed by every attempt by Cameron and the remainers to go out of their way to sow discord within the party.
You appear to be part of that. There are ways of winning and ways of winning. Some make the loser feel they were beaten by the better opponent and some make the loser feel they were beaten by a complete c**t. In the latter case the loser waits for revenge. This is not good.
Both campaigns have been pretty farcical.
Yes. But the problem is that he referendum has failed to achieve its two major goals,
1. Settling the EU issue. It will not have.
2. Uniting the Conservative party (at least mostly). Instead it has sown discord where their was unity and enmity where there was friendship.
Blimey, this is the first time I've heard this story.
BORIS Johnson’s wife is the subject of a vicious sex smear campaign designed to derail his battle for Britain to leave the EU.
False claims have been swirling around Westminster and online that Marina Wheeler was the high-profile QC caught in a drunken clinch with a fellow lawyer at Waterloo station last summer.
And it’s members of the Remain camp that have helped fuel the lie, a Tory minister says.
Sources claim the slur was spread around a champagne reception for Lord Ashcroft in early March
I had thought this referendum was a cracking good wheeze to get more powers back from the EU, then tell the whingers to shut up whilst winning the argument.
Instead its been a farce of a renegotiation, then the biggest stitch up since the Bayou tapestry followed by every attempt by Cameron and the remainers to go out of their way to sow discord within the party.
You appear to be part of that. There are ways of winning and ways of winning. Some make the loser feel they were beaten by the better opponent and some make the loser feel they were beaten by a complete c**t. In the latter case the loser waits for revenge. This is not good.
This story has been swirling long before Boris came out for Leave
I know but the fact that it is being bandied around the press now speaks volumes for the rancour the referendum has created rather than quelled.
Maybe. But the Remain focus on economic matters is telling. It is what we want the EU to be about. And it just isn't.
The EU is not only about economic matters, certainly, but economics is a big chunk of it.
But we think that it ends there whereas for pretty much most of the rest of the EU economics is a means to a political end. And the political end is far more important than the economics.
We make the mistake - in this context - of thinking like merchants. It is the wrong way of looking at the EU. The economics are being used to create political facts on the ground and the issue - to my mind, the only - or the most important - issue is whether we are content with the political facts which are being and will be created.
Being satisfied with the economics is necessary - but not a sufficient - answer to the question which faces us.
The real failure of the Remain campaign - even if it wins, which seems likely - is that it will not have asked, let alone got an answer to, the question: "Do you really understand what Remain means?"
An excellent article and an interesting post, Mrs Free. The EU does not speak with a single voice, so it would indeed be interesting to hear how the various political leaders in different countries view its development. Always bearing in mind, of course, that their presence is temporary.
And then we could perhaps have a response from our (also temporary) prime minister. How does he see the future development of the EU? At present, I have no idea.
And I have no intention of voting for a pig in a poke.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
To be honest, I may be looking for a new Party myself fairly soon. I've found Tim Farron's supine attitude toward the EU very difficult to accept - he churns out the old "it can be reformed" mantra but if the Government can't get anything out of a re-negotiation, a Party with 8 MPs won't do any better.
I'm an internationalist - I want nations to work together, to collaborate and co-operate and there are huge areas where such collaboration needs to happen but the EU isn't about collaboration but coercion. The way countries like Greece have been treated is repellent.
I would have thought you would find it difficult to be a Conservative right now.
I met Tim Farron the other night. Nice enough but so are most people. Unfortunately with so little charisma he wouldn't even get membership of Groucho's. He's just one of the crowd and if the Libs had more than 8 MP's I'm sure he wouldn't have been chosen
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
To be honest, I may be looking for a new Party myself fairly soon. I've found Tim Farron's supine attitude toward the EU very difficult to accept - he churns out the old "it can be reformed" mantra but if the Government can't get anything out of a re-negotiation, a Party with 8 MPs won't do any better.
I'm an internationalist - I want nations to work together, to collaborate and co-operate and there are huge areas where such collaboration needs to happen but the EU isn't about collaboration but coercion. The way countries like Greece have been treated is repellent.
I would have thought you would find it difficult to be a Conservative right now.
I find it difficult to be a Conservative in a party led by Cameron. I voted for David Davies.
Someone who earlier in the year said Britain was great and would have a great future out of the EU and now says we would be so much poorer out.
Who uses our money to give us a one sided argument whilst withholding vital information from the other side of the argument.
Interesting to see Lib Dems coming out for leave. I am struggling to believe their is a 28% remain lead amongst Conservatives if that is the case.
We will have a European army. We will have further controls over the City of London by the Eurozone (the opt out isn't worth the paper it was scrawled on). We will continue the ratchet effect of more and more powers moving to the EU. There is very little at all that can be done about it.
In the end the damage done by staying will be far better than any possible damage done by leaving now.
Possibly (although the European Army is scaremongering), but the Leave side won't be able to persuade me that the nebulous risk you refer to outweighs the near-certain economic damage. I did make the point clear several years ago that they should have got their act together on addressing the economic concerns, but nothing was done, and they've been flailing around like beached fish right up until now.
Richard, I appreciate you only care about short-term economic changes. Some of us care about the politics.
I care about both (and the long-term economic effects as well). I just give different weights to the risks and rewards compared with the weights you give.
Sadly, you are very much in a minority amongst Leavers in accepting that there is such a trade-off. Most bury their heads in the sand and engage in ludicrous messenger-shooting, as we see each and every time an economic forecast or opinion appears.
I don't shoot the economic messenger, I am however aware that most Conservative chancellors are aware they are wrong more often than not, doubly so, the larger the consensus.
@mattwarman: Lord Howard at the CBI: "Can I put my hand on my heart and promise we'd be better off outside the EU? No." Quite.
Thing is that is honest politics.
What remain are not saying is the same, which would be true if they said it. Alas they are not either because they are like Tony Blair, not aware of what the truth is, or lying.
First, thanks to Cyclefree for an excellent thoughtful piece. It brings some interesting new dimensions to a debate which has become increasingly sterile and ill-tempered on here in recent days.
My view has long been that LEAVE doesn't have to spell out the future but REMAIN does. LEAVE is in effect developing (though it should have done so months ago) a series of negotiating positions with regard to the withdrawal of Britain from the EU. Team LEAVE should have sat down and worked out its red lines - control of our borders, free trade perhaps - and those areas where compromise was possible.
REMAIN has the problem not so much of defending the status quo but defending the unknown i.e: the future. I have come to the LEAVE camp because I can no longer accept the mantra from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties that it is possible for the EU to be reformed from within.
Whether the EU doesn't want to reform or it does but it doesn't know how doesn't really matter. Successive British Governments have tried engagement (Blair), non-engagement (Major) and flouncing (Cameron) but none have achieved more than transitory successes which are soon watered down or flatly ignored.
Why will the future, if we vote to REMAIN, be any different from the past or present ?
Streuth Stodge.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
How about the "British Liberal Party - This time we're actually liberal"?
I'd join and donate the same £100 per year!
We would have to sort out where we stood on immigration.
We'd also have to storm and occupy the National Liberal club, it is a rather nice club to have after all.
Any person is free to come to the UK, they will have no access to the NHS or benefits system until they achieve residency. To access healthcare while non-resident a mandatory insurance policy must be purchased or provided by one's employer, this is on top of NICs and can be purchased from the NHS. It's really that simple. That way low skilled/low paid people won't bother as employers will face increased costs for employing someone from overseas or coming to the UK won't be workable on a low wage. Highly skilled people are not discouraged.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
To be honest, I may be looking for a new Party myself fairly soon. I've found Tim Farron's supine attitude toward the EU very difficult to accept - he churns out the old "it can be reformed" mantra but if the Government can't get anything out of a re-negotiation, a Party with 8 MPs won't do any better.
I'm an internationalist - I want nations to work together, to collaborate and co-operate and there are huge areas where such collaboration needs to happen but the EU isn't about collaboration but coercion. The way countries like Greece have been treated is repellent.
I would have thought you would find it difficult to be a Conservative right now.
I met Tim Farron the other night. Nice enough but so are most people. Unfortunately with so little charisma he wouldn't even get membership of Groucho's. He's just one of the crowd and if the Libs had more than 8 MP's I'm sure he wouldn't have been chosen
Without wishing to wound overly unkind I would still have been surprised if he was chosen as leader with 1 MP...
First, thanks to Cyclefree for an excellent thoughtful piece. It brings some interesting new dimensions to a debate which has become increasingly sterile and ill-tempered on here in recent days.
My view has long been that LEAVE doesn't have to spell out the future but REMAIN does. LEAVE is in effect developing (though it should have done so months ago) a series of negotiating positions with regard to the withdrawal of Britain from the EU. Team LEAVE should have sat down and worked out its red lines - control of our borders, free trade perhaps - and those areas where compromise was possible.
REMAIN has the problem not so much of defending the status quo but defending the unknown i.e: the future. I have come to the LEAVE camp because I can no longer accept the mantra from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties that it is possible for the EU to be reformed from within.
Whether the EU doesn't want to reform or it does but it doesn't know how doesn't really matter. Successive British Governments have tried engagement (Blair), non-engagement (Major) and flouncing (Cameron) but none have achieved more than transitory successes which are soon watered down or flatly ignored.
Why will the future, if we vote to REMAIN, be any different from the past or present ?
Streuth Stodge.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
How about the "British Liberal Party - This time we're actually liberal"?
I'd join and donate the same £100 per year!
We would have to sort out where we stood on immigration.
We'd also have to storm and occupy the National Liberal club, it is a rather nice club to have after all.
Any person is free to come to the UK, they will have no access to the NHS or benefits system until they achieve residency. To access healthcare while non-resident a mandatory insurance policy must be purchased or provided by one's employer, this is on top of NICs and can be purchased from the NHS. It's really that simple. That way low skilled/low paid people won't bother as employers will face increased costs for employing someone from overseas or coming to the UK won't be workable on a low wage. Highly skilled people are not discouraged.
That's workable.
What would actually happen is that the low paid would turn up and take no insurance, and then there would be a daily procession of stories of 'heartless' hospitals turning away 'the sick and disabled'.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
How about the "British Liberal Party - This time we're actually liberal"?
I'd join and donate the same £100 per year!
We would have to sort out where we stood on immigration.
We'd also have to storm and occupy the National Liberal club, it is a rather nice club to have after all.
Any person is free to come to the UK, they will have no access to the NHS or benefits system until they achieve residency. To access healthcare while non-resident a mandatory insurance policy must be purchased or provided by one's employer, this is on top of NICs and can be purchased from the NHS. It's really that simple. That way low skilled/low paid people won't bother as employers will face increased costs for employing someone from overseas or coming to the UK won't be workable on a low wage. Highly skilled people are not discouraged.
That's workable.
What would actually happen is that the low paid would turn up and take no insurance, and then there would be a daily procession of stories of 'heartless' hospitals turning away 'the sick and disabled'.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
To be honest, I may be looking for a new Party myself fairly soon. I've found Tim Farron's supine attitude toward the EU very difficult to accept - he churns out the old "it can be reformed" mantra but if the Government can't get anything out of a re-negotiation, a Party with 8 MPs won't do any better.
I'm an internationalist - I want nations to work together, to collaborate and co-operate and there are huge areas where such collaboration needs to happen but the EU isn't about collaboration but coercion. The way countries like Greece have been treated is repellent.
I would have thought you would find it difficult to be a Conservative right now.
I find it difficult to be a Conservative in a party led by Cameron. I voted for David Davies.
Someone who earlier in the year said Britain was great and would have a great future out of the EU and now says we would be so much poorer out.
Who uses our money to give us a one sided argument whilst withholding vital information from the other side of the argument.
Interesting to see Lib Dems coming out for leave. I am struggling to believe their is a 28% remain lead amongst Conservatives if that is the case.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
To be honest, I may be looking for a new Party myself fairly soon. I've found Tim Farron's supine attitude toward the EU very difficult to accept - he churns out the old "it can be reformed" mantra but if the Government can't get anything out of a re-negotiation, a Party with 8 MPs won't do any better.
I'm an internationalist - I want nations to work together, to collaborate and co-operate and there are huge areas where such collaboration needs to happen but the EU isn't about collaboration but coercion. The way countries like Greece have been treated is repellent.
I would have thought you would find it difficult to be a Conservative right now.
I find it difficult to be a Conservative in a party led by Cameron. I voted for David Davies.
Someone who earlier in the year said Britain was great and would have a great future out of the EU and now says we would be so much poorer out.
Who uses our money to give us a one sided argument whilst withholding vital information from the other side of the argument.
Interesting to see Lib Dems coming out for leave. I am struggling to believe their is a 28% remain lead amongst Conservatives if that is the case.
And if this does not happen before the referendum and the result is Remain, then let it happen then. Rather than storming into Brussels and stamping his feet, Cameron should try this approach. It'll catch them all off-guard, rather like smiling at a French check-out person in a supermarche.
Comments
No, he'll do whatever the Tory leadership decide he should do. The next few years he'll talk a good fight just like his party, rah rah against Brussels but when it comes to the crunch time and in 2025 they're arguing for us to join the Eurozone and to join political union or risk "economic shock" he'll follow them because y'know 1,000 years of national independence isn't worth the 'risk' of 1% GDP.
He's as captive to the devious Conservative leadership as the children of Hamelin so you have to really ask yourself what is the point in trying to reason with a closed book.
Firstly there is the many experts things. Surely that many must be right. Thing is that all those experts are fundamentally doing the same sum on the same numbers with the same assumptions. As a consequence they get the same answer (without the requirement for a conspiracy), You can argue having 200 adds weight, it doesn't add any more weight than 10 or 10,000. Besides which more have been wrong. (364 in 1981 anyone?)
The thing is, the assumptions are wrong.
For a start the EU is unlikely to return to trend growth. Bits of it will but the error that is the Euro amongst other things are a brake.
The other assumption is that it will be hard to get new free trade agreements. Only if we make it so. Planning permission hasn't even been applied for yet there is a (small) queue forming outside where they think the door will be.
As such, as Churchill implied, our future is in the open sea.
First, thanks to Cyclefree for an excellent thoughtful piece. It brings some interesting new dimensions to a debate which has become increasingly sterile and ill-tempered on here in recent days.
My view has long been that LEAVE doesn't have to spell out the future but REMAIN does. LEAVE is in effect developing (though it should have done so months ago) a series of negotiating positions with regard to the withdrawal of Britain from the EU. Team LEAVE should have sat down and worked out its red lines - control of our borders, free trade perhaps - and those areas where compromise was possible.
REMAIN has the problem not so much of defending the status quo but defending the unknown i.e: the future. I have come to the LEAVE camp because I can no longer accept the mantra from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties that it is possible for the EU to be reformed from within.
Whether the EU doesn't want to reform or it does but it doesn't know how doesn't really matter. Successive British Governments have tried engagement (Blair), non-engagement (Major) and flouncing (Cameron) but none have achieved more than transitory successes which are soon watered down or flatly ignored.
Why will the future, if we vote to REMAIN, be any different from the past or present ?
You have no bank accounts denominated in a foreign currency?
BORIS Johnson’s wife is the subject of a vicious sex smear campaign designed to derail his battle for Britain to leave the EU.
False claims have been swirling around Westminster and online that Marina Wheeler was the high-profile QC caught in a drunken clinch with a fellow lawyer at Waterloo station last summer.
And it’s members of the Remain camp that have helped fuel the lie, a Tory minister says.
Sources claim the slur was spread around a champagne reception for Lord Ashcroft in early March
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/7157677/Vile-romp-rumours-being-spread-about-Brexit-leader-Boris-Johnsons-spouse-in-attempt-to-bring-down-Leave-campaign.html
Our relationship with the EU is not just economic, it is political, every single time a PM has come back saying we've managed to extricate the nation from the political aspect, we've quickly been pulled back in. After Maastricht, Nice and Lisbon we've been assured that Britain will be protected from meddlesome eurocrats and each time that has been false. This latest deal is no different, 40 years of experience shows us that is true. You may be happy thinking "this time it'll be different" but a remain vote hitches us to the superstate train, getting off that will be even costlier than leaving today, at that point the doom scenarios may well have some truth in them as our economy and politics will be so very intertwined with the EU that leaving will cause untold damage. If you are worried about the march to the superstate, and I am far from convinced that you are, then Leave is the only option, economic damage be damned, we'll survive. I also say this as someone who's job may be in the firing line if we do Leave, so it isn't some self-interest that drives me towards Leave, if anything my self interest is probably for Remain.
And even after it proved a disaster he would be arguing we should stay in.
I am surprised that you, I and Richard Tyndal are all on the same side of any argument!
Perhaps we should start a party?
We'd call it something like "UKIP with brains" or similar.
I'm happy with the way things are. Both sides have two months to get their arguments and their teams together and put their case. The public as they are accustomed to doing will weigh them and make a decision. Like a general election it'll always be the lesser of two evils.
I read yesterday someone saying we build our information as birds build a nest. Picking out pieces of information over a long time. There are no killer arguments. The most either side can do is reinforce existing prejudices.
Glad I didn't buy that 8 grand ticket for the final
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/18/economists-have-a-century-of-failure-behind-them-no-wonder-they/
I'd join and donate the same £100 per year!
But as Cyclefree argues for: some actual arguments on the case for remain and leave would be nice. Remain and Brexit campaigns have been p*ss poor.
I had thought this referendum was a cracking good wheeze to get more powers back from the EU, then tell the whingers to shut up whilst winning the argument.
Instead its been a farce of a renegotiation, then the biggest stitch up since the Bayou tapestry followed by every attempt by Cameron and the remainers to go out of their way to sow discord within the party.
You appear to be part of that. There are ways of winning and ways of winning. Some make the loser feel they were beaten by the better opponent and some make the loser feel they were beaten by a complete c**t. In the latter case the loser waits for revenge. This is not good.
We make the mistake - in this context - of thinking like merchants. It is the wrong way of looking at the EU. The economics are being used to create political facts on the ground and the issue - to my mind, the only - or the most important - issue is whether we are content with the political facts which are being and will be created.
Being satisfied with the economics is necessary - but not a sufficient - answer to the question which faces us.
The real failure of the Remain campaign - even if it wins, which seems likely - is that it will not have asked, let alone got an answer to, the question: "Do you really understand what Remain means?"
https://twitter.com/SkySportsNewsHQ/status/733032774735699971
If the voters feel shortchanged later, they won't be too bothered about that either.
https://twitter.com/suttonnick/status/733036028521553921
I'm an internationalist - I want nations to work together, to collaborate and co-operate and there are huge areas where such collaboration needs to happen but the EU isn't about collaboration but coercion. The way countries like Greece have been treated is repellent.
I would have thought you would find it difficult to be a Conservative right now.
Sadly, you are very much in a minority amongst Leavers in accepting that there is such a trade-off. Most bury their heads in the sand and engage in ludicrous messenger-shooting, as we see each and every time an economic forecast or opinion appears.
Sorry did I say today? I meant this week.
Oops, did I mistype? I of course meant month.
And by month I of course mean year.
Where year is defined as a decade. A decade of decades.
Worse than the pollsters accuracy in 2015.
As usual in life, it's more fun being the problem than solving the problem.
@mattwarman: Lord Howard at the CBI: "Can I put my hand on my heart and promise we'd be better off outside the EU? No." Quite.
We'd also have to storm and occupy the National Liberal club, it is a rather nice club to have after all.
NEW THREAD NEW THREAD
This was not written from a pro-Remain or pro-Leave perspective: plenty in it for both sides.
There were 3 impulses behind it:-
1. With all the hoo-ha over Obama/the IMF etc it struck me as odd - if not downright daft - that the one group of foreigners we weren't talking to or hearing from were other EU states. A bit like putting one's life savings in a fund without even getting -let alone reading - the prospectus.
2. The delusions or dishonesty of pretty much all British politicians about what the EU is is the principal reason why this has been such a running sore in British politics for so long, will continue to be and why the debate has been so acrimonious at times (even here, alas). Far too many people believe what they want to be true. They are letting their opinions determine the facts rather than the other way around - and this has been particularly so with the Remain / pro-EU side, though it is by no means restricted to them (see Leave and migration, for instance).
If we don't look at the EU for what it really is now, when?
3. And finally I wanted to see if I could write about the referendum from a perspective which had not been done before.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/7159998/Rod-Liddle-suspended-from-Labour-party-for-saying-anti-semitism-is-rife-among-Muslims.html
I believe I did say once that I was surprised Blair didn't take us into the Euro, in accordance with the '97 Labour manifesto.
Well said CycleFree.
1. Settling the EU issue. It will not have.
2. Uniting the Conservative party (at least mostly). Instead it has sown discord where their was unity and enmity where there was friendship.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/18/money-not-eu-membership-is-the-citys-central-tenet/
And then we could perhaps have a response from our (also temporary) prime minister. How does he see the future development of the EU? At present, I have no idea.
And I have no intention of voting for a pig in a poke.
Someone who earlier in the year said Britain was great and would have a great future out of the EU and now says we would be so much poorer out.
Who uses our money to give us a one sided argument whilst withholding vital information from the other side of the argument.
Interesting to see Lib Dems coming out for leave. I am struggling to believe their is a 28% remain lead amongst Conservatives if that is the case.
What remain are not saying is the same, which would be true if they said it. Alas they are not either because they are like Tony Blair, not aware of what the truth is, or lying.
.....and so it begins,
And if this does not happen before the referendum and the result is Remain, then let it happen then. Rather than storming into Brussels and stamping his feet, Cameron should try this approach. It'll catch them all off-guard, rather like smiling at a French check-out person in a supermarche.