In last weeks newsletter we set up a poll for your view on staying or leaving the EU, here are the results…
Q1. What would you like to be the result of the EU referendum?
Q2. Do you think leaving the EU would have a positive or negative impact on your working life as a UK contractor?
One concern I have about “Leaving the EU and then setting up individual Trade Deals”.
Bearing in mind the EU is like a Club, it has rules and a Membership fee. What the “Out Campaign” seems to arguing for is partial membership (as we want to do business) but without paying the Membership Fee. Not on I would suggest. Think of the EU as a golf club, yes you can play a round of golf as a visitor, but that is not the same as membership, and you still have to abide by Club rules. Any thoughts???
There will be lots of to-ing and fro-ing over the next months, with more stats bandied around than you can possibly handle.
For me it comes down to just a few issues:
i) I am a *British* citizen and I don’t want to be an EU citizen.
ii) I simply don’t trust Juncker and his ilk. If you don’t trust the people across the table, you walk away.
The EU has a decades-long history of power grabbing. There’s nothing covert, mysterious or sly about their activities and intentions; it’s all out there in the open and they’ve provided many examples over the years.
Let’s get back to the trade aspect and leave them to proceed with economic, political and monetary union.
As for Scotland, I don’t think they’ll vote for independence, well not for quite a few years yet. The economic arguments won the last referendum and with the SNP’s case predicated on oil at $120+ a barrel, they’d be insane to mount another attempt.
Life outside the EU will be more uncertain, that much is definite. Life inside the EU will be far more certain: continued EU corruption of the democratic process and sovereign institutions.
I like the Golf Club analogy. it would be valid if the “EU golf club” limited it’s membership rules to just playing golf on it’s golf course. The problem many members now face is the EU golf club also dictates rules (laws) for all members to abide by when they aren’t anywhere near the golf club. All these new regulations and directives are dictated by the Golf Club’s management board, called the commission, members of this commission are not directly elected by the golf club members but are self appointed with little recourse available to the golf club members if they don’t like the decisions the commission make. There is an elected committee who get to vote on amendments to the directives from the commission but this is more of a rubber stamp exercise and in reality any objections the committee have to the new directives get overruled or ignored. It’s not all bad for the committee members though, they do get very generous expenses and they hold the committee meetings at two different locations, Brussels and Strasbourg, at huge unnecessary expense to the golf club.
Many of the original club members signed up to the club years ago because they were told it was just a golf club and nothing more. The membership fees of the golf club have gone up astronomically over the years, some members find that they are paying more than others and that the golf club insists on inviting ever more members to join. The golf club’s own accounts have never been signed off by the auditors for decades. In fact the golf club is so self important it now has it’s own currency which all new members must adopt. Any members who struggle to implement the rules of the new currency are not allowed to leave but have to suffer extreme hardships in order to remain members of the club. In fact leaving the club is not at all easy and many scare stories are spread about what will happen to any member who dares to leave the golf club.
As the world economic forum recently eloquently analyzed, there are no clear economic benefits to leaving the EU. Trade deals are likely to cost the UK much more and we’d still have to adhere to EU standards. Being part of the ECC means we get to trade in the EU but abide their rules and have no say in it. Who wants that? Bilateral treaties will take unbelievably long to get to place and we’d be in an unleveraged position. Switzerland’s treaties all abide by the EU rules more or less and its sovereignty is not any more preserved by it being outside the group. Same with Norway. More or less, leaving for an economic argument fails. Leaving for a sovereignty argument fails as it too is so heavily tied in with the economic aspect. The UK still hasnt recovered from its foot and mouth issues when it comes to exporting beef to the US. That’s just one example of how these treaties work. The values argument is being neglected. Surely we must be aware of the unprecedented dangers coming from the east threatening everything the west stands for. Be it Turkey, Russia, Iran, ISIS or China, we face an incoming storm of a wildly different way to doing things. The only way to face is by standing together with our EU neighbors and continuing to work together for a stronger Europe. Yes the EU has its issues, but the renegotiation package shows that the EU needs as and are willing to work with us. That was a great first step, now we build and move forward.
[quote name=”Kay”] (…) Yes the EU has its issues, but the renegotiation package shows that the EU needs as and are willing to work with us. That was a great first step, now we build and move forward.[/quote]
Juncker:
“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”
“There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties”
The so-called renegotiation (lol – very loose use of the word) is a flimsy sham and any parts that aren’t already time-limited will gradually be reversed over time anyway. Those two quotes are worthy of any tinpot dictator.
[quote name=”Kay”]Surely we must be aware of the unprecedented dangers coming from the east threatening everything the west stands for.[/quote]
Germany has basically committed suicide by throwing its doors open. Yet even in the face of such self-destructive generosity, the EU has stated that Germany is not allowed to dictate where these migrants are allowed to settle. *That* is the level of interference a once-sovereign can expect even when it does the right thing.
If the EU insist on adding levies and rules when we leave the @Golf Club@ Can we not add the same levies for EU members to trade with an Independent UK. I know when we leave the EU it may be difficult for the UK for a short period of time, but Britain will always be strong nd come out of the tunnel as a shining beacon to individuality and strength of Sovereignty for others who need to dump this Rich Spoilt BOY’S CLUB. Also Deport all Immigrants who have no paperwork back to the country they entered into the EU.
[quote name=”Michael Harford”]If the EU insist on adding levies and rules when we leave the @Golf Club@ Can we not add the same levies for EU members to trade with an Independent UK.[/quote]
That’s the basis for a trade war that is not in anyone’s interests. The trouble comes when the UK votes out, then subsequent talks during the next two years also fail to reign in this upstart island and other nations start to agitate for their own exit from the EU.
What will the EU do under those circumstances? They’ll have to balance their economic interests with the need to not precipitate an international recession *and also* (!!) balance that with the need to ensure that the remaining EU members toe the line.
We are definitely in for uncertainty should we vote out. If we vote to remain I think we’ll see the ‘renegotiation’ (lol, calling it that still makes me laugh) either expire naturally or be overturned by an emboldened EU. At that point, with one hand around our throat and the other cupping a delicate area, we’ll have little choice but to go quietly whimpering to a corner with our tail between our legs.
And all of this is with the backdrop of a huge, uneven influx of traumatised people with a very different cultural perspective. Yet where is our compassion in all this? 20,000 Syrians is not very many at all.
There is nothing pretty about this situation at all.
A lot of the problem with the EU debate is that the media are (deliberately?) misreporting the facts.
EU membership and membership of the single market are NOT the same thing. We can leave the EU and still retain single market access by joining the EEA or EFTA, just as Norway and other nations have done.
People dismiss the Norway option and talk about “fax democracy” and Norway having no say in the regulations but it’s absolute tosh. Most regulations are decided by GLOBAL bodies these days and are then later fed down to the EU who then implement the regulations for their members.
Norway have a seat on the global bodies but we do not as ours is taken a an EU representative who has the priorities of 28 countries to juggle. As it stands, Norway get more of a direct say in the creation of regulations than we do!
Then you get these ridiculous arguments about the EU being responsible for there having been no major wars in the west since WW2. This is nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with the creation of nuclear weapons and the fact that a war between developed nations would surely lead to “Mutually Assured Destruction”.
The newspapers are full of talk about how the “leavers” don’t have a realistic plan for after we leave. Well yes, if you’re talking about the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage then that’s true. However there is the sterling work done by Dr Richard North over the past few years which has resulted in the “Flexcit” plan for leaving the EU.
The Flexcit plan would have us leave the EU and join the EEA or EFTA initially, which would retain UK access to the single market and avoid any economic shocks. This would then give us the breathing room we need to negotiate a bespoke trading agreement with the EU (which could take anything up to 10 years!). What we cannot do is simply leave the EU and the single market in one “big bang” gesture as that would decimate our trade with Europe overnight and massively impact UK businesses and jobs. It’s taken us 40 years to get into this mess, it can’t simply be reversed overnight.
The Leave Alliance will be launching their campaigning group on March 16th and will be presenting Flexcit as their official exit plan (making them the only Leave group that actually has one!). I hope this will get some decent media coverage as the people of the UK need to know that there can be life after the EU and a positive future for us as an independent state.
If you want to know more look out for the Leave Alliance launch on March 16th which will also feature an abbreviated 2 page version of Flexcit (the full plan is over 400 pages long). In the meantime you can find out more at Dr Richard North’s blog at eureferendum.com.
Out unequivocally. Watch them squirm. Yes we pay 17% less, minor but this will put pressure on other members to pick up the slack and likely cause a rethink among eastern nations who never really wanted it in the first place. We coild also return the favour and disregard any rules that we find inconvenient to sovereignty. This could even cause a collapse, though in reality, the decision has already been made because this is not a democracy its an aristocracy.
“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”
A lot of the problem with the EU debate is that the media are (deliberately?) misreporting the facts.
EU membership and membership of the single market are NOT the same thing. We can leave the EU and still retain single market access by joining the EEA or EFTA and have the same trading privileges as the likes of Norway.
People dismiss the Norway option and talk about “fax democracy” and Norway having no say in the regulations but it’s simply not true. Most regulations are decided by GLOBAL bodies these days and are then later fed down to the EU who then implement the regulations for their members.
Norway have a seat on the global bodies but we do not as ours is taken a an EU representative who has the priorities of 28 countries to juggle. As it stands, Norway get more of a direct say in the creation of regulations than we do!
Then you get these ridiculous arguments about the EU being responsible for there having been no major wars in the west since WW2. This is nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with the creation of nuclear weapons and the fact that a war between developed nations would surely lead to mutually assured destruction.
The newspapers are full of talk about how the “leavers” don’t have a realistic plan for after we leave. Well yes, if you’re talking about the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage then that’s true. However there is the sterling work done by Dr Richard North over the past few years which has resulted in the “Flexcit” plan for leaving the EU.
The Flexcit plan would have us leave the EU and join the EEA or EFTA initially, which would retain UK access to the single market and avoid any economic shocks. This would then give us the breathing room we need to negotiate a bespoke trading agreement with the EU (which could take anything up to 10 years!). What we cannot do is simply leave the EU and the single market in one “big bang” gesture as that would decimate our trade with Europe overnight and massively impact UK businesses and jobs. It’s taken us 40 years to get into this mess, it can’t simply be reversed overnight.