EU - where did it go wrong?

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mainbeam
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Re: EU - where did it go wrong?

Postby mainbeam » Tue Jun 28, 2016 2:28 pm

Rolyan wrote:
mainbeam wrote:
Rolyan wrote:
mainbeam wrote:
It worked for the Leave campaign.


I appreciate that you need to believe that.


It would be naïve to believe it didn't. I can appreciate why you need to convince yourself that those aspects of the Leave campaign had little or no affect on a sufficient number of people to result in a marginal difference. The difficultly you have is in convincing those who are neither naïve nor in denial that they must be wrong.

Yes, you're entitled to that opinion.


It would be absurd to opine that as you were not influenced by those reasons that others weren't also although you are of course entitled to hold the opinion.
Last edited by mainbeam on Tue Jun 28, 2016 2:41 pm, edited 3 times in total.

mainbeam
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Re: EU - where did it go wrong?

Postby mainbeam » Tue Jun 28, 2016 2:33 pm

Rolyan wrote:
mainbeam wrote:
Strangely Brown wrote:
That's the whole point! Your voice is not and cannot be heard by the EU. Further integration will only cement that yet you ask why it is such a bad idea?

That is also incorrect. Your voice is - and by implication can be - heard by the EU through our elected representatives. At the European Council, The Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.

If those in the UK parliament don't do what you want (or do what you don't want), you can vote them out. That isn't the case with the EU. That is the real issue for many, which I'm sure you know, even if you pretend that you think it's to do with being heard..


Do you also hold the opinion that our elected representatives representing us in these institutions cannot be voted out? NB I can only hope to vote out one of the UK Parliament's MPs out over 600 and none of us have a say in the hundreds of Lords who populate the other House.

mainbeam
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Re: EU - where did it go wrong?

Postby mainbeam » Tue Jun 28, 2016 2:40 pm

Strangely Brown wrote:Exactly!

The most important issue, by far, is the sovereignty of the UK parliament and the supremacy of the UK courts. If you have that, then control of everything else (immigration, taxes, defence etc) can follow. Without it you are at the whim of those who will always have their own interests above yours.


The UK Parliament does have sovereignty over taxes (except VAT to an extent) and we traded in sovereignty over defence when we joined NATO.

We also traded general control of economic migration within the EU in return for being part of the single market.

Do you believe we should also leave NATO in order to regain our sovereignty over defence?

mainbeam
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Re: EU - where did it go wrong?

Postby mainbeam » Tue Jun 28, 2016 2:45 pm

mainbeam wrote:
Rolyan wrote:
mainbeam wrote:
Rolyan wrote:
I appreciate that you need to believe that.


It would be naïve to believe it didn't. I can appreciate why you need to convince yourself that those aspects of the Leave campaign had little or no affect on a sufficient number of people to result in a marginal difference. The difficultly you have is in convincing those who are neither naïve nor in denial that they must be wrong.

Yes, you're entitled to that opinion.


It would be absurd to opine that as you were not influenced by those reasons that others weren't also although you are of course entitled to hold the opinion.

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Strangely Brown
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Re: EU - where did it go wrong?

Postby Strangely Brown » Tue Jun 28, 2016 3:01 pm

I never missed that at all. You may think that it was only down to narrow party political interests but they were clearly born out of the massive rise in public disquiet. Yes, you are correct that they didn't *have* to allow a referendum but if they hadn't given one in this parliament then it was only a matter of time before a party was voted in that did offer it. One way or another the electorate eventually get heard.

hir
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Re: EU - where did it go wrong?

Postby hir » Tue Jun 28, 2016 3:10 pm

Rolyan wrote:If those in the UK parliament don't do what you want (or do what you don't want), you can vote them out. That isn't the case with the EU. That is the real issue for many, which I'm sure you know, even if you pretend that you think it's to do with being heard..[my emphasis]


That's just a little bit too simplistic and a tad misleading. I doubt that any one individual has that power. I think the concept that you intended to convey was that the power to which you refer resides with the British electorate; not with me or anyone else individually.

But, hey, that's just a minor detail in all this pointless point-scoring and misleading obfuscation.

The question that needs to be addressed is... are we going to attempt to negotiate free access to the single market, and if we are, how are we going to negotiate an exemption to the EU's condition of free movement of labour?

My guess, and Boris' guess, and Michael's guess, and Daniel Hannan's guess is... that we can't avoid free movement of labour, and that we'll have to accept it as a condition of access to the single market. And, access to the single market will also mean that we will have to agree to contribute to the EU budget. :o Makes you want to emigrate to Norway! :lol: :lol: :lol:

The Leave campaign has promised to take control of our borders and to restrict/limit/point-score immigration. With free movement of labour within the single market that's not going to happen. This means that there will be a significant part of the Leave constituency that is going to be disappointed, and as a nation, this disillusionment is going to be yet another consequence of Brexit that we're somehow going to have to deal with.

ancient
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Re: EU - where did it go wrong?

Postby ancient » Tue Jun 28, 2016 4:41 pm

I disagree. The question that needs to be addressed is: Will the UK electorate continue to be sufficiently engaged with the political process to badger their MPs into stopping the bickering and getting on with the job of negotiating the best terms possible (which will not be the ones initially offered). Of course, a certain part of the electorate like the bickering and want it to continue (it justifies their apathy) and TPTB (nice acronym ;) ) want to lull the proletariat back to sleep by highlighting divisions. If our electorate continues to be engaged and uses the plenitude of opportunities available, then we do have a degree of democratic control over the UK parliament that is lacking in the EU.

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Re: EU - where did it go wrong?

Postby Gareth » Tue Jun 28, 2016 5:07 pm

hir wrote:The question that needs to be addressed is... are we going to attempt to negotiate free access to the single market, and if we are, how are we going to negotiate an exemption to the EU's condition of free movement of labour?

Although one of the four pillars of EEA membership is free movement of people, I heard today on Radio 4 "Law in Action" that member countries can restrict free movement in some situations.

Haven't yet found the clauses but anyone can read through the rules at http://www.efta.int/legal-texts/eea.


ETA - Article 33 says "The provisions of this Chapter and measures taken in pursuance thereof shall not prejudice the applicability of provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action providing for special treatment for foreign nationals on grounds of public policy, public security or public health." - being a restatement of the same provision as part of Article 28.
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sussex2
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Re: EU - where did it go wrong?

Postby sussex2 » Tue Jun 28, 2016 5:47 pm

Perhaps another way of looking at this is the the UK has now joined the vast majority of other countries in the world.
They, the other countries, don't have stable (well sort of) governments elected every five years; there's no 'I see Labour's in now'.
I wonder if we have relaxed, became complacent, for too long.

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Re: EU - where did it go wrong?

Postby Gareth » Tue Jun 28, 2016 5:53 pm

jont- wrote:
Gareth wrote:What is your position if the reports of the move to a European super-state [thenews.pl, source is 'TVP Info' Polish news website] prove to be well founded?

Given it only seems to have been proposed on the back of us voting to leave the EU, I'm not sure how helpful it is as a question.

This has been raised previously, before the referendum, but it seemed pertinent that the particular article referred to a statement by a member of the Polish government and citing a specific document being discussed, rather than merely rumour.

jont- wrote:I don't know about a fully unified tax system

Seems like a logical step to and a requirement for fiscal union, which seems inevitable if the Euro currency is ever going to work.

jont- wrote:I'd certainly like to see the removal of the ability of firms like google, amazon etc to fiddle their corporation tax to the lowest rate country and instead contribute their fair share.

That's a world issue rather than specifically a European issue, and will probably need international action in the wider sense.

jont- wrote:Unified armies? Well if that stopped our vanity trident replacement project, I'm sure we could think of lots of more useful things to do with the money.

My impression was that the UK voting to leave is what allowed this to go ahead. I can't see that Europe would give up nuclear weapons held by France. If the UK was part of an EU with a unified military, then maybe Trident wouldn't be replaced, but I'd lay odds that the money saved would be redistributed to poorer countries in the EU rather than being used to spend more to help parts of the UK. You see, it wouldn't be our money, it'd be theirs.

jont- wrote:But I come back to an earlier point made - given country boundaries are pretty much entirely artificial constructs, why do people feel the UK is the /right/ size to represent/govern them?

It isn't so much a matter of size but of shared culture. This is also the reason for devolution within the UK - effectively recognition that smaller shared cultures exist within the larger whole. There is some history of this in these islands, with Ireland having home rule then becoming an independent country - and today the shared history is recognised by Irish nationals being allowed to vote in UK elections. While the UK is moving in the direction of devolving power closer to the people, the EU is moving to centralise power.
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