If there was a referendum on Europe....

I can't believe what Cameron has done. He comes across like a petulant schoolboy in a public school debating society. This is all for his party and not for the country.

I like in London. Most of my work is connected with Europe as is most of the work of my friends. London is the most European city in the Eurozone, and subsidises the rest of the UK, which without London is mostly a relatively poor country. Severing ties with the largest trading partner due to some deluded visions of former national grandeur is hardly in the interests of the country. In terms of waste - I would guess that he is committed to spending massively more on international development than Britain commits to the EU. Also, Britain's welfare system is hardly a model of efficiency. I really don't see what there is to gain from leaving but there seems that a hell of a lot could be lost.

This reminds me of the experience of Montreal. In the 1970s, it was the most important Canadian city. Then they elected a party which wished to make Montreal more 'Quebecois' - more french-speaking. The result - exit of businesses and relative economic decline.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal

"London is the financial capital of the world because of our timezone (we're slap bang in the middle), our friendly laws AND free access to the EU markets. If we removed that we'd see banks all wanting to establish a new European HQ so they can continue to trade in Euros.

Please come and explain this to me - I don't get why the banks would want to move - we use sterling here anyway?"

ivykaty44: International banks are in London because:

• Under EU financial services rules a bank in London can lend to a business borrower anywhere in the EU or an investment manager in London can have as clients companies anywhere in the EU. This is under EU rules on freedom to provide services. If the U.K. leaves the EU then those rules will no longer apply. International banks are going to establish their European HQs in the EU instead - I expect some will go to Paris, some to Dublin, some maybe somewhere else.

• The EU rules on free movement of workers mean that they can easily employ in London people from any EU country. Most non-admin staff in international banks in London are not from the U.K. Unfortunately, because of the poor education system / general laziness, non enough British people can speak French/German/Italian etc. with sufficient fluency and not enough of them have the educational standards to do the complex work, never mind work the long hours involved.

"Can I also ask why as a country we wouldn't want to trade with other countries outside the EU, if already we have 90% of our trade outside the EU surely finding another 10% of trade to go outside wouldn't be so hard with countries such as china and India?"

ivykaty44: 90% of the U.K.'s trade is not outside the EU. That figure is generated by the anti-EU bunch saying 80% of U.K. trade is internal, e.g. you buy a piece of beef that is the product of a bullock raised and butchered in the U.K. But foreign trade is vital.

Roughly half of the U.K.'s exports go to other EU countries. A bit more of the U.K.'s imports come from other EU countries. China and India are much less important - in 2011 the U.K. exported more to Belgium alone than it did to China and India put together. The anti-EU bunch will say the U.K. imports more from the rest of the EU than it exports, so it is better off without that trade. That is utter rubbish. First, the U.K.'s total imports are, and have been for many years, more than its exports - it's not just with the EU that the U.K. runs a trade deficit. For example, in 2011 for ever £1 of goods the U.K. exported to China the U.K. imported £3 of goods from China. For many many goods geographical proximity matters as shipping costs are too high.

Here is a link to the 2011 figures for U.K. exports and imports with different countries:
www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/feb/24/uk-trade-exports-imports

Ivykaty.

The Eurozone is the largest single market in the world. The UK makes up a fair size of that yes....but even without us, it would still be very big.

If the UK was not part of the EU then the banks would have to establish a headquarters in an EU country in order to maintain free trade.

Secondly I suspect banks such as Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas & SocGen will be under massive pressure to move business back into the Eurozone.

As for the cars. the EU slaps import taxes on cars made outside of the EU. So our car exports would be subject to this. The likes of Nissan & Toyota would have more incentive to move to avoid this. After all, the duty is why they built factories in Europe anyway and didn't simply ship them over from Japan in bigger numbers.

As for trade, 52% of our exports go to other EU countries, not 10%.

It just makes NO sense to me. To want to leave because we want to be independent. But then to sign up to be an outsider who has to obey the rules but not have a voice in making them. It's just crazy.

Right now we're one of the core members albeit an awkward one. But Germany is actually more onside with us than France usually is and an Anglo-German alliance would to me be a more logical way forward. France would LOVE it if we left. They'd suck up to the German's in a heartbeat.

Indeed. Retaliation for DC saying he'd welcome with open arms anyone who found that unacceptable

Fraktion is that the same French which recently hiked up the rate of taxation prompting the rich and famous to flee France

Eu is popular in Scotland and the scots just do not get their knickers in a twist over Europe the way a sizable number of English apparently do. Scotland is holding its own 'in or out' referendum in 2014. Does anyone seriously think that scots voters will be willing to risk being dragged out of Europe by the likes of Nigel Farrage????

This simply will not have occurred to the Tory backbenchers currently crowing over their 'victory'. I suspect they and UKIP are only dimly conscious of the fact that the United Kingdom consists of 4 countries, not just England

London is the financial capital of the world because of our timezone (we're slap bang in the middle), our friendly laws AND free access to the EU markets. If we removed that we'd see banks all wanting to establish a new European HQ so they can continue to trade in Euros.

Please come and explain this to me - I don't get why the banks would want to move - we use sterling here anyway?

The same will be the case for every car manufacturing plan in the U.K. (auto manufacturing being bright spark in this rececession). Why will car plants suffer?

Can I also ask why as a country we wouldn't want to trade with other countries outside the EU, if already we have 90% of our trade outside the EU surely finding another 10% of trade to go outside wouldn't be so hard with countries such as china and India?

The French have basically just said they'll make special efforts to accommodate (read: give special treatment to) any companies who decide to relocate from the UK over this referendum. Britain's place as the European HQ for many companies would be lost in a flash if that happened.

I hope British citizens resident in the EU will get a vote on this referendum. 99% of them would be voting to stay in because their entire lives are built on the opportunities afforded by free movement. Either that or their host countries will be facing a steep increase in applications for citizenship and the DWP will be facing an administrative nightmare.

IMO there is no realistic way the UK can withdraw and be better off in the short term, and I don't see a strong long term plan. Our only alternative is to create a rival faction and the Commonwealth isn't strong enough.

Instead of fannying around with a referendum which won't happen because there's legal precedent that promises made in one electoral term aren't valid in another I would much rather the UK tightened up the loopholes and applied the same measures other countries do re: healthcare and benefits for EU citizens.

In - definitely. I want my children to grow up and feel part of something larger than GB. I have loved travelling/living/working in Europe and feeling that I can be part of a growing generation for whom borders are less and less powerful as lines which separate us from each other. It's a big world out there and anything which reinforces our common humanity, common interests, common standards and expectations seems to me to open up possibilities for the future. Pulling out, battoning down the hatches, keeping to what we have got - even if it means we have a bit more financially (which I doubt would translate into huge gains for the UK, if any) - is not a mentality I want to pass onto the next generation.

absolutely in!

Think i don't think DC sees himself in coliation with libdems at next election and either do I as I think libdems will be annihilated

I think if we have a referedum the turnout will be high because for most people they would base their vote on the single issue that has affected them the most in recent year; the unexpected mass immigration of eastern europeans with the prospect of more from Romania and Hungary. If the government had any effective strategy to reverse and control this they may have some hope of generating enough support from voters to stay in EU but if they are seen as ineffective on this single issue then my feeling is we will vote to get out.

Interesting to see what this will do to any future coalition discussions. Seems to me DC just painted himself into a corner. If the. Tories don't win out right it's hard to see the lib dems would enter a coalition with another referendum on a subject so close to their hearts where they disagree with their coalition partners. The electoral reform vote was surely too bruising to forget?

Ps those french! I gather they've decided that a free trade agreement with siuth korea is not such a good idea now that french consumers have started buying korean cars in preference to french ones....:)

Which i guess emphasises the fact that it's difficult to get a handle on the existing pluses and minuses for the uk, and potential pluses and minuses going forward. Everyone has a view based on their own personal areas of interest, political belief, experiences etc etc. I wish someone could create a giant comprehensive and comprehensible spreadsheet for me to have a look at.

Maybe we could invite an existing third country - eg Canada to join, let them do the analysis and then go with that :)

legalalien not in my policy areas. Civil servants and ministers from Defra, BIS, the NMO, the HSE and increasingly DECC are influential in the drafting of those Directives and Regulations. They are then lobbied by business and MPs here in the UK and make amendments and respond to consultations based on our domestic concerns.

We've been working on a recent issue where the French producers of a particular construction material have banded together screaming that the European Commission's regulation of a certain substance via a harmonised directive (ie, one with no scope as you rightly pointed out for MSs to derogate or set different domestic standards) has been set to maximally benefit UK producers and disadvantage French ones and there's nothing the French can do about it. Direct result of a particularly enormous UK construction company's lobbying of the UK government.

So you win some, you lose some - but if you're not in the EU, you never win any except by chance.

In addition I spend a lot of my time advising companies from non-EU jurisdictions, including countries like Norway, how they can comply with EU laws, which they have absolutely no control over but have to comply with anyway if they want access to the market. As you can imagine this costs them a huge amount of money and they have no say in the content of those regulations but have to follow them anyway if they want access to the market. Again the UK currently takes a leadership role in drawing up these regulations but if we withdrew from the EU we would be subject to all the regulations but would have no say in their reasonableness, scope and effect on our own industries. As the vast majority of our trade is with the EU and many multinationals manage their regulatory compliance work in the UK, leaving the EU would be a hammer blow as we would continue to have to comply but would have absolutely no influence over what our regulatory obligations are. This will massively increase costs for UK businesses, UK-based importers and and drive multinationals elsewhere.

But surely it's increasingly the case - certainly in some policy areas such as financial services - that notwithstanding our membership we have little say in the reasonableness, scope and effect of relevant legislation, particularly as the Commission moves from a Directive approach to a Regulation approach, regulatory bodies become more centralised eg ESMA and once the 2014 changes to qualified majority voting kick in. And in areas covered by maximum harmonisation Directives we don't have the flexibility that you suggest further up the thread.

The problem for the UK is that the EU is forging ahead with it's primary aim of 'ever closer union' which ultimately means one country called Europe with one currency, the Euro, one European Government, flag, anthem etc etc etc.

The Lisbon Treaty was a large leap towards this end state when it gave the EU legal personality for the first time i.e. the EU can now do things in it's own name.

So, a vote to stay IN means embracing the move towards 'ever closer union', andgiving even more control to the EU.

It would be great if Britain could renegoiate our membership but why should our fellow EU members agree to Britain having what could be more preferential terms than them? I cannot see Cameron getting any agreement on the Fisheries policy or the CAP or on restoring much of the sovereignity we have given up.

The only bargaining chip Cameron has is the £50 million a day that we pay into the EU.

If we can't get agreement then we have to decide IN or OUT.

In Jan 2012 400,000 UK citizens live permanently in Spain - about the same number as Polish citizens that live in the UK.

150,000 Brits live in France and 100,000 in Germany.

There are 300,000 Germans in the UK and 123,000 French.

data here from ONS and Eurostat

ILikeBirds I absolutely agree that it's so much more complex than In or Out.

I've tried to introduce some concrete examples from stuff I work with every day that will have massive adverse consequences in many significant areas (product safety, environmental etc) if people vote Out. No one has engaged with any of my examples at all, likely because they are too complicated and boring. But if the problems that will be caused are too complicated or boring, they shouldn't be allowed to be boiled down to an In/Out vote.

somebloke you claim the 3 million jobs figure was reached by one report by an economic research institute, doing work for a pro-EU lobbying group - ie. a report by NIESR in 2000. I have no idea about the soundness of this report. However the link I provided above is from 2010 and references Department from Business, Innovation and Skills data for the figure of 3.5 million jobs, rather than any NIESR report from 10 years previously. So unless we're now going to start second-guessing our own government's trade figures, I stand by the statement that 3.5 million jobs number.

Wondering whether we can grade countries differently dependant on their standing in the EU?

I don't understand how anyone could say how they would vote as a simple In or Out question?

It's so much more complex than that.

I honestly don't see how you would turn back the clock on EU migrants either, doesn't London have the second largest French population after Paris?

The UK signed up to the EU for business reasons not the other rubbish that seems to have taken over. However, retrorobot has made a very good post about why we should stay. Perhaps better the devil you know in the EU's case?

I would vote "In", but I think the referendum is a daft idea.

JoanByers I guess they can't do it before an election, because the Lib Dems won't agree to a referendum.

I would vote to leave we have surrendered too much of our sovereignty to Europe. I can't imagine being able to renegotiate the terms of our membership. So many member states are in deep trouble financially and France and,especially Germany , have a stranglehold on the rest. At the moment it seems as though, having failed to dominate Europe in two wars, Germany is en route to succeeding in 'peace'. We would be well out of it at least for now.