If there was a referendum on Europe....

I think what will happen is the following; Cameron will try to cherry pick(claw back what he can from the EU) this will fail as Merkel will not allow it and probably other EU countries also. Cameron wants to allay fears of some of his MPs regarding Ukip, as 900.000 voted for them at the last election. The electorate who will vote Ukip has increased, this will put (and has) the willies up Cameron.
Cameron will then if he is in power (with a majority, which is highly unlikely)
have to call a referendum. The outcome of course is not known.

flatpackhampster You are right the EU cannot 'boot us out' but my feeling is that they would make it uncomfortable for Britain to stay, if they do not repatriate any of the powers or policies Cameron will ask for, he will make himself unpopular and Britain will become isolated. I think many want the relationship that Norway has with the EU, whether we will get is another thing.

Does Cameron seriously think that the EU will give back any of the 55 million we give it a day? The EU has changed greatly since it emerged as the Common Market over 40 years ago. When there last was a referendum on the EU, I couldn't even vote on it!
I wonder how many MNs voted in the last referendum?....Just a thought.

You should be pleased that anti-EU sentiment is more mainstream here, because that does at least reflect in some form the dominant sentiment amongst the electorate.

The EU can't boot the UK out, even if it wanted to. The only way that the UK can leave is by invoking article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.

It would be nice, I agree, if the discussion was more grown up.

I'm sure there are some parties in other countries who would like to leave. But we're talking about the ruling party in the UK. Not some small fringe party or even the opposition.

I get that some of this rhetoric is very possibly brinkmanship but it seems to me we're quickly boxing ourselves into a corner.

Well you do hear of political parties in other countries talking about leaving the EU. But our media is so ghastly that access to European news is practically nil. It's like people saying "Oh, why is it only the UK that struggles with a bit of snow". It isn't, it's just that 'Trains don't run on time in Denmark due to dusting of snow' doesn't reach our media.

What I tend to do is read the English-language versions of European newspapers, which gives a much better insight in to the back-and-forth of European politics.

There are anti-EU parties, both large and small, in countries across the EU, but if you think about, say, how little airtime UKIP got until recently, you're not going to hear about a minor party in the Slovakian elections opposing EU membership.

@flatpack. I hear what you are saying and I totally get that other EU members want to change the rules which favour them the most. But the difference is that you don't hear France threatening to quit if they don't get their way.

And that's basically what the UK is pretty much saying right now. And as much as the EU wants us to stay (since we have a large economy), I doubt they will allow us to hold them to ransom. Otherwise another country will do exactly the same after us.

I don't have any issues with fighting our corner within Europe but it's just ridiculous to keep threatening to leave if we don't get our way. It's the equivalent of a petulant teenager having a strop and threatening to move out unless the parents do x,y,z. Sooner or later you have to call their bluff.

I think any such referendum is likely to be fudged. Or we are given 3 choices:

Do you think the UK should

1. Stay in the EU on current terms?
2. Stay and renegotiate?
3. Leave?

such that 1+2 votes would be likely to be greater than 3.

In the run up to the vote, all the usual suspects - big business (not SMEs who would not get a look in), big finance, unions, BBC and the old bruisers like Heseltine and Clark would be wheeled out to say what a catastrophe it would be if we left.

It would be little effort for them to do this. All they would have to do is to cut and paste from the articles they wrote several years ago detailing why it would be disastrous for the UK not to join the Euro (UK isolated, 3m jobs at risk, no seat at the top negotiating table, City sidelined by Frankfurst etc etc).

In fact we can't just renegotiate as we would need agreement from the 27 states to hold an intergovernmental conference and hammer out a new treaty for our benefit.

The only way we could get a new settlement is by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty signalling our intention to leave. We would then be involved in real negotiations.

But Cameron will never do this.

niceguy2

Hi Betty

And I think your example is a very good example. The EU or as it's old name used to be 'the common market' is as it's name suggests. And the best way for that to work is if we had same (or incredibly similar) rules.

The Common Market is not (repeat NOT) the old name for the EU. The Common Market was, at the time, an agreed set of trading rules. The EU is a political entity, a supranational government.

So using your example we as members of the EU single market should accept the same rules as every other EU member. By introducing our own 'better' standards and then using those conditions to try and limit free trade goes against the principles of the EU. And in effect we're again trying to cherry pick the rules we prefer.

That's exactly what every country does. Let me give you an example. A couple of years ago France decided that it wanted to change the rules on ground beef (beef mince). In France, they eat steak tartare, which is raw ground beef served with a raw egg. The beef has to be very fresh - no more than three days between slaughter and grinding. So they wanted a rule to specify that all ground beef sold in France had to be no more than 3 days old.

Because food and agriculture are run by the EU, France couldn't simply impose that rule. It had to get a ruling from the Commission, which it tried to do. Because the laws can't apply to a single country, if France had succeeded that would have meant that all ground beef, sold everywhere within the EU, could have been no more than 3 days old.

Naturally, to those of us with functioning tastebuds, that's a travesty. Beef has to be hung in order to get the best flavour from it. The darker the beef (or mince) the better the flavour. The sad-looking pink stuff you see in the supermarket should be kept in the fridge for at least a week before you eat it.

Culinary advice aside, the point is that France was trying to 'cherry pick' the rules to suit itself. And every country does this. If you didn't, you'd be an idiot.

The EU is a club. And as club members we agree to the rules of membership.

No, it's a supranational government, which keeps changing the rules, and which disregards the views of the members on those rules. See the ignored referenda on the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty.

If we want to change the rules as members then we do so from within. But in the meantime we stick to the rules.

Why? Everyone else tries to change the rules as they go along, as in the example I quoted above. Even today there's a Spanish socialist MEP who's tabled a motion in Parliament which would require companies who laid off staff to find them alternative work. Because the parliament is just a rubber-stamping tool for the Commission that motion has no power, but it's another example of how every nation tries to change the rules to suit themselves.

What a ridiculous idea that we should just do what we're told and if we don't like it then that's just tough.

The problem is that at the moment we keep threatening to quit and take our ball home with us. And the other members are getting pissed off now and sooner or later we'll get our bluff called.

What are they going to do? They can't force the UK out of the EU. The only way that the UK can leave the EU is by invoking article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The UK can't be forced out. Frankly, the northern members need us far more than we need the EU, because we help to counterbalance the handout countries to the south when it comes to votes.

And that's all I think it is at the moment, a bluff. I don't think we have any serious alternative plan. The Tory approach to this seems to be all over the place. Frankly it's a shambles.

Yes, and that's because Cameron is a a Europhile leading a party which is around 2/3 opposed to EU membership. The man's a fool and it'll come back and bite him.

Lastly it scares me even more that with the combination of the Scottish Independence referendum and talk of an EU one that in a few years time the 7th largest economy in the world, the UK will be broken up and end up as just England. The equivalent of getting divorced and getting the sack all at the same time.

Scotland won't leave (sadly) and what if it did? With that massive drag off the English economy, and us free of the high costs of EU regulation, we'd be freer and richer than we have been for decades.

A Britain free of the EU would be a glorious place to live. We'd be able to rebuild our fishing and farming industries, which would breathe new life in to coastal towns and country villages. We'd have cheaper electricity because we wouldn't be required to produce 20% of our power from bird-killing windmills, which would pull the poorest part of our population out of fuel poverty. We'd be able to block the million or so Romanians and Bulgarians who will turn up next year to claim benefits and housing and take the last few low-skilled jobs from the hands of our working classes. We wouldn't be tied to EU rules on corporate taxation which mean that multinationals pay their tax on the money they earn in the UK in Luxembourg instead.

The losers from our leaving the EU would be big business and big government. Frankly, they can go hang.

I vote for out. I think the EU costs Britain a lot more than what we get out if it.

Hi Betty

And I think your example is a very good example. The EU or as it's old name used to be 'the common market' is as it's name suggests. And the best way for that to work is if we had same (or incredibly similar) rules.

So using your example we as members of the EU single market should accept the same rules as every other EU member. By introducing our own 'better' standards and then using those conditions to try and limit free trade goes against the principles of the EU. And in effect we're again trying to cherry pick the rules we prefer.

The EU is a club. And as club members we agree to the rules of membership. If we want to change the rules as members then we do so from within. But in the meantime we stick to the rules.

The problem is that at the moment we keep threatening to quit and take our ball home with us. And the other members are getting pissed off now and sooner or later we'll get our bluff called.

And that's all I think it is at the moment, a bluff. I don't think we have any serious alternative plan. The Tory approach to this seems to be all over the place. Frankly it's a shambles.

Lastly it scares me even more that with the combination of the Scottish Independence referendum and talk of an EU one that in a few years time the 7th largest economy in the world, the UK will be broken up and end up as just England. The equivalent of getting divorced and getting the sack all at the same time.

I'd like to have much looser arrangements with Europe. It annoys me that the referendum on joining it was held when I was only a little girl, and since then the organisation has changed immensely but my generation and younger has never been allowed an opportunity to comment, as all the main parties are committed to staying in.

Niceguy I hear what you're saying, but don't they all want to cherry pick? I'm thinking of, for example, the rules on improving conditions for intensively farmed chickens that we've enforced but a number of others have wriggled out of. This has lead to a situation whereby EU regulations forbid forcing a product to have country of origin, so eggs can be imported into the UK with nothing more than 'Produce of the EU' on the packaging, and we have no way of telling at point of sale if they've been farmed in conditions that we as a country have deemed unacceptable. Bear in mind the vast numbers of 'invisible' eggs, used to produce processed food (quiches, frozen things in batter, cakes, that sort of thing).

It actually scares me to think that we could blindly withdraw from Europe.

And whilst I agree that Europe is wasting a lot of money, I think leaving the EU will do more harm than good.

It is the biggest single market in the world. So many companies set up in the UK because we can freely trade with all 27 EU countries and since English is the business language of the world, we are the obvious choice.

If we left Europe, a lot of large companies would simply move their European HQ to another EU state. A lot of jobs would also be at risk.

I know there's talk of us staying in the EU like Norway but honestly that's speculation. And an assumption that the EU needs us more than we need them. And frankly a very dangerous game. The other EU nations are already exasperated at Britain and the perception is that we've joined the club but want to cherry pick the rules we want.

I think a lot of the problems are due to the common perception that Europe is a waste of money. Something peddled by the tabloid press along with all benefit claimants are scroungers.

The economy nowadays is based upon one single thing. Confidence. The money we have in our pockets is not backed up by anything anymore. It's value is merely down to our confidence that we can spend it. Companies manufacture and invest based on confidence in the economy. A withdrawal will have a massive short to medium term impact on the confidence of the UK government and in turn the UK economy.

In short if we leave the EU or investors seriously think it's a possibility, the result will be another recession and more austerity measures which will make the current lot look easy.

I think the vote would go in favour of withdrawal, if that was the question. I would like to see the money currently sent to Brussels used in our country rather than support bloated, unaudited overspending in Brussels.

It would depend on the question. However, I think turnout would be so low that no government could legitimately claim a mandate for significant change.