To think if Blair , brown and sarpong obe want us to stay in the EU we should vote to leave

[Mcdotii]

This new campaign feels like its just very rich people trying to bully us into doing what suits them the best.

If most millionaire s want us to stay in sounds like a good reason to leave!

I kinda understand where you're coming from OP even if it's not right. We've had real pain inflicted on us by those in charge we no longer trust them and believe they are self serving and will screw the rest of us over to suit their own agenda type of thing. So if they want it then it must mean pain for us?

I'm not sure what side to take I don't understand it enough yet.

The UK on its own would be in a mess, a former imperial power who has made many bitter enemies.
In this global economy we have little clout and our industrial base has been collapsing for decades.
Our seat on the UN Security Council is retained only by our very expensive nuclear arsenal.
Leaving the EU would leave us very isolated and diminished.

The whole campaign to leave the EU has been driven by the racist xenophobic UKIP and the Little Englander right wing of the Tory party.
They think it will enable them to stop immigration and turn back the clock wrt many human rights, especially workers' rights.

It will take the whole EU to stand up to Amazon, Google etc and force them finally to start paying their fair share of taxes.
We need to be part of the EU to stop the 0.1% and the multinationals driving down wages to developing world levels.
To combat climate change, not let big business pollute as they wish and leave our kids with a runined environment
We should fight to retain our employment rights, not fight for the right of employers to make us work unlimited hours under worse conditions

I will vote to stay in the EU and work to improve those aspects we don't like.

Norway and Switzerland have to follow the EU rules to trade with them. They just don't get to vote on any of them.
We would be paying 94% of our current membership fees, without any say on what they are used for

BigChoc - so am I right in thinking your pro-EU stance rests on a conception of the UK as in a state of chronic and irreversible post-imperial decline, loathed by a world it's only recently finished oppressing?

I've travelled extensively and that just doesn't square with the international perceptions of the UK I've encountered overseas.

And that you see our choice as between nasty, xenophobic Little Englanders and a warm, fuzzy internationalist attitude promoting human rights and protections for workers?

I don't contest that there is a xenophobic rump to the eurosceptic movement. But the majority of people who are uncomfortable with the EU aren't uncomfortable because of jingoism but because of a mounting concern that being in the EU means having little or no control over hugely important areas of government policy.

For example, many of the people who recently voted Jeremy Corbyn in as Leader of the Labour Party are concerned that whole swathes of his popular policies are simply impossible because the EU forbids them. Want to nationalise the railways? No can do. Want to stop the privatisation of the NHS? Sorry, Jeremy, EU trade policies say you're stuck with it.

Whether or not you support privatisation in healthcare, or nationalisation of the railways, is neither here nor there: within the EU, we have no choice. No control. Leaving the EU isn't about jingoism, it's about having democratic control over important issues in our own country. This scaremongering about the poor, little, weak and disliked UK is qualitative, unprovable and, frankly, mistaken.

our industrial base has been collapsing for decades.

We have been in the EU for decades. So how has that helped our collapsing industrial base? Or are they the cause of the collapse ...
Look at the recent case of SSI - the Government aren't allowed to help them out because of EU 'state help' legislation.

Our decline is due to our own failings, our insistence on copying the US system of low tax tax, low benefits, vulture capitalism.
I've actually lived in other countries and the UK is often considered a faded power with delusions of grandeur and still making bad decisions.

If we'd listened to our main EU partners like France, we would have avoided some of our worst foreign policy mistakes, like the dreadful mess we helped cause in Iraq. They begged us not to go to war, but no, Britain and Blair had to go their own independent way.

Once Jeremy Corbyn actually became leader, as distinct from his former rule as a campaigner without responsibility, he said

"he cannot envisage the circumstances in which he would campaign against Britain staying in Europe"15 Sept Guardian

So, even though some of his aims would be thwarted, the benefits mean that it is better to stay in and change the EU.
Most important decisions are a matter of weighing risks, disadvantages and benefits.

Once the referendum question has been put, look at the terms and look at the parties who mostly want us to remain / leave.

So, even though some of his aims would be thwarted, the benefits mean that it is better to stay in and change the EU.

Chief among those benefits being avoiding a revolt among the europhile MPs behind him

Not sure what Blair and Iraq have to do with anything, especially as Blair is one of the most ardent europhiles out there; chiefly because he thinks nation states in Europe are outmoded and xenophobic and should be replaced with a sort of transnational technocracy managed by people like him.

But elsewhere I suspect that the recent exodus of skilled French people to London, not to mention its 0% growth in the last quarter, has everything to do with the fact that our adoption of 'vulture capitalism' means that unlike most of the rest of the EU the UK has far lower unemployment than the eurozone, not to mention avoiding the kinds of punitive taxes that cause that sort of brain-drain. You talk about decline in the UK but the French have been worrying about their decline for decades, and if you ask me the UK is in a far stronger position to bounce back.

Personally I'd far rather our country were free to do so, not shackled to a failing 20th-century political experiment driven by false fears of the UK's weakness and the nationalist bogeyman.

Blair and Iraq are an example of the UK choosing to ignore its main EU partners and going it alone.
If we had followed EU consensus, instead of being a US poodle, we wouldn't have contributed to the slaughter and chaos in Iraq.
Britain is NOT best when going its own sweet way.

There are indeed far more opportunities for the top 10% income level in the UK. That is what happens whens you lower tax rates for the wealthy, lower IHT, cut the welfare state and the NHS.

Those in the UK on low income, the disabled, the carers are having a much worse time.
The inequality gap in the UK is worse than in France and Germany, but the rich are doing well, so that's fine ?

Also, companies love to come to a place that is part of the EU, but has opted out of some legislation to protect workers's rights, e.g. the maximum weekly hours that can be worked.
Many workers signing the "opt out" are forced to do so, or give up on career advancement, even lose their jobs.
We work longer hours than any of our EU partners, with consequent effect on quality of life, health, stress and family time.

Leaving the EU will allow the governement to really take a machete to what workers rights remain.
That's one reason why most on the left and centre want to remain.
btw, some on the really far left think that leaving the EU gives the best chance of economic collapse and then the voters turning to them in desperation.

The EU requires companies to hold to certain environmental standards, so naturally rightwing Tories want to dump these, go for maximum profit, regardless of the pollution.

The EU protects against extreme laws, tax policy that the left or the right might want to bring in.
The rich can move abroad if a far-left government hammers them with taxes. Those on lower incomes, or dependent on the welfare state, have far fewer options.

For those who think this government or "the elite" have been been cruel and harmful to many people, imagine what they would be like unfettered by EU law.