To ask brexiteers to explain to me why they want us to leave the EU?

[ethelfleda]

I have a totally open mind here. I did vote remain but I genuinely want to know why people think that leaving the EU is a good thing?
I’m not being goady - I actually want people to convince me that Brexit is a good thing so I don’t feel so terrified of what’s to come!
So what is it about the EU that’s bad for us? What will we achieve by leaving?

Aargh, getting mixed up with leavers and Remainers! Meant to say ..’a lot of Remainers....

@ScreamingLadySutch

This is a discussion board. You post your opinions then someone may disagree with them.

You call it nick picking, I call it debate.

We are quite capable of regulating our own industries at the moment. If we're forced to give more concessions to big business after Brexit in order to secure good trade deals, we may not be.

Leaving the EU gives more power to our parliament- ie the Tories. The architects of austerity, cutters of services and who are opposed to regulation as much as possible.

Nice to see some people who voted Brexit giving their well considered reasoning as OP asked.

Of course these will be overlooked and the old cliche line; “They just say something about wanting their country back or something” will be trotted out and then something about, “they won’t like it when they lose their employment rights” and they will think they are the first person to say it and sit back feeling all self important.

Yaaaawn

My main reason is that I don’t believe that two main economic powers being Germany and France can hold up an entire continent forever.

One day and I predict sooner than the next 20 years this with collapse and I want out before it happens.

The eastern countries are the ones gaining power now the west is old hat

We need to be able to trade with them without restrictions.

Of course these will be overlooked and the old cliche line; “They just say something about wanting their country back or something” will be trotted out and then something about, “they won’t like it when they lose their employment rights” and they will think they are the first person to say it and sit back feeling all self important

Has this happened?

Very goady post.

Well if you asked my Mum she would say less immigration and not being told what to do by the EU.
She's a dyed in the wool Daily Fail bus poster propaganda believing racist.

From my experience with leave voting relatives and friends it tends to be those with right leaning views or Daily Mail/Sun type readers.
Usually older people or less politically aware or educated. Some thought it was a vote against David Cameron.

@teaonthebed
You point out "That's not correct. Although not yet legislated, "In January 2018 the European Commission finally published proposals to overhaul the EU rules on VAT rates – in effect, to reverse the current approach".

But not yet legislated.
No plans, no timeline.

I don't give a shit about what anyone on here thinks about me or my views, I have wanted to leave since 1973 when Heath first took the UK into the Common Market without asking the people if it was what they wanted. His comment at the time, when told the fisherman would lose sole control of their fishing rights, 'It's a price worth paying'.
I want my country to be able to control who comes in and goes out through its borders. I want everyone who is here to be able to be identified, if the need is there.
I want my country to be governed by politicians who can be voted out if they are not good for the country without any foreign powers trying to influence the result. The House of Lords receives funding from the EU, so does some of the media.
I want British fishermen, and no one else, to be able to catch fish off our coastal waters.
I want our farmers and other industries to be able to produce and sell what they like, to whom they decide at a price which is viable to their business and fair also to customers.
I want our courts to be able to deport foreigners who are making our country unsafe.
I do not want our country's NHS and education system to be seen as a free for all for everyone in the world.
I want our industries to be supported by our government rather than having to follow rules which put them as a disadvantage. I want our government to decide regulations, we do not need any foreign power to tell us how to behave.
I don't want money spent on translating documents into a multitude of languages or a large percentage of the education budget spent on children who cannot speak English, while our own English speaking children see additional services being cut.
I want our country to be able to trade with whomever they wish and decide the trade rules for doing so, not be told by someone else and have to follow their regulations.
I want the British way of life to stay true to our own culture.
I want British tax revenues to be spent improving this country, not someone else's. Currently the UK contributes over £50 million a day to the EU budget ( We are the 3rd highest) plus VAT revenues, so Boris' bus was correct! Some is returned, but the EU decides how that can be spent. Our contributions can only rise annually and the EU is planning to cut/remove the rebate, if we stay.
I do not want the euro.
I do not want benefits/housing//education/health services etc. spent on people who have just arrived in this country and never contributed anything to it beforehand. Law abiding people with skills we need and who want to be part of the British way of life are welcome to come and work here, at our invitation.
I do not want a UK population 20 million higher than it needs to be.No one asked the British people if they wanted mass immigration, neither were we asked if we wanted to build millions of extra homes for them while we wait in a queue.
In short, I want this country to be able to make any decision it wants to, whenever it wants to without being told what to do by what started off as a trading organisation, but which now needs a flag, an anthem, an army, a currency, parliaments in two different countries, a budget which is unaccountable, politicians who pay no tax, and unelected leaders who are, on the whole, failed politicians from somewhere else.
Freedom may come at a cost to some but, in the end, it is priceless.

I voted leave.

A few reasons, but the main one was that the objective of the EU is and always will be ever closer union.

The longer we are in the EU, the harder it is to leave. This exercise of trying to leave has shown how hard it is to extricate ourselves from the EU.

I don't want to be part of a union that makes it impossible for us to leave.

I am not a leaver and certainly not under the current proposal. However the black/white Panglossian view of the EU that ultra remainers have is as ‘thick’ as the little Englander leavers.

But let me just put a few points forward:

The EU is intimately bound up with the Euro. If the Euro fails, so does the EU, and the Euro will fail. I cannot tell you the timing but it is inevitable. The only currency unions which have succeeded have had a unified fiscal policy and huge transfers of actual money from the richest areas to the poorest areas (the U.S for example). This has only really worked where there has been a common language and culture (the reunification of the East Germany and West Germany, for instance).

Right now, the majority of the Europeans believe the EU will fail by 2040. There has been a recent poll on this which I can link to if you have not seen it.

The ‘citizens of everywhere’ vs the ‘citizens of somewhere’ argument resonates with a lot of people. They identify as culturally British with an allegiance to their nation. They would not (and could not) transfer to Paris, Frankfurt or Singapore tomorrow and eat in the same restaurants, send their children to the same type of schools and do the same jobs. The ‘elite’ (for want of a better word) fail to understand this. They feel our culture is being irreparably diluted by a rapid wave of immigration. I get this argument.

If we ‘fell’ out of the EU without a deal, Trump and the Chinese would love to do business with us. This would come at a cost, it would not be done out of magnanimity. However the EU could clearly be put on the back foot by a mischievous Trump. The reality is that the EU would have no desire to stop trading with us and push themselves into a recession. Within weeks of no deal we would have some sort of deal.

The nations of the EU also need to borrow money regularly and they could not replace the City quickly. Paris and Frankfurt just could not ramp up their infrastructure that fast so, in the short term at least, they need us.

I think we should revoke, personally, but a good negotiator could get us far more than the pessimists on this thread believe.

@CannoninD
One was British and the other a Swedish student. She told me all about how she was completing her degree for ‘free’ as Sweden had an agreement with Scotland that students could study for free at each place.

Actually, Sweden has an agreement with the whole EU that anyone can study for free in Sweden. In English. Including you. Or rather, you could've done but not after Brexit.

Hardly that Swedish student's fault that you can't afford to move and do what she did. Everyone speaks English in Sweden so it's not like you can't live there without learning Swedish.

We were offered a choice remain or leave
People had a choice to vote
The only issue is that we haven't left !

@tomtom1999xx
I wasn’t aware of that.
Why is that allowed?

It's not allowed, but other EU countries don't care...

This is an old article on this, but the problem still stands (got a very active 1 year old currently, can't Google for long...!)

www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8627955/First-trucks-now-trains-how-EU-rules-kill-off-our-industries.html

It is the wrong question though there are many good and valid reasons for leaving and would have been far simpler in 1973.

The question that worries me (and has me voting remain) is how
How can we leave and not destroy the Northern Ireland border
How can we call it Brexit when Scotland and NI want to stay and England and Wales leave

But most importantly how can we do it and ensure all the agreements etc remain in place

love the way Leavers won't explain their reasons, and that's the fault of the Remainders

Not necessarily; some may feel it's the fault of the remainers on MN, but most places for discussion have their "tone" and I doubt I'm alone in looking elsewhere for debate on this particular topic

Interesting that a couple of the more offensive posts have been deleted this time though ... maybe it's down to different mods, or perhaps the number of comments about personal attacks have triggered something?

But people have explained their reasons ad nauseum, thread after thread.... What do you want? Blood?

What I don't really understand is that many people claim the reason they voted is because they fear the EU becoming a superstate, they want more local control, etc. which I actually get. That stuff does make some sense. And so logically it seems that what would be best would be to leave the EU but maintain the customs union. But whenever anyone suggests that, it's met with roars of disapproval and that we couldn't possibly do that. Why not?

I would like to put a slightly different question to the leavers who have commented.

If the issues you have raised here were resolved by EU reform, would that change your mind or is it more fundamental than that?

What makes my blood boil most is that there has been no attempt by any UK government to introduce EU reform, we come in on the winning side on about 95% of EU votes so they are largely doing what they do with the agreement of our MEPs and the first time EU reform is being openly discussed is after the referendum has been held. Even during the campaign, the Remain group were so arrogant that they didn't believe that they had to sell the EU to people, after all, they thought everyone would automatically see it their way.

I live in Austria which was occupied until the late 1950s by the Soviet and allied troops. The town where I live was split in half and each power held a half. I was teaching an English class here and the students were all 80+ years old and they wanted to talk about Brexit. They shared a lot of the concerns of British leave voters but said ultimately they would not want to leave because they remember what it was like to live under foreign occupation. They remember the time of political uncertainty as a time of fear and insecurity and they credit the development of the EU for the shift. Even so, they are concerned about trade deals being done and the Germans having more control over them.

To me it is a tragedy that politicians both in London and in Brussels have created a situation where people now feel that the negatives outweigh even this massive positive.

EU reform should have been a discussion point for years leading us to the point where we discuss leaving.

@MaximusHeadroom I'm coming to this late but yes. My reasons to vote leave were because of my concerns about EU policy, reach, and plans for the future. It was a long term view and not based on immediate issues. If those were resolved I'd be much happier.

As it happens, I've changed my mind now anyway. The concerns I had about the EU pale in comparison to the trouble caused by the total inability of our parliament to be able to work together, cross party, to deal with something that should transcend party politics.

I voted one the EU election for one of the remain parties. I'm hoping it's not too late to undo the damage that I regret being part of causing.

Myself and almost everyone I know voted remain

Two friends voted leave that I'm aware of, the first is far right wing

The second isn't racist, but believed that Brexit would mean that borders would tighten a bit more and less people flooding into the country

Personally I hope they hold another referendum, the last vote was far too close plus the papers made a mockery of the situation, they should be told to keep out of it, and only expert advice on what each deal really would mean, both sides of course, but the bastard shit stirring, self serving newspapers should be banned

HarryElephante

Yes it has happened, repeatedly.

So not goady, just a review of what has happened over and over again.

flumpybear

If another referendum happens, what should happen is that both sides are forced to actually tell the truth.

No manipulative bullshit from either side. (and no remain did not put up a good clean fight)

Okay I’ll bite , my top three reasons :

1. I think it makes sense if we have only our laws to apply to , not any others (such as EU law) . Why should the EU law supersede our own when we have sufficient laws in place anyway, are we children that need to be kept under control? Take the application of gender directive , gender directive was applied to all insurance companies so you can’t get cheaper car insurance based on the data that women statistically have less car accidents as to do so would be now deemed as sexist . You have the Eu to thank for a lot of things like this that you just don’t hear about.
2. England fought and won two world wars not to be goverened by another country and here we are literally paying for the privilege .
3. in the 1960’s before we even joined the EU , the U.K. was leading in many thing , automotive industry (the mini) , fashion (the mini skirt) , sport (we won the world cup) , music (the Beatles) , every country wanted to BE us , we were considered a leading power. Why can’t that happen again ? Rely on our OWN industry in the U.K. to rejuvenate , bring creativity and leadership back to our own country rather than standing in the shadows . It’s a shame to see that future generation mostly seem fearful of leading the way on our own.
4. It is the will of the EU to have all the EU countries using the euro . Historically the Euro has proven unreliable and has had damaging impacts on many countries that started to use . Our sterling is and always has been strong , we shouldn’t give this up. Again it’s an attempt to take away a countries individual identity and strength.

Happy to help .

Sorry 4 , I got carried away ! There are more but those are the top burning issues for me.